World News Korner

Courtesy of TPM:

The chair of the Democratic National Committee on Monday called a Breitbart News ad portraying House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) "disgusting" and urged Republican leaders to condemn the conservative outlet.

Breitbart News launched a new vertical focused on California politics with an ad campaign that included a Miley Cyrus-referencing image of Pelosi in a nude bikini with her tongue lolling out. Pelosi-as-Cyrus is pictured on all fours below an image of Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) head photoshopped onto his predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger's body.

“To say the least, the Breitbart News ad is foul, offensive, and disrespectful to all women," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said in a statement. "It is a disgusting new low and would be reprehensible against any woman – regardless of party. It’s no wonder the Republicans are having problems appealing to women."

Invoking Republican efforts to change the way the party messages to women, Wasserman Schultz challenged GOP leaders to condemn the ad as well as stop publishing on Brietbart News. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) wrote one of the pieces inaugurating the new Breitbart California vertical.

"If GOP leaders are serious about their rebrand, then both their elected and Party leadership should condemn this outrageous behavior, call on Breitbart News to immediately remove the ad, and not continue to use this website as a forum for their views," the statement continued.

I can almost hear Sarah Palin's ghostwriters firing up their coal burning word processors now, preparing to offer the claim that Palin has also been portrayed in sexual terms as well, on late night comedian shows, cable news networks, and blogs. (Political pole dancer comes to mind.)

Of course the difference is that Nancy Pelosi is a serious politician, who has not lowered herself to play up her sexuality in order to gain attention, or used sexually charged comments to attack her enemies.

When Nancy Pelosi appears in a magazine spread with fake bolt on breasts like this.

Or like this, then clearly somebody can be excused for pointing out that the person pictured is using a provocative sexual image in order to garner attention and promote her brand.

However until Nancy Pelosi goes to these lengths to advertise herself in a prurient manner, then what Breitbart did must be considered completely out of line, and an attempt to demean a strong woman who they fear and wish to reduce to an image they find less threatening.

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Courtesy of Raw Story:

A new documentary film, narrated by a former Star Trek actress, promotes the long-ago disproven idea that the sun revolves around the Earth.

“Everything we think we know about our universe is wrong,” says actress Kate Mulgrew as she narrates the trailer for “The Principle.”

The film, which is set to be released sometime this spring, was bankrolled in part by the ultra-conservative and anti-Semitic Robert Sungenis, who maintains the blog “Galileo Was Wrong.” In addition to Mulgrew, who played Capt. Kathryn Janeway in “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Star Trek: Nemeis,” the film features several scientists, including Michio Kaku, Lawrence Krauss, and Max Tegmart.

The scientists are of course quoted completely out of contest to give the impression that they support this lunacy.

In fact one of them, Lawrence Krauss, went to the film's Facebook page , where he responded to concerns that he participated in the making of this film:

I didn't..but the good thing is that I am hoping that journalists contact me, in the rare chance that more than 3 people actually want to watch this garbage.. and I can tell them it is not worth watching..

The technique of interviewing scientists, and then taking their answers completely out of context, was also recently used by Ray "The banana man" Comfort on his incredibly deceptive piece of propaganda, "Evolution vs God."

I cannot however so easily dismiss Kate Mulgrew's participation as the narrator of this pseudo scientific piece of garbage.

I thought she was great as Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, and recently rediscovered her in "Orange is the New Black" as the incredibly intimidating 'Red' Reznikov.

I actually think that this is just a desperate attempt to ride on the coattails of Neil deGrasse Tyson's new Cosmos series by introducing a "documentary" which supposedly refutes what the Professor has been saying about scientific assertions.

Personally I am pretty shocked that in this day and age there is anybody who would actually put forth a theory that was refuted over 500 years ago.

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And here I thought the old Coke was bad for the health of the country.

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Courtesy of The Ouachita Citizen:

Fifth District Congressman Vance McAllister, who campaigned for office last fall as a devout Christian and devoted husband and father, was caught in video surveillance two days before Christmas passionately embracing and kissing one of his congressional aides.

The Ouachita Citizen obtained the video recording from an anonymous source.

The incident occurred at roughly 1:39 p.m. on Dec. 23, 2013, inside McAllister’s congressional office at 1900 Stubbs Ave., Suite B, in Monroe.

The woman who McAllister, 40, was caught kissing for almost half a minute is Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, 33, of 400 Zachary Way, Sterlington. She is McAllister’s district scheduler. 


At the time of this initial report the Congressman was not responding to calls for comment, and neither was the female staffer.

That all changed a few hours ago, when the Congressman's office released this statement:

"There's no doubt I've fallen short and I'm asking for forgiveness," McAllister said in a statement. "I'm asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve. Trust is something I know has to be earned whether your a husband, a father, or a congressman. I promise to do everything I can to earn back the trust of everyone I've disappointed."

"From day one, I've always tried to be an honest man. I ran for congress to make a difference and not to just be another politician. I don't want to make a political statement on this, I would just simply like to say that I'm very sorry for what I've done."

"While I realize I serve the public, I would appreciate the privacy given to my children as we get through this.

So the man who campaigned on his conservationism, his Christian faith, and his deeply held moral values, would like to be given privacy now that it has been revealed that he is a fraud.

Of course he does.

Once again I don't really care about a politicians personal life as a rule, but when somebody demonstrates this incredible level of hypocrisy, well then all bets are off.

By the way you might remember that McAllister was the guy who brought one of he Duck Dynasty guys along as his guest to the President's State of the Union Address.

Hmm, I guess phony Christians really DO flock together.

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Courtesy of The Salt Lake Tribune:

A 2-year-old boy apparently shot and killed his 11-year-old sister while they and their siblings played with a gun inside a Philadelphia home, police said Sunday.

Jamara Stevens was fatally shot Saturday morning with a gun that police believe was brought into the home by the mother’s boyfriend a few hours earlier.

The mother was home with her four children in a master bedroom, Lt. John Walker said. Police say the shooting occurred when she left the room at about 10 a.m. to use the bathroom.

The 2-year-old pointed the loaded, cocked gun in the direction of his sister and the gun discharged, according to investigators.

The fatal bullet struck Jamara’s shoulder and then traveled to her chest. Jamara was rushed to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, but died about a half-hour later, police said.

It appears that the boyfriend at least TRIED to place the gun out of reach of the children. However it seems he did not understand the tenacity of children in their efforts to get their hands on something new and forbidden.

Police believe the mother’s boyfriend had brought the gun to the house and stashed it on top of a refrigerator. It’s not immediately clear who brought it to the bedroom.

Homicide detectives are investigating and will forward information to the district attorney’s office, police said. No charges have been filed.

And it is unlikely that any charges will be filed, since this appears to be the very definition of an accidental shooting.

However it is an accident that simply could not have taken place before the arrival of the boyfriend, and his weapon.

I am sure the boyfriend believed that his gun made him and everybody around him safer, only to learn that often it has just the opposite effect.

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Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

It’s not all that often that the lead piece on the Drudge Report attacks Republicans, so it’s worth a little savoring when it happens, and this one is especially delectable. The link was to an AP story reporting that two weeks ago, House Republicans stealthily voted for a measure that changed an aspect of the Affordable Care Act.

What? I know. In other words, Congress amends bill it passed a few years ago. In a normal moral universe, this would scarcely qualify as news. But when we speak of the House of Representatives, we are in the modern Republican Party’s moral universe, and there, the rules are different.

You see, by agreeing to amend Obamacare, Republicans are acknowledging the law’s existence and legitimacy. The only things they’re supposed to be doing with Obamacare are burning copies of it on the Capitol steps and voting to repeal it. But here they’ve done the exact opposite. And what made it even worse was the way they did it. The change was very quietly tucked into a larger bill, the Medicare “doc fix,” which helps payments to doctors who serve Medicare patients keep pace with inflation. Only House majority leadership—the Republicans—can do that. And then, to make matters still worse, the yellow-bellied quislings passed the thing by voice vote, so no one had to be on the record.

The change, by the way, removes deductible caps from certain plans small businesses can offer their employees. This allows the employers, according to the AP, to offer cheaper plans to individuals who also have health savings accounts, which conservatives have been pushing for 15 or 20 years. Only around 30 percent of American businesses offer HSAs, and large employers are more likely to include them than small ones. Hence, the target of opportunity for HSA partisans. So the change accomplished a GOP policy goal. But funny thing: apparently not a single Republican member of the House trumpeted the change or even said a word about it when the vote took place March 27.

Not a single Republican mentioned a word about how they helped small businesses offer cheaper health care plans to their employees? Geez, you would think they'd be yelling that from the mountain tops.

Oh that's right, they are a party full of obstructionists and anti-government saboteurs. The last thing they want is for the government, and especially the Obama administration, to be successful at anything!

Welp, too damn bad. It looks like the law is here to stay, and that the Republicans in Congress are now well aware of that.

Which may end up costing them.

This from TPM:

The GOP's political inclination to dig in runs deeper than keeping conservatives energized for the November congressional elections. It's about preserving their party's brand. Even minor concessions of Obamacare's potential for success would gravely damage their credibility after relentless warnings for years that the law was fatally flawed, irreparably damaging to the health care system and ruinous to economic freedom. They don't have a good option other than to stay the course and keep highlighting Obamacare's downsides and flaws.

Hmm, well this should help those Democrats in red states during the upcoming elections. If only they are smart enough to take advantage of it that is.

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If Palin could have gotten away with pandering to the Southern voters in this garb, you know she would have.

Over the weekend there was some minor controversy, fanned by certain RIght Wing blogs, concerning remarks made by Kathleen Parker on Meet the Press in response to an anti-Obamacare commercial:

Kathleen Parker quite visibly cringed at the AFP's newest anti-Obamacare ad, not because it was full of crap and propaganda. No, she didn't like the fact that the "Obamacare sufferer" depicted had a Southern accent:

"And by the way, I think you could find someone who doesn't have a southern accent who is confused by this act. (CHUCKLE) Because we always seem to find a character who seems a little country-fied, who can't just fathom. You know, there are plenty of smart, sophisticated people, who are equally hazy about what is really going on."

Now Parker's comments were not very well thought out since the ad that she was referring to was playing in Arkansas. I am not sure how else she would expect them to speak if not with a thick southern accent.

However, though I am by no means a fan of her writing, I took her meaning to be, that the majority of these anti-Obama ads feature people with a southern twang and she was trying to say that there were people in the North who were concerned about the law as well.

In other words she saw this as feeding into a stereotype that she thought was unfair to those living in the South.

Sure it was clunky, and her description not terribly sensitive, but she DOES kind of have a point.

However that point was completely lost on a certain intellectually challenged Alaskan version of white trash, and she took to Facebook, so that her ghostwriter could assist her in letting the world know that she panders to the southern demographic as well:

These people are nuts, albeit entertaining nuts… Ah... this nice Sunday afternoon has been groovin' along so enjoyably, and then – BAM – I see some articles that leave no doubt about how out of touch our self-proclaimed "elite leaders" and opinion makers really are. These people are nuts! Just reading these headlines makes you ask, "Really?!" The jokes on them, though, because they've just added to the entertaining, shake-your-head/almost-feel-sorry-for-them reports that we "average" Americans use as examples of their condescension. These are the "leaders" who look at the crowd behind them and assume they're leading the parade, when really the growing crowd is chasing them out of town. So, check these out and let me know what YOU'VE found that adds to the list!

First, here’s the video of one celebrated member of the elite D.C. chattering class suggesting that people with Southern accents aren’t “smart” or “sophisticated.” Are Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and James Carville exempt from this blanket denigration of Southern intelligence, or was this comment only directed at conservatives with Southern accents? (Poor gal, that Ms. Parker, not knowing the Southern roots of many Founding Fathers who wrote the exceptional, providential Constitution for her to enjoy today.)

Isn't is nice that she even dropped one of her "g's" in this condescending piece of moosepoop in order to show solidarity with her Southern brothers and sisters?

The second part of the Facebook post attacks the amount spent on Obama's trip to Brussels, because now that we have a black man in the White House suddenly we all need to be shocked at that kind of thing.

Once Governor of the most northern state on the continent Sarah Palin wraps herself in the rebel flag and rides to defend the South. From political pundits.

You know I find it particularly ironic that Palin rides to defend the conservative's habit of pandering to southern voters when it comes to spreading misinformation and propaganda. Especially since we have seen her do very much the same thing throughout her career, both in national politics and in reality television.

I mean do YOU really think this is how this moron dresses when headed out to Nordstroms?

(Yes there are people walking around in camo in Wasilla, but Palin was NEVER one of them.)

As we all remember during her 2008 campaign Palin specifically ratcheted up the racism in order to agitate a certain demographic who were less than happy that a black man might soon be the leader of their country.

That demographic was NOT located up north.

And that same approach is still being used today, by the Republican party, the Teabaggers, and of course the Koch brothers.

It is no accident that those on the liberal side are referred to as "northern elites," or "city dwellers," or as "intellectuals," all of which is considered suspect by those who regularly attend a Baptist church, think a formal affair requires wearing their shiniest belt buckle, and believe that the Bible is the most trusted source for scientific information.

That pandering has lead to scenes such as this one.

In provoking animus among those living in the South, the conservatives have brought us perilously close to yet another civil war. And they seem completely unconcerned if that comes to pass.

However for Palin, pandering to this group has also filled the coffers of SarahPAC, increased book sales, and hopefully attracted viewers to her new "huntin" show.

She is manipulating those in the South for her purposes, and the Koch brothers are manipulating them to suit their objectives, and that was really all Kathleen Parker was attempting to point out.

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