Headlines - Thursday November 11

Happy Veteran's Day.

Sorry fellas, we're never leaving Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Washington Post has a story about a new program to assist two groups of wounded veterans, "Vets with PTSD train dogs to help comrades"

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How's Mama Grizzly gonna cover this pregnancy up?

The 20-year-old mother of one has reportedly gained 15 pounds during her stint on Dancing With the Stars — because she keeps eating junk food.

You're telling me that with all the money she's making off this gig, Bristol Palin can't buy herself a fucking salad?

Girlfriend, please.

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Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.

 

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Wisco: ExxonMobil's ever-shifting strategy on climate.

 

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The General reviews Bush's book on Amazon.

 

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You might have heard about Sarah Palin's dick-move stunt in Pennsylvania. She accused the Pennsylvania's State Board of Education of banning sugary foods, and referred to it as a "nanny state run amok." So she hauled a buttload of cookies to her speaking engagement in Plumsteadville, PA. Get it? She's so clever.

Here's the problem. No such ban exists -- or is even in the works.

Jed Lewison:

The newspaper that made the claim is the right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and even they retracted the allegation.

Between this an her Wall Street Journal debacle, it's clear that she's having a rough week with her reading comprehension.

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Margaret & Helen: Higher Ground

 

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Mario: Rape and Pillage at Will

 

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Excellent. While The Obama administration has a message for Republican governors who campaigned against the president's high-speed rail program: Build the trains or give back the money.

 

But then there's this.

 

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Now we know why Chris Christie has declared war on the teachers' unions

 

It's because he's an uneducated, willfully-ignorant moron and wants a state of people just like himself:

Gov. Chris Christie says he's skeptical that humans are responsible for global warming.

The governor, a new darling of the Republican Party, made the remark at a town hall meeting he hosted in Toms River Tuesday afternoon.

Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he's seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn't been proven one way or another.

Christie says "more science" is needed to convince him.

 

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Samuel "NOT TRUE!" Alito

 

"Ethics are for thee, not me!"

That would seem to be the point of view of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who has no problem with actively appearing at conservative fundraisers, no matter how that might conflict with the Judicial Code of Ethics.

Justice Alito's goon squad bodyguards seem to be taking the "Joe Miller" approach that asking inconvenient questions is grounds for arrest.

"Our master's voice" would now seem to be the operating principle for several of the justices.

 

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Remember when the Feds said the air was safe at Ground Zero and that the seafood from the Gulf was safe to eat?

 

"I'll have the unleaded shrimp, please"

 

Raw Story

 

In two separate cases, a toxicologist and a chemist independently confirmed their seafood samples contained unusually high volumes of crude oil and harmful hydrocarbons — and some of this food was allegedly being sent to market.

 

One test, conducted by a chemist from Mobile, Alabama, employed a rudimentary chemical analysis of shrimp pulled from waters near Louisiana and found "oil and grease" in their digestive tracts.

 

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GOP fought recovery from the start for own gain

 

As we mark the midpoint of President Obama's first term, the defining moment of the past two years may have occurred during the very first week of the new administration when House Republicans voted in regimental lockstep, 177 to 0, against an $800 billion stimulus bill that economists both left and right agreed had to be passed to prevent a sputtering economy from seizing up altogether.

http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/6961/gop-fought-recovery-from-the-start-for-own-gain

 

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He'll get more cooperation from North Korea and the Taliban than he will from the rethuglicans. "President Barack Obama has pleaded with world leaders to put aside their differences and work together for global economic recovery. On the eve of the G20 summit, he said the US would play its part to create jobs and reduce global imbalances. World leaders are gathering in South Korea for the two-day meeting. There are fears the Seoul summit could descend into a row between the US and China about so-called "currency wars" and trade imbalances."

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The Dream That Is Michele Bachmann Has Finally Died

For Michele Bachmann, this was the year. Her party took back the House. She raised more money than ever. She set up a PAC to buy the devotion of her colleagues. MICHELE BACHMANN WAS FINALLY GOING PLACES IN THIS WHOLE POWER THING. So she ran for Republican Conference leader. She was finally going to destroy and conquer the party leadership from the inside. Yet tonight she's given up. Her prospects were so bad she couldn't even make it to the vote. And despite all the hype in this election, it's a final nail in the coffin of crazy. Crazy was exploited by the old guard, but then when it really counted, crazy promptly lost. And now the terrifying vision of Michele Bachmann taking over this country has died. Big sale on Truck Nutz. FOR NOW.

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Federal Government Now Paying Lots of People $150,000 For Some Reason

While the U.S. economy continues to suck, unemployment holds at a very high level, and employers are cutting salaries and benefits at every turn, one important employer is actually paying 11 times more people $150,000-a-year salaries than it did five years ago. And that employer is the federal government. Good for them! Hey, if your company is making record profits like the federal government is, you really should reward your employees. Still, federal employees are said to earn less than private-sector workers in similar jobs. But that's not stopping Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz from deciding that all federal employees need an across-the-board pay cut right now.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who will head the panel overseeing federal pay, says he wants a pay freeze and prefers a 10% pay cut. "It's stunning when you see what's happened to federal compensation," he says. "Every metric shows we're heading in the wrong direction."

The wrong direction to what? What is the right direction, an entire bureaucracy of unpaid interns? That may work just as well as what we currently have, actually.

President Obama, on the other hand, is seeking a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to federal workers this year for some reason.

Since 2000, federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Good for them, we guess? Chaffetz needs to shut up with this pay cut talk. Pretty soon, with this whole private-enterprise unemployment thing, Chinese-funded-debt-backed federal jobs will be the only jobs in this country, except for a few multinational corporate CEO jobs. And we will need those government jobs to provide all the salary we can get. [USA Today]

Wow. In other news, he says he's 'not afraid to go after the Bushies in an investigation into torture.'

Did you hear that, Hopey?