Bill Frist disclosed that he went to animal shelters and pretended to adopt the cats, telling shelter personnel he intended to keep them as pets. Instead he used them to sharpen his surgical skills, killing them in the process.
JamesDobson:When I returned I held up the belt and again told my angry dog to get into his bed. He stood his ground, so I gave him a firm swat across the rear end and he tried to bite the belt. The tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast... I eventually got him to bed, but only because I outwieighed him 200 to 12.
Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler) In his youth he trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes.
Jeffrey Dahmerstaked cats to trees and decapitated dogs.
Henry Lee LucasAs a child, he killed every cat on his parent's farm.
There have been buzzings about a potential Senate run by Elizabeth Warren for some time - but things kicked in high gear Tuesday afternoon when EMILY's List Director Stephanie Schriock tweeted she'd meet with Warren in Massachusetts the day previous. Roll Call also reported Warren was "wooing democrats at Boston house parties."
Today the superhero of the economically disenfranchised announced she is filing paperwork to open an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate race against Scott Brown who replaced Ted Kennedy after his death.
Scott Brown has been no friend to regular Americans. When it comes to big banks on Wall Street, Brown refused to vote for a tax on banks and hedge funds with over $50 billion in assets. When everyday families can't make ends meet, surely Brown could support them over companies with over $50 BILLION in the bank?! But no. Americans took the hit once again because Brown refuses to put people first.
In a piece by Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism Elizabeth Warren becomes the target of a fantasy Presidential run, but the same benefits of her unwinable race against President Obama can also be true as a viable challenger to Scott Walker.
Warren has been branded as a scourge of banks. Even though it should be common sense that selling exploding toasters is bad business, the fact that she talks repeatedly and persuasively about the need for rules to have markets work well makes her a threat to much of Corporate America. Note that their heated opposition to the idea of fair play reveals the importance of treating customers badly, looting the official coffers, or both to their business models.
Here's a video from FOX & Friends with Cody James, a student at the university who wanted to see the recruiters and says the protesters were not violent.
Whatever your beliefs are regarding military recruiting at colleges, Michelle Malkin crosses the line of decency by printing the telephone numbers of the students that formed the protest. They have been receiving death threats non-stop. An email-er wrote me and said:
"The protest was reported on by Hannity and OReilly. Michelle Malkin put actual students' phone numbers on her blog and they've been getting death threats nonstop."
In her update to the post Michelle writes:
"SAW has removed the contact information from its press release and is now lying about the fact that it made the info publicly available on the Internet. I am leaving it up. If you are contacting them, I do not condone death threats or foul language. As for SAW, my message is this: You are responsible for your individual actions. Other individuals are responsible for theirs. Grow up and take responsibility."
Obviously the death threats are emanating from her blog and she knows it. Malkin understands the nature of the fear and outrage she causes. Will she take responsibility when somebody gets hurt? Here's another example of the fear-mongering she causes. Read Cathy Young's Boston Globe column.
Another email: "She REPRINTED the numbers. The death threats have started again with a vengeance." She's basically blaming the victim, saying "we asked for it." But we only sent the contact info to the PRESS (not her site) along with our press release and then we specifically asked HER to remove them, when there were death threats (we've published some on our site), she's refusing."
"The basic thing is, she's trying to make us sound like lunatic vandals and criminals so that her fanatical audience feels justified in sending us death threats. The action was completely peaceful and it was blown out of proportion. Malkin says: "SAW is trying to cover its tracks again and has wiped the info from the cached version." Does she have any understanding of how google cache works? We don't have the power to "wipe it."
(If you contact her please don't stoop to the levels that her readers are.)
[Please sign the petition, above, and ask Boston to stop allowing the federal government to turn our local police into border patrol agents.]
Boston has made one mistake too many in trying to enforce federal immigration law.
The city is currently enrolled in the federal program with the Orwellian name Secure Communities (S-Comm), which forces local police to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest. The Obama administration wants to force every local police force in the U.S. to enroll in this program by 2013, but states and localities across the nation are resisting. If migrant communities are afraid to go to their local police officers to report crimes, then all residents are less safe. Following the governors of Illinois and New York, the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, recently declined to participate in the program.
While the program is under review in Boston, the latest Boston Globe article from Maria Sacchetti makes clear that the time for Boston to terminate its S-Comm program is now. With DREAMer Lizandra DeMoura now in deportation proceedings, this program has manifestly done enough damage to our communities.
In 2006, one of the first official acts of Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis was to refuse then Gov. Mitt Romney's request to use local police forces to enforce federal immigration law. What wouldn't be made public until four years later is that while Davis was publicly decrying the involvement of local police in enforcing federal immigration law, privately, the Boston Police Department was the pilot for a program that would check the immigration status of everyone they arrested, a program which would later come to be known as S-Comm.
It's easy to understand why the federal government approached Boston about doing this. As one of the most pro-migrant major cities in the U.S., involving Boston early would blunt criticism against S-Comm later. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also promised all participants in S-Comm that the purpose of the program would be to target the worst of the worst for deportation.
Someone should tell Scott Brown: If he voted with the Democrats more often, this wouldn't be happening in his home state. Of course, I'm assuming this problem is repeated all over the country. No wonder the Taser incidents keep going up:
Massachusetts spends far less than other states on training for police officers, committing less money to its police academies than it did 20 years ago, according to a state legislative report that says the result is a fractured system with an outdated curriculum that fails to keep officers abreast of the latest trends in law enforcement.
Even academy instructors are falling behind on key topics like Taser and pepper spray use, firearms use, defensive tactics, and first aid, says a draft report by the Legislature’s Municipal Police Training Commission.
“There are a number of police officers, because of the lack of money departments have, they’re not getting any [specialized] training at all,’’ said Kenneth Scanzio, legislative director and vice president of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police and a member of the commission. “There’s a lot we have to work on to get our police training to better standards.’’
Phillip Morse, a minority partner of the Boston Red Sox, said Sunday that his private jet has been chartered to the CIA and confirmed that it had been flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 terrorism suspects are held, as well as other overseas destinations.
But Morse said he was "stunned" by a report in Sunday's Chicago Tribune suggesting that the plane might have been used for "renditions," the controversial practice in which terrorism suspects arrested abroad have been forcibly returned to their native countries for interrogation...read on
It was rather sickening to listen to the high-and-mighty posturing of our 'representatives' browbeat ball players on the steroids matter while we are at war, the treasury is being bankrupted and unprecedented government corruption is happening right before their eyes. Listening to them sanctimoniously lecture baseball about its ethics and practices is especially ironic when one considers that their own ethics process has been de-fanged by the Tom Delay-led GOP.
As quickly as they had latched onto his campaign four months ago, they repudiated him yesterday through a flurry of blog posts, editorials, and Facebook messages.
“His career as a senator of the people lasted slightly longer than the shelf life of milk,’’ said Shelby Blakely, executive director of New Patriot Journal, the media arm of the Tea Party Patriots, which includes various Tea Party groups around the country. “The general mood of the Tea Party is, ‘We put you in, and we’ll take you out in 2012.’ This is not something we will forget.’’
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Brown’s crucial support infuriated critics who believed that the financial legislation will lead to a bigger and more intrusive regulation. Americans for Limited Government wrote an online editorial called “A Lamentation of Scott Brown.’’
Some of Brown’s former supporters posted blistering comments on his Facebook page. “Scott Brown is a turncoat and I am ashamed that I did so much campaigning on his behalf,’’ wrote one. Another former backer wrote, “I am hereby officially un-liking you.’’
Much of the criticism appeared to be coming from interests outside Massachusetts. If the right continues to be disenchanted by Brown, it could hamper his fund-raising, most of which came from out of state.
Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, said she doesn’t think people are “ready to throw him under the bus . . . but there’s a lot of questions and a lot of chatter . . . and a lot of perplexed voters.’’
Brown has to win reelection so he can't just kowtow to the anti-government Tea Party crowd -- which means he'll side with the Dems on occasion, and that is going to be a problem for him. Was he ever a real Tea Partier? Sports Talk radio in Boston helped torpedo Coakley as much as anything else. He's more like a pinup poster hottie for the likes of Sally Quinn.
Oh please. He'll probably lose his seat not because the teabaggers wield their mighty swords, but because he won on a fluke against a bad candidate in an off year with an electorate that was mad at the world. But hey never underestimate the arrogance of opportunists and charlatans. These guys will make a lot of money and help progressives defeat Brown, so I'm all for it.
Update: Speaking of Scott Brown, when I read Erick Ericksson's revealing remarks that hot women like Nikki Haley don't like ugly poor men, it occurred to me that many of the Tea Party heroes are pin-ups: Brown, Palin, Bachmann, Rubio. (Rand Paul is the exception --- not that he's particularly unattractive, but he's no Cosmo centerfold or beauty pageant winner.) Since Scott Brown was never actually a Tea Partier and Palin actually hails from the corporate/social conservative wing of the party, I'm guessing that these folks are just suckers for a pretty face.
UPDATE: Scott Brown told Schieffer that he hasn't heard anything about jobs since he's been in the Senate, but Steve Benen reminds him that he voted on a couple of jobs bills already. What a nitwit. He's lying only a couple of months into his new gig. Welcome to the House of Lords.
Scott Brown made his first appearance on Face the Nation Sunday, and while he distanced himself from Sarah Palin and wouldn't answer Bob Schieffer's question asking him if he would have appeared with her if he wasn't working, he gave an awfully good impression of her by not including any substance in his answers to Bob's questions -- only right wing talking points.
I found it rather bizarre that since he has been part of the legislative process in Boston before he became Senator, his performance made it sound like he had zero knowledge on what's wrong with the financial reform bill other than saying that President Obama is now putting his political arm in the debate so he's going to filibuster the bill.
SENATOR SCOTT BROWN (R-Massachusetts): Well, I think the President's political arm is now taking over this debate. And it's unfortunate because I, like many others in my state and throughout the country, want banks to be banks. They don't want them to be casinos. They don't want them to take risky bets on our money. And, I think that this is an issue that we can clearly come to common ground and just solve the problem. Where there're problems, we should fix them. But the regulation and the-- the bill that's being proposed by the banking chairman dramatically affects businesses-- mutual-- for example, Liberty Mutual, MassMutual. These folks are-- are caught in that-- that-- that regulation as well. It's going to cost potentially twenty-five to thirty-five thousand jobs. And--
BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Well, now, wait a minute, Senator. How-- how can you say that?
SENATOR SCOTT BROWN: Well, I-- I can say it very clearly because the-- the regulations that are-- they're trying to reel in with some of the risky he-- hedging-- that bets are doing also affects companies like-- like I just described in Massachusetts. It's-- it's very clear. And-- and speaking with Secretary Geithner the other day I-- I certainly noted the-- the President's comments. But, Secretary Geithner has some of the same criticisms of the bill. In that, it doesn't end the bailout mentality of the big bank--the too-big-to-fail concept. And, in addition, there are a lot of things in the Dodd bill that-- that are just bad for business, small businesses in particular. And we should do better. And, I've-- I called the President out the other day and the administration to do better and stop politicizing these issues and just start solving problems.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But don't you think that Senator McConnell might be a little bit guilty of politicizing when he-- he comes out and just says flatly, "No, we're against it?"
SENATOR SCOTT BROWN: He's not saying-- he's not saying no to financial reform unless I'm mistaken because that's never the impression I've gotten in the seventy-three days since I've been there. Throughout our caucuses, that issue has been in the forefront with the teams that are negotiating with the banking chairman to try to find common sense reforms and-- and address situations like the one that I just pointed out with-- where companies are-- are caught in the big web. And, when you have government interfering in-- in-- in businesses-- small businesses' lives and just throwing-- like a-- a one-size-fits-all approach just to score political points, it's-- it's sad. We should be looking at real issues-- I'm sorry, real solutions to these
problems. And, to politicize, it is clear what they're with, you know, trying to score points and he should do better.
The interview went on like this for about thirteen minutes or so. He wouldn't answer any of Bob's questions and just repeated prepared lines that fell flat. He was unimpressive and appeared to be just like another political hack who's going to vote with the Democrats whenever he can so he'll be able to say he's a true independent voice for the people of Massachusetts to get reelected to the Senate. It's fine to be prepared, we all do it before we go on TV, but I thought he would be able just list a few reasons why he's against the Dodd bill instead of flatly rejecting it like Frank Luntz has instructed them to.
He didn't offer specifics about what he thinks should be in a financial reform bill, but said he'd filibuster the current bill rather than let it come to the Senate floor.
Bob didn't bother to push him on anything either except when it came to Palin. I can see that Scott Brown is a bit shaky about Our Lady from Alaska.
BOB SCHIEFFER: well, would you have, for example, gone to the rally in Boston and appeared with Sarah Palin had the Senate not been in session?
SENATOR SCOTT BROWN: Well, I’ve been to rallies before. I spoke a couple of years-- last year at two rallies in Worcester, before I was elected. And, you know, my role now is, as an elected official, is to do my job. And that’s not-- that wasn’t-- those weren’t the circumstances. And I have great respect for-- for Sarah and what she’s doing. She’s got a lot on her plate. And, she’s plays a role in-- in-- in that movement, and-- and-- and just the-- the-- the Republican Party. And-- and--
Notice how he referred to the Tea Parties as "that movement?" He also had a hard time with Shieffer's question about whether Obama is a socialist.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But, do you decline to answer my question: is he pushing the country towards socialism?
SENATOR SCOTT BROWN: I don’t think he’s making proper choices when it comes to dealing with the-- the free market and free enterprise and allowing businesses to-- to really run themselves and create jobs. And as a result, larger government is happening and we’re creating
jobs but they're all government jobs. And the private sector is definitely-- definitely suffering.
This interview was about as softball as it comes and what I came away from it was that Scott Brown is a political fly weight. Not knowing, but speaking "Luntz" is the new "in," people.
Oh, and did you know his daughter got a job on CBS? I'm not saying she didn't deserve the job because you know, American Idol really prepares oneself for political reporting.
By noon, more than 55,000 voters cast their ballots in Boston - up from an estimate of 24,000 during the December primary. That puts Boston on pace to produce more than 150,000 votes. In raw votes, if this keeps up, that'll be slightly more than the 2002 or 2006 state elections, but well below presidential years. (The surge in enrollments in '08 means that a slight increase in the number of voters would still be a significantly lower percentage.)
It's also above the election eve forecasts. The Secretary of State predicated roughly double the December turnout - so far, Boston is actually up 130%. And with lines discouraging voters at some precincts and a snowy morning, coupled with much more intensive GOTV efforts, there are some indications that turnout may actually tilt toward the afternoon.
It's too soon for optimism. Turnout had to exceed projections for Coakley to have any chance. Well, it has - so she's still in the running. But we're going to need more numbers before we can guess whether she'll pull it out.
I would stress the readers caveat that this is really nothing for Dems to get too excited about. What it does suggest is that the kind of big turnout Coakley would need to pull this off seems to be happening. Solid turnout is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition.
In contrast to the light turnout for the party primaries last month, there are already signs of a heavy turnout. In the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's district in Barnstable, they're estimating a 60-percent turnout by the end of the day.
For you Bay-staters, what are you seeing on the ground? And for the rest of you, have you made your calls? Polls are open for several more hours. Keep on pushing.
Usually turnout is very small for special elections and state primary elections, but if Coakley has any chance to win it if the polls are correct is by a bigger than normal turnout. We'll see.
When I heard that "The Brady Bunch" turns 40 this Fall, I knew I couldn't bring myself to post the "Marsha Marsha Marsha," "Ow, my nose," or especially the "It's a Sunshine Day" musical number. Then I found this Jamie Foxx tribute to the theme song. Watch to the end: Jamie Foxx doing Prince doing the Brady Bunch theme? Priceless.
Here's a video from
