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02-14-09 - Those poor, misunderstood evangenitals: With such exemplary parenting, how could son ever make such a wrongheaded lifestyle 'choice'?
- Anti-gay televangelist and 30,000+ megachurch homophobe pastor T.D. Jakes: Son busted for public gay sex (joemygod.blogspot - dallasvoice) -- How's that for a poke in the eye?
- Republican Corruption and Corporate Greed: Medicaid reform, Florida GOP, WellCare Health Plans Inc. and $$$ -- this time
- Corporate Greed and Corrupt Republicans: Locked Together in Their Usual Frenzied Coitus (tbo)
- Military-Industrial Complex:
- Israel: Former Israeli envoy to the United Nations: Israel can hardly wait to attack Iran (presstv)
- Stimulus-Schmimulus:
- Final Economic Stimulus Bill Permits Americans' Personal Health Information to Be Sold for Research and Public Health Purposes WITHOUT Patients' Consent (prnewswire - in.sys-co) -- If this is true, what other little jewels like this one are going to pop up over time?
- IC 1805: The Heart Nebula (apod)
02-13-09 - Those poor, misunderstood evangenitals:
- Extremist evangenitals no longer want to be referred to as the "religious right" because too many people now know them for what they are -- extremists. They want to be called "socially conservative evangelicals" instead (thinkprogress). -- Well, a dead rat that you call a rose still smells like a dead rat. They hope we will forget what they stand for if they change their logo. What they fail to remember is that their holy book of fantasies, the one they use to condemn anyone who doesn't drink their own particular brand of koolaid, says that "by their fruit ye shall know them" (referring to recognizing false prophets -- like so many of the Pharisaical evangenital false prophets, for instance), "by their works." And their works are abundantly clear already. Next thing you know, Republicans will want to change their name, too! And George W. Bush! And Karl Rove! Blackwater just did it. And Pope Nazi -- oh, he already did it too, that's right.
- Stimulus-Schmimulus:
- Concerns that Feinstein is secretly trying to add non-stimulus related, internet spying pork to Obama's stimulus package (americablog)
- Man the Polluter:
- Satellite collision highlights growing threat (bbc.co.uk - spaceweather) - 17,000 objects above 10cm in size in orbit - and as many as 10,000 more less than 10cm in size. The last collision has added about 500 more pieces to that number. Orbital speed as high as 18,000 miles an hour.
- Military Now Tracking 18,000 Items Which Could Damage, Destory Spacecraft (washingtonpost)
- Space: We've trashed it -- with high-speed debris (orlandosentinel)
- Warning of catastrophe from mass of 'space junk' (guardian.co.uk)
- Great Pacific Garbage Patch (wiki) -- (GoogleSearch "plastic ocean pollution")
- Bits of plastic turn parts of the ocean into a deadly "soup" (canada.com)
- More plastic than plankton in Pacific Ocean (calgaryherald)
- Failed So-Called 'War on Drugs':
- At least 8 arrested in attempt to build Michael Phelps drug case (mcclatchydc) -- I suppose the Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff's Department thinks that by discrediting American hero Michael Phelps for smoking pot, they may 1) get some good press for themselves as if they were actually earning their paychecks, or 2) dissuade some hero-worshiping would-be pot smokers to leave it alone because, as we all know so well, crime doesn't pay -- unless, that is, you happen to have a high-ranking white collar job. If the former is true, I'd suggest they look around nearby for some real crime, like violent offenses or the white-collar crime they have to swim through daily in their fair county, home of the state capital -- and leave hero Phelps to glory in his youth, fame and accomplishments. If it is the latter reason, I suspect that could backfire when a few hundred thousand more kids smoke their first pot merely out of support for Phelps and in contempt for this new misguided authoritarian attempt to further control their lives. By the way, how many people died in South Carolina last year because of tobacco and alcohol? -- And how many died because of pot?
- Update 02-16-09: Michael Phelps not to be charged with Marijuana crime (dailykos) but 7 of those arrested still face a 'simple' posession of marijuana charge, and 1 more for 'distribution'.
- Prison-Industrial-Judicial Complex:
- Corrupt judges facing prison; Luzerne pair admit to $2.67M kickback scheme (policelink - uk.reuters) -- 1000 to 2000 youth tossed into private prisons with long, unjustified sentences for the sake of a few corrupt bucks. -- Another case where we need Chinese justice brought to bear against the offending judges and the responsible prison executives (see my 02-11-09 entry (China airport executive . . .) and real justice and hundreds of millions of dollars of financial compensation brought in turn to the kids this gang of monsters abused.
- Looting Social Security (thenation) - Author Bill Greider boils down the attempts by Blue Dogs, Jim Cooper, the Pete Peterson folks and others to loot Social Security (Jane Hamsher).
- Social Security Reform: Your Opinion Doesn’t Count (firedoglake) "A February summit, convened by Obama, will include Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, conservative Blue Dogs and "a host of outside groups with ideas on the matter" -- presumably the Peterson folks will be there. No progressive participants have been announced." -- I guess Obama doesn't realize (or believe) that if he only eliminated the $102,000 Social Security taxes cap completely, so all wages were taxed, the Social Security Trust Fund would have enough money for 75 more years. With this bunch of stingy, right-wing advisers who principally represent the wealthy elite who would prefer to see the Social Security program eliminated completely, what kind of wreckage will Obama make of the Social Security Program? Rush will surely give him a pat on the head along with a slap on the wrist for not going even further.
- Circle 'round the Moon (apod)
02-12-09 - Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882) - Celebrating Enlightened Reason in an Age of Willful Ignorance:
- Richard Dawkins: The Genius of Charles Darwin
- Darwin's a God (firedoglake) - Links
- Celebrating Darwin's Birth (guardian.co.uk) - Links
- On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution (gallup) - Religious fantasizers and the conservative corporate media have done such a great job of dumbing down this nation. So much easier that way to manipulate an ignorant populace when it really counts. For the religious, personal loyalty and contributions to maintain their organizations -- and political loyalty at election time. For the media, important times such as camouflaged coups d'etat -- like the JFK murder, which enabled our aggressive and illegal push into SE Asia, the 2000 GOP election theft, which enabled 9/11, which in its own turn enabled our Neocon aggressive and illegal push into the Middle East, and the 2004 GOP election theft, which culminated in the current economic 9/11, which has illegally transfered untold hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the wealthy banks and their shareholders -- as gifts to them from the rest of us, plain and simple.
- Personal Privacy Gone, Gone Away:
- Great discussion about the privacy leaks in our digital lives (democracynow)
- Global Warming:
- Front Group For Polluter Billionaires Wastes $140K On Goofy Global Warming Denial Ads (wonkroom)
- Zodiacal Light Vs. Milky Way (apod)
02-11-09
- Evangenital superstition and ignorance are boundless:
- Evangenital pastor says abortion to blame for fires in Australia (current) - Another of the Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson fruitcakes of the world. Please, may the rapture come quickly and take them from our midst.
- Military-Industrial Complex:
- That 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position (salon - includes Rachel Maddow discussion).
- The State Secret Protection Act (emptywheel) - "This bill would establish a CIPA-like process to allow the admission of evidence over which the executive has invoked State Secrets. . . . The bipartisan State Secret Protection Act is modeled on existing protections and procedures for handling secret evidence. Specifically, the bill would require a court to make an independent assessment of the privilege claim . . . ." - There's no time like the present to really push for this bill.
- Are Bush's Secrets Safe With Obama? (commondreams)
- Madsen: NSA’s meta-data email surveillance programs exposed (onlinejournal).
- Lendman: Obama's "War on Terror" (globalresearch.ca) - "The language is softened and deceptive. The strategy and tactics are not. The "war on terror" continues. Promised change is talk, not policy."
- America’s Predators: Fighting the Afghan War From Las Vegas (commondreams) - "Singer talks of pilots shooting missiles at enemies thousands of miles away and then getting into their Toyotas to be home for the kids' soccer practice." - There are more than 5000 of these unmanned remote killers prowling the skies now over Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and . . . . If not already here, they will become an addition to the planes in U.S. skies. They are indiscriminate in who they kill and depend primarily on young military personnel, often with limited training for their jobs, sitting at consoles perhaps thousands of miles away, to give them their lethal instructions.
- Obamamania:
- Obama planning to be a one-termer: Says he won't run again if stimulus fails (bostonherald). - Well, as I've commented before, among the long-term crushing economic collapse the ultra-wealthy elites have visited upon us AND the relentless conservative corporate news media's microscopic and often deceitful examination of every grain of Obama administration dust AND the unchallenged GOP election theft machine, he probably will be a one-termer anyway. But, just for fun, couple his comment with what Roubini and Taleb say in the video below. I wonder what the master puppeteers have up their sleeves for 2012. Will there be enough economic improvement by then to turn it back over to the Republicans, or will there still be such devastating and continuing damage that it will be politically expedient to leave it in the hands of the Democrats awhile longer so they can be blamed for it? -- But on the other hand, Obama is getting so good at saying one thing and then doing the opposite, maybe he'll come across for us again in 2012 anyway.
- Economic Shakedown:
- Senate Stimulus: Steal from the Poor to Give to the Affluent (emptywheel) - "ProPublica has done a comparison of the House and Senate stimulus packages. It shows, in striking fashion, how much the Grassley-Isakson-Coburn-Collins-Bad Nelson bill skews spending away from the poor--the most stimulative kind of spending, since these people need this money badly and would spend it right away--to the upper middle class"
- Required Watching: Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Nicholas Taleb on CNBC 2/9/09 (youtube) - The only problem with this video is that we have to listen to the over-talking CNBC used-car salesmen blather on and on among the two experts' comments.
- That Liberal Media:
- Project Censored's # 7 story for 2009: Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking (projectcensored) - "When Mello asked an African-American Katrina survivor who supported the guest workers’ grievance how he justified comparing guest work to slavery, he responded, “Do you know the story of the Middle Passage? . . . In slavery, you send a slave catcher, they go to the chiefs and make a deal. They say, We’re going to take your people to heaven, and they show them a few pretty things from heaven. You load them onto the ships and only when they get out to sea do they know they’re slaves. You take them to one owner, and if they leave they’re a runaway. Well, with guest workers . . .” He trails off, says Mello, his meaning clear. "
- Call for Accountability:
- FBI Probing 530 Corporate Fraud Cases (fauxnews) - Why so few?
- China airport executive sentenced to death for embezzlement (marketwatch) - Time to import this form of justice to U.S. white-collar criminals. Peanut processing plant executives who knowingly dispense disease, for example -- and government executives who deliberately shred or aid and abet in the shredding of the U.S. Constitution.
- Flashback to 01-22-09: China: Life imprisonment and death sentence for those at center of tainted milk scandal (nytimes). An idea we definitely need to import to the US. My views on the death penalty have changed considerably over time. I now believe that most offenders should not receive it. However, it should generally be reserved for only the very powerful -- those who cause a lot of damage to a lot of people through their criminal actions, especially including government and corporate figures -- that their appeals be limited and execution be by swift, merciful and final means such as the guillotine -- and that those executions be publicly broadcast to the world, as was Saddam Hussein's execution. I defer to the death penalty for those particular individuals because of the greater likelihood that through their power and influence, they would otherwise eventually be prematurely delivered from their just desserts.
- Orion's Belt Continued (apod)
02-10-09 - Obama continues to try to manage his favorable image without offering substance. Where have I ever seen that before? It's only a matter of time before the little boy watching the parade cries out, "The emperor has no clothes."
- Economic Shakedown:
- Treasury Sec. Geithner blocks tougher conditions on Wall Street (americablog - nytimes) - When you select the same guys who caused the problem to "fix" it, this excrement is what you get. Why expect anything different? - Markets vote 'no confidence' and DJIA closes down 382 (4.62%).
- Sony's New Stupid Box Thing Not Well Received (theonion) - A lot like the efforts so far to repair the GOP's damage to the U.S. economy.
- Recession to have impact for up to 15 years (americablog - independent.co.uk)
- Military-Industrial Complex:
- The 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position (salon). Unprecedented transparency promise out the window! Obama uses State Secrets Protection Act, like Bush, to throw out entire court cases based on the protection of State Secrets, thus giving full protection to the Bush regime's illegal extraordinary renditions program. Did we elect another Republican in Democrat's clothing? No, this is what it looks like when the same ultra-wealthy elites pull the strings of both political partys. One Corporate Party with two wings, the Democratic on the "left" and the Republican on the hard right. How could we ever expect Obama's administration to prosecute Bush regime criminality when he aggressively takes positions to protect that regime. "Democrats have large majorities in both houses of Congress; they ought to use it to legislatively bar the power that the Obama DOJ is now attempting to vest in the new President by enacting the legislation they spent all of last year insisting they favored. Now that the Obama DOJ is seeking to acquire that power for its new President, the need for that law is more acute than ever."
- 'State Secrets' Privilege Not Gone With Bush (antiwar) - Among other things, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' gag order on explosive illicit government activity she was aware of remains in place (googlesearch).
- Orion's Belt (apod)
02-09-09 - Will Wonders Never Cease?
- Yet another skyscraper burns but fails to collapse (mcclatchydc) - Neither before nor since, only on 9/11 -- then it was 3 in one day. Amazing!
- Grand Obstructionist Party:
- Robert Parry: GOP hypocrites were against the filibuster before they were for it (consortiumnews).
- Responding to Crisis (digby) Republican supporters of $1.3 trillion Bush tax cuts in 2001 now call $900 billion recovery plan ‘too much’.
- Alaska Senate finds Todd Palin in contempt in 'troopergate' (mcclatchydc) - Why incriminate yourself? Just don't show up.
- Not till the fat lady sings:
- U.S. Bank Failures in the Next 3 to 5 Years May Reach 1,000 on Commercial Property Loans (bloomberg) - So far it's only 34 since the beginning of 2008 (thestreet). Looking at 1000 in all, we Have a long way to go, folks.
- Obama's Bunch:
- Greenwald: Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully (salon - nytimes - emptywheel). "This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. . . . It will be extremely difficult for even the most loyal Obama followers to deny that this was an active and conscious decision on the part of the Obama DOJ to embrace one of the most extreme abuses of the Bush presidency. . . . They're embracing a theory that literally places government officials beyond the rule of law." Well, here we go again.
- Madsen: WMR has learned from inside sources in Washington that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has actually been sidelined in her position as secretary of state by Barack Obama’s mega-powerful chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel (onlinejournal).
- Boundless Gay-Bashing Evangenital Hypocrisy:
- A History of Violations at Ted Haggard's New Life MegaChurch (signorili - queerty) - Investigator alleges up to 10 cases of sexual misconduct on the part of Ted Haggard and that three of these involve minors. More church suppression of information.
- Stimulus Schmimulus - A One-Legged Chicken:
- Obama: Undermining his Own Mandate for the Sake of Bipartisanship (firedoglake) - "There is no inherent value in bipartisanship, it's the means to an end. If the administration doesn't define what that "end" is and gives the Republicans the power to determine success or failure by a simple refusal to participate, they will continue to do so."
- A Place In Hell (digby) - "Just in case anyone was wondering what the effects of taking out all that silly, stimulus "pork" that was planned for the states might be, this story is a good clue."
- Krugman on The Destructive Center (nytimes) - "What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist. . . . But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy." - Obama is not learning from his expensive mistakes.
- Why is that $50 billion radioactive antique toilet still in the stimulus bill? (smirkingchimp)
- Election Theft - Voter Fraud: Two Different Things
- Each election cycle the Republicans trot out their fallacious arguments about the grave dangers of voter fraud (illegally casting a ballot), in order to drum up approval of their latest legislative attempts to further restrict Democrats' access to the voting booth. They try to conflate voter fraud with election theft in order to draw attention away from their real attempts to steal the elections by denying Democrats the vote and by using Republican-controlled electronic voting equipment to count and manipulate the votes. Of course the conservative-biased corporate media go along with the game because the GOP's and the corporate media's goals are essentially the same. Bush and Gonzalez fired US Attorneys who wouldn't prosecute Democrats for voter fraud just before the elections. However, those conscientious attorneys didn't prosecute because they didn't find enough evidence that the crime existed.
- Voter Fraud: However, now we have one of the Republicans' own most vitriolic mouthpieces, Ann Coulter, under investigation for voter fraud by the Connecticut Elections Enforcement Commission (bradblog - harpers - thinkprogress - firedoglake) for living in New York but voting in Connecticut. This is not the first time for Coulter, either. Such a fitting representation of the real Republican Party.
- Election Theft (the legal way): Mississippi Republicans Push For Disenfranchising Polling Place Photo ID Restrictions (bradblog) - This is one of dozens of ways the GOP uses to keep Democrat voters out of the voting booth.
- Military-Industrial Complex:
- Obama Facing Stiff Pentagon Resistance to His Iraq Troop-Withdrawal Timetable (skeeterbitesreport) - Pentagon Plans Public-Relations Drive to Force Obama to Back Down - There is no viable option. Obama MUST get in control of his military.
- Greenwald: Israel poised to lurch to the right (salon) "If, as it appears, the face Israel is now choosing for itself is that of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, then the cost to the United States of ongoing, one-sided support for Israel is going to skyrocket, and the need for serious change in U.S. policy towards Israel will be even more acute." - How far will Obama bend over for them? He's getting very good at that.
- Lendman: A Short History of the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict: Past Is Prologue (globalresearch.ca)
- Anemic Galaxy NGC 4921 at the Edge (apod)
02-08-09 - Reason versus Self-Serving Demagogic Superstition:
- Ads supporting non-believers going up on buses in several countries (washingtonpost) - It's good to know you're not alone in a world otherwise filled with fanciful insanity.
- Council for Secular Humanism rips apart Baylor survey (dallasnews) - Why am I not surprised that Xtianity apologists would cook the books?
- FLASHBACK to 12-31-08 and UPDATE (So Help Me . . .): Sam Harris eloquently articulates his case for not being a theist (video.google 1hr10min - YT playlist). Atheist comedian Pat Condell sounds off (youtube 5min - VG playlist - YT playlist).
- Virtue Queen Ted Haggard's "Party Formula" and More (signorile) - More of Signorile's interview with Grant Haas (Part 3)
- Military-Industrial Complex - The Neocons Are Not Going to Like This:
- Stiffing the Stimulus:
- Senate centrists’ plan = 600,000 fewer jobs (thinkprogress - nytimes) -- So, is this a deliberately engineered depression in order to reduce global warming gases and buy some time? When Democrats are deliberately destroying recovery chances, one has to wonder.
- Maddow on GOP obstruction of the stimulus bill (washingtonmonthly)
- Limbaugh, Hannity, and the GOP: an iron triangle of stimulus misinformation (mediamatters)
- GOP Alternative to Obama's Stimulus Consists Only of More Tax Cuts (washingtonmonthly) - What else could you expect when you realize that the GOP speaks for and is paid by the ultra-wealthy? Adjust the target, folks, and get it right -- it's the ultra-wealthy who are the enemy here, as has been the case from time immemorial. The French certainly knew how to take care of it years ago. They hide behind their point men and women in the halls of power and pull the strings that influence us all. They try to remain nameless and faceless. It is time to start giving them names and faces. It is indeed a class war that has been going on for scores of years in this country. Call it what it really is -- class warfare. Whenever Democrats propose legislation that would limit upper-class privilege in any way, the ultra-wealthy controlled networks scream "Class Warfare!". It's true. It is class warfare, except the left is never supposed to fire any volleys back. Only the conservatives have that privilege. Give us more tax cuts = give us the U.S. Treasury. That's surely the fair way.
- Most Senators Are Economic Morons (firedoglake)
- Global Warming - Species Destruction:
- Citizen Scientists' Notes Pinpoint Effects of Climate Change (commondreams) - "Perhaps the classic example of the impact of climate change on an ecological community is oak trees in the Netherlands, which are leafing out earlier. The winter moth caterpillars that feed on the leaves are coming out earlier. The pied flycatchers that eat winter moth caterpillars remain on the old schedule, however, as they migrate from central Africa to the Netherlands. In some areas, the populations of pied flycatchers have dropped 90 percent."
- When Silence Can Be Catastrophic:
- Bird flu cover-up fear in China (dispatch.co.za) - "With each day that passes, more dead birds, ducks and chickens have washed up on the beaches of Hong Kong, suggesting that H5N1- infected birds may have been dumped into China’s polluted Pearl River and carried by the tide to Hong Kong waters." See also my 02-03-09 entry (When Silence Can . . .)
- 'Flu And You' Series (dailykos)
- Inside the Eagle Nebula (apod)
