Headlines - Saturday May 15

I'm happy to report that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein dropped $26 million -- in cash -- on his new 15 Central Park West duplex.

 

 

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The Real Life Oil Slut

 

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-BP), who is doing everything she possibly can to protect the interests of BP and any other oil company who happens to spill tens of millions of gallons of oil into the oceans. You can always find someone from the party of Hoover to stand up for the interests of large corporations.

Meanwhile, the chairman of BP is trotting out the rationale that their is leaking not a lot of oil into a very large body of water, so what's the big deal, mate? I would like to put a glass of water in front of him, drip motor oil into the glass and ask him to take a swig.

 

 

"How much harm could I possibly do? I'm just a microturd in the Intergalactic Plantetary Dimension."

 

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Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, a well-connected former Washington lobbyist, has calmly said the oil slick looming offshore is just a sheen in most places and there's no reason for people to panic. 

 

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Lawsuit to Challenge Salazar's Wholesale Disregard of Marine Mammal Protection Laws in Gulf of Mexico

400-plus Oil Projects Illegally Approved by Salazar Without Permits to Harm Endangered Whales

 

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Poor white, Catholic Pat Buchanan. He feels soooo besieged:

Pat Buchanan, everyone's favorite MSNBC pundit, wondered in his syndicated column this week why Democratic presidents don't nominate white Christians to the Supreme Court anymore.

"If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats," Buchanan wrote. "Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?"

And bless you, TPM commenter pmccoy, for providing this response:

Did you know that one of Buchanan's relatives was killed in the camps during the Holocaust? He fell out of a guard tower.

 

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Aaah, so NASCAR stands for National Association of Severely Cretinous American Racists: 

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Wisco: Just a reminder: Republicans lie

 

Yesterday, I included this video in my daily roundup. Think Progress had caught Republicans attending a morning fundraiser with the oil and gas industry on the very same day that the House would take testimony from executives about the Deepwater Horizon gusher polluting the Gulf of Mexico. It's Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, the first interview, that I want to examine here:

http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/05/just-reminder-republicans-lie.html

 

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h/t Dick

 

This is a big part of the problem 

According to the new WSJ/NBC poll, more Americans think congressional Democrats are on the side of large corporations than think they are on the side of average Americans:

When it comes to the problems in the financial markets, do you think that (INSERT PERSON/GROUP) is more concerned about the interests of average Americans or more concerned about the interests of large corporations? (RANDOMIZE)

President Obama: 51% average Americans, 36% large corporations
Republicans in Congress: 20% average Americans, 71% large corporations
Democrats in Congress: 35% average Americans, 53% large corporations

In today's political and economic environment, with nearly 10% unemployment and corporate malfeasance everywhere you look, it's a disaster for congressional Democrats to be seen as supporting the interests of large corporations over average Americans. If the Democratic brand means nothing else, it should mean fighting for the little guy and for the middle class.

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Obama makes a

funny.

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GM crops killing non-GM crops? Franken-farming really needs to go.

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Morford: Is Laura Bush going to hell?

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Corporate tax cheats declare economic warfare against the US by moving profits overseas "As America struggles with record deficits, tax dodgers apparently are taking billions of dollars out of the country. ... A new report from the business giant Bloomberg News finds hundreds of companies skirting $60 billion in taxes, and the practice is completely legal. ... The figure, $60 billion, is more than the budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security. ... "We are obviously now in a time of enormous deficits, and we should be broadening our tax base," said tax economist Martin Sullivan. "This phenomenon is moving exactly in the opposite direction.""

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You can bet that support for future offshore drilling will

vary inversely with the distance from the Gulf Coast.

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Those of us who'd been following the Family Circus, DT steps of the shaved chimp known as George W. Bush knew that his administration had waged an all-out war on science that stretched from NASA to the Surgeon General's Office to the EPA to the FDA to the Dept. of the Interior and beyond.

So it kind of feels like a blast from the past, if recent events in the Gulf of Mexico permit me the unintentional pun, when I read stories like this from the New York Times, especially when they're front and center, above the fold: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/05/blast-from-past.html

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Remember the story a few days ago about Delta losing a dog on a flight? Seems United wants to beat them at that game and start losing people.

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Blackwater shows up at NRA convention with guns blazing, sets up display of assault rifles. 

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President Obama Confirms That He Is 'Angry,' Continues With Scheduled Events

President Barack Obama's White House staff alerted reporters last evening that the President would be hosting a press event late Friday morning to inform them of his "anger" with both the public and private responses to a recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Reporters were also made aware of the President's intention to use such language as "frustrated" during this media availability.

The scheduled presidential briefing was held at approximately noon today, as anticipated. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has since confirmed that, during this availability, the President acknowledged harboring feelings of a similar nature to the previously reported anger and frustration. Gibbs notes that the President's specific language included such phrases as "this mess" and "ridiculous spectacle."

After informing the press of these feelings, the President went and did sump'm else. Atlantic

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Once upon a time, there was a bill moving through congress that was a good bill. It increased funding for research, and for science and math education. It had bipartisan support and was sailing through. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/congress_is_a_disfunctional_me.php

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That insane tea-baggin' Maine GOP convention did something else of interest. Some of the Republican caucuses were held in a local school, including the 8th grade classroom of teacher Paul Clifford. He returned to the classroom after the weekend to discover that the Republicans had indulged themselves in remodeling the classroom.

Labor is so un-American, Norman Rockwell was an America-hating commie pinko, and kids shouldn't be exposed to the Constitution, especially if the ACLU likes it.

It's getting so you can't tell the patriots from the vandals. And Republicans are clearly the party against intellectualism, education, and diversity.

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Here are some fun numbers you can throw around the next time you're sharing an ice cream cone with your favorite wingnut.

If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush's presidency.

That comparison comes with many footnotes and asterisks. But it shows how the economic debate between the parties could look very different over time — perhaps by November, more likely by 2012. More important, the comparison underscores the urgency of repairing an American job-creation machine that was sputtering long before the 2008 financial meltdown.

[...]

In only eight of Bush's 96 months did the economy create as many jobs as the 290,000 it did last month. Clinton exceeded that level 33 times. Reagan exceeded it 24.

There isn't enough time for the slow economic recovery to have any real effect on public perception before the November elections.  Dems will in all likelihood take a beating.  2012 is another story.  The key to Obama serving a second term will be the state of the economy at that time.  If job growth continues its upward trend and Americans feel its positive impact in their pocketbooks, it'll be near impossible for Republicans to spin the numbers in a negative light.

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Your weekly, rapidly becoming daily, Iraq suicide bombing. "A suicide bombing at a football stadium in northern Iraq has killed 10 people and injured 120 others, police say. An attacker detonated explosives hidden inside a vehicle at the entrance to the stadium in Tal Afar, a mainly Shia Turkmen town west of Mosul. Witnesses said the blast was followed by at least one other. Some said up to three suicide bombers were involved. Earlier, the militant umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, warned Shias of "dark days soaked with blood". "What is happening to you nowadays is just a drizzle," said Al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman, the group's so-called minister of war. Abu Suleiman succeeded Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed along with ISI leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in a joint operation by US and Iraq forces in April."

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Kevin Costner helps fight oil spill.