Headlines - Monday August 16

That was when Jesus returned. And, for the first time

in human history, it was bad news for Republicans.

 

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Obama's exit strategy from Iraq under threat once again.

 

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If the "free market" was really a free market i.e. not heavily subbsidized, we would be paying about fifteen bucks a gallon for gas. Just thought you ought to know that.

 

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How about demanding BP clean up the Gulf Coast to the point you don't have to beg people to go there? "President Obama has urged Americans to "come on down and visit" Florida to help revive the economy stricken by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Mr Obama said oil was no longer flowing into the Gulf but "our job is not finished and we are not going anywhere until it is." The president is visiting Florida with his wife and elder daughter. On Friday, US incident commander Adm Thad Allen said work would continue to seal the leaking well for good. The president paid tribute to the US Coast Guard and others who had "toiled day and night" to plug the leak. He urged Americans to take their holidays in Florida, saying: "As a result of the clean-up effort, the beaches are clean, open and safe." Tourism is one of the mainstays of the Florida economy. This year, however, much of the coastline is deserted, says the BBC's Andy Gallacher in Miami. The dramatic drop in tourists is down to a perception that all the beaches along the Florida panhandle, as it is known, are coated in oil, our correspondent says, even though that is not the case. Mr Obama said he would maintain the pressure on BP to pay out compensation claims from the $20bn (£12.8bn) fund set up for that purpose."

 

 

Oh look. Here's Barry and Sasha supposedly swimming in the Gulf.

 

And here they are playing golf at Pirate's Island:

 

 

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Eric Margolis: Punishing the WikiLeaker Misses the Point.

 

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h/t Dick:

 

Reporting on the news that China is now the world's second largest economy, the TV 'analyst' just pundited that the US economy is 4 times larger than China's and that China would require at least "two decades" to catch up.
 
Two thoughts at once came to mind.  First; that that was pretty typical of our general attitude that China is taking over as the world's leader, there is nothing we can do but accept (and support) it, and that it's just a matter of time.  And second; China will be number one in less than 5 years, not twenty.
 
We're fucked.  And the perps is us.

 

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We don't want this psychotic fucker on our planet, we sure as hell don't want him in our country, politicizing 9/11. "The right-wing group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) has announced that it will be hosting a rally against the proposed Cordoba House Islamic community center on September 11. ... The confirmed list of speakers includes former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Andrew Breitbart, and, notably, the far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. "Islam is not a religion, it's an ideology," Wilders told the Guardian in 2009, "the ideology of a retarded culture."" (Especially when renowned academic Tariq Ramadan can't get a visa.)

 

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How the Democrats will arrange to lose despite widespread hatred of GOP: help corpo's outsource more jobs.

 

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Saint David

 

It's good thing we fired the guy who bitched about Obama over a few beers to a Rolling Stone writer. It's much better to have our commander in Afghanistan giving hour-long interviews to the New York Times undermining the President's strategy there.

 

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Nut and Yahoo

 

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Just say no in November

 

2. NO to Stimulus
3. NO to Lilly Ledbetter equal pay for equal work act
4. NO to Hate crimes prevention act
5. NO to Student loan reform
6. NO to Healthcare reform
7. NO to Cancelling the F-22 - a plane the military doesn't want
8. NO to Funding energy and science research which Bush passed but never funded.
9. NO to Nuclear arms (reduction) deal with Russia
10. NO to US Navy increasing patrols off Somali Coast
11. NO to attractive tax write-offs for those to buy hybrid automobiles
12. NO to Cash for clunkers program and stimulating auto sales
13. NO to Announced plans to purchase fuel-efficient American-made fleet for the federal government
14. NO to Expanding the SCHIP program to cover health care for 4 million more children
15. NO to Signing national service legislation/expanding national youth service program
16. NO to Instituting a new policy on Cuba, allowing Cuban families to return home to visit loved ones
17. NO to Ending the previous policy of not regulating and labeling carbon dioxide emissions
18. NO to Expanding vaccination programs
19. NO to Closing offshore tax havens for corporations
20. NO to Negotiating deal with Swiss banks to permit US governmenbt to gain access to records of tax evaders and criminals
21. NO to Ending the previous policy of offering tax benefits to corporations who outsource
22. NO to growing American jobs through a policy promoting in-sourcing to bring jobs back to America
23. NO to Lower drug costs for seniors
24. NO to Tax cuts for small business
25. NO to Cap and Trade that republicans originally proposed and campaigned for two years ago.

Those are just a few of the things they voted AGAINST.  What does it all mean?

That they voted FOR Corporation Interests over the American People.

If republicans are against helping America's middle class and poor ....

WHY would anyone vote for them in November?

They drove the economic car into the ditch and now they want the keys back!

Just say NO!

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John Ensign - big-haired sex lizard update

Infamous momma's boy, big-haired, Jeebus-loving adulterer and all around GOP sex-lizard, the sheep with a secret sorrow, Senator John Ensign of Nevada has been sort of invisible lately. An invisible f***weasle is not a good thing, and so to remind of that he is still free and unfettered, today we have an article from the Las Vegas Sun.

And it begins thusly:

John Ensign is a man of many talents, not the least of which are his skill at twisting the truth and of putting on a false front to the world.

Nevada's junior senator has been morally superior in public while morally inferior in private, and he created a web of deceit that ensnared friends and supporters now being punished for his indiscretions. Facing an ethics probe and a federal investigation, Ensign has tried to make his scandal about a moment of human weakness (that lasted for months) and nothing more.

OK, that's a good start. But as Ensign has been trying to push the whole thing off as a weakness of the flesh, and rarely mentioning that bit about coverups, payoffs, and patronage. The LVSun, however, sums it up nicely:

That mistake — this is just about sex! — did not lead to a "difficult legal battle." Ensign is in legal jeopardy not because he slept with his wife's best friend and his best friend's wife — that never sounds less grotesque, does it? — but because of how he tried to cover it up, pay off the couple through Mom and Dad and then try to hush up the cuckolded husband by importuning people he regulates to hire him.

Ensign – you just got served.

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Cholera arrives in flooded Pakistan. "UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has described as "heart-wrenching" the destruction he witnessed on a visit to flood-devastated Pakistan. Mr Ban said the scale of the disaster was greater than anything he had seen before. He again urged the world to speed up aid to the country, saying shelter and medicine were desperately needed. The Pakistani government says up to 20 million people have now been affected by the monsoon floods. At least 1,500 are known to have lost their lives. Health experts are warning that the threat of epidemics in flood-hit areas is growing. The UN has already confirmed at least one case of cholera among the victims."

20 million devastated by floods, but the clusterfuck must go on. "A suspected US drone missile strike in Pakistan has killed at least 12 militants in a tribal area near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials say. The strike hit a compound used by militants in Issori village in North Waziristan, the officials said. The region that has become a stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and has been repeatedly hit by similar attacks. Pakistan publicly objects to the strikes but analysts believe they have the private backing of officials. A BBC investigation in July found that more than 700 people had died in such drone strikes since January 2009, including a number of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, but the attacks have fuelled anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Saturday's attack was the first since devastating floods hit Pakistan in late July."

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The Battle of Meet the Press

General Petraeus is on the scene in Afghanistan — and by "Afghanistan" we mean "the Sunday morning political talk shows, in America" — to announce his intention to just stone cold win this war for you, whether you like it or not. "The president didn't send me over here to seek a graceful exit," Petraeus said, as he made his plans for a bloody, desperate exit midway through President Palin's first term. In order to achieve these goals, he's bringing in all the folks who helped him out in Iraq, including some dude from the American Enterprise Institute. [NYT]

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Dehumanization is the currency of the Republican Party.  Latinos, gays and Muslims are the Others.  They're not Real Americans.  Their rights must be curtailed through the will of the majority because they are unpopular.  Republicans want to apply the Constitution through Rasmussen polls.  Only the approved religions get to build here.  Only the approved relationships count as marriage.  Only the approved people born here count as citizens.