Midday Open Thread

• Convicted New Hampshire phone jammer has high hopes of selling his story to Hollywood.  - SusanG
• We've got hope. What do they have? Corruption and more of the McSame.  

  PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

  On Sunday, BarbinMD will be taking a comprehensive look at McCain's record in the Senate of pushing highly profitable deals for his biggest campaign donors and lobbyists pals.

• Dick Cheney continues to live in his own fantasy world.  

  In Northeast Philadelphia Thursday morning, Vice President Dick Cheney said that America's economy "remains the envy of the world," and that a recent economic "slowdown" could have been much worse without President Bush's economic policies.

  Cheney said that because of those policies, particularly tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, "the slowdown that did come was a fairly mild one."

  "For the better part of six years now, this nation's economy grew without pause," Cheney said.

• A Fox News Assistant was fired for stopping John McCain on the red carpet at the Time 100 Gala and blurting out - on camera - I voted for you in the primary, you're going to win.

  Insiders tell us the assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the entertainment angle of the event. When Sen. John McCain walked by, the assistant said, "I voted for you in the primary, you're going to win."

  McCain was overheard saying to her, "You're not supposed to reveal that." Locke apparently continued to explain that she is the daughter of Vietnam veteran.

  Insiders who were at the event were surprised and shocked to hear the disclosure, which was recorded on videotape. A Fox News insider called it "journalistically unacceptable." An FNC spokesperson would not comment on the personnel matter but did confirm Locke is no longer with the company, where she'd worked for a couple of years.

  Too bad a 24 year old assistant gets fired while their blatantly biased reporting continues unabated.

• Nelson Mandella has discovered that he is on the US terrorist watch list. To her credit, Condoleezza Rice called the situation, "embarrassing."
• The number of soldiers kept in uniform involuntarily by the Army's stop-loss program has nearly doubled in the last year since the Pentagon extended combat tours. - smintheus
• Once again, after denouncing Iran for being behind smuggling of arms into Iraq, the Pentagon has quietly backed off the charge and produced no weapons made in Iran. On Wednesday a briefing by M. Gen. Kevin Bergner about hundreds of weapons seized in Basra and Karbala didn't even try to link any of them to Iran. The Pentagon's policy has been to accuse Iran first, look for actual evidence second.

  A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran...When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

  - smintheus

• The Arizona Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill prohibiting the state from implementing Real ID. The AZ House has passed a weaker version of the bill, so the pressure is now on Gov. Janet Napolitano to sign the measure into law. It would make Arizona the 9th state to join the anti-Real-ID rebellion. - smintheus
• Send your mom a Mothers' Day card from you and John McCain (so she can know that John McCain thinks she doesn't have a right to fair pay) -DHinMI
• China is so determined to suppress opposition to its rule in Tibet that it has instituted a law regulating reincarnation. It's now illegal for Tibetan lamas to be reincarnated without first having applied for and received authorization from the Chinese government. - smintheus