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The laws and policies of the legislature of the United States of America are now effectively on eBay, for sale to the highest bidder. Are you a Wall Street boss who wants to party like it's 2007? Are you a Big Coal baron who wants to burn, baby, burn? Are you an insurance company that wants to be able to kick sick people off your rolls? Meet John Boehner, the most powerful Republican and soon-to-be Speaker of the House. But -- of course! -- you already have. Here's an example of how you have worked together. In 1995, the House was going to finally repeal subsidies for growing tobacco, because an addictive cancer-causing drug didn't seem like the most deserving recipient of taxpayers' cash -- until Boehner walked the floor of the House handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to his fellow elected representatives. They changed their minds. The subsidy stayed. Explaining his check-dispensing, Boehner says: "It's gone on here for a long time." So get your bids in: The House is open for business.

TWEEDLE DEE AND TWEEDLE DUMB. THEY'RE TWIN SONS OF DIFFERENT MOTHERS! A LITTLE FACT CHECKING WILL BEAR OUT THAT RONALD REGAN INHERITED A WORSE MESSFROM CARTER THAN OBAMA DID FROM BUSH.

For those of you out there who believe that the Obama Administraition had nothing to do with Andrew Breitbarts death, check this out!

Fact checking and how journalists find new ways of investigating factual content.

The candidate supported by progressives - President Obama - himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians - Muslim children by the dozens - not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents - in secret and with no checks - to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

check out the mind control drug scopolamine

This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using 50 classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald's life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.   Will Donald's feelings of disenfranchisement lead him to be persuaded by his radio's increasingly paranoid and divisive rhetoric? Or will our favorite Disney duck decide that this voice is not actually on his side after all? Watch and find out!   * Listen to Glenn Beck's response on his radio show to this remix video: YouTube via stopbeck.org - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHHByFFSh54  * Better yet check out ikat381's remix of Beck's response using Mickey Mouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjjTLVrkKA  This transformative remix work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. "Right Wing Radio Duck" by Jonathan McIntosh is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License - permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.  * Please link back to my website: http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * English captions are now working in case you're not fluent in duck-speak  * Learn about fair-use at the Center for Social Media: http://centerforsocialmedia.org * Learn about transformative works at the OTW: http://transformativeworks.org * Useful Media Matters archive of Glenn Beck clips: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Jonathan McIntosh http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  List of Cartoons used:  * Window Cleaner - 1940 * Lucky Number - 1951 * Symphony Hour - 1942 (Mickey Mouse Cartoon)  * Put-Put Troubles - 1940 * Donald's Dilemma -19

Last night, Bill Maher went off on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally for Sanity, and the resulting monologue was predictably funny and utterly brilliant. He's not completely discounting the impact of the rally-he's psyched that it had twice the attendance of Glenn Beck's. But he makes the important point that the Rally didn't: the right wing and the left wing are not separate but equal entities, taking down the false dichotomy between the two, and criticizing the Rally for even suggesting as much. "Two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments," he said. "This isn't Team Edward and Team Jacob." Awesome. Check it:

While it's not the most exciting name, it certainly speaks to the boat's size. Christened the PlanetSolar, the 101 foot by 49 foot yacht is hailed by its designers as the largest solar-powered ship in the world. Either way, we're certainly not going to argue - it's one big damn boat. The 66-ton PlanetSolar boasts a whopping 5,380 square feet of solar paneling, a 50-passenger capacity with a crew of two, and a cruising speed of 15 knots (or 17 miles per hour, comparable to the speed of an oil tanker). Built at the Knierim Yacht Club in Kiel, Germany, the PlanetSolar will embark in April on a tour that'll have it circumnavigating the world, a voyage which is expected to last 140 days and will see the ship visiting cities such as New York, Hong Kong, Marseille and Singapore. Check out more of the solar yacht in the gallery below.

As this article from Webdesigner Depot aptly puts it, "Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information." Infographics take advantage of the adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words," and the can give broader appeal to a message by tapping into the appetites of visually-oriented consumers.\n\nI find infographics particularly useful to help explain difficult or complex topics, and frequently make use of graphics applications like "mindmaps" in my own work. In fact, I wish my primary field would embrace more creative ways of conveying information to consumers and students. The legal world might be surprised to discover how much more interesting and informative the information would be.\n\nThis article contains infographics aimed primarily at web designers and those with a fairly advanced knowledge of technology. However, there are a number of infographics, such as no. 14, which I think do an excellent job of explaining how different social media outlets can be used by a business to attain different marketing goals. It takes no particular technical skill to understand the information displayed in no. 14, which is what makes it a good infographic for anyone.\n\nIf you are interested in this topic professionally, or you just want to look at some interesting graphics that convey information, check out the article. It's worth a look.

Darrell Issa is getting ready to start scrutinizing - and his first oversight meeting was just announced today - who is he going after first? This is what we were asking for in November - check it out!