Headlines - Tuesday

Hilarious 911 math call: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT4NOe4vtoM

 

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Til death do us part? The vow would really hold true in California if a Sacramento Web designer gets his way.

In a movement that seems ripped from the pages of Comedy Channel writers, John Marcotte wants to put a measure on the ballot next year to ban divorce in California.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ityjaAAMYI7StNV2uur-vrfyGuFgD9CA3KB80 

 

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Larry Summers ignored warnings about Harvard investments, $1.8 billion disappeared.

 

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Surprised kitty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8&feature=player_embedded

 

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Redneck fire alarm.

 

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The five biggest Republican lies about health care.

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Do you think these Obama supporters would have been standing out in the cold and rain had they known that, one year later, President Obama would be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan?

 

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Matt Taibi explains how the media -- the suits, not the reporters -- get to decide who runs for higher office.

 

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zMOG! Socialist fire departments! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb8qG76L9jE&feature=player_embedded

 

These two guys have also taken on the police and the military

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Morford: Top ten uses for "Going Rogue". He's found a bookstore in San Francisco that is donating 100% of the profits from Palin's book to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

"WARNING: Studies have shown that consuming foods grown using compost made from the pages of any book written by conservative politicians and/or Fox News pundits may result in bloating, brain damage, grammar mutilation and the mad desire to taxidermy your cat."

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AP –Mary Jo Coady says an image of Jesus Christ that she sees in the pattern on the bottom of the iron, which she first noticed on Sunday, has reassured her that 'life is going to be good.'

 

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Warmongers with itchy trigger fingers are thrilled that Iran has approved a plan calling for the construction of 10 new uranium enrichment sites, but the truth is that these sites are perfectly legal within the NPT, so war will have to wait.

 

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Quite a lot happened during the Holiday week, very little of it good. Among the bad news that hasn't gotten a lot of press is news that the American public's belief in global warming is at its lowest point since ABC News/Washington Post polling began tracking the issue. Things aren't as bad as they sound, though:

ABC News:

The number of Americans who believe global warming is occurring has declined to its lowest since 1997, though at 72 percent, it's still a broad majority. The drop has steepened in the last year-and-a-half -- almost exclusively among conservatives and Republicans.

This ABC News/Washington Post poll also finds that support for government action to address the issue, while still a majority, likewise is down from its levels in summer 2008.

So, the vast majority of Americans still believe in global warming, it's just that Republican voters are continuing their trend of diving outside the mainstream. Imagine my surprise.

Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/11/right-out-of-touch-on-climate.html

 

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They must be so proud: by a wide margin, Americans consider Rush Limbaugh the nation's most influential conservative voice.

 

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Dubya, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, Wall Street. TIME Magazine gets it right when they call the aughties "the decade from hell."

 

Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era. We're still weeks away from the end of '09, but it's not too early to pass judgment. Call it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade. Call it whatever you want — just give thanks that it is nearly over. Calling the 2000s "the worst" may seem an overwrought label in a decade in which we fought no major wars, in historical terms. It is a sadly appropriate term for the families of the thousands of 9/11 victims and soldiers and others killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the lack of a large-scale armed conflict makes these past 10 years stand out that much more. This decade was as awful as any peacetime decade in the nation's entire history. Between the West's ongoing struggle against radical Islam and our recent near-death economic experience — trends that have largely skirted much of the developing world — it's no wonder we feel as if we've been through a 10-year gauntlet. Americans may have the darkest view of recent history, since it's in the U.S. that the effects of those trends have been most acute. If you live in Brazil or China, you have had a pretty good decade economically. Once, we were the sunniest and most optimistic of nations. No longer.

 

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While the corporate media salivates over the Tiger Woods car incident, stories that really matter slip silently by...

 

The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten?

 

"They knew about it, they lied to us and they didn't let the American people know for years later and in the meantime, people are suffering and dying and not knowing why."

Ed Bauries will tell you he is a proud Marine with a tortured soul ,"nothing will bring my babies back", and a broken body, "I thought of just taking my own life at times, it would be easier for my family."

Riddled with searing pain and paralysis from multiple sclerosis, his muscles and nerves feel so inflamed, it's as if he is on fire: "Up my neck up the right side of my face which it burns for 24/7."

 

Sitting across from Chief I-Team Investigator Michele Gillen in his South Florida home, he traces his arm and neck for Gillen explaining the pain is constant.

"Do you feel it now?" Gillen asks. "Oh yeah, yes."

But it is not only disease that bonds him with a band of brothers, other Marines, their children, their widows, from across Florida and the nation. Their shared bond is the water at Camp Lejune, North Carolina. Water they bathed in, cooked with and drank, decades ago, stationed at the base. Water that now appears to have been tainted with some of the most dangerous chemicals in the world.

Keep reading: http://cbs4.com/iteam/marines.american.iteam.2.1338809.html

 

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Perhaps pig brains were not meant to be inhaled by humans. Just a thought.

 

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The AP reports:

The mistaken belief that albino body parts have magical powers has driven thousands of Africa's albinos into hiding, fearful of losing their lives and limbs to unscrupulous dealers who can make up to $75,000 selling a complete dismembered set. [...] Since 2007, 44 albinos have been killed in Tanzania and 14 others have been slain in Burundi, sparking widespread fear among albinos in East Africa. At least 10,000 have been displaced or gone into hiding since the killings began, according to a report released this week by the International Federation for the Red Cross and Crescent societies.

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A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate health care bill "would leave premiums unchanged or slightly lower for the vast majority of Americans." The report undermines many of the fear-mongering arguments against health reform that have been put forward by conservatives.

 

I want mine a LOT lower.

 

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Washington Times runs anti-Obama birther ad: 

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Goldman Sachs staff buying guns to protect themselves against public uprising: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ahD2WoDAL9h0

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D.J. Feldman was 11 weeks pregnant last year when she learned that her child had anencephaly, a fetal defect that left the baby with almost no brain. It is always fatal.

Feldman, a 41-year-old federal lawyer, and her husband had been trying for two years to have a baby. Sadly, her doctor "made it very clear I wasn't to continue this pregnancy," she said.

An abortion was medically necessary. She had little choice.

But after the jolt of the diagnosis and the emotional pain of the procedure, Feldman was in for another shock -- sticker shock. She thought her health insurance policy through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) would cover the $9,000 cost of the abortion. It didn't.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113004065.html

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Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling

The tar barons have held the nation to ransom. This thuggish petro-state is today the greatest obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/30/canada-tar-sands-copenhagen-climate-deal

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Supreme Court upholds government position in detainee photo battle.

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Huck's world: Only Christian converts need apply: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/12/hucks-world-only-christian-converts.html

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Barack Baines Johnson.

 

Remember today, my friends. Because after Barack Obama, purveyor of Hope and Change and Yes We Can, leaves our television screens tonight, he will have officially morphed into Lyndon Johnson.

He won't be the unfortunately nearly forgotten Lyndon Johnson who signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, knowing full well (and accurately) that it meant the Democrats would lose the South for many generations to come, as the warhorses who still revered the old Confederacy would jump ship for the already welcoming Republican Party. In some ways it's a shame that Obama hasn't chosen to be that Lyndon Johnson. For where civil rights were concerned, the situation was very much like it is right now with health care reform: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/12/barack-baines-johnson.html