TSA Chief Urges Underwear Ban on Some Flights

TSA Chief Urges Underwear Ban on Some Flights

By Rance Sidhanes
AP Staff Writer
December 31, 2009

WASHINGTON -- At a press conference this afternoon, Transportation Security Administration Acting Director Wilton Pohl told reporters he would "favor a ban on underwear" on domestic flights lasting over one hour and all international flights to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks.

"It would be a simple and inexpensive matter to enforce," Pohl said, reacting to the alleged Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt by suspected al-Qaida operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. "Passengers could either arrive at the airport without underwear, or TSA marshals could collect their underwear in sanitary bags at the point of departure, and the passengers would get their underwear back at their destination."

Asked if some Americans might stop flying if they had to do so without underwear, Pohl replied, "I don't think this will be a major problem – I often go without wearing underwear myself -- but for those passengers who feel uncomfortable, we would issue temporary paper underwear. Once the people are aware of how vital this program is to our national security, I'm confident any objections will cease."

Questioned as to what undergarments would be banned, Pohl said, "Boxers, briefs, pantyhose, long john's, anything where a bomb could be concealed. Thongs, I don't know – they may be too small to worry about, although, for the sake of consistency, they will be prohibited too."

Contacted for comment, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "Mr. Pohl's credentials in this area are spotless. If he says we need this, then I take him at his word. Though it may sound funny to say, it's true: we can't have any more exploding underwear incidents aboard our airliners. Mr. Pohl's program would make sure of that."

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) objected to the proposal, "This is more of Obama's socialism marching right into your underwear. Next the Democrat Party will have Americans taking airplanes buck-naked. We need a change in this country, but not of our underwear."

The in-flight underwear ban, which does not require a full Congressional vote, could go into effect as early as February 2010, if approved by the House and Senate Homeland Security committees.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

The Tattlesnake – Odd Quotes at Year's End Edition

Random blips on the mental radar selected randomly, with commentary in brackets:

"One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis."
-- George W. Bush, Jan. 12, 2009. [Translation to English from Bushspeak: 'I used your money to bailout my family and wealthy friends on Wall Street and in banking because my administration didn't do its job of properly regulating them.']

"Um, you guys said that we, um, did this for the show."
-- Falcon "Balloon Boy" Heene, to his parents during a TV interview, Oct. 15, 2009. [This should be the motto of the Republican Party.]

"I think we all have a screw loose in this business."
-- Kyra Phillips, inadvertently speaking the truth on CNN, Oct. 9, 2009. [This should be the motto of the US national media.]

"Give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."
-- Jesse Ventura, former MN Gov. and Navy SEAL, on CNN, May 11, 2009.
[This line should be emblazoned across the bottom of the screen every time a clip of Cheney speaking is shown.]

"I don't know anything about cars."
-- Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., when he took over as CEO of GM, June 9, 2009. ['Gee, how could we be going bankrupt?']

"You can't convince me that the founding fathers wouldn't allow you to secede."
-- Glenn Beck, April 14, 2009. [They might make an exception in Beck's case.]

"So you need to get deep into why he is what he is, instead of just saying, 'Well, he's a homosexual so how do I handle him, and how do I be Christian?' Well, I think you ought to tell him, 'Listen, son, you know, here's what the Bible says about this, and it's called an abomination before God, so I've got to tell you the truth because I love you.' That's what I think."
-- Pat Robertson's advice to the parents of a gay son, on CBN's "The 700 Club" June 9, 2009. [Right after this broadcast, Pat ordered out for a BLT.]

"An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Inuit earnestly, 'did you tell me?'"
-- Annie Dillard

"Ted Kennedy's dad, by the way, Joe Kennedy, sympathetic to Hitler, sympathetic to the Nazis."
-- Rush Limbaugh, as quoted by Simon Maloy at Media Matters' LimbaughWire, Aug. 8, 2009. [George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, helped finance the Nazis even after WWII began, and was forced by the US government to stop. Whatever Joe Kennedy's sympathies, he never contributed financial backing to Hitler's Third Reich.]

"The Army, the Marines do not have uniforms that fit that big an ass."
--The always classy Limbaugh again, commenting on Hillary Clinton, Sept. 22, 2009, also via Media Matters. [This from the manly Lard Lad whose 'anal cyst' was too big to allow him to wear the uniform.]

"Nearly half of all US children, including an overwhelming majority of black children, will eat meals at some point during their childhood paid for by food stamps, an indicator of poverty, a study showed Monday."
-- AFP, "Half of US kids depend on food stamps during childhood: study," Nov. 2, 2009. The study was done by the American Medical Association's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. [Out of a population of about 300 million, 66 million Americans now collect food stamps, a record high number. Nearly 50 percent of US children need food stamps to eat regularly.]

"The urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right."
-- David Broder's sage advice to Obama on Afghanistan, proving once again why Uncle Fudd is the dean of doomed Washington punditry, from the Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2009. [Say, Dave, if your life were on the line, would you be this cavalier about whether Obama's decision was wrong or right?]

"The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America!"
-- Michael Savage, from his radio show June 17, 2009, as quoted by Media Matters. [Okay, so when does the former Michael Alan Weiner come out of the closet?]

"Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. All he'd have to do is show a birth certificate."
-- Limbaugh once more, from his July 20, 2009, radio show. [All Rush would have to do is use the Google in that laptop he has in front of him at the EIB studios and in under a minute he could find a copy.]

"Who calls a shot like that? Who makes a decision like that? It's a disturbing trend."
-- Sarah Palin in West Allis, WI, Nov. 6, 2009, in a tizzy about Obama supposedly moving the legend "In God We Trust" to the edge of US coinage, a change made by the Bushites and reversed by Congress before Obama took office. [That's leadership you can trust – imagining 'disturbing trends' in inconsequential matters.]

"I basically don't."
-- Dick Cheney, when asked if he believed the Bush Administration bore any responsibility for the situation in Afghanistan, Dec. 1, 2009, from Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog. [Sure, because we didn't invade Afghanistan in October of 2001, we invaded two minutes after Obama was sworn in last January. Republicans believe people should accept responsibility for their actions, as long as they are Democrats or liberals. See Dana Perino quote below.]

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
-- Former Bush WH Press Secretary Dana Perino on Sean Hannity's gabfest, Nov. 24, 2009. [Insert disk in slot in back of head underneath hair flap. Press 'play' behind right earlobe to activate voice.]

"You are being shagged by a rare parrot!"
-- Comment from a man watching another man with a large parrot attempting to mate with the back of his head, as shown on The Rachel Maddow Show, Dec. 30, 2009. [This could be America's motto for the entire first decade of 'Century 21.']

Michael Palin (as the shopkeeper): "There, he moved!"
John Cleese (as the customer): "No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!"
-- From Monty Python's "The Dead Parrot Sketch," wherein John Cleese tries to return a clearly dead bird to the pet shop where he bought it. [So far, the majority of the American public hasn't caught on that most of the fearmongering of the past decade has been the result of vested domestic interests profiting from 'hitting the cage' rather than the actions of a ubiquitous, terrifying external enemy.]

Have a Happy New Year and catch you on the flip side, cousin.

H/T to Media Matters for America, Bob Cesca's blog, MSNBC, and other sources for the quotes.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

The Crash of the Titan

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GOP Freaks of 2009

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The Tattlesnake – Why the GOP Hates ACORN and the Poor Edition

Remember those ACORN-office videos that a right-wing ringer named James O'Keefe, posing as a pimp, surreptitiously taped with Hannah Giles, a young woman pretending to be his prostitute, that were a media kerfluffle a few months back?

Watching them gave me a familiar feeling – it was the same feeling I had back in 2003 when glowering TV Doctor Colin Powell, performing at the U.N. Club in New York, shook a vial of white powder in front of the camera and claimed it was Saddam's Very Own Anthrax. The feeling only increased when 'Dr.' Powell produced artist's renderings of super-secret Iraqi chemical-labs-on-wheels, views that we apparently couldn't catch photographically from sophisticated spy satellites or aerial reconnaisance overflights because – well, he never actually said why.

This feeling, as close as I can come to describing it, is akin to doing Houdini's Chinese Water Torture trick, wherein the master magician was suspended upside-down in a glass-paneled cabinet filled to the top with water -- only instead of water, imagine horse manure.

The Tattler was wincing with disgust while laughing as I watched geeky white boy O'Keefe, dressed for all the world like Sonny Bono when he had Cher, babe, trying to pass himself off as Mr. Bad Ass Pimp to a collection of black women from the 'Hood who had doubtless seen the real thing at sometime in their lives – it was like casting Wally Cox as Don Vito Corleone: "Gee whillikers, we'll make 'em an offer they won't get mad at and refuse!"

Hannah didn’t play her role much better – she was dumb enough, but a little too clean and preppy – but hers wasn't the important role.

The college-educated ofay voice of O'Keefe, in the same tone as a census-taker, earnestly asking for help to avoid paying his pimp taxes and advice in running a brothel with underage girls rightfully had the ACORN women stifling grins. This was a surreal spectacle that only a teabagger could swallow whole without gagging on the absurdity.

Well, a teabagger, our vacuous illiberal media, and the growing crop of space cadets in our Congress.

It was expected that the GOP would indulge in their usual over-popped level of fake moral outrage – they paid for the video, after all -- and the pundits live off their crumbs, but couldn't we have had at least one Democrat call 'bullshit' on this silly nonsense? No one but a halfwit would believe this skinny white boy wearing his mother's old chinchilla coat is actually a pimp, and anybody who's been around a city block more than once knows it. But the risible sight of O'Keefe in his cartoon pimp outfit is instructive, both as to the contempt with which the corporate Republican elite hold the public, and to their knee-shaking fear of the extension of democracy and equality to people without money.

The Republican Party's fringe-right wingnuts, excuse me for repeating myself, have long had a bitter grudge against ACORN, the community service group that registers voters and helps poor people. Why? Because, to put it simply, the GOP hates the poor, even though they work diligently to produce more of them to reward their corporate backers with a large pool of ever-cheaper labor. This is filtered through several levels of the corporate Republican psyche:

Level One: They hate them, naturally, because they've been incredibly effective at registering low- and no-income voters who tend to vote for Democrats. I've seen ACORN in action on several occasions and, contrary to right-wing myth, never once saw an ACORN representative tell anyone what candidate or party to vote for but, since they operate in neighborhoods where Bill Kristol wouldn't go for a nightcap with friends, even Mommie Dearest from Wasilla could figure out how the new register is going to cast his or her ballot once in the polling place.

Level Two: ACORN shows people how to claim their rights and there's nothing a Republican hates more than some sepia-shaded minority or poverty-stricken white demanding their damn rights. Rights, in their opinion, are for the landed gentry, preferably those with at least two 'lands': main residence with a circular driveway and spacious vacation home. These modern Scalia Federalists know that the only right an indigent person deserves is the right to clean their house, cook their food, raise their kids, or trim their lawn at whatever wage and under whatever conditions the employer determines is fair, without interference by meddling Big Government, or ACORN, trying to insure the menials have 'rights.'

Level Three: This taps into the deep panic of every Republican that one day they, too, could be out on the street, flat broke and without a relative or sugar daddy to help them, selling StreetWise or begging change with a foam coffee cup. In a sensible person, this would lead to support for social safety net programs and the like, in case they ever happened to hit rock bottom; in the bizarre psychological landscape of the wingnut, this becomes a vicious loathing of poor people, perhaps as an easy self-justification for their hatred: 'They're poor because they deserve to be poor.' For all of their neverending blather about hard work and pulling up bootstraps, some of the more intelligent wingnuts, deep in their dark little hearts, know very well life is largely a crap shoot; a gamble that starts with the accident of who you are born to, and continues with lucky breaks and class advantages all along the way. They are well aware that most of American life is not a meritocracy where your fate is cast by your talent or intellect – the aforementioned Kristol lad and George 'Junior' Bush being two prime examples – and that success is usually rigged in favor of those with the proper family connections or the ability to suck up in a manner that would embarrass the average swamp leech. One of the major reasons the official Washington GOPocracy so despises Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has to do with their personal histories – they came from humble beginnings and actually used their talent and intelligence to prevail in a game that's supposed to be the sport of the privileged and well-born. And, of course, they were all helped into the Big Show by ACORN-registered voters.

It's no surprise that Democrats as well as Republicans voted to defund ACORN – most of the Dems seem as afraid of offending the Right-Wing Attack Dogs and their corporate funders as any cracker GOP politician – but federal money was only ten percent of ACORN's revenue, so they'll still be around.

Then, when some gun-toting teabaggers, inspired by Fox News or Limbaugh, barge into an ACORN office and start 'refreshing the tree of liberty' with the blood of these uppity voter registration tyrants who refuse to call the white man 'Suh' anymore and celebrated the election of that black Hitler in the White House, our Big Media, nudged by the GOP, will play it as a political contest as to who is at fault for the attacks – yes, it was wrong for these enraged patriots to open fire on innocent unarmed people, but didn't they invite it by continuing to belong to a communist/socialist/fascist/terrorist/criminal organization that hates America like ACORN? Why, just look at these undercover videos of them encouraging a pimp and his hooker to break the law!

And we will move another inch closer to the ignorant new Dark Ages of President Palin 2012 as Obama is blamed by the Pundi-twits for not doing enough to prevent the attacks, such as forcing ACORN to disband with federal troops. In the cause of freedom, of course.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Welcome to the Palin-Teabagger You Betcha Party

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Harry Reid's Clueless Dems

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Quotes with a Holiday Punch

"How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757.

"Jesus wasn't a Christian, and he never preached in a church. He was also a drinker, and liked to hang out with sinners. We think of him very highly in the Church of Stop Shopping. We put him right up there with Lenny Bruce."
-- Reverend Billy

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
-- Lenny Bruce

"To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals."
-- Don Schrader

"Christian fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life."
-- Andrew Lias

"The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is 'Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.' It does not mean 'Beat the sh*t out of your child or he will become rotten' as many fundamentalist parents seem to believe."
-- Author Unknown

"I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Eskimo earnestly, 'did you tell me?'"
-- Annie Dillard

"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
-- Author Unknown

"Christianity is not a religion; it's an industry."
-- Author Unknown

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
-- Anne Lamott

"An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures."
-- Robert Ingersoll

"There is no point in saying that one should not doubt or one should believe. Just to say 'I believe' does not mean that you understand and see... To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual."
-- Walpola Rahula, "What the Buddha Taught."

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than going to the garage makes you a car."
-- Dr. Laurence J. Peter

"No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a 'clean bomb,' yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God."
-- Marya Mannes in 1956.

"Great hypocrites are the true atheists."
-- Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626).

"Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying,
This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth,
and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men."
-- Jesus, Matthew 15:7-9, KJV.

What's Christmas Without Poetry?

Seasonal Greetings...or not.

THE GUY IN THE JESUS SUIT
(Another holiday rerun by 'popular' request.)

The guy in the Jesus suit
occupied space at the end of the bar
exuding waves of beneficence
and winey fumes to all
and sundry.

The suit fit comfortably,
38 Regular, relaxed-fit pleat pants,
with a seven-and-a-quarter halo on the side.
He muttered of Old Testament doom
and it wasn't even Sunday.

"I'm only here to fulfill prophecy,"
he remarked to the bartender,
who was taking his money from the bar.
On the jukebox Bing began to croon
'White Christmas'
and Jesus started to say,

"I'm very disappointed in you all,"
he turned to me and glared,
"As usual, you people just got it all wrong:
I was actually born in June,
and died at the end of May."

"I was a Jew preaching to Jews,
and so were all twelve original Apostles,
and then along comes Paul,
who was something of a loon,
and gives to the Gentiles a way

"to get into heaven.
Hey, the only person I said was saved
was a thief hanging next to me,
sometime before noon,
on my crucifixion day.

"And you can't even follow
the few simple words,
that I spoke in the Sermon on the Mount,
instead you fight about theological trivia
and spread horrifying gloom
and tell people there'll be hell to pay,

"Where any of you got the idea
you were wise enough
to judge anyone else,
I'll never know,
I talked about humankind's boon,
and said you should all
acknowledge your feet of clay,

"But, of course, you got it wrong again,
instead of being kinder and forgiving,
you dare use my name
to despise and complain
and drone the timeless tired human tune of
hate, vengeance,
and compelling others to obey.

"It doesn't matter how many times
you are born again, for, in truth,
you are born only once;
and it doesn't matter what
pious guise your words assume
nor any other homilies you bray,

"If you can't act on my philosophy,
you can baptize yourself 'til you drown,
and sing hymns until hoarse,
and cry to the stars and moon,
and it won't make even a whit's difference,
whatever you pray.

"You could, indeed, make of
this world a paradise,
but you choose differently,
but maybe someday you'll learn,
probably later rather than soon,
what a pity it is that
you could have created this world
two thousand years ago
or yesterday."

He finished his drink
and got up to leave the bar,
then sighed deeply and said:
"Whatever webs you weave
on deception's loom,
remember just this of what I say;
peace and love for one another
remain the only way."

Copyright 1999-2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org

Texas 'Bizarre Claims' Couple Deported

'Bizarre" Claims' Couple Deported

By Walt N. Ponde
The Corpus Christi Sun-Journal
December 24, 2009

SPECIAL TO THE SUN-JOURNAL -- The strange tale of illegal immigrants Jose and Maria Natividad has finally come to an end after a federal judge yesterday ordered the couple deported to Mexico.

They were arrested on the streets of Corpus Christi last Tuesday while seeking a place they could stay for free. Because they had no money and were unemployed, police initially charged them with vagrancy and loitering until a Spanish translator – the Natividads speak no English – discovered they were illegally in this country. The case was then turned over to U.S. immigration authorities.

INS agents told federal prosecutors that due to their age difference – Jose is 60 and Maria is 15 – they wanted Jose charged with statutory rape and transporting a minor across national borders for immoral purposes, but federal immigration Judge Ben Dayeau found that their marriage was legal under Mexican law, and ordered the deportation without additional charges filed. The local vagrancy and loitering charges were also dropped.

But that was after Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) investigators uncovered what Judge Dayeau called, "the most bizarre claims that have ever been heard in my courtroom."

Nine-months pregnant Maria Natividad told DFPS social workers that she had never consummated the marriage with her husband, that she was a virgin, and that her pregnancy was the result of divine intervention. As the DFPS report put it, "Mrs. Natividad claims she was impregnated by God and that her unborn son is the Messiah or second coming of Jesus Christ as promised in the New Testament of the Bible." Interviewed separately, Jose Natividad concurred with his wife's story.

DFPS spokesman Rod N. Staph told the Sun-Journal that under ordinary circumstances it would have ordered a complete physiological and psychological examination of Mrs. Natividad, but that recent state immigration restrictions prevented that. "She'd be in a hospital right now," Staph said, "except a new state law prohibits hospitals from treating undocumented immigrants." Instead, DFPS recommended the couple be deported as quickly as possible.

In Austin, Gov. Rick Perry reacted to the judge's ruling, telling reporters, "The people of Texas don't want to pay for another illegal Mexican mother to have her baby here, no matter what kind of crazy tale this woman is telling. If born here, their child will then be an American citizen, and it will make it more likely this couple, who have no useful skills, no money and can't speak our language, will stay here and We the People will have to pay for them. The tough new immigration laws I signed protect Texas and America from these illegal bloodsucking deadbeats and their welfare babies."

Texas religious leaders contacted for comment all agreed that Mrs. Natividad's assertions were improbable at best, with Good Samaritan Baptist Church of Dallas pastor Ballman Gilead summing up their feelings: "This is, frankly, nuts. We know the second coming will happen in the Middle East and it won't be a child of poor Mexican parents, you can be sure. This Natividad couple are just using this wild story to try and get a free ride from the U.S. taxpayer."

Mindy Putts, a translator for DFPS, said that as she was helping the Natividads on an INS bus bound for Mexico early Thursday morning, Mrs. Natividad turned to her and said in Spanish, "I would ask God to curse this state of Texas for its lack of Christian decency and hospitality, but I see that He has anticipated my request."

On her Facebook page, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin responded to the Natividad controversy by writing, "Controlling our borders is controlling our great American national destiny, and nothing is too important for that goal."

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Palin's Holiday Greeting to McCain

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(Post updated 12/25/09)

Reform, Deform -- What's the Big Difference?

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Lieberman the Great Compromiser

U.S. Sen. Lieberman Says He Would Have Compromised on Slavery

Cites economic costs of American Civil War

By Woody Nichols
Staff Writer
The London Daily Advocate
December 19, 2009

In an interview with the Hartford Courant newspaper to be published Monday, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the controversial independent from Connecticut who has been criticized by some Americans for delaying health care reform in that country, said that if he had been a member of the U.S. Congress during the era before the American Civil War, he would have voted to compromise with the southern states rather than risk conflict over the issue of slavery.

After stressing his "long record of accomplishment" on civil rights legislation, Sen. Lieberman said, "I know this may be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that the Civil War had a terrible impact on the economy of that time, increasing the national debt and unfairly imposing the government on our profitable textile businesses, and so it was not morally justifiable on that basis. I would have sought a compromise rather than subject our nation to that war."

The 2000 Democratic Party vice presidential candidate added, "But I would have imposed some regulations on the slaveholders, such as insuring that the slaves were fed and clothed adequately by local standards and that slave families were kept intact when possible. I would have also guaranteed each working slave a half-hour daily lunch break."

Sen. Lieberman concluded the interview by saying that he thought slavery would have passed away eventually "by natural processes," although he admitted it might have taken another 50 or 60 years. "But look at the money that would have been saved if there had not been a Civil War," he summarized.

Asked about U.S. health care reform, Sen. Lieberman offered, "I don't believe our economy can afford health care for everyone right now without unfairly impacting our profitable insurance companies in a negative way, but someday I'm sure we'll have a better system, perhaps by 2060 or 2070."

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

It's Her Party Now...

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The Tattlesnake – The Political Good, Bad and Ugly Edition

Good: Your husband has decided to get more involved in
local politics.
Bad: He's running for congress as a conservative Republican.
Ugly: He's Karl Rove.

Good: Your wife just got a great-paying job.
Bad: She's on Fox News.
Ugly: After fifteen years of marriage, you never knew she was a wingnut.

Good: Your 22-year-old daughter just announced she's marrying the man of her dreams.
Bad: He's old enough to be her grandfather.
Ugly: He's Mitch McConnell.

Good: Your 21-year-old son's new book is about to be published.
Bad: It's a biography of George W. Bush.
Ugly: He's started talking like him.

Good: Your wife buys a new hat for her birthday.
Bad: It has teabags hanging off the brim.
Ugly: They've all been used.

Good: The recently discovered Bush emails prove conclusively that Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al, committed high crimes while in office.
Bad: Holder's Justice Department refuses to prosecute them.
Ugly: Obama excuses them by saying, "Anyone could make a mistake."

Good: You laugh at an Andy Borowitz satire about Glenn Beck 'editing' and releasing an 'abridged' version of "1984" wherein Big Brother's name is replaced by Obama's.
Bad: Turns out it's not an Andy Borowitz satire.
Ugly: The MSM quote from the book as if it were George Orwell's original version.

Good: Your daughter just got a new job.
Bad: She's working for Bill O'Reilly.
Ugly: She just bought a case of loofahs.

Good: Your son just got a new job.
Bad: He's working for FreedomWorks.
Ugly: He's Dick Armey's 'butt boy.'

Good: You just got a tenured job at a university.
Bad: You're teaching 'Creation Science.'
Ugly: At Messiah College.

Good: The ideas of Tom Paine are being discussed on TV.
Bad: By Glenn Beck on Fox News.
Ugly: Beck has made liberal agnostic Paine into a far-right Christian fanatic just like himself.

Good: Your son has been signed to star in a major motion picture.
Bad: It's "The Life of Rush Limbaugh."
Ugly: He was hired due to his strong resemblance to the subject.

Good: You've accepted a $50,000 speaking gig.
Bad: At the next CPAC convention.
Ugly: Your topic is "The Incredible Genius of Sarah Palin."

Good: You're not feeling well and your friend says he will find you a good doctor.
Bad: You're flat broke.
Ugly: Your friend is Joe Lieberman.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Harry Reid's Chamber of Horrors

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The Health Care Grapes of Graft

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A Tale Told By More Than One Idiot

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"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."
-- William Shakespeare, "Macbeth," Act 5, Scene 5.

The Tattlesnake – A Stake Deep in the Heart of GOP Texas Edition

Judging by this, Lone Star state Republicans may have much to fear in the future.

I've made plenty of fun of Texas and that breed of Texan that keeps electing crooks and nitwits like Tom DeLay and Junior-clone Rick Perry against their own best interests, but it seems things have gotten bad enough down there that even Houston, the nexus of Bush Oil Country, has elected a lesbian Democrat, former City Controller Annise Parker, as Mayor rather than face a corrupt and/or dumb Republican. (Albeit that Houston has been trending Dem for some years and the last mayor was a Democrat.) Although Parker has some past ties to the energy industry, her most recent non-political gig was running a bookstore and she is regarded as fairly liberal, at least by Texas standards.

It's no secret the GOP has raped the state from one end to the other, giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations while cutting social safety-net programs to the bone, eviscerating the educational system, and putting workers at the mercy of employers – it was the neocon corporatist blueprint for what King Junior tried to do in Washington, but didn't quite succeed at entirely. Now that the economy has gone all to hell, fed-up Texans are worse off than most of the nation, and they have no one to blame but the laissez-faire policies of the Republican Party.

Sure, the voting machines have been rigged and districts redrawn to keep the GOP in perpetual power, but even that may not be enough to underwrite the Republican Party's future in Texas.

The Tattler's prediction: Within ten years all the major state offices will be held by Democrats, as well as the two US Senate seats. Texas was, at one time, a populist state; I think it will be returning to those roots – who knows, maybe the great Jim Hightower will end up in office again, if he can stomach the campaigning.

Houston biggest US city to elect openly gay mayor

Monica Rhor, AP Writer
December 13, 2009

HOUSTON – Houston became the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker after a hotly contested runoff. [...]

Parker, 53, has never made a secret or an issue of her sexual orientation. But it became the focus of the race after anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups endorsed Locke and sent out mailers condemning Parker's "homosexual behavior."

Read the rest here.

"Anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups" couldn't defeat an openly gay woman in TEXAS?! Oh, yes, the doom come soon for the GOP.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org

Astroturfers Fight Creeping Socialism

Clicking on the image will make it bigger -- you know, like the government.

The Tattlesnake – The Reason Sarah Palin Should Never Be President in One Answer Edition

Read this answer and reflect…

Bill O'Reilly: "Let me be very bold and fresh again, do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?"

Sarah Palin: "I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have I believe the values that I think are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the um, the ah, a kind of spineless, spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite, Ivy league education and, and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans are could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership, I'm not saying that that has to be me." [YouTube video link here.]

All that's missing is the 'such as'…

Palin Poster © 2009 Dan Piraro, Bizarro.com

The Irrefutable Stupidity of Sarah Palin
-- Cenk Uygur, The Huffington Post, Dec. 7, 2009.

A h/t to Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks for his article and video.

The Teabaggers' Tainted GOP Love

Clicking on it will only make it bigger.

Mark Sanford's Number Two First Lady

"Hey, look! I clicked on the image and it got bigger!"

Welcome to GOPLAND!

Click on image to enlarge.

Inhofe's Climate Change-Denying Copenhagen 'Truth Squad'…
-- Matt Corley, Think Progress, Oct. 22, 2009.

Why Conservatives Are Always WRONG
-- By Jefferson Smith

The Raucous Baucus Caucus

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A GOP Majority in 2010?

Clicken to enlargenate.

The Tattlesnake – GOP Nuts 'n' Money Edition

"The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern."
-- Paul Krugman, "The Politics of Spite," NY Times, Oct. 5, 2009.

"... [T]he 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
-- Alex Carey

Now Alaska's Hockey Momster has had her 'Birther' moment, alternately encouraging the Orly Taitz Bizarros to pursue their vain quest to besmirch Obama's presidency by endlessly questioning his birth certificate, and then backing away from that stance on her Facebook ramblings. This madness has reached its limit – every sane member of Congress should condemn this insanity and then demand that Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs, Jerome Corsi, random Republican politicians, and any other right-winger who has questioned Obama's American citizenship post their own birth certificate publicly and, in keeping with the Birther's rules, it can't be a stamped copy. Of course, they won't be able to do this – every US state keeps the original document and issues a photocopy or duplicate certificate when legal proof of birth is required – and perhaps that will finally shut these fringe-freak nitwits up.

Speaking of Wasilla's Gift to the Democrats, word is her book tour is something of a bust, leaving a trail of disappointed Palinites in its wake, and not just in Indianapolis where she left a crowd of cranky book-buyers standing out in the rain. Not only is her speaking bureau allegedly regretting signing her on after her Hong Kong fiasco, but now her publishing company may be thinking twice about that $1.4 million they paid her in advance. Sure, they'll probably make it back in book sales, but Palin's unstable personality, and her unpopular insistence on selling photos of herself posing with her fans, have driven her bus tour handlers eye-rolling, hair-pulling crazy.

But Palin is just the most prominent peak of a small molehill of the American public -- ignorant, peevish, narrow-minded, misinformed, angry, intolerant -- they are an army of everything that's wrong with America, denizens of a weird trickster God who speaks to them through words they don't completely understand, or tint with their interior wrath, rendered and interpreted by preachers, politicians and other charlatans either crass or confused or both, but they're all making a quick buck peddling hatred-on-a-cross to this crowd.

They wouldn't matter much except they are whipped into a frenzy and 'played' by cynical manipulators like Frank Luntz, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who, in turn, wouldn't have much impact without the billions of dollars spent to spread their message from right-wing corporatists like Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.

If Sarah continues to implode, even Fox News and Limbaugh may not be able to save her presidential chances in 2012 – at some point, we may have to form a Progressives for Palin coalition to make sure she's the GOP nominee in three years, assuring Obama's reelection and the ultimate crack-up of the radical GOP.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org

The Tattlesnake – The Reality Behind Obama's Afghanistan Policy Edition

First, forget Obama's purported reasons for staying in Afghanistan; those are just easily understood anti-terrorist bromides for the media and the viewing audience. He supposedly knows we aren't fighting any real threat to the US in Rock City, nor are there enough Al-Qaeda hanging around the Af-Pak border waiting to be captured to make it worth the billions we are pouring into this new 'surge'.

Word is the real reasons – the 'clinchers' presented by the Pentagon chieftains and the president's staff – for maintaining an American and NATO military presence there are threefold:

1. Pakistan's government, contrary to Obama's speech, is weak and has little sway in the northern and western parts of the country, the same regions where various anti-American groups operate with impunity. Ostensibly, the Pakistan military has the country's nuclear arsenal under tight control but, then, it's known Muslim extremists have infiltrated the army. The nightmare scenario, barely touched on by Obama, is of a band of Islamic fundamentalists getting their hands on nukes. The thinking is that, if such a scary scenario unfolded, the US and NATO troops in Afghanistan could move to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons before the wackos could launch. Obama could not say this publicly without offending the Pakistan government, damaging our relationship with them, and causing a diplomatic furor. He also allegedly privately promised India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he would not hesitate to use American troops to keep Pakistan's military in check, if need be.

2. The Pentagon believes that a large military force on both Iran's eastern and western perimeters will staunch any ambitions they may have in Iraq or Afghanistan. Forget the nuclear distraction; the fear is that Iran will try to fill the power vacuum left by US withdrawal from either nation. Whether this is a valid concern, the groupthink in Washington convinced Obama of this even before he started his run for the presidency.

3. Obama's most trusted advisors and the Joint Chiefs believe he must not be trapped into a test of his resolve and willingness to employ force. While he has extended the olive branch of peace with one hand, and repaired most of the damage done by George W. Bush's my-way-or-the-highway foreign policy, the world must know he will be ready to use the sword that's in the other. In order to avoid another 'Cuban Missile Crisis' test of wills, it's believed by this faction that he has to show that he's capable of bucking the peace faction in his own party and US public opinion in order not to appear weak and invite challenges. Afghanistan is a chess move to establish his readiness to use force to avert future, potentially more disastrous, tests of his strength. Another example of Washington groupthink with dubious legitimacy, but a theme Obama has embraced entirely.

If you think we will be withdrawing from Afghanistan completely in 2011, put down that crack pipe. There may be some troop withdrawals by then, but a sizable US military force will remain in the country until, like the USSR, we are forced out by economic circumstances and/or insurgents, a highly probable outcome historically.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Afghanistan: The March of Folly Continues

Click on image to enlarge.

"A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defended as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?" […]
"The follies...begin with continuous over-reacting: in the invention of endangered 'national security,' the invention of 'vital interest,' the invention of a 'commitment' which rapidly assumed a life of its own, casting a spell over the inventor."
-- Barbara Tuchman, "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam," Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. Quotes from Google Books and a review by Uitlander.

"The United States Empire is following a long line of empires and conquerors that have met their end in Afghanistan. The Median and Persian Empires, Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Indo-Greeks, Turks, Mongols, British and Soviets all met the end of their ambitions in Afghanistan."
-- Dahr Jamail, "Afghanistan: Where Empires Go to Die," TruthOut.org, Sept. 17, 2009.