Somewhere, an Israeli hawk is spanking the monkey to this: U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Wednesday a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a “grave threat” to the world. Obama told reporters during a visit to Israel that if elected, he would take “no options off the table” in dealing with the Iran issue and said tougher [...]

On Hardball a few minutes ago, heard roughly the following from Chris Matthews re: Obama’s trip to Iraq: “The republicans have to be worried looking at this.  Americans are finally being greeted as liberators in Iraq, but it’s Obama!  Y’know, thinking back to other countries we’ve saved there hasn’t been much appreciation there either.  There were [...]

-Trivia question no one seems to ask: Who invented pole dancing?  “Exotic dancing” itself has been around forever, with variations from burlesque to belly-dancing, but it doesn’t seem clear who first thought “maybe if we put a pole on stage…”. -I’ve always felt the stereotype of old drivers going too slow was an odd one.  Technically, [...]

With the panic over rising oil prices, the hijinks just don’t stop: House Republicans on Thursday killed a Democratic plan designed to spur drilling on already available federal lands in Alaska, the West and the western Gulf of Mexico. Republicans scoffed that the Drill Act — imposing a tougher “use it or lose it” rule on leases [...]

It’s too bad I don’t believe in Hell, because I’d like to believe the nonsensical sado-masochistic motherfucker who invented the necktie was burning there. Don’t ask.

In an American Voices bit on The Onion, in response to Bush lifting the executive ban on offshore oil drilling: “Is there a ban on printing more money? If so he should lift that too and fix the economy while he’s at it.” -Don O’Connor, painter Rather than laugh about how obviously stupid that remark would be [...]

I got a question: After all the evidence to the contrary, why do statist-progressives STILL have this crackpot idea in their heads that the Republican Party is run by libertarians?  Seriously, “billionaire libertarian cranks”? Uh, yeah, hardcore libertarian billionaires run the GOP.  That’s why their agenda consists of those central libertarian goals of endless war, gay-bashing, [...]

A couple snapshots from the active meltdown.  All emphasis mine: -Another bank failed… U.S. banking regulators swooped in to seize mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc on Friday after withdrawals by panicked depositors led to the third-largest banking failure in U.S. history. California-based IndyMac, which specialized in a type of mortgage that often required minimal documents from borrowers, became [...]

By now the following should be common knowledge:  I don’t vote for philosphical reasons, and just because something shows up in the ad bar does not mean I support it.  That aside, I’ve noticed something odd in the Google advertizing.  Once in awhile it’ll spit out a presidential campaign ad, but (at least on my [...]

Things you don’t expect to see: Richard Simmons tongue-kissing a woman Nuns smoking weed in public A Harold Meyerson column that doesn’t deserve ridicule Waitaminute…what? According to a report by Keith Bradsher in the New York Times last month, such multinational companies as Canon (the printer and copier maker) and Hanesbrands (the North Carolina-based underwear empire) are expanding or building [...]

It’s only stealing when poor people do it. The above link goes to a story about an oil well in Nigeria, and how the people that actually live on the land where that oil is at got ganked by the oil companies, receiving virtually nothing for the privilege of using their land but sickness and scraps.  [...]

Sucky development in the legal battle between GooTube and Viacom re: the latter’s ridiculous IP-infringement claims: A court order has been issued demanding that Google hand over the information for every single YouTube user, including what videos they watched & their IP address, and every video that has been removed, regardless of reason.  Not only [...]

This is so bang-your-head-against-the-wall Stupid with a capital S that it doesn’t deserve pithyness or particular wit in response: The price of retail gasoline could fall by half, to around $2 a gallon, within 30 days of passage of a law to limit speculation in energy-futures markets, four energy analysts told Congress on Monday. Testifying to [...]

Found this amusing, re: Iraq & the political status of its oil.  All emphasis mine: Bush administration officials told Hunt Oil last summer that they did not object to its efforts to reach an oil deal with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, even while the State Department was publicly expressing concern that such contracts [...]

Shorter Daniel Koffler: “Scalia is full of shit in a way even deeper & more dangerous than any of us previously realized.” Read the whole thing. Trust me.

Out of curiosity checked out what Kevin Drum had to say about the Heller ruling. He doesn’t really elaborate much on his own view, except to doubt that the threat of confiscation swayed anyone outside of an “extremist fringe” (whatever that means: chances are, your fringe ain’t my fringe…). As is usual with [...]

While reading Radley Balko’s guest column on the Chicago Tribune website (about why Chicago came in dead last on a “freedom in big US cities” index done for Reason Magazine), I noticed in a sidebar of links to other articles on the site the following headline: “Motorcyclist dies in LSD crash“. My first thought prior to [...]

So…wanna travel outside of the US this summer, but frustrated about higher prices & crappier service with air travel? Google Maps has the solution for you! Check out turn #15 in the screencap above. Took that in case they realized the quirk & changed it.  Props to Sullivan.

As you know by now, the Supreme Court struck down D.C.’s ridiculous handgun ban & clarified what shouldn’t have needed clarification in the first place. Op-ed columnists are laying fingers to keys all over the place, doin’ their job. Spotted a pair on the Washington Post website that say a lot in their [...]

36.  44. Those numbers are, respectively, the percentage of US citizens that when polled said they condoned torture in 2006 & this year. Leaving aside the obvious moral implications of this, especially with regard to American Exceptionalism & our overall foreign policy, here’s the question: why has this number gone up?