Thursday, February 12, 2009

Headlines - Thursday

The price of oil today is $35.35.
 
I'm with Dick in wanting to know why the price at the pump keeps rising.
 
Gas in this town was $4.49 when oil was $147 per barrel.
Today it is $1.84.
 
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Peanut-encrusted Salmonella, anyone?
 
Domestic terrorists that knowingly sold salmonella-laced peanut butter are pleading the 5th: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/11/health/main4792328.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4792328 
 
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More heartwarming news from our BFF in the Middle East - the ones that supplied the 9/11 hijackers and we let fly out of the country without questioning them :

A Saudi judge has ordered a woman should be jailed for a year and receive 100 lashes after she was gang-raped, it was claimed last night.

The 23-year-old woman, who became pregnant after her ordeal, was reportedly assaulted after accepting a lift from a man.

He took her to a house to the east of the city of Jeddah where she was attacked by him and four of his friends throughout the night…

According to the Saudi Gazette, she eventually 'confessed' to having 'forced intercourse' with her attackers and was brought before a judge at the District Court in Jeddah.

He ruled she had committed adultery — despite not even being married — and handed down a year's prison sentence, which she will serve in a prison just outside the city.

She is still pregnant and will be flogged once she has had the child.

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Wall Street had been holding its breath, pricing in, and "banking" (betting) on an effective Stimulus Plan, and a new and sensible Bank Rescue Plan. Well, neither are happening, and now we've continued with our regularly-scheduled collapse.

Geithner is a total schmuck, clearly unwilling to properly confront the real problems of his Banker-Buddies' greed, their unwillingness to be honest about the shittiness of their piece of the Big Shitpile, and unwillingness help their borrowers, and those others on the hook in order to help themselves. So many better candidates for the role, and it's too damned early in the Obama Administration to replace the pinch-faced piece of shit, dammit.
via Bloomberg
 
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In the far right's cross hairs: Snowe, Collins, Specter

After stimulus vote, Republicans demand more rope  

When the stimulus passed in the House of Representatives, it did so without a single Republican vote. When it passed in the Senate yesterday, it earned a whopping three Republican votes. Sens. Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins broke ranks with their party, voting for a watered down version of the bill. Not content to fiddle while the nation burns, these three senators recognized that we're in an honest-to-goodness emergency. Something needed to be done and, despite pressure from their own party, these three senators did something. Not enough, but something.
 
With the Republican party the minority in both houses of congress, you'd think that most conservatives would be concentrating on increasing their numbers there. But, if you did think that, it would mean that you haven't been paying attention lately. The only people who still consider themselves Republican voters are fringe nuts and that means that cooler heads must never, ever be allowed to prevail. The lunatics are running this particular asylum and that's the way they like it. Wisdom is for the weak-willed, true conservatives listen only to their jerking knees. When you have an abundance of rope, the only Republican thing to do is to hang yourself.
 
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Dump the Dems - Obama won't give up Bush powers: http://casadelogo.typepad.com/factesque/2009/02/obama.html#more
 
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Safe seafood guide - print it out and take it with you - thanks, Rachel:
 
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Word to the wise, don't smoke dope with celebrities in Richland County, South Carolina. Media reports indicate that the Sheriff's Department have arrested eight people in connection to the controversy. It would also indicate that criminal charges are being contemplated against Phelps since such arrests are often useful in coercing cooperation from witnesses.
 
Story here.
 
It's nice to know that sheriff Leon Lott doesn't have anything more important to do.
 
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As a single parent with no income, Nadya Suleman (Tetradeca Mom) could receive thousands of dollars a month in government aid. - latte times
 
Suleman received disability payments for an on-the-job back injury during a riot at a state mental hospital, collecting more than $165,000 over nearly a decade before the benefits were discontinued last year.
 
Oh, and if you're not content with the bailout in the form of tax dollars that you're giving her, there's a website that takes PayPal:
 
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Times have certainly changed for the Yellowstone Club, an ultra-luxurious retreat for the wealthy including Bill Gates and Dan Quayle which was once to be the site of a single home to sell for $155 million. now it is more than $400 million in debt. - luxist
 
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Charles Darwin February 12, 1809 - April 19, 1882
 
Happy birthday to the man who showed us "endless forms most beautiful", from the 39% of Americans that believe in the theory of evolution. 
 
For the rest of you, you can visit the creationist fossil shop.
 
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Two juvie court judges in Pennsylvania are on their way to the Federal slam for seven years. They were taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from private prison companies; the two robed goons were sending kids to juvenile prison if the kids were unfortunate not to have a lawyer. It didn't matter what the charge was, the kids got a one-minute trial and were sent to jail.

There is no telling how many kids' lives were ruined by those two shitheels. Once the litigations get going, it is going to cost the Commonwealth a hell of a lot more than the bribes those two corrupt bastards received. Seven years in prison? Hell, they should serve seventy! Every day, they should be locked in the stocks with plenty of rotten fruit and eggs for those kids to throw at them.

Of course, the prison companies claim they were victims, too. I call "bullshit" on that. Last time I checked, the phone number for the FBI is in the book. Nothing was stopping them from dropping a dime on the judges, other than greed.

And you have to wonder if this isn't also going on in every other state with privately-run prisons.
 
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Fair and balanced and horny as a goat
 

"A Fox News producer who covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign for the cable network is facing child porn charges after federal agents discovered photos and videos on his computer depicting "children under the age of ten being sexually abused by adult men and women."

Maybe when he gets out he can work for Bill-O.

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…Cow pee?

Now, the RSS's Cow Protection Department has invented a new urine-based soft drink it hopes will promote its health-giving properties to a wider market. "We refer to gau ark (cow urine) as gau jal (cow water) as it has immense potential to cure various diseases. We have developed a soft drink formula with gau jal as the base and it has been sent to a laboratory at Lucknow for testing," said director Om Prakash.

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Rep. Maxine Waters asks CEO's about their practice of raising credit card limits at the Bank CEO hearing today. How many of us have had a sudden jump in our interest rates without ever even knowing it.Which of course never allows people to pay off the debt. Waters is making a key point here.

Waters: Since you received TARP money, have any of you increased the amount of interest on the credit cards by sending out letters to the consumers, to your credit card holders indicating that this was part of the contract even though this was in small print and you now have the ability to do it, have any of you Did any of you do that?

Did you do this?

CEO: I was volunteering. First of all I feel like corporal of the universe not captain of the universe.

Waters: Did you increase your credit card interest rate?

CEO: In 2008, we increased interest rates on 9 % of our customers.

Waters: Thank you very much, did anyone else increase credit card rates after you received TARP money? Anyone else, if so would you please raise your hand. (most of them did)

You sent out the letters I'm trying to describe? Saying that you have the authority to do that. Did any of you reduce the amount of credit that was available to credit card holders because they shopped at certain stores? Just raise your hand if you did. None of you did. Let the record reflect, none of them raised their hands.

Tom Geoghegan has repeatedly talked about the idea of helping the American consumer with their credit debt by canceling their private consumer debt which would immediately stimulate the economy. He often speaks about how these institutions can raise their rates to as high as they want. The consumer can never catch up and it's a sad practice which will cripple Americans with overriding fear about their state of finances. 

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A man shot and killed by his wife in Maine had materials in his home capable of making a dirty bomb. And no, he was not a Muslim Islamofascist. It appears he was homegrown American Nazi angry at the election of Barack Obama as our first African American President.
 
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Yesterday, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted 11 to 1 to give the District its first full voting seat in the House of Representatives. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), acting all mavericky, cast the lone "no" vote.
 
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CNN:

Eight Taliban suicide attackers struck Afghan government buildings and a prison Wednesday killing 19 people in a coordinated attack that the Taliban said was in retaliation for the mistreatment of prisoners, according to Afghan officials.

 
I think we need to throw some more money and human lives into the meatgrinder over there.
 
And in an Afghan-related story:
 
The U.S. has been shoveling weapons into the hands of Afghan troops but doesn't have a firm system in place or enough personnel to ensure they don't wind up in the hands of Taliban fighters, according to an independent study.
 
The U.S. shipped some 242,000 weapons to Afghanistan during a nearly four year period before June 2008. The weapons included rifles, pistols, machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The Defense Department did not maintain a complete inventory on more than a third of those weapons, according to the GAO.

Many weapons could not be linked to serial numbers, making it nearly impossible to verify receipt. And of the 41,000 with serial numbers, none could be tied to records confirming their location. The military also would forgo routine inventory checks because of staffing shortages and a lack of direction, GAO concluded. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090212/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan

Recall that the same thing happened in Iraq when Saint Petraeus handed out 190,000 pistols and AK-47's to the Iraqis that went missing due to "clerical errors."

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Three weeks and he's almost entirely gray...
 
 
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Reunited: Sam and the firefighter who saved her:
 
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A federal grand jury has subpoenaed the records of former New Mexico senator Republican Pete Domenici as part of an investigation into whether "former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges" for the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys. Prosecutors, led by acting Connecticut U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy, are also preparing to interview Scott Jenings, a former aide to Karl Rove.

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There are days when, after scanning the news, I push back from my computer and think, "Holy shit, is this how the French Revolution kicked off?" Today was one of those days.

In Washington, D.C., the eight, white, male bank CEOs were so relieved to avoid the rabble picketing outside their estates up in Greenwich, CT, that they allowed members of the House Financial Services Committee to wag accusatory fingers and scold them on their continued use of private jets to transport them around the country. In return, they promised they'd try to remember how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they "earn" per year:

Wells Fargo's Stumpf had some trouble remembering his salary.

"My compensation in 2008, I'm embarrassed, I think it was 850 — I can't remember the exact number. Let's say $850,000," he said.

Well, whatever Stumpf does, he should also remember not to call this year's cash payout a bonus!

Across the hall in another chamber, Stewart Parnell, CEO of The Peanut Corporation of America, a.k.a. "Salmonella Central," defiantly pleaded the Fifth in the face of proof that his greed and arrogance caused at least nine deaths to date. Cost of doing business, right?

Then it turns out that sweet little victim Ruth Madoff, wife of archvillain Bernie "I'm a Prisoner in My $7 Million Apartment" Madoff, somehow managed to transfer $10 million out of a brokerage account run by her husband . . . the day before Bernie was busted.  Um . . . negative optics, anyone?

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Steve Austria, the Republican Kaiser of Ohio, blames America's original great depression ("The Great Depression") on FDR, despite FDR taking office four years after its start. Matthew Yglesias

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Yesterday in Iraq: at least 31 Iraqis were killed and 94 more were wounded - and 4 Gitmo detainees who were handed over to Iraq and went missing, have been found in an Iraqi jail. http://www.antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=14230

4,244 soldiers killed in Iraq. 

Media barely reporting on Iraq war: http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2009/02/monthly-media-coverage-of-iraq-from.html

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Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has embraced a simple, indisputable truth: All persons are created equal, and should be treated equally under the law: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_11684218

Found in the comment section of the Trib: With the Pledge of Allegiance being cast aside by both mormons and christians, I have rewritten a pledge for them and their Un-American points of view. It is still a work in progress, so please be patient.
   
"I pledge allegiance to my religion, and the hatred for which it stands. One Theocracy under god, for misguided morals I will stand, with liberty and justice for all, except for gays."

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As companies lay off more workers, the aspect of layoffs that gets very little publicity is the fact that companies have to pay higher unemployment insurance rates to compensate the state system for layoffs.

So what's a money-hemorrhaging corporation to do to save these costs, especially one just trying to protect the jobs and "retention awards" of the very executives that ran the companies into the ground?

Easy:
Fight the people you laid off and try to deny them unemployment compensation.

This is why the compensation of top executives has become a huge issue. When times are good and everyone is sharing the wealth, no one cares about what executives are making. But when times are bad and everyone else is tightening their belts, the spectacle of corporations defending their executive compensation practices and bonus structures while denying laid-off workers $300 a week in unemployment just shows how rigged the game is.
 
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Ari Fleischer, who let a gay male hooker ask Bush a question is upset that Obama called on a blogger from the Huffington Post
 
The Huffington Post should not have been permitted to ask President Obama a question at this week's press conference, Ari Fleischer says, because they're too extreme and "out there." 
 
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Al Franken is in DC today. He won his election and should be Senator Franken. He should be on the Senate floor, giving speeches and voting for the stimulus package. Instead, because of the intransigence of Norm Coleman and the GOP, Al had to write an op-ed about the stimulus in the Star-Tribune.
 
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Mark Morford: Eat the rich
 
Politicians? Lawyers? Not anymore. Time to loathe the *real* American monsters
 

1 comment:

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