Democrats and Villain Rotation

February 23, 2010

Glenn Greenwald breaks it down:
This is what the Democratic Party does; it’s who they are.  They’re willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there’s no chance that they can pass it. They won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections by pretending they wanted to compel an end [...]

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Lingerie for Beginners

February 21, 2010

From MeFi:
Getting someone lingerie for their birthday is the equivalent of getting someone flour, eggs, and chocolate chips, and telling them to bake you cookies.
via Lingerie for Beginners | Ask MetaFilter.

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How the US Government Poisoned 10,000 During Prohibition

February 21, 2010

Hey man, remember when the US government killed over 10,00 people?
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as [...]

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Family Guy Actress with Down Syndrome’s Sarah Palin Smackdown Too Hot for NYT

February 18, 2010

Sure the recent episode of Family Guy wasn’t all that funny. The character with Downs Syndrome said ’My mother is the former governor of Alaska.’ Sarah Palin of course went apeshit. Turns out the actress that voiced the character has Down Syndrome and had this to say:
I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense [...]

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Networks Use the Word ‘Terrorism’ With Care

February 18, 2010

The new T-word:
There are “a couple of reasons to say that,” the NBC correspondent Pete Williams observed on MSNBC. “One is he’s an American citizen. But that doesn’t rule out an act of terrorism. Timothy McVeigh, of course, was an American citizen as well, and that was the biggest act of terrorism in the U.S. [...]

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Apartment Hunting Complete

February 14, 2010

Ron came in for the weekend. Well really just Saturday. The snowstorm that came across the coast on Friday screwed up a lot of plans. The seminar team at work was in Atlanta ending a 2-day seminar and the Atlanta airport shut down (this is after several attendees coming thru Dallas couldn’t make it) and [...]

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The Liberty Restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina

February 14, 2010

We went to eat at The Liberty which one of my co-workers had recommended. Every restaurant here no matter how fancy is required to have a sports bar set up in their main bar. There’s just too much fandom for NASCAR and basketball to not have those amentities for the sports-going crowd. We sat at [...]

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Gay Dog Whistle

February 14, 2010

When we are out we try to see if we can sense homos among us. There were two tables near us composed of all men and they all seemed a bit too groomed to be straight. This was all confirmed when we heard the gay dog whistle: Madonna. ‘Frozen’ came on over the sound system [...]

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There is No Date Hoodie

February 12, 2010

Daisy brings down the hammer:
“The date hoodie” is a complete figment of your imagination in which you've decided guys like you for your personality and intellect. “The date hoodie” is something you made up to rationalize wearing your pajamas to an event where you’re supposed to at least pretend to care what the other person [...]

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Student Detained for Arabic Flash Cards

February 11, 2010

Safer and safer:
George, a physics major who’s studying Arabic, was pulled aside for secondary screening at the Philadelphia International Airport as he tried to go through security. When he emptied his pockets, the inspector saw his flash cards and he was arrested, handcuffed, locked in a cell for hours and aggressively questioned. Because of some [...]

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UN Concludes UK Complicit in Torture

January 27, 2010

Tighten that noose:
United Nations human rights investigators have concluded that the British government has been complicit in the mistreatment and possible torture of several of its own citizens during the “war on terror”. In a report published today that will make difficult reading for ministers who repeatedly denied the UK’s involvement in torture, UN officials have [...]

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KY to Force Women to Watch Ultrasound Before Terminating a Pregnancy

January 27, 2010

Oh Kentucky, nobody does it like you:
The [state] Senate passed legislation Monday that would require doctors “to show a woman an ultrasound image of her fetus and explain how it is developing before performing an abortion.” By an overwhelming vote of 32-4, Senate Bill 38 encountered no difficulty passing in the Senate. However, the fight for [...]

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CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

January 27, 2010

Dear CIA, this is why we don’t believe anything you say:
John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about. Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency’s intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over [...]

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Dumbass California Mother Requests Ban on Dictionaries

January 25, 2010

And the dumbass school district complies:
A mother in Menifee, California, asked the Menifee Union School District to ban all copies of the 10th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary after her child stumbled across the term “oral sex.” What is surprising, indeed horrifying, is that district officials immediately complied with her request, and pulled all dictionaries [...]

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Judge Dismisses NSA Wiretapping Case

January 22, 2010

Great news for those who love bad news:
A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails. In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge [...]

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No One Knows How Goldman Sachs Makes Money

January 22, 2010

PBS economist Paul Solman answers viewer mail:
Fact is, no one knows for sure where Goldman’s profits come from. So here’s the request: If YOU know how Goldman has been making its money – taking advantage of credulous clients, say, or front-running the big ones (see below) – please write and let us know…. [H]ere’s the [...]

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Obama Imprisons 50 Indefinitely

January 22, 2010

Best Nobel Peace Prize Ever:
The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.
via Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

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Mind Your Own Business

January 22, 2010

Starting to love Alan Grayson more and more:
HR 4431: Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (Introduced in House). To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns.
via Search Results – THOMAS (Library of Congress).

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Unemployed Guy on Obama and 2012

January 22, 2010

I don’t entirely agree with this. From Metafilter:
I’ve been unemployed for eight months now. I don’t talk about it a lot because I don’t feel like playing the wah-wah poor-me card. I understand there are a LOT of people out there worse off than me, both in this country and afar. But it fucking hurts, [...]

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Warren Buffett Has the Right Idea

January 22, 2010

I concur:
Still, Mr. Buffett did offer one tough general opinion: make sure the bosses of failing banks — and their spouses — pay very, very dearly. “If I was running things, if a bank had to go to the government for help, the C.E.O. and his wife would forfeit all their net worth,” he said. [...]

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