Tag: Republicans

Dick Shelby is a National Laughing Stock

Seth Anderson0 comment

I sincerely hope the professional gabbers seize on Senator Dick Shelby’s unrequited, forbidden love for Northrop Grumman and mercilessly ridicule him. How is holding up the working of the Senate to demand more political pork for Alabama going to be justified to his Teabagger masters? Even more importantly, wouldn’t be nice if this was the final straw that broke the back of the filibuster?

Twists and Turns

Gail Collins writes:

Normally, a senator who’s feeling testy will just put a hold on one presidential nomination, the way Jim Bunning of Kentucky did last year when he stopped action on the confirmation of a deputy U.S. trade representative because he was upset that the Canadian Parliament was considering a bill to ban the sale of cigarettes with candy flavorings.

I am not making that up.

Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri had a hold on the nomination of Martha Johnson to be the leader of the General Services Administration since last summer because he was ticked off with the G.S.A. over construction of a new federal building in Kansas City.

The agency kept saying it had responded to Bond’s questions, although perhaps the staff was slow in getting back to him since there was nobody in charge. But Bond held firm until the Democrats forced a vote this week. That naturally involved a great many delays, postponements, overrides and a passionate if incomprehensible speech by Bond, the highlight of which was: “Please bear with me. I know this is confusing.”

Then after many, many months of waiting and several days of total gridlock, Johnson was approved, 96 to 0.

That was a normal Senate procedure. Now Shelby has upped the ante with a blanket hold on everybody. His incredibly grave reasons were the desire to see that a defense contract for a new tanker is awarded to a bidder who will do the assembly work in Alabama. Also, he feels that a new F.B.I. facility for testing explosive devices should be conveniently located in Huntsville.

“If this administration were as worried about hunting down terrorists as it is about the confirmation of low-level political nominations, America would be a safer place,” said a spokesman for the senator.

[Click to continue reading Gail Collins – No Holds Barred – NYTimes.com]

Zanzibar

Obstructionist, Party of No, these epithets are too mild for the Republicans in the Senate; Mouth-Breathing Idiots might be accurate, but doesn’t quite have the necessary zing. Got to think of a better phrase for these idiots – what say you?

Reading Around on January 30th through February 2nd

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected January 30th through February 2nd:

  • The Roman Army Knife: Or how the ingenuity of the Swiss was beaten by 1,800 years | Mail Online – The world’s first Swiss Army knife’ has been revealed – made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart. An intricately designed Roman implement, which dates back to 200AD, it is made from silver but has an iron blade. It features a spoon, fork as well as a retractable spike, spatula and small tooth-pick. Experts believe the spike may have been used by the Romans to extract meat from snails.
  • Hypocrisy Alert: 68 House Republicans Take Credit for the Economic Bills They Opposed | DCCC – Is this number higher by now? Wouldn’t be surprised

    The DCCC has unveiled the latest entries into the House Republicans Hypocrisy Hall of Fame, which has now grown to 68 Members. These Republicans have been caught trying to celebrate the benefits of projects they opposed in President Obama’s recovery bill, the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations bill, and the Omnibus Public Land Management Act.

Reading Around on January 18th through January 20th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected January 18th through January 20th:

  • Change of Subject: W.W.R.D? — What Would the Republicans Do? – [Republicans]

    now control the U.S. Senate, 41 votes to 59.The Democrats, based on this one very notable setback, seem poised now to attempt a strategy of retreat and appeasement, exactly as is being demanded by their harshest critics on Fox News. Evan Bayh, Barney Frank and the coalition of the pouty and lily livered seem to think voters in the fall will be drawn to the sight of their fluttering white flags.

  • Chicago Transit Authority urges commuters to report photographers | Photography is Not a Crime –

    The Chicago Transit Authority is so “committed to safety,” that it is urging commuters to report people committing “excessive photography/filming.” The sign posted inside the train stations places photographers on the same level as, say, a non-CTA employee walking the tracks or an unattended package or “noxious smells or smoke.”

    In other words, it accuses photographers of being possible terrorists or just suicidal maniacs.

    The problem is that these signs not only encourage commuters to dial 911 when seeing someone taking photos, which will tie up real emergencies, it contradicts the CTA’s own policy on photography and videography within train stations

  • Econundrum: 10 Eco-Apps for Your iPhone | Mother Jones – Econundrum: 10 Eco-Apps for Your iPhone

Reading Around on November 12th through November 14th

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A few interesting links collected November 12th through November 14th:

  • More on Franken Amendment, elitism… at StarkReports.com – In an effort to increase my ability to do this kind of reporting, I’ve exchanged contact information with several Democratic Press Secretaries. I’ve explained that I am a progressive news service and that my goal is to quench a thirst for timely progressive news… that it’s not enough to complain about Fox, Nedra Pickler, John Solomen or an inability to get your message out… that growing a progressive media requires cooperation from the news-makers that want to see the progressive media grow…

    Perhaps I’m too impatient… But the truth is that I’m having a really difficult time getting my calls returned from most offices.

    That’s something I’d understand if my web videos hadn’t been viewed nearly 500,000 times. But hell, it’s clear my work is reaching people, so it’s difficult for me not to see a certain form of elitism in the Democratic communications establishment.

  • Hullabaloo That Commie Bastard Al Franken Broke the Rules – Are those Senators not insensitive to rape victims? It’s quite obvious that they are.

    The good news is that the Republican senators have learned their lesson:

    Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.

    Right, they forgot to hide their misogyny. (Man, you let your guard down for one minute and those bitchuz are all over you.)

  • There is no time to be tactful – For fans of Mad Men it will prove difficult to learn of the story behind ‘Peace, Little Girl’ – a brutal 60 second television spot which first aired on September 7, 1964 – and not imagine the offices of Sterling Cooper. The ad was conceived by agency Doyle Dane Bernbach on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson, in an effort to kill off Republican candidate Barry Goldwater’s march to the White House. DDB, desperate for success with their first political client, threw 40 of their best men at the campaign and chose to aim for the jugular by capitalising on comments Goldwater had previously made concerning nuclear weapons. The following letter was written by DDB co-founder and legendary ad-man Bill Bernbach just months before the election, at a time when Goldwater had managed to regain the public’s confidence and the DNC had started to drag their heels.
  • Blind Man’s Penis -John Trubee’s infamously great song:

    I got high last night on LSD My mind was beautiful, and I was free Warts loved my nipples because they are pink Vomit on me, baby Yeah Yeah Yeah.

    Stevie Wonder’s penis is erect because he’s blind
    It’s erect because he’s blind, it’s erect because he’s blind
    Stevie Wonder’s penis is erect because he’s blind
    It’s erect because he is blind

    Let’s make love under the stars and watch for UFOs
    And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs
    You can fuck them
    Yeah Yeah Yeah.

    The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles Ramona’s titties died in hell And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Reading Around on October 1st through October 2nd

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A few interesting links collected October 1st through October 2nd:

  • The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers: If You Wanna Win You Gotta Learn How to Play – The whole Olympics is going to be like this–a game in which Chicagoans will be made to feel like they should be emotionally invested when the real players will be behind the scenes: the guys with contracts waiting to be signed, and properties on the Olympic venue Monopoly board … Maybe the games will lose money on the whole, but some people, people on the inside, are going to make Benjamins by the bagful. These are the people who exaggerate the benefits, who make it sound like Chicago needs the Olympics more than the Olympics needs Chicago (a dubious claim if only because the IOC stands to make another half billion or so in television rights for summer games on US soil) so that you’ll support an endeavor that will line their pockets.

    One Billion Dollars

    One Billion Dollars

  • Senator Helped Mistress’s Husband, Raising Ethics Flags – NYTimes.com – A Republican Senator and an ethical scandal? What a a surprise!”The senator also put his chief of staff at the time, who had raised concerns that Mr. Hampton’s activities could violate the one-year ban on lobbying, in charge of dealing with him.”
  • whore.jpg
  • Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch | vanityfair.com – more than being about cost, [Rupert Murdoch’s] strategy is about pain. What he is always doing is demonstrating a level of strength and will and resolve against which the other guys, the weaker guys, cower. He can take more pain than anybody else. While others persist in the vanity of the Internet, he will endure the short- or medium-term pain necessary to build a profitable business.

Gloves Are Off in Texas Race

Seth Anderson0 comment

Texas Governor’s race is already amusing, even though it hasn’t officially begun yet

Charges of economic cluelessness and political hackery are flying in Texas as U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison challenges Gov. Rick Perry for the Republican nomination for governor.

The primary isn’t until March and the big bucks haven’t yet been spent on advertising, polling or voter-luring barbecues in this large and heavily Republican state.

But from the get-go the race has been fierce, even by the bare-knuckled standards of Texas politics. For instance, both sides have taken to posting attack videos on YouTube, referring to one-another as “Kay Bailout” and “Tricky Ricky.”

Mr. Perry, who appeals to the conservative wing of the party, took office in December 2000 and is already the state’s longest-serving governor. Ms. Hutchison, who was elected to the Senate in 1993 with 67% of the vote, is more moderate and considered one of the most popular officials in the state.

That makes for a high-profile battle, one that is often seen as a microcosm of the national debate within the Republican party over its future direction.

[Click to continue reading Gloves Are Off in Texas Race – WSJ.com]

joementum

What I’m hoping for is that the loser of this race of losers pulls a Joe Lieberman, and runs in the general election as an Independent, thus splitting the Republican vote.

No wonder I hate football

Seth Anderson0 comment

No wonder I hate football, the overwhelming majority of coaches are Republicans, at both college and professional ranks.

LBJ Library Sky

During the 2008 campaign cycle, college and NFL head coaches (and their wives) contributed a total of $13,286 to John McCain and the Republican National Committee. From that same group, Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee received just $4,600—half of it from Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears and the other half from San Jose State’s Dick Tomey.

In all, 20 coaches active in the 2008 season gave to Republican candidates seeking federal office. Three donated to Democrats. This disparity is even more striking given that, among the individual donors in the ’08 campaign cycle, Mr. Obama outraised Mr. McCain by more than a 5-to-1 margin.

Some coaches display their largely conservative instincts in non-financial ways. Jack Del Rio of the NFL’s Jaguars led the crowd in the pledge of allegiance at a Sarah Palin rally in Jacksonville last fall. Longtime Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs addressed last summer’s Republican National Convention. Lou Holtz fired up congressional Republicans with a pep talk in 2007 and recently flirted with running for Congress in Florida. Ralph Friedgen, the portly University of Maryland coach, good-naturedly called one of his Canadian players a socialist last fall.

There’s no evidence that coaches with a conservative bent are better coaches or more likely to get jobs. Football coaches aren’t the most diverse group, which may help explain their political similarities.

[Click to continue reading Why Your Coach Votes Republican – WSJ.com]

Wild CatThe reasons the Wall Street Journal opines as to why Republicans are pretty ridiculous1: more marketing for the Republican brand, in my opinion, but you can make up your own mind whether Republican virtues translate onto the grid iron.

Footnotes:
  1. discipline, self-reliance, loyalty to core values – yeah, the Republicans I know and read about don’t fit any of these parameters [↩]

Reading Around on July 9th through July 10th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected July 9th through July 10th:

Obama’s Presidential Bid Linked to Swinger’s Club

swanksalot1 Comment

By a certain logic, exactly and completely true. Strangely enough, I blogged about one aspect of this back in 2004.

Red Light Night

Barack Obama would probably never have become the Democratic Presidential nominee if he hadn’t first won the Senate race back in 2004… and there was a good chance that Obama would never have become senator if Jack Ryan hadn’t withdrawn from the election… and Jack Ryan wouldn’t have withdrawn from the election if the story had never broken about he and Jeri Ryan visiting swinger clubs… and his visits to swinger clubs never would have become public record if his wife, Jeri Ryan, hadn’t mentioned it in their divorce proceedings… and maybe Jeri might not have wanted to get divorced in the first place if Jack hadn’t tried to pressure her into sexual situations at swinger clubs that she wasn’t comfortable with… and maybe she would have actually gotten turned on that night back in 1997, and said “Yes” to swinging if only she hadn’t seen my bare naked ass.

I hate that someone (anyone) was adversely affected by simply going to a swinger’s club. Especially someone like Jack Ryan. But that pebble was dropped into the water here in New Orleans back in 1997 and it rippled until Jack Ryan’s campaign was doomed. Funny how much can happen… just by dropping a stone.

[From Obama’s Presidential Bid Linked to Swinger’s Club | Kasidie.com, April 2008]

As an aside, too bad the Chicago Tribune does not believe in permanent links to its archives, because I would like to read (and link to) the original Eric Zorn column. In 2004, every blog post was related to me reading the actual print edition of something1 – yet the original article is lost to the ether now. Too bad, I’d like to revisit the complete article.

Footnotes:
  1. in this case, the Chicago Tribune [↩]

Condi’s Really Bad Day

Seth Anderson0 comment

Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine catches Condoleezza Rice speaking lazily, as if she were still bantering with the complacent White House press corp and not being questioned by young folks not yet part of the corporate system.

For eight years, Condoleezza Rice dealt with the Beltway punditry and the access-craving White House press corps. The reception she got, with a handful of exceptions, was fawning. Which leaves her totally unprepared for a return to an academy populated with the Daily Show generation: bright young minds with a very critical attitude towards the last eight years. In a meeting with Stanford students at a dormitory reception on April 27, the school’s former provost got off to a shaky start and ended in a train wreck. She may in fact have her last words in the exchange quoted back to her some day in a law court.

…

Rice insists that waterboarding is not torture. Why? Rice pulls a Nixon. It was not torture because the president authorized it. In Condiworld, apparently, “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” What lawyer was advising Rice through this process? That’s a pressing question–the Senate Intelligence Committee suggests that legal counsel at the National Security Council was guiding her at every step–and evidently giving her some very peculiar ideas about the law.

(6) Whereas the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary shows Rice giving authorization for waterboarding, Rice has a different recollection. “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency.” This is dicing things very finely. But I think I know how Judge Garzón will understand this: Rice just confessed to a focal role in a joint criminal enterprise. Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who has a lot of first-hand experience with the legal issues in play, had the same take: Rice just admitted to her role in a conspiracy to torture, a felony under 18 U.S.C. sec 2340A.

[Click to continue reading Condi’s Really Bad Day—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEED_iviTA

Ms. Rice should go to prison for her crimes against humanity, but doubt seriously if justice will ever be served on any of the Bush Administration criminals.

Explaining a No Vote on Stimulus in Michigan

Seth Anderson0 comment

Actions have consequences, and if Congress-critter McCotter and others of his ilk lose their jobs because their constituents run them out on a flaming rail, I’d celebrate the fact.

Newstand on State Street circa 1996

[Representative Thaddeus] McCotter — whose suburban district west of Detroit is laced with unemployed autoworkers, shuttered automotive plants and struggling manufacturers — could become a test case of whether House Republicans’ united front against the economic measure was the wise political and policy course.

Democrats are mounting a new campaign to remind voters that Mr. McCotter and 11 other Republicans in competitive districts in harder-hit states opposed the stimulus package, which the president says will provide middle class tax cuts and millions of jobs — 7,800 in Mr. McCotter’s district alone, according to a calculation by the White House.

“Did you know Congressman Thad McCotter voted against President Obama’s economic recovery plan, endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?” says the script of an automated telephone call that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee plans to direct to homes in his district this week. The message will encourage voters to call Mr. McCotter and “ask why he voted to raise taxes on middle-class families.”

[From Explaining a ‘No’ Vote on Stimulus in Michigan – NYTimes.com]

The Vulgar Pig Boy1 has convinced so many working class people that the Republicans have working class Americans interests at heart, despite consistent behavior that demonstrates the complete opposite. Wouldn’t it be cool if the stimulus package opposition was the beginning of the end of this Republican lie?

Footnotes:
  1. aka Rush Limbaugh [↩]

Reading Around on February 15th

swanksalot1 Comment

Some additional reading February 15th from 09:57 to 21:10:

  • Having It Both Ways: Republicans Take Credit for ‘Pork’ – In Stimulus Bill They Opposed | Crooks and Liars – Rep. John Mica was gushing after the House of Representatives voted Friday to pass the big stimulus plan.

    “I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future,” the Florida Republican beamed in a press release.

    Yet Mica had just joined every other GOP House member in voting against the $787.2 billion economic recovery plan.

  • Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.” – Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.

    Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

  • Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Michael Isikoff: Yoo Disbarment Proceedings Now Visible on the Horizon – Torture Report Could Be Trouble For Bush Lawyers: An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department’s ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos “was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.” According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said.
  • Gutless Wonders: Specter Admits GOP’s Political Calculus On Stimulus Bill | Crooks and Liars – DCCC head Chris Van Hollen puts it into perspective (if only the media would actually frame it this way):

    “Americans will hold House Republicans accountable for just saying no to saving and creating three to four million jobs and the largest tax cut in American history.

    “House Republicans are fast becoming party of No-bama. Americans will hold Republicans accountable for being the party of no – no to President Obama’s economic recovery, no to children’s health care, and no to equal pay for women doing equal work.”

  • Talking Points Memo | The Big Disconnect – But there’s a very big problem with this strategy above and beyond the absurdity of the argument. “Congress” may be really unpopular. And the Democrats now control Congress. But politics is a zero sum game. At the end of the day, in almost every case, you’ve got to pick a Republican or a Democrat when you vote. And if you look at the numbers, congressional Democrats are pretty popular. And congressional Republicans are extremely unpopular. If you look at the number, the Dems are at about 50% or higher in most recent polls, while the GOP is down in the 30s.

    The city remains wired for the GOP. Not that it’s done them a great deal of good of late. But it remains a key part of understanding every part of what is happening today.

  • Google Jumps Into Organizing Smart Meter Energy Data « Earth2Tech – “Just as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hinted over the past few months, Google is moving from managing the world’s information to managing your personal energy data. On Monday night Google tells us it is developing an online tool called “PowerMeter” that will allow users to monitor their home energy consumption. For now Google is testing the web-based software with Google employees, but the search engine giant is looking to partner with utilities and smart energy device makers and will eventually roll out the tool to consumers.”
  • Energy Information – “Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to her home electricity consumption right on her iGoogle homepage. The graph below shows how someone could use this information to figure out how much energy is used by different household activites.”

    Oooh, I want one of these so-called smartmeters

  • MyDD :: The Beltway Games Don’t Really Matter – “Perhaps more than ever, there is a real divide between what the chattering class inside the Beltway is saying and what the people of this country are saying. We saw the beginnings of this during the campaign, when despite the fact that John McCain was deemed to be winning the news cycles — indeed, his campaign seemed to care more about winning “Hardball” than it did about reaching 270 electoral votes — Barack Obama nevertheless continued to lead in the polls, both nationwide and in the key states. Now we’re seeing it again, as the establishment media focuses on the less meaningful back and forth while at the same time overlooking the larger picture being grasped by the public — that is that President Obama is succeeding, in terms of both moving forward his policy agenda and bringing two-thirds of the country along with him in his effort.”

Duped into being a Republican

Seth Anderson0 comment

Is there any other reason one could reasonably claim to be a Republican? Other than being duped? Really?

– Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

“I am not a Republican,” insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. “I certainly . . . won’t sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again.”

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party — a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states — has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.

The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.

The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.

[From Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans – Los Angeles Times]

Headaches

Seriously, are the Republicans that hard up for new voters that the only way to inflate their numbers is through lying? Wait, don’t answer.

and the real repercussions to this slimy act:

Those who were formerly Democrats may stop receiving phone calls and literature from that party, perhaps affecting its get-out-the-vote efforts. They also will be given only a Republican ballot in the next primary election if they do not switch their registration back before then.

Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.

The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them — more than 80% — said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

Read more before the article goes behind pay-wall.

Economic Snake Oil

Seth Anderson0 comment

Thomas Frank notes the inherent cynicism contained within Republican politicians. Republicans of the last few decades got elected by running against Big Gomnet1, and once elected, proceed to gut, damage and otherwise destroy the mechanisms of the very bureaucracy they were supposed to be in charge of. Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, the current fiscal mess, these are all direct results of electing anti-government Republicans.

now we are supposed to vote for more conservative Republicans because we learned from the last bunch of conservative Republicans that government just doesn’t work.

That is the advice of Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential nominee, in last week’s debate with her Democratic counterpart, discussing the dread prospect of universal health care: “Unless you’re pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don’t think that it’s going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds.”

Conservative misrule, prompted by conservative disdain for government, proves that government cannot be trusted — and that the only answer is to elect another round of government-denouncing conservatives.

“Cynicism” seems too small a word for this circular kind of political fraud. One reaches instead for images of grosser malevolence. It’s like suggesting that the best way to recover from pneumonia is to stand in the rain for three hours. It’s like arguing that the way to solve nuclear proliferation is by handing out weapons-grade plutonium to everyone who asks for it.

[From The GOP Peddles Economic Snake Oil – WSJ.com]

Snake oil, in other words, pure malevolent snake oil, containing mercury, BPA, perchlorate, and who knows what else.

Footnotes:
  1. also known as Big Government, or worse [↩]

EPA hates Americans

swanksalot1 Comment

The Bush cronies in the EPA want to kill and maim American citizens, presumedly to bring on The Rapture. Their latest scheme to damage public health: ignore perchlorate in the nation’s drinking water because cleaning it up would cost the Pentagon too much money. The Pentagon has much more important tasks to accomplish with its trillion dollar budget: like killing people in other countries.

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there’s no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.
EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public…

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a “meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems.”

[From EPA won’t limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking water – USATODAY.com]

I like to eat paste

The EPA chooses to ignore common sense, and the criticism of non-Bushies like Barbara Boxer:

“This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate’s environment committee.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: “This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly.”

The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.

The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA’s conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.