“And, you know, they live in this fantasy world where it’s always 1945. America’s always number one… Marc Rubio, who’s the new teabag senator from Florida, the new — the new Bobby Jindal, I think, he made a speech, it was astounding. And this is not uncommon for a Republican to talk about this at the CPAC Convention. He said this is the only country in the world where an idea that started out as an idea on a cocktail napkin could wind up being traded on the stock exchange. No, other countries have napkins and stock exchanges. But you see, this is their room full of balls at Chuck E. Cheese. Their fantasy world they live in.”

–Bill Maher, on Fareed Zacharia’s GPS (12/5/2010). 

Company	Action	Cowards?	Explanation
Amazon	Removed WikiLeaks cables from its “cloud” data service.	Yes.	Only 612 cables (out of a quarter-million) had been released, and Amazon was hosting the redacted versions already published by the New York Times and other newspapers.
Tableau Software	Removed charts illustrating statistical summaries of WikiLeaks cables.	Yes.	Never hosted the cables themselves.
EveryDNS	Removed “wikileaks.org” from its free DNS service, which translates domain names to numeric Internet server addresses.	No.	Attacks on system threatened entire service.

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… in a ten pound bag:

[ Crooks & Liars Flash video not available. ]

I meant what I said – he might be the Republican who did the most damage, shutting down the press when we needed them most.

Patrick Smith, who writes the “Ask the Pilot” column on Salon, has a sign of the times.  And I feel an urge to put on my Citizen Kane DVD.

They have been, and always will be, with us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt9JpYRulSk

Title: “Millie’s Book”

Authors: Barbara Bush & Millie Bush

Rank: 166,729 (#27 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( B ) > Bush, George)

Blurb: “The Bush’s dog, Millie, describes a day in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush and family, discussing morning briefings, deliberations in the Oval Office, and short breaks for squirrel hunting.”

Review: “I’m Millie’s son, Ranger. I think that ‘Millie’s Book’ is truthful, and beautifully written. My mother had incredible courage to write this book and I’m very proud of her.”

Customers Also Bought: “Keeping Up With the Kardashians: The Complete Second Season”

Footnote: Speaking of Amazon’s Long Tail… Okay, no, we won’t go there. But between the Fetus Jar and Talibunny calling Babs a Blue Blood, we just got curious. For the record, Millie ascended to Doggie Heaven in 1997, while Ranger made a quick exit in 1993.

Millie’s Book [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

I have the night off – the girlfriend is cooking me chicken katsu:

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