Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Headlines - Tuesday June 15

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Gulfers: We love that oil
They love what's killing them? 
Link

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"What was she thinking? You don't just blurt out racially charged comments on camera. You do it on your radio show." Stephen Colbert, on Helen Thomas

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"So, I voted Clinton out. My vote counted.  Bush won." former celeb Victoria Jackson is so stupid, she thinks Bush beat Clinton for president Link 

 
"I'm an f-ing Teabagging idiot." 

Actually, your vote didn't count.
The Supreme Court ordered that the vote counting be stopped so they could appoint their boy for president over the voters' wishes.

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The U.S. Health Care System - "boom!"

Granted, this is an extreme example but it does highlight the fact that the greatest health care system in the world might not in fact be the greatest health care system in the world.

An unemployed Michigan woman who was unable to afford medical treatment for a searing pain in her shoulder took matters into her own hands last week, shooting herself in the shoulder in a last-ditch effort to get into the ER.

Kathy Myers, 41, said she was pushed to the brink of desperation Thursday night because she was "crazy in pain," and the local hospital emergency room would give her no more than a handful of anti-inflammatory pills.

"Pain will make you do silly, crazy things," the 41-year-old Niles, Mich., woman said in a YouTube.com interview with News 8 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "I knew they wasn't going to do anything, again. They said if it wasn't life-threatening, no health insurance, you can't get no help."

In the video, she reenacts how she covered her right shoulder and head with two pillows before pointing her .25-caliber handgun at her own body.

"I took the gun and went 'Boom!'" she said.

Needless to say, an unemployed woman in Canada, France or Great Britain suffering from severe shoulder pain would never have to consider taking a gun to herself in a desperate attempt at receiving medical treatment.  Nor would people in those countries ever have the humiliating experience of receiving medical treatment while lying on a cot in a stall intended for livestock.

If you can afford it, I have no doubt the U.S. health care system is the greatest health care system in the world.  For everyone else…well, Boom!

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"Sarah Palin says Obama needs to make sure that these oil companies act ethically and responsibly. This from a woman who shoots wolves from a helicopter." Letterman  

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BRITISH Petroleum took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as it dealt with one problem after another, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a "nightmare well," according to internal documents released Monday.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BRITISH Petroleum official involved in the decision not to install all of the centralizers explained: "It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: "who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."

"I care."

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Wisco: You can't be a military hawk and a budget hawk at the same time.

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AP via Raw Story: The Republican nominee for a New Mexico congressional seat suggested during a radio interview that the United States could place land mines along the Mexican border to secure the international boundary.

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Jed Lewison reminds us of Paul Krugman's words of January 6, 2009. He was right.

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John Aravosis: Memo to the President.

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Facing South

BP hires company to handle oil spill claims whose goal is "reducing payouts" for clients

Effing weasels. Go read.

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Touchdown Jesus, destroyed by a fire caused by a lightning storm. I wonder what the members of the Solid Rock church in Monroe, Ohio did to cause this obvious visitation of the wrath of the creator, other than make their Jesus out of cellophane.

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Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) was walking on a public sidewalk last week when he was politely asked a question by someone holding a camera, and this is what happened: 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/14/law/index.html

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In their latest eyebrow-raising PR move, multinational oil giant BP has enlisted private security contractors to keep onlookers away from oil cleanup sites.

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The FU Rules

Right on the heels of yesterday's Times piece on our new riches in Afghanistan, this morning's story tells us that a Friedman Unit has passed and it's time for more troops! But the White House says we're supposed to wait another FU before deciding:

Even before the recent setbacks, the military was highly skeptical of setting a date to start withdrawing, but Mr. Obama insisted on it as a way to bring to conclusion a war now in its ninth year.

For now, the White House has decided to wait until a review, already scheduled for December, to assess whether the target date can still work.

Obviously, the functioning of the FU in Afghanistan is not quite the same as the Iraqi variety. The Iraq FU required that all serious participants keep up the charade that things were working until the last possible minute, when everyone finally conceded that a mere 6 more months would be required to really fix things. Perhaps the Afghani FU has some sort of look-ahead window? Since I'm not a serious person, these little details escape me.

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Will Americans care about people in countries whose names they can't pronounce?
Especially when the people in these countries are Muslim?

While people like Maureen Dowd and Chuck Todd are busy waiting for Barack Obama to throw the kind of tantrum about the BP oil spill on national television that they feel is appropriate, there's yet another ethnic cleansing going on, this time in one of the former Soviet republics, one we ignore at our peril: 
http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/06/will-americans-care-about-people-in.html
 
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Chuck Todd asked Pelosi if there was a statute of limitations on placing responsibility on President George W. Bush.

"Well, it runs out when the problems go away," Pelosi replied.

More, please.

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Jeebus. Better shape than it was before?

During a visit to Mississippi and Alabama yesterday, Obama said, "I am confident that we're going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before." He also urged tourists to visit the Gulf, stating, "a lot of beaches that are not yet affected or will not be affected." Today, he visits the Pensacola Beach area in the Florida panhandle.

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Not quite stealthy enough

Mysterious American Ninja arrested in Pakistan, for heroism

Gary don't be a hero

Back in 2001 and 2002, most of us were content to work out our rage against Osama bin Laden by peeing on novelty urinal cakes decorated with his face, before eventually forgetting about him altogether when George Bush stopped talking about him on teevee. But one man dedicated himself to hunting down America's greatest enemy, armed only with his wits, his highly trained reflexes, and a lot of weapons. After years of study and ritual purification, he finally arrived in Pakistan this week, ready to walk barefoot across the border and meet bin Laden in a final confrontation of good vs. evil, but then he got arrested by Pakistani police, because apparently in Pakistan it is illegal to try to kill Osama bin Laden. MORE »

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50% more absorbent than the store-brand failed idea

BP using paper towels to heroically save us from Obama's oil spill

In Britain, they call these cigarettes.

Over the past year or so, our nation's finest celebrities and citizens with camcorders have come together to help us gather up the sweet, sweet oil that is shooting into Mexico's ocean and trying to get to freedom on America's shores. There hasn't been much success so far, but our friends at British Petroleum have lent a hand with a brilliant new plan: soak it up with paper towels.

Cleanup crews are on the scene right now tearing off individual paper towels and randomly dropping them in the gunk. And the results speak for themselves! (There are some paper towels here and there, in the oil.)

Also, there's a dead dolphin in the vicinity of the paper towels (Grande Isle State Park, Louisiana), which is sad/gross.

To be fair to BP and its lazy, inept contractors, these paper towels are not paper towels per se, but rather "slightly thicker, oil-absorbent pads." So do not call them "paper towels." Call them "Maxi pads." Mother Jones

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Iowa republican Representative Steve King just keeps bringing the crazy. Just when you start to think he might have plumbed the depths, he digs a little deeper and manages to sinks to a new level.

Yesterday he was on G. Gordon Liddy's right-wing radio hate-fest, and the disgraced Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist Liddy wasn't the craziest, most over-the-top wingnut in the broadcast booth.

During an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show this morning to discuss Arizona's immigration law, King suggested President Barack Obama was a racist and "favors the black person" while carrying out his presidential duties.

King also said that he was "offended" by both Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

"When you look at this administration, I'm offended by Eric Holder and the president also, their posture. It looks like Eric Holder said that white people in America are cowards when it comes to race," said King. "And I don't know what the basis of that is but I'm not a coward when it comes to that and I'm happy to talk about these things and I think we should."

King added: "But the president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race - on the side that favors the black person."

Wow. If he was an old lady and he said something like that about Jews Israelis, he would be forced to apologize and resign. But he only trashed the President and the Attorney General, and since they are only 3/5 of a person each in the eyes of a hateful racist like King, they barely count as one person when you put them together.

Psychiatrists have a term for the pathology that King is engaging in here. It is called projection, a phenomenon wherein a delusional individual ascribes to others those traits which they themselves possess, and Steve King has a textbook case.  

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Now they just need their tax exempt status removed

So does this mean California can re-vote on the issue? The Mormon church has been found guilty on 13 counts of election malfeasance and fined with regards to the highly-charged "Proposition 8" campaign that outlawed same-sex marriage in the Golden State.

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What to do with the Glenn Becks of the airwaves?

.Glenn Beck…

"If I get out of control and start leveling baseless charges that can't be backed up, guess what happens? I'm fired. I lose my job."

In fact, every single one of Beck's shows is filled with baseless claims.  MediaMatters highlights eighteen of them.  This makes the statement above baseless in itself.

You're probably as fed up with this charlatan as I am but I'm not sure that ignoring him is the way to go.  Should clowns like O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Malkin be allowed to spin at will and in so doing, dictate, without challenge, the message being heard?

I don't think so.  Ask John Kerry how that line of thinking worked out for him.

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Teabagger asks voters to gather their armies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iQ7ZDUutU4&feature=player_embedded

Wingnuttery at its best.  When does the madness end?

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