Litte Thom Songs: CDBaby Five-Day Sale

CDBaby is doing a 5-day "all for the artists" promo. (From July 30 until August 3.) You buy songs—and all the money goes to the musicians. They take no cut at all. Nice.

Oh look - there's one of those musicians right here! One I like to call, "A crappy singer with some darn good songs."

Go ahead! Buy a song! Buy two!

My favorites: "You Can Use My Bathtub" and "Sigh"

Thank you.

Sarah Palin Tweets Photo of Herself at Selma, Alabama, Lunch Counter

SELMA - One-time U.S. vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin has injected herself into the American segregation controversy by posting a photo of herself beside a lunch counter in Selma, Alabama, on the social media site Twitter.

The photo shows Palin standing at the counter and smiling, her husband Todd at her side. Text accompanying the photo reads, "Stopped by a lunch counter restaurant in Selma to support a great business." 

African-Americans are legally disallowed from sitting at lunch counters in Selma, the central-Alabama city being just one of many in the American South where such "Jim Crow" laws relegate African-Americans to sub-human status.

A later Palin tweet told her millions of followers she was "planning to go *hang* around with the gang in, what's that place called...Lynchburg? /winkwink/."

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Republican WSJ Writer James Taranto Deletes Deeply Offensive Aurora Tweet: I've Got It

James Taranto is a longtime Republican columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

In the wake of the horrible tragedy that was the shooting in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater that saw seventy people shot, twelve of them killed, we learned that at least three young men died protecting and ultimately saving the lives of their girlfriends.

That inspired Taranto to say this on his Twitter account:

It's hard to absorb the shock of a statement like that. It's like someone making a vicious, violent joke about your mother or sister. It's hard to comprehend just how depraved a mind you have to possess—particularly, how deeply you have to hate women—to even conceive thinking such a thing, much less following through with writing it down for who knows how many thousands or millions to see. And this in the still wickedly painful days of horror and loss for those three young women.

After a lot of condemnation, Taranto wrote an article at the Wall Street Journal titled, "Heroes of Aurora; a mea culpa for an errant tweet." In the article he said he meant the tweet to be "thought-provoking." There is no apology in the article.

I've just found out that Taranto has deleted the Tweet. I made a screengrab of it the day he wrote it—that's it above—thinking he might try to run from it. I'm going to let it live here, testimony to the depth of James Taranto's depravity. (Taranto has, it's fair to note, forthrightly admitted to deleting the tweet, and put it's text in the mea culpa article.)

James Taranto is a leading Republican thinker and writer in the U.S. today. I don't know what else to add to that, except that we Americans are in a very sick state right now. And it's very fucking sad.

Low Murder Rate Prompts Police "Shoot to Kill" Order

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett ordered police in the state to immediately begin shooting people to address the growing problem of a complete lack of murder in the state.

"A murder rate this low is un-American," the first-term Republican governor known for his folksy, no-nonsense way of speaking said to a large, rather suspicious-looking crowd in downtown Harrisburg this afternoon. "And we're not about to sit back and let it erode at the very fabric of our society. That's why I've ordered our police forces to start arbitrarily shooting people in the neck, face, and generally around the head, until further notice."

"Don't let what some people say fool you," the governor continued. "They say, 'This isn't a problem, a low murder rate is a good thing'. But we know better. We know better because we've told you it's a problem, again and again and again and again. And Americans like that. And if we have to kill every last person in the state to solve this problem, then we'll do it."

That brought a loud boo from the crowd. They were all shot and killed seconds later.

"We hope especially through this program to see murder rates rise in poorer areas of our state, and on college campuses," Governor Corbett concluded. "That's the way it's supposed to be."

An aide to the governor told reporters the program would be in place at least until at least early November.

Authorities Search For Cause of Death of Gunshot Victims

FBI: "Maybe it's a virus"

WASHINGTON - Forensic investigators and coroners affiliated with the FBI are trying to determine the cause of death of people who die after being shot with guns.

"It's the damndest thing," said FBI forensics specialist Agent Will Phillips. "A really lot of people who get shot with guns, and have bullets from the guns hit their bodies, and go inside their bodies, die. And we just don't know why. We've seen it thousands and thousands and thousands of times—and we just cannot figure it out."

Phillips said that in each case being investigated the victims began to bleed, stopped breathing, their hearts stopped beating, their brains ceased functioning, and they died, "pretty much around the time they get shot. Usually after. Well, always after." But, he said, they cannot determine why the strange symptoms occurred.

He also said that in every case involving gunshot victims who later die of unknown, mysterious causes, heartbroken family members and friends are left behind.

"There are a lot of really sad, really confused, really angry people out there. They've lost children, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, friends—and they want answers. They want to know how they died. And we want to know, too. We can't get those people back, but maybe if we knew how they died we could prevent deaths like this from happening again in the furture. Unfortunately we just don't know how they died. We're thinking maybe it's a virus or something."

Phillips said they would keep searching for the answer, "no matter how long it takes."

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The Right to Bear Vials of Anthrax, No Lids

If only the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had said: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear huge vials of anthrax—with no lids!—shall not be infringed.

We'd be okay now.

Corduroy (the band) Plays "Chowdown"

I'm researching an article about corduroy. Everything and anything corduroy. (Germans call it Manchesterstoff—Manchester cloth—because it was invented (or so it is believed) in Manchester, England.)

I just found this:



It even sounds like cordury! I don't know what that means.

Corduroy.

Limbaugh: Letter 'O' in Alphabet Proof It's a 'Lefty Plot'

"WASHINGTON - Republican talk radio host Rush Limbaugh today called on his legion of followers to boycott the alphabet, telling them the inclusion of the letter "O" in the ancient writing scheme was "proof that this whole thing has been a Leftist conspiracy from the getgo."

“Do you think that it is accidental, that the alphabet has a letter in it that just happens to be the first letter of Barack Obama's last name?" Limbaugh said Thursday. “The alphabet, the number of people who use it is huge, a lot of people are going to use this alphabet. And it’s a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the college crowd,” Limbaugh continued. “And they’re going to see 'O' in the alphabet, and they are going to associate Obama. And the thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep using the alphabet, and the letter 'O', that these people will think back to Obama."

So far, more than five million of Limbaugh's followers have signed on to his "Boycott the Olphabet" campaign.

One caller to the show noted that the word "boycott" has two "Os" in it, and that Limbaugh's own website is still using the alphabet. Limbaugh cut the caller's line before he could go on.

"You know what else," Limbaugh added, "'O' is a vowel, and everyone knows vowels are the gays of the alphabet."

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Mitt Romney is Rush Limbaugh's Hindenburg

You allow a man who has built his entire career on lies and hate to lead your party - this is what you get.

Crash and burn, baby. Crash and burn.

If you're on Twitter - my new hashtag: ‪#MittRomneyIsRushLimbaughsHindenburg‬

Redneck Chia Pet

Rush Limbaugh Defects; Asks For Asylum in U.S.

WASHINGTON - Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio firebrand known all over the world for his violently anti-American broadcasts, has made a shock defection to the U.S., official said.

"We can confirm that Rush Limbaugh has officially requested asylum with the United States," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today. "We are taking that request seriously."

Exactly where Limbaugh would be defecting from is still unclear: The radio host, who has several times defended his incendiary rhetoric as "just comedy," has been broadcasting from secret locations for decades. CIA sources say they believe that for the last several years he has been somewhere in Syria. The recent heavy fighting there, along with a spate of similar defections by Syrian officials, appear to support that belief.

News of such a high-level enemy defection comes as a major blow to anti-American forces.

"Rush Limbaugh has inspired hatred of America and everything America stands for in virtually every sector of the world for a very long time now," said General Tom Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "If he switches sides, well, it's really bad for the bad guys, and it's really good for us. Wish he would have done it a long time ago."

Asked whether the U.S. military had ever considered taking Limbaugh out with its drone program, the general answered, "Oh, hell yes."

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FDA To Require Graphic Warning Labels On Republicans

WASHINGTON - Dr. Martha Hamburg, the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, announced today that the agency will begin requiring graphic warning labels on Republicans.

"With these warnings, every person who even considers voting for a Republican is going to know exactly what risk they're taking," Hamburg told reporters. She called voting for Republicans the "number one cause of preventable death" in America, claiming more than 500,000 lives a year.

Republican candidates for public office—from small city council seats all the way to Congress and even the White House—will now be required to carry one vivid color image and one of these warnings about the consequences of voting for them: "Republicans cause cancer"; "Republicans can harm your children"; "Republicans hate you"; "Republicans want to crush you like locusts and suck your blood"; "Voting Republican during pregnancy can harm your baby"; "Republicans are out of their f*cking minds"; "Voting Republican causes disease in people who don't vote Republican"; "Jesus hates Republicans"; and "Quitting Republicans now greatly reduces serious risks to your health."

The warnings, which must be in place by September 2012, will cover the upper portion of both front and back of a Republican. At least 50% of the Republican will have to be covered.

Then I Met Picasso...

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Little Australia Figures America Out

The reason so many good, kind, smart, and honest Americans support the Republican Party—a political party that for some years now has been neither good, kind, smart, nor honest—is because Democrats, to these good people, are something whose very existence is defined by being Worse Than Republicans. This is set in stone.

These unlikely modern supporters of Modern Republicans don't even seem to really care what Republicans do. They are always looking over Republicans' shoulders, they are always looking past Republicans. And they are always finding Democrats there. They do not see or care about what Republicans do—they can't. They can only see around, over, and past Republicans.

Democrats, to them, are shadows cast by Republicans.

There is nothing a Republican could do (Nixon?) that could be worse than what a Democrat has already done, or is doing, or will do. Democrats are Worse Than Republicans. That is what they are. It is the Democratic DNA.

Does Mitt Romney lie with the regularity of an atomic clock? Yes. But Democrats are worse.

Did Mitt Romney seek and make at least part of his enormous fortune by breaking up American companies and casting their American employees to the wind, and further hurt American workers by offshoring their jobs? Yes. But Democrats are worse.

Did Mitt Romney hide millions of dollars in overseas shelters to avoid paying U.S. taxes? Of course he did. But Democrats are worse.

Is Mitt Romney an empty, amoral, sociopath who wants to be president the way a spoiled child wants a shiny trophy? Yeah, maybe. But Democrats are worse.

And round and round the drain we go...

This has been another episode of: Little Australia Figures America Out.

BREAKING: Scott Brown Picks Mitt Romney as Running Mate

BOSTON - Senator Scott Brown has announced he has chosen Mitt Romney as his running mate in his race for Emperor of Massachusetts and North America.

"I am announcing today that the waiting is over," the senator said at a hastily assembled press briefing. "I have chosen Mitt Romney as my running mate in this campaign. He is the perfect person for...hold on."

The senator abruptly halted the briefing at that point to answer his cell phone.

"Sorry folks," he said after just a few moments, "gotta go. It's the King of Asia—needs my advice."

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and currently in the midst of a tough U.S. presidential campaign himself, said he'd think about Brown's offer and get back to us.

Photo credit.

BREAKING: Romney Pick's Guy 5' 10" For VP

"He's the right height," former governor says

WASHINGTON - Presidential candidate Mitt Romney ended the vice presidential pick waiting game today and picked someone around five-feet ten inches tall—according to campaign sources who said they "kind of stood near the guy"—to be his vice presidential running mate.

"I am so happy for the American people," Romney said to a crowd outside his Washington, D.C. headquarters. "This guy, he's just the right height. He's the right height in Michigan, he's the right height in Oklahoma, he's the right height everywhere he goes—and he'll be the right height in Washington. And that's what the American people want."

Romney did not provide the running mate's name.

Some critics of the choice said they'd hoped Romney would pick a woman for VP; a senior Romney aide said, "Well, we really wanted to. But all the woman who were the right height were the wrong width."

More at The Huffington Post.

Photos: Narrabeen Outdoor Market, Northern Beaches, Sydney

We live here, in between those arrows. (The arrows look pretty at night, floating above us in the sky. Pilots hate them, though.)

Today we drove the 4-door just a few kilometers north to Narrabeen. (Narrabeen gets its name from a chicken. The chicken's name was "Narrabeen."):

We went to the Narrabeen Market, held every Friday. I brought a camera. Results:

Pretty sure this dog is part of a cult:

Australia thinks it's Europe, breadwise:

Beautiful hard sausage:

Even more beautiful hard sausage! (Being presented by the French woman who ran the saucisson.)

BREAKING: Romney Campaign Demands Apology After Obama Aide Calls Romney a "Mormon"

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, issued the following statement after Barack Obama's campaign suggested Romney is a member of the Mormon church:

“President Obama’s campaign hit a new low today when one of its senior advisers made a reckless and unsubstantiated charge to reporters about Mitt Romney that was so over the top that it calls into question the integrity of their entire campaign. President Obama ought to apologize for the out-of-control behavior of his staff, which demeans the office he holds. Campaigns are supposed to be hard fought, but statements like those made by Stephanie Cutter belittle the process and the candidate on whose behalf she works.”

On the remark Rhoades is referring to:

Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter suggested that Mitt Romney is a Mormon on a conference call with reporters this morning about a Boston Globe report that shows that Romney is, indeed, a member of the Mormon religion. Cutter, in reply to a reporter's question, had said, "What does Romney being a Mormon have to do with anything?"

We'll have more on this shocking story as news comes in.

More at the Boston Globe.

Romney: NAACP Speech Proves I'm Ready For "That 3 A.M. Phone Call"

HOUSTON - Presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke at the annual meeting of the NAACP in Houston, Texas, this morning, and emerged confident the engagement had boosted his chances for election.

"The American people need to know I'm ready for anything," Romney said in a post-speech press conference. "They need to know I can take that 3 a.m. phone call saying we've been attacked, we've been bombed, that our women are being raped, our children are being drugged, thugs and pimps are hanging out on our street corners and gaming courts, wearing the wrong clothes, talking funny. The American people need to know I'm capable of taking that phone call, and of standing up to these enemies. And that's what I came here to do today."

Mr. Romney then gave reporters a wink, and was whisked away by several heavily-armed bodyguards.

Update: MSNBC.

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Mark Halperin: Getting Shot at in Vietnam is Just Like Having a Gazillion Dollars in the Cayman Islands [updtd]

Brain, meet Clorox:

We are at a potentially critical moment in the presidential race over the Democrats’ attempts to make Romney’s Swiss bank account, Cayman Island investment funds, and secret tax returns into what the Republicans’ Swift Boating effort was for John Kerry in 2004.

That was written, today, by Mark Halperin. Mark Halperin is "the senior political analyst" for Time magazine. Time pays him an actual pile of money to make Americans smarter about the world. This Mark Halperin. And this Mark Halperin.

John Kerry actually got shot at, with bullets, in Vietnam. He was actually where bombs exploded in Vietnam. People, up close and personal, with big, loud, deathmaking weapons tried to kill him in Vietnam. He was actually wounded by shrapnel in Vietnam. Say whatever you like about John Kerry—he actually risked getting shot in the face, he actually risked having his intestines and legs blown off, in Vietnam, for the U.S. of A.

Trying to find some equivalence between the very putrid "Swift Boat" attacks on Kerry's military service—and the critiques and questions about Mitt Romneys's having who knows how many millions of dollars in Cayman Island banks, Swiss banks, and his refusal to release tax returns...

Ladies and gentlemen, we have seen what the end of the world looks like. It looks like Stupid. It looks like this.

Photo credit.

Update: Reminder: Offshore Tax Havens Cost U.S. Government $100 Billion Per Year.

Judge: Army Can Install Nancy Grace On Rooftop For Olympics

LONDON - A High Court judge has ruled that the British army will be allowed to install U.S. talk show host Nancy Grace on the roof of an apartment building to provide security during the London Olympics later this month.

Tenants in the building had argued that the installation endangered their families.

“They talk about safety, but what about us? Putting Nancy Grace up there makes the whole building a target!" resident John Doyle said. "Who knows how many people are after her—terrorists, people who have been on her show, people who have watched her show—I wouldn't be surprised if her own mother wants to see that woman dead."

The court ruled that having the army install Ms. Grace on the building was a necessary risk authorities were allowed to take.

"We live in a very dangerous world, and we have to put our most deadly, our most lethal, our most vicious, our most poisonous feet forward in situations like this," Justice Charles Haddon-Cave said. "And Nancy Grace, well, I think the terrorists will know we mean business, don't you?"

Nancy Grace, which the army hopes to finish installing on the rooftop in the coming days, is capable of shooting down a Boeing 747 or other fixed-wing hijacked aircraft with only the toxic vapor she shoots from her nostrils.

Officials said she should be able to keep a ten-square-mile area of the city safe for the duration of the games.

Higgs Boson Kills Ernest Borgnine, Chumbawamba; Funny-Name Link Suspected

New York City - It's still only days since scientists announced they had likely proven the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, but the particle has already shown it has a temper—and that it doesn't like things with funny names.

"Ernest Borgnine, the poor guy," said Stanford University physicist Peter Pieterschwanzel.

The iconic actor died yesterday at the age of 95.

"He probably didn't know anything about the Higgs—but it knew him—and you've got to admit he has a really funny name: Borgnine Borgnine Borgnine. And now Chumbawamba!"

Chumbawamba, the band known almost exclusively for the "I get knocked down, but I get up again"-song, announced just hours ago it has officially broken up.

Pieterschwanzel thinks the Higgs boson is responsible.

"Whoever decided to call the Higgs boson the 'Higgs boson' really screwed up," he said. "It's just such a silly name. Who wouldn't be angry about that? And then we find it, and in a matter of days we lose Ernest Borgnine and Chumbawumba? There has got to be a connection there."

Pieterschwanzel predicted that in the coming weeks, as the Higgs boson "gets its stride," we'd be seeing people and things with funny names dying off in droves.

"Hey, if I were Englebert Humperdinck's wife, I'd be buying life insurance by the convoy right about now. And Shia LeBeouf—oh my God, that poor schmuck's a goner."

Asked if he had any fear for his own safety, Pieterschwanzel replied, "What do you mean?"

John Updike, Cartoonist

I'm working on an article about notable Harvard Lampoon presidents (George Plimpton, Conan O'Brien), and came across this essay excerpt by John Updike:

A 1950 issue of the soon defunct magazine Flair contained, in its eccentric format, a booklet about the Harvard Lampoon, including photographs of the young, crew-cut editors, the curious mock-Flemish building, and some sample cartoons. Somewhere in the concatenation of aspirations and inadvertences that got me to Harvard, this story played a crucial part. Early in my freshman year, I carried a batch of my cartoons down to the Lampoon building, there where Mount Auburn Street meets Bow at an acute angle, an ornate little brick flatiron fronted by a tower with a sort of cartoon face and, on its hat of roof tiles, a much stolen copper ibis. In due course, some of my drawings were printed in the magazine, and I was accepted for membership. The Lampoon, I was too ignorant an outsider to realize, was a social club, with a strong flavor of Boston Brahminism and alcoholic intake; to me it was a magazine for which I wanted to work. This I was allowed to do, especially as the upperclassmen year by year graduated and the various editorial offices fell to me. Though Harvard did little to attract cartoonists, in fact there were four on the Lampoon in 1950 -- Fred Gwynne, Lew Gifford, Doug Bunce, and Charlie Robinson -- who seemed to me much my betters in skill and sophistication. Fred Gwynne, a multitalented giant who went on to become an actor, best known for Car 54, Where Are You? and The Munsters, drew with a Renaissance chiaroscuro and mastery of anatomy; Bunce had a fine line, and Gifford, who made his career in television animation, a carefree, flowing brush stroke years ahead of its time.

I tried to measure up to their examples, and cartooned abundantly for the Lampoon -- but the budding cartoonist in me, exposed to what I felt were superior talents, suffered a blight; my light verse and supposedly humorous prose felt more viable. By graduation, I had pretty well given up on becoming a cartoonist. It took too many ideas, and one walked in too many footsteps. Writing seemed, in my innocence of it, a relatively untrafficked terrain.

Updike and Gwynne—who most people know only from The Munsters, were both Lampoon presidents in their day.

• The full essay appeared in Best American Essays 1998.

• "John Updikes Harvard," Houghton Library, Harvard University.

"Wisconsin Lawmaker Introduces Law To Classify Single Parenthood As Child Abuse"

Sorry—not satire.

Probably the most important thing to note:

Grothman isn't just some fringe nut-job. He's the assistant majority leader and a staunch ally of Gov. Scott Walker.

TSA To Start Randomly Tasing People

WASHINGTON - U.S. Transportation Security Administration agents will begin randomly tasing people in airport security lines, the agency announced today. The new policy will begin in August.

"Every couple hours, or every couple days," explained TSA chief John Pistole, "an agent will pull out a taser and shoot the first passenger he sees in the neck, or other available area of exposed flesh. The person will then be restrained, taken away, and thoroughly checked out. If everything is in order, that person will be allowed to continued traveling."

According to the TSA website, the tasings will be completely safe—and hygienic—and will be applied at airports across the country.

Asked if there would be any age restrictions on who could be tased, Pistole said, "If a terrorist comes through holding a baby, are we going to ask the terrorist to put the baby down first?"

Pistole said parents should start telling their children that "getting tased is part of the fun of travel," to get them used to the procedure. "Just like they did with taking off their shoes and getting their privates fondled by strangers."  

Photo credit.

Republican School Teachers: "Holy Sh*t! We're F*cking Idiots!"

WASHINGTON - The National Republican Teachers Association (NRTA), the nation's largest organization of confused people, announced today that they will be holding a membership-wide conference to "figure out how in the hell we became so damn stupid."

"We're teachers," said Buffalo, New York, elementary-school teacher Judy Swivla, "we're supposed to be smart. And, well, looks at us—we're Republicans! Republicans hate teachers! We might as well be cows in the Burger King party!"

NRTA president Ed Wilkins, a ninth-grade math teacher in Omaha, Nebraska, said many Republican teachers he'd talked to expressed similar sentiments. "We're social conservatives," he said, "so naturally we're members of the Republican Party. But we're also teachers, and lately we've realized that it's kind like African-Americans being members of the Ku Klux Klan Party because they're into nifty hats. I mean it just doesn't make a lot of sense."

Wilkins said he and other Republican teachers were "sick of being called 'thugs'" by people like Rush Limbaugh. "Rush Limbaugh calls us thugs," he said. "Good Lord. Good, good Lord."

Obama Kills Small Business Owner

Wait for it - you'll hear it soon!

Update - 2 hours or so later: I'm not getting hits from people googling "Obama kills small business owner." Awesome.

Fox's John Stossel: "I Only Pledge Allegiance to Wealthy America"

WASHINGTON - Fox News creepy person John Stossel announced on the morning show "Fox & Friends of Creepy People" that he doesn't pledge allegiance to "the whole America," because "that would be kind of communistic."

"The idea that we should feel allegiance to all of our fellow citizens," Stossel said, "is just some Lefty peace-and-love idea. It's straight out of Marx. Just like we shouldn't socialize our money, or our health care, we shouldn't socialize our allegiance. If, for example, Al Qaeda attacks us again, but this time they wipe out some city where there's nothing but a bunch of people on welfare—am I going to feel the same kind of loss and anger like I felt the day they attacked Wall Street? Hardly. "

"They'd be kinda doing us a favor there," co-host Brian Kilmeade said, to laughs.

"The 'Pledge of Allegiance' needs to be rewritten," Stossel continued. "It should say, 'I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the wealthy people that make it the greatest country in the world, and not all the lazy poor people all over the place who are constantly asking for handouts like unemployment insurance and minimum wage and on and on and on - why don't you just get a good job like rich people do? - with liberty and justice for the hard-working rich people who deserve it."

"Amen," added Kilmeade emphatically.

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Sarah Palin: Countries With Universal, Affordable Health Care "Don't Actually Exist"

WASHINGTON - Failed governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin told fans in a FaceBook announcement today that stories they may have heard about countries with affordable and universal health care programs were lies.

An excerpt from the post, dated 12:24 PM (EDT) this afternoon:

"All those other so-called nation countries with their so-called cheap health care programming for everyone that the Leftstream media keeps harping down our throats about—well, guess what? The DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST. It's totally a made up lie. It actually costs MORE to get sick in every other country in the world than the United States of America. I CHECKED."

Ms. Palin did not elaborate on where she "checked."

The posting received 75 million "likes," and hundreds of thousands of positive responses, including these examples:

"I. KNEW. IT. Libs - so busted."

"I wouldn't be surprised if they made up whole countries. 'Belgium'? SRSLY?"

"Sarah, I was just going to go to Europe to study this myself - you saved me a trip! Thank you so much! (And thank God - I would have had to get passport! And you can only get them at a UN office! Ick!) 

At least one commenter took issue with the posting, writing, "Uh, dumbass, I live in a country that provides universal affordable health care (Australia). I've (unfortunately) had to use that health care to deal with serious health issues. I was very well taken care of - for very little cost. I mean - do you think I'm from another dimension or something?"

That post was deleted by someone associated with Ms. Palin's FaceBook page shortly after it appeared.

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For-Profit Probation Companies Putting the Poor in Jail

No such thing as class warfare:

In Georgia, three dozen for-profit probation companies operate in hundreds of courts, and there have been similar lawsuits. In one, Randy Miller, 39, an Iraq war veteran who had lost his job, was jailed after failing to make child support payments of $860 a month. In another, Hills McGee, with a monthly income of $243 in veterans benefits, was charged with public drunkenness, assessed $270 by a court and put on probation through a private company. The company added a $15 enrollment fee and $39 in monthly fees. That put his total for a year above $700, which Mr. McGee, 53, struggled to meet before being jailed for failing to pay it all.

For-profit probation companies, like for-profit prisons, are as perfect a breeding ground for corruption as could possibly be imagined. (In a democratic society their very existence should be considered a form of corruption. But that's practically communistic thinking...)

Aussie MPs Get ANOTHER Pay Rise

A note from little old me to Australian MPs: You are out of your freaking minds:

Federal MPs have reportedly received a $5550 pay rise, just three months after pocketing a $44,000 salary boost. 

You read that right: Three months ago the Australian government executed sweeping changes in MP pay and benefit packages (some benefits were actually cut), resulting in backbencher pay going up $44, 090 a year, from $140,910 to $185,000.

That was backbenchers: Opposition Leader (Tony Abbott presently) got a $81,564 a year boost, upping his salary from $260,684 to $342,250.

And the Prime Minister: Ms. Gillard's salary jumped by an incredible $114,000, from $366,366 to $481,000.

And now, three months later, they're getting another raise.

Holy shit. I mean just holy damn shit. (Yes, this is decided by the "Independent Renumeration Tribunal," but it's not like the MPs couldn't do something about it, if they wished.)

Crush children's testicles or give them healthcare?

It's a tough one, isn't it?

A couple years ago Republicans were arguing that crushing a child’s testicles was constitutional. Now they want to argue that denying your child health care when he has leukemia is constitutional. Go in for the fucking kill, liberals.

Damn striaght.