BP's safety history flat out sucks..and people die regularly.

I have blogged ad-friggin- nauseum about BP’s lack of safety in all areas of oil drilling and refining. These fuckers simply do not give a tinkers damn, and consider the fines levied against them the cost of doing business.

Lets recap, shall we?

First, the Alaska pipeline. NBC News had a piece in 2006 about BP having not only knowledge of how bad the state of their pipeline was, but they hadn’t performed normal proactive maintenance procedures for over 15 years. The fact that they poisoned a huge area of Alaska with their oil spill, and didn’t blink an eye over it should tell you what their priority is..money..make it while you can and screw the environment. Some parts of the pipeline are quoted as being “paper thin”. The environmental disaster would be horrific.

Next the explosion at the TX refinery which killed 15 workers in 2005. Four years later, they had major safety issues that still had not been addressed. From the Telegraph article:

BP has been handed a record $87m fine for “outstanding life-threatening safety problems” at its Texas City refinery where an explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170 in 2005.

Hilda Solis, the US Labor Secretary, said authorities had found 439 current “wilful and egregious” safety violations which “if unaddressed could lead to another catastrophe”.

“This administration will not tolerate disregard of our laws,” she added.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration visited the refinery 17 times over four years and it claims that 270 notices to correct hazards have not been rectified.

There have been four additional fatal incidents at the Texas City refinery since the 2005 explosion.

One worker was crushed between a lift and a pipe rack, another was electrocuted while working on a light circuit, a third was killed when the top blew off a pressure vessel, and a fourth was hit by a front-end loader.

“There were some serious, systemic safety problems within the corporation and specifically within this refinery,” said Jordan Barab, acting assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. “Just the fact that there are so many still outstanding problems, life-threatening problems, at this plant, indicates that they still have a systemic safety problem.”

As I said, they pay the fines which are usually less than what it would cost them to actually fix the fucking problems. These pigshit mutha fuckas need to be criminally charged for these issues. It will be the only way to wake these bastards up..perp walk the upper echelon of management into federal court on murder charges for starters.

But I ain’t holding my breath..nope. The past and current administrations did not and do not have the balls to do that. A history of not giving a shit will continue, which means people will continue to die and nothing will change. Eleven workers lost their lives in the Gulf Disaster last week…just chalk it up to the cost of doing business….right gents?

The 411 on the AZ immigration law authors...

I was stunned..and it takes a shitload of ...well...shit to do that to me. From Rachel's show this evening...a little 411 about the men that wrote the fascist AZ undocumented workers/illegal immigrants law.

 

From The Maddow Blog:

It was [John] Tanton who founded the anti-immigration movement's most powerful institution, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). A retired ophthalmologist once active on environmental issues, his interest in immigration was marked in the beginning by an explicitly racial argument. "To govern is to populate," Tanton wrote in 1986. "Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?"

If you want to know more about these fascist, racist, Holocaust denying bastards, check out this 2005 American Prospect article about these fuckers. Below are their names:

Kris Kobach
John Tanton
The Pioneer Fund, big in the eugenics movement and funders of FAIR.
 Russell Pierce

Google those suckers and be amazed, m'dear reader, at the Hitler-esque fuckery they are involved in. And they compare Obama to Hitler...give me an effin break. From the American Prospect article:

Tanton founded FAIR in 1979. Between 1982 and 1994, it received more than $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund. A little-known foundation created in 1937, the Pioneer Fund likes to benignly describe its origins in “the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.” In the late 1930s, though, it frankly admired Hitler. Today, it still bankrolls groups such as the aforementioned American Renaissance and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) in Virginia. As fair has attempted to develop a more mainstream persona, it has dropped the Pioneer Fund as a funding source. FAIR's executive director, Dan Stein, has repeatedly denied that any racial animus motivates its activities. But the federation has kept Tanton on its corporate board of directors.

In addition, FAIR's political action committee, the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, routinely receives significant contributions from Tanton and his wife. FAIR's PAC has contributed more than a quarter-million dollars for and against candidates since 1999. In 2000, it spent more than $30,000 against Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, an Arab American, who lost that general election. Not surprisingly, it has also given Representative Tancredo $15,000 over the years, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Buried in those documents is a disclosure that the PAC had Peter Gemma on its payroll doing clerical work. Gemma is a denizen of Holocaust-denial meetings and other hardcore anti-Semitic venues, according to Devin Burghart, the author of numerous reports on anti-immigrant groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago. Gemma apparently did not make any of the money decisions at FAIR's PAC, but his presence is another indicator of the shark-infested waters that politicians like Tancredo swim in.

While FAIR has the biggest footprint on Capitol Hill, the AICF possesses the largest list of donors among the think tanks that provide literature and ideas to local groups. It has also received $180,000 in grants from the Pioneer Fund. But its main source of funds is an immense donor base: more than 400,000 names of contributors who give $5 or more, according to documents provided by the Center for New Community. The donor list legally belongs to American Immigration Control Foundation NC, one of three corporations that make up this particular mini-empire.

Notably, the AICF is heavily interlaced with the Council of Conservative Citizens. The lineal descendant of the '60s-era white Citizens Councils, the Council of Conservative Citizens revived itself in the '90s with campaigns for the Confederate flag and against immigration. It stays away from explicit anti-Semitism and describes itself as a “white separatist” group rather than “white nationalist.” This distinction is without a difference -- particularly given the arguments its leadership have made for a genetically determined notion of American nationalism. Trent Lott was forced to disassociate himself from the council once his ties to the group became public.

The Council of Conservative Citizens is heavily linked with several anti-immigrant groups, including the AICF. One AICF board member, Brent Nelson, also sits as director of the council's foundation. President of the AICF's board from 1993–95, the now-deceased Sam Francis edited the council's tabloid until this year and otherwise served as its commanding philosopher-general. And the aforementioned Wayne Lutton, editor of Social Contract and occupant of Holocaust-denial circles, serves on the Council of Conservative Citizens' editorial advisory board.

What a wonderful bunch of white supremacists! Congratulations AZ...you really screwed the pooch this time.

UPDATE: My dear blogger bud REALITYZONE has an excellent post up on this topic as well, entitled We Are All Mexicans in AZ. Also, check out the video below that I filched from my Canadian blogger bud Kim @  repliderium. If the AZ law is allowed to stand...we are all redheads aren't we?
M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Why its Confederate Memorial Day folks!!!

Holy Fuckamoly....from the Maddow Blog:

At the Shad Plank in Virginia, which has no Confederate Memorial Day and remembers anyhow.

Twitter pal @argylestyle notes that state and local offices in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Texas are closed today for Confederate Memorial Day, marking the South's surrender to Union General William T. Sherman in 1865. North and South Carolina have their own Confederate Memorial Days, on May 10.

If one poster to a Virginia blog has his way, we'll all be "singing Dixie, Carry Me Back to Old Virginia, and flying Battle Flags along with Old Glory" -- for the sake of economic development.

The Shad Plank is one of those Virginia traditions that you apparently have to be there to really get. Judging from the picture up top, I'd say it has a lot to do with Confederate flags. And, judging from this comment, a lot to do with misplaced sentimentality, too.
Paul Garber writes:

Virginia could be making so much money off of its connection with the Confederate era. During the 150th Anniversary (2010-2015) we should put into place as many recurring festivals, tours, battle re-enactments and other annual or ongoing events that will attract domestic and international tourists to the Old Dominion.

People are NOT going to throng to Virginia to see the White guilt programs and slave path tours, proposed by Ed Ayers and the rest of the "New South" apologists.

The things that will attract tourism are fun festivals like, Hanover's Dixie Days, battle re-enactments and musical programs.

I have read research that said that we could add a billion bucks to our Central Virginia economy by promoting our Confederate era tourism.

Everyone should be singing DIXIE, Carry Me Back to Old Virginia, and flying Battle Flags along with Old Glory from Virginia homes and businesses.

All of our jobs have been sent to Communist China. Our Confederate heritage may be the only economic engine that we have left!

Garber gives his URL as SCV.org, for Sons of Confederate Veterans. That's the group that pushed for Virginia to get a Confederate History Month, with or without bringing up that old slavery thing.

Christ....what a bunch of morons. Who in the blue hell celebrates losing a damn war?? I lived in northern VA (McLean) for years, and thankfully never ran into any of these brain-dead assholes.

Today's number: $29 Billion

That cunt, AZ's Jan Brewer, went ahead and signed the bill which legalizes, in AZ, racial profiling and other civil rights intrusions. She received over three times as many anti-bill messages from her constituents than those who supported this fucked-up legislation.

I hope that worthless hag will appreciate the drop in income for her state if, as many think, the state law enforcement folks will go hard after anyone that looks hispanic, otherwise known to the haters as brown people and mud people among other things. Check out this local writeup on what 'those people' aka undocumented workers, bring to the state cash-wise:

If all undocumented workers were removed from Arizona's workforce, economic output would drop annually by at least $29 billion, or 8.2 percent, according to a University of Arizona report released Wednesday.

The study is based on Census Bureau and other data from 2004, the most complete year available, and assumed most non-citizens in the state are undocumented.

It also found that Arizona's documented and undocumented immigrants generate nearly $44 billion in output annually.

*snip*

Without most non-citizen immigrants, the simulations showed:


• $6.56 billion in lost construction output.


• $3.77 billion lost in manufacturing.


• $2.48 billion lost in service sectors.


• $600.9 million lost in agriculture.

"Filling the specific jobs in question would require large numbers of low-skilled workers, and the U.S. education system produces relatively few of them," Gans said. "There simply aren't enough additional workers in Arizona to fill the jobs."

Output means money folks..as in salaries, spending and of course..profits.

What a piece of shit she is...seriously. There aren't enough white folks to take those jobs, and I lived there for over a decade, so I ain't blowing smoke up anyone's ass. But evidently, the governor can't see past her own fucking ignorant nose.

Civil rights icon Dorothy Height dies.

She walked the walk, with Martin. For 40 years she championed the cause of civil rights and woman's rights. She passed away at the age of 98. From the link:

As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, "Stop the lynching." In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading the movement not to underestimate their women counterparts.

One of Height's sayings was, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said that the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

 Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

Benjamin Hook also passed away last week. Both these individuals put their lives on the line to further the cause of civil rights for all people.

We have lost two of best within a weeks time. :( Their contributions must be remembered and lauded as they spoke truth to power when it was dangerous to do so.

Update: KO does a great piece on Ms. Height in the first half of the video below. Then, he talks about the horseshit the state of AZ is trying to pass for people of color..the color brown.

15 years later, a discussion.

“Words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and our responsibility, we have to take responsibility for,”- President Bill Clinton’s address to the Center for American Progress.

President Bill Clinton can look back on the horror of the OKC bombing and for that, his words are important for the present. His speech at the Center for American Progress last Friday gives us a retrospective and a warning for today regarding the violent extremist's, aka American-born terrorists, that seek to validate violence against their own and our, government. 

Michael Reyes, a victim of the bombing who also lost his father in the bombing, introduces President Clinton. Mr. Reyes recounts the horror of that day and I found it incredibly moving. Ron Brownstein, Congressman Kendrick Meek, former Congressman Mickey Edwards, Bradley Buckles, Mark Potok and Mike Waldman and Jamie Gorelick were the panelists that held a Q & A after the President spoke.

Below is the entire presentation split into specific sections. You can click the double arrows (>>) to move on to the next section of the presentation.

Germany & Britain might go after Goldman-Sachs

From Jurist:

The German government said Saturday that it is considering taking legal action against Goldman, Sachs & Co. [corporate website] for defrauding investors, according to a report [text, in German] by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. The announcement comes just a day after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] filed a civil suit [complaint, PDF; JURIST report] on alleging securities fraud against the bank. German government spokesperson Ulrich Wilheim said that the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) [official website] will request information from the SEC to decide whether to file a suit. Britain has indicated that it may also pursue legal action [Bloomberg report] after it found out the scope of the allegations contained in the SEC lawsuit.

The SEC complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website], alleges that Goldman made misleading statements and omissions to investors in early 2007 in violation of the Securities Act of 1933 [text, PDF] and Securities Exchange Act of 1934 [text, PDF]. Goldman's alleged conduct in marketing collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) [Investopedia backgrounder] to investors lies at the core of the controversy. Goldman responded [press release] to the allegations by denying all wrongdoing. The SEC is seeking "injunctive relief, disgorgement of profits, prejudgment interest, civil penalties and other appropriate and necessary equitable relief from both defendants," remedies considered appropriate in securities fraud cases.

I really hope their troubles have just started. Frog march, in prison orange, every single prick of the GS executive branch and that pig that headed up the hedge fund that made billions off the misery of others. 

18 scoreless innings of baseball..

We interrupt our regularly scheduled policital bitchfest to bring you important baseball news...

Over seven friggin hours and a total of 20 innings. That is what it took for the Muts to beat the Cards Saturday.

What. A. Fucking. Game! For you aficianado's here is the Box Score.

My sista in Springfield went to the game...her first Cards game. I don't know if she stayed for all 20 innings but I doubt it...her ass and back would be killing her if she did. My son in OK watched it....and ate two meals and took a nap during the game. He kept texting me during the last 4 innings.

From the ESPN link:

It was the longest game in the majors since Colorado beat San Diego 2-1 in 22 innings on April 17, 2008.


St. Louis left the bases loaded in the 10th, 12th and 14th and stranded 22 runners, including 14 in extra innings. Molina caught the whole game and went 3 for 9.

It was the longest scoreless game in the majors since the Los Angeles Dodgers and Montreal Expos went 21 innings without a run on Aug. 23, 1989, according to STATS LLC. The Dodgers won that one 1-0 on Rick Dempsey's leadoff homer in the 22nd.

Utilityman Joe Mather (0-1) became the first position player to lose a game since shortstop Josh Wilson for the San Diego Padres in a 9-6 setback in 18 innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks last June 7.

I watched the '08 Pad's/Colorado game..got over in the middle of the night as I recall.

Also, the Rockies had their first No-No of franchise history tonight..a great baseball Saturday!

Blackwater indicted: Federal firearms violations.

Couldn't happen to a better bunch o' fuckwits! From McClatchy:

Five former employees of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater violated a series of federal firearms laws to give the company a leg up in the military contracting and training business, a federal indictment charged Friday.

Blackwater officials falsified federal paperwork to conceal a gift of firearms to Jordan's King Abdullah II, whom Blackwater was courting as a client, the indictment charges.

Former company president Gary Jackson used the tiny Camden County, N.C., sheriff's office as a front to buy AK-47 automatic rifles that Blackwater wanted for its training facility in Moyock, N.C., and the company illegally possessed short-barreled rifles that Blackwater officials thought were useful for winning security contracts.

The indictment also charges former Blackwater vice-president William W. Mathews Jr.; former general counsel Andrew Howell; former vice-president Ana Bundy; and Ronald Slezak, who handled federal paperwork for firearms.

Mark Corallo, a company spokesman, said the company wouldn't comment on the indictment beyond saying that it cooperated fully with federal investigators.

Oh please, oh please..get these fuckers..let's see them in prison orange for the love of christ!

I know...they will never see the inside of a prison cell. Damn it.

Online privacy – Fighting the feds

From Cnet:

Google and an alliance of privacy groups have come to Yahoo’s aid by helping the Web portal fend off a broad request from the U.S. Department of Justice for e-mail messages, CNET has learned.

In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages–a position that puts those companies directly at odds with the Obama administration.

Yahoo has been quietly fighting prosecutors’ requests in front of a federal judge in Colorado, with many documents filed under seal. Tuesday’s brief from Google and the other groups aims to buttress Yahoo’s position by saying users who store their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“Society expects and relies on the privacy of e-mail messages just as it relies on the privacy of the telephone system,” the friend-of-the-court brief says. “Indeed, the largest e-mail services are popular precisely because they offer users huge amounts of computer disk space in the Internet ‘cloud’ within which users can warehouse their e-mails for perpetual storage.”

The coalition also includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and TRUSTe.

If the federal government believes someone is a bad guy..aka a terrorist…then they can get a fucking warrant to comb through the individuals  internet history. It’s a no-friggin-brainer. This is called Due Process for christ’s sake.

The Digital Due Process Coalition is trying to level the playing field. They want police to be able to obtain private communications (and the location of Americans’ cell phones) only when armed with a search warrant, per the Cnet article. Updates to the article are below.

Update 9 a.m. PDT Wednesday: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a statement on the case, with EFF attorney Kevin Bankston saying: “The government is trying to evade federal privacy law and the Constitution.” Yahoo’s brief is also worth noting. Like the coalition’s filing, it argues that “users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their e-mails” and says the Fourth Amendment requires police to obtain a warrant to peruse stored messages. And it confirms that prosecutors want “all e-mail” in the targeted Yahoo Mail accounts, even if it’s not relevant to the investigation or could include documents protected by the attorney-client privilege.

Update 9:30 a.m. PDT Wednesday: Yahoo has sent over a statement saying: “Yahoo values our trusted relationships with our users and works to protect their privacy while at the same time fulfilling our legal responsibilities. Yahoo’s filing in this matter is a public document. Beyond what is contained in that document, Yahoo has no comment on the specifics of the case.”

Stay tuned kiddies…the shit will get waist deep…count on it.

Gainesville elects openly gay Mayor

From ThinkProgress:

Last month, the Dove World Outreach Center — a church in Gainesville, FL that attracted attention last year for erected a sign reading “Islam is of the devil” — posted a new sign stating “No homo Mayor.” The message was directed at Craig Lowe, an openly gay candidate in Gainesville’s mayoral race run-off. “We don’t feel as though the city should be represented by a homosexual,” said Terry Jones, a senior pastor at Dove World. When the media raised questions about whether such advocacy violated the church’s tax status, Dove World changed its sign to just say, “No Homo.” Despite this homophobic campaign, Gainesville elected Lowe as its newest mayor yesterday. However, he won by just 35 votes, so there will automatically be a recount. If Lowe takes office, he will be “among about 30 gay or lesbian mayors nationwide.”

Hopefully this will hold up after the recount. As for the homophobes at Dove World Outreach...you worthless hate-filled fuckers need to get a grip on reality and practice what Jesus preached...acceptance of all people.

Paylin has 12 million reasons she hosed Alaskans

As in 12 million bucks..that is what she has earned since she quit her job as Governor of Alaska, or to be more specific...since July of last year. The spelling in the title is not accidental.

Holy fuckamoly...that is a lot of friggin moolah to pay a female that doesn't know a fucking thing, and spews more bullshittery than anyone else this side of Rush Limpballs.

Her salary as Governor of Alaska was a measly $125K.

From the ABC News article that broke this story:

That conservative estimate is based on publicly available records and news accounts. The actual number is probably much higher, but is hard to quantify because Palin does not publicize her earnings. She reputedly got a $7 million deal for her first book, with the bulk of that money due after her resignation as governor, and will earn about $250,000 per episode, according to the web site The Daily Beast, for each of eight episodes of a reality show about Alaska for the The Learning Channel. She has managed to keep a lid on reliable figures for her earnings from a multi-year contract with Fox News and a second book deal with HarperCollins. 

Is she worth it? Hardly..But then I am not a mouth breathing, knuckle-dragging rightwing nutter.

ProPublica wins Pulitzer Prize

This is a huge victory for new media, meaning online -only publications. I am  proud to say I have linked to them for quite some time, and Sirens Chronicles has proudly displayed their logo, with a link to their site, on the front page for over a year now. They do heavy-duty investigative reporting...like the corporate media used to do. From the HuffPo link:

ProPublica, a 2-year-old organization, is bankrolled by charitable foundations, staffed by distinguished veteran journalists, and devoted to doing the kind of big investigative journalism projects many newspapers have found too expensive.

The Pulitzers opened its doors wider in recent years to online-only material. The changes reflect the seismic shifts going on in the industry in the past decade, with readers getting their news online at all hours, in a never-ending news cycle.

Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler said there about 100 online entries from 50 sites this year, up from 65 entries last year.

If you are not familiar with ProPublica..I would like to suggest you check them out.

Matt Taibbi on the price of predatory banking

The price of this bullshit is utimately paid by the citizens of Jefferson county. From Democracy Now, via Crooks and Liars, we get a nightmare situation that should be considered criminal activity..and was on several levels. From Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article:

If you want to know what life in the Third World is like, just ask Lisa Pack, an administrative assistant who works in the roads and transportation department in Jefferson County, Alabama. Pack got rudely introduced to life in post-crisis America last August, when word came down that she and 1,000 of her fellow public employees would have to take a little unpaid vacation for a while. The county, it turned out, was more than $5 billion in debt — meaning that courthouses, jails and sheriff’s precincts had to be closed so that Wall Street banks could be paid.

It’s a horror story of course, complete with carpetbagging Wall Streeter’s and corrupt officials and businessmen. What took down this county? A new sewer system. From the RS article:

And once the giant shit machine was built and the note on all that fancy construction started to come due, Wall Street came back to the local politicians and doubled down on the scam. They showed up in droves to help the poor, broke citizens of Jefferson County cut their toilet finance charges using a blizzard of incomprehensible swaps and refinance schemes — schemes that only served to postpone the repayment date a year or two while sinking the county deeper into debt. In the end, every time Jefferson County so much as breathed near one of the banks, it got charged millions in fees. There was so much money to be made bilking these dizzy Southerners that banks like JP Morgan spent millions paying middlemen who bribed — yes, that’s right, bribed, criminally bribed — the county commissioners and their buddies just to keep their business. Hell, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the fuck off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.

*snip*

Once you follow that trail and understand what took place in Jefferson County, there’s really no room left for illusions. We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over. It’s our turn to get laughed at. In Birmingham, lots of people have gone to jail for the crime: More than 20 local officials and businessmen have been convicted of corruption in federal court. Last October, right around the time that Lisa Pack went back to work at reduced hours, Birmingham’s mayor was convicted of fraud and money-laundering for taking bribes funneled to him by Wall Street bankers — everything from Rolex watches to Ferragamo suits to cash. But those who greenlighted the bribes and profited most from the scam remain largely untouched. “It never gets back to JP Morgan,” says Pack.

Makes you physically ill doesn’t it? Taibbi’s article is a great read…even if it did make me want to throw-up. Below is the Democracy Now interview w/Taibbi.

Mitt wins, beats sister Sarah

Romney didn't even have to show up to the Southern Republican leadership conference to take 24% of the vote to Palin's 18%.

Romney should also note that he only won by a single vote..Ron Paul came in second. From The Guardian:

Another potential candidate for 2012, the former House speaker, Newt Gringrich, secured a respectable 18% (321). Mike Huckabee, the pastor and broadcaster who won the Iowa caucus in the 2008 primaries, won only 4%, while Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, took only 3%.

So the Rightwing Nutter Party is anything but united, which of course made me smile. The Rethugs biggest hold is below the Mason-Dixon line, so that is why I think this assinine poll deserves to be mentioned.

It's been a lousy couple of weeks here and smiling has been at a minimum. I did cackle when I saw Pawlenty's numbers. That fuckwit really needs to step the fuck up if he plans on running for Prez in 2012.

Below is a video of the neocons defending Palin. C&L has a nice writeup as well.

Cop pleads guilty to Katrina murders

Actually, its ex-cop Michael Hunter. From ProPublica:

Former New Orleans police officer Michael Hunter pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of conspiring to obstruct justice and failure to report a felony for his role in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He’s the third ex-cop to admit guilt in the ongoing case.




On Sept. 4, 2005, Hunter and other officers barraged a group of civilians with gunfire, killing two and wounding four others. The latest guilty plea, covered in depth by our partners at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, offers fresh details about that bloody day.



The judge who accepted Hunter’s guilty plea said she was “sickened by the raw brutality of the shooting and the craven lawlessness of the cover-up” by police.

Almost five years after the fact..It's about time justice prevails in this case. PBS's Frontline has more.

Let the games begin!!!

The flowers and trees are blooming, the weather is slowly getting warmer and for me that means only one thing..Let the games begin, it’s Baseball Season! Although there will only be one game today, BoSox vs Yank$, it is the beginning of my favorite time of the year.. Baseball is possibly the only thing that keeps me from going postal and/or stroking out with regard to politics and how the Congress critters and the Obama administration are running our country.


My favorite talking head, Keith Olbermann, is also a lover of all things baseball as well. He even has a blog on MLB.com that he calls Baseball Nerd. It warms the cockles of my little black heart to know that the man who epitomizes leftwing values loves the sport of baseball as much, if not more, than I do.

The sport of baseball has a wonderful way of crossing political party lines. Even the asshat George Will worships baseball. I am fairly certain that the only thing Will and I have in common is our love of the sport. Will is fond of saying he only writes about politics to support his baseball habit.

Today George has an article up at WaPo that isn’t about politics..it’s about baseball. I know for a fact that I could sit and talk for hours and hours with George Will as long as the subject was baseball. The sport is a great equalizer and when I was a young hothead, the only time my father and I could stand each other was when we were watching, listening or talking about baseball. My fathers favorite word to describe me back then was…Commie. We had screaming matches about politics that would drive everyone else from the room. Our discussion’s would end with my father screaming that I was a commie-pinko and I would respond in kind.

But when the subject was baseball, we would be good to each other. Even when we loved different teams, we never got ugly or foul-mouthed towards each other. The best memories of my childhood are of my father and I listening to his beloved Dodgers on the radio and talking baseball.

As an adult I hate the Dodgers, being a Padres fan and all. The Ball n’ Chain is a lifelong Dodger fan as well. Both of us have waited for this day all winter. We both participate in Fantasy Baseball leagues and I love that my spouse comes to me for advice on players to draft…it means I know more than he does about our national pastime.

Keith and George however, know far more than I regarding the history of baseball. So that means I read their baseball columns religiously.

Speakiing of religion..Yes, I do worship at the Church of MLB. It’s the only church I know where people who vehemently disagree can still be friends and lovers. And that is a wonderful thing indeed.

So I gotta cut this short as it’s time for church. ;)

Today's number: 102

That is how old Scott Roeder will be before he is eligible for parole. From McClatchy:

Judge Warren Wilbert on Thursday sentenced Scott Roeder to life in prison for the first-degree murder of abortion provider George Tiller, and ruled he must serve at least 50 years in prison before he can be considered for parole.

Wilbert told Roeder he can earn a 15 percent good time credit and has 10 days to file an appeal. Wilbert said if Roeder lives past 102, then gets parole, he also faces lifetime supervision after his release.

Wilbert also sentenced Roeder to 12 months on each count to run consecutive for the aggravated assault of Gary Hoepner and Keith Martin, the men Roeder pointed the gun at after he shot Tiller.

Roeder yelled "The blood of babies is on your hands, Nola Foulston ... And Ann Swegle," as guards quickly ushered him out of court. Foulston is the district attorney and Swegle, the prosecutor who prosecuted the case.

Roeder ran his piehole, attempting to justify his actions, for 40 minutes before the Judge finally told him the courtroom wasn't a soapbox. Roeder was talking about his politics and railed against both his victim, Dr. Tiller, and his church.

Fucking sumbitch will rot in hell...and he can't get there soon enough for many people..including the family of  Dr. Tiller.

At least there is one less anti-choice extremist on the streets of America.