Thursday, August 9, 2012

Headlines - Thursday August 9

The security firm formerly known as Blackwater – founded by Holland's Erik Prince in 1997 – has agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to resolve allegations that it smuggled arms, among other crimes…
 
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Morford: Well-armed gay chickens for Jesus 
 
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Bryan Fischer wants to kidnap your kids to prevent them from being raised by LGBT parents.

The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer has sunk to a new, disturbing low with his anti-gay statements. In two separate tweets last night, he called for an "Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households." In one tweet he was referring to the sad story of Lisa Miller, who, after declaring herself ex-gay, kidnapped her daughter away to Central America to prevent her former partner from having any custody. (She is still being tracked by federal agents as a fugitive of the law.)

Because nothing says Family Values like kidnapping kids from their family homes and legal guardians.

I would remind you that The American Family Association is a proud supporter of Chick-Fil-A and the Republican 2012 campaign.

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Norquist is implying that the Mars mission wasn't worth it.

And Iraq was?

George Bush's vendetta war in
Iraq is costing us $3 trillion, or 1,200 times the cost of "that picture of Mars" (the Curiosity mission cost only $2.5bn). So, actually, had the Republicans not invaded Iraq on a lie we could have afforded both Mars and Rembrandt.

This is something that bothered me way back in 2001. I remember when George Bush was proposing the huge $1.6 trillion tax cut, and when Democrats, led by Tom Daschle, immediately caved and countered with a $1.3 trillion tax cut (that'll show 'em). At the time I thought, yeah we have a surplus thanks to Bill Clinton, but shouldn't we save this for a rainy day rather than run out and spend it like a drunken Reagan? Yet that's what the Republicans did, and it's what they always do.

The Republicans never met a surplus they didn't spend. They wasted America's rainy day fund on tax cuts for the rich and wars of convenience, and now we're all paying for it.

Of course, it gets even funnier. Had Norquist taken a few more science and math classes he might have had the smarts to Google the photo before sending it out to the world as a new photo from Mars. It's not a new photo at all.
It's a photo from 2005, and has nothing to do with Curiosity's current mission to Mars.

And Grover, there's one more difference between the Mission to Mars and the $3 trillion Republican war of convenience in Iraq.

The Mission to Mars didn't kill anyone.

PS Oh, and Grover, the pic you're complaining about was from the Bush administration. But funny you didn't complain about the cost of the Mars mission, or Bush's various wars, then. 

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Romney's blood money

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"To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Gov. Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care."

–Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul, responding to a Priorities USA ad in which a steelworker, who lost his job after Bain Capital closed the GST Steel mill where he worked, connects his unemployment — and resulting lack of health insurance — to the death of his wife.

One hopes that Andrea Saul lives in Massachusets, because by now she is the former Romney spokeswoman.

(TPM)

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We live in a time in which ordinary people are being told to expect far, far less. Social Security isn't even a given, nor is Medicare. And yet, now we hear this:

Super Rich Holding $21 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxation

Here's the link. That number is "conservative" -- the actual one could run as high as $32 trillion.

This not only comes at a time like this for America -- EU countries are in a bind, too.

I have a "conservative" friend who once made a reference about "money we don't have." Bullshit. Fucking BULLSHIT. It's there, and we KNOW who has it. They are hiding it in places like the Cayman Islands.

Is Slick Willard one of them? We can only guess. Why won't he release his tax records?

The era of "responsible capitalism" is over

It would appear that the only thing that forced that situation was the international challenge of socialism. Granted, socialism didn't hold up well, for reasons that don't have to be enumerated. But when faced with something like an international challenge, "capitalists" had to behave more responsibly.

Karl Marx was certainly wrong about a lot of things. But one thing he predicted was that, despite myriad attempts to "reform" capitalism, it would always revert back to its original, brutal form. It's looking like Karl was right about that one.

So, what to do now?

Revolutions don't generally turn out well, when you look at history. I can't say that I would recommend them. But if there isn't some kind of serious turnaround in Western societies within the next decade -- well, something else dramatic will have to happen. If it doesn't, we will be walking around as plutocrat trolls for the next couple of centuries. The plutocracy has the technology to commit this atrocity, unless we the people prevent it.

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This is blatant cheating and it should be illegal and halted by the courts. In Ohio, republicans are expanding early voting hours in republican strongholds and reducing them in the precincts that went for Obama in 2008.

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This will set the creationists to screaming and pearl-clutching and falling on the fainting couch. Two million years ago when our hominid ancestors stood up on their hind legs and ventured out of the Olduvai Gorge, they were not alone in their "quest for fire." Archaeological evidence and the fossil record show that there were at least two other species who were also clambering for that next rung on the evolutionary ladder.

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The liberal media:

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Rep. Steve King is a fucking moron.

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