Introducing PerryCare™
Does our president know what the word "perception" means?
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I wonder what her Secessionist White Power fans would think of this:
In the book, which will be published on September 20th, McGinniss claims Sarah had a steamy interracial hookup with basketball stud Glen Rice less than a year before she eloped with her husband Todd.
Sarah hooked up with the NBA great, then a 6-foot-8 junior at the University of Michigan when he was playing in a college basketball tournament in Alaska in 1987, the book says. At the time, Sarah, just out of college, was working as a sports reporter for the Anchorage TV station KTUU.
A publishing source told The ENQUIRER that McGinniss claims Sarah had a "fetish" for black men at the time and he quotes a friend as saying Sarah had "hauled (Rice's) ass down."
[...]
In the book, McGinniss quotes Rice as confirming the one-night stand.
"I take it black. Like my men."
Reagan was president in 1987. This is Reagan's fault, this entire story, this entire post, just like Reagan is to blame for everything that is unholy and decrepit and crumbling in America, starting with everything we have ever read about Sarah Palin and eventually ending there, too.
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The White House wants Republicans to pass the entire Jobs Act -- unless of course, they don't want to. Which would be OK with the White House too. Way to stand your ground, Obama administration.
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1% of Americans work for the DOD
A story today should prompt some discussion in how our society is changing as more and more Americans work for the government. For years, there has been a concern that we are becoming an institutionalized society with millions of Americans serving or working in prisons while millions more work for police and government agencies. Now, a report shows that one out of every 100 Americans work for the Defense Department. That is an astonishing figure. That figure balloons further when one considers the number of citizens working in the internal security, police, and intelligence systems. Continue reading 'One Percent of Americans Works For The Defense Department'
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The Myth Of Global Warming
Scientists say about 20,000 walruses showed up at their Alaskan mating grounds three weeks early this year due to "extreme Arctic sea ice melt caused by climate change." The northern polar ice cap is at its third-smallest size in recorded history.
This should serve as a healthy portion of Humble Pie, but it probably won't. Unfortunately.
The United States could only account for 1,160 out of 17,500 kilograms of Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU) — weapon-usable nuclear material — exported to 27 countries in response to a 1992 congressional mandate, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week. [...]
In another disquieting revelation, the GAO pointed out that in the 55 visits from 1994 through 2010, U.S. teams found that countries who received nuclear components met international security guidelines only about 50 percent of the time.
"The agencies have not systematically visited countries believed to be holding the highest proliferation risk quantities of U.S. nuclear material, or systematically revisited facilities not meeting international physical security guidelines in a timely manner," the GAO report warned.
We can only account for 1,160 out of 17,500 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium, but don't worry, as long as the TSA continues coping a feel, preventing you from taking water and lotion onto the airplane, and forcing you to remove your shoes, we can assure your safety.
How can we lecture countries such as Iran, with any measure of credibility, while we can't even keep track of or properly secure our nuclear materials?
It should be noted that over the course of the last 9 months, the Republicans have repeatedly threatened the authority and the funding of the Department of Energy which is responsible for regulating such things. Some have even called for dissolving the Department of Energy and rolling its responsibilities into the Department of Defense, as if that would somehow improve things.
I have no doubt the Republican response to this would be something along the lines of "See? Government doesn't work. We should abolish the Department of Energy" while ignoring the fact that the agencies responsible for oversight of nuclear materials are woefully underfunded. And it's the Republicans who are the biggest warhawks concerning Iran's nuclear ambitions.
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Family Research Council's super duper prayer team is requesting everyone to pray that:
May God intervene to prevent any U.N. effort to declare a Palestinian State. May believers everywhere cry out to God, and may the Jewish people turn to their Savior. May God cause the U.S. to stand firmly with Israel and expose any internal or external plan to undermine our loyal support! (Gen 12:1-3; 13:15; Ex 32:13; 2 Chr 20:7; Pr 21:1; Is 60:1-21; Zec 12:1-10)
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For all of you who can't get enough of a 3rd rate writer's offering of selfishness and greed, your prayers have been answered.
Penguin Group will launch a new iPad app of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged," combining the unabridged text and rarely seen photos from Ayn Rand's archives.
The app [...] will include videos and audio lectures given by Rand, original manuscript notes, an illustrated timeline of Rand's life, and other features.
Excited? I certainly hope so but if you aren't, I'm sure Tea Partiers, Libertarians and many conservatives are. They have made Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged a metaphor for an America suffering through an economic recession. Where is John Galt when you need him?
I would urge teabaggers and friends, though, to hold back from spending their hard earned $14.99 for the iPad app until they've delved a little deeper into this Ayn Rand person they so adore.
And to help them along on their journey of discovery, here are a few selected Ayn Rand quotes these good people might find interesting.
On Conservatives:
"Today's 'conservatives' are futile, impotent and, culturally, dead," she said. "They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country's uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship."
On Ronald Reagan:
"I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word – i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose – see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2). This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion."
On Homosexuality:
"All laws against homosexual acts should be repealed," she said in 1968. "I do not approve of such practices or regard them as necessarily moral, but it is improper for the law to interfere with a relationship between consenting adults."
So what would Ayn Rand think of today's Tea Party folk? Well, based on the avowed atheist's own words on issues so dear to teabaggers, I'm thinking disdain would best describe her thoughts.
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Drunk Ron Paul fan on Nat Geo.
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The New York Times has a link to the full 217-page report the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. The NYT summary:
The central cause of the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was a failure of the cement at the base of the 18,000-foot-deep well that was supposed to contain oil and gas within the well bore. That led to a cascade of human and mechanical errors that allowed natural gas under tremendous pressure to shoot onto the drilling platform, causing an explosion and fire that killed 11 of the 126 crew members and caused an oil spill that took 87 days to get under control…
The report concluded that BP, as the well's owner, was ultimately responsible for the accident. But it also said that BP's chief contractors, Transocean, which owned the mobile drilling rig, and Halliburton, which was responsible for the cementing operations, shared the blame for many of the fatal mistakes.
The study goes further than previous reports, citing seven violations of federal regulations as factors. Among them were violations of laws that required BP and its contractors to operate in a safe manner, to take measures to contain oil and gas for the protection of health and the environment, to conduct reliable tests of well pressures and to notify federal regulators of changes in drilling plans.
The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation that could bring indictments and heavy fines…
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Because Obama's jobs plan has not yet been introduced in the House, Louie Gohmert snagged the named "American Jobs Act of 2011" for his two-page bill which simply amends the tax code to repeal the corporate income tax.
No, seriously.
If he weren't such an unstoppable dumbass, with his anchor baby nonsense, his batshit Islamophobia and fear of terror babies, and his virulent homophobia, and if his bill amounted to anything other than more of the Norquistian same, I'd actually congratulate Gohmert for this rather cheeky move. Read the rest of this post »
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Mother Jones: The GOP's Genius Plan to Beat Obama in 2012
Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election—not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. That's not all: There's no legal way for Democrats to stop them.
If the Democrats tried this, the Republicans would be rioting in the street. They're quite literally trying to steal the presidential election. How will the Democrats respond? The word feckless comes to mind.
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Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars explains how the repugs destroyed the U.S. Postal Service
If the repugs succeed in killing the quintessential American public service - one that predates the Revolution - then it's game over for American democracy.
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Yes, bin Laden won. Here's your proof. "On the same day the country gathered together to recognize the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched two F-16 jets to tail a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver after the crew reported "suspicious activity on board." That "activity"? The existence of three dark-skinned passengers.Two Indian men and one self-described "half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife" from Ohio -- all unknown to each other -- made the mistake of boarding a plane on Sept. 11, 2011. ... After the crew reported that two people had spent "an extraordinarily long time" in the bathroom, the jets escorted the plane to its destination in Detroit, Michigan. Then, according to reports and the "half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife" Shoshana Hebshi, a SWAT team of about 10 police boarded the plane with machine guns and three dogs, approached Hebshi and the men's aisle, handcuffed them, and escorted them off the plane."
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Here's a handy tool from the redoubtable Henry Waxman: a searchable database of Republican votes to dismantle environmental protections in the current session of Congress. Just in its first six months! And it doesn't even count the growing popularity of calls from GOP presidential candidates to simply eliminate the EPA lock, stock, and barrel. (Excuse me: the "job-killing EPA." Precise terminology is important here.)Anyway, it's handy stuff if you want to know with precision just how deeply Republicans are committed to undermining the environment in the service of their corporate interests. You can search by agency, by topic, or by legislation. The full database is here. Have fun.
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Dick Cheney On U.S. Credit Downgrade: 'I Literally Felt Embarrassed For My Country'
The debt and the deficit are both thanks to Cheney and his sockpuppet George Bush. Bill Clinton handed them a budget surplus and an economy that was on schedule to pay off the national debt. And when people like me fretted about the deficit and the mounting debt, Cheney chided us with "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" while his administration put two wars, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, and oh yes, not one but two rounds of massive tax cuts for the rich -- on the nation's credit card.
It's rich indeed that he is suddenly worried about the deficit now -- because he sure as hell wasn't worried about it when he was running up the tab.
Him opening that fetid maw of his and deigning to utter the merest syllable is offensive enough. But this? This makes me want to hit him in the face. Hard. And not stop.
Not embarrassed over illegal wars, torture, or shooting his friend in the face.
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This quote from Garrison Keillor below is perhaps the best definition you'll find anywhere of the Tea Party movement and it was uttered in 2004, before anyone had ever heard of the Tea Party, and was meant then to describe the Conservative Republican apparatus during Bush's first term.
Obviously, even Mr. Keillor didn't realize how much worse things would become once they were out of power and a black man was in the White House.
Today, with the Tea Party having come to it's corporate financed fruition and having totally and even officially taken over the Republican party... and without the direct reference to Bush who is no longer a player... it's an even more perfect description of the GOP today than it was then.
Just think about the current Republican slate of presidential candidates while you read it... toss in a McConnell, a Boner, a Ryan or a Cantor or two dozen. See what I mean?
The party of Lincoln and Liberty has been transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brown-shirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch President, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk*._Garrison Keillor 2004
Eff that "more they stay the same" tripe. In the case of the Republican party, it would be more accurate to simply say that the more things change, the more they suck.
*And as far as I'm concerned, the description of Bush is still accurate... just no longer relevant.
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Speaking at the annual Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's gala yesterday, President Obama said he will do "everything in my power" to enact the DREAM Act. Noting that the bill lacks a Republican co-sponsor "for the first time in a decade," Obama said, "It's heartbreaking, to see innocent young people denied the right to earn an education, or serve in the military" because of their parents' actions or "the actions of a few politicians in Washington."
Gee, Barry, do you think you could do something for the people who are here legally FIRST? We have dreams too.
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Stephen Colbert Has the Perfect Presidential Running Mate for Republicans - the Grim Reaper
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GOP zero sum sham: no jobs bill unless Obamacare is repealed
There you go. Orrin Hatch has sent the signal: If we want a jobs plan, we'll have to give up any right to access our current health care system.
Of course, he buries the threat inside a rant about the individual mandate, because that's unpopular with many, not just those on the right. So now we have Republicans saying "Want a job? Die."
These people make me sick. Oops. Guess that's their goal.
Update: Eric Cantor has taken up the hostage-taking on behalf of the House. Washington Post:
But by putting the disaster aid funding on a separate piece of legislation that's required to keep the government running, House leaders seem to be calculating that the Senate will have no choice but to go along or risk a partial government shutdown.
Oh, and this:
Besides being about half the overall size of the Senate's disaster aid measure, the House bill ties cuts to an Obama-backed loan program to encourage the production of fuel efficient vehicles to pay for the $1 billion in immediate aid for 2011. Typically disaster aid is added to the budget as an emergency expense, and the insistence by Republicans on so-called offsets has Democrats fuming.
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