B Back Soon

I, your Wizard par ardua ad alta, am about to embark upon a hazardous and technically unexplainable journey into the outer stratosphere. To confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with my brother wizards.

Try to behave while I’m gone.

See you in a few days.

Courage.

GOP War On Reality Continues

GOP “wimmen’s rahts” practice

Another day another debacle: GOP decides to scuttle committee  vote on EPA nominee. GOP continues to pretend that mindless sequester cuts aren’t hurting the country or economy. GOP continues to block judicial nominations, leaving a massive federal courts crisis to get worse and worse. GOP continues attack on women, women’s rights. GOP continues hating immigrants and blaming them for de facto slavery. GOP pretends that Benghazi is a big scandal. And their propaganda machine clanks into full “I dreamed a dream” mode, crocodile tears included at no extra charge.

Listen:

Official Offers Account From Libya of Benghazi Attack
New York Times

WASHINGTON — A State Department official presented a minute-by-minute account on Wednesday of what happened during the seige of the diplomatic compound in Benghazi last Sept. 11, offering the first public testimony from an American official …

But that’s not the real show.

Tomorrow’s News Today

Sharyl Attkisson’s role in the Benghazi coverage has come under media/bloggy scrutiny:

The Post’s Sharyl Attkisson piece
Dylan Byers / Politico

The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi has written a glowing profile of Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy award-winning CBS correspondent who has been the mainstream media’s most persistent investigator of the events surrounding last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Remember kids, you read it here first:

The Shadow of the Valley of the Stoopid

UPDATED BELOW

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” ~ Dean Vernon Wormer, Animal House

Welcome to the Futum, as politics and tabloids have, finally, completely merged. Imagine “ELIZABETH TAYLOR” in the following headline and you’ll see what I mean:

Christie reveals secret stomach surgery to lose weight
[Rupert Murdoch's] New York Post

By TARA PALMERI and BETH DEFALCO
Last Updated: 3:59 AM, May 7, 2013
Posted: 3:01 AM, May 7, 2013

EXCLUSIVE
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie secretly underwent lap-band stomach surgery to aggressively slim down for the sake of his wife and kids, he revealed to The Post last night.

The Garden State governor agreed to the operation at the urging of family and friends after turning 50 last September.

He told The Post he was thinking of his four kids and how it was time to start improving his health when he decided to have the procedure.

“I’ve struggled with this issue for 20 years,” he said. “For me, this is about turning 50 and looking at my children and wanting to be there for them.”

Ah, so instead of bribing hospital staff and staking out hotels, Christie CHOSE Murdoch’s Post as his friendly messaging machine. No surprises there. Move along, move along. (“SECRET SURGERY”! sounds like a soap opera, frankly. Too cheesy to be real.)

But we have finally managed to bring politics to the level of tabloid faux scandals and heartwarming gushy bullshit.

“I did it for my family.”

Here’s the actual caption that the POST
put to this AP stock photograph in the story:
HEAVY DUTY: Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
told The Post last night he had
lap-band surgery Feb. 16 because he
wants to stay alive for his kids.

Right.

You believe that don’t you? Or perhaps, rather than a cynical political ploy to run in 2016, he’s picking up the weight-loss mantle and political playbook of Huckolas Huckabee at Dickens Central, who launched his presidential run with a weight loss book/crusade, and then launched his media career via his presidential run.

Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

And stop readin’ them tabloids and git ter doin’ yer chores.

Courage.

============

UPDATE: I am reliably informed that a lot of people don’t know what “lap band”  (laparoscopic surgery + stomach banding) surgery is. Here’s a quick primer.

It’s an operation for radical weight loss, and, as a variant of bariatric surgery, does NOT involve chopping up the stomach or duodenum … e.g. it is reversable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_gastric_band

Adjustable Gastric Band (Wikipedia)

Ben-Hur, Benghazi, Ben Gay

UPDATED BELOW

Well, the rumor is that Sharyl Attkisson is going over to Faux Nooz, after a bizarre series of “walking Right Wing Konspiracies’ into the “mainstream” media.

And lookie what the Faux Nooz crowd got today (not exactly refuting the rumor):

click to enlarge; click here to go there

Look at that sea of red.  Only Little Green Footballs and Daily Kos have any rebuttal to the massive right-wing red/pink blog kkkonspiracies. Because, you  know, the REAL criminals of the Benghazi attack were, conveniently, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. I mean, Terrists gone be terrists, raht?

This is naked Big Brother propaganda, only, weirdly, the evil Eurasians aren’t nearly the problems that our Very Own Oceana Official Is! War is peace! Ignorance is strength! (Right Winston?)

And here’s what Sharyl has to say … 

Loony Weekend Commences

The Bonfire of the Hannitys focuses its annual loon-fest in Houston this weekend. Sarah Palin, looking more and more like a clever Alien simulacrum of what they consider a generic middle-aged SUV driver brought down the house with a paean to stupidity, as mellifluous as fingernails on a blackboard …

Sarah Palin gets standing O from NRA crowd
James Hohmann / Politico

HOUSTON — Sarah Palin said Friday that the elite media would never let a Republican president get away with what Barack Obama has done in his push for new gun laws.  —  The former Alaska governor recalled that the national press “tore apart” …

And did a whole chewing tobacco schtick and threw out her catchphrases, variants of “Big Brother Loves You” one and all, and, expressing hatred and contempt for thought, observation and reason, and accomplishing a spectacular non-trashing of Shakespeare in perhaps the worst riff on Henry V ever enunciamated by the unedumacated. Is our children learning? No.

Assassinating Health Care Reform

The long knives have made their noise, gliding NEARLY soundlessly from their sheaths, quietly concealed in the folds of robes, in sleeves, in gubernatorial cowboy boots, in nullification and science rejection and failure to climate change detection. Each knife a Republican erection.

Last week, you might have noticed the swirl of early headlines: Health Care Reform needs more TAXES … most people don’t know health care reform fully kicks in next year … Democrats worried about rollout of health care reform. It’s not an accident. It’s been in the works, and last I checked, the old Crane/CATO/Koch machine’s brain, the fellow behind the “term limits” campaigns of 1992 and 1994 had been tasked to destroy health care reform. (Long after its passage, please note.)

But the American Enterprise Institute, even more than the Heritage Foundation, fires the Fort Sumpter shot indicating that it’s ON, babies …. right from the center brontosaurus barking the conservative cant:

Part-time Nation: Was the April jobs report really the Obamacare jobs report?
James Pethokoukis / AEIdeas

US job growth in April beat economist expectations as nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000, and the jobless rate fell to a four-year low of 7.5%.  But the report contained worrisome signs that President Obama’s health care reform law …

Yes. Obamacare is bad for “Job creators” who will punish employees by not creating full time jobs, so that they won’t have to pay for health care.