World News Korner

Courtesy of the "weed picker's" Facebook page:

I was out picking weeds in my ridiculously deficient garden, so I haven't seen the Hillary Clinton interview on Fox yet. But Greta's a good one, so I shall do so -- unless you can summarize it for me! I'd love to hear what YOU thought of it, so I can go back to separating the weeds from the chaff (or baby carrots anyway).

Palin then links to part 4 of Hillary's interview with Bret Baier and Greta.

You know I have covered some incredibly bizarre, and nonsensical interviews, articles, and Facebook posts attributed to the Alaskan White Walker, and this one is right up there.

I mean why bother alerting her fans to the fact that she has nothing to say about the Hillary interview? (Which I don't believe by the way since this is the part of the interview where Greta asks Hillary about the portion of her book that claims the Obama campaign wanted her to speak out about Palin. In fact Greta even asks Hillary about the claims that Palin was not Trig's birth mother. And you KNOW Sarah has something to say about that!)

What the hell is a "ridiculously deficient garden?"

And since by most accounts Hillary emerged essentially unscathed from the Fox News interview why would Palin direct her followers attention to it?

I will say one thing for sure, she most certainly wrote this unnecessary little scribble herself. Because even the untalented hacks she employs to keep her from sounding like an imbecile would know better than to allow this thing to end up on Facebook.




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Still from "The Innocence of Muslims."

Courtesy of TPM:

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the suspect captured by U.S. special forces on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, reportedly said he was motivated in part by the anti-Islam online video made in America, according to the New York Times.

"What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video," Times reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in a story on Khattala on Tuesday.

So to be clear Susan Rice was right!

President Obama was right!

And the Right Wing attack machine, was wrong, wrong, wrong!



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Andrew Dandurand's booking photos.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

A Florida man with a history of domestic violence was arrested this week as police say that he was on his way to murder his ex-girlfriend, her boyfriend and possibly her child with an assault-style rifle.

According to Flagler Live, the Flagler County dispatcher received a report on Sunday that 24-year-old Andrew Dandurand had an “assault rifle,” and was planning to kill his ex-girlfriend, and her boyfriend.

In April, Dandurand’s ex-girlfriend had called deputies after he hit her with a plastic pipe, and then broke into her home, forcing her to flee. The court responded by giving the ex-girlfriend a protection injunction.

But only a week later, Dandurand was back in jail for violating it, and for aggravated assault. He was later released on $7,000 bond.

And then St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputies got the call from Flagler County dispatch on Sunday that Dandurand was on the way to kill his ex-girlfriend, and her boyfriend. Sgt. Catherine Payne told WAWS that Dandurand may also have been planning to harm his ex-girlfriend’s child.

“Based on the information we had at hand, absolutely. He was going to victimize somebody, whether it be the girlfriend, her child, the boyfriend or himself,” Payne said.

So wait, does this mean that what stops a bad man with a gun is actually the police?

Gee whoda thunk it?

Gee I wonder if the NRA will hire an attorney for him to protect his ability to exercise his 2nd Amendment rights the way they seem the get exercised the most often in this country?

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Courtesy of News Corpse:

A local TV station in Fresno, California did a rather trivial story about a waiting room at a Veterans Administration pharmacy. The story concerned an allegation that Fox News had been banned from the televisions at the facility. So the reporter sent one of his veteran buddies into the pharmacy to pretend to want to view Fox News. Whereupon they discovered that the channel was not accessible.

That set off a flurry of outrage over at the Fox News mothership. They aired panicky segments on this massive censorship plot on multiple programs, including America’s News Headquarters, The O’Reilly Factor, and Fox & Friends. In each case they characterized the situation as a blatant attempt to silence Fox News due to their reporting on the scandalous backlogs and corrupt management at some V.A. hospitals. The only thing wrong with these reports was – well – everything.

First of all, there was no attempt to censor Fox News. A spokesperson for the facility made it clear that that the channel was removed because of patient concerns. At least some of the patients explicitly objected to Fox News and the resultant controversy created an uncomfortable environment.

“It was just a misunderstanding. We’ve had a lot of veterans with diverse personalities. A lot of veterans complaining about one news station or the other, so the intent was really to be fair and equitable and take all stations off. [...] We’ve had several incidents of veterans actually arguing, fighting over the different news stations. Some wanted to watch news, some did not. Others wanted to watch specific stations.”

This kid of reminds me of the so-called "IRS Scandal" where the IRS dealt with the influx of applications by 501 (c) (4) organizations by flagging those that seemed suspicious for later review, which the Right Wing distorted to make it appear as if it were an attack on them.

In this case all cable news stations get removed, but the only one to play the victim is the one that promotes Right Wing ideologies.

Notice a pattern?

News Corpse then goes on to explain that there was no reason to single Fox News out over reports on problems with the VA, as they did no more than any other cable news network. (And besides CNN broke the story, NOT Fox News.)

But what was REALLY troubling was HOW Fox played the victim:

Particularly disturbing was the framing of this phony whining about censorship by the Fox & Friends crew, where co-host Brian Kilmeade packaged the segment as “Abandoned Brothers.” They actually employed language generally reserved for prisoners of war or fallen soldiers on the battlefield to describe people waiting to get their prescriptions filled in a downtown Fresno drug store who weren’t able to watch a gaggle of Fox News blondes in short skirts mutilate journalism.

Kind of icky. Especially considering how they tried and convicted Sgt. Bergdahl, an actual POW, without bothering to get the whole story about his capture and subsequent release.

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Courtesy of Consumerist:

A couple weeks back, HBO’s John Oliver questioned whether it was wise to fill the FCC Chairman vacancy with former cable/wireless lobbyist Tom Wheeler, likening the decision to a parent hiring a dingo as a babysitter. Wheeler takes issue with the comparison and is now publicly denying that he is a child-devouring canine.

In the original 13-minute segment from Last Week Tonight, Oliver referred to Wheeler’s previous jobs as president of wireless lobbying group CTIA and of the National Cable and Telecom Association.

“The guy who used to run the cable industry’s lobbying arm is now running the agency tasked with regulating it,” quipped Oliver at the time. “That is the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.”

At last week’s open meeting of the full commission, Brendan Sasso of the National Journal asked Wheeler if he’d seen the Last Week Tonight piece on net neutrality.

“I think that it represents the… um… high level of interest [makes bizarre snuffle-laugh-chuckle] that exists in the topic in the country,” replied a very slow-speaking Chairman, “And that’s good.”

Then comes an amazing few seconds during which Wheeler stands silently, the only sound coming from his fingers tapping on the podium, before he deadpans, “Uhhhhmmm… You know, I would like to state for the record that I’m not a dingo… I had to go look it up; it’s a feral, wild animal in Australia.

This made me laugh so hard.

You know I was not as impressed with Oliver's stint at hose of the Daily Show during Jon Stewart's absence, but damn he is really hitting his stride with this new show.

In fact he is really giving Stewart and Colbert a run for their money.

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Courtesy of the Wasilla Wendigo's Facebook page:

The more things change the more they stay the same? Seems so! If the national GOP machine spent as much time fighting President Obama's disastrous and dangerous agenda as they've spent fighting that great conservative candidate Chris McDaniel, well, maybe they'd have been successful at stopping Obama's "fundamental transformation" of our country. Negative results from Obama fulfilling that one promise of his to transform America are just beginning to be felt at home and abroad. (Yeah the ending of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, better access to health care, protection against discrimination in the federal workplace and military for the LGBT community. Such a terrible "transformation.")

Let's cut through the GOP Establishment's rhetoric and the predictable media bias in Mississippi's U.S. Senate race and look directly at the record. Chris McDaniel is a proven conservative fighter with undeniably impressive, tangible and needed results. He's gone above and beyond in his capacity as a citizen, attorney, and citizen legislator to stop the Obama agenda. We need to send this fighter to Washington where he will continue his fight for all of us by shaking up the status quo and by effectually defending our Constitution. Take a look at Chris' legislative and personal accomplishments for the constitutional conservative cause here, and see the recognition he's received by those who know him best. Election day is just one week away. Please send a message to the career politicians who sure seem satisfied with the trajectory our nation is on, because they sure don't lift a finger to help elect the guys they KNOW will be the fighters for American exceptionalism in DC. Instead, they ignore their opportunity to stop the damaging leftist policies the people do not want, and instead choose to put all these resources into trying to defeat a courageous, proven Republican who's smart enough to stay independent of any political machine on any side of the aisle for the sake of We the People. Please support Chris McDaniel for U.S. Senate on June 24th.

- Sarah Palin

PS: Pay attention to who is funding these attacks on Chris' record. One of the Super PACs supporting Chris’ opponent received a huge donation from none other than Mike Bloomberg whose positions on things like gun control and the intrusions of the nanny state run counter to what the voters in Mississippi stand for.

I believe what has Palin's soiled panties in a twist is this ad paid for by Citizens for Cochran:

Please, how many of us haven't accused a woman of using her tits to get elected before?

Or referred to women as "Mamasita," "Hot Mama," or called them a "fine young thing?"

I mean it's not like he is representing a party that has been accused of waging a War on Women or anything, right?

Or maybe I'm wrong and what has really caused Palin's hot flashes to suddenly flare up is the fact that TPM discovered ties between McDaniel and the KKK.

Though since this is a conservative candidate running in Mississippi that hardly seems like a scandal at all really.

Let's see sexism AND racism, yep seems like the perfect Sarah Palin endorsed candidate to me.

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Courtesy of NBC News:

American special forces seized the suspected mastermind of the deadly Benghazi consulate attack in a weekend raid in Libya, a U.S. administration official said Tuesday.

Ahmed Abu Khattala has been wanted in the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack. His capture marks the first apprehension of one of the alleged perpetrators in the attack.

Khattala was grabbed Sunday "in an extremely tightly held SOF (Special Operations Forces) operation," a U.S. official told NBC News.

According to one senior official, "There may be other shoes to drop."

I know what you're thinking, "Oh thank goodness, now with the capture of this guy the Right Wing can stop beating the Benghazi conspiracy drums and move on to something else.

Yeah well if you actually were thinking that then you may not be intelligent enough to be here and I would respectfully ask that you step away from the blog.

This is only going to open up a whole new can of stale Benghazi worms, and the Righties are going to pick it apart like vultures pecking away at a rotting corpse.

In fact they already are:

A Fox News anchor suggested that President Obama captured one of the alleged architects of the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi to boost Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.

Speaking on Fox News’ Outnumbered just moments after news broke that the United States had captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, Kennedy mused, “you have a former Secretary of State who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing.”

The sentiment — that Obama timed Khattala’s capture for political benefit — was quickly echoed by other conservatives. Rory Cooper, an aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, tweeted, “While it’s great to see they caught the Benghazi suspect, it’s important to remember, he wasn’t really hiding.”

There is more here.

Damn! That didn't take long!

But remember these are the same people who found EVERYTHING wrong about the rescue of a POW held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. So could we expect nothing less?

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Courtesy of KTOO:

Alaska was No. 1 for corruption-related convictions of federal, state and local public employees and elected officials, averaged over the state’s population. When averaged over the number of public employees per state, Alaska ranked seventh. Convictions were counted from 1976 to 2008, based on data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The rankings were just one item the researchers fed into their statistical analyses testing for connections between corruption and state spending.

Four theories were tested:

1. The more corruption there is, the bigger the budget;
2. Corruption skews spending toward capital spending, construction and highways;
3. Corruption skews spending toward salaries, wages and debt financing;
4. and Corruption skews state spending away from social sectors, such as education, welfare and health.

Their analyses backed all four theories. The researchers also presented a statistical model that suggests if Alaska had merely “average” corruption, the state could save more than $900 million a year.

To be fair between 2006 and 2008 we were convicting politicians right and left. (Well Right anyway.) However just because the FBI is not throwing them in jail at the same pace certainly does not mean that the corruption is any less than it was before.

It just means our politicians have become better at hiding their criminal activities.

Of course in some cases the politicians simply quit their jobs half way through to avoid prosecution, which may skew the number of convictions as well.

The rest in the top five of corrupt states were

2) Mississippi
3) Louisiana
4) North Dakota
5) South Dakota

You know why can't Alaska be number one is something good for a change, instead of number one in things like corruption, rape, and alcoholism?

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Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The Republican National Committee is pushing back against all the 2016 buzz Hillary Clinton is getting, courtesy of her book tour with their own campaign. It involves a giant squirrel costume. The squirrel was first spotted — like its friend the fox — near the National Mall, wandering around outside a Hillary Clinton event at George Washington University. It was handing out "Another Clinton in the White House is NUTS" bumper stickers.

Long line to get into HRC's book tour event at GWU. Lots of students, Ready For Hillary and.... The GOP squirrel pic.twitter.com/G3vMKxUYAp
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) June 13, 2014

Okay so to be clear, the RNC is suggesting that voting for Hillary is a nutty thing to do.

And to drive home the point as to which party is the most mentally stable, they hire a guy to dress up as a giant squirrel and hand out bumper stickers?

You know maybe just to save time the Republicans could just concede the 2016 presidential election now.

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So below are some citizen reports that were phoned in to the police of Kalamazoo, Michigan:

The first caller reports seeing a "Caucasian man with white hair and pajama pants walking with what looks like and AK-47."

A second caller says he saw an older man walking down the street with what looked to be an assault rifle, although he admits it could also be a pellet or BB gun. He says the man had the gun up by his shoulder and "didn't look dangerous or nothing." The dispatcher asks if the gun is in the man's hands, to which the caller replies it is not. "He's an elderly man and I just want to make sure everything's all right," he says.

A third caller gives police more cause for alarm. "There's an older gentleman carrying what looks like a large semi-automatic rifle through the streets," the male caller says. "He does appear to be intoxicated; he's stumbling around a little bit and kind of bumping into some stuff."

KDPS Sgt. Sean Gordon is the first officer on the scene and observed the man with a gun slung across his shoulder and jaywalking across the street in a state of intoxication.

He carefully makes contact with the individual:

Gordon: Hey partner, how you doing? Can you set that down real quick and talk to me?

Houseman: I'm not setting it down.

Gordon: Well you can't cross the street like that.

Houseman: Am I being detained?

Gordon: Yes, you are being detained right now. You crossed the street illegally. Place the weapon down on the ground please.

Houseman: I will not.

Gordon radios that it appears the man will not drop his rifle.

Gordon: "Look, you crossed the street illegally; I just want to talk to you. I just want to talk to you. You're walking around here scaring people, man.

A second Public Safety vehicle arrives just after 4:11 p.m. About a minute later, Gordon asks Houseman for his name. Houseman says he is "Joe Schmoe."

"Based on training and experience I know that this is a euphemism used as an alias and knew it was not correct," Gordon would later write in his report.

Houseman: I am free to go?

Gordon: "No, you're not free to go. Right now you're committing a crime of resisting and obstructing (for failing to identify himself after being stopped for jaywalking). Now you've stepped up to a misdemeanor crime.

Houseman: Why don't you (expletive) shoot me?

Gordon: I don't want to shoot you; I'm not here to do that.

As the interaction continues Houseman calls the officers "gang members" and mentions a coming "revolution." Which you may all remember is the same language used by those cop killers in Nevada.

More officers arrive, including SWAT, but the police continue to negotiate with Mr. Houseman and avoid the use of force.

Another officer takes the lead, KDPS Lt. Stacey Geik, who finally convinced Houseman to lay down his weapon, which turns out to be empty.

He then has the following exchange with Houseman:

Geik offers to allow Houseman to walk home and retrieve his rifle the following day, or to drive him home and continue the discussion there. Houseman declines both offers.

Geik: But you're not stable mentally, which now takes you away from that rifle.

Houseman: I'm not stable mentally? How do you decide that?

Geik: You're damn right. How did this happen with open carry? What are you supposed to do when you contact law enforcement? Do you say, 'I hate you mother(expletive), (expletive) you? I hate you, there's a revolution coming.' Do you say that? Is that what you're taught?

Houseman: It was wrong of me.

Houseman agains asks for his gun back. Geik tells him he wants to make sure he isn't a risk to himself or others.

Geik: You saying (expletive), (expletive), (expletive) and yelling across the street with a rifle in your hands ...

Houseman: That's my First Amendment right.

Geik: No it's not. You can't swear.

Houseman: That's bull---. I can threaten you if I want to.

Geik: That's incorrect.

Houseman: I can threaten you. I can threaten you're family. I didn't threaten your family, I said I could.

Unidentified officer: You said a war was coming.

Houseman: I didn't say a war was coming.

Unidentified officer: You said a revolution is coming.

Houseman: Think about it. You know it is.

My first thought is that the Kalamazoo police are very patient people.

My second thought is that these idiots need to stop quoting the Constitution until they have somebody sit down and explain it to them.

And my third thought is that if these assholes keep talking about a revolution they are going to find themselves yelling that kind of crap through iron bars.

This idiot is very lucky he did not end up looking like a chunk of Swiss cheese, but if this keeps up there is definitely going to come a time when an abrasive Open Carry advocate runs into an irritable police officer and then shit is going to get real.

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Essentially at its core the difference is that the religious are concerned with life after death, while the non-religious are focused on the one before.

We live our lives as if it is our only one, because it is.

Therefore we enjoy it for the opportunity that it provides to live, laugh, and love without the fear that living too fully, laughing too long, or loving too much will deny us access to the more rewarding life that some have convinced themselves follows this.

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"I can't believe he lied to us."

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday blasted former President George W. Bush for selling Americans a "bill of goods" before the Iraq invasion, which led to the violence that is currently sweeping across the country.

During his Monday broadcast, a viewer asked Robertson if there was a solution to the ongoing violence caused by an al Qaeda splinter group, ISIS, threatening to take over Iraq.

"Right now, what we did -- and it was a great mistake to go in there," Robertson explained, pointing out that Saddam Hussein's "bomb maker" had said that the then-dictator "doesn't know how to make an atomic bomb."

"And so to sell the American people on weapons of mass destruction, he had WMD and was getting [concentrated uranium] yellowcake out of Africa and all of that, it was a lot of nonsense," the TV preacher said. "We were sold a bill of goods, we should never have gone into that country!"

"As bad as Saddam Hussein was, he held those warring factions in check, and he contained those radical Islamists," he continued. "Fix it, no? It's too late to fix it. It's unfixable. Those simmering animosities have been there for centuries."

Holy crap! If that is not a sign of the Apocalypse I don't know what is.

However if Robertson wants to lay the blame where it really belongs he might want to start with God. Because THAT is who George Bush claimed told him to invade Iraq:

A 2005 story in The Guardian pulls back the curtain and reveals the sniveling little man behind Bush’s Great and Powerful OZ persona: God. The story quotes Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Foreign Minister at the time, detailing a meeting with Bush at a Israeli-Palestinian summit in Egypt after the start of the Iraq invasion:

“President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.”

Mr. Bush went on: “And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East’. And, by God, I’m gonna do it.”

So yes Pat Robertson, you old fossil, George Bush lied to get us into a war. However the real problem is that he claims he was listening to the voices in his head which he believed were coming from God.

And people who make claims like that, should NEVER be taken seriously.

Right Televangelist Pat Robertson?

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Courtesy of Raw Story:

An Illinois man reportedly fatally shot his ex-wife and her new boyfriend at a high school reunion in East Peoria over the weekend before being killed by an off-duty FBI officer.

WEEK reported that 33-year-old Lori A. Moore and her boyfriend, 36-year-old Lance E. Griffel, (pictured, above) were at The Fifth Quarter Sports Bar and Pizzeria on Saturday, when 40-year-old Jason A. Moore walked in and shot them both in the head at pointblank range.

Lori Moore was there to attend her reunion for East Peoria Community High School Class of 1999. More than 100 attendees witnessed the shooting.

According to the New York Daily News, an off-duty FBI officer shot and killed Jason Moore.

“It’s very difficult to say. You can play the ‘what if’ game over and over again, but I think it’s pretty clear in his case the presence of this officer and his ability to take very quick and very decisive action prevented a further tragedy,” East Peoria Police Chief Ganschow explained.

Lori Moore and her boyfriend were pronounced dead at OSF St. Francis Hospital several hours after the shooting.

The NRA will tell you repeatedly that access to guns keeps us safe, but I think we all know that the VAST number of gun deaths are muhc like this one, the result of a crime of passion, or an accident, or simply somebody angry at the world who kills for no discernible reason.

Of course we can never make and absolute determination as to how many people are killed by guns, and for what reason, becasue the NRA has been actively blocking efforts by the CDC to gather that data.

Which is odd if in deed they were confident in their belief that guns keep us safe, don't you think?

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Courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:

His advice is broken up into two parts.

First, if the child is still a Christian, then you have to confront the child and get him to repent! If he doesn’t repent, bring a couple witnesses along. If he still doesn’t repent, tell the church! If he still doesn’t repent, kick him out of the church (and, presumably, out of the family):

If they profess to be a Christian, you have to alienate them. You have to separate them. You can’t condone that. It’s inconsistent with a profession of Christ. So you isolate them. You don’t have a meal with them. You separate yourself from them. You turn them over to Satan, as it were…

But if the child is no longer a Christian, then forget it. There’s just no hope.

My daughter went through something similar in the fundamentalist church that she attended with her mother in Georgia.

They kept telling her how much they loved her and wanted her to be happy with the Lord, while shaming her and telling her that she mush repress her love for those the church did not sanction.

My approach was somewhat different.

I told her I already knew because I had been paying attention to her life, and that on the day she was born I had promised to always love her, accept her, and support her, and that nothing had changed.

I have seen too many parents try to mold their children into idealized versions of themselves, only to drive them away and spend their later years in regret and frustration.

There is no worse fate for a child than to have their parents tell them to change who they are or leave, and there is not worse fate for a parent than when their child choose the latter.

Update: And let me just add that part of my support for my child was helping to elect a President who has done more for the LGBT community than any other President in history.

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Seriously what is going on here?

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The Idaho state GOP convention collapsed on Saturday as the presiding Republican U.S. congressman called a halt to the proceedings amid infighting and walk-outs by delegates.

Saying the party had hit “rock bottom,” 1st District Idaho Congressman Raul Labrador adjourned the convention without electing a chairman, establishing a platform or completing any of its scheduled business, according to the Spokesman-Review.

“This is as low as the party can go,” said Labrador. “We have hit bottom. I think the party has no choice but to go up from here.”

The three-day convention dissolved into acrimony as various factions representing the Tea Party and the libertarian wing battled over unseating delegates.

According to the Huffington Post, all 15 delegates from Bannock County were successfully deposed, with a move to remove delegates from Ada and Twin Falls counties in the works before Labrador gaveled the proceedings to a close.

State Sen. Chuck Winder (R-Boise) criticized the attempts disqualify entire delegations from the three counties.

“It was basically the ultra-, ultra-conservative, tea party-libertarian type people basically flexing their muscle in the way the thing was organized,” said Winder. “It’s a real shame that a convention comes to that stage, where there really wasn’t any real floor leadership, there wasn’t any fairness in the process, either in the credentials committee or on the floor. It was all predetermined. It’s kind of ‘who’s going to have the power,’ rather than working together.”

This same scenario is playing out, in one form or another, all over the country.

The Tea Party, who got a taste of power and liked, are determined to either take over the Republican party or tear it apart.

We saw this same thing happen up here in Alaska, and currently the establishment Republicans maintain a tenuous hold on leadership, but things remain shaky.

Which is great news for our Democratic Senator and will undoubtedly mean the same for Democrats in other red states where this infighting is taking place.

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Okay this is another contribution from my daughter, who is on a campaign to improve healthy eating, education, and get everybody using renewable energy.

Y'all don't stand a chance.

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Courtesy of Americans Against the Tea Party:

Republicans don’t seem to have the same sort of memory that most of us have. Theirs seems to be much more selective and malleable. In other words, if the real memory doesn’t support their current position it can morph into an entirely different one. Such seems to be the case as they assess the crisis in Iraq in which the Shiite dominated government seems poised to fall to a Sunni insurgency led by an al Qaeda offshoot called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The right rallied quickly to condemn President Obama, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President’s entire National Security team for “allowing” this to happen. It is all his fault, they say, made possible when he pulled all of our troops out of the country in December of 2011. Had he left a stabilizing force in place, they say, this would not have happened.

This is a case of a complete memory morph since the withdrawal of our forces in 2011 honored an agreement between the U.S. and the Iraqi government which required that all of our troops be out of the country by December 31, 2011. That agreement was drawn up in October of 2008, during George W. Bush’s term, and ratified by the Iraqi government one month later — before President Obama took office.

And hey not to nitpick but Bush was also the one who ignored advice from the military not to invade Iraq, used faulty information to convince the American people it was necessary, did not provide our troops with the equipment and armored vehicles they needed to survive over there, declared victory before the fighting really even got started, and was never able to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden which was the originally stated goal for us sending any troops overseas in the first place.

But hey, at least he was white. Right conservatives?

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Courtesy of Enroll America:

We got a new Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment report from the feds this week, and it marks a new milestone. Between the health insurance marketplaces, Medicaid, and CHIP, 14 million Americans signed up to get covered between October 1 and the end of April.

Compared to the sign-up stats from before October 1, Medicaid/CHIP enrollment has increased by 6 million people since open enrollment began on October 1, including 1.1 million in April alone. In states that expanded Medicaid, enrollment increased by more than 15 percent, and sign-ups still increased by 3.3 percent in non-expansion states.

It’s important to remember that even though open enrollment ended for the health insurance marketplaces on March 31, people can still sign up for Medicaid and CHIP at any time. So that 6 million figure will go up as the year goes on.

Now if only the twenty or so states that are NOT expanding medicaid will get with the program we might see those numbers go up even more dramatically.



After all isn't it time for the Republicans to admit defeat on this issue?

(H/T to the Obama Diary.)

Update: You know it might be worth mentioning here that many insurance companies that were once hesitant to sign on with Obamacare have had a change of heart.

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Courtesy of the New York Daily News:

A state-funded research project will offer free pregnancy tests at 20 bars in Alaska to stop expectant mothers from boozing.

The University of Alaska has $400,000 to study if women are more likely to forego alcohol if a poster is pasted on a dispenser rather than a wall, reported the Anchorage Daily News.

The project was proposed in March by Sen. Pete Kelly (R-Alaska) to flood bars and restaurants with tests to tackle birth defects and substance abuse problems in Alaska.

Researchers claim Alaska has the highest rate of fetal alcohol syndrome because of frequent alcohol use among its female residents.

The new study will target women with unexpected pregnancies with the help of a Minnesota nonprofit, Healthy Brains for Children, who installed the first pregnancy test dispenser in a bar in 2012 to curb fetal alcohol syndrome.

Unlike the Minnesota dispensers, the tests in Alaska will be offered for free starting in December.

Okay while I appreciate that Pete Kelly wants to do SOMETHING about this terrible problem, it might help if he understood what the fuck he was trying to stop.

First off I think it is pretty clear that these machines will be treated as jokes by women in bars who will undoubtedly empty the machines every night just for shits and giggles, or to stock up for the future.

Second I work with the community most impacted by FAS, and the vast majority of the children are natives from rural communities, where there are few bars, and more drinking in the homes. Therefore even if this COULD have an impact, it won't impact the demographic that needs it the most.

Third there has already been a more thoughtful program launched in 2000, that actually DID have some favorable results:

The state has documented a 32 percent drop in the rate of Alaska children born with fetal alcohol syndrome. A state health official is attributing the decline largely to programs started under a multi-year, $29 million grant former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens obtained in a 2000 congressional earmark.

The state used the money for both prevention and treatment of fetal alcohol syndrome, which occurs if a mother drinks during pregnancy. The state launched a multi-media campaign to educate people, and set up teams around the state to work with fetal alcohol kids.

The findings of this program might well have helped this Pete Kelly guy if he had bothered to study what they discovered.

The decline in the rate of fetal alcohol births was all due to a reduction in cases among Alaska Natives, Schoellhorn's report says. The rate of non-Native FAS births did not drop.

It's not clear why that's the case, she said.

Casto said she believes Alaska Native health organizations have strongly emphasized screening and intervention for pregnant women and women of child-bearing age.

"They have recognized it as a huge problem. They are making an active and forceful effort to intervene."

Yes well the number of cases in non-native births did not drop because they are already quite low already, and the number of native FAS births dropped because the program focused on education and prevention. Not simply installing dispensers in restaurant bathrooms and hoping for the best.

But hey, do you know what would have a HUGE effect on bringing down the number of FAS births?

Greater access to birth control, and sex education.

However Senator Kelly will have none of that.

I mean sure encouraging women to piss on a stick in a public restroom is reasonable, but offering them the opportunity to forgo unwanted pregnancies, take control of their lives, and plan when and with whom to start a family, well that's just social engineering.

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From the IM puppet's Facebook page:

Happy Father's Day, all you great hardworking American men who make this world a better place! The nation needs you. The nation loves you.

- Sarah Palin

Well thank you Sarah I love my nation too. Though to be fair I was unaware they had elected you as their spokesperson.

Palin also included a picture of Todd with Trig and one of Chuck Sr. putting his hand over his heart in front of the Statue of Liberty, which sports a SarahPAC logo in the corner so the old fart can help to earn his keep.

However I chose to borrow the picture above, with all credit to Palin's Facebook page, because we have not seen Track in uniform in many, many moons.

I have to imagine that this is in response to all of the criticism she receives for calling her son a "combat veteran" when he is no longer active in the military and never saw any combat.

Clearly this is a picture that she has had for some time since Kyla Grace was born in 2011 and has surely not taken until 2014 to learn to walk.

And we know that Track was discharged in 2010 after serving only 2 years.

So I am not sure why he is wearing his uniform in that picture. (Do soldiers get extra attention on airlines these days?)

He also did not see any combat while in Iraq as indicated by the fact that he did not receive a Combat Infantry Badge which is automatic once a soldier engages in a firefight.

But nonetheless, I am sure that the low hanging fruit will eat all of this up with a spoon.

You know sometimes Sarah you can simply love your family without feeling the need to make up mythologies to cover for your embarrassment at how they turned out.

They should not all have to be combat veterans, book authors, or reality show stars in order to earn their parent's love.

I'm just saying.

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Courtesy of the New York Daily News:

The 15-year-old freshman who opened fire on his Oregon high school Tuesday wanted to kill "sinners," the teen wrote in his diary.

Jared Padgett, an active member of an Gresham, Ore., Mormon church, shot and killed a student and injured a teacher during the attack on Reynolds High School before turning the gun on himself, police said.

While searching through the teen's home, officers found his journal, Portland's KGW reported.

In the diary, Padgett detailed plans to kill the "sinners" at his school, police said.

No specific students or teachers were named as targets. His writings did not outline how or when the killings would occur, police said.

Well I guess when you are surrounded by a culture that labels guns "tools" that can be used to solve problems, it might make sense to give God a helping hand with those you consider "sinners."

This young man was pumped full of religious fairy tales, allowed to arm himself, and then sent to school. It is a miracle these things don't happen more often.

And there is at least one teacher from his high school who has had enough of this kind of lunacy.

Courtesy of Americans Against the Tea Party:

Seth Needler teaches science at Reynolds High School, where America saw the 74th school shooting since Sandy Hook. After the shooter, Jared Padgett, killed one of his classmates last week, Needler wrote a lengthy post on social media describing his terror as he and his students huddled in their darkened classroom, fearing for their lives.

Now, he is calling for action. Needler has even offered his own outline for tightening security on gun sales. He was critical of the NRA for not allowing such common sense steps to be taken already, stating:

“I’m sick and tired of hearing gun enthusiasts claim that any kind of gun regulation is an attack on the second amendment, or that the solution to gun violence is more guns” he wrote. “I completely fail to understand how one organization, which is the lobbying arm of one industry, can control every politician in Congress to the extent of preventing any action at all on gun control, even after polls show that 90% of Americans are in favor of it.”

"But every time another shooting happens, and undoubtedly this will be no exception, people (including me and my family and friends) sigh, groan, bemoan the incident, talk about how awful it is, criticize the NRA and its lopsided influence, and then do…nothing. The only constituency that responds with any energy to incidents of gun violence is gun enthusiasts, who declare that it just provides more proof of their hypothesis that schools need to be staffed with U.S. Marshalls and teachers need to be armed and carry loaded weapons. Rather than stricter gun regulation, we get weakening of the existing regulation, and states literally pushing each other out of the way to be the most liberal when it comes to who can carry weapons into how many different venues, including churches, schools and even bars."

Mr. Needler then goes on to lay out a very reasonable gun control proposal which includes letters of recommendation, extensive background checks, and gun safety course.

Mr. Needler also says he is going to start aggressively contacting his representatives and ask them to sign a "No Gun Pledge." He reminds naysayers that there was a time when big tobacco was considered too big to take on, until the government and people did just that.

Personally I think what he says sounds more than reasonable. And as someone who has gone through extensive background checks, including letters of recommendation, I don;t see why anyone who wants to own a firearm should not have to go through a similar experience.

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So Bristol posted this two days ago on Nancy's blog. (So nice of her to share.)

A couple of things.

I thought that Joey and Bristol were on the outs.

Trig looks happy, but why can't anybody find a hat that fits his head?

Where are Willow and Piper? Did they escape the compound?

And who is that weird looking guy third from the left?

He kind of gives me the creeps.

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Like the President I also grew up without a father around. Which is why I take my role as Dad very seriously.

In fact for Father's Day today my daughter is expressing her love for me by allowing me to clean that stain out of the carpet in front of her bedroom door, rinse off her dishes because she overestimates the cleaning power of the dishwasher, and buy her dinner later on tonight because she is in between paychecks again.

She shouldn't have.

But you know I love her, and I love having her living with me.

Well, today at least.



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