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There was a weird moment during Bush's press conference, Crooks and Liars posted video of it which made remixing it much easier- thanks C&L!

Here's Gooka-Gucka-Uh-Uh-Eh which, one can only assume, is code for "I'm gonna slash the shit out of your Social Security benefits.":



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After officers of the White House Correspondents' Association provided the Secret Service with names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of those who would attend the VIP reception, an agent called back to ask for racial identities. "It's offensive on the face of it," said Edwin Chen, a Los Angeles Times White House reporter who is secretary of the association and who provided the information. "Why do they need to have race?"

Oh quit yer whining Chen, you stupid mick!

/I suck at racism.

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Dan Froomkin yesterday:

What Real People Would Tell Bush Tonight

This is absolutely fascinating stuff: The Gallup Poll is out with the results of asking 1,003 real people what advice they would give Bush if they had the chance.

If they could, topic one would be the war in Iraq.

Consider this finding: Among Democrats, the top two things they would say to Bush are "get out of Iraq" and "you're doing a bad job." The top two things independents would say are "get out of Iraq" and "leave Social Security alone." The top two things Republicans would say are "you're doing a good job" -- and "get out of Iraq."

Gallup, fantastically, publishes the actual responses , along with the respondents' ages and genders.

A selection:

· "Stop the (swear word) war. Male, age 56"

· "Keep following the Lord. Female, age 23"

· "That he's an idiot because he turned the surplus to the deficit. Female, age 35"

· "Get our troops out of Iraq. Use the money being spent in Iraq and work on the awful problems in this country. Female, age 58"

· "Let's go hunting! Male, age 60"

· "Keep on plucking away and see where it leads. Male, age 85"

· "Lighten up and recognize he is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Male, age 75"

· "I'd say that I'm disappointed that he hasn't been indicted for war crimes. Male, age 56"

· "He doing a (swear word) of a good job and keep fighting those democrats. Male, age 78"

· "I'd probably go to jail for the rest of my life. Female, age 77"

***OVERSPUN EXCLUSIVE*** MUST CREDIT OVERSPUN***

Drudge is currently featuring this photo of himself on his site:



Check out the glare- I started thinking- it looks like Drudge took a picture of himself on his TV with his digital camera and posted it. I decided this warranted further investigation because- well, I'm bored. So I unleashed my kung foo and found he's also got the full size uncropped version sitting on his server:


(click for full size version)

So here's the scenario- the last time Drudge was in Washington he went on C-SPAN in the morning, after the show he raced back to his hotel room to catch the repeat and took a digital picture of it when he appeared on screen. Isn't that just about the saddest fucking thing you've ever heard? Almost makes me feel sorry for the poor fella... almost.

Things to notice:

The picture is of a replay of the show- we know this because it says "Today" in the upper right corner instead of "Live"

Shelving! (That's all I can make out in the reflection from the TV)

The harsh angle of the photo- I get the sense that if he'd taken the picture head-on we'd see a naked Matt Drudge with a monstrous erection... but I have no way to prove that.

Here's my copy of the picture in case he takes it down. (Yes, I am stealing Drudge's bandwidth to serve his pictures. Ha.)

Developing HARD...

Update: Thanks to the exif data in Drudge's photo we know that Matt has a Kodak EasyShare CX6230 Zoom. Looks like the camera's internal clock was off though- it claims the photo was snapped at 9:23 PM on 1/23/2003, but Drudge's appearance on C-Span was on 4/30/2004.

Other interesting facts? The flash didn't go off.... Uh... exposure time was 0.034 sec... uh... okay- there are no interesting facts here.

Good night.

Hope it's nothing serious, but maybe he needs to take it easy on all the red faced screaming for a bit...

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(By the way, the article says he "felt faint" - I just thought the above headline was funner.)

Rush Limbaugh's appeal was thrown out today without comment by those crazy America hating Supreme Court judges in Florida.

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Unfortunately we didn't get to hear Rush's reaction to the news today- according to his web site he's having a cochlear implant adjustment made. Rush's implant has helped him overcome his Vicodin-induced hearing loss, but honestly, if you were spewing that shit would you want to have to hear it?

Guess What--It's Tom DeLay's Frisbee Now

Damn it! What did I tell you kids?

Yeah, I'm talking to you, you little hippie freaks. Didn't I tell you to stop messing around on the Capitol lawn? Don't act like you didn't hear me when I stuck my head out the window earlier. I saw you look up. I saw you laughing. Punks! I told you to clear out and take your games somewhere else. Then, not 15 minutes later, this thing sails right through the window and interrupts deliberations of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Oh yeah? Is that so? Well, guess what. It's Tom DeLay's Frisbee now.

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The Agonist has a nice review of the facts of the Larry Franklin/AIPAC spying scandal- Pentagon neoCons are implicated, and it sounds like it's much more than just one guy passing off classified documents to Israel...

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Thanks to Dusty59 in the comments section for pointing me to www.johnsugg.com, a well-written weblog by, you guessed it, John Sugg. Here's a bite from his recent post on Gannon/Guckert:

Still unanswered: Who provided cover for Gannon at the White House? Why isn't the mainstream press trying to unearth Gannon's connections among the Bushites? And, how in the world could the Neo-con Praetorian Guard not have known that Gannon was a ho? Or maybe they did know. Hmm.

Sugg goes on with a great quote from Ed Wasserman, who corrects Gannon/Guckert on his use of the phrase "the liberal elites." It's the liberal elite, damnit, and we like it here.

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MP3 player, herbal remedies lead to emergency landing at O'Hare
Tuesday April 26, 2005

CHICAGO (AP) An airline passenger's MP3 player and three vials harmless herbal remedies led to an emergency landing at O'Hare International Airport, the evacuation of 74 passengers and crew and a search Tuesday by the Chicago bomb squad.

The United Airlines flight was headed from New York to San Francisco when a passenger told a flight attendant he saw another passenger with suspicious materials, United spokesman Jeff Green said. The flight crew looked at the materials, and the pilot decided to land at O'Hare, Green said.

The material turned out to be wires, an MP3 player and homeopathic medicines, said Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Ann Davis.

I wonder if Annie Jacobsen has anything to do with this?

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Pretty exceptional episode of the Daily Show last night- here's their "Gaywatch" segment- topics include the following:

Spain legalizes gay marriage, Texas gays can't adopt foster children, CNN anchor Kyra Phillips sucks at her job ("Why don't you call them on their bullshit on the air? You're an anchor for fucks sake!") and Microsoft's lame cop-out.

Good God, could the rumors of Gannon/Guckert's extracurriculars at 1600 Pennsylvania be true? The Raw Story raises some interesting questions about the online reporter's remarkable access to the White House:

Here's a moneyshot:

In what is unlikely to stem the controversy surrounding disgraced White House correspondent James Guckert, the Secret Service has furnished logs of the writer’s access to the White House after requests by two Democratic congressmembers.

The documents, obtained by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal Guckert had remarkable access to the White House. Though he wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, the records show that he applied with his real name.

Gannon’s ready access to President Bush and his work for a news agency that frequently plagiarized content from other reporters and tailored it to serve a conservative message may raise new questions about the White House’s attempts to seed favorable news coverage. Democrats have sought to paint Guckert in the context of other efforts by the Administration to “plant” positive spin by paying for video news releases and columnists to espouse their views.

Guckert made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, previously worked as a male escort, and was refused a congressional press pass.

Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance, however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits.

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Okay- we're at a point now where if Tom DeLay's downfall is indeed a vast left-wing conspiracy, lobbyist Jack Abramoff would have to be in on it.

Before, it was my understanding that it was Abramoff's credit card company coming up with endless torrent of incriminating evidence, (goddamn librul credit card companies!) but now... if this happened the way DeLay claims it did, the word "vast" hardly does it justice.

"Omnipotent left-wing conspiracy" doesn't have quite the same ring, but it's more accurate if what Tom DeLay says is true.

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Yahoo News has a new beta version that seems OK enough... just noticed this though:

Scott Ritter, September, 2002:
Iraq is not a threat to us. Bush is lying to the American people to get us into a war.

CIA, April, 2005:
Iraq was not a threat to us. [Note: Anyone who would have blamed Bush has already been fired.]

Me, Now:
You know all those thousands of people killed because of Bush's fake war? Well... shit happens. Truckloads of inconceivably awful shit happens when you have a moron running things.

Are there any pictures of Bush holding hands with other world leaders as is his pattern with Abdullah?

Whatever power the Saudi royal family has over Bush, it allows him to disregard fears of looking all faggy to the red states.

Sorry it's been so quiet around here- I've been sick. Nothing life threatening, but ill enough that I've started three or four posts over the last few days and actually passed out while typing. By the time I wake up the topic is stale and I feel like taking another nap anyway.

FYI- this is what it looks like when one passes out on one's keyboard:

jh hnnjnkmiluu87yh jnj nkmillllllll

So there's that.

Hope to be fully recovered soon, not sure how many posts will make it out of my head until then, but in the meantime here's the first image that comes up when you type in "cute" in Google image search: