Headlines - Saturday July 10

GOP agenda to be shaped by lobbyists.

 

 

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General: US casualties in Afghanistan will continue to rise - Insists war 'on the right track'

 

And in other great war news, General "it's fun to shoot people" James Mattis named as new Centcom commander.

 

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In the clearest indication yet that Israel intends to resume settlement construction en masse when the current "freeze" expires in September, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Whatayahoo today panned the freeze as a failure.

 

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Working Women

 

Sarah Palin barely earning minimum wage

Everybody just assumes that Sarah Palin wakes up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy all the time, in a golden bed of $100 bills. This is because the lamestream media makes it seem like she's always collecting enormous wads of cash in exchange for her hardcore mama grizzlin' services (speechin', hangin' tough, Teabaggin'). But according to Forbes investigative reporter Dirk Smillie (né Dirksen Smilloszewskiwicz), Palin has earned only $10 million in the past 12 months, "at best." AT BEST, people.
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Good thing Democrats control the White House, House and Senate, huh? Because we know they're working hard to correct these horrible discrepancies ..... 

 

Wealthy Reap Rewards While Those Who Work Lose

BOSTON - Times are tough for workers in the U.S. where a recession has a stranglehold on much of the economy, but life is perfectly rosy for those at the top.

The riches of the wealthiest North Americans grew by double digits in 2009, primarily from interest their money earned when it was invested in the stock market and elsewhere, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.

Millionaires in the U.S. and Canada saw their wealth increase 15 percent in 2009, to a total of 4.6 trillion dollars, the report found.

Worldwide, 11 million - or less than 1 percent of all households - were millionaires in 2009. They owned about 38 percent of the world's wealth or 111 trillion dollars, up from about 36 percent in 2008, according to Boston Consulting Group. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/09-2

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Obama defines the midterms 

An oversimplification?  If so, not by much.

"This is a choice between the policies that led us into the mess or the policies that are leading us out of the mess," Obama said. "It's a choice between falling backward and moving forward."

It's always quicker and easier to break something than to fix it…especially when the bastards that broke it keep on messing with the tools required to get it fixed…and when some members of the fix-it team are more interested in their corporate sponsors than actually fixing anything.

And in case anyone forgot, when President Inept left office in 2008, the country was losing 800,000 jobs a month.  That's quite a fall Humpty Dumpty took and it'll be quite a job to put him back together again.

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Imagine the soul-crushing horror. A foreign correspondent reacts to the news of a regional political leader's death with a message of respect on Twitter. Outrageous! Yet, that's exactly what CNN's senior editor of Mideast Affairs did earlier this week. For those with strong stomachs, I'll post the message. But sensitive readers are advised to avert their eyes.

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot..

Gahhh!! She said something nice about a leader of Hezbollah on the occasion of his death! Gahhh!! Flee! Flee!

Well, that was too much for CNN and Olivia Nasr is no longer the senior editor of Mideast Affairs. Nasr later explained this crime against humanity on her CNN blog -- apparently as security was dragging her out:

I used the words "respect" and "sad" because to me, as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of "honor killing." He called the practice primitive and nonproductive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.

Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/07/for-media-not-being-conservative-enough.html

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Clueless secretary prompts hilarious office email thread.

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Via Crooks and Liars, yet another one of these studies:

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest—not only in amount but also as a percentage of income—which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.

I think a capital gains tax cut and permanently getting rid of the inheritance tax should fix this problem.

In all seriousness, what I do not understand is why don't people realize this is unsustainable? How do people expect the economy to grow when 3/4 ofthe nation is too broke to buy anything?

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Self-hating rabbis

Because of the current make-up of the Israeli government and because of the TNR/Weekly Standard/AIPAC dominance of the coverage of Israel here in the United States, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there are plenty of Israelis who view relations with Palestinians quite differently than Marty Peretz et al.:

"If we try to enter our land, settlers will be waiting, and we will be beaten," said Muhammad Moqbel, a 71-year-old Palestinian from the village of Qaryout who pointed to fields that he said had been stolen by settlers. Last year, he said, he was hospitalized with a broken rib after settlers attacked while he was picking his own olives.

Rabbis for Human Rights has helped Palestinians recover some land through lawsuits in Israeli courts. And Rabbi Ascherman and other Jewish activists escort such farmers to protect them. The settlers still attack, but soldiers are more likely to intervene when it is rabbis being clubbed.

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Not everyone finds Rabbi Ascherman inspiring. He gets death threats, and hard-line Israelis see him as a naïve traitor.

He responds that he is struggling to uphold his religious and moral values. But he also argues that building bridges between Jews and Palestinians helps make Israel a safer place for his children. "In the long run, we're going to live here together," he says, "or we're going to die here together."

Kristof likens these rabbis to civil rights activists, which I think is accurate. When peace is finally achieved in that part of the world, it will likely be more because of people like these rabbis than because of all the "pro-Israel" crazies.

I realize I sound like even more of a hippie than usual saying all of this, but seriously, what are the odds of any kind of peaceful agreement when Israeli settlers are stealing land from Palestinians?

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Thanks, Hopey!

Obama US Attorney expected to stand behind federal gay marriage ban

I mean, you knew it was coming, right?

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Justice Thomas' nephew suicidal and tasered 

Tasers are painless they bring on many changes

Security guards punch and tase and pull out dreadlocks of Clarence Thomas' nephew

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas' nephew was allegedly tased and beat up at a New Orleans hospital yesterday after an apparent suicide attempt when he "refused to put on a hospital gown and tried to leave his examination." Derek Thomas, 25 and a student at Nicholls State University, is epileptic and went into a massive seizure when he was tased. Clarence Thomas and his family are said to be outraged at this terrible incident, though maybe that can't be true for Clarence, as he usually loves weapons and authority figures using them. Clarence Thomas is said to be flying to New Orleans, to sit there and listen to people talk about the case without interjecting, we assume. [WDSU/ABC 26 via Newell]

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WI GOP congressman supporting Ron Johnson surprised that Johnson supports Great Lakes drilling.

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Town hall turns ugly for Oral Snatch.

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Get your hand out of our minority leader's wallet

Tanning salon tax is yet another example of 'reverse racism' in Obama's America

Part of the MaoBama Obamacare Pelosicare SOCIALISM SOCIALISM SOCIALISM Plan was a 10 percent surcharge on the use of tanning beds. Smart conservatives are now beginning to figure out that this is yet another example of Obama's "reverse racism," which is racism against white people, as it's impossible to be regular racist against white people because they are so awesome. The only people who go to tanning salons, you see, are white people. Our president, who is privileged with beautiful brown skin, has oppressed the poor underprivileged pale people of our nation, who only want to get skin cancer and look like they work in the fields all day. MORE »

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Tax season just got a lot more fabulous

Masshole judge overturns DOMA, uses teabaggers favorite amendment for gayness

Your right-wing types often go on and on and on about "keeping the gummint out of my hair" and "state rights," and take as their proof text the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which basically says that the Feds can't do anything but fight wars and mint gold coins and maybe build interstate highways, and the states should be in charge of everything else. And if you've had to listen to all this, you've probably had the urge to say "So why should the gummint be all up in some dude's business if he wants to marry another dude?" but you don't because you promised your mom that you wouldn't start any fights at Thanksgiving this year. Well, Joseph L. Tauro just basically said the exact thing that you wanted to shout over turkey and stuffing, except he's a federal judge who was appointed by gay communist Richard Nixon 38 years ago, and he said it in a court decision declaring parts of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, so it's really a lot more meaningful than your holiday-ruining diatribe. MORE »

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Another Archeology Geek Moment of the Week. "Researchers have found the earliest archaeological evidence of a tortoise being kept as a family pet in Britain, at a castle in Staffordshire. The find, which is reported in the journal Post Medieval Archaeology, dates to the late 19th Century. The researchers say that, at this time, attitudes to keeping family pets "began to change". "A fondness for pets was more regularly expressed in literature," the researchers wrote in their article. There has been evidence of turtles and terrapins in domestic situations dating back to the 17th Century - but it was believed that these animals were used for food. The discovery of a 130-year-old tortoise leg bone at Stafford Castle, amongst the remains of cats and dogs, suggests that this animal was a pet kept by the castle's caretakers. According to Dr Richard Thomas of Leicester University, who led the research, the keeping of pets had until then been considered "morally suspect". "If you go back to the medieval period you can see that attitudes to animals in general were very much constrained by religious doctrine," he said. "Man was given dominion over all animals, and where close relationships with animals are found, suspicion is aroused. "In witchcraft, for example, having a close animal companion is seen as very sinister and a sign of devilry." The discovery of the tortoise bone is seen as evidence that this was an era of the start of a social and cultural change. It was then that ordinary people began keeping animals - not for any practical use - but because they were fond of them and wanted them as family pets."

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Who says lying and smear don't work? 

Repeat it enough times and…

Have months of Fox News hyperventilating and right-wing fear mongering over our supposed socialist-in-chief finally paid off? A majority of voters now think President Barack Obama is a socialist, at least according to one new poll.

The poll (PDF) from Democracy Corps finds that 55 percent of likely voters believe that the word "socialist" describes the president either "well" or "very well."

I'd bet that 99% of those polled would be unable to define socialism but hey, so what.  Enough people have seen the word on teabagger's protest signs or heard Beck mouth it off twenty times an evening, so it must be true.  Idiots.

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Must be a lot easier to cap now that most of the entire oil field has gushed out into the Gulf. "The BP oil leak could be completely contained as early as Monday if a new, tighter cap can be fitted over the blown-out well, the government official in charge of the crisis said Friday in some of the most encouraging news to come out of the Gulf in the 2 1/2 months since the disaster struck. Crews using remote-controlled submarines plan to swap out the cap over the weekend, taking advantage of a window of good weather following weeks of delays caused by choppy seas. "I use the word 'contained,'" said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen. "'Stop' is when we put the plug in down below." Two relief wells are still being drilled deep below the seafloor to intercept the ruptured well and seal it up permanently with mud and cement, a job that may not be completed until mid-August. The cap now in use was installed June 4 to capture oil gushing from the bottom of sea, but because it had to be fitted over a jagged cut in the well pipe, it allows some crude to escape into the Gulf. The new cap - dubbed "Top Hat Number 10" - is designed to fit more snugly and help BP catch all the oil. During the installation, the gusher will get worse before it gets better. Once the old cap is removed, oil will pour into the Gulf unhindered for about 48 hours while the new one is put in place, Allen said."

And if the cap doesn't work .... "Russian-owned submersibles would be able to cap the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the captain of one of the vessels has said. The skipper was speaking as two of the subs - which can dive to 6,000m - started a campaign of exploration at the bottom of Lake Baikal in Siberia. He added that there was still time for the subs to help BP with the disaster. The subs are searching for gas hydrates - a potential alternative fuel source - on the bed of Baikal. Yevgenii Chernyaev told BBC News that the problem had to be addressed at the highest level."

Meanwhile, Beyond Prosecution's attempt to blame others falls flat. "One of BP's partners in the deepwater well which exploded in April - leading to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico - has refused to pay its share of the costs so far. Houston-based Anadarko, which owns 25% of the Macondo well, was asked to pay $272m (£180m) by BP. But an Anadarko spokesman said it was going to withhold payment. BP said it was "disappointed" that the firm had "failed to live up to their obligations". "Anadarko's refusal to pay their share will in no way affect BP's commitment to stop the leak, clean up the spill, and pay all legitimate claims as quickly as possible", spokesman Mark Salt added. He said another firm with a stake in the project, Mitsui Oil Exploration, had also not responded to a request to help pay for the spill. BP's bill so far has been more than $3.1bn - and it has agreed to set up a $20bn fund to deal with compensation claims and clean-up costs."