Monday, May 10, 2010

Headlines - Monday May 10

WTF?
 
After a Pakistani-American attempts to set off a bomb in the U.S. in retaliation for the constant drone attacks of his home country, we warn Pakistan to crack down on Islamic militants or face severe consequences. Like what? Sending more troops into their country than the 200 that are already there? Adding to this huge list of drone attacks? Laughing when our president jokes about the attacks? 
 
 
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Greek riots dog: 10 December 2009: A stray dog sits during a student demonstration

A dog that has been seen at nearly every demonstration in Athens over the last two years has turned up again during the recent protests against new austerity measures. Slideshow here.

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Remember that hilarious FAIL of an anti-gay Christianist rally that took place on May Day in Washington, DC? Today Right Wing Watch tips us that rally organizer Janet Porter is now saying that they prayed them some prayers that were SO good, that as a thank you bonus, God decided to make sure that there Times Square car bomb would not blow up. Glory! Praise His Name!
According to Right Wing Watch, Porter was forced to cover the rally's financial deficit of "ten of thousands of dollars" because only 300 out of the expected 8000 attendees showed up. Glory! Praise His Name!

RELATED: As insult to the delicious injury above, Janet Porter's daily radio show
has been dropped by Voice Of Christian Youth America because of her increasingly rabid dominionist theology. VCY America says: "This has not been an easy decision, but a line has been crossed that VCY America cannot ignore. Faith2Action has chosen to go in a direction that is not consistent with the biblical position of VCY America."

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Using the sounds of his mother's garden and samples of her voice, here is his Mother's Day tribute, Gardyn.

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Will Rick "Governor Good Hair" Perry still consider the gusher in the Gulf an "act of God" when the oil reaches the harbor in Houston? "Engineers desperately explored options on Sunday to control oil gushing from a ruptured well deep under the Gulf of Mexico after a setback with a huge undersea containment dome fueled fears of a prolonged and growing environmental disaster. ... The spill is spreading west, further from Florida but toward the important shipping channels and rich seafood areas of the Louisiana shoreline, where fishing, shrimping and oyster harvesting bans have been widened. ... A state of emergency was declared in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, with sheen, the leading edge of the oil slick, forecast to come ashore near Port Fourchon within days."

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This Week In Holy Crimes.

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What frightened little children these Republicans are. The same man who thought that smart terrorism moves were to locate the Office of Emergency Management in WTC7 despite NYPD opposition, keep the same ineffective radios for FDNY from the '93 WTC bombing, recommend scandal-laden Bernie Kerik to Homeland Security and the extension of his mayoral term worries about "missed signals" by the Obama administration. http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/mr-noun-verb-and-911-thinks-political

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What the hell is the matter with the Catholic church? They're a bunch of sick people running the show if this is how they think rapists should be handled. Same story, different location.

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Enough about Rahm. Can we sack Holder? 

Seriously:

Attorney General Eric Holder said for the first time today on ABC's "This Week" that the Obama administration is open to modifying Miranda protections to deal with the "threats that we now face."

"The [Miranda] system we have in place has proven to be effective," Holder told host Jake Tapper. "I think we also want to look and determine whether we have the necessary flexibility—whether we have a system that deals with situations that agents now confront. ... We're now dealing with international terrorism. ... I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public-safety exception [to the Miranda protections]. And that's one of the things that I think we're going to be reaching out to Congress, to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our times and the threats that we now face."

I've completely had it with this administration's complete obeisance to the national security state and their willingness to adopt indefensible positions. 

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Eh, give her a blingee, see what happens.

How any of the teabaggers get the idea that Barack Obama is some kind of Marxist, I have no idea. When his health care plan delivers hundreds of thousands of new customers to insurance companies and his economic advisers are some of the very people who contributed to the economic meltdown of 2008, I just don't see where this comes from. And now it appears he's going to nominate someone who was an adviser to the great vampire squid from 2005 to 2008 to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-obama-trying-to-hand-republicans.html

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BP - behind the curve in safety. And an industry leader when it comes to racking up safety violations.

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US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

So does constant war, drilling for oil, continued torture, spying on US citizens, treating corporations like people, laughing about drone attacks, taking away Miranda rights, and all of the other things you're doing, Hopey.

Like Wonkette said, "Notice he didn't slam the Blackberry."

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In a piece of very campaign-like literature recently mailed by Rep. Mary Faillin (R-OK), complaints of wasteful government spending abound. The message would seem sincere, were it not for a block of small text noting that the congresswoman paid for the mailer with taxpayer funds.

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The nation's five largest banks are fighting a provision in the Wall Street reform bill that would stop banks from trading derivatives, fielding "more than 130 registered lobbyists" and spending $6.1 million on lobbying in first quarter of this year alone.

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Racing to beat the Monday opening of world financial markets, European leaders decided, "Eh, how about a trillion dollars, would that work?" And then somebody screamed (in German), "IDIOT THIS IS ABOUT THE EURO." And then everybody was all, Right, Euros, that's kind of the problem, isn't it?" So, this 750-billion-Euro package of loans and guarantees plus $40 billion US from the IMF should, uh, put off "Acropolis Now" for who knows, maybe a couple of years. Please return to the Economic Recovery now, and pay no attention to the Greek Riots. You know how the Greeks are, so melodramatic and with the "cradle of democracy" and such. Minus Greece and, uh, all those scary computers and the permanently unemployed American underclass and the collapse of the basic system of Capitalism, things are fine! Bloomberg/Reuters
 
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Get a haircut and help save the Gulf Coast If you need a trim, find out if your hair salon is one of the 370,000 hair salons around the world that are sending the clippings to be stuffed into nylon stockings to soak up the oil that is shaping up to be the largest environmental disaster the earth has ever seen. Petco is getting in on the act, too. They have over 1000 grooming salons across the country and believes they can ship a ton of fur a day to be used in battling the oil spill.
 
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Why is this even a debate? 
 
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27 That is how many waivers have been given to oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico. Since the disaster started unfolding.