A wish...

I just finished writing a ridiculous article about a dystopian Romney-led future that, joyfully, won't happen...in my mother's house, on her funny old computer...with the smell of my mom's pumpkin pie, my wife's outrageous buffalo chicken dip, and the crock pot chili we're having for dinner actively mugging my nose...all combining to make me, quite literally, insane.

This year began, for me, with half a dozen funerals for people I loved dearly. It is coming to an end with a favorable election result, a wildly healthy wife carrying our wildly healthy daughter...and this, tonight, with my mother, and my beloved.

I know full well just how lucky I am. I hope, with all that is in me, that this small space in time finds you happy and hopeful as well...and if not, if it hurts, if it's bad, I hope with everything I am that it will improve, both dramatically and soon.

Here's to my friends and family, for whom I am so grateful.

Here's to DU. Thank you so much.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

"This is what you should do..."

I somehow managed to forget this '08 John McCain incident that explains everything about him

What I wrote then.

===

The American Tragedy of John McCain
William Rivers Pitt - t r u t h o u t

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

- T. S. Eliot

Arizona Sen. John McCain took a walk through a Baghdad market on April Fool's Day, and may well have burned his presidential campaign down to the ground in the process. That little stroll has visited upon his head a deluge of humiliation and shame vast and astonishing enough to beggar imagination, and that was before the bodies started hitting the ground.

Translated into mathematical terms, McCain's walk was Pythagorean in scope, squared hypocrisy added to squared idiocy equaling squared disgrace. In political terms, McCain's Baghdad walk was a full-blown, bull-moose, train-wreck disaster of truly galactic proportions: a veritable Hindenberg of campaign photo-op debacles. It was so mind-bendingly ugly and deranged and disgusting that the once-iconic "Dukakis in the Tank" blunder now seems quaint by comparison.

The genesis of this catastrophe, in case you missed it, was a verbal gaffe by McCain during a widely broadcast interview last week. After enduring several minutes of sharp interrogation regarding his staunch support of Bush, the war and the "surge," a neuron within his logic circuits apparently misfired. He claimed, with an entirely straight face, that the streets of Baghdad are today entirely safe for an American to walk down. This whopper made even the most shamelessly craven war apologists shake their heads in public, and forced McCain to undertake a desperate face-saving lunge to recover some shred of credibility.

McCain traveled to Baghdad to prove his claim correct, and the pictures appeared shortly thereafter. In the first available frames, the senator was shown walking through a Baghdad marketplace wearing a Kevlar vest, a general on his right and a troop on his left, and a second troop three steps ahead brandishing his rifle. While this kind of protection detail seemed to undermine his claims of safety, the escort and the vest could easily be understood as normal and necessary precautions taken to protect a visiting dignitary. For a time, McCain appeared to have made his point.

It didn't last. On the heels of those narrow-scope photos came reports of what McCain's entourage was actually comprised of. That "safe" Baghdad market had been flooded with more than one hundred battle-ready troops and armored Humvees. Three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache attack helicopters roared overhead, and sharpshooters were posted on the surrounding rooftops. Simply put, McCain's "safe" street was one overly loud mouse-fart away from being paved with flaming lead during every step of that little walk.

To compound the calamity, a report emerged two days later describing the abduction and slaughter of 21 Iraqis who worked in the marketplace McCain's mini-Normandy force had stormed the previous Sunday, an obvious act of retribution for his visit by a violent Baghdad militia. Already belied by the revealed firepower he brought along, McCain's "safe" walk in Iraq led directly to yet another horrific Baghdad bloodbath. There is bad, there is awful, and then there is this thing, this quantum singularity of ignominy that bends the very light now shining upon it.

The rest: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x590946

"I don't always pump my own gas..."

You want a conspiracy theory? OK, here's one:

Hostess floated false rumors about closing down to inspire a mad rush on their product at stores all across the country.

Soon, they'll announce a "deal" that saves the company and all those jobs...and laugh all the way to the bank when their massive quarterly earnings increase comes in.

Call it a re-interpretation of the "New Coke" trick.

Mwah ha ha ha ha, prove me wrong, ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Hostess Shutdown on Hold; Deal Sought Between Union and Management
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/19/news/companies/hostess-bankruptcy-bonuses/index.html?iid=Popular

His name was Henry Hamilton, and now he is dead.

His name was Henry Hamilton, and he owned a small business. He was taking medication to treat anxiety and schizophrenia. He was an ardent listener of the Right-wing noise machine, and lived in terror of Obama winning re-election. Two days after the election, he was found dead next to empty bottles of his pills and a suicide note that read, simply, "Fuck Obama."

Hannity, Rush and the rest didn't kill Mr. Hamilton. But they sure as shit didn't help him, either. Words, like actions, have consequences.

Leonard Pitts | The Sad State of Zealots with Microphones
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-the-sad-state-of-zealots-with-microphones-20121116,0,7918183.story

...pssst...Benghazi tinfoilers...when The Economist calls you a total blithering idiot...

...you might be a total blithering idiot.

===

Benghazi-gate gets even more ludicrous

REPUBLICAN senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham devoted an appearance at the Washington Ideas Forum on Wednesday to vowing to filibuster if Susan Rice, the current UN ambassador, is nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. They're apparently ticked off over her statements on talk shows on September 15th about the Benghazi attacks. Barack Obama got pretty incensed about this at his press conference later in the day, and Kevin Drum argues he was right to be incensed. As Mr Drum says, everything Ms Rice said on September 15th was in fact the judgment at that moment of American intelligence agencies, and she relayed that judgment accurately. The only thing that was even arguably wrong in those intelligence assessments was the claim that there had been a copycat protest over those anti-Muslim YouTube videos in Benghazi; intelligence agencies didn't start calling this into question until some time later. "Berating Rice, who had nothing to do with Benghazi aside from representing the administration on these talk shows, is nuts," Mr Drum writes. "The intelligence community was wrong about one relatively unimportant fact, and Rice passed along that mistake. That's it. There's no coverup, no conspiracy, no incompetence, no scandal."

This is absolutely right as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. At the most fundamental level, the reason it is absurd to suspect the existence of a "cover-up" over the Benghazi attack is that such a cover-up could not have had any conceivable goal. Back to the beginning: the underlying accusation about Benghazi is that the Obama administration deliberately mischaracterised the terrorist attack there as having grown out of a spontaneous demonstration because that would be less politically damaging. Such a cover-up would have made no sense because the attack would not have been less politically damaging had it grown out of a spontaneous demonstration. The attack on the Benghazi compound would not have been any less politically difficult for the administration if it had grown out of a riot, nor would any normal voter have expected it to be less politically damaging, nor would any normal campaign strategist have expected any normal voter to have expected it to be less politically damaging. Had Susan Rice gone on the talk shows on September 15th and inaccurately stated that the attackers had been wearing green pants, when in fact their pants had been red, there would be no reason to suspect this to be part of a political "cover-up", because no American voters could conceivably have cared either way.

(snip)

Obviously there's a huge temptation to turn any incident that could reflect badly on the opposition's government, such as the killing of an ambassador in a terrorist attack, into some kind of scandal. But this attempt is just absurd. The strategy here has been to shout "Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi!" until the public begins to think there's something fishy going on with Benghazi, and then move on to targeting administration figures because...Benghazi! If this actually works, we are all still in kindergarten.

Full article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/susan-rice?fsrc=scn%2Fob

What the GOP is **really** afraid of...

Knock Knock...Who's There?

If you think you've seen everything, you haven't seen this. Oy.

After absorbing the reality of defeat at the polls all across the country in an election that saw gains on the state and federal level for Democrats, expanded the rights of LGBT Americans, defended the rights of women, and showed a clear repudiation of the GOP's platform, Republicans got together and decided they needed to do things differently.

...said no one ever.

9 lawmakers want to charge U.S. officials who implement Obamacare
By Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel

Madison - As Gov. Scott Walker contemplates whether to create a state health care exchange under Obamacare, he will have to contend in the coming legislative session with nine lawmakers who have said they back a bill to arrest any federal officials who try to implement the health care law.

Eight of the nine Republicans also have gone on record saying they also want to write a law that would see airport screeners charged with sexual assault if they conduct overly invasive pat-downs of passengers going through security.

All nine also told a tea party-aligned group they backed passing so-called "right-to-work" legislation; allowing people to carry guns without having to get permits from the state; allowing people to buy raw, or unpasteurized, milk; and blocking state funding for the federal Real ID law that requires states to develop more secure driver's licenses.

But their stance on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, could cause the most fireworks in the upcoming session. Walker must decide by Friday whether the state will create a health care exchange under the health care law or leave those duties to President Barack Obama's administration.

The rest: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/nine-lawmakers-back-charging-federal-officials-who-implement-obamacare-here-n47kl10-179180251.html

...but it's the South that's crazy, right?