What's next?

This is funny.

Who said it?

"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.... We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years."

Who said it?

A. Sarah Palin.
B. Glenn Beck.
C. Michelle Bachman.
D. Rush Limbaugh.
E. None of the above.


Answer:

E. None of the above. It is from a radio address that aired on July 22,1933. The speaker was Adolf Hitler.

Former CIGNA exec: Michael Moore was right

Wendell Potter is former head of communications for CIGNA, one of Amrica's biggest health insurance companies. On tonight's Bill Moyers Journal (PBS), Potter says Michael Moore's health-insurance documentary Sicko "hit the nail on the head" and contains "a great truth" "that we shouldn't fear government involvement in our health care system, that there is an appropriate role for government, and that it's been proven in the countries that were in that movie."

Moyers reveals the secret industry plan which successfully blunted the film's message by "radicaliz[ing]" Moore and threatening Democrats with political retaliation if they embraced him or his film. Here's a clip:

It was a dark and stormy night...

The 2009 winners in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the annual competition to write the worst opening line for a novel, have been announced.

I won't spoil the surprise and give you the winner, but here are some of my favorites from among the runners-up and dishonorable mentions:

It could have been no more than midnight's icy incipit when Clifford, stumbling in hitherto sanguine emprise through the tombstone teeth of the raven lit Kirk-yard like some well-performed but lichen-hushed human bullet-catch, heard the manifest bactrian vociferation which betrayed with desperate flourish the inexplicably wretched fact that his camel was out there, out on the ice - and she was in mortal peril. (Mr. S. J. Crawford, Redlynch, QLD, Australia)

On a lovely day during one of the finest Indian summers anyone could remember--a season the Germans call "old wives' summer," obviously never having had Native Americans to name things after, but plenty of old wives, and "Indian summer" in German would refer to the natives of India in any case, which would make even less sense than the current naming system--on such a day, however named, John Baxter fell in the creek and drowned. (Deanna Stewart, Heidelberg, Germany)

If she wasn't the poster girl for the word voluptuous, with her not exactly "bedroom," but definitely "walking-down-that-hallway" eyes, her hair a palomino mane rather than platinum blond, lips reminding me of Marilyn Monroe not Angelina Jolie, and that slow hip-swaying walk that sweet-talks a man's thoughts into dim, smoky rooms where R & B is played, she should've been. (Sandra Trentz, Yakima, WA)

Read the rest, and see the best - er, worst - here.

To the slaughter

"They are hauled in crowded trailers as far as 1,000 miles from auctions and feedlots to abattoirs across the border. Many end up in unregulated slaughterhouses, where they are sometimes paralyzed with knife stabs in their backs, leaving them conscious as their throats are slit."

They are horses, and upwards of 72,000 were slaughtered in Canada and Mexico last year. Many of those came from the U. S. Washed-up racehorses, unwanted foals, horses and ponies whose owners can no longer afford to keep them - sold for a few hundred dollars or less, to be shipped across the border and slaughtered in "unspeakable" conditions.

Coleman concedes!

Welcome, Senator-elect Al Franken.

Note to Harry Reid: you've got 60 votes now. Get off your butt.

I reckon not

Texas governor Rick Perry recently told the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce that Texans will keep driving pickup trucks no matter how high the cost of gasoline goes, because "You can't put a bale of hay in the back of a Prius. It don't work."

Over at CleanMPG.com, Austin American-Statesman columnist John Kelso relates how he decided to test Perry's statement. Turns out you can't fit a bale of hay in the back of a Prius: you can fit five.

Unprecedented!

A network is given "unprecedented" access to the White House. Is this a good or bad thing?



I guess the answer depends on which network it is.

Quote of the week

Andy Ostroy, writing about the "Freedom Cruise" co-sponsored by Ollie North's Freedom Alliance and the National Rifle Association:

So who exactly is the Freedom Alliance? On its website, it states that its mission "is to advance the American heritage of freedom by honoring and encouraging military service, defending the sovereignty of the United States and promoting a strong national defense." As for the NRA, well, that's just an organization of he-man wannabes with small dicks who like to shoot shit up.

Who says liberals have no sense of humor?

Yet anther domestic terrorist attack

The head of a so-called "minuteman" vigilante group is among three suspects arrested for the May 30 murder of a man and his eight-year-old daughter when the suspects allegedly invaded their home in Arizona.

Yet another case where right-wing activists are obviously engaging in terrorism by any definition of the word.

Yet another case where the terrorists are not charged as terrorists. It seems that distinction is reserved for those who protest at political conventions.

Yet another case where talking heads in the media (are you listening, Lou Dobbs? Sean Hannity? Rush Limbaugh? Genn Beck? Beuhler?) incite the wingnuts to commit violence and go scot-free.

I fear for my country's future.