Hot diggity dog

Laugh till you cry

Love it

The un-American
Needs a personal Jesus
Private insurance
An obedient wife
The un-American
Should really stop complaining
He oughta take a trip to Disney
Get his head on right
Buy a new buy a new buy a new buy a new
It’ll be alright
Buy a new buy a new buy a new
That should fix the un-American
A threat to security
Feeding on literature
From a socialist state
The un-American
It really breaks my heart
To see a promising citizen deviate
Buy a new buy a new buy a new buy a new
It’ll be alright
Buy a new buy a new buy a new buy a new buy a new buy a new buy
That should fix the un-American
Oh
Oh
Oh
Oh oh
The un-American
Could be your own neighbor
He could be talking to your children
Sleeping with your wife
Oh what if you’re the un-American
Oh what if you’re the un-American
Oh what if you’re the un-American
Oh if you’re the un-American
Oh
Buy a new buy a new buy a new buy a new
It’ll be alright
Buy a new buy a new
And it’ll be alright
Be alright

Novel daily editorials

Songwriter Jonathan Mann of Berkeley, Calif., has come up with a unique format to express his editorial opinion. Huffington Post or some other online newspaper would be smart to hire the Rock Cookie Bottom guy to post his song-a-day exclusively at that site to drive hits.

Irony aside, listen to Saving Newspapers, The Musical (DEMO).



Click here for Mann's entire playlist. Most-viewed: Hey Paul Krugman (A song, A plea), seen more than 151,000 times.

Website find of the day

News and Verse blog's motto is "light verse, ripped from headlines."

Clever stuff. Today's entry:

NEWSWIRE--Accused investment scam artist Bernie Madoff is expected to plead guilty today and could face life in prison.


A pink slip means your laid off,
A furlough means you're day'd off
A buyout means you're paid off,
All, better off than Madoff.

Simple and to the point

The new "COALergy: Smudge" ad that ran on CNN should win awards. It does what a great ad should do: entertain and make a simple point.



Bravo, Reality Coalition, and hat tip to TPM.

"First, you have to get mad."

Peter Finch's achorman character in the classic movie, Network, seems more precient today than he was in 1976. We should be thinking about a better ending for today's real world, though.

A word on words

The Sunlight Foundation reports Sen. Robert Menendez is, by far, the most outspoken member of New Jersey's delegation in Washington. His statements on the floor and in the Congressional Record outpace fellow Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg almost 3-to-1.

The list at the foundation's website, CapitolWords.org, left me wondering why we see so little about what Menendez says in any media at the Jersey Shore.

Of the words New Jersey's delegation speaks most often on the record, the word "billion" comes up more quite a bit often than the word "women." Sad.

(Hat tip: Herb Jackson's blog, Capital Games)

Ultimate woman bosses

A few days ago, Anne Dunwoody became America's first woman four-star U.S. Army general. Today, we met Maria Falca-Dodson, the first woman commander of the New Jersey National Air Guard:

Falca-Dodson, who had served as Deputy Adjutant General of New Jersey since March 2002, ... replaces Brig. Gen. Lawrence Thomas III. ...

For Maj. Gen. Glenn Rieth, there was little doubt that Falca-Dodson was qualified for her new position.

“I had the opportunity to work with her the last six years directly,” Rieth said. “Make no mistake; she's a soldier and an airman first. During her time as a deputy, she didn't always get the glorious jobs. But every issue she took and every project that was handed to her was carried out. And there were a lot of things that needed to be carried out during that time.”

Thomas said he is fully confident in Falca-Dodson.

“Changing command is like dropping kids off at school for the first time and you want to make sure they succeed,” he said. “I know she is ready to assume this command. She has my full support.”

I'm not following Rieth's little analogy, but still, the glass -- and brass -- ceilings have a couple more cracks.

The Beatles were bad boys

Curvature plays the 5 most anti-feminist Beatles songs:

1. Run For Your Life
2. You Can't Do That
3. You Like Me Too Much
4. Martha, My Dear
5. You Won't See Me

You can vote however you like

Go Mayberry!

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Aaack!

I'm still not convinced this wasn't PhotoShopped, but every source I see says this is the real McCain after he and Barack Obama finished up the last debate:

Nailing Gov. Palin, er, or something like that

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did it again this week on Saturday Night Live!

Introducing Caribou Barbie

It's a sad day when the Republicans create more relevant ads for the Democrats than do the Democrats.



And is this Sarah Palin or the real Tina Fey? It's hard to tell the difference, but if it's Fey, she has nailed Palin to a T. Bravo!:



Best lines:

Gov. Palin: "And to think, just two years ago I was just a former small-town mayor of the crystal meth capital of Alaska."

Sen. Clinton: "I invite the media to grow a pair, and if they can't, I'll lend them mine."

Who wouldn't want to pay their fair share?

Former N.J. Rep. Jim Courter (right), it seems.

Lucy Komisar reports that the Federal Communications Commission has fined Courter's New Jersey telecom company, IDT, $1.3 million for failing to file a contract for telephone service to Haiti in 2004.

Seems the man who's John McCain's biggest presidential campaign fundraiser in New Jersey found a novel way to conspire with a dictator and avoid paying due taxes at the same time.

Its work with Haiti has been put under scrutiny since a former employee, Michael Jewett, then IDT’s manager for the Caribbean, sued the company. His suit claims he was fired when he balked at negotiating a scheme that routed a portion of the company’s long distance revenue from Haiti calls to a shell company owned by then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Jewett’s suit alleges that the deal cut IDT’s long-distance payments to Haiti to 8.75 cents a minute, from 23 cents, the legal tariff, which mainline U.S. carriers such as AT&T were paying.

Payments went to an offshore shell company, Mount Salem in the Turks & Caicos, which sent 3 cents to Aristide and the rest to the Haiti telecommunications company.

Courter, a former New Jersey Republican congressman, is one of 20 McCain national finance co-chairs, and joined the campaign in February 2007. He’s a “Trailblazer” for McCain, meaning he raised at least $100,000. The IDT PAC has contributed $84,850 in 2008.

So, this is the kind of economy a McCain administration would endorse? He who can better outsmart the tax system is rewarded, while a bigger portion of the burden falls on the shoulders of us common wage earners?

Read Komisar's full report here.

(Getty picture cropped from Komisar's blog.)

Welcome to the Jersey Shore

This is funny, but seriously, most of us here do welcome any visitors to come enjoy our beaches and restaurants, while the rest of us jealous suckers work our butts off.

Happy Indie Day

Flash back to 1982 (thanks, Crooks and Liars blog)

Memory failing or a flip-flopper?

Could be either, but it's not presidential material.



And here, with hat tip to John Aravosis at Americablog, is one of his flip-flops on one of the most critical aspects of this election: court appointments.

McCain in a Town Hall today "I will not impose a litmus test on any nominee."

McCain in 2000: "Somewhat surprisingly, McCain had the support of Gary Bauer, the social conservative, who had dropped out of the race by that time. 'I wanted a commitment from either George Bush or John McCain that if elected he would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court,' Bauer told me. 'Bush said he had no litmus test, and his judges would be strict constructionists. But McCain, in private, assured me he would appoint pro-life judges.'" [New Yorker, 5/30/05]

McCain 2007. McCain said, "I do not support Roe v. Wade. I think it should be overturned." [New York Times, 2/24/07]

RIP Eight Belles but ...

... is there a karma going on here? CubbyChaser at Comedy Central posts what I think a lot of us, heads cocked, were musing after presidential candidate Hillary Clinton asked supporters to put money on Eight Belles for her, then ...

On Saturday, the Kentucky Derby -- which is essentially the Kentucky Derby of horse races -- was held in, I think, Tennessee, and Hillary Clinton put her money on Eight Belles, the one female horse, running against a bunch of male chauvinist horses to win. ...

Unfortunately, Eight Belles came in second place to (I'm not making this up) a horse named Big Brown, suffered a fatal injury and had to be euthanized immediately following the race.

Girl, feel the cosmic karma ...

Tuesday was the latest in a string of Super Duper Tuesdays that should decide the Democratic primary. Sen. Barack Obama creamed Sen. Clinton in North Carolina and lost by a dubious 51-49%, far better than the double-digit loss expected, in red state Indiana.

I say dubious because 1 in 10 voters in exit polls reported they are Republicans who crossed over to sabatoge the race for the candidate they think McCreepy can beat, in compliance with radio god Rush Hussein Limbaugh's Operation Chaos instructing them to vote for Clinton. The voting poll games already have begun.

Then there's the untimeliness of a massive voter registration purge and nuns who were prevented from having a voice in the Indiana elction. A dubious win, but along with an infusion of another $6.5 million from the Clinton's personal bank account, will keep her going.

Women as second-class citizens

For the first time since 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women, according to this Washington Post report.

In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.

The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. ...

The phenomenon appears to be not only new but distinctly American.

"If you look in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, we don't see this," Murray said.

I think all those countries have government-guaranteed health care.

(Flickr photo by plagueoftruth)

Accurate vote counts shouldn't be so hard

People have voted on slips of paper -- or rocks or some other tangible, countable resource -- since the beginning of civilization.

So, in 2008, why is it so daunting for public officials who can't get their acts together on electronic machines to print up some ballots and have us all vote by putting our hand to pen to paper? Have you ever seen anyone other than for-profit newspapers and broadcast stations say they care whether the results are announced an hour after the polls close or a day afterward?

Today's Asbury Park Press has this must-read editorial: "Will the winner be the winner?"

Who is this Nina Mitchell Wells and how did she become the all-powerful N.J. secretary of state that gets to pull the levers behind the curtain in Oz?

Down the rabbit hole

If you thought American "elections" couldn't get more surreal than that absurd flag-pin interrogation last week that ABC called a Democratic "debate," get a load of this Hillary Clinton ad running today in Pennsy.

Earth Day is tomorrow

Plant a tree. Pick up some litter. Carpool, if just for one day.

But do something, please.

Enjoy Jay Leno's Earth Day clips. I like the kids' letters about global warming:

My kind of guy

Father Mike Pfleger makes me want to turn Catholic, were they all so straight talking:



"It doesn't make it right just because that's what you (Bill O'Reilly's Fox Snooze ambush "reporter")say about him." Exactly.

Why doesn't the media ask whether candidates and clergy think it's moral that more children in the U.S. live in poverty than children in any other country in the industrialized world.