April 17, 2009
FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:
* Captain Richard Philips returns home to Vermont.
* A breakthrough on relations with Cuba?
* Marital rape will not be legal in Afghanistan after all.
* NIH releases new guidelines on stem-cell research.
* Andrew Slack has a report on how "the genocide in Darfur has shifted to a new phase of horror for the Darfuri people."
* California's unemployment rate is up to 11%.
* The White House is standing by Steven Rattner, at least for now.
* Thank the ACLU for yesterday's revelations on the Bush torture memos.
* And be sure to read Jeffrey Toobin's take on one of the torture memo authors: Jay Bybee.
* I guess it was only a matter of time before Glenn Beck attacked Little Green Football's Charles Johnson.
* Let the countdown-to-apology clock begin -- Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R) of Kansas described Rush Limbaugh today as "just as entertainer."
* Whether Gates realizes it or not, DADT is going to end.
* The feud between Howard Dean and Rahm Emanuel appears to be over.
* I have no idea why CNN would "commend" South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) for embracing Neo-Hooverite policies.
* Deranged right-wing shock-jock Michael Savage is apparently feeling litigious.
* I often wonder what kind of media figure Joe Scarborough would be if he weren't so frighteningly foolish.
* And finally, Fox News' Geraldo Rivera reminded his colleagues yesterday that the "grand total of all of the tea party demonstrators" this week was less than the number "at that immigration rally in 2006 in the city of Chicago alone." That's true. Remind me, did Fox News do public-relations work for that rally, promote it constantly for weeks, and offer live coverage throughout the day?
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
—Steve Benen 5:30 PM
Permalink
| Trackbacks
| Comments (22)
"* I guess it was only a matter of time before Glenn Beck attacked Little Green Football's Charles Johnson."
Vipers' heads are assploding today! These jackals deserve each other, I mean Beck is simply the malignant outgrowth the same victimization freak out Johnson suffered after 9/11. That he has regained some basic equilibrium is nice, but the shit he's been posting for the better part of 6 years has helped exactly no one.
Posted by: Jay B. on April 17, 2009 at 5:54 PM | PERMALINK
Don't count on DADT ending, Steve, or DOMA, either. President Separate-But-Equal campaigned to the LGBT community by promising the repeal of DADT and DOMA, among other things. Repeal of DOMA and DADT is part of the DNC's platform, FFS! (DOMA is addressed on page 52, DADT is addressed on page 36.) Since the inauguration, we've heard nothing but backpedaling on DADT, and the issue being shunted to a mystery Pentagon study group, which will no doubt keep "studying" ths issue until after 2012. Nancy Pelosi just told the Bay Area Reporter that repealing DOMA isn't even on Congress's to-do list, despite being on page 52 of the DNC platform. So much for keeping promises.
See for yourselves:
http://www.democrats.org/a/party/platform.html
It's popular and acceptable to hate gays no matter which party you belong to. One party wants us dead, though only a few truly brave and honest ones will say so. The other wants us to shut up and go away after voting them into office. All of them can suck my DD-214 in hell.
Posted by: Keori on April 17, 2009 at 5:54 PM | PERMALINK
The Savage Weiner is no fool.
After his case gets laughed out of court he can get back to demonizing the liberal judges.
Posted by: atlantic shoo-fly on April 17, 2009 at 6:07 PM | PERMALINK
"Thank the ACLU for yesterday's revelations on the Bush torture memos."
One way to do that is to become a member. Only $35 a year!
Posted by: hells littlest angel on April 17, 2009 at 6:22 PM | PERMALINK
Deranged right-wing shock-jock Michael Savage is apparently feeling litigious.
Napolitano and Holder need to hire a couple of million-dollar-per-hour lawyers for this one. They discredit Savage in court, and then stick him with their legal defense bill---wiping him out in a heartbeat.
Let the financial rape of the Reich wing begin!
Posted by: S. Waybright on April 17, 2009 at 7:02 PM | PERMALINK
And think of the fun a tivated lawyer could have using the civil discovery process -- interrogatories, requests for production, depositions. Who's paying his fees?
Posted by: Greg Worley on April 17, 2009 at 7:12 PM | PERMALINK
Fox did cover the immigration rallies just as much, right?
Posted by: Obama / Steelers / etc on April 17, 2009 at 7:13 PM | PERMALINK
Michael Savage...what I find ironic, or perhaps calculated, is that with the Right Wing Leadership deliberately mis-representing the DHS document, it potentially COULD drive some military folks into the arms of the extremists.
Posted by: JWK on April 17, 2009 at 7:17 PM | PERMALINK
"Marital rape will not be legal in Afghanistan after all."
Well, that's good thing. But there's still the problem that such a law would even be considered. We should learn from the experiences of England, Russia, and Alexander, and just get the hell out. The Afghans are nuts. Let them wallow in their own shit, we don't need to get our boots dirty.
Posted by: fostert on April 17, 2009 at 7:28 PM | PERMALINK
I was thinking I feel worn out from the craziness of these so-called tea bagger exhibitions,
and how rascist the participants' signs were--this insistant cup of White Supremacist Tea??
And the shameful participation of FOX News. Neil Cavuto. Just awful.
And between watching the oppressed Afghan women and the talented songstress from Idol obviously denied in life merely by her looks, we women really have not come a long way baby
Posted by: consider wisely always on April 17, 2009 at 8:43 PM | PERMALINK
Deranged right-wing shock-jock Michael Savage
The next time you drink a RockStar energy drink, you can congratulate yourself for having given the Weiner family (Savage's real name is Michael Weiner) your money. Now you know.
Posted by: TCinLA on April 17, 2009 at 9:01 PM | PERMALINK
Correct CWA. Although much talk and action about recognized minority groups; homely folks (female and male both in their own ways), stutterers, nerds, etc. are still game for the presumption of inferiority and risibility.
Posted by: Neil B ♪ on April 17, 2009 at 9:03 PM | PERMALINK
(Savage's real name is Michael Weiner)
I refer to him as "Michael the Savage Weiner" when I deign to mention the jackass at all.
Posted by: Blue Girl on April 17, 2009 at 9:16 PM | PERMALINK
The LGF crowd have mixed feelings about Beck and it goes back and forth, and now I no longer consider LGFs among the nuttiest wingers (freepers I suppose still pull it.) Some interesting points came up. Notably, the claim that Beck used to be a heavy drinker and that whacked him out; here is a comment quoting another first:
>> AND..... a heavy drinker. Don't forget that part.
>They're called wetbrains; wetbrains are those former alkys who drank so heavily for so long that the damage done to their pyrimidal cells in the hippocampus of their midbrains is substantial and irreversible, and they never truly lose the emotionally overwrought irrationality with which their chronic sauce abuse inflicted them.
Posted by: Neil B ♠ on April 17, 2009 at 9:18 PM | PERMALINK
D'oh! I should have read the thread! I see that someone upthread calls him that too. Apologies for being repetitious.
Posted by: Blue Girl on April 17, 2009 at 9:19 PM | PERMALINK
"the genocide in Darfur has shifted to a new phase of horror for the Darfuri people."
If it's not one thing, it's another. Oh well. At least now we know the solution: send in the Navy SEALS to shoot each of the bad guys in the face.
Posted by: Grumpy on April 17, 2009 at 9:50 PM | PERMALINK
I, for one, might not agree with Joe Scarborough that waterboarding is better than nuclear annihiliation, but think folks shouldn't attack him just because of that. Isn't it enough that he's encouraging us to have this debate?
You can read my post on this at American Nihilist:
Media Hero of the Day: Joe Scarborough
Posted by: Doctor Biobrain on April 18, 2009 at 3:27 AM | PERMALINK
I have had to stop watching Joe Scarborough, he very seldom seems to know what he is talking about, Mika is just a bobbing head, sitting beside him with a permanent vacant expression.To everyone who thinks waterboarding is not torture, I would say 'try it'
also the US government at Nurembourg declared it to be torture, and if I remember correctly, Japanese soldiers were executed for it.
Posted by: JS on April 18, 2009 at 8:14 AM | PERMALINK
Somebody needs to take a fall, and as a citizen living in the Ninth Circuit, I say
IMPEACH JAY BYBEE
Posted by: Cal Gal on April 18, 2009 at 1:43 PM | PERMALINK
FYI the "talented songstress" Susan Boyle was on Britain's Got Talent (another Simon Cowell show) and not Idol.
If you haven't seen her yet, look for the longest version -- it has a lot of the intro from the show as well as full comments from the judges and her reaction after she left the stage.
Posted by: Cal Gal on April 18, 2009 at 1:52 PM | PERMALINK
I hope Rivera has a fresh resume ready to mass fax.
Just a few hundred comments more like that one and Fox will become fair and balanced.
Posted by: toowearyforoutrage on April 18, 2009 at 5:11 PM | PERMALINK
Glenn Beck didn't attack Charles Johnson, he defended himself against attacks FROM Charles Johnson.
Posted by: juyt on April 19, 2009 at 12:41 PM | PERMALINK