Headlines - Monday September 13

A quest to get Barack Obama to shout his commitment to solar power from the roof tops - by re-installing vintage solar panels at the White House - ended in disappointment for environmental campaigners today.
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, had led a group of environmental activists to Washington in a bio-diesel van hoping to persuade Obama to re-install a set of solar panels originally put up by Jimmy Carter.

The actual Carter-era solar panels - which weigh in at 55 kilograms and are nearly 2 metres long - are out-dated now. But campaigners had hoped that the White House would embrace at least the symbolism of going solar - much like Michelle Obama kicked off her healthy food movement by planting a vegetable garden.

But the White House declined - twitchy perhaps about inviting any comparison to one-term Democratic president Carter in the run-up to the very difficult mid-term elections in November

 

Pathetic. Just fucking pathetic. Here, folks, is Democratic ineptitude in full flower. God forbid we should point out that it isn't 1980 anymore, we've just had the hottest summer on record, even former climate change skeptics are coming on board, and those who aren't are either Christopaths or guys like Limbaugh and Beck making millions of dollars a year off of the willfully ignorant and the terminally stupid. Because that would require EFFORT, and it would require LEADERSHIP, and oh, no, we can't have any of THAT. Because it's SO much more important to try to win over people who will NEVER, EVER, EVER IN A MILLION YEARS VOTE FOR YOU.

Goddess almighty, would someone please send this man a SPINE?

 

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Instead of the Fox News watching drones, now they want to educate the youth. Even worse the plan is being spearheaded by Rebekah Brooks who Murdoch promoted even though she is at the center of the more recent phone hacking scandal. What a horrible idea.

Rupert Murdoch's News International (NI) is drawing up plans to sponsor an academy school in a move that is likely to trigger anxiety about the media mogul's influence.

The Observer understands that executives at NI, which owns the Times, the Sun, the Sunday Times and the News of the World (NoW), are actively discussing sponsoring a school in east London, close to the company's headquarters in Wapping.

The idea, which is being spearheaded by Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun, who is now chief executive of NI, has been under discussion for several months but is still at an early stage, according to sources

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The very serious so-called papers of record failed to staunch my curiosity, but Wonkette's "Northern Terrortories Warblogger" Bill Scannell has a trio of hilarious (yet depressing) posts on the Nine-Eleven Grifters Gala in Anchorage. The pics in the "Palin-Beck 9/11 DeathFest Crowd Haunted By Weird Protesters" dispatch add a special surreality—why is the guy wearing a bunny costume and a 'Scream' mask being patted down by security guards?—but the event itself seems to have been underwhelming:

It was a classic case of bait and switch. The Palin/Beck NineEleven™ Porno Deathfest was a LIE. They promised masturbatory delights beyond the wildest dreams of even the most ardent exurban WTC pr0n junkie. Instead, the close to 4,000 attendees were served up something far more profitable in the long term to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin: a Messiah myth…

For the next 20 minutes, Beck and Palin did their shtick, chastely fondling the aura of one another's genitals and bantering on about Alaska and how Grifter Girl has caribou blood under her salon fingernails and the Spirit of Alaska must renew A'murka until finally, FINALLY they got to The Point. Glenn Beck announced that he will not run for public office while Sarah Palin thrice refused (hear that Christian dog whistle?) to say whether or not she would run for President in 2012…

Glenn Beck may have made seventeen separate references to his own insanity during the course of the evening, but he is no nut job. This wily huckster, this greasy purveyor of shallow dreams and crocodile tears, set the pick tonight on what will be his biggest score yet: a years-long never-consummated and congenitally impotent dry hump on a ghost candidate. For at least another several years, we will all have to watch these two grifters roll.

I do love a nicely-turned phrase, and little gems like "a years-long never-consummated and congenitally impotent dry hump on a ghost candidate" may have to serve as my only consolation during the next couple of political months. As Wonkette commentor MiniMencken summarizes:

Wow! This really is good old-fashioned American revival tent grifting. Beck announces he is going to be in Alaska on 9/11 for a big announcement. Palin tweets out to her fans that she will be there for this really, really huge announcement. They fill a drab meeting room with far fewer people than what I would imagine the word stadium implies, collect a pile of cash and don't actually do anything apart from show up. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you—the Hope and Crosby team of the wingnuts.

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Freedom....freedom...troops...military....reform...independent...pioneering...blah...blah...blah...

 

If you really can't resist reading about Evita Mooselini's appearance in Wasilla on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Mudflats has the entire sorry tale, including a transcripts of Mean Grrrl's remarks. It is interesting indeed how only mentions the anniversary that's the reason why she's even there. Doesn't she understand that invoking September 11 over and over again is the key to the Republican arsenal?

 

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While teabaggers were out there enjoying the 9/11 attacks all over again (it IS wingnut Christmas, after all), something that ought to have gotten the attention of every teabagger whose job was outsourced during the last decade and a half got ZERO coverage here at home:

President Barack Obama today underlined his determination to end tax incentives for companies that create jobs overseas, saying he will provide a generous tax credit to companies that create more jobs in the US.

Amid indication that outsourcing could become a hot issue in the November elections, Obama said the tax breaks should go to companies that create jobs in the US and not overseas.

"One of the keys to job creation is to encourage companies to invest more in the United States. But for years, our tax code has actually given billions of dollars in tax breaks that encourage companies to create jobs and profits in other countries," Obama said in his speech on economy at Cleveland, Ohio.

The President said he was determined to change that. "I want to change that. Instead of tax loopholes that incentivise investment in overseas jobs, I'm proposing a more generous, permanent extension of the tax credit that goes to companies for all the research and innovation they do right here in America," Obama said with Ohio Governor Ted Strickland standing by his side.

But of course why let coverage of something GOOD that Obama wants to do get in the way of relentlessly flogging the ravings of a religious lunatic or endless discussion of whether the President's response about said lunatic was adequate.

 

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Short one today - just not that into it when I found out that Hopey said no to solar panels at the White House.