Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Headlines - Wednesday May 26

 
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Nope. The teabaggers STILL aren't gonna like you, Mr. President. You keep trying, though. Maybe next time...

TUCSON, Ariz. - The Obama administration plans to announce Tuesday that it will send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to improve border security, an Arizona congresswoman said.

Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords also said in a statement released Tuesday that President Barack Obama will request $500 million in funding for border security.

Oy.

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This is adorable.

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America's collapse briefly stalled by sexytime Obama pic

But where are the WHITE HOUSE CRASHERS???
Terrible oil spills destroying however many states/Gulfs of Mexico? Stock market collapse, again? Who cares, just look at these sexy grownup people dressed all fancy and not having sex affairs with bloggers or whatever.

This photo was taken just before White House Taco Night, which is always on Wednesdays. Wednesday is Taco Night — not like Tuesday is Taco Night, which is the case for Real America. (Actually Real Real America has Taco Night every night, after whatever other fifty pounds of shit they ate while watching the TeeVee for seven hours, because Taco Bell is Open Late(TM) at night.) White House Flickr

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On 9/11 Jerry Falwell declared that god was punishing us for abortionists, gays, and feminists. 
 
Muslim clerics have declared that recent earthquakes is God punishing us for women dressing immodestly.
 
Pat Robertson said that the Haiti earthquake was God punishing the Haitians for making a "pact with the Devil". 

So I just can't wait to hear what God is punishing us for now!

As an Atheist I feel like I should be able to have an opinion as to what God is punishing us for that is based on our cultural perspective and belief system.

So, speaking in behalf of the Atheist community, the oil spill in the Gulf is because God is punishing us for not having a working shutoff valve at the oil well head. 

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"I tend to think she wishes she'd never heard my name. I have become her legacy. Mary Beth Loose Cannon is now looking for a job. She blew her last job busting me.  Karma is so sweet! She's looking for a work while Cheech and I start our second multi-million dollar tour thanks to the publicity she created for us! Thank you Mary Beth - may you find peace and happiness in your search for your soul."  Tommy Chong, gloating that Mary Beth Buchanan, the anti-science, religiously-insane slut who put him in prison for nine months for selling harmless plastic pipes, lost her primary by getting only 33% of the vote Link

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Oil soaked birds of a feather.

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I guess god wrote the Magna Carta too?

Idiots.

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Wisco: The ultimate failure of wedge issue politics.

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Louisiana beach

More grim photos are here.

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WAR FOREVER

Dan Froomkin
reported this yesterday:

Members of Congress with any inclination to balk at President Obama's massive emergency war-funding request have found their case strengthened by two recent reports that question many of the administration's key premises and assumptions.

The reports from the
Congressional Research Service and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction raise concerns ranging from the existential to the procedural.

Just for starters, there's the lack of an exit strategy, signs of a slipping timeframe for troop drawdowns and the mixed results thus far of the troop "surge." ...

In his December announcement, Obama declared that the troop surge would enable the U.S. to "seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan." He said troops would then start coming home in July 2011.

But ... the Congressional Research Service report raises serious doubts about Obama's promised timeframe....


There isn't going to be a drawdown anytime soon. I never believed there would be -- when the president announced his plan and the most reasonable-sounding analysts expressed severe doubts about accomplishing all of his goals in the timeframe, I assumed Obama knew he'd be able to take an incomplete if the efforts fell short and no one would try to stop him -- letting at least one of our wars drag on endlessly is the only thing he's doing as president that isn't being attacked by the right. And that's exactly where we seem to be headed.

Lefties could put millions of bodies in the streets demanding an end to this war and it would accomplish no more than it did in the Bush years with regard to Iraq. Our GOP/Fox News overlords would finally have a visible hippie enemy to punch. If Obama had any thought of withdrawal, the right's theatrical howls of outrage would drag him to the right. Nothing would change.

You know what it would take to finally end this war? America has to elect a Republican president -- and we have to engage in no anti-war protests whatsoever. Just play possum -- then it will be fine to pull out (our president is a Republican, after all, so pulling out won't be considered treason), and there won't seem to be anything to be gained by staying in (no hippies in the streets to punch, so no potential for domestic political gain). It's a bleak prospect, but it may be the only hope we have. (Or, of course, our entire economy could collapse, which might force the issue.)

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Your oil dispersant is on its way

And it looks like this.



June marks the beginning of Hurricane Season down South.

What are the odds that a big hurricane comes along shortly and with winds over a hundred and forty miles an hour, picks up a bunch of that black gold, oil ya see, and takes and dumps a metric buttload of an emulsion of oil, water, foam, stuff that will lubricate those squeaky hinges, all over the damn place, From Louisiana to New York.

Once that shit gets picked up by hurricane force winds and is sucked up into the upper atmosphere, we are going to have the biggest can of WD-40 on our hands the world has ever seen.
Water Displacement, Formula Number 40.

90 weight oil, formula one, all over the place.
It's coming, mark my words, it will be raining oil.
 
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Big surprise. The President left the room and the GOPers started trashing him:
President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a rare meeting with Senate Republicans, but the 75-minute session yielded little progress on hot-button topics and left some senators with bruised feelings.

"He needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans," Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) told reporters. "He's pretty thin-skinned."

Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) described the meeting as "testy," and Sen. John Thune (S.D.) called it a "lively discussion." Others questioned whether the "symbolism" of Obama's approach matched the actions of his Democratic congressional allies.
I'm sure this was another victory for bipartisanship and the Republicans will do whatever they can to make their relationship work.
 
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GOP rallies to protect BP from liability again.
 
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BP CEO walks on oil covered beach, barks orders to media. Video here
 
Well isn't this fun. The moron tea-sipping CEO of Britishe Petroleumeshire, Tony Hayward, decided to take a Very Serious stroll along the terrifying, ruined oily death-beaches of the Gulf Coast, and then yelled "GET EM OUTTA THERE" at independent media reporters filming the awful, profit-destroying scene. Apparently he only "invited" the cameras for a press conference later, hundreds of yards away, with no oil in sight. Well, sorry to tell you mister fancy Lobsterback queen-fucker, but here in 'Merka we just show up whenever and go nuts.
 
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Foreign agents
 
Are cardinals, bishops and priests agents of a foreign power? I ask this because the Obama Administration has filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that the Vatican is immune from being sued for its child-molesting priests because it is a foreign state.

Then are not at least the cardinals and bishops foreign agents? My understanding is that they are promoted to being bishops and cardinals and assigned to their jobs by the Vatican. The Vatican exercises some degree of oversight, though probably not a terrible amount, as I would suspect that their rules evolved during the days when it took weeks and months to travel from Rome to a far-off place like Scotland. The cardinals also vote in the papal elections.

It would seem to me that the church should not have it both ways; that they are both a foreign power and their hierarchy here are not foreign agents.

But evidently, they've been having it both ways for decades.
 
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This, critics say, is what BP does not want you to see: oil and chemical dispersants swirling together into a toxic soup, forming large plumes under the surface of the water as deep as twenty-five feet, perhaps deeper.

The small droplets of dispersed oil are "capable of passing right into the flesh of fish and birds." "It's absolutely disgusting," Cousteau described. "I think this has got to be one of the most horrible things I've ever seen underwater." Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBQkNgY3bY&feature=player_embedded

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Lazy Snowbilly Grifter

Palin bombs at trade show; could her speech scam be finished? 

Hope you liked the free food, slob.

Sleazy grifter Sarah Palin has been raking in the money at various conventions and trade shows, because she became famous in late 2008 when a shameless old man thought she might help his doomed presidential campaign. But Palin's relatively small fan base — maybe 2 million dumb people in a nation of 309 million? — may have spent all the money they have to spend on her idiot shenanigans and shameless embrace of the liberal celebrity lifestyle. Plus, she keeps giving the same stupid "campaign speech" at these events — hardly bothering to even mention the industry that paid her six figures to show up and spew her ignorant nonsense. MORE »

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Deepwater Horizon kept oil rig survivors detained until they signed legal documents

Jesus christ.

The workers who survived the awful explosion of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil rig weren't simply taken back to shore after their harrowing escape and rescue — instead, according to lawyers for the survivors and interviews with The Guardian, they were detained for up to 40 hours at sea, unable to even call their families until they had signed legal documents absolving Deepwater Horizon.

Lawyers say the isolation was deliberate and that Transocean was trying to wear the men down so they would sign statements denying that they had been hurt or that they had witnessed the explosion that destroyed the rig.

The White House just announced that Barack Obama is going to the Gulf on Friday to, who knows, yell at BP. [Guardian/Yahoo News via Cryptogon]

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Complacency, greed and rapaciousness are a fatal combination.

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h/t Dick:

Oil inspectors took company gifts, watchdog group finds.

So... U.S. flag rank officers, on their own authority, are apparently able to send fully-armed combat troops to invade sovereign nations.  Do you suppose this authority extends to all the nations of the world?  Or are the number of troops they can decide to send limited...to a squad, or a division, or maybe a corps?  Would they possibly be restricted in the weapons they are permitted to use...pistols, mortars, howitzers, main battle tanks, 2000 lb.laser-guided bombs dropped from B-2s?

This is a truly fascinating concept. Thanks, Barry.

Sounds like after 60 years of thoughtful, forward-looking diplomacy and countless
billions in aid, we've finally won their hearts and minds. 
Oh, wait.  

                                 Pakistan has teabaggers, too.

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