Original Sick

Antonin Scalia makes a good case for not inventing the time machine:

"Using his "originalist'' philosophy, Scalia said he likely would have dissented from the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared school segregation illegal and struck down the system of "separate but equal'' public schools."

Ratings Go Up, Intellajents Go Down

Glenn Beck: Sharpest sock in the drawer.

Senator Franken Makes A Joke

...out of Diana Furchtgott-Roth.
The right wing shill and Senior Fellow from the conservative think tank Hudson Institute tried the usual bogus fear-mongering about how moving to a European style health care system would create more medical bankruptcies.
One of her big mistakes, other than being a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute thereby having to make awkward water cooler conversation with Douglas Feith, was in not realizing that Franken is a policy wonk and likes nothing more than to call bullshit where he sees it.

He saw it in Furchtgott-Roth:



Another "Fascistsocialistcommunisttaliban...ist government shouldn't give handouts to those too lazy to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps!" argument made by a right-wing group that provides for themselves through hard work and personal initiative accepts government funding.

Just Checking In

So how's that NFL boycott going, anyway?

From Little ACORN Large Wing-Nuts Grow

For anyone interested in the whole, honest ACORN story, some inconvenient truths the right prefers to stay mum on.

Joe Conason:

"When ACORN officials discovered those cases, they informed the state authorities and turned in the miscreants. (That was why the Bush Justice Department's blatant attempt to smear ACORN with rushed, election-timed indictments became a national scandal for Republicans rather than Democrats.) The proportion of fraud is infinitesimal. For example, a half-dozen ACORN workers were charged with registration fraud or other election-related crimes in the 2004 election. They had completed fewer than two dozen false registrations -- out of more than a million new voters registered by ACORN during that cycle. The mythology that suggests that thousands or even millions of illegal registrants voted is itself a fraud.

If only the Republicans who have worked up a frenzy over ACORN's alleged crimes were so indignant about real and damaging voter fraud -- such as the amazing case of Young Political Majors, the firm that ran GOP registration efforts in California, Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere before the authorities in Orange County, Calif., busted its president, Mark Anthony Jacoby, and sent him to jail last year. He had built a lucrative partisan career by teaching his minions to deceive thousands of voters into registering as Republicans rather than Democrats, among other scams. Of course, the only on-air mention of the Young Political Majors scandal on Fox News was made by blogger Brad Friedman -- and the national media, mainstream and conservative, generally ignored it. They were too busy generating "controversy" over ACORN."

Eric Alterman:

"O’Keefe admits that his enmity for ACORN derived from its success helping Democrats win elections, not from any charges of corruption. The Post also points out that in Philadelphia ACORN employees called the police when the duo left the offices there. The videotape of that encounter has yet to be released, and so the prevailing image of ACORN in the mainstream media has been the one that the video makers, with a vendetta against the organization, wanted out there."

Rick Perlstein:

"In 2008, when the election was going on, conservative activists and Republican politicians were able to drive discussion of ACORN in the following way: they said that ACORN was aiding and abetting election fraud, and as evidence they gave all these false voter registration forms handed in by ACORN. You had to be an extremely alert news reader, you had to be an extremely informed member of the public, and you had to be very patient to be aware that it was actually ACORN that had discovered the fraud, and that law requires them to turn in every voter registration form they receive, even the ones that are fraudulent. In actual fact, they went above and beyond the law and flagged the ones they believed were fraudulent. So actually they were fighting electoral fraud, not creating electoral fraud."

Get Ready For A Ratings Boost

Hey NFL! Feel the wrath of the Mighty Right-Wing Jugger...not.

The right should organize another one of their devastating boycotts. It worked so well to bring down David Letterman.

It's like their version of the Colbert Bump.

Oh, For Crying Out Loud.

Really? Again? Why doesn't this guy just wear ties made of Kleenex?

Fat Chance

For Rush Limbaugh, NFL stands for Not F#@&ing Likely.
Looks like his racist*, misogynistic and homophobic rantings - though they are protected as free speech - carry a price.

Let the whining and ridiculous charges of "reverse racism" begin.

*the evidence.

And here's the whining right on cue - smothered in a rich victim sauce.
Delicious.

Another Fiasco

Frank Rich holds the right people accountable:

"Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. "

It's a column fat with details on just who got the U.S. into this mess and why it's well within Obama's right as Commander In Chief to not do what his predecessor did which was place more importance on being seen as "The Decider" of "Bold Decisions". Bush knew he would not have to clean up after himself - business as usual for him - so he didn't care what kind of mess he left for the next person to govern from the oval office.

Oh, That's How It Works

So now they're giving out Peace Prizes as consolation for not winning the Olympics?

No wonder I didn't get one.