Headlines - Tuesday May 18

This is the view that my poor friend Richard is subjected to every day from his neighbor in the RV Park:

 

 

If I were him, I'd hang this on my window:

 

 

or maybe this:

 

 

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Republican Values, Texas Style

 

With the state facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent almost $600,000 in public money during the past two years to live in a sprawling rental home in the hills above the capital, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

 

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The oil industry would be proud of Jonathan I. Katz, the man the Obama administration has chosen to take a stab at fixing the Gulf oil spill disaster. He's an avowed "proud homophobe," who thinks that "sodomites" are responsible for infecting "innocent victims" with AIDS, and he's an Al Gore hating climate change denialist too!

 

I'm sure a climate change denier is a really good scientist. 

 

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Mudflats

"Look out, Washington. There's a whole stampede of pink elephants coming." ~Sarah Palin

Yup. She really did. She said it once before and I guess nobody told her what it meant. Presumably she was trying to come up with a cute analogy for Republican women, not realizing the expression was already taken.

Allow me:

"Seeing pink elephants" is a euphemism for drunken hallucination, caused by alcoholic hallucinosis or delirium tremens.

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Noam Chomsky, the iconic left-wing MIT professor and longtime critic of Israeli policy, was barred from entering Israel on Sunday, setting off what the New York Times describes as "a fierce debate" in the Israeli media.

 

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Iran's uranium deal a derious blow to the war party - Can Obama Still Use Third Party Enrichment Deal as Excuse for Sanctions?

In a move that will likely drive a stake into the heart of the near-term prospects for the US-backed "crippling sanctions" against Iran, Turkey and Brazil have managed to come up with a compromise deal that provides everything the Western nations claimed to have wanted from the third-party enrichment deal in the first place.

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Newsweek has a whole article about why we should teach evolution to children. They do make some pretty good arguments, but it's really quite simple: We shouldn't replace science with fairy tales.

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Tragic But Unsurprising: More U.S. troops were hospitalized for mental health disorders than any other reason in 2009, says new data from the Pentagon. Mental health care accounted for almost 40% of hospital stays, leading to health care costs that Defense Secretary Gates says "are eating the Defense Department alive." Even for the Army, there's no mystery as to the cause. Or, for some, the solution: Bring 'em home.

"War is difficult. It takes a toll." - Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker

No shi*. Especially when they are unwinnable and unecessary and illegal.

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A metric assload of batshit crazy - Via TPM

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Don't drunk dial Freedom Works! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMUVFctJ2Xw&feature=player_embedded#!

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Bristol Palin shows horny teens everywhere the Palin equation for lucrative disgrace: (Promiscuity + Carelessness) / (Hypocrisy + Scolding) = DOLLARS! Her first $30,000 speech (which works out to be about $750 for every "ummmmm," $430 for each "his, like, totally lame wiener!" and $1.50 for each time her look of self-satisfied contrition approximates sincerity) will be entitled: "True Love Waits. Opportunistic Lust, However, Is Somewhat Less Patient."

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First the presidency, now Miss USA!

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Wisco: Rightwing media insists Elena Kagan is Hugo Chavez. 

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Students, teachers, faculty, and parents at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, in San Francisco, wish Harvey Milk a happy birthday for the very first official Harvey Milk Day (May 22, 2010).

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Nance Greggs: Ugly Debbie.

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Old, but still funny.

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NYT: BP PLC continues to stockpile and deploy oil-dispersing chemicals manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, even though other U.S. EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective.

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Pat Buchanan Denounces Too Many Jews on Supreme Court

BuzzFlash

Buchanan, who never served in the military and whose only, if any, relative killed in WW II probably fell out of a Nazi concentration camp guard tower, writes in his syndicated column: "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats," Buchanan wrote. "Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?"

This is the Buchanan who on Rachel Maddow's show basically said only white males should be on the Supreme Court since the founding fathers were all white males.

Oy. He forgot to mention the rest of 'em'll be Catholics. As Molly Ivins said about one of Buchanan's xenophobic speeches, "It probably sounded better in the original German."

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Orrin Hatch has always been good for a few lines of tendentious bullshit, but the Bennett teabagging has inspired him to new heights:

HATCH: [...] I listen to these folks, I don't disagree with them. They're angry for good reasons. I mean, my gosh, these people in Washington are running this country right into the ground. [...]

INGRAHAM: But aren't you part of Washington?

HATCH: Hell no. I've never been. I've never considered this a job. I've had, people have asked me, they said, "say Senator Hatch, don't you just love being a U.S. senator?" My constant answer is this. No, I don't love it at all, but I'm good at it.

I'll give Orrin this: having been in the Senate for 33 years, it's not a job—it's a life-long career.

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Connecticut Dem frontrunner likes to tell terrible lies about Vietnam service

 

 

 

He has been going around and implying that he served in Vietnam. He did not. He strung a shitload of deferments together and when he couldn't do that anymore, he went the George W. Bush/Dan Quayle route and got a cushy job in the Reserves in the 152nd Toys For Tots Brigade.

 

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"Sexually dangerous" offenders can be imprisoned forever - so says the Supreme Court.

 

What kind of precedent does this set? I'm not defending the perverts, but what's to stop the government from deciding that anyone who has committed a few crimes or has engaged in political dissent just has to be mentally ill? Some paid lackey of a psychologist, just like the ones who signed off on the use of torture at GITMO, would be more than happy to sign a stack of verification forms to hold anybody that the powers that be wanted to hold.

The use of mental health rationales to hold people in prisons and "hospitals" indefinitely was one of the darker abuses of the Soviet Union. It is sad to see that we are now treading forcefully down the same road.

 

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Five days after appearing before Congress to testify about its responsibility in one of the worst oil spills in US history, the Swiss company that owned and operated the oil rig that sunk into the Gulf of Mexico announced that it would shell out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders.

 

 

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A suicide car bomber attacked an American convoy in Afghanistan this morning, killing at least five American soldiers and twelve civilians. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, which also left scores of people with serious injuries.

 

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U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY), darling of the tea party movement, wants to abolish the Americans With Disabilities Act, because it's not fair to the business owner. 

 

And in a related story of compassionate conservatism:

 

Republican governor of Minnesota doesn't think gays should have the power to decide what to do with the body of a deceased partner. 

 

 

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Wave bye-bye to Key West. "Oil spilling out of a ruptured pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico may reach the southern Florida coastline, a top coast guard official has told the US Senate. Any oil that does wash up is likely to be in the form of tarballs which are a "little easier to manage", Rear Adm Peter Neffenger said in testimony. Reports from the White House say a presidential commission will be set up to investigate the disaster. And a top official who oversaw offshore drilling has announced he is retiring. Chris Oynes said he would step down at the end of this month. There was no official comment on the reasons for the resignation of Mr Oynes from the Minerals Management Service (MMS). Senior officials there have been accused of becoming too close to the industry. Oil has been spewing into the Gulf since BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April. US President Barack Obama has described it as a "potentially unprecedented" environmental disaster."

 

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Good riddance

Guy in charge of regulating offshore drillling to quit, finally (he should be going to prison, but these days we reward bad behavior)

Chris Oynes, associate director for offshore energy and minerals management at at the Minerals Management Service—a.k.a. "the guy in charge of making sure what just happened doesn't happen"—is resigning after 35 years of not doing his job.

Here he is giving Transocean their "Safety Award for Excellence" (SAFE). He's the bastard on the left: