Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Headlines - Wednesday June 22

"You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time."
 
###
 
 

A flurry of overnight drone strikes by US Predator drones has left at least 12 people dead and an unknown number of others wounded. The first strike hit a vehicle, and then a second strike targeted tribesmen who rushed to the scene to aid the wounded.

###

Oh please, this is pathetic. End the damned war and use the money to rebuild the US. If we're going to throw money around, at least throw it around on Americans who are having hard times because of the high cost of the war and the stupid tax cuts that Obama went along with.

###

###

Another implosion for the Gingrich campaign.

But according to Newt Gingrich, President Obama has no idea how to run a country or balance a budget.

###

JP Morgan Pays SEC Chump Change for Fraud

###

Mormon Jesus hates America

Mitt Romney Says Helping America's Tornado Victims Is 'Immoral'

Let's give a big hand (or two) to Mitt Romney, giant masshole.

Tornadoes and floods and wildfires and droughts and other biblical plagues have been killing Americans and destroying their towns all year long, but constipated mannequin Mitt Romney wants to be seen as a real tough-guy Tea Party asshole these days. So he told a crowd that helping storm victims is "immoral" and that it also "makes no sense." Just let those stupid Midwestern people die already! If Mormon Jesus wanted Americans in the Heartland to be alive, he wouldn't have killed them with a constant parade of devastating megastorms!

Think Progress reports:

Embracing a radical anti-government ideology from the most extreme elements of the Tea Party, Romney said that the victims in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and other communities hit by tornadoes and flooding should not receive governmental assistance. He argued it is "simply immoral" for there to be deficit spending that could harm future generations

Mittens also argued that it's better to simply let Mormon Jesus kill off Christian America now, so that there will simply be no future generations at all. [Think Progress]

###

Indiana Republicans have forced the closure of all 28 Planned Parenthood clinics in their state, even though only four of them provided any abortion services. Previously, Planned Parenthood in Indiana earned $1.3 million a year for its work with Medicaid recipients. Those low-income women will now find it much harder to get access to female contraception and basic health care. Many of them will, as a result of this hostility from Indiana Republicans, experience an unplanned pregnancy and will seek out abortions, or they will have less access to health care during their pregnancy, resulting in less healthy babies. I know it's hard to get inside the brains of Republicans, but the opposite of planned parenthood is unplanned parenthood. And it is only the latter that causes elective abortions to occur in the first place. No organization prevents more abortions than Planned Parenthood. Nice work, assholes.

###

I'm predicting that nothing much will be done to mitigate a potential mass extinction in the world's oceans. That is, not until after it's too late. And even then, the Republican solution will probably be more drilling, more deregulation and, as always, tax cuts.

The scientific panel concluded that degeneration in the oceans is happening much faster than has been predicted, and that the combination of factors currently distressing the marine environment is contributing to the precise conditions that have been associated with all major extinctions in the Earth's history.

According to the report, three major factors have been present in the handful of mass extinctions that have occurred in the past: an increase of both hypoxia (low oxygen) and anoxia (lack of oxygen that creates "dead zones") in the oceans, warming and acidification. The panel warns that the combination of these factors will inevitably cause a mass marine extinction if swift action isn't taken to improve conditions.

Let's say for argument's sake this study is only half right. Half of a mass extinction would be very, very bad.

###

Thank you, Jeebus, for this gift.

###

Atheists fed up? Believe it!

###

Marc Perkel: Letter to the Editor

I have a question for every member of Congress. Do members still get paid if they refuse to raise the debt limit? If they do then that's just plain wrong. If America runs out of money then Congress shouldn't get paid.

###

Michele Bachmann: Ignorance in Motion

###

If this is the best public officials can do in the modern industrialized world, there's a serious problem. We used to be a country that valued math and science but with this collapse into prayer, there's little hope of a city or state or country to succeed if prayer is the best that can be offered. These are not the Dark Ages so extremists like this need to quit acting like it is. For any businesses still left in that city, they better move quickly because it's only going to get worse.

If all the brightest minds in Harrisburg's government can't solve the city's financial problems, maybe God can.

That seems to be the thinking in Pennsylvania's capital city, where Mayor Linda Thompson and a host of other religious leaders are about to embark on a three-day fast and prayer campaign to cure the city's daunting money woes

###

Comrad Misfit: What the frak is TSA doing?

Why is the agency, whose main job is copping feels of airline passengers and stealing shit from their luggage, doing a sweep of 5,000 square miles of the Ohio River Valley?

TSA has something called
the "Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response" teams, or VIPR teams, an appropriate acronym for an agency of snakes. The name itself tells you that the TSA is putting on armed security theatrics, all in the name of supposedly keeping us safe and assuredly reducing the Bill of Rights to something that has the strength of a sheet of one-ply toilet paper. Don't think you can just shut up and drive your car, for the TSA wants to check cars, too.

The other day I was a function and talking to a gent I know. He and I disagree on almost everything-- he thinks Bush was a great president and that Obama is a foreigner, I think Cheney should be executed for war crimes and that Palin is a drooling imbecile. But one thing that we agreed upon is that the post 9-11 security theatrics are becoming less about preventing terrorism and more about promoting a national security/police state.

It is high time that the TSA and the DHS be completely defunded, lest we end this decade with zero personal rights and liberties.
And speaking of TSA:
 
Rick Perry Will Cancel Air Travel In Texas To Keep TSA Hands Off His Butt
 
pedobear loves texas... they don't love him back?
 
It is Election Season, which means that every legislative agenda item across America is now required to pointlessly pander to everyone's weirdest fears by passing laws against stupid things like "saying Sharia Law while riding an escalator" or "explaining to children that gay people exist." But Texas, because it is Bigger at Everything, wants to do "unconstitutional" for extra points. Gov. Rick Perry has taken an abandoned state law banning TSA pat-downs and put it back on a special legislative session agenda that only he gets to create, even though a U.S. Attorney sent a letter to lawmakers warning that they are not allowed to block federal law and let terrorists fly on planes just because Rick Perry is afraid of someone touching his butt.

Perry is under pressure from paranoid wingnut Tea Party people to prohibit TSA pat-downs, which at some point here is going to devolve into "let's just allow people to bring guns on airplanes to stop the FURRINERS from getting on the flights." This will be Rick Perry's 2016 campaign platform.

From Reuters:

"I am grateful that the governor heard the calls of the people demanding that lawmakers stand up for the liberties of Texans," Wesley Strackbein, a conservative activist and founder of TSATyranny.com, told Reuters. Strackbein said he traveled to the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans over the weekend to confront Perry on the issue.

The bill would make it a Class A misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in prison or a $4,000 fine — for a TSA agent to "touch the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person, even through that person's clothing" for the purpose of "granting access to a building or a form of transportation."

If Texas lawmakers pass such a bill, the TSA will be forced to ground all planes trying to fly out of Texas until someone goes, "eh, supremacy clause, you morons, read the Constitution." On the other hand, there will be an airborne wall around Texas, which is not anyone's worst nightmare. [Reuters]

###
 
By a 44 percent to 34 percent margin, more Americans say they believe they are worse off than when President Obama took office. The Bloomberg poll finds that more than "half of respondents say their children are destined to have a lower standard of living than they do."
 
###
 

Trickle down, my ass.

###

While Aid To Homeless Vets Gets Cut, The Pentagon Funds NASCAR 

As Republicans cut aid to low income Americans in the name of deficit reduction, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) is pursuing a campaign to stop the Pentagon from funding NASCAR and other sporting events through sponsorship deals. Her bill would require "the military to submit for a 30-day congressional review period" any sports sponsorship deal larger than $250,000. She said she introduced the bill because Congress "voted to eliminate funding for homeless veterans, slash community health centers serving low-income families and pass a fiscal year 2011 budget that would force 800,000 Americans to lose their jobs" while "taxpayer-funded sponsorship of NASCAR racing teams was protected."

###

 

No comments: