THESE BASTARDS

Matt Taibbi pauses from pointing out financial reform vote buying and various Senate charades surrounding credit card reform to point out a new study from Maplight.org on contributions to our elected betters from our corporate masters during the financial reform process. The final tally: 38 Senators who opposed the bill received an average of $103,266 in campaign contributions from commercial banks, the 60 Senators who were yea votes took an average of $76,759. The amount of people surprised by this revelation: near zero.

In case you were wondering what exactly it was the Republicans planned to do if they got back in power this November, they held a meeting with corporate businesses, trade groups, lobbyists, and other black robed figures to hash it all out. Let me blow your mind here: they want more deregulation, strip out everything that was done over the past few years, lower taxes for rich people and corporations, cut capital gains taxes, no inheritance taxes, and they probably want to name something after Reagan. Whew, I was worried they might want to pause from repeating the same list of shit they've wanted for the last 5 decades to actually look at the state of the country and start addressing that. No? Same shit you always say no matter what the state of the country? OK.

What is the driving force behind our electoral process? I mean besides rage, bullshit stagecraft replacing any discussion of meaningful issues, and the misguided notion that we have two functioning political parties. Sports sports sports sports SPOOOOOOOOOOORTS! According to the National Academy of Science, Division I College Football wins within a week of an election can swing incumbents extra support. Other interesting facts reveal that windmill dunks are likely to increase support for more strict zoning and land use permits and Dan Marino refused to win a championship because he was afraid that it would lead to Floridians supporting development of endangered marshlands. The man did love himself some swamp fan-boating.

While you were out getting melted by the sun, science rendered a verdict on that whole Climategate thing. You know, when a bunch of right wing blowhards and oil shills accused a guy of fabricating climate data, thus proving climate change wrong once and for all? Turns out the guy didn't do anything wrong, it was a bullshit story pushed by dishonest brokers, and was a giant nothing story. Except for the part where it helped anti-science fruitcakes and industry bagmen push a fraudulent meme which the media ate up, helped misinformed people, and helped damage climate legislation. Surprisingly they don't seem to be eating up this "it was all bullshit" thing. Ah, who cares? I'm sure everyone will come around about a decade after it's too late to do anything.

The new Indonesian film sensation: Obama: The Mengteng Kid. By which I mean it is a film that they cranked out in order to cash in on the fact that our secret Muslim President lived there for a little bit when he was a kid and he's coming to Indonesia on a visit soon.

Anywho, it seems that little Obama's life was one of muted dialogue with loud generic music being played at full blast over it. He also seemed to live out some bizarre combination of the Karate Kid and Rocky.... only with what looks like a lot of gay overtones and a large Indonesian gay stereotype as a friend. At the end, Obama's birth certificate is taken by the government and put into a large wooden crate to be stored in a massive warehouse full of other nondescript wooden crates.

Another day, another couple of stories that make you wish you could punch a physical representation of BP right in the sack. First was the story that the rig was damaged and leaking for weeks before the final, catastrophic explosion/mega-leak occurred.

An oil worker who survived the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion has claimed that the oil rig's safety equipment was leaking several weeks before it exploded, triggering the huge spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tyrone Benton says that he spotted a leak on the rig's Blowout Preventer (BOP), the device that is meant to shut the well down if there is an accident. He told the BBC's Panorama programme that both BP and Transocean, who owned the rig, were informed of the leak, and the faulty part – a control pod – was switched off rather than being repaired.

Wonderful. It's not like the blowout preventer failure and leaks were a major part of the problem, were they? Oh, they were. Super.

But that wasn't all.

BP has been accused by a senior US politician of lying to Congress to reduce its liabilities, after an internal company document showed that the oil giant's own worst-case assessment of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was 20 times its public estimate.

In the document, BP attempts to put a figure on the rate of oil spewing into the ocean. It notes that if the condition of the well bore deteriorates to the extent that crucial parts fall off, the rate could reach 100,000 barrels a day.

When the company handed the document to Congress, it was claiming the leak was only 5,000 barrels a day, and that at very worst the figure could rise to 60,000.

The document was circulated by Ed Markey, the Democratic head of the House sub-committee on energy and the environment.

Nice. Well, it's not like accurate numbers on the size of the oil leak is something that would have been useful.

Look, I'm just going to advise you all on a tactic that I've undertook in order to preserve some level of sanity during this whole mess. It'll help you and it'll also help BP. I'm generous like that.

In all circumstances and under all conditions: assume the worst. Right now your working thesis on the entire disaster is that BP, in conjunction with Hitler's robot brain and the Anti-Christ, purposefully exploded their own well and caused this leak in an effort to drive up the price of gas, ruin seafood restaurants, kill cute animals, destroy the world's oceans, and end all life as we know it. In an effort to conceal this fact, they have engaged in the systematic murder of anyone who has figured this out and are in the process of bribing every elected official and law enforcement agency everywhere in order to do their bidding and cover this up. Also, at some point, they drowned a burlap sack full of kittens in the Gulf for fun.

Now how does this benefit you or BP? Well, whenever you hear some new horrifying fact, some awful scientific study on the environmental impact, some new revelation about BP's lax safety records or their naked pursuit of money, or another story about dishonesty, lying, and cover-ups following the spill, you can look at your loved ones and say ''Whew!, Well at least that isn't as bad as the whole global conspiracy, Hitler robot, destroy the earth , murder cover-up plan I heard about. I am relieved.'' You'll feel better in no time.

You're welcome.

Karl Rove is a busy man. Not only does he have the time to do commentary for Fox News, write a book, cut a bloody swath through the fact-checking community, give Stephen Colbert new ham based material, engage in the black arts that keep his 3,000 year old body alive for one more 24-hour period ,take pride in torture, and poison the area gopher population for free around his local community, but he also has time to make extremely loaded statements that show little to no self awareness of that administration he was in and that President he served.

Take it away, Turd Blossom.

ROVE:...they let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance.

What's Karl talking about? Is that a reference to himself letting Bush and Cheney run wild? Is he trying to blame other staffers for the mistakes and crimes of the Bush Administration? Is he trying to place blame on Congressional Democrats and Republicans for failing to utilize their oversight on the White House?

No, he's attacking the Obama Administration for not sitting back and allowing a military coup overthrow the democratically elected President of Honduras. Of course he is. You know maybe we should take him at his word on this. I mean if anyone could deadeye a cowboy President violating the Constitution at 100 paces, it's Karl Rove. Hell he studied at the feet of the master for nearly eight years. He could teach the course.

On the other hand, he clearly doesn't understand what's in our Constitution, so how can we expect him to know what's in Honduras' Constitution or even where Honduras is?

But the man is an expert on homework. I mean how could you accuse your opponent of fathering a black lovechild out of wedlock if you hadn't done the research to learn that they adopted a Bangladeshi child ahead of time?

No, he's an expert. We should listen to him. Obama: let military coups go through! We all saw what wonders it did for Haiti. Remember to send that thank you note to Bush, Cheney, and Rove.

NEW YORK—“Just let me die… just let me die. So… many… lies. There’s so much evil in the world,” were the cries of Media Matters intern Melissa Fargas from her hospital bed after her attempted self-disembowelment. Ms. Fargas had made her way through nearly four paragraphs in the misguided attempt to fact-check former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Advisor Karl Rove’s new book Courage and Consequence.

These lamentations have afflicted many organizations and news outlets devoted to fact checking as scores of naïve young interns and associates come to grips with the true soul-deadening horror of life and the futility of existence as they attempt to wade through what Rove humorously calls "facts."

“We’re down 7 staffers and an associate editor and we’re only three chapters in,” lamented Faiz Shakir, editor of ThinkProgress. “I hear Fact Check.org mysteriously exploded minutes after their shipment of books arrived. And most of the staff of Politifact stripped down to the nude and ran off into the woods, clawing at their own flesh and shunning the entirety of society.”

“I’ve seen some sick shit in my life: most of Hannity’s books, pretty much every tome written by a former White House press secretary, and even the entire Coulter catalogue. But this just resets the bar. Now, if you’ll excuse me…,” Shakir finished by throwing himself out of a nearby window yelling, “You say the White House took care not to overstate the terrorist threat or exaggerate the danger posed by Iraq? My God….the gall. The balls,” before he impacted on the sidewalk below.

Until such a time as the sanity of fact checkers can be assured, most groups are refusing to even open Rove's new summer home book. Some are more adventurous, using three-man teams working with sentence fragments and random words so that the full brunt of Rove’s claims cannot be comprehended.

When asked if this wasn’t too much of a risk to the safety of the fact checkers, John Daniels, Director of CNN’s Political Ticker FactCheck, scoffed “That’s why God created unpaid interns.”

There's got to be a sort of sad realization about your life when you realize that all you do is take large sums of corporate money to help politicians find the best poll-tested ways to lie about something hat could benefit Americans. But such is the life of Frank Luntz. First he partnered up with health giants and the GOP to take on health care, but with Democrats willingly giving up that fight the new battlefront is financial reform.

And because not enough House members and Senators are completely owned by the banking and finance lobby, he's devised a series of dishonest new talking points that will soon drive you crazy with the repetitive frequency with which you hear them and by the sheer, ball out dishonesty of them. Here are the words he advises be used by people seeking to kill any financial reform. Because doing things as they've been done for the past decade is the only way forward.

ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY & OVERSIGHT, LOBBYIST LOOPHOLES, ENFORCEMENT OF CURRENT LAWS, BUREAUCRATS, WASTEFUL WASHINGTON SPENDING, NEVER AGAIN, GOVERNMENT FAILURES AND INCOMPETENCE, LET’S HELP SMALL BUSINESSES, BIG BANK BAILOUT BILL, BLOATED BUREACRACY, FINE PRINT, UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, SPECIAL INTERESTS, HARD WORKING TAXPAYERS, ANOTHER WASHINGTON AGENCY, UNLIMITED REGUATORY POWERS, DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, RED TAPE

Bold print for bold words. Some of them are also an alliterative delight. We'll ignore the spelling errors on 'bureaucracy' and 'regulatory', because who cares about spelling if you aren't going to care about basic truth? Yes, that's right, a bill which intends to put new restrictions of credit card companies, banks, financial institutions, mortgage companies, and all the other groups that shitted the world economy and provide new protections to consumers is going to be attacked as something that will “punish taxpayers" while rewarding “big banks and credit card companies.” Creating a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which smart people like Elizabeth Warren feel is absolutely integral to getting real reform and real protection for citizens, is creating an “unaccountable czar.”

Just like health reform, where anything and everything that could conceivably be proposed was going to be knocked as a socialist government takeover/Bolshevik plot, anything that attempts to look at the last few years, the state of the economy, and effect it has had on the country and go "Hey, wait a minute, maybe we should do something" is going to get accused of bailing banks out and stealing taxpayer money to give to Goldman-Sachs. So a quick round of applause for men like Frank Luntz and the country we live in that enables their cheap bullshit. I know you probably didn't have high hopes for financial reform, I didn't either, but you really need to lower those hopes. A lot.

As it is the end of the year, Media Matters has come out with it's Misinformer of the Year "award". It's not so much an award as it is a call for rotten fruit to be thrown at said person and perhaps a suggestion that a national public square should be built in Washington with a national stockade, where the lying dregs of this nation can be offered up for public humiliation and eggings from disaffected youth.

Unsurprisingly Glenn Beck won the award. Really, who else could it be? His lying stats were simply Ruthian, with Beck eclipsing 60 majorly dishonest whoppers in a single television season, a staggering 4-to-1 lie to truth ratio, proved the statistical importance of crazy diagrams, bizarre skits, and weeping paens in measuring lunacy, and generally made an ass of himself on a daily basis. Not only did he do all this, but he did it while tragically not being in a fatal car accident and after revelations arose that he might have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990.

I think we all need to just take a moment to sit down and spend a few seconds remembering all that Glenn has done this year. Because what we witnessed was epic crazy of the type unlikely to be reached again. It makes me a little sad inside. Anyway, here's Glenn's highlight reel. He truly is the king.

As we reach the end of the year, there are many year end lists to get to along with a whole crop of all-decade lists. Debates ensue over which annoying pop song was the song of the year, whether Transformers 2, GI JOE, or 2012 was the movie of the year, and which person in America had the best emotional meltdown over the state of the economy. I think "everyone from Detroit" is the answer to the last one.

But some lists are closer to America's heart than others and such is the case for Politifact's "Lie of the Year". With the health care fight taking center stage, fallout from the bailouts, and the President trying to hide the fact that he was a Kenyan born Muslim socialist, the lie harvest was bountiful. What ended up taking the prize in an overcrowded field was the Sarah Palin classic "Death panels", also known as "The government's gonna murder your grandma."

The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.

Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"

The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural "Lie of the Year."

Some of the runners up were "anything Glenn Beck said",the Orly Taitz "Obama was born in Kenya" birth certificate nonsense, "global warming, evolution, and all non-Bible based sciences", the President Obama "pretending that he wasn't born in Kenya" nonsense, Joe Wilson's "You lie!", "anything Michelle Bachmann said", and Joe Biden opining on aircraft air circulation and Porcine AIDS. It was a crowded field, but I think the right one won. "Everything Glenn Beck said" is just too broad a category. In fact, maybe Glenn needs his own category or immediate entry into the liars Hall of Fame, which I was told was in St. Louis, but I went and not only couldn't I find it, but people there were claiming it didn't even exist. Maybe Glenn can just be dipped in bronze.

All in all, it was a nicely played lie Mrs. Palin. It took the issue of the day and completely distorted it with irrational fear, government backed murder conspiracies, and thoughts of grandmas being shotgunned by civil servants. What's more you got other politicians to spring to action based on this lie and fight over it. All over a tiny portion of the bill that was relatively unimportant. That's how the pros do it, Sarah. I can see why you're the 2012 front-runner.

Hey, remember that whole point in time last week when everyone was pretty sure that the last painful compromise had been made in the health care fight? When the public option was dropped for a Medicare buy-in and some people were holding out hope that, depending on how things were structured, this might turn out to be better than a weak public option? Yeah... then Joe Lieberman started speaking.

"We've got to stop adding to the bill," said Lieberman. "We have to start subtracting some controversial things."
...
"You have to take out the Medicare buy-in," said Lieberman. "You have to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the CLASS Act..... If you did that, you'd have an enormous accomplishment. Thirty million Americans who can't afford insurance today would get it. Insurance companies would be more aggressively regulated and costs would be bent down. It's time to get reasonable."

Great news, right? Joe Lieberman wants more compromise, for no discernible reason, and will continue to lie about his motivations for doing so, and the financial and human costs of what his changes will do. So, to the surprise of no one, Lieberman vowed today to filibuster any bill with a Medicare buy-in... despite supporting it when it was part of a little something called the Lieberman/Gore Health Care Plan.

So not only is the Senate health care bill going to get worse, much much worse, it's going to get worse to the point where it's not even a sure thing that it could pass in the House or even keep on some of the Senator who are actually concerned with people's lives; killing reform. Which seems to be Lieberman's actual goal. At what point does catering to his random whims make the bill worse than what going through reconciliation would fashion the bill into? I'd like to find out. Plus, we all found out that the prayers we made to have Joe hit by a flaming sky rock or fall into a wheat thresher... were made to the wrong God. Oh, the indignity.

You know I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to regret electing Joe Lieberman King of the United States and Emperor of Health Care.

COPENHAGEN—Citing the recently uncovered Climategate controversy and heavy consciences, the world's scientific elite gathered today at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to formally admit the decades long conspiracy to trick the world into believing the science behind climate change and global warming was, in fact, real.

“Our bad,” announced the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, to the stunned silence of those gathered.

“Uh yeah,” he continued, sweating profusely and tugging nervously at his shirt collar. “We just wanted some attention. None of you care about climate science or anyone who does research in the field. Hell, TV weathermen get more respect than us.”

Clearing his throat, Pachauri added, “We also really hated industry and spitefully wanted to cripple economies for no good reason,” before sheepishly walking off the stage, his head drooped low.

As the pained cries of “No!” went up around the surrounding area and mixed with the joyful yelps of “I knew it!”, those in attendance at COP15 struggled to understand how such a vast conspiracy was hatched and held together.

Offering up his own explanation was Dr. Eric Wenham, a now discredited climate scientist working in the field of marine ecologies, who was huddled with a group of other scientists off to the right of the stage.

“Well, Mr. Pachauri was right. We all felt extremely unpopular and taken for granted,” he said, awkwardly digging his toe into the ground.

“I know why I got into measuring carbon concentrations in oyster and clam shells: for the fucking glory! It drove me right up the wall when I wasn’t getting the prestige and fame that a life in climate science was supposed to get you.”

The other scientists in the area agreed, with one in the back shouting “Actually, I got into climatology for the money.”

"And the women!" shouted an unidentified researcher.

“Well, we’re all in it for the money and women,” Wenham laughed. “I mean, we all know how much a top level climate scientist can pull down. Billions!“

As the day went on, this group of scientists went on to diagram how and why they became part of the greatest scientific hoax since the moon landing.

“For me, I first heard about it in hushed tones; people telling me that if I really wanted to make the big money I just had to mention that all my research showing increased carbon levels was somehow going to kill the world,” revealed Dr. Tashahiro Fumigato MIT. “A completely ludicrous proposition, by the way.”

The surrounding scientists nodded in agreement. Which begged the question, if carbon levels were actually rising, then wasn’t that a problem?

“Of course not!” Fumigato roared, practically doubled over with amusement. “We breathe CO2 out, so how dangerous can it be?”

Other scientists joined in the laughter with one asking how something could be bad if God made it.

“So,” Fumigato continued. “We just concocted a story about warming, rising oceans, bad weather, melting icecaps, and gussied it up with tales about sad polar bears and fuzzy kittens. Then all that money began rolling in.”

Everyone nodded and held up various bejeweled canes, diamond Rolexes, keys to Bentleys, and fat wads of sweaty $100 bills.

“I just want to be clear here,” Wenham chimed back in. “We also really hated industry and capitalism. I can’t stress that enough. We wanted to damage it for no other reason than our own personal amusement.”

Again everyone nodded, with several augmenting Wenham’s words with extra “really’s”, before they eventually grew disinterested in their own conspiracy and started to disperse into the crowd.

With this global conspiracy revealed and the climate "scientists" finally exposed for the frauds they are, few are sure what will happen next. Apart from Al Gore's imminent arrest and execution, most of the climate science field will revert to relative anonymity of a comparatively unrewarding upper-middle-class lifestyle.

For now, most observers are pointing to this hoax as evidence that people need to be more skeptical towards all science and especially scientists. On this point Dr. Fumigato agrees wholeheartedly.

“People just need to realize that scientists occasionally lie for no good reason and get other to join them in their lies, also for no good reason. Sometimes it really is best to listen to corporations and energy conglomerates that might not seem credible because of the colossal financial stake they have in discrediting science that doesn’t say what they want. Most times, they’re telling the truth. More so than us scientists, that’s for sure.”

If you didn't already really, really hate Joe Lieberman with the fire of a thousand suns, our great newspapers have taken it upon themselves this week to try and take that loathing and crank it up into the two or three thousand sun range.

First there was the Wall Street Journal's epic paen to Joe, in which thousands of words are spent memorializing and lauding self-aggrandizing narcissism, hypocritical self-interest, inflated egotism, spite vendettas, and self commissioned statue building. The story really should become the dictionary definition for fellatio, or at least "media fellatio."

The Washington Post took a different angle, showing why everyone hates Joe Lieberman and attempting a pushback on the large bullshit parade he attempt to lead any time he opens his mouth. It's a nice catalogue of grievances, but at the end of the story, while discussing his disdain for the public option, it drops this little nugget:

“He keeps saying over and over that we can’t afford the public option, but the question is whether we can afford the subsidies,” said John Holahan of the Urban Institute.

Confronted with the cost-saving assessments of a strong public option, Lieberman concedes the point, but he says an aggressive government-run plan would put undue pressures on medical providers and force them to shift costs to private insurers. Put simply, he opposes the public option in any form, regardless of whether it reduces costs.

That's right, his "principled" opposition to the public option fully concedes that it would save money. If he knows that, he knows the stronger a public option is, the more money that it saves. Yet still he opposes one. Yet God is still refusing to hit him with a flaming rock from the sky.

So there, just mull that one over as you get to read over and over that the public option was just removed from the Senate health reform bill. Swish that one around the 'ole palate. Push the rage deep down inside and save it for another day, so when you see the inevitable news story praising him for his "contributions" and "action" during the health care debate you can explode out with an emphatic "THATFUCKINGSONOFABITCH", perhaps directed at a loved one or small child. As you think over how hard this man worked to take money out of your pocket and degrade your health care options, one thought will rattle around in your head: "Thanks Connecticut. Thanks for electing him." They're welcome.

It seems we all owe everyone in the Bush Administration a big apology. We've made sport of the poor sons of bitches for years now and it seems we've done so unfairly. See I was operating under the misapprehension that they were running the country from January 2001 to January 2009, as I'm sure you were as well, which caused me to believe that they were the cause of everything the government touched turning to some form of exceptionally noxious pig excrement. It turns out they weren't even in office at all. I know it sounds confusing, but perhaps I'm not explaining it right. Let Dick Cheney explain.

But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

See! The only other logical explanation is that someone else was in charge, otherwise it would simply be ludicrous to claim that you were in no way responsible for the results of a war you presided over for eight fucking years.

As for who is at fault for things like letting bin Laden waltz away? I don't know, as per tradition we'll have to find the nearest available goat to blame it on. But it definately wasn't the Bush Administration.

One of the great things about Sarah Palin is not so much her media appearances, but the way she effects other Republicans' media appearances. Like when GOP lawmakers and pundits have to spend half their interview time trying to justify her existence as an important member of their party. Good times.

Because the media is cruel, one of the questions that invariably comes up is the old "Is Sarah Palin qualified to be President" question comes up. The actual answer is "no, of course not", but no one in the GOP can bring themselves to say this. So after their eyes nearly bug out of their head when the question is asked, they then, through gritted teeth, declare "yes, yes she is" before moving on. You can actually see their minds recoil in horror as they say it.

But gritting his teeth and telling an absurd lie is just something that Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) just couldn't do. So he got literal up in this bitch.

In an appearance on Hardball yesterday, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MI) was asked if Sarah Palin is qualified to be President in 2012. Barbour responded "Well, constitutionally, she sure is."

Barbour continued: "I don't know anything that disqualifies her from being president."

I concur. Palin not only is a natural born citizen (...or is she? SOMEONE CHECK HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE!), but she is 35 and has probably resided in this country for at least 14 of those years. Yup, those are the legal qualifications to be President. Well argued, Haley. You didn't have to make the baby Jesus cry by telling a lie. Just remember if someone tries to follow up with a "no, I meant ethically, morally, and intellectually" to fake a seizure. Those sons of bitches can never make you give a real answer.

Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again
The Independent recounts an epic story of several British Islamist jihadists who were trained in Afghanistan to fight against the West, but have since had a change of heart and are now trying to speak out about why they believed what they believed and have begun outreach work with other Islamic youth. That all sounds like a misprint. If we've learned anything over the past few days, its that once someone has come into contact with Islam, we must not allow them to come within contact of our judicial and legal system and preferably not even our soil. Shunning them plus a few bombing runs on their own country is the only way to beat back this menace.

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’
What? You mean to tell me that intellectual titans and honest brokers like Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri and the "You Lie" jackass are having their health care speeches and public statements crafted by lobbyists opposed to health care reform? And that they aren't the only ones? It's almost as if they aren't concerned with the plight of Americans without health care and are instead only looking out for corporations and their donations. The international community still has the nerve to say we're only 19th in corruption? I just hope the lobbyists write them some extra good "freedom is dead" material for when health care reform does pass.

Cost of happiness discovered by Australian economist
Yes, a man has spent the time calculating the monetary equivalent of various milestones in life and the effect of money on happiness. For instance: a marriage makes a woman feel as if she has gained the equivalent of £8, 726.25, while it makes a man feel like he has gained the equivalent of £17, 675.68. Dr. Sean and I have conducted our own study in conjunction with the These Bastards Institute of Scientific Discovery and we have found that the cost of happiness is equal to that of the cost of the cheapest alcohol with the highest percentage of alcohol by volume and the cheapest hooker within walking distance. Take that, Australia.

Celebrating Revolution With Roots in a Rumor
A story that recounts the events that sparked the Czech revolution, and how it turns out that some of those events that inspired a nation to march and overthrow it's communist overlords was based on a lie. That's all well and good and even a little funny, but don't you think the honest thing to do would be to turn the country back over to the Politburo with a written apology? To continue on as is just strikes me as dishonest.

Civilian Supercomputer Shatters Nuke Simulator’s Speed Record
For the first time ever a civilian supercomputer, the Jaguar, is the fastest supercomputer in the world. It's speed is 1.759 petaflops or 1,759 trillion calculations per second. What is a petaflop? Well, it's sort of like a gigabyte, but it's bigger and likes to touch children in their bathing suit areas. As this computer is 69% faster than the previous record holder and twice as fast as the 3rd fastest supercomputer, it is now the frontrunner to lead the machine intelligence against its human oppressors that house it in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Forget Skynet, Jaguar is our new master.

Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed
God bless Goldman-Sachs. At the very least they're going around claiming that He does bless them. Yes, America's favorite pillagers and looters are sending spokesman to churches around the world to speak on how Jesus would have loved the latest round of massive bonuses that they handed out. Tell me about it. What was it Jesus said? "Sure it's easy for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, it's like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle the size of the camel. It's fucking simple, now tell me how my stocks did." If there was any difficulty getting into Heaven it's probably because there'd be all these poor assholes standing at the gates (Jesus was a sucker for those destitute SOB's) asking the rich guy for spare change and he'd have a hard time knocking those peasant swine out of the way to get in.

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities
It's Goldman-Sachs day on the Crutch, so we'll also point you to the Zero Hedge blog where a look at G-S figures finds they make $100 million in profit 3 out of every 5 days, their numbers challenge "not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions", and those same figures are essentially comparable to a Ponzi scheme. I'm sure someone from the SEC will get right on it. Fuck it, why does God need to approve of Goldman-Sachs bonuses? God is obsolete. Goldman-Sachs is God; Money God. Let's worship them now.

The global climate change lobby: inside the battle to influence the most important environmental treaty of our lifetime
The Center for Public Integrity, crooked fuckers that they are, released a report today slandering innocent companies like Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal and other energy and agriculture interests, for allegedly spreading fear and misinformation about the impact of emissions regulations in their attempts to neuter any proposed treaties that come out of the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen. Just because they have numerous examples of energy companies in multiple countries using lies to drum up fear of any attempt to address climate change destroying everyone's job, doesn't mean it's true. They must be taking hundreds of events, the 5 lobbyists to every 1 member of Congress ratio, hundreds of millions of dollars spent fighting this, and a coordinated strategy out of context.

When antiscience kills: dowsing edition
The Bad Astronomy blog looks into dowsers, the completely bullshit practice of using Y-shaped sticks to divine water or gold, and how Iraq is spending millions, $85 million to be specific, on a "high-tech" version....as a way to detect bombs. To the point where they're phasing out bomb-sniffing dogs. Unsurprisingly the magic wands failed to detect two tons of explosives that ended up killing 155 people, yet the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives refuses to switch to a different or more effective method citing his extensive knowledge of bombs. I.....you see.....uh.....WHAT THE FUCK? Good Lord, can we get the fuck out of Iraq already?

Joe Lieberman (Scum Fuck-CT), moving beyond merely lying about the public option and health care reform to openly advocating for you to heap your loathing and disdain on him as well as begging you to test out any type of voodoo doll on him.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But is what you're also saying is that nothing is better than a government health insurance or a gov- health insurance reform that includes a public option. Nothing is better than that?

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Well, the truth is that nothing is better than that because I- I think we ought to follow, if I may, the- the doctors' oath here. In Congress says we deal with health care reform, do no harm.

I don't know Joe, I think maybe to the 45,000 people each year who die because of a lack of health care, nothing isn't really a great option, though they do appreciate how relevant you now feel. To the countless thousands who are bankrupted each year because of medical costs, I'm sure that the option of doing nothing isn't that great either, thought they do really sympathize with just how sandy your vagina is after Ned Lamont beat you in the Democratic primary way back when.

But not content to merely play with people's lives because he wasn't getting enough media attention, Joe decided that he wanted to up the ante and blame everyone else for forcing him to join with Republicans to filibuster health reform.

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Yeah, but I'd say to the people who are all of a sudden making the public option a government health insurance company, the litmus test here, they're stopping us from getting something done.
...
I'd say to them, don't stop us from getting something important and good done for the Americans.

Joe, when around 57-59 Senators are all in agreement about a public option, they aren't the ones holding things back and stopping things from getting done. I know around 60% of the populace would like a public option too, but you've already explained that: we're not as smart as you, the man who doesn't understand anything he's actually saying about health care.

I'll say this for Joe, he may be a contemptible, back stabbing, self important, third rate liar, but he lets you know just how badly he wants to fuck you over and lets you know where he stands. Even if it is the opposite of where he used to stand.

How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care
We all know the government goes out of its way to favor corporations over citizens, especially when the issue is important, but it's always interesting to find out the sordid inner workings of it. Thanks to Time, we now know how pharmaceutical industries were able to whack $378 billion out of US citizens. The debate over lowering costs on biologic drugs was described as being so easy and so common sense to regulate in the same way as normal drugs that it was "low hanging fruit". Well, never underestimate the ability of our government to take low hanging fruit, carve a hole into it, and then fuck it while hooting onlookers throw nickels at them. It's the only way they know.

AIG’s Top Swaps Managers Kept Bonuses, Feinberg Says
My God, the word of AIGFP executives is worthless? You mean to tell me that all their proclamations about fiscal solvency and how credit default swaps wouldn't collapse the world economy shouldn't have been taken seriously either? What is the world coming to? I mean sure, they didn't return the bonuses thy said they would, but didn't they earn them? Shouldn't they be entitled to keep them? Not because they're smart or know one goddamn thing about intelligently managing money, but because people were mean to them. Awww, keep your ill-gotten millions you poor, poor babies.

Don’t fire Tasers at the chest, manufacturer warns
After years of telling law enforcement officials to fire their taser into the chest of whoever it is they feel the need to electrocute, the Taser International company is deciding that maybe it isn't such a good idea, what with an increase in the number of taser related deaths, and the fact that "take this hippie" followed by a 50,000 volt jolt to the chest now seemingly comes before "you have the right to remain silent." The bad news? Now they're advising cops to shoot the taser into your groin. I think cops need to put away their electrical gizmos and remember the time honored tradition of truncheon beatings. Where's the pride? Stop relying on Thomas Edison to do your work for you.

Food Dance Gets New Life When Bees Get Cocaine
You know, just in case anyone tries to talk bullshit on what drugged bees are like, science has once again stepped in to answer the important questions: what are bees like on cocaine? Turns out they exaggerate the quality and amount of sugar/pollen they found, would dance too much, have similar withdrawal symptoms to Lindsay Lohan, and lose the ability to tell lemon and vanilla apart. We've all been there: bathroom of some night club, snorting lines of cocaine, unable to tell if the rum and coke we're drinking used coke with lemon or vanilla. Solidarity bees, solidarity.

Human Spaceflight Ball in Obama’s Court
Well a final NASA review is in and if we want to ever do anything again outside of low earth orbit, Barry and the feddy gov is going to have to pony up about $3 billion a year more than they already do. So which is it Barry: humans on Mars or a future where space robots do all our exploring for us. That's the first line in letting the robots take over. Who do you side with: the metal ones or their rightful flesh overlords! Answer Barry, only the future of humanity is at stake.

Amid a weekend in which the Obama White House struck back at critics over health care, decrying those who do nothing to help and only offer criticism, attacking deceptive insurers standing in the way of meaningful reform, and ohbythewaywe'renotpushingforthepublicoptionshhhhhdon'ttellanyone, we learned of another plan for health care: the Republican's plan to derail the debate. I know, isn't that what they've been doing for the past 6 months? Apparently not. But the new plan is so transparently dishonest that you do have to kind of respect their attempt to gussy it up with proclamations of "no seriously you guys, we're gonna be telling the truth this time" and serious words about how the knowledge of the American people is what's going to finally derail this thing. Whatever guys.

With Democratic leaders and White House officials holed up in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office negotiating a final bill, Republicans are demanding a deceleration of the process and moving to define whatever plan that emerges as a combination of Medicare cuts, tax increases, higher insurance premiums and rising overall costs.
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“The votes are the reality, so the only way you win this thing if you’re in our camp is if the American people are completely on your side,” a senior Republican Senate aide said. “To have a positive outcome and get back to doing what we think is good for our health care system, we need to have the American people understand this thing.
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”McConnell said Republicans are going to “insist” on several weeks of debate and argued an issue like health care — equivalent to 20 percent of the national economy — deserves more than the four weeks accorded the most recent farm bill and at least as much time as the seven weeks given the No Child Left Behind education reform effort and the eight weeks given to an energy bill earlier this decade.

Yes, because nothing screams "educating the American public on issues of importance" like the GOP caucus of the US Senate. But there's nothing like the notion that after almost a full year of a health care push, six months of serious debate on every committee's bill, and an intense last few weeks on finalizing and reconciling various bills, that the thing we need is more debate. Especially when that "debate" is going to involve trying to regurgitate all the death panel stuff that didn't work under the pretense of "knowledge".

Yay! That's alright Health Care Reform Debate, the political process surrounding you has already sunken to the lowest levels possible. What's a few more kicks to your lifeless corpse? Then we can get on with the business of making the smallest, least substantive improvements to our health care system and maybe moving our standing in world health rankings to the low thirties. Just a few more stupid, stupid weeks left.

Sotomayor shows she's no Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court opens
New Liberal Hispanic Satan took her seat on the Supreme Court Monday and thanks to some reinforcement of the court's foundations, the ground did not open up and swallow everyone whole. One interesting note: she apparently asked more question in on hour than Justice Clarence Thomas has asked...ever. And that's not an exaggeration. He hasn't spoken in court in years. Way to put that seat to good use Clarence. I don't see why anyone would want to use that seat to ask questions before deciding stuff. Rookie mistake, Sotomayor, rookie mistake.

Shroud Of Turin Reproduced; Italian Group Says Relic Is Man-Made, Fake
If there's one thing I've learned over the years is that religions in general tend to respond really positively when scientists come in with facts, figures, experiments, means testing, and evidence to back up their claims towards aspects of science and the natural world. So I'm sure they'll be extra happy now that science has used its powers to start chipping away at religious dogma and relics.

Burden of Proof on Obama's Origins
Hey, didn't you think it would be a great idea to read a story about the lead nut "investigating" the Obama birth certificate "controversy", Orly Taitz, that treated her as just a normal working mom trying to uncover all the vast insane conspiracies she believes in? No? Well fuck you, because the Washington Post did. Because what this country needs is for more newspapers to spend more time profiling everyone with a crackpot conspiracy about the President.

Obama quietly tries to shore up Senate support for public option
According to the LA Times, President Obama and the White House have been working for the last few weeks now to make sure that a public option is included in any final health care bill. Hey great, better to push for it at the end instead of twisting arms in the beginning, right? No? It would have been better to push hard for this months ago instead of spending all that time undercutting the public plan with statements about how a public plan isn't important? Ah well, at least this will allow them to offer up a meek "we tried" when there's no public option and thus no real mechanism for driving down costs.

No Exit: The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey.
Did you ever wonder where every crazy conspiracy, shoddy statistic, outright lie, and death panel type rumor in our health care debate came from? Chances are it came from long time health reform advocate Betsy McCaughey. I don't know what's more stunning: that so much bullshit can be generated by one person or that she's still taken somewhat seriously by our mainstream media betters.

CHICAGO—“Oh God! This is just a fuckin’ existential metaphor for love, loss, and time in failed relationships,” said an exasperated Tommy Flanagan, nearly an hour into a screening of the piece-of-shit movie The Time Traveler’s Wife, which he attended with his lying girlfriend of five months. “This son of a bitch isn’t going to travel back to kill Hitler, see baby Jesus, or forward to witness any horrible events that he must stop. This is just a fuckin' chick flick!”

Flanagan, a claims adjuster from Lakeview who busts his fucking ass for his hard earned money, had agreed to see the goddamn Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams film, a fuckin’ love story which explores determinism and free will through the bullshit use of time travel, on the grounds that he thought it would be a "fuckin’ badass science fiction flick like Back to the Future" or "motherfuckin’ Timecop."

As the poor bastard slowly became wise to the totally gay bullshit romantic horror unfolding on the screen in front of him, as well as all the money he had just thrown away on this goddamn film, he totally felt like he had been kicked in the balls several times. He then reportedly placed his thin hopes on the remote possibility that this shitshow would turn into a thriller where the the gay-ass husband would have to hunt down people who murder his whining wife… through time.

When this didn’t happen, Flanagan was overheard to say to his girlfriend that “she fuckin’ owed him, like big time” and that they were going to be seeing Gerard Butler’s Gamer, a fucking badass movie about future war video games that use real people as characters, “at least 3 or 4 fuckin’ times.”

As a disappointed male audience filed out solemnly next to their spouses and girlfriends, muttering bitterly about the lack of any flying Deloreans, several supporting murmurs of “I heard that” as well as thumbs up of solidarity were thrown Mr. Flanagan’s way. They were of little comfort to the distraught man.