Democratic leaders in Congress denied the Jet-Setting Big Three CEO’s saying show us your plan before we show you the money.

The Big Three are on their own for now.

Congressional efforts to rescue Detroit’s auto makers collapsed Thursday, with lawmakers saying the industry lacked credible plans to return to profitability.

The decision came after two days in which leaders of three of America’s largest corporations pleaded for a taxpayer-financed rescue from lawmakers in front of a national television audience. The spurning of their pleas leaves in question the future of companies that have been synonymous with American industry for decades and together employ 239,000 people in the U.S. (Please see related article on Page B3.)

Democrats in Congress offered only a glimmer of hope, saying they would reconsider a rescue if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC submit convincing turnaround plans by Dec. 2.

This is a dire, critical juncture for America’s auto makers but you have to admit, Congress asking The Big Three for a business plan laying out their plans for the money if they got it? Requesting accountability? Discerning fiscal efficiency?

That’s humor.

…and it would be funny if it wasn’t real.

Frank, Pelosi and Reid wouldn’t know a business plan if they saw one let alone offering anything in the way of analysis or assessing viability.

That would be like getting marital advice from Barney Frank. Advice on manners and professional comportment from Al Franken. Executive leadership advice from Barack Obama.

Good luck Big Three. Just copy some economics paper from your freshman year of college and show it to them. They’ll never know the difference.

As the saying goes “the people they’ve been waiting for” may not be the brightest bulbs on the tree.

A recent Zogby poll: they can’t even find the tree.

83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President. . . .

57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

The test was multiple choice. This goes a long way to explaining how BHO garnered such momentum in the race for the White House.

With the news that Molly “Is It White In Here” Priesmeyer has become a victim of budget cuts at the Minnesoros “Independent”, it’s time to step back for a moment for a brief perspective check.

Did she use obnoxious Gen-X colloquiety to mask wafer-thin understanding of complex issues and history?  Sure. 

But even on her worst day, she was better than the person who seems to have replaced her on the facile stereotype beat at her alma mater, the City Pages, one Emily Kaiser, whose combination of gutlessness and middle-school-level writing chops (as in this recent hatchet job on Michele Bachmann) actually…

…I can’t believe I’m saying this…

…make me miss Molly.

Come back, Molly.  All is forgiven Hope you land a gig soon, Ms. Priesmeyer.  A rising tide lifts all boats; likewise, three inches of brackish runoff covers the algae-sodden mud.

[Cliff Clavin] “Ahhhh, it’s a little know fact Nawm, that uh, America does not have a two party system. There is actually to date quite a few political parties. Truth be told, this year I voted for the Cool Moose candidate, a Mr. Bill Winkle.”[end Cliff Clavin]

To wit:

“Spot” and “Mr. Spooge” from Cucky Spoon have, alone among Twin Cities’ leftybloggers, come up with an original idea!

In this post, (I’ll put the link there out of general principle – but don’t go there; it doesn”t deserve any traffic from anyone not addled by lead poisoning) “they” write about the Talk The Vote rally the other night…

…and insert a pic of the Nazis’ Nuremberg Rally!

Never seen that one before!

At any rate, I’ve had enough of gutless anonymous bloggers.  Below the fold, I shall reveal Mr. Spooge and his dogs’ identities:

(more…)

Mary LaHammer ponders yesterday’s vandalism of the homes of most of the Twin Cities congressional delegation – mostly Republicans (along with Rep. Ellison and Sen. Klobuchar):

 

If these images get a lot of attention I wonder if this could evolve into something like the Rick Kahn comments at Wellstone’s memorial. 

While the partisan in me sort of kind of hopes so (hey, I’ll cop to it), the rest of me does not – I think (and hope) most voters can tell the difference between pinheads with paint and party operatives (and in saying this I’m presupposing the vandalism wasn’t carried out by party operatives or their associates, naturally).

To:  Dennis Lien, St. Paul Pioneer Press

From:  Mitch Berg

Re:  Fact Checking in your 10/9 piece

Mr. Lien,

Mitch Berg here.  Not sure if you’re new in the market because, like an awful lot of people to the right of Amy Klobuchar, I don’t actually read the daily newspapers in this town.  I know I’ve seen your name in the paper, but I don’t recall if you’re an old PiPress hand or not.

I’d like to hope so, since your piece on Thursday incorporated a lot of rookie, or rookie-esque, flubs. 

Your piece covers the “Dump Bachmann” blog, run by Eva Young.  The reason I wonder if you’re a newbie is, of course, “The Dump” got near-saturation coverage before the 2006 election, back when lots of reporters – whether well-meaning or gullible – treated “The Dump” as a legitimate news source. 

It’d seem you and the PiPress have fallen into the same trap – whether through wishful thinking or merely digging for anything to throw at the conservative rep and lightning rod in the Sixth. 

The reasons matter not – the same First Amendment that applies to me (until the Obamessiah repeals it) covers you. 

But there’s some fact-checking to be done, here:

There’s a lengthy discourse on whether Bachmann will attend a debate. 

“Discourse” requires two sides, Mr. Lien.  The word you’re looking for is “echo chamber”.   

 From its debut in 2004, the site, dumpbachmann.blogspot.com, has been home to a hyperactive collection of people who find Bachmann oddly compelling.

Whatever your piece’s other faults, Mr. Lien, I’ll give you style points; “hyperactive collection of people who find somone oddly compelling” is the most artful way to describe “bunch of obsessed stalkers” I’ve ever read.  Kudos!

But please see to this bit here…:

 Young said she spends an hour or two every evening updating the blog. Minneapolis cartoonist Ken Avidor handles the video items.

Let’s cut the crap, Mr. Lien.  It’s Ken Weiner.  “Avidor” is a pseudonym he adopts to try to dignify his dork-fingered oeuvre.  But don’t worry about names, since whenever he wants a different identity, he just takes one.  Without bothering to tell anyone.  You can call him Avidor, you can call him Weiner, you can call him Al Goldstein’s kicktoy, you can call him the only “cartoonist” in the Twin Cities less accomplished than Swiftee…

…but those of us who know him best just call him “the Lord of the Sock Puppets”. 

“What I bring to the blog is not only documentation and video, but a little bit of humor,” Avidor said.

Yep!  Funny stuff, like the picture of Michele Bachmann in a Nazi outfit!

(Although to be fair, perhaps that was what you were referring to when you wrote about The Dump’s “provocative, in-your-face bits of rhetoric”

And quoting Karl Bremer – a man whom Yellow Hacks have disowned for giving them a bad name – is kinda a self-limiting move, Dennis.

At any rate, please see to this, OK?

That is all.

(PS to Eva:  “Acknowleding and responding” to something is not the same as “having a cow”.  Or to put it another way; I’m laughing at you).

(And, of course, Lien).

Barack Obama is buying his own satellite television channel. This is cause for

1) Elation – as this opens up a whole new category of bloggfodder, derision and political satire

2) Concern – What sort of propaganda can Obama have in store for his hypnotized minions, given his series of associations with anti-American far left radical thinkers and activists (some would say even terrorists)?

Bill O’Reilly (paraphrased from his radio show this morning): Why does Obama have to buy Channel 73? He already owns MSNBC.

Looking to the future…

Cable companies will offer one-channel plans.

Obama’s minions will walk the streets like zombies, wearing Obama logoed T-Shirts saying Change: to 73

Whoopee Cushion will leave “The View” and will have a new show on Obammy-73 called “The Pew” (not as in church – as in olfactory dissatisfaction).

Reverend Wright and Michelle Obama will host a perky morning show:

“Good Morning God Damned America”

Bill Ayers will host a new show about blowing up public property for fun and entertainment:

“Smash ‘n Grab”

Tony Rezko will host a home improvement show:

“Steal It, Fix It, Sell It, Prof-it”

The possibilities are endless…

The producers of “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Trading Spaces” must have been getting nervous, and desperate as they worked their way down their list of potential talent for their upcoming new show on TruTV.

Then Jesse “The Hind” Ventura opted in. 

The former governor will host a new program for TruTV (formerly Court TV) in which he’ll travel the country, exploring modern-day conspiracies and getting input from believers and skeptics.

“I’ve been a mayor; I’ve been a governor. Now I get to be a detective and seek the truth,” Ventura said in a press statement.

“Until you hunted man, you haven’t hunted yet.”

“Huh?” Replied the show’s producers.

No word yet as to which Jesse Ventura will show up for filming; the bald but clean-cut former Guv or Kinky Friedman-sidekick with braided chin hair.

Another show not to watch. 

“It would be a disgrace and a humiliation if Barack Obama does not win,”

Said Woody Allen, seen here with his current wife and former lover’s adopted daughter; 35 years his junior.

Reportedly Senator Obama’s reply to Mr. Allen: “Get off my side you parched, peaked, pedophile!”

Point.

Counterpoint.

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura said Tuesday that he would consider running for president in 2012.

Hey you,
Out there in the cold,
Getting lonely, getting old,
Can you feel me?

Hey you,
Standing in the aisle,
With itchy feet and fading smile,
Can you feel me?

Hey you,
Don’t help them to bury the light.
Don’t give in without a fight.

Speaking to a Ron Paul event at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Ventura told the crowd that he intends to watch events between now and the next election and decide “whether it’s worth it.”

Hey you,
Out there on your own,
Sitting naked by the phone,
Would you touch me?

Hey you,
With your ear against the wall,
Waiting for someone to call out,
Would you touch me?

Hey you,
Would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I’m coming home.

“I wrote the book, “Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me,’ ” Ventura said.

“Well, I’m here. Let’s get the revolution going.”

But it was only fantasy.
The wall was too high, as you can see.
No matter how he tried he could not break free.
And the worms ate into his brain.

“If I see it in 2012, we’ll give them a race they’ll never forget,” Ventura said.

Hey you,
Out there on the road,
Always doing what you’re told,
Can you help me?

Hey you,
Out there beyond the wall,
Breaking bottles in the hall,
Can you help me?

Hey you,
Don’t tell me there’s no hope at all.
Together we stand, divided we fall.

…when her daddy implored her to enter rehab, she stuck to her principles and replied

“No. No. No.”

You go girl!

Another great Letter of the Day

I admire Paris Hilton. While her life circumstances have been far from difficult, she has taken an identity that society despises and made something of it.

Profound. Where do you start with a statement so brimming with stupidity?

Paris Hilton didn’t take an identity that society despises. She doesn’t personify an identity that society despises. She is the identity that society despises. She invented it and the fact that it was by design, having nothing else to occupy her time, is hardly a station to be celebrated.

Paris was conceived where wealth and neglect meet. She is the product of the Cream of the Crap in America.

She did not turn to lawyers when the embarrassing sex tapes surfaced, but instead “went with the flow” of her notoriety and became one of the world’s foremost celebrities.

Of course she didn’t turn to lawyers. They were undoubtedly consulted, along with others, as to the best means, media and timing of their release. She profited by the strategic use of her genitalia (is it okay to say that here Mitch?).

It never ceases to amaze me how celebrity is oft equated with credibility in our culture.

She’s a “foremost celebrity.” Is that sort of like “wholesome feces?”

At its peril has the John McCain campaign learned to trifle with Paris. She’s back in the spotlight with a rebuttal to the TV ad and her energy plan, which is said to be superior in ways to those which the presidential candidates have presented.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Surely her rebuttal was a non-plus to the McCain campaign, who (I’m chuckling at the choice of words) trifled with Paris, but I am equally sure that Obama’s campaign suffered even further as the questions it begged of him were answered with…with…with…um…(sorry it escapes me).

Yes, she is, as she says of herself, “hot.” Not bad for a day’s work while soaking up the sun.

BILL MCGaughey, Minneapolis

Paris is a broken bat. You got no shot with Paris, Bill. Go back to your People magazine.

With DNC in mind, city bans carrying urine, feces

Poo and pee dominated a public hearing Monday on a new law that prohibits people from carrying certain items if they intend to use them for nefarious purposes.

What other purpose might there be for carrying these “products”? I’d say monger away. This is a law whose time has come!

Representatives from some of the groups planning large-scale protests during the DNC this month said the ordinance was unnecessary and accused city officials of fear mongering.

No Pun intended? 

“The intent of this ordinance is to try to smear protesters and make them look as if they are somehow criminal or somehow going to engage in some kind of gross conduct,” said Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer with the Re- create 68 Alliance.

The ordinance makes it illegal to carry certain items, such as chains, padlocks, carabiners and other locking devices. It also prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a “feces bomb.”

Police have to prove that people carrying such items intend to use them to block public access or emergency equipment or to thwart crowd control measures.

“Our intent for this bill is not about suppressing or chilling First Amendment rights,” he said.

“Young man!”

“Yes Officer?

” Just exactly what do you intend to do with that shit?”

“Exercise my first ammendment rights?”

“Put down the poop son. Before I get pissed!”

NEW YORK (AP) — Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt say their four previous children are adjusting just fine to the arrival of a twin brother and sister last month, with cupcakes and “Dora the Explorer” to help ease the transition.

Jolie and Pitt speak about their growing family, their charity work and their work-life balance in a question-and-answer in a special edition of People magazine that hit the newsstands Monday. A 19-page, $14 million-photo spread anchors the piece and gives a first look at the new babies interacting with the whole family.

The photos show Jolie and Pitt — each cradling a twin — sitting on a white bed with Zahara, 3, between them; Pax, 4, by Jolie’s side; and Shiloh, 2, lying on top of 7-year-old Maddox, who is plopped down by Pitt. There are close-ups of the twins, Knox and Vivienne, with their eyes closed, and photos of the older siblings gently holding the babies.

“It is chaos, but we are managing it and having a wonderful time,” Jolie, 33, says in the interview, though Pitt jumps in: “(It’s) still a cuckoo’s nest.”

(I thought this time I would I would hijack a post before anyone else did)

Might I suggest: How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps!

(As Mitch says) That is all.

As everyone knows by now, the Packers have offered Brett Favre $20,000,000 to stay home (I put the zeros there for emphasis instead of the customary $20M or $20 Million to illustrate how unbelievably absurd the NFL has become).

It serves further to illustrate how asinine it is to allow franchise owners to hold major market communities hostage by threatening to move clubs to more agreeable venues. If the Vikings threaten to leave the Twin Cities because we won’t give Zygi $200,000,000 I say fine. There is no way you can justify the expenditure of public money for the construction of a sports facility any more, which is probably why the Vikings stadium issue hasn’t floated to the top of the news pile of late.

I say screw them and the Sex Boat they rode in on.

I get the fact that Green Bay doesn’t want Brett Favre to end up with a division rival but his arrival on the roster is by no means a guarantee of a division title let alone a Super Bowl.

I have a hunch that Brett retired for a reason.

History shows that mature, overpaid primadona athletes are as likely to implode in these scenarios than propel their teams to national championships. Ladies and Gentlemen, Herschel Walker.

As such, how can it possibly be worth $20,000,000 to keep Brett on ice? You can buy a lot of grass seed for twenty million. Crap, you can buy the team a new airplane for that.

Oh, and furthermore, in alignment with the boss around here, …who the hell cares.

This could be a post on the second amendment, or on property rights. The comments section will dictate that.

I just had to put it up because…

…because I thought it was so damn funny.

Man shoots his lawn mower, police say

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) — A 56-year-old Milwaukee man is accused of shooting his lawn mower because it wouldn’t start.

Keith Walendowski has been charged with felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun or rifle and misdemeanor disorderly conduct while armed.

According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski says he was angry because his Lawn Boy wouldn’t start Wednesday morning.

Not exactly an endorsment for Lawn Boy.

Right off the bat, I can empathize. Lawn mowers don’t have a complicated life. They start, they run, they cut. In that order. A lawn mower unable to perform any of these three elements would foster hatred in the heart of any property owner.

 He told police: “I can do that, it’s my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want.”

Okay, fearless readers, who wants to handle that one?

A woman who lives at Walendowski’s house reported the incident. She says he was intoxicated.

No, really?

Walendowski could face up to an $11,000 fine and six years and three months in prison if convicted.

Wow. That would have paid for years of lawnmower tune-ups and oil changes. Heck, that would have paid for years of lawn mowers.

A call to Walendowski’s home went unanswered Friday.

Seriously, what could possibly come of that conversation? Again, the comments section might offer some insight here as well. Anyone up to the task?

There was no information available on the condition of the lawn mower.

There was no mention of Brett Favre in the article either.

The political pundits are buzzing today about Hillary Clinton’s new look: She changed her hair part from left to right. What might this mean? If you go by the CEO hair-part theory I wrote about in Fortune three months ago, her new right part could signal that she is ceding her claim to leadership and is moving into a role supporting Barack Obama.

Applying Fortune’s hair-part theory to Hillary’s new look 

Or it might just mean she got up on the wrong side of the bed?

Hey, I think she looks thinner too! What does that mean?

Our new stadium deal stinks? Nick, we knew that already and as much as I loathe linking to your tripe, you may have a point (albeit a bit late) here.

Our ill-gotten stadium will be a flop without a roof once the novelty wears off, and now it appears the weather may be the least of the Twin’s environmental bogies.

With ‘facility’ next door – so much for new ballpark smell

Don’t say “garbage burner.”

“It’s not a garbage burner,” says Glenn Schmidt, chief engineer at the plant, which burns 1,000 tons of, um, “waste” daily. “It’s Energy From Waste.”

“Facility,” adds maintenance supervisor Jeff Johnson: “Energy From Waste Facility.'”

I met them after I hiked around the stadium Wednesday to check out a tip that “the facility” was giving off the kind of smell you encounter when someone “dies” while using your facilities.

In other words, it wasn’t good. And it really wouldn’t be good if a national TV audience saw us holding our noses.

It was 85 degrees and windy — a typical summer day — as I perambulated the area. It didn’t smell good to me, but I have a big smeller, so maybe I was pulling in a scent cloud from a turkey plant near Willmar. I asked people I met along the way how it smelled to them. Some were catching a big whiff. Others, just a sniff.

“It stinks like mildewing filth,” said Jennifer Dixon, 36, who was waiting on 7th Street with her husband, Mike, and their children to catch a No. 22 bus. “I don’t think people at a ballgame are gonna like it.”

There are times I almost feel bad beating on the Minnesoros “Independent”. The site – a paid propaganda site funded by “liberals with deep pockets” and now staffed mostly by refugees from the City Pages – is (occasional and, I stress this, rare bits of good reporting notwithstanding) kind of like the the really drunk guy who walks into a bar spoiling for a fight after he’s already had sixteen beers. You shake your head and hope he doesn’t hurt himself. You hope he goes away, and gets home safely. You try to mute a chuckle as he tries to pick fights with bartenders, waitresses, the barback. You try to continue talking or playing trivia or dancing.

And then the drunk – or the “Independent” – staggers over to wherever you are, and says something really, “beneath and below the call of duty” stupid and inflammatory. And as you’re trying to wave it off, he throws a punch – a sloppy, drunken roundhouse you duck easily. And, earlier sympathies and compassion and best wishes notwithstanding, you’ve had enough, and you smack his jaw so hard he falls down like a load of old City Pages returns getting dumped in the landfill, and despite yourself, you have to laugh. He pissed you off that bad.

Steve Perry staggers over and calls your date a whore as snot drippes over his stubbly mustache thinks he’s got big goods on Mac:

Steve Benen at Carpetbagger Report and Jake Tapper at ABC pick up on a rather astounding fib told by John McCain to a Pittsburgh TV station:

“When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”

“Did you really?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

“In your POW camp?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

If you’ve heard this story before–and it’s one of the staples of McCain’s POW yarns–you know that it has always been the Green Bay Packers whose starting lineup McCain claims to have recited for his captors. In his 1999 book Faith of My Fathers, McCain wrote: “Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron.”

Steve Perry – paid propaganda streetwalker of the party whose previous nominee presumptive concocted a dash through sniper fire that was invented from whole cloth, whose hubby invented terror-bombings of black churches, and whose last Prez nominee had a completely fictional Christmas trip to Cambodia “seared, seared” in his memory, goes on:

So much for the third-rail sanctity of John McCain’s time as a North Vietnamese POW. In his own mind, clearly, it’s just another tool in an old campaigner’s arsenal.

And you know what, Steve Perry? More power to him. If this is the best “lie” you can come up with, then you are going to have one long campaign, little fella.

For starters, Mac survived one of the ghastliest ordeals any American has ever suffered, and I don’t care if he claims, forty years later, to have recited the entire lineup to Disney On Ice or the cast of The Fantastics.

Second – so what? It has what to do with policy?

That’s right – exactly the same as Norm Coleman’s “luxury apartment” or any part of Barack Obama’s platform.

Funny this is coming to light a day after McCain confessed in the New York Times that he is not really up on his computers and internets.

“Life is full of ironies, if you’re stupid”. P.J. O’Rourke.

This is your lefty “alternative” media at work; nitpicking a triviality spoken by a guy whose suppositories Steve Perry is not fit to carry.  I have a hunch that in five years, he probably managed  to get through the Steelers, the Packers, the rest of the NFL, major league baseball, and every cabinet officer in US history.
And it’s “Internet”. What, you’ve been taking “glib and cutesy” lessons from Priesmeyer?

Ralph Nader, desperately seeking relevance, rears back and tries to take a swing at Rush Limbaugh, calling him a welfare queen:

Rush Limbaugh
The Rush Limbaugh Show
2 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10121

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

The Associated Press reports your new contract with Premiere Radio Networks will enrich you with at least $38 million a year over the next eight years. You are making this money on the public property of the American people for which you pay no rent.

You, Rush Limbaugh, are on welfare.

As you know, the public airwaves belong to the American people. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is supposed to be our trustee in managing this property. The people are the landlords and the radio and TV stations and affiliated companies are the tenants.

Leave aside the obvious double standard – could also demand “rent” from the Big Three networks?  They’ve made astronomically more money than Limbaugh over the past eighty years.  How about Air America? 

Ralph (and the supporters of his who will hop up and down like poo-flinging monkeys at his latest utterance)?  Limbaugh doesn’t own any transmitters.  His production company, and Premier, his syndicator – just produce a program, and put it up on the satellite (and they do pay for that).

You’ll need to take it up with Limbaugh’s 600 affiliates, who carry the show.  By the way – this is important – they carry it of their own corporate free will:  nobody was forced to carry the Limbaugh show.

The problem is that since the Radio Act of 1927 these corporate tenants have been massively more powerful in Washington, DC than the tens of millions of listeners and viewers. The result has been no payment of rent by the stations for the value of their license to broadcast. You and your company are using the public’s valuable property for free. This freeloading on the backs of the American people is called corporate welfare.

No, it’s not.  The airwaves are “public” in the same sense that the great outdoors is “public”; I, or Limbaugh, owes “the public” no more for sending a radio signal through the ether than I do for walking along the beach.

You need not wait for the broadcast industry-indentured FCC and Congress to do the right thing. You can lead by paying a voluntary rent–determined by a reputable appraisal organization–for the time you use on the hundreds of stations that carry your words each weekday.

Excellent idea, Ralph!

And then you can pay me “rent” for the space you’re using on my monitor!

No really – they’re the same.  Equally senseless and illogical.

Anyway, Ralph; I’ll look for the same letter to go to Al Franken, Bill Maher, “Lionel”, Oprah Winfrey…

(Via Brian Maloney)

Maha – of “Mahablog”, a famously gutless leftyblog and a leader in the “namecalling = facts and research” school of leftyblogging – wants to dismiss the whole “we found yellowcake uranium in Iraq” story:

The critical point is that Saddam Hussein couldn’t do anything with this uranium because he lacked the equipment and technology to enrich it. So it had been sitting around for years in drums sealed by the IAEA. No nuclear program.

Right.

Of course, the presence or absence of “equipment and technology” was a key bone of contention between about 2001 and the invastion, but…

…oh, why bother.

Justin Levine at Patterico has the essential response:

If Mahablog has a legitimate point, then why did Joe Wilson go to such great lengths to try and cast doubt on the very existence of the yellowcake Niger story? Why didn’t he just say, “It is possible that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. But even though I can neither confirm nor deny this accusation, it is ultimately irrelevant since yellowcake is harmless and is not proof of anything significant regarding an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.”?

That is not the argument that Joe Wilson the liar made. There is a reason for this – reason’s that people like Mahablog would rather not address. So I’ll be happy to stay on his ‘Idiot’s Hall of Fame’, let people read both posts, and decide for themselves.

Look – it’s pretty clear, five years on, that Hussein didn’t have any functioning WMDs when the tanks crossed the border.  We know that he had WMDs, because he gassed the Kurds in the eighties.  We know he wanted WMDs, because he was buying equipment to build them.  We know he had uranium that, combined with that equipment he was seeking (and, for whatever reason, didn’t deny having), could have been made into one kind of bomb or another.

If it were a criminal case, it’d be like finding a once-convicted, paroled Meth producer with 50,000 tabs of Sudafed.  All he needs is a stock pot, some tubing, and a few other chemicals…

Oh, Maha’s counterattack?

Here’s the Idiot’s Hall of Fame:

American Thinker
Don Surber
Gateway Pundit
Pirate’s Cove
Neptunus Lex
Patterico’s Pontifications
Sweetness and Light

The accumulated IQ of the above bloggers adds up to about 47.

Hm.

Oh, the two grafs I pulled were the closest “Maha” gets to sentience.

But please, “Maha” – can I be an “idiot” too? 

(And note to Ms. O’Brien; she can’t ban my comments when they’re on my blog)

Code Pink tries to break up a group naturalization ceremony for new US citizens at Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s old home.

President Bush invoked the memory of Thomas Jefferson Friday in welcoming new U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony at Monticello, saying “I’ll be proud to call you a fellow American.”

On his final U.S. Independence Day as president, Bush told an audience Friday at the home of the Declaration of Independence’s author that he was honored to be present for the naturalization. Shouts from protesters were heard during Bush’s remarks, and the president responded by saying he agrees that “we believe in free speech in the United States of America.”

Gateway Pundit covered the incident:

GWP notes that:

The crazed Pinko running at President Bush is Desiree Farooz, the same lunatic who assaulted Condoleezza Rice with “bloody” hands at a Senate hearing last October. This dangerous woman is going to get seriously hurt some day.

It’d be uncharitable and wrong of me to add “…if there’s any justice in this world”. Nope. Not gonna say it.

I would not want to see some Polish or Georgian or Laotian or Burmese or Tibetan or Cuban or Vietnamese, who risked life and livelihood to uproot themselves from tyranny (even former tyranny) and travel halfway around the world, backhand this “woman” in mid-specious-chant, and give her a picturesque and metaphorically-rich but ultimately-harmless bloody nose. This, I do not want to see. Because this slimy, pustulent, skeezy hag’s right to free speech is just as important as yours (and, if Nancy Pelosi gets her way, more important than half of yours will be).

It was nice of the Leftists to ruin the naturalization ceremony for the new Americans and their families.

C’mon, GWP – it’s all about them.

GWP also goes into this fella’s connections.

Oh, yeah. Don’t dare call them unpatriotic.

Michael Brodkorb: “Joe Bodell lied about his identity to smear me on Wikipedia”.

Joe Bodell: “I know you are but what am I?”

No word yet on whether Bodell has turned his crack investigative skills on Brodkorb.

Last night after work, I went to the “No Primate Pets” rally at the XCel Energy Center. Of course, the X only holds around 20,000 people with the floors entirely opened to an SRO crowd; as I walked up to the press box, I saw crowds standing eight abreast all the way up Fifth Street, circling around the Travellers building, and over to the Saint Hotel, waiting patiently as the doors closed on a full house. Some waved signs – “Keep oar Monkeez in the White Haus”, “Primates Make Bad Mates” and so on – as they trudged over to Kellogg Boulevard to watch the proceedings on the Jumbotron.

Inside, a tripartisan coalition of Ellen Anderson, Brian Sullivan and Dean Barkley (wearing a “Will Advise Your Administration For Food” T-shirt) led the crowd in a mass “chant-in” on behalf of apes around the world; former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel provided interstitial music, keynoting his set with a newly-rewritten “Don’t Shock The Monkey”.

And when former Governor Jesse Ventura – perhaps the most respected man in Minnestoa politics today – took the stand and bellowed “No primates for…um…pets”, the building shook, as the 20,000 voices inside, and at least as many outside, joined their voices as one to demand that Congress ban monkeys as pets.

No, really! Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros Monitor Independent says that Minnesotans are really, really fired up about this issue!

“Michele Bachmann is out of step with Minnesota citizens who want common-sense animal welfare policies and want their communities protected from dangerous attacks and diseases,” Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund said in a press release Thursday.

Ah. Well, if the Humane Society – AKA “the voice of Minnesota” – says it’s so…

Bachmann – Minnesota’s Sixth District congresswoman, who excites more unthinking hysteria than any other politician in Minnesota (indeed, some have called her “The Katherine Kersten of Politics”) voted against the bill, doncha see. And if Rep. Bachmann – who won her office in 2006, a famously bad year for Republicans, by the biggest margin of victory in any seriously-contested race with her rigorously conservative message – votes against something, well, most Minnesotans just have to be for it.

Right?

Of course, we don’t know why Bachmann voted against the bill – not from Birkey’s story, certainly.

Perhaps monkeys as pets are not rightfully a federal issue, and that Rep. Bachmann was correct in voting against it? Perhaps?

The Minnesoros Monitor Independent’s spiral into self-parody continues.