Saturday, May 22, 2010

Headlines - Saturday May 22

 
###
 
Too extreme or fair warning? The Guardian:
 
The UN's biodiversity report – dubbed the Stern for Nature – is expected to say that the value of saving "natural goods and services", such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher – between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them.
 
###
 
Wow. Scientists have succeeded in creating artificial life in a test tube, in a development which promises to revolutionise biotechnology.
 
###
 
It ain't terrorism if white folks do it:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.

...

About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.

I mentioned another attack the other day that was met with complete silence by the national media. Obviously, we have more to worry about from our own people than Muslim Jihadis.
 
###
 
 
###
 
Passive-aggressive twitters
 
Rand Paul campaign going nuts, suddenly terrified of David Gregory

David Gregory is a professional cocktail-hour name-dropping titty child who only got into television so he could meet and dance with and suck up to famous people — mostly "dance with." So this is a good move by Rand Paul, if he's trying to bargain with David Gregory, who just wants the most famous person of the week on his teevee show and will probably end up allowing that person to write the entire show's vanilla script, if the person demands. Is that too harsh on David Gregory? Fine, Rand Paul's just as big of a pussy. Now it's journalistically objective. UPDATE: Now it's official: Rand Paul will not be on the teevee show that you sleep through, according to Dave Weigel, who lies about everything. [Twitter]

 
Rand Paul: A male Sarah Palin.
 
###
 
Morford on oil spill conspiracy theories and nuclear terrorist supernuns.
###
 
Reminder
 
Julius Caesar did not break ancient Rome's taboo against marching troops into the city of Rome. Lucius Cornelius Sulla did that in 82 B.C., thirty years earlier. Sulla even set what you might call a good example: he restored the Republic's traditional balance of powers and then, setting himself apart from self-appointed dictators then and now, he retired.
 
###
Oxymorons for Our Time #36
Texas Board of Education
 
Thanks to the Teajad that the Paliban wing of the Texas Board of Education has declared against history, truth, and anything that isn't evangelical Christianity, Texas schoolchildren will now be trained to be good little soldiers for Jeebus. Because according to them, facts have a decided liberal bias. (If Stephen Colbert didn't exist, we would have to invent him for occasions like this.)

Yesterday, before voting, high-profile Board member Cynthia Dunbar did the invocation:
 
Additionally, during a session this past week that included debate and comment from members of the public, a man stood up and said, "I have to tell you: Islam is coming, and Islam brings death. So I say, 'Repent America, repent.'" CNN said that Lawrence Allen, the one Muslim member of the board, called the man out for his "insulting" comments, but not one of the other 14 members complained. Watch it.
 
###
 
 
###
 
Shorter Rand Paul: Gimme gimme gimme!
He's the gift that keeps on giving:
Tea party favorite Rand Paul has rocketed to the lead ahead of Tuesday's Republican Senate primary here on a resolute pledge to balance the federal budget and slash the size of government.

But on Thursday evening, the ophthalmologist from Bowling Green said there was one thing he would not cut: Medicare physician payments.

In fact, Paul — who says 50% of his patients are on Medicare — wants to end cuts to physician payments under a program now in place called the sustained growth rate, or SGR. "Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living," he told a gathering of neighbors in the back yard of Chris and Linda Wakild, just behind the 10th hole of a golf course.
###
 
I forgot my pants.  IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.
 
Rand Paul, the Teabagger/ party of Hoover candidate for the U.S. Senate in KY, has spent the last couple of days trying to furiously backpedal away from his many previous statements that he pretty much opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act (and, presumably, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act), as Paul thinks its perfectly OK when private companies discriminate against anyone they damn well feel like discriminating against. There is no need to rehash all that, he's a dick, and you've probably seen more than enough blog posts elsewhere on it.

Now, he has come up with another corker:
It is "un-American" to go after BP for its oil spill.

Has he forgotten, perhaps, that the "B" in "BP" stands for "British"?

So it is now "un-American" to attack the British, at least in Rand Paul's eyes.

Well, now we know which side he would have chosen in 1775: The Loyalist side, also known as the losing side.
 
###
 
Fox News 'Red Eye' host: Al Gore 'hates human beings'
 
###
 
Alan Grayson introduces 'war is making you poor act' to highlight the cost of the ongoing wars. 
 
###
 
Monster Island for sale by Department of Homeland Security
 
 
###
 
Public enemies
 
Obama let's tiny terrorist invade the White House

No comments: