Saturday, June 11, 2011

Headlines - Saturday June 11

A Pentagon memo whose content was revealed today by the Financial Times shows that the cost of America's involvement in the war in Libya is around $2 million per day, putting the cost well ahead of previous estimates of $40 million a month to more like $60 million a month.
 
Meanwhile, Americans are homeless, hungry, unemployed, without health care, and our infrastructure is crumbling.
 
More good news:

Speaking today at the US Senate, incoming Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta insisted that Iraq was already preparing to request the continuation of the US occupation beyond the end of 2011. He insisted the Iraqi government would submit a request soon.

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Really, AMC? REALLY?

The Sarah Palin documentary, "The Undefeated," is getting a national release this summer at AMC movie theaters.

"The Undefeated is the ideal candidate for digital theatrical distribution," said Jonathan Dern, president of Cinedigm Entertainment Group, which is managing the release, in the press release. "Given Palin's ardent following throughout the country, digital cinema allows us to be extremely precise and efficient in our distribution strategy, bringing this much-anticipated film directly to interested theatre-goers."

After premiering in Iowa and then other key primary states this month, the film will be released in Dallas, Denver, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Atlanta, Orange County, Phoenix, Houston, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, among other cities on July 15.

Let's hope it does half as well as Atlas Shrugged. I can't wait for the reviews.

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Rep. Weiner says he has no plans to resign. I say leave it up to his constituents, who are mostly supportive.

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Digby

Krugman:

So Joe Lieberman is proposing that we raise the Medicare eligibility age. That's a truly cruel idea; as it happens, I know several people who are hanging on, postponing needed medical care, hoping that they can make it to 65 before something terrible happens. And if I know such people in my fairly sheltered social circles, just imagine how widespread such stories must be.

There are a ton of people like that and with this job market there are likely to be a whole lot more to come. If you lose your job, you lose your insurance and if you lose your insurance over the age of 55 it's very expensive to buy it. Now, the new health care plan will eventually end things like denial for pre-existing conditions and rescission, but it's not going to help with those expensive premiums for quite some time (if ever.) And people over 55 tend to start having some health problems which make those premiums more expensive.

Like Krugman I know quite a few who are hanging on for dear life and just hoping against hope that whatever's wrong with them doesn't kill them before they get a new job or qualify for Medicare. Raising the age makes no sense at all. In this economy with the system in flux it should be lowered to age 55 --- a position, by the way, that Joe Lieberman used to have (
until he agreed that sticking it to the hippies in the health care debate was more important):

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The Obama Administration issued a memo today extending Medicaid protections to same-sex couples.

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Mario: God – Political Junkie

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Here's Colbert drilling Tom Ridge about fracking: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/389134/june-09-2011/tom-ridge

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Krugman: "Rule by Rentiers"

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Alaska finally released 24,199 pages of emails from Sarah Palin's term, and news organizations are crowdsourcing their reviews. Here's a round-up of the different places to search emails. McClatchy has a backgrounder on what's been found so far, and her local paper is live-blogging their findings. The Times has a searchable database of scanned emails. Mother Jones instigated the dump, and here's their explanation of how it came to be, and their roundup of interesting emails.

Sarah Palin and her legal team spent two and half years combing these emails for pages they wanted to withhold and for redactions to protect the privacy of some people. But you want to know whose information they left in? ... Any person who wrote to criticize the Governor has their email and phone number out for the Palin cult to attack. Sarah Palin once again used a seeming "attack" on her (aka, a request for transparency) as an opportunity to turn the guns of her internet vigilantes on her detractors. This is an outrageous compromising of those citizen's privacy and safety. ... Yes, they are private citizens, not public officials."

What a nasty, nasty bitch.

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National Enquirer via Gawker, so usual concerns about accuracy:

IN a devastating act of ultimate revenge, a dying Elizabeth Ed­wards recorded a bombshell secret videotape for prosecutors – nailing her cheating husband John as he will stand trial on charges that could land him behind bars for 30 years.

That's the stunning secret behind the federal indictment brought against the disgraced former presidential candi­date on June 3 -– following a two-year grand jury investigation into whether he illegally used campaign funds to cover up his affair with his then-pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter. "Elizabeth wanted to exact revenge against John for destroy­ing their 33-year marriage and family by cheating with Rielle," source close to the scandal told ENQUIRER. "It was Elizabeth's idea to secret­ly record a video and tell what she knew of the affair and John's horrific betrayal."

That will leave a mark.

Say what you will about Edwards, but at least he was having a right proper affair with an actual female and trying to be discreet about things. He met a groupie on his campaign trail, she threw it at him, and he was willing to play ball. Weiner, on the other hand was all "I'll just send random chicks on the internet pictures of my cock for the lulz. ROFLCOPTER! What could go wrong?" Fucking idiot. That's a great use of twitter, you clown. Doesn't everyone know twitter is for heaving insults at establishment media types and hoping they block you?

Some of our political leaders have all the maturity of a teenage sexter.

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Now that this man has been brought to justice, I say we redouble our Tommy Chong efforts

This was certainly worth it:

A former spy agency employee agreed late Thursday to plead guilty to a minor charge in a highly publicized leak prosecution, undercutting the Obama administration's unusual campaign to prosecute government officials who disclose classified information to the press.

The National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake, had faced a possible 35 years in prison if convicted on felony charges under the Espionage Act. Instead, he agreed to admit to a misdemeanor of misusing the agency's computer system by providing "official N.S.A. information" to an unauthorized person, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. Prosecutors said in the written plea agreement that they would not oppose a sentence under which Mr. Drake would serve no time.

A formal plea hearing was set for Friday morning in Baltimore. The presiding judge, Richard D. Bennett of the district court, could impose a sentence of up to a year in prison. But legal experts said it would be highly unusual to impose a prison term when the Justice Department was not seeking incarceration.

The deal represented the almost complete collapse of the government's effort to make an example of Mr. Drake, who was charged last year in a 10-count indictment that accused him of obstructing justice and lying to investigators. It is uncertain whether the outcome will influence the handling of three pending leak cases or others still under investigation.

Ten counts and 25 years to a misdemeanor charge with a slap on a wrist. Sure seems like someone was overdoing things and wasted years and millions prosecuting someone who should have just been fired.

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Anyone who believes that Republicons support small business

Need only read this. If you'd rather not, then this is the summary: Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is trying to shut down the small beer brewers by barring them from selling their beer on-site and by barring them from selling directly to bars and restaurants.

Why does he care, you might ask? Probably because Miller-Coors Beer donated $22,000 to his campaign and they want that provision enacted.

Walker must be a really cheap politician to buy if you can get him to gut an entire sector of small business for that piddly amount. The Koch brothers have more than that under their sofa cushions.
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Google is not only expanding their electric car fleet, they are making 5% of their parking spots charging stations. "Google plans to extend its electric vehicle charging infrastructure to five percent of its parking spaces in an attempt to encourage its employees to buy the vehicles, said a Google executive in charge of its electric transportation program Thursday. ... The company's non-profit arm Google.org has been experimenting with electric cars on the Google campus to see how it can push their adoption on a more widespread basis. ... On Thursday, the company said in a blog post that it's updating its experimental electric car fleet with Chevy Volts and Nissan LEAFs, and that ultimately there will be 30 of them on the campus for Google exmployees to use in a car-sharing program. The cars are available to employees during the work week to enable them to get around either for work, or to run errands."
 
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"Restaurant owners insist Utah's recently enacted law requiring new eateries to erect barriers to hide bartenders from diners is so destructive to business that some establishments are pushing legal boundaries to get out of building them. ... And restaurants that are exempt from the law are refusing a collective $1 million in incentives to tear down their existing bars. During the past two years, not a single owner has applied for awards of up to $30,000, which lawmakers set aside to help pay the costs of erecting barriers to hide bartenders and open bottles of liquor from public view, dubbed Zion Walls. ... The incentives, offered as state credits toward liquor purchases, aren't worth the competitive advantages that grandfathered bars give restaurants over newer eateries that must erect barriers, many owners say. ... "Our customers like our bar area, it contributes to the ambience here," said Kenny Lundin, manager of Stella Grill at 4291 S. 900 East in Murray. "Diners like to see bartenders shake a martini or pour a glass of wine, instead of servers bringing drinks from somewhere out of a back room. Many diners are uneasy about what goes into their drink in that back room.""
 
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Stupid Palin Email Dump Media Frenzy Makes Fox News Poll Kind of Fun
Lou Sarah revealed, again.
 
Unlike everyone else furiously competing to uncover new humiliating details within Sarah Palin's thousands of newly released emails like greedy children searching for a Wonka golden ticket, Fox News reporter Greta Van Susteren will just conduct this slanted, simplistic poll about whether the media is being annoying. The answer is still yes! Congratulations, Lame Stream Media, for the first time ever we'd rather read a Fox News poll than suffer through any more of this "Palin email liveblogging." What vitally important national security information have we come across so far? READ MORE »
 
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It kinda defeats the purpose of making us take off our shoes and feeling us up when the baggage screeners don't bother checking for bombs, doesn't it? "The Transportation Security Administration is moving to fire more than 30 of its security personnel at Hawaii's Honolulu International Airport after the discovery late last year that they were not properly screening checked bags for bombs, the TSA said Friday. ... A dozen more TSA workers face suspension, the TSA said. Those slated for firing included workers responsible for the actual screening, several supervisors and the federal security director for the Honolulu airport, the TSA said. ... "TSA holds its workforce to the highest ethical standards and we will not tolerate employees who in any way compromise the security of the traveling public," TSA Administrator John Pistole said in a statement announcing the actions."

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Of Course Sarah Palin Made A Bus Tour Video To Ask For Cash
 
 
Sarah Palin made a dumb campaign video called "American Foundations" about her bus tour, even though she says she was not on a campaign tour. But the video ends with a title card for her PAC, so it is pretty much a video campaigning for money for Sarah Palin. The edit is a mix of her soundbites, audio from news clips of tour coverage and a few soundbites from old white people, which as we know are each crucial "American Foundations." Sarah Palin told you how great America is and showed you pictures of herself in famous places, and now that will be a million dollars, please. This is why God made America, so Sarah Palin could make a commercial of herself talking about it. Video after the jump: READ MORE »

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is standing by his vow to block any candidate — specifically Elizabeth Warren — for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his aide said yesterday. Addressing charges of sexism, McConnell's spokesman said "It's not sexist. It's not Elizabeth Warren-specific. It's any nominee."

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Yesterday in Baghdad, Rep Dana Rohrabacher (REPUBLICAN) told the Iraqis — whose country the United States invaded by choice — that they must repay the U.S. for invading their country, the AFP reports:

"Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country…we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years," Rohrabacher told journalists at the US embassy in Baghdad.

"We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs."

Rohrabacher "raised the issue in a meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki" although the AFP did not report what would most likely have been Maliki's bemused response. But it's beyond absurd for Rohrabacher to demand that Iraq pay back the United States for, in retired Gen. Colin Powell's terminology, "breaking" its country. If anyone is responsible for that, it's George W. Bush.

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The Incidental Economist: After hyping its outlier study claiming 30% of employers will drop health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act, McKinsey refuses to provide details or methodology on its research.

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chris-hondros-in-iraq.jpg

A terrified Iraqi girl cries after her family is killed at a checkpoint in Iraq. Photo by Chris Hondros.

Let's not forget what real obscenity looks like. Don't get distracted by the media version.

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