From ThinkProgress, a very disturbing image from a gathering of very disturbed and dangerous individuals:

^{Sign reads: "Warning: If Brown can’t stop it, a Browning can"}

This is the type of violence that the Republicans and their anti-American supporters have been striving for ever since the Obama Administration took office with the pledge to clean up the GOP's mess.

In attendance and apparently proud to be part of a group of anti-American traitors engaged in seditious behavior were Republican Reps. Steve King (IA), Michele Bachmann (MN), and Mike Pence (IN), and the insanity was in part organized by Dick Armey's Freedomworks and Art Pope's Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity "advocates pro-tobacco industry positions on issues like cigarette taxes and clean indoor air laws" [SourceWatch].

The Tobacco Industry was a major player in the efforts to astroturf the previous attempts by the Clinton Administration to pass healthcare reform, and it appears that the efforts -- and lessons learned in how to game the system -- have not been forgotten.

With the advent of signs advocating gun violence if and when HCR passes, however, the rabid fervor of the lunatic fringe takes a very dangerous turn into deep waters, where advocating violent insurrection and fanning the flames of insanity are likely to initiate a powderkeg that just might backfire on them...and on their Republican 'leadership' in Congress.

Bumped and promoted. Originally posted 2010-03-20 09:38:16 -0400. CTMan makes a good point. -- GH

President Alf Landon?

"This is the largest tax bill in history," the Republican leader fumed. The reform "is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."

And that wasn't all. This "cruel hoax," he said, this "folly" of "bungling and waste," compared poorly to the "much less expensive" and "practical measures" favored by the Republicans.

"We must repeal," the GOP leader argued. "The Republican Party is pledged to do this."

That was Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon in a September 1936 campaign speech. He based his bid for the White House on repealing Social Security.

Unless you have some kind of alternate universe revisionist history to go by, expect this kind of campaign lunacy to go over just as well in the next election cycle.

Via a Facebook update by Naomi Wolf comes the news that the ACLU uncovered a memo from the Bush era that warned the 9/11 Commission not to "cross a line" in its investigation and not to probe too deeply.

Leaked confidential documents have revealed that senior officials from the former US administration had warned a 9/11 investigation panel against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks.

In a letter obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the 9/11 Commission was refused permission to question terror suspects, with the Bush administration arguing that by doing so the panel would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's efforts to protect the nation.

Wolf's link includes a reference to an OpEd News article by Sahil Kapur that offers this additional insight:

The 9/11 Commission, officially called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was formed by President Bush in November of 2002 "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks" and to offer recommendations for preventing future attacks.

"The Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line," the letter continued. "As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees."

FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler speculates that this was an attempt by the Bush administration to ensure that its torture of certain detainees, which has since been widely documented, remained secret.

"[W]hoever made these annotations appears to have been most worried that Commission staff members could make independent judgments about the detainees and the interrogations," Wheeler wrote on her blog. The official "didn't want anyone to independently evaluate the interrogations conducted in the torture program."

Eventually, the commission's co-chairs harshly criticized the administration for having purportedly "destroyed" tapes of its interrogations with terror suspects, as Raw Story reported last year.

Destruction of -- and loss of -- evidence seemed to be a hallmark of the Bush Administration's years in the White House. Story highlights from the CNN link about the missing emails from the US Attorney scandal:

Story Highlights

• NEW: White House spokeswoman says 5 million official e-mails may be missing

• White House admits it should have kept e-mails on private GOP system

• Chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee doubts e-mails are deleted

• Committee investigating whether U.S. attorneys' firings were politically motivated

At some point, hopefully before the Obama Administration gets too far along on its own path, someone will have the fortitude and wherewithall to send a huge cleaning van up to the White House to help mop up the mess left by the previous Administration, ideally in time to help ensure that the current Administration is given a much clearer mandate to work with, and ideally to help it stay within the bounds of Constitutional law and proper common ethical standards.

As we wind down to the end of the Healthcare Reform cycle we get a view of the the few Teabagrrrrs that bothered to show up in D.C. on March 16th to make their last stand in fighting against reforms that will likely be voted on tomorrow. New Left Media showed up with camera in hand and documented some of the embarrassingly empty talking points that make absolutely no sense at all. From TomK1960:

New Left Media has compiled one of the funniest (and most pathetic) videos in recent memory featuring interviews with Tea Baggers at the last health care protest in Washington D.C. Although sparsely attended.....the folks who do appear on camera exhibit the consequences of Fox News/Right Wing Radio/Glenn Beck influence to the point of parroting word for word what is preached by these people.

Prepare to be simultaneously amused and appalled at at the misinformation you are about to be view in the GOP funded Tea Party Healthcare Reform Waterloo that comes up shorter than Napoleon both on the numbers that bothered to show up and the FOXiffied facts they toss around:

From TPM we get this Weiner take-down of Noonan:

In a shocking development, Peggy Noonan is accused of making "the most cliched, hackneyed assessments." In this case, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was referring specifically to her take on health care reform. Watch.

       --David Kurtz

There are a lot of interesting points in this video from Morning Joe featuring Anthony Weiner, Howard Dean and Peggy Noonan. While TPM concentrates on the part of Noonan's silliness near the end, unremarkable to anyone who really follows her endless stupidity, and Anthony Weiner's take-down of said silliness, I found the fact that Joe Scarborough, while pointing out some of the very real holes in the bill, said that he is moving closer to Weiner's view of Medicare for All. Watch it all below the fold, along with BIG news on Grayson's Medicare You Can Buy Into Act, because all 8 minutes or so are well worth your time:

Over at Ted Talks (h/t lambert) we get an interesting discussion on "Why Societies Collapse":

Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it.

From BooMan we get video documentation of some insane and bigoted psycho talk:

Rep. Paul Broun, whose district includes the University of Georgia, went to the floor of the House of Representatives and said:

"If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States — the Great War of Yankee Aggression."

Does any part of that comment make sense? Over at Think Progress, Lee Fang notes a pattern, with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina comparing the effort to pass health reform to Japan's kamikaze pilots and Glenn Beck repeatedly referring to the effort as 'reparations' for slavery. Frankly, I can't decipher Rep. Broun's meaning. It's just psycho talk. But, in this day and age, to refer to the Civil War as ' the Great War of Yankee Aggression' is simply racist.

More Open Thread goodies to snack on below the fold...

From the BBC we get news that scientists have managed to observe fruit fly sperm that they have made glow either red or green and watched them duke it out in the sexual selection process. They believe this breakthrough may help advance theories on evolution and could provide solutions to human infertility:

In nature, monogamy is often the exception, promiscuity usually the rule, the BBC's Matt McGrath reports.

But whenever a female of any species mates with more than one male there is a battle between the sperm of the potential fathers as they attempt to fertilise the eggs.

Scientists regard this type of sexual selection as a very important force for evolutionary change.

...snip...

Prof Scott Pitnick says it was a jaw-dropping moment when he saw the multicoloured sperm through the microscope for the first time.

"It turns out that they [the sperm] are constantly on the move within the female's specialised sperm-storage organs and exhibit surprisingly complex behaviour," Prof Pitnick said.

Below the fold are some other stories on this breakthrough and other related fields of study as recommended by the BBC.

We have a broadband connection at our house so it isn't too bad on downloading information even in comparison to the rest of the world that is burning up the internet with speed. But for the most part the USA is lagging versus the parts of the world that have truly embraced the high speed connection world. Go ahead and take this test to compare where you stand in your State, in the nation and in comparison to internet connections around the world. And please remember that many of the nations that have better or similar connections than you are paying less for it.

When I look at my own results, where our internet connection and most US users' internet connections really lag is in the uploading of information. Something that can be considered a serious issue when you think about Freedom of Speech and getting information out in any Citizen Journalists' world. And when you consider that we have the fiber optics and technology to hit some serious Terabits for connection speeds, it makes setting standards of 100 Megabits for ten years down the road seem like a slow walk that won't even keep pace with the parts of the world that invest heavily in moving forward quickly on this stuff.

In other words, by the time we reach the FCC goals those standards will probably be near obsolete in other parts of the world. And we will still be lagging.

Below the fold are some recent articles from SpeedMatters.org's Blog where they are embracing the FCC's new standards which will be an improvement. But I honestly think we can and should do better and it starts with thinking faster NOW.

And compared to the previous scores of both the Senate and House versions... The costs are down even more:

Brett Baier proves himself to be an ignorant, arrogant, disingenuous asshole by disrespecting the President, the office and the nation with his childish Teabagger behavior. Watch:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Disgraceful.

As Cantor sings deliriously about what he does not understand*, over on the FOX "News" side, where unlike the "opinion" right wing activists they supposedly deal in facts, they can't seem to get the facts straight about whether or not there is a vote:

There is a vote on Healthcare Reform when someone flips their vote on Healthcare Reform but there isn't a vote minutes later when the Dems are using magic** by taking what the GOP calls the unprecedented*** move of deeming a bill passed.

Almost sounds like dizzy political opinion that doesn't reconcile with the truth, eh? But FOX says it is just the "News" and facts in that slot.

* Where understand means Cantor does not like political reality smacking his argument up-side the head with a vote moving ahead.

** Where Magic means evil things only the Democratic party could ever do. If the GOP were to do it it would be called "doing God's work".

*** Where unprecedented means it has been done thousands of times before by both parties BUT it is outrageous that the Dems might do it now.

Image © BBC: Iran and Pakistan sign 'historic' pipeline deal:

Correspondents say the deal is not likely to be welcomed by the US - because of Tehran's suspected ambitions to build nuclear weapons.

I wondered how they could have stretched and tortured that logic to go from a pipeline to nukes. Then it hit me: aluminum tubes. The same people that brought us the tubes will now try to convince us that pipeline parts are actually going to be used to manufacture 'nukular missiles'.

WTF, the tea-partiers'll buy it.

AP: House leaders joust over use of parliamentary rule

Hoyer's Republican counterpart, Rep. Eric Cantor, acknowledged that such a process is permissible under House rules. . [but] said he couldn't understand why Democrats would use such a parliamentary detour with a bill of this magnitude and reach.

So after spending close to fifteen months, more hearings in more committees with more hours of debate than in the entire period of Reep-Rule, and using the most obstructionist tactics by one party in the history of the House, Cantor "can't understand"?

Quick, get that man a procto-neuro-surgeon.

Photo © Lee Williams/CRES

Alana Semuels/LAT: More homeowners are opting for 'strategic defaults':

There are consequences to walking away. A default will knock down a credit score by at least 100 points, said Craig Watts, a spokesman for FICO, the company that developed credit scores.

Via The Existentialist Cowboy, A court case concerning an attempted arrest of Bush in Canada gets about as politically charged as it can get:

Today the trial of Splitting the Sky commenced. Splitting the Sky attempted a citizens' arrest on credibly accused war criminal George W. Bush on March 17, 2009, and was arrested and jailed for doing so by police. Try as its representatives might to disguise their motivations with the kind PR spin doctoring we witnessed in the court today, the Calgary Police, the RCMP and its contractors were under the Harper government's strict political orders to protect the Alberta home turf of the current minority government that came to power as the holder of the Bushite franchise in Canada. Some have termed this historic proceeding as "The Trial of Splitting the Sky versus George W. Bush." From what I witnessed firsthand on day one, the government attempt to manage this highly volatile convergence of law and politics was an exciting affair.

For those of you that might try to point out the lack of the word "alleged" in front of the "Bush War crimes" part of the title, this has already been dealt with legally as Canada had already documented some war crimes of the Bush administration previously in court leading to their placing the USA on its torture watch list: