One person's plea for sanity and the continuation of the human race in an insane world.
posted by rich at 7:01 PM
Palin wrote an e-mail to friends pretending to be God: ‘Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.’
In a new article in next month’s Vanity Fair by Todd Purdum, former McCain presidential campaign aides unload on former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, calling her a “Little Shop of Horrors,” a “diva,” and a “whack job.” The exposé also reveals that Palin, in an e-mail to her friends announcing the birth of her baby Trig, pretended to play God:
When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”
Also, Purdum reports that Palin lied about not having insurance to show “she could empathize with uninsured Americans.” Palin insisted that in her early years of marriage, she and husband Todd did not have coverage, when in fact they had catastrophic coverage. Palin “insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed.”
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AP Newsbreak: SC gov 'crossed lines' with women
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that he "crossed lines" with a handful of women other than his mistress — but never had sex with them. The governor said he "never crossed the ultimate line" with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has derailed his once-promising political career.
"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."
During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his wife.
He said that during the encounters with other women he "let his guard down" with some physical contact but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail.
Sanford said the casual encounters happened outside the U.S. while he was married but before he met Chapur, on trips to "blow off steam" with male friends.
posted by rich at 1:01 PM
Minn. court rules for Franken in Senate fight
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race. The high court rejected a legal challenge from Republican Norm Coleman, whose options for regaining the Senate seat are dwindling.
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It's all over but that won't necessarily stop the repugs from continuing their obstruction of a legally elected member of the Senate.
Hopefully, Minn. will eventually get the representation they are entitled to.
Update - per Think Progress, Coleman has conceded! And it only took him 8 months!
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Iraqis rejoice as U.S. troops leave Baghdad
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. troops pulled out of Baghdad on Monday, triggering jubilation among Iraqis hopeful that foreign military occupation is ending six years after the invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.
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Joe The Plumber Suggests Lynching Chris DoddSamuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher, better known as "Joe the Plumber," has had his fifteen minutes of fame during the 2008 election and was widely expected to disappear when the candidate who brought him into the spotlight lost. But he's still a star in conservative circles -- and still saying some odd, hostile things. At an event Thursday for the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity (one of the lead organizations behind the Tax Day Tea Parties), Wurzelbacher suggested Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) should be lynched.
Wurzelbacher has a reputation for being a blunt, politically incorrect speaker. Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, "Why hasn't he been strung up?"Wurzelbacher appeared at a Tea Party in Michigan on April 15, where he claimed that he and other protesters were wrong labeled as extremists.
"I'm here for one reason and one reason only: It's 'I love America,'" Wurzelbacher told the crowd. "Mainstream media wants to paint us as a bunch of extremists, right? We're in search of liberty and our freedoms. What's so extreme about that?" [...]"Let me give you another extremist view, 'In God We Trust,'" he said to wild applause. "Say that too loud in some parts of America and you will be shot. It's terrible." "'In God We Trust' ... too loud in some parts of America and you will be shot."
(Huffington Post)
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Rep. Broun receives applause on the House floor for calling global warming a ‘hoax.’During the floor debate this morning over the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) received a round of applause from GOP colleagues when he claimed that man-made global warming is a “hoax” with “no scientific consensus.” Broun, citing misleading statistics, also claimed that the bill would hurt the poor and “kill jobs:”
---BROUN: Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus. … And who’s going to be hurt most [by ACES] the poor, the people on limited income…the people who can least afford to have their energy taxes raised by MIT says $3100 per family. … This bill must be defeated. We need to be good stewards of our environment, but this is not it, it’s a hoax! … [APPLAUSE.]
Broun’s tired hoax claims aside, Broun’s $3,100 talking point is contradicted by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that that the average cost of the legislation would be only 48-cents a day, the price of a postage stamp, and that “households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020.” A report by the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts also found that the bill would create 1.7 million new jobs, including 59,000 new jobs in Broun’s homestate of Georgia.
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Maryland GOP group distances itself from letter comparing Obama to Hitler: We ‘never approved it.’As former TP editor Judd Legum reported earlier this week, the website of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County — “one of Maryland’s most prominent Republican organizations” — prominently featured a letter from RWAAC President Joyce Thomann that compared Obama to Hitler. “Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view,” she wrote. That letter has now been taken down and replaced with an “urgent message“:
The article put on our web site by Joyce Thomann was done solely by her. Our Board of Directors never saw the article and would never have approved it. We are not in support of Mrs. Thomann’s personal thoughts ot [sic] opinions.
Ms. Thomann’s husband, Charles, told the Baltimore Sun that the letter “wasn’t meant in the way people are taking it.” He conceded that “maybe she wasn’t as artful as she could have been,” but said the main point was still valid: “The methods that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [President] Obama are using to get the socialist view point across, is similar to what Hitlder [sic] did. … I happen to be a history teacher.”
(Think Progress)
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Analysis: Liberals prod Obama on their health billWASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has learned the lessons of Bill Clinton's failed bid to overhaul the nation's health care system. Too well, in fact, say fellow Democrats angry over his refusal to intervene while a conservative proposal advances in the Senate.
Obama says he supports a government-run health insurance program to compete with private insurers, a proposal that is popular with many Americans, especially Democrats. But he is standing by as a watered-down, bipartisan version appears likely to be included in a Senate package.
The president's allies hope it can be strengthened later, or at least accepted by liberals who want a tougher measure. Compromise is essential to every tough political battle, they say, and Obama may prove wise by keeping his options open in a health care debate certain to last for months.
Frustrated liberal activists, however, point to polls showing strong public support for a government-run option that is more robust than the one apparently favored by the Senate Finance Committee. They ask why Democrats, who control the House, Senate and White House, are pushing a version backed by many Republicans.
White House aides say Obama wants to avoid issuing nonnegotiable demands early in the legislative process. He feels Clinton made such a mistake in a failed 1993 bid to revamp the health care system. Obama has made clear that he supports a bona fide public option for health insurance, which critics say is missing from the Senate Finance package, at least for now.
But Obama "wants comprehensive health reform even more," said former Sen. Tom Daschle, who has advised the administration on health care. "He will do all he can to get a public option," Daschle said, "but at the end of the day, the only thing nonnegotiable is success."
Some Democrats, however, feel Obama has over-learned the lessons of 1993 and is bending over too far to attract GOP support in the Senate. Unless he and congressional Democratic leaders agree to strengthen the public insurance provision later in the legislative process, they say, he may regret his hands-off approach.
"No one in this building wants health care reform as much as we do," California Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters in the Capitol this week. However, she said, if a bill "does not include a real and robust public option that lives up to our criteria, then we will fight it with everything that we have."
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President Obama will lose the left if he loses a vibrant "Public Option"It's real simple. If President Obama doesn't include a vibrant public option in health care reform, he will lose the left and will never recover. Is that what he wants? Does he want to be a one-term president? Does he want conservatives and teabaggers to control Congress?
I'm sick and tired of hearing his representatives tell me that Congress is writing the bill. He won a mandate to reform health care. John McCain's plans for health care were rejected by Americans. So why is he involved in a kabuki dance with all the weak-kneed Democrats like Blanche Lincoln, DiFi, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and all the rest of the corporate Dems? And why does Sen. Grassley matter at all? They don't care about American families and what's been happening to them.
Doesn't his team look at the polls? Americans are willing to be taxed for health care reform. What more does he want? There's a 20-point jump in the belief that the government can run health care, which is amazing. The polls aren't lying so what is President Obama doing?
Protests should be breaking out all over America about health care before it's too late. July 4th would have been a great day to have one.
President Obama wants a bill to sign in October. Great. But it has to be a good bill with a vibrant public option or health care will never be reformed and President Obama will see his popularity rise in Republicanland. I'm sure they'll all turn out to vote for him in 2012. The problem is that nobody else will.
(Crooks and Liars)
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This is all too true, even in regards to other policies.
Everyone voted for Obama for some real change and he is backtracking on many of his promises. He still has a chance to come through for America, but if he doesn't then he is going to throw away this huge amount of mainstream support and is going to disappoint everyone.
Of course, as I have always said, he is just a politician, so he has to be watched just like any other poitician, but it doesn't seem like he wants to capitalize on his own mandate.
We'll see...
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Obama talks tougher on Iran violence
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared the United States and the entire world "appalled and outraged" by Iran's violent efforts to crush dissent and for the first time expressed significant doubt about the legitimacy of the national election at the root of the upheaval.
The president suggested that Iran would face consequences for brutally beating back protest, warning that the way the country responds in the days ahead will shape its relationship with other countries, including the United States. He would not specify what any punishment might be.
posted by rich at 12:46 PM
Iran expels 2 British diplomats, refuses new vote
CAIRO – Iran expelled two British diplomats Tuesday after bitterly accusing Britain of meddling and spying. The government also dealt a fresh blow to the opposition by making clear it will not hold a new vote despite charges of fraud.
State TV said hard-line students protested outside the British Embassy in Tehran, where they burned U.S., British and Israeli flags, pelted the building with tomatoes and chanted: "Down with Britain!" and "Down with USA!" Witnesses said about 100 people took part.
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With poll numbers like this, why are Democrats caving?Why bother to have elections if you're not going to use the authority that voters delivered? When a winning campaign is based on the theme of change, then change, dammit. The Democrats want to buckle under to the status quo special interests and win over Republican support. To hell with that folks. Look at the numbers which leave little doubt about which direction Americans want. More on the NYTimes/CBS News poll:The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.The only tricky task is locating a spine either in Congress or the White House. What part of "72% support" are the Democrats missing?
Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.
That paradox was skillfully exploited by opponents of the last failed attempt at overhauling the health system, during former President Bill Clinton’s first term. Sixteen years later, it underscores the tricky task facing lawmakers and President Obama as they try to address the health system’s substantial problems without igniting fears that people could lose what they like.
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Voters weigh in on Obama, Reid, Nevada governor
President, Gibbons now seen less favorablyBoth Gov. Jim Gibbons and President Barack Obama have lost points with Nevada voters in the past month, according to a new Las Vegas Review-Journal poll.
The percentage of Nevada voters who view Obama favorably has dipped below half, with 49 percent now saying they view the new president positively while 32 percent have an unfavorable view.
Asked the same question last month, the president was seen favorably by 55 percent, unfavorably by 30 percent.
Gibbons' favorable mark has declined to just 10 percent, with 57 percent holding a negative view. In May, it was 17 percent favorable, 52 percent unfavorable.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's numbers remained about the same compared to the last poll. His favorable rating dropped 4 points, to 34 percent. But his unfavorable rating also dropped 4 points, to 46 percent.
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McCain: Obama has 'done well' as president so farWASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain says his opponent in last year's presidential campaign, Barack Obama, has "done well" in his first five months in the White House.
The Arizona Republican says that using a legislative scorecard to judge the presidency so far, Obama has achieved all his legislative goals.
On the down side, McCain says that Obama's successes in Congress have come with little or no Republican support.
McCain also is critical of Obama for setting a date for closing the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay without first developing a comprehensive plan for what to do with its prisoners.
And the Arizona senator says Obama should speak out more in support of protesters in Iran.
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I think it's funny that McCain is implying that it is somehow Obama's fault that the repugs are not supporting him in his policies that the American people want to see implemented.
Is it somehow Obama's fault that the repugs are completely out of touch with the rest of us?
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Real Time New Rules June 19, 2009Real Time's New Rules from June 19, 2009. Bill gets an amen from me this week.
Maher: Now people talk a lot about a third political party in America. We don't need a third party. We need a first party. You go to the polls and your choices are the guy who voted for the first Wall Street bailout, or the guy who voted for the next ten. This week we're hearing that a public option for health care is unlikely because it doesn't have the support of enough Democrats. Even Ted Kennedy's plan, Ted Kennedy, yeah, leaves thirty seven million uninsured.
This is because we don't have a left and a right party in this country any more. We have a center right party, and a crazy party. And over the last thirty odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.
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Attorney General Holder reminds Sessions who’s boss.
This morning, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) slammed the Justice Department’s release of Bush-era memos authorizing the use of torture on terrorist suspects, telling Holder that his “predecessor, Judge Mukasey, and Mr. Hayden,” the former Director of National Intelligence, “didn’t approve of that at all.” Holder reminded Sessions that Mukasey and Hayden were no longer in charge:
SESSIONS: Well it was disapproved by your predecessor, Judge Mukasey, and Mr. Hayden, the CIA, um, DIA [sic] director. They didn’t approve of that at all. … You were willing to release matters that the DNI and the Attorney General believe were damaging to our national security.
HOLDER: Well, one attorney general thought that. I am the Attorney General of the United States, and it is this attorney general’s view that the release of that information was appropriate, as well as the president of the United States. I respect their opinion, but I had to make the decision, holding the office that I now hold.
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Obama: ‘I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.’
During an interview with President Obama that aired on CNBC yesterday, chief Washington correspondent John Harwood said, “When you and I spoke in January, you said — I observed that you hadn’t gotten much bad press. You said it’s coming.” Harwood added that since then, Obama still hasn’t received much critical press and wondered if his administration isn’t being “sufficiently held accountable.” Obama, however, disagreed:
OBAMA: It’s very hard for me to swallow that one. First of all, I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration. I mean, you know, that’s a pretty…
HARWOOD: I assume you’re talking about Fox.
OBAMA: Well, that’s a pretty big megaphone. And you’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front.
(Think Progress)
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I think that all of the media has been pretty tough on Obama - sometimes legitimately and sometimes not. But, I don't think that anyone is giving him anything close to the free pass that bush has.
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Intel officials ‘scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.’
After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaked a report warning of the threat of right-wing extremists, mainstream conservatives went into a frenzy, demanding that Secretary Janet Napolitano be fired. According to Newsweek, some local intelligence “fusion” centers ceased their operations monitoring right-wing extremists because of the conservative outcry.
Now, after a series of murders by far-right extremists, intelligence officials admit they are taking the threat seriously:
They may talk about it less in public now, but law-enforcment and intel officials tell NEWSWEEK they’re quietly scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.
Even after last week’s shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Museum, conservatives stood by their criticism of the DHS report — despite the fact that the report specifically warned about white supremacist and anti-Semitic extremists.
posted by rich at 1:03 PM
Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years
After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets.
The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.
"We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure."
Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there's not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn't be reproducing much. It's possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating.
"Microbes have found ways to survive in harsh conditions for long times that we don't yet fully understand," Brenchley told LiveScience.
To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).
The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well. "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."
Such vigor is partially due to the microbe's small size, the scientists speculate. Boasting dimensions that are 10 to 50 times smaller than Escherichia coli, the new bacteria likely could more efficiently absorb nutrients due to a larger surface-to-volume ratio. Tiny microbes like this one can also hide more easily from predators and take up residence among ice crystals and in the thin liquid film on those surfaces.
H. glaciei is not the first bacteria species resurrected after a possibly lengthy snooze
beneath the ice. Loveland-Curtze and her team reported another hardy bacterium in the same area that had survived for about 120,000 years as well. Chryseobacterium greenlandensis had tiny bud-like structures on its surface that may have played a role in the organism's survival. Another bacterium survived more than 32,000 years in an Arctic tunnel, and was brought back to life a few years ago.The harsh conditions endured by these microbes serve as models of other planets.
"These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats," Loveland-Curtze said, referring to the Greenland glacier. "The exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for even millions of years."
And studying such microorganisms may provide insight into what sorts of life forms could survive elsewhere in the solar system.
posted by rich at 12:54 PM
Republicans step up the anti-Obama-speak----
Republicans in Washington are offering up some of the strongest language yet in their efforts to distinguish themselves from the 5-month-old Obama administration’s economic policies.
In recent weeks, GOP leaders and rank-and-file members have offered stinging rebukes of the Democratic control in Washington in terms that Democrats say have gone over the line.
Last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor said Obama’s handling of the faltering U.S. auto industry is “almost like looking at Putin's Russia.”
That came as Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was drawing heat from Democrats for saying that he told Chinese leaders that “the budget numbers that the U.S. has put forward should not be believed” and that Congress would spend more than what is contained in the budget.
Just days before, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said at a fundraising dinner for House and Senate Republicans that Obama’s efforts to stimulate the economy and save automakers have “already failed.”
Democrats contend that Republicans have jumped the shark and staked out such an extreme position against the administration that they should no longer be taken seriously.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said after Cantor’s comments this week that the approach is alienating even members of the Republican Party.
A USA Today/Gallup poll last week showed 38 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents viewed the GOP unfavorably.
“When Republicans have no ideas and no leadership, they resort to personal attacks and bank on failure,” Van Hollen said. “It’s no wonder that recent polling shows that one-third of Republicans hold an unfavorable view of their own party.”
For their part, Republicans are mostly unapologetic. The rhetoric is part of a continued effort to portray the Obama administration as something of an inept “Big Brother,” unable to deal appropriately with the challenges created by the economy and, all the while, expanding government.
Ken Spain, a spokesman with the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), said Democrats should focus on what they are doing, rather than what the opposition is saying.
“It would be nice if Democrats could spend some time creating jobs instead of growing the size of the federal bureaucracy and pointing fingers,” Spain said.
But not every example of the GOP’s strong rhetoric has been focused on the economy.
Democrats point to comments made by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) in recent months which said Obama was well on his way to becoming the “abortion president.”
And then there are the usual suspects – Gingrich, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and, increasingly, NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas).
Gingrich has also caused a stir in recent weeks by labeling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a “racist,” because she said that experiencing life as a Hispanic woman might make her a better judge than a white man. Gingrich later backed off that assertion.
Bachmann’s well-publicized statements have led to the creation of a section on the DCCC’s website devoted solely to her.
And Sessions has drawn some heat for saying to the New York Times last month that the Obama administration deliberately sought to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” in order to “divide and conquer” in Washington. Prior to that, Sessions suggested Republicans could take lessons about “insurgency” from the Taliban.
The first midterm election under a new president is almost always a referendum on how that president is performing. Election experts agree that, for the Republicans to make serious gains in the 2010 elections, Obama’s popularity needs to come down.
Democrats have labeled Republicans the “party of no” and said they are rooting for Obama to fail, as conservative talker Rush Limbaugh has openly advocated.
But Republicans say it’s not about rooting for failure, but rather keeping Democrats honest in their efforts to expand government.
“At some point Democrats are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they won the 2008 election and start governing,” Spain said.
Van Hollen said it’s time for Republicans to stop lobbing bombs and become a part of the process.
“Republicans should stop the name-calling, roll up their sleeves, and start working with the president and congressional Democrats to turn the economy around,” he said.
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Right Wing Anti-Immigrant Group Leader Arrested For Murder, Burglary In AZThe nationwide surge in violence by right wing extremists has been making a lot of headlines lately, both in the blogosphere and the corporate media -- with Fox News doing its best to downplay the violence as isolated and perpetrated by lefties.
Now it appears that Shawna Forde, a rising star in the xenophobic, anti-immigrant militia movement has been arrested for her role in a home invasion that left two dead, including a 9 year old girl.
TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Pima County Sheriff's investigators have charged three people with a May 30 home invasion that left a father and 9-year-old girl dead.
Shawna Forde, Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola face murder, burglary and aggravated assault charges.
Investigators say the suspects broke into a home in Arivaca, shooting and killing 29-year old Raul Flores and his daughter Brisenia.
Investigators say Forde was the mastermind of the operation. She and Gaxiola are in the Pima county jail. Answering media questions while led out in handcuffs, both suspects denied responsibility for the deadly home invasion.
"This is a very unusual woman," said Clarence Dupnik, Pima County Sheriff. "I don't really know what goes on in her mind, but she is obviously a very evil person. If you look at her history closely, and you know what we know, she is, at best, a psychopath." Read on...
Forde, who is surrounded by numerous controversies, has been on the radars of both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League for some time now. Shawna is also supported by Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project -- who is also embroiled in controversies of his own.
(Crooks and Liars)
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Former Miss Calif: Gay comment cost me my crown
LOS ANGELES – Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean says she lost her crown because of a comment she made about gay marriage and not because she had been skipping appearances.
Prejean told Matt Lauer on NBC'S "Today" show Friday that she "absolutely" had been dethroned because of the comment, when she said marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Prejean lost her title Wednesday after the California pageant's executive director said Prejean was skipping Miss California USA events while speaking out against gay marriage at unsanctioned appearances.
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House GOP energy plan declares that impact of global warming ‘shall not be considered for any purpose.’
House Republicans today introduced their alternative energy plan. Developed by the Republican American Energy Solutions Group, the American Energy Act is billed as an “all of the above” energy program. But as The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, the legislation looks more like an attempt to legislate the threat of global warming “out of existence.” Indeed, the bill specifically states that at no point in implementing their energy plan can the effects of global warming on the environment “be considered for any purpose”.
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Johnson remarks, “The Republican response to our dependence on fossil fuels and their pollution is to give billions of dollars in new tax breaks and subsidies to the oil, coal, and nuclear industries.”
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Steele points to the ‘one young black woman’ in College Republicans crowd: ‘This is my reality.’
At the College Republican annual conference last weekend, RNC Chairman Michael Steele confronted the issue of race and the Republican Party. Lamenting the problem that “a lot of these people don’t have the technology of Internet or television,” one attendee asked Steele, “With you being chairman of the party, what are your strategies for reaching out to African American and inner-city communities?” Steele first responded by sarcastically brushing off the notion of reaching out to African Americans, before pointing to the sole African American attendee to single her out for “special recognition“:
STEELE: What? To reach out to black people? I ain’t doing anything. Black people don’t vote for Republicans, why would I bother with them? […] I’m just messing with you. That is the point I wanted you to get to. Stop it, I know what you meant. But I wanted to illustrate a point. And unfortunately you were at the wrong end of that point. But this is my reality. I look in this room and I see one young black woman here.
posted by rich at 1:03 PM
Will O’Reilly whine about FNC ignoring today’s presser with survivor of recruiting station attack?
In recent days, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has criticized the “liberal media” and CNN for what he viewed as a paucity of coverage of the deadly attack on the Army-Navy recruiting station in Little Rock, AR last week. “Only Anderson Cooper at 10 o’clock covered the story,” O’Reilly said of CNN. (In fact, CNN had reported on the attack over a dozen times.) Despite O’Reilly’s insistence that Fox News has been following the attack story more closely than its competitors, when the lone survivor of the attack, Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, spoke with reporters earlier today, only CNN and MSNBC carried the press conference live. Fox News never cut to the press conference, choosing instead to focus on Newt Gingrich’s criticisms of the Obama administration from last night’s congressional Republican fundraiser.
So the question is, will O’Reilly complain about his network’s failure to cover today’s presser? Or is Fox News above such complaints because its not part of the “liberal media”?
posted by rich at 1:01 PM
