Wait, who was that on The View this week?

Oh. It WAS Hannity. Nevermind.

h/t Heather from here.

Watch out. @KathyGriffin just peed her panties.

Not just because apparently Levi's ex-girlfriend (no, the other one) is preggers, but because of this tidbit:

“Levi insists the baby isn’t his, but no one really knows for sure,” a source told RadarOnline.com exclusively.

“Levi is one of three possible fathers who were with Lanesia during the probable week of conception.”

Kathy and I both knew this before: fertility is wasted on the wrong bitchez.

Anyone that wants to accuse me of slut shaming? Fuck you ahead of time. And you're welcome.

Our New Podcast and Biggest Gripe: Why Won't Sarah Palin Friend Us?

The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards podcasting costs. Thanks for your listenership and support! We really appreciate it:

Funniest Cat Post I've Ever Read

I freaked out my neighbors when they heard me exclaim “It’s not the lesbianism I mind, it’s the incest!” and [the neighbors]didn’t realize I was talking to my cats.

It was nice to have a few weeks without their kids playing in my driveway….

From the knitting social networking site Ravelry (registration required), a forum thread about the silliest thing that's come out of your mouth. Most are things we've all said to our kids, but this one...

Stop the E. R. A.!

h/t Zen Comix. Tengrain has the audio of Phyllis Schlafly saying that besides "the Blacks" (yeah) Obama voters are single women who have "kicked out their husbands."

Phyllis has obviously never known a hungry day in her life.

About that defense contractor on trial for fraud

About that defense contractor on trial for buying porn, prostitutes, race horses, Aerosmith for his daughter's bat mitzvah, plastic surgery for the wife, a one-hundred-thousand dollar bejewelled American flag belt buckle, not to mention allegedly defrauding investors by falsifying the value of his inventory, and providing defective body armor to US troops in the Middle East:

Eventually, the Pentagon broke DHB’s monopoly to speed up production, but that wasn’t the end of the military’s problems with the company. Over the course of 2005, the Marines and Army recalled a total of 23,000 vests – all of them produced by DHB -- after an investigation by the Marine Corps Times revealed that the vests had failed ballistics tests for stopping 9 mm bullets. The exposé showed that Pentagon officials had dismissed repeated warnings by inspectors. In one instance, army ballistics expert James MacKiewicz alerted higher-ups of “major quality assurance deficiencies” by DHB and recommended rejecting certain lots of vests and “disciplinary action against the contractor.

”

Disciplinary action? This guy is compromising my convictions regarding capital punishment. How about this modest proposal....





P.S. I wonder if their stock in Robert Graham Shirts is down. Fuckers.

Our newest meme:

and also too

Sharron Angle is friends with your mother.

click image for larger

The Big Picture

Click for larger.

On Charlie Rangel

Yeah Luke Russert is a young punk. But that wouldn't matter if Rangel's kitchen timer hadn't dinged, oh, about ten years ago.

Rangel is a poster boy for a Congress and Senate long overdue for some fresh blood. Forty-seven Senators are over 65; the average age of a House member is 58, but that's mostly because that douche Aaron Schock was born in 1981.

Podcasting against Breitbart

The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards podcasting costs. Thanks for your listenership and support! We really appreciate it:

Baggy Sweatpants and a Gift From the Lord!

Tosh.0
The Web's Newest Dance Crazes
www.comedycentral.com

And by the way, "Surra da Bunda" is what Rachel did to O'Reilly last night:



Vid from Heather at Video Cafe (Bloggers, don't forget you can grab embed codes for ANY C&L video by clicking the post's title and using the widget on the sidebar.)

Podcast later today; watch this space.

This is an outrage.

I am outraged at PayPal.

That Pammy Atlas has had her PayPal account reinstated, but Jesus General has not, because his blog is allegedly some sort of...hate site?

Are you kidding me?

I wrote to Paypal using their contact form (login required)

I just want to say with all due respect for your anti-hate policies, and I certainly get those, that banning the SATIRICAL website Jesus General, but reinstating the non-satirical website Atlas Shrugs, you've lost a lot of credibility with the blogosphere.

I have no direct connection with either blog, but I hope you'll reconsider JC Christian (really, he's not actually "Jesus 11 on a manly scale of absolute gender" as if).

It's unfortunate you were bullied into reinstating Atlas, but if you had to do that, keeping an obvious prankster off of your rolls looks as if you don't do your homework at all and let a right wing mob decide your policies.

With all good wishes to you and your hard-working staff,

PS. It doesn't help their case that after the Ft. Hood shootings, Pammy Atlas posted the absolute worst photoshop ever. I really have a hard time linking to it.

UPDATE: It appears Pammy Atlas is using something called GPal for payment. They are not affiliated with PayPal and are apparently owned by a number of defense contractors and gun manufacturer/salesmen. No women or minorities appear on their "About" page. Maybe Jesus General could bring his "11 on the manly scale" to their attention.

Free Advice for Lindsay Lohan

Make sure that for each of the fourteen days you're a guest of the Lynwood Charm School, you eat every bite of the turkey tetrazzini.

Because, you see...Hollywood has way way way too many of these:



And not nearly enough of these:

Dear NAACP:

Sorry to hear you've been "snookered" by Andrew Breitbart. I suggest you do to him what the Southern Poverty Law Center did about the "snookering" from the Klan.

Take his assets.

Shirley Sherrod has valid grounds for suing, and you should represent her and take your ten percent.

And depose everybody, absolutely everybody, who could have possibly funded him in the past three years, and find out what they thought they were paying for. Deep pockets, my friends. Deep pockets.

I don't give a fuck if Rahm is a hostile witness. Neither should you.

UPDATE: Atlanta Journal Constitution is "asking the question" too.

In Other Sarah Palin News (Photoshop CHALLENGE)

Oh jeez, turns out Christian publisher Zondervan is postponing the Sarah Palin biography for children indefinitely. I wonder why?



Click on this image for larger:







Feel free to add your own with a link in comments...

Refudiating Sarah Palin

Alas, poor Reagan! I knew him, Marco Rubio....

And Sarah Palin, who simply made a little tiny slip of the tongue in her prejudiced Twitter rant about the Manhattan Muslim Center. She said "refudiate" when she meant "refute" or "repudiate."

Language is fun for those who know how to use it. My sister used to make a joke about how men are "deceivious"--a delicious combination of deceptive and mischievous, which exactly fit any number of bad dates we've been on.

And if Sarah Palin had simply said, "oops, of course I meant 'refute'" -- well, then she wouldn't be Sarah Palin, now, would she? Why does the Right Wing have such a problem with being frail, imperfect humans?


[Twitter screenshot via the wonderful worth-the-click post on this issue from Rumproast.]

By comparing herself to Shakespeare, Sarah Palin illustrates perfectly that being right-wing means never admitting you're wrong. Fundamentalism is not only dangerous, it is a completely untenable position precisely because human beings are inconsistent and imperfect beings. Believing the Bible is the literal Truth, even though we can't recite a single verse of Leviticus, let alone obey one, is inconsistent. Insisting that the original Constitution and intent of the founding fathers must be left untouched, nevermind that most of the grassroot organizers of the Tea Party (women) are dependent upon the 19th AMENDMENT for their right to vote, is inconsistent. And stating, as Sarah Palin did on Twitter, that the English language is fluid and changing but, as many of her Tea Party supporters do, that our interpretations of the law and Constitution must not be, is inconsistent.

Being afraid of ambiguity is a hallmark of fundamentalist thinking. Left wingers, often to a fault, love ambiguity. We also love Shakespeare puzzles.

Twitter was completely on fire last night with Shakespeare silliness and Palin puns. Comedian Andy Borowitz suggested 'refudiate' is in the 'fictionary.' Our own Jon Perr pointed out that this incident is just an example of her "self-defecating humor." And several tweeters went all Lloyd Bentsen: "I've read Will Shakespeare. You, Sarah Palin, are no Will Shakespeare." And those tweeters who got out their 'Complete Works Of' and got bizzay* had a long fun night ahead of them...

Honestly, Quitty McQuitter, you can't throw a bone like that at us and expect to be left with any marrow.

You undergo too strict a paradox,
Striving to make an ugly deed look fair:
Your words have took such pains as if they labour'd
To bring manslaughter into form and set quarrelling
Upon the head of valour; which indeed
Is valour misbegot and came into the world
When sects and factions were newly born:
He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer
The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs
His outsides, to wear them like his raiment,
carelessly,
And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart,
To bring it into danger.
If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill,
What folly 'tis to hazard life for ill!

from Timon of Athens


*Every tweeter knows "Bizzay wit da Bitchez" was The Bard's working title for "The Merry Wives of Windsor." ;)

Mike Pence gets the Dave Chappelle Treatment (VIDEO MASHUP)

Also too, Distributor Cap has Sing a song of Mike Pence...four and twenty tax cuts baked in some lies....wonderfully clever.

And those of you who laughed now and missed my fundraiser last week? Don't 'waste your weed' like Mike Pence!

Thank you.

Political Debate or Performance Art? (Whatever, as long as it's "good for John McCain".)

If you missed the performance art of the Arizona GOP Senatorial debate, there's C&L video here and more here. Lovely.

Thank the good lord Rick Santorum is BACK!

Tip for the GOP leadership: When the left wing blogosphere cheers as one of yours appears set to take the stage? Oh, wait, that's pretty much everybody you've got.**

Rick Santorum raised more money than Mike Huckabee last quarter.

And he's coming out with lefty political gold like this:

"[Obama] is detached from the American experience. He just doesn't identify with the average American because of his own background - Indonesia and Hawaii."

And of course, cruder and more creative minds than mine denoted that "santorum - n." refers to, well, poop and sperm and lubricant mixed together, the culmination of an erotic act.



**I laugh at the prospect of a Santorum presidency the exact same way we all did about George W. Bush in 2002. Sigh.

The Original Memory Hole

Remember when all those pesky Tea Party protesters used to crash our marches with outrageous signs just to make us hippies look bad?








It worked out so well for them. [Update: Heather has video of this.]

WILLIAMS: It’s impossible — it’s impossible for there to be a racist element in the tea party, you don’t get it! The tea party is about human rights, it’s about the United States constitution. The United States constitution mankind’s foremost human rights document.

[MSNBC's Tameron] HALL: What about the signs of the president as an African with a bone in his nose? What is that? Is that about the constitution?

WILLIAMS: Those signs were brought by Crash the Tea party, the coalition of anti-tea party groups, google crashed the tea party. You will find it all there. ... Buy my book!

Madam, I'm Adam. I didn't do it, she made me eat the apple!

PS what you find when you google "tea party crashers" under google blog search is a circle jerk of right wing blogs frothing over alleged fake signs.

Honestly people you can tell the fake signs immediately because

liberals know how to spell.

I'm all for tea party crashing. I just think we should do it naked.

The Friday Podcast - Bonus Extended Edition!

If you would like to donate specifically to the podcast, go to our podcast website. You can also play past episodes there for free. Thanks!


PS If you downloaded the podcast on Friday, it had some audio errors in it. The above version is corrected.

My Birthday, the final day of the fundraiser, and an @maddow mention

People love the #Maddow reference in this video. I don't blame them.



Thank you so much to those of you who've wished me well via Facebook, Twitter, and email. And to those of you who've said "Keep it up, Blue Gal" with a contribution to this blog, words can't say thanks enough. xxx

Podcast will be posted momentarily.

Let's talk about sex, Bay-Bee....

...because intelligence is an aphrodisiac.

For those of you who missed it, the Kink on Tap podcast featuring yours truly is now online at their website. I really enjoyed talking to Maymay, Emma, and Arvan from Sexgenderbody. And K-O-T is a great place to hang out (they've got a chat room and everything) on a Sunday night.

One for @KathyGriffin

Because she's one of my faves and I actually think she helped Levi grow the fuck up a bit in the past year. Plus give him some income. And now he can piss off his mother in law for the rest of his life.



It's all good.... Except for the cake.



found at The Wedding Police.

Yes I'm asking for patrons of the art to contribute to me on my website this week. Which is kind of like searching for "Jesus" on Google Blogsearch. Oh wait, no it isn't.

Jesus met the wingnut at the well....

...and gave her a sign. [The hand of our Lord is pixelated for your protection. Click image for larger.]

Honestly, when I hear claptrap from people like Sharron Angle saying God is on our side, my own christian-with-a-small-c tendencies sink to the bottom, and my dope slap them Jesus through blogposts of strife start bursting through. The hubris that puts God on one's own side is a punishable offense. Ask the Pharisee:

“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up unto the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

And just in case anyone has forgotten, Jesus of Nazareth was nailed to a tree by the political and religious CONSERVATIVES of his day because they mistakenly thought they had power and that he threatened that power. ANY Christian, myself included, who thinks they would have rescued Jesus from the cross, that certainly WE wouldn't have gone along with Pilate and Judas and abandoned him like Peter, are just kidding themselves. And those right-wingers who think they're really serving the cause of Jesus by electing Republicans, or working to make America a "Christian" nation? Little Christian ladies like me can say fuck off, can't we?

It's that the religious right/Republican Party has so often set the discourse that "God/Jesus equals us" that some of us lefties tend to believe that. Rejecting hate speech, intolerance, and fundamentalism becomes rejecting all religion.

But see, I love Jesus, and I'm strongly committed to making sure YOUR right NOT to believe is protected. I also believe, while we're at it, that I would be SINNING against my God to attempt to convert you. That's His provence. And if I believe (and I struggle to, at least) that God is Love and that God loves his creation, I think smart, funny, gifted non-believers have one of the better tables at Divine Love's cocktail party. You certainly do at mine.

Here's the deal about Christians, though. We're not all Sharron Angle, and I refuse to allow Sharron Angle to tell any of us what God wants. If she really wanted to follow God, she'd shut the fuck up and listen. The still small voice is not in the religious isolationist shriek of the Tea Party.

Sharron Angle does not speak for me.

Those of you who have read this far, thank you. No one pays me to do this except generous readers like you. Please give what you can during my quarterly fundraiser. (And Friday is my birthday.)

Time Flies....

...this is me circa 1965.

At the time this snapshot was taken, our country was about to lose Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Vietnam, Watergate, oil shock, etc... I'm not going to turn this post into the Billy Joel song no matter how much it wants me to. We fetishize our own times as being harder and tougher and worse than any other, but it isn't true. We always suffer under the Asian curse to live in "interesting" times.

I've been blogging here since 2004. That's before twitter and iPhones and yes, even Lady Gaga. I'm truly old skool. And I keep telling myself, perspective is a gift.

On Friday I will turn 47. And it feels as though my life has changed as much in the past six years as it had in the previous 41. The support and love of my readers has made a tremendous difference for the better. I am so glad I found blogging, and that you are here to share that community with me. Thank you.

Four times a year I ask my readers to drop a little sumpin in the bucket to keep me going. The money doesn't pay for trips to Netroots Nation or $5K publicists. It pays for printer toner or perhaps a "gourmet" coffee. Your contribution means the next time the ice cream truck rolls down the street I won't have to say no this time.

We're in tough times now but I love the sense that those of us who blog and those who read blogs are in this together. I've shared outrage and frustration here but I sincerely hope I avoid despair. Hope is not a word on a poster for me, it is the angel who sits on my shoulder and whispers, "Oh, that's a funny one. More Boehner."

If you have a job or other source of income and value what I do here, you have an opportunity to say so with the button below. And you have my deep abiding gratitude. Thank you.

The obligatory Lindsay Lohan post

Even Wapo does not report whether the infamous prison poncho is a Mexican poncho or a Sears poncho, but I think Frank Zappa was thinking about someone very much like Lindsay when he wrote that song.

I hate being wrong.

This past April, I wrote:

I was so disappointed to read about the new release of one of my favorite authors, Justin Cronin. His books The Summer Guest and Mary and O'Neil are lovely, just lovely. The Summer Guest is definitely great American novel material and Blue Gal highly recommended.

Now he's come out with an 800 page dystopian novel about...vampires. Sigh. Also before it was a novel it was the subject of a movie rights bidding war. Well of course it was. I'm delighted that the author of two lovely little books gets almost two million bucks out of his career, but at that cost it makes me weep.

I kept The Passage on my radar. Several reviews said,"if you read the first chapter you will not want to put it down."

Today I read the first chapter. The reviews are right. Damn he's a good writer.

So I know what I'm going to be reading for...the rest of the summer. Son of a bitch weighs a ton, too. (and no I'm not reading it on a fucking Kindle. I don't need a meth delivery system for my book addiction, which is what those things are, plain and simple.)



It's the best first chapter I've read in a very long time. Heartbreaking and real and compelling. And I fucking hate that this LITERARY novel has a fucking iPhone App.

Silver Lining: Beach readers will be reading more than a bestseller, they will be reading something by an actual good writer, which still exists in the U S of A, amen.

Team #Rachel @Maddow

Meet The Press tomorrow morning is Rachel Maddow and David Brooks on the panel...


Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha.

And I'm on Kink On Tap talking sex and politics at 8 Eastern Sunday Night. Hope to see some bg readers in the chat room. (There is no actual sex in the chat room. But you knew that.)

The Kinkiest Podcast Ever?

The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards podcasting costs. We really appreciate your listenership and support! Thank you so much.

Theatre Candy

I know it is unnecessary for me to say this to regular readers of this blog, however:

Sharron Angle does not speak for me or, I dare say, most Americans, Christian or otherwise. To indicate that an impregnated child incest victim should "make lemonade" out of their situation is callous and hateful, and in contradiction to both the teachings of Jesus Christ and the established laws of our nation.

May her destructive, moldy fundamentalism be cleansed from the nation's discourse by sunlight. Amen.

Feeling the frustration and opting in anyway....

There's a truly wonderful rant over at LA Progressive by Wayne Williams, in which he rails against not only the nation's destroyers on the Right, but also the self-seeking corporatist Blue Dogs on the "Left":

The corporate greed machines won, our culture has collapsed, the people have lost by their own choice, the wealthy and powerful have figured out how to destroy a once great nation. Yet like their own devious heritage, they too will soon turn against themselves. Like Madoff sucking his rich clients wealth, BP and Goldman et al., will do the same until they all are the only ones left standing, and then continue to eat each other alive for the last polluted morsel left. Leaving us all without even air to breathe or water to drink, at least none without a very high price to be paid.

It will be all our fault.

We are living through some terrible times. But I don't see Wayne's point in opting out for the summer. After a bit about being the change we wish to see, Wayne says:

See them all for the bloodsuckers of crony capitalism—Democrats and Republicans alike.

Am I upset? You think? Oh well, so it goes. This was not the great nation I thought it was. It is a corporate dream machine of unconscious idiots, but how do I really feel? Just plain angry, that’s how! I’ve given my all by playing by the rules, working with the system only to find out the rules rig the game against the people and the people don’t give a damn.

So, “let it be, let it be, there will be an answer, let it be, let it be?”

Tell you what I’ve got in mind on the outside chance the Democrats can wake up. I suggest Progressive activists and bloggers do the same – that being, let us have a Summer of Silence. Let us not support the Democrats even with our outrage at their incompetence. Stop the talking, the complaining, the organizing, the blogging. A Summer of Silence, that makes them fear the fall—wondering if we will be there in the end with them in November.

Here's the deal. Look carefully at the two progressive protesting guys below:


Can you tell the difference? Do you care? Neither does he:

He also doesn't wonder if we will be with Barack Obama in November. Trust me. You can take the summer off if you like, and for some of us a re-charge of the batteries is essential. I'm spending this month knitting more and it's really helping my stress.

But I don't think a summer of silence for bloggers is desirable -- or possible. See, 'herding cats.'

We blog not because we're great journalists, we do it because we're citizens who are paying attention. There is no time off from PATRIOTISM. I love America too much to take time off from attending to what is happening socially and politically in the world. Suck it, Hannity.

But on many things Wayne is right and I'll stand with him and say it again and again: the most important issues, the ones that matter more than any other, are campaign finance and media reform. Every other issue hangs from those ropes.

Limbaugh: "If Obama Weren't Black He'd Be a Tour Guide in Honolulu"

...says Rush Limbaugh. And if Rush Limbaugh weren't White, absolutely nothing would change.



Except Michael Steele would be among the 99 percenters.