Holiday Nausea

We'd always kinda known...

"Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer."

Yikes

A little Christmas paranoia...

"LIMBAUGH: Who’s benefiting? Aside from the people being bailed out. The Democrat party and Barack Obama are benefiting.

They got elected, they increased their numbers in the House, they increased their numbers in the Senate, they got the White House now, and they’ve got a crisis that people think can only be fixed with the all-mighty and powerful government interceding to save this or to save that, when in fact, the government is going to nationalize the automobile industry. It’s going to nationalize some banks. It’s going to nationalize the mortgage industry, and may end up nationalizing the automobile industry."

Southern Strategy: Disembowel Organized Labor

Let's be crystal fucking clear about the union busting designs of the pre-eminent asshole in the country right now, [Banker Bitch] McConnell, and the rest of his would be plantation owner colleagues.

These folks, with foreign money flowing into their constituencies, do not want to help Americans employed by Americans for, what they claim, is the lack of parity between the wages of the American Auto Worker, and their Foreign Counterparts. This disparity is easily explained: By and large, Toyota, Honda, Volvo et al. are running non union shops. They hire and fire at whim. Talk of organization gets you canned.

Thus, despite the rabid, jingoism of "Americanism" by McConnell and the rest of the Confederacy, they are willing to destroy the heart of American Manufacturing, and thus, the American Working Class, and thus-America, for foreign companies.

And why?

Update: Jesus, they aren't even really trying to disguise it.

Gov. Blagojevich: An Primer

The Adam B. at the Kos explains.

What's funny, of course, is watching Mika, Dan Abrams, Tweety et al. say "taint", or even watching Chuck Todd ask "What is the definition of 'taint'".

What's not so funny is watching "Butthead" Scarborough claim that the lack of torch bearing villagers at Obama's door is proof of "media bias", stating (and I'm not joking, but I am paraphrasing) that said torch bearing villagers would never have given a Republican a pass like this? Not Blagojevich, but Obama.

Nice. As if this sordidness isn't sleazy enough.

Right On

I'd imagine we haven't seen the last of this:

"Workers laid off Friday from Republic Windows and Doors, who for years assembled vinyl windows and sliding doors here, said they would not leave, even after company officials announced that the factory was closing."

Update: Whoah...a Christmas miracle?
"Bank of America said in a statement today that it was “prepared to provide a limited amount of additional” loans to Republic and 'expressed concern' over 'Republic’s failure to pay their employees the employee Claims to which they are legally entitled'. Workers were upset that they did not receive vacation pay when the plant shut down."

A Little Holiday Schadenfreude...

but with right on analysis from Taibbi:

"He was a war hero who married an heiress to a beer distributorship and had been in the Senate since the Mesozoic Era. His greatest strength as a politician had up until this year been his ability to "reach across the aisle," a quality that in the modern Republican Party was normally about as popular as open bisexuality. His presence atop the ticket this year was evidence of profound anxiety within the party about its chances in the general election. After eight disastrous years of Bush, they thought they had lost the middle — so they picked a middling guy to get it back."

Taibbi, who, in my humble opinion, is the only reason to utter words Rolling Stone Magazin, nails something us Gen Xers have understood instinctively: Our country no longer surprises us. We're too ironic to care. It all sucks.

Except when it doesn't. And despite the fact that now, even the bread is dearer, its good to be alive, right now, to cheer the end of the "powdered wigs" for something new.

Happy Zappadan

Zappa Power!

Posse Comitatus

via OpEdNews:

"The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 in response to the Union Army’s occupation of the Confederate states following the Civil War, and prohibited the deployment of US troops within the borders of the United States. Having never met a law or constitutional stipulation that he liked, George Bush is working hard to deploy up to 20,000 US troops within the United States borders."

The ACLU has more.

Remember that crack I made about there being plenty of time left for more massive Bush fuckups. This one screams like a Cheney, if you ask me.

National Security

Thus far, it seems that Obama's been true to his word about maintaining a post ideological "team of rivals". The National Security Team is no different.

Not sure how I feel about Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, but, at the end of the day, I'll feel a hell of a lot better about it than who McCain would've picked.