Thursday, June 16, 2011

Headlines - Thursday June 16

FBI Now Investigating Major U.S. Enemy: Domestic Peace Activists

anyone who cares about anything at all is now the enemy

It is still 2006? No, it is 2011! And your mysterious Bush administration Obama administration is concerned about the terrible presence of peaceniks and hippies roaming freely in American cities, because 9/11 was a hippie thing. So what is going on? 'We just killed that pro-war bin Laden guy,' Non-Partisan Obama said, 'so we have to be fair and go after some anti-war activists now.' There are two sides of the terror coin, after all: the people who want to kill you and the people who dislike the United States being at war all the time. Keep tabs on them both. Hell, just keep tabs on everyone. Everyone is now a terrorist.  READ MORE »

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Richard Allen Smith: Why do people think Conservatives are extremist bigots?

Shorter: Because they pretty much brag about it to pander to their base?
 
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At this point in the process, the Republican Presidential race is a bit like an unwanted pregnancy—it's going to take 9 months until we find out who's going to emerge from the bloody mess, and in the meantime, everyone involved going a little crazy.

Mitt, for example, seems to be crumbling around the edges. The other day, he pretended that a waitress in New Hampshire grabbed his ass at a photo-op (warning: creepy video), and then told a local businessman in New Hampshire, "I will probably be back in four years. Only this time it will be a larger group and I will probably have Secret Service."

Crazy Shelley is already nuts. For example, she thinks teh ghey is going to kidnap her:

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to gay marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! I'm being held against my will!"

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was "absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her." The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, "It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann."

Update: I see Sarah had already posted that last bit.

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political pictures - republicans - sex - Extinction Theory

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Simply put, this ad is 'Willie Horton on steroids'.

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What? The United States was fighting wars in only Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen?  That's only five wars at one time!  He had his heart set on SIX before finally being wrinkled to death.  Was President Peace Prize going to let him down?

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Jill: This is working America under corporate and bankster greed

The only thing trickling down is the socialization of debt by handing out gratuitous tax-cuts to corporations and the uber-rich while imposing tax hikes on the middle-class and the working-poor. And while President Obama was able to pass the largest middle-class tax cut in history at the federal level, Republican-controlled state legislatures are fighting tooth and nail to make up for the disparity at the state level by lowering their corporate tax rates while also increasing fees, taxes, and other expenses on the little people.

Jill: This is what happens in the aftermath of "voting by tantrum"

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EVERYBODY HATES AMERICA

Pakistan Super PO'd About America Killing Pakistan's Favorite Guy, Osama

Show some respect, dead bin Laden!

What are America's allies up to, these days? Oh, just jailing the CIA people who targeted Osama bin Laden in his fancy Pakistan suburban castle. China reads the White House gmail, British prime minister David Cameron mocks our wonderful health care system that's available only to people with lots of money, and now Pakistan is just cold arresting people for squealing on Bin Laden. It's almost like the whole world is laughing at America, nonstop.

The Guardian reports:

Pakistani intelligence has detained five alleged CIA informants who spied on Osama bin Laden in the months before the al-Qaida chief was killed in a special forces raid, US and Pakistani officials have said. A Pakistani official said the owner of the CIA hideout had been arrested along with several other people.

A military spokesman denied a New York Times report that a serving army major had also been detained. The arrests highlight continuing tensions between the US and Pakistan in the wake of Bin Laden's death. They are likely to intensify pressure from senior Washington politicians to cut Pakistan's $2bn annual aid package.

Eh, just cancel that $125-a-year tortoise website, that should fix everything, globally. [Guardian/NYT]

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A registered sex offender died while raping an elderly woman at knifepoint in her home. ... Sgt Gary Wright of the Refugio County Sheriff's Office said they believe the man died from a heart attack after cycling the two miles to his victim's house.

Too bad the victim didn't get to stab his ass to death

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Steve Benen:

The lies aren't working about the repug plan to kill Medicare, and when the truth got out in one special election in a repug gimme district, it destroyed the GOP candidate and elected the Democratic candidate.

What's a desperate GOP to do?

Kill the truth, of course.

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SNOWBILLY OFFSPRING NEWS

Quitter Bristol Palin Moving Out of Bland Arizona Mansion
 
Professional quitters the Palin clan are working on their resume again: Bristol Palin is moving out of her Phoenix narcomansion only six months after she paid $172,000 in cash for it. She's renting it out for $1,400 a month so that YOU TOO ordinary sad loser can wake up each day in the angry meth wonderland of Phoenix, Arizona with a new chin thinking about where your life went wrong. Why is Bristol abandoning this poorly landscaped foreclosure paradise? Does she not like John McCain anymore, wherever Walnuts is? No, she is supposedly moving to LA for her new reality show about how hard it is to have roommates and wake up in the morning and go to work, which is something many of us would like to monetize in today's economy. economy. READ MORE »
 
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Rick Perry's Strong Faith Instructs Him To Give Almost Nothing To Charity
just don't bring the collection plate near him
 
Texas Governor Rick Perry's National "Prayer-a-palooza" abdication ceremony is now officially doomed to failure, because Rick Perry has been holding out on God in the financial department by a serious margin. Rick Perry earned $2.68 million from 2000 to 2009, of which he donated 0.5% to charity. Regular Americans donate an average of 1.2% of their income, making Rick Perry below-averagely qualified to ask God to fix all his problems. Or maybe this is why Rick Perry wants to pray with all those other people, hoping God can sort of consider their giving cumulatively and give him a pass. "Our community has given so much, Lord" Perry can actually say, as long as he is not praying by himself.

From the Houston Chronicle:

The average cash charitable contribution from U.S. taxpayers in [Perry's] income bracket was $6,529.

Perry gave $2,998 in cash to charity in 2008 – not including a pay raise from the Legislature that his staff said he would donate to charity instead of keeping. The governor's pay jumped from $115,000 to $150,000 after legislative action in 2007.

In the 2008 tax year, he gave $34,988 to charity from that pay raise – $9,996 each to March of Dimes; Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (where his wife is a $65,000-a-year consultant), and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation; and $5,000 to the Mansion Restoration project.

The following year, the amount of money that went to charity from his raise dropped to $20,000.

He promised to give his raise to charity and actually did so for one year only. Is that something public figures do, give themselves huge raises during a recession, promise to give the raise to charity and then not do that? Rick Perry is going to need so many people at this rally that God refuses to screw them all over just to teach Rick Perry a lesson about being a stingy jerk.  [Houston Chronicle; h/t "Charles C."]

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A long list of repulsive anti-gay scumbags will gather in Minneapolis this weekend "in defiance" of the Netroots Nation convention. Confirmed to attend: Andrew Breitbart, Michelle Malkin, Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Herman "Gays Are Sinners" Cain, Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, and GOProud's Jimmy LaSalvia. GOProud won't be allowed to actually participate, of course, but they'll be holding a happy hour in one of the Netroots host hotels. 

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Today In Christian Love™

Unbelievable.
Activists in Kentucky are planning a peaceful response after two gay men with developmental and intellectual disabilities were kicked out of a public pool. A maintenance technician reportedly cited the Bible while telling the two men they couldn't swim at The Pavilion, a government-funded recreational facility in Hazard, Kentucky. "We own this place and can tell you to leave if we want to," the couple was told, according to the Kentucky Equality Foundation. "The Pavilion staff immediately entered the pool area and asked my clients and their staff to leave the Pavilion," Mending Hearts Executive Director Shirlyn Perkins recalled. "My staff asked The Pavilion staff why they were being asked to leave, and they were informed that 'gay people' weren't allowed to swim there."

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The Republican war against women continues in earnest. This time in Alabama where fetuses will ostensibly have more rights than the woman carrying them.

Gov. Robert Bentley (R) signed the nation's harshest immigration bill into law last week, the GOP-led state legislature tee-ed up another radical bill for his consideration: Alabama's own anti-abortion "fetal pain" bill. The bill bans abortions past 20 weeks even for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Today, Bentley's office stated that the governor supports the legislation and "is going to sign it" by the end of the week.

Question. What about a "woman's pain?"

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political pictures - dogs - This is My Stop

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The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is beginning debate today on a food and farm spending bill which will oversee deep cuts, amounting to roughly $47 billion dollars, to social programs which primarily service low-income women and children and elderly citizens.

Because life is sacred until you emerge from the womb, then you're on your own.

Essential programs on the chopping block include the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and Commodity Supplemental Food programs, which both help low-income people get nutritional food. Hundreds of thousands of people will be cut from the programs if House Republicans get their way. WIC "provides healthy foods like milk, eggs and infant formula to about 9 million poor mothers and pregnant women and their children," and would absorb a $868 million cut under the GOP bill, which falls $1.3 billion short of what's needed to adequately fund the program with food prices on the rise.

The GOP measure also calls for cuts to food safety programs, a childhood obesity initiative backed by First Lady Michele Obama, and food aid for senior citizens.

The spending bill also cuts programs that deliver food to low-income senior citizens by 23 percent, so they're not only coming for your Medicare, Seniors, they're coming for your milk and bread too.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee will be voting on a $649 billion defense-spending bill that boosts the Pentagon's operating budget by $17 billion. Because Republicans really care about spending.

Isn't it ironic that the Republicans are approving any spending bill, particularly one which increase spending in the case of the Pentagon, while also refusing to raise the debt ceiling? Every single one of these bills, even the ones which cut spending for poor children, will require the debt ceiling to be raised in several months.

Obviously the solution to this conundrum is more tax cuts.

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"For the moment, Republicans have no interest in moving the nation's debate toward investments in job creation because they gain twice over from keeping Washington mired in discussions on the deficit. It's a brute fact that Republicans benefit if the economy stays sluggish." EJ Dionne implying that the Republicans might be trying to deliberately sabotage the recovery

You know what would totally screw the economy? Allowing the deadline for raising the debt ceiling to expire. And that's precisely what the Republicans are trying to do. That's just one of many things the Republicans are actively doing in order to slow or reverse the recovery.

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It can't be easy being a Republican these days. Their hate for everything Obama is overwhelming and the thought of another four years of the Kenyan socialist Muslim in office is killing them. Their desperation fueled by the hate-mongering liars over at Fox and their conservative allies in print and radio, their only salvation lies in finding a candidate with the right stuff – one with the intellect, charisma and political know-how to take down the black guy sitting in the White House.

So who do they have? Well, based on Monday's GOP debate, they have little more than a pathetic cast of clowns and has-beens who have little chance at this point of swaying independents over to their side. Bachmann? Really? Who aside from diehard conservatives would consider voting for a candidate with an IQ slightly higher than Sarah Palin's? How about the Islamophobic simpleton, Herman Cain? Not in this lifetime unless the key to rescuing the economy is in selling more pizzas. Gingrich? A 90s relic with the moral fiber of a snake who repulses liberals and conservatives alike.

How about Rick Santorum, the gay-bashing pompous moralist who has no qualms in dictating the proper way to live one's life…perhaps he's the Republican savior? Don't think so. Googling 'santorum' is all you need to know about this guy.

Ron Paul? Perhaps, if you're looking for a guy who for every decent idea he expresses, shouts out another 8 unworkable, crackpot ideas that all begin with the word "constitution".

Pawlenty? One word…who?

And then we come to Mitt Romney, a man who was best portrayed by a cartoon showing his face with a number of mouths, each one saying, "Stop me when I say something you like." The unfortunate thing about Romney is that there was a time when he would have made a decent right of center president – a true moderate conservative. No longer. As a member of a party pulling ever further to the extreme right, there no longer is room for moderates of any kind. What you end up with is the new Mitt Romney – the flip-flopping king who finds himself forced to downplay his successes as Governor because none of it jives with today's extreme conservative ideology.

As I said, it can't be easy being a Republican these days.

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