May 27, 2011 archive

Eric Cantor Blocks Tornado Relief

Eric Cantor

This story is usually attributed to HuffPo around the internet, as if Arianna’s cash-cow featured actual reporting, but the real source is the ultra-right Washington Times…

http://www.washingtontimes.com…

And for those weasels it was really all about a “learning experience.”

“Cantor learns DeLay’s lesson on disaster spending”

“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

That stands in stark contrast to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who six years ago stumbled when, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he said emergency spending would be tacked on to the deficit.

At the time, Mr. DeLay said the GOP, which had controlled Congress for most of the preceding decade, had whittled the federal budget down so well that there wasn’t room to cut enough to pay for the billions in hurricane-related spending.

“It is right to borrow to pay for it,” he said, adding that cuts could “attack the very economy” that Republicans were trying to bolster.

He took flak from conservatives who said after years of expanding budgets under President George W. Bush, Republicans in Congress should have turned to cuts before deficit-spending.”

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

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The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is an Open Thread

Oven

 

“I bake my mud-cakes in the sun,”

said the crazy baker.

“My beautiful oven!”

 

 

Cartnoon

Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner

Own It, Live With It, Embrace It

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Because we aren’t going to let you get out from under it….

Thus spoke Anthony Weiner on on May 24th, laying out the Republican plan to replace Medicare with an inadequate voucher program:

Today, House Republicans brought another bill (HR 1216) to the House floor that does not address jobs and wastes time in a futile attempt to repeal part of the Affordable Care Act. House Democrats are staging a “mini-filibuster” by “striking the last word” allowing them five minutes of time to discuss their strong opposition to the Republican-passed budget which ends Medicare as we know it and forces seniors to pay over $6,000 more a year.

   Weiner: I move to strike the last word Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, you may recall I was standing here approximately two hours ago waiting to speak with several other members on the efforts of my Republican friends to eliminate Medicare as we know it and for reasons that are known only to the Chair, I was denied the ability to do that. Well, I’m back. And just to review the bidding, here’s where it was before that order was made. We had the Chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, a good man, a guy I like, stand down in the well and say, ‘Oh, no’ (and this by the way is someone who is elected by the Republican members to represent them in races all around the country) saying that the Ryan plan wasn’t a plan it was and I’m quoting here, “a construct to develop a plan” and he said the proposal is not a voucher program and then he said it was a one size fits all, that Medicare was draining our economy is what he said.

  Well, ladies and gentlemen, that might be the rationale for our Republican friends wanting to eliminate Medicare, but none of those things are true. It is not a ‘construct to develop a plan’ it is the proposal of the Republican party of the United States of America to eliminate Medicare as a guaranteed entitlement. If you don’t believe me, go get the book that they wrote, go get the budget that they wrote, go get the bill that they wrote.

h/t to Crooks & Liars for the transcript.

The Ryan Budget plan has failed in the Senate with 5 Republicans opposing it, the Republicans are still embracing the proposal to eliminate Medicare. They are in denial about the loss of NY-26, long a Republican stronghold. to Democrat Kathy Hochul. The sadder part is the White House has also missed the message

Joe Biden group to tackle Medicare and Medicaid: aide

Vice President Joe Biden and top lawmakers will examine government-run health plans on Tuesday as they try to work out a deal to raise the United States’ borrowing authority, a congressional aide said.

h/t Marcy Wheeler

It would appear that the White House is willing to sell out future seniors to give political cover for raising the debt ceiling.

Six In The Morning

Mladic health questions halt court hearing

Officials say interrogation will continue on Friday, despite former Bosnian Serb general’s poor physical condition.

Last Modified: 27 May 2011

 Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, captured in Serbia, has appeared in a Belgrade court, but his hearing was halted for doctors to assess his health, according to local media reports.

Mladic appeared frail and haggard during his court appearance on Thursday evening, and Serbian television station B92 reported that Milan Dilparic, the judge, had suspended the interrogation due to Mladic’s poor physical and mental health.

Mladic, who is accused of multiple war crimes charges, faces extradition to The Hague where he would be tried by a tribunal prosecuting cases relating to conflicts during the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.

The 69-year-old, who commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, is alleged to have orchestrated the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, as well as the four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Spam

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

helmetNever let it be said I’m above poking a little fun at my Viking relatives.

It seems that in addition to producing racist anti-Muslim cartoons, Denmark has decided to ban Marmite.

What you have to understand about this is that Marmite and it’s Australian cousin Vegamite are basically expended Brewer’s Yeast and they taste… well… let’s just say you have to acquire one.

Some will point out that it has high levels of umami and there are other foods that require a ‘willing suspension of disbelief‘ like natto and garum.

The reason they’re banning it is because it’s fortified with extra vitamins which, as with riding your dog like a small pony, IS FROWNED ON IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT!  Thank goodness I was able to hide this computer under my blanket so I can keep track of my blog accounts.

The advertising says you either love it or hate it, fans are up in arms ready to smuggle it in like Reservation cigarettes from Germany and Sweden and are calling for retaliatory bacon boycotts.

You’re wondering about the hat.  It’s what Vikings wear to keep the CIA mind control microwaves out.

Now, if it were Spam-

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.

–Judy Garland



Basket 0

“Fukushima is leaking like a sieve!”

JAPAN-QUAKE/

“Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking like a sieve,” says Nature, a journal which isn’t exactly prone to hyperbole, and this screaming headline is actually an understatement, because…  

Fukushuima is really leaking like five sieves!

1. The pressure vessels around the reactor cores are leaking!

2. The primary containment vessels are leaking!

3. Pipes between the buildings are leaking!

4. The storage pools which were supposed to contain 100,000 tons of radioactive water are leaking!

And…

5. There are leaks in the basements of the buildings which contain the containment vessels!

Everything is leaking, and outside the tight little circle of TEPCO and Japanese government nobody knows how much radiation has already leaked into the air and soil and ocean, because…

Tepco and Japan’s nuclear regulators haven’t updated the total radiation leakage from the plant in northern Japan since April 12.

And of course April 12 was the day Fukushima was declared a Level 7 Nuclear Event, the same as Chernobyl.  

Late Night Karaoke

Obama Use Patriot Act For Domestic Spying and more

During the debate, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that the executive branch had come up with a secret legal theory about what it could collect under a provision of the Patriot Act that did not seem to dovetail with a plain reading of the text. “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” Mr. Wyden said. He invoked the public’s reaction to the illegal domestic spying that came to light in the mid-1970s, the Iran-contra affair, and the Bush administration’s program of surveillance without warrants.

Another member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, backed Mr. Wyden’s account, saying, “Americans would be alarmed if they knew how this law is being carried out.”

The Obama administration declined to explain what the senators were talking about. Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said that Congressional oversight committees and a special panel of national security judges – known as the FISA Court – were aware of how the executive branch was interpreting and using surveillance laws.

“These authorities are also subject to extensive oversight from the FISA Court, from Congress, from the executive branch,” Mr. Boyd said.

Mr. Wyden has long denounced the idea of “secret law” – classified memorandums and rulings about the meaning of surveillance law developed by executive branch officials and the FISA Court. He and Mr. Udall had proposed requiring the Justice Department to make public its official interpretation of what the Patriot Act means. The chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, agreed to hold a hearing on their concerns next month.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05…

Of course, this information comes from the libertarians.

Oh wait, it doesn’t.