Headlines - Sunday May 8

 

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George Carlin: The truth about Republicans.

 

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Could someone please tell me how things are any different than they were two years ago?

Pentagon: more money for weapons, less for troops. 

 

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More Afghan deaths certain in military PR-friendly 'process'

 

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Who's the "pure" race now, hmmmmm?

 

Oh, this won't sit well with the KKK:

The Neanderthal, the barrel-chested brute and beastly evolutionary outcast thought to be extinct for 30,000 years, actually may still have some remnants living in surprising places -- Europe and Asia.

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For the new study, scientists reconstructed the Neanderthal genetic code and compared it to modern humans from across the globe. They found there was up to a 4 percent match with humans everywhere except those from Africa.

The theory is that our human ancestors migrating out of Africa about 70,000 years ago had some amorous encounters with Neanderthals somewhere in the Middle East.

Suddenly, this makes more sense:

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It looks like the financial lobbyists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the Congress. Despite the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. Words fail.

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Another consequence of war…

The number of American soldiers seeking treatment for opiate abuse has skyrocketed over the past five years, at a time when the U.S. military has been surging forces into the heart of the world's leading opium producer.

Pentagon statistics obtained by FoxNews.com show that the number of Army soldiers enrolled in Substance Abuse Program counseling for opiates has soared nearly 500 percent — from 89 in 2004 to 529 last year. The number showed a steady increase almost every year in that time frame — but it leaped 50 percent last year when the U.S. began surging troops into Afghanistan. Army troop levels in Afghanistan went from 14,000 as of the end of 2004 to 46,400 as of the end of 2009.

The military is caught between destroying the opium fields which fund the Taliban or leaving them be to not worsen relations with the local population for whom many the opium trade is their only source of income.

In the meantime, the number of dead and wounded increase each day while tens of thousands return home suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and drug abuse issues, both of which often lead to suicide.

War sucks from whichever angle you choose to view it.

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Mario Piperni: The economy - unspinning spin. 

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Al Gore writing in the New Republic: why the oil spill could change everything.

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Ladies of the Canyon ~ Give it Again

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Freedom isn't free

The Center For American progress tallies the cost of the Iraq war.

I would add to the list 5 million children orphaned since the invasion and estimates as high as 1.2 million Iraqis killed. I would like to see even one of the liberal hawks who supported the Iraq war defend all of this and/or apologize. And no, wanking in Slate about how "no one could have predicted" doesn't cut it.

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Yes, Virginia, there really IS a Christian Taliban

And Sarah Palin would be its leader, thanks to her profound ignorance and lackof understanding of the founding principles of this country: 

Sarah Palin was on the O'Reilly Factor last night talking about the National Day of Prayer, but she went a bit further than her usual party line of calling America a Christian nation. "I think we should keep this clean, keep it simple, go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant," she said. "They're quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments, it's pretty simple."

Keep reading: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/05/yes-virginia-there-really-is-christian.html

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"You Guys Drilling For Oil Do What You Want. We're Good."

That was basically the attitude of the Minerals Management Service, the office in the Department of the Interior that is supposed to be regulating and overseeing offshore drilling.

Numerous Congressional and internal investigations have called the oversight agency badly mismanaged and at times corrupt. It has been rocked by regular scandals, including disclosures in 2008 that agency officials took bribes and engaged in drug use and sex with oil industry officials. And its own scientists have said that senior agency officials in recent years revised staff reports to eliminate environmental concerns that might have complicated oil-company drilling applications for offshore sites in waters near Alaska.

This is not the first time that there has been a problem with blowout preventers in the Gulf of Mexico. There was a leak in 2000 when one failed to function.

The actions of the MMS were a classic case of the bureaucratic equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome. First, the MMS, while scuffing their toes and saying "gee, you boys really ought to have back-up preventers installed", did nothing to require it. Second, the MMS decreased the inspection and testing requirement for installed blowout preventers.

One of the things that has to come out of this disaster is a through reformation of the MMS. It is a gutless, toothless, ineffective regulator. But that is exactly what the oil industry wanted and, with the aid of their bought-and-paid-for legislators in the Congress, what they got.

And if you don't see any parallels here between the total failure of oversight and regulation of offshore oil drilling (and coal mining) with the negligible amount of oversight and regulation of the banksters, then you have not been paying attention.

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MadFloridian at DU is doing some incredible work to keep us informed of the Obama administration's war on public education – although of course no one else is calling it what it is.

Go read.

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People keep lecturing me about nuclear power and how it's perfectly safe, but I'm not convinced:

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Radioactive water that leaked from the nation's oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state's environmental chief said Friday.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has ordered the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to halt the spread of contaminated water underground, even as it said there was no imminent threat to drinking water supplies.

Uh huh. No imminent threat.

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Effort to use dome to contain oil disaster fails.

All bets are off on what's going to happen to the wildlife. 

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Are there campgrounds in Iowa?

Iowa lawmaker presses the state to discriminate against LGBt families at campgrounds.

Here he is:

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Goodbye old man

HA HA, IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: "SALT LAKE CITY – Republican Sen. Bob Bennett was thrown out of office Saturday by delegates at the Utah GOP convention in a stunning defeat for a once-popular three-term incumbent who fell victim to a growing conservative movement nationwide." For an Informative Wonkette Post about why this makes no sense, click here! Will it ever be possible to compromise with Republicans again? Maybe if they stop existing. AP

 

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Stopping fundamentalism from destroying the military

 

From contracting out essential services to greedy, incompetent corporations through shoddy or nonexistent equipment right up to committing torture and killing thousands of troops for a baseless and illegal war, is there anything the repugs and the freakazoids won't do to destroy the U.S. Military?

The latest long-standing threat to be acknowledged semi-publicly is the unconstitutional and illegal promotion of Xian fundamentalism. Edward Teller at FDL explains. Read the whole thing.

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The AP kills it's own meme and grudgingly admits that the Obama administration has responded appropriately and in a timely manner to the gusher in the Gulf. Remember, it was the Associated Press that first tried to propel the idea that the gusher in the Gulf was "Obama's Katrina" - as offensive as that sounds. Well, it didn't catch on. People simply know better. They watch teevee, and they saw Coast Guard ships fighting the fire before the rig sank, so instead of picking up the ridiculous notion, the American people looked at the Village idiots as if to say "What, exactly, is the particular drug cocktail you are enjoying right now, because we want to ask for it by name?" 

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"Fer chrissakes, Stan, give it a rest already!"