Headlines - Friday May 21

How many of his Tea Party supporters do you suppose

can afford to pay $6,340 a year to be a member of the

Bowling Green Country Club, where Rand Paul

celebrated his Republican primary victory

on Tuesday?

 

###

 

(CNN) – A national leader of the conservative Tea Party movement has been strongly criticized by Islamic civil rights leaders for referring to the proposed site of a New York City mosque as a place for Muslims to worship "the terrorists' monkey-god."

 

Thanks, teabaggers.

 

###

 

 

"I never intended to get in a battle of wits with Glenn Beck. As you know, he comes only half-prepared to that battle." Rep Anthony Weiner (D-NY)  won his investigation of the gold market, Link

 

###

 

Weren't we supposed to be done with the adolescent saber-rattling? "The US state department says there "will definitely be consequences" for North Korea following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March. The North is facing international condemnation after investigators blamed it for the sinking of the ship, in which 46 sailors died. Pyongyang has rejected the claim as a "fabrication" and threatened war if sanctions were imposed. China urged restraint and did not criticise the North. The report - by a team including experts from the US, Australia, Britain and Sweden - concluded that a torpedo had sunk the Cheonan corvette. The investigators said parts of the torpedo found on the sea floor had lettering that matched a North Korean design."

 

###

 

 

### 

Bush DoJ Killed BP Probe
Probe Threatened to Net Top Officials Link  

If there's a big crime you know the Bush bastards are involved .

###

Rush and Brit are right - there's not much oil in the Gulf.

###

The tea party's record of failure

One of the better moments from the primary elections earlier this week came in the form of an interview of Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. The whole thing is about twenty minutes long, but Paul repeats himself a lot, so if you want to drag that pointer at the bottom of the video and skim through it, you won't miss too much.

http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/05/tea-party-record-of-failure.html

 

###

 

Today Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and 21 fellow Senators introduced a federal bill intended to protect LGBT students from harassment and bullying. Via the ACLU.

 

###

 

"We must assert that homosexuality is an acquired vice that can be likened to addiction to drugs, alcoholism, tobacco smoking, etc., so that those who practice it cannot be treated as a 'minority.' We must say that sexual perversion cannot be tolerated in the public sphere so that this disorder is not turned into a bad example for all society. If someone has inclinations to vice, vice must be reined in and treated. It cannot be legalized or protected, erroneously invoking the notion of human rights. Homosexuality is not a sexual orientation; it is a sexual perversion." - Archbishop of Latvia, Janis Pujats, speaking to the American Catholic nutters, the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property.

RELATED: Latvia is presently embroiled in a molestation scandal in which a former Catholic priest is accused of abusing numerous orphan boys at a school for the mentally handicapped.

 

###

 

Why Is BP Still in Charge in the Gulf?:
So the little ramshackle bayou town of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana has canceled its annual Seafood Festival because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. You might think they're overreacting, since the festival's not until July 30. Except that Lafitte's less than a 100 miles from this:

 

That's dark, thick oil in the marshes near Pass-a-Loutre in Plaquemines Parish, which is about 20 miles further north from where the initial reports of oil making landfall about a week ago. That small area of the marsh will be dead in another week, so you can't really fault the town of Jean Lafitte for thinking that, by the end of July, Bayou Barataria will become a viscous, awful dead zone. Damn, the Rude Pundit remembers that being a good festival when he was a kid. Of course, the 2100 people who live in Jean Lafitte will probably miss the tourist dollars a great deal more. You think BP is gonna pay for the loss of income?

The Rude Pundit can't get his mind around the fact that the well is still pouring out oil a month later. He can't grasp how BP executives haven't been arrested for, at the minimum, criminal negligence, if not manslaughter, and the well blown up and sealed.

 

Keep reading: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-is-bp-still-in-charge-in-gulf-so.html

 

###

 

The Dead Zone will go far past the docks in the gulf

Now all the fishermen and people cleaning up the spill are already getting sick from the fumes and the dispersants being used, which, by the way, were documented after the Exxon Valdez,to cause BRAIN LESIONS AND DEATH.

From Crooks and Liars, linked above.

Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on a person's body and even lead to death.

"The volatile, organic carbons, they act like a narcotic on the brain," Ott said. "At high concentrations, what we learned in Exxon Valdez from carcasses of harbor seals and sea otters, it actually fried the brain, (and there were) brain lesions."

OMG.

###

Presidential leadership fail

Three weeks after the gusher started, Obama finally tells BP (British Polluters) they need to be more transparent about how much oil is really gushing into the Gulf and the EPA asks them to use a less-toxic form of chemical dispersants to break up the oil. Also, federal officials have told local animal rescue workers who have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill that the work must be done by a company hired by BP.

President Obama?

###

Here's a good post by GP on how Social Security actually works and why "fixing it" will end up screwing us like the last "fix" did:

...

2. You already "fixed" Social Security, in 1983. In that fix, Ronald Reagan and the Greenspan Commission (yep, Alan Greenspan) recommended increasing Social Security taxes on the middle class, but not on the Big Boys, the wealthy. The declared goal was to put tons of cash into the Social Security Trust Fund — create a huge rainy day stash — for when Boomers started retiring. (If you click the Trust Fund link, watch what happens to the last column, the total amount, starting in 1984.)

Why is it important to understand this?

Everyone making less than $100k per year has been paying for that fix — every working day since 1983. They robbed you once, so they wouldn't have to do it twice. Want them to do it twice?

Take a look at how the tax rates on the rich have steadily decreased over the past 30 years.

"Why do you rob banks?"

"Because that's where the money is."

The rich won't be happy until they've bled us all dry and we come to them, begging for crumbs.

###

In his old age, former President Obama was

often asked why he had never closed Gitmo,

as he had once promised. Tragically, he had

been stricken with Alzheimer's by that time

and could only answer, "Gitmo?

What Gitmo?"

###

I've never used an ATM, so I don't know what the fees are. It's true, I don't know how to use one. But I could learn how to do it just like I've . . . I swipe to get my own gas, buy groceries. I know about the holograms.

–Senator Ben Nelson

Those comments came in response to a question about ATM fees. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has been pushing for a vote on a proposal to cap the fees ATMs charge customers of other banks.

Maybe he should just stick to taking bribes from health insurers. What a moroon.

(TPM)

###

Translation: "But because you're white college grads and one of you is fortunate enough to the offspring of a U.S. Attorney, we'll just slap you on the wrists, send you to nuisance court and call it a day. Since I called this an 'extremely serious crime' and made an Extremely Serious Face, no one can accuse me of favorable treatment."

###

A Wisconsin bar burns Obama effigy with duct tape wrapped around its neck as crowd laughs and cheers. 

###

On second attempt, Senate breaks GOP-led filibuster of Wall Street reform bill.

###

Nobody's making the house payment, nobody's getting new mortgages

Despite the complete recovery of the American Economy — what, did you miss it? — a record 14% of households with mortgages are currently delinquent. That's more than 7 million households. Another survey says 10% of all mortgages are in default, the highest percentage on record. Don't worry, it gets worse. MORE »

###

The "security failure" isn't the foiled terrorist plots; it's the illegal secret torture at Bagram. "US President Barack Obama's national intelligence director has resigned after a 16-month tenure marked by a series of security failures. Adm Dennis Blair said he had informed the president of his resignation, which goes into effect on Friday. His term of office saw the Fort Hood shooting, the Christmas Day bomb plot and the failed Times Square bomb plot. He drew fire for the Christmas Day plot when he said special interrogation teams promised had not yet been formed. This was despite a decision to form the teams months earlier."

###

We know without a doubt that the "C" in "CNN" doesn't stand for "Classy" "CNN.com published a story today on Rima Fakih, the Muslim Lebanese-American woman who was just crowned Miss USA, mentioning that some neocon bloggers (namely Debbie Schlussel) have called her a supporter of Hezbollah, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization. ... The headline: "Miss USA: Muslim Trailblazer Or Hezbollah Spy?""