Meet The Next Sarah Palin: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer | Prosebeforehoes
The above video is from last nights Arizona gubernatorial debate, with the breakthrough performance of the night going to current governor and champion of Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration legislation, Republican Jan Brewer. It only gets worse, as after the debate she ducks questions about her allegations that illegal immigrants have beheaded American citizens in the Arizona desert, only to space out for 20 seconds and walk away:
As Sarah Palin’s star rises, critics expose her dark side | The Independent
She tells lies. She’s a lousy tipper. She billed the Republican Party more than $3,000 for the underwear she bought during the last Presidential election, including dozens of Spanx girdles. Oh, and for all the cutesy charm that Sarah Palin projects in public, she’s got a nasty habit of bullying staff, losing her temper with friends and family, and, when particularly upset, throwing tin cans at her husband, Todd.
Fresh from a week that seemed to cement her status as the most valuable brand in American conservatism, and saw her both receive top billing at a vast “tea party” rally in Washington, and almost single-handedly alter the direction of a Senate race in her native Alaska, Palin is on the receiving end of a brace of vintage journalistic hatchet jobs from the left and right sides of the political spectrum.
The first, a vast profile of the self-proclaimed “Mamma Grizzly,” which covers 18 pages of next month’s Vanity Fair, devotes more than 10,000 words to a mixture of revelation, allegation and innuendo regarding both her public and private persona, detailing what it calls her “erratic behaviour,” her “pattern of lying,” and what the magazine’s reporter Michael Gross describes as the “sad, mouldering strangeness” of her everyday existence.
More…
BP Says Limits on Drilling Imperil Oil Spill Payouts | New York Times
BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Clifford Krauss and John M. Broder report in The New York Times.
The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support.
BP executives insist that they have not backed away from their commitment to the White House to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund over the next four years to pay damage claims and government penalties stemming from the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The explosion killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.
The company has also agreed to contribute $100 million to a foundation to support rig workers who have lost their jobs because of the administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium. And it pledged $500 million for a 10-year research program to study the impact of the spill.
More…
Wikileaks servers move to nuclear bunker under Stockholm | TechNews
The Wikileaks whistleblowing website has reportedly moved its server hosting to a Cold War bunker deep under the streets of Stockholm.
According to a Norwegian magazine that broke the story (credit to Forbes blogger Andy Greenberg), Wikileaks’ servers are now housed 30 metres (100 feet) underground in the 4,000 metre square Pionen White Mountains data centre, famous for a studied ‘James Bond’ design blasted from solid rock in the 1960s.
Said in its heyday to be able to withstand an H-bomb, with entrance doors made from 40cm (16 inch) steel, Pionen was remodelled by Swedish ISP, Bahnhof, two years ago.
More…
Tea Party Rocks Primaries | Rolling Stone
I’m beginning to wonder why effective boycotts against these hate-media channels, and particularly Fox, haven’t been organized yet. Why not just pick out one Fox advertiser at random and make an example out of it? How about Subaru and their unintentionally comic “Love” slogan? I actually like their cars, but what the fuck? How about Pep Boys and that annoying logo of theirs? Just to prove that it can be done, I’d like to see at least one firm get blown out of business as a consequence of financially supporting the network that is telling America that its black president wants to kill white babies. Isn’t that at least the first move here? It’s beginning to strike me that sitting by and doing nothing about this madness is not a terribly responsible way to behave.
More…
FBI: Marines won’t be charged with hate crime | AJC
Two U.S. Marines accused of knocking a gay Savannah man unconscious will face only misdemeanor charges in the attack after the Justice Department declined to prosecute them for hate crimes, authorities said Wednesday.
Savannah-Chatham County police arrested the Marines on June 12 after finding 27-year-old Kieran Daly unconscious on a downtown sidewalk. Witnesses said the Marines got upset because they thought Daly winked at them and attacked him as he tried to walk away.
The FBI launched a preliminary investigation into whether the attack warranted charges as a federal hate crime. Stephen Emmett, spokesman for the FBI in Atlanta, said Wednesday the Justice Department opted against pursuing hate-crime charges after reviewing the case.
“The matter now rests with local authorities,” Emmett said.
More…
Up to 90% of oysters dead in DMR’s reef sample | Sun Herald
Officials from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources took oyster fishermen out on the reefs off the Pass Christian Harbor on Wednesday to give them a preview of what to expect from the upcoming oyster season.
Catches resulting in an abundance of empty oyster shells led some fishermen to doubt the viability of the season, which typically begins in September or October.
“We’ve lost this season,” oyster dredger Loe Nguyen said.
More…
Food Fosters Friendship
Hey, we here in the burgh are getting an indoor market. We used to have them but they went out of fashion in the 60s’ and I thought they would be a long lost memory. We do have the strip district. A wonderful area where fresh produce is sold to stores and to shoppers alike. It has little ethnic stores as well but it’s not the market place of old.
This promises to be a gathering place for all sorts of people to mingle and meet.
It’s an age old concept, the marketplace. A wondrous maze of vendor stalls. Full of foods and crafts, delicious and exotic scents mingled with handmade artisan goods and PEOPLE.
read more…
Oil platform fire reported in Gulf of Mexico | CNN
A well connected to an oil and gas production platform caught on fire in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday, engulfing the vessel in flames about 100 miles off the central coast of Louisiana and forcing 13 people overboard, Gov. Bobby Jindal said.
All 13 people have been accounted for, said Petty Officer Bill Colclough of the Coast Guard. They were found floating on a raft, officials said. Mariner Energy, which owns the Vermilion Oil Rig 380, said none of the crew members was hurt in the incident, despite earlier reports of a single injured worker.
Also, Mariner indicated that the fire — which was first reported to the Coast Guard by workers on a nearby rig around 9:20 a.m. (10:20 a.m. ET) — was not sparked by an explosion. It started at one of the platform’s seven active wells, the company said, though its cause is under investigation.
More…
Tributes paid to Sid, ‘King of the Hippies’ – Glastonbury Festival legend | This Is Glastonbury
“KING of the Hippies” Sid Rawle has died.
The 64-year-old festival organiser, from Hillersland, collapsed suddenly at the Rainbow Camp in Rodley on Tuesday afternoon.
Sid was one of the most recognisable faces of the ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967 and the new age movement of the 1970s.
A former resident of ‘Beatle Island’, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s retreat off the coast of Ireland, Sid was a leading figure in the free festival scene.
He organised events around the country as well as the Forest Fayre and the Rainbow 2000 Camps near Westbury-on-Severn.
More…
Israelis are willing to divide Jerusalem | New York Post
Israel is willing to make a sweeping concession — dividing control of Jerusalem — as part of a historic final peace pact with Palestinians, a key Cabinet member revealed yesterday.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak signaled that his government is ready to drop its demand that even after the creation of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem would “remain the undivided capital of Israel.”
“West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 [Israeli] residents will be ours,” Barak told the newspaper Haaretz.
“The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs,” he added, referring to the eastern part of the city that was captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.
More…
VERMILION BAY, LA (WAFB) – The Coast Guard is responding to another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to the Coast Guard, 13 people were onboard when it exploded and caught fire Thursday morning.
Everyone is accounted for. Officials are reporting one injury.
The injured worker is being taken to Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma.
The other workers are in the water in immersion suits.
The rig is located about 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay.
Rescue choppers from New Orleans and Houston are responding.
The explosion happened around 9:30 a.m. and as of 10:30 a.m. it was still on fire.
Coast Guard officials said they do not yet know if there is any type of leak associated with this explosion.
They said there are reports it was not actively producing product, but they will investigate whether there is any type of environmental impact. Read More
Study: Illegal Immigrant Population Shrinks, Crossings Down Sharply | ABC
The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has begun to shrink, ending two decades of steady growth, according to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center.
An estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants lived across the United States as of March 2009, down nearly 8 percent from a peak of 12 million in 2007. Still, the unauthorized population remains a third larger than it was in 2000.
“This is something we haven’t seen before,” Jeffrey Passel, a senior Pew demographer, said of the decline. “It’s a rather large decline and sustained over two years.”
More…
Music festival Finch’s answer to Woodstock | EMC
First there was Woodstock, a bacchanalian music festival in the days of peace, love beads and hippies. Fast forward some 40-odd years and now there’s Barnstorm, Finch’s answer to 1960s event.
But because it’s 2010, there won’t be any hippies in the crowd, you won’t see any love beads, and the only peace is the kind you get along with a side dish of quiet. And since Barnstorm is an all-Canadian event attended by Canadians for the most part, it’s pretty safe to assume this live music event is going to be a little more reserved and buttoned-up than that other rollicking festival of music and mayhem.
First launched in 1993, Barnstorm is the brainstorm of organizer tic – with a lowercase “t” – a former Montrealer who fell in love with the country after moving to Ottawa. He bought the 20-acre non-working dairy farm just outside Finch, which today is the site of the festival, and set to work clearing out and rehabilitating a 150-year-old barn. Christened the Odditorium, if the 3,000-square foot structure is the heart of the event, then the music is its soul.
More…
Same-sex adoption bill clears hurdle | ABC.AU
A bill allowing same-sex couples to adopt in New South Wales has been passed in state parliament’s Lower House.
The bill passed 46 votes to 44.
MPs were allowed a conscience vote on the legislation.
Many speaking this morning were in favour of proposed amendments that modify anti-discrimination provisions so faith-based agencies can refuse services to gay couples and that the preferences of birth parents can be met.
A further vote is needed on one of those amendments before the bill goes to the Upper House for ratification.
Premier Kristina Keneally and Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell supported the bill, but Nationals leader Andrew Stoner said he did not.
More…
My father always hated visiting nursing homes. He would look at the poor souls nodding off in their wheelchairs, lining the halls like pelicans on a pier and call them “human wreckage.” I think he feared that it might one day happen to him.
As I writer I try to see nursing homes through different eyes. In every patient’s room there is a story waiting to be told. And more often than not, you’ll find a diamond in the rough.
I encountered one such lady shortly after my grandmother was admitted to a nursing home Alzheimer’s unit. It was a lock down facility, where a password is required to get in and out.
She met us at the door, a rather tall one woman Welcome Wagon. I was half afraid she’d knock me to the floor and bolt like a runaway giraffe.
Thankfully she had other plans.
read more…
‘Mexploitation’ at the Movies | Daily Beast
From bad-ass migrants to drug gangs, Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, opening this weekend, runs wild with America’s vexing immigration problem.
An undocumented Mexican immigrant puts aside his gardening tools, picks up an AK-47, and goes on a killing spree. This is not a fever dream of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. It’s the revenge fantasy Machete, the new Robert Rodriguez movie that takes America’s panic over its southern border—the jitters that historian Ricardo Romo once called a “Brown Scare”—and runs wild with it.
Machete is the first summer blockbuster of the immigration crisis—“Mexploitation,” in Rodriguez’s coinage. In its jolly exploitation of ethnic tension, it is the spiritual compadre of seventies blaxploitation movies like Super Fly and Foxy Brown. Here, the “illegal,” Machete, played by Danny Trejo, finds himself trapped between Mexican drug lords who would murder him in the south and American politicians who would deport him in the north. Both will have to pay. When I asked Trejo to describe his alter ego, he answered, “A badass.” Then he repeated it slowly for emphasis. “A baaad-assss.”
More…
Arguing is useless. I am tired of it. Too many words are being flung around. Too many interpretations of them. Faith. Hope. Charity. They slide effortlessly from the lips of those who can shed a tear on cue in front of a TV camera; who can speak to the fears of the insecure; who strike just the right chord in the hearts of the greedy. Faith. Hope. Charity. They are wonderful words. They are big words. Most all people would agree that they are noble words.
But like all words, they are open to interpretation. Each person will conjure up a picture of what faith, hope and charity look like. For some, the pictures will be similar. Those people will gravitate toward each other. Others will see a different picture, and they will gather together. Yet we will all use the same words as if their meanings were the same.
The differences become evident when we talk about how we implement these words. How will we live them? How does one live faith, hope and charity? It is here, when we have to implement one of these words, that the rubber hits the road. It is here where the word is no longer a concept, an idea, a buzz word, but actually has to become something we can experience, that the pedal hits the metal.
Take “charity” as an example. The Tea Party never gets terribly specific about implementing any of the planks in their platform, but regarding the homeless, sick and the poor, it states, “As a compassionate society we will aid those in need.” Well, a person has every right to ask, “wtf? I mean exactly how does your concept of “personal responsibility” translate to solving real problems?” To which the Tea Party Platform will answer, “Only market based solutions will solve the problems.”
How interesting. Do I sense some mistrust within the Tea Party’s own constituency? The Platform speaks of a “compassionate society,” yet doesn’t seem very confident that they can count on its voluntary generosity, so just to be sure they threw the problem to the “free market” to solve, as if using profit as an incentive, will fix everything or anything! read more…
It takes Beck just 55 hours to start cashing in on “restoring honor” to America | Media Matters
Glenn Beck’s original “I Have a Scheme” (per “The Daily Show:) idea for his Washington rally that he announced in late 2009 was clearly one that was highly focused on a goal of….making boatloads of money for Glenn Beck. The concept, Beck told a large crowd in the Fox-happy retirement community of The Villages, Fla., was that he would consult a bunch of experts and develop a “100-year plan for America.” Then, after luring a huge audience in person and on TV to watch him at the Lincoln Memorial on what he claims he then didn’t know was the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he would roll out new product, a book called “The Plan” that would surely be the Beckian best-seller to end all Beckian best-sellers.
That didn’t happen. Weeks later, the king of all right-wing media pulled a complete 180 (hardly the first time). The rally would still be on the same day and the same place, but everything else would be completely different. The event would be completely non-political, not about policy prescriptions but “Restoring Honor,” with a goal of raising money not for a Beck book but for a four-star charity called the Special Operations Warrior Fund. And to some extent, that’s what unfolded Saturday. Beck used his bully pulpit to urge America to turn inward, toward God as a source of answers, and although most of his aggressive fundraising went toward the massive cost of the National Mall event, Beck claims that SOWF will also reap a large donation.
There is indeed no book called “The Plan” coming out this week.
More…
Glenn Beck wore bulletproof vest while speaking at ‘Restore Honor’ rally at Lincoln Memorial | NY Daily
Fox News host Glenn Beck wore a bulletproof vest at his weekend rally, where he claimed “many, many miracles” had occurred – including a flyover of geese.
“I’m absolutely wearing a bulletproof vest,” Beck said he told Alveda King, the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., before the “Restore Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial.
He and other speakers risked their lives but “she decided not to wear it,” Beck said of Alveda King, and now “she is a marked woman for standing on that step with me.”
Beck often describes himself as a potential target in his conspiracy theories.
More…
You already knew that John was a good friend of the late Hunter S. Thompson, right? I’d argue that this is Mr. Cusack channeling some of the good doctor’s bombast… though I’m sure Johnny Depp would have made it more convincing.
John Cusack Calls for ‘Satanic Death’ of Fox News, GOP Leaders | Fox News
Actor John Cusack went on a caustic Twitter rampage Sunday evening, attacking former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Fox News.
“I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES ORDICK ARMEYAND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS,” Cusack tweeted.
Cusack has long been outspoken about politics. He supported Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election and has contributed to The Huffington Post, but this is the first known time he has stooped to the level of making threats.
More…
Loading ...