[Posted by Karl]

As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sockpuppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply.

Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself.

Sockpuppet comments about the Republican primary race are strictly prohibited. If you wish to use sockpuppets for that purpose, confine your comments to this thread. Same goes for any discussion that is not funny where people want to get angry at each other. Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged.

And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny.

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Film Actors’ Guild president Alec Baldwin has never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the drawer.  On Victims of Communism Day, Baldwin told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell of Republicans’ political woes:

Well, you know, things for these guys aren’t going that well. You know the, the economy may stumble. It probably won’t stumble that badly between now and the election. For those people who look at these very handy benchmarks like the Dow, the Dow is still staying pretty well above 13,000. Which that kind of crowd of Romney’s really, really goes for. ***

And here’s Alec talking to GQ in a new interview:

GQ: Yesterday you were speaking about how Mitt Romney is out of touch with the American people. If getting pizza with firemen isn’t the right way to remedy that, what’s a more appropriate food to show that you’re down with regular people?

Alec Baldwin: I think right now, and I know this is a very glib thing to say, but I think right now it would be to take a book full of food stamps and go buy whatever meals you can with a food stamp provision on a weekly basis. Because although welfare has been cut, as we all know from a lot of reportage over the last several months that food stamp use has soared. I think the most American thing you can do today is go stand in line and see what your weekly allotment of food stamps will buy you.

He thinks he’s being cute, but when Alec Baldwin joins Newt Gingrich in calling Barack Obama the “food stamp president,” he may want to rethink the notion that the GOP is running scared.

–Karl

If her daughter wants to look this good, it’s going to have be her own decision:

(more…)

The Chinese dissident and opponent of forced abortion will be allowed to stay in the U.S. — perhaps not permanently, but at least past the 2012 elections (which is the important thing for Obama). In reporting the news, Ed Morrissey lists the Obama administration’s mistakes in handling this situation:

Thus ends, one presumes, the shockingly inept performance from the State Department and the Obama administration in handling the Chen matter. The State Department all but pushed Chen out of the US embassy in Beijing, reneged on a promise to accompany him to a hospital, and then blamed Chen for the miscommunication. They let themselves be pushed around by Beijing, which miscalculated exactly how the rest of the world would react to their heavy-handed treatment of the anti-One Child Policy dissident, but that doesn’t let the White House off the hook for its callous abandonment of a democracy activist.

We are in the best, and most principled, of hands.

Alternate post title: Frivolous Lawsuit of the Day 2:

When she plucked a winning lottery ticket out of the trash, Sharon Jones’ luck changed instantly. The $1 million prize let her pay off debts, give thousands of dollars to her children and buy a gleaming new pickup truck.

But now her jackpot is in jeopardy. A judge ruled this week that the money belongs to another woman, who says she threw the ticket away after a lottery machine incorrectly told her it was a loser. The Arkansas Lottery Commission insists there are no problems with its equipment.

A discarded lottery ticket is at the center of a million dollar dispute in Arkansas. A woman who found the ticket in the trash received the prize from the state lottery commission, but a judge says the ticket belongs to the woman who bought it.

The winner in the lawsuit says she threw away the ticket after an electronic scanner told her she had lost:

Sharon Jones claimed the $1 million prize last July, turning in a scratch-off “Diamond Dazzler” ticket that the other woman, Sharon Duncan, said she purchased earlier at the Super 1 Stop convenience store in Beebe, about 35 miles northeast of Little Rock.

Duncan told a judge she discarded the ticket after an electronic scanner told her it was “not a winner.”

“And then the next thing you know, 10 months later, you’re fighting for something that was trash,” William Jones said.

It’s not clear how Duncan proves she bought the ticket, especially in light of this:

White County Judge Thomas Hughes concluded that Duncan bought the winning ticket, even though lottery records and store security video didn’t synch up to the precise timing of the purchase. He ruled that Duncan never abandoned her right to claim the winnings.

“The $1 million was never found money,” the judge said Tuesday.

My favorite part of the story isn’t in the linked article, but I know I saw it the other day and just can’t find the link: the store owner also sued for ownership of the ticket.

Hey, why not?

If this doesn’t provoke a lively debate then I have no idea what could.