Archive for June 22, 2010
BP Doesn’t Want You to See This
BP doesn’t want you to see these images and neither does the corporate media. If they did, we’d see them all day and all night and all the time in between. Kinda like the Natalee Holloway story.
Is General Stanley McChrystal into Kinky Sex?
So, General Stanley McChrystal sends Navy Seals into the Afghan night with this admonition: “You better be out there hitting four or five targets tonight.” And then he says, “I’m going to have to scold you in the morning for it, though.”
What? This reads like a kinky Hollywood sex tape.
Don’t Eat This
Friendly’s restaurant has launched the new “Grilled Cheese Burger Melt:”
That isn’t a bun wrapping around that burger. It’s two grilled cheese sandwiches.
This puppy contains 1500 calories and 79 grams of fat! I read somewhere that one should steer clear of anything containing more than 7 grams.
Wow.
Iraq Still Experiencing “Widespread Power Outages”
The poor Iraqis. It’s unbelievable that they’re still suffering through widespread power outages:
Iraq’s prime minister has said that his country faces at least two more years of widespread power shortages like the ones that sparked protests across southern Iraq.
Nouri al-Maliki said at a news conference on Tuesday that new power plants will eventually add 9,000 megawatts to Iraq’s meagre power supplies.
But he said construction will take several years.
I wonder of W. has air conditioning in his Houston home.
Giant Spider Crab Molting — Break Time
This time-lapse video was taken over a period of 6 hours and is of a giant spider crab molting.
I was wondering how he was going to get all his legs out hey, who am I? He knew what he was doing.
Politico Unintentionally Reveals How Screwed Up Our Media Is
Politico wrote a piece today about Michael Hastings, the freelance reporter who wrote the blockbuster article in Rolling Stone — The Runaway General — exposing General Stanley McCrystal. In it they unintentionally (I believe) reveal exactly what’s wrong with “journalism” in the United States:
And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.
So, the next time you see a report by oh, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, CNN’s Barbara Starr, or NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski — all “beat” reporters assigned to the Pentagon — bear in mind that they wouldn’t “risk burning bridges” by telling us the real story behind what’s going on there.
When oh when will we have a better media?
Judge Martin Feldman — Owned by the the Oil Industry
The oil companies who sued the Obama administration over its 6-month oil moratorium (and won today) couldn’t have had a better friend on the bench than the man who decided the case, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman:
The federal judge whooverturned Barack Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium appears to own stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry—including Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP prior to its April 20 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico—according to 2008 financial disclosure reports.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued a preliminary injunction today barring the enforcement of Barack Obama’s proposed six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, arguing that the ban is too broad.
According to Feldman’s 2008 financial disclosure form, posted online by Judicial Watch [pdf], the judge owned stock in Transocean as well as five other companies that are either directly or indirectly involved in the offshore drilling business.
It’s not surprising that Feldman, who is a judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, has invested in the offshore drilling business—an AP investigation found earlier this month that more than half the federal judges in the districts affected by the BP spill have financial ties to the oil and gas industry.
Feldman should have recusing himself. He never should have heard (much less decided) this case. He’s too tainted to be impartial, and he knew it and knows it today. This case illustrates just how far our judicial system has fallen. Thirty years ago, this would have been an outrage.
Oh, and by the way, Feldman was appointed to the bench by none other than Ronnie Reagan.
Louisiana Police Working for BP
Why hasn’t this kind of behavior — which we’ve been hearing about for weeks — been brought under control? It’s absolutely outrageous:
Everyone knows by now that BP is still blocking press access to oil-spill sites even though they’re not supposed to anymore. I’ve been blathering about it for weeks, and it’s been all of three days since four contractors wouldn’t let me through the Pointe Aux Chenes marina outside Montegut, Louisiana. And though as of June 16 the federal government was saying helicopters could fly reporters as low as 1,500 feet around spill sites, on June 17 I was on a helicopter that was prohibited from flying below 3,000 feet (and whose pilot flipped silent birds at the “military guys” coming over the radio and hassling him about being in the area at all). But Louisiana state police pulling over a video camera-wielding private citizen because the head of BP security wanted to ask him some questions is a whole other level of alarming.
Here’s the key exchange:
Wheelan: ”Am I violating any laws or anything like that?”
Officer: ”Um…not particularly. BP doesn’t want people filming.”
Wheelan: ”Well, I’m not on their property so BP doesn’t have anything to say about what I do right now.”
Officer: ”Let me explain: BP doesn’t want any filming. So all I can really do is strongly suggest that you not film anything right now. If that makes any sense.”
Not really! Shortly thereafter, Wheelan got in his car and drove away but was soon was pulled over.
It was the same cop, but this time he had company: Kenneth Thomas, whose badge, Wheelan told me, read “Chief BP Security.” The cop stood by as Thomas interrogated Wheelan for 20 minutes, asking him who he worked with, who he answered to, what he was doing, why he was down here in Louisiana. He phoned Wheelan’s information in to someone. Wheelan says Thomas confiscated his Audubon volunteer badge (he’d recently attended an official Audubon/BP bird-helper volunteer training) and then wouldn’t give it back, which sounds like something only a bully in a bad movie would do. Eventually, Thomas let Wheelan go.
Looks Like Wingers Have an “Enthusiasm Gap” Too
All we hear is that Democrats have an “enthusiasm gap” and thus they might be doomed come November. So when will the “liberal media” start speculating that wingers might be in the same position: Karl Rove’s 527 PAC far short of $52 million goal.
