The Truffle

Via WaPo , we find that Senator Tom Coburn, an Okie like fellow douchebag Jim "I Don't Believe in No Stinkin' Global Warming!" Inhofe, was holding out for one small, slim chance that health care reform wouldn't pass. "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said. "That's what they ought to pray." It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) who has been in and out of hospitals and lay at home ailing. It would not be easy for Byrd to get out of bed in the wee hours with deep snow on the ground and ice on the roads -- but without his vote, Democrats wouldn't have the 60 they needed. A sitting senator wishing for a colleague's death. Disgusting. Of course, the reporter, Dana Milbank, went on a "Democrats do it toooooooo!" tirade, referring to Sheldon Whitehouse's speech. Excuse me. ...

From MSNBC : A Minnesota man has pleaded guilty to driving his motorized La-Z-Boy chair while drunk. A criminal complaint said 62-year-old Dennis LeRoy Anderson told police he left a bar in the northern Minnesota town of Proctor on his chair after drinking eight or nine beers. Prosecutors say Anderson's blood alcohol content was 0.29, more than three times the legal limit, when he crashed into a parked vehicle in August 2008. He was not seriously injured. (Via Stuperb )

Did the Disasta from Alaska really think she could make up stories without someone doing some fact-checking? In "Going Rogue" Palin wrote: "In that first year, I was alerted to threats against Willow by students at her Juneau school, one particularly disturbing. Someone posted a note on an Internet site threatening to gang-rape her at school. I never felt safe for her after that. Later, the same thing happened to Bristol." Willow Palin attended Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School, while Bristol Palin attended Juneau-Douglas High School. Palin provided no details about where the Internet site was, how seriously she took the threats, how she knew it was posted by students, or what steps she'd taken to ensure her family's safety. Former Juneau School District Superintendent Peggy Cowan was superintendent during the period in question and said she never heard of such concerns. "That was never reported to my office," she said. "I am completely confi...

Via Ed Brayton comes the Notorious GOP, a.k.a. Michael Steele and his interns gettin' doooowwwwwn ! But wait--is this a terrorist fist jab? At some point, a Fox News anchor's head will explode. No wonder the GOP pretends Rush is the party leader.

A judge blocked the ban on funding for ACORN. At least one of the yellow elephants young conservatives involved in the sting on ACORN isn't going to be happy. One commenter on this case sums up my feelings exactly: ACORN has the misfortune of being an organization with extremely worthwhile goals (even if they do upset the rich folks bankrolling Faux News) and yet filled with associates that apparently don't take their role as ethical exemplars seriously and as a result end up besmirching the organization as a whole. Even if the right-wing operatives that want to strip ACORN of its ability to fulfill its mission use extremely underhanded tactics, ACORN itself can only survive by sticking to the highest levels of ethical conduct. It's clearly an indictment of their organization that the leadership cannot communicate this fact to its staff. However, the legions of inner-city poor who have benefited from their works shouldn't have to pay the price for the stupidity of ...

Hence "The 8 Days of Scientology."

Farnsworth sums up my feelings on Afghanistan. I hate to see Obama pouring even more military and money into that rathole. But at this point I don't know what else can be done--there's no easy solution now. We've stepped into another lake of quicksand... Hey, how could've I have missed a band with a great name like Salad ? I thought I was a '90s music hipster. Sigh... I have nothing to say on Tiger Woods, except that professional athletes sleeping with bimbos is hardly front page news. Oh, and golf is boring. Via BlueGal , we have Andy Mckenna , former head of the Illinois GOP, who thinks Illinois' minimum wage ($8.00/hour) is too high. Mr. Mckenna missed his calling. He should be writing for the Onion . President Obama says banks don't get it re financial reform. Uh, Mr. President? You do remember you've got Geithner and Summers in your cabinet, right? These aren't exactly reform-minded guys.

I've been on a Hollies kick lately. Truly an underrated band--perhaps the most grossly underrated group of the 1960s. They're a link between the purest of pure British invasion pop and the power pop artists of the 1970s (Raspberries, Big Star et al.). They were also great singers and musicians. The hits continued even after Graham Nash quit the band (a proposed Dylan cover album was the last straw before he hightailed it to Laurel Canyon). From the 1960s, "I Can't Let Go." This should've been a huge hit in the USA. From the 1970s, "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress."