Late Night: Interesting Juxtapositions
Posted: April 22, 2011 Filed under: Barack Obama, Surreality, torture, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: 9/11, Barack Obama, Bradley Manning, Charles Manson, Chernobyl, FBI, first responders, Ground Zero, liqudators, Richard Nixon, terrorist watch list, the media, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks 9 CommentsFIRST JUXTAPOSITION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST
First responders at Ground Zero in NYC
Huffington Post reported today that a little-known amendment in the new 9/11 health bill requires anyone who applies for benefits to be checked by the FBI to make sure they’re not terrorists.
The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.
Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment for the numerous, worsening ailments that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law was passed to address.
It’s a requirement that was tacked onto the law during the bitter debates over it last year.
The letter from Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, informs medical providers and administrators that they should begin letting patients know before the new program kicks in this July.
Yes, the people who risked their lives and their health to help after 9/11 will be treated like suspected terrorists by their government.
"Liquidators" clean up after Chernobyl explosion
From Voice of America: Chernobyl’s Cleanup Crew Pay a Steep Price, 25 Years On
On April 26, 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant caught fire and exploded, sending radioactive debris high into the sky. Aleksey Breus was an engineer at Chernobyl at the time of the explosion. He worked four straight days inside the plant after the explosion. He wore protective equipment, but still received a large dose of radiation.
According to Breus, all “lucheviki” – the Russian word surviving cleanup workers use for describing one another – have been left with one thing in common: illness and a lack of money to pay for medications. He says virtually all of them live in poverty.
Another Chernobyl worker, Aleksander Kramer, says he was one of the first to go into the plant after the explosion. Kramer, who now lives in Germany, remains angry at how he was treated by authorities in what was then the Soviet Union. From the very beginning, he says, the authorities doubted those claiming they were part of the clean-up effort.
And the suspicions have lingered. In 1993, Kramer says former rescue workers had to prove to Ukranian authorities “that their documents were not a sham and that their health problems were real.”
Remember when we were told over and over again that the United States was morally superior to the Soviet Union? What’s the difference again?
SECOND JUXTAPOSITION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Time Magazine, 1970: President Richard Nixon tells the media that Charles Manson (then on trial in Los Angeles) is guilty.
Nixon had just come from a ten-day working holiday in San Clemente, where he found himself angered by the coverage given the Manson case in the local media. Many of the young, Nixon said in Denver, “tend to glorify and to make heroes out of those who engage in criminal activities.”
In Los Angeles, the effect of Nixon’s remarks on the Manson trial was instant and dramatic. While the Los Angeles Times came out the same afternoon with a four-inch headline reading MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES, Judge Charles Older went to great lengths to ensure that the jury, which has been sequestered since the trial began, would not learn of Nixon’s remarks. The windows of the jury bus were whited over with Bon Ami so that no juror could glimpse the headline on street newsstands. If the jury discovered Nixon’s verdict, the defense might have grounds for a mistrial.
Remember when Americans (and the media) cared when the President did something wrong?
WL Central, April 22, 2011: President Obama tells protestors that Bradley Manning “broke the law.”
Transcript and comments from WL Central:
“People can have philosophical ideas about certain things,” President Obama explains. “But, look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on open source.” He then goes on to add that he has to abide by certain classified information rules or law and if he had released material like Manning did he’d be breaking the law.
Now, here is the remark that deserves the most attention: “We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our decisions about how the laws operate.” He adds, “He broke the law.” Finally, before removing himself from the conversation, he says Manning “dumped” information and “it wasn’t the same thing” as what Daniel Ellsberg did because what Ellsberg leaked “wasn’t classified in the same way.”
First, President Obama says Bradley Manning did it. It is not entirely clear that he did it unless you solely rely on the chat logs published by Wired magazine. Manning is the alleged whistleblower in the case. And, displaying this attitude that he is guilty before he actually is put on trial and convicted may prejudice Manning’s case.
That’s if Mr. Obama ever allows Bradley Manning’s case to go to trial. When is that going to happen? And when will today’s media be as outraged by Obama’s irresponsible remarks as the media of 1970 was at Nixon’s?
Thursday Reads: Crazy Republicans, Nuclear Meltdowns, MLB Follies, and More
Posted: April 21, 2011 Filed under: Gulf Oil Spill, net-neutrality, Psychopaths in charge, the internet, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, bible, Boston Red Sox, BP Oil Gusher, Charles Manson, Eric Cantor, Frank McCourt, Fukushima nuclear plant, Gulf Of Mexico, JoAnne Kloppenburg, Kindle, LA Dogers, Major League Baseball, meltdown, net neutrality, public libraries, stupid Republicans, U.S. debt ceiling, Wall Street, wetlands. Louisiana, Wisconsin 62 Comments
Good Morning!!
According to Politico, Republicans are escalating their game of chicken with demands they want met before they agree to raise the debt limit.
One day after being named to a presidential task force to negotiate deficit reduction, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor fired off a stark warning to Democrats that the GOP “will not grant their request for a debt limit increase” without major spending cuts or budget process reforms.
The Virginia Republican’s missive is a clear escalation in the long-running Washington spending war, with no less than the full faith and credit of the United States hanging in the balance.
Wait a minute…Obama put ERIC CANTOR on a deficit task force??!! Okay, the joke’s over. This guy cannot legitimately run on a Democratic ticket in 2012.
Cantor says he’s ready to plunge the nation into default if the GOP’s demands are not met. People close to Cantor say that he hopes to make clear that small concessions from Democrats, including President Barack Obama, will not be enough to deliver the GOP on a debt increase….
Republicans are floating a wide range of major structural reforms that could be attached to the debt limit vote, including statutory spending caps, a balanced budget amendment and a two-thirds vote requirement for tax increases and debt limit increases.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has finally admitted that nuclear fuel in reactors 1, 2, and 3 has melted. From reading the article, it isn’t exactly clear what has happened, but I still detect efforts to minimize the damage. There’s a little more detail in an article from the Irish Times:
The head of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, Takashi Sawada, said yesterday that fuel rods in reactors 1 and 3 have melted and settled at the bottom of their containment vessels, confirming fears that the plant suffered a partial meltdown after last month’s huge earthquake and tsunami.
Engineers have been struggling since to bring four reactors under control by pouring water onto overheating nuclear fuel, and that water is highly contaminated as a result. Mr Sawada warned the condition of the plant could worsen if another strong quake knocks out power to its cooling systems.
“That would destabilise pressure and temperatures inside the reactors and the situation would become extremely unpredictable again,” he said.
The story also says that there was an aftershock yesterday centered around 25 miles from the plant.
All the news outlets are covering the BP oil gusher and the damage it has done to the Gulf, because yesterday was the anniversary of the explosion that killed 11 oil rig workers. Don’t worry, they’ll drop the subject like a hot potato in a couple of days. Here’s an article from the NYT.
Even in the worst days of the BP spill, coastal advocates were looking past the immediate emergency to what the president’s oil spill commission called “the central question from the recovery of the spill — can or should such a major pollution event steer political energy, human resources and funding into solutions for a continuing systemic tragedy?”
That tragedy is the ill and declining health of the Gulf of Mexico, including the enormous dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi and the alarmingly rapid disappearance of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, roughly 2,000 square miles smaller than they were 80 years ago. Few here would take issue with the commission’s question, but the answer to it is far from resolved.
Eclipsed by the spill’s uncertain environmental impact is the other fallout: the vast sums in penalties and fines BP will have to pay to the federal government. In addition to criminal fines and restitution, BP is facing civil liabilities that fall roughly into two categories: Clean Water Act penalties and claims from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process, whereby state and federal agencies tally the damage caused by the spill and put a price tag on it. This could add up to billions, perhaps tens of billions, of dollars.
Awwww, gee. Poor BP. It sounds like the writer feels sorry for them.
In Wisconsin, JoAnne Kloppenburg has asked for a recount in the race for the state supreme court.
JoAnne Kloppenburg arrived at the state Government Accountability Board’s office in Madison barely an hour before the 5 p.m. local time deadline by which she had to ask for a recount or concede defeat. According to the vote count finalized by the state last week, she trails Justice David Prosser by 7,316 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast in the April 5 election.
“Today, my campaign is asking the Government Accountability Board to conduct a statewide recount,” Kloppenburg said at a news conference. The announcement was met with applause and cheers of “thank you.” She’s requesting the recount “in part to determine what the proper outcome of the election will be and to ensure that elections form this point forward will be fair.
“I do not make this decision lightly … I have weighed the options and I have considered the facts,” Kloppenburg, currently an assistant state attorney general, said. The tight margin — small enough to trigger a provision allowing the state to pay for the recount process — means that “the importance of every vote is magnified and doubts about every vote are magnified as well,” she said.
And in silly Republican news, eight Wisconsin doctorswho wrote excuses for protesting teachers are being investigated.
The state Department of Regulation and Licensing and the Medical Examining Board said Wednesday that they had opened investigations into eight individuals who allegedly wrote doctor excuse notes for protesters at the state Capitol during rallies in February.
Last month, the Department of Regulation and Licensing said it had identified 11 people who may have provided the medical excuses, and it asked them to submit information about their activities at the Capitol.
Three members of the Medical Examining Board reviewed the information and decided to open investigations on eight of the 11, according to a department news release.
The eight being investigated are all licensed physicians, department spokesman David Carlson said.
Are Wisconsin taxpayers going to have to pay for this silliness? How ridiculous.
As a Kindle owner, I’m excited about this news. Amazon’s Kindle Will Offer E-Books From Libraries
Bookworms who own Amazon.com Inc.’s popular Kindle electronic reader will finally be able to borrow digital books from public libraries….
The move is likely to have major repercussions for public libraries and the digital-reading market generally, since Amazon currently dominates the e-book industry and its actions in the space are closely watched. There are an estimated 7.5 million Kindles in the U.S., which gives Amazon a two-thirds share of the $1 billion digital-book market, said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey.
Many major public libraries, including those in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, offer free digital-book lending. A physical trip to the library isn’t required. Instead, library-card holders can download books from library websites. Each library sets its own digital-book lending policy, but typical lending periods are 14 or 21 days.
Major League Baseball has seized the LA Dodgers and will now control day-to-day operations for the team. Owner Frank McCourt is having financial problems.
The move was prompted by a number of issues surrounding the Dodgers, including owner Frank McCourt’s recent receipt of $30-million personal loan to meet payroll and the parking-lot attack at Dodger Stadium on March 31 that left a San Francisco Giants fan in a coma, according to a league source.
“This has been like watching a soap opera unfold,” said Gary Toebben, the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “We want a financially solvent Dodgers. We want a winning team.”
The league will now have approval rights over every significant expenditure by the team, including a trade or contract extension. This will likely put the franchise on the path to being sold.
The commissioner’s move adds to the turmoil surrounding a team already embroiled in divorce proceedings between McCourt and his wife, Jamie, who is seeking joint ownership.
McCourt tried to buy the Red Sox back when the the former owner died. Thank goodness he didn’t succeed in buying the team–they probably never would have beat the curse and won the World Series twice.
Some nutty right wing talk show host says the Bible forbids net neutrality.
The idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally is against the teachings of the Bible and America’s Founding Fathers, according to evangelical Christian minister and political activist David Barton.
During his radio show on Tuesday, he said that net neutrality violated the Biblical principle of free markets, a principle upheld by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
“That is part of the reason we have prosperity,” Barton said. “This is what the Pilgrims brought in, the Puritans brought in, this is free market mentality. Net neutrality sounds really good, but it is socialism on the Internet.”
“This is really, I’m going to use the word wicked stuff, and I don’t use that word very often, but this is wicked stuff,” he added.
Well that settles it then!
Monday was the 40th anniversary of Charles Manson’s conviction, so some media types decided to give him an opportunity to spout a bunch on nonsense. Manson’s new lawyer has asked the president to let the maniac out of prison, but Manson ruined his chances by giving his honest opinion of Obama.
Manson, 76, called Obama foolish in reference to Wall Street, saying he considered the president “a slave of Wall Street.”
“He doesn’t realize what they are doing. They are playing with him,” he said, according to the magazine.
Bla, bla, bla … so what else is new?
That’s about it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?
Late Night: FEC Investigating Obama’s 2008 Fundraising
Posted: April 16, 2011 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, campaign donations, FEC violations, money, The Kingsmen 8 Comments
Individuals familiar with the [Obama 2012] campaign told Roll Call Friday that the FEC has been investigating the financial records of Obama’s previous campaign. The scope of the probe, which began approximately two years ago, is unknown. Presidential audits typically take years to complete and can cost millions of dollars….
The FEC was not required to audit the president’s campaign because Obama chose not to accept $84 million in federal funds following the Democratic National Convention in 2008….The potential for the FEC’s audit became increasingly more likely as the FEC questioned some of Obama campaign filings. In all, the FEC wrote 26 letters to Obama for America warning the campaign that if it did not adequately respond to the agency’s questions that it “could result in an audit or enforcement action.”
These letters totaled more than 1,500 pages of questions and data that outlined compliance concerns — including the longest one ever sent to a presidential candidate.
The article says that the Obama campaign has spent millions on legal fees since 2008 and has had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Treasury department because of “unverifiable contributors.”
Like me, you may recall stories about how the Obama campaign had disabled software that would catch people who had already given the maximum or people who were using false identities. I located this relevant article from the October 9, 2008 LA Times.
Barack Obama’s money machine is fueled by the likes of Martha Murphy, a grandmother who has donated 104 times for a total of $2,475.34.
Murphy has used her credit card to donate in amounts as small as $10. “It is amazing how it adds up,” she said.
The Democratic candidate’s donors also include “Derty Poiiuy,” an individual with a scatological sense of humor who has given $950. “Mong Kong” has contributed $1,065 and lists an address in a nonexistent city. “Fornari USA” gave $800 and listed the address of an apparel store of that name near San Francisco.
The Republican National Committee filed a federal complaint this week, alleging that some of Obama’s small donations are illegal because they come from foreign nationals or exceed the limit.
Obama’s contributions have also exposed a loophole in the law, which does not require disclosure of the identities of donors who give $200 or less, making it impossible to determine whether they are legitimate without a federal audit.
I realize nothing will probably come of this, but it would be nice if it at least got enough play to be embarrassing for Obama’s campaign staff. I really don’t think Obama himself is capable of guilt or shame.
CBO Analysis: Budget Deal Cuts 2011 Spending by $352 Million, not $39 Billion
Posted: April 14, 2011 Filed under: Barack Obama, Economy, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: Barack Obama, Congressional Budget Office, government shutdown, John Boehner, lying liars 15 Comments
Boehner and Obama agree to pacify the proles with lies
This is hilarious. From the National Journal:
A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the fiscal 2011 spending deal that Congress will vote on Thursday concludes that it would cut spending this year by less than one-one hundredth of what both Republicans or Democrats have claimed.
A comparison prepared by the CBO shows that the omnibus spending bill, advertised as containing some $38.5 billion in cuts, will only reduce federal outlays by $352 million below 2010 spending rates. The nonpartisan budget agency also projects that total outlays are actually some $3.3 billion more than in 2010, if emergency spending is included in the total.
The astonishing result, according to CBO, is the result of several factors: increases in spending included in the deal, especially at the Defense Department; decisions to draw over half of the savings from recissions, cuts to reserve funds, and mandatory-spending programs; and writing off cuts from funding that might never have been spent.
According to Fox News, Congress is in a uproar about it.
Liberal Democrats remain opposed to the plan because of its trims and because of policy points, like its restriction of abortion subsidies, but a rebellion is spreading among conservative members of the House and Senate.
The problem is that in heralding the deal, Obama, Boehner and Reid played up $39 billion in cuts, which were assumed to be for the current fiscal year. But those cuts include some gimmicky accounting and the savings obtained from not tapping reserve funds for programs like Medicaid.
When the CBO crunched the numbers on how the deal would affect the projected $1.65 trillion deficit for this year, the result was a reduction of .02 percent.
So I guess we could still be headed for a shutdown? The House will vote on the bill today.
The real danger zone for the deal would be around 70 Republican defections. That would cast doubt on whether there are enough moderate Democrats [i.e., DINOs] to fill the gap and get to the requisite 217 votes. It would also be nearly a third of the Republican caucus in opposition, a weak showing for the GOP ahead of the even bigger battle over Obama’s request for an increase to the government’s $14.3 trillion borrowing limit.
Bond buyers will be watching for major fractures here. If the House GOP is in a riot, watch U.S. debt prices start to climb.
We are so f’d.
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