If you don't know Grayson, don't be embarrassed: he's a Freshman Representative from Florida, the land that time forgot. But that won't impede his national appeal among the left set: Grayson's been gaining ground as the Democratic party's newest sharp-tongued trash talker.

Grayson charmed last month when, on the floor, he said Republican health care plan rewards timely death, "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." Then, after the GOP got their panties in a twist and called for an apology, Grayson stuck it to them good: "I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."

The very next day, seizing the moment, Grayson told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Republicans who oppose health care reform are "foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals." And that sensational hard line was out in full force yesterday when Grayson took to the floor to blast the GOP's obstructionist posturing:

[The American people] understand that if Barack Obama was somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation... In fact, they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch they would try and ban bacon. But that's not what America wants.

It's all very cute, yes, but as entertaining and, perhaps, true as Grayson's remarks, they may also backfire. In an article on how liberals call Grayson a "hero," CNN notes that neither Nancy Pelosi nor the White House would comment on Grayson's comments, nor the GOP's repeated calls for apology.

If he continues in this vein, Grayson may become too outrageous and too high on his inflammatory rhetoric and end up burning bridges in his own party. Regardless, if the Republican's equally vocal Joe Wilson's any indication, all this wonderful sensationalism will be a boon for fundraising. And that's what's most important here, isn't it?

The waterworks tweaked out a few mists at a press conference this afternoon, when Pelosi was discussing the pervasive, volatile anger that has infected our nation. It's all so familiar!

I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.

Of course it's a big deal when politicians cry — especially when it's a girly-girl talking about gay San Francisco! — and it wasn't long before Pelosi's arch-nemesis, Rush Limbaugh piped up and called the display nothing more than "tears of a crown." "You know that's fake because you can't cry when you have botox all over your face." Some say she's only exasperating exacerbating the problem, like Drudge, whose headline highlights that she's warning us of political violence. So, now people are angry at her weepy anger.

One self-styled citizen "commentator" over at ABC News called her a "witch who should disappear." Another confessed his — or her? — dream: "I wish the the headline read: Nancy Pelosi chokes to death." The people miss the point: chill the fuck out. Never mind, though, because it's just Nancy Pelosi. She's a politician who has dedicated her whole life to her constituents and must be evil. Hogwash.

But, if some people don't think she's serious, let's look toward Hollywood. It's there, where the real heroes reside, that a man tried to attack Ryan Seacrest. And the guy had a knife on his person. And it went down in a Children's Hospital parking lot! Seacrest is fine.

Worried fans, however, are distraught. "Thank God nothing happened! Lock that suspect up for good," reads one comment. Another? "Thank God for security when you need 'em." And that's the real point in all of this: the national insanity endangers our celebrities!!

Don't you see, Rush and company? Even celebrities aren't immune! This is some real, real shit, people. Panic. Now.

Or, that's what Pelosi should have said.

Hedrick gained a bit of notoriety after yelling at Congressman Brian Baird for describing the protesters as the aforementioned "brown shirts." He then reminded everyone about how the Nazis took control of Germany's industries — just like the Democrats!

Well, it didn't take too long for Fox News to bring him on, and tonight, while talking with Hannity, Hedrick used the opportunity to go all out and suggest that politicians "better be careful about that conversation because they might find that the swastika is on their own arm."

Because that's how it happens: one day you just wake up with a swastika. Didn't you read The Wave? Where's Barney Frank when you need him?

The House has backed off its attempt to make the Pentagon buy a whole bunch of new jets with which to ferry members of Congress around the country. As is customary with defense spending bills, members had tried to lard the budget with a bunch of spending that the Pentagon didn't actually ask for: In this instance, the Pentagon asked for one new Gulfstream and three new Boeing jets at a cost of $220 million, which the House tried to double to eight planes for half a billion dollars.

The reason, according to the Wall Street Journal, was that the Pentagon-maintained fleet that lawmakers currently use to fly around on official business are "expensive to operate and maintain" (read: "old and smell like a municipal bus").

But after a whole bunch of people pointed out that we don't have any money, and that federal dollars spent on private jets are more properly channeled through bailout funds to General Motors and Citibank, Pelosi and Rep. Jack Murtha decided to settle for a lousy four new planes.

Pelosi should have known better than to try to upgrade the congressional fleet—she's been attacked (unfairly) in the past for requiring a large private jet to fly her back and forth to her district. Whether the new planes are a good idea or not, the optics are terrible and they should be able to live with just the four brand new jets.

Geez, where to even begin with this? Glenn Beck is so goddamned exhausting — Okay, so here's Beck being Beck, just being a big, goofy ass, pretending that he's hanging out at Nancy Pelosi's liberal, elitist wine vineyard, and near the end of the clip he "jokes" that he's poisoned Pelosi's wine. Now, Nancy Pelosi is one of the more unsympathetic characters in the history of American politics, a Bogey Woman for the right and an endlessly frustrating congressional leader for the left. You rarely meet anyone who loves Nancy Pelosi. In fact, she's almost universally disliked by everyone who follows politics, which is beyond weird when you actually stop to think about it.

Now with all of that said, Beck's joking on-air to his audience of angry simpletons about poisoning the less-than-endearing Pelosi is mildly infuriating. Sometimes you watch Beck and you just can't believe what you're seeing and hearing, like you're living in the middle of a bad dream directed by Mike Judge, causing you to just drop your head, take a deep breath in order to summon some semblance of serenity, and think hard about moving to an island or joining the Peace Corps, anything to distance yourself far, far away from all of the idiot noise.

Goldberg's furious anger was set off by Beck's quackery-laden version of events, as told to his radio audience, after he ran into Goldberg and Barbara Walters on an Amtrak train to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Beck, in the typical charlatan on steroids fashion that is his hallmark, told his audience that Amtrak had reserved seating for Walters, Goldberg and 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft, when it's normally their policy not to reserve seats for anyone (You know corporate America—-always sucking the assholes of the liberal media!). So this set off the ladies of The View, who claimed that no such thing had happened, and Beck just sat their sheepishly half-apologizing, claiming that he "misspoke" ala Nancy Pelosi, looking every bit like a bratty child who'd been sent to the principal's office for firing spitballs at a handicapped kid. And all the while Elisabeth Hasselbeck didn't say a fucking word (I'm convinced that she may actually be undergoing an ideological conversion right now, but I could be wrong).

Watch this clip, if only so you can fully comprehend just how disgustingly reptilian Glenn Beck is.

In what was largely a rather chummy two-part interview with Jon Stewart, Gingrich, perhaps the only modern Republican leader who regularly exhibits a capacity for rational, original thought, usually delivered eloquently and in complete sentences, which at the very least makes him one of the few party leaders who doesn't incite genital-punching when he speaks, expressed outrage at Pelosi's recent "utterly irrational" behavior in regards to her attacks on the CIA, saying that she needed to prove her allegations or step down from her position of Speaker of the House, something Gingrich knows a lot about, himself having resigned the post in disgrace in 1999. In her defense he did mention, however, that he is not in favor of "enhanced interrogations" to be used to squeeze the truth out of her. Zing!

Newt Gingrich on the Daily Show [Daily Show]

At a news conference in which she appeared—as she always does, every time she speaks—to be lying, Pelosi said that the CIA briefed her in February 2002 about waterboarding and other torture techniques being contemplated by the CIA, but was specifically told that waterboarding was not being used. In fact, by that time, Zubaydah had already been waterboarded 83 times.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The press conference is part of Pelosi's pushback against Republican attacks that she and other Democrats knew that the CIA was waterboarding Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed while it was happening and stayed silent, only to look aghast at the practice now. They've been citing a CIA timeline [pdf] of congressional briefings on the torture program that lists Pelosi's February 2002 briefing and says it included the "use of [torture] on Zubaydah and a description of the particular...techniques that had been employed."

Pelosi adamantly insisted that while the CIA told her that it thought waterboarding was legal, her briefers said it was not being employed. She found out several months later, through a staffer, that then-intelligence committee ranking member Jane Harman was told about the waterboarding and wrote a letter to the CIA questioning its legality. The recent release of the CIA's briefing timeline, Pelosi said, was a "diversionary tactic to take the spotlight off of those who conceived and developed and implemented these policies."

In other words, the CIA lied to me in 2002, and they're lying to you now. Pelosi's acknowledgement that she had learned second-hand of Harman's briefing on waterboarding in February 2003 only narrowly jibes with her previous statement that "we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." It depends on who "we" is—if she was talking about the congressional leadership, then she gets a pass. If she's talking about any members of Congress at all, including Harman—who was prevented by classification laws from sharing the information with any other members—then she was lying and knew it.

Either way, her statement today practically ensures, as Talking Points Memo points out, that some sort of truth commission or robust congressional investigation will get to the bottom of it. Pelosi supports a commission, and Obama opposes one. The fact that she's just dug in her heels and accused the CIA—both its Bush-era incarnation and the current one—of lying strengthens her position. It will be tough and messy for Obama to leave this to Congress to sort out.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't quite close the smoking lounges herself, her House Administration Committee did, but Congressional Quarterly says the San Francisco Democrat had it out for smokers (tobacco; weed is fine) for a long time:

Shortly after becoming Speaker in January 2007, Pelosi banned smoking in the ornate Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor. House members must gather outside on a balcony if they want to light up during floor votes.

Now up for closure are smoking rooms adjoining cafeterias in two office buildings, the "last major indoor refuges on the House side of the Capitol complex," writes CQ. (Except, presumably, for members' own offices, which remain exempt from the smoking ban.)

Smoking also just became verboten in DC restaurants and bars. So basically if a Congressional rep wants to have a smoke and maybe a bite or drink without pissing off his office staff, he has to somehow get into Barack Obama's house. Come to think of it, that does highlight a certain genius behind the plan: it makes a White House invitation all the more difficult to turn down.

Rahm Emanuel is no doubt buying Marlboros (R) and American Spirits (D) by the carton. (Republican crossover votes should totally get an extra pack.)

See, Nancy Pelosi posted a weird video of cats in her House office, and "analysts say" (that is the hilariously vague formulation the Telegraph uses) Pelosi broke YouTube, or something.

Here is more wonderful journalism-talk, from the headline:

YouTube, the internet hosting site, is being flooded with cringe worthy video messages from US politicians, it has been claimed.

The Telegraph doesn't really understand how the internet works, it has been claimed.

But seriously, we agree with them 100%. Nancy Pelosi needs to get off the YouTubes right away, before her clowning around takes away any more server space and precious attention from important videos like this:

(Congressional YouTube videos are really the worst thing, but you know so is YouTube, basically, except for this.)

Notable San Franciscan politician Nancy Pelosi has written a letter to the Justice Dept. asking them to ease antitrust laws so the dying San Francisco Chronicle might be able to merge or consolidate with something somewhere, and not die. This is in fact a fair request, but NANCY PELOSI LIBERAL MEDIA FRIENDS OH SURE, etc.


Whattayaknow, it's an interview with Fox News journalist Courtney Friel. Let's make up our own questions and answers. Courtney, how'd you get your job? "Well...I went on a date with Roger Ailes...OMG- I'm joking!!" Courtney, do you regret posing for Maxim and FHM? "I'm lucky I even had the opportunity to be in those magazines...which only came about as publicity for the show I was hosting at the time- the 'World Poker Tour.'" Wait, those are the real questions and answers.


A tipster tells us that Interview magazine is telling freelancers it can't pay them right about now, because they just don't have the cash. If you know more, email us.


The Writers Guild of America, West, which represents Hollywood screenwriters, is laying off 20 people by the end of the month. They have a $2 million budget gap and they had that writer's strike thing to deal with a while back and all the networks really aren't shelling out as much for writing as they used to, which adds up to 20 layoffs.

Recently departed Time managing editor Jim Kelly, the second-most famous "Jim Kelly" in New York state, tells John Koblin that ""Paid content in some fashion is just inevitable," then admits that the journalism business is so screwed up right now he's happy to just chill at home and read books and go to the movies. Smart man.

Andre Reed is open!

• Oh hey libtards, Page Six is wondering if you're happy you all blacklisted Ron Silver? Year-old (secondhand?) quote from the late actor: "After I made that speech for President George W. Bush at the Republican Convention here in Manhattan [in 2004], Holly wood and Broadway dried up on me." It's the same blacklist that destroyed the careers of obscure Republican actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood. [P6]
• Did the world's weirdest dance party involve Chelsea Clinton, Ted Danson and a J. Crew executive partying at Elephant "until the wee hours," or Nancy Pelosi and her husband singing "Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sun Shine In" from Hair, in the aisles of a Broadway theater?
  
• Rihanna would like to remake The Bodyguard, the 1992 movie starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. Then we can all discuss the creepy parallels between the two singers' lives. [Gatecrasher]
• John Roberts and Kyra Phillips of CNN are maybe getting it on. In Canada, because they're kinky like that. [P6]
• DJ AM, who survived a plane crash last year with former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, is suing Learjet and others for tens of millions of dollars. [People]
  
• Page Six just called Jon Stewart's brother, who works at the NYSE, a big Wall Street suck-up. This should end well. [Post]
• Lindsay Lohan crashed her car and hid from the cops at Jack Nicholson's house Friday night because there was a warrant out for her arrest. But then by Monday she was openly showing up at court-ordered DUI class. Like she needs lessons.
  
• Before Michael Jackson can tour again, he has to obsessive-compulsively rearrange his face for good luck. [Sun]

Her sense of timing was uncanny. At every key moment in Obama's speech, Pop-Up Pelosi hastened to be the first to give him a standing ovation — before he even finished his sentence. Note how usually-grinning VP Joe Biden starts to grimace as Pelosi's eagerness to jump up and applaud bullies him into rising from his seat one more time. It's understandable that Pelosi would want the television audience to remember her as Obama's most ardent supporter. When she steps out of Obama's radiance, people mostly think about her corrupt business dealings, her crazy cat videos, and her ne'er-do-well son.

Sully, who glided a US Airways jet into the Hudson and saved the lives of all 155 people on board, told a Congressional panel today that airline pay cuts were driving the best pilots out of the industry, Bloomberg reports.

US Airways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002 and exited court protection in 2003. It filed for bankruptcy a second time in September 2004, and emerged in September 2005 through its merger with America West Holdings Corp....

"My pay has been cut 40 percent," Sullenberger said. "My pension, like most airline pensions, has been terminated and replaced by a PBGC guarantee worth only pennies on the dollar."

The solution, obviously, is a bailout for airline pilots like Sullenberger. We knew he'd never be satisfied with Broadway tickets and softball interviews with student journalists. He's having a photo op with deliciously corrupt House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and then he's attending President Barack Obama's big speech tonight.

(Photo by Getty Images)

The hug and kiss they exchanged at last year's Democratic National Convention could haunt Pelosi, a Bay Area millionaire who more or less bought her way into office and whose shady fundraising activities, including paying her husband with political action committee funds, have repeatedly drawn rebukes.

Stanford's brokerage firm, Stanford Financial, marketed CDs offering rates well above the market which, SEC investigators allege, he secretly plowed into risky real estate and private equity deals instead of the safe investments he promised. The FBI had also been investigating him for possible investment in money laundering for Mexican drug cartels.

It only makes sense that Stanford, with so much to hide, would seek safety in the arms of a powerful politician who has controlled the House of Representatives since the Democrats regained the majority in 2006. Before Pelosi was in power, Stanford cozied up to then-Speaker Tom DeLay, flying the Texas congressman on his private jet 16 times. Money and power always find each other attractive. We're just not sure who came away from this embrace more tainted.

(Video stills via ABC News)

This is what your congress is up to, fyi. Cat-vlogging and RickRolling.

• Age: 39. Marital status: Single, though we hear Bulick may be his live-in girlfriend. Residence: San Francisco's Marina district.
• Last year, Men's Vogue called him the "rising prince" of a "new political dynasty." He's so green it hurts, refusing to wash his clothes during peak hours of energy use. He also rides San Francisco's electric Muni buses, which predisposes us to like him.
• Pelosi is president of San Francisco's Commission on the Environment, a powerless advisory group. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is his cousin, and they're supposedly good buds. But Pelosi was appointed by Newsom's predecessor, Willie Brown.
• Pelosi fling Nicole Bulick isn't what you'd call a professional model; she donned lacey underclothes in her part-time, contract position as "Arbiter of Zeitgeist" for Moxsie, a San Francisco online-fashion startup. Bizarrely, when Valleywag reported on Bulick's brief modeling career and mentioned her relationship with Pelosi, she sent us a threatening email claiming that she neither worked for Moxsie nor dated Pelosi. In fact, their relationship is well-known and she's frequently found on his arm at San Francisco society events.
• Pelosi earned three degrees at Georgetown University — which kept him conveniently close to mom, who was first elected to Congress in 1987. Georgetown received hundreds and his thousands of dollars from his mom and dad. (Paul Pelosi, Sr. is a wealthy real-estate investor who's been involved in some questionable deals.)
• His LinkedIn profile is a bit incomplete. It discusses his investment-banking work for Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. And it mentions his job at Countrywide, for example, where he worked as a loan officer — at one of the mortgage companies most scrutinized for its role in the housing bubble and ensuing collapse of Wall Street.
• But it pointedly omits his $180,000 a year job as a senior vice president at InfoUSA, a marketer of consumer databases, which he started less than one month after his mother became House Speaker, while simultaneously holding his job at Countrywide. InfoUSA CEO Vinod Gupta also paid Bill Clinton millions of dollars as a consultant, so many suspected Pelosi's job was an attempt to win influence with Nancy Pelosi. Paul Pelosi's explanation: He got to know Gupta as a client for whom he refinanced a house, and his experience as an investment banker was useful in evaluating acquisitions.
• InfoUSA is best known for peddling lists of seniors with gambling addictions and serious diseases like Alzheimer's or cancer to opportunistic telemarketers. Gupta resigned as InfoUSA's CEO in July 2008. Pelosi is not listed on the company's investor-relations website as an officer of the company.
• Which raises the question: What was a former investment banker doing working as a mortgage loan officer, anyway?
• Pelosi is currently working as an advisor to NASA on environmental issues, and he's joined the board of Blue Earth Solutions, a recycling outfit. So basically, he dabbles in a lot of green work, but isn't holding down anything resembling a full-time job at the moment, as far as we can tell.
• Know more about Pelosi? Tip us off.

(Photo of Pelosi via Men's Vogue; photo of Pelosi and Bulick by Drew Altizer via SFLuxe)