One Hell Of A Typo, I’d Say

“Worst Persons” (Billo gets the runner-up-to-the-runner-up for saying the Park 51 “Ground-Zero Mosque” shouldn’t be built because “Muslims killed us on 9/11″ – I’m not the biggest fan of Whoopi Goldberg, though I think Joy Behar is pretty witty, but do you want to know something? I’m done too, with trying to explain that it wasn’t “Muslims” who attacked us, but “radical Islam”; John Raese, the Repug senatorial candidate from West Virginia, makes a joke out of not being able to pronounce the name of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, but to me, the true hilarity is what passes for the thought process that “Star Wars” is anything but a pork-laden gift to the defense biz seeing as how IT WILL NEVER, EVER WORK! And oh yeah, this meat sack also seems to get a kick out of mispronouncing other names – I’ve tried not to comment on West Virginia since I don’t think it’s a good idea for a Dem to shoot a bullet at what is supposed to represent cap-and-trade legislation, but I may make an exception since Raese is such a nitwit; but the Chicago Board of Elections gets the top honor, such as it is, for quite possibly the most racist misspelling in a voting booth of all time – if this isn’t the death knell for touch-screen voting machines without a paper backup, then I don’t know what would be…good song choice at the end, by the way).

A Moment When Rick Sanchez Did Good

Yes, saying that Jon Stewart is a bigot is flat-out dumb, and inferring that Jews run the media is even stupider (here), but I cannot help but wonder why a less-drastic-than-firing on-air apology for stuff like this is never good enough anymore.

In the meantime, here is some big time “straight shooting” from Sanchez during the ’08 presidential campaign over a particularly heinous “urban legend” (wonder why nobody, including yours truly, ever realized that stuff like this would only escalate in the event that Obama won).

There Once Was (At Least One) WTC Mosque

And K.O. tells us the story (and please disregard the snickering from the peanut gallery – the day J.D. Mullane is an expert on Islam is the same day that I learn the basics of particle fusion).

There Once Was A WTC Mosque, posted with vodpod

Rupert The Pirate “Drills Down” On Teh Stupid

“Worst Persons” on “Countdown” on Monday (Tom Shales looses what’s left of his mind over Christiane Amanpour’s “In Memoriam” segment on “This Week”…more here, Fred Barnes pretends that he’s not being paid off by the Repugs, which he is, and Rupert Murdoch and one of his lackeys take top honors for trying to promulgate the “message” of Fix Noise all the way down the corporate media food chain to a “mom and pop” station in your town)

More Billo Blather Debunked by Maddow

From the guy who has a section of his program’s web site devoted to “pinhead of the week” (yes, I went there – hideous), we now have an instance where he tells the MSNBC host/correspondent that his network kicks MSNBC’s butt, as it were, in the ratings, and Maddow responds with logic and actual reporting (and she didn’t even need testimony from Andrea Mackris!).

Oh, and Bill Orally said this and then immediately went on vacation, leaving Laura Ingraham in charge in the event of an on-air “cat fight,” though Rachel Maddow is too smart to engage in such nonsense, to her credit.

I would say that Orally is a pig, but that’s an insult to perfectly good livestock.

Monday Mashup (7/26/10)

1) The Bucks County Courier Times brought us more riotous comedy yesterday from Repug Mikey Fitzpatrick, running to reclaim his PA-08 House seat from Dem Patrick Murphy (here)…

Unemployment has risen 100 percent in the four years Congressman Murphy has been in Congress; notably, his party has been in the majority in every one of those years.

It has only occupied the White House for a year and a half, though (of course, Mikey omits that incon-vee-nient detail). And the event that triggered the skyrocketing unemployment rate was the fall of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, which took place on the watch of A Certain 43rd President, as well as approval of TARP funding soon afterwards.

Besides, based on the graph that appears here, the Repugs and their “leader” in the White House had nothing on the employment numbers of the full eight-year Democratic presidential administration that preceded it (and here is more on Murphy and jobs).

And a lot of other House members, both Democratic and Republican, have held their House seats since 2006, so I guess you could say that they brought us a “100 percent” increase in unemployment also.

Otherwise, Mikey’s screed was full of the “tax cuts, magic of the marketplace” mythology that got us into this mess to begin with, as well as “Murphy-Pelosi Murphy-Pelosi Murphy-Pelosi baad scary liberals vote for me I’m a native Bucks Countian with six kids” stuff (and to help his opponent, click here).

Update: Oh, and P.S…

Fitzpatrick Spending Cuts While in Office: 0

Former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick’s criticism of Murphy bill to cut spending shows complete lack of an agenda to move country forward.

(Bristol, PA) – Former Congressman Fitzpatrick announced last week that, given the chance to return to Washington, he will not fight for legislation to cut government spending and waste. He criticized Patrick Murphy for passing a new law to cut spending but clarified that he agreed with the content, just not the act of passing a law.

“We are all against waste, fraud and abuse,” former Congressman Fitzpatrick said, “but shouldn’t the federal government be working to eliminate fraud without new federal legislation?”

Patrick Murphy’s campaign manager Tim Persico noted that it was unclear what, exactly, Fitzpatrick suggested we do to cut spending and eliminate fraud, since it seems unlikely that asking agencies nicely will work.“Fitzpatrick’s comments pretty much sum up his economic agenda,” Persico said. “If sent to Washington, Fitzpatrick promises not to fight for legislation to cut spending and waste.”

This matches up neatly with his past record. When the voters of Bucks County gave him a chance in Washington, Fitzpatrick failed to introduce or pass a single bill to cut spending. However, he was happy to support massive, unpaid tax breaks for the richest people in the country. Now, in a bit of sour grapes, he’s whining that we’re finally making progress against outrageous and wasteful spending. It’s his own record in Congress – not Patrick Murphy’s – that Mike should take issue with.

# # #

For Immediate Release, July 23, 2010
Contact, Tim Persico, (215) 783-3736

—————————————————-
BACKGROUND:

Passing this law is the latest in a series of initiatives that Patrick Murphy has championed to cut spending. He worked with Republican Congressman Tim Rooney (FL) to pass a law closing loopholes in Medicare that were allowing billions in fraud. He also has a measure to eliminate a massive corporate welfare scheme in the Department of Agriculture that would save $500 million taxpayer dollars.

Additionally, Murphy has fought to eliminate the F-22 savings taxpayers $3 billion, and he has crossed party lines to vote for $20 billion in spending cuts.

And Fitzpatrick? His bipartisan bills to cut spending while in Congress? …0

Successfully passed Fitzpatrick bills to cut spending while in Congress? …0

2) And speaking of big yuks, Jonah Goldberg chastised Tom Friedman in the New York Times yesterday since Friedman quite rightly took umbrage over what could be the death knell for common sense climate change legislation this year (here)…

But when DC — and the entire East Coast — was shellacked by an historic snow storm and deep freeze, Friedman thought it was flat-out stupid to cite abnormal weather as evidence in political squabbles:

I realize there are a lot of different directions I can go to point out that only a life form with a single-digit IQ could contest the fact that man-made global warming has accelerated to the point where our planet is melting and sane people need to do what we must to try and stop it, but I think this will suffice for now.

Oh, That Doughy Pantload.

3) Also, I’ll “cut to the chase” concerning this Matt Bai column in The New York Times yesterday; he blames the Shirley Sherrod mess last week on Obama because he isn’t “transcendent” enough on the race question – there really is no further need to frustrate yourself by trying to make further sense of it.

4) And in a related story, as they say, Mark Halperin tells us the following on the Sherrod business here (comparing her case to the O.J. Simpson mess – Memo to Halperin: lay your hand on the table, open it up so your palm faces upward, and then smack yourself in the forehead)…

But the coverage of both sagas — Simpson literally for years and Sherrod for the better part of a week — was insanely overblown. The Sherrod story is a reminder — much like the assault in 2004 on John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — that the Old Media is often swayed by controversies pushed by the conservative New Media. In many quarters of the Old Media there is concern about not appearing liberally biased, so stories emanating from the right are given more weight and less scrutiny. Additionally, the conservative New Media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by decision makers in the Old Media is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative New Media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the Old Media finds it irresistible.

I guess this is as close as Halperin actually gets to something approximating introspection, but I still believe the following should be noted from here (in the matter of “Old Media” preoccupation with largely conservative “New Media”).

5) Finally, the Washington Times continues to give column space to Ted Nugent, with predictable results (here)…

We shouldn’t expect anything different from a president and administration who don’t have a clue about how private industry works or how Fedzilla’s policies stifle growth. At least from my research, I still can’t find anyone on the president’s closest team who has actually started a successful business.

From here…

In Obama’s Cabinet, at least three of the nine posts that Cembalest and Beck cite — a full one-third — are occupied by appointees who, by our reading of their bios, had significant corporate or business experience. Shaun Donovan, Obama’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, served as managing director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., where he oversaw its investments in affordable housing loans.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed the electronics research lab at one of America’s storied corporate research-and-development facilities, AT&T Bell Laboratories, where his work won a Nobel Prize for physics. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in addition to serving as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator, has been a partner in his family’s farm for decades and, with his wife, owned and operated a Dairy Queen and radio stations in his home state of Colorado.

The post also tells us that the only Obama cabinet appointees who do not have had “significant private sector experience” are Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

And funny, but as I read this, I don’t have an inclination that Nugent, were he deprived of a guitar, a weapon, or his big mouth, would have the slightest clue as to how the “private sector” works either.

Tuesday Mashup Part One (7/6/10)

1) I recently came across this interesting item at The Daily Beast pertaining to a certain 43rd President of the United States. It seems that, in the aftermath of 9/11 (recounted by author Randall Lane)…

…the State Department hired a highly regarded Washington-based custom media company, TMG, which in turn hired me. Working with a squad of Arab-born Americans, including a smart, opinionated Libyan, a poetic Syrian, and a diligent Palestinian, I would craft America’s public face for the part of the world that hated us most, as translated via the cover and substance of a glossy magazine.

The magazine came to be known as “Hi!” – the thinking was that, even if the name was highly unoriginal, at least it was an English word that everyone seemed to know.

It sounded good so far. However…

…as the memory of 9/11 began to fade, so did the magazine’s utopian mission. Congressmen began complaining that rather than show young Arabs how Western society works, Hi! should tell them why American policies are right. The initiative’s leadership got incrementally political: The undersecretary for public diplomacy, a former advertising CEO named Charlotte Beers, was replaced by a veteran from the previous Bush administration, Margaret Tutwiler, and then, eventually, by President Bush’s top image-maker, Karen Hughes. A State Department panel of ham-fisted political appointees now began actively reviewing our content before we printed it, as the new war in Iraq turned increasingly unpopular.

One of my favorite sections loosely translated to “Window on America.” It was a simple conceit: a photo essay showing what America actually looks like, unfiltered. A bass fishing tournament, a breast-cancer walk, the Puerto Rican Day parade—these were exotic images to most Arabs, too often poisoned about the United States by their inflammatory local press. But during one review meeting, held before a star chamber of 10 high-level State Department officials, the co-leader specifically took offense to a photograph from a classic Western scene: campers and pack mules heading out on a rugged weekend expedition.

Our team always remained vigilant about cultural sensibilities, avoiding the bottoms of shoes, or bare arms, or other seemingly innocuous images that could backfire with the Arab audience. This official’s concerns, however, were more parochial. She held up the offending photo, as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting, and pointed to a pack mule that, by other names, might be known as a donkey. This has to go, she said. Too pro-Democrat. And out it went.

As we know from the dark Bushco days, politics trumped all else (as it did here, when Karen Hughes refused to answer some pretty “vanilla” questions from Sen. John Kerry about whether or not she had any knowledge concerning former CIA agent Valerie Plame, though Hughes was still confirmed for a top PR job with the State Department – by the way, on that subject, Plame’s husband Joe Wilson wrote the New York Times Op-Ed refuting the so-called “Niger letter” about Saddam Hussein supposedly receiving uranium from that country seven years ago today…how time flies).

2) Also, Ken Blackwell returns to spread more propaganda at clownhall.com (here), this time about NPR…

Pro-lifers have long understood the issue of media bias. Years ago, the late, pro-choice David Shaw wrote a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times showing how biased his own newspaper was when reporting on abortion. Shaw showed that bias came through not just on stories about abortion. Shaw showed how even stories that related to surgery on unborn children were skewed or spiked to avoid anything that might have a pro-life message.

Now, we have National Public Radio (NPR) lining up to support the pro-abortion side in the ongoing struggle over this issue. Managing Editor David Sweeney recently issued a memorandum to staff ordering them to use only the politically correct designations for the contending sides in the debate: abortion rights advocates is the approved way of referring to those who favor liberalized abortion; abortion rights opponents is the only way NPR will refer, from now on, to pro-lifers.

This should not come as any great shock to us. NPR has long been hostile to conservatives and traditional values. The part I object to most strenuously, that I think we should all object to, is that NPR takes public tax money to spread its pro-abortion bias.

Sooo…Blackwell accuses NPR of bias over a matter of semantics (at least abortion rights opponents aren’t supposed to be referred to as “anti-choicers,” which may push more right-wing buttons, as it were, even though that is an entirely accurate description).

Well then, if NPR is supposed to be so hostile to the wingnuts, perhaps he can explain why Mara Liasson, an NPR correspondent, regularly appears on Fix Noise (here), even though, as Think Progress points out, “(while) NPR’s ethics guidelines allow journalists to appear on other media outlets, they clearly state that journalists should not ‘encourage punditry and speculation’.“

Or maybe Blackwell can explain why the supposedly “liberal” Liasson would lie about polling results here, claiming that the Dems were in trouble based on polling Repug-represented voting districts that supposedly voted for Obama, even though, as pointed out in the post, one of those districts in Minnesota represented by Moon Unit Bachmann voted for “Straight Talk” McCain and a certain moose-hunting former governor who quit halfway through her term.

Besides, the last I checked, NPR still provided a paycheck for the odious Matthew Continetti (here), which is all the proof I need to tell me the direction taken recently by that once-fine news organization.

3) Also, it seems that Elliott Abrams, of Iran-Contra infamy, is unhappy with President Obama over the matter of space exploration (here)…

This past week, the current NASA administrator revealed what our current president thinks about space. “When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things,” NASA head Charles Bolden told al-Jazeera. “One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”

This quote is entirely believable. Mr. Bolden was not told that he must advance American interests in space, but instead to become part of the big Obama program of engagement with the “international community.” His achievements will be measured by whether he can “reach out” to make people “feel good,” and those people aren’t even Americans; no, his “perhaps foremost” job is to make Muslims around the world “feel good” about their past.

(By the way, I know that when Obama’s predecessor took up space in An Oval Office, that I rarely, if at all, referred to him as “President Bush.” Well, let it be known that conservatives are guilty of the same thing when it comes to Obama.)

Part of me honestly doesn’t wish to dignify Abrams’ idiocy here, but part of me also realizes that what he says is too stupid to be ignored.

This tells us (in a story from last April) that the goals in space as outlined by President Obama include a manned expedition to Mars by sometime after 2035; as the story also tells us…

Obama said he will scrap the Constellation moon program, and its Ares rockets, to develop new rockets, propulsion systems and a crew capsule that have yet to be designed. Constellation’s Orion space capsule will be used instead as a lifeboat for the Earth-orbiting space station.

Sometime after 2025, the rockets should be ready to go, and the first target for a landing by astronauts will be an asteroid. The moon will be bypassed, since “we’ve already been there,” Obama said.

By 2035, systems would be in place for journeys to Mars, with orbiting missions around the Red Planet preceding an attempted landing, Obama said.

And when Obama made this announcement, he did so in the company of former astronaut Buzz Aldrin (to deflect criticism from fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong, among others).

But I suppose the thought of a president pursuing a goal of a manned mission to Mars is really pretty loopy as far as Abrams is concerned (and what exactly qualifies him to speak as an expert on space anyway?).

Sure it is (i.e., Obama’s predecessor wanted to go to Mars too – insert your snark here).

4) And finally, the following letter appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times today…

I am a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot and spent a year flying combat missions. Because of the constant exposure to the noise of the helicopter, a machine gun firing only feet from my ear, the enemy firing at us at every landing zone and explosions all around me, I lost a great deal of hearing. Of course, as a young man I was too proud to admit it. Now many years later I applied to the Veterans Administration hoping to get help with the cost of hearing aids.

My initial application was in November 2009 and during the ensuing seven months I received two letters from the VA titled “sorry for the delay.” Finally in frustration I called Congressman Murphy’s office. I was treated with utmost courtesy and respect and two days later a VA representative called me with two scheduled appointments for the following week. At those appointments I was finally given a hearing test, they had my military records which clearly showed a hearing loss when I left the service and I was assured that the hearing aids “wouldn’t be a problem.”

I have read many letters to the editor complaining that Congressman Murphy did not represent the interests of his constituents. My experience is the direct opposite: He absolutely represents my interests with actions in addition to words. He will have my vote for as long as the Eighth District is fortunate enough to have such an outstanding representative.

Sandy Kaplan
Lower Makefield, PA

As always, to reward good behavior, click here.

Monday Mashup Part One (6/28/10)

1) In response to this pic, I only wish to ask the following question…

This is CNN?

2) Also, Tyler Cowen of the New York Times wrote an entire column yesterday about our economy with not a single mention of this country’s chronic unemployment (here).

Meanwhile, in the reality-based community, Paul Krugman gives us the following (here)…

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

…

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

As far as rhetoric is concerned, the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence. As a practical matter, however, America isn’t doing much better. The Fed seems aware of the deflationary risks — but what it proposes to do about these risks is, well, nothing. The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.

…

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

What a shame that those in the “pain caucus” such as Cowen, who seem to have no problem whatsoever with a national unemployment rate of 9.7 percent, apparently can’t or won’t find an appreciation for the plight of those worse off than they are.

3) And in the department of corporate media illogic, Ross Douthat of the Times tells us the following today about Afghanistan (here)…

Advocates of a swift withdrawal tend to see Biden as their ally, and in a sense they’re right. His plan would reduce America’s footprint in Afghanistan, and probably reduce American casualties as well.

But in terms of the duration of American involvement, and the amount of violence we deal out, this kind of strategy might actually produce the bloodier and more enduring stalemate.

It wouldn’t actually eliminate the American presence, for one thing. Instead, such a plan would concentrate our forces around the Afghan capital, protecting the existing government while seeking deals with some elements of the insurgency. History suggests that such bargains would last only as long as American troops remained in the country, which means that our soldiers would be effectively trapped — stuck defending a Potemkin state whose leader (whether Hamid Karzai or a slightly less corrupt successor) would pose as Afghanistan’s president while barely deserving the title of mayor of Kabul.

At the same time, by abandoning any effort to provide security to the Afghan people and relying instead on drone strikes and special forces raids, this approach would probably produce a spike in the kind of civilian casualties that have already darkened America’s reputation in the region.

Shorter Douthat…

We have to stay in Afghanistan and execute McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy, including rules of engagement that allow our people to get killed easier than they might otherwise, because if we pull out (and Heaven forbid we execute some cowardly li-bu-ruul strategy like that), we’ll just have to go back in and start all over, and in the process, kill more people than we are now. Is that about right?

But just remember that Douthat tells us that “success is the only way out.”

With all of this in mind, I give you the following from U.S. House Rep Dennis Kucinich (here)…

In a little more than a year the United States flew $12 billion in cash to Iraq, much of it in $100 bills, shrink wrapped and loaded onto pallets. Vanity Fair reported in 2004 that “at least $9 billion” of the cash had “gone missing, unaccounted for.” $9 billion. Today, we learned that suitcases of $3 billion in cash have openly moved through the Kabul airport.

One U.S. official quoted by the Wall Street Journal said, “A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen.” $3 billion. Consider this as the American people sweat out an extension of unemployment benefits. Last week, the BBC reported that “the US military has been giving tens of millions of dollars to Afghan security firms who are funneling the money to warlords.” Add to that a corrupt Afghan government underwritten by the lives of our troops. And now reports indicate that Congress is preparing to attach $10 billion in state education funding to a $33 billion spending bill to keep the war going. Back home millions of Americans are out of work, losing their homes, losing their savings, their pensions, and their retirement security. We are losing our nation to lies about the necessity of war.

Bring our troops home. End the war. Secure our economy.

Amen to that.

Thursday Mashup Part One (6/10/10)

1) I haven’t said anything to this point about the retirement of Helen Thomas from the White House press corps because I think there are more important matters out there for us to learn about. Yes, it was wrong for her to say that Israel should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to Germany and Poland, or whatever, but she did apologize right away after she spoke. However, since she is not a conservative and has a history of speaking out against Israel, our corporate media demanded swift retribution.

What made me turn my attention to this matter was this recent column from Cal Thomas (hardly a relation), in particular the following…

Helen Thomas’ real sin — in addition to the obvious — is that she exposed Washington journalists as having strong personal opinions about the subjects they cover.

And with that in mind, I give you the following from C. Thomas about a certain former first lady and Democratic presidential candidate (here)…

In his July 10 nationally syndicated column, Cal Thomas discussed a July 7 New York Times article that reported that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) “said she believed in the resurrection of Jesus, though she described herself as less sure of the doctrine that being a Christian is the only way to salvation.” Thomas asserted: “This is a politician speaking, not a person who believes in the central tenets of Christianity.”

Talk about your “strong personal opinions”…

And besides, the whole dustup over Helen Thomas is the tempest in the proverbial teapot when you consider the following from here, namely that…

On May 31st Israeli commandos killed at least nine unarmed volunteers attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

According to eyewitness reports and forensic evidence, many of these aid volunteers were shot at close range, including a 19-year-old American citizen killed by four bullets to the head and one to the chest fired from 18 inches away.

Israel immediately imprisoned eyewitnesses and hundreds of other aid participants, confiscated their cameras, laptops, and other possessions, and prevented them from speaking to the press for days. Among the incarcerated were decorated U.S. veterans and an 80-year-old former ambassador who had been deputy director of Reagan’s Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism.

When they finally emerged and were able to tell their stories, many described horrific scenes of Israeli commandos shooting people in the head, of those tending the injured being shot in the stomach, of people bleeding to death while flotilla participants waved white flags and pled for help.

They also described being beaten brutally by Israeli forces, again and again – including those on ships that, in the U.S. media’s judgment, experienced “no violence.” A 64-year-old piano tuner from California, Paul Larudee, described hundreds of Israeli commandos boarding his ship. When he refused to cooperate with them, soldiers then beat him numerous times both on board the ship and after he was imprisoned on land.

And given all of this, the only thing a pompous windbag like Cal Thomas can find to complain about is a moment of frustration (carried to excess, I’ll admit) by a member of the profession to which he allegedly belongs as well.

2) Also, this tells us that John C. Metzler, Jr., superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, has been fired along with his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, by Army Secretary John McHugh (as Fix Noise tells us, Higginbotham had reportedly illegally hacked into the computer files of a former Arlington employee).

The matter truly at issue here, however, has to do with at least one service member’s remains buried on top of another at Arlington, as noted here by Salon from last November…

The top official at Arlington National Cemetery claims he was unaware of the most recently reported burial error at the cemetery, possibly, he says, because he was away at the time it occurred. Cemetery employee records, however, show Superintendent John Metzler present and working at Arlington when the cemetery discovered this most recently disclosed burial foul-up…

Arlington officials also continue to struggle to locate key paperwork that must be completed when remains are moved. The paperwork would confirm that Air Force Master Sgt. Marion Grabe’s remains were moved and explain the circumstances surrounding that decision. The Army, which oversees Arlington, has been unable to locate any such documents.

The still-missing burial paperwork adds to the mounting evidence suggesting that top Arlington officials may have disregarded cemetery rules in this case. The explanation from Metzler, meanwhile, raises serious questions about the conduct of top cemetery officials with respect to repeated burial mix-ups at Arlington. Cemetery officials have already established a pattern of incomplete, inconsistent or contradictory responses when asked by Salon to account for misplaced or misidentified remains at the cemetery.

…

…over the course of many months, as Salon has investigated problems at Arlington, statements from cemetery officials have been wildly inconsistent and contradictory about this and other burial mix-ups. Some of the statements, most issued via cemetery or Army spokesmen, have appeared in previous Salon articles, but this full pattern has not been assembled until now.

Among Salon’s earliest queries on the subject was this one, sent in writing to cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst last July 10: “Is (Deputy Superintendent Thurman) Higginbotham or (Superintendent John) Metzler aware of any information that suggests that in some cases, the person identified on a headstone may not, in fact, be the person buried underneath that headstone?” Salon asked. “For example, has the cemetery ever begun digging a grave, only to find that there is already someone there, though the grave is unmarked?”

Horst responded via telephone some days later. “The answer to that is no,” she said. “To the best of our knowledge, we are not aware of any situation like that.”

Ten days after submitting that question, Salon obtained proof that in 2003, the cemetery went to bury a service member in a grave only to find unmarked remains in that spot. The response from the cemetery was to cover up the unknown remains with dirt and grass and walk away. Cemetery officials then kept that secret for six years until Salon brought the case to the cemetery’s attention.

There are no words that I can add that would truly communicate what an affront all of this is to the dignity of our men and women in the armed services. And I don’t mean to allege purposeful negligence here so much as I’m alleging managerial incompetence.

Let’s just say that the terminations of Metzler (an appointee of Poppy Bush, for the record) and Higginbotham were both long overdue.

Update 6/11/10: Hat tip to Atrios for this (shame indeed)…

3) Finally, I give you The Orange One, who said the following from here about the Congressional hearings into the devastation in the Gulf…

“This is Congress at its best,” said (House Minority Leader John) Boehner at the beginning of a rant on the scores of House and Senate hearings on the oil spill.

“Why don’t we get the oil stopped, figure out what the hell went wrong, and then have the hearings and get the damn law fixed,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference.

Yep, as noted here, Boehner and his pals know a lot about trying to mess up congressional hearings, as they did last March 25th on the occasion of the energy bill sponsored by Dem Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts; a whole parade of global warming denialists held court while Congress continued (and continues) to struggle with passing legislation aimed at reversing the effects of climate change, which hastens the warming of the planet and the consequent spreading of sickness and disease among the very young, very old, and everyone else.

Oh, and did you also know that, according to this, Boehner thinks that taxpayers should foot the bill for the BP cleanup in the Gulf?

Maybe Boehner won’t think hearings into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and wreck and the subsequent cleanup are such a joke if gooey tar balls from oil and dispersant start washing up onto the shores of the Ohio River.

Some “Rand-y” Friday Comedy

Gee, I wonder if “city kids” is wingnut code? Who for, I wonder?

(Yes, I’m being sarcastic – I know the answer. And to do something about it, click here.)

And Paul remains “the gift that keeps on giving” based on this (and I’ll await Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik’s expression of outrage for this, and I’m sure I’ll keep waiting…if K.O. had criticized “Morning Joe” – which he wouldn’t, because he’s too smart to do that – Zurawik would vent online forever about it).

(Hat tip to Atrios for the clip, by the way…)