Very close to being the truth.

You know I think that Fox News might even be willing to report on News Corp phone hacking just so long as those intercepted phone calls somehow indicated that President Obama was lying about Benghazi.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski sticks a pin in the Tea Party's desire to run Sarah Palin for office.

"I'm sorry, Sarah who?"

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Tea Party activists from around the country are eager to see Sarah Palin run for the Senate, but Republican senators themselves aren’t rushing to recruit her. 

A recent poll shows Palin would lead the Republican field if she ran for Senate in Alaska. And while Tea Party activists are running a “Draft Sarah” campaign, Republican leaders in Washington appear decidedly less interested in the prospect. 

A Harper Polling survey conducted on May 6 and 7 showed Palin leading the second-place Republican candidate, Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, 32 percent to 30 percent. 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has feuded with Palin in the past, said the former Alaska governor has become detached from the state. 

“I think there are a lot of outside interests that would like to see Sarah Palin in some form of elected office. Most in Alaska recognize our former governor is really not involved in or engaged in the state anymore, that she’s moved to other interests,” Murkowski said. “In order for you to represent the state of Alaska, you’ve got to be in the state.” 

I don't often agree with Murkowski, but she definitely has Palin's number.

As everybody who reads here already knows Palin has demonstrated very little interest in Alaska or Alaska politics since the end of her ill fated reality show. You know, when she was being paid to give a shit.

Since then she has not endorsed anybody up here, donated to anybody's campaign up here, or even spent all that much time up here.

She has made it as clear as she can that she is essentially done with Alaska.

Remember this?

“I just don’t want to go back to Alaska.” 

That is what she was quoted as saying in "Sarah from Alaska," it is what Levi quoted her as saying, and it has been quoted by a number of people who know her as something she repeated on numerous occasions.

She does NOT want to be in Alaska, she does not want to represent Alaska, and she does not want to deal with anything that has to do with Alaska!  Sure, she'll fake it for money, and support from he paint chip eaters, but other than that she is over it.

Which is fine with us because we are COMPLETELY over her loser ass as well!

Report exposes fact that Tea Party groups are really a astro-turf organizations that were originally funded by tobacco companies. In other words they serve as camouflage for big business interests and have NOTHING to do with individual freedoms.

Courtesy of  an exhaustive research paper published earlier this year:

Background 

The Tea Party, which gained prominence in the USA in 2009, advocates limited government and low taxes. Tea Party organisations, particularly Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, oppose smoke-free laws and tobacco taxes. 

Methods 

We used the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, the Wayback Machine, Google, LexisNexis, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org) to examine the tobacco companies’ connections to the Tea Party. Results Starting in the 1980s, tobacco companies worked to create the appearance of broad opposition to tobacco control policies by attempting to create a grassroots smokers’ rights movement. Simultaneously, they funded and worked through third-party groups, such as Citizens for a Sound Economy, the predecessor of AFP and FreedomWorks, to accomplish their economic and political agenda. There has been continuity of some key players, strategies and messages from these groups to Tea Party organisations. As of 2012, the Tea Party was beginning to spread internationally. 

Conclusions 

Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests. It is important for tobacco control advocates in the USA and internationally, to anticipate and counter Tea Party opposition to tobacco control policies and ensure that policymakers, the media and the public understand the longstanding connection between the tobacco industry, the Tea Party and its associated organisations. 

In other words the Koch brothers, and other big businesses, used the model already put into place by big tobacco companies when they were trying to manufacture fake grassroots resistance against laws restricting smoking in public places or the introduction of cigarette taxes that they knew would impact their ability to make money.

All they had to do was give it a shiny new name, access the same easily manipulated group of dipshits, and the next thing you know they had a new political "grassroots" movement willing to jump through whatever hoops you held up for them, so long as they kept inspiring their anger with words like "freedom," "traditional values," and "communism."

And THIS is the group now keeping the Republicans on a short leash and fro all intents and purposes holding out country hostage

President interrupted three times during speech on drones.

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Courtesy of MSNBC:  

President Barack Obama was repeatedly interrupted by a heckler whose taunts slowed the delivery of a major national security speech in the Washington, D.C. area. 

The unidentified heckler began shouting at the president toward the tail end of his highly-anticipated address, when he touched upon U.S. policy toward detainees suspected of terrorist acts.  

Obama was forced to pause three separate times and talk over the protester, interrupting the flow of the closing section of the speech at National Defense University. 

“I'm about to address it ma'am, but you've got to let me speak,” Obama scolded the woman. “Why don't you sit down and let me tell you exactly what I'd do." 

The antiwar group Code Pink, which often interrupts high-profile political events with vocal protests against U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy, said its founder Medea Benjamin was the person responsible for the interruption. 

Though the president appeared somewhat irritated by the interruption, he said he was willing to cut the woman “some slack, because it’s worth being passionate about.” 

He added after another interruption: “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to. Obviously I do not agree with much of what she said. And obviously she wasn’t listening to me and much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong.”

I think he handled that pretty well. And he is right, this is something many of us feel very passionately about and he, and his administration, need to recognize that.

Here is the transcript of the entire speech in case, like me, you missed it earlier.

Apparently Congressman Darrell Issa works for Rush Limbaugh.

"What am I supposed to do here Rush?"

Courtesy of Politico:  

Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday charged that House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa went soft on IRS official Lois Lerner. 

“Issa basically let her get away with it,” the conservative talk show host said, according to a transcript. “She’s gone. He looked clueless, like didn’t know what was going on, didn’t know how to deal with this.” 

Limbaugh’s comments came after the House Oversight Committee held hearings concerning reports that the IRS had targeted conservative groups with extra scrutiny. Lerner, the director of the IRS division in question, tapped her Fifth Amendment rights to not incriminate herself at the hearing, declining to answer further questions after asserting that she had done nothing wrong in an opening statement. Later on Wednesday, Issa said Lerner will be called before the committee again, telling POLITICO that the Fifth Amendment doesn’t hold after she gave a statement. 

“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa (R-Calif.) said. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”

NO, she DIDN'T waive anything! As Lawrence O'Donnell had pointed out on his show last night her initial statements do not negate her ability to plead the fifth.

And what is more the Congress, which is bulging at the seams with politicians who have law degrees, undoubtedly KNOW THAT!

So WHY is Issa threatening to bring Lerner back?

Because the average conservative is too stupid to understand the law, and they get their information from this asshole:

After IRS official Lois Lerner pleaded the Fifth Amendment during Wednesday afternoon’s House committee hearings on the agency’s intentional targeting of conservative groups, Rush Limbaugh took to bashing the woman as someone “filled with rage” who he can easily envision as a sadomasochist. 

“I can see her with whips and chains. This is not a happy woman. This is a woman that is running around filled with rage. And they all are, folks. They’re angry all the time. They’re never satisfied. And no matter what they get, it’s never enough, they always want more. They exist in a permanent state of being enraged.”

I am assuming that this "they" who Limbaugh keeps referring to are either liberals or women, or perhaps a combination of the two. Either way it indicates an incredible amount of prejudice and lack of intelligence. And yet THIS is the go to guy when Republicans politicians need advice on what to do.

So Issa, terrified of upsetting millions of paint chip eaters, is going to call  Lois Lerner back in front of the committee.

Gee I wonder how she will respond?

Can you say "Waste of government time and resources?" I knew that you could.

Forbes Magazine lists the 100 most powerful women. No quitters allowed.

Courtesy of Forbes: 

Our annual snapshot of the 100 women with the most impact are top politicians and CEOs, activist billionaires and celebrities who matter. In roughly equal measure you’ll find next gen entrepreneurs and media mavens, technologists and leaders in philanthropy — all ranked by dollars, media momentum and impact. 

We’ve selected women that go beyond the traditional taxonomy of the power elite (political and economic might). These change-agents are actually shifting our very idea of clout and authority and, in the process, transforming the world in fresh and exhilarating ways.

On this list are politicians, entrepreneurs, business women, entertainers, and activists. Easily a list of the most impressive women on the planet.

Here are the first five:

  German Chancellor, Angela Merkel

President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff.

Melinda Gates,  Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Michelle Obama, well she needs no introduction.

Hillary Clinton, and neither does she.

The entire list can be found here.

Many prominent Democrats and Obama administration members are on this list such as Janet Napolitano, Nancy Pelosi, and Kathleen Sebelius, While the number of prominent conservatives is not so well represented. (Though Greta Van Sustern DOES show up as number 97.)

And as you may have gleaned from my title there is NO mention of a certain disgraced former politician and Fox News contributor, even though she once held a fairly prominent spot on that very same list.

Nice to see that the most powerful and influential women on this planet are far more visionary, and progressive than some of those listed in times past.

Is is also nice to see that Hillary and Michelle are listed in the top five, since I think that indicates good things for America moving forward.

Hardball: Lois Lerner pleaded the 5th during the House IRS probe because she had no other choice.

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Marcus Owens, who held Lerner's job from 1990 to 2001. reports that since she had been accused of lying by members of Congress and there is talk of a criminal investigation that she had no choice but to refuse to answer the questions before Congress.

This was the best explanation that I saw yesterday for her choice.

Personally I just liked it because is damn near made the Republicans on the committee's heads explode.

Evidence discovered which just might prove the existence of multiple universes. "All that I know, is that I know nothing."

Courtesy of the Mail Online: 

Laura Mersini-Houghton, theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Richard Holman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, predicted that anomalies in radiation existed and were caused by the pull from other universes in 2005. 

Now that she has studied the Planck data, Dr Mersini-Houghton believes her hypothesis has been proven. 

Her findings imply there could be an infinite number of universes outside of our own. 

She said: 'These anomalies were caused by other universes pulling on our universe as it formed during the Big Bang. 

'They are the first hard evidence for the existence of other universes that we have seen.' 

Although some scientists remain sceptical about the theory of other universes, these findings may be a step towards changing views on physics. 

The European Space Agency, which runs the £515million Planck telescope, said: 'Because precision of Planck’s map is so high, it made it possible to reveal some peculiar unexplained features that may well require new physics to be understood.' 

Cambridge professor of theoretical physics Malcolm Perry told the Sunday Times that the findings could be real evidence of the existence of other universes. 

While George Efstathiou, professor of astrophysics at the university, told the newspaper: 'Such ideas may sound wacky now, just like the Big Bang theory did three generations ago. But then we got evidence and now it has changed the whole way we think about the universe.' 

Multiple universes. Just imagine how amazing it would be to learn that we are all just a vibration away from entire universes lurking just outside our ability to perceive, and waiting to destroy our concept of reality and our place in the cosmos.

I cannot help but wonder if after such a discovery were to be universally accepted it would signal the final death throes of religion, or if the need to cling to a faith would force a chameleon like metamorphosis that would allow religion to survive and adapt to the new information?

It would seem impossible for the Abrahamic religions to evolve past the outrageously egotistical idea that the planet, the stars, and the sun itself had been created by a God for the human creatures crawling across this tiny orb to encompass the idea of multiple universes. But then again I walked away at seven years of age, so what do I know?

For myself all I can say is that I hope that we learn more about this as soon as possible, because I would hate leave this life with so little understanding of the reality in which I once existed.