State of Emergency

(via Fail Blog.)

Of course, I've been distressed over the situation in Japan and the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant... but if I laugh at the above magazine cover, does that mean I go to hell?

But now let's discuss the real emergency, at least as the Republicans see it: House GOP Declares Emergency ... Over NPR Funding. Yeah, all because that little prick O'Keefe taped (and edited!) one video of one NPR employee not taking bribes while describing the teabaggers in quite accurate terms.

Another stupid and misguided thing the Republicans are fervently working on is cuts to the U.S. solar industry. Yeah, so solar power facilities are a million times safer, cleaner and simpler to operate than nuclear power plants, so Republicans say "let's cut funding to solar power!" At the exact moment in history when we should be investing in clean renewable energy sources, Republicans want to play childish games.

Speaking of which, the new Pokemon game is pretty cool.

Conservatives Hate NPR

"Step one: act like gun-toting racists. Step two: catch NPR exec on tape acknowledging reality of step one. Step three: scandal!" — Tom Tomorrow on Twitter.

This NPR "scandal" keeps popping up in my Google news headlines, so I guess this means the MSM hasn't yet learned to ignore the lying, video splicing, misogynistic accused felon also known as James O'Keefe.

O'Keefe is behind this latest ruse where Ron Schiller, NPR's senior vice president for fundraising, was secretly videotaped conversing with actors posing as members of the fictitious Muslim Action Education Center.

Here is one of Schiller's "scandalous" comments about teabaggers: "Xenophobic, I mean basically they are; they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

Funny because that's what I've been saying all along. Wow, he's an elitist liberal just like me, but I didn't know that being caught in the act could cause such a stir.

Let's be clear that nothing illegal happened in this setup. This fact gets buried at the bottom of all these stories, but when the pair of actors wanted to give $5 million to NPR, Schiller refused to take it.

However, he did make some dumb moves. Number one was going to lunch with two unknown men from an unknown activist group. Dumb.

And then Schiller made a comment that will haunt NPR for years. He said NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding." This is counter to what the organization believes.

But who would take this off-comment during a shitty prank seriously anyway? The GOP of course. They've destroyed ACORN already and now, with purely political motivation, they're out to get Planned Parenthood, PBS and NPR -- the last two because, you know, real journalism is warfare and they don't want any of that.

Ron Schiller resigned from NPR today. He can be thankful for one thing though. At least O'Keefe didn't invite him onto his dildo boat.