Headlines - Tuesday June 1

President Obama forgoes memory for Memorial Day.

 

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At the risk of being called an anti-Semite once again (not that I care anymore), at what point to we say "enough is enough"? At what point does Israel have to pay a price for their actions? At what point do we say, "Israel has become what it despises the most"? At what point do American Jews stop having the knee-jerk reaction to protect and defend anything that Israel does to the point of labeling anyone who disagrees an anti-Semite? And, at what point do our politicians stop kowtowing to Israeli lobbying groups in this country?

What Israel is doing - squeezing the Palestinians out of the West Bank through continued settlement expansion (my people called it Lebensraum), through the siege of Gaza, and disproportionate responses to any Palestinian transgression - is indefensible and unjustified under the blanket statement of "protecting Israel's security". Thanks to our alliance and unquestioned protection of Israel, our troops in the region are put in more danger than they already are. Our diplomatic efforts in the region are consistently undermined by Israel's unilateral aggression toward its neighbors, tainting us with the stench of their inhumanity.

JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid that left at least nine passengers dead.

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Their ruthlessness, their indifference to the human suffering (the direct result of Israel's policy toward the Palestinian areas) just across the border, and the Israeli government's adamant defense of those policies only makes them a 21st Century Nazi Germany. They learned well from those who once oppressed them.

As everyone in this country is complaining about how we're going broke (thanks to the two wars we're fighting, an underlying result of our alliance with Israel), I have a serious problem sending billions of dollars of my tax money (in the form of direct payments and military support) over there. I'm tired of our government looking the other way when Israel persists in implementing their plan to take whatever land the Palestinians have left and either shove them across the Jordan River or over the border into Egypt, or just kill as many as they can.

The United States can no longer afford to give the Israelis diplomatic cover in the U.N. with their veto power over the Security Council. I am very sorry for what my people did to theirs, there is no excuse or justification and will be a stain upon Germany for centuries to come, but that does not make Israel 'untouchable' (because, underneath it all, the label "anti-Semite" is inferring Nazism and if you say a cross word about Israel ...). It does not make them unaccountable for their actions and the consequences resulting. They certainly have no right to determine U.S. policy in the region.

If we expect to ever get our troops out of the Middle East, our policy toward Israel has to change. If we ever want to stop living in fear of a terrorist attack, the likes of which we saw here on 11 September, we have to distance ourselves from a government we have no control over. It's time to stop treating Israel as the 51st State.

 

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PR Fail

Talk about tone deaf:

At least nine fishermen hired by BP to use their boats to help with oil cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico have been hospitalized with serious heath problems, including one who "busted his skull" after collapsing on a dock.

When asked about this clear pattern of illnesses of workers who come in contact BP's oil and chemical dispersants, BP CEO Tony Hayward callously dismissed the health problems as "food poisoning."

"I'm sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it was anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning or some other reason for them being ill," said Hayward.

Yeah, Hayward. They probably shouldn't have eaten that Gulf Coast shrimp.

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Oh great

BP apologizes for ruining your three-day weekend (and the earth)

Happy Memorial Day, Americans! (Because of the Constitution, you are the only people on the planet to have a day honoring your soldiers, so enjoy it! Foreigners just cold eat their war casualties, "to avenge the fallen.") And don't turn on the news radio or look at the Internet, except for the usual porn and pizza orders, because baby it's bad out there. FOR EXAMPLE: You know that "top kill" oil spill thing nobody really believed was working even though we had Hope, for a little while, on Friday? Yeah, the BP guy apologized. He's totally sorry. The new "fix" probably won't work, either — and it might increase the bleeding crude "by as much as 20%." But August might be different, so hold on for August.

The LA Times reports:

BP's plan to sever a leaking pipe as part of an effort to cap its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico could increase flow by as much as 20%, and the oil giant has no remedy to stop up the well until August, Obama administration and company officials said Sunday.

But at least BP feels bad:

BP's CEO said Sunday he's sorry for the largest oil spill in U.S. history and the "massive disruption" it has caused the Gulf Coast, telling reporters the company hopes to corral most of the crude offshore.

"The first thing to say is I'm sorry," Tony Hayward said when asked what he would tell people in Louisiana, where heavy oil has already reached parts of the state's southeastern marshes.

"We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."

"I would like my life back." Ha ha, so never mind, what he means is that he's sorry for the inconvenience, to his life. Could you people please give this man his nice life back? He's a global oil executive, not a common slob. [CNN]

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One of the worst oil spills in history just happened and you didn't hear a thing about it That is because it happened in the Niger Delta, where about 300 spills a year have happened every year for the last half century or so as oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been rendered uninhabitable. This is just a reminder that once the focus is off our troubles and the world's cameras have turned their lenses back to Paris Hilton and Sandra Bullock and Bombshell McGee, there are lots of worse troubles out there if anyone bothers to take five seconds to notice - and at the bottom of most of those fetid piles of debris and human suffering...you'll find a god-damned oil company.

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Liz Cheney speaks!

Liz Cheney THE MOST IMPORTANT DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS In Our Nation's History, Maybe Ever thinks that President Carebear's Administration needs to be investigated over the alleged Sestak bribe.

It is to laugh that the Daughter of Darkness thinks this is required when given the absolut evil perpertrated by her father is dismissed without so much as a meh.

Let's recap some of the things that Princess LocoHauntUs finds insignificant, shall we?

1. The Plame Affair, where her father outed an undercover CIA agent for political revenge against her husband, Ambassador Wilson. That's called treason.
2. The Energy Commission, where her father conspired with energy companies, and drew up a map allocating who would get which oil fields if Iraq were to be invaded -- months before he trumped up excuse to invade Iraq. War Crime.
3. Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. War Crime
4. The Torture Policy. War Crime
5. No-Bid Contracts to Halliburton, which enriched her dad. Graft and War Crime - Profiteering.

Why does the media allow this evil (is there any other word?) woman on the public airwaves?

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Not that you could notice, it hasn't. But while we're on the subject, how about Hague trials for BP, Transocean and Halliburton execs? "The International Criminal Court (ICC) has forced governments to alter their behaviour in the eight years of its existence, the UN chief has said. Ban Ki-moon told a summit in Uganda discussing the Hague-based court that it had curtailed impunity and had broken new ground on victims' rights. But he called on member countries to step up co-operation. The ICC has five active investigations, all in Africa. So far no-one has been convicted of alleged war crimes. Delegates from more than 100 countries are attending the meeting, to take stock of the ICC's achievements and push forward proposals for strengthening its rules. "Few would have believed then that this court would spring so vigorously into life, fully operational, investigating and prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity," Mr Ban told the delegates, AFP news agency reports. "In this new age of accountability, those who commit the worst of human crimes will be held responsible." "

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Making a killing from the Gulf oil disaster

.There's something about this that isn't right.

Transocean Ltd.,  the owner of the rig leased by BP which is currently leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, made a $270 million profit from insurance payouts after the disaster, the Sunday Times reports.

The amount, revealed during a conference call to analysts, was made because its insurance policy for Deepwater Horizon rig was greater than the value of the rig itself, the paper reports.

Transocean said the cost of the cleanup from the leaking rig must be covered by BP and two smaller partners, Anadarko Petroleum and Mitsui of Japan, the paper says.

And Transocean shareholders picked up $1 billion in dividends as the company tried to hold it's liability to under $27 million.  All of this while millions of gallons of crude poured into the Gulf.

Life is good for some.

For others, not so much.