Headline of the day

Woman bites lover's penis off in car crash

A sordid tale of parking lots, backing up, hard boiled private detectives, biting off more than you can chew, and open and shut divorce cases.

The unfortunate descriptions Michelle Bachmann uses

Hey, what the best way to say that you're concerned that the black president is running up too much debt? Did you say "invent a new fictional tax rate and then make thinly veiled slavery allusions"? You can't see me now, but I'm tapping my finger on my nose.

BACHMANN: Well, I tell you what I am concerned about are the current 19 and 20-year-olds that are going to hold this debt. And it’s the mother of all ironies, John and Brian, that the kids who voted en masse for Barack Obama are the ones being fitted with shackles and chains. And they’re going to wake up one morning and find out that their tax rate is 65% or higher.

Now say you're Michelle Bachmann and you want to complain about spending levels. Of course you'd immediately want to talk about ejaculation and group sex at a meat based buffet.

"During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed," Bachmann said. She then told the crowd that April 26 was National Debt Day, which conservatives commemorate as the moment government spending outpaces revenue. As Bachmann explains, "The government spent its wad by April 26."

I don't know what Swedish restaurants she's going to, but I want to join her.

Um... I, ah, I, I, ah... I, uh -- the, uh -- ah

Why is it that every time a Republican is asked this question they turn into some blubbering combination of a nervous Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig? Then they have to pledge their fealty to the scientific method, even though they completely reject most of what it comes up with. Why do they feel the need to take us on a five minute stammering journey of gibberish in order to claim that the science isn't in on evolution or climate change and we sure as fuck shouldn't find out what it says on stem cells? Just say "no".

Why not? The "debate" has been so watered down by attempts to bend over backward to accommodate the opinions of "God did it" that only 40% of the country definitively believes in evolution. The only place on the planet where "I'm not sure about that evolution thing" is even a more popular answer: Turkey. Feel free to definitively state your opposition to science, Mike. You've helped make ignorance a massively popular opinion. You'll gain votes.

Oh, and Tweety? Pat Toomey vs. a Democrat Arlen Specter? I'm sorry about what I said earlier, please run for the Senate in PA.

No need to worry, Bernanke says it's all OK

Ben Bernanke is optimistic. Why? He's apparently figured out he'll be collecting a big fat FED paycheck for years to come and can never be fired. But other than that he sees clear sign that the economy is totally OK. Is it the fact that 10 of the 19 banks the government stress tested will need billions more in capital? Is it the constant drops in home prices that now leave a full 20% of the American people owing more on their homes than their worth? The news that lenders were the ones responsible for $1 trillion of the bad subprime loans? That Bank of America needs another $34 billion? No. He's just got a feeling.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave his most optimistic prediction yet Tuesday about the end of the recession, saying he expects the economy to start growing again this year _ although the comeback could be weak and more jobs will disappear even after a recovery takes hold.

The Fed chief told Congress' Joint Economic Committee that he saw hopeful signs, including firmer home sales, a revival in consumer spending and some improvement in lending conditions for banks, businesses and individual borrowers.

"We continue to expect economic activity to bottom out, then to turn up later this year," Bernanke said.
...
"A relapse in financial conditions would be a significant drag on economic activity and could cause the incipient recovery to stall," Bernanke said.

Barring such a setback, Bernanke suggested the worst of the recession _ for lost economic activity _ has passed.
...
Striking a lighthearted note, Bernanke said that after the economic crisis has ended, "I look forward to a long period of boredom."

Oh Ben, you are our government's foremost comedian. But hey, look at that staggering optimism. What's it based on? The fact that he's pretty sure things can't get any worse. Except for job losses. But everything else can't. Unless banks continue to be insolvent. But otherwise, we can look forward to a period of weak, almost imperceptible economic recovery with continued job losses.

So hive five the guy in the bread line next to you. You won't have a job and the unemployment line is going to get longer, but there will be a minuscule bump in GDP numbers. Because that's what's the important focus: GDP. Not the people in the economy, an arbitrary measure of the economy. And why not, that's the kind of laser like focus that helped bring about our new Gilded Age and subsequent New Depression. Looks like things are back on track. All better now.

Stay classy, Mormons

Mitt Romney is breathing a sigh of relief today that he didn't get the GOP nomination over McCain. Why is that? No, not because he had a chance of winning and would have had to face the pig flu/economic crisis. But because it turns out that right in the middle of the campaign season last year, his very own Church of Latter Day Saints decided to posthumously baptize Barack Obama's mother into the Mormon faith. If that had come out during the increased scrutiny of Mitt and the LDS church during a Romney/Obama Presidential campaign you would have heard three things: 1. Romney's political career audibly dying as he either defended it, admitted to having taken part in previous posthumous baptisms, or attempted to throw his entire religion under the bus. 2. Barack Obama cracking his knuckles in preparation for...3. Obama's fist being punched cleanly through the skull of the first Mormon he saw. Which would have probably been Romney.

Via Americablog:

A reader contacted me last week, saying that last year, in the heat of the presidential campaign, the Mormons had posthumously baptized Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Baptizing the dead of other faith's, secretly and without the consent of their families, is a common Mormon practice. For the past fifteen years the Mormons have caused quite a stir by forcibly baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims - in other words, converting them to Mormonism - despite strong objections from the Jewish community.

Thus, it's hardly a stretch to imagine the Mormons' doing this to Obama's mother. Still, I had no proof. Then yesterday, I received a document. It's allegedly a screen capture of the registration-only section of the Mormon-run Web site, FamilySearch.org. In that screen capture, excerpted above, is clearly the name and correct date of birth and death of Barack Obama's mother (Stanley Ann Dunham, born 29 Nov 1942 in Kansas, died 07 Nov 1995) and the date of her alleged post-death baptism by the Mormons. You can see the entire document here
...
So we know that the Mormons do in fact have President Obama's mother in their public database. We know that the Mormons have a policy of baptizing into the Mormon faith, without consent, every single person who dies on the planet. And we have a non-public document that mirrors the public documents to a T, and which says that the Mormons baptized President Obama's mother on June 4, 2008 - in the middle of the presidential race.

Reach your own conclusions.

Nice. At least they haven't gotten around to posthumously baptizing any other dead members of the President's family. Go visit Americablog for the whole sordid little story.

MEAT CARDS

Oh yes, this is real. Why hand some one a piece of paper and ink when you can hand them a hunk of meat burned by a laser. They'll remember you. They won't remember any of your contact information though, because they'll have eaten it. Still, it's based around the always sound premise that carrying around a pocket full of dried and cured meat is the way towards business success.

We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER.

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients:
MEAT AND LASERS.

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards.

MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.

Availability announcements soon. Initially will be available in beef, turkey, ostrich, and human, with smoked or teriyaki options. Follow new developments on Twitter.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 5.5

An invention that could change the internet for ever
Everyone is getting excited about a new search engine, Wolfram Prime, that is THE MOST IMPORTANT NEW THING EVER and is totally going to kill Google dead, just like all the other search engines that have killed Google. What can this one do? Work things out "on the fly", whatever that means, and is "curated" by experts. The strike against it: it's totally useless when dealing with pop culture, ensuring no one will use it. It's probably also terrible at finding porn. It's going to be unveiled later this month and will have failed by the following month.

Court sends Janet Jackson case back for review
Want to know why this country is hopeless? We're still litigating the national horror that was Janet Jackson's exposed titty at the 2004 Super Bowl. The dispute over nipple based FCC fines for nine-sixteenths of one second has reached the Supreme Court...which sent it back down to the federal appeals. Dred Scott was decided in less time. Though honestly, I do hope to eventually read Scalia's scholarly legal reasoning on nipples, nipple rings, and the musical stylings of one Justin Timberlake. I'm sure it'll be hilarious.

Joe The Plumber Slurs Gay People: I Would Never Let "Queers" Near My Children
The man keeps on giving. In one paragraph he moves from explaining why "queer" isn't a slur, it's OK for him to use the word "queer", that the first example of racism he can think of is black people calling white people "honky", his God and Constitution based belief in "no homos" getting up in his marriage, and then finished with his declaration that he totally has gay friends and that they knew and were cool with the fact that Joe wouldn't let them near his children because he assumed all gays are pederasts. Joe, this is God speaking: Run for office.

Art historians claim Van Gogh's ear 'cut off by Gauguin'
Art's most famous self mutilation may not have been a disturbing act of "love" towards a prostitute. It was probably just the result of a drunken sword fight in front of a brothel between Vincent Van Gogh and a syphilitic Paul Gauguin that they then attempted to cover up for some reason. You learn something new every day. I learned that art history is waaay more interesting than I had originally thought. Way more drunks, syphilis, and whore fueled swordfights than normal history.

Warren Ellis: Column 02
Warren Ellis has important news for you in his new Wired UK column: the US government has developed a robot that can and will eat anything and everything for fuel. It is dubbed EATR and will be our doom. Though he has identified a new growth business sector and a new apocalypse to fear: Anti-carnivorous-robot security for the impending Robochompocalypse.

UK asshole list

Our former colonial masters seem to have a good handle on keeping undesirables out of their country. Instead of using their watch lists for simple stuff like known terrorists, innocent citizens, people you mistakenly tortured, and liberal senators, they've decided to expand the list to keep complete and total American assholes from crossing the pond.

Also on the list published by the Home Office is a US “shock jock” talkshow host whose views on Islam, rape and autism have stirred controversy in America.
...
The list includes Erich Gliebe, the leader of an American neo-Nazi group, Michael Savage (real name Michael Weiner), a radio presenter in America, Mike Guzovsky, a Jewish extremist, and Stephen “Don” Black, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan.

Also on the list is Fred Waldron Phelps Snr, an American Baptist pastor and his daughter, Shirley, who were barred last year for their homophobic views.

The two have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and celebrated the deaths of US soldiers as punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

Michael Savage, a neo-Nazi, a Grand Wizard, and the asshole who pickets every funeral. Lovely company, Mike. The UK has listened to Savage Nation, heard his rants blaming Muslims and Mexicans for swine flu, the gay mafia, rogue homo elements in the DHS, Obama "raping America", and his apologist lines of thought on Joe McCarthy and Tim McVeigh. They decided they don't so much as want him touching their airport tarmac. I'm surprised he's the only right wing talk radio guy on it. The UK must not have been Hannitized yet.

Well up with pride America. The UK list of undesirables is filled with Hamas members, shady imams, Muslim extremists.......and Americans. The difference: the Hamas guys, imams, and extremists don't have audiences of millions and are considered in the mainstream of American political discourse. Whoops. Our bad.

So we aren't going to all die?

I'm confused here. I, along with the national media, have been fearmongering my heart out about the world's impending pig virus based death. Now today, instead of the WHO creating a 7th pandemic level and saying we've hit it, we have tax cheat Secretary Sebelius telling us not to worry. To be cautiously optimistic. That Obama's secret fire based razing of Mexico has seemingly kept Porcine AIDS out of our precious American air. The only guy left who wants to ratchet up panic is the UK's chief medical officer. But all he can seem to do is promise a nebulous future outbreak that'll totally be worse. He basically shares Sebelius' optimism. How disappointing.

The swine flu virus could turn out to be less severe than previously feared, the US government said today.

Kathleen Sebelius, making her first speech as the US health secretary, said: "We are cautiously optimistic that what we are seeing right now is presenting itself as a much milder virus than the initial cases that presented themselves in Mexico."

But the British government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, today warned it would be "premature" to assume the virus was a mild infection.
...
Donaldson predicted that a second, larger wave of infections could be expected during the usual flu season in the autumn and winter.

Promises, promises. At the very least we can hang our hat on the fact that Sebelius is saying we should be optimistic that the virus that came across the border was a mutated, weaker form of the Mexican version. That does give us some shred of hope that the worse version can jump over.

How many times are we going to dodge the apocalypse? The financial crisis seems to not be wholly devouring society. Health officials are optimistic about the flupocalypse. That giant meteor missed Earth. Hamas is talking about a two-state solution. Our only hope is that sharks start to eat swimmers en masse as the summer starts up. Otherwise we're going to have to start planning for the future. Until 2012. Then it's over for real.

Glenn Beck is coming for your children

Yes, I understand that book publishing is a business. Yes, I understand that Glenn Beck has a following amongst certain crypto-fascist Morlock factions. And yes, I understand that saying the following might well be a career-limiting act...

But seriously, fuck you, Simon & Schuster:

Today Simon & Schuster announced "a global multi-book, multi-imprint co-publishing agreement" with conservative personality Glenn Beck--a book deal that will put the television host's literary efforts on YA bookshelves, audiobook collections, e-readers, and children's libraries.

Possible titles include Our First Black Hitler, Taxation = Immolation and Dumber Than I Look: How to Get Paid Ungodly Sums of Money to Act Like a Home Shopping Network Host While Soft-Peddling Pseudo-Libertarianism Wrapped in The Flag.

PSA

No worries, President Obama has deployed a late 70's Green Bay Packers safety tandem to fight Porcine AIDS. We're safe...for now.

Unless they get drawn in by a play action from the Swine Flu, leaving them vulnerable to a deep attack up the middle. Then we're fucked, unless the nickel corner can man up and keep pace with the Pig AIDS the Mexicans lined up in the slot. Actually, you really need to read Vince Lombardi's On Defense and Influenza Type A Pandemics to fully understand what we're dealing with and the only way we have of combating our imminent mucousy death.

Why wasn't I informed this existed?

The FEMA backed 9/11 coloring book for kids is no more.

The Smoking Gun reports that FEMA has “removed a children’s coloring book from its web site following criticism over its inclusion of drawings of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The coloring book, titled ‘A Scary Thing Happened,’ is geared towards helping kids ‘cope with disasters.’”

Now they'll have to learn about "the day that changed everything" and color usage in some other way. On the other hand, this'll probably save kids from overusing their grey crayons. Those towers were a bitch to color in and they were on every page.

Why aren't we at war with Iran yet? Newt's getting impatient

Newt Gingrich is out hitting the old dusty trail, self flagellating for heightened tensions with Iran. Why? Because war is like an multi-year dose of Cialis shot right into the base of the GOP's penis. With Iraq winding down and Afghanistan not winding up enough, their war boner is is going limp and no amount of right wing wang flogging is going to get it up. Not unless Iran gets invaded. So Newt brought his case to the Jews, and he didn't forget his bag full of Hitler references.

"We need to recognize that there are some regimes we will never be able to cut a deal with because they are in fact evil," he said Sunday, the opening day of this year's American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, drawing close to 7,000 delegates.

Gingrich likened negotiations with the current Iranian regime to negotiating with Adolf Hitler, and called for "enforcing the disruption of gasoline supplies until the Iranian economy broke, the ayatollahs were ousted and a new regime was in place without a single shot fired." That earned thunderous applause.

Gingrich also called for a military strike to destroy missiles in Iran and North Korea.
...
"There's almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world," he said, speaking to the Post ahead of his speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference.

He called US President Barack Obama's program of engagement on Iran a "fantasy," and his Middle East policies "very dangerous for Israel." He summed up Obama's approach as "the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter."

Wait, the same Jimmy Carter that negotiated a sill intact peace accord between Israel and Egypt? That son of a bitch. I bet he could have got an even better agreement if he missile striked one of the pyramids. I think it's just nice to know that Obama has moved from just being a Iran enabler, what with his declarations to actually engage diplomatically with them, to being objectively anti-Israel.

Who knew a pledge to have their diplomats go to lunch some time would spiral into all out Israel hating? Newt Gingrich knew...and he's not afraid to go into an AIPAC conference and start screaming "NEW HITLER!!!! NEW HITLER!!!!" and unveil his embargo plan (which coincidentally is the same plan he decries whenever a Democrat or the UN tries to use it against a non-Iran country) that will totally bring Iran to it's knees. He'll do anything to get you to see the danger.

Look at the comparisons. Hitler perpetrated the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad doesn't believe it happened. Hitler controlled vast armies, navies, and air forces and used them to wage the largest war in human history across multiple continents. Iran has no such forces, doesn't even have nukes, has started no war, and in any event Ahmadinejad doesn't have any control over the military. One had a mustache, the other had a beard. I forget which had which. Hitler triggered a conflict that killed millions upon countless millions. Ahmadinejad is a massive prick in all his public speeches. Fuck, I'm convinced. Let the nukes fly. Newtie needs his war boner back.

Well, at least he's honest

There is one honest man left in Washington. To bad it's the guy with the ethics of a 1900's robber baron. Ben Nelson, a man who strives every day to make everything he touches worse, is opposing any plan to make health care public and universal. Why? Because if that happens, he can't seem to find a way for insurance companies to sensually cover him in honey and then roll him through a pit of non-sequential hundreds. It's about the principle. Whither the poor insurance company?

Nelson's problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game," Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a "deal breaker."

As he so often does, Nelson said, according to CQ, that he planned to form a "coalition of like-minded centrists opposed to the creation of a public plan, as a counterweight to Democrats pushing for it."

Nice of him to decide that protecting insurance companies is preferable to making health care cheaper and more widely available. We can't have it because it would work too well and cover too many. It's nice to know that he at least admits that any public plan will be massively superior to anything the private sector deigns to put together. Negating your own position and openly stating you're in it for the money, that's Debating 101, tight? Nice that he can also scrounge up a few attention seeking "centrists" (Evan Bayh and Olympia Snowe probably hav eincoherent speeches already written up) to grub for insurance money.

Just wanted to help you identify one of the two brilliant arguments that will undoubtedly kill health care. "But what about those poor private insurers" and "Waaaaaah socialism", possibly with a "This is what those dirty Frenchies do" thrown in for good measure. We are ruled by adults, that is why you can't have decent health care.

Stay classy, Arlen.

New Democrat Arlen Specter, freshly buoyed by polls suggesting that soulless, morally empty, completely naked political maneuvering solely in the service of getting re-elected usually works like gangbusters, decided to spend some of the political capital...blaming his former party for the death of Jack Kemp. Did John Boehner poison the former VP candidate? Did Gingrich forget Kemp's safe word during an extra rough BDSM session? Is Sarah Palin concealing a dagger with Kemp's blood on it? No, Republicans are to blame for not curing cancer.

And one of the items that I'm working on, Bob, is funding for medical research. I've been the spear carrier to increase medical research.
...
If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.

Now, as the New York Times pointed out in a column today, when you talk about life and death and medical research, that's a much more major consideration on what I can do, continuing in the Senate, contrasted with which party I belong to.

Gracelessly executed, Senator. Now I'm not one for absolving Republicans of blame for everything, in fact I blamed all Republicans for an unfortunate toe stubbing this morning, but I would have at least fired off a few tin eared shots about "lazy, goldbricking cancer doctors" before moving on to the entire Republican party. Now Republicans take blame on stem cell related diseases and their opposition to universal health care (whoops, you're against that too Arlen), but I'm not ready to blame them for cancer not being cured unless you have some solid evidence of Eric Cantor smashing up a research lab with a baseball bat.

I'm glad this is what he decided to bring to the Democratic Party. Classless cheap shots, standing for all the same garbage he used to stand for, and an increased chance that Harry Reid will walk in on him and Joe Lieberman wanking it to pictures of themselves. What ever would we do without Arlen? Someone please present a primary challenge to this guy.

Painting of the day

"Senior Partner" via Hey Okay

This is how you run for governor

Candidate for Georgia governorship says he’d kill his own son to secede

A longshot Georgia candidate for governor who’s already admitted having sex with a mule before finding God says he’s ready to sacrifice his own son in an effort to get his state to secede from the union.

Neal Horsley made national headlines when he posted the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors online. His “Nuremberg Files” website also crossed off the names of doctors as they were killed.

Now he’s ready to make new news. In an interview by Dylan Otto Krider published late Wednesday, he indicated he’d kill his own son to dissolve the United States (in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade).

So he's virulently anti-abortion, but he's willing to consider 70th trimester abortions if it would dissolve the United States. He also wonders why he's estranged from his family....and the mule farm up the road. This is a brand of crazy I can get behind. I smell a Georgia State GOP Chairmanship in his future.

Weekend Art

Old Works Progress Administration posters updated for more exotic destinations:



[Via Geekanerd]

h/t Hobo John Constantine

Broken In Brief: Fashion industry unveils lines of designer flu masks

MILAN—In what is sure to be the hot new trend of the season, designers at the 2009 Vogue Medical Fashion Expo unveiled their new lines of designer flu masks and protective breathing apparati to the world’s celebrity and fashion elite.

“I just didn’t think we’d see this trend brought back so soon. It seems so 2003,” said American Vogue editor André Leon Talley, referring to the 2003 SARS outbreak. “But suddenly the WHO issues a couple of warnings, a complicit media encouraged popular paranoia, and we have our new trend. Creatively it smacks of the back end leading the front, but these are the sort of things one must sacrifice to look fabulous and free from a H1N1 subtype of the Influenza A virus.”

Among the highlights were a black N95 95% efficiency medical mask with an embossed gold Gucci logo on it, a diamond encrusted gas mask from Damien Hirst, and Louis Vuitton combo of a tan leather ASTM D 6319 standard Nitrilite exam gloves cleverly paired with a cream colored take on the famous Moldex® 2207 Alternate shape dust/mist respirator that, upon closer inspection, included a subtle pink pig pattern.

“It's the sort of detached whimsy one would expect from the world's leading designers,” observed Marissa Florentine, a fashion reporter for the New England Journal of Medical Respiratory Technology. “The sort of thing that says ‘I won’t be caught dead watching the poorer classes get caught dead in anything other than the most expensive, and therefore best, flu mask.’ Not only are they fashionable, they’re just the thing that will protect you after you fire your maid staff for being from the wrong hemisphere.”

According to fashion insiders, most designers hope to have these masks into upscale boutiques before the impending flu pandemic starts ravaging the poverty stricken population of the nations where said products are manufactured.

Support your independent presses

In tandem with the Real Labor Day, today is "Buy Indie Day." Support you local independent presses and bookstores by buying a book, doesn't matter which or for what reason, at an independent bookseller.

Don't know where to find an independent bookstore? No matter. Go HERE.

Fuck the system, damn the man, man the parapets, etc. Go, be good.

Record Straightening

For reasons beyond my comprehension, an otherwise skilled and professional AP journalist occasionally contacts me for comment on whatever the news cycle is gnawing on that particular day. This week it was, naturally, Porcine AIDS ("Swine Flu" to you nonbelievers) and so my take was buried somewhere around the tenth paragraph of this wire piece and published.

The thing is, they cut all of my Texas jokes. And while the Associated Press is held to certain standards of accuracy and decorum, Matthew and I have no such reservations. Thus, we can publish the redacted material here, below the fold. Why? Because we're self-promoting shills. Why else? Because Fuck Texas, that's why.

JN: I am wondering if you have any thoughts about living in NYC during this emerging swine flu threat. Are you changing your habits at all? Avoiding crowds? Public transportation? Washing hands more? Or not. Any thoughts would be appreciated. You can email me or call (I’m writing it today). Hope to hear from you!

SM: Pleasure to hear from you. I hope all is well with the AP now that they're in the business of suing content aggregation outfits, apparently without irony.

[All the stuff that made the cut was here]

And it's not as though I needed a new excuse to avoid the apparent epicenters of the outbreak: Texas, Ohio, all the hot spring break spots in Mexico... oh, and Queens.

Not that it wouldn't be interesting to watch Texans encounter a pig they couldn't barbecue, deep fry, sodomize, or deport. Think there's any truth to the rumor that if you live in Texas and contract swine flu, your life expectancy actually increases?

Seriously, what's wrong with any of that? Loosen up, AP.

Souter out

David Souter has had it up to here with all your Supreme Court bullshit. He's finally leaving to start that prog-metal band he kept mentioning in all his minority and majority opinions. Knights of Justice. He's already got a 12 minute opus loosely based around the Boumediene decision. Why's he leaving? Mostly because he hates Washington, hates politics, hates the politicization of the court, hates the court itself (calling it a "annual intellectual lobotomy" every time a term started up) and he ain't too crazy about your ugly mug either. He's gone as soon as they can find his replacement.

Justice Souter, who was appointed in 1990 by a Republican president, the first George Bush, but became one of the most reliable members of the court’s liberal wing, has grown increasingly sour on Washington and intends to return to his home state, New Hampshire, according to the people briefed on his plans. One official said the decision might be announced as early as Friday.

The departure will open the first seat for a Democratic president to fill in 15 years and could prove a test of Mr. Obama’s plans for reshaping the nation’s judiciary. Confirmation battles for the Supreme Court in recent years have proved to be intensely partisan and divisive moments in Washington, but Mr. Obama has more leeway than his predecessors because his party holds such a strong majority in the Senate.

Replacing Justice Souter with a liberal would not change the basic makeup of the court, where he and three other justices hold down the left wing against a conservative caucus of four justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate Republican appointee, often provides the swing vote that controls important decisions.

All that being said, Souter isn't THAT liberal, like Thurgood Marshall was. But he became a solidly rational, liberal leaning Justice. He will be missed. He also wasn't as liberal as the right wing will pretend the person to replace him is. Joy of joys, I can't wait for that circus. So and so wants free mandatory abortions for all from illegal immigrant doctors, this justice hates freedom, they're gonna take all the guns, SECEDE~!, this is tyranny, biggest liberal in the history of the world, affront to Democracy, etc. It'll be the pinnacle of rational debate.

As to who Obama wants to replace him with, baseless speculation has centered on the fact that someone heard from some guy who heard from another who heard a rumor that Obama might have said he wanted 'more chicks' at dinner last night. Or 'more chicken'. Either way that definitely signals he wants a woman to preside, what with her special lady parts and judicially analyzing lady brain. All in all, it ought to provide a couple days of rampant meaningless speculation over a position that hasn't even been officially vacated or even publicly signaled that is was going to be vacated yet. In any event it will at least give us a few days distraction before the H1N1 Super Pig AIDS kills 99% of us, rendering man's law and thus the Supreme Court null and void.

Promotion of the day

Footy club sorry for KKK promotion

The Torquay Tigers became embroiled in a racism scandal yesterday, after images of the white supremacist group were used as part of a photo montage to promote the event on the club's website.
...
Mr McMahon stressed the "All White Night" theme of the function related to the dress code and had no racial overtones, although he conceded people were now "obviously going to read other things into it". He insisted the club was not racist: "One person's mistake is not a reflection of our club.
...
"The latest Ku Klux Klan scandal comes after Fremantle this month denied claims by its assistant coach, Steve Malaxos, that players had dressed in Klan gear and raided each others homes as a prank.

Gee, now I'm slightly more impressed that the Penguins were able to pull off their Game 5 Whiteout without using the phrases "All Whites", "Whites Only", "No Darks", photos that reference a couple hundred years of racism/murder/intimidation, or reference an anecdote where Evgeni Malkin dressed as a Grand Wizard and ransacked Sidney Crosby's house. Who knew it was so difficult?

I don't have as high hopes for their Game 3 combo brownout and "German National Socialist Movement Appreciation Night", that one has fiasco written all over it. Word to the wise amateur sporting promoters: think twice before you decide to put that photo of a racist organization in your promotion. Or just think. Thinking would probably head most of this stuff off.

Constitutional violation ain't cheap

The CIA's $1,000 a Day Specialists on Waterboarding, Interrogations

As the secrets about the CIA's interrogation techniques continue to come out, there's new information about the frequency and severity of their use, contradicting an 2007 ABC News report, and a new focus on two private contractors who were apparently directing the brutal sessions that President Obama calls torture.
Top interrogation officials' "waterboarding expertise" was "misrepresented."

According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington: Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates.

Both men declined to speak to ABC News citing non-disclosure agreements with the CIA. But sources say Jessen and Mitchell together designed and implemented the CIA's interrogation program.
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Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites.

Really. It costs $1K a day per man to have specialists supervise simulated drowning? I thought at the very least we were getting a cost effective means of violating our law and ideals. I figured they only needed water, a bucket, a rag, maybe a table, and an amoral cretin or two that was already on the payroll. Turns out you need two guys watching and going "No, with less humanity. Move the hose closer, I can't hear Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave yet."

Both Jessen and Mitchell got the lucrative job because they were the guys who helped tech pilots how to resist....waterboarding torture...if they got caught behind the enemy lines of some nasty, un-American, godless country that didn't believe in freedom or International law, like we do. Turns out though that they misrepresented their medical expertise, had in fact zero experience as interrogators, and conducted waterboarding that was much more dangerous, unsafe, and medically dangerous than what they were allegedly "experts" at.

You know what really hurts? Besides being waterboarded. Our specialized $1K a day torture experts weren't even experts. We got our Constitution pissed on by amateurs. I'm a little disappointed, Bush Administration, I at least thought you would have sprung for some pros to really get some vicious dogs barking at the shame filled & terrified ghost of George Washington.

Blame Mexico

I'm surprised it took a week to put together clips of the right wing media blaming Mexicans and illegal immigrants (in conjunction with the Council of Evil Wizened Pigs) for waging a bioterrorism attack against us. Maybe this was just the stuff they said on Monday. We're through the looking glass people, flu zombie armies are being sent across the border because they hate our freedom. Why couldn't we have listened to Michael Savage and Neil Boortz when we had the chance?