In a shocking upset Friday, Boeing lost the long-awaited and lucrative Air Force refueling-tanker contract to a competing bid based on an Airbus plane.
…
Boeing’s loss means the 767 assembly line in Everett will wind to a close around 2012 when the current commercial orders run out.  
…
Large sections of the Northrop/EADS tanker will be built in Europe; they will be shipped across the Atlantic for assembly at a new widebody-jet plant to be built in Mobile, Ala., which will gain some 1,500 direct jobs.

Employing Europeans, shipping planes back and forth across the Atlantic, screwing 2,000 to 6,000 Washingtonians out of jobs. I love it.

“If we were to prohibit sovereign wealth funds from investing in our market for fear they might introduce market distortions, there is a risk we might actually end up doing precisely this to ourselves,” said Ethiopis Tafara, director of the office of international affairs for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
…

The credit crisis, which has left several financial firms strapped for cash, opened up even more opportunities for these funds. A number of Wall Street firms have looked to sovereign wealth funds to raise capital.

So far, Citigroup has raised $22 billion from state funds located in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Singapore. Others have enacted similar moves including Merrill Lynch, which has raised nearly $13 billion from the governments of Kuwait, Korea and Singapore’s state-run Temasek Holdings. In December, Morgan Stanley said it received a $5 billion injection from China’s state-run investment arm, China Investment Corp. 

I think they’ve both been punished enough. Him by the press, her by his penis. What are your thoughts?

Further reading from The Goog:

1. Vitter had five calls with D.C. Madam - Updates - NOLA.com

2. Vitter’s number on D.C. madam’s list - Breaking News Updates New …

3. Michelle Malkin » “Very disappointed in Vitter”

4. Think Progress » Vitter Flashback: Clinton should resign.

5. Taylor Shows | SamSederShow.com

6. Political Forums - Politico.com

I had some inside information so I’ve known about this for months and I guess I should have said something, you know, get the big scoop but I didn’t really give a shit.

Anyways. I was reading about this over on David Gregory’s favorite news site and there was this one comment that totally tweaked my interest:

King Con Location: NA Party: Republican

Reply #: 4 Date: Sep. 5, 2007 - 8:25 PM EST

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I told my wife I f I get the chance to hook up with a hottie like fread did when I am his age she is out the door.

She has been real sweet ever since. Try it guys. But you got to be serious for it to work. No one can say us Republicans aren’t all man. Am I right?

Thank God For Fred!!!!

Reply Quote Report Abuse

I had it on good authority that Fred didn’t swing that way but sometimes this happens. I was wrong and I admit it.

I guess I figured, you know, after he played the “Rear Admiral” in Hunt for Red October and named his kid after his character in the 1989 gay romp comedy, Fat Man and Little Boy, well…. these all seemed like clues.

But no, I totally just googled this shit and looks like I’m not the only one feeling lucky!

Can you even imagine what her nipples look like?

As my good friend Norman Hsu likes to say, Hillary just lost the erection!

Anyways, they were analyzing the state of American politics, wondering if our great empire is about to topple into pinkoism. Luckily, they argue, we are safe for now. Their cogent portrait of the probable Democratic nominee, that insufferable whore and her hamburgler husband, pretty much summed up my own feelings:

Mrs Clinton might be portrayed as a communist on talk radio in Kansas, but set her alongside France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s David Cameron or any other supposed European conservative, and on virtually every significant issue Mrs Clinton is the more right-wing.

Strangely enough, this point of debate provides a rare confluence for many on opposite sides of the spectrum. Folks on both Right and Left whole-heartedly declare her liberal (albeit, for opposite reasons) but these people, ill-intentioned ideologues all of them, are stupid, lying to you, or probably a whole bunch of both.

Mr. Robert Novak, that liberal bastard whose attempt to destroy the Bush administration remains a sore subject with me, has found that the responsible members of Ms. Clinton’s own party are, like me and the rest of the cortex-enabled nation, fearful:

Many of the Democratic congressmen who ousted Republicans in marginal House districts last year privately express concern about the impact on their re-election prospects if Hillary Clinton is nominated for president.

Hillary Clinton is toxic. Neither liberal nor conservative, she is an opportunist. Disliked by all, her only hopes are the further collapse of the Elephant party and/or the insatiable desire of millions of left-leaning Americans to continually settle for less than they deserve.

Not exactly a strong platform, but at least it’s something. Take that away and there’s little substance left: no real position on the war, no real position on the economy, no real position on health care. She is Bill Clinton-Lite and it seems to me Al Gore already lost.

I guess New York Times writer Matt Bai has a new book out (its point: bloggers are writing a bunch of words but not doing anything truly constructive and neither are the politicians… a funny thing to publish in a book) and apparently he has a metaphor worth considering:

Just as G.M. couldn’t begin to consider a world without Pontiacs, neither could Washington Democrats and their interest groups envision a world where every single liberal provision of the last 70 years didn’t exist intact. This made real innovation — the kind of innovation that had launched the modern Democratic Party in the first place — all but impossible. There were all kinds of specific new policy proposals on the Democratic shelf, just as there were always new models of Buicks and Pontiacs on the drawing boards. But there was nothing approaching a plan to restructure the modern social contract for an age when Wal-Mart, and not G.M., employed the most Americans, in the same imaginative way that the New Dealers had dreamed up a compact to meet the challenge of an earlier day.

So, yes: if Americans began to demand of their leaders someone who at least believed in themselves, someone who had ideas, wouldn’t that be something?

Failing that, the left could just twiddle down the days to the 2008 election and hope the Grand Old Party’s self-destruction continues and thus no platform is needed, no hard decisions need be made and no real ideas need be formulated. But, sadly, presidential adviser and former GOP chief Ed Gillespie is putting a stop to those chances, vigorously promising politicians unlike any we have so far seen:

“I think that we will not have candidates who have any kind of ethical considerations that will be a concern to the voters come 2008.”

My word! Ethical politicians? Representatives we can feel good voting for?

I don’t know about all that. But I do know this: Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama, John McCain, and the smelly man stumbling around the grocery store could all learn a lesson in leadership — in faith and beliefs — from the man who currently holds the position they all want.

You can hate on George W. Bush if you like, but you’d be a fool to ignore his lessons, to not follow his lead. The Donkey Punch today is a few words of truth:

I have come to understand true leadership leans into the wind. It tackles big challenges with uncertain outcomes rather than taking on simple, sure tasks. It does what is right, regardless of what the latest poll or focus group says.

First off, let me say that you and I have a lot in common. First of all, I, as you so eloquently put it, am not gay and have never been gay. I admit that once I was accused of giving myself a handjob, but those charges have never been substantiated.

Secondly, we both live in Washington DC, and we know that the place is overflowing with corruption. It’s enough to make us miss the fruits of our home states (Idaho Potatos for you, Kentucky Bourbon for me–by the way, I win). I admit that one night I found myself in the bathroom of Union Station, which I have since learned is a hot-spot for anonymous gay sex. I went there, not looking for anal love, but because I was going out to a bar in Union Station and when I got off the metro, I had to pee very badly. I rushed into the bathroom and quickly saw what was happening there. There were two voices coming from every bathroom stall, and the walls smelled as though they had been painted with a light coat of semen. When I used the bathroom, a preppy looking gentleman in a Georgetown University sweatshirt sidled up to the urinal next to me, dropped his pants to his ankles
and belted out the chorus of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, all the while shaking his ass in my general direction. From that encounter, and several corroborating stories, I have discerned that the bathrooms in Union Station are meant primarily for anonymous gay sex and secondarily for urinating.

You’ve been accused of having gay sex in these same Union Station bathrooms where I once peed. You say it’s not true, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You’ve also been accused of soliciting sex from a police officer in a Minnesota restroom. You say it’s not true, and who am I to say you’re lying? I mean, after all, we have a justice system, and if you were guilty, you probably would have plead guilty. I’m sure you, like me, were in these
notorious gay sex bathrooms because you had an innocent reason to be in these gay sex bathrooms.

Here’s where maybe we part ways. Say, for argument’s sake, you were in those bathrooms for PG-13 reasons. Maybe you heard somebody sing “You can’t always get what you want,” and you thought, “But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.” It would be monstrously hypocritical of you to say that the bathroom cruisers, whose secret signals you coincidentally knew, shouldn’t have the same rights as you, a more distinguished bathroom cruiser, who probably preferred Idaho’s own music to the Rolling Stones.

But even if you are just being framed, then we have to work together to ensure that this bathroom-banging stops. Maybe if there were a socially acceptable way for gays to live as committed couples, sort of the way that you and your wife do. Short of that, I propose that you and me join forces and keep a 24 hour watch on the Union Station bathrooms with a video camera just to ensure no funny stuff happens.

The Keith to your Mick,
Gov’t M

During the critical discussion of Mr. Larry Craig, Idaho’s openly gay Senator, last night on Larry King Lies, King zinged faggot sexpert Dr. Drew with one of Chris Matthews’ patented “hardball” questions (and in a sign of the times, doesn’t that sound a little gay itself? Where’s that Islamofascist from Nightline when you need him?). The exchange follows, direct from the transcript:

KING: Dr. Pinsky, why men’s rooms?

PINSKY: (laughs) Why men’s rooms?

KING: Is that because it’s a safe kind of cover?

PINSKY: Yes, it’s an anonymous behavior. There’s a ritual element to it. I mean they tend to be public spaces where people can sort of hide away and sometimes can be quiet. I mean parks are sort of the characteristic place for it. I don’t know about airports. I wasn’t aware that airports were a very commonplace (INAUDIBLE) because there’s plenty of traffic.

So, yes, now not even the bathroom is safe. No longer is my shitastic throne a fortress of solitude.

No, now these faggots have infiltrated even this bastion of pussyfucking and I can no longer poop in peace, let alone hold my penis in my right hand and stare at boogers on the wall above the urinal without thinking, “What’s that queer to my left looking at? Why does he keep tapping his fairy feet like that?”

What is the world cumming to? When will these liberals stop? They disgust me with their semen swapping and their “I don’t care if I burn in hell attitude.”

Butt here’s The Donkey Punch:

Liberals can rejoice in this debacle of hypocrisy all they like but they’ll just cum out as cruel and unusual.

Treat this like it is: a known fact. Republicans make good faggots, too. Given the way they insist on dressing, obviously a good percentage of them must be a little light in the loafers. You can’t put that many douchebags in dock shoes and not expect any number of them to occassion the airport glory hole.

And if it’s a known fact then it’s like, oh, gravity. We don’t sit around marveling at gravity, do we?

We don’t waste precious time discussing gravity instead of subject of more gravitas, like Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt or, hmm, that insane war in Iraq.

So please, Liberals, get off your sloganeering ass and say something that means… something.

And let the queers of all parties party like queers who fear no evil. Otherwise, you liberals will burn in hell right fucking next to them.

If you’re not doomed to it already. You shitheads. (I mean you, Carville.)

If you don’t remember, Bertha was the 62-year-old long-time nanny in the home of Mr. Marvin Bush, one of our esteemed nation’s three First Brothers. She was by all accounts sweet and loved by all.

Then one fateful night nearly four years ago as she stood in Marvin’s driveway, poor Bertha was struck by an unoccupied vehicle that had somehow slipped into gear and was slowly rolled to her obviously straight-forward death.

There is, of course, plenty to read about Ms. Champagne were you to scour all the bullshit left-wing America-haters have seeded across the Google, but I’ll just send you to those liberal assholes over at the WaPo.

I guess maybe it’s just important to remember those that pass and I guess also it’s easy to be glib with the passing. So, in this spirit of, oh this momentary jaunt into the void of feeling, let me lament:

The brave police officers who fall in the line of duty while protecting the leader of the free world, both the one today in New Mexico and the one last November in Honolulu. (It hardly needs mentioning that those shits at Democratic Underground are rejoicing.)

Arizona Senator Rick Renzi — Victim of that liberal witch hunt known as politics as usual, Sen. Renzi is guilty of nothing more than being a fine American crafted from the very mold of all such fine Americans as who have ever represented this the greatest nation on Earth. But when those fucks at the FBI raided his business, well, a good white man can only stand so much.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig — He is guilty only of having taken a shit, and in the process tapping his feet, playing footsie, reaching under a public bathroom stall divider for a phantom piece of paper and, yes, making his poop disappear. I mean, really, is this Salem all over again? Do we really have to burn this man alive like some sort of faggot because he has startling unseen powers?

And of course, Alberto Gonzales… our dearly departed Attorney General, one of President Bush’s last Texan carpetbaggers and “America’s #1 Anchor Baby.” He was run out of town for what? Defending America? Loving our rights? Not remembering every goddamn thing that ever happened in his life? His good name wasn’t dragged through the mud, it was covered in a Ted Kennedy-sized pile of shit and as we all know, Liberal shit doesn’t just vanish like the feces of true defenders of this country.

But you see, friendship is also about setting your friends straight. So it is that I find amusement in the odd defense B the Opponent’s friends keep trumping up. Like, this one, for example, from those douchebags that won’t go away:

Quote Of The Day

I loved this gem from former Lt. Governor Steve Beshear (D) in today’s Middlesboro Daily News:

“I’m running against an incumbent so desperate to keep his job, he’s willing to say anything to keep it,” Beshear said. “Well, for every lie they tell about us, we’ll tell the truth about them. And the truth about them is much worse than any lies they can tell about us.”

Amen.

I mean, really? What’s the point here? This is the sort of shit people want to read on a blog? An inane quote from a fucking Dittohead?

And really, B, what’s the fucking lie? That your economic plan for the state you wish to govern is based exclusively on gambling? Or that you and all your friends have promised the moon, a brighter tomorrow and health insurance on that phantom concept?

That’s not how you build an economy. And to point it out isn’t a lie.

So really, what’s the gem here? And what do you do when the lie they told about you turns out to be the truth? What will you do then?

And that is today’s Donkey Punch.