The Funniest Sunday Morning Moment

post from Crooks and Liars on 28 March 2011 11:00:10 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Chris Wallace Whines About White House Refusing to Put Anyone on His Show

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I laughed so hard at this segment. First Chris Wallace allows Newt Gingrich to make the "but Clinton broke the law" excuse for his sexual hypocrisy, and Wallace never once mentions Newt's $300,000 fines from the House Ethics Committee. Not once.

Immediately following this shagfest, Chris Wallace engages in a whiney rant about the White House turning down an FNS request for Secretaries Clinton and Gates to appear, though they went on other networks. Chris Wallace claims that the mean White House is denying Fox News viewers the opportunity to hear why American troops are being committed in Libya. Well, they COULD change the channel, Chris.

Then the punchline:

But next we'll hear from Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

What, Jon Kyl was busy? Honestly could you choose two more predicable regurgitators of Roger Ailes dreck? Way to keep your massive number of viewers "informed" there, Fox.

And the FNS website once again has the audacity to call their appearance an "exclusive." Because neither of these over-ripe wingut windbags are on Meet The Gregory every other weekend.

enlarge Credit: Fox News Sunday

Your right wing propagandistic Sunday Show is not prom night, Chris. Let's hope the White House is done with you permanently. Your network has no other goal except to destroy this White House and everything it does. Why should they bother with you?

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This Could be the Comeback Stock of the Year

post from Jutia Group on 28 March 2011 11:00:00 AM. © Jutia Group

If you're the CEO of a large corporation, you do not want to see your company's name in this article. The companies in this article stumbled — badly — in the past year and have seen their shares prices fall by half — or more. Apparently, nobody told these companies that there was . . . → Read More: This Could be the Comeback Stock of the Year

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http://jutiagroup.com/20110328-this-could-be-the-comeback-stock-of-the-year/

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Stock Stories: Boeing (NYSE:BA), Chevron
(NYSE:CVX), ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM), American Express (NYSE:AXP), Visa (NYSE:V)

post from Jutia Group on 28 March 2011 10:56:05 AM. © Jutia Group

Boeing (NYSE:BA) has canceled two Monday working shifts for employees at its Auburn, Wash., fabrication facility because of a power outage. Power to the facility was interrupted over the weekend because of a transformer failure, according to media reports. The facility builds aircraft parts for the Chicago-based aerospace company, including wiring, tubes, ducts, and . . . → Read More: Stock Stories: Boeing (NYSE:BA), Chevron (NYSE:CVX), ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM), American Express (NYSE:AXP), Visa (NYSE:V)

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Try not to be too shocked by this...but Rush
Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about.

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 28 March 2011 10:54:42 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

We all know that Rush Limbaugh is a chickenshit and a draft-dodging, yellow-bellied coward who got out of serving in Vietnam because he had a friendly draft board and a pimple on his ass.

Keep his history of avoiding service at the front of your mind whenever you hear him attack members of the military who favored withdrawal from Iraq as "phony soldiers." That should have gotten his fat, pimply ass kicked off of the Armed Forces Radio airwaves, but it didn't.

Now he is attacking the military leadership and the Obama administration over the use of the term "kinetic action" to describe what the United States is doing in Libya.

He asserts that the term was just "made up" in order to give President Obama "a pass."

LIMBAUGH: But now "kinetic activity." We're not at war. We are engaged in "kinetic activity." Here we have a headline, this is from the DC Examiner, "In the last few days the Obama regime -- officials frequently faced the question, Is the fighting in Libya a war? And for military officers to White House spokesmen up to the president himself, the answer's been 'no.'" Well, OK then, what is it?
"In a briefing on board Air Force One yesterday, the deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at the answer. "Well, I think what we're doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals.' "
[...]
LIMBAUGH: At any rate, this guy, the deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer, said, "Well, I think what we're doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals. Which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone. Obviously, that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end."
Folks, this is pathetic. Literally, genuinely pathetic. "Kinetic military action, particularly on the front end." Kinetic simply means motion. That's all it means. Depending on movement for its effect, of, relating to, or resulting from motion. So, now we've got "kinetic military action."
And here's the defense secretary. This is -- let's grab sound bite five. This is Robert Gates, Tuesday in Moscow. And he spoke with reporters, and this is what he said about the war in Libya.
GATES: I think as we are successful in suppressing the air defenses, the level of kinetic activity should decline. I assume in the next few days.
LIMBAUGH: I swear, this is -- this is -- this is surreal. ...
LIMBAUGH: It's -- and it's not really a military intervention, it's kinetic military action. That's why they've come up with this ludicrous term. Right, that's why they don't want to call it a war on terror because the Muslims don't intend to occupy us, they just blew up the World Trade Center. Of course, you might get some argument on that from certain people. All of this is nothing more than one of these intellectual exercises to excuse Obama, give him a pass. It really isn't war. Democrat presidents don't like using the U.S. military. If the truth be known, liberals actually are happier when the U.S. military loses. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/24/11]

Limbaugh doesn't make millions being prudent and reasonable in his bluster, but when he talks about the military, he really shows his ignorance and his pasty, pimply ass.

"Kinetic action" at least predates 1981, when I first heard it in a course that was required of every cadet in the university's ROTC program. But Limbaugh wouldn't know that, either. Not only was he too chickenshit to step up and serve, he couldn't hack it in college, either.

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No Labels and Third Way: Peas in the slashing
Social Security pod

post from Daily Kos on 28 March 2011 10:50:01 AM. © Daily Kos

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles Two men who are not worried about their retirements. (Larry Downing/REUTERS)

"No Labels" sounds a lot like Third Way when it comes to Social Security. Apparently no one in either organization can read a poll. The American Prospect's Ben Adler catches them in the act of "ignoring the public on Social Security."

Last week, No Labels -- a supposedly nonpartisan group that seems to exist to promote Alan Simpson's austerity agenda -- blasted Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid for refusing to join in the deficit hysteria. "Senator Reid's position is out of step with the majority of [the] country when it comes to our financial woes. Most Americans want bipartisan action that goes to the heart of the fiscal crisis," said Lisa Borders, a No Labels' "founding leader." (Apparently, the organization's effort to avoid labels includes job titles.)
What is the supposed evidence that most Americans want cuts in Social Security, one of the most popular and successful domestic programs in the history of the federal government? A Washington Post/ABC poll that shows 81 percent of Americans "see the country's Social Security system as headed for a crisis, and most think a major overhaul is in order." This argument -- that Americans think there's a crisis, so there must be one, and action must be taken -- would be hilariously moronic were it not so lamentably powerful. Pardon me for questioning the wisdom of Americans -- a majority of whom cannot name two members of the Supreme Court or find Iraq on a map -- but the relevant question for policy-makers should not be whether we believe Social Security is headed for a crisis but whether it actually is. Ideologues masquerading as nonpartisan truth tellers have been telling the public for years that Social Security won't be able to meet its obligations, and now that they've convinced Americans, the ideologues have turned around and cited that public belief as evidence that the program must be cut.

Adler continues to lay out the the actual facts of the total non-crisis in Social Security, but I want to back up a bit. Even in that WaPo poll Borders cites, there's no majority support for cutting Social Security. Only 32% of respondents think benefits should be cut. The solution they most support for their conviction that Social Security is in crisis (which it's not) is lifting the payroll tax cap on earnings above $107,000. They're behind that idea with a 53% majority.

Adler's spot on:

Let the Republicans meet the Democrats halfway by agreeing to tax increases and cuts in defense spending, and then maybe Obama and Reid will get behind some reasonable adjustments to entitlement spending that they can sell to their party. But to expect Democrats to agree to make their painful concessions without a compromise deal in place is to ask them to trade away Social Security benefits for further tax cuts for the rich. There are already people doing that: They're called Republicans.

They're apparently also called No Labels and Third Way. Why all the Very Serious People seem to want to elevate and emulate this guy is beyond me.

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Steve Clemons on Jon Huntsman Presidential Run

post from Taylor Marsh on 28 March 2011 10:44:13 AM. © Taylor Marsh

Ben Smith has a piece up on Steve Clemons.I know Steve a bit, have been to his forums, parties and heard him speak innumerable times. He’s one of the few making sense on Libya.What people do not realize about Clemons is that not only is he a tough[...]

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run/

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"Safe" Radiation is a Lethal Lie

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 28 March 2011 10:39:23 AM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

HARVEY WASSERMAN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

There is no safe dose of radiation.

We do not x-ray pregnant women.

Any detectable fallout can kill.

With erratic radiation spikes, major air and water emissions and at least three reactors and waste pools in serious danger at Fukushima, we must prepare for the worst.

When you hear the terms "safe" and "insignificant" in reference to radioactive fallout, ask yourself: "Safe for whom?" "Insignificant to which of us?"

Despite the corporate media, what has and will continue to come here from Fukushima is deadly to Americans. At very least it threatens countless embryos and fetuses in utero, the infants, the elderly, the unborn who will come to future mothers now being exposed. (http://nukefree.org/arnie-gundersen-radiation-dangers )

No matter how small the dose, the human egg in waiting, or embryo or fetus in utero, or newborn infant, or weakened elder, has no defense against even the tiniest radioactive assault.

Science has never found such a "safe" threshold, and never will.

In the 1950s Dr. Alice Stewart showed a definitive link between medical x-rays administered to pregnant women and the curse of childhood leukemia among their offspring.

After a fierce 30-year debate, the medical profession agreed. Today, administering an x-ray to a pregnant woman is universally understood to be a serious health hazard.

Those who pioneered the health physics profession---towering greats like Dr. Karl Z. Morgan and Dr. John Gofman---set a definitive, impenetrable standard. A safe dose of radiation does not exist. All doses, "insignificant" or otherwise, can harm the human organism.

That has been repeatedly shown in major studies---done most notably by Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Jay Gould, Joe Mangano, Arnie Gundersen, Dr. Steven Wing (http://nukefree.org/tmia-bloomberg-dr-ed-lyman-developments-fukushima ) and others---showing that among human populations near commercial reactors, infant death rates plummet once the reactors shut down.

In 1979, 32 years ago this March 28, the owners of Three Mile Island said there was no meltdown, no serious radiation release and no need for evacuation.

All were lies.

To this day no one knows how much radiation was released or where it went or who it killed.

TMI's owners ran ads dismissing the emissions as the equivalent of a single chest x-ray given to everyone within a ten mile radius.

But that included all the pregnant women.

Soon infant death rates soared in nearby Harrisburg. Some 2400 central Pennsylvania families sued based on the health impacts.

In 1980 I interviewed dozens of these people. Cancer, leukemia, birth defects, stillbirths, sterility, malformations, open lesions, hair loss, a metallic taste and much more were among the symptoms.(http://www.loran-history.info/health/Killing_Our_Own.pdf )

The death and mutation rate among farm and wild animals was also thoroughly documented by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and a team of investigators from the Baltimore News-American.

We were again told there were "no health dangers" from radiation that hit California from Chernobyl ten days after that 1986 explosion. But bird births at the Point Reyes National Seashore quickly dropped 60% from the levels that had been carefully monitored and recorded through the previous decade.

The cloud then crossed the northern tier of the United States. Heightened radiation levels were found in milk in New England---as they were throughout Europe from clouds that had blown from Chernobyl in the other direction.

The doses were neither "insignificant" nor "safe" to those far or near.

In Russia ten years later, I interviewed dozens of downwind victims, and many of the 800,000 "liquidators" who ran into Chernobyl's seething corpse to help clean it up. After TMI, it was déjà vu all over again.

The most recently published findings, from a compendium of more than 5,000 studies, indicate a global Chernobyl death toll in excess of 985,000, and still counting. ( http://www.nukefree.org/node/1828 ).

Today we are assaulted by yet another radioactive death cloud from yet another "perfectly safe" nuclear plant.

Fukushima's radiation is pouring into the air and water. The operators have reported radiation levels a million times normal, then retracted the estimate. Workers are being exposed to doses that are certain to be lethal. At least three of the reactors, and one or more of the spent fuel pools, hover at the brink of catastrophe.

Fukushima's radiation has now been detected in Los Angeles and Sacramento, and has blown east across North America. It has also been detected in Sweden, which means its blowing across Europe as well.

Radiation is not being released as a single puff. Rather it's a steady stream that could yet turn into a tsunami.

Fukushima's worst may be yet to come. Its collective emissions are virtually certain to exceed Chernobyl's.

And yet we continue to hear smug, misinformed "experts," TV meteorologists and industry talking heads saying these are "safe" doses.

The response of the Obama Administration has been beyond derelict. As the accident began, the President went on national television to assure us there was nothing to worry about, and that he would continue to demand $36 billion in loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants.

Since then, even as the Fukushima crisis mounts, President Obama has remained silent.

Millions of Americans have heard about potassium iodide (KI), which can be used block the uptake of radioactive iodine and perhaps protect the thyroid.

But KI can have potential medical side-effects for some individuals. And timing can be critical. To say the least, we need to know when the radioactive fallout is present.

Yet the administration has not provided us with a national supply of KI, or guidance for using it.

At very least we need reliable real-time mapping of the radioactive clouds as they cross the nation. Every American should be issued a mask, and sufficient KI pills with directions on how to use them, if necessary.

Above all, we need national leadership that puts the health of our people first and foremost.

Americans who are of reproductive age---and their unborn, our babies, the elderly, those of us who may be specially sensitive---we all deserve better.

As we have learned so tragically from Drs. Stewart, Morgan, Gofman and Sternglass, from Gundersen and Mangano and so many other researchers, from TMI and Chernobyl, and from the on-going operation of nuclear plants where infant death rates continue to be affected---a "perfectly safe" dose of radiation does not exist.

No truly informed or responsible scientist, medical doctor, health researcher, TV weatherman, bloviating "expert" or on-the scene reporter would ever tell you otherwise.

Whenever you hear the term "insignificant" fallout, ask yourself: "insignificant to whom?"

"Acceptable" to which expectant mother. To whose child? To how many mourning parents? For which dying elder?

Nuclear reactors make global warming worse and prolong our addiction to fossil fuels. They stand in the way of our transition to a totally green-powered Earth.

As we continue to learn at such a huge cost, there can never be a "perfectly safe" nuclear reactor, any more than there can be a "perfectly harmless" dose of radiation.

"Impossible" accidents continue to happen, one after the other, each of them successively worse.

What we fear most about TMI, then Chernobyl and now Fukushima, is not what has happened---but what is yet to come, there, and at the next inevitable reactor disaster.

We are a pro-life movement.

Please call the White House, the Congress and your state and local governments and demand they protect the health and safety of our people in the face of this disaster.

Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. He is author of Solartopia: Our Green Powered Earth (www.solartopia.org), and co-author, with Robert Alvarez, Norman Solomon and Eleanor Walters, of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation.

Read The Full Article:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12534

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Democrats Will Offer Additional $20 Billion in
Budget Cuts

You could make a case that the first $10 billion didn't have a huge impact, as they went to programs already scheduled to be cut (I don't totally subscribe to that). But the low-hanging fruit is gone. This $20 billion will hurt.[...]

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Monday Morning Grab Bag

I’ve been staring at the computer trying to get motivated for the last couple of hours. I[...]

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Liberal analysts present an alternate economic
universe

Utopia street sign

It'd sure be something if someone who is in a position to make policy were presenting this side of the budget debate in DC. Atrios:

In a rational world, there should be no discussion of the deficit as policy. Team D and Team R would present their competing visions for what the government should spend money on, and where that money should come from. People should understand that modest deficits are never a problem, and that large deficits in recessions are predictable (drop in revenue) and often desired (stabilizers to prevent state budget cuts). We should not be discussing whether we must cut granny's pension to cut the deficit, we should be discussing how big we think granny's pension should be and how we should be funding that pension. Ideally, we'd have one party that thinks we should spend a bit more on things like social safety nets, and do so with more progressive taxation, and one party which thinks we should spend a bit less, and with more regressive taxation, and the voters would have a reasonably clear choice.

Or this, from Richard Eskow. He envisions a world where our elected official recognize that "25 million Americans are unemployed or under-employed," and have read a "recent Celinda Lake poll [which] shows that concern over jobs outweighs deficit concerns by 2 to 1, and that 77% of the public opposes cutting Social Security." In his world, a majority of Senators don't write a letter to the President demanding that make deficit reduction his top priority, but write this:

As the Administration continues to work with Congressional leadership regarding the current prolonged, recession-like situation for many millions of people, we write to inform you that we believe comprehensive unemployment reduction measures are imperative and to ask you to support a broad approach to solving the problem....
Beyond FY2011 decisions, we urge you to engage in a broader discussion about a comprehensive unemployment reduction package. Specifically, we hope that the discussion will include stimulus spending, entitlement increases and tax increases for the wealthiest among us.

Too bad Atrios and Eskow aren't in charge.