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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Geoff Tate: Fixing the economy.

Ann Telnaes: Life begins at conception.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Maddow: Heritage Foundation, “Low IQ immigrants are parasites & their ‘unborn’ children will be too!”.

White House: West Wing Week.

Heavyweight Governor:

Maddow: Obama’s IRS scandal in context.

Sam Seder: Judge slams Obama administration over their right wing Plan B stance.

ONN: The week in review.

Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: Another state falls to gay marriage.

Lush Rimbaugh:

The Point: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor regrets Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Maddow: Alarming ineptitude revealed in care of U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Jon on the Jodi Arias coverage.

Sam Seder: Republican warmongers beating the war drums.

South Carolina is Still Crazy:

Young Turks: Elizabeth Warren wants students to get bank rates on their loans.

Ann Telnaes: America the armed.

Maddow: G.O.P. war on student voters violates the law.

Mark Fiore: iEvade.

Thom: Should Obama send troops to Texas?

Benghazi Brouhaha:

Young Turks: Enron CEO to get reduced prison term.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Comments

  1. 1

    What’s happening in Japan??

    Japan’s broad stock market index is up more than 36 percent since Abe took office in late December. Household spending, housing starts, and industrial production all jumped the last time data were released. Japan is on the move again.

    Oh that has to because of that austerity stuff that the trolls are into (like this fool).. Well let’s see (from the same article):

    He brushed off the doubters and plunged ahead with new fiscal stimulus—reversing a big tax hike implemented by his predecessor—allaying doubts about debt sustainability by combining it with monetary stimulus. He fired the Bank of Japan’s president, and brought in an outsider. Haruhiko Kuroda promised to do “whatever we can do” to curb deflation and said he wanted to see the inflation rate rise. The stimulus program will be affordable because under Haruhiko the Bank of Japan is committed to printing as much money and buying as many bonds as are out there. At least until inflation rises from its longtime near-zero level up to 2percent.

    Oooooops! We’ll be watching this one.. And watching any trolls squirm like the worms they are!

  2. 2

    What’s happening in Oregon?

    This is what competition looks like: One health insurer wants to charge $169 a month next year to cover a 40-year-old Portland-area non-smoker. Another wants $422 a month for the same standard plan.

    Wow. Such different pricing for the exact same thing. I know which one I’d pick. Wisdom of the “free market” right?? Heh..

    On Thursday, a comparison of proposed 2014 health premiums became public online, causing two insurers to request do-overs to lower their rates even before the state determines whether they’re justified.

    The unusual development was sparked by a comparison that used to be impossible because plan benefits varied so widely. But under the federal reforms that take effect Jan. 1, health insurance is mandated and every insurer must offer certain standard plans.

    Oooops! It’s that “gubmint” getting in the way..
    Look what all this socialism is doing:

    Providence Health Plan on Wednesday asked to lower its requested rates by 15 percent. Gary Walker, a Providence spokesman, says the “primary driver” was a realization that the plan’s cost projections were incorrect. But he conceded a desire to be competitive was part of it.

    A Family Care Health Plans official on Thursday said the insurer will ask the state for even greater decrease in requested rates. CEO Jeff Heatherington says the company realized its analysts were too pessimistic after seeing online that its proposed premiums were the highest.

    “That was my question when I saw the rates was, ‘Can we go in and refile these?‘” he said. “We’re going to try to get these to a competitive range.”

    Oh my! The consumer seems to be winning! What will batshit insane Limbaugh worshipping wingnuts do?

  4. 4

    @2 Next thing you know, health insurance CEOs will have to scale their annual compensation back to 8 figures.

  5. 5

    One thing I keep seeing and hearing is how the EPA is hurting the coal industry. Actually, clean air laws maybe part of it, but the market is helping, as natural gas is cleaner, and cheaper.The mines in Appalachia are hit hard, as I was reading the in the news section of this month’s TRAINS Magazine(June, 2013), it has led to CSX reassigning crews to other regions. Although, coal plants in the east are still getting deliveries, from Illinois and the Powder River Basin.

  6. 6

    @ 5

    Gas isn’t cleaner, in many ways it is filthier. People all over Pennsylvania and South Dakota are seeing their water supplies permanently destroyed by hydrofracking. The destruction is permanent. There is no way to clean out the benzene, diesel fuel and shit the drilling companies use to fracture the rock, and people are pumping brown water that burns, chemically and literally, instead of the pure clear water they were 10 years ago.

  7. 7

    People all over Pennsylvania a

    Really OWS Fraggy? From the NY Times no friend to anything conservative…

    The Pennsylvania experience with water contamination is also instructive. In Pennsylvania, shale gas is accessed at depths of thousands of feet while drinking water is extracted from depths of only hundreds of feet. Nowhere in the state have fracking compounds injected at depth been shown to contaminate drinking water.

    In one study of 200 private water wells in the fracking regions of Pennsylvania, water quality was the same before and soon after drilling in all wells except one. The only surprise from that study was that many of the wells failed drinking water regulations before drilling started. But trucking and storage accidents have spilled fracking fluids and brines, leading to contamination of water and soils that had to be cleaned up. The fact that gas companies do not always disclose the composition of all fracking and drilling compounds makes it difficult to monitor for injected chemicals in streams and groundwater.

    Hmmm… Try again OWS Fraggy!

  9. 9

    Yes, sigh all you want OWS Fraggy… where is your PROOF? Got a link to your “commentary”? Puddy uses the well known leftist mouthpiece, so where is your link?

  10. 10

    @7

    Nowhere in the state have fracking compounds injected at depth been shown to contaminate drinking water.

    The fact that gas companies do not always disclose the composition of all fracking and drilling compounds makes it difficult to monitor for injected chemicals in streams and groundwater.

    Wherein, again, puddybigot provides his own rebuttal, without realizing it.

  11. 11

    @7

    In one study of 200 private water wells in the fracking regions…

    Notably provided in the NYT and by puddybigot without citation.

    However, here are some studies, with citations…

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)…

    Shale gas development impacts on surface water quality in Pennsylvania

    also PNAS…

    Geochemical evidence for possible natural migration of Marcellus Formation brine to shallow aquifers in Pennsylvania

    This latter study didn’t show that fracking caused contamination, but rather showed that there were natural links between the shallow drinking water aquifers and the deep gas shales – which blows away the pro-fracker assertion that the differences in depth would keep drinking water safe.

  12. 12

    Once again I have to thank God the Mother that I wasn’t born as stupid, easily-manipulated or hateful as puddybigot.

  13. 13

    WOW…knuckledragging Christianists in Louisiana are getting state money for religious charter schools….

    At one of them, Claiborn Christian Academy…

    [T]he principal promotes young-earth creationist talking points from Answers in Genesis, saying, “Our position at CCS on the age of the Earth and other issues is that any theory that goes against God’s Word is in error.” She also claims that scientists are “sinful men” trying to explain the world “without God” so they don’t have to be “morally accountable to Him.”

    At another…

    Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

    and another (same link)…

    At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains “what God made” on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

    Puh-raise JAYZUS!!

    Let’s make citizens as dumb as possible, and bend them to an irrational authority and make sure they do what they’re told. Under no circumstances let them get near “sinful” scientists. We’ll tax everyone and use those dollars to advance our agenda of ‘godly’ affirmative stupidity.

    This is what the supposedly rational-in-real-life puddybigot agitates for on these threads every fucking day, and represents nothing less than an existential threat to democracy.

  14. 14

    From one of puddybigot’s favorite sites, WorldNetDaily….

    I have always leaned in the direction of the administration having orchestrated the attack for reasons of its own – given his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and legendary understanding of all things Islamic, it is possible that President Obama could even have arranged for the assault on the compound without the foreknowledge of his Cabinet.

    MmmmmHmmmm….

    BENGHAAAAZZZZZIIIIIIMOOOOOOOSLUMSSSS!!!!!!!

  15. 15

    From TPM…

    In a speech Wednesday at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) dismissed progressivism as “arrogant and condescending.”

    I think he’s just pissed that facts have a well known liberal bias.

    Any time stupid people are shown their stupidity in clear terms, they lash out at the person revealing their stupidity. Ryan is merely pandering to the stupid people in his party who resent education and critical thinking (see post above about Christianist schools).

    The march toward serfdom for the masses, and plutocracy for Ryan’s benefactors continues, and stupidity plays a big part in that strategy.

  16. 16

    @7 If you light a match and the water tap in your kitchen sink bursts into flame, it must be an Act of God, right? Never mind the drilling rig down the street …

  17. 17

    @16
    I think there’s nothing he won’t apologize or shill for, in the service of money/Republicans/plutocrats/Christianists.

  19. 19

    6)The article was just describing the reasons for the recent slump in Appalachian Coal production. Natural Gas might seem cleaner than coal, but as you described, it still is dirty. The railroads are making money either way. The cover story was on Montana Rail Link, which operates from Sandpoint, Idaho to Livingston, Montana. Besides online traffic(locally generated), they also get overhead traffic from former track owner Burlington Northern(Now BNSF), and that includes the Boeing trains(moving 737 fuselages), coal to West Coast terminals(it is already coming through here, the terminal is just north of the Peace Arch), Bakken Crude to Washington refineries, but also a heavier cargo coming into Montana, wind turbines. The latter is so heavy, they have to run empty flatcars between cars with the turbines, to distribute it.

  20. 20

    19 – Heh. How many of those routes are short lines?

    Great time to be a mom and pop short line operator if you’re near those fracking fields.. Location, location, location.

  21. 21

    20)The edition of the magazine I was talking about, just happens to be the annual Short Line and Regions issue. Iowa Pacific Holdings(which does not oen any railroads in Iowa, but does have one on the Pacific Coast) got started with a couple properties that Shortline conglomerate RailAmerica did not find profitable, then the frac sand boom came. Now the owner of Iowa Pacific Holdings is working on the passenger side, with a few tour open, a luxury operation hitching a ride on a few Amtrak runs. My favorite is Gennessee and Wyoming, a holding company that started as a 15mile long railroad serving a salt mine, and now owns 63 railroads on three continents, and among it’s Australian operations, is the Adelaide-Darwin line. It’s most recent acquisition, was RailAmerica. Still, the oil boom is benefiting short line operators, large and small.

  22. 22

    So Heritage has descended to the eugenics level. Must be right, though, the Irish, the Italians, the assorted Bohunks never contributed anything except hordes of marginally functional children suitable only for scut work. And don’t get me going on those Negroes!

  23. 23

    Isn’t Heritage also pro-war? Just about every war we have had since the Civil War, we have had at least one segment of the population having to fight two enemies. The one on battlefield, and racism and suspicion at home.

  25. 25

    22, 23 – Heritage fired Jason Richwine yesterday. His contention that immigrants have sub IQs was too low even for their bar.

  27. 27

    It’s fascinating to watch the transformation occurring within the GOP. They’re on the verge of purging homophobes and border vigilantes from their ranks. It’s amazing what the election drubbing did to their attitude. Maybe some big donors took the children out to the woodshed on Nov. 7 to remind them that the folks paying the party’s bills can’t get their drilling permits and tax breaks by re-electing the opponent. Unfortunately for Jason Richwine, he didn’t read the memo.

  28. 28

    @ 25, 27 RR

    The only reason they asked him to quit was that he openly said what they’re all thinking anyway, and it made them look bad. These Organizations like American for Prosperity and Council for Conservative Citizens and Heritage are racist, neo-nazi groups thinly disguised as legitimate political organizations. They are die-hard Fascists, and eugenics is but one aspect of their philosophy of turning Government over to private companies to divide the country up into private fiefdoms.

    Government by the people, for the people, and of the people is their sworn enemy. They are the ownership class, and they believe that ownership concept should include people, to use as they please, and dispose of when they are no longer useful.

  29. 29

    Here’s Michele Bachmann saying that 9/11 was God’s Judgement:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA_qzlwDzkQ

    Isn’t that the same thing that got wingers all up in arms when Rev. Jeremiah Wright said it? God damn America?

    Oh, wait! Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that God was damning America for slavery. That’s why it as bad when Rev. Jeremiah Wright said it.

  30. 30

    @ 28

    “They are the ownership class, and they believe that ownership concept should include people, to use as they please, and dispose of when they are no longer useful.”

    Actually, the don’t really want to own people. They just want to own the fruits of other people’s labor without having to pay for it. They figured out how to do that after the civil war.

  31. 31

    29)I wonder if Bachmann will be in saying the same thing, after a vote in St. Paul this week. On Marriage Equality, rounding up enough DFL and moderate GOP votes in the State House was seen as the tough battle. That one was cleared. Ironically, it’s her quest for a State Constitutional Ban on marriage equality that may have made last weeks vote possible. While the GOP had both houses of the legislature, they put the measure on the ballot. Before the jokes about her husband get started, I heard she does have a gay relative, and they don’t speak to each other that much. Hsr stepsister, who she has used in negative ways in her campaigns in the past.

  32. 32

    Turkey is warning Syria about car bombs going off in border towns. The US and NATO have condemmed the attacks, and are standing by Ankara. Now, I wonder if Turkey will be asking for Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter to be invoked? They have flirted with it in recent months but backed down. Article 5, was first invoked by the NATO Council on September 11, 2001, if anybody was wondering what Article 5 means.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl.....t-22498891

  33. 33

    Interesting on last week’s bus crash.The bus bus had just been inspected last week. Also, it’s of a type that is no longer in production, but only 5 years ago. Due to declining orders, and most high floors falling out of favor, Gillig pulled the Phantom from production in 2008.

    http://www.masstransitmag.com/.....atal-crash

  34. 34

    @16 “If you light a match and the water tap in your kitchen sink bursts into flame, it must be an Act of God”

    Or an old episode of Ernie Kovacs’ program.

  36. 36

    @30 Good point. The “Cheap Labor Conservatives” (with appropriate attribution to Roger) may well have come up with somethings even better than slavery for those who profit from the labor of others–they don’t have to feed or shelter them.

  37. 37

    Amtrak is showing off the new Electric Locomotives for the Northeast Corridor. They will replace the AEM-7 and HHP-8 locomotives. Replacing electric locomotives has been hit and miss. The AEM-7s were the second attempt to replace the venerable ex-PRR GG-1s.With several long distance and state supported trains continuing on to Richmond, too bad they can’t extend the electric territory, CSX owns that trackage, Mtrak ownership rnds in DC.
    http://news.yahoo.com/amtrak-u.....41862.html

  38. 38

    Amtrak ownership endef at DC, had a few problems with the edit feature and the tablet.

  40. 40

    Looks like a big union vote is coming up in Portland on June 6-7.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/busi....._to_p.html

    “Managers of the corporate giant, which makes airplane and gas turbine parts, have fought off unionization before. They oppose the current bid to bring a union to Portland-area plants …. But this time Precision faces determined employees who say they’re fed up with working mandatory weekend overtime shifts on short notice, toiling in some cases for weeks or months at a stretch. … Precision worker Rod Scott … said managers penalize workers for taking sick days, change policies without notice, withdraw benefits and set impossible production targets.”

    Treat your employees like dirt, get a union. Simple as that.

  41. 41

    Another Responsible Gun Owner (pat. pend.) exercising his Second Amendment Rights (TM):

    “[A] University of Oregon graduate student has been arrested for shooting guns into the ceiling of his campus-area house. …

    “Investigators say they found at least 39 bullet holes in his ceiling, and later seized several firearms and other evidence from inside the house.”

    http://www.oregonlive.com/paci.....cart_river

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Maybe he smoked some really bad weed and thought he saw German dive bombers coming at him. They were only fruit flies.

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