Tuesday Reads
Posted: April 5, 2011 Filed under: Environment, Foreign Affairs, Japan, Libya, MENA, toxic waste, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics 25 Comments
What's with all the bad news?
Good Morning, politics junkies! Let’s get right to the news.
The best news as far as I’m concerned is that Eman al-Obeidi is still alive and still telling her story. I was so afraid she would be killed if she refused to recant. Read all about it in Wonk the Vote’s late night post from last night.
This story made me laugh out loud. Awhile back, Maine’s right wing tea party nut Governor ordered that a mural that celebrates Maine’s labor history be removed from the Labor Department building. The Governor thinks it’s unfair that the mural didn’t celebrate the bosses along with the workers.
So the mural was removed, but it turns out it had been paid for by a Federal government grant and the feds now want their money back.
Whoops: The governor of Maine’s decision to remove a pro-labor mural from the state’s Department of Labor may cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, all because he wanted to “send a message.”
Apparently unknown to Maine’s recently elected Republican governor, the mural targeted by his ire was initially paid for by a federal grant — the terms of which he violated by having it removed.
And now, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Labor has officially demanded reimbursement.
The grant, awarded in 2008 to pay for the 37-foot-long mural, fulfilled 63 percent of the $60,000 historical art project.
If the state decides against putting it back up, they’ll be forced to repay 63 percent of the mural’s fair market value, which has likely gone up since it became a centerpiece in Republicans’ battle against workers.
Bwaaaahahahahahahaha!!
That world famous right wing nut tea party Governor in Wisconsin’s antics are still making news. It seems Scott Walker, who thinks school teachers are overpaid, is not as worried about saving money when it comes to pleasing wealthy donors.
Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.
Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.
So how did this kid get his big-time job?
His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year’s governor’s race.
The group’s political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor’s successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker’s campaign over the past two years.
Total donations: $121,652.
According the The Hill, 41 senators have committed to filibuster any spending bill that defunds Planned Parenthood.
The group, led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), includes thirty-nine Democratic senators and two Independents, Sens. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.).
It’s just large enough to sustain a filibuster to block any spending bill that cuts Planned Parenthood funding from passing the upper chamber.
Let’s hope they stick to their guns this time. Frankly, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m not sure how many of the people who object to the UN approval of intervention in Libya realize that the UN has had troops in the Ivory Coast for awhile now. Today UN helicopters
attacked President Laurent Gbagbo’s forces in Ivory Coast, destroying their weapons at four places where they had been shelling civilians, a UN spokesman said.
The helicopters fired four missiles at a Gbagbo military camp in the main city of Abidjan, witnesses told Reuters. “We saw two UN MI-24 helicopters fire missiles on the Akouedo military camp. There was a massive explosion and we can still see the smoke,” one said. The camp is home to three battalions of the Ivorian army.
Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the UN mission in Ivory Coast, said in an email: “We launched an operation to neutralise heavy weapons Gbagbo’s special forces have been using against the civilian population for the last three months. We destroyed them in four locations.”
The French are helping out too. Of course the massacres have already happened there….
The BBC is reporting that the presidential residence in Abidhan has been “taken.”
Forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the country’s internationally recognised president, said they had taken the building after a day of fierce combat.
A spokesman for Mr Ouattara, Patrick Achi, told the BBC it was not yet clear whether Mr Gbagbo had been inside.
Earlier, UN and French helicopters attacked targets near the residence.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the attacks were ordered to defend civilians and were not a declaration of war on Mr Gbagbo.
Hmmmm…protecting civilians…”not a war.” That sounds familiar somehow. Nahhh, I must be imagining it.
Yesterday the Daily Mail reported that two of Gaddafi’s sons have offered to “get rid of their father” if Saif can take over for him.
The opposition forces won’t accept that, but there are definitely negotiations going on to remove Gaddafi. The UK has announced that any defectors from Gaddafi’s regime will be treated fairly, and Scottish authories are meeting with defector Moussa Koussa regarding the Lockerbie bombing.
In Japan, Tepco is dumping highly radioactive water directly into the ocean.
Tepco began discharging 11,500 tons of water yesterday, enough to fill 4 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools, to make room to store more highly contaminated fluids. The United Nations nuclear watchdog said the partial meltdown at the station was a result of “errors” from the time a March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out pumps used to cool reactors and spent fuel.
Meanwhile, even more toxic water is still leaking from damaged reactor core. What a mess!
That’s about it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Charlie Cook sees warning signs that public opinion is turning against the GOP.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/off-to-the-races/warning-signs-among-the-gop-20110404
Great round up!
This all works out beautifully for the top 1%. Bush gives way to Obama..Obama golfs and hands over trillions to Wall St.
Americans are offered only the tea party for a political expression of oppostion in the mid terms. Then once a goodly amount of tea party hardy people are in, they trash the system and the crazies are let loose. All making Obama seem less horrible just in time for 2012.
All canned, set up before and in the bag…no wonder campaign ennui is seen as his biggest problem for 2012…I expect him to be declared President for life in 2016 simply because the over lords can no longer be bothered with the campaign kabiki.
They’ll say ” we’re broke!”
Perfect summation of the Elite strategy!!
Sadly too true, paperdoll. We’re being snookered all over again with the shadow dancing. I don’t see anything changing regardless of who takes the WH. It’s nothing more than a pathetic spectacle to keep the public in line for another election cycle.
And the band plays on.
There has to be a third way. Republicans aren’t even reasonable any more and the Democratic Party seems completely disconnected from its voters. I’m tired of them just being the less horrible choice. I think Rachel Maddow said it well last night when she said only a Democratic President would completely break a campaign pledge that insults the base(re Guantanamo and military tribunals) and announce re-election at the same time. The Republicans are obsessed with their crazies. The Democrats don’t pay any attention to any one but their narrow interests and deal making. It’s completely depressing.
If things don’t change, there will be violence and it will be said it came from those on the street…but the violence
will have started well before…the social violence being done now by the insane greed of the top 1%
Americans are going to need a new word to describe their condition: adapt.
That’s right, learn to adapt to the taste of oil and the pollutions we breathe because it is far better to protect those little unwanted embryos and assure the rich that there is nothing obscene about buying another gazillion dollar home they can visit for a few weeks each year.
As for me, still trying to decide if I prefer dry over wet catfood when stocking up on my food supplies. Decisions, decisions.
lolsob
I feel more we’re all treading in the cesspool they’ve created by empowering the worst of their political bases.
House GOP’s ‘Radical’ Plan For Medicare, Medicaid:
Basically, this puts seniors straight into the lion’s den. It forces them into private insurance and you know how bad our system is now. We’d go to worse than third world coverage with this plan. The Republicans keep redistributing income to the richest. They avoid taxes and the poor and middle class can’t.
The GOP is all over the dial this morning feeding us the same crapola we have heard for the last two years. Had to turn it off before my head explodes. But this is basically what they are saying:
1. We have to reduce the debt and the only way to achieve this is by placing the “shared experience” on the backs of the poor and needy.
2. Private accounts are the only way to go since the government can no longer afford to offer a helping hand to the greedy guts amongst us “who live off the tit” of these programs.
3. The extension of the Bush tax cuts has shown a decrease in unemployment claims which exemplifies the “job creation” they expected to occur upon passage. (WTF?)
4. Social Security is going broke as the Boomers are now in line to collect so we must correct this now. (Another WTF? from me.)
You get the point. So far I have yet to hear or see on Dem being interviewed this morning to deliver an opposing POV but the day is young.
And where is President Indifferent today? Not sure but he could be practicing for his latest round of capitulation that is about to take place because Mike Pence has “threatened” to close down the government if he does not get his way.
Where did I leave my Advil?
Better stock up on that stuff, Pat. The 2012 election campaign is likely to be headache-inducing.
I guess their hero Ronald Reagan didn’t do such a good job if Social Security is still in ‘trouble’. NOT!
I follow Karl Rove on Twitter. Know thy enemy. Just saw a picture of him and a table of white men and, of course, 2 women sitting in back of room. I suppose to get coffee or take notes. One only needs to see this to know what these people are all about. And to think this picture was posted!
Here is link for that picture.
http://twitpic.com/4h8bu3
Too much!
I spoke too soon. Thanks!
I see only one woman. Is the person back in the corner by the flag a woman too? I wonder who all those people are?
They’re probably trying to figure out how to get the Tea Party nut jobs back into the box. Funny thing, once you unleash things like the Southern Strategy, you have to fear the crazies you let out of bedlam. I think people like Rove live in fear that Huckabee or Bachmann will be their candidate. They want those people to show up at the polls and vote in their establishment Republicans. They’re not supposed to actually get their way and show up on TV to scare the independents away.
Do you have a link? I follow Rove on twitter too, but I rarely see much interesting stuff from him.
Apparently the UN “war” in Ivory Coast worked. Gbagbo to step down.
Sounds a lot like the UN resolution on Libya. Maybe Hillary knew what she was doing after all?
Speaking of wars: Wanna know how many tax dollars are going over to those sinkholes in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Maybe we should get a social security calculator and a medicare calculator to figure out the total amount of premiums we have paid in over the years and demand our money back.
Just don’t put it in the stock market. You’d have been better burying in the ground than putting it there recently.
We don’t have anything in stocks right now. I pulled the tsp out of stocks right before the last crisis. Put some back in afterward and pulled it out again.
The stock market is a puff of smoke and mirrors.
Equities are due for another correction. They’re totally running on vapors now. There’s no there there. The improved bottom lines are coming from not hiring and low inventories with a little increased demand. Plus, Wall Street’s trying to force momentum again by shuffling stocks between subsidiaries while churning fees. The only stock I’ve bought recently was Ford Stock about 2 years ago March at $1.60. I wouldn’t buy a finance industry stock if some one threatened my life. They’re just doing a repeat and the first bill isn’t even paid yet. I will admit to investing in bonds from places like South Korea. I’ve totally bailed to ASEAN for the most part. They don’t have insane Republicans there that seem to want to bring on the end times for every one else. I’ve got money in Indonesia which means I trust an Islamic Democracy over the brand of crazy we have going on here now.