Great allies
BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia (15 of the 19 hijackers) and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.
And speaking of Iraq .......
Sunday: 40 Iraqis, 1 US Soldier Killed; 109 Iraqis Wounded
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan:
Ten members of a medical team, including six Americans, were shot and killed by militants as they were returning from providing eye treatment and other health care in remote villages in northern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the team said Saturday
4,414 soldiers killed in Iraq; 1,217 in Afghanistan.
And for what?
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Russia burns, Asia floods, Obama plays hoops
More than 700 people per day are dropping dead in Moscow thanks to the poison smoke from the worst fires since Napoleon tried to burn down Russia two centuries ago. But because Putin's Russia doesn't want people thinking the fires are really the problem, doctors have been threatened with dismissal if they diagnose the smoke inhalation victims with smoke inhalation. MORE »
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The reason gas is priced so that it always ends in 9/10 of a cent is the same reason something like milk is priced at $4.99 instead of $5.00. People buy more of it. What's amazing is to learn that the extra fraction allows oil companies to rake in an extra $1.7 billion a year in the U.S. alone.
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It turns out the government response to the recession actually helped to reduce the budget deficit compared with what it would have been had we done nothing. Via Yglesias:
Of course you won't hear this in any wingnut docu-fiction movies or coming from the very serious old media.
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Left Coaster: Catastrophic Weather: 2010
The renowned meteorologist, Jeff Masters is struck by the extent of the heat wave in Russia, the soil aridity and massive fires afflicting that land. He writes that it is "One of the most remarkable weather events of my lifetime."
As Joe Romm writes, the drying of the soil is one of the major predictions of global warming which he calls the "Dust-Bowl-ification" of major sections of the world. The result of the record heat wave in Russia is higher wheat costs throughout the world and possible radioactive contamination as the area around Chernobyl is burned. Along with the massive floods in Pakistan, the horrific fires in Russis are events which indicate we are well on our way to creating the inhospitable climate predicted by the climate scientists.
Meanwhile the deniers spread their lies that it's all a conspiracy theory. Too bad nature itself doesn't believe their story.
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Environmental news stories you probably won't hear from the white middle age dudes on the Sunday morning yacking shows.
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The right's ingenious campaign to turn one billion people into our sworn enemies.
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While Ted Olson was over on Fox News ripping apart Chris Wallace, David Boies spent this morning on Face The Nation totally destroying Family Research Council douchebag Tony Perkins.
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Rush Limbaugh and William Shatner debate health care.
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The current death toll in Pakistan's ongoing flooding is estimated at 1,600 people. As of Sunday, the impact is reported to have affected more than 15 million people. The U.N. said Monday that the number affected could exceed that of the 2004 Tsunami, 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and 2010 Haiti earthquake combined.
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Global warming's real victim: America's golf courses
As myriad continents either flood or burn and North America bakes, experts at the Wall Street Journal say the real victims of this endless bummer are the golf courses. Thanks to a combination of record heat and humidity, the awful weather is literally murdering the nation's crucial greens. But are Democrats exclusively to blame? Perhaps not: "Golfers themselves deserve part of the blame for insisting that putting surfaces be mown short and fast even in weather conditions in which such practices are almost certain to ruin them." Important golf clubs are actually shutting down because of this! We want our country back, etc. MORE »
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Obama will take this Idaho slob's nonexistent money
Direct from Ketchum, Idaho — where Ernest Hemingway shot himself, because the people were such trash — comes this shocking photograph of a dumb redneck's beat-to-hell 1984 Suburban. Wonkette operative "Sebastian S." apparently walked right up to this thing to take this picture, or maybe he just leaned out of his car and snapped the shot and sped away, weeping for America. But what do the custom Word document printout 'n scotch tape signs say, about America? Let's say "Enhance, enhance" to the teevee-apocalypse robot of the future (which is now) and get a closeup view.
Oh, proud patriot with your peeling window stickers and home-made racist signs, how much do you want for this two-tone (primer & rust) piece of crap so you can continue having so much money, which the "coon" is not going to take, because you are free? Nine-hundred dollars? That's a bit steep for such a PoS, but whatever, you're rich (in freedom)!
Extra bonus wingnut points for proudly standing up for shooting wolves. It's too bad wolves aren't a "threat" to anybody but welfare ranchers and the sheep they love in the night, because it would be funny if re-introduced wolves really did develop a taste for the slob offspring of the very rednecks who hunted wolves to near extinction. (The home-made sign in the driver-side back window says "Wolf meat tastes like chicken.")
(Ha ha, we are so accustomed to outright public racism from the teabagger trash these days that we're more offended by the shitty anti-wolf window signs … and the paint job on this piece of American garbage.)
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It appears as if this is regarded by conservatards as a greater breach of decorum than hollering "YOU LIE" during the President's State of the Union speech, or telling a senior Senator to go EFF himself on the Senate floor. Ugh, the hypocrisy!
