Too Progressive

Senator Larry “Bathroom stall” Craig (R-ID) seems to have missed the connection with one possible suitor in the DC Union Station bathroom!

Sen. Larry Craig - missed connection - m4m
——————————————————————————–
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2007-08-29, 2:16PM EDT

Hey, Larry, we exchanged glances in the men’s bathroom in Union Station last year. Initially, I thought I was imagining that you were cruising me, but after recent “revelations” in the news of your bathroom cruising prowess, I *knew* it was you!

Too bad I didn’t understand what you were doing when I was taking a crap in a bathroom stall while you nervously were pacing outside my stall door and periodically peeking inside.

I should’ve known you were cruising me when you then sat in the stall next to mine and kept moving your foot into my stall and tapping it. I just figured you were trying to squeeze a big poop out and were having trouble with it and you were squirming about ha ha.

And then when you reached under our stall divider and flailed your hand about a few times, I figured you were just having a momentary epileptic seizure.

I’m sorry I was so dense and unaware of the ways and signals of bathroom cruising. If I had realized you were cruising me, we could’ve had some HOT sex. You could’ve spanked me while you told me that I was a “naughty, naughty bad boy” (just like you said Bill Clinton was in 1999 on “Meet the Press”).

SIDEBAR –> On January 24, 1999, during the Clinton impeachment, Senator Craig told Tim Russert on Meet the Press: “The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

But since we had a missed connection, I guess I can only leave such thoughts as fantasy, only to hopefully be realized as reality someday

[Craigslist -- Sen. Larry Craig - missed connection - m4m]

I also think, after watching this video, that this man is definitely a child molester:

And the nominees are:

Option 1: This duo of quotes from the office of Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) regarding his arrest on “lewd conduct” charges inside a men’s restroom:

I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use.

Also:

Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the report states. Craig also told the arresting officer that he reached down with his right hand to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor.
“It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper.”

Option 2: This picture of George Bush with AG Alberto Gonzales taken Sunday at the Bush ranch in Texas (Gonzales submitted his resignation on Friday, FYI):

As per usual, Laura Bush looks like she just blew a line or something.
[h/t Swamp Land]

Option 3: This shot of Michael Chertoff side-by-side with something from Lord of The fucking Rings:

[h/t Gawker]

Michael Vick should have killed him some babies. [Gawker]

Well, at least it didn’t blow up this time. [CNN]

God punishes Mexicans for their partial responsibility for Bill Richardson. Also, Corona. [WaPo]

Carl Levin calls for the assassination of Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki. [WaPo/Wonkette]

So this story about a couple in West Virginia being arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at a political rally where President Bush gave a speech is pretty funny in and of itself. The fact that they then sued the federal government, and eventually settled for $80,000 is kinda funny too.

No surprise though that the media has failed to report on the real story here, which is that the federal government took $80,000 from U.S. taxpayers to protect George Bush from having to face any kind of dissent, even when it was something as simple as a fucking T-shirt.

It also won’t surprise anyone to find out that the Bush administration is adamantly denying any “wrong doing.” But of course! Because I’d just hand out $80,000 too, especially if I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, and especially when it wasn’t my own fucking money I was giving away.

“This settlement is a real victory not only for our clients but for the First Amendment,” said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of West Virginia. “As a result of the Ranks’ courageous stand, public officials will think twice before they eject peaceful protesters from public events for exercising their right to dissent.”

White House spokesman Blair Jones said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.

“The parties understand that this settlement is a compromise of disputed claims to avoid the expenses and risks of litigation and is not an admission of fault, liability, or wrongful conduct,” Jones said.

Ha ha, they even sent out a manual stating that George Bush isn’t allowed to face dissent, ever! It even comes complete with an action plan to deal with the “terrorists” who dare oppose the grand dragon supreme ruler!

The ACLU said in a statement that a presidential advance manual makes it clear that the government tries to exclude dissenters from the president’s appearances. “As a last resort,” the manual says, “security should remove the demonstrators from the event.”

Bush and his self-loathing minions are so scared of facing reality that they’re even willing to call on local athletic teams, college/young Republican organizations, and even fraternities/sororities to beat down anyone who opposes!

The first step to keeping demonstrators out of events, the manual tells the president’s event staff, is to encourage the Secret Service to “ask the local police department to designate a protest area…preferably not in view of the event site or the motorcade route.”

Inside the event space, the manual advises, White House advance personnel should preposition “rally squads” that can swarm any protesters at the event and “use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform.” The rally squads can be formed using “college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities,” the manual notes.

All over a fucking T-shirt.

[cross posted at Daily Kos, and Raising Kaine]

Remember how Pat Robertson and other crazy religious fundies are always running around touching themselves, starting pretend universities, and claiming that natural disasters are the work of God to punish gays, and blacks, and Democrats, and Muslims, and Jews, and the like? Yeah? Well, Texas isn’t doing so hot these days with all the recent flooding, and now it’s about to get worse as Tropical Storm Erin makes landfall along the Texas coast! Hooray for punishing the state that brought us George Bush (or at least the state he likes to pretend he hails from).

DC’s favorite ex-mayor/crack addict, and current city councilman/crack addict Marion Barry is the new BFFL of a now homeless Michael Jackson! [Fox News]

Michael Vick offered plea deal from piss poor excuse of a prosecutor. [VA Pilot]

Self loathing Barack Obama joins the “Blame America Americans first crowd;” officially (finally) declares war on his own campaign. [RTD/AP]

The real death toll in Iraq included 99 soldier suicides last year. [AP]

Big fat Karl Rove pretty much locks up the Presidency for Hillary. [CNN]

Here’s a list of all the things super sexy retailer Wal Mart wants (or doesn’t want?) you to know about their fabulous company!

Old entry: “Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at other retail stores. Founder [[Sam Walton]] once argued that his company should be exempt from the [[minimum wage]]. (Palast, 121).”

New entry: “The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage (Wal-Mart).”

Old entry: “As of 2004, about 70% of the products sold in Wal-Mart stores have at least a component manufactured in [[China]].”

New entry: “Even today, though, Wal-Mart buys merchandise and services from more than 68,000 U.S suppliers and supports over 3.5 million supplier jobs in the United States.”

Deleted entirely: “Sam’s Club does not accept any credit card other than its own card and the [[Discover Card]]; [[debit card]]s are generally accepted.”

In this entry: “Since [[1997]], investigators have found 250 [[illegal immigrants]] working at Wal-Mart stores. These individuals were employed by custodial services [[subcontractors]] used by Wal-Mart. Many of the janitors worked seven days a week without overtime pay or injury compensation. To settle criminal charges relating to these incidents, Wal-Mart paid $11 million in March 2005 without admitting wrongdoing or liability. Several of the custodial services firms that employed the illegal immigrants pled guilty to criminal charges.”

A Wal Mart employee added a clause which read: “There were no charges brought against Wal-Mart or any of its associates.”

Old entry (regarding Ann Coulter): “Although often rumoured to be a lesbian, she has dated….”

New entry: “She has dated….”

So basically, Wal Mart wants you to know that although they don’t pay their employees shit, they still pay more than minimum wage! They’d also like you to know that although 70% of the products they sell are nothing but cheap plastic crap they import from sweatshops in China, they also buy cheap shit from 68,000 U.S. suppliers. They’d also like to share with you that although they are supported by right-wing, urban sprawl loving zealots, that they still employee illegal immigrants, and then pay $11 million to cover that up. Oh and, they love Ann Coulter too!

More so called progress in Iraq! The death toll following yesterday’s truck bombing in the northern part of Iraq now stands at at least 500.

The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a “trademark al Qaeda event” designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The attacks, targeting Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority, were attempts to “break the will” of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation — the “surge” — is failing, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon said.

The bombings highlight the kind of sectarian tensions the troop surge was designed to stop.

Major General Mixon went on to say “this is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will — almost genocide when you consider the fact the target they attacked and the fact that these Yazidis, out in a very remote part of Nineveh province, where there is very little security and really no security required to this point.”

Get our troops out from the midst of the Iraqi civil war NOW!

So Wikipedia has implemented some sort of spy machine sort of like the one the government (or more specifically, the NSA) uses to spy on Americans. Except this time, it’s catching some pretty stupid employees at Fox News, the DCCC, the CIA, and even the Vatican in some pretty hilarious acts of vandalism!

The new Wikipedia scanner thing has revealed what we pretty much always suspected: The world’s political, religious and media leaders are about seven years old, on average. By matching anonymous edits to Wikipedia entries back to the office computers where they originated, the scanner is able to match up particular changes to particular organizations. For example:

Somebody at the CIA repeatedly added “Wahhhh!” to the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The CIA also made some helpful edits to, uhm, Oprah Winfrey’s profile.

At the Vatican, they fucked with the entry about the Catholic Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, removing “links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged that Adams’s finger prints and hand prints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.”

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computers added color commentary to the Rush Limbaugh profile, describing him as an idiot, racist and bigot, while noting this about his listeners: “Most of them are legally retarded.”

Diebold employees removed references to Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell being a loyal stooge of the Bush Administration.

People at Fox News fucked with Al Franken’s profile.

Fox News staffers also “de-loofahed Bill O’ Reilly, posted false information about the ratings of Fox News shows, accused Keith Olbermann of making light of Peter Jennings’ death and deleted rating info for MSNBC programs.”

Somebody at the NYT added the very clever insult “jerk” to Bush Junior’s entry, while others are editing the Wall Street Journal’s entry for some reason.

A computer at the New York Times was also used to call Tom DeLay a “grand dragon,” which is pretty good but not quite as good as Robert Byrd’s actual title, “Exalted Cyclops.”

[h/t Wonkette]

UPDATE: More sexy Wikipedia edits! Via Ana Marie Cox:

Condoleezza Rice trained to become a “concert penis“? That’s Gutfeld territory, people. (Maybe they meant Mr. Penis…)

Not only is Mitt Romney too popular to participate in the YouTube debates, and a dog hater, and a Republican from Massachusetts who wants to be President only slightly more than he wants to do business with Iran, oh and don’t forget a Mormon, but he’s also really pissed off that we’ve got questions for him!

Asked about abortion rights last week, Mitt Romney grew exasperated and said: “I’m pro-life; it would be great if we could just leave it at that.”

Oh hey there, that’s kinda what happens when you change your position every even numbered year, you ass goblin.

But as his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination progresses, Romney is revealing more complex thoughts on the subject for which he has already been labeled a flip-flopper. It shows even his current position defies easy labels or rote town-hall meeting answers.

Before audiences in early voting Iowa and New Hampshire, where Romney leads in the polls, the former Massachusetts governor insisted he wants the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow the states to determine their own abortion policies. He said it’s preferable to the “one-size-fits-all” federal approach embedded in the court’s 1973 landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

Let’s be honest, though. Mitt Romney doesn’t even want to leave it up to the states! He has said in the past that he supports a “Human Life Amendment” for the Constitution that would ban abortion nationwide. Then again, that quote was from more than 24 hours ago so who knows where he stands at this very moment!

Mitt Romney, who is too popular to participate in the debates, is the only hold out at this point. From the Washington Post:

This just in: The Republican CNN/YouTube debate, in limbo for the past few weeks, is on again.

But Mitt Romney, who won Saturday’s Iowa straw poll and has criticized the debate format, has yet to commit to the Nov. 28 event.

Romney, the lone GOP holdout, has posted more videos on his YouTube channel (283 as of Sunday afternoon) than any other presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat. But he has resisted the debate, in which videotaped questions are submitted through YouTube. In an interview with Manchester Union Leader, Romney said, “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

Tommy Thompson drops out of the 2008 presidential race after finishing sixth out of eleven in an Iowa straw poll.

“I have no regrets about running,” he said in a statement released Sunday evening by his campaign.

“I felt my record as Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of Health and Human Services gave me the experience I needed to serve as president, but I respect the decision of the voters. I am leaving the campaign trail today, but I will not leave the challenges of improving health care and welfare in America.”

I have very much enjoyed my years in public service and I am comforted by the fact that I think I made a difference for people during that time,” Thompson said in the campaign announcement. “I hope to continue working to serve others over the next few years.”

Bill Richardson looked like a deer caught in headlights during the HRC/LOGO debates last night that focused on issues important to gay Americans, saying that he believed homosexuality was a choice, not something you are born with. Both Lowell and Vivian have detailed write-ups on the debate. The fact that Bill Richardson thinks homosexuality is a choice is one issue (although I would challenge “straight” Americans to ask themselves whether they could just become “gay” whenever they wanted), the fact that he LIES to try and cover up his mistake is another.

Via AmericaBlog:

UPDATE: Governor Richardson called me to discuss his comments that homosexuality is a choice. I was writing as fast as I could to get quotes close to verbatim. You can draw your own conclusions about them.

He says that was confused by the question, saying that it was tricky and it threw him off that it was asked in the context of biology and science. He said “I knew when I was walking out of the parking lot that I had said something in error. My staff alerted me that I needed to set the record straight.”

Oh hey there Bill, you’re a liar, so please stfu. Let’s leave the “oh I misunderstood the question” bullshit to the Republicans, or more specifically, Tommy Thompson, shall we?

Via Politico:

As the Democratic presidential hopefuls gather in Los Angeles for a precedent-setting gay-sponsored and -themed debate, new data show that in the key Electoral College states the endorsement of gay rights groups hurts a candidate much more than it helps.

Quinnipiac University polls of voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania — the big three Electoral College swing states — found voters by large margins more likely to see the endorsement of a gay rights group as a reason to vote against, rather than for, a candidate.

Polls have shown that an increasing number of Americans support equal civil rights for gay Americans, so you know, consider the source (Quinnipiac University).

The Human Rights Campaign is sponsoring a debate between the Democratic candidates tonight from Los Angeles. Vivian Paige has much more info on the event.

The U.S. Senate passed the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007,” by a vote of 83-14 today. The bill is a key ethics reform measure which now goes to George Bush for approval. No surprise though that all 14 “no votes” came from Republicans!!!! Who were they? Bennett (R-UT), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Cornyn (R-TX), Craig (R-ID), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Graham (R-SC), Inhofe (R-OK), Kyl (R-AZ), Lott (R-MS), and McCain (R-AZ).

So Presidential hopeful John McCain doesn’t think Congress is in desperate need of ethics reform? Interesting. Let’s review the key provisions of the measure via Politico:

Requires disclosure on the Internet of lobbyist fundraising for lawmakers, including the amount of direct campaign contributions and bundled contributions and who raised them, as well as which lobbyists hosted fundraising events and how much was raised. Lawmakers must disclose the names of those lobbyists who have raised $15,000 or more for them within a six-month period by “bundling” donations from a pool of contributors.

Bars members of Congress from attending parties sponsored by lobbyists at national party conventions.

Requires lobbyists to report their lobbying activities every three months in an electronic format available on the Internet. The results will be posted immediately on the Internet.

Bans all gifts from lobbyists or their clients to lawmakers and their staffs.

Bans nearly all extended travel by members of Congress sponsored by nongovernmental entities. It does so by (a) barring any organization that employs a lobbyist from sponsoring trips for members longer than one day, (b) requiring pre-approval of all trips by the relevant congressional ethics committee, (c) requiring disclosure of all trips on the Internet and (d) barring lobbyists from going along on any of these trips. Senators, as well as candidates for the Senate and for the White House, are required to pay full charter rates for trips on private planes. House members and House candidates are barred from accepting trips on private planes.

Requires disclosure of the names of the sponsor and recipient of congressional
earmarks “if technically feasible” to be posted on the Internet 48 hours before final approval of appropriations and tax bills. The relevant committee chairman, the majority leader or someone designated by the majority leader must certify that earmarks have been disclosed. Senators must certify the earmarks would not directly benefit them financially.

Permits any senator to remove an earmark by raising a point-of-order challenge on an earmark slipped into a conference report.

Extends the “cooling-off” period for senators before they are eligible to join a lobbying firm from the current one year to two years. Former House members would have to wait one year. Both House and Senate members are required to disclose publicly any job negotiations they engage in while serving in Congress. Lawmakers are forbidden from attempting to influence hiring decisions among lobbying firms.

Bans secret “holds” on pending legislation.

So what exactly is John McCain and the rest of these Republican wackjobs so afraid of? Being honest?

Oh hey there! It’s me, Bill Kristol. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to continue to tell lies and pick my nose.