Wait, wait!

I am authorized to tell you of an important development: The Ann Coulter Project is being shut down. We all agree it was a smashing success, but Ann’s latest stunt — calling Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a “faggot” — was simply too much. It’s only a matter of time before the right wing figures out that “Ann” is just an actress hired by progressives to parody right-wing kooks and destabilize their movement. In light of that, we’re going to pull the plug now.
(The Carpetbagger Report)

Yeah, I like it all right. But "hired by progessives" is wussy. How about, "hired by Hillary's camp"? The "camp" thing sounds real good, don't you think? And I'm telling you, Hillary's camp is the camp around here. I'm thinking, for the next 18 months or so any time there's anything embarrassing about anybody in the news you can just say "Hillary's camp" and everybody you say it to will nod and say, "Uh huh.

"I knew that."

The handwriting on the wall.

Vagina: Not a monologue any more.

Well, I mean, not here, in the blabberama, where everybody seems to be yipping about some high-school girls from New York who got suspended from school for reading, out loud and in public, fercrissake, a passage from "The Vagina Monologues," a monologue. Or more like a series of monologues, I think. Meant to be read out loud. In public. From a stage.

But what nobody's talking about is, well, you know, what do they call it in New York? They've gotta have some word for it, don't they? I mean they do have - oh no, no no no, I don't want to tangle with no New York broads - what I was going to say is, they do have biology classes, don't they? Do they just, like, I don't know, skip that part?

Really?

Wall in winter.

Goose egg.

0º. And that's the warm widget - the cold one is -4. The forecast keeps going up but the results keep going down. Has BushCo invaded the weather service too?

If there's any justice...OK, I give up.

Good thing it's Friday. Today is the worst class in the Word cycle. It's picking-up-all-the-loose-pieces day and everybody winds up hopelessly confused. Good thing it's Friday - did I mention that?

And it'll warm up tomorrow. I'm not kidding.

No! Wait!

This is the scariest thing I've heard all day.*

A Patriot Act provision which may have led to the suspected political firing of eight US attorneys "did not come out of the head of Zeus," according to a renowned legal expert.
(Raw Story)

*Not counting when the weather widget this morning said 2º.

Cute? More like scary, IMO.

Sometimes dumb sounds cute: Sixty percent of Americans can't name five of the Ten Commandments, and 50% of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married.

(And more from USA Today...)

Support the troops. As long as they don't get blown up or something.

Which would be, well, embarrassing.

Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.

But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital's problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(HuffPo)

Save yourself a little reading time.

Wonkette summarizes today's contribution from Robert Novak.

Yes! Gimme cookies!

"The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your *thought* that food is responsible for putting on weight..."

According to somewaterytart at Shakespeare's Sister, quoted from the very latest, Oprah-recommended, book of feelgood pop, "The Secret."

Or, well, not a secret now, exactly. But hey, it used to be.

Turns out "surge" is more like a...

...wait, I don't want to say...no, really...how about, I don't know, "trickle." Yeah. Trickle.

The new US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said on Thursday reinforcements pouring into Baghdad have a long task ahead of them and warned there is no military solution to the conflict....

"There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq," the general told massed ranks of reporters in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. "Military action is necessary to help improve security... but it is not sufficient."
(Raw Story)

Patraeus. He was the surge guy, wasn't he? Now he's more of a trickle guy. Also a little bit spooked, sounds like.

He said "thugs with no souls" were carrying out atrocities to derail Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law), launched with 90,000 Iraqi and US troops last month in a bid to quell sectarian violence in the Baghdad region.

Yikes.

You'd think 90,000 troops would represent enough violence to curb the violence, wouldn't you?

Reaching a new geezer milestone.

I came home from work at noon and noticed there was something in the microwave. It was the butter.

OK, the microwave is right next to the fridge so it was pretty close. Right? At least? And anyway it wasn't real butter, it was sissy butter - you know, the kind that comes in a tub and is made out of, whatever, stuff, and maybe sorta tastes like butter but isn't butter, really. Which is a kind of geezer milestone right there, come to think about it.

Still, when you find your butter in the microwave that's got to be another geezer milestone, I'm pretty sure.

And you thought things couldn't get any worse?

Captain America, the comic book superhero with a penchant for figure-hugging body suits in red, white and blue, has died at the age of 89, shot dead in New York.,,,

"Breaking news: Few details are clear at this time, but the scene outside the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan is a portrait of chaos and confusion as a former superhero has been shot," Marvel comics said on its website.

(AFP)

Wait. This is some kind of sausage, isn't it?

A deadly bacterium known as Klebsiella pneumoniae is believed to have killed some 120-200 patients in hospitals across the country.
(Ynet news)

Oh. Israel. Go back to work.

Two more days. Two more days. Two more days.

But wait...they're all Rs, ya think?

SMOKING GUN - Federal prosecutors want to gag an indicted former Washington, D.C. madam who has recently threatened to go public with details about her former customers. In a motion filed Monday in U.S. District Court, investigators are seeking a protective order covering discovery material to be provided to Deborah Palfrey and her lawyers.

(Undernews)

Just doing what they do best.

The Pentagon has approved a request by the new U.S. commander in Iraq for an extra 2,200 military police to help deal with an anticipated increase in detainees during the Baghdad security crackdown, Defense Secretary Robert ["No Expert On Military Matters"]Gates said Wednesday.
(HuffPo)

So then. Lock 'em up.

Look how well it's working for us.

Constitution huggers!

What a great term. I love it.

Some Constitution huggers have raised concerns about the White House engaging in an unprecedented power grab that violates Americans’ privacy rights. Don’t worry, the president’s own privacy board has looked into these questions and found that everything’s just fine.

Read The Carpetbagger Report

From the alternate universe, "breaking news."

(Big thanks to Spiiderweb™)

OK, so I can't find my socks - but this is ridiculous.

Arkansas' Gov. Mike Beebe and Rep. Mike Ross complain about lack of help from FEMA and the DOOFUS for tornado victims in the southern part of the state And, notes USA Today in the last graph of its story...

Also, Beebe and Ross have asked the White House to send Desha County some of the 8,000 trailers being stored at the Hope Municipal Airport by FEMA. The trailers were originally bought to shelter survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

(Read more.)

Seems a shame, to have 8,000 trailers just sitting around like that. Why don't we convert them to cells and ship them on up to DC? Might not be enough, but at least it'd be a start.

Grayscale

So does this involve, like, getting a tattoo or something?

Becoming an annotated instructor, I mean.

Minus. One.

Isn't that special.

We need a new weatherman, is what we need.

Moose downs chopper in Alaska.

Isn't happy about getting shot with dart.

Instead of slowing down after being shot with a tranquilizer dart, a moose charged a hovering helicopter used by a wildlife biologist, damaging the aircraft's tail rotor and forcing it to the ground.
(CNN)

There's always a day in March...

...when winter needs to be over. And today is it.

Yeah, I know. It's been a pretty mild year. But we had a cold February and this is an old, cold, drafty house. There's a cold front blowing in right now that'll keep us sub-freezing for the rest of the week. If the forecasters are right, that will probably be the last of it - Saturday we should be in the 40s and maybe even hit 50 next week. But right now, Saturday seems a long, long, grumpy way away.

I want winter to get gone. Now.

Old bricks.

10 freaking 000?

BAGHDAD (USA Today) — Iraq's Interior Ministry has fired or reassigned more than 10,000 employees, including high-ranking police, who were found to have tortured prisoners, accepted bribes or had ties to militias, a ministry spokesman has disclosed.

A deputy Interior Ministry spokesbimbo (because 10,000 is really just a deputy kinda thing) Jassim Hanoon announces, "Maybe we aren't 100% cured, but we're getting better day by day." And also, helpfully, points out, "Under Saddam...torturing was routine." Now, I guess, it's a special option.

WTF?

Snowjob: "They can get their training in Iraq." Army: "Bavaria."

Huh?

The US military plans to recreate Iraqi and Afghan villages for war games in, where else, Bavaria, and is trying to recruit Arab-speaking extras by placing ads implying they were being hiring for a film. Only four of the people who showed up didn’t leave upon being told the real purpose, which is for them to play natives 24 hours a day for three weeks while being constantly filmed. Said a spokesmodel for the US Army Joint Multinational Readiness Center, the amusingly named Reggie Bourgeois, “The more actual culture we can inject into the exercise the better it is for our soldiers. After all, we’re in the business of dealing with the culture.”

(Whatever It Is, I'm Against It)

Awww. Let's all give those guys at Diebold a big, warm hug.

"It pains them greatly to see their brand tarnished by a marginal operating unit," said Gil Luria, an investment analyst who monitors Diebold for Wedbush Morgan Securities Inc.
(Raw Story)

See? Poor guys. It wasn't them, it was a marginal operating unit that made those crappy voting machines. So how come everybody's being all mean to them? And not only that...

"Further changes in the voting laws could further hurt business."

...if they have to start making good machines, they're screwed.

Peeking in on the anti-universe this morning, we find...

...one viewpoint that seeks to downplay the role of social conservatives in GOP politics – stating that this voting group will eventually bow to pragmatism and support moderate/liberal candidates such as McCain/Giuliani/Romney, all in an attempt to defeat a potential Hillary Clinton presidency.
(Emphasis mine.)

Yeah. You can read all about it at ConservativesBetrayed.com or, naturally, at Faux News, which has the moderate/liberal Mitt ("Multiple Choice") Romney wooing the Coulter/CPAC axia by reminiscing about the good, conservative Cold War and moderate/liberal Rudy ("Just Plain Multiple") Giullani declaring, "I don't agree with myself on everything" - while, meanwhile, Wayne ("Shoot First, Ask Questions Later") LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, advocated attacking British shipping and dumping garbage in Boston Harbor:

"You, all of you, are the sons and daughters of the Boston tea spillers. Act like it and go out there and make them proud!" he told [CPAC] conference attendees.

Civilization marches on.

A US inventor has come up with a fridge that throws cold cans of beer to lazy drinkers....

"There is a slight danger of being hit in the head with a flying can but this danger decreases the more you use it."
(Ananova)

Afternoon

New York Times asks the question of the hour.

Where is the Asian-American Justin Timberlake?

It's 12:30 PM. Are you defending your aerospace?

"It doesn't matter if you're military or civilian, folks are counting on you to defend the homelands of Canada and the United States."

–Adm. Timothy J. Keating, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command

("Quote of the Week" from United States Northern Command)

New hero for Republicans

Things were looking a little touchy there, after the skinny blonde went and blabbed about the pervert thing. But now, just in time, comes Prince Michael of Greece.

True, M of G lives in Paris now and is a distant heir to that Bourbon family that came to no good end in the revolution. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have the right R stuff. Discussing a novel he recently published in which he argues (shades of Dan Brown) the real heir to the lost French throne is an Indian, M of G thusly spoke:

"The more unbelievable it is, the more I believe in it."

See what I mean? The guy's a natural R.

Meanwhile:

From his home in the Bhopal suburbs, Mr Bourbon, 48, [the Indian in question] said he would be glad to take a DNA test, but remained stoical about the "hypothetical question" of whether he was heir to the throne. Conscious of the bloody outcome for royals in France, he felt royal status could bring "trouble", not to mention questions from skeptical historians.

(More from the Guardian...)