• More phases, please.
• Whew, it’s lucky the Democrats control the Senate.
• South Carolina out crazies Arizona.
• Damn it feels good to be a bankster.
• Good times for our Galtian Overlords.

Michele Bachman surges in poll of Republican primary voters, morons.

Ana Popovic — How’d You Learn To Shake It Like That, live at Trasimeno Lake, Perugia, Italy, on July 25, 2009.

I have family in Tennessee. Tennessee is home to lots that is good about America: barbecue, blues, jazz, Elvis, the St. Jude Memorial Research Center/Children’s Hospital, not to mention some gorgeous scenery and important history. But gods have mercy on us, they are crazy there. And it is just getting worse. …

Surely we must be in some kind of parallel mirror universe where everything is backwards and nothing makes any sense.

We hold the fate of global ecosystems in our hands. It is solely up to the decisions of our species whether mass extinctions occur and the planet becomes uninhabitable by modern societies. Will this report join the growing body that have been largely ignored in the past? This report has received more attention in the corporate media than most reports of similar importance. That’s a good thing. But it means little if policymakers continue to drag their feet while enjoying their access to power.

The fact that the Pentagon is handing out “imminent danger” pay to troops working in Libya suggests that “hostilities” are taking place.

Tim DeChristopher placed fake bids in a public land auction to disrupt drilling by energy companies. He has been convicted on two felony charges and now could face a number of years in prison.

In the interview, DeChristopher recounts how he disrupted a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas auction at the end of 2008 that the Bush Administration was holding as a “parting gift to the oil and gas industry.” DeChristopher registered as a bidder and wound up outbidding most of the companies’ bidders that were present.

“It was a bust.”

That’s what Guilford County register of deeds Jeff Thigpen told me about his visit to the White House last Friday. Many were intrigued by the surprise announcement that Thigpen would be part of a reception and policy briefing some of the nation’s brightest young legislators. He has been at the forefront among registers of deeds of the foreclosure fraud crisis, using the power of his office to document forgeries and other abuses by banks seeking to upend the land title recording system that has prevailed in America for centuries. There was a hope that this White House meeting would offer a chance for Thigpen to build on his success, and get the ear of top policymakers about the extent of the fraud.

It didn’t pan out.

With President Obama planning to keep tens of thousand of American troops in Afghanistan for several more years, this growing desire to bring all the troops home could quickly become a serious political liability for Obama in 2012.