Bad Deeds for 2-11-2009

Dirty Bomb Parts and Instructions for Assembly Found in U. S. – A man who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.” According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center, radiological dispersal device components and literature, and radioactive materials, were discovered at the Maine residence of an identified deceased [person]. Was the man Muslim? No. Were the parts from the Middle East? No. So what kind of person was this? An independently wealthy, white guy with ties to white supremacist groups, who was “very upset” that Barack Obama was elected president.

 

Suspect Was Imprisoned in Guantanamo for Reading Magazine’s H-Bomb Satire – A British ‘resident’ held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a ‘joke’ website on how to build a nuclear weapon. Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the ‘instructions’ after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail. It was this confession that apparently convinced the CIA that they were holding a top Al Qaeda terrorist.

The offending article was first published in a US satirical magazine [Seven Days] and later placed on a series of websites. Written by Barbara Ehrenreich, the publication’s food editor, Rolling Stone journalist Peter Biskind and scientist Michio Kaku, it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made ‘using a bicycle pump’ and with liquid uranium ‘poured into a bucket and swung round’. Despite its clear satirical bent, the story led the CIA to accuse 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack, before subjecting him to its ‘extraordinary rendition programme’.

 

Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said House Republicans May Need to Employ a Taliban-Like Insurgency – Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) said the Republican party will have to become an “insurgency” to counter Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and added that the Taliban can serve as “a model.”

 

Fox News Passes Off Republican Party Press Release as its Own Research — Typo and All – In purporting to “take a look back” at how the economic recovery plan “grew, and grew, and grew,” Fox News’ Jon Scott referenced seven dates, as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods — all of which came directly from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release. A Fox News on-screen graphic even reproduced a typo contained in the Republican press release.

 

Bailed-Out Firms Distributing Cash Rewards, Saying: “Please Do Not Call It A Bonus” – Two Wall Street firms that received at least $60 billion in government bailout funds will be rewarding their financial advisers with controversial retention payments, the terms of which one senior executive described as “very generous.” “There will be a retention award. Please do not call it a bonus,” said James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley. “It is not a bonus. It is an award. And it recognizes the importance of keeping our team in place as we go through this integration.” “They are putting lipstick on a pig,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. “Very often, retention bonuses are paid to undeserving executives who helped drive their enterprises into the ground.

 

Bill O’Reilly Shows His Ugliness Again; Calls Helen Thomas “Wicked Witch Of The East” – Bill O’Reilly called legendary White House reporter Helen Thomas the “wicked witch of the east” Monday night following President Obama’s press conference.

“The White House press corps looked intimidated to me,” O’Reilly said. “Except for that, what’s her name? The old lady, Helen Thomas.”
O’Reilly then squawked out a Helen Thomas impression.
“It’s like the wicked witch of the east! If I were Obama I would’ve poured water on her, and she’d dissolve,” he said.
“Bill, it’s not nice to impersonate an old woman like that,” Alan Colmes told him.
“Why can’t my mom ask a question?” O’Reilly asked, trashing Thomas’ question (about Taliban hiding in Pakistan).
“Helen Thomas’ fifteen minutes were up during the Lincoln administration,” Bernie Goldberg said later. “It’s time for Helen to find something else to do during press conferences.”

 

Fox News Channel Producer Arrested and Arraigned on Child Pornography Charges – Fox News Channel producer Aaron Bruns, who was arrested and arraigned on child pornography charges in a federal courthouse in Washington Tuesday. Bruns covered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008 and later was a general producer in Washington, covering politics. this is not Bruns’ first run-in with the law,” TV Newser notes. “He dropped out of the University of Michigan in 1999 after being arrested on charges of distributing child pornography.” TVNewser’s Chris Ariens continues, “So why wasn’t Bruns checked out by Fox News? A network spokesperson tells TVNewser criminal background checks were not instituted until 2003. Bruns was hired in 2002.”

 

Norm Coleman Says ‘God Wants Me to Serve’ – Norm Coleman is keeping a high profile these days as his court challenge of the Minnesota U.S. Senate recount plods along against Al Franken . On conservative Mike Gallagher’s radio talk show, when asked about the recount and how it is affecting him personally, Norm Coleman said he starts every day with a prayer and that he knows “God wants me to serve.” (Norm is searching for God’s ballot to prove his point.)

 

Texas Electricity Rates Soar Under Deregulation – In the decade since Texas deregulated its retail electricity market, rates have skyrocketed higher than any other state with such open competition, according to a report released today. Commissioned by the Cities Aggregation Power Project, a nonprofit coalition of Texas municipalities, the report found that residential electricity rates rose 64 percent between 1999 and 2007. Before that, Texans paid rates that were well below the national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Legislature passed a sweeping deregulation law in 1999 that sought to break down electric company monopolies and remove strict government control over retail electricity rates. The idea was to allow competitive market forces to drive down prices. (How’s them market forces working for ya?) The sponsor of the legislation, former Sen. David Sibley, acknowledges rates have gone up but said he still considers the bill a success. Sibley now lobbies for power companies .

 

Peanut Company Owner Urged Shipping of Tainted Products – More from the wonderful world of private enterprise and corporate profits. Peanut Corporation of America e-mails obtained by a House committee show that owner Stewart Parnell ordered workers to ship peanut products even after test results indicated salmonella contamination because he was worried about lost sales. The resulting outbreak has led to 600 illnesses and eight deaths.

 

Sarah Palin’s $159,050 Conflict of Interest – Alaska’s First Dude, Todd Palin, is riding a snowmobile — I’m sorry, snow machine — 1971 miles from Big Lake to Fairbanks. In the course of performing this awesome feat, his Arctic Cat’s powerful two-stroke engine will emit the same amount of hydrocarbons as an automobile driving from Chicago to San Francisco and back 150 times. This week, as a participant in the Iron Dogâ„¢ snow machine race, Todd Palin will release as many cancer-causing and smog-forming pollutants as a Chevy Malibu driven around the Earth at its equator 28 times.

But Todd’s not just doing it because he hates his home life and likes things that make loud noises and emit benzene. He does it because it’s there. And for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts from corporations who do business with the Governor’s office. The total purse value of this year’s Iron Dogâ„¢ is $159,050. The sponsors include the petroleum giants Tesoro and Conoco-Phillips; State Farm, Wells Fargo, Frontier Airlines, Alaska Airlines and the Alaska First National Bank. Todd has won four times: once after Sarah was elected to the Wasilla City Council, once after she was elected mayor, the year she was appointed to the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission, and the year she was elected governor. Does this smell?

 

All the Hate He Needed, He Got From Conservative Talking Heads – James Adkisson has been sentenced to life behind bars for the deaths of Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger, the Unitarian Universalist martyrs who died during his assault on their church in Knoxville, TN last July. When police searched Adkisson’s apartment and found it filled with books and newsletters penned by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing hate talkers. But Monday, Adkisson told us himself — in his own words — just how central right-wing eliminationism was in driving him to his shooting spree. Shortly after he was sentenced Monday, he released a four-page handwritten “manifesto” — which he’d intended to be his suicide note — to the Knoxville News (the full .pdf can be downloaded here). In it, he unleashes the full measure of his hatred for liberals — and encourages other would-be right-wing warriors to take up arms and follow him into battle.
Some choice excerpts:

Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them….

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me.

 

Republican Rep. Eric Cantor Posts Profanity-Laden Web Video Ridiculing Labor Union – Virginia Republican Eric Cantor is in hot water after responding to critics with a profane web video. The union coalition AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), along with Americans United for Change, started running ads targeting Cantor for encouraging Republican opposition to the economic recovery plan. The House whip reacted with an ad of his own, depicting AFSCME workers as curse-spewing bullies.

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee isn’t amused. “Eric Cantor may think the greatest economic crisis in seventy years is a joke, but we don’t,” he said in a statement. “He should talk to the people in Virginia who are losing their jobs, health care and homes.” Brad Woodhouse, President of Americans United for Change, responded more forcefully: “Does Eric Cantor believe that peddling profanity-laced filth around the Internet is consistent with the values of the people of Virginia or the country? This is childish, inappropriate and disgusting behavior from someone who is supposed to be a leader in Congress and a role model to others. Eric Cantor’s response to one of the most serious crises facing America in our lifetimes is to spread this filth, denigrate government employees and treat the current economic crisis like a joke. …”

 

Republican Representative Steve Austria Says Franklin Roosevelt Caused the Great Depression – As Republican Representative Steve Austria was explaining his opposition to the huge federal stimulus package backed by President Barack Obama, he said: “When Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression. … He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”

History? Roosevelt took office in March 1933. Many historians date the Depression from the stock-market crash later dubbed Black Tuesday, which happened in 1929.”

Here’s a graphic that shows what the New Deal accomplished. [Here is a timeline that shows GDP, deficit spending, unemployment and other factors of the depression era.]

Notice what happened [in 1937] when FDR reduced the New Deal Programs to balance the budget.

 

Not Much Stimulus Money for High-Speed Rail – The Senate’s revised stimulus bill provides $2 billion in funding for a high-speed rail corridor, as well as another $1.1 billion to upgrade existing trains. Altogether, big-ticket rail investment only makes up about 0.3% of the bill’s total outlay.

A new report out today from Britain’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, finds that new rail investment should be a key part of “green stimulus” plans, because new rail investment creates jobs and has long-term economic and environmental benefits. The Grantham Institute called today for $400 billion on global spending on “green stimulus” plans by this summer.

The Senate’s $2 billion isn’t just small compared to the total package; it’s tiny compared to the costs of developing high-speed rail. California approved a $10 billion bond issue last November for a rail line linking San Francisco to Los Angeles. Spain (with help from Brussels) has spent about 20 billion euros–$25 billion—just on its three latest high-speed rail projects. The Millennium Institute, a non-profit, figures developing a new U.S. high-speed rail network would cost $250 billion to $500 billion.

Regards,

Jim