William Shatner's Hard-Hitting Interview With The DC Sniper

DC Sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, Tells William Shatner Other Shooters Involved in Plot - ABC News

Okay, leaving aside the fact that this is a very disturbing revelation...am I the only one who finds it completely surreal that the guy who gets the story is William Freaking SHATNER?

Oh, sure, I can see spilling your guts to Leonard Nimoy, becuase he's got that whole neck-pinching mind-melding thing going on, but....Captain Kirk? TJ Hooker? Denny Crane?

I mean,   WTF?

The Nicest Man In The World

Meet the Australian Who's Saved 160 People from Suicide

Don Ritchie lives across the street from the most famous suicide spot in Australia: A cliff known as "The Gap." Most people would move, but Ritchie's stayed for almost 50 years—saving an estimated 160 people from suicide.

So what's his big secret? Ritchie wakes up every morning and looks out the window for "anyone standing alone too close to the precipice." If he sees someone who looks like they might be contemplating a jump, he walks over and... strikes up a conversation.

He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they'd like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.

Every time I'm about to give up on the human race, someone like this comes along.

Just When You Think They Can't Go Any Lower

A writer for the conservative magazine American Spectator claims Shirley Sherrod was lying when she says her father was "lynched." Why? Because Sherrod's father was beaten to death by white cops, not hanged.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Lessons Learned? I Wouldn't Bet the Farm On It

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It's been, to say the least, an interesting couple of weeks in American race relations. Things kicked off when the NAACP voted, at its annual convention, on a resolution that "condemns the bigoted elements within the tea party and asks for them to be repudiated." Note that the statement doesn't call all TPers racist. And as we know, it's not unusual in American politics for one group to ask another to "repudiate" its more fringe elements - so long as those fringe elements are on the so-called "left."

On one occasion, for instance, the late Tim Russert called on Barack Obama to repudiate, of all people, Harry Belafonte, for referring to President George W. Bush as a "terrorist," as if the rantings of an aging calypso star were somehow the responsibility of every black politician.

But, boy howdy, ask the TPers to distance themselves from the people at their rallies who carry signs showing the president as a witch doctor, complete with bone in nose, and just watch their old gray heads explode.

The immediate reaction was to go into their standard attack mode - as always, a variation on the old schoolyard riposte, "I know you are, but what am I?" It was the NAACP, the tea partiers asserted, who were the real racists.

Then the leader of a group called the Tea Party Express, a guy named Mark Williams, published a mock letter from the NAACP to Abraham Lincoln. "We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing," Williams wrote. "Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house."

Nope, no racism there.

Within a few days, Williams was, as requested, repudiated. He and the Tea Party Express were tossed out of the the Tea Party Federation. The NAACP issued a press release commending the federation. A new day of tolerance and understanding dawned in America.

Ha ha! Just kidding.

Enter Andrew Breitbart, the man who gave the world the infamous ACORN "pimp" tapes, in which members of the community organizing group were supposedly caught on tape advising a fake pimp and his prostitute how to set up in business and avoid taxes. The tapes were later discovered by the California attorney general's office to have been "heavily edited." They cut out the fact that, among other things, one ACORN worker had called the cops and that the supposed "pimp" (shown in the intro in full Superfly regalia) had actually been dressed in a suit and tie and claimed he was a law student.

After that, Breitbart was discredited and never again believed or taken seriously by anyone of any significance.

Hee hee! Got you again!

Breitbart claimed to have found a tape of a U.S. Department of Agriculture functionary named Shirley Sherrod telling an NAACP group that, in a former job, she hadn't given a white farmer who came to her for help "the full force of what she could do." She'd taken him to a white lawyer ("one of his own kind") and, as the clip ends, left him there.

The NAACP, apparently unaware of what a dishonest propagandist Breitbart is, condemned Sherrod. She lost her job with the USDA. Then the rest of the tape came out. Once again, things were not as Breitbart had presented them. Imagine that.

Sherrod found out that the lawyer she'd referred the farmer to hadn't done much. In fact, the poor guy was about to be foreclosed on. At that time, she went on to say, she realized that "it's really about those who have versus those who don't ... and they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic."

She got to work, she helped save the man's farm, and she and hisfamily remain friends to this day. He and his wife even went on CNN to try to clear Sherrod's name. Instead of a story of racism, it was a story of overcoming it. The NAACP and the White House apologized and USDA head Tom Vilsack offered Sherrod her job back. She's not sure she wants it, and who can blame her?

In the end, everyone learned a valuable lesson. From then on,everyone listened to what other people were actually saying, instead of filtering it through their own prejudices and trying to pick out little out-of-context nuggets to pelt their perceived enemies with.

Ho ho! That's a real knee-slapper, that one is.

Another Loyal American

TPMDC:

Tennessee Congressman and gubenatorial candidate Zack Wamp talks secession if the next two votes don't go the Republicans' way:

"I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government," said Wamp, who has also promised to refuse to implement the[health care reform] law at the state level if he is elected, in an interview with the Hotline.

Wamp also praised Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) -- who has also floated the idea of secession -- for leading the fight against the health care bill. "Patriots like Rick Perry have talked about these issues because the federal government is putting us in an untenable position at the state level," said Wamp.

Jesus Christ, all I did was question the wisdom of the Iraq War and people like Wamp called me a traitor. They're talking about starting another Civil War, and no one on the right bats an eyelash.

John Boehner's Family Is Suffering In This Economy, Too. He Thinks. Maybe.

WaPo:

"I've got real empathy for those who are unemployed," the Ohio Republican said. "As most of you know, I've got 11 brothers and sisters. I know that three of my brothers lost their jobs. I'm not sure whether they've found jobs, yet, so I've got a lot of empathy for those caught in this economic downturn."

Yeah, real empathetic there, John.

Do you at least know how many houses you own?

This has been your daily message from the non-elitist, in-touch-with-the-people party of family values.

SHARKTOPUS!

Like "Snakes on a Plane", the title says it all. But watch the trailer anyway.



H/T to Jonathan Hayes.

Does Good Writing Matter?

Today on Murderati, I ask the question: In a world where TWILIGHT and THE DAVINCI CODE become best-sellers, does good writing even matter? I'd love to hear your thoughts....

It's Not the America I Grew Up In Either. So What?

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Recently, House Minority Leader John Boehner gave an interview to The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in which he - surprise! - criticized Congressional Democrats and the President.

It was a wide-ranging interview covering subjects like the financial reform bill, which Boehner compared to "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." (I'm sure people adversely affected by the financial meltdown will be glad to know that the crisis was only an "ant" as far as the Republican leadership is concerned.)

As usual, Boehner trotted out one of the catchphrases of the American right: a professed yearning for, as he put it, "the America he grew up in," which he claims is being "snuffed out" by those awful Democrats.

Well, according to Brother John's Wikipedia page, he was born in 1949. So the "America he grew up in" saw the Red Scares, the polio epidemics, the Korean War, McCarthyism, the Berlin Wall and the hydrogen bomb. It also was the era in which the Vietnam War began, although no one really paid much attention at the time. Oh, and let's not forget the overarching and ever-present dread of a nuclear war that would wipe out civilization (fallout shelters, anyone?)

It should also be noted that America wasn't exactly congenial if you were black, brown, gay or disabled, and was pretty doggone restrictive if you were female. If you were an abused child, your plight was more likely than not to be ignored or hushed up.

I joined up with America in 1962. The America I grew up in saw the aforementioned Vietnam War in full bloody flower, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X, race riots, anti-war riots, the 1968 Chicago "police riot,"
hippies, Yippies, an exploding drug culture, Nixon, Watergate, Charles Manson, an OPEC embargo which led to a gas crisis, an economic crisis, a hostage crisis, "malaise," a major city going broke, Chrysler going broke (and having to be bailed out), polyester leisure suits, disco, and a limited selection of weak, lousy beer that we only drank because we didn't know that there was anything better.

Oh, and there was still that fear that we were going to start swapping nukes with the Russians and wipe out all life on the planet.

Consider this, though: The America Brother John and I grew up in also gave us the vaccine that eradicated polio, the GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, the Interstate highway system, Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, the Ford Mustang, moon landings, communications satellites, weather satellites, the transistor, the microchip, the MRI ... the list of advancements, societal and scientific, goes on and on.

And now? There are still environmental dangers like the Gulf oil spill, but on average, the country's air and water are measurably cleaner than they used to be. We are able, if we have the will, to give everyone in the country instant access to more information than our ancestors ever dreamed of.

We still have our differences with the Russians, but we don't live in fear that we're going to blow each other off the face of the Earth. We still fear attack, but it's not a world-ending one. Things are not perfect, but they're certainly better, for children, women, minorities, gays and the disabled. And the beer selection is excellent.

The America I grew up in is like the one John Boehner grew up in, the one my children grew up in, and the one that every American child born while you read this column is going to grow up in. It's a place of fear, violence, chaos and injustice. It's a place of hope, kindness, creativity and progress. It's always, as Dickens put it, the best of times and the worst of times.

What America is always doing, though, is moving forward. That progress may be slow, or it moves in fits and starts. That can be frustrating. But there's no going back, Mr. Boehner. The America we grew up in is gone, and it's not coming back. A new one is being made every day on its foundations, just like every day since the country was founded. You can slow that down, but you can't stop it.

You Know Who Else Talked a Lot About Nazis? HITLER!!!!!

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I’m old enough to remember a time long, long ago when it was absolutely the worst thing you could do to compare the president of the United States to Adolf Hitler. And by “long, long ago,” I mean 2004.

That’s the year that the liberal website Moveon.org sponsored a contest for homemade political campaign ads. One of the contest entries featured quotes from George Dubbya Bush to the effect that God had toldhim to strike the country’s enemies and that he was “taking steps to protect the homeland.”

These were superimposed over stock footage of Hitler speaking to cheering, swastika-waving crowds. It was crude, it was heavy-handed, it was over the top and unfair. It also was taken down off the website, and it didn’t make the cut for the first round of the competition.

Another ad said, “What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003.” The final two frames of that proposed ad included Hitler with his hand raised and then a shot of Bush with his hand up taking the oath of office. That one got pulled, too.

But that didn’t stop Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie from calling the ads “the worst and most vile form of political hate speech” and demanding that the Democratic candidates, none of whom had anything to do with the ads, “repudiate this pollution of our political process” by denouncing them.

It looks like the Republicans are still ultra-super-sensitive, in a “Princess and the Pea” kinda way, about being in any way even ­vaguely associated with Hitler or the Nazis.

When Vice President Joe Biden recently sent out a fundraising

­message saying there was going to be a “GOP blitzkrieg” of dirty ­campaign tactics, Republican ­lawmakers went verruckt (crazy). Despite the fact that “blitzkrieg” and its shortened form “blitz” have long since passed into common usage as an expression for any fast, overwhelming attack, the GOP claimed they were being compared to the invaders of Poland.

“Invoking the Nazis’ crimes against humanity in a political debate is simply inappropriate,” a spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner said. But apparently it’s only “inappropriate” or “vile” if you’re a Democrat. As you know, the only principle the GOP has left is IOKIYAR (It’s OK If You’re a Republican), and comparing their political rivals to Nazis is, it seems, A-OK with them:

* Posters and placards of President Obama dressed as Hitler abound at tea party rallies.

* National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg wrote a notorious book entitled “Liberal Fascism.”

* Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, writing about the $20 billion dollar relief fund paid by BP for the Gulf oil spill, directly compared the fund to laws passed by Germany’s Reichstag that gave Hitler “dictatorial powers.” (A Republican congressman read the column out loud on the floor of the house. )

* On May 16 of this year, Republican elder statesman Newt Gingrich went on Fox News and asserted that “the secular socialist machine” (his buzzword for the currently elected government) “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union ever did.”

Backed into a corner by host Chris Wallace, Gingrich said that he wasn’t really calling the administration Nazis, he was just saying they were as big a threat as the Nazis. You know, sort of like saying, “I’m not saying your sister’s a prostitute, I’m just saying she sleeps with a lot of guys for money.”

The biggest proponent of associating President Obama and ill-defined “liberals” as Nazis, however, is Glenn Beck. Pretty much any spokesman for the administration or its policies can expect at some point to be compared by Beck to Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels. He’s responded to critics of Fox News by invoking a famous poem about the Holocaust and directly comparing Fox to the Jews. (“When they’re done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, ‘first they came for the Jews, and I wasn’t Jewish.”)

And the list goes on, with not a peep from the Republican leadership.

In the responses to this column, both in e-mail and in the online ­comments section, I tend to get some negative feedback for using terms like “wingnut.” Maybe I should become a Republican again. Then I can call people anything, up to and including Nazis, and no one will say a mumblin’ word.

NV Senate Candidate: You Can't Be Mean to Me! I'm a Girl!

The Washington Monthly:

Nevada Republican Senate Candidate Sharron Angle:

"...dirty tricks Harry [Reid] is up to his dirty tricks one more time and he's just trying to hit the girl," Angle said on the Alan Stock Show.

"You know, isolate that Sharron Angle, marginalize her and then demonize her," she said in a separate appearance on the Heidi Harris Show. "And he has been doing that to me and what we need to do is say, 'you know Harry, it's not going to do you any good to hit the girl.'"

It's the same bullshit we've seen in regards to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Any time they're criticized, one of their supporters is bound to come out with some faux-feminist claptrap like "Sexist! You're just afraid of a successful and powerful conservative woman!"

UPDATE: As someone reminded me, the die hard Hillary Clintonites (aka PUMAs) did the same thing. And they were idiots, too.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim to be a feminist and then try to use your gender as a shield from criticism of your actual record.

And isn't calling a woman a "girl" supposed to be a no-no? Guess IOKIYAR!

Tea Party Candidate: Stop Telling People What I Said!

Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle is well-known for some nutty and some ominous statements, such as this one:

“You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that second amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact, Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.”“I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, ‘my goodness what can we do to turn this country around?’ I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”

She later retracted the statement--sort of. But she hasn't backed off on her suggestion that her followers might engage in armed insurrection if they don't get their way.

But now, it seems that Angle is threatening to sue the Reid campaign--for reposting what she said on her own Website.

After the former state Rep won Nevada's Republican Senate primary, Angle's campaign took down most of its website, and later replaced it with a relaunched version that in some ways toned down her right-wing rhetoric. But Internet pages are rarely ever forgotten -- the Reid
campaign saved the old version, and put up a website called "The Real Sharron Angle," reproducing the old content.

Then, they say, the Angle campaign sent them a cease-and-desist letter, claiming misuse of copyrighted materials in the reposting of the old website -- which was, of course, being posted for the purposes of ridiculing Angle. The Reid campaign has in fact taken down the site, rerouting visitors to another website that goes after Angle's positions, "Sharron's Underground Bunker."

This is the thing about the TPers: the only way they think they can win is by concealing how nutty most of them really are. And they're willing to go to court to hide what they themselves have said, and to hide their nuttier beliefs until its too late. Fortunately, that's harder and harder to do in the age of the Internet.

In Iceland, the Clowns Are Running the Circus

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America has long had a tradition of comedians running for public office, with varying degrees of seriousness and success.

Smother Brothers regular Pat Paulsen was known for his perennial presidential campaigns. (One slogan: "I've Upped My Standards. Now, Up Yours.") Columnist Dave Barry was also a frequent contender. (Slogan: "It's Time We Demanded Less.")

Comedy Central pundit Stephen Colbert actually went so far as to try to file for both the Republican and Democratic primaries in South Carolina in 2008. (He dropped out of the Republican race because of the $35,000 filing fee; the Democrats refused to let him on the ballot.)

Your Humble Columnist, let's remember, has also thrown his hat in the ring from time to time. ("Saturday Night Live" alumnus Al Franken doesn't make this list, by the way, because he retired from comedy before running a serious campaign to become the junior senator from Minnesota.)

But what would happen if a comedian ran a joke campaign for office - and won? To my knowledge, it hasn't happened in America yet, although I do admit to the possibility that Michelle Bachmann's career is some sort of extended comedy routine, or possibly a piece of performance art. Britain's Official Monster Raving Loony Party has had some minor electoral success, most notably in municipal council elections in the U.K.

But by far the most successful intentionally comedic politician has been Iceland's Jon Gnarr, whose so-called "Best Party" pulled down 43.7 percent of the vote in recent elections in the country's largest city, Reykjavik, thus making Gnarr the mayor and putting the other Best Party candidates (described by The New York Times as "a who's who of Iceland's punk rock scene") in charge of governing a third of the island's population.

It's been a tough couple of years for Iceland. First the economy crashed and burned in a particularly spectacular way, then the government was wracked by one corruption and cronyism scandal after another, and finally, just to top it all off, the world now blames the country for screwing up transatlantic air travel because that volcano whose name no one outside of Iceland can pronounce keeps erupting.

So maybe Gnarr, who once played in a punk band called "Runny Nose" and who's known for pranks like calling the White House, the CIA and the FBI (yes, ours) to see if any of them had found his lost wallet was just what the country needed to cheer itself up.

"We want a city that's cuddly, clean and cool, with topnotch stuff as a general rule," Gnarr and his -fellow Bestians sang in their campaign ad, a "We Are the World"-style music video which also promised "a polar bear for the Reykjavik Zoo" and "A drug-free Parliament by 2020." (some blog readers may need to click through the get the video in full screen):

Now that they've won their plurality, the Best Party faces the dilemma of the car-chasing dog who actually succeeds: Now that they've caught the thing, what do they do with it? First came the task of building a coalition government, although Gnarr solemnly insisted he wouldn't work with anyone who hadn't seen all five seasons of "The Wire."

And, he reassured the people, "No one has to be afraid of the Best Party, because it is the best party. If it wasn't, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that." Hard to argue with that logic.

Gnarr and his cronies may have started as a spoof, but they seem to be buckling down and getting serious about doing the work of governing. "I love this city very much so I really want to do a good job," Gnarr told Britain's Financial Times last month. The Best Party's plans include harnessing Iceland's plentiful geothermal energy to turn the city into a "hub for electric cars." And I hear they really are working on getting that polar bear.

In Iceland's most populous city, the clowns really are running the circus. It's almost enough to make Your Humble Columnist think of running for office again. After all, as I often say, "How hard can it be?" Hmmmm ... that might make a good campaign slogan. Anyone want to form an exploratory committee? And can you pick up some beer on the way over?

It Won't Make Any Difference to the Zombie Liars

Slashdot Science Story | Climategate's Final Days

"Climategate may be on its way out. An investigatory committee at Pennsylvania State University has formally cleared climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of any scientific misconduct. Mann was central in the so-called Climategate scandal, where illegally leaked emails were purported to indicate examples of scientists trying to cover up any lack of global warming in their data. This finding by the committee (PDF) is another in a series of independent investigations that have all concluded that no misconduct has occurred."

Not that this will stop the climate change deniers from bringing up "Climategate" as "proof" that global climate change is a "fraud." Just like the alleged ACORN "pimp videos" are still being trotted out as "evidence" that the organization is up to some ill-defined, but nefarious plotting at the behest of George Soros, or Nancy Pelosi, or someone, even though not one but two investigations found that the videos had been "heavily edited" and that the organization, while having some flaws in its management, had done nothing wrong.

We live in the age of the Zombie Lie, where misinformation never dies.