Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Headlines - Wednesday June 1

 
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Blue Girl: Paul Ryan's budget and opening another front in the war on women.
 
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It's for their own good
 
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I have a question: Why did God decide to kill 125 innocent people?
 
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Jesus' General: Desecrating America's Most Holy and Sacred Symbol
 
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While Congress continues to plan for hundreds of billions in cuts and states are closing parks and educational programs, we continue to gush billions on three wars. This fiscal year alone the cost of just Afghanistan will be $113 billion. Just this year. Just for Afghanistan.

Continue reading 'Cost of Afghanistan War This Year: $113 Billion'

I'm so happy we elected an anti-war president.

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The budget of the state of Florida is $67 billion dollars, and while Governor Rick Scott already signed nearly one billion dollars in cuts to programs such as aid for homeless veterans, meals for poor seniors, a council for deafness, a children's hospital, cancer research, whooping-cough vaccines for poor mothers, and aid for the paralyzed, he also felt the need to veto a measly $4.8 million dollars in funding for public broadcasting. http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/05/rick-scott-vetoes-pbs.html

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I'm not being cute with that headline. Pawlenty literally called the president a doofus.

"We don't have 20 years, we don't have time for more status quo politicians to just come here and say, we don't have to make any tough choices. Any doofus can go to Washington and maintain the status quo. And that's what we've got in the White House and the Congress in terms of the attitude about their willingness to tackle these issues."

And, as Steve Benen notes, it's really difficult for the Republicans — any Republican — to make the case that the president is both the most radical liberal in the history of liberals while also maintaining the status quo. Then again, such flagrant contradictions are at the core of the unserious flailing that's become the Republican Party message.

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The poor pay no taxes? That's a big surprise to them.

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Wow. Democracy may take a while in Egypt.

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No surprise ...

But it's nice to see it quantified:

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The result of this concerted campaign of disinformation is a viewership that knows almost nothing about what's going on in the world. According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Shariah law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama's citizenship. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland reveals, ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. That's because Ailes isn't interested in providing people with information, or even a balanced range of perspectives. Like his political mentor, Richard Nixon, Ailes traffics in the emotions of victimization. [my ems]

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The Dead End Quarter.

A small part of
a Rolling Stone article on Roger Ailes and Fox 'News'.

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Orwell: "Bwahahahaha!"
Raw Story

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun field testing new technology designed to identify people who intend to commit a terrorist act.

Nature reported that the DHS has been conducting tests of Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) in the past few months at an undisclosed location in the northeast.

The technology uses remote sensors to measure physiological properties, such as heart rate and eye movement, which can be used to infer a person's current mindset.

According to a Privacy Impact Assessment (PDF) released by the DHS in 2008, the technology is intended to measure a person's malintent -- the intent to cause harm.

"Undisclosed location in the northeast." That would be the van outside Fixer's house. The one parked over the soon-to-be crater. Heh.

Looks like fiction is all the rage in National Defense these days. By scaredy-cat paranoid and power-mad civilians who don't know jack shit. The Chimp and Darth Cheney used 24 to foment their torture agenda, and it looks like DHS watched Minority Report a few too many times in their Moms' basement. Think 'jizz-soaked Cheeto crumbs' rather than 'civil rights' and 'Constitution'.
 
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Al Gore is fat

But Chris Christie is a serious, small government conservative:

Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son's baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter.

Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field, a noise from above distracted the spectators as the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

I hope this hothouse flower runs, because he'll be crushed by any serious media attention.

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Media Matters: One Year After Debunking Breitbart's "Slander," CNN Welcomes Him Back As Newsmaker

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Considering they haven't created one job since taking office, and haven't so much as advanced one plan to create jobs since they took office, and, mind you, presided over the worst economic collapse since the Depression, it's pretty clear the Republicans are very serious about killing the economy:

In a symbolic vote to send a message to budget negotiators, the House on Tuesday defeated a measure to raise the national debt ceiling without any accompanying deficit or spending reduction provisions.

The Republican-controlled House voted 318-97 on the legislation that would have raised the federal government's debt limit by approximately $2.4 trillion.

Under rules for the vote set by the GOP leadership, the measure needed at least two-thirds support to pass, ensuring it had no chance for approval.

The vote was scheduled by Republican leaders to show that any attempt to divorce an increase in the debt ceiling from spending reduction efforts—a move initially favored by the Obama White House—cannot win congressional approval.

Democrats called the move a dangerous political stunt that could rattle financial markets.

Not sure why the markets care. If shit crashes, they'll be made whole again by the taxpayers. Just like the last time.

Gotta love the 80 or so Democrats who voted with the nihilists.

Also, I blame Obama.

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Tweet of the Day "We polled 481 Republicans in Iowa. 1 picked Jon Huntsman. Not 1%. 1 respondent." -- Public Policy Polling

 

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