punditus hogwartium

it's not easy to walk erect

Ten years ago today the Pfizer company introduced Viagra and gave prostitutes all over the world a huge increase in business. Today, with new competitor drugs on the market, Pfizer is scrambling to keep their increasingly limp place in the business of chemically-induced wood.

Personally, I think it's time for a new direction, the "Viva Viagra" campaign has to be one of the schlockiest commercial series ever created.

Instead, picture this:



HARD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FORESKIN!
HARD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FORESKIN!
HARD-ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FORESKIN!


Now that's some classy advertising!

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The United States of America has now lost 4,000 military personnel in Iraq. George W. Bush has their blood on his hands. If he were deliberately trying to destroy America, he couldn't have done a better job. Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you really need him?

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It's Caturday!

another way to look at it

Remember those millions of missing White House emails? White House staff informed a Federal Magistrate on Friday that they were unable to locate them since the computers they were on had been destroyed as part of a "routine" upgrade of workstations. In other words:

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7

rebirth

HAPPY EQUINOX!

funniest. blogpost. ever.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

and your little dog, too!

Toto, it's a really good thing you're not in Kansas any more. The headline from today's Wichita Eagle:

Local Man Sentenced To Six Months For Sex With Dog

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third time's the charm

The media has been stumbling all over itself to proclaim John McCain's "Iran is training Al Qaeda and sending them into Iraq" moment that hit the news yesterday as nothing more than a fumble by a tired and jet-lagged campaigner, a little moment of forgetfulness that could happen to anybody.

That could happen to anybody three times in twenty-four hours, that is.


When something happens the first time, it's an accident.

When it happens the second time, it's horrible bad luck.

When the same thing happens the third time, it's a plan.

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9

happy anniversary!

Our great decider's private little war is five years old today. Hasn't it made you proud to be an American?

IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

It seems only yesterday that Carl Sagan left, and now, the great Arthur C. Clarke, the man who invented the future, passed away in Sri Lanka. So much of what we take for granted in our technological world of today sprung from his imagination, and if he had patented only a fraction of the incredible ideas he had, he would have been able to buy a thousand Bill Gates. Thank you, sir, you were one of the people in the world who represented the very best that humanity has to offer.

well, that explains it

Chris Matthews just gave Jim Cramer the chance to clear up any confusion over his advice to market players last week that Bear Stearns was rock-solid. Cramer indignantly told "Hardball" viewers that what he actually meant was that nobody would LOSE their money if it was deposited in Bear Stearns, not invested.

Matthews' only follow-up to this load of crap?
"Jim Cramer, still bullish on America."


Just keep in mind that, much like Jim Cramer and Chris Matthews, "bullish" is 87.5% of "bullshit."

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10

premising the assumption

I've been listening to the television drone on for the last few hours, and one of the cable "science" channels is airing another biblical archaeology show. At one point, the narrator introduced the segment to follow a commercial break with "next, archaeologists search for the birthplace of jesus."


That sentence has no more place in a science program than does "next, primatologists describe the social hierarchy of bigfoot families" or "next, biologists discuss the mating habits of unicorns."

talk about flip-floppers

Even though he just did it on Friday, our liar-in-chief is going to lead another cheerleading broadcast about what he is going to do to preserve the financial security of the United States after a morning meeting with his "financial advisors," who, if are anywhere near as good as his national security advisors, are going to come up with yet another colossally stupid bunch of ideas that will only exacerbate the coming economic disaster.


The one question that I would like an answer to is this:

Why are the same people who have been telling us all this time that we need to let the markets regulate themselves suddenly deciding that what we need to do now is throw massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to rescue the same businesses and institutions that "creatively" financed themselves into penury instead of letting the unregulated market decide their fates?


I can't help but think that what they really mean is that the market should regulate itself as long as it leads to massive profits for them, but that the government should step in and bail them out when their deceitful games mean they start losing all of that stolen loot.



Think straight-talkin' George will bother explaining the sudden change of heart?

wouldn't it be nice?

I don't know about you, but I would certainly be very appreciative if the federal government would loan me a few billion dollars (without me having to provide any real guarantee of repayment) to ensure that I don't have to suffer from my bad financial decisions. I have to admit, it must bring a heady sense of freedom to know that you can be as greedy, reckless, and dishonest as you want and have Uncle Sam pick up the tab for it all, even as the people who were the victims of your mendacity and stupidity have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

How exactly does one get on that list?

finally, some good news

Word is that vice-president Cheney has made a "surprise visit" to Baghdad today, right on the heels of yet another uptick of violence in the country.


Thank goodness. If there's anybody that can inject some reason and sanity into that hellish place, it has to be the gentle-spirited Dick Cheney.

prediction

Every once in a while, I go out on a limb and make a total ass of myself with a prediction. Here's the latest.

We will see a thousand point drop in the US Stock Market this week, and possibly five hundred points just in today's trading. The presidential cheerleading over the strength of our economy will finally be brought face-to-face with the fact that we are facing the largest economic crisis in our history.

Even then, the conservatrolls will continue to regurgitate the Kool-Aid.


I sure hope I'm wrong.

the best revenge?

As I watch the financial debacle that our country is sidling into, I'm beginning to wonder if it might not be the best thing if John McCain becomes (as I already suspect he will) our next president. The economy of the United States is going to take a massive beating over the next several years, and the government is going to be forced to bail out the greedy miscreants who have gotten us into this mess or watch the nation descend into a depression that would make the last century's look like a party at the Gatsby's.

Regardless of who the president is, the federal government is going to have to make good on trillions of dollars of bad debt with no accountability enforced on the bad actors that caused it, for no other reason than to avoid the utter financial destruction of our nation. Normal people are going to be brushed aside and left to survive the best they can while the despicable scumbags that caused the problem are going to get to keep all of the money that they essentially stole by means of the new, creative accounting that they developed in order to pull of this unparalleled heist.

If a Democrat is in the White House, being forced to choose between the existence of the United States or the existence of individual citizens will make them the visible target of the tsunami of dissatisfaction and fingerpointing that is going to exist for several years, even though they had nothing to do with its creation. That will further tarnish the Democratic brand, and by way of that, liberalism in general. The worst part is, that's the only choice that the president can make. If they bail out homeowners and let the economy crash, we all go under anyway. If they bail out the banking crooks and let the homeowners crash, they will save the country, but at the expense of looking like they only care about the big-moneyed business people instead of the "great unwashed" of the citizenry.

There is no good solution to this Gordian knot. Whoever is president gets the blame, and I'm afraid that most of our countrymen, with their "American Idol" attention spans and intellectual sophistication, will neither listen to nor understand explanations of how we got here and will focus their anger on the person who is our leader at that time.

I say let the republicans immolate themselves once and for all. If they are not in power, they will survive the coming crisis to come back and to loot our economy again. However, if they are in power, they have nobody to blame but their fellow republicans, and the simple act of performing the necessary triage to save the country at the expense of millions of citizens will be the biggest pair of cement overshoes in history.

Let's face it, even the brilliant Al Gore doesn't want to be president now, and it's most likely because he has a keen appreciation of the insolubility of the disaster we face.


Viva President McCain!

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deep thought

While the Constitution may have a ban on any "religious test" as a requirement for office, it is more and more obvious every day that there are abundant religious bonus points available to all of the office-test takers.

sneak preview

As our feckless leader is about to make another speech cheerleading for the American economy, I'd like to save everybody some time. I already know the exciting new plan for economic recovery, so read it here and save yourself some time. This new recovery package has been vetted and prepared by some of the finest minds in the Bush administration, so there's no reason to think it won't be completely effective.


Bush's Strategy for Economic Recovery

Step 1 - collect underpants
Step 2 - ?
Step 3 - PROFITS!

Friday cat-blogging

I see by my TV Guide that there is now a show called "Rachel Ray Feeds Your Pets."


That's nice.

You want to impress me? Come clean the litterboxes.

wake the hell up, already

Democrats, there is a powerful lesson being played out in New York. It looks like the Federal Judiciary is going to throw whatever book it can at Eliot Spitzer for what is basically a meaningless personal transgression. There is talk that he can be charged with using campaign funds for illicit purposes, a federal offense, even if it was as simple as using a vehicle paid for by his campaign committee to pick up the young woman with whom he is being linked.

The lesson in this is clear. The republicans will always press any and every advantage, will exploit any and every weakness they can find to the maximum extent possible. Always. They are going to do everything that they can to put Eliot Spitzer in jail with Don Siegelman on these overwrought charges.

At the same time, we have the liberal leadership in this country saying things like "impeachment is off the table" for the multitudes of felonies and war crimes that our scumbag of a president has committed.

If liberals want to survive, it is time to fight. To fight tooth and nail and to once and for all legally extinguish the far-right conservative nutjob wing that currently holds this country in its thrall. Anybody who thinks that we can persuade them to play nice by simply being nice to them is deluded and is bringing a balloon giraffe to a gunfight.

Fight or die, liberals, fight or die. It is time to take a stand and mark an uncrossable line in the sand over which we will never again permit these people to pass. The Coulters, the Limbaughs, the Hannitys, the Bushes, the Cheneys, all of these hideously malevolent and untrustworthy people must be defeated and we must fight to restore the Constitution of the United States before it is too late, and to enact new Constitutional Amendments to make their dishonest tactics illegal instead of just dishonorable. They care not about honor, they know no self-limitation, so we must take control and finally set some boundaries so that our national dialogue can never be polluted to the extent it has been in the last thirty years.

Like we used to say in the Sixties, if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. We should have done this after Nixon, and we will not get another chance if we don't do it now.

I'm not alone

A few years ago, I became aware of a new television show that seemed to demonstrate a preference for facts over ideology, and I contacted the show's host via email. We carried on a few email conversations over the next couple of months that were always humorous and insightful, and I was heartened that someone who actually had real liberal values had somehow managed to run the gauntlet at MSNBC. It was difficult for me to square what I knew of the network that Jack Welch built with the presence of the new host, so I decided to enjoy the show but to remain wary.

It seems that my wariness was not unmerited. I've been getting sickened by the recent transformation of Keith Olbermann into Chris Matthews with a measurable IQ, and apparently I'm not the only one. Today alone, Larry C. Johnson at www.noquarterusa.net , Taylor Marsh at www.taylormarsh.com , and Bob Somerby at www.thedailyhowler.com have all been equally critical, if not more so, of the changes that have appeared in Keith over the last couple of months. Given that I only read a handful (maybe as many as a dozen) of blogs on a regular basis, I suspect that these three are just the ones that I know about and that there are many more people out there who are disgusted by this transformation. At this rate, it won't be long before he is castigating people for not wearing flag pins to demonstrate that they love America.

Matthews gets three million a year for his rancid piffle, Keith. How much did your journalistic integrity go for?

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still off the table?

"The Fed has a plan and Wall Street likes it!"

At least that's the way that MSNBC is playing it. What an amazing coincidence. It has only been a day since the completely apolitical federal justice department took down Eliot Spitzer, one of the people who was trying to make the scoundrels pay, and we suddenly have a 400+ point rise in the stock market.

I suppose saying that the Bush administration has a "plan" that Wall Street "likes" has some validity, but it seems to me that if they want to portray things the way that they really are, "the Fed has looked at the situation, and it seems that Wall Street, with its new-fangled 'creative financing,' has so completely ransacked the American economy while they pocketed trillions of dollars of scammed money that to let them suffer the consequences of their scheming would be seriously detrimental to the nation, so for the sake of the United States we're going to let them keep the money and bail them out of the hole they have put the country in by giving them huge piles of taxpayer dollars" would be a lot more accurate.


Talk about income redistribution. Let freedom ring. Or reign. Or rain. Or whatever the fuck our incompetent asshole of a president says.

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you've been warned

It appears that Eliot Spitzer is likely going to be face federal charges of money laundering and possibly conspiracy for being "involved in a prostitution ring." This should chill every single person in this country.

The "money laundering" charge stems from the fact that he was paying for services that were illegal. This is the administration's notification to all of us that any single thing we do that is not within the bounds of law that we pay money for opens us up to federal charges of money laundering. Think about it. Paying into that poker game? Federal offense. Illegal lottery ticket? Federal offense. Buying weed to smoke? Federal offense. Oh, and also criminal conspiracy and drug trafficking, because it means you are "involved in drug smuggling." This incredible widening of definition can catch up nearly anybody the government chooses to examine under a microscope, and with Habeas Corpus being a fond memory, means that anybody can now be disappeared with ease. Forever.

It is so far beyond time to impeach and imprison these bastards, and hang the ones who are legally eligible for it that our Founding Fathers are spinning like pulsars.

Choose your side wisely, folks.

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silver lining

With the republicans in full sanctimony mode over Eliot Spitzer's "reprehensible transgressions" I'd like to point out to them that, yes, men in the Democratic party also are sometimes inclined to stray from the bounds of matrimony.

However, you can easily tell the difference between the republicans and our guys.



The Democratic men prefer to RECEIVE the blow jobs.

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the Spitzer distraction

This looks like the first skirmish in the media immunization of Wall Street and the banking industry for their part in the looming economic meltdown. The big clue is it's "federal prosecutors" who have the evidence against Gov. Spitzer. Goodness knows we have no reason to suspect the Judicial branch of engaging in partisan witch hunts. The news readers are already starting to show their shock that this man who was so hard on the stock barons should be determined to have been frolicking with call girls. I mean, how can we possibly trust his prosecutorial integrity about such an entirely unrelated topic now, right?

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pwning the press, British style

The British reporter who broke the story of Obama's advisor calling Hillary Clinton a "monster," Gerri Peev, gave an interview to MSNBC's overly gilded lily, Noron O'Donnell, and really ended up making a comment about the crippled "free press" our country now has. Noron asked Ms. Peev if she had second thoughts about printing the remark, which was knowingly made on the record as a tape recorder was running, and which Ms. Powers immediately attempted to walk back with a request to make it an "off the record" comment. Ms. Peev's response to our favorite ageing trophy newsreader?

"I don't know of any journalist worth his salt who would, would have pulled the, a remark, we're not in the business to self-censor or to censor ourselves, we're in the business to print the truth, and to print or to show at least a little bit of some of the tensions that are going on behind the campaign."



Just for fun, let's compare that to America's Most Important News Man, Tim Russert, and the limp and tepid explanation he gave when being questioned about his own policy of "on the record" vs. "off the record" as he was being questioned in the Scooter Libby trial:

"But when I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it's my own policy our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission."




Aaaaaah, just smell that freedom of the press!

Friday cat-blogging

Over the last several years, I've been noticing a dramatic increase in the numbers of feral cats in the part of the country in which I live. I have long assumed that there is also a growing population of wild dogs living in the forested parts of the United States as well, dogs that we don't see because they have come to avoid human contact entirely. Turns out I was wrong.

While domesticated cats can sometimes do a reasonably good job of surviving on their own, catching mice and birds and bugs and the occasional garbage can, their lives are usually brief and violent. Dogs, though, are a different matter entirely, one might say "a different breed of cat."

Turns out that the occasional dog that you see who is homeless is probably not going to survive much longer from the time you see him. Domesticated dogs are not hunters, and the few wild dogs that you see still survive on the benificence of humans. Wild dogs scavenge on the outskirts of human habitation, eating out of garbage cans, pet food bowls, dumpsters, wherever they can find the cast-off scraps of humanity. They don't live long. Dogs are basically not smart enough and adaptable enough to make it without humans, something that cats seem to handle just fine.


Once again, the evidence says that cats are smarter.

RIP

Farewell, Keith Olbermann. It was fun while it lasted. It's become clear over the last couple of weeks that you have at last sold out, decided to play the game, gone over to the dark side, and have become yet another of Jack Welch's paid poolboys.

The steady flow of republican oppo research cant that has been pouring from your mouth for the last few weeks, the pairings with Tweety, Margaret Carlson and a lot of the other duplicitous MSNBC right-wing shills, it almost seems that your scripts are being written by Tony Snow these days.

Your ratings will diminish by the tiniest percentage, but I've had it with paid-off social climbers and sycophants pretending to be journalists. Buh-bye.

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what Digby said

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/pressing-issues-by-digby-blogosphere-is.html

those disgusting Canucks

I, by the way, am half French-Canadian. I get to say "Canuck," so if you don't like it, find somebody who fucking cares.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/03/03/what-does-universal-healthcare-mean%c2%a0a-canadian-physician%e2%80%99s-experience-of-the-current-healthcare-system-in-america/

the best reason

I'm going to make this short and sweet.

You want to know the most important reason to support Hillary Clinton for president?

It's because she is the only one who will hold the Republicans accountable for the last eight years. They have given the presidency unprecedented powers which in the hands of Hillary Clinton would mean that all of the closet fascists, the war criminals, the petty thieves, the hypocritical bureaucrats who blithely ignore the Constitution of the United States, the highly placed White House personnel up to and including our felon of a president, all of these scoundrels would have their feet held to the fire and we would be able to close this horrible chapter in our nation's history. Think about how much shit they have hung on her and her husband for the last couple of decades, horrible things far beyond being excused as simple politics. Do you really think she is going to just let them walk away from the mess they have made? They are terrified of her holding the reins of power that they have willingly granted George Bush, and that's why people like Matthews are saying things like they feel "sensations 'running up (their) leg'" when they discuss Obama. They can slap him down easily once he becomes the nominee, but once Hillary is president, they know that the next four years will have many of them seeking refuge out of the country.


Barack Obama wants to try to make friends with these bastards.


Which one of these options is better for the United States of America?