Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Headlines - Wednesday

Well this can't be good
 
Lightning strikes Angel Moroni on new temple in South Jordan.  
 
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World Nut Daily ratchets up another anti-Obama conspiracy mongering
 
You see, the super-flu isn't a natural pathogen but rather a bio-engineered weaponized flu designed for mass population reduction:   
 
I hope the DHS pays them a visit.
 
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".....Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been." - Barack Obama 4/27/09
 
So important in fact, that his nominee to lead the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service did not protect science from political interference or scientists from retaliation, according to a survey of his employees conducted by PEER. 
 
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I have a question: How much exactly does it cost us to pay the tab for the 48 million Americans that are without insurance, the Medicare and Medicaid recipients, the people on welfare, and the illegals? About the only person not getting free medical care seems to be me. 
 
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Northern Exposure,: how Sarah Palin turned Alaska into a toxic dump.
 
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The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

CREW says it will file a lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.

Read more:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31373407 /
 
Have I mentioned that I voted for Hillary? 
 
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The former top executive of AIG was pissed off at being ousted, so plundered $4.3 billion (with a "b") from the company's retirement program: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3924176 
 
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This is awesome! Just freaking awesome! Thanks, George and Dick:

I hope Lakhdar Boumediene sues the shit out of this country.
 
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arnold schwarzenegger
 
 
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Somehow I think this is a bigger problem than gays ...
 
Racism in the military:
 
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South Carolina GOP operative Mike Green is under attack for this thing they call a tweet:

JUST HEARD OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT'S WHITE AND IT WORKS.
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earls

Raping a 4 year old girl in Oklahoma = one year jail sentence.

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Wingnuts, led by Drudge, are outraged that ABC news will be anchored from the White House on June 24, when Obama pushes for health care reform. 

Well you sure can't blame the wingnuts for being upset at something that "Dr. Goebbels would be so proud of." I mean, Republicans would never do such a thing. Except yeah, they did, in 2006:

Two weeks before a pivotal election, the Bush administration brought some of the Republican Party's conservative base to its front yard Tuesday by inviting talk radio hosts to broadcast from the North Lawn of the White House.

There was a similar event
less than a week before the 2002 midterms, involving the likes of Hannity and Ollie North.

Ah, memories:


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There is a little dustup going on in the town of West Bend, Wisconsin. The local bluenoses noticed that there are books that discuss human sexuality in the library — and some of them are even written for teenagers! Teenagers, of course, never think about sex and have no interest in the subject unless some vile prurient publication stirs them up, so the crusaders for purity are stridently demanding that these books be removed from view.

One particular target of their fury is a book by Francesca Lia Block, Baby Be-Bop, which commits the sin of writing positively about young gay men and negatively about gay bashing. A group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union has filed suit over the book, since it exists at the library, and they don't like it. 

The plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, say their mental and emotional well-being were damaged by the book at the Library, the claim states.

That must be one powerful book. It sits on a shelf balefully, emanating damaging gay-rays that permeate the whole town, and disrupting the sexual health of its inhabitants. Perhaps the elderly are especially fragile and sensitive to its effects. Imagine some tired old codger, exhausted after a lifetime of aggressive heterosexuality, sitting in his easy chair before the TV, and suddenly he starts feeling frisky at the sight of Matlock reruns — it must be distressing. And the fault must lie in some kids' book sitting in a library a few miles away, undermining their ancient manliness.

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Ensign

If only Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) had listened to his own advice when he said:

Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.

... then maybe he wouldn't have been forced have an affair with the wife of an employee:

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, on Tuesday admitted that he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff.  [...]

An aide said the consensual affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008, and that the woman worked for both Mr. Ensign's campaign operation, Ensign for Senate, as well as a conservative political action committee, Battleborn PAC, from December 2006 to May 2008. Mr. Ensign is honorary chairman of the PAC. The woman's husband was a member of Mr. Ensign's official Senate staff. Neither has worked for the senator since May 2008, the aide said.

And of course in the interest of consistency, we can expect Ensign to announce his resignation, given that he called for Bill Clinton to resign in light of his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky ...

Update: it seems Mr. Ensign was a member of Promise Keepers, and that he may have stumbled a bit on promise 3 and promise 4.

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Non-troop-supporting Rebooblicans trying to blackmail administration, using troops as bargaining tool

Reasonable people can certainly disagree with elements of the $106 billion war supplemental spending bill, but the hypocrisy by the Republican Party on this is stunning, even for them:

Heading into a critical vote, House Republicans are unified against the $106 billion war supplemental bill, saying because they don't trust President Barack Obama's promises to never let certain detainee abuse pictures see the light of day.

For eight years, with supplemental after supplemental, the GOP position was that voting against funding was voting against the troops. And so today, the Republicans plan to vote against the troops.

Update: the roll call vote shows that only five House Republicans voted in favor of the bill. 

Personally, I wish everyone had voted against it so we could get on with the business of stopping the wars.

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John Berry, director of Office of Personnel Management, and highest ranking openly gay administration official:

On Sunday, John Berry, who is director of Office of Personnel Management and the highest-ranking gay official under Mr. Obama, told The Advocate that the administration plans to take action on both DOMA and "don't ask," as well as an employment nondiscrimination bill, "before the sun sets on this administration."

So apparently the plan is:

  1. Ignore promises to repeal "don't ask, don't tell".
  1. Write unnecessary and bigoted legal briefs comparing gays to pedophiles and incest.
  1. Wait seven years.
  1. Hope Obama does the right thing "before the sun sets on his administration".
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When Obama fired the Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service last week, he did not abide by the same law that he co-sponsored with Claire McCaskill about firing Inspectors General.
 
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Here's a tip: When the NSA says they are "overcollecting" e-mails, that means they are collecting all emails.
 
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Speaking on the House floor yesterday, Rep Steve King (R-IA) reacted to the news that the innocent Uighur detainees held in Guanatnamo were released in Bermuda with this comment:

KING: We could avoid this criticism and shut down an operation that has actually been built up to accommodate the people that are there now, including the Uighurs, who are now wasting away in MargaUighurville from what I understand. I can't even say it because I get Jimmy Buffett and Warren Buffett mixed up, I think.

"Rep. John Carter (R-TX) snickered at King's remark, adding, "That was good. I like that." 

America sure does have a lot to be proud of with this whole Uighur situation, Steve! Ha ha ha!

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Obama plan would cut number of banking regulators and transfer more power to the Federal Reserve.

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As the inheritor of the old segregationist wing of the Democratic party in the erstwhile "Solid South", it's not surprising that today's Republican party has been afflicted with multiple outbreaks of racism, particularly with an African-American president. At the current rate, the GOP will set a new record for the number of non-apology apologies it's had to make for these atavistic manifestations of white supremacist ideology. 

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Here's something you'd never expect:

An audit by the U.S. government found the Department of State overpaid security contractors with the company formerly known as Blackwater by about $55 million.

http://www.metimes.com/Security/2009/06/16/us_overpaid_blackwater_audit_shows/f29c/

 

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