Not Safe For Work: PhotOh! Chicago Republican website is hottt!

By GottaLaff

Correction (title edited to reflect): The site belongs to an individual who labels it Chicago GOP, but is apparently not affiliated with GOP. Thank you HeidiEKMassey. My information was wrong. ChicagoGOP.com is an unnofficial site for Republicans.

I've always admired the Rushpublic party for standing up for Family Values, labeling themselves the Family Values Party, being so Family Values pure of heart, condemning others for their prurient ways, raising their eyebrows at the mere mention of the Sex Word, shaking their fists angrily at extra curricular activities like extra marital affairs, visits to Voyeur-istic venues, revealing photos...

Why, I feel safer and more protected just knowing they are always looking out for the children and the more prim and proper among us. They'd never expose, say, readers to anything that comes close to racy. Certainly not a woman's bare boobuses!

Oh. Wait:

H/t: Misha44_

VIDEO: The Big CPAC rap show embarrassing moment... *Cricket, cricket*

By GottaLaff

::Cricket, cricket::



Oh no, seriously, this is just deadly.

Painful.

Off the scale cringeworthy:

A few CPACers eventually walked in, looking for rap. They seemed bewildered. No one canceled the show officially, and no one knew what was going on. [...]

We hung around for a while, hoping for some hear some phat rhymes from headliner Hi Caliber, the tea partier rapper we profiled last year. He never showed.

I caught up with Hi Cal this afternoon to find out what happened. "The crowd disbanded early," he said, "so we moved the show."

The new performance will be tonight "after Ann Coulter," he said.

Yeah, because Ann Coulter is so hip and kewl and rad that all the rapper fans and awesome, with-it, gnarly Rushpublics will be drawn like flies to her rhythmically hott, pulsating, rapitude-inous aura.

More here.

H/t: Cody

The latest blatant hypocrisy of John Boehner

By GottaLaff

Here is a statement from Glowy McFauxTan that clearly demonstrates how very bipartisan and open to civil discussion the GOP is:

Statement by Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) on the Proposed Feb. 25 Health Care Summit

Washington, Feb 13 - House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today issued the following statement regarding the health care summit being planned by congressional Democrats and the White House for February 25:

"A productive bipartisan discussion should begin with a clean sheet of paper. We now know that instead of starting the 'bipartisan' health care 'summit' on Feb. 25 with a clean sheet of paper, the president and his party intend to arrive with a new bill written behind closed doors exclusively by Democrats -- a backroom deal that will transform one-sixth of our nation's economy and affect every family and small business in America. They will then engage a largely handpicked audience in a televised 'dialogue' according to a script they have largely pre-determined. They will do this as a precursor to embarking on a legislative course that Democratic congressional aides acknowledge has also been pre-determined -- a partisan course that relies on parliamentary tricks to circumvent the will of the American people and engineer a pre-determined outcome. It doesn't sound much like bipartisanship to me."

NOTE: House Republicans' alternative solutions to make health care more affordable and accessible can be found at HealthCare.GOP.gov.

Here is a link to their so-called solutions.

Where do I start?

For one thing, The Boehner seems to forget that those very same "tricks" were used ad nauseam by Boy Georgie. And that it's because of the stubborn obstructionist tactics by his own party that the Dems might, and should, resort to circumventing the endless, and unprecedented, number of filibusters.

Oh, and BoehnHead? When it comes to "pre-determined scripts", you might want to 1) Look in the mirror (with sunglasses on, lest your artificial coloring blind you), 2) Check out this post on ReadHand McCribNotes' insistence on pre-screened questions, and 3) Walk down Memory Lane long enough to recall that BushCo pre-determined everything from hand-picked audiences to fraudulent wars against sovereign countries.

But using the word "Democratic", instead of "Democrat", is duly noted.

H/t: _ccm, Coopster04

45-minute WMD claim 'came from an Iraqi taxi driver'

By GottaLaff

Next time you're out on the street screaming, "Taxi!", consider this:

An Iraqi taxi driver may have been the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Gee, I hope he was at least licensed. But I digress:

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi military commanders talking about Saddam's weapons.

And then he divulged that one commander was in the middle of a messy affair and was leaving his wife. But MI6 didn't think he was credible on that score, so we never heard any of the juicy details.

Oh, but I kid the MI6.

After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.

That would have been too embarrassing. It's a good thing it didn't leak out. That wouldn't have ended well.

Oops.

Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist who is now a member of the Commons defence committee, wrote:

"Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, British intelligence was squeezing their agents in Iraq for information. One agent did come up with something: the '45 minutes' or something about missiles allegedly discussed in a high level Iraqi political meeting.

"But the provenance of this information was never questioned in detail until after the Iraq invasion, when it became apparent that something was wrong. In the end it turned out that the information was not credible, it had originated from an émigré taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard a conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier.

"Indeed, in the intelligence analyst's footnote to the report, it was flagged up that part of the report probably describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. They verifiably did not exist.

"The footnote said it in black and white ink. Despite this glaring factual inaccuracy, which under normal circumstances would have caused the reliability of the intelligence to be seriously questioned, the report was treated as reliable and went on to become one of the central planks of the dodgy dossier."

Bus drivers are so much more reliable. Had they been smart, they would have gotten more bang for their buck, er, pound, er, Euro, had they relied on public transportation.

There is much more here.

H/t: DCPlod

Prejean threatened walkout before she stepped on to 'Larry King Live' set

By GottaLaff

When C-Pre glanced over at who I assume was her attorney, gave him a nod (at about 2:05), and mouthed, "We have to leave" (at about 2:24) on the video we posted yesterday, I suspected this had been staged, er, planned:

Upon entering CNN's Washington Bureau Wednesday night, the first words out of Former Miss California Carrie Prejean's mouth to CNN news assistant Christina McAusland were, "You tell Larry if he's not nice to me, I will get up and leave." [...]

She arrived with an entourage of five, (for cable news Green Room context, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., never arrives with a group that large) and barked at a studio operator for touching her hair while setting up her microphone.

Ooo, Diva McDiverson is getting a little big for her fancy pageant walkin', isn't she?

She accused the King staff of lying to her when they sworetogod there would be no phone calls. Those fiends! What could they have been thinking letting a caller slip in? After all, why would C-Pre expect phone calls on a call-in show? Unheard of!

She belittled McAusland saying, "Is the intern talking to me? Oh look at the little intern, look at the little intern trying to explain!"

"I've never been treated so poorly in my whole life," McAusland, who recently accepted an executive producer position at Newsie.com of Media Convergence Group, said.

VIDEO- Rick Perry Gaffe-itude on Recession: "We're in one?"

By GottaLaff



How many ways can I say, "Wow!":

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), facing a tough primary challenge from Sen. Kay Baily Hutchison (R), left many puzzled when he declared his state was recession proof.

Said Perry: "As a matter of fact ... someone had put a report out that the first state that's coming out of the recession is going to be the state of Texas ... I said, 'We're in one?'"

Paul Burka of the Texas Monthly: "This gaffe is going to stick. It is going to be national news. It will come back to haunt him in a campaign spot. If Hutchison can't make something of it, the Democrats can. You cannot be callous and cavalier when people are losing their jobs and their homes. I don't care how ideological the Republican base is. Unemployment in Texas just reached the 8% mark. Everybody knows someone who is suffering in these times. Everybody has lost part of their life savings. It could cost him the race."

Wow!

VIDEO-- Michele Bachmann: Has DHS Sec. Napolitano Gone "Stark Raving Mad"?

By GottaLaff

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Speaking of stark raving mad, someone prep the rubber room, because, sadly, this government representative, who was actually voted into office and speaks on behalf of a few Americans, is clearly not well:



Yes, Michele, Obama would nab anti-choicers at an airport, but not Osama Bin Laden. You just keep on thinking that.

H/t

Update to the latest (John) Ziegler Follies

By GottaLaff

Earlier I posted a video revealing John Ziegler's latest psycho antics, or the Ziegler Follies as I shall now call them. But what have we here? Why, I believe it's called The Truth:

This afternoon, the Huffington Post spoke to James Grant, the Executive Director of Media Relations for USC. Their version of events goes a little counter to Ziegler's narrative.

According to Grant, in the days before his eventual appearance on campus, Ziegler publicly announced his intention to demonstrate at the Couric event. USC was happy to accomodate Ziegler, and provided him with a designated area, where he could register his protest, be seen by event attendees and the student body, and pass out whatever materials he wished. These arrangements were ready upon Ziegler's arrival.

However, according to Grant, Ziegler showed up for the event making unexpected demands. He was no longer a demonstrator. Now, he was a journalist, with cameramen in tow, insistent that he had a right to enter the event. Told that the event was invitation only, Ziegler contended that he had the right to range up and down the entryway and stick microphones into the faces of attendees.

Said Grant, "The University both respects and facilitates the right to free speech, but we reserve the right to set reasonable ground rules that respect the rights of everyone, and provide for the safety and security of the University community." Ziegler, opting against the ground rules that had been mutually agreed to, was given the choice of leaving campus or being arrested, and eventually chose to leave campus.

This guy's entire professional life is an epic fail. If you need further proof, watch him in this dating video. You remember, the one in which he gets rejected? Yeah, that one.

VIDEO: Sham OW! Sham Wow pitchman busted for battering hooker

By GottaLaff

Vince Shlomi, aka Sham Wow Guy

I sweartogod I came up with that blog title before I looked at the Tee Vee Machine and saw Keith had the same one. Swear. To. God. 'Cause Keith and I so, like, share a brain, right?

The Smoking Gun has the story ("TV pitchman battered hooker in South Beach hotel room brawl"), mug shots of the hooker, and images of the arrest affadavit.

Here's the video from CountdOWn:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sham WOWzers. Way to make a lucrative gig come to a screeching halt.

After this, it's doubtful even the people in the ever-lengthening unemployment lines will allow you anywhere near them.