Thursday, May 27, 2010

Headlines - Thursday May 27

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Because we have an abundance of money and are not fighting enough wars, it looks like we're getting ready to attack Iran.
 
Fun fact: Iran is in compliance with ALL U.N. laws, treaties, and in particular has NEVER failed an IAEA inspection. 
 
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Rage Against the Machine Gun

Contractors shipped useless gun parts to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan ... and still got paid.

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Why Sarah Palin talks like a child.

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DADT disrespects all soldiers - as does the GOP

One of the things that always strikes me when talking about Republicans is their tremendous disrespect for Americans' intelligence. The lies are transparent -- at times, idiotic. The spin never quite fits the situation very well. The solutions, such as they are, are always either a call to do something that's already failed or merely a gimmick to get reelected. But what really gets me is when their arguments hinge on that belief in your stupidity; i.e., the Democrats' idea will never work because you're too dumb to understand it/too lazy to do it/too committed to being a jerk. Not only does the GOP believe you're stupid, they really don't think you're a very good person. That is, assuming their arguments are presented honestly. Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/05/dadt-disrespects-all-soldiers-as-does.html
 
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Riding the Holy of Holies to Victory

Tim D'Annunzio
Candidate for Congress

Dear
Mr. D'Annunzio,

I'm glad to see you're trouncing your opponent in the Republican primary. Now it's time to finish him off for good. Capitalize on your greatest strength. Force him to campaign against your Christian beliefs.

As far as I know, he's been silent about
your claim that you found Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. Make him address it by doing an ad about it. Even better, employ the Ark as the centerpiece of your immigration strategy. Say you're going to use it like God used it against the Philistines and send all the immigrants packing with a severe case of hemorrhoids in their secret parts.

Do something with your pyramid smashing Greenland prediction too. I know that's a bit harder to do. No Mexican Muslims there, but I think they have Eskimos. They're brown. They're probably Muslim. Do an ad about how you're addressing the Eskimo Muslim terrorism threat by asking God to crush Greenland with a 1000 mile tall pyramid. I bet Sarah Palin would help you out with that.

I know it's a gamble. God might not smite Greenland before the primary, But when he does, you'll be able to write your own ticket. How does "President D'Annunzio" sound to you?

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

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And the American Family Association's (AFA) homophobic Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy, Bryan Fischer, claims that not only was Adolf Hitler gay, but all of his "Brownshirts" were too: 
 
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A proposed 13-story mosque and Muslim visitors center to be built near the former World Trade Center site has many in the city taking sides. Last night a Manhattan community board endorsed the project over the loud protestations of 9/11 survivors and others.
 
Some worry that the building will become the focus of future anti-Islam demonstrations and protests, something not appropriate for the planned 9/11 memorial nearby. Other say the mosque will "bridge and heal a divide" between religious factions in New York City.
 
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BP bets on Top Kill. This piece describes the procedure and the potential problems. This dKos analysis speculates that some of the pressure testing has already been done.

Meanwhile, Congress has found out that all was not well at the well before the explosion. Nice that the NY Times is finally reporting on the timeline to the explosion even though 60 Minutes reported this over a week ago.

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Oil disaster hearings: BP was under economic pressure to finish job

Chris Granger / The Times-PicayuneMembers of the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation team, from left, are: Lt. Robert Butts, USCG; Ross Wheatley, USCG; Capt. Hung Nguyen, USCG; David Dykes, MMS; Jason Mathews, MMS; and John McCarroll, MMS.

It's always about money, whether it's health care reform, our children's education, the incentive for the GOP to avoid smiling at President Obama, and now the lives of 11 crew members, and the prevention of Big Oil disasters:

A member of the federal panel investigating why the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 presented evidence Wednesday that BP had wanted to use the rig to drill another well by early March and would have overspent by about $22 million by the time of the accident.

Jason Mathews of the Minerals Management Service said BP applied to use the Deepwater Horizon rig to drill in another oil field on March 8, 43 days before the rig workers, in a rush to finish months of work in the oil field known as Mississippi Canyon 252, removed heavy drilling mud that could have held down explosive natural gas.

Based on earlier testimony that a typical well costs a lease-holder like BP $500,000 a day, Mathews asserted that the company had already overspent by $21 million to $22 million. [...]

It's the first time anyone has tried to quantify the economic pressures that may have led BP to do things like remove the drilling mud before placing a final cement plug or send a subcontractor's team home without performing the most definitive test of the well-cementing job.

Eleven lives were lost. Eleven families are mourning. An exponential number of friends, extended families are, too. But that doesn't matter, so long as BP can recapture some of that oil gush while avoiding an accurate gallon count.

Poor BP and Co. are probably in a tizzy now, what with not having factored in criminal lawyer fees.

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Social Consevative Hate.

They actually make it up as they go.  Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association:

So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.

These people have no shame and their hatred knows no bounds.  There is no need to rebuke trash of this sort except to point out that homosexuals were sent to concentration camps along with Jews and gypsies.

Allow me to state again that the biggest threat facing the United States is not radical Islamic terrorism.  It's the hateful, lying, ignorant scum from within who quote scripture and carry a copy of the Constitution in their pockets – both of which they know not a fucking thing.

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The Gulf Disaster - Where is Captain Kirk?

The pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to get this thing fixed.

Five weeks after the beginning of an oil spill in the Gulf Coast, President Obama is poised to announce strengthened, new inspections of offshore drilling on Thursday — a heightened response that his critics say comes too late and with too little force.

Although Obama has responded to the disaster from the start, he has chosen his words carefully in criticizing BP, the oil firm in charge of the site. On Tuesday night, he said at a fundraiser in California that the government needs to "revisit how these oil companies are operating."

Obama will hold a news conference — a rarity so far in his administration — at the White House on Thursday morning to discuss the spill, officials said.

This is a tough one for the President.  His opponents have been relentless in trying to lay the blame his way.  Actually, the criticism is coming from all quarters.  James Carville

"The President of the United States could've come down here, he could've been involved with the families of these 11 people" who died on the rig after an explosion, Carville said on ABC's Good Morning America. "He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard…doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they're begging for something down here, and it just looks like he's not involved in this."

"Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We're about to die down here!"

There is a crisis at hand and it is unsure what more the President can do.  The best scientific minds in the country are trying to devise a means to plug the leak.  That said, perception is everything in politics.  Obama needs to gear up the emotion machine and look more concerned than he has. This is one time when his Mr. Spock-like cool and reasoned approach is not allaying the anger and emotion being felt out there.

Look tough.  Be tough.  And send a clear message that BP and whoever else is responsible for this disaster will get what they deserve.  As someone noted, there are times when Mr. Spock is not enough.  What people need now is to know that their anger is not only justified but that that White House feels exactly the same way…and that requires Obama to display the raw emotion of Captain Kirk.

President Obama playing basketball with Russian kids during Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Bush-guitar.jpg

Bush playing the guitar during Katrina.

Here's a list of things that could be done by the White House regarding this horror.

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To be fair to BofA and Citi, it's a mistake that could have happened to anyone who had massive teams of lawyers and accountants. Gosh, some people are such nitpickers. Funny how those two banks were among the hardest hit during the crisis but that was surely a simple coincidence. It could have happened to anyone and was surely an accident since intentional hiding of debt would be a violation of SEC rules. CNBC:

Bank of America and Citigroup incorrectly accounted for billions of dollars in debt over the past three years, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal

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Alternet: How Do You Feel About Obama Siding with the Vatican Instead of About a Hundred Thousand U.S. Victims of Pedophile Priests?

I'm slammed on my day job, so invite others to write how it makes you feel to have the President of the United States side with The Vatican instead of hundreds of thousands of crime victims of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church. It was the U.S. Solicitor General, joined by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Justice Department who filed briefs in favor of The Vatican Friday May 21st, in the lawsuit from Oregon that Jeff Anderson and other plaintiff attorneys are trying to take all the way to the Pope.

Do you agree that the .17 square miles of real estate that is the Vatican is a sovereign nation? That a mall sized pile of cement populated by leaders of a religion, who go out from that nation all over the globe propagating their message, is a sovereign nation?

Like Italy and Germany?

Am I getting this right?

The Office of the U.S. Solicitor General who wrote the amicus brief is headed by Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Hearings confirming Kagan onto the Court are scheduled for June in D.C.

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Is there a Sarah Palin vileness/absurdity threshold?

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BP: Bringing people together.

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The Many Faces of Bubba Jindal – Small Government advocate and noted volcano expert, boy exorcist and LA governor, Bubba Jindal wants Big Government to do something about BP polluting his shoreline. Other GOPers think he is hurting the oil industry.

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Eel checks out oil gusher.

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Running government like a business.

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Stimulus-critic Rick Perry only able to balance his state's budget because of stimulus.

"I am a hypocrite!"

And speaking of the President of Texas, he's writing a new book! It's called Fed Up, and it teaches you how to hate the federal government like a Texan does (i.e., while wearing spurs). A rep from Perry's publisher says that "when [Perry] speaks, millions listen," so this book could inspire a new civil rights movement or even cause a world war between Texas and "the Beltway," depending on how "fed up" people end up getting.

More here: http://wonkette.com/415637/rick-perry-is-so-fed-up-hes-writing-a-bible-about-it#more-415637

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This is the kind of psycho fucker who would never have made it to induction before Bush broke our military The Army is investigating a Ft. Wainwright soldier (Track Palin, was our first thought, too, but it wasn't him) for posting a video to his Facebook page where he taunts Iraqi children as "future gay terrorists." The children - who are so young they have never known peace - smile and nod and give the soldier a "thumbs-up" sign. Until the older of the two realizes they are being mocked and tells the younger child to put his hand down.

And speaking of psycho fuckers: Conklin Dairy Farms video shows dairy cows being violently abused. 

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Gas: It's America's crack!