I don't want to blame the victim, but it's pretty clear that James Rosen, the Fox News reporter under investigation by the Justice Department for his role in publishing classified data, is a bumbling fool. Not only did he communicate with his source in a way that was almost guaranteed to get both caught, but he announced to the world that the US had a source in the North Korean government for no good reason.
And, no Sharyl Attkinson, the Obama Administration is not hacking your computer because you're investigating Fast and Furious, Solyndra or whatever other scandal CPAC will give you an award for. Take it to the Geek Squad.
I don't have any deep issue with the concept of shield laws, but if we are going to have them I want to be damn sure that they cover non-traditional news organizations. Bill Keller might not like Julian Assange's body odor, and there are a lot of dirty hippie bloggers whose kids don't attend Sidwell Friends, but if they're not covered by the same shield law as Rosen and Attkinson because they're not members of the club, I'm not supporting them.
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Good piece by Charlie Cook on the GOP's nonsense.
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Chris Christie recently underwent lap-band surgery in an attempt to address his slightly controversial girth and has now, despite the devastation wrought upon his state last fall by Superstorm Sandy, has joined the Flat Earth wing of the Republican Party:
"I don't think there's been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change," Christie said. "But I would absolutely expect that that's exactly what WNYC would say, because you know liberal public radio always has an agenda."
Proof. He wants "proof."
Keep in mind that this is a guy who believes that there is a great white alpha male who lives in the sky and that a guy in a dress in Rome has a direct conduit to him and that when he takes Communion the wafer and wine literally turn into the body and blood of a guy who may or may not have lived over 2000 years ago.
And yet several hundred miles of his state were devastated last fall by a veritable turducken of a storm that was unprecedented, and he wants to see "proof."
Granted, "weather" and "climate" are not the same thing. But a storm of the magnitude of Sandy, just like a tornado of the magnitude of the one that hit Oklahoma on Monday, is a symptom of a generally warming climate, which allows the air to hold more moisture and build more energy. We used to see devastating hurricanes every ten years or so. Now there is at least one every two or three years. Tornadoes have always been common in the midwest, but not tornadoes that cut a swath of up to two miles wide.
That looks like a CGI effect, doesn't it? It's not. Oh, and by the way? It's only May. It's not July, the peak of tornado season, it's MAY.
F5 tornadoes in May. Thunder-snow in January.
Nope. Nothing to see here.
Christie is hoping that by joining the "La La La La La I Am Not Listening" wing of his party, he can get past the certifiable lunatics that are sure to be his opposition in 2016. But here is the company he's going to have to keep in order to get there.
Got that, New Jersey and Chris Christie? Oklahoma's federal relief is deserved. YOUR relief is a "slush fund."
Someone should tell Sen. Inhofe that the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington DC were also devastated by Sandy. Not that it would matter. It's the same mindset that gives Republican politicians a free pass on corruption and sexual infidelity but runs Democratic politicians out of town. It's also the same mindset that has more than one in ten Oklahoma residents not having even basic literacy. It's also a state where:
James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, the latter of whom wants relief for tornado victims offset by cuts to programs in states other than his own (presumably the Communist Jewish Homosexual Pornographer states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts that subsidize Oklahoma year after year), insist that THEIR state's relief is somehow different from New Jersey's. Left unsaid is their view that God and Jesus somehow favor the Bible-thumpers in Oklahoma who are doing just as much fucking and divorcing as everyone else, in which case why does God always rain tornadoes and devastation upon them making them a leading recipient of federal relief funds, while in the Communist Jewish Homosexual Pornographer states, we ask for help maybe once a decade?
Voters in New Jersey this fall ought to remember that this is the company Chris Christie wants to keep.
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Meet two-term Teabagger Congressman Stephen Fincher, easily the most insane one from Tennessee next to abortion advocate Scott Desjarlais. Today, on the floor of the US House of Representatives, Fincher stood up on his hind legs and quoted a Bible verse from Thessalonians that he'd offered as support that we should let poor people starve. Fincher, you see, was responding to Juan Vargas (D-CA) who'd quoted his own Bible verse from Matthew that essentially said Jesus was committed to feeding the poor (Both quotes from the Bible are egregious sins against the mandate separating Church and State but at least Vargas gets brownie points for getting Jesus' priorities right).
Last March, Fincher became one of a growing number of "fiscal conservatives" led by Rick Scott who wants welfare recipients to be drug-tested before they receive any money. This farmer/gospel singer-turned Congressman is leading the fight in the House in which foaming-at-the-mouth right wing ideologues who have no problem with endless tax cuts for the top 1% want to take away virtually the only thing keeping body and soul together for many poor families and households who can't find work: SNAP benefits. In fact, they're looking for $20,000,000,000 in SNAP cuts over the next decade while the Blue Dogs of the Senate are looking for a "mere" $4 billion in cuts, meaning they have no problem with letting only some needy people starve.
Even before I had to get on the SNAP program myself two years ago, I would've had a major problem with walking brain stems like Fincher trying to literally take food out of the mouths of needy men, women and children. The Bible quote Fincher just used in the House today goes, "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat." In other words, "Your Jesus can blow me, Rep. Vargas. He had fucked-up priorities. If you're on any kind of federal assistance that isn't tied to a corporation or company, then you don't want to work since there's about one job for every three applicants, plenty to go around. And if you don't want to work, then you should starve to death in the richest nation on earth because some old anonymous Jewish guy said so."
Fincher is essentially George W. Bush on steroids and with an extra asshole gene. Last September even while running for re-election, Fincherintroduced another insane bill that would've essentially dismantled the US Constitution and replaced it with Judeo-Christian ideology. And just 13 months ago, Fincher also demanded we "cut the EPA's legs off" (one that's already been virtually hobbled and decapitated thanks to the Obama administration and the GOP-led House).
Again, Fincher alone got nearly $4,000,000 in federal farming subsidies plus a nearly $14,000 grant for heavy equipment, all courtesy of the US Dept. of Agriculture (and John Q. Public). He's also received more NRA money than any US Congressman or Senator, even, which is saying something about an entire political party that'd been bought and sold since time immemorial by the NRA. Two years ago, CREW named him one of the most corrupt people in Congress. During his election, he was embroiled in a campaign finance scandal involving his own father's Savings & Trust in which it was proven he'd broken several laws, according to the FEC, and yet no charges had even been filed. Even the Teabaggers who'd initially supported him were ready to 86 his fat, welfare-sucking ass over the farming subsidies until they got even stupider and decided to vote for the hypocrite with the "R" after his name. Then they saw fit to re-elect him last November.
Now, it's expected that Teabagger Republicans will automatically go after the neediest and most indigent in their faux outrage over government spending (that never seems to bleed into trillions being spent on needless wars and war profiteering contracts). What makes Fincher especially slimy is his rank hypocrisy since his farming company has received about $10,000,000 in farm subsidies just in the last decade.
Essentially, whatever pro-corporate, anti-poor movement that starts brewing in the US House of Representatives is virtually guaranteed to have Fincher's greasy paw prints all over it. One has to wonder how many morons in the 8th district who'd voted for him back in '10 and again in '12 are on SNAP or some other kind of federal assistance program who nonetheless voted for him and against their own interests simply to keep the guy with the "D" after his name from getting in. In point of fact, 17.6% of Tennessee residents receive SNAP (.pdf), one of the highest percentages in the nation, while 22.1% of the 8th district he represents (.pdf) receives SNAP benefits (second highest of all nine of TN's congressional districts), making, next to Mark Sanford's supporters in SC's 1st district, the stupidest voters in this galactic quadrant.
As long as stupendously corrupt, racist, sanctimonious, economic sadists and hypocritical godbags such as Fincher remain in Congress, we will never, ever continue advancing as a species.
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Corporations are people, my friend — only a very SPECIAL kind of people who are above vulgar affairs like, say, paying taxes, or being held accountable. This is why it's not illegal for Incorporated Americans to evade avoid taxes, even if they are posting record profits, and also, because making corporations pay taxes is like class warfare, which, while not illegal, is un-American. This is why Apple, lord and master of the free market and captain of the laptop, did not do anything illegal by evading avoiding taxes using a complicated "web of lies tax shelters."
From the New York Times:
Even as Apple became the nation's most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday.
[...]
Congressional investigators found that some of Apple's subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world. READ MORE »
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Thanking the Lord - Last-place anchor of last-place news network Wolf Blitzer encourages an aetheist to thank the Lord for her safety following the tornado.
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Sad Cat Diary
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Immigration reform takes a step forward. The victory comes at ashameful cost, however.
