Like the gay old socialist queen he is, Arlen Specter is becoming a Democrat, so he can get elected until he is 100 years old.  Looks like we don’t need to pay attention to Norm Coleman anymore Norm Coleman is now more important than he has ever been.

Double win!!

Specter to Switch Parties [NYT]

If you’re holding something valuable and fragile in your hand, right now, I suggest you put it down before reading what follows. That’s because if you’re holding, say, that coffee cup your kid decorated for you at day care, or a cell phone, or, more likely, that precious Fabergé egg your grandmother willed you before she passed away, you’re going to be overcome with an uncontrollable urge to smash is against the wall when you read of the latest twist in the saga of General Motors’ struggle for survival.

The twist appears in a New York Times article, published today, entitled “G.M.’s Latest Plan Envisions a Much Smaller Automaker.” The article expands on some of the drastic cuts that the General is finding itself forced to make in order to soldier on as a viable automaker in this terrible economy and a changed industrial landscape far less suited to the current model of the American Automotive manufacturer:

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• Blossom Dearie, Ann-Margret, Bruno Kirby, Jay Leno and Saddam Hussein celebrated birthdays.
• Hugh Downs hosted the 181st episode of Concentration. It is not known how many clues got stuck while turning.
• Harry Truman delivered a lecture on “The Constitution” at Columbia. Somewhere in Wyoming, 18-year-old Dick Cheney chortled.
• Senator John F. Kennedy criticized a federal student-loan program that required loyalty oaths. “Few high school graduates today are members of the Communist Party,” he joked.

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Have you guys heard of Citizen Quasar, who will free us all from the tyranny of the government with his pulsating star powers and interneptitude? In Oklahoma, the newest communist state with a theme song written by actual communists, the FBI arrested Daniel Knight Hayden earlier this month for his hilarious Twitter jokes about violent overthrow of the government and cop killing. Hayden, whose Twitter account is still up (but unfortunately not being updated) under the name CitizenQuasar, is my new favorite Twitterer, barely edging out John McCain because he is just slightly more out of touch with reality. His totally insane tweets include hits like, “START THE KILLING NOW”, “I fell down. I got up. KEEP ON TRUCK”IN!!!”, some stupid quote from Conan the Barbarian, and my favorite, “test”. Anyway, this dude’s the first twitter user to be arrested for the crime of being an idiot on the internet. More of his inspirational douchebaggery after the jump. . . Read more »

Because none of you bothered to get up off your asses and buy a Solstice or a G8, GM’s “excitement” division will go the way of Oldsmobile and Plymouth:

Pontiac is a brand of automobiles produced since 1926 and sold in the United States, Canada and Mexico by General Motors (GM), marketed as an “athletic” brand specializing in mainstream performance vehicles.

On April 27, 2009, amid ongoing financial problems and restructuring efforts, GM announced that it would phase out the Pontiac brand by the end of 2010 and focus on four core brands in the U.S.: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC.^[1]

In my opinion it was badge-engineering that killed Pontiac (an Impala is a Catalina is an Olds 88 is a Lesabre is a Sedan de Ville).  Why buy a car from Pontiac if Chevy offered the same car for less money?

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What the fuck is it with Louisiana politicians? First it was Jindal and volcano monitoring, and now:

Given the recent outbreak of swine flu, Sen. Susan Collins’s (R-ME) push to strip funding for pandemic flu preparedness is looking increasingly shortsighted. But Collins was not the first to campaign against the provision. Indeed, several days prior to Collins’s public push, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced an amendment that would have stripped, among other things, the flu funding provision. In arguing for his amendment on the floor of the senate, Vitter apparently couldn’t fathom how pandemic preparedness could possibly serve to protect the economy, calling it part of a “laundry list of…big government spending items.”

What a fucking idiot.

Stormy warning for after the jump.

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July 14, 1955: The United States ratifies the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War. Of the four conventions, the third is the “Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.”

August 21, 1996: President Clinton signs the War Crimes Act of 1996. “After 40 years, after the ratification of the Geneva Conventions, [we discovered] that it was not self-enacting, and we actually have never passed the necessary legislation to accept jurisdiction within our Federal courts to prosecute war crimes that we were aware of,” says Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe.

Subsection (d)(1)(A) of the War Crimes Act expressly defines and forbids torture: “The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”

Violation of the War Crimes Act is a felony with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, or death if the torture victim dies.

September 11, 2001, 12:05 pm: Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is told that al Qaeda is likely responsible for the morning’s attacks, based on a phone call the NSA intercepted 15 minutes after the Pentagon was hit.

September 11, 2001, 2:40 pm: Rumsfeld demands “Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden].… Need to move swiftly.… Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

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