Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy hit back at Fox News during a UK press conference following the London Premiere of their new film. Fox had publically criticized the film for supposedly pushing a ‘dangerous liberal agenda’ at kids.

Kermit mocks their blatant and pointless fear mongering before Miss Piggy offers her own opinion on Fox News.

Camera and Post by Russell Nelson.

So, so cool.

Tip of the hat to Media Matters for America.

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How the war on drugs became a race war, from the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

And this too:

William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are “foolish” and tend to “vote their feelings” because they lack life experience. “Voting as a liberal,” he said, “that’s what kids do.” And that’s why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration. New Hampshire Republicans even tried to pass a bill that would have kept students who previously lived elsewhere from voting in the state; fortunately, the measure failed, as did the others Mr. O’Brien favored.

Read more.

Nod to Eric Byler.

If Notre Dame will permit this kind of thing to take place on campus, can official recognition of the University’s gay groups Outreach and GALA be far behind?

Let’s go, Irish!

Conservatives have developed their own “news” sources such as Fox and right wing talk radio to protect them from hearing actual facts about the outside world. When the wish to hide the fact that they are promoting views which directly contradict the views of the Founding Fathers on subjects such as separation of church and state, they promote their own revisionist history. They ignore sound economic principles to promote their brand of Voodoo Economics, regardless of how often their economic view fail in the real world. Conservatives especially concentrate on rejecting science when the facts contradict their views, including on creationism, denying geology and cosmology when it contradicts their views on the creation of the earth and the universe, and denying climate change.

I’ve had numerous discussions with conservatives who have openly rejected science, believing scientific evidence can be ignored when it contradicts their religious beliefs, but political leaders are rarely as open in their contempt for science. Rick Santorum is an exception in his open hostility towards science. He opposes keeping religion out of government, but does want to keep science out. According to the Des Moines Register, while discussing controversial subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum suggested that “science should get out of politics.”

Read the entire post here.

From Business Insider:

President Barack Obama was just asked to respond to Republican charges that he has engaged in a foreign policy of appeasement.

Obama responded: "Ask Osama bin Laden, and the 22 out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement — or whoever is left out there, ask them about that."

There you have it.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com

In a surprise move, the nation’s health secretary stopped the Plan B morning-after pill from moving onto drugstore shelves next to the condoms, deciding Wednesday that young girls shouldn’t be able to buy it on their own.

The Food and Drug Administration was preparing to lift a controversial age limit and make Plan B One-Step the nation’s first over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, available for purchase by people of any age without a prescription.

But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius intervened at the eleventh hour and overruled her own experts.

Plan B instead will remain behind the pharmacy counter, as it is sold today — available without a prescription only for those 17 and older who show an ID proving their age.

That this comes from this sometimes-perplexing Democratic administration is one thing. That the move comes in direct opposition to the administration’s own experts baffles me.

The lede for this one goes to the New York Times, from the caption used for the picture above:

Instead of going after those who helped Osama bin Laden to live in this Abbottabad compound, Pakistan arrested those who assisted in the raid that killed him.

Oh, shit.

From the New York Times:

Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.

Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael J. Morell, the deputy C.I.A. director, to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10. 

“Three,” Mr. Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange.  

The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.

Pakistan is no ally of the United States of America.

More.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A black woman who applied to become superintendent of Trinity Area School District in 2009 sued that district today, alleging that she was passed over because of her race and gender.

Patrick Hefflin had three years of experience as an assistant superintendent for the Kiski Area School, and all of the necessary qualifications to run Trinity Area, in Washington, according to her complaint in U.S. District Court.

But school board member Thomas A. Bodnavich, the complaint said, told the search committee that "I don’t think that the district is ready for a black woman." The district hired Paul T. Kasunich, a white man.

If A. Bodnavich actually said, "I don’t think that the district is ready for a black woman," well, then, hello, Trinity Area SD, you were ready, and this dude steered you wrong.

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Commentary

Keith Olbermann signed off last night for the last time from MSNBC. And I was mildly surprised.

First, contrary to some of my conservative friends (Yes, some of my best friends are conservatives.) I enjoyed Keith, discovering him for the first time only after then State Senator Obama delivered the incredible keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. We were having a meeting of the South Chicagoland
Young Democrats, and Michael Kean – then a high school student, now in college, and someone you should consider voting for some day if he runs for office – told me to find Keith Olbermann on the Web. This was one of Keith’s closing commentaries, have no idea which one, but I loved it.

Now, contrary to some of my liberal friends, I was not a Keith Olbermann "fan," whatever that is. I did not watch him every night. I was more partial to Rachel Maddow.

You can have Ed Schultz. The whining is too much for me.

But I did watch Keith, and, his melodrama and over-the-top flair aside, I enjoyed and most often agreed with him.

Yes, Olbermann was often melodramatic. Yes, Olbermann was often over-the-top. World’s Worst Person? Really, Keith?

Overall, however, Olbermann’s message was, by far, coherent and consistent. And wonderfully liberal: the American Dream is for everyone: from the richest rich to those living in squalor. And everyone, everyone, is entitled — yes, entitled — to the same opportunity. The rich are not (necessarily) rich because they’re smarter, wiser, or more deserving (entitled?). The poor are not (necessarlily) poor because they’re not smart, unwise, or less deserving (excluded?). The Liberal is the thinker, not wedded to ideology, wedded only to the truth. To compassion.

And it is possible to have a thriving economy that is also wedded to truth, to compassion.

For whatever reason, Olbermann lost his job. MSNBC and he decided that they could not continue to work together. It turns out, Keith has a history of not working well with a boss. In his 32-year career, the Washington Post reports, "His nearly eight years hosting "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" was by far the longest he’s lasted in a job during his career as a broadcaster."

And that, much more than a commentary on liberalism in the new millenium, or pushing Keith’s leave as the dominance of conservatism in the media, or at MSNBC, the simple, sad truth simply may be that Keith doesn’t like having a boss.

Here’s what Olbermann taught us: Liberalism sells. While his ratings slipped recently – many of us took a breather after the 2008 election – Olbermann’s show remained the most popular show on MSNBC.

O’Reilly, Beck and Limbaugh remain on the air – as entertainers. They are empty voices, concerned only with their only bottom line.

Olbermann, for all his flaws, had a conscience. And a heart.

So it goes, Vonnegut would say.

So it goes.

You would think after yesterday, after a United States Congresswoman was shot through the head and struggles in recovery, after a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl were shot dead, you would think, after all of that, the right-wingers would catch on.  Would start to get it.

Apparently not.

The right-wingers at RightWingStuff.com are selling liberal hunting permits.

No expiration. No kidding.

Among other things, the stickers say, "Also Valid at School Board Meetings, Polling Places and City Council Meetings."

No kidding.

Another version adds, "No Bag Limit – Tagging Not Required. May be used while under the influence of Alcohol. May be used to Hunt Liberals at Gay Pride Parades, Democrat [sic] Conventions, Union Rallys [sic], Handgun Control Meetings, News Media Association, Lesbian Luncheons and Hollywood Functions."

Available for sale now at CafePress.org.

No kidding.

Welcome to conservative America.

We are not a patient people.

Liberals, conservatives, moderates: we want our pudding, and we want it now.

These past two years, I have been impatient, watching and waiting while my liberal dreams for the United States were postponed — or so I thought. Why did President Obama channel former President George W. Bush and simply push a liberal agenda through the United States Congress and let the conservatives be damned?

I held back, however, and refused to play along with the liberal cacophony screaming for everything and anything to happen yesterday. They collectively screamed "I told you so!" when Democrats lost seats in Congress, losing the House of Representatives. All this screaming in spite of the fact that such losses had long been predicted, indeed, from the moment President Obama was sworn in. That was an easy call. We may be impatient, but we Americans are quite predictable.

A wee bit more than two years into the Obama presidency, I have to say, I’m quite pleased with what the president has done.

Health insurance reform was a start. No, it did not go far enough. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the best reform for the health of the country would be to simply forbid health insurance companies operating on a for-profit basis. Let them insure all the widgets they want to for profit, but hands off human lives.

Still, health insurance reform was long, long overdue. And over the past few weeks, we’ve seen some wonderful things happen. For one, "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is on its way out. Next, today saw the near ratification of the START treaty, with a vote likely this week.

There’s more.

What do I appreciate most about President Obama?

His patience, a quality many of us in the media lack. From the insipid "Round Table" on ABC’s "This Week" to the endless drone of CNN, the media is so full of prognosticators who get it all wrong 99% of the time and more.

I’ve often said this in my elected life, and I’ll say it again here, "I don’t make predictions. I just work hard to achieve results."

President Obama is patient, looking, I’m convinced, two or three decades down the road. This is not a man likely to bark, "F— Saddam. We’re taking him out," as President Bush did in March 2002. If nothing else, the president is patient, weighing his decisions carefully because he knows — he knows — that everything he does has global repercussions.

I don’t know that he’s doing everything right, or wrong. I still remain careful. I remain critical. I still read Paul Krugman and hope for a Keynesian revolution in Washington.

But I like the President, even as I hope and pray for patience.

The following was sent from President Barack Obama after the United States Senate voted to repeal the infamous "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" and allow our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to serve in our military with a clean conscience, no longer forced to hide or lie.

President Obama fulfills yet another campaign promise.

From the President of the United States:

Moments ago, the Senate voted to end "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."

When that bill reaches my desk, I will sign it, and this discriminatory law will be repealed.

Gay and lesbian service members — brave Americans who enable our freedoms — will no longer have to hide who they are.

The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one.

This victory belongs to you. Without your commitment, the promise I made as a candidate would have remained just that.

Instead, you helped prove again that no one should underestimate this movement. Every phone call to a senator on the fence, every letter to the editor in a local paper, and every message in a congressional inbox makes it clear to those who would stand in the way of justice: We will not quit.

This victory also belongs to Senator Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and our many allies in Congress who refused to let politics get in the way of what was right.

Like you, they never gave up, and I want them to know how grateful we are for that commitment.

Will you join me in thanking them by adding your name to Organizing for America’s letter?

I will make sure these messages are delivered — you can also add a comment about what the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" means to you.

As Commander in Chief, I fought to repeal "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" because it weakens our national security and military readiness. It violates the fundamental American principles of equality and fairness.

But this victory is also personal.

I will never know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my sexual orientation.

But I know my story would not be possible without the sacrifice and struggle of those who came before me — many I will never meet, and can never thank.

I know this repeal is a crucial step for civil rights, and that it strengthens our military and national security. I know it is the right thing to do.

But the rightness of our cause does not guarantee success, and today, celebration of this historic step forward is tempered by the defeat of another — the DREAM Act. I am incredibly disappointed that a minority of senators refused to move forward on this important, commonsense reform that most Americans understand is the right thing for our country. On this issue, our work must continue.

Today, I’m proud that we took these fights on.

Please join me in thanking those in Congress who helped make "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" repeal possible:

http://my.barackobama.com/Repealed

Thank you,

Barack

I clicked and thanked Congress. Amen to that all day long.

From ENEWSPF:

Rich Central High School will induct 14 into the school’s Hall of Fame.

“We, at Rich Central High School in Olympia Fields are very proud of all of our students, present and past,” the school said in a press release. “On Saturday, October 23rd we unite to honor some of our former students and their great accomplishments. This is a wonderful event for all of our communities to enjoy. Our Keynote speaker is Senator Toi W. Hutchinson – Class of “91 and we will be joined by several board members, mayors, aldermen and friends of Rich Central.  Our award winning RC Jazz Band, under the direction of Mr. Phillip Crews, will provide the entertainment.”

The following are the 2010 Hall of Fame inductees:

A. Jason Bonaparte ‘97
President, Bonaparte Corporation

Michael Brock ‘88
Owner, Pacesetter Ground Transport & Global Logistics

Glen Brooks, Jr. ‘88
Chicago Police Dept. Area Coordinator & Special Projects

Gene A. Cross  ‘89
Head Coach College Basketball

Linda R. Delaney Milam ‘84
Software Engineer for NASA at Johnson Space Center

Michael C. Garner, Jr. ‘97
Football All-Star & Community Volunteer

Gregg Garofalo ‘88
Attorney, Garofalo & Thiersch, P.C.

Chuck Greenberg ‘68
Grammy Award –Winning Musician

Col. Steven R. Grimes ‘71
Chief of Ophthalmology, COL, Medical Corps, US Army

Sen. Toi W. Hutchinson ‘91
Illinois State Senator, 40th District & Community Service Volunteer

Derrick Murphy ‘00
Community Service Volunteer & Professional Athlete

Thomas K.R. Stovall ‘97
Small Business Expansion Consulting

Angela K. Walker ‘89
American Cancer Society & Community Activist

Rachel W. Williams ‘88
Attorney, HR Director for Avatar Corporation

Openly gay men and lesbian women now can apply to join the military, Defense Department officials said today.

The department issued guidance Oct. 15 to process paperwork for openly gay men or lesbian applicants. The instructions come from a California federal judge’s decision that the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law is unconstitutional.

On Oct. 12, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips enjoined DOD “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation or other proceeding that may have commenced under the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Act or its implementing regulations.”

Pentagon officials said the department will abide by the judge’s order, and that part of that compliance is allowing openly gay people to apply to join the military. But citing uncertainty over final disposition of the matter in the courts and on Capitol Hill, a DOD spokeswoman said potential applicants must be aware that the situation may change.

“Recruiters are reminded to set the applicants’ expectations by informing them that a reversal in the court’s decision of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law/policy may occur,” Cynthia Smith said.

Phillips said yesterday that she is leaning against granting the government’s request for a stay of her order. The Justice Department has indicated it will appeal her decision declaring the law unconstitutional to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Defense Department wants a deliberative, long-range look at any changes in the law, said Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates set up a working group to examine the ramifications of a possible repeal of the law that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The group is scheduled to submit its report Dec. 1.

“The review that is going on would look at all the far-ranging impacts of what changing the law would mean,” Lapan said.

A long-range plan for changing the law would include a period of transition to conduct training, to ensure that everybody was informed about new policies and procedures, Lapan explained.

“In the current environment with the stay, you don’t have the time to go through all these processes and make sure you determine what effect this has on housing, benefits, training on individuals across the board,” he said.

The legislative remedy would allow that work to move forward, Lapan said, as the department would have “the chance to study the impacts, to get the input from the force and to make adjustments and changes before an abrupt change in the law occurs.”

Lapan said it is too early to draw any conclusions about Phillips’ stay and what is happening in the force.

“I would caution against conclusions made from just a few days of having a stay in place,” he said. “A repeal of the law will have far-reaching effects. Now we are sort of in a holding pattern on discharges and proceedings related to enforcing the current law.”

Nod to ENEWSPF.