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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Tweety: The G.O.P. “Demographic Death Spiral”.

Ed: Will the hateful house GOP ever pass an immigration bill?

Maddow: What happened with the Bolivian President’s flight?

Barack Obama’s alter ego on wire taps, Sallie Mae, 800 numbers, and the Kardashians.

Ann Telnaes: George W. Bush insists he’s protected civil liberties.

Gay Breakfast Cereal!!!!

Obama: Independence Day weekly address.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Mental Floss: 50 facts about 50 states.

Young Turks: Getting money out of politics.

Pink Tennis Shoes:

White House: Fireworks from the White House.

Mark Fiore: Prop-8 personal injury.

Ann Telnaes: Trading freedom for security.

Barely Political: NSA Wiretapping revealed!

Nutjobber Sen. Ted Cruz sings ‘Amazing Grace’ to the tune of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ (via Crooks and Liars).

Young Turks: Lady Gaga vs Allen West in ‘defiling’ the National Anthem.

Maddow: Virginia’s “Governor Ultrasound” Bob McDonnel is asked to resign (via Crooks and Liars).

Sam Seder: Random Rush.

White House: West Wing Week.

SlateTV: Rush Limbaugh goes after FAUX News.

This Week in the G.O.P. War on Women™:

Steve Kornacki: Inside the collapse of the IRS ‘scandal’ (a.k.a. The G.O.P. witch hunt).

SlateTV: Chick-fil-A President just couldn’t keep quiet on DOMA decision.

Marijuana retail rules released by Washington State Liquor Control Board.

Thom: The Koch brother’s new plan to destroy democracy and the world.

Young Turks: Conservatives exploding over Bert & Ernie???

Red State Update:Podcast 33.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Comments

  1. 1

    Even if what Governor McDonnell has done warrants resignation, he only has a couple months left on his term. In Virginia, they only get one.

  2. 2

    Yesterday afternoon, BART trains were rolling again for the first time since the early morning hours on Monday, as the unions and BART agreed to a 30 day extension of the existing contract.
    http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/.....649711.php
    The BART GM is the former head of the Seattle Department of Transportation, from 2001-2009.

  3. 3

    Is it just me or is it weird that there is a Second Baptist High School in Houston? This is where Ted Cruz went.

    Houston also has the First Baptist Academy.

    What they lack in naming imagination, they make up for in “we be white”. There are a few pictures of people of color on the websites, but mostly they are blindingly white. Houston is about 44% Hispanic, 23% African American, 26% White and 6% Asian. I saw more pictures of Asian students than Black in the pictures available on their web sites.

    When ever I see a picture of Ted Cruz, I am reminded of Lou Craddock, the character played by Jason Robards in “A Boy and His Dog”.

  4. 4

    @ 3

    Whenever I see a picture of Ted Cruz, I am reminded of Joe McCarthy. I wonder how much booze that guy consumes?

  5. 5

    So multi-media…how ’bout books.

    I was driving home last night and Michael Weiner was driveling on about his new novel and asking listeners to call in with their favorite passages. (Uh, hello Narcism…I have a caller on the supreme ego line)

    But after a long rant about wanting everyone to hear the depths of his artistry he read some. And it was terrible. From a language standpoint it was awful. The themes, well subtlety and storytelling aren’t something he does. Here’s an excerpt:

    “They probably spent sixty seconds on the Navy SEALs,” he muttered, “but they’ll spend a full five minutes on the vacation plans of royalty.”
    Every day he wondered, was his profession dead now? How about now? News channels were afraid to report anything that their audience might whine about, never mind topics that could scare them. Changing people’s minds was serious, vital business, and nobody had the guts to do it anymore. Jack had received regular death threats when he was hosting his cable news talk show Truth Tellers, but they had never discouraged him. Instead, it had taken all the resources of a giant to swat Jack down, back when he posed one simple, rhetorical question to the panel on his show:
    “How would you feel if Muslim extremists got hold of a nuclear weapon?”
    Within hours Media Wire, the leftist radical watchdog group funded by reclusive, Austrian-born billionaire Lawrence Soren, had organized a smear campaign. They had been looking for a hook on which to hang Jack like a slaughtered bull. He was labeled an Islamophobe and the liberals gleefully piled on with the kind of manic indignation only aging hippies and ignorant youth could muster. By the time Soren was done, Truth Tellers had not only lost half of its sponsors but Jack was out of a job. And he was barred from the United Kingdom, due to his “radical and provocative statements” that were deemed “a threat to public security.”
    Eddie trotted into the office, the chew toy in his mouth. He lay down and sank his teeth into it.

    Hmmm…is this supposed to be autobiographcial? Maybe? Is Savage writing about himself as the spy-hero-savior of the world?

    And again, the writing. It isn’t even as good as E.L. James.

    Artistry indeed.

  7. 7

    So has this phony IRS scandal finally died?

    That phony “culture of intimidation” from the White House as fantasized by the Senate turtleman? Was that a joke or what?

    Heh. What were those letters from the turtleman to pro sports outfits about?

  8. 8

    Salon reports that nearly 60% of citizens killed by police in the U.S. since 2000 were mentally ill.

    http://www.salon.com/2012/12/1.....ion_finds/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Some years ago, a policy decision was made in our country to abandon the mentally ill to the streets. We closed our mental institutions, defunded community mental health care, and threw them under the bus. Now the police use them for target practice.

  9. 9

    Do you get a feeling that police have become more violent? That “serve and protect” has become “shoot first, ask questions later”? There seems to be a culture of violence growing in our police departments. Why are street cops so confrontational and violent?

  10. 10

    @7 Republicans are trying to discourage IRS audits of their cronies because they know what the auditors will find.

  11. 11

    Do you get a feeling that police have become more violent?

    My late father-in-law, a real Archie Bunker type in so many ways, HATED COPS..

    You’d casually bring up you were stopped by a cop and then he’d go ballistic.. Whoa old timer I was speeding ok.. It was my fault.

    I just thought it was kind of odd until I found out only recently he’d witnessed a lot of police abuse in his life and was on the receiving end of it once or twice.

    He was a guy raised in a rock-ribbed Republican family who became a hard core union man.. This bagger insanity in the Krackpot Kongress and in so many states would really depress him.

  12. 12

    Cops can do whatever the fuck they want, whenever they want. There are no effective laws that prevent cops from beating a person half to death if the cop decides thats what he wants to do.

    Cops are just another street gang. Just because they have a license from the State doesn’t change the fact that they will always protect their own, even under the most egregious of circumstances, and are almost entirely exempt from the laws they are legally entitled to enforce against everyone else. The only time the law is enforced against them is when the offense is made public. Otherwise, as long as the paperwork is clean, they can do whatever the fuck they want.

  13. 13

    From 11,

    The police are acting more and more like some sort of military force every day. I’d like to see this trend towards police militarization stopped. If the cops wanted to be the military, they should join the Army.

  14. 14

    @ 13

    It used to be that former military were discouraged from entering law enforcement as a profession. It used to be considered counter to the objective. Now, a lot of cops are former miitary. I heard shit from some of the Afghanistan vets at school about the national guard/Army Reservists who were cops in civilian life, being the super yahoos who loved to kick doors in the middle of the night and kill everyone in the house, just because they could. There are a LOT of small massacres that have happened there. Whole families wiped out by American troops based on rumors of a family members personal associations with suspected terrorists. All those guys are back out on the streets, with a license to beat and kill anyone they want to at any time, under the color of authority. It’s only going to get worse, and it is only a matter of time before someone really has a really bad reaction to a cop going apeshit on someone for refusing to sign a ticket or put down a camera.

  15. 15

    From 14,

    Yes, I fear you’re entirely correct with your comments.

  17. 17

    From 16,

    Looks like the tail came off the airplane as the craft was approaching the runway. That’s consistent with the tail pieces lying several hundred yards away from the main body of the wreckage.

    Could be trouble for Boeing!

  18. 18

    @ 17

    Thats a rather hairy airport, I’d be willing to bet the pilot came in too low at too high an attitude and bopped the tail off the rip-rap at the end of the runway there. I’ve flown into SFO dozens of times, including that very same runway, and never been feeling rather disconcerted at the approach and landing.

  19. 19

    From 18,

    Some curious observations:

    1. Wings are more or less intact. Shouldn’t there have been more damage to the wings?

    2. No fire in the wings – that’s where the fuel is! Fire in the upper areas and forward areas of the fuselage.

    3. Fire apparently started after the crash – no surrounding evidence if fire in the grassy areas near the plane.

    4. Engines aren’t so near to the fuselage. Hmmmmm….And very little fire damage to them, too.

    This one is going to be an interesting accident to investigate for the NTSB.

  20. 20

    This was an aircraft at the end of an almost 11 hour flight. Any fuel on board would probably be minimal. If all he did was clip the tail, it would have just pancaked it down onto the runway. It couldn’t have been going more than 200 knots at that point. Bear in mind that the wings on a 777 are the strongest wings ever put on a passenger aircraft. I remember the tests back in the late 90s, they were flexing them up to 35 feet off nominal before they broke.

    Naw, this was pilot error. “Controlled flight into terrain.”

    Oops. His union ain’t gonna be happy about that.

  21. 21

    @17

    Pictures show debris starting right where the blacktop meets the riprap in the water, so it looks like the tail was below the level of the runway. You can also see the trail of debris moving to the right side of the runway, rather than straight down the runway.

  22. 22

    @ 21

    Yeah, now folks are saying he may have actually touched the water before he hit the rip-rap. Betcha the pilot was tired and maybe a little overconfident. I’m wondering what sort of crosswind he was getting there. I’ve landed there at some pretty seriously fucked up angles.

  23. 23

    I was listening to KCBS out of San Francisco. On the tune-in app, and they have said, 2 confirmed fatalities.

  24. 24

    Ok, what I’ve found out is that the wind was 16 knots WNW which puts it at just about a perfect tailwind for that runway. The pilot and co-pilot walked away, as did most of the other passengers.

    There was no emergency or incident report prior to the aircraft striking the seawall there. Wham.

    Like I said before, that is a hellava disconcerting approach. You come in low over the water and don’t even see the runway until about a second before the wheels touch down.

    Ooh, and look what I found. Interesting, 24′ 7″ over nominal, at 154% of design load. Damn.

  25. 25

    Yep…this looks like a not-so-interesting case of pilot error, perhaps confounded by a down-draft (or even wind sheer) that caused a higher-than-expected sink rate. (I doubt wind sheer had anything to do with it, as it is usually caused by convective weather, and there are no signs of that in the photos.)

    A possibility is that the flaps were not deployed, causing a higher sink rate for a given speed AND a more nose-high attitude.

    Either way, the plane ended up way below the glide slope. The pilot likely tried to recover by pulling the nose up before the engines were fully spooled up. The nose-high attitude causing a tail strike at, or just after, the sea wall. That would have caused “porpoising,” slamming the nose gear down, which caused the tail to slam down even harder.

    It is pretty remarkable there were so few deaths.

  27. 27

    The WSJ finally gets one right.

    Cargo Bikes: The New Station Wagon
    Cargo bikes are winning over casual and avid cyclists alike with one supersize feature: the ability to haul it all—from the groceries to the family that eats them
    http://online.wsj.com/article/.....%3Fdsk%3Dy

    Also, if the WSJ is pimping it, this shit is mainstream.

  28. 28

    when he began carrying cargo bikes—a catchall term covering a variety of bike styles built for functional hauling—five years ago, he thought they would be for just that, cargo. “But parents, mostly moms, were the ones who were buying them,” he said. “It quickly became a family bike.”

    Mr. Doebele attributes the interest to Portland’s “mini baby boom” and the fact that many young families are choosing to stay in cities like Portland instead of moving to the suburbs—
    http://online.wsj.com/article/.....%3Fdsk%3Dy

    Yep! And the Republicans are so very fucked.

    There’s nothing at all wrong with classical conservatism other than the fact that there’s only three classical conservatives left in America and they have to stay in hiding so that the teahadists don’t truss them up and burn them at the stake.

    But, the Republicans and the various shades of contemporary conservatism are very flawed, harmful, and dangerous, and we really need not to just vote them out but to run them out.

  30. 30

    @28 This exchange occurred in a financial website forum discussion about raising the minimum wage:

    Poster #1: “When the US economy entered the present Structural Greater Depression event in Nov/2006, the federal minimum wage was $5.15/hr. Despite the fragile situation, Congress raised it 41% ($7.25) over the next 32 months thereby making millions of then employed and potential hires thoroughly uneconomic … mostly affecting unskilled blacks and Hispanics. Unintended consequences then put the next tier of wage earners ($6-$9) at risk as they demanded the usual premium compensation over the minimum wage earners. In this light and with Structural GDP still at -3% today, Obama’s SOTU demand of another 24% increase (to $9) borders on insanity … structural & real gdp charts: http://bit.ly/pfbeJm”

    Poster #2: “Well said, Freddy. This is common sense in economics that is proven time and time again, yet most people do not get it.”

    Poster #3: “I can’t agree with ideologies that would ‘solve’ economic problems by expecting people to work for absurdly low wages. Many minimum-wage workers are adults trying to support themselves, for example, nursing home workers who provide resident care usually are locked into the minimum wage set by state or federal law, and a low minimum wage makes the working poor more dependent on government subsistence programs. A wage rate below subsistence level is little more than a subsidy of business owners’ labor costs at the expense of taxpayers. Costs of rent, food, transportation, etc., for low-wage workers, do not stop going up simply because Congress refuses to raise the minimum wage. It’s reasonable to expect businesses to pay workers what it costs them to provide their labor. One could argue that a job that’s uneconomic at a subsistence wage rate isn’t worth doing.”

    Poster #1: “Less than 5% of your labour force is paid minimum wage. Most folks at this level are society’s most dysfunctional or entry level participants. For the most part they are in basic training mode wrt ethics, cleanliness, dress, etc. They are high maintenance. Anyone worth their salt moves up the ladder. Those finding themselves trapped at this level must look inward … You have millions of blacks and latinos (and lotsa whites) who could get a start at life (or reset) if there was no minimum wage. In short if employers could pay them only what they were truly worth to the firm.”

    Poster #3: Well, I do get it, and I can’t agree with you guys that your arguments are either common sense or workable in the real world. Refer to my discussion below. And, what you’re saying appears (to me, at least) lacking compassion or consideration for our country’s working poor. It seems to me any theory of economics that fails to go beyond cold-hearted mathematical calculation and take basic human values into account is profoundly flawed; after all, the absence of such values is what produced the monstrosities of communism and slavery that we condemn. I would also mention that various studies have debunked the claim that raising the minimum wage eliminates jobs; scholarly analysis of this issue generally has shown that it doesn’t, so that claim is largely a myth.”

    Poster #1: “It is not surprising to find someone from the left coast truly believes business owners should put ‘compassion’ ahead of profits. There are as many white papers suggesting minimum wage has a damaging effect than those that support the socialist view in Seattle. The academic discussion started with Milton Friedman: http://bit.ly/15kWfbv Someone on minimum wage for a lengthy period is there for a reason. Those who aren’t hired even at minimum wage are screened out for a reason: losers … Greater than 95% of Americans are paid by merit. The rest rely on business owners to subsidize their training and/or lousy habits.”

    (Note: The ellipses in Poster #1’s comments are in the original, and are the poster’s writing style; they are not deletions. I haven’t deleted anything from these postings.)

  31. 31

    My point @30 is that what now passes for “conservative” has sunk so low these swine try to justify their mean-spirited positions by making defamatory attacks against the poor and working poor.

    For example, if you’re a young single mother on welfare, you must be on welfare because you’re a lazy bum who doesn’t want to work, fucks like a donkey, and pops out a dozen babies with different fathers. The possibility that she’s a single parent because her husband/boyfriend was beating her up, and maybe abusing the kids too, and she had to flee for her life and her kids’ lives never occurs to these blockheads.

    It would be interesting to know what percentage of single moms on welfare got there because of abuse by their male partners. You know, the same ones who refuse to pay child support after she stopped spreading her legs for him when he began coming home drunk every Saturday night.

    These people aren’t real conservatives, of course. You’re right, there are very few of those left, and when William Buckley died that took out 99% of the remaining conservative intelligentsia. The people who call themselves “conservatives” today are the same people we used to call “crackers” and “hicks” and “rednecks” a few years ago.

  34. 34

    @30 sounds like heterosexuals have some real problems. Sounds like make heteros are like Neanderthals.

  36. 36

    @34 And gays aren’t? All you humans are basically the same. Get rid of humans, let rabbits take over, and — voila! — no more plane crashes, no more oil train fires, no more exploding fertilizer plants, no more domestic or child abuse. All human problems can be solved by eliminating humans. The planet will be better off, too, when you stupid humans are gone. I say “when,” not if, because at the rate your species is going it’s just a matter of time.

  39. 39

    SF Hotels Gouge Stranded Passengers

    “Hotels around San Francisco International Airport have been flooded with passengers whose flights were delayed or canceled because of Saturday’s crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214.

    “Most hotels were sold out, and the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit found that some appeared to be charging a lot more because of the crash.

    “Some rooms were advertised online for up to $1,200 Saturday night — rooms that normally go for $100 to $200. …

    bThe Best Western in South San Francisco is listed at $140 to $150 a night over the next month. But after the crash, it was advertised as $999. … The Unit asked the manager about the increase. He said, ‘Sometimes the price goes up,’ and he was not interested in commenting further. …

    “Other hotels are also listing high prices online. When the Unit called about the rates, they said people who need a room bad enough will pay it.”

    http://www.nbcbayarea.com/inve.....12671.html

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: This is called profiteering and it’s as rancid as it gets. The people who run these hotels may pocket some temporary profits by overcharging stranded passengers, but the ill will and bad publicity will end up costing the hotel chains millions of dollars.

  40. 40

    This is big money. If 10,000 stranded passengers are overcharged $300 each, that’s $3 million of windfall profits for the hotels. I think they should be sued by California’s attorney general under state consumer protection laws. I would also like to see Congress make this type of financial exploitation of air disasters by private businesses a federal crime. And the city of San Francisco should seriously consider regulating airport hotel room rates.

  41. 41

    @37 that isn’t hate speech, merely a interpretation summarizing what Roger wrote in @31. You are to sensitive. I meant to put in the word “some” heterosexuals but forgot. Would that have been better? You are not going to tell me that some heterosexuals could be considered Neanderthals, are you? Besides Roger clarified it in @36.

  42. 42

    Apropos the discussion above about the militarization of the police, here is an article in Salon on this very topic.

    “Why did you shoot me?” The New Warrior Cop is Out of Control

  44. 44

    Okay, so, even though only 2 people were killed in yesterday’s air disaster — both were 16-year-old girls from China — it looks like this will be one of the most expensive accidents in aviation history in terms of the insurance claims. According to today’s news updates, many of the survivors suffered spinal fractures and traumatic head injuries. Apparently they got bounced around pretty hard during the “landing.” Factoring in the aircraft loss, the insurance losses could exceed a billion dollars.

  45. 45

    Given a jumbo jet with 300+ people aboard, nearly all surviving, and many suffering severe and disabling injuries, it’s hard to see how this won’t be the most expensive accident in aviation history.

  46. 46

    44)I am surprised that isn’t factored into the decision to build bigger planes. Airbus says that the current production model of the A380 is the first, it could be stretched.

  47. 47

    I wonder if airliners are insured at full replacement value anymore. I remember seeing a documentary on American Airlines 191, and it was mentioned that minus the lawsuit settlement, the airline could have made money as the plane was insured at FRV, and inflation had doubled the cost of the DC-10.

  48. 48

    @46 The A380 can carry 800+ passengers. Imagine if one of those crashes! But if everyone is killed, the airline’s insurers can settle most of the claims in the $250,000 – $1 million range. If you’re an insurance company, you want everyone to die, so there will be no medical bills to pay. It’s always much cheaper to pay a wrongful death settlement than to be responsible for severe injuries and lifelong disability.

  49. 49

    @47 I don’t know. I would assume they’re insured for depreciated value. Most airlines don’t own the planes, there’s usually a leasing intermediary, so the insurance payment for aircraft loss will go to the leasing company. For example, airplane leasing is one of General Electric’s big businesses, although they’re not the biggest player in that business. International Lease Finance Corp. of Los Angeles is. GE owns more planes, but ILFC owns more dollar value of planes.

  50. 50

    Breaking News — Mrs. Kerry Critically Ill

    John Kerry’s wife fell ill and was airlifted to a Boston hospital today, where she is in critical condition. No details available yet; media are reporting it as an unspecified “medical episode.”

  51. 51

    49)A good chance that is the same with the tank train that derailed, the railroads own a very small percentage of the fleet.

  52. 52

    @ 49, 51

    Yeppers, its looking more and more like the Pilot totally fucked the dog.

    Oops, so much for your pension, asshole. I’ve read somewhere that Asian pilots and Copilots have the most “issues” in the cockpit because their social hierarchy pretty much forbids the questioning or contradiction of a superior by a subordinate. Crashes have happened because the co-pilot kept his mouth shut and didn’t question the Pilots decisions even when the guy was about to stall the aircraft.

  54. 54

    Bill Maher says:

    If it is enacted, the Senate immigration bill is “going to make the Border Patrol bigger than the FBI — you could put one agent every 250 feet.”

    True..

    Klownservatives want a “secure” border.. The southern border of course.. Northern border is fair-skinned in nature. Baggers in barcaloungers fear the brown-skinned people with funny accents.. Iraq has been done and over with a long time. So crank up the stupid on the southern border.

  56. 56

    @ 55

    Thats not an “accent”, thats lack of education coupled with a sub-80 IQ. The average TeaBagger is the sort of person that sat in the back of the class and threw spitballs and jeered at the teacher when receiving instruction on the Constitution and our nation’s history. The folks that ran a straight 1.7 GPA all the way through school and all they needed to pass was a possible future in sports.

    My old boss, an ardent TeaBagger/Redneck/Lying cheating bastard, openly bragged about all he did in high school was fix his teacher’s cars. His pop owned a rather prominent auto repair shop in Ballard and he’d been raised in the industry from the time he was a little kid. He swapped auto repairs in the auto shop for grades. He bragged about getting straight-A’s in high school, and never had to go to a class.

  57. 57

    @54 – you can be big government republicans when your base is too stupid to do 3rd grade math. Republicans are Puppets.

  58. 58

    Er, Pilot Error, Maybe?

    Asiana Airlines says the pilot of ill-fated Flight 214 was in training and had only 43 hours of experience flying the 777 type. That means he got 20% of his type experience after taking off from Seoul.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....d%3D340892

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: That’s a big honkin’ airplane, and I can’t land it either. Every time I’ve tried on computer simulation software, I’ve either hit the control tower or gone into the trees. It sucks having paws instead of fingers and thumbs when you’re trying to manipulate a trackball. http://www.captainsim.com/products/x777/

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