LeGone

As the world watched LeBron's sad, narcissistic farewell/fuck you to the city of Cleveland, one had to sit back in awe at the misguided, cruel, tone deaf, ego stroking nonsense it was. A double fuck you to ESPN, for hyping it and shoving it down everyone's throats. This is why we hate you, Worldwide Leader.

But aside from the whole media whoring, mememememememe, "I wanted to do what was best for LeBron James.... What LeBron James was going to do to make him happy" third person, self-absorbed bullshit that it was, one had to take note at just how needlessly mean it was to a franchise he spent 7 years with and the fans who "witnessed". Or whatever inane Nike slogan it was they used to crown the King. Cleveland, we sympathize. OK, we don't. But it was still a shitty thing to do. As Deadspin put it: "LeBron James is a cocksucker." HE MADE BIEBER CRY!!

On the bright side, your owner went delightfully insane. First posting a letter full of righteous anger that wasn't even tempered by the curious, usually point destroying use of the font Comic Sans. He then knocked LeBron for his poor playoff performance and, rightfully, for quitting during the Celtics series. Fans were burning jerseys, screaming "Judas!", and talking themselves into Jake Delhomme and the upcoming Browns season. You know, depraved shit.

So Sean and I were eagerly awaiting the city's final farewell to LeTraitor, via the front page of the Plain Dealer. What cheap shot would they take? What insult would they hurl? What cruel photoshop would they unveil in order to mock and humiliate the jerkoff who spent an hour, nay offseason, jerking the city around in the unkindest of ways?


Eh. It's a nice, refined version of "Count the no rings, bitch" but we were hoping for so more. So we took it upon ourselves to offer up the city of Cleveland two alternative headlines to send the King off to his new position as Dwyane Wade's sidekick in South Beach.

Tell me they wouldn't already be going back to the printers to order a third run. C'mon Cleveland, this was your one chance to curse in a headline and be cheered for it. Missed opportunity. You had a chance to be justifiably and insanely bitter, vulgar, and mean in print, and you settled for catty.

Take solace though, aside from all the endorsement money he might have just cost himself by turning into the world's most unlikable ass, he probably stored up enough negative karma to engender a multi-ligament blowout on both of his knees somewhere around week one of training camp. Then Miami will be down to fielding a two man team filled out with "Win a spot on the Heat" raffle winners selected from season ticket holders.

Just hold out a little longer. The "delighting in his misery" part will be glorious.

Art of the day

The Pentagon officially unveiled the portrait of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a ceremony on the 25th. The painting, which "shows Rumsfeld at his stand-up desk with a picture of first-responders and soldiers unfurling the flag over the still-burning Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001", joins his other portrait from his tenure as Secretary in the seventies. That's right, this asshole has two portraits.

On the bright side, it was also relatively expensive by government portrait standards.

At the upper end of the scale, the Defense Department awaits the expected February completion of a $46,790 portrait of controversial former secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Well, let's be clear, the portrait was supposed to cost $46,790 and be completed in only a few months, but due to poor planning, an insufficient amount of paint, Code Pink protests, and a host of unknown unknowns besieging the project, the painting spiraled out of control, ended up costing several billion dollars and taking several years to paint, and is still relatively unfinished. All in all, a fitting metaphor for his tenure. Also: they served snowflake shaped sugar cookies at the reception!

To turn this in an art critique blog for a second; the picture is fine and the 9/11 imagery befits the monomaniacal obsession with and co-opting of the attacks that the Bush Administration engaged in. But can I ask, what ever happened to the standard "man on a horse, pointing off into the distance... as if pointing at the future" style of portraiture? I would actually start to respect Rumsfeld if he comission a multi-million dollar, 20 foot wide painting of him, dressed as Napoleon, sitting on a chestnut mare in front of a battlefield. Maybe that can be Gates' portrait.

YEAH, RUMSFELD!!!!!

Your time spent resting on your stellar reputation is over, Thurgood!

The hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan are underway. You know the drill: in order to be allowed onto the highest court in the land, the nominee vows to remain as silent as possible, dodge any question that may in fact reveal a personal thought or long held position, and attempt to set a Guinness world record for saying the phrase "I don't answer hypotheticals, Senator." You know, it's the way a serious country full of adults and intelligent elected officials selects a slot on its most august judicial body.

Then there's the dance our elected betters put on. Kagan's supporters on the Democratic side spend their time telling us how she's the most qualified nominee in the history of judges and law, that merely asking her a negatively toned question is likely to make God weep, and that any opposition to putting her immediately on the Supreme Court is rooted in the blackest evil, the foulest magic, and darkest blood rituals.

On the other hand, the GOP concocts scenarios in which her activist judicial fiats will split the earth in two in a literal orgy of flag burning illegal Mexican immigrants performing mandatory abortions on the Children of God, and how it is entirely conceivable that the President has nominated a dangerous mental defective and terrorist sleeper agent who, the second she gets on the bench, will strap C4 to herself and make for the Constitution.

You know how it is. It pretty much went by that book yesterday. But there was an unexpected addendum to yesterday's proceeding. Apparently going after Kagan was not enough, so the GOP decided to set their sights on another ACTIVIST JUDGE: Thurgood Marshall, who is apparently a massive shitbag.

Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an "activist judge." As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple senators slammed both Marshall's judicial philosophy and her service as his clerk in the late 1980s.
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In an example of how much the GOP focused on Marshall, his name came up 35 times. President Obama's name was mentioned just 14 times today.

Ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said Kagan's reverence for Marshall "tells us much about the nominee," and he meant that more as an indictment than a compliment.

The Washington Post says the Republicans even went so far as to pass out opposition research on Justice Marshall. Thurgood Marshall! You know, the guy who argued Brown v. The Board of Education, worked tirelessly on civil rights, and worked to fix institutional barriers of racial discrimination. That Thurgood Marshall. He was apparently a massively activist asshole. So, of course, the GOP spent an entire day trying to tear him down, discredit him, and attack him in order to knock Kagan's time spent as a law clerk for Marshall. One of the most accomplished, important justice and lawyer in US legal history. I'm not sure they even asked Kagan a question.

But there is one question we do need the answer to: would current GOP Senators vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court?

Sen. Orrin Hatch, like many Republicans these days, is arguing that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s hero, Thurgood Marshall, was an activist judge and that raises questions about Kagan’s judicial philosophy.
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I caught up with Hatch after today’s confirmation hearing to ask an obvious question: Would Hatch have voted for Marshall?

“Well, its hard to say,” Hatch said.

Jesus Christ.

/throws up hands, walks away

I want you to know something...

These Bastards isn't here to make friends.



This leads me to a great idea I had for a reality show: Making Friends. A show in which these socially maladjusted, orange tanned, raging narcissist egomaniacs, and breast implanted fame obsessives are all put into a house where the objective is to get people to like you and become your friends based entirely on the content of your character and personality.

I think it would probably result in the first reality show murder/suicide/murder-suicide/murder-murder-suicide-murder. Which would be awesome.

You can add Double Dare type obstacle course games with slime and slides and spinning objects if the concept isn't enough. Award points for making an emotional connection without booze, flexing, toplessness, or boozed up flexing. Bonus points for making it through the Slime Zone without getting creamed corn on your Von Dutch hat. Make it happen, FOX.

Razing Arizona

If you've been wondering how Arizona could get even classier and find a way to top its "HEY! YOU LOOK MEXICAN!" law, they're here to tell you they've finally thought of it. You know how we all hate the Constitution? You're in luck, Arizona does too.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona — and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution — to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state senator Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene.
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But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the anchor and leave.
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But that was 1868. Today, Pearce says the 14th Amendment has been "hijacked" by illegal immigrants. "They use it as a wedge," Pearce says.

Ah yes, the quintessentially American state of mind that causes us to see our laws and way of life as under an imaginary threat ("The Mexicans is takin' over illegally!") and then go about dismantling those freedoms, undermining that way of life, and violating our laws in order to "protect" ourselves. This time that onerous 14th Amendment has to go. Just who does that legal document outlining the supreme law of the United States think it is?

So head back to Mexico illegals and take your US citizen children with you. The Governor says so. Stop plaguing us with the "wrong" and "immoral" ways in which you situation confiens to our Constitution. What did your children do to deserve to be citizens anyway? It's not like they did what Governor Brewer and Rep. Pearce did to become citizens: be born white and then act with a smug sense of entitlement that they "earned" their natural born citizenship.

So eat it, Mexicans and the Constitution. Mexicans, sure, your US born kids might be US citizens, but consider this your first lesson in the way American works: our laws usually have tons of wiggle room when it comes to "the tans" and "the darks". Teach your kids that... from Guadalajara. And to the Constitution, sure we may bleat on and on about how you're the supreme law of the land, but that's only when you don't piss off right wing white people and their attempts to demonize minorities for naked political purposes. Then you're an onerous burden. Shape up or we'll start ignoring you on even more stuff besides the 14th amendment and all the war on terror/spying stuff. Get it straight.

Buddies

There are some friendships where you look at the two people involved and say "I don't know how they became or are still friends." Then there are the ones where you say "Yeah, those two assholes deserve each other. I get it." This is a tale about the latter. This is a tale about Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-Il, and a crateload of baby animals that are probably dead already.

Two by two, they were caught and lined up as an extravagant gift from one despotic regime to another.

According to conservationists, the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, will send a modern-day ark – containing pairs of giraffes, zebras, baby elephants and other wild animals taken from a national park – to a zoo in North Korea.

That's right, in order to continue their decades long friendship, Mugabe looted his national parks to send baby animals -including rare and endangered rhinos- to the North Korean dictator/shriveled husk of beef jerky, unaware that this action would cause said animals to die. Or he may be completely aware that the animals would die. Mugabe is after all, and immensely crooked and evil prick.

This is not the first time Mugabe has done this.

Zoo conditions in North Korea, which is isolated by most world nations, did not meet international standards, he said. Two rhinos, a male called Zimbo and a female called Zimba, given to Kim by Mugabe in the 80s, died only a few months after their relocation.

What did Mugabe get from Kim for this first gift? A trained brigade of Zimbabwean soldiers equipped them with tanks and armored personnel carriers... who went on to quash an uprising and slaughter 20,000 civilians. I wonder if Kim will be able to spare a kill squad in return this time? Mugabe does have a free press to deal with now.

Who knows, maybe Kim Jong-Il just wants to eat the elephants and rhinos. That is what he did when he was sent 12 giant rabbits for breeding and farming purposes. He. Ate. Giant. Rabbits. Maybe Kimbo just wants a really exotic BBQ for the World Cup. It is North Korea's first appearance since 1966.

So let us take time out of our day to take note of the special animal killing, crazy ark sending, death squad training, insane friendship of Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il. The worst pen pals ever.

The shit people should be bitching at Obama for

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of attempts by the right to label this oil spill Obama's Katrina or even Obama's 9/11 in an attempt to anchor it around his neck and use it to drag him down into the briny deep. This is a bit odd, because according to those same people, 9/11 and Katrina were handled expertly by Bush and in no way mistakes or examples of negligence/incompetence.

But there has also been lesser attempts by the media and commentators to get mad at Obama for.... something. Apparently he isn't mad enough, or too mad, or not doing enough, or doing too much, or something. I've found these to be a little shallow and reactionary. Frankly, what BP is attempting to do to seal up the leak is basically all that can be done. What, is Obama refusing to turn into Aquaman, swim down to the underwater leak, and use his magical Aquaman powers to seal it up? We know who you are, Barry, no need to protect that secret identity!

But because we're miserable bastards that can only find fault in things, that doesn't mean we can't pillory the President for making mistakes. Massive mistakes. And thanks to the blog Brendan Calling, we have good reason to. Mostly having to do with failing to clean up the scandal ridden Minerals Management Service and hiring an industry shill in Ken Salazar to head up the Department of the Interior.

Ken Salazar to the head the Department of the Interior.Salazar’s appointment was slammed by environmentalists, who said things like “It’s no surprise oil and gas, mining, agribusiness and other polluting industries that have dominated Interior are supporting rancher Salazar — he’s their friend.”
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Would you like to know what Mr. Salazar did about the corruption at MMS? NOTHING. In fact, last year Mr. Salazar appointed an eight-year BP executive to be the deputy administrator for land and minerals management, which makes Salazar’s promise, delivered yesterday, of a crackdown nothing more than a bad joke. Salazar should be fired immediately.

Obama has had nearly two years to clean up the MMS, and he did NOTHING.
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Deepwater Horizon moved into the Tiber oil field in September 2009, and Obama’s BP-staffed MMS exempted Deepwater horizon from an environmental impact study. Would that have happened under... an MMS purged of the scandal ridden staff everyone’s known about since at least 2008 (and maybe even as far back as 2005, 2006, 2007, as Ken Salazar admitted yesterday, in a defense that sounded more like an indictment of himself)?

I can’t answer that: what I can tell you is that no one can say “I didn’t know” because it’s a matter of record that MMS was mired in corruption. Allowing the same rotted people to run the agency amounts to negligence.

Yeah, that seems like a large string of bad decisions. You should really click the link and go read the full piece as it's full of damning excepts and news articles chronicling the bad judgment. The exempting the Deepwater Horizon from an environmental study and hiring a former BP exec to be the deputy administrator for land and minerals management seems quite bad. Glenn Greenwald makes a similar point about Salazar, shady industry ties, and negligence (including the Deepwater Horizon plan getting rubber stamped in less than 10 minutes and BP hiring the lobbying group owned by Obama transition chief John Podesta to lobby the White House) in his article on Salon.

So maybe instead of complaining whether the President is showing enough anger at the situation or yelling enough, maybe this is the kind of thing the media should look into. Though I will admit "Administration has close ties with industry" and "Corporations concerns given more weight than environmentalists' and non-moneyed sources" are hardly surprising stories. I'm sure the media will get right on it. Just like I'm sure revelations like this will result in our government not being so nakedly entwined with the interests it is supposed to be regulating.

Quote of the day

Look, it's clear that people are overreacting to this unprecedented oil spill thingy dingy in the Gulf. I mean BP CEO Tony Hayward spelled it out for us last week when he explained that the spill was "relatively tiny" when compared to the overall size of the ocean and it's total water volume.

I mean, yeah, when you think about it, covering the entire Gulf of Mexico in oil isn't that big a deal when you consider the earth is over 70% water. Plus it's only the top of the water that's covered in oil. What about all the water underneath that's still perfectly good? What about the depth of the ocean? That's a lot of water, BP could have only massively polluted a small fraction of it. When you think about it, taken against the entirety of human achievement and failure, this is only a small failure on Heyward's part.

Proving that no one in BP's PR Department was brave enough to smack him in the back of the head and ask Heyward what the fuck he was doing, Tony went right back out there to keep hitting that line of defense.

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. We’re going to do that with some of the science institutions in the U.S. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.

Yes... modest. Very, very modest.

Plus, it's not like this is the only Gulf. If people want to see a Gulf they can go to the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Gulf of Tonkin, or the Gulf of Riga. Everyone loves Latvia, right? So when you think about how many Gulf's there are and how much ocean water there is by area and volume, it's like this didn't even happen. You hear me? THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN!

Picture of the day

Yesterday, in part of Fox News's never ending commitment to shill for industry and downplay their mistakes at all opportunities, Brit Hume took time out of his busy days chastising Tiger Woods to become Christian to offer up his brilliant insights into the Gulf oil spill.

WILLIAMS: First of all, don’t you think, this spill now is going to be in excess of what happened with Exxon Valdez.

HUME: Let’s see if that happens. There’s a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil?

Well Brit, the oil is all over the fucking Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully NASA has satellites far enough into space that they can actually capture the magnitude of the disaster. Which, for your edification Brit, is far beyond a mere Exxon Valdez or two at this point.

Click to embiggen or click here to even further embiggen.

You'll note that all the murky stuff that' bracketed by azure blue... is the fucking oil. With the darker oilier spots being the parts where it's just pretty much all oil. Rather staggering isn't it?

As a bonus the picture also kindly shows the beginnings of that whole thing we'll be talking about over the next few days: the Gulf Loop Current taking the oil to the Florida Keys and Florida Gulf Coast. Happy times.

Stay classy, Arizona immigration law supporters

If the Arizona immigration law that makes you a suspicious person if you're caught breathing while Latino, has been good for one thing: the comedy resulting from those who support the law. Not so much "funny ha-ha" comedy, but more of a "oh sweet merciful Christ, these are elected representatives... in America... in 2010" kind of funny.

Even worse on the unconformable comedy of awkward discomfort scale are the people who have viewed this law as a gaslight for them to rush out and espouse their brilliant ideas about ways in which this country can go further down into a racist hole with immigration laws. Take Iowa Republican (shocking) congressional candidate Pat Bertroche

“I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support micro-chipping them. I can micro-chip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I micro-chip an illegal?

“That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under,” Bertroche said.

Micro-chipping every illegal immigrant? You know, maybe Georgia was on to something with their crazy "no robit hunks in mah body" law. That being said, if we could catch every single illegal immigrant to the point where we could perform invasive microchipping surgery on them... wouldn't we just cart them over the border? I mean we go to all the trouble of catching them to scientifically experiment on them and we just release them back into the wild even though they're illegal? Methinks someone needs to mull over his "Mexicans are exactly like dogs" immigration plan.

But then there's Republican (shocking~!) Rep. Duncan Hunter the Younger of California, who isn't merely content to treat immigrants like stray dogs. No, he's got a better plan.

QUESTION: Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens?

HUNTER: I would have to, yes. [...] We simply cannot afford what we’re doing right now. California is going under. How much in debt are we? Twenty billion dollars? [...] And we’re not being mean, we’re just saying it takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s what’s in our souls.

Yeah, fuck them. Who ever said that being born here means you're a citizen? The 14th Amendment? Balderdash! Let's repeal it and start chucking American citizens who aren't sufficiently white over the border. Their souls aren't American.

But if advanced GPS tracking, a catch and release Latino program, or grossly violating the Constitution in the name of racial paranoia aren't your thing, have you thought of just claiming all your Latin opponents of wanting to cede American soil to Santa Anna and his Mexican hordes? Then get on board with Republican (shocker) Rep. Steve King (shocker) from Iowa (shocker).

I’m wondering if we look at the map of Congressman Grijalva’s congressional district if we haven’t already ceded that component of Arizona to Mexico judging by the voice that comes out of him, he’s advocating for Mexico rather than the United States and against the rule of law, which is one of the central pillars of American exceptionalism.

He is of course talking about Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Latino himself and Arizona representative, who decried the law and advocated that people boycott Arizona in response. Of course that means he doesn't sufficiently love America, is probably a Latin sleeper agent, hates the law, freedom, and baby eagles, and is probably the point man for the Mexican Reconquista movement. Aztlan!

So stay classy everyone. I know we all though that a re-fried bean swastika was about as low as the debate could sink. But we didn't count on the prides of Iowa and a second generation half-witted reactionary race-baiter deciding that this was the perfect opportunity to offer up their brilliant ideas on better ways to dehumanize entire swaths of the US population. Wonderful. It wells me up with so much pride for the country.

Thanks for keeping us updated

Serial liar and toad-like goon Dick Morris had a busy morning on Fox News warning American about it's imminent death. And not the symbolic "death of freedom and liberty" type stuff either. Real death. Two separate predictions. That's a pretty good streak. Most completely unreliable liars can only get off one completely misinformed proclamation of imminent doom during an appearance.

Let's get to his first. You may have thought that health care was only going to gank your grandparents and yoke you to a system where tribunals decided whether or not you were fit to live or die based on a loyalty oath you'll take to the disembodied spirit of Vladimir Lenin. Nope, it' only the end of medicine... that is unless you vote for the GOP.

"If we are unable to defeat Obama in 2010... there will be permanent harms in the country and one of the big ones is a nation without doctors."

Clearly. That's the step after "cover everyone", "2. eliminate all doctors". It all makes so much sense now that's it's put in such clear terms. Uninsured insured -> elimination of practiced medicine.

Now tell us how we're all going to die a biological death from a snickering Kim Jong-Il because the President hates the country.

It's the most outrageous thing, I think, I've ever heard a president of the United States say. He's literally saying that if an American city were gassed or hit with a biological weapon and millions were dying in the streets coughing their lungs out, or in hospital wards dying of an incurable disease, we would not use nuclear weapons to reply? It is totally absurd. It's beyond belief that a president of the United States would say that and it shows that Barack Obama might be, might be the first anti-American president we've ever had.

He isn't literally saying that. Not in the slightest. If only there were a nightly comedy news show that tackled this.



But Dick can't be expected to do things like read treaties or watch comedy programming. So I pass on his warnings to you: elect Republicans or medical knowledge will vanish from the earth just like it did in every other country with socialismed medicine... which won't matter much anyway because we'll all be dead of nuclear anthrax because the President is anti-American. Clear? Ok.

Your daily reminder that justice doesn't exist

You all remember the Westboro Baptist Church, don't you? Fred Phelps and his bunch of crazies? They picket anything gay related with charming signs like "God hates fags" and "God hates you" and have taken to picketing gay funerals with even more charming signs about the deceased burning in hell. They're like a deranged cult, but without that great part at the end where they castrate themselves and drink strychnine according to some astrological chart.

In recent years they've taken to protesting military funerals with their atypical tact and class, choosing to blame the military deaths on America's tolerance of homosexuals. Well one father who had to go through their hateful idiocy at his son's funeral decided to sue them on the basis that they invaded his privacy and intentionally caused him emotional distress. He originally won millions in judgment. The appeals courts decided to see it another way.

The father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq has been ordered to pay $16,510.80 to a family that protested his son's funeral in Maryland.
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The judgment is a setback for Mr. Snyder, who has been fundraising to cover the costs of the Supreme Court action with hopes of finally bringing Phelps' followers to their knees.

"Armed the with knowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court decided to review the case, the Court of Appeals made the decision concerning assessing costs," Mr. Snyder's lawyers said in a statement. "This decision is tantamount to adding insult to injury."

Not only did he have these assholes picket his son's funeral, he got to pay them for the privilege of them doing so. Because, as the court ruled, "as utterly distasteful as these signs are, they involve matters of public concern." Because where would this country be if inbred fundamentalists weren't able to invade someone's funeral to chastise, insult, hurt, and abuse mourners? I'd thank the courts for ordering the continued funding of Westboro, but Snyder will likely have to go into bankruptcy because he can't afford to pay Fred Phelps.

Rest easy, the courts today affirmed your right as a God given American to act like a completely subhuman piece of shit and get rewarded for it. So, happy day. American justice strikes again.

Stay classy, Hannity

We always like to mock Sean Hannity here at TB, and why not? The man is probably the most baldfaced liar on TV and he doesn't even have the nerve to be an interesting kind of crazy like Glenn Beck. I mean all he does is work himself into outraged conniptions about minor events he exaggerated and stories he invented in a annoyed windbaggy tone. No weeping, no stunts, no chalkboard. Boring evil.

And it's worked out pretty well for Hannity, as he's knocked down a $100 million dollar contract just for his radio show alone. But that's not enough money for him apparently, and has taken to using a charity he ostensibly started to help wounded soldiers and children of wounded soldiers and decided it should effectively be run as a PR machine and goodie bag dispensery for himself, his friends and his family. It's a shocker, I mean he just looks so trustworthy.

For the last several years, Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance “charity” have conducted “Freedom Concerts” across America. They’ve told you that they are raising money to pay for the college tuition of the children of fallen soldiers and to pay severely wounded war vets.
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But it’s all a huge scam.

In fact, less than 20%–and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively–of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferret the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style. And, despite Hannity’s statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show, few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes. Moreover, despite written assurances to donors that all money raised would go directly to scholarships for kids of the fallen heroes and not to expenses, has begun charging expenses of nearly $500,000 to give out just over $800,000 in scholarships.

And who revealed all of this? Conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel. Et tu Brute? Media Matters, not one to give Schlussel credit, even goes so far as to say that her numbers check out and points to further work done on the Charity Navigator page. There, on the website that rates and analyzes charities to see if they're scamming people and how much of the money they get is actually spent on their supposed cause, alleges that Hannity's charity might even spend less on wounded veterans than Schlussel does. Noting that by Freedom Alliance's own tax filings they have taken in almost $50 million since 2003 and doled out only &1.8 million to the families of veterans.

I guess this is why Hannity is always railing against the government for misuse of revenue: he sees that kind of abuse first hand all the time and must have a sixth sense for when it's happening.

Well this is all just so surprising. I mean, for one, who thought Sean Hannity would be so thoroughly dishonest is his dealings? Secondly who thought that a charity he started in an attempt to get publicity for himself and puff his chest out about how he cares more about the troops than liberals, wouldn't actually be committed to the spirit of charity? On the other had he did get a lot of free promotion and content for his radio and TV shows and he did get to meet Trace Adkins and Toby Kieth a bunch of times, so defrauding the American public and wounded soldiers worked out like gangbusters. Stay classy, Sean, I know you will. Can't wait to hear about how this is all a giant liberal conspiracy against you.

Compare/Contrast

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on health care:

As I said to some friends yesterday in the press, we will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit.

Various and sundry Senate assholes on health care:

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said health care reform “is on life support, unfortunately,” and the president should have been more specific with how Democrats should move forward.
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Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said it was “a real possibility that health care is at a stalemate and you can’t solve it this year.”
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Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on health care reform, Democrats are “thinking about it and how to move on it.”

But, he added, jobs are the current high priority and that is what we are going to work on for now.

Anyone still confident that health care is going to be acted on anytime soon? They've got to pretend they're doing something on jobs now.

Quote of the day

Say anything for a buck, corporate owned, no real beliefs of his own, political hack/carpetbagger Harold Ford Jr. has decided that what New York needs is a Democratic Senator that is not only completely embarrassing, is the Democratic equivalent to Sarah Palin, but also tries to out-Lieberman Joe Lieberman. It doesn't sound like a great campaign strategy to me, but what do I know? I'm probably going to have to choose between Arlen Specter or Pat Toomey in November.

In between declaring how he's a real New Yorker because his helicopter once touched down in Staten Island thus technically qualifying him as having visited all five boroughs, flip flopping on gay marriage, opposing health care, backing large salaries for bankers while not understanding capitalism as a principle, and generally making people question what the hell he is doing and what the hell he is thinking, he dropped this little nugget in an almost 'too bizarre to believe it was anything other than a parody' NY Times interview:

Q. Guns. Let’s talk about this issue.

A: I never got an A rating, like my opponent — would-be opponent — has enjoyed. I don’t own them. I do shoot them, and I shoot them at things that can’t shoot back. And will continue to do that. And by that, I want to be clear, I don’t mean children.

Well, thanks for clearing that up. But I think you might want to soften that stance a little bit. It's New York and the kids there definitely do shoot back.

Still, it's a hell of a political slogan.

Ford '10! Let's be clear: I do not shoot children.

Beats the shit out of 'Hope' or 'Change'.

Noun, verb, ....

I don't want to alarm our audience here, because I know you're all great fans of the man, but I think there's something terribly wrong with Rudy Giuliani. He looks fine from the outside, but on the inside... I think something is affecting his memory. Because not only did Mr. 9/11 forget to mention 9/11 in an interview about terrorism, he forgot that 9/11 even happened at all.

Rudy Giuliani, the man who was mayor of New York City during the 9/11 attacks, appeared on Good Morning America today to say President Obama should take lessons from former President George W. Bush on how to prevent a terrorist attack.

"What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things Bush did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama," Giuliani said.

My God, get this man a CAT scan. Not only has he lost the ability to recall the largest terrorist attack in US, he's forgotten his chief duty as former mayor of New York: to crassly exploit 9/11 at every single opportunity for his own personal, political, and monetary gain. Plus, for some demented reason he decided to count a failed attack by the underpants bomber as an attack, but failed to count the failed shoe bombing during the Bush Administration as one. Or count the anthrax attacks that killed Americans. Or, again, count that tiny little event where three thousand people died, two rather large buildings were destroyed, and a mayor tried to chisel every nickel out of it he could. I can't believe he doesn't remember that last part.

Thankfully though, it appears that Giuliani, while forgetting 9/11, can still use nouns and verbs. Tragically he's not the only one suffering from this affliction of 9/11 related dementia. In the past months fellow Republicans Dana Perino and Mary Matalin have have had memory related afflictions surrounding 9/11. Hopefully some money can be raised to find a cure for this disease. Actually maybe that is the cure. Just tell Rudy that he has to raise money to pay off some debts or build a statue to himself, I'm sure memories of 9/11 will flood back into his brain and he'll be able to give the necessary speeches and acquire the necessary funds. We can only hope Rudy remembers before the 2010 political campaigning starts and the 2012 Republican primaries are underway.

Oh shut up

Health care is almost done, with only a few t's and i's left to cross or dot, a few differences to smooth out, and a couple of rights that we need to decide if women should have or not. But even though the health care bill isn't finished, there is still ample opportunity for Democrats to bitch about it and complain that it shouldn't have been done so soon, that we should have left reform to the ever shifting, always nebulous "future." Ben Nelson is one of those whiners.

“I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy,” he said.
...
“I would have preferred not to be dealing with health care in the midst of everything else, and I think working on the economy would have been a wiser move,” he said.

Irrespective of the fact that health reform is of benefit to the economy or the fact that every idiot in the Senate seems to have convinced themselves that they can only do one thing at once and that they don't want to do more than one hard thing every two years (no hard things is preferable), what exactly is it that you want to do on the economy, Ben?

Because I remember a period in time when the government was explicitly dealing with the economy in terms of a stimulus. Do you know why it's burned into my head? Because after proposing a stimulus that was too small for the economic problems this country was facing, a couple of jerkoff Senators decided that it needed to be made smaller and randomly lopped of $100 billion in programs that would have benefited the economy in order to look they they were doing something important. I seem to remember one asshole basing his economic theories around what numbers sounded too big or too much for Nebraskans. Sound familiar?

You know, new action wouldn't be as necessary if you didn't help mangle the economic help the first go around. So let's just agree that you should stay far the fuck away from the issue of jobs and the economy. You just stand in the corner calculating economic theories based around imagined Nebraskan notions and what passes for adults in the House and Senate will take care of the hard work. Then you can make it worse, like you always do. Just stop whining.

Definitions

cour⋅age
–noun
1. the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.
2. Obsolete. the heart as the source of emotion.
3. Earning millions of dollars as a backup QB after an incident where you murdered dogs for fun and profit and went to jail.

Example:

Michael Vick’s peers appreciate his tough journey back to the NFL. Vick won the Ed Block Courage Award, voted on by his teammates on the Philadelphia Eagles. The once-disgraced star quarterback returned to the league after spending 18 months in a federal prison for his role in a dogfighting ring.
...
”I’ve overcome a lot, more than probably one single individual can handle or bear,” Vick said. ”You ask certain people to walk through my shoes, they probably couldn’t do.

hu⋅mil⋅i⋅ty
–noun
1. the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc.
2. having the balls to claim that overcoming the media and legal scrutiny that came as a result of your own crippling stupidity and despicable personhood is some point of pride while simultaneously claiming that the 99.9% of the populace that isn't dumb enough to do what you did couldn't ever show the courage you did, again failing to note that this whole situation was of your own making.

Broken In Brief: Area man so goddamned proud of himself for making 'change' crack to Obama voter

MINNEAPOLIS—According to family and friends, area Republican Jerry Rainer, 47, is still fucking enthralled with himself nearly one week after making a sarcastic crack towards someone he perceived to be a supporter of President Obama.

“Yeah, some lady or something was sayin’ something about being disappointed with the speed that the health care bill was going through Congress,” remembered friend Sonny Adams, who still can’t believe he’s having to relive such a minor anecdote a week after the fact. “So, Jer was all like ‘I guess this isn’t CHANGE you can believe in’, sarcastically emphasizing the ‘change’ part in a really annoying way.”

Adams sighed and continued, “We didn’t think much of it. Actually, we kind of thought he was being a dick. But it wasn’t until he walked away with such a smug look on his face and kept bringing it up in every conversation that we began to suspect he thought he had won the Lincoln-Douglas debates.”

Those close to Rainer don’t know what caused him to interject his big fuckin’ mouth, uninvited, into a mildly political conversation, noting that his previous political interaction seemed solely centered around forwarding utterly retarded right-wing chain e-mails from his office. Most surmise that Mr. Rainer had likely thought of the alleged joke a long time ago and may had been waiting a long, long time to finally say it.

They were quick to note that this was “pretty goddamn sad.”

For now they don’t see any way of getting him to stop mentioning it without further engaging him politically, a process in which none of them wisher to engage. Instead, they have organized a movie night around the film Borat, hoping that this human wasteland will switch over his incessant ‘change’ references to the equally overdone, but at least mildly amusing, catchphrases of Sacha-Baron Cohen's character.

“Frankly it’s our only HOPE,” smiled the now repellent Adams. “You see what I did there?”

Quote of the day

It's a shame these town halls on health care are ending, what with everyone returning to Washington to get down to the serious business of fucking us hard. But alas, it's true. No longer will Americans be able to show their creativity in sloganeering and conspiracy mongering and our elected betters will no longer get to show off their best "I can't believe these people can operate cars" faces of disbelief or show their extreme heartlessness in the face of tragedy.

Take Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), for example. When he was regaled with a story of how a man lost his insurance, got colon cancer, was treated through emergency measures, survived....so far, but was left bankrupt, and how the same thing happened to his friend....who died, Kingston came to one obvious conclusion: that everything was fine and worked out great for the man.

Kingston responded by telling the man that “you did do very well” because he was able to get treated when he arrived at the hospital. Parker responded, “I am functionally bankrupt!” Kingston cut him off and reiterated his point, "But you did get coverage. You didn’t get the insurance, but they won’t turn you down at the door."

Yes because emergency room access and health care coverage are practically the same thing. But in addition to trying to tell this man that he had mistaken a positive event as a great malady, he tried to scare the man with tales of socialism, lines, and rationing. As if bankruptcy and death are preferable to comprehensive treatment and screening if the stench of liberalism is about. Still, I'll miss these events. Where else are you going to get to see Congress members listen to a story of heartfelt pain and desire for change and respond with a "No, fuck you" or a "You seem to have misunderstood your own suffering and pain, here let me explain why it was awesome"? We'll miss you, town hall health care debates, we'll miss you.