Apparently, the guys are broadcasting a football game but attending the ballet and need to remind themselves constantly that they're working, and not goofing off.
(h/t to Thers for setting me off)
"Democrats Work For Solutions; Republicans Pray The Problem Will Go Away" - Actor212
Once again, the Congress is going to go on a break without having extended long term jobless benefits, as the Senate failed to get 60 votes last night on another plan from Democrats.
By my count, this is the third time that Senators will have gone on a vacation without an agreement on extending those jobless benefits - the first time was Easter, the second just before Memorial Day, and now before the July 4th break.
Washington • Republican leaders have not ruled out filibustering to block Elena Kagan from ascending to the Supreme Court, a last-ditch effort that could throw the Senate into turmoil in an already tempestuous year.
“We’re hoping that a filibuster is not necessary, but I think the examination did not go well today,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Judiciary Committee Republican, told The Salt Lake Tribune midway through Kagan’s second day of confirmation hearings.
From your slimy racist anti-Semitic mouth to God's ear, Senator.
By filibustering a perfectly innocuous nominee to the Supreme Court, one who has demonstrated time and again during the hearings the patience to put up with the moronic and mind-numbing idiocies demonstrated by conservatives, and then presenting a formidable case for her arguments, Kagan has shown she can clearly work with moral and intellectual turpitudes like Clarence Thomas and Antonin "Never Met A Bribe I Didn't Like" Scalia.
Of course, a filibuster won't happen, to be sure. There are not 41 Senators on the Red side of the aisle who would dare oppose a nominee to the Supreme Court ahead of a Congressional election in which many will be asked why they chose to block that perfectly nice lady from New York when the voted to let Sotomayor be seated. Even Orrin Hatch, who believe it or not is actually a voice of reason these days, thinks it's unlikely.
One exchange did annoy me, however. When Sessions called Kagan out on the recruiting ban Harvard University had in place with respect to the military (far more of which has been made than reality calls for, I should add), he mentioned that her actions prevented a prime "recruiting season".
Now, I'm confused: since when is Harvard Law School fertile ground for any military recruitment, if in fact it is part of the "Eastern liberal elite" that conservatives harp about like it was a thorn in their feeble paws?
I would have called Sessions on that, and glared mightily at him, daring him to reconcile his stupidity.
But I digress. It looks like Kagan will be confirmed and soon.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and states must abide by the 2nd Amendment, strengthening the rights of gun owners and opening courthouse doors nationwide for gun rights advocates to argue that restrictions on firearms are unconstitutional.
In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the right to have a handgun for self-defense is "fundamental from an American perspective [and] applies equally to the federal government and the states."
Embrace your nausea. There's more here than meets the eye.
Essentially, what the Court ruled is that Constitutional rights trump states' rights or een individual rights. "Libertarians" may mark this as a good thing, but I do not. See, the Second Amendment prescribes that, in order to ensure your God-given inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you have to buy a gun.
I'm betting that's not what the Founders intended. This might be the only enumerated right that requires a citizen to do something in order to enforce it. A truly libertarian position would be that an individual's right to privacy is far more important than the constitutionality of a manufactured good.
This is a glaring distinction that so-called "glibertarians" (e.g. people who read and masturbated to Ayn Rand books) fail to grasp and it's really a simple concept: no man is free if for that freedom he is requred to carry a weapon.
But hold that thought for another time. Here's the really scary part.
This decision opens the door for the Court to decide that individual state laws are unconstitutional. Should Roe V. Wade for example be overturned, there is no check on the Court to decide that New York's abortion law violates the Constitution. Or New Jersey's. Or California. Should a consitutional challenge to the gay marriage ban fail in SCOTUS, that would open the door to overturning Hawaiian law, Iowan law, and would also prevent any number of states from recognizing homosexual marriages.
It wouldn't stop there. Your state doesn't have a death penalty? Too bad. You might be forced to get in line with the totalitarians. Our laws would revert to the lowest common denominator of a moron state like Alabama or Mississippi.
Medical marijuana? Nope. Speed limit of 55? Gone, mostly because the federal government mandates it in exchange for highway funds, so all it will take is some yahoo from Montana to overturn that necessary and safer speed limit, and your state won't be able to do a thing about it. Property rights? Eminent domain will encroach and absorb as many properties as it deems necessary, because the SCOTUS has already ruled it's perfectly constitutional to appropriate your land and turn it over to a developer.
Are we sure we want to walk this path when it's taken so long and we've worked so hard to bring even a shred of progressivism to the nation?
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and states must abide by the 2nd Amendment, strengthening the rights of gun owners and opening courthouse doors nationwide for gun rights advocates to argue that restrictions on firearms are unconstitutional.
In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the right to have a handgun for self-defense is "fundamental from an American perspective [and] applies equally to the federal government and the states."
Embrace your nausea. There's more here than meets the eye.
Essentially, what the Court ruled is that Constitutional rights trump states' rights or een individual rights. "Libertarians" may mark this as a good thing, but I do not. See, the Second Amendment prescribes that, in order to ensure your God-given inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you have to buy a gun.
I'm betting that's not what the Founders intended. This might be the only enumerated right that requires a citizen to do something in order to enforce it. A truly libertarian position would be that an individual's right to privacy is far more important than the constitutionality of a manufactured good.
This is a glaring distinction that so-called "glibertarians" (e.g. people who read and masturbated to Ayn Rand books) fail to grasp and it's really a simple concept: no man is free if for that freedom he is requred to carry a weapon.
But hold that thought for another time. Here's the really scary part.
This decision opens the door for the Court to decide that individual state laws are unconstitutional. Should Roe V. Wade for example be overturned, there is no check on the Court to decide that New York's abortion law violates the Constitution. Or New Jersey's. Or California. Should a consitutional challenge to the gay marriage ban fail in SCOTUS, that would open the door to overturning Hawaiian law, Iowan law, and would also prevent any number of states from recognizing homosexual marriages.
It wouldn't stop there. Your state doesn't have a death penalty? Too bad. You might be forced to get in line with the totalitarians. Our laws would revert to the lowest common denominator of a moron state like Alabama or Mississippi.
Medical marijuana? Nope. Speed limit of 55? Gone, mostly because the federal government mandates it in exchange for highway funds, so all it will take is some yahoo from Montana to overturn that necessary and safer speed limit, and your state won't be able to do a thing about it. Property rights? Eminent domain will encroach and absorb as many properties as it deems necessary, because the SCOTUS has already ruled it's perfectly constitutional to appropriate your land and turn it over to a developer.
Are we sure we want to walk this path when it's taken so long and we've worked so hard to bring even a shred of progressivism to the nation?
Fox News host Glenn Beck's apocalyptic political thriller has shrugged off a pile of bad reviews to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list this week.The story of a young, handsome PR executive's quest to save America from a 100-year-old plot to destroy it, The Overton Window was described as "didactic, discursive [and] sporadically incoherent" in the Los Angeles Times, and as "not just a bad book ... an instructively bad book because it offers a complete colour-by-numbers picture of the contemporary Wingnut psyche" in the Daily Beast.
We can presume just two things: one, Glenn Beck's rabid fans, all five of them, have bought multiple copies they can't afford on Social security and unemployment and, most likely, some right-wing welfare benefactor has gone out of his way to smooth Beck's feathers after the reviews he received, not just in what he might term "liberal mainstream media," but from respected writers and reviewers with no plausible agenda.
Which of course raises the issue "Who?" Who is stupid enough to push this godawful hateful shameless little man into a best-selling author, thus neatly overriding countless hours teachers across America have spent trying to instill in young minds good grammar, good syntax and a metaphorical prose somewhere north of a barroom tale?
Presumably, someone who hates America. Presumably, it was Glenn Beck himself, a man not known for, um, modest displays of temperment or emotion. The man cries often enough, we would have called him a sissy and made him wear a dress back in my old neighborhood.
However, even Beck could not possibly have that much money that he could afford to buy his own book (even if authors usually pay a remaindered price on copies they order). So we must search other, wealthier and more American-hating sources.
Rupert Murdoch springs to mind. His America-destroying agenda has been well-documented, as his Fox network competes with his Fox News network and various News Corp. in a race to the bottom, dragging millions of sheeple along with him. Why does Murdoch hate America so?
Any other ideas? List them in comments.