Author Archives: Attaturk

The never ending walking tour of cemeteries to whistle through

Posted by on May 17, 2013 Comments Off

Mount Everest from space via NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at flickr.com

The usual cheerleaders are out to sing the blessings of increased levels of carbon monoxide:

“The Earth has had many-times-higher levels of CO2 in the past,” said Marc Morano, former spokesman for Republican Senator James Inhofe and executive editor of Climate Depot,
a blog that posts articles skeptical of climate change. “Americans
should welcome the 400 parts-per-million threshold. This means that
plants are going to be happy, and this means that global-warming
fearmongers are going to be proven wrong.”

Marc Morano, the 21st Century’s Lysenko, here to encourage as much pollution as a smokestack can bellow.

Meanwhile, in reality:

For years, scientists have worried about the impact of climate change in
the invaluable Himalayan region. Recent research seems to confirm
worries that a warming world is melting one of Earth’s most iconic, not
to mention tallest, summits: Mount Everest.

Of course, the elimination of glaciers in the Himalayas is no big deal — they are only the predominant source of fresh water for about one in every four people in the world.

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Let the stomping begin

Posted by on May 16, 2013 Comments Off

pic via monkey_bob99x at flickr.com

Well we all know now that the Deficit has plunged to its lowest level since the great Bankers Get-a-Way of 2008, a fraction of the GDP compared to 2009.

So there’s only one thing to do.

A House committee rebuffed Democratic efforts Wednesday to keep the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program whole, as debate on the farm bill turned into a theological discourse on helping the poor.

The House bill would cut about $2.5 billion a year — or a little more than 3 percent — from the food stamp program, which is used by 1 in 7 Americans.

The committee rejected an amendment by Democrats to strike the cuts 27-17, keeping them in the bill.

If there’s a chance to grind the poor into jelly, our political leaders cannot pass up that opportunity.

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Oh, the humanity

Posted by on May 15, 2013 Comments Off

I guess the Wurlitzer shall never die:

The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status.

One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.

But at least there’s no passive-aggressive race-baiting going on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now on to a bipartisan scandal we can all get behind. As opposed to the bullshit ones.

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What could be more American

Posted by on May 13, 2013 Comments Off

Than this headline?

It is unclear what sparked the shooting, which happened in the city’s 7th Ward on Sunday afternoon. Police say two or three suspects were seen fleeing the area.

Police said that, as well as the 12 people with gunshot wounds, one person was injured in the ensuing panic.

It is all part of a typical week of gun incidents in this country, which the NRA would like to have you completely ignore.

Cue Lee Greenwood.

 

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Knowin’ how to pick ‘em continued

Posted by on May 10, 2013 Comments Off

Yesterday I posted about how former Senator, freak, and current Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint managed to put out a factually laughable immigrant bashing report put together in large part by a bigot.

But the bigot, Jason Redwine, is so much, so very much more:

The Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine, who co-authored the think tank’s study claiming immigration reform will cost trillions of dollars, contributed two articles to a “nationalist” website about Hispanic incarceration rates, Yahoo News reported Thursday.

Richwine came under fire after the Washington Post reported Wednesday that his Harvard dissertation argued Hispanics have lower IQs than Caucasians and that the United States should screen immigrants based on their IQ scores.

Meanwhile in reality, which is NOT a whiter shade of pale:

A record seven-in-ten (69%) Hispanic high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college that fall, two percentage points higher than the rate (67%) among their white counterparts, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Looks like it is time for resign again Jim DeMint.

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Knowin’ how to pick ‘em

Posted by on May 9, 2013 Comments Off

James DeMint resigned from the Senate (as a representative of South Carolina) some months ago — so he could get a big pay raise to be the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

What better place to be rewarded with seven-figures at a think tank, when this is your big thought:

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.

Classy.

Naturally as head of the Heritage Foundation, DeMint used his first big project — critiquing immigration reform to keep those big “ideas” flowing.

One of the co-authors of the Heritage Study claming immigration reform would add $6.3 trillion to the deficit, Jason Richwine, advocated barring immigrants from entering the United States based on their IQ in 2009.

Really getting their Confederate Dollars’ worth the Heritage Foundation.

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Knowin’ how to pick ‘em

Posted by on May 9, 2013 Comments Off

James DeMint resigned from the Senate (as a representative of South Carolina) some months ago — so he could get a big pay raise to be the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

What better place to be rewarded with seven-figures at a think tank, when this is your big thought:

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.

Classy.

Naturally as head of the Heritage Foundation, DeMint used his first big project — critiquing immigration reform to keep those big “ideas” flowing.

One of the co-authors of the Heritage Study claming immigration reform would add $6.3 trillion to the deficit, Jason Richwine, advocated barring immigrants from entering the United States based on their IQ in 2009.

Really getting their Confederate Dollars’ worth the Heritage Foundation.

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So how’d that thing go last night?

Posted by on May 8, 2013 Comments Off

South Carolina, what happened?  That sucks.

Meanwhile, as America wakes up to another day, another call to invade another place, we can look forward to more of the same. Like this:

Plague of Locusts descend upon East Coast!

“Last appeared under Clinton in 1996, before that under Carter in 1979, before that Kennedy in 1962, before that Truman in 1945.

DO YOU SEE THE PATTERN PEOPLE, DO YOU SEE THE PATTERN!?”

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America’s Concern Troll

Posted by on May 7, 2013 Comments Off

With such a sterling history of foreign policy accuracy like this:

“The evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”

And this:

In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic.

Richard Cohen is still paid a great deal of money by the same money-losing entity to dispense foreign policy advice like this:

The Syrian situation is spinning out of control. The longer Obama waits to intervene, the harder it becomes to do so. More than 70,000 people have been killed. More than a million Syrians have become refugees. The suffering is vast and the consequences of inaction are catastrophic. The White House is coldly wrong. Obama didn’t misspeak when he said red line. He misspoke when he later suggested that he didn’t mean it.

Self-proclaimed Washington Post “liberal” columnist Richard Cohen has yet to meet a war he wasn’t willing to have some other American fight.

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America’s Concern Troll

Posted by on May 7, 2013 Comments Off

With such a sterling history of foreign policy accuracy like this:

“The evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”

And this:

In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic.

Richard Cohen is still paid a great deal of money by the same money-losing entity to dispense foreign policy advice like this:

The Syrian situation is spinning out of control. The longer Obama waits to intervene, the harder it becomes to do so. More than 70,000 people have been killed. More than a million Syrians have become refugees. The suffering is vast and the consequences of inaction are catastrophic. The White House is coldly wrong. Obama didn’t misspeak when he said red line. He misspoke when he later suggested that he didn’t mean it.

Self-proclaimed Washington Post “liberal” columnist Richard Cohen has yet to meet a war he wasn’t willing to have some other American fight.

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America’s Concern Troll

Posted by on May 7, 2013 Comments Off

With such a sterling history of foreign policy accuracy like this:

“The evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”

And this:

In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic.

Richard Cohen is still paid a great deal of money by the same money-losing entity to dispense foreign policy advice like this:

The Syrian situation is spinning out of control. The longer Obama waits to intervene, the harder it becomes to do so. More than 70,000 people have been killed. More than a million Syrians have become refugees. The suffering is vast and the consequences of inaction are catastrophic. The White House is coldly wrong. Obama didn’t misspeak when he said red line. He misspoke when he later suggested that he didn’t mean it.

Self-proclaimed Washington Post “liberal” columnist Richard Cohen has yet to meet a war he wasn’t willing to have some other American fight.

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Less a political philosophy than a doomsday cult

Posted by on May 6, 2013 Comments Off

pic via liits at flickr.com


Behold the further wonders of austerity!

The eurozone’s recession will be even deeper than previously feared this year, the European commission has warned, as it slashed its outlook for crisis-stricken Cyprus and downgraded the prospects of the bloc’s biggest economies.

The EU’s executive arm now expects GDP in the single currency zone to shrink by 0.4% in 2013, a sharper decline than its previous forecast for a drop of 0.3%. The recovery pencilled in for 2014 will also be slower than expected and the unemployment crisis in the eurozone will persist, the commission said in its spring forecasts.

No matter how much they want to say otherwise, it’s pretty clear that that gay guy, John Maynard Keynes, was absolutely right in how important spending is to job growth.

 

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A truly emblematic new leader

Posted by on May 3, 2013 Comments Off

I imagine, if we tried, we could easily have a half-dozen people sit around a table and when the question posed is, “If you could create the perfect stereotype for the new President of the NRA, what would he (because it’s gonna be a guy) be like?”

And after about 30 seconds we would probably come up with this:

1.  He would be from the South.

2.  He would be certain that Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton tried to get the U.N. to take his guns away.

3.  He would refer to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Agression”.

4.  He’d call Obama a “Euro-peen” Socialist (to which I’d respond, “if only!”)

5.  He would look like Yosemite Sam.

Well, four out of five isn’t bad.

And, sorry Elmer Fudd.

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There is only one solution…

Posted by on May 2, 2013 Comments Off


Oh goody,

According to the payroll giant’s latest survey, private employers added 119,000 jobs in April. Economists had been expecting a gain of around 150,000. ADP also cut its March employment figure to 131,000 from the 158,000 reported a month ago…

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, which helps compile the report, said: “Job growth appears to be slowing in response to very significant fiscal headwinds. Tax increases and government spending cuts are beginning to hit the job market. Job growth has slowed across all industries and most significantly among companies that employ between 20 and 499 workers.”

And…

The Federal Reserve has explicitly criticised budget cuts imposed by Congress, blaming fiscal policy for holding back the US’s economic recovery.

So naturally,

Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.)… said Tuesday that his constituents want even more cuts to kick in.

“The people that I’ve talked to seem to be doing well,” Long told local news affiliate KOLR10 News.

Shocking, I know, that Billy Long doesn’t talk to many poor people.

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Logic goes down in a hail of gunfire

Posted by on May 1, 2013 Comments Off

Cue Lee Greenwood.

Investigators now believe that the Tsarnaev brothers had a single gun between them, a Ruger 9mm semi-automatic handgun that they are suspected of using to kill an MIT police officer, Sean Collier, and to engage in a fearsome firefight with police in Watertown, a suburb of Boston. Tamerlan died after the gunfight, in which up to 250 rounds were discharged; his younger brother Dzhokhar was captured alive.

It remains unclear how the brothers obtained the Ruger, which had its serial number scratched off. But the existence of the gun, combined with the disclosure last week that in 2011 Tamerlan Tsarnaev was placed on a classified FBI watch list for suspected terrorists, has brought the so-called “terror gap” back into the political debate.

Under current laws, individuals can still buy weapons at gun shops even though a requisite FBI background check reveals that their name is stored on a central database of potential terrorists.

Can’t get on an airplane…can buy a semi-automatic weapon.

God Bless the U.S.A. NRA.

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