Gulfers: We love that oil
They love what's killing them? Link
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"What was she thinking? You don't just blurt out racially charged comments on camera. You do it on your radio show." Stephen Colbert, on Helen Thomas
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"So, I voted Clinton out. My vote counted. Bush won." former celeb Victoria Jackson is so stupid, she thinks Bush beat Clinton for president Link
"I'm an f-ing Teabagging idiot."
Actually, your vote didn't count.
The Supreme Court ordered that the vote counting be stopped so they could appoint their boy for president over the voters' wishes.
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The U.S. Health Care System - "boom!"
Granted, this is an extreme example but it does highlight the fact that the greatest health care system in the world might not in fact be the greatest health care system in the world.
An unemployed Michigan woman who was unable to afford medical treatment for a searing pain in her shoulder took matters into her own hands last week, shooting herself in the shoulder in a last-ditch effort to get into the ER.
Kathy Myers, 41, said she was pushed to the brink of desperation Thursday night because she was "crazy in pain," and the local hospital emergency room would give her no more than a handful of anti-inflammatory pills.
"Pain will make you do silly, crazy things," the 41-year-old Niles, Mich., woman said in a YouTube.com interview with News 8 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "I knew they wasn't going to do anything, again. They said if it wasn't life-threatening, no health insurance, you can't get no help."
In the video, she reenacts how she covered her right shoulder and head with two pillows before pointing her .25-caliber handgun at her own body.
"I took the gun and went 'Boom!'" she said.
Needless to say, an unemployed woman in Canada, France or Great Britain suffering from severe shoulder pain would never have to consider taking a gun to herself in a desperate attempt at receiving medical treatment. Nor would people in those countries ever have the humiliating experience of receiving medical treatment while lying on a cot in a stall intended for livestock.
If you can afford it, I have no doubt the U.S. health care system is the greatest health care system in the world. For everyone else…well, Boom!
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"Sarah Palin says Obama needs to make sure that these oil companies act ethically and responsibly. This from a woman who shoots wolves from a helicopter." Letterman
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BRITISH Petroleum took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as it dealt with one problem after another, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a "nightmare well," according to internal documents released Monday.
In an e-mail on April 16, a BRITISH Petroleum official involved in the decision not to install all of the centralizers explained: "It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: "who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."
"I care."
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Wisco: You can't be a military hawk and a budget hawk at the same time.
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AP via Raw Story: The Republican nominee for a New Mexico congressional seat suggested during a radio interview that the United States could place land mines along the Mexican border to secure the international boundary.
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Jed Lewison reminds us of Paul Krugman's words of January 6, 2009. He was right.
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John Aravosis: Memo to the President.
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BP hires company to handle oil spill claims whose goal is "reducing payouts" for clients
Effing weasels. Go read.
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Touchdown Jesus, destroyed by a fire caused by a lightning storm. I wonder what the members of the Solid Rock church in Monroe, Ohio did to cause this obvious visitation of the wrath of the creator, other than make their Jesus out of cellophane.
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Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) was walking on a public sidewalk last week when he was politely asked a question by someone holding a camera, and this is what happened:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/14/law/index.html
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In their latest eyebrow-raising PR move, multinational oil giant BP has enlisted private security contractors to keep onlookers away from oil cleanup sites.
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The FU Rules
Right on the heels of yesterday's Times piece on our new riches in Afghanistan, this morning's story tells us that a Friedman Unit has passed and it's time for more troops! But the White House says we're supposed to wait another FU before deciding:
Even before the recent setbacks, the military was highly skeptical of setting a date to start withdrawing, but Mr. Obama insisted on it as a way to bring to conclusion a war now in its ninth year.
For now, the White House has decided to wait until a review, already scheduled for December, to assess whether the target date can still work.
Obviously, the functioning of the FU in Afghanistan is not quite the same as the Iraqi variety. The Iraq FU required that all serious participants keep up the charade that things were working until the last possible minute, when everyone finally conceded that a mere 6 more months would be required to really fix things. Perhaps the Afghani FU has some sort of look-ahead window? Since I'm not a serious person, these little details escape me.
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While people like Maureen Dowd and Chuck Todd are busy waiting for Barack Obama to throw the kind of tantrum about the BP oil spill on national television that they feel is appropriate, there's yet another ethnic cleansing going on, this time in one of the former Soviet republics, one we ignore at our peril: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/06/will-americans-care-about-people-in.html
Chuck Todd asked Pelosi if there was a statute of limitations on placing responsibility on President George W. Bush.
"Well, it runs out when the problems go away," Pelosi replied.
More, please.
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Jeebus. Better shape than it was before?
During a visit to Mississippi and Alabama yesterday, Obama said, "I am confident that we're going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before." He also urged tourists to visit the Gulf, stating, "a lot of beaches that are not yet affected or will not be affected." Today, he visits the Pensacola Beach area in the Florida panhandle.
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Not quite stealthy enough
Mysterious American Ninja arrested in Pakistan, for heroism
