KGB Report

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Uvalde teacher who lost 11 kids in his classroom says 'there is no excuse' for officers' delay in taking down gunman. "You're supposed to protect and serve. ... There is no excuse for their actions. And I will never forgive them."

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Most Americans don't accept the mass slaughter of children. Why does the GOP? (Washington Post gift article.)

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Fox News Channel to skip live primetime broadcast of Jan. 6 committee hearings because of course. Fox News will be the only major news network not to air the entire Jan. 6 Committee hearings live, and instead will provide its own coverage "as warranted" through the filter of its regular prime-time programs and hosts.

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Nightclub needle attacks puzzle authorities across Europe. It's not just France: Britain's government is studying a spate of "needle spiking" there, and police in Belgium and the Netherlands are investigating scattered cases, too.

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The 'Benjamin Button' effect: Scientists can reverse aging in mice. The goal is to do the same for humans. Using proteins that can turn an adult cell into a stem cell, researchers have reset aging cells in mice to earlier versions of themselves. In the first breakthrough, published in late 2020, old mice with poor eyesight and damaged retinas could suddenly see again, with vision that at times rivaled their offspring's.

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World Bank warns global economy may suffer 1970s-style stagflation. The World Bank on Tuesday slashed its global growth forecast to 2.9% and warned that many countries could fall into recession as the economy slips into a period of stagflation reminiscent of the 1970s.

Domino's Pizza offering half off all online pizza orders until June 12. All regularly priced pizza items are part of the deal, including specialty pizza offerings like Brooklyn style or pan pizzas. The deal can be applied to pick-up or delivery orders.

Target is ramping up discounts. Here's why. Target is stuck with too much home decor and too many TVs. To clear out the glut, it will ramp up discounts.

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Five biggest Supreme Court cases to watch. The U.S. Supreme Court tends to issue its biggest decisions in June. With a conservative super majority of justices, the public is focused on what new precedents the court could set - or even overturn.

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The GOP drive to install thousands of poll workers sets off alarms. Raises alarms that Republican election deniers could infiltrate official election operations and undermine the process.

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They thought they bought Obamacare plans. What they got wasn't insurance.

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10 secrets snack companies don't want you to know. Well, this is depressing.

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Neural 'poisonous flowers' could be the source of Alzheimer's plaque, says study.

Neuroscience says this simple sleep habit literally cleans your brain. We're not sure why it works. But it seems to have a significant effect.

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Paramount sued over 'Top Gun' copyright as 'Maverick' soars at the box office.

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Miscellany:

Birthdays

• 1917 - Dean Martin, American singer, actor, and producer (d. 1995) (Video)
• 1940 - Tom Jones, Welsh singer and actor (Video-when you're over 80 and still the coolest dude in the room...)
• 1952 - Liam Neeson, Irish-American actor
• 1958 - Prince, American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor (d. 2016) (Video)
• 1959 - Mike Pence, 48th Vice President of the United States, 50th Governor of Indiana
• 1974 - Bear Grylls, English adventurer, author, and television host

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On this date in:

• 1776 - Richard Henry Lee presented the "Lee Resolution" to the Continental Congress. The motion was seconded by John Adams and led to the United States Declaration of Independence. (Video)
• 1887 - The Monotype mechanical typesetting system was patented by Tolbert Lanston.
• 1892 - Homer Plessy was arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train; he lost the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history.
• 1942 - the battle of Midway ended in American victory. (Video)
• 1953 - the first color network telecast in compatible color was transmitted in Boston, MA
• 1955 - Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first U.S. president to appear in a live telecast on color television.
• 1965 - Sony Corp announced its first home video tape recorder priced at $995.
• 1965 - the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibiting the states from criminalizing the use of contraception by married couples.
• 1968 - Sirhan Sirhan was indicted for the assassination of US Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
• 1969 - Tommy James and the Shondells released their single Crystal Blue Persuasion. (Video)
• 1972 - the musical "Grease" opened at the Broadhurst Theater in New York City, where it ran for 3,388 performances. (Video)
• 1975 - Sony launched Betamax, the first videocassette recorder format. (background)
• 1982 - Priscilla Presley opened Graceland to the public.
• 1991 - Mount Pinatubo began erupting, eventually generating an ash column over four miles high.

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Today is:

Daniel Boone Day, June Bug Day, National CAPHPACH Day, National Chocolate Ice Cream Day, Trial Technology Day, and VCR Day

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Categories: Aging (Ageing), Alzheimer's Disease, Domino's Pizza, Economics, Elections, Fox News, Mass shootings, Needle spiking, Obamacare, Paramount Pictures, Republicans, Stagflation, Supreme Court, Target, Top Gun, Uvalde school shooting

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Apparently, Columbo's first name was Frank.

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"Basic cable is so important for so many reasons. Without basic cable, there'd be no 24-hour news, no reality television, and there'd be no Shark Week. Where would we be as a culture?"
-Doug Herzog

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US deaths from COVID hit 1 million, less than 2 1/2 years in. The confirmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It's as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

Also: How often can you be infected with the coronavirus? The spread of the Omicron variant has given scientists an unsettling answer: repeatedly, sometimes within months. A virus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body's defenses, and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year- this may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear.

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On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools were otherwise equal in quality.

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Verizon wireless plan bills getting more expensive with new 'economic adjustment charge'. The advertised pricing of Verizon's actual plans will stay the same, but it will begin adding a new "economic adjustment charge" to your bill every month. (Why doesn't the FTC go after this as false advertising?)

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From a congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, watch new videos released by the Department of Defense and highlights from officials' testimony. The truth is out there?

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Did cats really disappear from North America for seven million years? My guess is the little bastards were hiding.

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Three scenarios for how Putin could actually use nukes. Here's how to think about the unthinkable.

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Why we're doomed: America more interested in Depp-Heard trial than abortion. On a per-article basis, the trial has dwarfed all other major topics in the news.

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Craig Ferguson is 60 today.

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The devil they know: Why the Big Four broadcasters are canceling fewer shows. As broadcast nets become starting points in a cross-platform ecosystem, rather than the stand-alone entities they long were, staying with proven (or at least familiar) programming makes sense: Networks can still draw eyeballs to on-air shows that people know so well, and recognizable library titles help bolster affiliated streaming services. Outside of having NFL rights, that's as much of a win-win as the shrinking linear TV world can provide.

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A racist theory may have driven the Buffalo tragedy. The Murdochs thrive on it. The demented ideology flows from many sources. One of them is Fox News.

The Right's embrace of racist replacement theory is both dangerous and dumb:

Tweets, observations, and diversions:

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "The greatest choice a woman can make is becoming a mother."
So... it IS a choice.
-Middle Age Riot

The formula shortage is an example of how free market capitalism does exactly what right wing fear-mongers think socialism will do.
-Bess Kalb

Freedom isn't owning 25 rifles, it's going to the grocery store and not having to worry about being killed by one.
-Kevin Sixx

Dolly Parton honors Dan Rather for fighting 'disinformation'.

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Categories: Cable TV, Cats, Columbo, Covid-19, Dan Rather, Dolly Parton, Fox News, Lawrence O'Donnell, Nuclear weapons, Rachel Maddow, Replacement Theory, Rupert Murdoch, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Supreme Court, Tucker Carlson, TV, UAPs, UFOs, Ukraine, Verizon, Vladimir Putin

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'Black Widow' Stunner: Disney's streaming revenue reveal may be game-changer. It takes something really major to get me into a movie theater these days.

It may sound strange, given a year of panic over school closures and reopenings, a year of masking toddlers and closing playgrounds and huddling in pandemic pods, that among children the mortality risk from COVID-19 is actually lower than from the flu.

Six fully vaccinated people who attended an outdoor wedding caught the Delta variant, but people with Pfizer and Moderna shots survived, study says.

FDA adds warning about rare reaction to J&J COVID-19 vaccine.

The 'Lambda' variant is now found in 29 countries. Here's what we know about it. Lambda? What about Epsilon through Kappa?

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From Crazytown:

Fox News hosts smear Covid vaccine, despite outbreaks among unvaccinated.

With Covid surging, GOP members continue to discourage vaccination. (Video)

Don Jr. bombs at CPAC as crowd cheers low vaccination rates: A Closer Look. (Video)

Neighbors see Trump waiting by mailbox for reinstatement notice. "When the mail truck comes, he gets this excited look on his face." (Satire: Andy Borowitz)

Student charged with putting Hitler quote in school yearbook.

Allen Weisselberg removed as officer of Trump Organization subsidiaries.

A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God's authority, and is central to Donald Trump's GOP. They forget about that pesky U.S. Constitution: "...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (Article VI, paragraph 3). It's the only place in the entire Constitution where the word "ever" appears, so the founders were pretty clear on their intent, no?

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

• Barbershop Music Appreciation Day
• Beans 'n' Franks Day
• Embrace Your Geekness Day
• Fool's Paradise Day
• Go West Day
• Gruntled Workers Day
• National Beef Tallow Day
• National French Fry Day

On this date:

• 1832 - The source of the Mississippi River was discovered by American geographer Henry Schoolcraft
• 1863 - New York City draft riots: In New York City, opponents of conscription began three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history.
• 1865 - Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the "New-York Tribune" reportedly told his readers to "Go west, young man"
• 1871 - World's first championship cat show was organized by Harrison Weir and held at the Crystal Palace in London.
• 1917 - A vision of the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to children in Fatima, Portugal
• 1923 - The Hollywood Sign was officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads "Hollywoodland" but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.
• 1955 - The last execution of a woman in Britain, Ruth Ellis, took place at Holloway Prison, London
• 1960 - Democrats selected John F. Kennedy as their nominee for President.
• 1973 - Watergate scandal: Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a secret Oval Office taping system to investigators for the Senate Watergate Committee
• 1977 - An electrical blackout in New York City lasted nearly 24 hours, contributing to widespread fires and looting.
• 2013 - Black Lives Matter movement created in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Birthdays

• 1864 - John Jacob Astor IV, American businessman and soldier (richest passenger aboard the Titanic) (d. 1912)
• 1913 - Dave Garroway, American journalist and television personality (d. 1982) (Video)
• 1926 - Robert H. Justman, American director, producer, and production manager ("Star Trek")(d. 2008) (Video)
• 1928 - Bob Crane, American actor (d. 1978) (Video)
• 1940 - Sir Patrick Stewart, English actor, director, and producer (Video)
• 1941 - Robert Forster, American actor and producer (d. 2019) (Video)
• 1942 - Harrison Ford, American actor and producer (Video)
• 1946 - Cheech Marin, American actor and comedian (Video)
• 1951 - Didi Conn, American actress and singer (Video)
• 1957 - Cameron Crowe, American director, producer, and screenwriter (Video)

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Miscellany

Can mankind be unified by an extra-terrestrial threat? The reaction to Covid has shown that the 'unity through crises' model of the global ruling class has backfired. Moot point. Any advanced civilizations monitoring us know to avoid us.

Duh. TikTok trend of whitening teeth with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is not safe, dentists say.

8 secrets Domino's doesn't want you to know.

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Categories: Allen Weisselberg, Black Widow, Christians, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Fox News, Marvel, Republicans, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert

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In case you missed it, a play-by-play of the Virgin Galactic flight hosted by Stephen Colbert.

This pizza chain owner who pays $16 an hour says there's no labor shortage, just a shortage of businesses willing to pay a decent wage. "If you aren't paying your employees enough to cover basic survival costs, what possible incentive could a person have to take that job?"

Last week's fake news: Graphene in vaccines, fake delta variant, kneeling Biden, veteran snub...

How did my phone number end up for sale on a US database? Ah, the wonders of technology. And social media.

Infections rise in 42 states; Fauci says it's 'horrifying' to see people cheer lack of vaccinations.

Cold weather virus in summer baffles docs, worries parents. RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a common cause of cold-like symptoms but can be serious for infants and the elderly. Cases dropped dramatically last year, with people staying home and social distancing, but began cropping up as pandemic restrictions eased.

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From Crazytown:

Trump on Jan. 6 insurrection: 'These were great people'.

Trump wins 2024 CPAC straw poll With 70 percent. (Video)

A seven point plan to reinstate Donald Trump as president 'in days, not years' was handed out at CPAC. It's insane, but constitutional. Sort of.

A Pennsylvania woman who allegedly stormed the Capitol and told a police officer to "bring Nancy Pelosi out here now... we want to hang that f***ing bitch" has filed court documents claiming to be a divinely empowered entity immune from laws.

"F--k him": Rupert Murdoch reportedly made the call to bury Trump's election night dreams in a shallow grave.

Heineken suffers Twitter boycott from anti-vaxxers over disco-themed pro-vaccination ad.

Trump sues eighty-one million voters for banning him from White House.(Satire: Andy Borowitz)

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

This is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. (Video)

Among other things, today is

• National Different Colored Eyes Day
• Etch A Sketch Day
• International Town Criers Day
• National Eat Your Jell-O Day
• National Pecan Pie Day
• New Conversations Day
• Orangemen's Day
• Paper Bag Day
• Simplicity Day

On this date:

• 1804 - Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton died after being shot in a pistol duel by Vice President Aaron Burr
• 1862 - The Medal of Honor was authorized by the United States Congress.
• 1906 - Alfred Dreyfus was found innocent in France
• 1909 - Congress passed The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allowing it to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population.
• 1940 - Frederick McKinley Jones received a patent for an air conditioning unit for trucks carrying perishable goods. He later co-founded Thermo King
• 1960 - The Etch a Sketch toy was introduced, selling for $2.99
• 1972 - Democrats nominated George McGovern for US president in Miami, Florida
• 1973 - A fire destroyed the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States near St. Louis, MO.
• 1976 - First "Family Feud" game show debuted on ABC hosted by Richard Dawson (Video)
• 1979 - "Disco Demolition Night" at Comiskey Park: fans riot destroying disco records and causing the Chicago White Sox to forfeit the second game of a double header to the Detroit Tigers
• 1984 - Geraldine Ferraro became the first US female major-party vice-presidential candidate, after Walter Mondale selected her as his Democratic Party running mate

Birthdays

• 100 BC - Julius Caesar, Roman politician and general (d. 44 BC)
• 1817 - Henry David Thoreau, American essayist, poet, and philosopher (d. 1862)
• 1854 - George Eastman, American businessman, founded Eastman Kodak (d. 1933)
• 1884 - Louis B. Mayer, Russian-born American film producer, co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (d. 1957)
• 1895 - Buckminster Fuller, American architect and engineer, designed the Montreal Biosphère (d. 1983)
• 1895 - Oscar Hammerstein II, American director, producer, and songwriter (d. 1960)
• 1908 - Milton Berle, American comedian and actor (d. 2002)
• 1909 - Joe DeRita, American actor (Curly-Joe of The Three Stooges) (d. 1993)
• 1917 - Andrew Wyeth, American artist (d. 2009)
• 1934 - Van Cliburn, American pianist and composer (d. 2013) (Video)
• 1937 - Bill Cosby,American actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter
• 1943 - Christine McVie, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player (Video)
• 1948 - Ben Burtt, American director, screenwriter, and sound designer ("Star Wars") (Video)
• 1948 - Richard Simmons, American fitness trainer and actor (Video)
• 1951 - Cheryl Ladd, American actress
• 1978 - Michelle Rodriguez, American actress

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Miscellany

Unopened Legend of Zelda game from 1987 sells for $870,000.

Giant pandas are no longer endangered, thanks to conservation efforts, China says. But they're still "vulnerable."

Colby would be official Wisconsin cheese under bill.

Holding up on that wake-up coffee until the cortisol wears off...

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Categories: Covid-19, Donald Trump, Fact check, Fox News, January 6, Medicine, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Shark Week, Social Media, Stephen Colbert, Unemployment, Virgin Galactic

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Condo owners in Surfside building were facing assessments for $15 million worth of repairs. Payments were set to begin a week after the building's deadly fall.

Gas stations are running out of gas ahead of the holiday weekend. It's the shortage of tank truck drivers coupled with rising demand that is causing supply chain bottlenecks and shortages. Experts say a growing number of stations are reporting that they are simply not able to get gas delivered- at any price.

Hotter than the human body can handle: Pakistan city broils in world’s highest temperatures (126°F) (Video)

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From Crazytown:

Blame Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices. (Video)

Out-of-practice Trump forgets to strand rally crowd in parking lot. (Andy Borowitz)

What underlies the G.O.P. commitment to ignorance? Closed-mindedness and ignorance have become core conservative values, and those who reject these values are the enemy, no matter what they may have done to serve the country.

Trump Organization sues New York City for closing golf course after January 6 riots. That could be a big mistake.

Tucker Carlson says 'Biden administration is spying' on him. The television personality offered no additional evidence to support his claim, which drew scrutiny from several users on social media.

Giuliani son gets no votes from Republican leaders in bid for New York governor. Andrew Giuliani, who has traded off his surname, embarrassed by poll that indicates Lee Zeldin will challenge Andrew Cuomo.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

• International Asteroid Day
• National Meteor Day
• National OOTD Day
• National Organization for Women Day
• National Parchment Day
• World Social Media Day

On this date:

• 1892 – Actions culminating in the Homestead Strike began
• 1905 – Albert Einstein sent the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduced special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik
• 1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, results in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia. (Video)
• 1938 - Superman first appears in DC Comics' Action Comics series issue #1
• 1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. (Video)
• 1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, was founded.

Birthdays

• 1901 - Willie Sutton, American bank robber (d.1980)
• 1917 – Susan Hayward, American actress (d. 1975)
• 1917 – Lena Horne, American actress, singer, and activist (d. 2010) (Video)
• 1930 - Thomas Sowell, American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
• 1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr., American magician and author (d. 1997) (Video)
• 1942 - Robert Ballard, American professor explorer and discoverer (wrecks of the Titanic, Bismarck, and USS Yorktown)
• 1943 – Florence Ballard, American pop/soul singer (The Supremes)(d. 1976)
• 1956 – David Alan Grier, American actor, singer, and comedian
• 1959 – Vincent D'Onofrio, American actor (Video)
• 1966 – Mike Tyson, American boxer and actor (Video)
• 1985 – Michael Phelps, American swimmer

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Miscellany

A record-breaking hailstone fell near San Antonio. A bigger one went into margaritas.

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Categories: Climate change, Covid-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Environment, Fox News, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Shortages, Superman, Surfside collapse, The Big Lie, Tucker Carlson

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Donald Trump gave his big speech with his pants on backwards? No, he didn't.

Apple's tightly controlled App Store is teeming with scams. Nearly two percent of Apple's top-grossing apps on one day were scams — and they have cost people $48 million.

AP's not real news: what didn't happen last week: Claim about airline meeting on vaccine liability is false; Cervical cancer screening letter is routine, not linked to COVID-19 vaccines; US military did not arrest Dr. Deborah Birx; and Dominion Voting Systems lawsuits against Powell and Giuliani are ongoing. I'm really beginning to wonder if a large portion of our population is insane.

I'm a billionaire politician, but you, a regular person, have to save the world. Purchase your world-saving equipment from Amazon. Amazon cares about bringing people together, as long as those people aren't coming together to form a union.

Sackler family empire poised to win immunity from opioid lawsuits While Purdue Pharma has twice pleaded guilty to federal crimes relating to its opioid marketing schemes, no member of the Sackler family has faced criminal charges.

25 secrets fast-food chains don't want you to know. My favorite: "the tastes and aromas of fast food items are often manufactured at special chemical plants in New Jersey." Why does the lab's New Jersey location make it seem worse?

MeidasTouch.com made a $184,854 TV buy with this ad on Fox News this week. Fox News denied airing the ad. You know what to do...

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is Daniel Boone Day, June Bug Day, National Chocolate Ice Cream Day, and VCR Day.

On this date in 1776, Richard Henry Lee presented the Lee Resolution to the Continental Congress. The motion was seconded by John Adams and led to the United States Declaration of Independence. (Video)

On this date in 1942, the battle of Midway ended in American victory. (Video)

On this date in 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first U.S. president to appear in a live telecast on color television.

On this date in 1965, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibiting the states from criminalizing the use of contraception by married couples.

On this date in 1968, Sirhan Sirhan was indicted for the assassination of US Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

On this date in 1969, Tommy James and the Shondells released their single Crystal Blue Persuasion. (Video)

On this date in 1972, the musical "Grease" opened at the Broadhurst Theater in New York City, where it ran for 3,388 performances. (Video)

Birthdays

• 1917 – Dean Martin, American singer, actor, and producer (d. 1995) (Video)
• 1940 – Tom Jones, Welsh singer and actor (Video-when you're over 80 and still the coolest dude in the room...)
• 1952 – Liam Neeson, Irish-American actor
• 1958 – Prince, American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor (d. 2016) (Video)
• 1959 – Mike Pence, 48th Vice President of the United States, 50th Governor of Indiana
• 1974 – Bear Grylls, English adventurer, author, and television host

Miscellany

After years of detecting land mines, a heroic rat is hanging up his sniffer. In four years he has helped to clear more than 2.4 million square feet of land. In the process, he has found 71 land mines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance.

Speaking of UFOs and related topics: "Preserving our way of life, because we care about the future - just not yours":

(This is a joke, of course...)

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Categories: amazon.com, Apple, Associated Press, Battle of Midway, Bear Grylls, Dean Martin, Donald Trump, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Fast food, Fox News, Grease, January 6, Liam Neeson, Mike Pence, Opioids, Prince, Richard Henry Lee, Robert F. Kennedy, Sacker family, Sirhan Sirhan, Supreme Court, Tom Jones, Tommy James

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"I have a dream, Jon, that one day the actions of a few bleeping white people will be seen as discrediting their entire race."
-Larry Wilmore

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Categories: Bill O'Reilly, Daily Show, Fox News, Jon Stewart, Larry Wilmore, Racism

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Categories: Batman, Christmas, Christopher Walken, Church and State, Civil Rights, Cleaning off the desktop, Congress, Fox News, Holidays, Politics

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart hits another one out of the park.

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Categories: Barack Obama, Daily Show, Founding Fathers, Fox News, Jon Stewart, Second Amendment

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Before everyone gets their knickers in a twist over Al Jazeera buying Al Gore's Current TV, let's take a deep breath and recall this informative little August, 2010 clip from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

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Categories: Al Gore, Al Jazeera, Alwaleed bin Talal, Current TV, Daily Show, Fox News, Jon Stewart

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That famous quote by Mythbuster Adam Savage is, simply, the reason why the Republicans were handed their lunch on Tuesday.

Here are two essays which address the issue in a sane, rational manner. The videos that follow, from last night's Daily Show, are a bit more... bombastic.

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Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, and he really did win. And really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to over sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack on us. It was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction. And the moon landing was real, and FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in the country are not the same things as Communism.

Listen. Last night was a good night for Democrats and liberals for very obvious reasons. But it was also possibly a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country we have a two party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing this country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media are stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate between competing feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked. And they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they've been so happy living inside... if they do not want to get shellacked again. And that will be a painful process for them, I'm sure, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican party and the conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we'll all be better off as a nation.

And in that spirit, congratulations everybody.

- Rachel Maddow

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If You're Surprised By The Election Results, You're The Reason You Lost, Or: A Plea for Useful Republicans.

Dear Republicans:

I know the despair you feel this morning, and sympathize, because I've been there. In 2004 my stiff, robotic millionaire lost to a President he should have soundly thumped, and I was so hurt I took a week off from the Internet afterwards. I am completely sympathetic with that slow terror that the country is now in the hands of an incompetent, and the voters don't even know it.

But I noticed a weird difference between the way Republicans and Democrats reacted to a losing candidate. In 2004, when the polls turned against Kerry and it was obvious he was going to lose, the Democrats asked "How can we fix that?" Oh, they asked in their glum, incompetent way, but when I personally talked to other Democrats both in real life and online, we were all pretty cognizant of the fact that Kerry was the underdog.

The Republicans of 2012, however, became increasingly convinced that Romney was going to win.

Everywhere I looked on Twitter and Facebook, I saw my Republican friends- not straw men, but actual people- talking about how terrible Nate Silver's methods were, how these Rasmussen polls showed Romney's real strength, and eventually you got the travesty of UnSkewedPolls.com, which cherry-picked the data and even today has their prediction of not just a Romney win but a landslide, Romney 311 to Obama 227. (Actual result: Obama 332, Romney 206.)

It all crystallized for me when my friend Brad Torgerson said, "Liberals and Democrats have Nate Silver and his 538 blog. Conservatives and Republicans have the U of CO guys. It's an epic cage match of predictive numbers geekery!"

Look there. Right at that post- one not too dissimilar from a thousand other dismissals of Nate Silver and the other aggregated polls. See what Brad did there? The way the guy bringing you news he didn't like was automatically assigned a partisan bias, and the only rational solution was to get a guy on your side with better numbers? As if reality was merely a function of getting enough guys on your side?

That's why you lost.

Stop confusing hard reality for partisan opposition.

It's time to step out of the bubble, dear Republicans, because we fucking need you. I don't trust the Democratic party to run the country single-handedly. I want a Republican party I can rely on for real solutions- and you've become lazy, voodoo-like, dismissing any data you don't like as partisan opposition.

Jay Lake is fond of saying, "Reality has a liberal bias." That's not because reality inevitably verifies liberal thinking, but because the Republican response to anything that challenges them is now to write off the data.

And let me repeat: we need you. I want a counterweight to Democratic power, not a deadweight that refuses to acknowledge the issues. I want a Republican party that will look at the numbers for climate change and not go, "I don't like what those scientists are saying, so I'll call it a silly liberal bias!" but say, "We're business experts, we know how to motivate rich people to do what we want, how do we fix this?" I want a Republican party that will realize while yes, we're spending far too much and should cut down, the results of thirty years of trickle-down theory and tax cuts won't actually provide enough revenue, because we are at the lowest effective tax rates we've had in thirty years.

And yes, you can argue all my statements here. But in that, smart person, you're like a driver with an SUV in Alaska. A person with a car in Alaska is going to get stuck in the snow eventually; that's a fact. But if you have an SUV, you're gonna get stuck way the heck out in the woods where no one can get at you, because you have the strength to do it and won't stop when common sense tells you to. I had a ton of Very Smart friends dissecting all the reasons why Nate Silver was wrong, why his methodology sucked, why these pollsters who said what they liked over here had better ways of slicing the data- and all that flurry of so-called "facts" amounted to was an elaborate justification of personal biases that had no basis in reality.

It's time to stop fighting the obvious. It's time to stop assuming that anyone who presents contradictory data is out to get you.

You should have won, guys. You had a President with an economy in the doldrums, a guy who'd lost a lot of his electoral mojo in the realities of politics. But instead of rising from the grave, you chose a candidate who never actually gave us firm numbers on what expenses he'd cut to fix the economy. You chose a candidate who said he'd get rid of Obamacare, but never actually named the parts he'd destroy. You chose someone who, though all politicians lie, lied a lot more than almost any modern Presidential candidate.

You had a guy who should have sliced Obama to ribbons- and he lost, in large part, because he said, "Trust me" instead of giving us a plan. And you let him get away with it.

You let him get away with it because you're indulging in a great deal of magical thinking. You let him get away with it because facts have ceased to matter; as long as someone tells you something you want to hear, you'll find a way to justify it with pseudo-science and trust and spit and baling wire. You don't like to hear how bad a candidate Mitt was, because you came so close this year, but it's true; the problem is that so much of the country has abandoned listening to reality that you can get massive votes and never touch a fact.

If you can't be honest today, in the aftermath of this great defeat, then you're never going to see the truth.

If you seriously thought that Romney had a good chance of winning, then you're part of the problem. Wake up. I implore you: learn from this. Look at your deepest beliefs, and see whether the numbers support them. Start thinking, maybe those people with data I don't like are right.

If you think the lesson to be learned is "We weren't conservative enough," then you're handing me a great victory in 2016. I want to have a real choice then.

Love,
T.F. (The Ferret)

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Megyn Kelly teaches Karl Rove the power of scientific gobbledygook.

"If only President Bush could have been so lucky as to have a massive hurricane on his watch, then... oh, right..."

It's just arithmetic.

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Categories: Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, Chick-fil-A, Daily Show, Elections, Fox News, Hypocrisy, Jon Stewart, Karl Rove, Megyn Kelly, Mitt Romney, Nate Silver, News Media, Politics, Rachel Maddow, Sarah Palin, The Ferret, YouTube

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Fox News is upset that empty-headed puppets are trying to brainwash and indoctrinate Americans... Perhaps you could sue them. The charge could be copyright infringement.
-Jon Stewart

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Categories: Daily Show, Fox News, Jon Stewart, Mitt Romney, Video

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"...For there are even more on the government dole than even his 49% accounts for. Like those welfare queens at ExxonMobil, AT&T, GE, et al... 250 corporations that from 2008 to 2010 got nearly a quarter trillion in tax subsidies. Although to be fair, at least ExxonMobil and AT&T give us back cheap gas and reliable cell phone service..."

"If they have success, they built it. If they failed, the government ruined it for them. If they get a break, they deserve it. If you get a break, it'a a handout and an entitlement.

It's a baffling, willfully blind cognitive dissonance...

(Watch the top of the video- you can skip the ad after a few seconds...)

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Categories: Daily Show, Fox News, Jon Stewart, Mitt Romney, News Media, Politics, Video

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... and today's youth know the difference...

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Categories: Barack Obama, CNN, Colbert Report, Daily Show, Fox News, Jon Stewart, Mitt Romney, MSNBC, Politics, Stephen Colbert

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