Just a picture of a former President, our current President, and our future President touring the Memorial Hall at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York

Courtesy of CNN:

President Barack Obama marked the dedication of the long-awaited September 11 Memorial Museum Thursday with families, survivors and rescuers at the site, saying the "sacred place of healing and hope" will ensure that "generations yet unborn will never forget" the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. 

"It is an honor for us to join in your memories, to recall and to reflect, and above all to reaffirm the true spirit of 9/11: love, compassion, sacrifice and to enshrine it forever in the heart of our nation," the President said before the gray bedrock of the fallen towers. 

The very fact that this monument even exists should be the reason that we never again elect a Republican as President of the United States.

Darrell Issa's IRS investigation appears to be imploding.

"Stop presenting me with facts! I'm trying to smear a President here!"

Courtesy of Bloomberg BusinessWeek:  

But after a burst of attention, Issa’s investigation appears to have stalled. Although he turned up embarrassing material—has any government official been humiliated quite like the IRS commissioner in the dorky video dressed up as Spock?—Issa hasn’t made the all-important connection to the White House. And he may not be able to. The news this week that he won’t release the full transcripts of his interviews with IRS officials—interviews he selectively quoted from to imply White House complicity—suggests that what they contain may in fact exonerate the administration of the very charge Issa is laboring so hard to prosecute. 

“Your push to release entire transcripts from witness interviews while the investigation remains active was reckless and threatened to undermine the integrity of the committee’s investigation,” Issa wrote in response to a letter from his Democratic counterpart, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who himself had selectively quoted the transcripts and then called on Issa to publicize the whole thing. 

In theory, Issa could be building a case against the White House to rival Watergate that he just isn’t quite ready to unveil. But that’s highly unlikely. Cummings has seen the transcripts and wouldn’t call for their release if they contained information that would fell his party’s president. Issa’s weak-tea defense of why he won’t comply—witnesses might be demoted or fired, he says—only buttresses this suspicion. So does the effort by Issa’s colleague, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, to broaden the investigation’s scope to include donor audits. You don’t broaden an investigation if you’ve found the smoking gun and nailed the culprit.

Issa must be just about shitting himself right now. First the "Fast and Furious" investigation turns out to be "snail-like and anti-climatic" and now, according to Elijah Cummings, THIS Obama "scandal" turns out to be a Republican scandal instead.

I mean what's a slimy, unethical, political hit-man to do?

If only Obama would knock over a liquor store or something, Then they'd have him by God!

When the debate over guns is worth killing for. Two Ricin laced letters sent to Mayor Bloomberg. (Update: And one to the President as well.)

Courtesy of ABC News:  

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the latest high-profile target of poison-tainted letters sent though the mail, police revealed yesterday. 

The leader of the nation's largest city was threatened anonymously in two letters sent to Bloomberg's offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., NYPD spokesperson Paul Browne said. An undisclosed number of New York cops who responded to one of the letters now "are being examined for minor symptoms of ricin exposure," but the potentially dangerous substance never reached the mayor. 

"The writer, in the letters, threatened Mayor Bloomberg, with references to the debate on gun laws," Browne said. 

Saying he has a "constitutional and God-given right and I will exercise that right 'til I die," the author warned that the government would have to kill him before he would relinquish his weapons, a source told ABC News.

You know I think that somebody's bluff is about to be called.

 I have no idea how anybody believes that sending this kind of threat would EVER benefit their side of the argument, but I will also add that there are a number of gun owners, especially those Right Wing fringe, who share this lunatic's determination to hang onto their weapons.

And of course, as those of us who are NOT suffering from a mental instability realize, the proposed bills would NOT take anybody's gun away.

A recent update has more from the letter: According to the source, the letter warned:

“You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns.” It concluded with the line: “What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”

Once again indicating that his is exactly the type of people who SHOULD have their guns taken away.

Update: It now looks as if there was a Ricin laced letter sent to President Obama as well.

With a mop of fake hair on her head, and a shirt stuffed with cantaloupes. Palin accuses the President of using grieving parents for "backdrops in his perpetual campaign-style press events."

Click One of the three fake boobs to hear the speech.

Courtesy of CNN Politics: 

Palin, wearing a shirt that read "Women hunt," was one of several speakers at the NRA gathering who targeted the Obama administration and some lawmakers for wanting tighter firearm restrictions after the Newtown elementary school massacre. 

Palin argued the president was practicing the "politics of emotion" by "flying in grieving parents on Air Force One, making them backdrops in his perpetual campaign-style press events." 

Par for the course, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee faulted the media for being a "reliable, poodle-skirted cheerleader for a president who writes the book on exploiting tragedy." 

Politics of emotion, she argued, won't make the country safer. "It's the opposite of leadership. It's the manipulation of the people by the politicians for their own political ends. It's not just self-serving. It's destructive and it must stop." 

Charging the president with being disingenuous in the wake of the shooting was a running theme throughout the day at the NRA. Palin added Obama was ignoring another tragedy. 

"We could use a bit more emotion by the way of what goes on every single day on the streets of cities like Chicago and New York," Palin said. 

Speaking of New York, Palin took the opportunity to take a swipe at Bloomberg, a mayor she has vehemently opposes for what she describes as his nanny state politics. In her last big speech at a major conservative gathering in March, Palin made headlines for sipping a "Big Gulp" on stage, a knock against New York's ban against certain large sugary drinks. 

"Now I see that the mayor of New York now wants to ban public displays of legal tobacco products," she said, referring to his recent push to keep tobacco products out of sight at stores in order to de-glamorize the product. 

"I tell ya," she said, as she pulling out a pack of chewing tobacco. "Don't make me do it." 

With the crowd roaring, she put the pack back in her pocket. 

"It's funny because Todd's been looking for this all morning."

As predicted Palin's fake boobs appear even bigger for this speech than they were for her last speech.

This speech contained pretty much every Palinesque sound bite one would expect. From attacks on the President, attacks on the media, and attacks on liberals, to a shout out to Margaret Thatcher, and sentences peppered with "freedom," "constitution," "mother of a combat vet," and "America."

She also claimed that Trig's nickname is Trigger, and that her nephew's middle name is "Remington," as proof of her gun toting bona-fides. (Too bad she still can't load a gun without her daddy, or hit a caribou drugged and tied up right in front of her, but hey why quibble?)

At one point Palin claimed that Hollywood and the media are helping "freedom destroy itself." Which I assume means that by exercising their 1st Amendment rights the liberal media is impacting the NRA members ability to exercise THEIR 2nd Amendment rights to masturbate with their gun barrels.

However perhaps the most ridiculous thing that Palin did to get some attention, was to use a can of Skoal in the place of her Big Gulp cup in another slam against Mayor Bloomberg.

 Yes, SO ladylike.

Sarah Palin made it into yesterday's Hardball Sideshow along with Larry "Wide Stance" Craig. Seems like a fitting place for her.

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

Here is Palin's actual tweet:

Victory in NYC for liberty-loving soda drinkers. To politicians with too much time on their hands we say: Govt, stay out of my refrigerator!
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) March 12, 2013

"Liberty loving soda drinkers?" Seriously?

I guess it would be a waste of time to inform Palin that Mayor Bloomberg is really battling the drink manufacturers who create these bladder bursting, sugar infused, contributors to childhood obesity,  and not the people are so easily duped into purchasing them.

You would think a woman planning to write a fitness book would be supportive of such a measure.

Oh that's right, now she is writing about the "War on Christmas" instead.

Personally I doubt she knows any more about that topic, than she did about fitness.

Oh, and by the way, the government was never not going to "stay out" of Palin's refrigerator. This law was for New York only, a place that even Sarah Palin cannot see from Alaska, and it had to do with the sale of large servings of sugary drinks in restaurants, stadiums, and other eating establishments, not what was stored in a private refrigerator.

So the tweet is, as usual, ridiculous.

Gabby Giffords to visit Newtown, Connecticut Friday.

Courtesy of NBC Connecticut:  

Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived after being shot at a campaign event in her home state of Arizona two years ago, will visit Newtown on Friday. 

Giffords will be at a home in Newtown for a private event, according to a spokesperson for Gov. Malloy's office. The event is not open to the public. 

The visit in Newtown comes just two days after Giffords met with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, met with Bloomberg Wednesday to discuss gun control, according to the New York Post. 

 Bloomberg has pushed for stricter gun laws in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

You know I kind of wonder if Joe Biden and the President are involved in any way with Gabby making these visits. Not that she wouldn't on her own, I'm just sort of thinking out loud.

Good lord could you imagine how powerful a gun control bill would be if Gabby put her name to it and walked onto the floor of Congress to introduce it?

The Republicans and NRA lobby would be hard pressed to attack her in any way, and the American people would rally behind the bill en masse.

I kind of hope something like that is in the works.

Hurricane Sandy makes a believer out of New York Mayor Bloomberg. Endorses President Obama.

Courtesy of New York Times:  

In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that Hurricane Sandy had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign and that as a result he was endorsing President Obama. 

Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent in his third term leading New York City, has been sharply critical of both Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and Mitt Romney, the president’s Republican rival, saying that both men have failed to candidly confront the problems afflicting the nation. But he said he had decided over the past several days that Mr. Obama was the best candidate to tackle the global climate change that the mayor believes contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage. 

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View. 

“Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.” 

Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is another indication that Hurricane Sandy has influenced the presidential campaign. The storm, and the destruction it left in its wake, has dominated news coverage, transfixing the nation and prompting the candidates to halt their campaigning briefly. 

More than that, it appears to have given a new level of urgency to a central issue in the presidential campaign: the appropriate size and role of government.

You know nothing makes you appreciate government, and the President who leads it, like watching them come to the aid of your city and literally save the lives of its citizens.

This storm was an incredibly unfortunate thing, but what is almost as unfortunate is that it took such a calamity to get people to recognize just what an amazing President they had leading their country.

This endorsement is a big one for the President, and coming on the heels of his budding "bromance" with Chris Christie, I think the President is well on his way to that landslide we have all been hoping for.

You know perhaps the bright light at the end of this terrible tragedy is that it will FINALLY wake people up, like it did Mayor Bloomberg, to the FACT that climate change is real, and that we have to do something about it now! If this fires up the American people to where they will finally support regulations that protect our environment, and demand that we spend more time and resources expanding our ability to utilize renewable fuel sources, we might some day look back at Hurricane Sandy as an important turning point for this country.

And I agree with the mayor that President Obama is the perfect person to lead the way forward.