Neil Gaiman reading his poem Reading Instructions at Cody Books in Berkeley, 2007 I am a huge, gushy fangirl of Neil Gaiman. I was introduced to his graphic novels by an illustrator friend of mine and was just thunderstruck by them. Now I have an extensive library of Gaiman books. If he spoke at my library, I would actually consider camping out to hear him. But Minnesota Republican House of Representatives Majority Leader Matt Dean apparently doesn’t find him as enchanting as I do. In fact, he is so upset at Gaiman that he called him a “pencil-necked little weasel.” What did Gaiman do to invoke such schoolyard insults from Dean? “I woke up this morning and people sent me links to the story and someone quoted it on Twitter and I thought, ‘That’s mad, a real politician can’t have actually said that,’ and then I went to the article and read it,” Gaiman told Wired.com, still snickering at the thought. “I expected him to carry on [in] the article saying that I was a stupid stupidface and that he would be meeting with his friends behind the lockers.” ‘That’s mad, a real politician can’t have actually said that.’ Why the insult? Republican Minnesota House of Representatives Majority Leader Matt Dean called out The Sandman author Tuesday, saying Gaiman “stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota” for accepting money from a state arts fund to speak at a public library. Gaiman responded Wednesday on Twitter, linking to a story in Minneapolis’ Star Tribune that reported Dean’s comments . “Sad & funny. Minnesota Republicans have a ‘hate’ list ,” Gaiman tweeted Wednesday. “Like Nixon did. I’m on it. They also don’t like capitalism.” The comments came as the Minnesota House was discussing its Legacy funding, which goes to cultural programs like public radio. Dean told the Associated Press that, although it was legal for the fantasy writer to take the money, he found the payment “infuriating” and he wanted Gaiman to return the payment . (Wired.com’s message left with Dean’s office seeking comment was not returned.) Gaiman, who noted he was a little dumbfounded as to why he was called a thief by Dean, said he received $33,600 for speaking at the library and he donated the funds to charity. Seriously? This is the *best* use of Dean’s time in Minnesota? As far as I can tell, that’s the free market in action…if the marketplace supports these kinds of speaking fees for celebrated and award-winning authors, who is Dean to whinge about it?
Continue reading …George W. Bush Reportedly Feels Ignored In Obama ‘Victory Lap’ Following Osama Bin Laden’s Death
May 5, 2011 No Comment
A source tells the New York Daily News that former president George W. Bush feels that his successor has failed to sufficiently recognize the role he played in the manhunt for Osama bin Laden that ensued following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Earlier this week it was reported that Bush declined an invitation from President Barack Obama to join him at a ceremony being held at Ground Zero in New York City on Thursday. According to the AP, Bush spokesman David Sherzer said the former president appreciated the offer, but has decided against remaining in the public spotlight in his post-White House life. Suggesting Bush sees the president’s actions in the days following bin Laden’s death as an “Obama victory lap,” the source who spoke with the Daily News said, “He doesn’t feel personally snubbed and appreciates the invitation, but Obama’s claiming all the credit and a lot of other people deserve some of it.” The source added, “Obama gave no credit whatsoever to the intelligence infrastructure the Bush administration set up that is being hailed from the left and right as setting in motion the operation that got Bin Laden. It rubbed Bush the wrong way.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said prior to Obama’s trip to New York City on Thursday that the president intended to have a measured tone during his visit and that it would serve as a “cathartic moment for the American people.” The AP reports: Obama will visit a bustling construction site that bears little resemblance to the pit that became ground zero in the months after Sept. 11, 2001. The emerging skyscraper informally known as Freedom Tower is more than 60 stories high now. Mammoth fountains and reflecting pools mark the footprints of the fallen twin towers. … Heightened security put in place in response to the killing of bin Laden will remain for Obama’s visit. Police officials said there are no specific threats against the city but also say they assume bin Laden’s “disciples” might try to avenge his death with a terror attack. “The ceremony will provide some closure to a horrific event,” said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, who was invited by the White House to attend Obama’s ground zero event. Through his spokesman, Bush has said he embraces the death of bin Laden as an “important victory in the war on terror.”
Continue reading …Chris Matthews Dreams Up Silly GOP Debate Questions: Do You ‘Fundamentalist’ Christians Hate Science?
May 5, 2011 No CommentChris Matthews apparently misses moderating Republican debates and hectoring the candidates with bizarre questions. On Thursday's Hardball, hours before the first GOP face-off, the cable anchor dreamed up hypothetical queries he would like to see: ” Question to Mr. Candidate, do you believe in evolution? Are you a fundamentalist who believes in the Bible as written? Has man been around millions of years or, say, just about 6,000? ” Apparently this question is crucial as it determines “whether you believe in science or not.” On the week Osama bin Laden was killed, Matthews added this relevant inquiry: “A question for the fundamentalists who give that answer, why do we conduct health experiments for people on animals if there's no relation?”
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Lib Dem grandee and close Nick Clegg ally calls PM ‘grave disappointment’ and says no campaign has told ‘regiment of lies’ Lord Ashdown, one of Nick Clegg’s closest allies, accused David Cameron of a breach of faith, describing his refusal to dissociate himself from a “regiment of lies” poured out by the no-to-AV campaign as setting him apart from every British prime minister of the postwar period. The former Liberal Democrat leader also predicted that Cameron’s behaviour would have long-term consequences for the coalition, including the terms on which it eventually ends. He told the Guardian: “So far the coalition has been lubricrated by a large element of goodwill and trust. It is not any longer. The consequence is that when it comes to the bonhomie of the Downing Street rose garden, that has gone. It will never again be glad confident morning.” The ferocity of his attack, made after consultations within the party, follows what looks like certain defeat in the referendum on the alternative vote due to be announced on Friday. The party also faces severe losses in the English council elections as results emerge. Senior figures in the yes campaign were predicting a 60%-to-40% defeat on a desultory turnout, with one admitting: “We were providing a solution to a problem the British public did not recognise.” Another said: “Once David Cameron moved in the way he did, the polls moved. It was unstoppable.” Ashdown is furious with the no campaign for personalised attacks on Clegg that accused him of broken promises on tuition fees and spending cuts, and arguments that AV was a “Lib Dem fix”. Ashdown, who led the party for 11 years until 1999, said: “The bottom line is that Liberal Democrats are exceedingly angry. We believe there has been a breach of faith here. If the Conservative party funds to the level of 99% a campaign whose central theme is to denigrate and destroy our leader, there are consequences for that. “What that means is that this is a relationship that is much less about congeniality, it becomes a business relationship, a transactional relationship, and maybe it will be all the better for that.” He went on: “David Cameron is the prime minister. He sets the tone of politics in this country. It is an unhappy fact that when he was asked to dissociate himself from a campaign that was run on the basis of personalisation and personal attacks, and messages that were far more than some subtle bending of the truth, he refused to do that. “I have to say that he did not dissociate himself from a campaign whose nature I believe every previous British prime minister in my time would have disassociated himself from. That is a grave disappointment. “This is a triumph for the regiment of lies. We live with pretty strenuous political campaigns in Britain, but these were downright lies.” Ashdown also accused Cameron of panicking after demands from his backbenchers to step up the referendum campaign. “In backtracking, to use no stronger a word than that, on what was a private agreement he had with Nick Clegg about the way this campaign was conducted, I think the prime minister panicked in the face of his rightwingers. I regret that.” Ashdown said it would be right if his party now highlighted its differences within the coalition. He insisted the Lib Dems would not leave the coalition until the end of the five-year parliament, saying: “We have set our hands to this task and now it must be completed so the purpose of the coalition has not altered, but the mood music, the atmosphere of the coalition most assuredly has as a result of what has gone on in the past three weeks. I think we should be much more straightforward where we disagree. That is not a criticism of Clegg. “I have always said when asked I did not think the result of the referendum could affect the coalition, but I did think the way it was fought could.” He seemed to imply that the party’s willingness to enter another coalition with Cameron may be affected. “I am very clear that the nature of this coalition and the way that it ends, the mood between the two parties when it ends and therefore what happens afterwards, may well be affected by this.” But he urged his party to hold its nerve, and to realise that popularity will take a long time to recover. “We are in there for the long haul, I recall how long it took us as a party to recover after 1991. It is not this year, next year or the year therafter. It is about being strong enough when the dividend comes.” He urged his battered colleagues to keep their nerve. “I am someone who has presided over a party represented by an asterisk denoting that there is no perceptible support for the party in the country, so I am used to setbacks and difficult days as this looks as though these will be. “Anyone that went into this coalition believing that there would be a benefit to the party particularly in the short term was living in cloud-cuckoo-land. We knew perfectly there was a price to be paid for this and it was going to be paid in the short term. “The dividend to be delivered in this will come after three or four years when the government has taken the country through an economic crisis.” He indicated that the Lib Dems’ fortunes were now inextricably bound up with the fate of the economy over the next four years. “The central proposition of this parliament stands: ‘Is George Osborne’s economic judgment right?’ I believe it is. The whole of British politics now rests on that single proposition. The fortunes of the coalition, the fortunes of the two parties in the coalition and the fortunes of the Labour party rest on that.” There is no sign that any senior Lib Dem cabinet member yet wants to revisit the deficit reduction plan. Ashdown challenged Cameron to show that he was the reformer he had claimed to be, by pressing ahead with an elected House of Lords. “It is in the Tory manifesto. Is he going to deliver or not? Let’s see the prime minister’s determination.” He also lashed out at Labour’s failure to back reform, saying: “Yet again Labour has proved it cannot be trusted with reform. Labour claims to be a great radical reforming party but whenever it comes to a key issue of reform, we find Labour defending the status quo.” Clegg and Cameron will try to show it is business as usual when they publish a checklist of coalition achievements before next week’s anniversary. There will be a symbolic joint foreword by the two men. There will also be some action on youth unemployment next week. Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives. AV referendum Alternative vote Paddy Ashdown David Cameron Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Conservatives Labour Electoral reform Liberal-Conservative coalition Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Gov’s Scott Walker and John Kasich make a mockery of themselves and declare "Public Service Appreciation Week"
May 5, 2011 No CommentAfter attacking public union workers and passing draconian and very controversial new laws in Ohio and Wisconsin that vilified public workers as an albatross around the necks of their states, both Walker and Kasich are pretending as if nothing happened at all, and now are hypocritically thanking those same public workers. Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) have decided to pay tribute to state workers. In Ohio, Kasich declared this week ” Public Service Appreciation Week ” on Monday. The same day, Walker announced a new public employee “recognition” program in Wisconsin. Given their high-profile battles with unions and state employees, plenty of people in the two states are wondering whether the olive branches are some kind of joke. When “honoring Ohio’s thousands of public employees,” Kasich asked his fellow Ohioans to “reflect on all that our public employees do in our communities, and thank them for the invaluable work they do each day.” During his first four months in office, Kasich has made rolling back the collective bargaining rights of public workers a centerpiece of his administration’s agenda. In response to the declaration, Ohio House Minority Leader Armond Budish (D) said in a statement that he had to “check my calendar” to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. He continued: “Do you thank teachers and firefighters for the invaluable work before or after you slash their wages and benefits?” Now that we’ve screwed you, we will thank you. Workers are shocked by the chutzpah of these moves, and Wisconsinites are responding in kind: The Wisconsin Capital Times reports that today a group of state employees are rallying outside the Capitol to instead recognize ” State Employee Depreciation Day .”
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Commons debate renews calls for parliament to consider passing a privacy law to give courts clearer guidance An MP has taken out a superinjunction, allegedly to prevent embarrassing details about his life being exposed, it has been alleged during a debate in the Commons. Neither the identity, nor the party, of the MP said to have resorted to the law for a gagging order was revealed. The issue emerged at Westminster as MPs discussed whether to debate the impact of judge-made privacy laws and the increased use of superinjunctions and anonymity orders in the courts. Pressing the leader of the House, Sir George Young, to allocate government time for a debate, the Tory MP Matthew Offord, who represents Hendon, north London, said: “There has been much public discussion on the increasing use of superinjunctions and the ability of judges to decide policy instead of elected parliamentarians. Is the leader of the House aware of the anomaly this creates, if, as has been rumoured, a member of this place seeks a superinjunction to prevent discussion of their activities?” Young replied: “This is a very important issue about how we balance, on the one hand, an individual’s right to privacy and, on the other hand, the freedom of expression and transparency.” He pointed out that an inquiry by Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, examining superinjunctions “and other issues relating to injunctions which bind the press”, is due to be published soon. “The government will await the report from the Master of the Rolls before deciding the next step,” Young said, “and it may then be appropriate for the House to have a debate on this important issue.” Offord told the Guardian that he intended to approach the MP alleged to have acquired the superinjunction and raise the issue “as soon as possible” as he did not believe that public figures should resort to injunctions “to promote false images of themselves”. Offord is not the first MP to exploit parliamentary privilege to try to challenge the use of restrictive legal orders, in the belief that they undermine free speech. Two months ago, Lib Dem MP John Hemming named Sir Fred Goodwin, the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive, as the subject of a superinjunction. That gagging order banned references to Goodwin – nicknamed “Fred the Shred” – as “a banker”. Last week Hemming gave the Treasury select committee a copy of the full text of the injunction and asked its members to consider publishing it if they believed it shed light on public interest matters about the near collapse of RBS in 2008. Calls for parliament to consider passing a privacy law to give the courts clearer guidance have been growing. In a blog on the Inform website, Hugh Tomlinson QC, a member of Matrix chambers, that legislation was now necessary. “The only alternative to abdicating responsibility for the development of privacy law to the Strasbourg judges is for the press and parliament finally to accept that privacy is a proper subject for legislation,” he wrote. Superinjunctions House of Commons Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
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Labour MP Ann Clwyd also says Foreign Office is stonewalling Manning’s mother in not responding to letter The foreign secretary William Hague is “playing an avoidance game” over the case of Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of downloading and leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks, according to Ann Clwyd, a Labour MP. The former human rights envoy to Iraq has also accused the Foreign Office of “continued stonewalling” of Manning’s mother, Susan. The charges against Manning include “aiding the enemy” – a capital crime. Manning’s mother wrote to the foreign secretary three weeks ago, asking British consular officials to visit her son in military prison to check on his physical and mental health, which she said was deteriorating. At the time she wrote her letter, Manning, 23, had been in custody since last May in conditions that provoked widespread criticism of the US military and government . He was being held in solitary confinement and on suicide watch, which required him to be stripped to just a smock at night and checked on repeatedly. Following sustained protests from human rights campaigners and others over his conditions, Manning has recently been transferred from Quantico, Virginia to a “more open” military facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. But Clwyd has criticised the FCO for not responding to Susan’s letter. A response should, she said, have been received in a week. “They seem to be playing some kind of avoidance game,” she said. Last Tuesday, Alistair Burt, parliamentary under secretary of state at the FCO, was forced by Clwyd to admit in the House of Commons that it has not had any discussions with the UN special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, on the case of Bradley Manning. Burt also refused to answer questions from Clwyd about Susan Manning’s request for consular assistance. “Susan Manning also asked for any help that could be given, in Washington and elsewhere, to the family if they so request it,” Clywd said. “At the very least, Mrs Manning, who is very concerned by the situation of her son, should have had the courtesy of a reply.” Burt said the FCO is “limited in both what we can say and what we can do in this case” because Manning has apparently said he does not consider himself a UK citizen. That response, said Clwyd, is “disingenuous”. She pointed out that the FCO has already confirmed that although Manning does not hold a UK passport he is British by descent because his mother is Welsh. “Their refusal to respond to Susan Manning or support Bradley Manning can’t be [because of] a genuine confusion over his nationality, the responsibility the British government have for him or the conditions in which he is being held,” she said. “There is no room for genuine confusion over these issues,” she added, pointing to comments by Méndez, who has been investigating whether Manning’s treatment to date amounted to “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment” or torture. “This avoidance game they are playing can only be completely deliberate,” she said. In her letter, Susan Manning wrote that she visited her son in Quantico marine base in February, travelling with her sister, Manning’s aunt and his uncle, but only she was allowed to see Manning. “I was very distressed by seeing Bradley. Being in prison is having a damaging effect on him physically and mentally,” she wrote. “I am worried that his condition is getting worse. I would like someone to visit him who can check on his conditions. If Bradley’s being a British national means that someone from the British embassy can visit him, then I would like to ask if you can make that happen. I do not believe that Bradley is in a position to be able to request this himself, so I am asking as his mother on his behalf.” Susan Manning, who divorced Bradley’s American father, Brian, when her son was a teenager, also asked Hague for consular support on her own behalf. “If I try [to] visit Bradley again, can someone from the British embassy help me and other members of Bradley’s family to deal with the US marine authorities and help with any other arrangements we have to make?” On 4 April, the FCO minister Henry Bellingham said the British embassy in Washington had expressed MPs’ concerns about the soldier’s treatment to the Obama administration. The FCO confirmed the foreign secretary’s office had received the letter, and said: “We will carefully consider Mrs Manning’s letter and will reply to her shortly.” Bradley Manning United States William Hague Foreign policy Amelia Hill Esther Addley guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Eric Bolling says waterboarding is a ‘typical weekend at my house with my 12-year-old son’
May 5, 2011 No CommentFOX Business is the new breeding ground for wingnuts that Rupert Murdoch needs to fill up his air space, and Eric Bolling is desperately trying to fill the void that Glenn Beck will leave. I wish all these lunatics would subject themselves to a day of waterboarding and then start making statements like this. Bolling Dismisses Enhanced Interrogation Techniques As “A Typical Weekend At My House With My 12-Year-Old Son” All I can say is I feel sorry for his poor son. Can he please stick to picking stocks and trying to manipulate the markets for his own purposes? What does waterboarding have to do with the Dow Jones?
Continue reading …Eric Bolling says waterboarding is a ‘typical weekend at my house with my 12-year-old son’
May 5, 2011 No CommentFOX Business is the new breeding ground for wingnuts that Rupert Murdoch needs to fill up his air space, and Eric Bolling is desperately trying to fill the void that Glenn Beck will leave. I wish all these lunatics would subject themselves to a day of waterboarding and then start making statements like this. Bolling Dismisses Enhanced Interrogation Techniques As “A Typical Weekend At My House With My 12-Year-Old Son” All I can say is I feel sorry for his poor son. Can he please stick to picking stocks and trying to manipulate the markets for his own purposes? What does waterboarding have to do with the Dow Jones?
Continue reading …Eric Bolling says waterboarding is a ‘typical weekend at my house with my 12-year-old son’
May 5, 2011 No CommentFOX Business is the new breeding ground for wingnuts that Rupert Murdoch needs to fill up his air space, and Eric Bolling is desperately trying to fill the void that Glenn Beck will leave. I wish all these lunatics would subject themselves to a day of waterboarding and then start making statements like this. Bolling Dismisses Enhanced Interrogation Techniques As “A Typical Weekend At My House With My 12-Year-Old Son” All I can say is I feel sorry for his poor son. Can he please stick to picking stocks and trying to manipulate the markets for his own purposes? What does waterboarding have to do with the Dow Jones?
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