Headlines - Sunday May 2

The Petroleum Industry Equation

Offshore Drilling = Onshore Spilling

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The Lowdown from Hightower Link

 

Excerpt:

And I think it was Jim who first said of George W. Bush, "If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head."

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"I repeat the slogan "drill here, drill now" not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills – my family and my state and I know firsthand those consequences. How could I still believe in drilling America's domestic supply of energy after having seen the devastation of the Exxon-Valdez spill? I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation,"- Sarah Palin, repeating a slogan.

Fuck you, Sarah Palin.

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Good Night, Moon

I guess Howie Kurtz will have to slum it with Washington Examiner employees now:

Washington Times executives are negotiating to sell the newspaper, after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's family cut off most of the annual subsidy of about $35 million that has kept the Unification Church-backed paper afloat, company officials said.

I've said this a million times so I won't belabor it: it's strange that for the last 20 years, a Korean cult leader was one of the most important figures in American media.

The Washington Times is certifiably a wingnut, if not fascist, rag and it has never, ever made money. It's almost astonishing that Rupert Murdoch hasn't snapped it up.

Update. Via Reader JK, this documentary about the Moonies looks interesting.

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What is a grifter to do when her slogan becomes the punchline for what has the potential of being the greatest ecological disaster of the new century? All the praying in the world isn't going to help. Nice try, and be sure to pick up your gift bag from the Oil Companies that made you into their Pets.com sock puppet, you stupid twat-waffle.

 

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The last great journalist at CNN is out.

 

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Jeebus Christ. Now BP is using toxic chemicals to "disperse" spilled oil.

 

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Whistleblower

BP has such nice commercials, don't they? Somehow you get the idea that there's nothing better for the environment than an oil company.

Until you read about all the engineering documents no one approved for the oil rig that's now pumping a massive mess into the Gulf of Mexico.

And would it surprise you to know that deregulating oil rigs was one of the topics of those secret meetings between Dick Cheney and the oil companies? They got exactly what they wanted.

Greed wins — again! But maybe not for good this time.

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While Ratzi was protecting child-raping priests, nuns were getting murdered for helping the poor. A court in Brazil has convicted a second rancher for ordering the murder in 2005 of US nun and environmental activist Dorothy Stang. Regivaldo Galvao was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the court in Belem. Prosecutors said Galvao and his accomplice Vitalmiro Moura had hired gunmen to kill the 73-year-old nun. Prosecutors said she was murdered because she had blocked Galvao and Moura from seizing land the government had given to Amazonian farmers. Galvao's defence lawyers are still to decide whether to appeal. Moura was also sentenced to 30 years in prison earlier this month. The killing in Para state caused an outcry in Brazil and internationally. Dorothy Stang had worked in the Amazon for 30 years to preserve the rainforest and protect the rights of rural workers against large-scale farmers to take their land. She was shot dead as she walked along a muddy rainforest track in the town of Anapu in Para, a northern frontier state where loggers and ranchers have deforested huge tracts of rainforest."

 

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Secretive right-wing plutocrats use front groups to attack new campaign finance disclosure bill.

 

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Agency postpones awards cewremony celebrating offshore oil drilling safety. 

 

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The radical anti-American fanatics on the Supreme Court shit out another taliban-tastic ruling to bring Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and James Madison roaring out of their graves in fury.

From Steve Benen:

In Salazar v. Buono, the high court considered a congressionally approved deal that made the land surrounding a cross in the Mojave National Preserve private property. Five conservative justices approved.

A badly fractured Supreme Court, with six justices writing opinions, reopened the possibility on Wednesday that a large cross serving as a war memorial in a remote part of the Mojave Desert may be permitted to remain there.

The 5-to-4 decision provided an unusually vivid glimpse into how deeply divided the court is on the role religious symbols may play in public life and, in particular, the meanings conveyed by crosses in memorials for fallen soldiers.

In one of the oddities of the ruling, the court suggested that the Christian cross isn't necessarily a symbol of Christianity.

In a dissent that effectively tore the majority to shreds, Justice John Paul Stevens strongly disagreed, "Making a plain, unadorned Latin cross a war memorial does not make the cross secular. It makes the war memorial sectarian." He added, in a dissent endorsed by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, "The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith."

Try to imagine anyone on President Obama's short list to replace Stevens writing "a dissent that effectively tore the majority to shreds." Or don't; it's impossible.

As for President Pollyanna's search for someone who can draw into a majority the same lying traitors who unconstitutionally annointed Smirky dictator, he'll find a unicorn first.

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Every teabagger assembly put together couldn't match this one. "Tens of thousands of people have joined protests in the US against a controversial anti-immigration law introduced in Arizona. The biggest protest took place in Los Angeles, but others were planned in more than 70 cities across the country. The law requires local police to question anyone they suspect of being in the United States illegally. The protesters say the law could lead to Hispanics being targeted, and inflame racial tensions. In Los Angeles, police estimated 100,000 people had joined a march led by singer Gloria Estefan. "It's the right of every American to protect where they live," she told the crowd. "But that doesn't give them a reason to place a law that could create racism and discrimination." The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani, at the rally, says there were banners calling for a boycott of Arizona, and even one portraying the state's governor, Jan Brewer, as Hitler. Many of the protesters waved the US flag, while some carried slogans appealing for US President Barack Obama to intervene."