I'm willing to bet your answer is no. Those people are freakin' nuts and the last time you tried to get together with them, it turned out to be a big disaster. You're not sure what that smell is, but you doubt you're ever getting it out of your couch. This is the position Barack Obama finds himself in with Republicans. His big "post-partisan" neighborhood get-together didn't work out the way he thought it would -- mostly because some of the people in the neighborhood are dicks.
Oh, there is more to the Runner's World interview with Sarah Palin than a simple Q&A about the regrets of falling down on the jogging trail and the Secret Service keeping her vile secret. (Which, like everything uttered by Sarah Palin, is also a lie.) There's a whole photo spread, with seven online pictures of Sarah lookin' all perky and athletic and just cold mocking John McCain for being a crippled old man who can't exercise at all:
"I used to joke around with John McCain during the campaign about coming jogging with me. And once I asked him what his favorite exercise was, and he said, 'I go wading.' Wading. He lives on a creek in Arizona, so he goes wading. That cracked me up."
Hah! Probably the Viet Cong broke his bones or whatever, when he was a POW. Loser can't even run now!
Sarah Palin: I'm a Runner [Runner's World Slideshow]
###
Juan Cole writes about how Dick Cheney is worried that the sacrifices made on behalf of capturing Iraq's oil fields will be wasted. He quotes a new report from the Public Record that reviews the documentary record:
' [An] April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney. In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.
"Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.
"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets . . . The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. . . [the notorious crook] Ken Lay, then chairman of the energy-trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.'
[...] 'The New Yorker 's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated Feb. 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 2004]
By March 2001, Cheney's task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch.
Some of us remember these stores, but it's good to be reminded of the larger context. And it's here that I get to say (again) the thing that makes conservatives crazy: Michael Moore was right. It was all about the oil.
###
The U.S. economy lost a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, according to a new Labor Department report out this morning. Unemployment rose to 9.5 percent, the highest rate in 26 years.
####
"Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years," according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, "involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands." This travel spending "is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001."
###
New budget estimate of public plan proves it lowers costs and covers more Americans: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/01/new-cbo-score-health-care/
###
On the same day the Minnesota Supreme Court declared Al Franken the winner of the state's U.S. Senate election, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) welcomed his newest colleague to the Senate by referring to him as a "clown." In the course of predicting that the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill would be "dead in the water" upon its arrival in the Senate, Inhofe extended an unprofessional greeting to Franken. The Tulsa World reports:
"I'll tell you what a lot of people are thinking, and that is it looks like things are going to be over and we are going to get the clown from Minnesota,'' he said.
"They are not going to get more than 35 votes."
Asked if he was referring to Al Franken as the clown from Minnesota, Inhofe confirmed he was.
"I didn't mean to be disrespectful. I don't know the guy, but … for a living he is a clown,'' the senator said.
"That's what he does for a living.''
Franken was a professional comedian — not a "clown" — while working on the cast Saturday Night Live. But now he's a U.S. senator…just like Inhofe. And unlike Inhofe, he's been a political commentator, the author of best-selling political books, and host of a nationally-syndicated radio show on Air America.
###
Huzzah for the Can-Do spirit of Americans, who continue to just pile on the pounds despite the nation's crushed economy. Turns out you don't need much money to become obese! And without jobs, Americans have more time than ever to sit in front of teevee eating another bucket of corn-syrup taco-ball cheezey-poop pasta-bowl Grease Dipperz™. So, let's all give a KFC double-drumstick round of applause for Mississippi, with a literally staggering 32.5% of its population medically obese. Second prize (a truckload of trans-fat soaked Chocohoglick-brand chocolate-flavored Globulez™) goes to West Virginia, Alabama and Tennessee, each boasting obesity rates of 30% or higher.
Now, you are probably saying to yourself, "Duh, this is the same story every year, because Americans are just gargantuan, repulsive blobs."
While the last part of your statement is medically correct, the first part is COMPLETELY WRONG. Last year, "only" 37 states got more obese, while the fat rate was steady in the other 13 states.
Once again, the relatively healthy folk of Colorado have the nation's lowest rate of obesity, with "only" 18.9% of its residents meeting the medical definition of Obesity — the rate was 16.9% just three years ago and was probably 1% in the 1930s, the last time we had a Depression.
###
This is tremendous. As the largest employer in the country, Walmart's agreement to make employer health insurance mandatory will make a real difference to the congressional fight over healthcare reform. An incremental step in the process, but it's a good sign.
###
Saddam interrogation: US still trying to show 9/11 connection as late as mid-2004: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/07/02/the-saddam-interviews/
No comments:
Post a Comment