That many Democratic partisans and fervent Obama admirers are vapid, unprincipled hacks willing to justify anything and everything when embraced by Obama - including exactly that which they pretended to oppose under George W Bush - has also been clear for many years. Back in February, 2008, Paul Krugman warned that Obama supporters are "dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." In May, 2009, a once-fervent Obama supporter, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, wrote a column warning that Obama was embracing many of the worst Bush/Cheney abuses and felt compelled - in the very first sentence - to explain what should be self-evident: "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House." The same month, former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith - who provided the legal authorization for the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program - went to the New Republic to celebrate that Obama was not only continuing the core Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism, but even better (from his perspective), was strengthening those policies far beyond what Bush could achieve by transforming Democrats from opponents of those policies into supporters.

And exactly as Goldsmith happily predicted, polls now show that Democrats and even self-identified progressives support policies that they once pretended to loathe now that it is Obama rather than Bush embracing them. On MSNBC, Obama aides and pundit-supporters now do their best Sarah Palin impression by mocking as weaklings and losers those who think the President should be constrained in his militarism and demonizing as anti-American anyone who questions the military (in between debating whether Obama should be elevated onto Mount Rushmore or given his own monument). A whole slew of policies that would have triggered the shrillest of progressive condemnations under Bush - waging war after Congress votes against authorizing it, the unprecedented persecution and even torturing of whistleblowers, literally re-writing FOIA to conceal evidence of torture, codifying indefinite detention on US soil - are justified or, at best, ignored.

Oops! FoxNews.com Uses Pic of Same Sex Wedding to Tout 'Traditional' Marriage

With Venker arguing for the traditional male-breadwinner, female-homemaker gender roles, the picture was actually of Stephanie Figarelle and Lela McArthur, who were the first same sex couple to be married at the top of the Empire State Building.

Figarelle was married in a black tuxedo while McArthur wore a strapless white gown with a train.

Figarelle said she hopes the couple's home state of Alaska will legalize same-sex marriage, which became legal in New York last year.

"Equality's a beautiful thing," she said. "Love is a beautiful thing. We don't have enough of it in this world."

The guy in this interview gets on my fricken nerve though.  I understand that his job was dangerous and stressful.  Let's not forget that within the military he chose to be where he was, and he has enjoyed a position of being a big man among men.  If you want a landing pad though you can't spend your whole military career only doing cool stuff and pissing away your 90 day breaks, you will have to prove that you can also provide administrative structure.  He didn't have to stay an operator, he chose that though because that is where the cool is.

He also received very generous bonus pays that most in the military never get.  I don't know what his cash bonuses were but I would guess between 20,000 and 30,000 for re-upping for deployments.  Before he went on the bin Laden raid he admittedly bought himself a more costly gift than he did his children so that he could die with some Prada sunglasses swag on.  That's sort of bull$hit and everyone knows it, you weren't going to be wearing Prada sunglasses on a raid but keep singing.

I realize he is a hero, but he chose to get out so close to his retirement it is insane. He sacrificed his healthcare and his spouses if they were married upon retirement, that would have continued until they died and his children would be covered until adulthood.

I was a little shocked at how low his base pay was, and that is what his retirment goes off of but my husband told me "DON'T, he's made huge bonuses for years and he is more connected than most people could ever hope for!"

How is it that this guy has no plan?  And how is it that it is up to this country to have a plan for him when he left service?  This is America!  He qualifies for all sorts of hiring incentives, so does his wife.  I'm not sure if he qualifies for the small business loans that we do, but I'm pretty sure he does.  That in itself is something above and beyond what civilians have right now.  IMO this guy is a horrible self centered whiner, hero or no hero.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (AP) -- The Pentagon for the first time is considering scaling back the massive buildup of drones it has overseen in the past few years, both to save money and to adapt to changing security threats and an increased focus on Asia as the Afghanistan war winds down.
...
Overall, Pentagon spending on unmanned aircraft has jumped from $284 million in 2000 to nearly $4 billion in the past fiscal year, while the number of drones owned by the Pentagon has rocketed from less than 200 in 2002 to at least 7,500 now. The bulk of those drones are small, shoulder-launched Ravens owned by the Army.
...
The analysis began before Brennan's confirmation hearings, where he was questioned sharply about the CIA's use of drones to kill terror suspects, including American citizens overseas. The CIA gets its attack drones from the Air Force fleet, but any decision to stop building them would be unlikely to have any effect on that program.
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Right now, Predator and Reaper drones that pilots fly remotely from thousands of miles away are completing 59 24-hour combat air patrols a day, mostly in Afghanistan, Pakistan and areas around Yemen and the Africa coast. The standing order is for the Air Force to increase that number of air patrols to 65 a day by May 2014, although officials say that is an arbitrary number not based on an analysis of future combat requirements.

The staffing demands for that increase have put a strain on the Air Force, as they would require nearly 1,700 drone pilots and 1,200 sensor operators. Currently there are fewer than 1,400 pilots and about 950 sensor operators. link

One of my favorite movies, 'The Darwin Awards', is about an insurance investigator who tries to profile these people before they do something dumb.  Loads of stars and damn funny.

I ran across, 'Killing Bono', which is a loosely true story about some of Paul Hewson's(Bono) classmates and their struggles to compete with U2.

'Billionaire' is a documentary about one of the DHL founders, Larry Hillblom(the H) who's plane disappeared and was he presumed dead.  He lived in the south Pacific and had an insane sex life that lead to many 'heirs' making claim to his fortune and because his plane disappeared, no DNA.  Oddest documentary I have ever seen.

The Ken Burns multiple part series about the rise of the National Park system is awesome.

Torrance police rammed their cruiser into a truck and fired shots into it because they thought it was Dorner's truck. Like the truck that police shot-up the other day, this truck was a different color and model than Dorner's.

The driver, who is shorter than Dorner and white, was not hit by the bullets, he was injured by the ramming of his truck.

I get that the police are on edge. They are not used to being the ones hunted. Still, it seems to me that the behavior of the police in this dicy situation puts the lie to the idea that civilians in a dicy situation will have anything approaching the presence of mind needed to shoot at a gunman and hit the gunman rather than any number of innocent bystanders.

Further, given that a large and intense snowstorm hit last Thursday night and Friday, right after his SUV broke and axle in Big Bear, and further that his trail went cold in the vicinity, I'd offer that there's a good chance that Dorner got caught outside and may have died from exposure.