This is for Bachmann and Palin.
Archives for April 2011
Virtually Corruption Free
I’m on a New York Tea Party mailing list, mainly just to chuckle over the crazy that’s posted about “Barry Sotero Soetoro” (which is what those who know the real truth about our homosexual president, who has no fewer than 19 Social Security numbers, call him). The leader of the pack, who last garnered attention by recommending a video of Obama portrayed as a Farina in Little Rascals, has a new hero:
Donald Trump’s involvement in the presidential race will change all the rules. Trump has plenty of money and doesn’t need anyone at this stage of his life so he is virtually corruption free. Unless obama and his thugs can dig up something on Trump to shut him up, it looks to be a very interesting year upcoming.
Palin and Bachmann are so 2010.
Fukushima, Pennsylvania
ProPublica reports that Pennsylvania is limiting the ability of inspectors to cite operators of hydrofracking operations:
The memos require that each of the hundreds of enforcement actions taken routinely against oil and gas operators in Pennsylvania each month now be approved by the department’s executive deputy secretary, John Hines. The memos are raising concerns that the state’s environmental inspectors can no longer act independently and that regulations could be overridden by the political whims of the state’s new governor, Tom Corbett.
“What this apparently is saying is that before any final action, the inspector must get approval by two political appointees: the secretary and the deputy secretary,” said John Hanger, who headed the DEP until January under former Gov. Ed Rendell and worked to strengthen the state’s oil and gas regulations. “It’s an extraordinary directive. It represents a break from how business has been done in the department within the Marcellus Shale and within the oil and gas program for probably 20 years.
ProPublica also reports that there are 120,000 deteriorating gas wells across the country, some of which are leaking gas into homes and causing explosions. Some of those wells are close to 100 years old.
As Fukushima dumps radioactive water into the sea, and it’s revealed that the Japanese government didn’t release projections that showed high levels of radiation far from the plant, it’s worth remembering that it isn’t just nuclear energy that leaves a toxic legacy, and that the Republican decision to leave frackers to their own devices will probably be causing problems long after the last victim of thyroid cancer is buried in Japan.
Early Morning Open Thread: City Cat
From commentor Sarah in Brooklyn:
When our cat Louie died, I wanted another cat right away. Louie’s pal, Max, was sad, and I hated having only one cat. I called one of Brooklyn’s cat rescuers (aka crazy cat lady), who said she had a kitten. We went out to her place, which was surprisingly sane considering that she had many, many, many cats and some dogs there. In one of her cat rooms were a lot of adult cats. It was a swirling mass of cat bodies, but I looked down and this little grey kitten was looking up at me, and it was all over.
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That was about 5 years ago. Strummer and Max have never gotten along well, but I adore him. He’s a secret love cat – most of the time he’s stand-offish, but he gets under the covers with me at night, curls up against my belly and purrs like a steam engine. He’ll sleep like that for hours, with his head on my arm. He’s also a champion jumper, as you can see from the picture (full disclosure: he can’t jump from the floor to the top of the door, but he goes from floor to bookcase to door with great ease). He’s an intelligent and mysterious cat, and I feel honored that he actually likes to spend time with me. He also has a really impressive set of whiskers.
Sunday Night Open Thread
Quick Memeorandum Rundown
Random thoughts inspired by the current memeorandum page:
1.) Anyone dumb enough to pay money to Charlie Sheen deserves what they get. End of story.
2.) I refuse to click the links and see what they say, but I am guessing the reactions to that scumbag minister burning a Quran (Christianity, the religion of peace!), leading to the deaths of multiple UN workers include a.) brief paeans to the 1st amendment, b.) clownish posts about how the murderers are really responsible, c.) sheepish remarks about draw mohammed day, d.) chest-thumping from the war party/”freedom isn’t free” jackasses. Personally, I’d like to ship all these draw Mohammed/Burn a Quran jackasses to the homes of the victims and explain how shit happens and they died defending the American 1st Amendment. That should go over well.
3.) Pinch Sulzberger is concern-trolling us about lawyers losing their jobs because the death penalty was ended in Illinois. I’m seriously reconsidering my stance on the NY Times paywall. I may not buy it when my free offer is over.
4.) The AIPAC crowd is very upset at Goldstone again. Conspicuously absent from all discussions are the fact that over a thousand Palestinians were killed. Shit happens. War is heck. Anyone who moves is a VC.
5.) The Times reports that Republicans are going to go after Medicaid. Of course they are. The poor don’t vote in the numbers the elderly do.
NIXONLAND, Week 10: “Trust”, “If Gold Rust”, “Presidential Offensive”
Ratcheting up the machinery:
Ronald Reagan’s administration prepared for the 1969/70 school year by asking the FBI to help in its “psychological warfare campaign” about student radicals. J. Edgar Hoover responded enthusiastically — “this has been done in the past and has worked quite successfully” — and dispatched his number two man, Clyde Tolson, to help…
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Senator Sam Irvine, the North Carolina conservative and civil libertarian, learned that Treasury Department officials checked library lists to see what books certain suspicious Americans read, that HEW kept a blacklist of antiwar scientists, that the Secret Service was asking government employees to report anyone with an interest in “embarrassing” the president.
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… The Nixon administration tapped an attorney in the Justice Department, William Rehnquist, to write a memo justifying expanding the program to spy on any antiwar activity. Soon, one thousand undercover agents in three hundred offices nationwide were compiling dossiers on such groups as the NAACP, ACLU, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Clergy & Layman Concerned about Vietnam.
Kissinger and Ehrlichman hosted seven student leaders in the WH Situation Room. They represented 273 student government officers and student newspaper editors who had signed a pledge of draft resistance. Ehrlichman said, “If you guys think that you can break laws just because you don’t like them, you’re going to have to force us to up the ante to the point where we give out death sentences for traffic violations.“
“Every American has a right to disagree with the President of the United States, and to express publicly that disagreement. But the president of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him, and the people of the country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a presidential address without having the president’s words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested” by “this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every presidential address, but more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues of our nation.”
That last was Spiro Agnew, starting his campaign against the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’. Of course, Roger Ailes was already embedded in the White House, taking notes (or writing scripts). If the President does it, then it is not a crime…
Of course, I could be reading too much into this. How do you remember those times? What do you think?
NIXONLAND, Week 10: “Trust”, “If Gold Rust”, “Presidential Offensive”Post + Comments (111)