Bloomberg News managed to pen a full obituary of the late Congressman Jack Murtha today, calling him a "Supporter of Troops" in the headline, without once mentioning his incendiary–and unfounded–claims that a group of Marines had murdered 24 Iraqis in cold blood (h/t Washington Examiner’s Mark Hemingway).

Murtha, himself a former Marine, said in 2005 after two dozen Iraqis were killed in the city of Haditha, "there was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Eight Marines were charged in the killings. Charges against six of them have been dropped, one has been found not-guilty, and the case against the remaining Marine is pending. Murtha was unrepentant about the slanderous accusations he leveled against these Marines. He even compared the Haditha incident to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War (see video below the fold).

Below is video of his appearance on "Hardball" shortly after his initial comments, followed by a clip of him dodging questions from an employee of Young America’s Foundation (language warning).

Murtha’s service to the country both as a Marine and a lawmaker was of course admirable, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the Murtha family for their loss.

But the fact remains that "Supporter of Troops" is a questionable label for the late congressman.

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Rosie O’Donnell is still spreading 9-11 conspiracy theories on her new Sirius/XM radio show. On Monday, she welcomed Broadway star (and one-season Saturday Night Live cast member) Christine Ebersole. The two entertainers agreed that something was fishy in Washington (just as they did on ABC’s The View in 2007):

EBERSOLE: I don’t need to know what happened [on 9/11], because I don’t, and that’s why we need another investigation…I do know that the official government story is a complete and total lie.

O’DONNELL: Yes, and that’s what I’ve been saying, too.

EBERSOLE: When you’re a truth-seeker…you’re called a conspiracy theorist…What is a more outrageous conspiracy theory than 19 guys taking orders from somebody on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan, with box-cutters, overcoming a trillion-dollar defense industry?…Come on. Really…You could be a ten-year-old and know that that’s…a Santa Claus story.

Ebersole also declared that governments use foreigners to scare the ignorant common people: "Goebbels said it in the ’30s in Nazi Germany: all you’ve got to do to get people to do your bidding is to say that there’s a foreign enemy…that’s coming to get you…Osama bin Laden, former CIA operative, I don’t know if most people know that, friends of the Bush family for many, many…decades."

Rosie recounted how she was frightened in an airport by what turned out to be a Homeland Security exercise: " I’m walking through [the airport], going, ‘Now, does anyone else think that this is some sort of totalitarian nightmare?’

Ebersole replied: "I think America is one of the most brainwashed countries, really, in the world, through school…It’s like, ‘Under your desks, darlings, the Communists are coming’…We’re taught to believe that we’re the good guys."

O’Donnell also repeated her line that the movie Avatar was a crystal-clear examination of our government’s policies: "Did you see Avatar?…Here it is, about [this] white totalitarian government that is exploiting these indigenous people for their resources…killing them…in order to take the resources out…and [the] American audience [is] cheering for the blue guys. I’m going, ‘Do they not see the parallel?’"

Ebersole even went after Obama, "flying over Afghanistan to get the Nobel Peace Prize as those 60,000 troops go in to murder how many…women and children?…War is war."

O’Donnell added: "And it’s wrong on every level, always."

[Hat tip: Yune-ity]

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Shelby Knox, a Huffington Post blogger who bills herself as a "full time speaker and organizer working with progressive organizations to promote sex education, women’s rights, and youth empowerment" admitted to Fox News’s Megyn Kelly this afternoon that women’s groups are upset about the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad because it was produced by the conservative organization Focus on the Family.

"We definitely respect Pam Tebow’s choice, and the ad in itself, as was expected seemed very benign," claimed Knox. "The point is, Focus on the Family’s agenda is not benign at all, and you can’t consider something a choice when the entire agenda of the organization is to make sure other women can’t make reproductive health decisions that are different than the one Pam Tebow made."

Knox also called Focus on the Family "a very radical, anti-choice, anti-woman organization" and decried the notion of CBS "partnering" with them to produce the ad.

Kelly asked Knox about the charges of some women’s groups, including NOW, who have insisted that the image of Tebow tackling his mother in the ad "promotes violence against women."

"How does this ad promote violence against women?" asked Kelly. "Because people are laughing at you for making that claim They are laughing at you they think that’s so ridiculous."

Knox admitted, "We’re sort of laughing at ourselves. It was really said jokingly, it’s not that serious but it’s weird."

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"It is not irresponsible to demand that bureaucrats do the job we pay them to do. It is not irresponsible to expect people in authority to be held responsible for dumb, and perhaps fatal, mistakes. And, finally, it is not irresponsible, even in time of war, to raise questions about the presidency of…"

Can you guess whose name was dropped at the end of that quote? We’ll have to go all the way back to…2002 and, of course, the George W. Bush presidency.

What’s that? You thought this quote from Bill Press was referring to President Barack Obama? Quite reasonable, actually, given that one of his chief national security officials today took to the opinion pages of USA Today to call critics of the Obama Administration’s handling of the war on terror unpatriotic.

Well, he didn’t actually use the word "unpatriotic", but neither did then-Vice President Dick Cheney when he told Congress that criticism of the administration’s war effort "is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war." That was the quote Press took issue with in 2002, so where is his disdain for the Obama Administration?

In fact, Cheney was warning Democrats not to "seek political advantage" by opposing the Bush Administration its war efforts. This is exactly the same thing that Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan said in today his USA Today column: the first sentence of the column is "Politics should never get in the way of national security."

But pundits who went after Bush and co. are so far conspicuously silent about Brennan’s complaints.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, in a July 2002 column headlined "Is It OK To Hate Bush?" complained that the administration had "made very clear again and again: You are not allowed to openly abhor the president or his decisions because doing so clearly indicates traitorous inclinations and this is wartime which is a Very Difficult Time for Us All."

Frank Rich whined in the New York Times in December of 2001 that it was "no longer just politically incorrect to criticize George W. Bush or anyone in his administration these days — now it’s treason."

MSNBC’s David Shuster claimed, "the right routinely brands [then-Senate Minority Leader Tom] Daschle and others as unpatriotic and un-American."

Speaking on another MSNBC program, former Clinton administration official John Podesta complained that Bush Administration officials were "calling [Democrats] un-American for raising very legitimate questions. That’s politics."

Lewis Lapham, former editor of Harper’s Magazine, complained of the critics "on the right, the people who say that people like myself who question the premise of the war, even question the definition of the war, are somehow unpatriotic, un- American, and so on."

So where are all of these talking heads now that Obama and his administration are issuing virtually the same critiques of their political opponents? Once again, it is plainly evident that the press considers dissent patriotic only when dissenting from a Republican.

[Author's note: any quotes without links were found through a Nexis search.]

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It seems that even the most [what appears to be] level-headed of comics writers these days just can’t resist the pressure to delve into the "progressive" political cesspool. This time it’s Captain America scribe Ed Brubaker. Hunting Muses lays it out:

Enter Captain America.

You know, the WW2 hero who died recently and just came back to life to fight a 20 ft tall Red Skull in front of the Lincoln memorial. I had heard a lot of good things from Ed Brubaker. I picked up some trades shortly before Cap’s death, read them, and then finished out Bru’s run because they were great. Right up there with Geoff John’s Green Lantern series as what I want from a comic.

Then Brubaker had to go and not only insult me, but violate the core of what Captain America is all about in issue 602 “Two Americas part 1″. Here are 3 consecutive pages from the comic to help you get a full context:

First Page

Second Page

Third Page

Savor the lines a moment:

“A grassroots anti-government army”

“…looks like some kind of anti-tax thing”

“I don’t exactly see a black man from harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks…”

Of course they’re all being led by an insane man according to the comic, and Captain America is there to stop them.

First of all, the very idea that the tea-party movement is “whites only” is not true (but then, how many black people are in Boise Idaho in the first place?). Second of all, let the full idea sink in: Captain America is going to fight an “anti-tax, anti-government” movement.

What’s next? Captain French is going to fight wine makers? Is Captain Britain going to beat up some… British stereotype? Hey, I remember an anti-tax, anti-government from around the late 1700s. They had some real rebels in there with names like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hancock, etc etc. How about after this Cap beats up on today’s tea-party movement, he go back in time and beat up those protesters?

What’s even worse is seeing the reaction around the internet. Some people are cheering at the thought of Cap beating up “tea-baggers”.

I’ve written enough about this sort of nonsense over the years; it got to the point (along with the ridiculously pricey issues) where I asked myself "Why do I continue to support these guys?" I don’t mind if occasionally a writer goes off on a storyline like this, better still if the writer at least tries to balance out their inherent liberalism put to paper. A lot of comics writers were lefties in the 70s and 80s; however, their biases were not nearly as overt as that of the current crop of authors. Steve Englehart’s awesome "Secret Empire" series in Cap in the mid-70s was a not-so subtle analogy of Watergate. Yet even Steve didn’t hit us over the head with a brick … even though he could have (Richard Nixon was pretty much thoroughly disgraced on the left and the right). In the 80s Mark Gruenwald’s superb "The Captain" storyline, which had Steve Rogers replaced as Captain America was decidedly leftist, yet again not brick-over-the-head so. John Walker, the new Cap, was a manic reactionary, but he certainly wasn’t a racist (his partner, Battlestar, was black), and if anything he had an excuse for his mental state: Gruenwald had a right-wing extremist group murder his parents (ironically, the same one Brubaker is currently using as his "Tea Partiers").

All Brubaker is doing is echoing the same tired, old media elitists that continually denigrate and belittle folks like the tea partiers and those who elected Scott Brown in Massachusetts. "Racists." "Bigots." "Stupid." "Crazy." "Childish." Etc.

And y’know what, Ed? Keep it up and you and your company are gonna go the same route that Air America and MSNBC are following. Straight. Down. The. Toilet. And I’ll keep spending my money elsewhere — outlets that don’t insult my intelligence or my beliefs, thank you very much.

UPDATE: Just read more about this "Two Americas" stuff and it’s made me even more nauseous:

Where has the Captain America from the ’50s been the past few months, and what part of our modern world has welcomed him? And what will Steve and Bucky do when an old enemy tries to become a revolutionary? TWO AMERICAS begins here!

If Brubaker means to have the Tea Partiers "welcome" the Cap of the 1950s, then, frankly, he is even more of a radical "progressive" loon than I had thought. In the 1970s, aforementioned Marvel scribe Steve Englehart decided to "explain" the story behind the Captain America that was seen in the 1950s. (You may be aware that in "standard" Marvel continuity, Cap was thrown into suspended animation at WW II’s end and thawed in the mid 1960s.) Essentially, a guy had stumbled upon, while doing research, the formula by which Steve Rogers became Capt. America. He approached some government highers-up and proposed that the "super soldier" program be started anew. However, the formula that had been unearthed isn’t the perfected version that was used on Rogers. Tests showed that it caused the subject to slowly go insane. Nevertheless, our researcher befriended a new "Bucky" (the name of Cap’s original partner) and both decided to use the [unperfected] formula on themselves. They then briefly go about "resuming" the roles of Capt. America and Bucky for a time. In issues #153-156, we see that the new crime fighters personify anything but America’s ideals, not to mention those of the original Cap. They’re basically Joe McCarthy on steroids, with a mix of J. Edgar Hoover thrown in for good measure (remember — they’re slowly going "insane"). The real Cap’s then-partner, the Falcon (who’s black), not to mention the black population in general, are called various racial epithets by the crazed duo, but eventually the real Cap and Falcon defeat the reactionaries. They’re put into suspended animation, and eventually [re]surface later — the fake Cap as the Grand Director, the leader of a Neo-Nazi movement.

Associating a few characters that possess some of the worst attributes imaginable with the contemporary Tea Party movement is just plain disgusting, period. Brubaker isn’t even original as he’s basically rehashing an old storyline done by former Cap scribe Mark Gruenwald (may he RIP) in the 1980s, even using the name of the group "Watchdogs" to "represent" the Tea Partiers, that "right-wing extremist group" noted previously above.

Gag me with a spatula. I’ll just reiterate what I said in my last paragraph before the update.

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Louisa Ball,a British girl has a rare condition called Sleeping Beauty Sickness, but there’s no Prince Charming on the way to rescue her. Doctors don’t know what causes it or how to cure it — only that it strikes teenagers and goes away by itself after eight to 12 years.

As 15-year-old Louisa Ball sleeps for days, suffering from Kleine-Levin Syndrome, life is passing her by. NBC’s Stephanie Gosk reports.

When 15-year-old Louisa Ball takes a nap, she doesn’t mess around. She sleeps for days on

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Megan Fox#39;s hand closeup is 4-7 seconds into the ad below, and scroll BELOW the video for a close up of Megan, blowing a kiss, and her real thumb.

Actress Megan Fox has stumpy thumbs, and as the NYDN and celebitchy pointed out, the hand thumbing at the Motorola device in Megan Fox#39;s Super Bowl ad, seen below, does not.

It seems Megan Fox needed a thumb double.

The 30-second clip was seen by an estimated 90 million TV viewers and despite Megan#39;s s-exy appearance in the commercial, m

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On Tuesday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, on the same show in which host Joe Scarborough had earlier complained about FNC’s Bill Sammon claiming that the media "hate" Sarah Palin, guest David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of the New Yorker magazine, declared that "Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated" if Americans were influenced by seeing "preposterousness" on public display. Remnick’s comment came during a discussion of the Senate’s adherence to the filibuster rule that makes it easier for the minority party to block the passage of legislation. At about 8:09 a.m., Scarborough contended that he would prefer that filibuster participants be required to actually stand up and speak in televised debate so that Americans might see the "preposterousness" of the practice.

Remnick then took his shot at Palin to dismiss Scarborough’s theory that "preposterousness" could wake up the American public. Remnick: "We see a lot of preposterous things in American politics. That doesn’t seem to convince us otherwise. Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated, would pass out of history if preposterousness were somehow disqualifying, but it’s not."

Below is a transcript of the relevant exchange from the Tuesday, February 9, Morning Joe on MSNBC:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I’ve heard other people say this, what I would like to see is, if somebody is going to filibuster, I want them on their feet, I want them talking. And perhaps Americans, televised, can see the preposterousness of it or perhaps they could-

DAVID REMNICK, THE NEW YORKER: We see a lot of preposterous things in American politics. That doesn’t seem to convince us otherwise. Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated, would pass out of history if preposterousness were somehow disqualifying, but it’s not.

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In the ad, Megan Fox can be seen reclining in a bubble bath in the promotional clip for Motorola which was aired on television in the US during the Super Bowl, reported femalefirst.co.uk. The model was brought in to avoid Megan#39;s clubbed thumbs.

Megan Fox used a hand double in a raunchy new advertisement as she has a genetic condition called brachydactyly that means she has clubbed thumbs.

The 30-second clip was seen by about 90 million TV viewers and despite Megan#39;s s-exy appearance in

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Pastor Rony Tan was questioned regarding his insensitive remarks, which the the Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said were “highly inappropriate and unacceptable as they trivialised and insulted the beliefs of Buddhists and Taoists”.

The apology was broadcast over Channel 5 news on 8 February 2010 at 2130 hours. According to a report by Channel News Asia, the Internal Security Department (ISD) has called up Pastor Rony Tan “in connection with his comments and insinuations about Buddhism and

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