Headlines - Thursday July 21

I'm not even going to post the video. You can go watch it for yourself. This apparently took place in a Japanese restaurant. The poor squid had half its head chopped off, then it was served fresh, so that when you pour soy sauce on it it squirms. I'm sorry, but this is vile. I'm glad that a number of people were equally appalled. So do we chock this up to ethnic/cultural differences, or are some things beyond the pale?

 

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From Sen. Tom Harkin: "On the Republican side you've got scores of Republicans who say, fine, let the country default. Need I remind you Michele Bachmann [was] running around my state saying she wouldn't vote to raise the debt limit no matter what? No matter what. Got that? No matter what. This is one of their leading contenders for the presidency. So the debate and fight is not between Democrats and Republicans; it's between some Republicans and their sort of cult fringe, as I refer to them, out there."

 

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From Roger Ebert, there's this from his blog at the Sun Times — "The Republicans exit history". The death of political parties isn't common, but it does happen — witness the Whig Party in the U.S., which lived from 1833 to 1856 and elected two presidents. (They even had Lincoln as a member for a while.)

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That sound you hear is Koch-whore heads exploding: Green jobs now employ more people than oil and gas jobs. "Throughout his term, President Obama has repeatedly heralded clean energy and the industries that surround it as being a vital element of America's economic future. Many Republicans, meanwhile, have questioned environmental regulations that would promote the "clean economy" as job killers that unduly penalize mature industries more central to the US economy.  ... The clean economy is growing, too. It grew 3.4 percent between 2003 and 2010. That's behind the 4.2 percent growth of the entire US economy, largely because of heavy job losses in the building and housing industries, the study authors said. Even so, newer clean energy and connected segments - which are just one part of the larger clean economy - grew 8.3 percent in that period. ... The growth of clean-economy jobs has often been ignored because there haven't been detailed statistics - until now. The Brookings study, called "Sizing the Clean Economy," cited jobs scattered across more than 41,000 companies nationwide, not just in clean energy industries like solar and wind power, but emerging fields like greenhouse-gas reduction, environmental management, recycling, and air and water purification technologies. ... Smart-grid efforts directly employ nearly 16,000 people, and battery technology about the same, the study found. Conservation accounts for a big chunk, with 314,000 jobs, as does public mass transit - 350,000 jobs. Add to that wind power and solar power, with about 24,000 direct jobs each, and sustainable forestry products with 61,000. ... Lighting standards adopted by Congress in 2007 have also created at least 12,500 jobs by fueling the growth of new, greener technologies, according to separate data from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. The US House recently tried to overturn those regulations in an effort to keep traditional incandescent light bulbs from being phased out by the end of the year. Edison bulbs are cheap but waste 95 percent of the energy they consume as heat."

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Superhero Al Franken uses literacy to prove homophobes are idiots.

 

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Rich people don't create jobs, they're useless parasites. "That the wealthy are "job creators," and therefore have interests that must be defended by the public at large, is a talking-point that, however facile, is so popular it slips effortlessly from the lips of conservatives every day. ... It can be deployed for any purpose - not only in calling for more tax breaks for the rich, but also when opposing public interest regulation, consumer litigation and worker protections. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, even used it to deflect attention from the "gay rehabilitation" services her clinic allegedly offers. When asked about it by ABC News, Bachmann merely acknowledged, "we do have a business that deals with job creation." When pressed, she stuck with it: "As I said, again, we're very proud of our business and we're proud of all job creators in the United States." ... It's also complete nonsense; the opposite of the truth. Sure, the wealthy create a few jobs - people who offer exclusive services or sell them high-end goods. But the overwhelming majority of jobs in this country are "created" by ordinary Americans when they spend their paychecks."

 

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60 percent of Texans suspended before high school graduation: A new study by the by the Council of State Governments finds that 60 percent of Texan students were suspended, expelled or faced in-school suspensions by the time they graduated high school...

 

Not enough Jeebus in the curriculum.

 

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House passes 'Cut, cap, balance'

Masturbation is the order of the day Link

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Via Buzzfeed

--WT

UPDATE: Oy vey. The Griftersaurus speaks:

"I want the mainstream media -- and I've said this for a couple years now -- I want to help them.

I have a journalism degree. That is what I studied. I understand that this cornerstone of our democracy is a free press, is sound journalism. I want to help them build back their reputation."

This from the idiot who wears fake glasses because she thinks it'll make her look smarter.

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That's some wrathful God they've got there.

WASHINGTON - Five people, including three children, have been injured after being struck by a large tree branch in the District of Columbia.

Fire department spokesman Pete Piringer says a branch the size of a large tree fell Tuesday afternoon on a group of people attending a Bible camp at Garfield Park in Southeast. He says the branch appeared to come from a large oak tree.

And this is explained away how exactly?

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This is big news:

President Obama is throwing his support behind the Respect For Marriage Act – the bill to repeal the 1996 Defense Of Marriage Act, which banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage even for couples married under state law.

No, he hasn't fully and completely enacted equality for all gay people in his first term. But to insist he's dragging his feet or is, according to the most hyperbolic activists on the left, "the worst president ever for gay people" is just outstandingly stupid.

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Mario: Louie Gohmert – Republican Idiot At Large