Falafel. Keith Olbermann has some fun with Bill O'Reilly.

The Impaler Update. In a blow to the Dark Side and what can only be understood as a sign of divine intervention and proof of God's existence, Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey's bid for governor of Minnesota, suffered a setback on Monday when The Impaler was arrested on two felony counts. But as Shrub has shown, just cuz you have a criminal record doesn't mean that you can't steal win an election.

Spying. The debate over Shrub's illegal spying in six simple steps, courtesy This Modern World.

The economy is great! If you're an oil company, that is.:

Exxon Mobil Corp. reported today that its 2005 earnings totaled $36.13 billion, the largest annual profit ever for a U.S. company.

The company's annual profit was up 43 percent from the year before.

Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, also reported a $10.71 billion profit for the last quarter, an increase of 27 percent from the year before.
....
Chevron Corp. last week reported that its fourth quarter profit was up 20 percent from the year before. ConocoPhillips reported a 51 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit. Marathon Oil Corp. reported that its fourth-quarter profit nearly tripled.

Good to see that someone benefited from Hurricane Katrina.
And if you're in the D.C. area, and you're filthy rich, things are looking up for you, too! According to this article in the Post, "Local Mansions, Relative Bargain":

It may seem as if Washington area home prices are ultra high, but only 21 properties here made a list of the 1,000 most expensive houses on the market in America that was published this week.

And at $8 million to $25 million, the farmland, estates and mansions here look like absolute bargains compared with the asking prices of hundreds of properties elsewhere, mostly in New York, California and Florida.

Bargains! Absolute bargains!!!

Who pays these people? In a craptacular Post article which is nothing more than an angry letter toward those mean liberal bloggers, there is this "galloping dose of bullshit":

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

Reading that, I left the following comment at firedoglake:

If your name is accompanied by the words "Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign," then you deserve a warm glass of shut-the-hell-up.

It's like quoting Axl Rose for tips on keeping the band together.

Thanks to Jane Hamsher for picking it up and linking here. So instead of the usual ten Saturday visitors (at least three looking for video of a monkey washing a cat), a few more people have dropped in. Y'all come back now, hear?

Huh? I just don't get it. According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll:

52 percent consider his entire presidency a failure to date, with 46 percent calling it successful.....

And 64 percent said things in the United States have gotten worse in the past five years, while 28 percent said things have improved.

I'd bet that the same 52 percent who recognize Shrub for the failure that he is would also say things have gotten worse over the last five years. Assuming that's the case, then what's up with the those who say it has been a success but think things have either gotten worse or not improved? Or maybe I'm just crazy thinking that success/failure should somehow be tied to performance. Yeah, that's gotta be it.

Box of rocks. Kevin Federline jamming to PopoZao.

And for you headbangers, it's the music video for Iron Maiden's anti-colonialist denunciation of Manifest Destiny, "Run to the Hills". On my latest trip down to the Star City of the South, I found no fewer than seven Iron Maiden cassette tapes in the house. Until recently, these were still hanging up in the basement:
On Edit: I totally forgot, but I found the Coverdale poster rolled up in the basement and hung it up just so that I could take a picture of it. But the Eddie drawing, that's been hanging up for 18 years.

Gimme a Breaksville. Will Arnett on Late Night with Conan.

The final episodes of "Arrested Development" will air on February 10th at 8:00. What else is on February 10th at 8:00? The opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. That's just so typical of the way Fox has treated this show. Though I can't imagine that A.D.'s core audience is the sort that you'd find watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics even if it does have craptacular commentating from Botox Katie Couric ("Iraq, a country with a tortured past...literally.")

Better Know a District. Stephen Colbert's interviews with members of the House are absolutely hilarious. This time it is Bill Pascrell of New Jersey's 8th District.

Falafel. Bill O'Reilly had a professional dominatrix on his show the other night. Video here. It would be creepy enough to hear O'Reilly say, "When you're into a situation where you're tying somebody up, alright, or doing whatever you people do, um, and there's a physical activity, and there's restraints, and there's contraptions and apparatus, whatever it may be, you're taking a risk." But then if you think about the lawsuit against him for sexual harassment, you just wonder whether or not Billyboy might be enjoying this interview a little too much.

Unnatural 1995.

1/24/95 UC Breakfast
First sighting of the new year! UNNATURAL!

Worst. Ever. What to expect from the SOTU address? More of the same.

Why does the Pentagon hate America? From the Department of No, Really?, we have a Pentagon-commissioned report saying that the Army is overextended and can't sustain deployment levels in Iraq long enough to defeat the insurgency. The title of the report? "Things I Could Have Told You Yesterday."

Don't they know that this sort of irresponsible debate is giving aid and comfort to our enemies?

Froomkin is back. Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing is back from extended vacation. Regarding Jack Abramoff's relationship with the White House and Scottie McMuffin's attempts to downplay its significance, Froomkin writes:

McClellan's continued attempt to portray the Abramoff scandal as bipartisan doesn't exactly help his credibility on the question of White House meetings. His assertion flies in the face of the facts and is a Republican talking point espoused only by the most partisan or most credulous.

I'm inclined to think that this is a dig at the Washington Post's Ombudsman, Deborah Howell, who has recently been criticized for wrongly saying that Abramoff gave money to both Republicans and Democrats (he didn't) and then engaging in a bit of truthiness in backing off that claim. Froomkin would certainly have reason to be less than pleased with Howell since she wrote a while back:

Political reporters at The Post don't like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing," which is highly opinionated and liberal. They're afraid that some readers think that Froomkin is a Post White House reporter.

John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, "The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset -- our credibility" as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column "that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display."

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular -- and Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.

Those "readers" Harris and Howell referred to were apparently the webmaster for Bush-Cheney 04. Only an idiot would think that Froomkin is a White House reporter. Same way only an idiot would think the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan.

Two years, two days. That's how long it has been since this blog got rolling.

And I have a feeling that its days might be numbered.

Something About Gary. Via a Friend of Gary, Parrot Squawks on Woman's Affair":

A parrot owner was alerted to his girlfriend's infidelity when his talkative pet let the cat out of the bag by squawking "I love you Gary".

Suzy Collins had been meeting ex-work colleague "Gary" for four months in the Leeds flat she shared with her partner Chris Taylor, according to reports.

Mr Taylor apparently became suspicious after Ziggy croaked "Hiya Gary" when Ms Collins answered her mobile phone.

The parrot also made smooching sounds whenever the name Gary was said on TV.

Mr Taylor, 30, a computer programmer, confronted the woman he had lived with for a year who admitted the affair and moved out, several newspapers reported.

He also gave up his eight-year-old African Grey parrot after the bird continued to call out Gary's name and refused to stop squawking the phrases in his ex-girlfriend's voice.

The only thing that would make this story better is if the parrot had been squawking, "Oh shit, Gary!"

The Impaler. After Ronnie James Dio's failed bid for to deliver the presidency to the Underworld in 2004, Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey will attempt to give hope once again to the Dark Side in his bid to become the 40th governor of the great state of Minnesota.

In addition to being a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch, he is also an entrepreneur, owning two Covens. He hopes to appeal to a broad base, from other vampyres, witches, and pagans, to the Nascar Dads. While his anti-abortion stance is certain to appeal to religious conservatives, this may be tempered by his statements such as, "I despise and hate the Christian God the Father. He is my enemy." Opponents will have a hard time painting Sharkey as soft on terror given his stated support for impaling terrorists and his skills with the longsword.

Before you discount The Impaler as being "out of the mainstream" or "weird," take a look at this picture of the candidate with Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Hat tip to Joel for giving me something to blog about.

Truthiness. Stephen Colbert continues his War on the AP.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a definition for "truthy" dating back to the 1800s. It's defined as "characterized by truth" and includes the derivation "truthiness."

Michael Adams, a visiting associate professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, pointed to that definition and has said Colbert's claim to inventing the word is "untrue." (Adams served as the expert opinion in the initial AP story.)

"The fact that they looked it up in a book just shows that they don't get the idea of truthiness at all," Colbert said Thursday. "You don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut."

Matrix Ping Pong. Whoa.

Crazy. Just crazy. With $110 $89.95 and someone's phone number, you can order a copy of that person's phone records. Even if it's former NATO commander General Wesley Clark.

Arrgh! Cyclopes, R.I.P. Poor thing only made it one day.

Good God. Read this. And then watch this. Stuff like this is why I loathe Bushco.

A great day for freedom. Mooning deemed "disgusting" but not crime in Md.

Acquitting a Germantown man who exposed his buttocks during an argument with a neighbor, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that mooning, while distasteful, is not illegal in Maryland.

"If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty," Judge John W. Debelius III said after the bench trial, reversing the ruling of a District Court judge.

Debelius made clear his disdain for the defendant, calling the alleged act "disgusting" and "demeaning." The outcome could have been different, he suggested, if the man had been on trial for "being a jerk."

I know what I'm doing today.

Falafel. I don't think Bill O'Reilly will be going back on Letterman any time soon. Letterman said he thinks Falafel is about 60% full of crap.

Update: Salon has most of the interview.

Analrapist. www.SaveTheBluths.org is up and sorta running. Man, I love that show. Me and my $6000 suit.

2006? How'd that happen? Seems like just yesterday it was 2005.