Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“woke” is the new caravan.

We will not go back.

He really is that stupid.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Second rate reporter says what?

You are here: Home / Economics / Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You / Won’t Anyone Think of the Onion?

Won’t Anyone Think of the Onion?

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From the “You Can’t Make This Up” file:

Patriot Coal Corporation today announced that it received three Mountaineer Guardian Safety Awards from the West Virginia Coal Association. The following operations received the award in their respective categories:

    Coal Clean preparation plant at the Panther mining complex;
    Fanco preparation plant and loadout at the Logan County mining complex; and
    Samples surface mine at the Paint Creek mining complex.

Mountaineer Guardian Safety Awards are presented each year by the West Virginia Coal Association to mining operations that demonstrate a strong commitment to safety. Inspectors for the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety & Training nominate facilities based on numerous safety-related criteria, including below average injury incidence rates and effective safety programs.

That was four days ago. Sadly, the Eagle operation was not an award winner, which I guess gives humorists everywhere a mild reprieve.

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Reader Interactions

93Comments

  1. 1.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    I’m pretty sure poisoning the local waterways is just business as usual, and therefore not monitored under the umbrella of safety.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    I want to form a company called Jesus, Inc. just to see how much I can get with before somebody says something.

  4. 4.

    PsiFighter37

    No offense, John, but I bet the response of you fellow West Virginians will be to blame Obama and then subsequently vote out the narrowing Democratic majority at the state level. Not that they’re worth much more given that the vast majority of them are conservative Democrats, but I would bet a pretty penny that most Mountaineers are going to blame the EPA and the black Kenyan Marxist for this, not Patriot Coal or any of the parties who are, you know, actually responsible.

  5. 5.

    Poopyman

    These industry awards are just grownup versions of gold stars in kindergarten. Everybody gets one.

    And a company called Jesus will be assumed by the local bigots to be pronounce Hay-zeus and will be boycotted as bein’ messican.

  6. 6.

    max

    it received three Mountaineer Guardian Safety Awards from the West Virginia Coal Association.

    “West Virginia! If you liked the free cancer, you’ll LOVE the free poison!”

    max
    [‘Maybe they should just close the state and turn it into a park.’]

  7. 7.

    Gin & Tonic

    Just a cynical hunch, but I’ll bet the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety & Training isn’t filled with Earth First! types. Regulatory Capture for $800, Alex.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    below average injury incidence rates and effective safety programs.

    To be fair, it sounds like these awards are given for worker safety, not the quality of chemical hazard containment. There’s probably a whole separate award for lowest amount of contaminants released into the environment.

  9. 9.

    geg6

    Bwahahahahaha! Jeebus but it’s great to live in a state that, no matter how bad it gets around here (thanks Tom Corbett!), looks good next to one of our closest neighbors. It’s not all that easy to do when New York and Maryland are also close neighbors but we can always point to WV and say, hey! At least we’re not WV!

  12. 12.

    Belafon

    @Baud: Which will be very hard to win unless companies regularly release some chemicals. The Patriot is just starting the trend.

  22. 22.

    gbear

    @Baud: The real pisser is that they were all up-to-date with their lunch payments. Good luck getting a refund on that money.

  23. 23.

    Poopyman

    There’s a Newsmax headline over there:

    The 2 Warning Signs of Sudden Cardiac Death

    OK, number one is sudden death. Do we really need a number 2? Not clicking to find out.

  25. 25.

    Poopyman

    @Poopyman: Also too:

    Ruddy: Liberal Intolerance Gone Wild

    This is the second time I’ve seen them reference “Ruddy”. Are they talking about Giuliani?

  30. 30.

    Fuzzy

    I’m waiting for a fracking pump to be built like a crucifix with a guy in a hardhat nailed to it.

  31. 31.

    Poopyman

    @srv: Hmmm. A metals treatment company. Plants in Southern Ohio and Louisiana. Given the way the Jesusy plants in WV are doing I think I’d be selling my Calvary stock if I had any. I think Jesus is annoyed.

  32. 32.

    jl

    @Baud:

    ” Trinity Amalgamated Chemical Company”

    Dude, that could be something ATOMIC! You see that run, especially if they start setting up towers.

  33. 33.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Garbo:

    It’s back up now, and the headline is

    ‘I didn’t mean to kill, it just worked out that way’

    which I think would make a fine rotating tag for this blog.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @gbear

    Divine International.

    Too drag queeny.

    (Still an example of bitter irony that he died just on the cusp of achieving broad popular audience notice, having been cast to play Peg Bundy’s mother.)

  37. 37.

    JPL

    @raven: One of my sons is working at the weather channel. He left work at six and has to be back at eleven. You could have more ice than I do or at least it’s wishful thinking on my part. My house has those fake gas logs which do nothing for heat but I have blankets so all is good.

  38. 38.

    shelly

    OT: CNN.com is down. Dare we hope they have closed shop in shame?

    If only. Just saw Kristol’s smarmy mug (please, not at dinner-time). Saying that Christie’s problems are just Democrats so desperate to distract from the disaster of Obamacare and….yadda..yadda…

  43. 43.

    MomSense

    I think I’m having my own water emergency right now. Just heard 10 year old yell from the kitchen “mom the sink is doing something really weird”.

  44. 44.

    Litlebritdiftrnt

    @JPL:
    We got a good two inches of freezing rain and then two inches of snow on top of that. I do not think that the storm was as bad as the one last week but I do not think I will be going to work tomorrow.

  46. 46.

    sherparick

    I am wondering if the West Virginia political climate has shifted a bit, or do they think all chemical spills and coal ash overflows is “God’s Judgement” on the gays getting married. I do think the biggest reason for West Virginia’s retrograde movement the last 30 years is the decline of the big industrial unions which use to dominate the steel mills along the Ohio and the chemical plants along the Kanawha. I do hope that these Environmental catastrophes is slowing the descent into full Tea Partyism.

  47. 47.

    gogol's wife

    Okay, this seems to have turned into an open thread, so — Here’s Shirley singing Robert Young and Arthur Treacher to sleep in Stowaway with the beautiful Mack Gordon – Harry Revel song “Goodnight, my love” (recorded later by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4FOpSQKP_E

    Rest in peace, dear Shirley.

  48. 48.

    max

    A brief interlude:

    There are two kinds of people in the world, those who are assholes and those who aren’t. Okay, that’s not really true. None of us are perfect and we all have a bit of asshole in us, but I continue to be surprised by just how horrible some people can be. Sure, we all have our moments, but it’s the people who are assholes on a sustained continuous basis that I can’t quite comprehend. You know, the people who spend decades scamming the elderly out of their Social Security checks, or send teenagers to jail for kickbacks.

    The top four headlines on Rawstory right now:

    Ann Coulter: Obama acts like he’s from Kenya — and weed is a ‘legal retard pill’
    ‘Loud music’ shooter cries about puppy on stand, says he ordered pizza after killing
    Idaho cop shoots disabled man’s service dog at son’s 9th birthday party
    Ex-Navy chaplain: Sin forces gay soldiers to wear diapers in combat

    Some people are just ideologically committed to being assholes.

    Back in the day, you could talk to one of those hard core committed American Stalinists (there were a few – not many, but a few) and they all talked like crazy people too. And they’d tell you that they were ideologically committed to murderous totalitarians on account that was the only way to purify the world.

    Well. OOOOhhhhhhhhhh-KKKKKaaaayyyyy, dude.

    max
    [‘Zampolitan,/em>, purge thyself.’]

  49. 49.

    JPL

    @Litlebritdiftrnt: uhoh.. That’s the first wave. Tomorrow is suppose to be the real storm. My sil lives in North Georgia on a higher elevation than I, and had 4 inches of snow. The danger for her is power outages because she is all electric. At least I have a gas stove.

  53. 53.

    raven

    @JPL: Yea, we’re 100 yards from a Georgia Power substation so we’re counting on that. I have a full tank of LP for the gas weber and plenty of chow. FIDO.

  54. 54.

    Suffern ACE

    @shelly: It is going to be all Obamacare all the time, no matter what the event is, until the election. It is 2014’s version of “Obamacare” without the garbage bags of beheaded people found in the Arizona deserts.

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodinger’s cat: Ten times a month, huh? The data in the study came from this:
    Wave II of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) (Sweet and Bumpass 1996). Sweet and Bumpass? Really?

  57. 57.

    Suffern ACE

    @Omnes Omnibus: Dude, kids can be cruel. Do you know how much crap Mary Bumpass took in highschool, and here you go bringing up those memories again on this blog.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Poopyman:

    No, it’s an idiot “journalist” who was one of the people jumping up and down and screaming about Whitewater and Mena back in the 90’s.

    He’s a sack of rancid pigshit. Fuck him.

    Yes, I’m intolerant of rancid sacks of pigshit. Why do you ask?

  73. 73.

    raven

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Mrs Claypool, Mr. Gottlieb;
    Mr Gottlieb, Mrs Claypool;
    Mrs Claypool, Mr Gottlieb;
    Mr Gottlieb, Mrs Claypool!
    If you four people want to play bridge, don’t mind me, go right ahead.

  75. 75.

    Baud

    Via Guardian.

    When British forces pull down the union flag for the last time in Afghanistan this year, it will be a hugely symbolic moment. It is not just that the departure marks the end of 13 years of British involvement in combat in that troubled country. The surprise is that it could also signal the end of a century or more of unbroken warfare by British forces.

    Next year is shaping up as the first since at least 1914 that British soldiers, sailors and air crews will not be engaged in fighting somewhere – the first time Britain is totally at peace with the rest of the world.

  77. 77.

    Litlebritdiftrnt

    @JPL:

    Thank the FSM that I have a wood burning fireplace, and a gas powered generator should things get really bad. We no longer have central heating and air since I decided it was a waste of money, but thanks to my fireplace the house is completely and utterly toasty warm tonight. In fact I am seriously thinking about shedding some clothes seeing as it is so warm in here.

  79. 79.

    Suffern ACE

    @Baud: Have we had a year off since, I don’t know – Panama? lebanon? Did we manage to not send the Marines in for a coup for a few years under Carter?

  85. 85.

    pseudonymous in nc

    America, Fuck Yeah! Industries announces a five-year contract to pipe coal sludge directly into school canteen water supplies, a move that will provide West Virginia with one job.

  87. 87.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    Some bulky things were shoved into the garbage disposal causing rumbling, vibrations, and loud noises. This was followed by a sort of volcano of food waste and a panicked attempt to hide the evidence with exuberant use of the sprayer. Oh and then mopping!

  89. 89.

    seaboogie

    I’m going with God Co. Can do anything I want, and get all of the credit and none of the blame – omnipotent and untouchable – suwhhhhhhhheeeeeeetttt!

    (Though if billing a conservative Jewish client, spelling will be G-d Co.)

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    On “settling”: When I was single, I told people I was holding out for a straight man who liked Sense and Sensibility (the Ang Lee movie, not the novel). People told me I was nuts.

    And yet here we are, almost 14 years later. Sure, he would drop me in a heartbeat if Emma Thompson ever showed up on our doorstep and offered to run away with him to the Casbah, but what are the odds of that happening?

  93. 93.

    Missouri Buckeye

    I resolve to never do business with any company in the future that has “Patriot” or “Freedom” in their name.

    It’s just like not trusting any business that prominently displays a Jesus fish.

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