Things that don't sound good

Iran Announces Successful Missile Test

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Wednesday that his country had successfully launched a medium-range missile, just two days after President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu discussed the importance of halting Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Gee, after Israeli elections that make the government more hard-line and right wing, the day after the US talks to Israel about "that Iran thing" and Israel's possible propensity for launching some unannounced missile strikes, Iran decides to do some missile testing. Then when asked about the range of the missiles all Ahmadinejad can say is "Oh, they can go as far as...say Israel, to use an example." This sounds like it's going to make things so much better.

Another Democrat Says CIA Records On Briefings Were Not Accurate

The letter makes Obey the fourth Democrat to allege that the CIA's record of which members of Congress were briefed on the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques contained factual errors. Former Sen. Bob Graham, in an interview with the Huffington Post, noted that the agency's records initially had him being briefed four times in 2002 about the interrogation techniques. Upon contacting officials with the CIA, it was determined that he had only attended one such briefing. Similarly, Sen. Jay Rockefeller has said that the records kept by the agency and made public on May 7 contained errors in regards to his briefings.

All told, the testimonies of these three Democratic officials bolster the case made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the agency's own account of those now-controversial briefings is misleading. Pelosi -- like Graham -- has insisted that members of Congress were kept in the dark in the fall of 2002 about the Bush administration's use of waterboarding on terrorist suspects.

All right! The CIA is back to actively misleading elected officials and fabricating records on their dealings with Congress. Topple a few African governments, rig a few European elections, switch out that high fructose corn syrup for real sugar, and we're back to the classic CIA we all loved. Some of the GOP, in their quest to blame all the torture (which was awesome) on Nancy Pelosi, seem to want to fight a battle based around the thought that the CIA would ever mislead Americans or elected officials...ever. Of all the battles to fight and all the hills to die on, "the CIA is honest" is probably the one you want to fight the least.

Arms Sent by U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands

Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.

Why does this sound familiar? *cough*Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq*cough* "May be", NYT? Between the weapons and money we give to Pakistan that end up in the Taliban's hands and all the equipment and money we give to Pakistan for anti-terrorism work they don't do, we're practically funding, arming, and supporting the fight against ourselves and our allies.Good thing we're not going to ramp up military action and funding into that whole entire area. ....Oh wait. Well.....at least we aren't sending them shipments of uranium that they totally promise to use to build a uranium statue of George Washington.

Picture of the day

Fossil Ida: extraordinary find is 'missing link' in human evolution

Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved ancient primate fossil that they believe forms a crucial "missing link" between our own evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom.

The 47m-year-old primate – named Ida – has been hailed as the fossil equivalent of a "Rosetta Stone" for understanding the critical early stages of primate evolution.

The top-level international research team, who have studied her in secret for the past two years, believe she is the most complete and best preserved primate fossil ever uncovered. The skeleton is 95% complete and thanks to the unique location where she died, it is possible to see individual hairs covering her body and even the make-up of her final meal – a last vegetarian snack.

What's that sound? Oh it's just science sticking another knife into God's back. No respect for the man upstairs, no respect at all.

You've got the touch

We all remember Stan Bush's "the Touch" from the seminal 1980's film masterpiece The Transformers: The Movie. That movie had everything: Orson Wells slumming it for cash, the childhood crushing deaths of Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Prowl, Ratchet, Brawn, Windcharger and Wheeljack, Judd Nelson's career defining role as Rodimus Prime, and Bush's song about having the touch.

Now with the advent of a second Transformers movie from Michael Bay and the official death of God, Stan has decided he needs to hook up "the Touch" to Bay's money wagon. Not only did he update the song to give it a more 2009 feel, he decided to just say "fuck it" and make the song sound completely like the Linkin Park song from the last movie. Is there hilarious video of it? Of course there is.



Well done Mr. Bush. You've still got "it". "It" being "the touch". But if Bay's got his head on straight, we all know he'll choose to use the superior version of "the Touch": The Diggler version.

Broken News: Scientists reveal waterboarded terrorists have evolved into marine creatures

MIAMI—Waves of relief rippled through the ranks of former Bush administration officials today as the Red Cross, in tandem with head scientists at the National Marine Research Center, announced that as a result of near-constant waterboarding at the hands of American military personnel, high-level terrorism suspects have evolved into amphibian-like creatures capable of extracting oxygen from water in order to survive.

This stunning revelation essentially brings to a halt any planned prosecutions of former Bush administration officials for violation of international law, skirting the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, or a fundamental disregard for basic human dignity. For while waterboarding constitutes simulated drowning for a normal human, the practice as applied to a marine mammal is, in fact, a life-saving technique.

Underscoring this revelation was a joint announcement by Oceana and the World Wildlife Fund that confirmed both organizations have nominated George W. Bush, as well as several key members of his administration's inner circle, for humanitarian awards on the basis that their actions, in effect, served to protect the health and well-being of what is now technically an endangered marine species.

Other veterans of the Bush administration were quick to showcase their pleasure with the statement. A euphoric John Yoo, former Justice Department official and author of several pro-anti-human dignity arguments, was seen rolling around the front yard of his suburban Philadelphia home, exultantly singing "no consequences for me" over and over.

However, some elected officials did not take this revelation quite so well. A slouched and disheveled Senator Patrick Leahy was spotted wandering the streets of DC with a near-empty plastic bottle of Vladimir vodka in one hand and a loaded, newly legal handgun in the other. Congressman Henry Waxman broke into tears during a Capitol Rotunda presser, offering girlish screams of "How do they keep getting away with this?" in between anguished, unintelligible wails fired in the general direction of the Jefferson Memorial.

Unlike previous "evidence"-based commentary on the part of the Bush administration, today's news was met warmly by the scientific community.

"We would just like to thank the Bush administration for providing the necessary conditions to facilitate short-term evolutionary processes," said NMRC Director Dr. Harry Cole during a press briefing. "As it turns out, the political body responsible for economically and ideologically thwarting scientific advancement at every turn has, through its insistent demonization of olive skin, not to mention its public disdain for any and all non-Evangelical interpretations of Christian myth, inadvertently pushed the boundaries of science much further than those of us bound by moral and ethical restraint ever could have hoped. Darwin would be proud... provided he was not made aware of the conditions under which the evidence was obtained."

After his formal statement, Dr. Cole moved on to a brief PowerPoint demonstration aimed at explaining the unintentionally epic evolutionary steps taken by the prisoners. Gesturing toward a picture of an emaciated, dark-skinned male strapped to a table whose face was obscured by a damp towel, Cole cheered, "As you can see here, oxygen deprivation, coupled with persistent inundation of water eventually led to the development of what we are calling, for lack of a better description, gills."

Holding a laser pointer in one hand and his penis in the other, Cole continued, "Here we can see the development of what seem to be flippers. Also, in this next slide of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, you can see the emergence of what appears to be a dorsal fin."

Added Cole, "Oh, and here you see Khalid getting a yummy fishy after he did his hoop trick during our observatory tour at the Miami facility. Isn't he just wonderful?"

As for naming the new species, scientists at the NMRC have announced that they are open to suggestions, but for the moment are going with "Man-atees", with a heavy inflection on the first syllable, to be followed with a look that begs onlookers to acknowledge the cleverness of the moniker.

The Defense Department announced that, for the time being, these meta-terrorists will be held in a tank at the University of Miami Sciences department until a suitable Jihadists of the Deep marine display can be built for them at the Orlando SeaWorld. This plan has already come under fire from hard-line conservatives, chief amongst them former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney decried this presumably soft stance on marine mammalian terrorism. Bleeding from both his ears and eyes, Cheney claimed, "You can't house these mer-terrorists with normal fish,” as he scattered inquisitive children from the front lawn of his Wyoming estate. Waving a gas-powered weedwhacker in the air, the former Vice President exclaimed, “They’ll congregate with the other fish, organizing them into autonomous schools with a decentralized leadership. Sea War is coming! Sea War I! I’ve been warning about it for years. I say we lay these mer-scum on a plank and run sand over their gills in order to divine their plans. There can’t possibly be a law forbidding that, can there?”

SeaWorld hopes to have a transfer plan with the Justice Department and the exhibit finished by late November.

Thanks California

You know the great thing about having the car industry over a barrel? They pretty much are forced to agree to do all the things that it would have been smart for them to do a decade ago. Plus, if you jerk their arm up behind their back hard enough, they'll agree to extra stuff, like a "one free backrub" card that the President can turn in at any time, a solemn promise to run 300% less "This is ouuuuuuuuur counnnnnntry" ads during the football season, and new fuel standards. What are these new fuel standards? The ones California wanted to pass four years ago.

In a ceremony today at the White House, Obama will establish the first national limits on car exhaust and dramatically raise fuel efficiency standards. The new exhaust target – an average 35.5mpg by 2016 – will force US manufacturers to produce cars and trucks that are nearly 40% more efficient.
...
A senior administration official said the change, which will sharply ramp up today's average 25mpg performance, equates to taking 177 million cars off of America's roads, or shutting down 194 coal plants, and will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million metric tonnes.

The plan is the product of months of negotiations between the White House, the Big Three struggling auto makers of Detroit – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler – and the state of California.

There are two parts to this. First is the raising the CAFE standards to the levels California wanted (cars - 39mpg and light trucks - 30mpg), makes that the national standard, and moves the timetable up to 2016. Second is new emissions standards, which again are California's emissions standards, that put an end to auto industry lawsuits against the standards.

So big thanks to California for pushing for this and big thanks to the auto industry. By holding onto a failed model for so long, filing lawsuit after lawsuit to block this kind of action, and refusing to even consider the possibility that better fuel economy was a smart idea, you brought about your own doom and are now being forced to do what smart people would have done a long time ago. We appreciate it. Now you have a couple more years to get your fleet up to the standards already reached by Japanese car companies reached a few years ago.

This is a place of important business

If you've ever wondered why Congress never seems to have the time to get anything important done, well you just aren't aware of the kind of important work that goes on every day. It isn't just health care bills, war resolutions, or impassioned speeches about important issues. Sometimes it's all about grinding out the very laws that keep America running. Like naming post offices after local celebrities, acknowledging the sporting achievements of the local little league team, or just plain recognizing that something popular is happening today on TV.

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) gets it and won't let the important business of glomming onto a TV ratings powerhouse be derailed by some piddling vote on bankruptcy protection.

Commending Adam Lambert for “his amazing journey” and for being “such a great star on American Idol,” Bilbray read his name into the congressional record last week. “As one of Adam’s favorite artists, Lenny Kravitz, once said: ‘I just need to know that I did the very best I could and that I was true to myself,” Bilbray noted. “Adam, we will be rooting for you and looking forward to your next unique and creative performance.”

Montana: The Last Best Place.......to hold terrorists

The GOP has become very clear on Guantanamo Bay: everyone there is guilty, anything used to interrogate them is fair game short of a gay interrogator, and these men housed there are such criminal masterminds and such a threat to America that they must never be allowed on American soil. Either because we need a super prison, like one we'd build to hold Lex Luthor or the Hulk, they magically gain rights when they tough American soil, or because it would invalidate about eight years of GOP arguments that we can't let these men tough American soil because *mumble*mumble* something something terrorism.

Senate Republicans settled Monday on their first line of attack in the battle over closing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay: No detainees can come to American soil.

With the blessing of his party leaders, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is expected to offer the language as an amendment to a $91.3 billion wartime spending bill that could come before the Senate as early as Tuesday.

Security concerns. US prisons are good enough to hold the worst of the worst and, given the rate at which we incarcerate our citizens, are given the chance to do so in overcrowded situations. But now they can't handle another couple dozen guys. Because *mumble*mumble* something something terrorism.

But not everyone thinks that way, in fact a Montana town thinks it's up to the job.

It is a long way from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But if people here get their way, up to 100 detainees now held in Guantanamo will soon be living in a brand new prison on the edge of town.
...
It is a windowless, low-slung tan concrete hulk surrounded by a double row of high mesh fence topped with gleaming coils of razor wire.

Earlier this month, Hardin's town council voted unanimously to offer the US government a deal: Send Hardin the detainees that most foreign countries and other cities the US are afraid to take.

That doesn't sound bleaker and more depressing to a terrorist than Cuba? Here's how bad the situation is in Hardin: 1. they have a town economic development director who's only job seems to be filling a prison 2. the people of the town view a opportunity to house terrorists as a chance at an economic boom and a chance at getting "a piece of the American dream." Frankly from the sounds of Hardin, an apt punishment would be to make the terrorists try to eke out a living there, prison be damned.

So come on here. We have a need to eliminate a worldwide blight on our reputation, a chance to economically stimulate a depressed region, an empty prison, and conditions that might be psychologically worse for the terrorists. Win-win-win-win. Big Sky Gitmo. It almost makes too much sense.

hurricanes are just spittle and hot air

I'm guessing the message here is that the Pittsburgh Penguins will cross a river to kill you in your sleep on Christmas... which is true.

h/t Pensblog

Broken In Brief: Former astronaut angry over NASA’s “most dangerous mission” space shuttle talk

CAPE CANAVERAL—Today famed astronaut and second man on the moon, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, launched a formal complaint over NASA’s repeated use of the phrase “most dangerous mission” to describe the efforts of the Atlantis shuttle to repair and upgrade the Hubble telescope.

“Are these people shitting me?” a distraught Aldrin was heard to yell during his demonstration outside Launch Complex 39 of the Kennedy Space Center. “They have the stones to tell me that a lens replacement is more dangerous than what I did? I went into low-Earth orbits wearing a glorified scuba suit inside a washing machine designed by honest-to-God Nazis. Hell, my goddamn cell phone has more computing power than every Apollo mission combined. Seriously, the balls on these people...”

“They even have a separate shuttle fueled up and ready to launch in case something goes wrong,” the American hero continued as he pitched rocks at the front door of the complex. “You know what the rescue plan was for Apollo 13? A fancy tombstone, that's what. Want to know want what backup procedures and safety tests we had? A monkey going around in a centrifuge. Once. Replacing a lens is dangerous? Tell that to Alan Shepard. For his first Mercury mission they tied him to a rocket with twine, gave him a belt of scotch, and told him to hold his breath.”

“Most dangerous? Someone come out here and fight me!” screamed the aeronautics pioneer and former senator as authorities attempted to talk him down from atop the fiberglass replica of Apollo 12 that sits in front of the facility. Neil Armstrong was unwilling to offer comment, as he was busy scouring the nearby Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for "anyone else who wants to tell me I walked across a fucking sound stage and not the moon."

Spokesmen for NASA were quick to point out the marketing aspects of the phrase, as well as the need to prompt interest in space flight as enthusiasm for off-planet exploration wanes. They said they hoped to be able to speak with Aldrin, in an attempt to comprehend what it was like when NASA spoke to the highest ideals in the human spirit instead of low orbit fix-it jobs, ferrying scientists into the clutches of stranded Russians suffering from space madness, and ushering in the robot apocalypse.

Quote of the day

Finally a Republican has made a non-Jesus based argument against same-sex marriage. Turns out it's still a bad idea because it makes the baby Jesus cry, but gay marriage is also a bad idea because it secretly enables gay couples to bankrupt the American business community. Teh gayz will steals all the moneyz!!

In a breakfast speech to delegates of the Georgia Republican convention, Steele put himself in the shoes of a small business owner having to pay for health care and life insurance for a same-sex couple.

“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele said. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”

Makes sense to me. Of course there are those pesky studies that show things like gay marriage being able to pump something like $700 million into local businesses and $75 million into the state for licensing fees just in California alone, but I'll take Steele's word for it. The gays are gonna destroy small business.

Consequences schmonsequences

Remember that whole "Bush legacy of hard right justices yanking the court into a black hole of conservative ideology" and "the importance of treating Supreme Court picks with more scrutiny, seriousness, and respect" thing I was on about earlier? Yeah...the consequences of not doing that the last 2 times reared it's ugly little 5-4 head again.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be sued by a former Sept. 11 detainee who claimed he was abused because of his religion and ethnicity, a sharply divided Supreme Court said Monday in a decision that could make it harder to sue top officials for the actions of low-level operatives.
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Iqbal is a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002. He had argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race.
...
The court's liberal justices _ David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens _ dissented from the court's opinion.

"Iqbal contends that Ashcroft and Mueller were at the very least aware of the discriminatory detention policy and condoned it and perhaps even took part in devising it," Souter said. He should be given chance to prove his claims in court, Souter said.

Being allowed to face your accusers in court and be given a chance to prove your claims? Letting a Muslim do this? What country does Souter think this is?

But hey, Anthony Kennedy had a good line of defense. It was essentially "boys will be boys" and he then moved on to "it was for his own benefit" then moved on to "it was 9/11, laws didn't count after that" before finishing with "just because something targets greater proportions of Muslims and Arabs doesn't mean it targets greater proportions of Muslims and Arabs." His head then exploded from the cognitive dissonance.

So just in case you were holding out hope that some court case would be able to hold top dogs accountable for the interrogation and detainment policies and actions of lower level actors that they either implicitly supported or explicitly ordered...nope. Not under this court.

Milestones

Take down the date and time, fellow citizens. Not only are we less enlightened about science than Bulgaria, we're now less tolerant towards gays in the military than Uruguay.

On Thursday, Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez announced that his government will “allow gays to join the armed forces by scrapping military rules that define homosexuality as a disorder.” Vazquez explained his decision saying, “The Uruguayan government does not discriminate against citizens based on their political, ethnic or sexual identity.” Urugquay’s Deputy Defense Minister elaborated, “There were a series of rules … regarding the psycho-physical requirements (for entry into the armed forces) in which homosexuality was seen as a sexual identity disorder, and this is what is being repealed.”

Meanwhile we struggle not to laugh at the fact that Uruguay sounds like "You're a gay". Don't even get us started on the childishness associated with Paraguay, Lake Titicaca, or Homonesia.

But hey, Obama's totally on it. He'll just drag his feet for a while longer, fire a few more Arabic translators, say "oh what a shame", and then put action off onto the group of people in Congress who could be barely shaken awake when the impending collapse of the world economy was at stake. If Uruguay's military (which is what....30-40 people?) can handle the "problem" of gays wanting to join relatively easily, can't we? I thought not.

Open government

How serious is President Obama taking this whole open government/transparency thing? Well, his official transcripts of Presidential events even include the shit hecklers yell out at him.

THE PRESIDENT: I also want to congratulate the Class of 2009 for all your accomplishments. And since this is Notre Dame --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Abortion is murder! Stop killing children!

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: That's all right. And since --

AUDIENCE: We are ND! We are ND!

AUDIENCE: Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

THE PRESIDENT: We're fine, everybody. We're following Brennan's adage that we don't do things easily. (Laughter.) We're not going to shy away from things that are uncomfortable sometimes. (Applause.)

In fact further reading of the transcripts even notes the yelling of "San Dimas High School Football Rules", Obama's aside to the Chancellor that "Charlie Weis and Jimmy Clausen suck", and noted the President's physical unease towards a pigeon that had landed to the left of the stage when he ordered the Secret Service to "shoot that damned winged rat before we all catch bird flu".

I look forward to this era of open government and I hope that in the future the White House will also move towards noting any signs or derisive puppets in the audience, note the body language and movements of the President with phrases like "he shifted his feet uneasily after meeting the gaze of a particularly ugly man in the first row" or "he pointed his thumb and fist with the confidence and manner of an eternal celestial God-like being", and move not just to transcribing shit that people yell out, but various hooting, coughing, and grunting noises the audience makes. Or maybe concentrate the open government movement on things like Treasury Department decisions to pay ousted GM CEO's $20 million bonuses and leave us to divine that some idiot yelled something out from the video of the speaking event you also post up.

SCOTUS-blogging

Before President Obama nominates the most liberal such & such in the history of such & such to the Supreme Court, throwing the earth off it's axis, flipping the magnetic poles, opening up the Constitution to infestation from legalese devouring law weevils and forever damaging this country, it is important to note the importance of the whole process. Take, for instance, John Roberts. Whereas we get to dismiss the rest of the Bush Administration as a time of crazy excess when we were run by a deranged collective of escaped mental patients, we're stuck with one of their major decisions, the 54 year old Chief Justice Roberts, for decades after the fact. Centuries even, if he decides to fashion himself into a machine of hate, powered by clockwork gears and his hate of socialism. Then there's Alito.

To that end the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin has taken a extensive look at Roberts career and decisions so far and, surprise surprise, has found him to be a hard-line conservative who sides almost uniformly with the prosecution.

In the past four years, Roberts and Scalia, while voting together most of the time, have had a dialogue of sorts about how best to address the Court’s liberal precedents....According to Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, “The Chief Justice talks the talk of moderation while walking the walk of extreme conservatism.”
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On issues of Presidential power, Roberts has been to Scalia’s right—a position that’s in keeping with his roots in the Reagan Administration. “John was shaped by working at the White House, where you develop a mind-set of defending Presidential power,” the lawyer who worked with Roberts in the Reagan years said. Just a few days before Bush appointed Roberts to the Supreme Court, in 2005, Roberts joined an opinion on the D.C. Circuit in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that upheld the Bush Administration’s position on the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.... Last year, Roberts dissented from Kennedy’s opinion for a five-to-four Court in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 violated the rights of Guantánamo detainees. Roberts saw the case as mostly a contest between the executive branch and the rest of the federal government. “Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants,” Roberts wrote in his dissent. “One cannot help but think . . . that this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.”
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Roberts’s solicitude for the President and the military extends to lower-profile cases as well. In Winter v. National Resources Defense Council, the question was whether the Navy had to comply with a federal environmental law protecting dolphins and other wildlife while conducting submarine exercises off California. Roberts said no. “We do not discount the importance of plaintiffs’ ecological, scientific, and recreational interests in marine mammals,” the Chief Justice wrote. “Those interests, however, are plainly outweighed by the Navy’s need to conduct realistic training exercises to ensure that it is able to neutralize the threat posed by enemy submarines.” Though Roberts was writing for only a five-to-four majority, he added, “Where the public interest lies does not strike us as a close question.”

All in all, worth spending a chunk of your time reading. Not only does it show the direction the Court has tipped in the past few years, but it shows the importance of the whole process and highlights the complete lack of scrutiny and phony procedures that go into picking a Court Justice. If the President picks 'em they must be good, then they're shuffled through a confirmation where they try to hide as many of their opinions as possible, and then they get confirmed onto a seat where they'll sit for 40 years. It seems to be kind of important, maybe we should pay a little more attention as a country.

New meme alert

Socially awkward penguin

Or, you know, you could just stick with Fuck Yeah Sharks.

Weekend art

peanut from the "Born With Googly Eyes" series

Partially Eaten Turkey Sandwich on Wheat Award

arguing on a banana phone

Da Vinci's "Spork"

The art, photography, and design of Brock Davis aka Laser Bread

Alberto Gonzales......

Alberto Gonzales has popped his head out from behind whatever tenement shack door he's been squatting in for the past few months to ask if you could spare any change...oh and to opine on a new Supreme Court Justice. Apparently the fact that Obama used "empathy" as one of the qualities he looks for in a justice is THE WORST THING EVER. Gonzales doesn't want no empathetic judge on the court, it would lead to chaos.

GONZALES: I do worry a little bit, well, I worry, I worry about about justices on the court making decisions based on what they think makes them feel good. I don’t think it’s fair to expect society to anticipate the outcome of a case based upon what makes a justice feel good. In essence what you’re saying, I think, is that I’m going to, I don’t care what the law says, I’m going to come out, I’m going to pursue an outcome that I think is fair and just. I’m going to rewrite the law. And I think that’s dangerous.

I'm just going to let that one sit there for a minute. Let it soak in.

RIP Irony
1107 BC - 2009 AD
Beloved by all
Murdered by Alberto Gonzales in cold blood

Poor 'lil guy. Couldn't withstand the sheer ignorant force of what Gonzales said.

Great moments in religious relations

Republican Senator hopeful Kim Hendren, on some of the outreach to the Jewish community he's undertaking.

Hendren, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, told Arkansas blogger Jason Tolbert he put his foot in his mouth while explaining “that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’”

“I made the mistake of referring to Sen. Schumer as ‘that Jew’ and I should not have put it that way as this took away from what I was trying to say,” Hendren elaborated.

Defending himself again to the Arkansas News, Hendren went further, saying he didn’t know why the words “that Jew” came out of his mouth. He added that there is a Jewish person he admires — Jesus. He’s also partial to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Well, that was a nice campaign your were running Mr. Hendren, but now it's all ov...oh...you're running in Arkansas. Everything's fine. Actually, you might have gained votes. Smart move.

I do like his contention that the main reason it was wrong to refer to a sitting US Senator as "that Jew" was because it weakens his argument. Yeah, taking an entire race, ethnicity, or religion and then referring to a member of that group by the singular name of that group does tend to weaken the strength of an argument. In fact I think the only time "that Jew" is an acceptable answer is if someone asks you "Which one of these Jews do you want to give a hug to" and even then it's kind of sketchy.

But then again since the argument you were trying to make was probably something like "the socialists are coming to steal the American Dream" or "The liberals done hate the heartland", I'm not sure even a trip to Slur-ville could have weakened the intellectual heft of anything you said.

Who could have foreseen?

For the last few weeks as Dick Cheney has given his numerous "You WANT me on that wall, you NEED me on that wall...when you put your fingers into a pile of GOO that used to be your best friend's face....forget it America, it's Chinatown" speeches he has maintained that not only was this government sanctioned torture vigorous tub time splashing effective, but it saved lives. What lives did it save? Those menaced by the sinister Iraq/al-Qaeda connection.

Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.

The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.

"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

My God, you're telling me that they used techniques developed and perfected by the Spanish Inquisition and Khmer Rouge to elicit false confessions....was used to elicit false confessions? Oh me oh my, a plot twist so complex and labyrinthine as to boggle the mind. Who could have foreseen this revelation? Who could have foreseen that Dick Cheney, rascal in chief, was talking utter shit? Someone has told Dick that he wasn't the only person involved with this and that when he starts telling bald faced lies there are other people that exist with different information and little pieces of paper with ink that says the opposite, right?

But there we are. We didn't even get anything good for the complete violation of our laws, international standing, principles, and integrity. Bush and Cheney couldn't even do torture right.

Broken News: A-Rod accused of using steroids on his tongue so he can lie better

Photo excerpt from the new book, picturing Mr. Rodriguez checking his tongue for any needle marks

NEW YORK—With a tumultuous off-season that included the release of a book rife with credible allegations of steroid use, as well as a hip injury requiring surgery and the continuing scorn of the sporting public, Alex Rodriguez is preparing for the media circus to begin anew.

A new book by Selena Roberts, entitled Back For Seconds: I Found Another Corner of A-Rod’s Life That Wasn’t Completely Tarnished Yet, is set to unveil that in the months since the steroid and performance-enhancing drug story went public, A-Rod has taken up a regimen of HGH injected straight into his tongue and prefrontal cortex in an attempt to improve his ability to lie.

Sources close to Mr. Rodriguez feel that the 12-time All-Star and all-time total douchebag, felled by a series of poor interviews and press releases leading to his eventual admittance of having used steroids, thought that his ability to get away with years of steroid use scot-free had been hampered by his poor ability to brazenly lie to fans, reporters, and interviewers all at the same time.

Those same sources state that since the book revealing his steroid use had been released A-Rod has been on an intensive HGH cycle combined with supervised lying exercises to improve his ability to hide a litany of dark secrets, terrible truths and embarrassing anecdotes.

“I would just like to take this opportunity to categorically deny these new allegations,” said Scott Boras, agent of the 3 time AL MVP and perennial fuckwad, during a conference call this morning. “Any and all improvement my client has seen in his ability to lie has come about through hard work and dedication. The man is a world-class athlete and his commitment to living in utter fantasy should not be questioned in any way. He has worked very hard at rigidly repeating the same falsehoods over and over and I shudder to think of people trusting scurrilous accusations about tongue steroids over this man’s commitment to complete mental discipline in the service of dishonesty.”

But baseball statisticians are quick to point out that since A-Rod was rumored to have started his HGH fueled schedule of deceit his lying stats have skyrocketed. Whereas before when no one would believe his declarations that he tried in the postseason, knew the names of his teammates, and had never used steroids, people haven’t been able to stop themselves from believing his recent proclamations that he was sorry he took the steroids, it was a onetime thing, that he was in fact in possession of a discernible human soul, that he had not known the carnal touch of Madonna’s ancient, leathery hide, and that there was more to him than the image of a self-absorbed narcissist who only played baseball for an overwhelming love of money and fame.

Further complicating matters for the rotten shit is that current MLB regulations do not treat illegal drugs taken for improvement of baseball skills any differently than illegal drugs taken for personal reasons, as Manny Ramirez’s recent 50-game suspension for simply trying to stimulate the egg production of his withered uterus clearly shows.

If there is one silver lining for the man millions simply know as A-Roid, it’s that Major League Baseball currently has no comprehensive test to detect HGH. In fact MLB Commissioner Bud Selig already intimated that there was little he could do.

“Unless the players union agrees to more comprehensive testing, my hands are tied,” said Mr. Selig, while taking questions at the league offices in New York. “Besides, I already had a nice conversation with the young man over the phone this morning. He wanted to assure me that not only were these allegations untrue, but that I was also a ‘great, handsome, and virile man’, whose wrath he would be 'foolish to incur’. I think we ended in a good place and I’m glad he called to clear things up. Next question?”

When the assembled press pointed out that Mr. Selig’s looks were “a cruel joke on the human form” and that his haircut resembled that of a dead possum that had been Flowbee’d and placed upon his skull, Selig paused, the realization slowly creeping across his face. “That dirty motherfucker,” he was heard to mutter as he left the room.

For their part, fans have promised to be outraged at this new revelation until Rodriguez hits a few towering home runs in the late innings of one-sided games. From then on, they will return to hating him solely for sports related reasons, only bringing up the steroids in an attempt to inflict mental harm and shame on Yankees fans who have long since stopped caring about anything other than winning.

Get a job.....working for Glen Beck

Just in case you recently jobless wanted an occupation more humiliating and debasing than mid-afternoon shift stripper, roadkill scraper, RNC Chairman, or dunk tank clown, Glen Beck is here to give you just what you wanted: a job scripting his poorly thought our insanity.

Mercury Radio Arts is the New York based production company owned by Radio and TV host Glenn Beck.

Mercury seeks a writer for contributions to Glenn’s radio program, magazine, and web site. The ideal candidate will have a strong interest in news, current events, and politics.

Key responsibilities will include contributing original content to GlennBeck.com and to Glenn’s radio program and magazine. Writing will include a mix of short pieces and long articles, fact-based commentary on the news of the day, etc.

Requirements:

• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Research skills
• At least 2 years of journalism experience

"Fact based commentary". I can't wait to dust off my research on Obama's dawning Fourth Reich and finally present it to the world.

Please note that in no way does TB Industries condone the bombarding of Mercury *snicker* Radio Arts with fake resumes, pleas for someone to stop Beck from talking, or other such timewasting activities. You are probably mailing this stuff to one of the last remaining interns there with a functioning soul. You really don't want to be the final straw that's responsible for pushing someone towards the kind of gruesome suicide that working for Glen Beck can drive a person to. Compassion is our watchword.

War on the war on drugs

Uh-oh. Someone is talking about the war on drugs in a way that's serious and seeks to address the real problems behind drug use, incarceration, and trafficking. What a shame, I give it two weeks before the clamor of complaints forces him to resign. Shame Obama had to bring rationality, facts, and a plan to move away from a track that clearly has failed into this serious debate by serous people who all know the only way to deal with the hophead is through mandatory minimums, guerrilla action in foreign countries, and more prisons.

The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.
...
Mr. Kerlikowske's comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate -- and likely more controversial -- stance on the nation's drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.

The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment's role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.

A such they want to do things like change the disparity in sentences for crack vs. cocaine, funding needle exchanges, increase funding for treatment, to stop raiding medical marijuana places, and maybe not arresting Chong so much. Kerlikowski used to run the 5-0 in Seattle and was famous/infamous for deciding that maybe he shouldn't waste his officers time fucking around with low level stoners. Though let's not get too enthralled with that possibility as President Obama's response to the whole marijuana debate was essentially "LOLSTONERS". But still, progress is progress, right? Things are looking up.

Just kidding, he's definitely going to be forced to resign and things will continue on as they were. No hope. No hope of any kind. He is unserious, he must be taught a lesson.

Because every day is a good day for a monster

Nothing wakes you up like a hot, fresh-brewed cup of jesus fucking christ what the hell is that?! To that end, I give you the new Montauk Monster:

At press time, we were not able to confirm that this is, in fact, a naked Karl Rove who passed out on the beach after another three-day indulgence of rum and virgin flesh. Updates will follow as they become available.

Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Boy Scouts

When the nation's military and reserves are off fighting two wars and the police are too burdened by crime to deal with border security, who then becomes the front line of America's war on illegal immigration, drug smuggling, human trafficking, terrorism, and other such unsightly problems stemming from US/Mexico border policy? The Boy Scouts. Naturally.

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

.........Yeah. When did the Boy Scouts stop being about camping and pinewood derby races and made a move towards supplanting Blackwater as our nation's largest private army? Not that I'm against BSA doing a little career training and some of that being for law enforcement, but this seems less like that and more like highly decentralized organization allowing for mildly crazy survivalist militaristic types running kids through Army Ranger training far beyond the scope, depth, or breadth of anything the kids will ever become involved in. It seems not so much "this is what police officers do" and more "you are the spear point at the tip of a war"/"this is a legal substitute for SWAT training."

But yeah, I'm sure there will be no problems with a bunch of dads and a discharged Marine drill seargent from the local police force who's on probabtion for "anger issues" training a bunch a kids on use of assault weapons and hostage crisis scenarios. What could possibly go wrong?

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Jim Cramer still hasn't gotten over his public castration at the hands of Jon Stewart. He's not taking it well. But he's moved from just talking tough when Stewart's not there to concocting fantasy scenarios where an enlightened Jon Stewart, having learned of Cramer's birth on Krypton and his mission to save the Earth, publicly fellates Jimmy and they totally become best friends forever!

No one wants to suffer a beat-down. No one wants to be humiliated or embarrassed. I was shocked at [host Jon Stewart's] behavior. I wish he knew about my background, and I wish he knew about a lot of things that I had done, because I think he would've thanked me instead of attacked me...I think the attack on CNBC and the attacks on me were gravely misplaced. It was rather remarkable in that it was so clear that his goal was to just destroy me. One day he'll answer for it.

What's Stewart going to answer for? Waving the depth and breadth of your ignorance in front of a large audience, showing your gung ho cheerleading of companies that would fail a month later, showing your poor financial advice, your toadying to CEO's, your complete inability to perceive even the slightest inkling of problems on Wall Street, or pointing all of that out while you sat there unable to defend yourself against mountains of evidence? Yes, Stewart will someday answer for his competent interviewing.

Jimmy, word of advice, stop reminding people of how badly you got shamed and how poorly you're taking it. Take solace in the fact a single interview was the sole "answering for it" that you had to do after years of bad financial advice. If most people were as bad at their job as you are, they'd be fired.