Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Headlines - Tuesday March 29

Morning awesome: BP Managers Said to Face U.S. Manslaughter Charges Review
 
The Gulf Coast: Come For the Dead Baby Dolphins, Stay and Get Sick
 
 
Actually the Koch brothers started whining at a very early age, even before their father, Fred Koch, became a founding member of the John Birch Society in 1958.
 
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Libertopians always amuse me when they spout the nonsense about an armed society being a polite society. No. An armed society is a scared society, where normal people are terrified that any day might be their last day if one of the vicious arrogant savages who enjoy killing people happens to decide they need killing for no reason at all.

You want proof of the viciousness of some human beings? Rolling Stone's expose of The Kill Team should be frightening enough about the depths of viciousness that some people will descend to. And don't say it's because these guys got trained to be killers yada yada. These guys were vicious *before* they joined the military, indeed, probably wouldn't have been allowed to join prior to the War on Brown People Everywhere and the resulting issues with recruiting that the Army has been having.

My best guess is that the typical pasty cheeto-stained-fingered Libertopian wanking off to photos of dead brown people in Mommy's basement would be scared shitless if these folks were walking down the streets of his city in full battle rattle with rules of engagement basically letting him shoot anybody he feels need killin'. As in, we'd need some adult Pampers big-time, yo.

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Clinton: No attack on Syria for now.
 
Bad news for Lieberman. He was already planning to invade.
 
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Remember when they scream about "voter fraud" they are just shouting to distract you from their own voter suppression efforts -- and if you don't speak up now, soon there will be no one to speak for you. "Thursday, ThinkProgress reported that the Ohio House had approved the most restrictive voter id law in the nation - a bill that would exclude 890,000 Ohioans from voting. Earlier this week Texas lawmakers passed a similar bill, and voter id legislation - which would make it significantly more difficult for seniors, students and minorities to vote - is now under consideration in more than 22 states across the country. ... Conservatives have said voter id laws are necessary to combat mass voter fraud. Yet according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Americans are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than commit voter fraud. And the Bush administration's five-year national "war on voter fraud" resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor."
 
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An Open Letter to Liberal Supporters of the Libya War
 
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But I'll bet they vote for cutting government spending on education:
 
Evangelical college Liberty University is the largest recipient of federal aid to a student body in Virginia and the eighth largest recipient in the country overall, reports Lynchburg's News and Advance.
 
Eighty-eight percent of the $445 million in federal aid that Liberty, of Lynchburg, Va., received in the 2009-2010 school year was comprised of student loans; the remaining 12 percent came in the form of Pell grants and other federal education subsidies.
 
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For those of us who are incredulous at the changing rationales for our intervention in the Libyan civil war, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough has come to the rescue. He told reporters that "we don't make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region." Thus, inconsistency is the consistent policy that we are trying to advance?

The White House has sent out legions of allies to defend his decision to intervene in a civil war. We were originally told that we simply wanted to maintain a no-fly zone. We are now actively assisting the rebels in their campaign and taking out government forces. What is most striking are the liberals who are defending the President and acknowledging that the distinction between Libya and Syria is probably oil (which we refer obliquely to as "our interests"). The key is that we no longer offer a pretense of principle or consistency. We appear now to simply be saying that we are the United States and can intervene whenever it suits our purposes.

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"The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam." Director of Issues Analysis Bryan Fischer from the American Family Association

I wonder if each wingnut yanks constitutional "facts" out of his or her own ass, or if there's one big community ass from which they all yank.

Just to be perfectly clear: Fischer is waaaaaay wrong. Way, way, way wrong.

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Massachusettes rainwater radiation probably from japan.

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The majority of female students at Cornell petition against having to share dorms with black students. There aren't any now, but two have applied for rooms.

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Mario: Will Republicans Pay For Their Deeds in 2012?

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Israel air strike kills 2 in Gaza - less than 24 hours after Palestinian factions offered a truce if Israel's military stopped bombarding the Gaza Strip.
 
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SEAFOOD FROM JAPAN OKAYED FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
But consumers remain wary.
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U. S. NEWS
Administration "Considering All Options" Regarding Libya
Except consulting Congress.
Army Apologizes for Abu Ghraib-Like Photos, This Time From Afghanistan
Says it won't happen again.
 
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"Ten Commandments judge" Roy Moore to run for president.
 
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I'm dreaming of a white district
 

ABOVE: Separated at Birth? Pigpen and Dough-Bob Loadpants (aka J-Load Doughberg)

Shorter J-Load Doughberg, America's Shittiest Website™:
Chocolate City No More

I, for one, think it is a good thing that there are fewer blacks in DC. One of the many benefits of urban improvement is that it makes all the blacks move out, because they really don't like to live anywhere but crime-ridden slums where they can sell drugs and mug people.

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Maybe, if you're having a meeting about the fate of Libya, you might want to have a Libyan or two among the attendees?

(CBS/AP) LONDON — World powers were meeting in London on Tuesday seeking to plot out an endgame for Muammar Qaddafi's tottering regime and to strike agreement on plans for Libya's future.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Arab League and as many as 40 global foreign ministers were joining the talks — seeking to ratchet up pressure on Qaddafi to quit.

...
Just sayin' ...

Addendum: And, again, just sayin', maybe we should send our own war criminals to The Hague before we demand the Libyans turn Gadhafy over.
 
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This is what "trickle down" looks like, people: After paying zero in taxes and actually receiving a tax credit of $3.2 billion dollars, GE is planning to share that wealth by eliminating a defined contribution benefit pension for new employees, eliminating the current health insurance plans in favor of lower quality health saving accounts, and possibly freezing wages. 
 
 
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Jill: Sorry, Mr. McKinley, no redemption for you.
 
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Have shepherds, like Patrick Edouard, always had carnal relations with their sheep?  Or is this just another modern trend?
 
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When the going gets tough, Japanese CEOs get going. (And we don't mean they put on their Superman Underoos and get busy, but as in they disappear.) "In normal times, Masataka Shimizu lives in The Tower, a luxury high rise in the same upscale Tokyo district as the U.S. Embassy. But he hasn't been there for more than two weeks, according to a uniformed doorman. ... The Japanese public hasn't seen much of him recently either. Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the company that owns a haywire nuclear power plant just 150 miles from the capital, is the most invisible -- and also most reviled -- chief executive in Japan. ... Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into hospital or even committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss suffered an unspecified "small illness" due to overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station. ... Vanishing in times of crisis is something of a tradition among Japan's industrial and political elite. During Toyota's recall debacle last year, the car maker's chief also went AWOL. "It is very, very sad, but this is normal in Japan," said Yagushi Hirai, the chief editor of Shyukan Kinyobi, a weekly news magazine. ... Shimizu's vanishing act "is not so much extremely strange as inexcusable," said Takeo Nishioka, the chairman of the upper house of Japan's Diet, or parliament. Speaking to reporters, Nishioka described as "mysterious" Shimizu's refusal to join the head of the nuclear safety agency at a briefing on the crisis for parliament. "I cannot understand this," fumed Nishioka."
 
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I have to admit I'm enjoying watching Weepy, the strangely orange-hued Speaker of the House, deal with his coalition of water-head Teabaggers and Xristian Xraxies as he tries to get a budget passed. No wonder he can only get three weeks at a time.

  • Teabaggers, morons that they are, only know how to subtract. And if they don't get their way slashing everything, they will say that they will shut down the government.
  • The Xristian Xraxies won't vote for the budget unless pregnant women are strapped to a cot and forced to calf their rapist's baby, and/or strip gays of their rights is attached to the bill.

And then the Dims are there saying if you do either of those things, we won't vote either.

It's enough to give a man grey hair. If he weren't already dying it, that is.

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At least he didn't claim mission accomplished. "In a televised address to the nation on Monday night, Obama said he refused to be a president who waited for images of slaughter before taking action (except in countries without oil). In blunt terms, Obama said the response had stopped Gaddafi's advances and halted a slaughter that could have shaken the stability of an entire region "To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and more profoundly our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are (except, say in places like Sudan). "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different," Obama said. However, he said that broadening the international mission to include regime change would be a mistake."
 
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Thank you, anti-science rethuglican know-nothings. "China is on course to overtake the US in scientific output possibly as soon as 2013 - far earlier than expected. That is the conclusion of a major new study by the Royal Society, the UK's national science academy. The country that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing is set for a globally important comeback. An analysis of published research - one of the key measures of scientific effort - reveals an "especially striking" rise by Chinese science. The study, Knowledge, Networks and Nations, charts the challenge to the traditional dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan. The figures are based on the papers published in recognised international journals listed by the Scopus service of the publishers Elsevier."
 
 
 

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