Friday, May 14, 2010

Headlines - Friday May 14

"He does it because he wants to."
 
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Oil explosion to destroy earth before global warming has a chance to
 
So you've probably been thinking throughout this whole gulf-destroying oil spill business: Isn't there, like, some kind of meddling bureaucratic government agency that's supposed to make whiny liberal complaints about potential environmental apocalypse when someone asks to set up an offshore drilling rig? Turns out that, whoops, there is, and they have been, but the Minerals Management Service has just been stone cold handing out permits anyway! The Mark Trail-endorsed National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been raising objections about sea life when these leases are approved, but apparently the MMS kids have "given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry," according to some environmentalist lady who lives in Tucson, protected from sinister oil spills by thousands of miles of deserts. [NYT]
 
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Florida tourism plummets: Florida's Panhandle on Wednesday...Reservations have dropped from the 90th percentile now down into the teens..
 
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"This is going to be the biggest environmental disaster ever. You know what that means? More bonuses." .–David Letterman
 
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9 indicted on charges of accessing Obama records - Nine people were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of accessing President Barack Obama's student loan records while they were employed for a Department of Education contractor in Iowa.
 
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"Limbaugh can play with himself." Obama, asked to play golf with Rush,  Link 

Generally, Rush pays little boys to do that.

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Cenk Uygur: The Problem With Elena Kagan Is Barack Obama

Oh, and there's this too: Just like Sarah Palin, White House does away with journalists for Kagan's first interview as a nominee

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Hundreds of billions for killing while we have homeless and jobless and starving people and natural disasters and a deficit in the trillions

Afghan War Costs Now Outpace Iraq's - The monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up. 

Afghanistan will cost nearly $105 billion in the 2010 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, including most of $33 billion in additional spending requested by Obama and pending before Congress. Iraq will cost about $66 billion. In fiscal 2011, Afghanistan is projected to cost $117 billion, Iraq $46 billion. To date, Pentagon spending in Iraq has reached $620 billion, compared with $190 billion in Afghanistan.

"$6.7 billion dollars a month poured down the drain in
Afghanistan? God, that makes me sooooo tired!" 
 

And the trillions we give Israel to kill isn't enough either:

Obama asks Congress for $205 million to upgrade Israeli missile defenses.

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Lewis Black for the win.

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There's plenty of blame to go around in the Deepwater Horizon gusher into the Gulf of Mexico. As dead dolphins begin to wash up on shore, we learn that the agency regulating offshore drilling is also the agency that sells leases for the same. With literally billions of dollars of revenue on the line, this creates a huge conflict of interest. As a result, the Minerals Management Service let industry do whatever they wanted -- so much so that the man in charge of the area, Minerals Management Service regional supervisor Michael Saucier, couldn't tell Congress who actually was enforcing safety requirements. "I am not aware of who does the self-certification," he testified. That's a pretty good indication that it was no one.
http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/05/corporations-are-literally-insane.html

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Caleb Howe's devious plan to defend the TeePees.

Please note he is not a relative.

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The Russian government was reportedly unhappy with international legal obligations in their trial of pirates captured off of Somalia — particularly with the possible demand of the pirates to stay in Moscow. Their solution? They let the pirates go . . . 300 miles from shore after removing all of their navigation equipment. They are now presumed dead.

Continue reading 'Captured Pirates Presumably Dead After Russians Release Them 300 Miles From Shore Without Navigation Equipment'

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Today Emperor Palpatine urged the Portuguese people to oppose the marriage equality bill recently approved by the nation's legislature, calling it an "insidious" threat to society.

…but raping little kids, that's OK — as long as you don't get caught.

(I read with great interest that the Diocese of Vermont is paying $17.6 M for all the rapey stuff that they did to alterboys in the 1970s.)

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Sarah Palin doesn't like it that an Illinois girls basketball team won't be playing in an Arizona tournament due to the state's racist immigration law. Cover your ears, Palin's voice hits some frequencies only heard by bats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mACZvEGyspE&feature=player_embedded#!

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Here's what the oil gusher looks like 5000 feet down on the ocean floor. No end in sight. (No audio on this clip.)

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Hawaii has passed a law authorizing state agencies to ignore repeated requests for President Obama's birth certificate. As you might expect, birthers are claiming that Obama forced the state to pass the bill. 

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The Governator will be the death panelist for thousands of elderly and young Californians to protect tax cuts for the rich.

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NPR has learned that more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe. That's the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.

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Nance Greggs: It's Going to Happen.
 
Other articles here here and here.
 
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Transocean files in court to limit liability in Gulf disaster.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill: dead dolphins found washed up on US coast

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Gulf oil spill 'tiny' compared to 'very big ocean' - so says BP CEO.

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By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT)

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/05/and-while-were-in-new-england.html

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Selling us out, one issue at a time

The Prospect tells us…

Over the past week, top White House officials have been floating a trial balloon for their strategy on the economy. At its core is a decision to put deficit reduction ahead of job creation.

The premise is that the bond markets and allied deficit hawks are demanding action to cut the budget, that Obama lacks the votes in the Senate for a serious jobs initiative, and that polls show voters care more about deficit reduction than about jobs.

Because when in doubt, President Carebear will always do whatever the GOP tells him to do. He is determined to both lose the majority (not that he ever did anything with it) and be a one-term president.

Hey triangulation worked for Clinton.

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Are you f**king kidding me? Actual headline:

Dolphins, sea turtles, and a variety of birds have been found dead along Gulf of Mexico coastlines. Is the oil spill to blame? Officials wait for results from testing.

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Top Mexican soccer team cancels match in Phoenix over Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law. 

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Yes. They want to limit their liability, even in light of this. "In the days after an oil well spun out of control in the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the supposedly failsafe device's configuration."