Really, Barack?
You think a ray of light is going to beam down and knock Coburn on his ass and change his mind?
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The term "Christian business professional" gives me a mild sense of visceral unease, like the words gonorrhea, peace officer, botulism and smegma. It just doesn't sit well. You've seen them, unwrinkled, affluent white Republican types driving a Cadillac Escalade along the 405 freeway in Orange County, California, or some equally soulless and manicured place; the obligatory 'Support Our Troops' magnet on the back bumper next to the Jesus fish, cell phones glued to their ears, their faith and their earthly desires joined together as one. Untroubled minds in an untroubled universe. Dante never envisioned such horrors.
But then Dante never read the Wall Street Journal. For some reason I occasionally do. Pardon the lack of links, but I'm getting this from the paper copy and the online version is, of course, behind a pay wall. Long live free markets! More here.
Two years after Government General Motors was bailed out by the Obama Administration, the company has completely turned around and is now going to dish out record bonuses to the people who deserve them the most: hourly wage workers. These are the kind of record bonuses we should be seeing more of, not record bonuses for white-collar criminals on Wall Street.
DETROIT – General Motors Co. will pay more than $189 million in profit-sharing to 48,000 U.S. hourly workers and millions more in performance bonuses to salaried employees, according to company documents obtained by The Associated Press.GM will pay most hourly workers more than $4,000 each as compensation for its strong financial performance last year, said a person briefed on the bonuses. The payments come less than two years after the automaker emerged from bankruptcy protection with the help of a huge government bailout. They're more than double the previous record payment of $1,775 in 1999, at the height of the boom in sales of sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.
Profit-Sharing! Socialist Motors! Boycott! IEEEEE!
Just think how the economy would look like right now if the government had allowed GM to collapse and the endless chain of suppliers who service GM and dealerships who sell GM vehicles no longer had a business.
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There exists a rumor that Todd Palin had sex with some Alaska massage lady. Is it true? Doesn't matter. There was an opening in the media patchwork for a Todd Palin sex rumor, and somebody filled it. Luckily for Palin rumor bloggers, this masseuse is also willing to confirm another Palin rumor, that Sarah Palin never was pregnant with Trig, and Trig is therefore the spawn of Bristol Palin or some other form of extraterrestrial life. This massage lady says she gave a massage to Sarah Palin during this supposed pregnancy, but when she felt up her abdomen, there were exactly zero magic Downs-syndrome campaign props inside it. Wow, what a nice coincidence it is that this lady is able to give life to so many Palin rumors, and in such detail!
Your evidence:
According to Shailey, Sarah Palin NEVER once told any of the people at All About You Spa that she was pregnant, even though she remained a client almost up to the moment that she "gave birth."
Sarah did not confess to Shailey that she was "with child." even though she was asked specifically. (Nor did she tell ANY of the people who gave her a massage since NOT ONE of them knew until after her announcement.)
Sarah did not appear pregnant by looking at her in an unclothed state.
Even though she was given a thorough massage by an experienced, and licensed, masseuse (Who also had substantial experience with prenatal massage) nothing about Sarah's body gave any indication that she was pregnant. (And don't forget, she would have been between SIX TO SEVEN MONTHS PREGNANT at this time. )
Sarah had procedures during her "pregnancy" that could have been harmful to a fetus and did not once say anything to alert the employees to that possibility.
There you go. Alaska has really Won the Future by diversifying their fish, petroleum, and stupidity based economy with this whole Palin blog rumor industry. It's an industry your Wonkette is happy to provide logistical support. Because when the Palins lose, we all win. Even, or especially, if it's libel. [Immoral Minority]
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Wisco: The No Job Agenda
Assistant Attorney General Charles Grube contends U.S. District Judge John Sedwick was wrong to issue an injunction last year barring the state from altering its benefits package. That ruling requires Arizona to keep funding the coverage until there is a final ruling, which could take years. Grube said that before issuing an injunction, Sedwick was required to consider not only the claims of harm to the people losing benefits, but the harm to the state by being required to maintain them. But Grube said Sedwick was "explicitly dismissive" of evidence presented by the state about the cost burden on taxpayers of continuing to provide coverage.
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Just as virtually every Republican governor in the nation is looking to kill unions, cut education, cut Medicaid, or even cut corporate taxes again to somehow magically fix their budget problems, a new poll of municipal bond traders and investors on Wall Street shows that they believe such budget cuts will only send unemployment soaring and possibly lead cities and states to default.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some of the United States' weakest local governments face a real risk of default in 2011 as well as waves of layoffs that could put upward pressure on the country's jobless rate, according to a Reuters poll.The findings from the poll published on Sunday found a majority of Wall Street professionals including municipal bond traders and investors believe -- 14 out of 25 -- up to four multibillion-dollar municipal bond defaults will take place this year.
...Among the investors polled, 19 of 23 thought job cuts aimed at bringing budgets into line would put noticeable upward pressure on the national unemployment rate, which over the past two months has fallen sharply to 9.0 percent from 9.8 percent.
"If the states fire the employees necessary to cut their budgets, unemployment will get worse," said Marilyn Cohen, president of Envision Capital Management in Los Angeles.
Budget cuts do not take place in a vacuum. Even if you cut a program and fire employees, you're still paying for those employees in the form of unemployment checks and reduced tax revenue. The austerity measures recently imposed in the UK, which are similar to the kind of measures that Republicans want to implement here, have already shown us what to expect.
Why let facts get in the way though? The Tea Party demands a sacrificial lamb.
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Presidential hopeful Fred Karger is anti-war, pro-pot and single-handedly revealed that the Mormon Church bankrolled Proposition 8. He's also an openly gay California Republican Jew who has a major hard-on for Ronald Reagan! But whatever. If a half-Muslin Kenyan from Kenya can be commander-in-chief, why can't a gay Jew from Laguna Beach? (This question would look exceptional on a bumper sticker/man-thong.) We scored exclusive CPAC partytime interviews with Fred Karger and Dan Choi, both of whom support Fred Karger, so you must clicky click and watch these videos! READ MORE »
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Here's a common-sense place to reduce spending: cut DEA's $15B budget, close its 62 overseas field offices.
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Arab street to Cairo: can you spare a Tahrir square? By Don Davis
SYRIA:
Uh, excuse me, this is kind of embarrassing, but there's no DEMOCRACY over here.
EGYPT:
Are you talking to me?
SYRIA:
Yeah … I just forgot to check, so if you could just spare me some Tahrir Square.
EGYPT:
No I'm sorry, I can't spare any Tahrir Square.
SYRIA:
You can't spare it??
EGYPT:
No there's not enough Tahrir Square to spare.
SYRIA:
Well I don't need much, just 3 square feet of Tahrir Square will do it.
EGYPT:
I'm sorry I don't have any Tahrir Square to spare, now if you don't mind.
SYRIA:
3 square feet of Tahrir Square? you can't spare even 3 square feet?
EGYPT:
No I don't have any square feet of Tahrir Square to spare … since we still need all of the Square to prevent the Egyptian Military from wiping out our ass!
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Obama's budget pits him against his own life story.
And yet, his 2012 defense budget bigger than Bush's or Reagan's, largest since WWII, and to grow 5% next year.
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Greenwald: More facts emerge about the leaked smear campaigns. He was one of the primary targets of the goon squad.
It wasn't just Glenn Greenwald who was a target. HBGary proposed going after anyone who ever donated to Wikileaks. Which might include one or more of you, Gentle Readers.
What the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America was doing was just despicable. Moreover, it should suggest to the casual observer that, by attacking those writing about their conduct, the CofC and BofA are tacitly admitting the truth of the allegations that both entities are fonts of evildoing. Facts speak for themselves and if the allegations were not credible, the story would not have survived, other than among conspiracy whackaloons.
If anything criminally actionable comes out, then it could be interesting, but don't count on the DoJ to do anything about it. They seem to have zero interest in pursuing cases against corporations who can pay for vigorous defenses. Which arguably shows that the DoJ into just another bunch of bullies, able to give out punches but not able to take one.
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Angry Black Lady: Can We Impeach Clarence Thomas Yet?
And this guy too?
Hopey better do something about these two.
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This case and the trial pretty much flew below the radar of the national press. I submit that was because the killers were Anglos (of the teabagging variety) and the victims Hispanics who were U.S. citizens.
Had the killers been illegal residents and the victims Anglos, I submit that the coverage would have been virtually wall-to-wall.
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Jill: If controlling behavior and wanting to see women powerless and pregnant is the mark of the abuser, then every last Republican male who has decided that forced childbearing is their first priority is a domestic (i.e. within the U.S.) abuser.
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What a $4T budget looks like
A very cool interactive map on the NYTimes website shows us the proposed budget by department, the winners and the losers.
Of course, when the Visgoths get through with it, it will look nothing like this.
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Mubarak rumored to be in extremely convenient coma
Uh? Hosni Mubarak allegedly collapsed after his last public address and then fell into a magic coma! And now he'll have to be airlifted to a special not-in-Egypt "coma treatment" center, amiright? And the $70 billion that Mubarak fleeced from the Egyptian people will also have an enormous coma and then disappear forever. Haha, Mubarak is probably already drinking Veuve Clicquot and counting his money at his secret underground whorehouse on the dark side of the Moon — just laughing and laughing. Oh, this makes us very grumpy. (Why can't we have a secret moon brothel?) [Al Arabiya via Business Insider]
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A confederate racist observes black history month.
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This must be the kind of international law the teabaggers are so afraid of - the kind that makes American corporations pay for their crimes. "A court in Ecuador has fined US oil giant Chevron a reported $8bn (£5bn) for polluting a large part of the country's Amazon region. The oil firm Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits and Amazon rivers. Campaigners say crops were damaged and farm animals killed, and that local cancer rates increased. Condemning the ruling as fraudulent, Chevron said it would appeal. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadoreans, in a case which dragged on for nearly two decades."
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Repug crimes against history:
Via Lawyers, Guns and Money, Roy Edroso at Alternet has 10 Historical 'Facts' Only a Right-Winger Could Believe:
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Doing the people's business
As for getting to work implement all of the Rushthuglican ideas that they don't have, here is a convenient fun fact:
Number of House resignations this year: 2.
Number of pieces of legislation signed into law: 0.
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As the country gets even stupider:
Upkeep of roads, bridges and transit systems is a high priority to an overwhelming margin of Americans, but by an even greater margin they don't want to pay more for it, according to a survey that will be released this week.Hey, I know how to pay for it.....CUT TAXES!!
Problem solved, thank you.
