Headlines - Thursday July 1

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. - Dorothy Parker, American writer and poet

 

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Jim Hightower: The GOP's Genetic Link to Big Oil

If scientists were to compare the DNA of Republican congress-critters and of oil corporations, I'll bet they'd find that they match perfectly. After all, the two species have identical political instincts and seem to have a natural affinity for each other — so I'm pretty sure they sprang from the same genetic pool.

How else can you explain the remarkable gusher of compassion that Republican lawmakers are presently directing toward Big Oil in general and BP in particular? For example, only hours after winning his party's nomination for a Kentucky Senate seat, GOP teabag darling Rand Paul was on national TV decrying Barack Obama as "un-American" for daring to demand that BP be held accountable for its human and ecological destruction in the Gulf of Mexico.

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According to John Wathen of BP Oil Slick, it's much worse than anyone can imagine or has been reported. Listen to the interview and keep checking his website that has regular updates and flyovers throughout the region. Despite some of the talk about "safe" beaches in the Florida panhandle, Wathen saw massive oil slicks just beyond the beaches which swimmers could not see.

 

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NASA image of the oil volcano:

 

 

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Broadband is now a legal right in Finland.

 

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From KDVR Denver:

 

The woman claims she spotted a vampire in the middle of a dirt road near Fruita, Colo. Sunday night. She told Colorado State Troopers she was startled by the undead being, threw her SUV into reverse, and crashed into a canal.

 

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Morford: The glorious myth of "female Viagra"

 

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Harper's reminds us:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

War is the quick road to profit and every dime of it comes out of our pockets. Any money going into our pockets does not go into theirs and is to be avoided.

 

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mistermix: Today's New York Times reports that FEMA trailers have re-appeared in the Gulf as a source of cheap housing for oil spill cleanup workers. Because the trailers were constructed with cheap materials, they have unsafe levels of formaldehyde.

That's not the only place those things have landed. I'm traveling in the Dakotas and the hills on the reservations are dotted with these things. The GSA says they're for "recreational use", but the tribes who received them weren't told that. They made the reasonable assumption that the government wouldn't truck trailers from Texas as vacation homes for some of the poorest people in the US.

 

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Here's what "shared sacrifice" looks like in New Jersey

 

Now that New Jersey is becoming a Republican paradise, the rest of the country might want to see what the "shared sacrifice" that Governor Chris Christie promised looks like:

Here are the facts: The 16,000 families in New Jersey earning more than $1 millon will get an average tax break of $40,000 apiece under this budget. At the same time, a single mom working for minimum wage will pay $300 more in state taxes.

The biggest cuts in this budget are painful but unavoidable. That includes the deep cuts in aid to schools and towns, and in property tax rebates. His single biggest move was to short the pension fund by $3 billion. Together, those moves account for the bulk of the governor's spending reductions.

Did you get that? 16,000 of the wealthiest families -- not business, but FAMILIES -- in the state will have $40,000 more in their pockets, while a minimum wage worker gets a $300 tax INCREASE. I guess this is shared sacrifice because the wealthiest families aren't going to get $100,000 more in their pockets.

Read the whole thing.

 

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Sinking Oil

Are you really that surprised? Did anyone in their right mind believe this company gave a damn about anything but the bottom line?

Testimony before a Senate investigative panel this week is expected to reveal what many have suspected about BP all along; they don't care about the environment, the animals that are dying, and the lives that are being destroyed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In a shocking interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won't have to pay fines on it.

McCallister said, "Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what's happening in the Gulf." He added, "Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we're allowing this to happen."

McCallister is set to appear before a Senate investigative panel on Thursday and testify that BP's only interests regarding the Deepwater Horizon spill is protecting their own financial interests. His statements explained why BP has been refusing offers of help from additional foreign skimmers.

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BP's Next Disaster

The oil giant plans to start drilling in the Arctic this fall — and the Obama administration is doing nothing to stop it.

Thanks, Hopey!

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Sit down and brace yourself, because we know that this will come as a shock to you, but we are going to tell you anyway...republicans lie. All the time. About pretty much everything. From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Arizona Sen. John McCain to junior members of the House of Representatives, conservative Republicans have accused President Barack Obama of failing to do all he can to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he hasn't waived a U.S. maritime law called the Jones Act. ... That statute, established in 1920, requires that all goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built and U.S.-owned ships crewed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Critics say that's needlessly excluded foreign-flagged vessels that could have helped. ... "It's a little shocking to me that a president that has such a multinational orientation as this president didn't immediately see the benefits of waiving the Jones Act and allowing all of these resources to come in," former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, said in remarks to Newsmax.com, a conservative website. ... Armey and the other Republican critics are wrong. Maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn't an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn't blocked anything. ... "Totally not true," said Mark Ruge, counsel to the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a coalition of U.S. shipbuilders, operators and labor unions. "It is simply an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem.""

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The Obama administration launched a new health care reform website yesterday that provides information to the public on "the full range of public and private health insurance plans" that fits their specific circumstances. Mandated by the health reform law, the site will show users how their options "will change in coming years" as the law takes effect.

Mine just changed. It went up $170 per month to $899. Thanks, Hopey!

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But god does want you raped though

Sharron Angle does not want to murder Harry Reid with guns

Ha ha, remember when Sharron Angle was some nobody teabagger that people voted for because, well, she's nuts and all, but at least she doesn't believe that people should pay for health care with live poultry? Back then she could just spout off with all sorts of crazy stuff, like, say, "People are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." But now she's an actual candidate and grown-up Republicans are helping raise money for her and so she had to go on a Nevada TV news show and admit that she has no immediate plans to kill Harry Reid, per se. MORE »

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President declaring a state of emergency before the hurricane hits? What kind of commie terrist shit is that? "US President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in Texas as Hurricane Alex bears down on the coast with 80mph (130km/h) winds. Alex, which has now strengthened to a category two hurricane, is expected to make landfall near the Texas-Mexico border. Heavy seas caused by the first Atlantic hurricane of the season have already disrupted BP's oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico. Boats skimming the slick have been sent back to port by the US Coast Guard. High waves and strong winds generated by Alex have also pushed more oil from the spill on to beaches in Louisiana."

Of course the company that planned to save the walruses in the Gulf in the event of a spill or blow-out didn't plan for hurricanes. That would have made too much sense and been too perilously close to a responsible position, so they certainly couldn't have any of that!

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"Yes, doctor, it's when Michele started talking in her sleep about the U. S. withdrawing from the global economy that I realized she needed professional help."