Sunday, March 18, 2012

Headlines - Sunday March 18

Whistleblower claims about BP's Atlantis filed this week argue against Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's claims platform is safe
 
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Imagine if phone companies suddenly took it upon themselves (under pressure from the White House) to listen in on phone calls and make sure you're not selling drugs. Would you be cool with that? If not, you probably won't be cool with this. The march toward a surveillance society goes on.
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Steve Benen and historian Michael Beschloss on the Guggenheim documentary and the scale of the disaster the president inherited.

When the narration tells viewers, "Not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt had so much fallen on the shoulders of one president," that's not hyperbole. Given that FDR "only" had to deal with the Great Depression, and Obama inherited a financial crisis and two wars, Michael Beschloss has argued that Obama's job was actually harder than anything any incoming president had to deal with in modern American history.

Put it this way: Obama entered the cockpit of a plane that was crashing, and managed to gain altitude, slowly but surely. As easy as it is to complain about the ongoing turbulence, the point of videos like these is to remind folks that the nose isn't pointed down anymore.

There's no denying that the president prevented a deeper crash and has, in a very brief period of time, turned the disaster into a steady recovery. That's big and it's historic.

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The Rutgers University student who used a webcam to spy on his gay roommate, who later committed suicide, was found guilty of hate crimes today.

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Iraq vet suffering PTSD snaps, takes out sister, mother, self.

Army Spec. Abel Gutierrez. That was his name. George W. Bush is responsible for these three deaths just as he's reponsible for so many others. And there is no hell after he dies, just darkness, just like for the rest of us. There is no hell, other than the one George W. Bush created on Earth for our soldiers (amongst many other man-made hells), and GWB as a fortunate son will never experience that.

For the record, I think Obama gets some blame too. They all need to come home and get help.

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Andy Borowitz: Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk died at 91 today, effectively ending his bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

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