Headlines - Friday August 13

 

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Not enough. If BP accepts it, it's not enough by an order of magnitude.  "BP has agreed to pay a record $50.6m (£32.5m) fine for failing to correct safety hazards at its Texas City plant. An explosion at the refinery in 2005 killed 15 people. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said the penalty "rightly reflects BP's disregard for workplace safety". BP said it had worked to enhance safety at the plant. OSHA is still working to collect another $30m from the company for other penalties that BP is contesting. The fine is the largest handed out by OSHA, which is part of the Labour Department. "This agreement achieves our goal of protecting workers at the refinery and ensuring that critical safety upgrades are made as quickly as possible," said Secretary of Labour Hilda Solis. BP also agreed to spend $500m on fixing safety problems at the refinery."

 

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Come for the weather ....

 

...and stay for the weddings: Gay Californians can marry starting August 18.

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But the real danger is mosques where imams preach peace. US police have arrested a man in connection with a series of stabbings that left five dead in three states. Police say Elias Abuelazam has ties to the towns of Flint, Michigan and Leesburg, Virginia, where nearly 20 attacks have taken place. He was stopped at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport as he tried to board a flight to Israel. Mr Abuelazam is an Israeli citizen and permanent US resident, a Michigan official told the Associated Press. At a news conference on Thursday, Virginia police said they had been notified at 2130 local time on Wednesday that the suspect was attempting to leave the country by plane. They co-ordinated with Atlanta police to have him stopped at the airport, police said. Atlanta police said they had paged Mr Abuelazam at the airport as he waited to board a Delta Air Lines flight to Tel Aviv. Passengers later said Mr Abuelazam appeared tense and was stopped at the boarding gate, before being led away without incident by six officers."

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Wisco: It's hot and it's just going to get hotter.

 

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The U.S. can only send a few helicopters to rescue flood victims in Pakistan. Maybe if Wikileaks didn't start the War in Afghanistan we could have helped out more? [Think Progress]

 

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"Obama is the worst president in history. And my generation will inherit a weakened country. Drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in D.C..What's happened to America? Somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place." Ben Quayle, son of the Potatoe* Kid,   Link
    
 
  "Hi, I'm stupid - like my Dad!"

Hey Asshole, the drug cartels were in Mexico long before Obama showed up.
And the Tax Cartels are your friends, remember?

I hope you win.
I'll enjoy kicking your ass for the next couple of years.

 

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Obama   Blackwater?
Not much 'change' going on there... Link

 

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Watchdog panel: US bailout money ended up in overseas banks

 

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Phyllis Schlafly's Son Successfully Reduces

Vast Liberal Conspiracy to Simple Formula

 

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Jurassicpork: A Scholarly, Politically Scientific Explication and Treatise of Why Robert Gibbs Should Kiss my Ass.

 

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You rarely see a good tax cut graph that illustrates the "what balls!" reaction to the enrich-the-already-wealthy crowd so literally, but WaPo has done it.

Yes, it's exactly what it looks like: the giant balls of tax cuts go to those who already have giant balls of income. And though it won't fit in the graph, those tax cuts for the wealthy all add up to a grossly humongous Ball of Deficit.

Steve Benen:

Regardless, in the coming months, one of the key political battles will be over what, exactly, officials should do about the Bush-era tax policies that, by Republicans' design, are due to expire at the end of the year. President Obama and most Democrats are touting the same plan presented in the 2008 campaign: keep the lower rates for the middle class, while allowing the top rates for the rich to expire on schedule. For Republicans, that's not good enough -- those millionaires and billionaires need champions, and GOP leaders intend to fill the role.

The Washington Post has a good report, with an incredibly helpful chart, on just how much the GOP approach would cost: "A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year -- and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation's millionaires, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday."

The study, completed by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, only looked at the effects for 2011, and they're pretty striking -- Republicans want to give millionaires and billionaires an average tax cut per household of about $100,000, every penny of which would be added to the deficit.

Read the whole thing.

 

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Counterpoint: Let's take a stroll down memory lane

 

Now, issues of economics are out of my wheelhouse. I mean way out of my wheelhouse. But I can read a calendar, and I can't quite grok how President Obama is responsible for the bank bailout when the economy melted down in September of 2008 and TARP was signed into law in October of 2008. I seem to recall that while the details of that bill were being hammered out, he was kinda busy with something else...what was it again that had him so preoccupied?

Oh yes, winning the damned election.

In light of that, I am simply not grasping how that can possibly be Obama's baby when he wasn't involved in crafting the legislation, wasn't elected until a month later and wasn't sworn in until three months after Bush signed the bill, and all the angry liberals in the world doesn't change that fact.

I don't like the bill, but I know who not to blame for it.

I also know how to count to sixty, and I know that there is no way in hell that the stimulus that we needed could get out of the Senate, and I am frankly sick of repeating that salient fact over and over and over.

You sign the legislation the Congress sends to you, not the legislation you wish Congress had sent to you.

Keep reading: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/6342/counterpoint-lets-take-a-stroll-down-memory-lane

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Point: Yes Obama is to blame for foreclosures AND the bank bailout And the new Vietnam.

 

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Mythbusting made easy

Bill in Portland Maine compiled a very useful list of myths --- and links that bust them. Suitable for bookmarking:

> Tea Party'ers are not more likely to have racist tendencies than other conservatives.
(Except they are.)

> Democrats are scheming to hit 94 percent of small business owners with tax increases.
(Except they aren't.)

> Bloody violence is out of control along the Mexican border, and illegal immigrants are streaming into America at record levels.
(Except it's not and they're not.)

> Obamacare will send Medicare spiraling out of control.
(Except it won't.)

> Marriage is a religious union that's all about procreation.
(Except it isn't.)

> Voters say cutting the deficit is more important than creating jobs.
(Except they don't.)

> Social Security is going broke, it adds to the deficit, and we have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
(Except it's not, it doesn't and we don't.)

> The earth is getting cooler.
(Except it's really really not.)

Clip'n'save.

 

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And the cover-up begins. "Doctors in Moscow are being told not to diagnose heatstroke as a cause of death after a jump in the mortality rate during the heatwave, Russia media say. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one doctor said the unofficial instruction being passed down was to use diagnoses that "sound less frightening". A photo shows a note pinned up in a casualty area which reads "Attention! Do not diagnose heatstroke"."

 

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Even Communist Europeans Making More Money Than Us

"The business of America is business" said Calvin Coolidge, America's greatest president; the obvious implication is that the business of America's enemies, the Foreigns, is using their eight weeks of vacation to sit around in romantic cafes, smoking and discussing their latest extramarital affairs with rueful detachment. That's why it's particularly disheartening to learn that America remains a nation of unemployed slobs while European countries like Germany, Spain, and even (shudder) France are doing better. That's just pathetic, America. Pathetic. [BBC]

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Golly, we're just scatchin' our heads over here wonderin' why we didn't see this on Faux Snooze "Hundreds of villagers shouted "Death to the United States" as they blocked a main road in eastern Afghanistan after Nato forces killed three people in a raid. ... Elders from Zarin Khil village in Wardak province said US troops stormed into a family house and shot dead three brothers before taking their father into custody, according to a local police chief. ... Shahedullah Shahed, a provincial spokesman, said about 300 protesters blocked the highway linking Kabul and southern Afghanistan for several hours."

 

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NH State House candidate somehow not congratulated for wishing death on Sarah Palin

Our New Hampshire colony is reeling today with the break of a major Facebook controversy: State House candidate Keith Halloran commented on an article about Ted Stevens' plane crash that somebody posted on Facebook, saying, "Just wish Sarah and Levy were on board." Apparently not everyone in America is expressing this sentiment about our once and future leaders Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston, because the Republican Party condemned Halloran for this. Will Sarah and that denim company ever recover from their hurt feelings?

If a Republican had done this, it would be considered "free speech."

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The party of obstructionism is concerned about the deficit and are very fiscally conservative.... until it involves their base:

A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year -- and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation's millionaires, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday.