Thursday, February 10, 2011

Headlines - Thursday February 10

 
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4,436 soldiers have been killed in Iraq; 1,475 in Afghanistan.
 
In case anyone cares.
 
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Tom Tomorrow has a history lesson from the Tea Party.

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Thanks to increased carbon dioxide levels, the pH of the ocean is dropping faster than expected. But Al Gore is fat, which means climate change is a myth.

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Your tax dollars hard at work....

CIA officers who were involved in cases of wrongful imprisonment, mistreatment and even detainee deaths have often avoided serious punishment and in many cases been promoted within the agency, an investigation by the Associated Press has found.

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The only thing Republicans didn't slash was the budget deficit

Almost nothing was spared in the GOP's target list, including the Centers for Disease Control, the FBI, job training, alternative energy research, and green jobs initiatives. In fact, the only thing that was actually spared was the budget deficit, because while the GOP targeted 70 different programs, they only managed to shave $23 billion in spending: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2011/2/9/942320/-The-only-thing-Republicans-didnt-slash-was-the-budget-deficit

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Orrin Hatch, Teabagger - Orrin Hatch, that fiery, barn-storming man of action, is trying to align himself with the Teabaggers by attending their televised town hall meeting and circle-jerk. Crickets ensued. Then Bachmann-the-Nut entered the room to thunderous applause. Hatch must be having visions of his fellow Utahistan senator Bob Bennet. (AP)

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Fracturing the Coalition

John Boehner cries It was a move worthy of Harry Reid. Assuming that an extension of key provisions of the PATRIOT Act would pass easily, House Speaker John Boehner put the bill on the fast track, suspending the rules to push it through so they could get right to work on such "job-saving" measures as defunding healthcare reform and shutting down Planned Parenthood. In doing so, Boehner had to raise the bar -- instead of needing a simple majority to pass, the bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass without amendments or debate. Turns out the Speaker's whip count was off a tad and the measure failed by seven votes.
 
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Gawker has posted the Craigslist ad of married GOP Rep. Christopher Lee (R-NY), who has allegedly been using the site's "Women Seeking Men" section to seek out adulterous hook-ups in the Washington DC area. The gossip site has posted screen shots of numerous emails purportedly exchanged between Lee and a woman he angered by lying about his marital status.
As noted above, Lee was among the U.S. House members who voted to retain DADT. His position on other LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage appears to be unknown at the moment.
 
Full of disappoint.
 
 
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Tea Party-backed South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was dogged by accusations of extramarital affairs during her successful 2010 campaign, prompting her to declare that she'd resign if the charges were ever proven true. Today a man who claims to have had an affair with Haley has published "steamy details" of their encounters and has dared Haley to sue him for libel.
 
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The Teabagger's Guide for Children
 
From the same company putting out Tea Party Review. Book synopsis:
A hilarious and entertaining way for parents to sit down with their children and teach them the origins of the new Tea Party movement and the importance of standing up for liberty and the American Dream. Follow Tommy and Lou as they struggle to keep their swing set business afloat despite 246 czars, onerous regulations and sky-high taxes in these troubling times. Will Tommy and Lou finally decide to join the other kids on the corner in standing up for freedom or will they continue to fear being vilified by the press and demeaned by Marxus Obundus ("the One")?
Can't make it up, can ya?
 
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Here comes the socialism!
Whenever I see a chart like the one below, I can't help but to think of jackwagons like R. Lee Ermey and Sarah Palin and every wingnut AM talk radio host in the world who insist that President Obama is attempting to replace capitalism with socialism.

dow_2years.jpg

That's the DJIA between February 9, 2009 and February 9, 2011. Two years of an obviously anti-capitalist administration.

Meanwhile, the Dow is up for a seventh consecutive session. The wingnut conspiracy theory that President Obama hates capitalism is an hilarious display of utter dumbstupid and batshit insanity.

Remember when Hannity was referring to the Dow as the "Obama Bear Market?" Take another look at the above chart, Hannity, and bite me.

And in a capitalist-related story:

LA Times:

Talk about outsourcing.

The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange revealed Wednesday that it is in advanced talks to be purchased by the owner of the German stock exchange -- meaning that the citadel of American capitalism soon could be foreign-owned.

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Great jobs (and discrimination) in Kentucky!

Wow, Ken Ham has been touting all the jobs his Ark Park will bring into Kentucky, and he's already advertising. Isn't that great? Look what opportunities are available:

Job Opportunities in the United States:

  • Constituent Data Administrator (CDA)
  • Guest Services Coordinator
  • Public Safety Console Operator
  • Senior Database Administrator (Senior DBA)
  • Video Editor/Animator/VFX
  • Web Developer--Python
  • Zoo Keeper
  • Ark Encounter Jobs

That's a diverse assortment of jobs, and they just have one thing in common. One little bitty catch.

All job applicants need to supply a written statement of their testimony, a statement of what they believe regarding creation and a statement that they have read and can support the AiG statement of faith.

So, you get to manage a database or shovel llama shit, as long as you have Fundamentalist Jesus in your heart. That goes even for those jobs at the Ark Encounter, where they are begging for state subsidies while insisting that it isn't really a religious ministry. If it isn't, why do all the employees have to swear an oath to worship Jesus precisely as Ken Ham demands they do?

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Good Morning America, February 8:

George Stephanopoulos: "But you had inspectors in the country [Iraq]. Why was it necessary to invade–"

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld: Saddam Hussein "had thrown them out about the second or third or fourth time."

Really, Donald? You claim Saddam Hussein threw out the weapons inspectors in 2003 which was further justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq?  Not so, you miserable, stinking, murderous liar.

Fact Checker has the story on when and how the inspectors left the country. They did so at their own volition after being pressured by the Bush administration to leave. It is no coincidence that the inspectors were reporting at the time that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found and that Hussein was cooperating with the inspectors.

Fact Checker awarded Rumsfeld it's top 'honor' – Four Pinocchios.

Rumsfeld writes in his just released memoir, Known and Unknown.

"Powell was not duped or misled by anybody. Nor did he lie about Saddam's suspected WMD stockpiles. The President did not lie. The Vice President did not lie. Tenet did not lie. Rice did not lie. I did not lie. The Congress did not lie. The far less dramatic truth is that we were wrong."

Four Pinocchios? A life sentence behind bars would be a more appropriate award for this duplicitous villain.

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Dear Republicans/teabaggers
 
How's that "repeal healthcare reform" thing working out for ya?

Oh, the irony. The Politico interviewed several GOP representatives who opted out of their Congressional health care plans, and discovered they're all having second thoughts about that whole 'repeal and replace' thing. If it's not the cost of individual insurance that's getting them steamed, it's the pre-existing conditions.

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Welcome to our world, assholes.
 
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Morford: How to rule the world for five minutes
 
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It's nice to see that Arianna Huffington's writers are rebelling once they've learned that they won't be getting a red cent from the recent $315 million sale of Huffington Post to AOL. I'd like to see her at least acknowledge this issue, which was completely absent from the mutually fellatory AOL/HuffPo statements about the deal.

Acknowledgement is probably the best HuffPo writers can hope for, because Huffington never pays for anything she gets from the little people, not even blogging software (Movable Type):

Six Apart relied exclusively upon the honor system when it came to collecting payments for people's usage of the platform. One story in particular exemplifies Six Apart's attritude towards its very own license, a story that can only be described as legend within the walls of Six Apart: the Huffington Post, the poster child of Movable Type, never actually paid for their license to use the software. To this day, even as Huffingpost is sold for over $350,000,000, its success can be attributed to the effectively free platform it built a business on.

This is Six Apart's fault, of course, because anyone who relies on Arianna to follow an honor system is living in a fantasy world.

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Boy, these mulsin terrists get whiter and more murkin all the time. "A US man has pleaded guilty in a court in the state of North Carolina to plotting terrorist attacks. Daniel Patrick Boyd filed a guilty plea at the New Bern court to charges of conspiring to provide support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap and injure people. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss several other counts against him. Boyd is alleged to have led a group of six other men who were part of a home-grown terror cell in rural America."
 
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Seventy-Four members of Congress ask Thomas to recuse himself from ruling on the Affordable Care Act "    As an Associate Justice, you are entrusted with the responsibility to exercise the highest degree of discretion and impartiality when deciding a case. As Members of Congress, we were surprised by recent revelations of your financial ties to leading organizations dedicated to lobbying against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We write today to respectfully ask that you maintain the integrity of this court and recuse yourself from any deliberations on the constitutionality of this act. [...] Given these facts, there is a strong conflict between the Thomas household's financial gain through your spouse's activities and your role as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. We urge you to recuse yourself from this case. If the US Supreme Court's decision is to be viewed as legitimate by the American people, this is the only correct path."
 
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Important: Santorum Gets In Some Sort of Spat With Politico Over Palin
 
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Fill it up with nothing at all
More WikiLeaks Fun: Saudi Arabia Is Running Out of Oil, Fast

The oil down the desert way, has been shakin' to the to-o-op!

When your editor was a child, he used to listen to Warren Zevon's Mohammed's Radio and think, "Well we won't have to be lining up around the block for Arab gasoline when I'm grown up, because we will live in spaceships and I will have sex with Linda Ronstadt all the time, like in that Philip K. Dick book." Linda Ronstadt is old now, too, and Warren Zevon is long dead and so is Philip K. Dick, but we all still have to pretend to pay attention to the Continuing Crisis in the Middle East because even the Prius gets thirsty for that sweet Arabian black tea. And one of the just-leaked leaks from WikiLeaks' broken condom says that Saudi Arabia is totally full of the B.S. when it comes to oil reserves, which were exaggerated by more than 40% and have been rapidly declining since at least 2007.

From the just-posted CNN article headlined "WikiLeaks: Saudi oil reserves exaggerated; decline inevitable":

(CNN) — Saudi Arabia's oil reserves may have been grossly over-estimated and its capacity to continue pumping at current capacity exaggerated, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable sent from the kingdom in 2007.

The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and published in the British newspaper The Guardian, cited the views of Sadad al-Husseini who had been in charge of exploration and production at the Saudi state-owned company Aramco for 12 years until 2004 ….

"According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is two-fold," the cable says. "First it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco executives and energy optimists would like."

Ha, such diplomatic language! [CNN/Guardian]