at-Largely

Breaking, no news to be reported...

Hurry everyone, a press conference is to be held in which nothing will be announced:

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is expected to announce Tuesday he is not running for U.S. Senate or anything else in 2010, effectively ending his storied - and often stormy - electoral career, The Daily News has learned.

Yes, Giuliani is NOT running for the Senate. Although he was not formally or informally running before this announcement and although his camp has already denied (countless times) rumors that he might run, Giuliani still felt the need to hold a presser to announce nothing new. The press too felt the need to report the NOT news. Perhaps next Sarah Palin will hold a presser to announce that she is not the governor of Alaska?

Run reporters, run.

IMHO, this is one time when no news is actually good news.

Mary Matalin's bloody hands...

Helping to lie the nation into a war of aggression, former Dick Cheney staffer Mary Matalin takes the Jihad propaganda domestic. H/T to Think Progress:

"Yesterday on CNN, Republican strategist and CNN contributor Mary Matalin railed against Democrats for pushing forward with health reform efforts. “They’ve been on this jihad for 70 years, and they’re going to throw over all their competitive seats to do it,” she said, adding:

And I don’t know what kind of party that is. That leaves left in the Democratic Party the urban centers, this is tyranny of the minority. Two-thirds of the country don’t want this. And one-third of these jihadists, these health care jihadists do. I guess that’s how democracy in the Obama era works.

Moments later, she smeared the prior efforts to establish Social Security and Medicare as “entitlement jihads” as well..."

Who is the Jihadi, a person who willfully helps lie a nation into a war of aggression, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans or a person who advocates for health-care reform? Matalin has blood on her hands. Someone should point that out to her. 

In fact, I think from now on I shall call Matalin 'Bloody Mary.'

Wishing death on political opponents...

This kind of ugly rhetoric is precisely why the far right-wing is destroying the entire GOP. The mainstream Republican party will not cut away this gangrene, so it is stuck with the ramifications of having in their party such violent positions so openly displayed. Just take a look:

'"Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) has seen far better days, and is often little more than a warm body when he is helped into the Senate. Granted, lucidity and coherence is not a priority among Senate Democrats, but Byrd is an embarrassment even for a party that regular drafts the imaginary or dead to vote.

Robert Byrd has been around a very long time, and his many decades of service have made West Virginia a wonderful state in which to manufacture methamphetamine or frame the locals for murder. But it's time for Senator to do the right thing, and expire.

It isn't too much to ask for Byrd to step off for that great klavern in the sky before the Senate vote that may force this nation to accept government-rationed health care. Even a nice coma would do.

Without his frail, Gollum-like body being wheeled into the Senate's chambers to cast the deciding vote, the Senate cannot curse our children and grandchildren with crushing debt and rationed, substandard healthcare.

I suppose some will be shocked and appalled that I'd wish for the former kleagle to die on command. I'd remind them that the party wheeling in a near invalid to vote in favor of this unread monstrosity of a bill is the one that should feel shame."'

Yes, the "i hope you die" political talking point is offensive, but not shocking. Not from this bunch. Let me share with you a story of something that had happened to me recently. I twittered about it mildly - not in fully detail - but I was too angry to fully blog about it. Given this latest display of death -by -disagreement- syndrome, I feel I must share it.

(more after the fold)

5 Arrested in theft of Auschwitz camp sign

Apparently, symbols of Holocaust atrocities are very profitable:

The "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz in southern Poland has been found in the north and five men are being questioned by police.

The five suspects, aged in their 20s and 30s, were not members of a neo-Nazi group, Krakow police said. The metal sign from the main gate, which symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany, had been cut into three pieces, they added. A major search was launched after the sign was stolen before dawn on Friday. 

Andrzej Rokita, the local police chief in Krakow - where the men were being questioned - said the theft had been financially motivated, and it remained unclear whether it was carried out to order.

"From the information we have, none of the five belong to a neo-Nazi group nor hold such ideas," Andrzej Rokita said of the suspects.

Did these idiots think they would simply sell it on eBay?

WSJ News editor = WSJ Fox News, Say it ain't so!

This  a great piece on how Rupert Murdoch has in a single year made the WSJ news pages questionable.  I am shocked! Shocked I tell you:

"Not long ago, a British conservative columnist and Weekly Standard contributor who once wrote a column asking if America was ready for a “dangerous left-winger” like Barack Obama would have been an unlikely second-in-command at The Wall Street Journal.

While the Journal’s editorial page has had a long tradition of outspokenly conservative commentary, the news sections have had an equally strong tradition of nonpartisanship. But when Gerald Baker was named the paper’s deputy editor-in-chief, critics cited the appointment as evidence that, under Rupert Murdoch, the walls between the two would be coming down.

Baker, 47, a longtime reporter and columnist in Washington for the Financial Times and The Times of London, has been at the Journal for almost a year, and the accusations that the paper’s coverage of the Obama administration has started to slant to the right have only become more pointed.

Baker, seen by Murdoch critics as responsible for a more partisan tone in Washington even more than the paper’s editor-in-chief, Robert Thomson, dismisses the criticism and says those who make it have no understanding of his long career in journalism."

Oh really?

One Journal staffer described Baker’s first impression in the newsroom — by way of YouTube — as “totally obnoxious, puerile, anti-intellectual, useless drivel.” A journalist who’s known Baker for years said he was “quite taken aback” by the Hannity clip, and while acknowledging that Baker leans right, argued that “he’s not as hard-line as he’s being portrayed.”

I love the irony. For all of the right-wing patriotism talking points, they take no issue with a foreign national controlling the level of truthiness they get int their news.

Idiots and criminals - their opinions matter...

I continue to be baffled as to why our very own national village idiot, Sarah Palin, is given continued news coverage as though she was already a candidate for office or a sitting political official. She is neither. She is, however, considered by every reasonable person on the planet to be an embarrassment to America. Everything she does or does not do is covered extensively- despite her having repeatedly been caught lying; despite her extremist views; despite her ignorance on issues she opines about regularly;  despite her inability to form coherent sentences - Palin is news.

How is this for stupid:

"Sarah Palin announced Thursday night that she ended a Hawaii vacation early because of the ruckus raised after she blacked out "McCain" on her sun visor in an effort to elude paparazzi.

After the former Alaska governor was photographed on the beach earlier this week, TMZ.com portrayed the visor marking as a slight of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), her running mate last year."

Seriously, does any one care that Palin ended her vacation to Hawaii early? Does anyone really believe that she blacked out McCain on her sun visor to avoid paparazzi? This is a woman who courts paparazzi!

Does anyone believe for a moment that if Palin did not want attention she would have opted for a McCain visor, blacked out rather than a plain visor?

Seriously, why is this woman constantly getting news space for opinions she does not write herself and which she is not remotely capable of formulating? Why does she get news space for cutting her vacation short after pulling a PR stunt to take a swipe at her former running mate? Let the tabloids have at her, which they are. But why are reputable publications, news publications, giving her any space whatsoever? Oh right, because the opinions of fools and opinions about opinionated fools are newsworthy.

Then there is former Dem Rep and alleged mobster Jimmy Traficant:

"Former Rep. James Traficant, who was recently released from prison after serving seven years for corruption, said Thursday that he is "proud of being an ex-con" and may try to return to Congress.

Traficant, a Democrat who was elected to nine terms from Youngstown before he was kicked out of the House, said he will circulate nominating petitions in three House districts. He didn't specify which, but the three districts closest to his hometown are all held by Democrats."

Not only is he contemplating running for Congress, but he actually thinks he has a shot at the POTUS slot too. Now, until he actually declares his candidacy, he is an irrelevant and deeply corrupt former politician whose opinions and day-dreaming have no news value whatsoever. Unless of course the media is getting an early start on helping Traficant court the organized crime vote. Seriously, does anyone really care that Traficant just got out of jail or believe that he has a shot at being elected to any office? So why is he and his foolishness newsworthy?

135,000 Uninsured Americans Will Die Before Health Reform Takes Effect, Analysis Finds

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Read it and weep (my latest for Raw Story):

Over 6,600 uninsured veterans will die by 2013: estimate

A Raw Story analysis, based on a recent Harvard Medical School study, estimates that 135,000 American citizens and over 6,600 US veterans will die due to a lack of health insurance before current proposed healthcare reform measures would take effect.

One hundred and thirty-five thousand US lives far exceeds the total number of Americans who died in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the attacks of 9/11 combined. The lives of over 6,600 US veterans is more -- by over 1,300 -- than the total number of US soldiers who have thus far died in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-author of the Harvard Medical School study, called Raw Story’s estimates “quite reasonable.”

Read the rest... (provocative, hard truths from health and policy experts throughout -- ones rarely or ever mentioned in the mainstream press -- including a veterans' advocate who discusses the correlation between lack of proper healthcare and the military's suicide epidemic)