The 300 kg bull had escaped from a farm near the town of Braila .
Finally, the bull was caught on a narrow street and tranquilized, before being taken back to the farm where it came from. It’s still unclear how the animal managed to escape.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Escaped bull headbutted traffic cop
A bull escaped from a truck and ran wild in the streets of a busy Romanian town on Wednesday.
The 300 kg bull had escaped from a farm near the town of Braila .
Surveillance cameras caught the bull headbutting a traffic policeman,
who was later transported to a hospital with non-life threatening
injuries
Finally, the bull was caught on a narrow street and tranquilized, before being taken back to the farm where it came from. It’s still unclear how the animal managed to escape.
The 300 kg bull had escaped from a farm near the town of Braila .
Finally, the bull was caught on a narrow street and tranquilized, before being taken back to the farm where it came from. It’s still unclear how the animal managed to escape.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
The Daily Drift
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Today in History
| 1774 | The first Continental Congress, which protested British measures and called for civil disobedience, concludes in Philadelphia. | |
| 1795 | When General Paul Barras resigns his commission as head of France's Army of the Interior to become head of the Directory, his second-in-command becomes the army's commander—Napoleon Bonaparte. | |
| 1825 | The first boat on the Erie Canal leaves Buffalo, N.Y. | |
| 1881 | Three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday have a shootout with the Clantons and McLaurys at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. | |
| 1905 | Norway signs a treaty of separation with Sweden. Norway chooses Prince Charles of Denmark as the new king; he becomes King Haakon VII. | |
| 1918 | Germany's supreme commander, General Erich Ludendorff, resigns, protesting the terms to which the German Government has agreed in negotiating the armistice. This sets the stage for his later support for Hitler and the Nazis, who claim that Germany did not lose the war on the battlefield but were "stabbed in the back" by politicians. | |
| 1942 | Japanese attack Guadalcanal, sinking two U.S. carriers. | |
| 1942 | U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Hornet is sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz Island, in the South Pacific. | |
| 1950 | A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reaches the Yalu River. They are the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushes the whole army down into South Korea. | |
| 1955 | The Village Voice is first published, backed in part by Norman Mailer. | |
| 1955 | Ngo Dinh Diem declares himself Premier of South Vietnam. | |
| 1957 | The Russian government announces that Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the nation's most prominent military hero, has been relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense. Khrushchev accused Zhukov as promoting his own "cult of personality" and saw him as a threat to his own popularity. | |
| 1958 | The first New York – Paris transatlantic jet passenger service is inaugurated by Pan Am, while the first New York – London transatlantic jet passenger service is inaugurated by BOAC. | |
| 1967 | Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and his wife Farah as empress. | |
| 1970 | Gary Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury first appears. | |
| 1979 | The President of South Korea, Park Chung-hee, asssinated by Kim Jae-kyu, head of the country's Central intelligence Agency; Choi Kyu-ha is named acting president. | |
| 1994 | Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty. | |
| 2001 | The USA PATRIOT Act signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush, greatly expanding intelligence and legal agencies' ability to utilize wiretaps, records searches and surveillance. | |
| 2002 | Russian Spetsnaz storm the Moscow Theatre, where Chechen terrorists had taken the audience and performers hostage three days earlier; 50 terrorists and 150 hostages die in the assault. |
The math says Red Sox have a big edge in the World Series
Woman Holding Her Own Heart in Her Hands
Here she is holding up her old heart while her new one keeps her alive. This photo was taken a few months after her transplant:
"That was in the hospital in the pathology lab," Smith said. "I was saying goodbye to my heart, actually, because I felt like it got me through half of my life and I needed to say goodbye to it. So I was saying goodbye, and getting to know my new heart.
"My doctors made me wait because they didn't think I was ready. I wanted to be able to hold it, and they didn't want me to drop it.
"I was happy to see it again-well, see it for the first time, I guess.
"My husband even got to hold it. It felt really weird for both of us, but it was amazing to get to hold something that was once in someone."
Fantastic Bacon-Laden Treats For Your Thanksgiving Dinner
Personally, I'm a big fan of bacon, but I have discovered that some Thanksgiving favorites are better without it -like green bean cassarole where the bacon just add saltyness and doesn't even enhance the crunch. I do recommend adding bacon and dried cranberries to your sweet potatoes for some some serious flavor enhancement though.
Did you know ...
Here's 5 reasons it's ridiculous America doesn't tax wall street
That a half million North Carolinians fell into a hole created by repugicans
Let's just say it shall we: repugicans are the problem
JFK had trouble with the wingnuts, too
House Democrats Stand Up and Demand That Walmart Pay a Living Wage
George Miller (D-CA) has had enough of workers getting
trampled by hugely profitable companies. "For too long those who denied
workers rights have dominated the conversation... "…
Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) and Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FLA) joined Walmart workers who have been fighting for a living wage of $25,000 a year. Together they addressed Walmart CEO Bill Simon’s previously unreported and rather defensive comments regarding wages, which demonstrated that as many as 825,000 Walmart workers make less than $25,000 a year.
This is significant because Walmart has avoided addressing the issue of how many of its employees make $25,000 a year and is only doing so due to the sustained pressure of its employees and their supporters.
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has had enough of workers getting trampled by hugely profitable companies. “For too long those who denied workers rights have dominated the conversation… Workers across the country are changing the debate.”
Scoffing at the way obscenely profitable corporations like Walmart have framed their argument for starving their workers around the “freedom” narrative, Miller continued, “The debate is indeed about freedom and fairness.” The Congressman pointed out, “There are either two places workers get their income, from their employer or from public assistance.”
He made the point that the argument is over whether the employer should pay a decent wage or the taxpayers should subsidize Walmart’s profit margin via public assistance . The Congressman is referring to the fact that just one Walmart could cost taxpayers $900,000 a year, according to a congressional report released in May of this year.
Imagine the outrage if Walmart were an African American single mother. But because Walmart is part of the predator model of the privatization and theft of all wealth from the middle and lower classes, its theft from our coffers is supposed to be an admirable trait of a “winner” and anyone who doesn’t like it is accused of hating capitalism.
Miller asked, “Why should we help an impoverished family like the Waltons?” He decried the absurdity of repugican/corporate policy, saying they advocate for “public assistance for Walmart”. He pointed out that is not what welfare reform was intended to be. Miller called for an end to federal subsidies, “End federal subsidies to wealthiest, the most profitable companies in the world are living off of public assistance and their workers are not being paid a living wage.”
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said, “The most important problem facing our economy is income inequality.” Ms. Schakowsky was not impressed that in this time of huge economic disparity, taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart, “The taxpayers are the ones who are subsidizing Walmart right now. We heard a lot about takers and makers…
“The welfare kings of this country are the Walmarts who only play those low wages because taxpayers subsidize them.”
Anthony Goytia from Our Walmart works at an East Los Angeles Walmart making $12,000 a year. He works overnight so he gets an extra dollar an hour. He asks for full time position but is not given one. He wants to provide for his family, but it’s hard on $12,000 a year. He said, “As a husband and father I want nothing more than to provide for my family and let me tell you that it’s very hard to do on 12,000 dollars a year. My family and I are forced to rely on public assistance – sometimes we’re approved and sometimes we’re not which means I have to dip into my rent money. I am going to keep fighting, I’m not afraid of you Walmart, no one who works at a company with $17 billion profits should have to live loan to loan.”
Explaining that he just had to get a tooth pulled because he couldn’t afford the root canal and it takes him 4 hours to ride his bike to and from work each day, Anthony continued, “Twenty-five thousand a year would mean an overall better life, it would mean not having to ride my bike for 4 hours a day – I live 13 miles from work, I have to ride my bike…. Twenty five thousand a year would mean I don’t want to have to rely on other people to put food on my table.”
Mr. Goytia wanted to make sure that the public knew he wasn’t living high on the hog, “I want members of Congress and the public to know what life is like when you make poverty wages. I don’t need cable TV, I don’t have cable TV. I shouldn’t have to rely on donating plasma to be able to put money in my pocket to put food on my table. Walmart can do more.”
Members of Congress were asked by a member of the press about federal policy changes to fight the growing income disparity. They pointed to raising the minimum wage as the first place to make change. But as long as Republicans are the majority in the House, there’s not a snowballs chance in Hell of getting the minimum wage raised. The solution to that problem is to do what they did today – raise the profile of the issue of a living wage. By doing so, they can apply pressure to repugicans and then they can run on the inherent justice of a living wage and ending taxpayer subsidies to hugely profitable companies like Walmart.
The campaign frame can be: If you believe workers should earn a living wage and you don’t think you should be funding welfare for Walmart, vote for X.
Just who is trying to fundamentally transform America and redistribute the wealth? It’s not the evil socialists you hear so much about. They don’t have the money to buy the pr to buttress beneficial policy. Nope. It’s the corporate parasites masquerading as “businessmen” — an ingenious disguise for massive redistribution of taxpayer money to the upper 1%.
The working poor and middle class are being squeezed out and there aren’t very many politicians who really give a crap and get it. Those who do are concentrated within the Democratic Party or are Independent Socialists like Bernie Sanders. In order to effectively change the dynamics for labor, we need lawmakers in the House and Senate who will support a living wage. Walmart workers have shown the beauty of democracy — by speaking out over a prolonged period of time, they’ve forced Walmart to respond. Citizens can do the same to their elected representatives.
If you believe in a living wage as a basic right, insist on it in the next election. Make noise about it. Let lawmakers know that it’s time for Walmart to pull itself up by its bootstraps and get off welfare. We can’t afford their sense of entitlement to our money.
Understanding NSA boss James Clapper's France-spying "denial"
NSA boss James Clapper has officially responded to the allegations that
the agency intercepted 70,000,000 French phone calls with a narrowly worded, misleading denial. Tim Cushing at Techdirt does us the kremlinological service of finely parsing the NSA word-game and showing us what Clapper doesn't deny:
Clapper addresses none of these activities and simply focuses on the one sentence that gives him plausible (and convoluted) deniability.
In essence, the foreign collection (although, in the NSA's hivemind, a collection doesn't actually occur until an agent searches the, uh, collected data) is almost identical to the NSA's Section 215 collections. Vast amounts of metadata grabbed simply because there's no legal basis preventing it.
The rest of his statement is mostly true -- almost every country spies on other countries. This has been the status quo for years, and while the French government has made lots of noise about this recent leak, it seems to be largely using this as an opportunity to reroute outrage and criticism away from its own domestic spying.
Merkel says U.S. spying an unacceptable breach of trust
by Luke Baker and Andreas Rinke
German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused the United States of an unacceptable breach of trust on Thursday after allegations that the U.S. bugged her personal mobile phone, and she suggested data-sharing agreements with Washington may need revising.
Arriving for a two-day summit in
Brussels where the broad economic and social policy agenda has been
overshadowed by allegations of eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency against Italy, France and Germany, Merkel said she had told President Barack Obama in a telephone conversation late on Wednesday that the acts were unacceptable.
"It's not just about me but about every German citizen. We need to
have trust in our allies and partners, and this trust must now be
established once again," she told reporters.
"I repeat that spying among friends is not at all acceptable against anyone, and that goes for every citizen in Germany."
The stern words follow an
announcement by the German government on Wednesday that it had seen
evidence suggesting the chancellor's mobile was "monitored" by the NSA.
Germany's foreign minister has summoned the U.S. ambassador to Berlin
to discuss the issue, an event diplomats said had rarely happened in the
past 60 years.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama had assured Merkel in
their telephone call that the United States "is not monitoring and will
not monitor" her communications, leaving open the possibility that it
had happened in the past.The affair dredges up memories of eavesdropping by the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany, where Merkel grew up, and is an emotive topic for many Germans.
Following the unceasing flow of leaks by former U.S. data analyst Edward Snowden, which revealed the reach of the NSA's data-collection programs, Washington finds itself at odds with a host of important allies, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia.
Germany's frustration follows outrage in France after Le Monde newspaper reported the NSA had collected tens of thousands of French phone records between December 2012 and January 2013, and an Italian news magazine reported on Thursday that the NSA had monitored sensitive Italian telecommunications.
The revelations could have an impact on major legislative and trade initiatives between the United States and the European Union, with some German lawmakers saying negotiations over an EU-U.S. free-trade agreement should be suspended.
Merkel, who has previously discussed a "no spying" agreement with
the United States, hinted that data-sharing deals with Washington may
need to be relooked at, a potentially damaging blow for U.S. efforts to
collect counter-terrorism information."To this end, we need to ask what we need, which data security agreements we need, what transparency we need between the United States of America and Europe," Merkel said.
"We are allies facing challenges together. But such an alliance can only be built on the basis of trust."
Merkel and Hollande discussed the spying allegations one-to-one before the Brussels summit, with Hollande suggesting beforehand that he intended to put the issue formally on the agenda.
While Berlin and Paris are likely to find sympathy among the EU's 28 member states, domestic security issues are not a competence of the European Union. The best that may be hoped for is a public expression of support from leaders and calls for a full explanation from the United States.
On their way into the summit, several European leaders did express their shock and surprise at the spying allegations.
"This is serious," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
"I will support (Merkel) completely in her complaint and say that this is not acceptable. I think we need all the facts on the table first."
DATA PRIVACY RULES
The most immediate impact of the furor could be to encourage member states to back tougher data privacy rules currently being drafted by the European Union. The European Parliament this week approved proposed legislation that would overhaul EU data protection rules that date from 1995.
The new rules would restrict how data collected in Europe by firms such as Google and Facebook is shared with non-EU countries, introduce the right of EU citizens to request that their digital traces be erased, and impose fines of 100 million euros ($138 million) or more on rule breakers.
The United States is concerned that the regulations, if they enter into law, will raise the cost of doing business and handling data in Europe. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others have lobbied hard against the proposals.
Given the spying accusations, France and Germany - the two most influential countries in EU policy - may succeed in getting member states to push ahead on negotiations with the parliament to complete the data regulations and make them tougher.
That could mean an agreement is reached early next year, with the laws possibly coming into force in 2015. For the United States, this could substantially change how data privacy rules are implemented globally.
It may also complicate relations between the United States and the EU over an agreement to share a large amount of data collected via Swift, the international system used for transferring money electronically, which is based in Europe.
Among the revelations from Snowden's leaks is that the United States may have violated the Swift agreement, accessing more data than it was allowed to.
The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to suspend Swift, and the spying accusations may make EU member states support a firm line, complicating the United States' ability to collect data it says is critical in combating terrorism.
Despite the outrage in Paris and Berlin, the former head of France's secret services said the issue was being blown out of proportion and no one should be surprised by U.S. spying.
"I'm bewildered by such worrying naiveté. You'd think the politicians don't read the reports they're sent - there shouldn't be any surprise," Bernard Squarcini told Le Figaro.
"The agencies know perfectly well that every country, even when they cooperate on anti-terrorism, spies on its allies. The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level like we spy on them, because it's in the national interest to defend our businesses. No one is fooled."
US ambassador to Germany summoned to explain NSA bugging chancellor Angela Merkel
John B Emerson, the US ambassador to Germany, has been summoned to a
meeting with Guido Westerwelle, the country's foreign minister, over
revelations that the NSA bugged chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. Germans are pissed
about this. The country's defense minister told a television interview
that the allegations were "really, really bad" and that there could be
no more "business as usual" in US-German relations. Merkel herself is
described as "livid."
Merkel's political opponents, such as the Pirate Party, had criticized her for failing to do enough to bring the US to account over leaks regarding bulk US surveillance of Germany; now they're making great political capital out of the fact that Merkel herself appears to have been directly targeted by US spooks.
Though, as a Guardian commenter observes: "If Merkel has done nothing wrong she has nothing to fear. If she objects to having her phone tapped doesn't that suggest she might be a terrorist?"
Merkel's political opponents, such as the Pirate Party, had criticized her for failing to do enough to bring the US to account over leaks regarding bulk US surveillance of Germany; now they're making great political capital out of the fact that Merkel herself appears to have been directly targeted by US spooks.
Though, as a Guardian commenter observes: "If Merkel has done nothing wrong she has nothing to fear. If she objects to having her phone tapped doesn't that suggest she might be a terrorist?"
Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be "livid" over the reports the NSA had bugged her phone and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.
The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel's mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification...
...Merkel told Obama that "she unmistakably disapproves of and views as completely unacceptable such practices, if the indications are authenticated," Seifert said. "This would be a serious breach of confidence. Such practices have to be halted immediately."
The sharpness of the German complaint direct to an American president strongly suggested that Berlin had no doubt about the grounds for protest. Seibert voiced irritation that the Germans had waited for months for proper answers from Washington to Berlin on the NSA operations
John Boehner Sees Obamacare Pink Elephants After House repugicans Kill 120,000 Jobs
Boehner said,
You know, we had another jobs report yesterday. Another, frankly, disappointing jobs report. This economy’s not creating the jobs that the American people are looking for. Their wages are stagnant, and part of the problem is that we’ve got the whole threat of ObamaCare continuing to hang over our economy like a wet blanket.John Boehner has decided that the best way to dig himself out of the hole that he dug for himself with the government shutdown is to blame President Obama and the ACA for everything. Unfortunately for Speaker Boehner, what he was trying to pass off was complete BS.
Employers scared to death in terms of what they have to do and what they don’t have to do, afraid to add new employees. And, you know, when you look at the problems with ObamaCare all the focus here lately has been on the website. Clearly there’s problems with the website, but I would argue that the problems go much further than that.
How about the report over the last couple of days of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are finding out that they’re going to lose their coverage because the plans they have today don’t qualify under ObamaCare. And when you begin to look at these hundreds of thousands of people I think what you’re going to see at the end of October are more Americans are going to lose their health insurance than are going to sign up at these exchanges. This is a very serious problem. It’s affecting our economy. And it’s affecting the ability of the American people to find the job that will help them take care of themselves and their families.
Nowhere in Boehner’s remarks does he cite any actual evidence that Obamacare is negatively impacting the economy. The reason why he can’t list any evidence, because there isn’t any.
John Boehner substituted feelings and opinions for facts. Speaker Boehner used phrases like “employers are scared,” and “I think” to make is case that the ACA is destroying the economy.
The fact that it is impossible for a law that won’t be fully implemented until January to destroy the economy months in advance appears to be lost on the Speaker of the House. Obamacare is the repugican version of the pink elephant. They see it everywhere, and blame it for everything that happens.
House repugicans killed 120,000 jobs with their government shutdown. There is no statistical evidence that the ACA has caused a single job to be lost.
The real job killer isn’t the ACA. It’s John Boehner and his Koched up caucus.
Thanks to Scott Walker, Wisconsin Will Pay Up To 99% Higher Insurance Costs
Thanks to Scott Walker, Wisconsin health insurance
exchange premiums for single coverage will be on average 79% to 99%
higher than premiums in Minnesota.…
If you’re wondering why there is such a disparity in healthcare insurance costs between similar states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, it’s because repugican Governor Scott Walker rejected enhanced federal Medicaid dollars and Wisconsin repugicans decided not to implement more robust rate reviews.
Translation: repugicans rejected money to expand Medicaid and repugicans choose not to oversee rate regulation (if this doesn’t ring a bell, when repugicans discuss it, they call their refusal to check corporation’s “freedom” and “free markets”).These decisions may cost Wisconsinites $1,800 or more a year over what their Minnesota counterparts pay for health insurance. Wisconsinites will pay between 79% and 99% higher premiums before tax credits are applied, and the middle class will be hit the hardest. Some cities will pay as much as 136% higher premiums.
Citizen Action of Wisconsin released a new report documenting the vast differences between Minnesota and Wisconsin in the cost for health insurance on the individual insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.
• Wisconsin health insurance exchange premiums for single coverage will be on average 79% to 99% higher than premiums in Minnesota, before tax credits are applied. That is a difference of over $1,800 a year.Additionally, when Walker announced his repugican plan to reject Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare, he was warned that this would cost Wisconsin state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Walker, with his eye on 2016, was at war with President Obama and what better way to prove his wingnut bona fides than by rejecting as much of ObamaCare as he could.
•The health insurance cost differential will be even worse for some major Wisconsin cities. Rates in La Crosse are 136% higher than the Minnesota average, rates in Eau Claire are 116% higher, and rates in Milwaukee are 112% higher.
• The cost gap with Minnesota has the biggest impact on middle class Wisconsinites because Affordable Care Act tax credits mitigate the impact on lower income people who buy insurance on the exchange.
It’s not as if Walker can run on his job creation numbers or making a great climate for business. Wisconsin is failing in both departments under Walker. He’s got to be able to run as the guy who fought Obama and won — a feat he has not actually managed to do, regardless of how many times he and his BFF Paul Ryan blame Mitt Romney for the 2012 election loss. Reality plays a small part in repugican politics these days that Walker won’t be hurt by inventing his own world so long as he is the comic book hero who said No to the Illegitimate President.
Comic book narratives aside, the Walker junta is still confused about how this fiscal stuff works (sure Walker didn’t graduate from college, but that is no excuse — plenty of Americans can add and subtract without going to college). Walker’s secretary of health services, Kitty Rhoades, claims to believe that they didn’t walk away from money - the state will have more money by petulantly keeping the working poor off of Medicaid expansions at the fed’s expense.
This belief earned her a Mostly False from PolitiFact. It turns out, the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau says Walker’s decision is going to cost state taxpayers $119 million and could exceed $459 million through 2021.
Scott Walker justifies this by claiming to believe the federal government won’t come through with the money because of the debt (along this failed logic, why wait for anything to be proven – if you feel it, it must be – leadership by hysterical emotion of the mentally impaired has worked out so well in the past). To be fair, perhaps Walker knew of his cabal’s plans to tank the economy with a shutdown and threat to refuse to pay our bills. If so, conspiracy charges are warranted, immediately following the mandatory repugican math class.
The Walker junta champions their plan to instead drive the money to health insurance companies and health care providers. More transferring of the wealth to corporations, or “job creation” in repugican speak.
Minnesota also took ObamaCare up on the money provided to review rates – aka, oversight, but Wisconsin hasn’t. They’re cool with whatever the insurance companies want to charge citizens. Regulation is the death of corporate freedom, after all, and when corporations aren’t free to rob citizens, they allegedly won’t create so many crappy jobs that don’t pay a living wage.
Appeasement of the corporate beast is a must in repugican circles and so Wisconsinites are getting it again. No doubt repugicans will blame Obama for this, too, since they are loath to take responsibility for their own behavior, ideology and policies.
The tea party Insists that Extremist Ken Cuccinelli Not Extreme Enough
The Richmond tea party says Cuccinelli hasn't taken a sufficient stand against "Obamacare, immigration, and moral decline." …
Bad enough the (anti)Family Research Council thought sending Rick Santorum to lead a special “strikeforce” to “save” Cuccinelli was a great idea. That alone is more than enough to doom the man given what Virginians already think about him.
But the Richmond tea party’s executive director Larry Nordvig told Breitbart last month that Cuccinelli isn’t wingnut enough because he hadn’t taken a sufficient stand against “Obamacare, immigration, and moral decline.”
Never mind that as Right Wing Watch reports, “Cuccinelli was the first state attorney general to file a lawsuit challenging Obamacare — even winning a case on the district court level against the individual mandate before the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the mandate as constitutional — and has called for civil disobedience against the law.”
And apparently, criminalizing oral sex between married couples isn’t a strong enough stance against moral decline.
Nordvig says Cuccinelli needs to “fight for their deepest-held beliefs.” Kissing up to the tea party to assuage their fragile egos, Nordvig said, also wouldn’t hurt.
As John Farmer wrote a few days ago at New Jersey Online, “odds are he [Cuccinelli] wishes now he’d never heard of them.”
I think we all feel his pain.
Look, here are the facts on the ground. Right Wing Watch lists a few of Cuccinelli’s extremist stances:
- Opposition to Obamacare;
- Support for Arizona’s SB 1070;
- Opposition to abortion. Cuccinelli has said god will punish America for legalizing abortion;
- Wants to criminalize some forms of birth control; and,
- Opposition to job protections for LGBT employees.
It is also interesting that repugicans always think in terms of “re-engaging” their base as though it takes no more than their base to win elections. Evidence to the contrary from past elections is ignored; they don’t seem to understand that expanding their base just might be a better idea.
But rather than appeal to a wider cross-section of voters, rather than trying to engage moderates and independents, they attack the problem by attacking voting rights.
In a sense tea partiers have no choice. Think about the facts even if they won’t: The tea party is inherently, as we have argued before – like the Nazi Party – a völkisch – that is, ethnic nationalist – organization. It is at its heart a modern pro-confederacy movement supported by “almost half of white Southerners (47.1%).”
The League of the South agrees, reports Warren Throckmorton, saying ethnic nationalism is better than democratic process. And if, as the League of the South also insists, the South is an “Anglo-Celtic” homeland, just who, other than angry, white, evangelical, and probably wistful Midwesterners, can the tea party reach out to outside of an angry, old, white evangelical Southerners?
Even if racism is not the driving force behind the tea party movement, there are enough other unsavory ingredients that have dictated their tent be very small. All they have is each other: angry white christians lashing out at everyone around them. Apartheid is such a hard sell to everyone else, after all, and there are a lot of someone else’s in America these days.
As Tom Davis, former repugican congressman for Virginia, put it, “We have nominated a ticket that Virginians don’t want to buy.” Virginians, and increasingly, Americans.
The Vile Koch Scheme to Make $100 Billion Destroying The Environment With KeystoneXL
It should come as no surprise to any American keeping tabs on the Kochs that they have spent a great deal of money to hasten the construction of the KeystoneXL pipeline, but it is not just because the dirty energy fascists will add to their fortune by refining tar sand prior to shipping it to Texas for export to China and Europe; it is because they stand to make tens-of-billions of dollars before the tar ever enters American territory.
Over the past couple of days, there have been two reports that should enrage Americans concerned about the quality of the air they breathe or the rapidly changing climate, and likely the Koch brothers want to keep their dirty involvement away from the public’s eye. Both stories directly tie the Kochs to the KeystoneXL pipeline that oil-whore repugicans and Speaker John Boehner are frantic to see constructed to profit the oil industry and Boehner’s personal stock portfolio. However, where John Boehner will profit from the pipeline’s construction because he owns stock in seven Canadian tar sand companies, building the Keystone XL pipeline would generate $100 billion in profits for Charles and David Koch, according to a report released a few days ago.
According to the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), the Koch brothers and their privately-owned company, Koch Industries, are holding close to 2 million acres of land in Alberta, Canada, where the Keystone pipeline will originate. In fact, there are many Koch Industry subsidiaries that will “benefit from the pipeline’s construction, including Koch Exploration Canada, which would profit from oil development on its land, and Koch Supply and Trading, which would benefit from oil derivatives trading.” Throughout the Republican drive to push President Obama to approve Keystone’s construction, officials from Koch Industries have asserted the “Keystone XL pipeline has nothing to do with any of our businesses.” The IFG report revealed the Koch’s dirty secret that Keystone XL has everything to do with their business and it is why they fund Republican efforts to pressure the President to approve the pipeline’s immediate construction.
What should be obvious to anyone familiar with repugican oil-whores is that IFG estimates the billionaire oil magnates have paid about $50 million to wingnut belief-tanks and members of Congress to support inaction on climate change as well as push for the pipeline’s construction. The repugicans advocating for the pipeline’s approval have never admitted to the people that not one drop of refined tar sand will be available for domestic consumers, or that as a foreign export pipeline the oil is already slated for Europe and China. Environmentalists are rightly worried about the devastating climate and environmental impacts the pipeline will have that includes intensely higher greenhouse gas emissions that an esteemed NASA climatologist warns means “game over for the environment.” For Americans living in and around Chicago, it did not take a noted climatologist to tell them it is game over for their local environment due to the Koch brothers storing refuge from refining tar sands.
In and around south Chicago, the dirty by-product of refining Canadian tar sand, “petcoke,” is responsible for polluting the air and water with toxic vanadium contained in the black dust the Kochs are piling up waiting to export to countries without environmental protections. Petcoke, short for petroleum coke, is the waste from refining tar sand oil and as its production increases petcoke is piling up near refineries across the Midwest and jeopardizing air and water quality the Koch brothers have no regard for.
Petcoke is just one tar sand residue that is worse for the environment than burning dirty coal, and its danger is one item a Koch-associated energy firm omitted from a State Department analysis claiming developing Canada’s vast tar sand reserves and sending it through the Keystone XL pipeline will not raise greenhouse gas emissions. The giant piles of petcoke stored along the Calumet River near Chicago are part of the Koch brothers’ business empire because a Koch Industries subsidiary, KCBX, owns “large parcels of land along the Calumet river” where tar sand residue is shipped in, stored, and distributed close to middle class homes.
What Chicago residents should be enraged over is that not only is their air being poisoned by the existing piles of petcoke, a new refinery’s “coker” which will be the second largest in the world “is growing by leaps and bounds” according to an Environmental Task Force member who said “It’s coming at a breathtaking rate.” When Tom Shepherd says breathtaking, he means it literally and figuratively because the toxic dust hangs in the air on its way to coating the surrounding environment that according to the Koch brothers is their dog-given right as free-market capitalists.
The Koch brothers and their Americans for Prosperity activist arm have secretly sought to derail and roll back clean energy regulations and environmental protections in states across the nation. The news they own 2 million acres around Alberta Canada’s tar sand reserves coupled with their intent to pile up residue from their tar sand refining efforts explains just one reason they are on a crusade to eliminate clean air and water standards.
If Americans have learned anything about the Koch brothers fascist government interference, it is that their agendas all include harming Americans for profit and to satisfy the greed for power to “fundamentally transform America” to their vision of a nation sans environmental safeguards. The Koch brothers spend tens-of-millions of dollars to kill Americans whether it is stopping the Affordable Care Act, eliminating Social Security and Medicare, slashing food assistance for poor women and children, or poisoning Americans with toxic dust from their tar sand residue. Now that it is no longer a secret they own millions of acres where the Keystone pipeline will originate, and are piling up giant mounds of petcoke around neighborhoods in Chicago, it is incumbent on decent Americans to demand that the State Department and President Obama permanently deny construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Fraud Countrywide in America
Or rather in Bank of America.
Oh, and that mofo, Angelo Mozilo, former head of Countrywide has a luxurious spread in Santa Barbara.
We think it's time to bring back public shaming. you see this criminal walking around the tony streets of Montecito, tell him how treasonous he is to sell out his country's economic future. And kick him. Hard.
A federal jury in Manhattan sided with prosecutors who alleged Countrywide Financial Corp. churned out risky home loans in a process called "the hustle" and then sold them to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.We are "outraged" at computer software glitches on a program that is meant to help people ... let's see if the public is "outraged" at this blatant corruption that brought our country's economy to the brink and inflicted pain on fellow Americans.
The Calabasas company, once considered the crown jewel of American mortgage lending, made big profits unloading loans that were later rendered worthless during the housing crisis in 2008.
The decision is the first civil fraud verdict against countrywide, and experts said the decision would probably invite more aggrieved investors to sue and could embolden other investigations aimed at countrywide or other banks. - LA Times
Oh, and that mofo, Angelo Mozilo, former head of Countrywide has a luxurious spread in Santa Barbara.
We think it's time to bring back public shaming. you see this criminal walking around the tony streets of Montecito, tell him how treasonous he is to sell out his country's economic future. And kick him. Hard.
‘Open government’ launch marred by spelling mistake
Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario in Canada was forced to spell-check
her own press conference when a reporter pointed out a glaring but
previously unnoticed spelling mistake.
The podium the Premier was standing at had the words “open goverment” written across the front.
“That is really not good,” she said when the mistake was pointed out.
She was given a pen by someone off-camera and tried to insert the missing ‘n.’
“That is really not good,” she said when the mistake was pointed out.
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