Is our school children learning?

Perhaps. But the minority party in Congress aren't: the rudderless Republicans doggedly continue piling up epic PR blunders such as this FAIL:

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Recent House Votes:
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21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act
Vote Passed (275-155, 3 Not Voting)

The House passed this bill that intends to modernize, renovate, and repair public school facilities.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry voted
NO

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Supplemental Appropriations, FY 2009
Vote Passed (368-60, 5 Not Voting)

The House approved this bill to provide funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, security improvements in Pakistan and the national pandemic flu response.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry voted
YES
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Plenty of money to fight torture-justified, wet-dream wars in Eurasia but no money to edjucate our childrens. Sad. Pathetic.

Won't somebody give this man a pineapple?

OMAHA — U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns visited the Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he says the conditions are more than adequate for the detainees held there.

He says facilities are modern and the detainees are given food, excellent medical care and time to pray daily.

Johanns says he fears pretty much anything that walks, talks and thinks for itself. Especially worrying to the freshman senator is the prospect of a U.S. foreign policy based on diplomacy instead of terror. Because Jebus is all about terror and brutality. Especially the brutality. And the terror.

Copied mostly from the Lincoln Journal-Star - thanks for the press release; sorry to hear about the recent negative income. Get back to me when there's a journalist on staff and the ad department is holding a bake sale.

I'm sure the good senator wasn't the least bit worried about the American citizen recently sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison. I'm equally sure he's already preparing his annual Christ Mass gifts for American citizens still held in North Korea since, by his peculiar brand of justice, holding foreign citizens in prison indefinitely is okay as long as they have food, medical care and time to pray.

Where's Bernie?

...and where's Brownie? Not to mention Turd Blossom and leader of the Republican Party, Dick'n'Rush.

Mr. A, 39, 216 Street, was arrested on suspicion of four counts of felony theft by receiving stolen property and one misdemeanor theft charge.

Officer K.F. said on Tuesday police went to Mr. A.'s home and he consented to a search.

She said police found more than 29 items believed to have been stolen in residential and business burglaries, even a church, in the past two years. The stolen items included a computer, a MIG welder, a riding lawn mower stolen from a church, an all-terrain vehicle, a snowblower.

Flood alleged Mr. A. had bought the items far below their estimated value. A reasonable person should have known they'd been stolen, she said.

I guess that settles it then. If the reasonable person test is sufficient to send someone to jail....

But don't just take my word for it

Here's ultra-flaming-liberal Larry Wilkerson's take on the Party of No:

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican, is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party.

He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We're at 21% and falling--right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln?

When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends.

Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson
Washington Note

Thunderbird's wry sense of humor

Hands on the wheel, head in the sand

This just in from Congress.org

Recent House Votes:
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Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act
Vote Passed (367-59, 1 Present, 6 Not Voting)

The House passed this fraud enforcement bill with an amendment to create a commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis, sending the bill back to the Senate for its approval.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry voted
Not Voting


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Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act 
Vote Passed (300-114, 19 Not Voting)

The House approved this bill to reform mortgage lending practices.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry voted
Not Voting


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Barack Obama has used a nautical metaphor to describe the slow, slow turning of the giant ship of State. Perhaps these two abstentions indicate Rep. Fortenberry's tentative turning away from the dead-ender Republican Party's march into history. A welcome sign, even if for the wrong reason: political survival is not quite the same as the noble, self-sacrificing actions of a principled statesman, but, for these two instances, at least he's stopped doing the wrong thing.

One of Twelve (percent)

In 1938, something between eight and 30% of the American radio listeners believed War of the Worlds was real. Even notorious practical joker Adolf Hitler cited the panic as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of [American] democracy."


Hand, Richard J. (2006). Terror on the Air!: Horror Radio in America, 1931-1952. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarland & Company. p. 7. ISBN 0-786-42367-6. via Wikipedia

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The minutes raced by. Wayne Williams was now fully prostrate, held up only by a trio of coaches, each of whom took part of his writhing body and propped it up. Another bald man in the front of the chapel was now freaking out in Linda Blair fashion, roaring and making horrific demon noises.

"Rum-balakasha-oom!" shouted Fortenberry in tongues, waving a hand in front of Linda Blair Man. "Cooom-balakasha-froom! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of philosophy!"

Philosophy?

...

The whole thing — the demonic expulsions, the trading of miraculous wives' tales, the crazy End Times theology based on dire predictions that come and go uneventfully once a year or so — it's all a con that is done with the consent of the conned. Which is what gives it strength. If everybody agrees to believe, it is real.

Jesus Made Me Puke Matt Taibbi / Rolling Stone

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• Cantor: GOP Recovery Strategy is “Just Saying No.”
• Despite Bipartisan Outreach, Every Single House Republican Voted Against Bill to Create or Save 3.5 Million Jobs.
• RNC Chairman Threatens To Withhold RNC Funds From GOP Senators (including Arlen Specter) Who Backed Stimulus.
• Republicans Oppose SCHIP Expansion: Bill to Provide Health Care for 11 Million Children Passes “Largely Along Party Lines.”
• Republicans Opposed Equal Pay Act, Bill Passes in Party Line Vote.
• Leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh: “I Hope he Fails."
• RNC Chairman Apologizes for Criticizing Limbaugh.
• Congressional Republicans “Rally Against Obama On Stem Cells.”

These clowns are in Congress because we sent them there. Well, no, that's not right; not all of us: The True Believers, those War-of-the-Worlds Believers, plus many whom the Believers distract with TV-praying, tittylating sports-n-guns sent 'em there. The rest of us stand around asking, "what just happened?" while mostly good and decent people like Chuck Hagel head for the hills.

flogging the fetus

...continuing from the previous post, here's Fortenberry's spokesperson slamming the Obama administration for being 'anti-science' regarding stem cell research:
Inadvertently cut from the above video, Pence's preparation for the interview:

concentrate... concentrate... I've got to concentrate... concentrate... concentrate... Hello?... hello... hello... Echo... echo... echo... Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon... Manny Mota... Mota... Mota...

And on an unrelated note, happy birthday, Weston!