Shhhhhhhhhhhhh -- Yay, Saints.....

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well, this is Vikings territory. Does take a hardy soul to cheer on the Saints hereabouts.

But what's not to love about this win....

A Timely Reminder to Snowpocalyptans

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If you're in the snow zone this weekend somewhere in America, just remember... what comes down will rise up in the spring.

There's a 30-day waiting period for flood insurance to go into force.

Never too early to prepare....
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Yes, the late, great Mr. Sunshine did sell insurance, how'd you guess? Yes, I do have replacement cost coverage...

You should, too.
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

Dicks Are Rs

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Once again a Republican Dick justifies his name.
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Question "R" Rush

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Is Rush Limbaugh deliberately taunting Sarah Palin? Daring her to call him out as she did Rahm Emanuel for his intemperate F***R****?

Is the battle of the rightwing grifter heavyweights building up steam?

Or is Sarah about to take her lipstick and retreat, licked, back to Wasilla?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Prairie's Reading: Fake Sincerity

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North Dakota's in inevitability mode...or so the Hoeven Senate campaign wants everyone to believe. Today they're announcing the support of 30 of the state's mayors, including the mayors of Fargo and West Fargo. The appearance of nonpartisanship belies those mayors' Republican ties, but inevitability marches on...and it's not even March yet.

So the article Why do people vote against their own interests? from BBC News caught my interest. [h/t commenter nomolos in attaturk's thread at fdl]

Two key takeaways from fellow frustrated Democrats cited in the article:

Republicans have mastered the art of appealing to emotions and persuading people to vote in ways that make their own situation worse.

And, if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.

Do I expect the voters to read and learn from this article, or Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? No.

But it would sure be nice if Democratic candidates and consultants would.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Shorter John McCain

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And let's be candid, John McCain couldn't get much shorter than he has gotten lately.

On Don't Ask, Don't Tell, here's the shorter, true take:

What do you mean I'm not president?

That pretty much sums up everything about John McCain...sore loser.

Sore.

Loser.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Monday Morning Food for Thought

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I'm having a wee bit of trouble taking seriously the bleatings of the corpulent king of greed and gluttony this morning as the videoclips of Roger Ailes on This Week make the rounds of the blogosphere and 24/7 cable. Maybe it was his slippery conflating of an obscure commenter's comparing him to FBI dame Jay Edgar Hoover at Huffington Post with the endless drumbeat of anti-Obama, anti-Democratic ranting by Ailes' own army of circus elephants named Beck and Hannity and O'Reilly.

Yeah, I know, they're all intimate friends with Barbara and maybe they've even been invited to salons at the Queen of Tarts' place a time or two.

But while these well stuffed, well botoxed elites blather on about what basically amounts to schoolyard bullying and fingerpointing, I'm thinking about real schoolyards these days.

The president is proposing significant changes to No Child Left Behind, and I'm betting it won't take long for the Faux News crowd to jump on this and sweep up attacks on teachers' unions as part of the enemies lists on which they thrive.

(Apparently thriving is going very well for Fox these days. $20something millions for Roger, Al Hunt practically drools, as though those dollars somehow signify something of importance other than Roger's ability to further stuff his face and build the gated fences higher and surround himself with more and more security....

(Ever wonder where those big audiences they boast come from? Take a look next time you visit grandma at the nursing home—you do visit grandma, don't you?—take a look at what cable channels are pumped in for her viewing. Betcha it'll be a whole lotta Fox and not a sign of msnbc. So much for liberal media.

(And then there are the apologists like the woman from USA Today whose name I mercifully missed. The print version of Fox person grudgingly acknowledges, well, yes, Fox prime time is conservative...blithely ignoring how Fox prime time memes weave through 24/7 programming.)

But back to food for thought of a more substantive nature. Those teachers that Fox loves to attack? Well, they're on the front lines day to day for more than just teaching. Any given Monday morning, for example, they can spot the signs of kids who are starving, malnourished, so hungry their bellies are growling, their heads are dizzy.

And the teachers, who already have dipped into their own wallets for school supplies, these days are on the front lines of seeing to it kids have food in their backpacks to take home for the weekends. And they're working now on ideas on how to keep kids fed during summer vacations.

Malnourishment just might be another good reason to extend the school year through the summer.

Is our kids learning? Not if the dumbing-down and impoverishment and destruction of the middle class lifestyle we used to take for granted keeps on going...

And this isn't happening in some far off third world country seen only in quick videoclips. No. This is pervasive hunger right in the middle of the heartland, where agriculture is big business and Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle are all too quick to earmark more of those farm subsidies, like the ones Michelle Bachmann's family farm rakes in.

President Obama has taken on a daunting challenge to change the status quo, whether healthcare, the economy or education or.... But the Forces of No will be doing everything in their power to bring things back round to the good ol' days of the 2000s. Because that all worked out so well for the middle class and America's children.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal