The Nightowl Newswrap

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 16 March 2012 01:00:00 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

By @BG & @YD

We knew as soon as we saw the headline that it was cherrypicked, we just didn't have time to comb through the report to find what they did to get their everybody-freak-out!!! numbers. Fortunately, while we were stalling, Jonathan Cohn was explaining what sort of dishonest nonsense they were peddling.

In the end, it came down to saving Schmidt As the doomsday clock to election day 2008 counted down in McCain headquarters, campaign advisers started scrambling to deflect blame for the disaster that was about to come down on their heads, thanks in part to the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate, away from Steve Schmidt. Even though he was the architect of the biggest steaming pile of FAIL since Mike Dukakis got in that tank.

So Rmoney has struck a secret deal with Ron Paul, then? Since he went to the trouble to deny that there is a secret deal in place, we will consider it safe to assume that the opposite of what he says is true.

Don't tell McCain that the American people aren't with him on bombing Syria. In fact, only one in four think the United States has any obligation to intervene to try and stop Assad from murdering everyone in Homs and Hama.

Let's make sure we understand this...The Komen Foundation, an organization that billed itself as of women, for women and by women crawled in bed with the most anti-woman organization of them all, the US Council of Bishops, and let the old bastards manipulate them into cutting funding to Planned Parenthood. We wonder if they look back over the last couple of months of what we are calling the Slut Uprisings and wonder if they wish they had just left well enough alone?

You know how much John McCain loves the military and bombing brown people? That's how much he hates green energy, even though the military loves it, and is driving expenditures and development in the green tech sector. This represents a conundrum for the original Bomber Boy, who is yammering to anyone who will listen that the Navy's biofuel spending will amount to "another Solyndra."

Bye, Bye Blago Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevitch reported to federal prison in Englewood, Colorado on Thursday to start serving a fourteen year sentence after he was convicted of trying to sell President Obama's former Senate seat.

Fighting's not working, talking's not working. Time to bug out. "The Afghan Taliban have announced the suspension of all negotiations with the United States, talks that had been seeking an end to the decade-long war in Afghanistan. "The Islamic Emirate has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the Americans clarify their stance on the issues concerned and until they show willingness in carrying out their promises instead of wasting time," the armed group said in a statement on Thursday. The statement said the US had continued to change the terms of the negotiations and had presented a "list of conditions" in their latest meeting that was in contradiction to earlier arrangements."

We have no idea what this means, but it's interesting that this is news rather than a secret. "Bo Xilai, a high-profile contender for the top leadership of China, has been removed from his post as the Communist Party leader of a major southwestern city, potentially ending the rise of a prominent conservative voice in the country. Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang will replace Bo as the party chief in Chongqing and will also keep his vice premier portfolio, state news agency Xinhua said in a brief report on Thursday. Initial reports did not say if Bo would retain his seat in the party's 25-member Politburo. Bo was criticised by Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, in a press conference on Wednesday over a February 6 incident in which Chongqing's police chief, Wang Lijun, briefly sought refuge in a US consulate. Chinese media speculated that Wang, who also held the position of vice mayor, had evidence of corruption and was seeking political asylum."

Anti-military serial killer in France. "A gunman riding a scooter has shot dead two soldiers and seriously wounded another in the southwestern French city of Montauban. Officials said the gunman, wearing a helmet with visor, got down from the scooter, fired on the three uniformed soldiers on a street near shops and a bank branch, then got back on and drove off at speed. The attack followed a similar shooting on Sunday in the nearby city of Toulouse when an off-duty soldier was shot dead by an assailant on a motorcycle."

And finally...

We could have told them that. "Male fruit flies that have been rejected by females drink significantly more alcohol than those that have mated freely, scientists say. In an article in Science, researchers suggest that alcohol stimulates the flies' brains as a "reward" in a similar way to sexual conquest. The work points to a brain chemical called neuropeptide F, which seems to be regulated by the flies' behaviour. Human brains have a similar chemical, which may react in a similar way. The connection between alcohol and this chemical, which in humans is known as neuropeptide Y, has already been noted in studies involving hard-drinking mice. The new work explores the link between such reward-seeking and the study of social interactions, said the lead author of the report Galit Shohat-Ophir, now of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, US. "It is thought that reward systems evolved to reinforce behaviours that are important for the survival of both individuals and species, like food consumption and mating," Dr Shohat-Ophir told BBC News. "Drugs of abuse kind of hijack the same neural pathways used by natural rewards, so we wanted to use alcohol - which is an extreme example of a compound that can affect the reward system - to get into the mechanism of what makes social interaction rewarding for animals." Working in the laboratory of Ulrike Heberlein at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr Shohat-Ophir and colleagues subjected a number of flies to a wide variety of fates."