Liberal media, my ass (ver. 3.0)

Just when I thought it was safe to read the paper, I'm met with this headline on the front page (PDF) of today's Palm Beach Post:

Early votes' rise stirs unease
The state's eightfold increase since 2004 does little to boost turnout and may create errors, experts say.

What experts are quoted in the article, you ask? Let's take a look:

Although local elections supervisors have promoted absentee and early voting as a way to lure time-starved voters to the polls, some elections experts say the trend does little to improve overall turnout and injects more possibility of error into a state that has had plenty of voting blunders.

"You're maintaining three distinct (voting) systems, each with its own quirks," said John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and author of Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils.

"Some administrators like it because they think it evens out their flow," Fortier said, "but it robs people of information when they vote a month before the election."

Ah, okay, so it's a problem because ... hey, hold on a second! Did you see that? The "expert" is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Fortier's colleagues include such notables wankers as John Bolton, Lynne Cheney, David Frum, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Yoo. In short, the AEI is a wingnut's wet dream.

The fact is that early voting allows greater turnout, despite the right-wing's desperate spin to the contrary. Of course, more people voting generally means more Democratic voting, so it's understandable that the AEI would want to depress voter turnout. But why is the Post quoting a wingnut "expert" on the front page? Look, Post, for every so-called "expert" from the right you want to quote, I'll throw three reality-based experts at you -- how does that sound? And when your wingnut expert skews the front-page headline this badly, that's a 15-yard penalty for unjournalistlike behavior.

I believe this may actually rise to the level of a letter to the editor ... by me. Again I say, as incredulously as ever: liberal media, my ass.

Illegal War II: Electric Boogaloo

Oh, shit.

Yesterday, Raw Story pointed out that former CIA operative Bob Baer told Fox News that the Bush administration will likely attack Iran in the coming months. “Iran policy is on close hold, but the feeling is we will hit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps sometime next six months or so,” said Baer.

Today, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton appeared on Fox News and responded. He said that while he couldn’t confirm Baer’s statements, he “absolutely” hoped they were true:

HEMMER: One final step here, too, that I want to take with you. You told one of our producers earlier today that you don’t know if it’s true — and you’ve made that clear in our interview here, that you don’t know what the odds are or are not against that — but you hope it’s true. Why do you hope it’s true?

BOLTON: Absolutely. I hope Iran understands that we are very serious, that we are determined they are not going to get a nuclear weapon capability, and unless they change the strategic decision they’ve been pursuing for close to 20 years, that that’s something they better factor into their calculations.

The Bush crime syndicate is oh, so seriously considering (if not planning) further destabilization of the Middle East, at the incalculable cost of more American lives and countless Iranian lives just as they've done in Iraq, spending untold billions of dollars (that won't be spent to help our own country's problems) and for what? More oil? Greater hegemony? National security?

Of course, it's ultimately none of the above (well, maybe oil, just a little). All the fighting and bloodshed and flag-waving and shit is for nothing more than fulfilling their own dick-swinging, hyper-masculine "my army can beat up your army" masturbatory fantasies. That's it.

So, the next question is, just how far are the Democrats in Congress willing to go to stop this ... or are they going to be enablers for the Bushies' war addiction yet again?

Atlas Juggs hearts John Bolton

The Mustache Rider rides again ... or does she?



Kudos to NTodd of Dohiyi Mir (the non-existent blog) and to a certain aquatic feline from Dependable Renegade. This perfectly captures the rank hypocrisy and obsequious prattling of Ms. Atlas.

Although the lighting and sound could have been a little better ...

Today's Daily Schadenfreude: "Pammy Atlas"

As soon as I read this morning of the resignation (at the end of his term) of unstable fascist wingnut U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, I knew there was only one person who truly deserved today's Daily Schadenfreude award: the well-endowed (in breasts if not brains) author of Atlas Shrugs, affectionately - okay, not really - known as "Pammy Atlas" or "Pammy Juggs."

I don't know her real name, and frankly, I don't give a shit. Point is, she's been fawning over Bolton forever, and to see her pain now, well, it makes me smile:

Speechless ................. hardly surprising. There is no way a man of John Bolton's character would be the willing mouthpiece for the terrible foreign policy direction the administration has taken.

There is no way he would lie and put a happy face on something so very bad. What a stunning loss.

A very bad day for America. The Bush Doctrine RIP.

We're screwed.

I don't know what made Pammy so excited about John Bolton, and again, I don't care.

Maybe it's the mustache.

Maybe she thought he was Michael Bolton.

In any event, I hope that as she dries her tears and blames the "terrible foreign policy direction" (that she supported, of course, before her hero exited stage right - pun intended) of the Bush maladministration, she might take some small measure of comfort in the honor bestowed on her (and her breasts) today.

Congratulations, Pammy - today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!