Headlines - Saturday June 26

I was here instead of reading the news:

 

###

 

Abstinence Only works wonders: Half of all pregnancies in U.S. are unintended.

 

###

 

Michele Bachmann is America's next Meryl Streep

Someone has finally recognized the "Hollywood" in Congresswingnut Michele Bachmann and stuck her in a real movie! Bachmann makes her big acting debut in a brand-new Cold War propaganda film called Socialism: A Clear and Present Danger, created by the evangelists at Coral Ridge Ministries and directed by a camera guy who's heard of James Cameron. Make way for a real star, Eclipse people! MORE »

###

 

 

 

###

 

Jindal declares day of prayer over spill, but hasn't called the National Guard.

 

###

 

Unfortunately, the average American doesn't pay enough attention to how their country is being run to understand this. Either that or they think it's a game and it doesn't really matter which side is in charge.

Everybody's talking about Senator Debbie Stabenow's aggressive words today accusing the Republicans of tanking the economy and throwing millions out of work for political gain. I don't see why this is even slightly controversial. The GOP is a party whose mouthpieces said from the very beginning that they wanted the president to fail and that they were planning his "Waterloo." And anyone who understood how our government works (or even understands simple logic) knew that saying that in the midst of an economic crisis translates to making people suffer. There was no other way to interpret that so it makes sense.

...

Republican policies are not about the welfare of their constituents but about setting the table for the November elections. It's about being in power in order to protect their 'patrons' from their constituents.

You have the Republican Party standing up for BP (many saying we should pick up the bill for the clean up), Bobby Jindal and Hayley Barbour some of the loudest, under the auspices of "saving jobs", and this is taken as sane behavior in this country. Their states' economies have been ruined, hundreds of thousands of peoples' lives ruined, and hundreds of miles of delicate ecosystem destroyed, and they're 'worried' about the handful of jobs lost if a small percentage of deep water rigs are shut down? People have been institutionalized for saying shit like that in the past but today it's considered intelligent discourse.

And people will go out and vote for these idiots.

In my day, "USA" meant "can do". Now, it's just an acronym for "fail" and we have ourselves to blame. Collectively, we put them in office and now it's next to impossible to get them out. Who else you gonna blame?

###

 

Morford: BP welcomes you to the apocalypse.

 

###

 

 

###

 

Frankenfoods: Genetically Altered Salmon Get Closer to the Table

 

###

 

 

###

 

More than 4 in 10 Americans are idiots, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center For The People and The Press/Smithsonian Magazine (see last bullet):

• 71 per cent believe cancer will be cured by 2050.

• 81 per cent believe computers will be able to converse like humans.

• 68 per cent of those under 30 predict a world war by 2050.

• 53 per cent say ordinary people will travel in space

• Nearly three-quarters, or 74 per cent, of those polled believe it likely that "most of our energy will come from sources other than coal, oil, and gas".

• Yet 72 per cent believe the world is likely to experience a major worldwide energy crisis by 2050.

• 66 per cent say the Earth will definitely or probably get warmer but it breaks down strongly along political lines, with just 48 per cent of Republicans saying so and 83 per cent of Democrats.

• 42 per cent say it is likely that scientists will be able to tell what people are thinking by scanning their brains but 55 say this will definitely or probably not happen.

• 89 per cent believe a woman will be elected US president by 2050.

• 86 per cent say it is at least probable that most Americans will have to work into their 70s before retiring.

• 41 per cent say Jesus Christ will return within the next 40 years while 46 per cent say this will definitely or probably not happen.

###

 

Don't Worry, America... 

...Blackwater is here to protect us all, no matter what the cost.

 

###

 

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was admitted to the hospital Friday after experiencing discomfort, the latest health scare for the 69-year-old Republican leader who has a long history of heart disease.

Satan is turning down the sheets, wistful for a homecoming for his favorite son.

###

An amoral prick of a judge who ruled against moratorium owned stock in Exxon, Transocean, and other drilling companies.

###

###

Supreme Court: Enron really wasn't so bad, actually! 

The first year and a half or so of the '00s sure seem pretty awesome in retrospect, right? The worst we had to worry about was Al Gore's "lock box" and the sudden discovery that maybe sometimes corporations acted in the interests of their own short-term profit, rather than for the greater good of society! One of these corporations was called "Enron," and everyone was really mad about it, for a while, and eventually some of the people who ran it went to jail. Except now the Supreme Court has thrown out a lot of the charges, because really, crimes from 1999, who can even imagine what those must have been like, now MORE »

###

 

 

###

 

Birds beware! Bionic Kitteh alert!

 

 

###

 

Now concentrate, Piper. If Mommy has ...

8 ethics violations and the independent counsel has discovered 2 more . . . "

Cough up the $386K, Snowbilly Queen

Just your average hockey mom, right? Can't wait for the outraged tweets on this one.

Nearly a year after she quit her governorship of Alaska, Sarah Palin was found guilty today of another breach of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act involving her so-called Alaska Fund Trust (AFT), which she established as a private "legal defense fund" while governor.

Timothy Petumenos, independent counsel for the Alaska Personnel Board (and ironically, the same independent counsel who issued the Troopergate findings nearly two years ago while Palin was the GOP vice-presidential nominee), presented the state's Findings, Consent Decree and Settlement Agreement this afternoon from the perfectly named Adventure Room of the Captain Cook Hotel in downtown Anchorage.

In what is an extremely detailed finding, Petumenos ruled that even though Palin assigned the research of forming the fund to her former spokesperson Meghan Stapleton and even though Palin relied on extensive outside legal counsel, that "the Trust itself, as ultimately conceived, violates the Ethics Act."

The finding is a stinging rebuke to Palin, who must now return more than $386,000 in contributions to the AFT.

UPDATE: Nice. The incoherent Facebook word salad I was expecting was written by Meg Stapleton. Glad she came out of "retirement" for that.

###

###

Thanks for this, BP.

Sorry, buddy. God's not gonna help us.

###

And the Mother of the Year award goes to this woman.

###

Conclusive proof that God sent the oil spill because Obama dissed Israel.

### 

Bristol Palin's "acting debut".

If anyone's looking for me, I'll be in the corner, downing hemlock.

###

Check out Wisco and Mario - I'm sure they've had a lot of great columns while I was away.

###

Bob & Henry get married after 64 years.

###

The Family Research Council is calling on all Christians to fall to their knees on the Fourth of July and beg God's forgiveness for our Muslim/Kenyan/socialist president and his "agenda of perversion" regarding LGBT rights (among other things.)

We are a broken nation full of broken people who have broken God's laws and God's heart. Consequently, in these difficult days, the Lord has continued to impress upon me the great need for us, as followers of Jesus Christ, to take responsibility for the broken state of our nation and go to God for help because He is the only one who can help. Yet we must go to God on His terms: in humility, prayer, and repentance as outlined in 2 Chronicles 7:14. We must begin on our knees. That is why we have re-launched the "Call2Fall" for Sunday, July 4th.

###

You know you're a douche if you drive a car with an MSRP of $65K and that gets 13/18 MPG and you're bitching about "trickle-up poverty":