“I am so fucked…”

Holy shit! If you haven’t seen Rachel Maddow’s EPIC slap-down of Republican Governor Bob “vaginal ultrasound” McDonnell, then settle in for some eye-popping reporting.

The background to the two-segment Maddow expose came from an earlier McDonnell bombshell courtesy of The Washington Post:

A prominent political donor gave $70,000 to a corporation owned by Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his sister last year, and the governor did not disclose the money as a gift or loan, according to people with knowledge of the payments.

The donor, wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., also gave a previously unknown $50,000 check to the governor’s wife, Maureen, in 2011, the people said.

The money to the corporation and Maureen McDonnell brings to $145,000 the amount Williams gave to assist the McDonnell family in 2011 and 2012 — funds that are now at the center of federal and state investigations.

Williams, the chief executive of dietary supplement manufacturer Star Scientific Inc., also provided a $10,000 check in December as a present to McDonnell’s eldest daughter, Jeanine, intended to help defray costs at her May 2013 wedding, the people said.

Unlike many political scandals, this one is very easy for the common man to understand. It’s not complicated. There’s no nuance to this one whatsoever: The governor of Virginia is on the take, he’s a tax cheat and he’s a bald-faced liar.

That the whole scandal centers around a diet supplement, of all things, makes it all the more amusing.

The Maddow show’s producers had exclusive access to the GOP governor’s financial disclosure statements from 2008 to the present and the revelations of the report, are, to say the very, very least, pretty damning.

And it’s not just a paper trail that haunts the Virginia governor, it’s a squirmy, “blinky” TV interview he did right before the revelations of the additional funny money from his sugar daddy “no strings attached” benefactor Jonnie R. Williams Sr. surfaced in the Post’s report. Right before.

As you’ll see in the segment, Maddow uses that interview to make a meal of this guy. McDonnell is gonna go down and he’s gonna go down hard. You can bet that a whole lot of influential people in his state have seen her segments and read the Post article. How much more fucked could he be? (Surely it puts South Carolina’s Mark Sanford’s relatively minor scandal into stark relief, doesn’t it?)

And it’s piss yourself funny to see the GOP standard-bearer, their candidate for governor (and current Virginia Attorney General) Ken “the Cooch” Cuccinelli also involved in this… up to his eyeballs! You may recall “the Cooch” as the flaming asshole wanting to keep a law on the books making blowjobs illegal in the state…

As I watched the report, I tried to imagine what was going through Bob McDonnell’s mind as he realized how fucked he was, because you just know he and his wife and their lawyer have all watched the whole thing… more than once.

And then I noticed a banner ad for the new Neflix “binge TV” offering Orange Is The New Black and it occurred to me what must be on Bob McDonnell’s mind!

From the state house to the big-house. I’m pretty sure that being Rod Blagojevich’s prison cellmate is not a path that McDonnell, a self-proclaimed conservative Christian, saw his life taking.

Boo-hoo, Republican weenie. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, Governor.
 

 
About ten years ago, whoever was managing Alex Jones at the time would have DVDs of Jones’ shouty “documentaries” messengered over to me at the Disinformation office.

I was already well aware of Alex Jones and sight-unseen, I already knew that this was not going to be something that I was going to be interested in, and especially not interested in investing any money into (the idea was that we would have manufactured it and distributed it on DVD).

Aside from the fact that they were obviously the products of a ranting and raving unhinged paranoiac lunatic with access to someone who knew Final Cut Pro, Jones used footage that there was no way he could have gotten the rights to use.

They were these long, like, messy video collages of fact, conjecture, crappy pixelated news footage and the jumbled-up logic, red-faced, bulging vein exhortations Jones is famous for. I will admit to watching them on the treadmill but they were always binned immediately afterwards.

In the intervening years, Jones has become a household name in some of America’s more gullible households, mostly due to Glenn Beck disgracefully elevating his profile on Fox News. Beck ultimately decided to cut out the middleman and unashamedly ripped off Alex Jones’ shtick. Oh yeah, Beck stole his act lock, stock and fucking barrel, went to the bank with it and then kicked Jones to the curb to distance himself from his hot-headed, foaming at the mouth mentor (and lesser showman). Jones does have a legitimate gripe with Glenn Beck, if you ask me, but it is Beck who deserves the blame for mainstreaming a kook like Alex fucking Jones in the first place.

Of late, Mr. Jones has been his own worst enemy, making himself into a laughingstock, first with his infamously berserk Piers Morgan interview on CNN and then again with his “false flag” accusations about the Boston bombing.

Jones makes outrageous predictions constantly. Is he ever right?

Nathaniel Downes at Addicting Info thinks Alex Jones is a fraud. That might be more than a little unfair to Jones—I think he believes what he says, he’s just fucking nuts—but he’s amassed an impressive list of some of Alex Jones’ greatest misses from 2012:

Worldwide shortage of rare earth metals – Didn’t happen
Food supply disruptions hit western nations – Didn’t happen
Deadly superbug mutation goes wild – Didn’t happen
New evidence links vaccines and neurological disorders – The opposite happened
U.S. power grid suffers catastrophic failure – Didn’t happen
Satellite breakdown – Didn’t happen
GM crop contamination leads to crisis – Didn’t happen
Honeybee population collapse spreads to other species – Didn’t happen
Weather patterns become increasingly radicalized – Debatable
Nuclear power sees global resurgence – The Fukushima incident discredited this
Nuclear weapons unleashed in the Middle East – Didn’t happen
New exotic superfood from South America emerges in western markets – Didn’t happen
A high-tech, portable vitamin D sensor device is invented – Didn’t happen
U.S. debt gets downgraded while world investors slash purchases of U.S. debt instruments – The debt was downgraded, but investors still flock to it
U.S. nearly comes to military conflict with China over natural resources – Didn’t happen
Huge new scandal implicates major pharmaceutical company in scientific fraud – Nothing out of the ordinary here
China unleashes armies of corporate espionage hackers onto western nations – Some debate on this is ongoing
Medical imaging scandal unfolds as older patients begin to show serious health damage from radiation via mammograms, CT scans and more – Didn’t happen
Another 9/11 false flag incident – Didn’t happen
The world won’t end on December 21, 2012 – Hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day!
EPA pressured to regulate pharmaceuticals in the water supply – Can’t even contemplate this one without the brain hurting
Nursing home drugging scandal exposed – Didn’t happen
The psychiatric industry will declare more normal behaviors to be “disorders” – Didn’t happen
Vaccine industry goes crazy with new vaccines for all sorts of “diseases” – Didn’t happen
War on health freedom ramps up, targeting raw milk, homeopathy, herbs and supplements – Didn’t happen
The world becomes a far more dangerous place for honest citizens – So open-ended you cannot even evaluate
New attempts are made to destroy internet freedom – SOPA and PIPA have been discussed for awhile, so not a real argument
China’s boom will bust, sending ripples through global economy – Didn’t happen
Central and South America will drop the U.S. dollar as a currency – Didn’t happen
Local currencies emerge following the collapse of the dollar – As the dollar didn’t collapse, this didn’t happen
TSA suspends full body scanners after celeb photo scandal – No, was suspended due to dangerous exposure to radiation
Cell phone brain tumors start to appear in younger users – Didn’t happen
Medical industry claims to find cause of autism – Didn’t happen, although some hope has been raised
Terrorist strike on the U.S. water supply – Didn’t happen
Sperm count drops, infertility rates rise – Fertility is increasing, not decreasing, across the United States
“Stealth personal recorders” go mainstream – We call them Cell Phones, although Alex Jones is quick to claim that they cause cancer

Good times!
 

 
Rachel Maddow’s epic Alex Jones takedown from last night is quite amusing. She starts off all serious, but wait until the clips of feverishly ranting Alex Jone start. After that she riffs on him like the fool he is and annihilates him, but with her typical good-natured wryness. Jones is perfect fodder for her wit. Good stuff.
 

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Previously on Dangerous Minds
Alex Jones: DMT elves want the elites to kill us all!

 
On her MSNBC program last night, Rachel Maddow warned people who were personally affected by the mass murder in Newtown, Connecticut that they might want to change the channel as new information has been made public about the tragedy. Via The Raw Story:

The Hartford Courant reported Wednesday that the shooter, Adam Lanza, fired a total of 152 bullets in less than 5 minutes, killing 20 young children and 6 adults. Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had 30-round magazines. As Maddow noted, he only needed to reload his weapon four times before killing himself with a pistol.

“Had he only had access to ten-round magazines instead of 30-round magazines he would’ve had to reload 14 times,” she continued. “He would’ve needed 14 spare magazines beyond the one in the gun with the extra round in the chamber. Reloading 14 times. You think he would’ve still pulled off the whole thing in less than five minutes?”

Contemplate that for a moment. I don’t ever think there’s ever going to be a time when guns won’t be a part of American life, but this cuts straight to the heart of the matter about allowing semi-automatic weapons as a society.

As someone who was born and raised in rural West Virginia, I grew up in a household where there were guns. Guns for protection, my father isn’t a hunter. He’s not really a gun “enthusiast” in any way, really, but he’s got a few. Considering where my parents live, it did then and it still makes total sense to me why my father would want to have a gun around the house for an emergency situation—it would take the sheriff at least 30 minutes to get to their house. In a life or death situation, frankly, I can well understand wanting to own a firearm for protection, but especially if you live way out in the boonies.

In the American spectrum of opinion, on most matters, I would describe myself to the far, far left. On the matter of gun control, however, I’d describe myself as almost “neutral,” but can anyone tell me why in the world any civilian would need to own an weapon that can fire a fucking 30-round magazine for ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN KILLING A LOT OF PEOPLE IN A VERY SHORT TIME FRAME?

I’m truly not an anti-gun person, but the NRA and its little bitches, the GOP, have got to scale one hell of a logical precipice to make a better argument than is made here.  I mean, seriously, come the fuck on, WHO NEEDS A BAZOOKA???? This is getting ridiculous…

I think Michael Moore is right: If the country saw photos of those dead kids in CT, the ban on semi-automatic weapons would be all but assured and there would be nothing the NRA or the Republicans could do about it.
 

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Count the clowns in this picture. Hint: They’re all wearing suits and ties.

During last night’s epic Rachel Maddow piece about the Republican party’s mind-boggling real-time implosion, she described the GOP as a dog being wagged by the tail of the conservative movement and pondered why some of the movement’s most powerful pols, like Jim Demint, are picking up their toys and leaving Congress:

“[A] huge internal fight including screaming matches in their own caucus… they’re just turning off the light and abandoning what they’re doing and nobody really knows why.”

Obama has all the leverage now. If he can’t manage to negotiate a modest tax increase for the wealthy without limiting future cost of living increases for poor and middle class Social Security recipients, he’ll have proven himself to be one of the worst—if not THE worst—presidential negotiators of all time. He’s already offered up more than he had to (WHY?) and also demonstrated that his promises made during the campaign were nothing but bullshit.

Frankly, I never thought Obama was offering lefties all that much to begin with—he just wasn’t named Mitt Romney—but these guys are pathetic, why bargain with them at all? Now’s the time to shove it up their asses, if for no other reason, just on principle.
 

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I don’t imagine listening to a smirking lib’brul lezbean school them is exactly what distraught reichwingers want to hear right now, but Rachel Maddow’s post-election wrap-up rant is a stone classic:

Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. And he really did win. And he 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 oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up 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 this country are not the same thing as Communism.

Listen. Last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats 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 our 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 is 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 even as it was happening to them. And unless they’re going to secede, they’re going to have to pop the factual bubble they have 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’s 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 movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations everybody. Big night.

Here are some interesting election factoids: Romney predominated only among older white men; Obama won 55% of womens’ votes, 93% of African Americans’, 71% of Latino ballots and 60% of voters ages 18 to 29.

The GOP is fucked. Well and truly fucked. It’s only going to be worse for them in 2016 as more of the old farts who make up the Republican Party shuffle off this mortal coil and more and more young Latinos join the voter rolls as Democrats.
 

Wrong “Fast and Furious,” dude

...while the rest of us have barely heard anything about it.

Rachel Maddow’s epic explanation of “Fast and Furious” last night on MSNBC—AKA “What Your Uncle Who Watches Fox News All Day Is All Worked Up About”—is must-see tee-vee for anyone wanting to get a glimpse inside of the mind of a Fox News watching nincompoop.

It’s not pretty.

Via Alternet:

Rachel Maddow did progressives a solid by explaining to us what the deal is with the “Fast and Furious” controversy, AKA “What your uncle who watches Fox News all day is all worked up about.” Bless you, Rachel Maddow. We all have that uncle/father/brother-in-law/high school friend.

“This is one of those days when what happened today in politics means something totally different to the portion of Americans who watch Fox News than it does to everybody else in the country,” she said. If you get your news from right-wing media, today was a “five-inch-tall headline, day that will live in infamy, huge deal in American politics!”

And if not? “Today might not have made much sense.” Indeed! Maddow describes “Fast and Furious” as one of those stories they tried to “drag…out of the conservative media world, where it’s been cooking for a year, and they tried to drag it into the mainstream….to see if it could survive outside the right-wing world in which it was incubated.” So what exactly are right-wingers talking about with this “Fast and Furious” thing? Watch the segment below for Maddow’s explanation.

It’s not just your uncle, it’s ALL of them!

I knew the basic outline of “Fast and Furious” already, but man is it much stupider than I thought it was.

What would a Fox News watcher make of this report? Would they understand it or just write it off because a godless librul lesbean said it?

Does something like this change a Republican’s mind when they see it (I know that’s a big “what if” but indulge me!) or does it cause them to dig into their delusions even harder?

(The folks at 14:00 minutes in are pretty classic, by the way…)
 

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On her Wednesday show, Rachel Maddow and filmmaker Michael Moore both agreed that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s Republicans will lose what Moore called a “class war” being waged against the working class.

The two were reacting to Wednesday’s sudden passage of a measure in the Wisconsin Senate to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights—something only accomplished through an unheard-of parliamentary maneuver.

Before bringing Moore on, Maddow said that the Wisconsin Republicans had awoken a “dragon.” And she sent a message to the Democrats as well. “When people who have to work for a living are directly attacked…they fight back,” she said. “And they are expecting the Democratic Party to stand with them.”

Moore then came on the show. He told people to go to Madison right away. “This is war,” he said. “This is a class war.”

He also expressed optimism about the outcome of the Wisconsin fight. “Everything has turned in favor of the working people,” he said.

Maddow said that the “political brittleness” of what Walker and other Republicans were attempting was working against them.“All it takes is some political pushback against that and it collapses,” she said.

Moore then echoed the speech he gave in Madison last weekend, which drew widespread attention.

“Wisconsin’s not broke,” he said. “America isn’t broke. The money’s just not in the people’s hands. It’s in the hands of the rich, the people who committed these crimes and got away with it.” He held up a pair of handcuffs and looked at the camera.

“I’d like anybody who works on Wall Street, anybody who works for the banks, just take a look at this,” he said. “This is what’s coming. This is what’s coming for you. Because the people are going to demand justice, they’re going to demand that your ass is in jail.”

 
Via HuffPo

 
There aren’t too many people who I’d be really that impressed to meet. To be perfectly honest/obnoxious I’ve already met most of the people who I ever wanted to meet, or else they’re dead. Just three people come to mind who I’d be humbled to find myself face to face with and all are women: Oprah Winfrey, Patti Smith and Rachel Maddow.

In the above clip, Rachel Maddow shows why she’s such an important, even necessary, figure in the American media. Although David Letterman is obviously throwing her well-intentioned, and respectful softballs, she says here what more sane and responsible people who have an audience should be saying about Fox News, Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart: “Scaring white people is good politics on the conservative side of the spectrum.” Bravo, Ms. Maddow, keep it up!!

Proving for the umpteenth time why she is a national treasure, Boing Boing reader Rachel Maddow offers a capsule history of the Rent-A-Thug organizing that the Republicans excel at.

Clearly Republicans have nothing to add to the national debate about health care so they want to make sure that debate never happens. What a plan they have: Hire a bigtime PR firm. Rile up a bunch of couch potato Glenn Beck fans and bus ‘em to Tampa for a photo op! Health care won’t be Obama’s Waterloo, it’s going to be the Republican Party’s.

Republicans are assholes.