Scozzafava pulls out of NY-23 House race, GOP's extremist right scores another major victory

By Michael J.W. Stickings

On this All Hallows' Eve 2009, Dede Scozzafava, the (official) Republican candidate in the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District, has suspended her campaign just days before the vote, giving up in the face of simple inevitability and essentially handing her official GOP nod to far-right Republican and Conservative Party insurgent Doug Hoffman.

Of course, the writing was on the wall. Conservatives have been conducting a nasty smear campaign to bring Scozzafava down while pumping up Hoffman as their chosen one, as their cause célèbre. Scozzafava had the party endorsement, but conservative Republicans across the land had declared their support for Hoffman, and the polls showed Hoffman well ahead of Scozzafava and just about even with Democrat Bill Owens. In pulling out, Scozzafava basically acknowledged that she understood what was happening, that she was going to lose, that Republican support was divided, that the only way for the Republicans to win was to let Hoffman pick up the mantle.

And Republicans, with Scozzafava kicked to the curb, have been quick to embrace Hoffman -- those, that is, who weren't already enthusiastically on board, including those at the top of the party apparatus. Here's what RNC Chair Michael Steele said almost immediately after Scozzafava's announcement -- yes, of course it was coordinated:

Effective immediately, the R.N.C. will endorse and support the Conservative candidate in the race, Doug Hoffman. Doug's campaign will receive the financial backing of the R.N.C. and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.

And the floodgates opened wider. "National Republican Party officials, who had also endorsed Scozzafava, are now lining up behind Hoffman," reports CNN. "This new show of GOP unity will make it more difficult for Owens to win the election on Tuesday." Of course, that's what this was all about. Scozzafava may or may not have seen the writing on the wall, but she was no doubt informed of it, and she was likely shown the door, or perhaps even pushed out, told that the party wanted her to fall on her sword, or else.

Even Newt Gingrich, who had shown a rare modicum of sanity by endorsing Scozzafava and rightly accusing Hoffman's right-wing backers of conducting a "purge" of the party, has flipped. He's now in Hoffman's corner.

So what now? Is a Hoffman win now pretty much inevitable? Here's Marc Ambinder:

A series of polls showed Scozzafava in third place, well behind Democrat Bill Owens and, suddenly, Conservative Doug Hoffman, who had stolen about half of Scozzafava's base. Where do the rest of her votes go? CW says that most go to Hoffman, but I'm with Jonathan Martin: I think half go to Democrat Bill Owens or they stay home. GOP registration exceeds Democratic registration by nearly 50,000. This is a Republican district that is likely to remain Republican, -- only significantly more conservative than it's been.

So, yes. It's now Hoffman's race to lose. And, in this generally Republican -- if also generally moderate (hence Scozzafava's appeal to locals) -- district (it went for Obama, but it has gone Republican in House races for generations), Owens just won't pick up enough moderate Republican support to counter the expected boost for Hoffman.

And what does Hoffman's seemingly successful insurgency mean, or, rather, how is it likely to be interpreted? Ambinder again:

Republicans will derive two lessons from the results of this race. One is that the activist base of the party is becoming increasingly powerful in the one area that had eluded them: candidate selection. Other conservative Republicans may now feel more comfortable if they decide to challenge incumbents in primaries. Democrats, believing that Republicans will conservatize-themselves to death demographically, will take this as a positive trend for the long-term. The second lesson is that populist, regular guy candidates win in supposedly "moderate" districts.

The race had become a proxy for debates about the future of the party. Since the situation in NY 23 is so unusual, it may be folly to squeeze out more meaning than's already present.

That's fair, sure, but I think this is far more significant long-term for the GOP than Ambinder suggests, and I think Andrew Sullivan is right: 

No one knows what might happen now. For the insurgents, it means a scalp they will surely use to purge the GOP of any further dissidence. But the insurgents were also backed by the establishment, including Tim Pawlenty, who's supposed to be the reasonable center.

Hoffman's insurgency was driven by the usual suspects on the Republican right, where the likes of Michelle Malkin, overcome with ideological madness, think even GOP moderates are "radical leftists," but, Gingrich notwithstanding, many in the Republican establishment had thrown their weight behind Hoffman. He wasn't just the preferred candidate, the preferred Republican, of the fringe but of parts of the mainstream as well.

Let me clarify that. What was once the fringe is increasingly the mainstream, and the right's victory here -- even before the election, the victory in pushing Hoffman over Scozzafava -- is indicative of the larger shift among Republicans as a whole to the (far) right. Moderates and others who dissent from rightist orthodoxy are either leaving or being purged, and what remains is a narrow ideological sliver in which a Doug Hoffman, or a Michelle Malkin, is actually the new center, a center well to the right both of what the Republican Party used to be and of where the overwhelming majority of the American people are. Even in New York it is not acceptable, it would seem, to deviate from the new party line. Scozzafava got the message. I suspect that all Republicans across the country are getting it, too.

Deep in the Cornyn hole of Texas

By Capt. Fogg

I got an e-mail from Texas Senator John Cornyn this morning. Somehow I had the urge to take another shower. In the relentless crusade to mock, rebuke, deride, insult, sneer at, and taunt the "opposition," Cornyn is an endless cornucopia of crepuscular reasoning and shady opinions, such as his assertion that the "delays" in supplying Texas and the United States with hundreds of millions of H1N1 vaccinations argue against the public option in health-care reform:

These delays and limited access make me question whether the government, which cannot run existing public health programs competently, should be trusted with even more responsibility – such as running a new government health plan. [italics mine]

Of course, Cornyn doesn't give examples of how the government can't run health care, either from Medicare, the Veteran's Administration, or indeed from the government health care Cornyn and his cronies enjoy. Of course, he doesn't have to, he's preaching to Republicans -- a faith-based group who never seem to question the tenebrous tenets of that faith. The Government just can't do anything right: Reagan said so and the Republicans are hell-bent for leather to make sure it's self-fulfilling.

Perhaps John can explain what the failure of the oil industry that supports him to end oil shortages and give us 29 cents a gallon gasoline again argues for or against, or why we shouldn't say that Exxon can't run anything properly, including keeping tanker captains sober. One offensively stupid argument deserves another, I should think, and the argument that the government can't do anything and so shouldn't be allowed to do anything is a stupid argument and an annoying one coming from someone who is part of the government and is stalling, obfuscating and sabotaging health care reform -- right after having supported Bush's massive increases of unaccountable executive power and failed wars for 8 years.

No, a public option for health care is a:

Trojan horse that will ultimately lead to a government takeover of our health care system,

says John Cornyn, another way of invoking the slippery-slope fallacy. If we allow A, we'll allow A+B, and if we allow A+B, we'll allow A+B+C... Of course, any truth to this is no more than accidental because none of these steps compel the other, That's why we call it a fallacy, but again, he's arguing to Republicans and Lone Star Republicans at that, not exactly a constellation bright enough to light up the sky. Funny that he didn't argue that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a "government takeover" of the world or that warrantless surveillance and the end of habeas corpus would lead to a police state.

No, we're not on a slippery slope toward invading Ireland, the U.S. Postal Service isn't going to take over DHL or UPS or FedEx, and none of those could handle a minute fraction of the envelopes, post cards, advertising fliers, or periodicals the USPS delivers. No, the public schools aren't going to take over the private schools, and the Social Security Administration isn't going to take over your pension. The county hospital or the VA hospital isn't going to take over the private hospitals. It isn't the "government" producing the vaccines, and if we had to depend on the profitability of doing that to induce the pharmaceutical industry to do it, we'd have far greater shortages and tens of millions who wouldn't get any and couldn't afford it and would help the disease spread because of it.

Of course, I'm sure Tex Cornyn will get his vaccination, one way or another. He'll get it for free. He gets all his health care for free, so why should he give a Texas damn about you?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Blood diamonds and Halloween

By Capt. Fogg

Pat Robertson -- where do I begin? I don't know whether his record speaks worse of American stupidity or of his character.

No, I'm not talking about the soliciting of funds for relief in Rwanda that actually were spent on Diamond mining operations in Zaire with dictator President Mobutu Sese Seko and to benefit other African genocidal madmen. I'm not talking about questionable use of Katrina relief funds or various tax-evasion charges. This Bozo runs a faith-based circus of stupidity and one of his side show acts is to be the grinch who stole Halloween or All Saints Day, as it was known for a while.

Robertson's God-forsaken parody of a broadcasting network, CBN, has a dire warning on its blog about virtually all Halloween candy having been "prayed over" by witches and carrying curses and spells which will be absorbed by any children eating it. Halloween is dangerous, it warns. Don't buy candy in October! It's a holy day, but if it's not a Christian holy day, it's a SATANIC holy day. Nice insult to the vast majority of humanity that's given up belief that ancient Celtic religious practices had anything to do with the Devil the Christians invented to demonize other religions:

Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store,

says CBN.com. The colors orange brown and red are dedicated to Satan. Respect for the Earth is Satanic. Bonfires are about Satan, even the harvest is about Satan. Everything he doesn't like is Satan -- everything is Satan and the world is full of evil entities and magic and spells and his followers listen with a straight face.

I could go on, but there's enough raging, pathological, libelous insanity and foul ugliness to drive any normal person to projectile vomiting. Read it yourself,** but there's something wrong with a nation that once considered this man for president, something insane about a nation that still talks about witches and spells and a political party that embraces this ugly medieval madness.

** Since writing this last Thursday, the article about witches, Halloween, and demonic tootsie rolls has been removed from the site. View the cached article here.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Pat Robertson: Christianity as hateful bigotry

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Consider what fascist-theocrat Pat Robertson said about the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a bill, signed into law by President Obama the other day, that extends hate-crime protection to sexual orientation:

The noose has tightened around the necks of Christians to keep them from speaking out on certain moral issues. And it all was embodied in something called the hate crimes bill that President Obama said was a major victory for America. I'm not sure if America was the beneficiary. [...] We have voted into office a group of people who are opposed to many of the fundamental Christian beliefs of our nation. And they hold to radical ideology, and they are beginning put people sharing their points of view into high office. And not only that, they not only have control of both houses of Congress.

Consider Robertson's "logic" here: The legislation silences Christians. Apparently, it is Christian to be hateful. Apparently, anyone or anything that prevents Christians from being hateful, or speaking hate, is anti-Christian, and anti-American. America is Christian. Since Christianity is hateful, so is America.

Just so we're all clear.

Christians, and Americans, should be disgusted and outraged.

Gore Vidal, a despicable old fool, defends Roman Polanski, a rapist

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Of all the Hollywood and Hollywood-ish celebrities who have come out in defence of Roman Polanski since the director's arrest in Switzerland last month, Gore Vidal is without question the most reprehensible.

Or, at least, his defence is the most reprehensible of all the defences that have emerged so far:

Author Gore Vidal says he refuses to feel any sympathy for Roman Polanski’s rape victim, whom he dubs a "hooker."

In an interview with The Atlantic, the controversial 83-year-old author of such books as "Myra Breckinridge" and "1876" says of the director's sex scandal, "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s being taken advantage of?"

The young woman to whom he is referring is Samantha Geimer, who was a 13-year-old aspiring model in 1977 when she was drugged and raped by Polanski.

Vidal went on to say that the media pushed an inaccurate image of Geimer, painting her as an innocent victim as opposed to what he believes to be her true identity.

He went on to suggest that anti-Semitism and anti-gay motives were behind Polanki's persecution. According to this celebrated author, Polanski basically did nothing wrong.

What a sick thing to say -- a reflection, perhaps, of a sick mind.

Geimer was not a prostitute, she was a 13-year old girl. Now, she may have been more grown-up than most girls her age, and her shameless mother may have been pushing her into Polanski's circle, but does that mean she deserved to be drugged and raped -- anally raped -- by a man with a sense of entitlement who was clearly trying to take advantage of her, and who persisted despite her protests? And even if she were a prostitute -- and, again, she wasn't -- would that justify rape? Is it perfectly okay to drug and rape prostitutes? According to Gore Vidal, the answer to these questions would seem to be a resounding yes.

For more on this, see Melissa McEwan, who shares my disgust and contempt. Yes, Polanski may have been the victim of bigotry, but, no, that doesn't mean "there is not a legitimate case against him." There is -- and his various supporters around the world can only defend him by ignoring the facts and making excuses for raping minors. As far as I know, no one has gone quite as far as Vidal, but it's all ugly nonetheless.

**********

See my previous posts on the Polanski saga:

-- The truth about Roman Polanski;

-- Defending Polanski; or, how the Hollywood left has completely lost its marbles;

-- Polanski, the French, and the backlash against the rape apologists;

-- Common decency and the rule of law v. Roman Polanski and the Hollywood elite; and

-- Politico and partisanship: The very stupid attempt to link Roman Polanski to Obama and the Democrats, via Hollywood.

Happy Mienfoking Halloween !

ORIGINS OF THE JACKOLANTERN from Wikipedia
An old Irish folk tale tells of Stingy Jack, a lazy yet shrewd farmer who uses a cross to trap the Devil. One story says that Jack tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree, and once he was up there Jack quickly placed crosses around the trunk or carved a cross into the bark, so that the Devil couldn't get down. Another myth says that Jack put a key in the Devil's pocket while he was suspended upside-down.

Another version of the myth says that Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met the Devil, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting the Devil with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told the Devil to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (the Devil could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin/Devil disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack's wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped. In both myths, Jack only lets the Devil go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, the Devil had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and the Devil mockingly tossed him an ember that would never burn out from the flames of hell. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which was his favourite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jack-o'-Lantern.











TRICK - HUMILIATINGLY CUTE DOG COSTUMES !







AND TREAT - HEIDI KLUM NAKED & COVERED IN CHOCOLATE !









THE NILES LESH PROJECT - All Rights Reserved 2009
JOIN THE NETWORK OF NILES LESH / MIENFOKS PSEUDO FRIENDS !

Why does Michael Steele hate Republicans?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Friday that a victory by Doug Hoffman, the third-party candidate in the Nov. 3 New York special election, is a win for the GOP.

The actual Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, trails Hoffman, the Conservative Party nominee, and Democrat Bill Owens by double-digits according to a recent poll. But Steele argued during an interview with POLITICO that the GOP doesn't need to worry about Scozzafava's lagging ratings because Hoffman is essentially a Republican.

"You've got two Republicans running in that race. My upside is that one of them will likely win," Steele said. "We want to be supporting the one that wins."

"I don't split the party into conservative or not," he said. "I'm looking as the national chairman to walk out of there one way or the other with a win."

I get it. He's hedging. But, in this race, Hoffman isn't the Republican, Scozzafava is.

Let me repeat that, just to be clear: In NY-23, Dede Scozzafava, not Doug Hoffman, is the Republican nominee. So shouldn't the chairman of the Republican National Committee be actively backing the Republican nominee?

Winning, of course, is what matters, and Hoffman, the Conservative candidate (and also a Republican), has a much better shot of winning than Scozzafava, who has been viciously and relentlessly smeared by the right.

Still, there's something pathetic about Steele's win-either-way approach. If nothing else, it papers over what is the real story here, which is the rapid splintering of the Republican Party and the ongoing rise of the extremist right in what is increasingly a narrow, ideologically extreme party on the fringe of American society.

For Democrats, time to cut ties with Lieberman

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So Joe Lieberman was against the filibuster before he was for it, eh?

Surprise... surprise... surprise.

Back in his more Democratic days, back when he was genuinely a member of the party, and presumably happy to be so, he argued that the filibuster -- not just any one filibuster but the filibuster generally -- "ails Washington."

That was 1994. Now, in 2009, having become the Republicans' favourite Democrat, then an independent, then, on the campaign trail, an enthusiastic supporter of John McCain, his long-time friend, while smearing Obama, and being essentially a Republican even while sucking up to Obama, post-election, he's all for the filibuster, at least when it comes to the public option.

Meanwhile, eyeing 2010 and beyond, he drifts ever further to the right, a "Democrat" when it's convenient for him, and when it's in his self-interest to pretend to be one, like when he wants to caucus with the majority and chair the Homeland Security committee, but hardly much of a Democrat at all. He makes Arlen Specter seem like FDR.

Throughout much of the Lieberman saga, from his loss to progressive favourite Ned Lamont to his successful campaign as an independent, I said time and time again that I wanted the Democratic Party to be a big tent, a party that welcomed diversity and dissent, a party that wasn't, like the GOP, driven by ideological purification. I even defended him now and then. Even earlier this year, I understood why Obama and Democratic leaders in the Senate wanted to keep him in the party -- his vote mattered, and it was important for the new president to reach out to his opponents across the spectrum and to try to build a broad coalition to support what would turn out to be a significant legislative agenda including an economic stimulus package, health-care reform, and, soon, one hopes, renewable energy and climate-change initiatives.

And, yes, ideally, Lieberman would vote with the 58 Democrats and one other independent, Bernie Sanders, to give Democrats the 60 votes they need to break Republican filibusters.

But now? What's the point? It doesn't seem to matter how big the tent is -- and, remember, it includes Bayh, Landrieu, Lincoln, among other non-liberals, and that's just in the Senate -- Lieberman wants no part of it. It may very well be that he still harbours grudges and resentments, and that his cozying back up to the party this year was just a blip, but, whatever drives him, the simple fact is that he's not just not much of a Democrat, he isn't even all that friendly to Democrats, including to Obama, the one who went out on a limb for him to bring him back into the fold.

It no longer makes sense to let bygones be bygones, because the bygones aren't gone. They're alive and well and in the present and aren't going anywhere.

It is long past time for "coercive measures," but perhaps threats -- notably, of removing him from his beloved chairmanship -- will keep him in line. Or perhaps not. Lieberman will do what he wants to do, and vote how he wants to vote, and he just can't be trusted to support the Democrats on anything, let alone on anything as historic as health-care reform and on anything as significant as the public option, about which he continues to lie.

He will say, of course, that he's an independent who calls them as he sees them, but what really matters to him are those grudges and resentments, and his own political survival in some form. Perhaps threats will keep him from joining the expected Republican filibuster, even if he ends up voting against reform, as is likely. Whether they do or they don't, however, what is clear, and what has been clear for a long time, is that the Democrats, who have been so generous to him over the years, even after his ugly efforts against Obama last year, need to cut ties with him instead of continuing to buy off his occasional vote while he plays his vengeful "independent" games as a Republican ally.

Enough, at long last, is enough.

Sasha Greys Anatomy

Category All Sex, Blu-ray
Starring Sasha Grey, Mia Smiles, Faye Regan, Jay Lassiter, Jayme Langford, Bobbi Eden, Marco, Courtney James, Chris Cannon, Cheyne Collins, Jerry

Sasha Grey’s Anatomy is a medical and mental health-themed sex fest taking place at the San Fernando Valley’s Center for Sexual Dysfunctions and where the characters tend to the kinky eccentricities of both their patients and each other.
Release Date May 24, 2008

---

Format= AVI Size= 1469 MB Language: English Runtime: 120 min Year: 2008

Cds= 2 Segmentos= 226 Metodo= Kamaleon/Winrar c/password

Demographic clustering and the self-segregation of America

By (O)CT(O)PUS

This post is inspired in part from this commentary, "Suffer the Little Children," by Southern Beale, and this incident, "Hate Begets Hate," reported by Southern Female Lawyer, who recalled this conversation with a stranger while shopping:

They have a young child and just couldn’t bear the thought of their child growing up in this sort of cultural environment … But the straw that broke their hearts was when they were at a local flea market … and there was a vendor there selling Klan material. And as it turns out, this woman and her family are of a group that is frequently targeted by the Klan …

Here is Southern Beale’s follow-up commentary:

What is the point of all the battles over de-segregation and all of the ground gained over the past 30 years if we’re going to self-segregate anyway? I certainly can’t fault anyone for doing what they think is best for their children … But the entire conundrum depresses me.

Indeed, one can hardly fault any family for wanting to keep their children safe from bigots. Yet, this tendency to self-segregate runs deeper than we realize. We no longer cluster along ethnic, racial, or economic lines; we self-segregate along political and cultural lines... with potentially dangerous consequences.

This is the thesis of Bob Bishop's landmark study, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. According to Bishop, the terms "red state" and "blue state" no longer refer to those states that return Republican or Democratic majorities, but to groups of people clustered within communities who self-identify across an array of opinion: liberal versus conservative, urban versus rural, and religious versus non-religious, as examples.

As evidence, Bishop cites major changes in the electoral map over the past 33 years. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won the presidency by a razor thin margin; yet 26.8% of the vote came from landslide districts where Carter won or lost by 20% or more. The number of landslide districts had grown to 48% by 2004... almost double since the Carter era.

Another study compares educational attainment and geographic mobility. In the 1980s and 1990s, 45% of Americans with a college degree moved from state to state within 5 years after graduation, compared with only 19% of the population having a high school education.

It is not difficult to imagine how and why we make conscious decisions that alter the electoral map. When we canvass neighborhoods looking for a place to live, we tend to notice the McCain-Palin or Obama-Biden signs in front yards. We may look for a bookstore or a gun shop, or a fundamentalist or Unitarian church in town. When choosing where to live, our decisions are not necessarily guided by economic considerations, but by cultural and lifestyle choices.

(O)CT(O)PUS is no less guilty. I am a northern transplant living in a southern state. There is a saying where I live: "The further south you go, the more likely you will meet northerners." I have witnessed racism at both ends. Racism is palpable and visible in the South; racism renders you invisible in the North. In the South, racism is a snake that strikes suddenly; in the north, racism means a slow, agonizing death by venom.

After the hurricane season of 2004, I turned refugee. I sold my beachfront home and moved to Lake County along the central ridge where I learned: Racism is cultural and systemic, not merely historical.

Lake County Florida is infamous for the case of the Groveland Four, an all-too-familiar story about the alleged rape of a white woman by four men who were beaten and forced to walk barefoot over broken glass until they confessed. It is the story of a young lawyer named Thurgood Marshall who appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, about a sheriff who was a Klan member, and the murder of two civil rights activists whose home was bombed on Christmas Eve.

I witnessed weekly acts of racism in the local cafes; the harassment of a black woman at a lunch counter; epithets hurled at a black family by a passing bigot. As I witnessed these encounters, I felt assaulted. When I spoke out, I almost got assaulted.

After a year, I returned to the coast where I bought a condo. My Lake County home along the central ridge, my refuge from coastal storms, remains unsold. Having witnessed racism first hand, I can well understand a family's concerns for the welfare of their children.

Yet, we pay a price for surrender. Over time, according to Bishop, a preference for living with like-minded neighbors in extreme homogeneous communities incubates ever more extremist views. Voters in landslide districts tend to elect more extreme members to Congress while moderate candidates shun public office. Among highly polarized lawmakers, debates degenerate into shouting matches as legislators engage in obstruction and gridlock. That is how our most urgent and pressing issues go unresolved.

Due to clustering, we are less likely to converse with people holding different views and more likely to caricature them. Democrats and Republicans alike are more likely to assume the worst, each regarding the other as "incomprehensible." Even in the judiciary, Republican-appointed judges vote more conservatively when sitting on a panel with other Republicans than when sitting with Democrats. As Bishop states:

We now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear and the neighbourhoods we live in.

So what do you say, fellow creatures above and below the waves? Shall we swim against the tide and give conservatives a chance to establish themselves as friends and neighbors before we dismiss them outright? I welcome your comments.

(Cross-posted at The Swash Zone.)

Realitykings - Rockin that thing

Tamaño=839mb
Formato=WMV
Metodo=Kamaleon/Winrar
Duracion= 120min
Segmentos=166

1By-Day - Clown Sex (HDTV)(720p)

Tamaño= 714mb
Resolucion= 1280x720
Duracion= 23min
Segmentos= 119
Metodo= kamaleon/winrar

Marc Dorcel - 18 ans initiation extreme

Réalisateur : Gazzman
Acteur : Annette Schwarz - Aubrey Adams - Christina Agave - Holly Wellin - Sakura - Vanessa
Durée : 153 minutes
Année : 2008

Tamaño: 1400mb
Video: XVID 512x288 25.00fps 800Kbps
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 131Kbps

What's "The Reaction" in Cyrillic?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The BBC reports that the Internet as we know it is about to change dramatically:

The internet regulator has approved plans to allow non-Latin-script web addresses, in a move that is set to transform the online world.

The board of Icann voted at its annual meeting in Seoul to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts.

More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.

It is being described as the biggest change to the way the internet works since it was created 40 years ago.

The first Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) could be in use next year.

I suppose it was about time for the period of Latin hegemony to come to an end, even if this will undoubtedly make the Internet more complicated to use. (To access an Arabic website, for example, would one not need to know Arabic script? Could this move not actually get in the way of effective communication across culture and language divides? I understand the objection to Latin dominance, but at least there's been a domain name standard to facilitate cross-cultural and cross-linguistic interaction.)

It's a cream puff!

By Capt. Fogg


Would you buy a used car from this man? That used to be a popular phrase back in the Nixon years when we were asked to buy his "secret plan to win the war." The secret was that there was no plan, but never mind, there was nothing to win and we didn't win it.

It's the first thing that comes to mind listening to the last ditch effort by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who is still telling us the public option will kill us all, although you can see he's having a hard time keeping his face straight while doing it. It's a prodigious effort of course, since he and his henchmen all have government health care just like the French and the Norwegians and the Germans and everyone else and all too many of them live to really ripe old ages because of it.

"I think if you have any kind of government insurance program, you're going to be stuck with it and it will lead us in the direction of the European style, you know, sort of British-style, single payer, government run system, and those systems are known for delays, denial of care and, you know, if your particular malady doesn't fit the government regulation, you don't get the medication. And it may cost you your life. I mean, we don't want to go down that path."

Yes, we do want to go down that path -- the majority of us anyway -- and it's an argument dependent on American ignorance of what the rest of the modern world enjoys and benefits from and chooses to have. There is no slope here, it's only his logic and his grasp of truth that's slippery. The problem with our health care cartel system is exactly the problem he tells us we will have if we abandon it and the coverage we have to buy now isn't even available to millions and millions. It may cost you your life and it's cost millions of lives already.

No, I wouldn't buy a load of fertilizer from this man and that's what he's selling and no matter how many times the truth is flung back at him, he'll continue. He's paid handsomely to continue and he's got a great health care plan as well which isn't known for denial, delay or enormous annual price increases like the one we have if we're lucky, young, in a good job and haven't ever been sick.

It's the old Republican song he's singing -- the corporate song, the best money can buy: I've got mine and screw you.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

What price, Sarah Palin's butt?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

TNR's Chris Orr exposes yet another glaring example of Sarah Palin's hypocrisy:

In her latest ill-advised broadside against Levi Johnston, Sarah Palin accused the soon-to-be Playgirl model of "sell[ing his] body."

It's a peculiar complaint for a former beauty queen to make, but particularly peculiar for one who told People, "I did the beauty pageants to earn money for college"; who, by placing in the Miss Alaska contest did, in fact, earn a scholarship (of which she reportedly said, "that's what got me through college"); and who described the process thus in Vogue: "They made us line up in bathing suits and turn our backs so the male judges could look at our butts."

She's so full of herself, so convinced of her own righteousness, that she probably doesn't even recognize just how full of shit she is.

We'd all be better off if she'd stuck to showing off her butt for money. (Not that she was ever a whore or anything. You know.)

Hoffman surges, Republicans jump on the bandwagon

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh, so now Republican leaders are embracing Doug Hoffman in NY-23. I suppose they got the message loud and clear from the ruckus-making right-wingers who really control the party.

But turning on their on candidate, Dede Scozzafava? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Democrat Bill Owens is in the lead, could it, what with Republicans bitterly divided?

Hoffman may very well win the election, but at what cost to the beleaguered GOP? The extremists are proving once more just how powerful they are, and a Hoffman win, spun as conservative insurgent triumph, would only empower them further, boosting their confidence and paving the way for the Great Purge to continue.

Flag art

By Mustang Bobby.

The DNC is running a contest to come up with a powerful message for selling healthcare reform. One of the finalists is a video that depicts the desecration of the American flag.

In the video – which is accompanied by the sound of a heart monitor pumping and then flat-lining – words such as “pre-existing conditions,” “homeless” and “death panel” ultimately obliterate the flag, which reappears on screen seconds later with the words “Health Will Bring Our Country Back to Life” on the blue field where the 50 stars usually are.

According to the Organizing for American Web site, the 20 finalists in the “Health Reform Video Challenge” were chosen by a panel of “qualified” Democratic National Committee “employee judges.”

A contestant whose video didn’t make the final-20 cut complains that a video “defacing the flag” won’t do much to help President Barack Obama or the Democrats sell health care reform.

“They should never pick that,” said the contestant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It makes the Democrats look really, really bad.”

Ya think?

I'm a believer in freedom of expression as much as anybody, and I have a real problem with amending the Constitution to protect the flag from desecration since one person's idea honor -- making a shirt out of the flag or painting it on your guitar -- is another person's desecration. I also have a problem with creating idols out of anything. But I also believe that art, be it a painting, a play, or a film, is a medium, not the message, Marshall McLuhan notwithstanding. The genius who came up with this ad will find out that no one will pay attention to the point of the ad: healthcare reform. It will be lost in the strong reaction this use of the flag will undoubtedly get, and not just from the people who make their living out of flag-waving. It's like using an obscenity on live TV; people will pay more attention to the word than to the point you were trying to make. It's also lazy. Trying to create a powerful message in a short amount of time is not easy, and throwing in something like a desecrated flag is a shortcut that says you couldn't think of anything else.

And it also hands the knee-jerks an easy target. Remember back to when MoveOn.org had a similar contest in 2004 and someone came up with a video that compared President Bush to Hitler? The ad wasn't produced by MoveOn.org, it was never sanctioned by them, and they never even ran it. But it leaked out, and Fox News ran with it, it went viral, and the next thing you know everyone on the right was purple with rage at MoveOn.org. (It kind of makes you wonder where all that high dudgeon went when the comparisons to President Obama to Hitler came up at the tea-baggers' festivals, but short-term memory loss and hypocrisy are part of their deal.) I am sure there will be a big stink about this and demands from the righteous right that the DNC renounce the ad and, for good measure, commit sepuku on the east steps of the Capitol. (Let's make a deal -- they will if the RNC will do the same over Obama=Hitler.)

If the DNC has any sense, they will ditch this "finalist." It won't help the cause of healthcare reform, and that is the point of the exercise.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Bad Idea Hall of of Fame - Permenent Marker Masks ?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

THE NILES LESH PROJECT - All Rights Reserved 2009
JOIN THE NETWORK OF NILES LESH / MIENFOKS PSEUDO FRIENDS !

Cemeteries, sex toys, and South Carolina -- and a Republican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

No, it isn't April 1. And, no, this isn't from The Onion. It's all true, and all funny:

A deputy assistant attorney general who said he was on his lunch break when an officer found him with a stripper and sex toys in his sport utility vehicle has been fired, his boss said Wednesday.

Roland Corning, 66, a former state legislator, was in a secluded part of a downtown cemetery when an officer spotted him Monday, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

As the officer approached, Corning sped off, then pulled over a few blocks away. He and the 18-year-old woman with him, an employee of the Platinum Plus Gentleman's Club, gave conflicting stories about what they were doing in the cemetery, Officer Michael Wines wrote in his report, though he did not elaborate.

Corning gave Wines a badge showing he worked for the state Attorney General's Office. Wines, whose wife also works there, called her to make sure Corning was telling the truth.

He then searched the SUV, where he found a Viagra pill and several sex toys, items Corning said he always kept with him, "just in case," according to the report.

Corning and the woman were let go without charges. Wines' wife reported the call to her supervisor, who told Attorney General Henry McMaster.

"We received credible information about inappropriate behavior Monday afternoon," McMaster said Wednesday. "And by the close of business, he was no longer working here."

Such a trip to the cemetery "would not be appropriate, at any time, for an assistant attorney general," McMaster said.

Not appropriate at all. Okay, a few things:

First, on a somewhat serious note, it seems inappropriate for a police officer to call his wife, for his wife to talk to her supervisor, for her supervisor to talk to the AG, and for Corning to be fired. He shouldn't have told his wife, at least not in any official capacity, and she shouldn't have passed along the salacious news. prior to a full investigation into what happened. Should he have been fired so quickly, simply because the story made its way to the AG so quickly? Should the AG -- the state's chief law enforcement official, by the way -- not have acted more deliberately and thoroughly examined the case before jerking his knee?

Second, a cemetary? I understand this guy wanted privacy and seclusion, but is that really the best he could do? Were there no motel rooms available?

Third, he's 66 and she's 18. Make of that what you will.

Fourth, I understand the Viagra. I mean, you never know, and if you need that stuff, I suppose it's good to be prepared. A lot of people carry condoms around with them, don't they? (Did Corning?) But sex toys? Really? Again, I suppose you need to be prepared, "just in case" (you find a willing 18-year old), but who carries sex toys around with them? Who thinks, "yeah, just in case, I'll take a butt plug, strap-on dildo, vibrating egg, and cock ring wherever I go," or whatever the hell it was he had with him? Well, this guy does, apparently, but it's rather odd.

But odd, not least when it comes to sex, seems to be what South Carolina is all about. Need I remind you of the conduct of its governor?

Accountability

By Carol Gee

Accountability is a word we have heard used a great deal this year. It as if the concept were new to the American experience, given the lack of same in the previous administration. As I think about it, the word means that people are held to account. Or people take the natural, normal and logical consequences of their own actions.

Though President Obama is often too reluctant to hold officials in the Bush administration accountable, he does not set that same lax standard for himself. I believe that he expects to suffer consequences for his decisions and actions, as a man and as President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the military. What are some of those consequences? They might include feelings of embarrassment, ambivalence, or worry and being subjected to criticism, among many other outcomes. But our President is not deterred by such. In that same vein he is willing to feel the pain, perhaps even anguish, associated with his decisions to send members of the military into harm's way.

President Barack Obama met the caskets of the most recent war casualties at Dover AFB before dawn Thursday. Arriving just after midnight, he and several other officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, paid respects to 18 U.S. soldiers and DEA agents killed in multiple tragedies in Afghanistan. The President also met with the families of the fallen Americans. It was the right thing to do. On Twitter Josh Marshall posted a very moving set of Dover images at TPM Photo Galleries. The pictures of the President's middle of the night experience are particularly poignant.

That anyone would dare to say that President Obama's trip to Dover was inappropriate is an absolute outrage. How dare they criticize this good man with so much weight on his thin shoulders! He is holding himself accountable for his wartime decisions by accepting the normal consequences. The feelings of sadness, solemnity, regret, frustration and perhaps even anger come with his POTUS territory. And he has stepped up, as he should have.


(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Sasha Grey is one pretty porn star but did you know that she is also involved in modeling and in music? Her real name is Marina Ann Hantzis and she was born on March 14, 1998 in North Highland in California but her heritage can be traced to Greek, Irish, English and Polish. A good mix of genes I say.



Ms. Grey here started in porn as soon as she turned legal which was in 2006. After only a year, she received two AVN awards for Best Three-Way and Best Group Scene. She was also nominated as Best New Starlet on the same year. Additionally, she was recognized as the best new starlet by the X Rated Critics Organization. All this in only one year proves that this girl's got talent.

She measures 32B-26-31 and stands at 5'7". For some unknown reason, she wears a silver thumb ring which she never ever takes off. We don't know what it means but do we really care? We just want to see her in her naked glory.

See her official website. You can also find Sasha Grey on MySpace on Facebook and on Twitter.


See her in award-winning threesome action below.

Lenka Gaborova is pretty indeed. There is not much info available on this pretty porn star but we know that she came from the Czech Republic and was born in Prague. She was born in August 23, 1982 and obviously her star sign is Virgo.




She measures 36C-24-36 and the boobs are all natural. She stands 5'4" and goes by different names including Lenca, Lenka G, Anoushka, Donna, Sara, Sarah, Sarah Hash and Lena.


See her in action below.