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Keep this handy for your next wingnut smackdown

The torture timeline - at least what we know so far.

Who said this?

"I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment."

Did you guess George W. Bush?

Sullivan has more.

Attention!

If we don't like the cut of your jib, we will torture you.

Thank you, and good day.

I can't believe this happened

Now the question is: are Republicans this stupid, or are they playing to their stupid constituencies?



Seriously? Trying to gotchya a fucking Nobel Laureate?

Some more links

A very interesting take on the health care system.

California is so fucked.

The rally may soon be over. Anyone ready for Dow 6500?

The world economy hinges on American consumer? We are sooooo fucked.

The Debt Puppy! Seriously, read this and the link in it.

Why we pay taxes: summary, and detail.

More on the soda tax.

An amusing account of a MASSIVE 50-person teabagging.

If this guy is a "journalist"...

Obama, transparency, and civil liberties: FAIL.

Benen is being generous when he calls them "low" information voters.

Government: always criminal. ALWAYS. Do you know what shortening yellows does, other than increase potential ticket revenue from red-light violations? It increases accidents and deaths. But hell, more $74 fines for Shittown. Woo-HOO! Who fucking cares who dies?

The smartcar: unsafe. But don't expect to hear that from publications that want Mercedes advertising dollars.

Holy crap I want this car, $2000 routine service be damned.

Winguts lying again.

{crickets}

In Binghamton, an immigrant killed a lot of people. Predictably, the wingnuts pounced.

I notice this morning's cop-killing in Pittsburgh was committed by a white 'Merkun wingnut:

Police did not immediately release the gunman's identity, but his friends at the scene described him as a young man who thought the Obama administration would ban guns.

One friend, Edward Perkovic, said the gunman feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said he feared that President Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."

Come on Pam, come on Michele. What's your take on this one?

Linka dinka doo

Mark Cuban gets it right.

Bill James on the Orioles and other things.

Tweak your Google Image searches.

In praise of strong coffee.

The next bubble to burst?

Beating back the the "lower taxes will raise federal revenue" bullshit, one blog post at a time.

Worst wresting character ever. I can't believe this is real, but that guy was apparently a real WWF character. Is that supposed to be intimidating? Should I be afraid he's going to get glitter on me?

"We cannot have a better first person to attack health care reform than someone who ran a company that ripped off the government of hundreds of millions of dollars." Awesome. A criminal former health care exec is the best representative the right wing can find to fight health care reform.

Republicans - criminally insane? Or inveterate liars?

1619 federal charges against The Hair.

Do you people know how embarrassing it is to have George Will be one of your fraternity brothers?

Joe the Dumber strikes again. Christ these people are ridiculous.

Yes, this is why I see 5-6 troopers and sheriffs a day on my commute. Tickets and fines are the only revenue a lot of municipalities can increase quickly and easily.

Cramer vs. CramStewart

Yesterday's Daily Show was more journalism in 1/2 an hour than has been on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC in that past 8 years combined.

Stewart really did mop the floor with Cramer. I think the main reason for that is that Cramer is not the beast that his co-workers are. He is contrite, he does acknowledge the mistakes, and hey, he's the only one out of all of them with the stones to actually show up for that! Remember how Santelli chicken-shitted his way out of an appearance last week?

There are a couple points that Cramer could have fought back on a little better, but overall, he was overmatched because he had nothing in his or CNBC's defense. Justifiably so.

Here is the full interview, not the edited version.

(I had to remove the videos from here, they kept crashing my browser)

Friday linkdump

Krugmania!

Spudsy is righteously angry. More. More.

Ezra snarks. McCain is such a fucking fraud.

Family planning and womens' health IS an economic issue. But it's a human issue first. It's just that Republicans aren't human.

Again, this chart shows exactly why spending more is considerably more effective than taxing less.

100% divorced from reality

This is phenomenal.

And the Palin nightmare gets funnier

Levi Johnston's mother arrested on felony drug charges.

Another Wasilla entrepreneur meth lab goes down.

UPDATE: Hillbilly Heroin! I wonder if she and Rush Limbaugh hang out?

Pantofla!

Three great links on the Republicans and the auto industry

Shakes, Maha, Benen.

My hero

Fuck tha police.

Looks like I need to bring my spring herb garden up from the basement. And put a webcam on it.

The enablers of the mortgage meltdown

This is it, right here.

“If a loan came from a top loan officer, they didn’t care what the situation was, you had to make that loan work,” she says. “You were like a bad person if you declined a loan.”

One loan file was filled with so many discrepancies that she felt certain it involved mortgage fraud. She turned the loan down, she says, only to be scolded by her supervisor.

“She told me, ‘This broker has closed over $1 million with us and there is no reason you cannot make this loan work,’ ” Ms. Cooper says. “I explained to her the loan was not good at all, but she said I had to sign it.”

The argument did not end there, however. Ms. Cooper says her immediate boss complained to the team manager about the loan rejection and asked that Ms. Cooper be “written up,” with a formal letter of complaint placed in her personnel file.

Ms. Cooper said the team manager told her to “restructure” the loan to make it work. “I said, how can you restructure fraud? This is a fraudulent loan,” she recalls.

Ms. Cooper says that her bosses placed her on probation for 30 days for refusing to approve the loan and that her team manager signed off on the loan.

Four months later, the loan was in default, she says. The borrower had not made a single payment. “They tried to hang it on me,” Ms. Cooper said, “but I said, ‘No, I put in the system that I am not approving this loan.’ ”

As I said in my original post on the topic, a loan officer's job used to be vetting loans so the bank wouldn't lose money to defaults. Once the banks started selling off loans, that didn't matter.

Fuck you all, I'm out of here

Guess which lame duck president has big plans for his exit?

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

At this point, you need to question whether Republicans are even human. They certainly lack any sense of morals, empathy, or compassion.

You don't look right

Fucking classic!

“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”

Even McCain voters are potential troublemakers.

O. M. FSM.

Own it, Republicans, own it. See you in 2024. Maybe.



Maybe the FBI should be paying a few people a visit?

Game. Set. Match.

So, Mrs. Palin, what do you have to say about this?