Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico | NOLA.com
Just three days after the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the BP oil spill cleanup declared little recoverable surface oil remained in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River delta.
Elections - Oshkosh Shrugged - NYTimes.com
It’s ironic that Feingold, who is possibly the most independent member of the Senate, a Mr. Clean who votes against his party regularly, is among the incumbents in the most danger from an anti-Washington voter rebellion.
Mexican cartel’s founding members trained at Fort Bragg: report | Raw Story
The US military may have inadvertently taught one of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels advanced military tactics, an al-Jazeera investigation alleges.
Special Report: The haves, the have-nots and the dreamless dead - Yahoo! News
"It is usually only left-leaning rich people that care about inequality in the U.S.," said Carol Graham, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank who studies the economics of happiness.
The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view.
Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.
Cory Gardner Ad Pulled By Denver TV Station For Falsehoods, Replaced With Corrected Version
A Denver TV station has stopped running an attack ad from Colorado congressional candidate Cory Gardner because it says the 30-second spot is "so blatantly wrong."
The Fury Failure - NYTimes.com
In Alaska, Miller keeps dropping in the polls, which made him so mad that he had his private security guards take an inquiring reporter into custody.
That did not go over very well even in Alaska, an extremely angry state that hateshateshates all forms of government, despite the fact that 40 percent of its economy comes from government aid, and the state’s oil-revenue-sharing program gives families thousands of dollars in payments every year.
Woman brings fake $10,000 bill to Mass. bank - Yahoo! News
The woman's name was not released because she has not been charged, but a police spokesman says she may have mental health issues.
Anita Hill Asked to Apologize by Justice Thomas’s Wife - NYTimes.com
Ms. Thomas, 53, has long been active in conservative circles in Washington. In the past year she has become more prominent as the founder of a new nonprofit activist group, Liberty Central, which is dedicated to opposing what she has characterized as the leftist “tyranny” of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats. The group has drawn scrutiny in part because of the unusual circumstance of a spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice drawing a salary from a group financed by anonymous donors.
Meanwhile, Anita Hill? Really?
Tea party candidates vow to make a difference in Senate - Yahoo! News
...why are these people called tea party candidates when they're running on the Republican ticket? That makes them Republican's, doesn't it?
I was looking for a song on my iPhone and searched on "I'll," and here's what I got:
I'll Fly Away, I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, I'll Give It All To You, I'll Get By, I'll Never Smile Again, I'll Catch You, I'll Be Seeing You, I'll Never Be The Same, I'll Remember April, I'll Drown in My Tears, I'll Close My Eyes, I'll Walk Alone, I'll Keep Loving You, I'll Love Nobody But You, I'll Be Around.
And, for extra credit, I Guess I'll Have To Change My Mind.
Would-be congressman Daniel Webster tried to ban happy hour | Raw Story
Daniel Webster, the Republican challenger to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), introduced legislation in 1991 that would have banned bars across Florida from holding happy hours.
Gibbs: White House 'Committed To Holding Accountable Any Bank That Has Violated The Law'
"As institutions are determining their next steps in addressing these issues, we remain committed to holding accountable any bank that has violated the law," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in a statement.
Obama to appear on TV science show "Mythbusters" - Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said Monday he is appearing on "Mythbusters," a television series that uses science to separate fact from fiction....
"I can announce today that I taped a special guest appearance for their show, although I didn't get to blow anything up," Obama said at a White House science fair event. "I was a little frustrated with that."
(Italics mine.)
Russian spies given top honors; Anna Chapman launches iPhone app - CSMonitor.com
Russian spies have traditionally faded into obscurity, embracing the aura of mystery surrounding the KGB. But not those deported from the United States earlier this year in a classic Cold War spy swap.
They were awarded top state honors Monday in a ceremony at the Kremlin, just days after one of them, the red-haired Anna Chapman, launched an iPhone application that allows users to play poker against a "virtual" Anna.
Pentagon Under Attack! (Two Bullets Hit Pentagon)
The world’s primary buyer and user of weaponry was itself attacked by a weapon today, when two shots were tragically fired at the terrible war building, by somebody somewhere (the woods?). According to Reuters, “there were no injuries or significant damage,” which marks the first time the Pentagon has been involved in anything that didn’t lead to injuries or significant damage. This may, however, be part of a shocking series of solitary, harmless attacks on military buildings in Northern Virginia!
The Vatican line: Homer Simpson is a Catholic | Raw Story
L'Osservatore Romano has written a story under the headline "Homer and Bart are Catholic" that included the phrase "few people know it and he does everything to hide it but it is true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic."
From Obama, the Tax Cut Nobody Heard Of - NYTimes.com
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — What if a president cut Americans’ income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?
TAMPA —
Some employees of Florida's largest "foreclosure mill" were given
jewelry, cars and houses from the firm, in exchange for altering
and forging key documents used to obtain foreclosures, according
to a statement released today by the Florida Attorney General's
Office.
Guest Post: Mortgages Were Pledged to Multiple Buyers at the Same Time « naked capitalism
April Charney – a consumer lawyer with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid – and CNBC’s Dennis Kneale noted in February 2009 that courts have found that some mortgages have been sold again and again to different trusts, when they should have only been sold once.
Kneale explained that that is the reason that two different banks sometimes try to simultaneously foreclose on the same home.
(Emphasis original.)
Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: A gravy train in the hands is worth two in the gravy train station
Is a gravy train something you’d actually want in your hands? It sounds either very messy or very dangerous. What is a gravy train, anyway?
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (featured on our very own Work Avoidance List) "gravy train (1927) was originally railroad slang for a short haul that paid well.
...you have never been so right.
Mark Hyman, MD: Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of Americans Are Fat?
Imagine a foot-high pile of broccoli, or a giant bowl of apple slices. Do you know anyone who would binge broccoli or apples? On other hand, imagine a mountain of potato chips or a whole bag of cookies, or a pint of ice cream. Those are easy to imagining vanishing in an unconscious, reptilian brain eating frenzy.
On the other hand, don't try to sell me on "food addiction." What do you think I am, an idiot?
Just shut up and pass the dip.
Harry Reid So Boring That His New Yorker Profile Is About Sharron Angle
Harry Reid is so dull that it takes 15 paragraphs for Harry Reid to make an appearance in his own profile (not counting a bland Reid/Senate anecdote by someone at a Sharron Angle event, in the fourth paragraph, and the pointless repetition of Angle’s “Man up, Harry Reid” line in, we think, the 13th graf). And once Reid is finally there, the reporter is so bored with the subject that he describes the Nevada senator as a “country parson” — marking the first time that phrase has been used in a periodical since 1955, when E.B. White employed the term to describe a very small cat who works as a psychiatrist, in single-panel cartoons. The whole profile is basically about Sharron Angle.
MERS-y, Mercy Me: The Sewer Drain at the Bottom of the Housing Market | FDL News Desk
Thus two centuries of land title operations in the United States have been outsourced to a shell company created by big banks so they could save a buck – and now they’re using it to forego legal processes and kick people out of their homes.
In the wake of this, you have companies like DOCX pop up, who can simply make up legal papers that then get used in court. The amount of fraud here is simply astonishing....
(Click the link, read it all.)
Epitaph For An Administration - NYTimes.com
Or to put it another way, the administration has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
I've read a lot of very good non-fiction books this year (well, seems like a lot to me) and absolutely the best one so far is Daniel Okrent's Last Call : The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. It is, as you might guess from the title, about prohibition, but also about "international trade, speedboat design, tourism practices, soft-drink marketing, and the English language itself" and a whole lot more. Know where the idea of home dinner parties came from? Or the American preference for Southern Italian food?
Well, it goes on. But the most fascinating part of the book to me was the revelation that 100 years ago we were all just as screwed up as we are today, which is strangely encouraging or profoundly discouraging, whatever.
Also, it's funny. The book, I mean. Okrent is a terrific writer and had me cracking up on just about every page.
I made a bowl of oatmeal, reached for the cinnamon and grabbed the chili powder instead.
Maybe it'll get better when the sun gets over the hill.
Time, like all good things, may come to an end, study says | Raw Story
WASHINGTON -- The end of the world as we know it cannot be avoided, but it can be predicted, according to a group of astrophysicists who see a 50 percent chance of the final countdown ending in 3.7 billion years.
Nevada's Angle says immigrant ads not about race - Forbes.com
LAS VEGAS -- U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle defended a series of campaign advertisements that use images of sullen, dark-skinned men and a map of Mexico to blast rival Sen. Harry Reid's immigration record.
Seriously! Those are Canadians!
"I'm not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through.
It's the icebacks. No friggin' kidding. Italics mine.
Bank Holiday is Best Solution for Epidemic of Mortgage Fraud | Credit Writedowns
This is the biggest scandal in human history. Indeed, all previous scandals from around the globe combined cannot even touch this one in terms of scale and scope and stench. This is the mother of all frauds and it will be etched into the history books for all time.
And yet...
And yet President Obama, ever the centrist, has taken sides with the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which warns that “it would be catastrophic to impose a system-wide moratorium on all foreclosures and such actions could do damage to the housing market and the economy”.
But never fear! We are saved!
...the banks are furiously working to manufacture documents, aided and abetted by companies like DocX that specialize in “document recovery solutions”—for a fee they will create fraudulent documents that banks can use in court.
I'm taking a nap.
Amazing: The French Work The Least In The World But Are Now Richer Than Almost Everybody
People like to make fun of France for easy work days, frequent protests, and a heavily state-driven economy. Oh yeah and they're a bunch of communists disguised as socialists.
It's probably all true, but whatever it is they're doing, they must be doing something right.
That's because French wealth per adult is now higher than America's...
Crossroads County - In Fervor for Voting, Retirees Hold a Key - NYTimes.com
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — In an election year of hype and hyperbole, one fact resonates across all contests and candidates: in midterm elections, many people tune out and stay home, but older voters vote. It is a deeply rutted pattern in American history that could swing race after race.
Sunnis in Iraq Allied With U.S. Quitting to Rejoin Rebels - NYTimes.com
Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency.
Op-Ed Columnist - Playing All the Angles - NYTimes.com
We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.
(Noted by our Midwest bureau.)
