Monday, October 19, 2009

Headlines - Monday

 
First the wolves, now the horses:
 
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (a former rancher) last week proposed moving thousands of mustangs to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect horse herds and the rangelands that support them - when in fact he's really just making room for cattle. 
 
Sad and pathetic fact: only four Democratic Senators ever earned a zero on the Humane Society's Humane Scorecard, and one of them was Ken Salazar. He voted to torture and put downed animals in your food supply, and also voted to slaughter horses (which are flight animals) in slaughterhouses designed for short necked, docile cows. 
 
###
 
Jeremy Scahill: The ACORN Standard

The nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight and Reform recently revealed that the top 100 government contractors made nearly $300 billion from federal contracts in 2007 alone. Since 1995 these same contractors have been involved with 676 cases of "misconduct" and paid $26 billion in fines to settle cases stemming from fraud, waste or abuse. Fines and other penalties, it seems, are simply the stunningly small price of doing government business.

Take the case of the top three war contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. These companies have engaged in 108 instances of misconduct since 1995 and have paid fines or settlements totaling nearly $3 billion. In 2007 they won some $77 billion in federal contracts. Or consider pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which in September paid $2.3 billion to settle a slew of criminal and civil cases, including Medicaid fraud. According to the Justice Department, this was "the largest healthcare fraud settlement" in its history. Yet Pfizer made more than $40 billion in profits last year and won $73 million in federal contracts in 2007; it continues to do robust business with the government. Not bad for a "corporate felon."

 
 
###
 
How Obama can earn the Nobel Prize.
 
###
 
 
New study finds that animals feel pain when murdered for religious sacrifices!
 
Imagine that.
 
###
 
Wow. Look at all of the companies that are betting on your death by using Dead Peasants Insurance.
 
###
 
Father Horndog and his helpful church
 
Lose all faith in Catholicism, please. If you haven't already, this story should help you on your way. If that's not enough, perhaps Cuttlefish's poem will persuade you.

To summarize: A Franciscan priest uses his office to seduce multiple women. He lives with at least one of them as husband in all but official name, and gets her pregnant (which he suggests ending with an abortion; she refuses), and has a son. He then scampers off and leaves both. The woman rattles the cage of the Catholic church and gets child support…as long as she signs a confidentiality agreement and promises to never mention the matter publicly. Now in her later years, she has cancer, and even worse, her son has cancer, and where's good ol' Father Willenborg? In a new diocese, acting as if it had never happened.

Keep reading: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/father_horndog_and_his_helpful.php

###

Climate change disasters: http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2009/10/environmental-news-story-sunday_18.html

###

Going after medical marijuana users and sellers was a complete waste of resources during the Bush administration. That strategy now ends in the state's where it's legal. This is a good move from the Obama administration.

###

Black Helicopters

This is the stuff of crap spy novels. Unfortunately, a good many of us are gullible enough to believe the propaganda:

Depending on your perspective, the Oath Keepers are either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia.

More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.
Folks better get out from in front of their TVs and breathe fresh air again. To these people, life is one big Oliver Stone movie.

"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.
I'd say you're about 8 years too late, pal. All your rights left during the Chimpy's reign. Where were all of you then? If I had to guess, I'd say they were the ones cheering the loudest for us to "go kill some ragheads".
 
###

Maybe instead of sending 200 million to their own foundation, Goldman could spend part of the billions they plan to give out in bonuses funding homeless shelters

###

funny pictures of cats with captions

###

Smart move, maybe?

The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States. ... The question at the heart of the matter, said President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is not "how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?"

There is no point trying to prop up an illegitimate government in Afghanistan. That is a fool's errand at best. Counterinsurgency requires a legitimate national government for without a legitimate government, it would be like building a house on quicksand. If raw military power was what was needed, the Afghan schools today would be teaching Russian as a second language.

I cannot emphasize this enough: Without a legitimate government in Afghanistan, all we can do now is to decide when we will leave the country to the Taliban. Not "if".

A lot also hinges on Pakistan's offensive into South Waziristan. With their recent bombing attacks, the militants may have overreached. They may have made the case to the people that the militants' presence in Pakistan can no longer be tolerated.
 
###
 
Rudy plays the race card again
From a campaign appearance by Rudy the Brown Shirt on behalf of Billionaire Mike:
Raising the specter of a return to higher crime and greater anxiety, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani warned on Sunday that New York could become a more dangerous city if Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is not re-elected in November.

Mr. Giuliani did not mention Mr. Bloomberg's Democratic challenger, William C. Thompson Jr., by name. But during the first of two campaign events alongside Mr. Bloomberg, he said that not long ago many parts of the city were gripped by "the fear of going out at night and walking the streets."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Mr. Giuliani said at a breakfast sponsored by the Jewish Community Council in Borough Park, Brooklyn. "This city could very easily be taken back in a very different direction — it could very easily be taken back to the way it was with the wrong political leadership."
Does anybody not understand what Giuliani was saying, there? This is beyond reprehensible. Giuliani is no different from the old racist white politicians (who were all Democrats until President Johnson signed the 1960s civil rights acts and until the GOP welcomed them with open arms) who used to stand up and rant about how the nigras were going to sit in classrooms next to white girls and rape them.
 
###
 
 
As you know, not a single Republican in the House voted for the stimulus, and yet a whole host of them have jumped at the opportunity to personally deliver stimulus funds to their cash-strapped districts.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/19/kingston-doesnt-mention-stimulus/
 
###
 
 
Acknowledging that they lack the votes to block health care reform, Senate Republicans "have implemented a comprehensive political strategy to delay, define and derail." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Republicans are going to "insist" on several weeks of debate.
 
###
 
Red Rocks sunset
 
Treachery at the Red Rocks Sweat Lodge: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/10/18/treachery-at-the-red-rocks-sweat-lodge/