Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Headlines - Wednesday December 1

EMERGENCY PETITION TO FCC CHAIR JULIUS GENACHOWSKI: "Don't let Comcast block Netflix or other online innovators for their own profit! Support the strongest Net Neutrality protections possible -- and keep Obama's promise." http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/petition_netflix/?source=auto-e&referring_akid=.573324.Kz49tf

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Ten facts that Republicans refuse to believe.

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told an interviewer today that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should resign if she had her diplomats "engage in espionage in the United Nations." Hillary Clinton, however, is unlikely to listen to Julian Assange.
 
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Math is hard:
 
 
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Attorney General Eric Holder says the criminal investigation into Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is more than just "saber-rattling," and Justice Department officials are claiming he violated the Espionage Act. If that's true, isn't the NYT guilty as well?
 
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While only 1% of the American people are millionaires, 49% of members of Congress are.  Calling them 'representatives' is pretty funny, isn't it?
 
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Wisco: A rant directed at the average news consumer.
 
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Wow. The Senate did something today!
They passed the food safety bill. Remarkable!
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday passed a sweeping overhaul of the nation's food-safety system, after recalls of tainted eggs, peanut butter and spinach that sickened thousands and led major food makers to join consumer advocates in demanding stronger government oversight.

The legislation, which passed by a vote of 73 to 25, would greatly strengthen the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that in recent decades focused more on policing medical products than ensuring the safety of foods. The bill is intended to get the government to crack down on unsafe foods before they harm people rather than after outbreaks occur.

Here's the rollcall vote. Note that the only "no" votes came from Republicants.

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"What we've learned over the last 19, 20 months now of the Obama administration is that you cannot grow this economy, you can't stimulate the economy through government handouts. You've got to do it through the private sector." Dick Cheney

As Benen points out, the stimulus absolutely stimulated economic growth. So Cheney is lying again. Also, a third of the stimulus was spent on tax cuts -- which pumped money into the private sector, along with paying private sector contractors to take on government infrastructure projects and the like. Yeah. Whoops! There I go again, looking at reality when the Republicans deal in bumper sticker lies.

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GOP hate group leader Tony Perkins cites research from Dr. George 'rentboy' Rekers' phony group to justify anti-gay smears.

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Just to be clear, would that be more or less damaging than the US spying on its own citizens? Or leaking the Valerie Plame details? It's not immediately clear why one is protecting America and the other is damaging so some helpful clarification would be great. CNN:

Former President George W. Bush joined a chorus of U.S. officials calling leaks of sensitive government information "very damaging," telling a forum at Facebook headquarters that Wikileaks' recent release of 250,000 documents may significantly hurt Washington's image abroad.

"It's going to be very hard to keep the trust of foreign leaders," the nation's 43rd president said of the documents on issues ranging from Iran to Honduras to Turkey. "If you have a conversation with a foreign leader and it ends up in a newspaper, you don't like it. I didn't like it."

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Flag Desecration #37

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Oh. My. God.

However, in one sign of action, Obama said he appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and budget director Jack Lew to work with congressional Republicans and Democrats to come up with a deal on taxes in the next couple of days.

If no agreement is reached before Congress breaks for the holidays, taxes on all Americans would increase, a new year shocker that would increase pressure on Washington to act.

Immediately following the meeting, congressional Republicans said the discussion with President Barack Obama was a positive one in which both sides agreed to spend more time working together and finding common ground on tax and other tough issues.

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More bipartisan. Seriously? How?:

President Barack Obama told GOP leaders behind closed doors Tuesday that he had failed to reach across party lines enough during his first two years in office, a senior administration official told CNN.

He promised to do a better job of bipartisan outreach in the days ahead, the official added.

"The president said he had to do better, and the president is ready to do his part," the official said.

That surely inspired the Republican leaders to want to work with the President. I'm sure they think he's really got a spine of steel now. 

Double Facepalm

I'm sorry, I want a President who stands up for himself, his administration, and those of us who voted for him. I don't need one who bargains away most of his position before he even begins negotiations, or one who gets abused for 2 years and then comes out and says he hasn't been attentive enough to Republican needs.

Fuck him.

Can we put Howard Dean up against him in a primary in '12? I want somebody with a set of balls and principle, not a meek, spineless asshole who thinks capitulation to bullies is the way to win.

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Did President Kyl approve this?

This seems like good news:

The Obama administration scored a victory in its drive to curb the worldwide spread of nuclear material with an agreement on Wednesday by the hard-line former Soviet republic, Belarus, to surrender its stockpile of highly enriched uranium by 2012.

The announcement came at a European security conference here after a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the foreign minister of Belarus, Sergey Martynov. Mrs. Clinton said the United States would give Belarus technical and financial aid to eliminate its stockpile.

She welcomed the decision as a sign that Belarus would join the United States in its campaign to stem the proliferation of weapons-grade material by converting nuclear plants to run on low-enriched uranium — an effort that is one of President Obama's most cherished foreign policy goals.

The administration had pushed Belarus for months to relinquish its stockpile without success. As a result, the country was not invited to Mr. Obama's 47-nation nuclear security summit last April, at which another former Soviet state, Ukraine, agreed to give up its highly enriched uranium.

Efforts like this would be easier if Republicans would stop impeding foreign policy advances such as START for little more than domestic partisan gain.

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One of Stephen Harper's advisors is "feeling manly" today and says that Julian Assange should be assassinated.

I have some good news for manly men like this guy. Because they've been under a massive denial of service attack, Wikileaks now hosting at Amazon. Last time I checked, Amazon is a US company, so unlike the treasonous rapist Assange, it's subject to masculine US law. After the dick measuring and pissing contests are over, perhaps all the smack-talking manly men will find a way to persuade feminine Amazon to stop hosting the most dangerous organization the world has ever known.

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Jill: John Shadegg is a moron.

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More of this, please. Anderson Cooper totally went all "journalist" on a Texas state representative who was still, two years after the Presidential election, pushing birther nonsense and repeating chain emails long since debunked by Snopes as fact, and Cooper destroyed his every utterance and left the man humiliated - or shall we say he would have been humiliated, if he wasn't a moronic racist birther douchebag.
 
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Adam Serwer at the American Prospect pulls this out of the DoD's survey on repealing DADT: As one special operations force warfighter told us, "We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He's big, he's mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay."
 
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Here's a good short way to describe our current economic non-debate, from Brad Reed at Crooks and Liars:  

Joe Lieberman apparently thinks (freezing pay of federal workers) is a great idea. Joe Lieberman also wants to keep tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans in place. In other words, Joe Lieberman supports denying pay increases to VA nurses taking care of wounded vets just so Paris Hilton can keep her precious, precious tax cut.

In case you haven't noticed, our political ruling class is deeply, deeply evil.


Ignore the mention of Joe Lieberman; he's just a stand-in for every rethuglican, teabagger and Blue Dog who also wants to -

deny pay increases to VA nurses taking care of wounded vets just so Paris Hilton can keep her precious, precious, tax cut.

Don't let anyone describe it any other way.

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The TSA, molesting poor Rosa
 
Fifty-five years ago today, a "very, very urban" woman named Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to Whitey, and soon thereafter the FBI did everything it could to destroy the civil rights movement forever. Thankfully they failed, but maybe Rand Paul will be able to repeal the Civil Rights Act? (Keep your fingers crossed, FBI!) But anyway, our sad country has come a long way since 1955. We have a black president now — and Shirley Sherrod — which proves we live in a glorious post-racial world, where undesirable black people are simply "urban Kenyans." Ha ha. Also, happy Hanukkah. [Politico]
 
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Christine O'Donnell planning to switch parties in 2012
'Leaking'? We don't want to ask.
 
Hey you guys, Christine O'Donnell is still willing to set fire to some media oxygen! Good Morning America had her and failed CNN newsman D.L. Hughley on today, because what America loves is listening to two people who know little about current events telling us their PERSPECTIVE. So here is what Christine thinks about Hillary Clinton: "I would love to see her take out Obama in the primary. You know, I would even be tempted to change my registration so that I could vote for her in the Democratic primary." Sounds like a plan. Christine O'Donnell is now your problem, Democratic Party. Enjoy her trying to latch onto Hillary Clinton to create the most frightening presidential ticket since Teddy Roosevelt and an estrous rhinoceros won the Progressive Party nomination in 1912. READ MORE »