THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release October 29, 2010 Statement of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Last night, intelligence and law enforcement agencies discovered potential suspicious packages on two planes in transit to the United States. Based on close cooperation among U.S. government agencies and with our foreign allies and partners, authorities were able to identify and examine two suspicious packages, one in East Midlands, United Kingdom and one in Dubai. Both of these packages originated from Yemen. As a result of security precautions triggered by this threat, the additional measures were […]
LADY BUGGING: Philly Dude Tells (Almost) All About His One Night Stand With Christine O’Donnell
GAWKER: Things got physical on the couch pretty quickly. It wasn’t long before we’d moved from the living room to my bed. I won’t get into the nitty gritty details of what happened between the sheets that evening. But I will say that it wasn’t half as exciting as I’d been hoping it would be. Christine was a decent kisser, but as soon as soon as her clothes came off and she was naked in my bed, Christine informed me that she was a virgin. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. She didn’t explain at the time that she […]
TEA FARTY: Joe Miller Drops To Last Place; O’Donnell Is Melting…Melting; Olberman Lowers The Boom
POLITICO: After several rough weeks on the campaign trail, a new poll out of Alaska shows Republican Joe Miller has fallen to last place in the three-way Senate race. A Hays Research Group poll released Thursday showed write-in candidates, presumably meaning Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in the lead with 34 percent, Democrat Scott McAdams with 29 percent and Miller with 23 percent. Murkowski is waging a write-in bid since losing the Republican primary to Miller. Miller’s plunge in the new poll comes on the heels of several misfires in the local and national press. Most recently, Miller’s employment records from […]
ARRESTED: For Drinking Coffee While Democrat
HUFFINGTON POST: A Democrat was arrested by local police at a public meet-and-greet event for Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday, with three men pulling him out of the building and pushing him to the ground for allegedly causing a disturbance in the coffee shop. Jon Taylor, the man at the center of the controversy, said he was “manhandled” by police from Louisa, Va. He and three other Democrats — including his wife, who held a sign promoting Cantor’s Democratic opponent Rick Waugh — went to the event with the intent to ask Cantor questions since he has refused to […]
The Corporate Takeover Of The Supreme Court
THINK PROGRESS: In an unfortunate interview with Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr, Justice Stephen Breyer rejected the notion that the Roberts Court is unusually pro-corporate because business interest “have always done pretty well.” Yet a new empirical study by the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center demonstrates that Breyer is mistaken. The study compares the right-wing Chamber of Commerce’s win-rate since Justice Alito joined the Court in January of 2006 to their win-rate twenty-five years ago, and the results are clear and undeniable. […] Significantly, this ideological shift in favor of corporations appears to be driven entirely by the Court’s conservative members. While a […]
REALITY CHECK: 8 Commonly Held Voter Fallacies
[via TRUTHOUT] 1) President Obama tripled the deficit. Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion. 2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy. Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been. 3) President Obama bailed out the banks. Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry […]
PLUTOCRACY: The Useful Idiocy Of The Tea Party
MOTHER JONES: It’s unfathomable why a conservative, but still mainstream, business magazine would publish something so reckless, false, and bigoted? For a clue to the answer, consider a data point from the Congressional Budget Office (PDF). If you are in the bottom 80 percent of American households, you’ve gained essentially no economic ground in the past three decades. Those of you lucky enough to be in the top 20 percent ($100,000+) might be heartened by the trajectory of the red line on the chart at right—but sorry: The vast majority of those gains have actually gone to the top 1 […]
SAY IT AIN’T MO: Velvet Underground Drummer Explains Why She Joined The Tea Party
RIVERFRONT TIMES: In April 2009, WALB-TV aired a story about a Tea Party rally in nearby Tifton, Georgia. About two-and-a-half minutes into the feature, one “Maureen Tucker, Tea Party Supporter” was quoted as saying, “I’m furious about the way we’re being led toward socialism. I’m furious about the incredible waste of money, when things that we really need and are important get dropped, because there’s no money left.” Eighteen months later, the news story somehow ended up posted on YouTube, and the blogosphere started buzzing. Could this actually be Moe Tucker [pictured, bottom left], former drummer for the Velvet Underground, […]
Wife Of Clarence Thomas Asks Anita Hill To Apologize
NPR: In a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twist, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas earlier this month left a voicemail message for Anita Hill, asking Hill to apologize for her 1991 testimony accusing then Supreme Court nominee Thomas of sexual harassment. Virginia Thomas has confirmed through a spokesman that on Saturday, Oct. 9, she left a voicemail message at Hill’s Brandeis University office. News organizations, including <em>The New York Times</em> and ABC, have reported that they heard the recording, which said: “Good Morning, Anita Hill. Its Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask […]
KHYBER PAST: Two Of David Coleman Headley’s Three Wives Tried To Warn Officials Of Mumbai Attack
PRO PUBLICA: In three interviews with federal agents, Headley’s wife said that he was an active militant in the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba, had trained extensively in its Pakistani camps, and had shopped for night vision goggles and other equipment, according to officials and sources close to the case. The wife, whom ProPublica is not identifying to protect her safety, also told agents that Headley had bragged of working as a paid U.S. informant while he trained with the terrorists in Pakistan, according to a person close to the case. Federal officials say the FBI “looked into” the tip, but they […]
OP-ED: The NRA Took My First Amendment Away
BY REP. TIM BRIGGS Harrisburg is not for the weak of heart. During my first term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, I have seen things that have made me think twice about running for re-election. If you are a wide-eyed idealist like me who believes in unicorns and reforming the Pennsylvania legislature, you need to be able to turn frustration and disbelief into passion for action. For the better part of the last two years I have been able to take many things in stride: bitter partisanship, entrenched colleagues, a legislative process that moves slower than a catcher […]
GAMBLOR: Like Candy From Smoking Babies
PAUL DAVIES: I’m not a fan of casinos, regardless of the design. It is a bad, insidious business that preys on vulnerable people who can least afford to waste their money. But I was curious to check out the first casino in the poorest, big city in the country. While the outside didn’t grab me, the inside was even more depressing. Row after row of slot machines were dotted with people slouched in seats aimlessly pushing buttons. Most gamblers appeared to be over 50. Several had canes. A heavyset woman wheeled around an oxygen tank with tubes going to her […]
POLI SIGH: The Wilmington Witch Trials
MEDIAITE: Hot on the heels of her “I am not a witch” campaign ad, and just in time for Halloween, Herobuilders.com is offering Christine O’Donnell witch dolls for the collectible price of $39.95. The site also offers an “Executive” version of the doll, in a smart business suit, for $29.95. If you live in a cave, the doll is a spoof of O’Donnell’s now-infamous claim to have “dabbled in witchcraft” as a teenager. The dolls just went on sale today, so when we contacted Herobuilders owner Emil Vicale, he was shocked to learn that his creation had already been […]