National retailer Saks Fifth Avenue wants Salon Fifth Avenue, a longtime downtown Olympia business, to change its name and logo because they falsely imply that the salon “is affiliated with or sponsored or approved by Saks,” according to a cease-and-desist letter....

Saks Fifth Avenue is based in New York City and generated about $3 billion in net sales last year, according to its annual report. The company doesn’t operate a store in Washington, according to its website.

Salon Fifth Avenue has been based downtown for about 30 years. It was on downtown’s Fifth Avenue for years before moving to 111 Capitol Way N. McConkey bought the business after it moved and hasn’t changed the name or business cards, although her son, a graphic designer, recently created a new design for the business logo, she said...

"They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other." Pat Robertson

Was he there?

The Floating Wingnuttery has made its way to the very top of the RNC - they're seriously considering a purity test to decide who gets money and endorsements.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

The proposed resolution was signed by 10 Republican national committee members and was distributed Monday morning. They are asking for the resolution to be debated when Republicans gather for their winter meeting.

The resolution invokes Ronald Reagan, and noted that Reagan had said the Republican Party should be devoted to conservative principles but also be open to diverse views. Reagan believed, the resolution notes, “that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.”

Hence the provision calling for cutting off Republicans who agree with the party on seven of 10 items. The resolution demands that Republicans support “smaller government, smaller national deficits and lower taxes,” denial of government funding for abortion, and “victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.” It calls on candidates to oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants and repealing of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Forgive my asking, but doesn't that sound a bit...Stalinist, or something?

Gin and Tacos' review of Going Rogue. It's simply a masterpiece of snark. Here's a sample:

Following American politics for the last two decades (and teaching about it for the last six years) I often feel like our political spectacles have taken on the air of an elaborate Dadaist performance piece, with each 'Tea Party,'ť Fox News segment, and Republican Savior more egregiously blurring the lines between reality, farce, and surrealism. We watch each Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal speech fully expecting Ashton Kutcher to appear and let us in on the joke, informing America that it has in fact been punk'd and laughing uproariously at our gullibility. Our collective capacity for credulity has been strained to breaking.

Now we are faced with the daunting task of wrapping our minds around the Palin memoir Going Rogue, appearing atop a bestseller list near you. Millions of copies will be sold of a book written by someone who can't write, intended for an audience that doesn't read, about the thoughts of a person who doesn't think. God is dead.

If you are in a hurry, here is the succinct version of this review: Going Rogue is shit. It is groundbreaking in its banality and disregard for facts. If you are sentient, it will pain you to read it. Imagine watching your parents 69 one another while John Madden sits behind you and bellows out color commentary and you will have some idea of how excruciating and profoundly scarring it is to plow through each page of this wholly fictional monument to self-aggrandized mediocrity. Going Rogue is to the art of writing what the Holocaust is to the concept of a just God - the piece of disconfirming evidence so overwhelming that we are left questioning whether it can exist at all.

Go read it all. Worth every minute.

Hat tip: Sean Paul at The Agonist.

For some reason, I received not one but two registered letters from Sen. Orrin Hatch today, each containing what's called a 'Republican Strategy Ballot.'

I have no reason why they'd be sending these to me, but I'm interested in what they contain. I'll post more tonight with the grisly details.

Update: Questions as they appear on the 'ballot' after the jump.

A fucking idiot over at LolliPop Land says if soldiers were able to carry guns with live ammo on the grounds of Fort Hood, then yesterday's death toll would have been lower.

Soldiers in other countries are allowed to carry arms on base and even when they are off-duty. In Israel, for instance, soldiers are issued a rifle and then . . . it's theirs. One sees slender 18-year-old girls, traveling from base, home to the suburbs for Shabbat dinner, still slung with a massive M-16 rifle almost as big as they are. The prevelance of arms doesn't mean the country experiences the kind of random mass murders seen in the United States. It means that the few times someone has gone crazy with a gun in a city street, he was taken down fast by bystanders.

The aforementioned fucking idiot fails to realize that a soldier carrying a gun with live ammo was the reason that 12 people were killed yesterday.

Leave it to a fucking conservative idiot to presume to know more about gun safety and protocol than the goddamn US Army, and criticize those protocol as 'political correctness.'

My God, some people are just beyond fucking stupid.

My, my. The Hoffman camp is a damned paranoid bunch, ain't they?

Roy Edroso puts together the best summary of NY-23 I've seen yet. The money quote:

Rightbloggers affected to be outraged that the candidate they'd been persecuting for weeks failed to support the party they had taken over.

And every bit of it is that good. Go read.

I read a couple of interesting stories this morning, and while they may not bear any relationship to one another it's interesting to me that they both appear on the same day.

First, Taegan Goddard noted this morning that a a time-honored money maker in DC seems to be drying up.

Lobbyists this year began terminating their formal registrations with the federal government at significantly higher levels than usual, a joint study by OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

The OMB Watch-CRP study found 1,418 "deregistrations" of federally registered lobbyists during the second quarter of 2009, a marked increase for any reporting period during all of 2008 and 2009. This occurred shortly after President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13490, which created new restrictions on former lobbyists appointed to the executive branch. Guidance was then issued in March, which marks the start of the 2nd quarter reporting, that enacted a gift ban and further restricted the kind of communications lobbyists could have about stimulus and TARP funds. Via a recent blog post, the White House also announced, “it is our aspiration that federally registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions,” a practice that is common today.

And over at Newshoggers, Dave Anderson pointed out that a former Bush US Attorney resigned from her gig with no private sector job to fall back on.

The Pittsburgh Comet is passing along reasonably solid rumors that the Pittsburgh Republican establishment and more particularly, its Republican leaning law firms made it clear that there would be no work available for Ms. Buchanan.

Is the Conservative Gravy Train coming off the rails? It may be a little early to say for sure, but if lobbyists are jumping ship and a Loyal Bushie can't get a private law gig, we can at least say the gravy train's slowing down a bit. Good news.

I always considered Lamar Alexander to be among the more moderate Republicans. Turns out he's a paranoiac like the rest of them, mumbling about an 'enemies list.'

"In 1969 and during the first half of 1970, I was a wet-behind-the-ears, 29-year-old staff aide in the West Wing of the Nixon White House,'' Alexander said today. "Based upon that experience and my 40ty years since then in and out of public life, I want to make what I hope will be taken as a friendly suggestion to President Obama and his White House: don't create an enemies list.''

In 1971, Alexander recalled, Nixon adviser Chuck Colson compiled a list of "persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration." He said he thought the administration should "maximize our incumbency . . . [or] to put it more bluntly, . . . use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."

Alexander presents a list of who he percieves as Obama's 'enemies' - health care giant Humana, Fox News, Wall Street, and John Kyl (because he made noises like he'd refuse federal stimulus money and the White House called him out on it).

But what Alexander fails to consider is that Obama's White House is taking on those who stake out extreme positions, and even make shit up, to try and undermine the president's agenda - Fox News and Kyl in particular. If Kyl decides to grandstand and tell his constituents that he's going to refuse the stimulus money, isn't it fair play to call him out and put him on the spot for it? If Glenn Beck goes on Fox' air and calls Obama a racist, does it not make sense to view Fox as an opponent?

Nixon, by contrast, laid out his enemies list out of paranoia and spite. Nixon's petty mindset is the stuff of legend, and he planned to actively use the workings of the government - the IRS in particular - as a club against his enemies. Big difference.

It says a lot that Republicans like Alexander reach for the worst villian they can find to demonize Obama - and name a Republican. I think there's a little projection going on here.

Update: Steve Benen has more.

Deep in the recesses of my mind, I knew I had vague reminiscences of a brief comedic skit that summed up the position of today's GOP. Finally, it dawned on me, and I'm delighted to share it with you all now. For indeed, it is the Republicans who are truly the Marxists:

Far be it from me to judge anyone, but I'll say this - if this woman was a Democrat, Beck and Hannity would be condemning her on a daily basis.

A lot of small business owners run for the Legislature, but one New Jersey candidate can tout a unique entrepreneurial experience: hosting sex-toy parties.

Stepfanie Velez-Gentry is the owner of Nookie Parties LLC. She makes a living organizing parties for women and couples where she sells sex toys, lotions, games, lingerie and other erotic items.

"It's kind of like a Tupperware party, but with adult novelties,'' the 29-year-old mother of two explained.

Or, as her Web site puts it, "For parties you will always remember and nights you will never forget.''

"We enhance people's romances and make people happy. It's wonderful,'' she said. "It makes the moms and dads happy, and then everyone is happy.''

Happy, happy, happy. Imagine is she were a Democrat - she'd be the poster girl for failed morals.

(Hat tip to my wife.)

Wingnuts threaten an NFL Boycott out of butt-hurt solidarity with Pigboy.

Ain't they cute??

So Limbaugh is out of the running on this bid to buy into the St. Louis Rams. But it wasn't like he was going to own the team itself--here's the statement from Dave Checketts, the head of the group bidding to buy the Rams:

Rush was to be a limited partner – as such, he would have had no say in the direction of the club or in any decisions regarding personnel or operations. This was a role he enthusiastically embraced.

However, it has become clear that his involvement in our group has become a complication and a distraction to our intentions; endangering our bid to keep the team in St. Louis. As such, we have decided to move forward without him and hope it will eventually lead us to a successful conclusion.

Boy, that's harsh. I'm sure these "limited partner" positions only go to the best people. Like:

The [Miami] Dolphins are working on a deal to bring Fergie on as a limited partner, and NFL owners during their meeting in Boston on Tuesday approved the Black Eyed Peas' singer as a potential owner.

Now do you get the hint, Rushbo? Maybe if Fergie was quoted as much as Rush on the cabloids, we'd all be better off.