With the primary season heating up, I try to fiercely attack the amount of clutter trying to weasel its way into my inbox. I resent it trying to take my focus away from bigger and better things. In fact, I try very hard to clear the clutter as often as I can just to vengefully smite something. Especially email scams. I hate email scams the most because they are so obviously rotten to the core, but good people fall for them everyday. It just makes me mad.

But no matter how hard I try they keep finding a way to slip the most legendary one of them all through.

That plague of all email plagues: The Nigerian Email Scam.

I can't stand it. And the latest one is a doozy.

The National Republican Campaign Committee (the NRCC) has chosen to keep donations made by one of their major contributors, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari.

According to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York's office, Mr. Alishtari was taken into custody "on charges of terrorism financing, material support of terrorism, and international money laundering, as well as additional charges of conspiracy and wire fraud."

The House Republicans are keeping terrorist cash.

We dirty John Stewart Watchin' Amurka Hatin' hippies betta watch out... the Queen of Rightwing Comedy Julia Gorin (yeah, I know. Who?) has a new wingnut friendly comedy show to fight back against the dangerous and unAmerican "liberal" trends feverishly screwing up comedy and satire for the right. (Like actually calling bullshit, honestly poking fun at the lies, strawmen, and dishonest horseflop of the powerful, and actually being funny.)

Behold the Latest Episode of TAS!: The America Show, Episode 2 Electric Buggaboo

You just knew it was going to happen sooner or later, didn't you? That the rightwing would go off trying their hand at 'makin' with t' jokes'. That the Ann Coulter wing of the GOP would eventually crack under the strain of the Daily Show and the Steven Colbert Report and, well, try to "balance" the "liberal bias" that is (of course) built-in to all things actually funny.

Well, this is it.

The first morsels of what we have to look forward to.

This is (allegedly) one of the best talents that the rightwing has to offer up for comedy besides watching Cavuto play it straight on Fox.

Worse, this is the best that one of the best of rightwing comedy has to offer up as "teh funny".

pandadan, pelosi rulz, CaptianPlanet40, wildefan, karaepps83, Pose, fredmincks, jal369, CaptianPlanet40, Ruggy, wildefan pandadan, Feeling The Pain, planteater425, yankeeinkensington, ds letter, Elastic Tuna, Captain May, Feeling The Pain, jluz1974, Ruggy, yankeeinkensington, ds letter, Elastic Tuna, karaepps83, Arthur Grove, hilaryrodham08, rbrocks2006, itrafalgar, bh1787, Jmalfideles, Geronimos

(Check the hidden comments section for the post, I am not repeating it here)

If anybody has a problem with me keeping a tally and reporting them here so they can be banned to put an end to this, say so. I am not 'outing' or 'calling out' anyone who is a member of this community, so I don't think this is a violation of the rules. But so far, the way this is being handled is silly (troll rating one at a time).

The guitar playing half of rightwing country superduo Montgomery Gentry went hunting.

As you might expect from a man who would proudly jam on such anthems as 'You Do Your Thing, I'll Do Mine", (a song whose video features a good ole boy driving around "exposing" liberal meat-eating city dwellers as hypocrites by sickening them with a big floppy deer carcass tied across his old American beater truck) he seeks out especially dangerous prey; a bear.

Only.... well, you gotta read this cowardly shit.

It's pretty bad.

Montgomery Gentry Country Music Superstar Charged with Killing a Tame Bear

The conventional wisdom for tonight's Connecticut primary seems to be that a Joe Leiberman loss will yank the Democratic Party so far left as to make other Democratic candidates unelectable this fall. The logic is laughable and similar to what I heard from Republican leaders in 1994.

That was the election year when the most conservative wing of the GOP took over the party and swept into power in the US Congress.

None would have predicted that outcome just two years earlier.

Joe Scarborough

This is the most shockingly honest take on the Nutmeg state race I have seen yet from a pundit.

The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.

The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March.

The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.

A spokesman for US forces in Iraq told the BBC an inquiry was under way.

The BBC Story

Box Turtle Ben may be gone from the 'MSM' he loathes so much, but his legacy certainly hasn't been forgotten. In fact, one embittered rightwing Ann Coulter wanna-be that never quite reached those lofty heights of wingnuttery thinks that there should be even more consequences: a further exploration of other well-known conservatives thieving from other conservatives to get ahead.

Did you know that former Fox News and current MSNBC rightwing uberblonde Monica Crowley is actually banned from the rightwing Op/Ed Pages of the Wall Street Journal? Because I didn't.

Why?

Other Conservatives Got Away with Plagiarism

For an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Crowley lifted whole passages about President Nixon from a Paul Johnson article in Commentary. She never admitted to it. She's banned from the Wall Street Journal because of it.

Debbie Schlussel Sings the Blues

GOP strategists had hoped Mihos would run as a Republican against Healey in the party primary this September. As an independent, however, he would avoid a party primary and face the Republican and Democratic candidates in the November general election.

The Boston Globe March 1rst

CITGO TO COOPERATE ON HOUSE ENERGY PROBE
Fuel Aid To Poor Americans Called 'Belligerent and Hostile'
The News Journal

WASHINGTON-- Citgo Petroleum Corp. says it plans to cooperate with the House Energy Chairman's request for documents on Venezuela's program that provides heating oil to poor Americans, including families in Deleware.

"Citgo shall attempt to comply with your request," Felix M. Rodriguez, President and CEO of Citgo, a Houston based subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company, wrote in a Feb. 17th letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, (R) Texas.

Citgo to Cooperate in House Energy Probe

And why is this investigation being launched?

This Sunday, "60 Minutes" aired a piece on global warming. The piece, which featured correspondent Scott Pelley, largely took the existence of global warming as a given. But there are those who claim that global warming - and, specifically, the notion that human's are responsible for it - is a myth. I asked Pelley why the voices of the skeptics were not heard in the piece.

Why indeed? Especially in the overwhelming face of the mighty 'there are those who claim' crowd?

CBS News: The Public Eye

Democratic blogosphere reaction was mixed with some such as "Kos" (Markos Moulitsas Zuniga) urging party activists to unite behind Brown.

'Brown better win this'
"I just have one thing to say right now: Sherrod Brown better win this," said Democratic blogger "Adam B" on the Daily Kos web site. "I hope that once Hackett's many supporters get over this disappointment, we can all work together this fall to make it happen. At the end of the day, Chuck Schumer's not the enemy -- Mike DeWine is, as is every other Republican who stands between us and control of the Senate."

Congrats to Adam B., you got to be, well, 'all of us' at the DKos, at least just for today. (I'm guessing this is how it goes. One is all, and all is one. I guess I don't think Tom Curry tossing Kos an M&M because he owns the site counts as an analysis of his views, frankly.)

Soldier's wife holds body armor benefit for troops

By ANGELA K. BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

FORT WORTH - A U.S. soldier's wife is launching real and virtual bake sales to raise money to buy body armor for troops, even though the government has promised to rush more protective gear to those on Iraq's front lines.

The Laredo Moring Times via-AP

As you can imagine, this sort of thing still going on was not taken well:

Anger at the Department of Defense

However, the sale was not positively received by officials in the Department of Defense. The Helena Independent record reported that Lt. Col Barry Venable of the Defense Press Office in Washington D.C. Said, "Every soldier has appropriate armor. Period." A Pentagon Spokesman went further saying it is "ludicrous" and "mis and "dis-information to suggest that our soldiers do not have the right equipment.

the military's reponse via the Helena Independent quoted at BSFBA.org

"It set everything in motion," an exasperated Clifton told E&P Friday, just a day after a federal prosecutor asked a judge to order that the sources of the leaked documents be revealed. "If I kept it to myself, it wouldn't have ultimately set the fuse. I think I was wrong to think that when I revealed it, it wouldn't become the cause celebre that it has become in the media. ...

"I thought that it would help to dramatize to people the consequences" of the Judith Miller/Matthew Cooper case, he said. "Instead, it became a simplistic discussion of a chickenshit editor and a source he was protecting."

Now Clifton Wishes He Had Kept His Mouth Shut, Editor and Publisher

At first blush, such stuff may sound shockingly sleazy. Bear with us. Miller has an explanation, contained in prepared statements issued through his attorney.

Zell Miller pinched 80K, but it's okay because he didn't know it was wrong

"Allowing You To Continue to Serve Your Country"

The U.S. Army, caught in a recruitment shortfall because of the continuing nightmare that is Iraq War II, had an idea... get people the Pentagon is losing to retirement from the Air Force and the Navy to transfer into the Army... rather than return to civilian life.

These patriotic folks have already signed their names on the dotted line. They have served their country proudly, and surely the old warhorses in the Pentagon could imagine that these are folks who will send a message to the rest of the country by 'voting with their feet'.

During this time of 'right sizing' the air force and navy, the army recognizes the need for our armed forces to retain highly qualified men and women in our ranks.

Unfortunately, the Army included lines that lend themselves to unintended gallows humor like:

Operation Blue to Green offers you an alternative to civilian life.

I'm tired of it already.

The ache that my country, that I love dearly, learned not a god-damned thing Viet-Nam -a war that mauled my
family and took several people out of my parent's life, has been drilling in my temples for ages.

So Kos, if we bail and Iraq descends into all-out civil war that's ok with you?

The politically-connected parasites at Custer Battles, not happy enough to have so far escaped fraud convictions over Iraq contract wrong-doings, are at it again. They have 'founded' new puppet contracting firms, boldly located in Custer Battles own offices in their industrial space in Rhode Island and going for the big government bucks again. AFTER being banned by the military and federal government.

The skinny on the skinning