Fans of the late great comedian Chris Farley, take comfort — liberal radio host and MSNBC talking head Ed Schultz often bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Farley’s best-known characters on "Saturday Night Live," that of Matt Foley, motivational speaker.

Schultz has been on a Foleyesque tear of late, raging at Democrats as "spineless weenies" for not standing up to Republicans, despite holding the White House and sizable majorities in Congress.

Here’s Schultz on his radio show June 17, spewing his warped theory that Dick Cheney wants thousands of Americans murdered in another terrorist attack to help Republicans regain political power (click here for audio) –

SCHULTZ: Believe me, that’s where Cheney’s going. I’m the only guy with any balls out there that’s willing to call him on it! And God bless all of you people who backed me up with emails. If you sent me an email (makes kissing sound), I love ya!

On his radio show the following day, Schultz vents about Democrats’ lack of resolve in pushing for health care reform (here for audio) –

SCHULTZ (initially in whiny, mocking voice): We don’t have the votes. We just don’t have the votes. It’s the votes. We’re trying to create jobs. We don’t have the votes. No, you don’t have any guts! You do not have any guts, Democrats! Spineless weenies!

Later on June 18, Schultz described how he would converse with Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanual (audio) –

SCHULTZ: If I’m a presidential adviser, if I am in the Oval Office, the first thing I’d do is turn to Rahm Emanuel and say, shut up!  ‘Cause I’m talking now!

More from Schultz on his mock conversation with Obama and Emanuel (audio) –

SCHULTZ: Mr. President, you need to stand now with the American people, the American people want you to stand up and give the finger to the Republicans! There’s only 40 of those bastards over there! And nail ‘em! (pause, lowers voice) OK, Rahm, you can talk now (followed by bizarre mimicking sound)

Schultz on June 23, disparaging GOP calls for bipartisanship (audio) –

SCHULTZ:  I’m listening to Shelby, Richard Shelby (Republican senator from Alabama), this morning again just on with Carlos (MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson) a little while ago, talking about (imitates Shelby’s accent), Well, you know, we got to have bipartisanship, you know, we got to work together, we haven’t done it yet, there’s always going to be disagreements and you know we got to get together and there’s things that we’re just not going to agree to and there’s things that they’re not going to agree to, but you know we got to get together and they said we’d get together and — Shut up! You lost! You lost! We don’t have to get together with you, Mr. Shelby! We don’t, we don’t have to have lunch with you. You know you don’t matter. You’re out of touch.

And on June 29, talking about how Democrats should respond to South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s unequivocal rejection of the so-called "public option" in health care reform (audio) —

SCHULTZ: I would have liked to have seen someone come out from the White House and say, Lindsey Graham has his head up his ass. That’s how you talk to him. Lindsey Graham has got it where it doesn’t shine.

One important difference, however, between Schultz and Farley — Schultz is humorless. Any laughter he prompts is unintentional.

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During a townhall in Waukon, IA Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was asked by a constituent of his: “Why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so better than my insurance?” When Grassley struggled to explain the details of his own health care plan, the elderly man followed up, “Okay, so how come I can’t have the same thing you have?” Grassley said, “You can. Just go work for the federal government.” Watch it:

Grassley has been at the forefront of railing against Obama’s health care plan, declaring, “We need to make sure that there’s no public option.” As Igor Volsky notes, there is an irony in government workers like Grassley complaining about “government-sponsored health care.” If Grassley wants to stand on principle, he could abandon his government-sponsored insurance and try his luck in the individual health insurance market.

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Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home:

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide open state.

SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin’s snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.

Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an addition $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzelment/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” But she also bemoaned “political operatives” who have “descended on Alaska” to investigate “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations.” Palin said this “politics of personal destruction” was one of the key motivating factors behind her decision today.

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guardian.co.uk

Analysis of Sarah Palin's strange move: Time-out or Flame-out? Los Angeles Times Hillary Clinton's long experience with that thickened her skin. Also, strategically, what has Palin done since the election? Gone home, worked hard, … Does Stuart Varney Get A Thrill Up His Leg When He Spins For Sarah …News Hounds Palin's Foolish ResignationWashington Post What the Sarah Palin Bombshell MeansPolitics Daily all 1,727 news articles »

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Sarah Palin’s “bombshell” holiday announcement that she will resign as Governor of Alaska managed to trump Michael Jackson as the lead on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts Friday night as NBC’s Chuck Todd predicted she will now make fundraising appearances for GOP candidates where she’ll draw in “car-wreck watchers.” CBS reporter Nancy Cordes reflected the tone of the stories when she described “a rambling, at times confusing announcement,” while on all three newscasts Palin’s decision was called “bizarre.”

NBC News White House reporter Chuck Todd, who suggested she decided to quit so she could “make a lot of money” on the speaking circuit free of ethics complaint hassles, also predicted she will bring in big crowds at fundraisers for GOP candidates which will also entice those not so impressed by her:

She may spend the next year campaigning for Republicans all across the country. She’s probably going to be the person that can attract the largest crowds, some it is car-wreck watchers — you know, they just are coming, kind of curiosity-seekers. It doesn’t matter. She can attract a lot of people.

Before Todd, NBC reporter Peter Alexander applied the “bizarre” label: “It was just the latest bizarre twist for the self-described maverick…”

ABC and CBS reporters refrained from using that description themselves and left it to others in their July 3 coverage. In the World News story by David Wright, ABC’s own Cokie Roberts maintained:

It’s mystifying. It was a bizarre statement. It didn’t make a lot of sense and it doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing someone would do if someone was running for President.

On the CBS Evening News, in the piece from Nancy Cordes, the Politico’s Mike Allen, a veteran of Time magazine, declared:

This is very unusual, even bizarre. Governors just don’t stop in the middle of their terms when there’s no clear reason.

Following Cordes, CBS News political analyst John Dickerson, also a veteran of Time, told fill-in anchor Maggie Rodriguez:

It’s bizarre and there’s no good explanation. And if she were trying to do away with the kind of speculation that she says has so irritated her, this not the way to do it.

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This is about as disgusting as Palin Derangement Syndrome can get.

A blog just published at the Huffington Post is disgracefully titled "Palin Will Run In ‘12 On More Retardation Platform."

The author, fiction and comedy writer Erik Sean Nelson, actually wrote the following (readers are seriously warned to proceed with caution as this is really vile stuff):

In Sarah Palin’s resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the "world needs more Trigs, not fewer." That’s a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it’s kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.

Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.

She will then encourage women to hold off on pregnancies until their 40’s just to mix up some chromosomes.

She now is in favor of abortion only in case of diploid birth.

Her policies will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be the greeter.

This will lead to smaller government because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job

Wow. Is this what passes for comedy today?

It will be interesting to see how long this post stays up before someone at HuffPo pulls it.

Stay tuned.

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In today’s Sarah Palin Derangement segment, CNN’s Rick Sanchez actually asked Candy Crowley if the Alaska Governor is stepping down because she’s pregnant again (h/t multiple NB readers):

For more examples of BDS, please read Judy Silver’s piece at The New Agenda.

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Aljazeera.net

US welcomes Amano as new head of IAEA AFP WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday welcomed the appointment of Japan's Yukiya Amano as the new head of the Vienna-based UN … US welcomes appointment of new IAEA chiefistockAnalyst.com (press release) IAEA's new chief promises to unblock Iran standoffAFP all 482 news articles »

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Today’s dispatch from the Associated Press about the Chinese Communist government’s attempt to require that a state-developed program called "Green Dam Youth Escort" be installed on all new personal computers sold in that country is all too typical of the awful reporting on this potentially frightening development. 

I will refer to Green Dam Youth Escort as "the GD software" for the balance of this post. Many readers will find this abbreviation particularly appropriate once they fully understand everything the GD software could potentially do. 

The latest news about the GD software is that the government has delayed what was to be a July 1 installation requirement, but that it intends to go forward with that mandate at some point. In the meantime, for reasons not fully vetted, many PC makers have begun shipping units with the GD software either already installed or included on an accompanying CD.

Considering the gravity of what the Chinese Communist government is trying to do to its people, worldwide media coverage of the GD software has been much lighter than justified. Somehow, what may happen to the free speech and free expression rights of 1.3 billion people isn’t anywhere near as important as what’s happening in connection with an entertainer who has been dead for a week.

Here are key paragraphs from Joe McDonald’s AP story, as carried at USA Today (bolds after title are mine:

PC makers voluntarily supply Web filter in China

Several PC makers were including controversial Internet-filtering software with computers shipped in China on Thursday despite a government decision to postpone its plan to make such a step mandatory.

Beijing’s decision this week to delay the requirement that the filtering software — known as Green Dam — be pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the United States and Europe. But the move by some makers to include the software anyway could re-ignite complaints by Chinese Web users.

Also Thursday, a government newspaper said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory at some point, a move that would disappoint opponents who hoped the government would drop the effort.

Taiwan’s Acer— the world’s No. 3 PC maker —Sony and China’s Haier said they were shipping Green Dam on disks with computers for sale in China. China’s Lenovo, the No. 4 producer, said it would offer the software pre-installed or on disk. Taiwan’s Asus said it was preparing to supply Green Dam disks with PCs. Taiwanese laptop maker BenQ said the system was on the hard drives of its computers.

Acer was supplying Green Dam because disks were already packed with PCs before the government postponed the plan, that had been due to take effect Wednesday, said a company spokeswoman, Meng Lei. Lenovo said it also was going ahead with plans made before the Green Dam order was postponed.

Hewlett-Packard, the world’s top PC manufacturer, said it was working with the U.S. government to get more information and declined to comment further. No. 2 Dell said it was not including Green Dam with its PCs.

….. An official of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology quoted Thursday by the China Daily said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory.

….. Beijing operates extensive Internet filters to block access to material considered obscene or subversive. Still, Chinese Web users were outraged by Green Dam, which would have raised screening to a new level by putting it on each computer.

As you will see, calling the GD software a form of "Internet filtering" is like calling a telephone eavesdropping device a "call screener."

Here, from an Epoch Times article that was originally in Chinese, is a more complete description of what the GD software actually can do:

The regime says Green Dam can block pornography, filter illicit content, control web surfing time, and check browsing records. In fact, the software is capable of blocking politically sensitive websites, filtering out content based on a list of keywords, recording keystrokes and passwords, taking screenshots every 3 minutes, and recording all of the websites visited along with all of the user’s other internet activity.

….. Computer hackers in China have cracked open Green Dam’s keyword library and administrative codes.

According to the information produced by these hackers, Green Dam has 2,700 keywords relating to pornography, and 6,500 politically sensitive keywords. While these keywords include references to the Tiananmen Square massacre and Tibet, the great majority of the keywords refer to Falun Gong, the spiritual practice the Chinese regime banned and began persecuting in 1999.

….. Analysts believe that Green Dam gives the regime the ability to tighten its control by collecting personal information and secretly sending it to a central database, while strengthening the regime’s ability to censor the internet. The collected information could then be used to persecute dissidents.

In 2003 the Chinese regime launched the Golden Shield, also known as the Great Firewall of China, an internet filtering system that cost tens of billions of yuan. The Internet Freedom Consortium believes Golden Shield is the world’s most stringent web filtering system.

….. However, Golden Shield can be circumvented by such popular anti-filtering software programs as FreeGate, UltraSurf, and Garden. Green Dam can block these programs.

Chinese users of Green Dam have found that the Green-Dam injects a dll file into Internet Explorer that prohibits the usage of FreeGate. Analysts predict that Green Dam will in its future updates add code that will prohibit the usage of proxy servers, another anti-blockage technology.

The makers of Green Dam claim that, while the software will be pre-installed, users can remove it.

A mainland Chinese computer expert discovered the truth after he installed and uninstalled the screening software. He said, “When we used its [Green Dam] uninstallation program to uninstall the software, about half of Green Dam’s 110 system files continued to reside in the computer. After restarting the computer, Green Dam’s screening program is running actively in the background. The only part of the software uninstalled is its user interface.”

The expert added, “Pre-loading the screening software and providing an uninstallation program that does not actually uninstall the software is an act of coercion. Green Dam project is a coercive software.”

What I have seen from the AP has consistently described the GD software as "Internet filtering" at least as far back as this June 21 report. 

This June 12 Christian Science Monitor article by Peter Ford confirms that the GD software goes well beyond blocking only pornographic material and terms, and that "its makers, Jinhui, boast on their website that Green Dam offers “real-time screen captures, detailed Internet usage records for post-facto monitoring,” and a tool to disable proxy servers, which many Chinese Internauts use to get around the “great firewall” and into sensitive political sites that would otherwise be blocked by existing filters.

Clearly, the GD software is intended to complete the task of perfecting the Chinese police state’s control of computers and communications. If that actually occurs, the world described by George Orwell in "1984," at least technologically speaking, would look like a relative picnic.

Only four things appear to stand in the way of the GD software’s success: 

• PC maker resistance, which appears weak to noncommittal;
• Pressure from other governments, which appears to be mostly the same;
• Technical problems — the software is very buggy, according to this review of the program by three members of the Computer Science and Engineering Division at the University of Michigan, though it’s tough not to wonder if the Chinese Communists really consider some of the alleged "bugs" to be "features";
• World opinion, which thanks to light establishment media reporting, has been mostly muted.

The Western press’s failure to give prominence to news about the GD software, its totally inaccurate description of its capabilities, and its failure to explore potentially horrible implications for the human rights of the Chinese people may someday be seen as an unforgivable journalistic failure. 

A related post is at BizzyBlog.com.

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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced this morning from her home in Wasilla that she will not be seeking re-election and that she will be stepping down in a few weeks. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated as Alaska’s governor on July 25. A local NBC affiliate reports that “there was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.” Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News yesterday that Palin “is not a serious candidate for the presidency.” “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency,” he said.

After running through her accomplishments as governor during the announcement, Palin said, “This success I am proud to take credit, for hiring the right people.” She said she decided to “veto” those “stimulus dollars” because “some of those dollars would harm Alaska and they harm America.” “So that Alaska may progress, I will not seek re-election as governor,” she said, adding, “I’ve determined it’s best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor Parnell.” Watch it (note the video feed cut out before Palin finished her statement):

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