This cover is nothing short of hilarious:

click for full cover
Matt Taibbi sums up Friedman’s new book perfectly in the coinciding article:

“Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we’re not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we’re not in Kansas anymore.) That’s the whole plot right there…… Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end—and I’m not joking here—we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce.”

We’re glad to see Matt’s “infamous” Pope article hasn’t dulled his edge.

This is either the worst video of all time or the best. Click here now. You must see this.

Wing is pretty priceless too. Click here to hear her ABBA and Beatles covers.

From Reuters:
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed a vote on the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador after a Republican senator said he was not prepared to vote for him on Tuesday and cast the nomination in doubt.
“I’ve heard enough today that I don’t feel comfortable about voting for Mr. Bolton,” Ohio Sen. George Voinovich said, stunning fellow Republicans who were set to push the contentious nomination through the committee on a party-line vote.

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[FROM Congressional Quarterly]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation’s security.
According to the list – part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security – between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.
It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.

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The Nuge proves once again that his politics are as insanely bad as his music. Worst of all, we’re not gonna be welcome at his annual squirrel cook-off this summer. Sounds like it may be a bloodbath this year anyway.

[From AP] Speaking at the NRA’s annual convention Saturday, Nugent said each NRA member should try to enroll 10 new members over the next year and associate only with other members.
“Let’s next year sit here and say, ‘Holy smokes, the NRA has 40 million members now,’” he said. “No one is allowed at our barbecues unless they are an NRA member. Do that in your life.”
“Remember the Alamo! Shoot ‘em!” he screamed to applause. “To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot ‘em.”

Ann Coulter made the cover of this week’s Time magazine. Here’s an except of Time’s jerkoff session:

“On TV or in person, you can trust that Coulter will speak from her heart. The officialdom of punditry, so full of phonies and dullards, would suffer without her humor and fire.”

Truth be told, we’d feel a lot better if this phony dullard would shut the fuck up for once. Here are some examples of her “humor and fire”:

“We should invade their [Middle Eastern] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”
“I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning”
“Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas [who is Lebanese] to sit within yards of the president.”
“God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
“When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty.We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.”
To a disabled Vietnam vet: “People like you caused us to lose that war.”
“I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote.”
“The presumption of innocence only means you don’t go right to jail.”
“I have to say I’m all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the ‘hood to be flogged publicly.”
“[Anti-war Democrats] know that the American people support defending America, unlike them. Their real feelings are coming out as much as they can right now, which is that they’re desperately dying to provide aid and support to al-Qaeda.”
“Americans understand that Manhattan is the Soviet Union.”
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
“Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy ’60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven ‘principles’of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life — economics, work, personality, even litter removal.”
“Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.”

Feel free to add your favorite Ann Coulter quotes in comments.

Mel Gibson to film the Pope’s story
Mel Gibson is reportedly set to turn Pope John Paul II’s story into a Hollywood movie. The New York Post reports Gibson has already filmed the ending to the movie. He also reportedly despatched a production crew to Rome to film the pope’s funeral. Gibson, a devote Roman Catholic, last year enjoyed one of Hollywood’s biggest box-office hits with The Passion of Christ. (from Ananova)

FROM NY TIMES

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as “against people of faith” for blocking President Bush’s nominees.
Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day “Justice Sunday” and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading “the filibuster against people of faith,” it reads: “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith.”

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BECK has announced a special NEW YORK gig.
The star will be appearing at the Hiro Ballroom in the city’s Maritime Hotel for the exclusive show.
Tickets can ONLY be bought here.
The password to purchase tickets is: girls. Tickets are limited to two per person and priced at $25.(From NME)

From BuyBlue.org

Based only on amounts given by their C-level executives in 2003-2004,
Ten Bluest Corporations
Time Warner, $1,713,621, 77% Blue
Viacom, $892,513, 78% Blue
News Corp, $689,549, 61% *
Walt Disney, $606,504, 70% Blue
IBM, $397,936, 68% Blue
Cablevision, $326,842, 68% Blue
Torchmark Insurance Cos., $314,441, 88% Blue
Sony Corp. of America, $287,535, 69% Blue
Working Assets, $234,255, 100% Blue
Costco, $224,803, 99% Blue
Ten Reddest Corporations
United Parcel Service, $2,361,922, 71%
SBC Communications, $2,028,031, 67% Red
Merrill Lynch, $1,900,326, 72%, Red
Pfizer, $1,465,317, 67% Red
MBNA Corp., $1,453,497, 73% Red
Union Pacific, $1,428,663, 79% Red
Southern Co., $1,041,025, 80% Red
Wachovia Corp, $998,997, 75% Red
Clear Channel Communications, $764,318, 67% Red
General Electric, $747,386, 67% Red