In light of the fact that rape is now legal in Afghanistan, it's nice to know we're passing out viagra to the local warlords over there.
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Oh my. The ten worst plastic surgery disasters.
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Glenn Beck has been so busy drinking and raking in the dough that he has never suited up and served the country he supposedly loves so much he can't stop crying about it. But that didn't stop "patriot" Beck from suggesting that the military stop detaining enemy combatants and just shoot them immediately. As if that were not repulsive (and anti-American) enough, a look of smug self-satisfaction immediately overtook him once he said it.
###I'd like to make three points. First off, it would appear that the assault on our system of civil liberties by the goons in the Bush Administration was far broader and deeper than the MSM has ever come close to covering.
Second, if you note the authors of the various memoranda, you may note a pretty good correlation with the list of "persons of interest" now under investigation for war crimes by the Spanish authorities.
Third, it is arguable that we cannot count on the armed forces of the United States to fulfil their primary duty contained in their oath of office. For if they had, Bush and Cheney would have been removed from office by force. Bush and Cheney were the true enemies of the Constitution, they did far more damage to this nation than any bunch of terrorists. If those two ghouls had decided to abolish free elections and seize power, they probably would have received the support of a clear marjority of the armed forces. Oh, some would have rebelled, but not all that many.
During the April 3 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, on-screen text repeatedly falsely claimed that President Obama's $3.6 trillion fiscal year 2010 budget is "4x bigger than Bush's costliest plan." However, President Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget for FY 2009. For FY 2008, Bush submitted a $2.9 trillion budget.
Poor Exxon. The biggest profits in the history of the world must, unfortunately, not be enough to cover the cost of using tankers that virtually eliminate oil spills. And of course Exxon, which was responsible for the country's largest oil spill, is all about avoiding them in the future. Or not.
On March 24, 1989 — 20 years ago exactly — the Exxon tanker Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound and along 700 miles of its coast, killing tens of thousands of marine animals and birds, and mostly wiping out the sound's then-thriving commercial fishing industry.
The company got off light, by filing endless appeals to its award of punitive damages (the type of damages intended to teach a lesson, as opposed to compensatory damages which should only repay financial costs), and by throwing the ship's captain, a recovering alcoholic, under the bus.
On June 25, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered an opinion permitting the assessment of punitive damages…However, the Court held that the punitive damages award against Exxon was excessive and should be limited to $507.5 million, an amount equal to the trial court's calculation of appropriate compensatory damages.
While $507.5 million sounds like a lot to you and me, for Exxon, it's just an oil drop in the bucket. Recall that this company's earnings in 2007, when gas hit $4 per gallon, was $40.6 billion. That record was broken last year, when Exxon posted $45.2 billion for 2008.
So you'd think they could afford to join almost every other oil refiner in using double-hull tankers. You'd be wrong.
Rocket science this isn't. It was a plan ripe for gaming from the get-go. Don't act all surprised that the geniuses have figured out how to game it.
Just go read it. Then bang your head against the nearest brick wall:
BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: You are.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong.
For nearly three decades, we tried it their way - and it has been a miserable failure. The Republicans may have decided they wanted to end both the Great Society and the New Deal, and Americans bought it because they were fat and happy as a result of these programs. But now we have seen what happens when you gut the middle class and tell them that the upper class will "trickle down" a few bucks upon them if you just give them enough. And last November, this country successfully battled its Fear of a Black Planet and elected a man that the opposition had painted as a secret Muslim, a terrorist, and everything else you can name - just to get out from under these disastrous Republican policies.
George W. Bush can remain silent until the day he dies, and until Americans can feel confident in their future again, we will remember who it was that did this to us.
our species.
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