June 2010
One Ant Equals Eight Million Jobs and $17 Trillion...
“Most of our friends in the other party are planning on voting against this reform. In fact, just yesterday, I was stunned to hear the leader of the Republicans in the House say that financial reform was like using a nuclear weapon to target an ant. That’s right. He compared the financial crisis to an ant. The same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs....
The 24 Types Of Libertarian
via ryking.tumblr.com It’s the “white flight” option from Republicanism. Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Oil Rain In Louisiana?
via realitychex.com “It’s raining oil right here in River Ridge” Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
How Mariano Rivera Dominates Hitters
via nytimes.com Very informative video on how the greatest closer in baseball dominates batters with his signature cutter. Former teammante, catcher John Flaherty, offers insights. Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Rand Paul Won't Answer How Old The Earth Is
Is Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul a creationist? Last week, Paul spoke at a conference for the Christian Home Educators of Kentucky at a Louisville church where he dodged a question about the age of the earth and expressed skepticism about faith-based programs. The first question during the Q&A was from a man who asked a two-part question, including how old Paul...
Clarence Thomas: He's the Chief Activist Judge!
Clarence Thomas: He’s the Chief Activist Judge!by Choire posted @12:20 PM Supreme Court nerds should give this lengthy SCOTUSblog run-down on the term a serious read. Most notable to me: “Although some cases are decided five to four, that’s no more than twenty percent of the docket this Term (we’re running the final numbers now). Roughly half the decisions are nine to zero. ...
White House: John Boehner Way Out Of Touch To Call...
via oliverwillis.com Thanks for really not caring, House Minority Leader. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, took aim at Mr. Boehner, who in a newspaper interview this week called the financial legislation nearing final approval an excessive response to the problem. ‘This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon,’ Mr. Boehner told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Monday. At his...
The Top 5 American Players Who Didn't Make the...
via brobible.com 5. Gale Agbossoumonde 4. Mike Grella 3. Sacha Kljestan 2. Freddy Adu [Yes! that Freddy Adu] 1. Charlie Davies [pictured] Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Rep. Gohmert Uses Idiocy To Warn Of Terrorist...
via youtube.com “… they [ terrorist cells] would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby.” …where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists.” - Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) They have figured out and gamed our system: have a baby here and 20 to 30 years later, destroy “our” way of life. Gohmert claims they’ve...
Matt Taibbi's "Lara Logan, You Suck" Takedown
“Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn’t mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here’s CBS’s chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that’s killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed...
Time To Rethink Afghanistan
via youtube.com “We’re f*#!ing losing this thing.” - Staff Sgt. Kenneth Hicks They call Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires” for a reason. Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
US Supreme Court Decides Against Vatican
The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal by the Vatican in a landmark case that opens the way for priests in the United States to stand trial for pedophilia. Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases. The Supreme Court...
Soccer: America's Unlove Affair
“Soccer, the sport for fourth graders that foreign people take seriously.” - Stephen Colbert via brooklynmutt.com Time management is key to all US sports. How you play the last minute can last 10 minutes. Playing for the tie not an option in our sports. Aside from regular season football, that’s our football, we always have a winner. We have breaks for our...
Jan Brewer: Feels No Need To Back Up Statements...
“The majority of [illegal immigrants] in my opinion and I think in the opinion of law enforcement is that they are not coming here to work. They are coming here and they’re bringing drugs. And they’re doing drop houses and they’re extorting people and they’re terrorizing the families,” - Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com Arizona has 15% less violent...
Obama: Reform Will Hold Wall St. ‘Accountable’
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama declared victory Friday after congressional negotiators reached a dawn agreement on a sweeping overhaul of rules overseeing Wall Street. Lawmakers shook hands on the compromise legislation at 5:39 a.m. after Obama administration officials helped broker a deal that cracked the last impediment to the bill — a proposal to force banks to spin off their...
Clint Webb for Senate
via youtube.com Clint Webb is one brutally honest politician. It’s about “him”. “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”. - Oscar Wilde Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Defending The Indefensible
Reuters: “A legal defense fund for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was illegal and must repay nearly $400,000 to donors, according to a settlement with a state-appointed lawyer announced on Thursday.” via realitychex.com The half-term Town Idiot maintaining her bare minimum attention to detail and facts. It’s called a slush fund. Judge Petumenous pointed out that the...
Oil Sands In Pensacola, FL
via brooklynmutt.com Kevin Reed weeps as he looks at puddles of crude that washed up overnight on the formerly white sands of his hometown Pensacola Beach, Fla. “I’d like to take the CEO of BP and jam his face in that pile on the beach,” he says. (Photo: Edmund D. Fountain / St. Petersburg Times via the San Francisco Chronicle) Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »...
Pyramid Of Capitalist System
via brooklynmutt.com “We rule you, We fool you” sums it up. Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Douthat's "Agony Of The Liberals" Staleness
Douthat’s NYT’s piece claimed liberals were anguished over Obama. Really? According to the latest Gallup survey, 79% of “liberals” approve of Obama’s job performance, compared to 78% month ago, 78% two months ago, 76% three months ago, and a bit over 80% during 2009. If his liberal support has collapsed in “angst,” it’s pretty much hidden in the...
Beck The Regressive
“Whatever you think of Theodore Roosevelt, he was not Lenin. Woodrow Wilson was not Stalin. The philosophical foundations of progressivism may be wrong. The policies that progressivism generates may be counterproductive. Its view of the Constitution may betray the Founders’. Nevertheless, progressivism is a distinctly American tradition that partly came into being as a way to prevent...
Joe Scarborough: Fox News "The Only Organizing...
On “Morning Joe” Monday, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Fox News chairman Roger Ailes “the most powerful voice in the Republican Party,” and the channel itself “the only organizing institution for the GOP.” Scarborough said this at the tail end of a discussion of former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Guest Mark Halperin noted that...
Anger Is Not A Platform
“It’s difficult for a political party to think strategically after a political defeat as severe as 2008’s. But the Tea Party elevated the inability to think strategically into a fundamental conservative principle. Its militants denounce those Republicans who have resisted the movement as ideological traitors: “Republicans in name only” or even (charmingly)...
Banksy: "You Owe The Companies Nothing"
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most...
FiveThirtyEight: World Cup Odds Update, June 21
via fivethirtyeight.com Not too much change. England’s chances fell. As did France and Germany’s. The best odds of winning still go to Brazil, Netherlands and Argentina. Posted via web from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Krugman: Spend Now, Save Later
“Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered. How hard is that to understand? Very hard, if the current state of political debate is any indication. All around the world, politicians seem determined to do the reverse. They’re eager to shortchange the economy when it needs help, even as they balk at dealing with long-run budget...
Obama, BP, And Theodore Roosevelt
via newsweek.com “The BP spill is a failure not just of technology but ideology. That oil flows into the ocean from the deregulatory tide of the last 30 years. President Obama is right to compare the fiasco to 9/11. If he can frame the message more memorably than he did in his Oval Office address, Obama may yet use the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history to speed the transition...
AM Radio Hosts Rules The Republicans
“As Dave Weigel points out, the escrow fund idea was proposed by BP itself, at the prodding of Republicans who endorsed the idea well before President Obama ever heard of it. This story is another example of the harm done by allowing talk radio & Fox – rather than elected officials and aspiring candidates – to define the GOP. Anybody heard any objection to the escrow fund ...
Rahm's Got Balls
Quote of the Day “In the past, corporate America was not only at the table, they owned the table and the chairs around it. Obama doesn’t start off confrontational, but he will be confrontational if there is resistance to the notion that there are other equities.” — White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, quoted by the New York Times, in forcing oil...
Big Oil: A Big Mature, Extremely Profitable...
via wonkroom.thinkprogress.org Peter Welch [D-VT]: “The question for Congress, and I’m going to ask you to comment on this, is whether we’re at a point where taxpayers are being well served when taxpayers are continuing to provide subsidies for a business as usual energy policy that’s based on a carbon energy, 19th century approach, versus a clean and renewable fuel policy of the 21st...
GOP = BP T-Shirts
via oliverwillis.com Sucking the nozzle of Big Oil was always the GOP’s wet dream, they didn’t have to be so obvious. Posted via web from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Iceland Passes Investigative Journalism Reform
Iceland has passed a sweeping reform of its media laws that supporters say will make the country an international haven for investigative journalism. The new package of...
FiveThirtyEight: World Cup Odds Update
via fivethirtyeight.com Posted via web from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Vuvuzela Scandal Of Yore
via brooklynmutt.com It all makes sense now. Posted via web from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Getting Shit Done
What are the odds that Obama’s huge success yesterday in getting BP to pledge a cool $20 billion to recompense the “small people” in the Gulf will get the same attention as his allegedly dismal speech on Tuesday night? If you take Memeorandum as an indicator, it really is no contest. The speech is still being dissected by language experts, but the $20 billion that is the...
“How’s that relative trickle going?”
– ABC News’ Jake Tapper yelling out to BP CEO Tony Hayward as he left the WH. Heyward, over a month ago referred to the oil leak disaster as a “relative trickle.”
video@mediaite
(via brooklynmutt)
Another Take On Obama's Address
Sure, I knew Obama was doing an Oval Office address. Sure, I knew it was about energy policy. No big deal; I’ll read it in the morning, right? Little did I know that the latest outbreak of tsunami-grade emo-progressive poutrage—with some accompanying conservative rat-fuckery—was in full force. IM less than HO, POTUS addressed every issue he needed to last night. He discussed the past, how...
Man Convicted of Torching Black Church After Obama...
June 16, 2010 Man Convicted of Torching Black Church After Obama Election A 23-year-old Massachusetts man plead guilty today to torching a predominantly black church several hours after the election of Barack Obama, a crime that prosecutors say was motivated by bitterness over the election of the nation’s first black president. Boston Globe:...
A Cautionary Tale For Obama
With only one telling exception, no Cold War Democratic candidate ever won a decisive majority of the popular vote. Truman got 49.5 percent in 1948; Kennedy got 49.9 percent in the...
People Ahead Of The Politicians
“It was a great speech if you’d been on another planet for 57 days”. — Keith Olbermann, on President Obama’s address to the nationvia realitychex.com Another massive crisis, another critique of the President. He’s too level-headed. He used the word “ass”. He is part of the problem. He’s the only solution. Take your pick. Posted via web ...
Dissent Of The Day
A Daily Dish reader writes: Quit classifying the whole tea party movement as people who stood by when Bush and his thugs shit on the Constitution. They say the tea parties actually grew out of the 2008 campaign of Ron Paul - someone who was very critical of Bush and his totalitarian ways. There is also a new show that many people are labeling as the tea parties’ own TV show: Freedom...
Republicans Talk About Tax Cuts Like Frat Boys...
“Republicans talk about tax cuts like frat boys talk about oral sex; they don’t care who it comes from as long as they’re the ones receiving.” Love Rhino (via danielextra) (via frothyparadise) via brooklynmutt.com Tax cuts with increased spending equals deficits and debt. The GOP’s scam of using the working class to benefit the rich goes unnoticed by many hard...
The 14 Funniest Animated Soccer Gifs
via comedy.com Check ‘em out. Posted via web from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Understanding Pseodo-Conservative Republicans
An excerpt from The Radical Right: From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released into action,...
NRA Gets Exemption On Finace Reform That Unions...
John Bresnahan of Politico: “House Democrats have reached an agreement with the National Rifle Association on campaign-finance legislation that would roll back the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, removing a major obstacle to the bill, according to House sources.” CW: this story makes me despair. When did the NRA become the fourth branch of government? What’s the idea...
Banks Focus On Other Losses After Volcker Rule...
WASHINGTON — Bankers have all but given up on defeating one of the most contentious provisions in the financial regulation bill — one that would effectively bar federally insured banks from trading for their own accounts — and are now focusing on battles like heading off a prohibition on derivatives trading. As House and Senate negotiators head into a final push to send the legislation to...
BP Engineer: Deepwater Horizon Rig A ‘Nightmare...
A BP drilling engineer warned that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was a “nightmare well” that had caused the company problems in the past. The e-mail came just six days before the well exploded: More than five weeks before the disaster, the Deepwater rig was hit by several sudden pulsations of gas called “kicks” and a pipe had become stuck in the well. In fact, the well had to be shut down...
One Fox Employee To Another
“Well, first, Greta, you know why we love you? Because you’re not afraid to ask the questions,” - Sarah Palin. via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com And the script goes on. Posted via web from liberalsarecool.com | Comment »
Palin: They Victimize Me For Looking Hot
via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com A reader on boob-gate: “What am I going to wear so that nobody will look in an area that I don’t need them to look at?” Nicely played. But then everyone should have expected this. A woman who does her bogus Q&A sessions sitting in a skirt so short that she can’t even shift in the chair without threatening to show her...
Taking Back the Language
Taking Back the Language — I hate seeing the word “conservative” used to describe right-wingers. America’s right-wingers are not “conservative,” as they don’t want to conserve anything. America’s right-wingers are radical activists with a regressive agenda. They’re regressives — the opposite of “progressives.” Call them “regressives” or...