Headlines - Saturday May 7

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World-o-Meters gives you world statistics updated in real time.

 

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Remember Chimpy's Department of Justice and Monica Goodling, the attorney who politicized it by hiring only good Xristian Republicans and firing Federal Prosecutors that didn't match her profile? Me Neither!

But anyway, it seems that the wheels of justice do grind on, and the proud graduate of Regent University (Motto: "Don't swear on the Bible!"), was recently publicly rebuked for her actions while employed by Chimpy by the Virginia State Bar: "The state bar found that Goodling committed "a criminal or deliberately wrongful act" that reflected poorly on her "honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice law."

Goodling currently is not practicing law, so it probably doesn't matter much, but it is satisfying.

(TPM)

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It doesn't even look like the same person to me, but the tabloids are going crazy over Bristol Palin's apparent visit to the plastic surgeon.

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Republicans will punt on health care and taxes.

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Best quote I've seen on Bush's Internets regarding last night's Republican presidential debate:

"…it looked like an episode of Jerry Springer or Maury without the intellectual appeal."

Here's what you need to know about last night's debate in South Carolina and the status of the Republican party. Two of the pre-debate "Freedom Rally" sponsors were the John Birch Society and The Oath Keepers – two extremist right-wing groups. With paranoid friends like those, who needs enemies?

The sanest of the insane at the debate were probably Pawlenty and Cain – but the latter was not given a chance to spout his anti-Muslim hate.  Cain has stated in the past that he would never appoint a Muslim to his cabinet or as a federal judge because

"there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government."

Cain, who sets himself apart from President Obama by referring to himself as "a real black man", has also stated that Planned Parenthood was…

"put in black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world."

The odds that this jackass gets the Republican nomination are less than zero.  While the GOP has no problem embracing fools (Bush, Palin, Bachmann, Trump, birthers, teabaggers…), they do draw the line at embracing non-white fools. This we know.

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While GOP presidential contenders debated, Boner was out drinking.

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William Rivers Pitt in a post about The Godawful Bush Years and their ongoing aftermath:

I wanted to celebrate the death of bin Laden, and in my own way, I did. I didn't dance in the streets or wave a flag or shout "USA! USA! USA!" But I definitely smiled, and I don't apologize for it. There an old joke about a man who would buy a newspaper every day from a paperboy, scan the front page, and then throw the paper away in disgust. After a while, the paperboy asked him why he kept throwing the paper away. "I'm looking for someone in the obituaries," the man replied. "But, sir," said the paperboy, "the obituaries aren't on the front page." The man looked at him and said, "When the son of a bitch I'm looking for dies, he'll be on the front page."

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Pakistan arrests dozens in connection with bin Laden compound
Mostly the Xe (formerly Blackwater) security guards contracted to protect him...?

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Andrew Cohen: The Unrepentant John Yoo: 'Enhanced Interrogation' Got Us bin Laden

Here's a great quote:

"Former government lawyer John Yoo taking credit on behalf of the Bush administration for Sunday's strike against Osama bin Laden is like Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, taking credit for the results of the 1998 Academy Awards," - Andrew Cohen.

So let us be very clear. The war criminal Dick Cheney presided over the worst lapse in national security since Pearl Harbor, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. This rank incompetent failed to get bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then dragged the US on false pretenses into a war in Iraq, empowering Iran's dictatorship, and killing another 5,000 more Americans on a wild goose chase. He presided over the deaths of more than 8,000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis during his criminally incompetent years in office.

On the other hand, the man who abolished torture as soon as he took office, Barack Obama, captured and killed Osama bin Laden, and captured a massive trove of intelligence, more than two years later. No Americans died in the operation.

What on earth are we debating? How have these delusional maniacs managed to even get us onto this turf? Because they have to. Because when the full truth of these past years are fully in focus, they will be revealed as some of the greatest criminals ever to have wielded power in America.

Amen.

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I'm loving this Lawrence O'Donnell/Condi Rice interview.

It must have been news to the Canadians when she had her own "You forgot Poland" moment by saying Canada was in the coalition to fight in Iraq.

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The name for their affliction is Obama Derangement Syndrome There are people out there -- mostly stone cold racists who just can't stand having a black man in the White House -- who will grasp at any straw to shriek and wail that the President is illegitimate and needs to be impeached. The latest idiocy was spawned by a Tweet by ABCs Jake Tapper right before he went on the air Thursday night. This set of apoplexy among the reactionary right. That Kenyan/Muslim/Socialist/Marxist/Nazi was having flags removed from the World Trade Center construction site! O Noes!!! Impeach!!! Except the President was gone, it was around 6:30 eastern, awfully close to sunset, and the construction workers were taking the flag down for the night, as per US Code: (a) It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness. ... (b) The flag should be hoisted briskly and lowered ceremoniously. ... (c) The flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all weather flag is displayed. To Tapper's credit, he sent the following tweet on Friday: "Bloggers who created a lie about the flag based on my innocuous tweet: please feel free to unfollow. don't want my facts to become your lies"

 

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Uh oh, progressive governor Scott Walker would like to say "thank you" to the men and women who work in public service. That can't be good. He wants you to send him the names, personal contact information, and places of work of certain state employees. So he's finally finished those gas chambers he was working on, huh?

 

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She's just a girl and she needs to get it through her head now that she's just chattel. "Earlier this week, the Supreme Court declined to review the case of a recent Texas high school student who was kicked off her school's cheerleading squad after she refused to chant the name of a basketball player who had allegedly raped her. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative courts in the country, ruled last November that the victim -- who is known only as H.S. -- had no right to refuse to applaud her attacker because as a cheerleader in uniform, she was an agent of the school. To add insult to injury, the Fifth Circuit dismissed her case as "frivolous" and sanctioned the girl, forcing her family to pay the school district's $45,000 legal fees."

 

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Last year, in perhaps the "most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades," the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) invalidated a sixty-three year-old ban on corporate and union money directly funding individual candidates in federal elections. The SCOTUS decision sent shockwaves throughout our democracy, with many fearing that it would lead to an overwhelming amount of corporate money flooding out the voices of ordinary people.

Now, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has put out a comprehensive analysis to assess the flood of campaign money in last year's election. One of the most shocking results of the analysis finds that the decision appeared to have a sharply partisan and ideological result. The group found that spending by Super PACs and all outside spending strongly tilted towards conservatives, and that spending by undisclosed donors actually was eight times higher for conservatives than liberals, with conservatives spending $119.6 million to liberals' $15.7 million:

Not only did this money help elect a more conservative Congress, but it also is having a lingering effect on our campaign system. Last week, Democratic strategists announced that they will be forming Priorities USA Action, an Independent Expenditure PAC that will be relying on a strategy of collecting unlimited funds from undiclosed donors similar to the one that conservative groups used in 2010.

What this means is that federal elections in 2012 may include an unprecedented flurry of corporate and secret cash that would drown out the voices of Main Street America in a way never seen before in modern history. Ultimately, the only way to deal with this threat to our democracy is to enact a system of public financing, much like the one enshrined in the Fair Elections Now Act.

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Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, established 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon to give Americans clean air and water. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.