Thursday, August 12, 2010

Headlines - Thursday August 12

 
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Wow. This really is really disturbing: The Pope is refusing the resignations of two Dublin auxiliary bishops that raped little boys.
 
Church leaders have enabled and protected child rapists for decades. Decades. Pope Benedict is the leading enabler. Still
 
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Administration gagging scientists studying BP oil disaster
From ThinkProgress:

In an explosive first-hand account, ecosystem biologist Linda Hooper-Bui describes how Obama administration and BP lawyers are making independent scientific analysis of the Gulf region an impossibility. Hooper-Bui has found that only scientists who are part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process to determine BP's civil liability get full access to contaminated sites and research data. Pete Tuttle, USFWS environmental contaminant specialist and Department of Interior NRDA coordinator, admitted to The Scientist that "researchers wishing to formally participate in NRDA must sign a contract that includes a confidentiality agreement" that "prevents signees from releasing information from studies and findings until authorized by the Department of Justice at some later and unspecified date."

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Chris Bowers at Open Left has the data to back up the warning to the White House that it punches hippies at its peril.
 
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I knew this was coming.
 
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 Bryan Fischer: the Atheists' Strongest Argument
Against the Existence of Christianity
 
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Hahaha! – Meet Rick Scott, a Florida billionaire GOPer running for Governor. He is a former CEO of Columbia HCA, which is accused of massive fraud.

Anyway, he was having a press conference to talk about ethics when he got served in front of the entire gaggle.

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The proper way to exit a job

Local Hero Makes Bail - Scott Slater, beloved Flight Attendant from Jet Blue was arrested and has made bail and is free!

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"If I can't get my dignity back here, then fire your best shot in getting rid of me through expulsion. Hey, if I was you, I might want me to go away too. I am not going away. I am here. At the end of the day, somebody, somebody has to do more than wish I would go away." Charlie Rangel, demanding to see the evidence against him so he can fight it Link 
 
Jon Stewart said one of the charges against Charlie was "improper parking in the House garage." Really? The Democrats are going to let one of their most powerful members get run out of town because he improperly parked his car?  And if the parking charge is the least of Charlie's problems, why the hell did they file the parking charge in the first goddamn place? Democrats - is there no end to their stupidity?
 
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BP not paying claims
They're not denying them, they're just not paying them. Link
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The Gulf is fixed quotes 
 
"That oil might be degraded all the way to CO2 and water in a matter of weeks."

          -- Bill Walker, director of Mississippi's Department of Marine Handjob Resources   Link


"If a small animal got coated with enough oil, it could smother it.
  But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn't breathe."

          --  Haley Barbour, trying to get pelicans to brush their teeth,    Link


"I want to see a new reality show, "The Barbour Family Eats Gulf Seafood! "
          -- mistermix   Link
 
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"Global warming is a hoax!
Those thermometers are LYING!"

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EPA declares global warming debate over
 
One thing that global warming deniers really hate is being told that the debate is over. Of course, that's because the "debate" is just a stall -- at this point, they add nothing to the science and only try to find fault with the consensus. Like creationists, they only attack the science, while offering no evidence of their own. If you want proof the debate is over, then consider that even the deniers have stopped debating. But it's one thing to recognize that the debate is over and another to stop it. The Environmental Protection Agency recently took that step.
http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/08/epa-declares-global-warming-debate-over.html
 
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Karen Handel, Another Victim of
Sarah Palin's Kiss of Death
 
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Unless this gets us first. "Russia is mounting extra patrols to fight wildfires in a region hit by nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, amid fears that radiation could spread. Crews put out several fires in Bryansk, the emergencies ministry said, amid concern that wind or fire could whip up radioactive particles in the soil. Officials say they are assessing the danger and there is no cause for panic. Fires have swept through western Russia for a week, although officials say many are now under control. The area engulfed by fires has halved, with 92,000 hectares (350 sq miles) now affected, compared to Tuesday's figure of 174,000 hectares. Moscow enjoyed clear skies on Wednesday after rains helped cleanse the air after a week of heavy smog. But more than 600 fires are still burning in different parts of the country, including around the capital, and weather forecasters are warning the smoke could soon return."
 
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Flunking America 101 The growing chorus of opposition to an Islamic cultural center that will be installed on property already owned by the group that wants to construct it is  horrifying to any Constitutional civil libertarian...you know, like us. We are horrified by the so-called "good, upstandin' 'Murkuns" who scream about the sanctity of a Constitution they haven't read opposing an exercise of religious liberty. But we are more horrified that people in positions of leadership are struck mute in the face of the mob.

Then you have these religious leaders...the only ones we can think of off the top of our secular, heathen heads that we would hesitate before strangling with the entrails of a freshly-murdered royal "More than 40 Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders said they were deeply troubled by some of the opposition and how protesters have demonized all Muslims and exploited fear. ... "We have witnessed this sinful corruption of religion across faith traditions throughout history and must condemn it without equivocation whenever or wherever it occurs," the religious leaders wrote in their statement. "However, we fail to honor those murdered on that awful day - including Muslim Americans killed in the Twin Towers and Pentagon - by betraying our nation's historic commitment to religious liberty, fueling ugly stereotypes about Islam and demeaning the vast majority of Muslims committed to peace.""

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Economic Terrorism

Wall Street's war against Main Street never ends.  Digby:

Possibly one of the most depressing, yet entirely predictable, political moments in a long string of depressing moments is this summer's obsession with Muslim and Mexican bashing (with a dollop of good old fashioned white on black racism) while the real miscreants in our system carry on unmolested and their apologists insist that we must appease them or risk even worse consequences.

Here's Krugman:

I'm saddened but not really surprised by Robert Rubin's declaration that we don't need more stimulus. It has seemed to me from early on in this crisis that Rubin and his disciples wanted to believe that this world crisis was something like the 1997-98 Asian crisis, and amenable to similar solutions.

SNIP


It's even worse than that actually, as Krugman has laid out elsewhere. Rubin and friends have persuaded themselves that the only important government function in the economy is the care and feeding of the Wall Street banksters.

SNIP

Wall Street, the banks and the corporate CEOs are still saying that unless the government does what it wants it to do --- austerity for average Americans so the wealthy can dine on their wasting carcasses --- they will blow whole damned thing up. I guess they figure that if the Mad Max scenario comes to pass they'll have enough money to hire one of those private armies Glenn Beck is angling for to keep the riff raff off their islands.


Read the whole thing.

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Young hearthrob Rush Limbaugh has a brand new Facebook page, and he has used this platform to at long last give the screeching masses what they want: photos of his wedding. "Sharing a laugh with Elton John backstage before his performance" is the caption on this one. Yes, somehow KNOWN HOMOSEXUAL ENEMY Sir Elton John was paid enough money to show up at this thing. Mazel tov, Rush! So what other debauchery is revealed in this photo gallery? And what did the Rush faithful have to say about these photos? MORE »
 
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Man-whore mark Sanford takes Obama's dirty money, like a prostitute

Mark Sanford will use the proceeds from album sales to pay down South Carolina's debt

March of 2009 was so very long ago that when you click this link you will be surprised that everyone in the story isn't wearing chain mail and calling each other "thee" and "thou," but back then South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was a guy with a future in politics, and if there's one thing guys with futures in politics do, it's go in for dumb grandstanding stunts that score points with ideologues but do real, actual damage to the people who elected them. That's why 2012 sleeper political candidate Mark Sanford bravely told Chairman Obama that he didn't want to use the money allocated to his state by the stimulus package to "stimulate" the economy in the intended Keynesian (Kenyan?) fashion, but rather to pay off this guy he owed money to. What happened to that strong, principled conservative of yore, anyway? MORE »

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Tax cuts for the rich will fix this ...

What a dying Empire looks like:

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.
But at least we can have our war profiteering AND we saved the banksters....YAY! No unemployment benefits for lazy people though, it adds to the deficit.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Freedom of Religion also means freedom FROM religion:

Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.

Each one is a potential jihadist recruitment and training center, and determined to implement the "Grand Jihad"...
This is a good start. why don't we take it to the next level and ban Christian churches. After all they were behind the Crusades that killed millions of innocents, they burned people as witches, killed abortions Doctors, and continually tried to drag the planet back to the dark ages with biblical story trumping science. Let's get rid of them all, Catholic churches and Synagogues too. It will make our children safer.
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to Hell, big deal.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Fairly imbalanced and fairly old.

In a survey released by analyst Steve Sternberg, Fox News has the oldest audience among fully distributed cable networks. The network's average viewer last season was 65 years old, according to Nielsen. Heck, it's viewers are even older than viewers of Hallmark Channel, Military Channel and Golf Channel. Perhaps the reason viewers tend to leave Fox News on all day racking up hours of big Nielsen numbers is they can't actually change the channel?
Watch Fox and eat your prunes. Right after Matlock, of course.