Headlines - Thursday April 29

 

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"If God is with us, who can possibly stand against us? The answer is no one." - Glenn Beck, explaining how the GOP lost the last two elections, Link

 

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Where are the prosecutors?
Eliot Spitzer wonders about Obama  by Joe Conason Link

If Eliot Spitzer is truly on the road to rebirth as a politician, the single issue that he still owns is financial wrongdoing. Eradicating the scams he once prosecuted as New York attorney general, before such chicanery brought down the national (and global) economy, is not only popular but essential. While Spitzer makes no excuses for himself, his advocates have suggested that the former governor's powerful Wall Street enemies gave a hard push to the prostitution scandal that forced his resignation.

Whether or not Spitzer believes there was a conspiracy against him, he shows no signs of backing down from his old adversaries. Today on New Deal 2.0, the news and opinion website of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, he and Bill Black, the economist and scholar who is among the nation's leading experts on financial fraud, launch a broadside at Goldman Sachs and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, among others, and more or less insist that the public interest demands indictments... 

But our president, much as we like him, isn't into "looking backwards" or "assigning blame."

He figures if he's nice to them...

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An open letter to conservatives - with lots of links.

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Brilliant.

Because letting gun owners wave around their Glocks while sucking down a Double Espresso Caramel Machiatto at Starbuck's wasn't a stupid enough idea.

Certain Virginians think gun owners should have the right to get wasted on the firewater without having to worry about concealing their deathsticks.

This country is rapidly becoming a candidate for the Darwin Awards. Seriously.

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Wisco: Tea Party Statists

Supposedly, I'm a statist. That's a fun new word all the teabaggers have learned from objectivist Utopians. It apparently means someone who's secretly a commie or a Nazi or both (they don't seem extremely clear on the difference). Or someone who believes in global warming and thinks we ought to do something about it before a bunch of people die. Or those who think that maybe not getting reamed by insurance companies might make for a helpful change of pace. Or someone who thinks that someone ought to do something about the fact that women make less on average -- for the same jobs -- as men. You know, crazy, pie-in-the-sky stuff like that. I love me some of that "Big Gummint."

Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/04/tea-party-statists.html

 

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After pleasing our Lord by asking forgiveness for worshipping the false idol of the "intellectual mind," this young woman is filled by the Holy Spirit who expresses God's love through a kind of chicken-inspired ballet. Surely, this is a sign from God that he approves of Sue Lowden's Chickens for Checkups healthcare plan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqLvV21tsdw&feature=player_embedded

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Angry about Arizona's new law, and aching to participate in the boycott of Arizona Iced Tea? You might want to know that the stuff is made in the NYC area, which is also home to the company's headquarters.

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"In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage. Before the election season had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never have imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead." - Laura Bush, writing in her forthcoming memoir.

The path this issue took, of course, was Laura's husband using the issue of gay marriage to demonize millions of gay Americans. Despite his "close gay friends."

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Teheran's police chief is threatening to arrest women with suntans. Where does he think he is, Arizona?

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Have you noticed how God only informs Republicans of his intent.  Why is that?  Texas Republican state Rep. Leo Berman…

"I believe that Barack Obama is God's punishment on us today, but in 2012, we are going to make Obama a one-term president."

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Mario Piperni: Glenn Beck, a pot, and a kettle.

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Climate Change legislation - Mario Piperni .

There are a number of reasons to distrust oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, not the least being his funding of Swiftboaters in their malicious smearing of John Kerry. That said, I believe his concern for clean and alternative energy development is real.

T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil investor and, more recently, a devout champion of ending America's reliance on fossil fuels, said on Tuesday that he's confident the Obama administration's hotly-anticipated climate change bill will be announced soon by Sen. Harry Reid.

"[Natural gas is] the only resource we have in America that will move an 18-wheeler other than diesel, and we're importing the diesel," Pickens said. "It's cleaner, cheaper, abundant and ours. We're fools not to do this."

Pickens added that he'll support the legislation — provided it includes the natural gas credits he called for. Pickens is pushing tax credits of $65,000 for the purchase of natural-gas powered trucks.

"I don't know the other parts of the bill," Pickens said. "But I will be for the bill. I will just have to accept the other parts because this is too important for the security of America."

The test for Pickens will be what he says when the climate change bill makes it to the Senate floor and his Republican buddies try to obstruct it because…well, because that's what a Party of No does.

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Climate change is making allergies worse.

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Unsurprising news: In addition to being expensive and compromising privacy, the new full-body scanners that the TSA is installing don't work.

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Oh. hey! Look who discovered the "T-word"

The NY Times:

The torture of Iraqi detainees at a secret prison in Baghdad was far more systematic and brutal than initially reported, Human Rights Watch reported on Tuesday.

The Washington Post:

Adding to the political tension, Human Rights Watch released a report late Tuesday saying that members of a military unit under the command of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, systemically tortured and sexually abused hundreds of Sunni Arab prisoners.

NPR:

Iraqi men held for months at a secret prison outside Baghdad were systematically tortured and forced to sign confession statements that in at least some cases they were forbidden to read, according to a new report by a human rights group released Wednesday.

When OTHER people do it, HRW is a legitimate, credible source, and it is not "allegations of torture" or "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Funny, that. In a really sad way.

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Jon Stewart asks how can Apple pretend to be the rebels of the tech industry when they can use the cops as their private goon squad.

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Party of Hoover keeps standing up for the banksters

For a third time, the Hooverites stood up for Wall Street and the banksters. The Democrats are going to make them keep doing so.

Took the Dems longer than it should have to come up with this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtW0E2l-Tc&feature=player_embedded

My prediction is that there will be a couple of more votes at best and the Republicans will then throw in the towel. They'll go to Wall Street and the banksters with their hands out (Sen. Nelson will crawl back to Warren Buffet), they'll tell them that they did the best they could, but donations to elect more Hooverites would help in the long run.

UPDATE: The GOP caved faster than I thought. I thought that the party of Hoover would be good for at least another day or two of their obstructionist nonsense.

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Birther rally to bring comedy n' costumes to D.C.

How do we know this special-people rally is going to be super special? The organizer wants you to "bring your birth certificates." YEAH THAT'LL SHOW KENYAN JOE! See you there at the Ellipse! Don't forget your misspelled signs with the "GO BAK 2 AFERKA," etc.

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Last of Earth's Oil Spilling Into Gulf of Mexico, To Be Burned

This week's stuff we can't stop from pouring out of the Earth's crust is … oil! And like that Icelandic volcano, the Gulf oil spill is one of those disasters you hear about and then forget and then it keeps popping up in the news again and suddenly it's UH OH NO WAY TO STOP THIS. The British Petroleum-leased rig exploded on April 20, and eleven workers were presumably killed in the blast. Every day since, some 42,000 gallons of crude oil have poured out of the hole at the end of the 5,000-foot-long pipe. But now, BP says the well is spewing more than 200,000 gallons per day. If the company can't stop the spill, the Department of Defense will take over. The Coast Guard has already begun burning the oil off the sea's surface. At least the sheets of oil rolling onto the Louisiana coastline this morning are the "color and texture of iced tea." Mmm, tea! America loves tea. New York Times/Wall Street Journal

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Compare and contrast; a sea of sludge, edging towards New Orleans vs. reaping power from Ocean Breezes -- the headline on a story about Cape Wind, the country's first offshore turbine -- also just approved by the White House.

You'd think there'd be no contest. But then there's this -- even as it belched, BP on Tuesday reported a more than doubling of its first-quarter profit: Profits rose from $2.56 billion to $6.08 billion while its alternative energy division saw losses.

A few hundred milllon out of $6.08 billion. The price of all that Cajun coastline just may not be high enough to make a dent.

And that's why it's not a level playing field. We don't need even-steven energy policy. We need aggressive government affirmative action for alternatives.

The death throes of the fossil fuel industry are going to be cataclysmic unless we have a large, strong, profitable renewable energy industry in place to protect us.

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Governor Goodhair kills desert beast in elaborate manhood ritual

Texas Governor Rick Perry admitted to the press yesterday that he actually occasionally feels fear deep within his mighty, manful chest — fear of legless, poisonous reptile-monsters. This confession took place in the only context in which a male Texan is allowed to discuss vulnerability or emotions of any sort: as part of anecdote about how he shot some living thing in the head and left its corpse to moulder, out in the blighted wasteland that he calls home.

So, yeah, Rick Perry was out jogging with his daughter's dog and shot and killed a coyote, is the thing. If we had to choose between our own adorable domestic pet and some mangy cur, we'd probably do the same thing, if we carried around a .380 Ruger loaded with hollow-tip bullets when we went jogging! But when we told the story to the press, we would probably not be this hilarious:

"I'm enjoying the run when something catches my eye and it's this coyote. I know he knows I'm there. He never looks at me, he is laser-locked on that dog," Perry said.

"I holler and the coyote stopped. I holler again. By this time I had taken my weapon out and charged it. It is now staring dead at me. Either me or the dog are in imminent danger. I did the appropriate thing and sent it to where coyotes go," he said.

Perry said the laser-pointer helped make a quick, clean kill.

"It was not in a lot of pain," he said. "It pretty much went down at that particular juncture."

Please use the phrase "at that particular juncture" today to make a traumatic but life-affirming moment in your day sound like a dull meeting of middle managers! Perry later drank the coyote's blood and praised its spirit for all the good it had done during its time on this plane of existence.

Perry also said, "Don't attack my dog or you might get shot … if you're a coyote." Why does soft-on-crime Perry refuse to shoot human dog-threateners? (Thanks to reader "Monsieur Grumpe" for the tip.) [CBS]

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ACLU to Obama: 'Entire world is not a war zone'

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Tancredo's conspiracy theory: Obama hides his birth certificate to stir up the right and make us look crazy

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The Louisiana Democratic Party has released this new ad, "Forgotten Crimes," to remind Louisiana's voters that one time David Vitter wore diapers around and had sex with prostitutes, but faced no prosecution or professional punishment. Why is the Louisiana Democratic Party trying to "smear" David Vitter with these gritty pube videos? Forgotten Crimes

 

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