Pope Benedict just named one Fr Gerhard Maria Wagner as assistant bishop of the Austrian city of Linz.
Fr Wagner is notorious for his extreme views — he has accused the popular Harry Potter novels of spreading Satanism, and described Hurricane Katrina as God's punishment for the sinners of New Orleans.He wrote in a parish newsletter that the death and destruction caused by the hurricane in New Orleans was divine retribution for the city's tolerance of homosexuals and permissive sexual attitudes.
The future bishop said he was glad that Katrina destroyed not only nightclubs and brothels in New Orleans, but also five of the city's abortion clinics.
Religious people are the coolest.
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How to create 4 million jobs in two months: http://www.teambio.org/2009/01/31/how-to-create-four-million-jobs-in-two-months/
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Obama Lets CIA Keep Controversial Renditions Tool: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/31-3
What good is it to close Guantanamo if we're going to continue outsourcing torture?
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Paul Krugman is talking about the possible damnation of deflation on the horizon:
If you ask me, the really scary report today wasn't the GDP release, although that was plenty bad, but the employment cost index, which shows wage gains falling off fast. Wages aren't declining, yet (although stories of wage cuts in particular firms are, I believe, more common than at any time since the 1930s); and we don't have actual deflation in consumer prices, yet; but we're moving in that direction. And we're only in the early stages of a slump that, in the words of the CBO director,
This really should be the key point in the stimulus debate. Yes, the effects of fiscal policy are uncertain; yes, running up large debts is risky; but doing nothing is even riskier, because there's a high probability that if we don't act strongly deflation will get embedded in the economy. We may be damned if we do, but we'll almost surely be damnified if we don't.
I didn't used to get worried when I read stuff like this because I figured that after Inauguration Day, we'd fix it enough to avoid calamity, if not get the stimulus/recovery package the country needs. But it looks like the GOP is willing to do nothing unless they get their Tax Cut Ponies (lame in three legs) and cuts in investment that actually has a chance of getting us going again. I am starting to worry.
I hope the Dems don't give away the store in the run-up to this vote to avoid a GOP filibuster. And if the GOP do filibuster the stimulus bill on Monday, I hope the Dems stand firm and launch a PR offensive that will make Sherman look like a moderate. Of course, if history is any indication, they'll simply capitulate in advance and weaken the bill beyond it's already weakened state.
Give me strength.
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We are going to be dealing with the conservative assault on civil liberties - particularly the fourth Amendment - long after he's faded into obscurity: Supreme Court steps closer to repeal of evidence ruling: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/bush-legacy-lives-on-by-digby-we-are.html
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Saudi Arabia has again shown its institutional intolerance of other religions with the arrest of Hamoud Bin Saleh, 28, who wrote about how he converted to Christianity from Islam. The arrest of the blogger followed the killing of the daughter of an official in the Kingdom's religious police who also wrote about her Christian faith. Story here.
Five months ago, a Saudi official with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice killed his daughter for converting to Christianity by first cutting the tongue of the girl and then burning her to death.
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Richest Americans' Income Doubled as Tax Rate Slashed
By Ryan J. Donmoyer - BloombergThe average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a third to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration and their average income doubled to $263.3 million, new IRS data show.
The 17.2 percent tax rate in 2006 was the lowest since the IRS began tracking the 400 largest taxpayers in 1992, although the richest 400 Americans paid more tax on an inflation-adjusted basis than any year since 2000.
The drop from 2001's tax rate of 22.9 percent was due largely to ex-President George W. Bush's push to cut tax rates on most capital gains to 15 percent in 2003.
Dear America, I have news for you: polarized economies tend to tank. The fact that this economy has been directed by the federal government for eight years to be so vastly polarized and the fact that this economy is now in the crapper is NOT A COINCIDENCE. And that House Minority "Leader" John Boner continued pressing a case for tax cuts over infrastructure spending as a means of stimulus should have everybody shaking in their boots. And, please note that when Boner and Comedian Rush Limbaugh talk about tax cuts and when President Obama talks about tax cuts, they are not actually discussing the same subject. Remember that Comedian's plan suspended the capital gains tax for a year and then slashed it to 10 percent; that's this very tax cut that just gave the rich even more paper to burn. Do you feel it tricklin' down on ya yet? Well do ya?
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Exciting news from Don Surber: Andrea Peyser takes on 49 stars in her latest book, "Celebutards." From Sean Penn to Rosie O'Donnell to Hanoi Jane Fonda, she takes them all on.
Wow, a right-wing attack on the likes of Rosie O'Donnell, Barbra Streisand, and Sean Penn. What a blazingly original book idea.
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File this under Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/01/bailed-out-banks-sought-f_n_162877.html
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When House Republicans planned their annual winter retreat, they invited Sara Palin, hoping she would give a morale-building speech to the. However, Palin declined, saying she had pressing state business to attend to, which made it impossible for her to leave Alaska this weekend.
So where is Palin this weekend? She's in Washington, D.C., attending the super-elite Alfalfa Dinner with Obama!
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Keep in mind that Congress just gave itself a $5,000 a year raise
If you're poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has a plan for you.
Just squat, she says.
Yes, this Ohio Democrat is actually encouraging her financially distressed constituents whose homes have been foreclosed upon, to simply stay put.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Rep_Foreclosed_owners_should_squat_in_0130.html
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AIG back at the trough
The welfare mama is back. Pay back the $450 million in bonuses paid out to 400 people and then talk. The first subject to be discussed should then be capping payouts as Senator McCaskill has proposed. Take it or leave it. If the tables were turned, you know this is what AIG and Wall Street would do. They've kicked sand in the face of Americans too many times to play along with their games so now is the time for some tough love, provided AIG wants to stay in business.
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Frank Rich explains that the Republicans really have zero to offer regarding the economy. Zero:
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The so-called party of ideas is now saying that in the Senate, they will rewrite the stimulus bill because it does not have enough tax cuts in it, and that giving rebates to people who make too little money to pay taxes is wrong. Never mind that these people are paying taxes on gas, food, and basically any purchases, and I would add that it is a disproportionate amount of poor people's income is consumed by these taxes, but, well never mind. Let them eat cake. That doesn't count.
So after 30 years, give-or-take, of GOP monetary policy that has basically crippled the middle class in this country, wiped out the lower class and put them on the street, and plunged the entire globe into a recession (if not depression), they are advocating for more of the same.
I can hardly wait for the Hoovervilles to start springing up. You know it is coming.
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At last night's black-tie dinner at Washington's Alfalfa Club, Sen. Joe Loserman (I-CT) couldn't resist cracking a joke about torture. Politico's Mike Allen reports:
More from Senator Lieberman: 'We had hoped Vice President Cheney would be here tonight. I hope it's not his back injury that's keeping him away. Apparently, he hurt it moving some things out of his office. Personally, I had no idea that waterboards were so heavy.
Last year, Lieberman, who has voted against banning waterboarding, "reluctantly acknowledged" that he doesn't believe that waterboarding is torture. "It is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological," he said.
Coincidentally, Joe, as of 2005, at least 108 people had died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them violently, according to government data provided to The Associated Press. Roughly a quarter of those deaths have been investigated as possible abuse by U.S. personnel. The figure, far higher than any previously disclosed, includes cases investigated by the Army, Navy, CIA and Justice Department.
Is it wrong for me to wish this guy would be held him in a dungeon cell for six years, and periodically waterboarded? If they want to throw his Torah in the toilet before feeding him two kinds of fruit, rice pilaf, and orange-glazed chicken, I won't think anything of it but that Lieberman got back what he so eagerly dished out.
Stay classy, Joe.
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Obama proposes cut in defense spending and wingnut heads are exploding: http://crooksandliars.com/cernig/obama-proposes-defense-cut-above-2007-level
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Do you think that the Repiglicans care about THIS big government spending? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxuqmPyKqcs&eurl=http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/blog/
So, you know about the Treasury's $700 billion bailout plan. But you probably don't know that the Federal Reserve has lent out about $2 trillion since September. Few do. And that is what's irritating bulldog Congressman Alan Grayson. Will he be able to shed a light on the Fed's secret spending?
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David Duke loses it over Michael Steele at the RNC
Ok. Now this is seriously funny. The BFF of Tony Perkins (of the Family Research Council), former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, is going apesh*t over the election of Michael Steele to run the RNC. He refers to the former Maryland Lt. Gov as "Obama Junior":
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/david_duke_loses_it_over_michael_steele_at_rnc/
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Congratulations, you poor bastard!
Remember the Onion headline, "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job"? Well, that was then...
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