Crazy in Arizona – Videographer Dennis Gilman attended last weekend’s “Phoenix Rising” rally in Phoenix last weekend and made this amazing video. You really have to watch it to believe it.
My favorite moment is the woman who believes there is a “radical Islamic Mexican Catholic movement” that “has been taking over our nation and getting rid of and killing American citizens”.
Republicans Try to Weaken Enforcement of Clean Air Act – A Republican-led resolution would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from moving ahead with rules under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other major sources.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the White House said the resolution would force the EPA to rescind standards for emissions from future-model cars and light trucks that it came up with earlier this year with the Transportation Department. The result, she said, would be a need for the country to consume an extra 455 million barrels of oil.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the measure, “a great big gift to big oil” that would “increase pollution, increase our dependence on foreign oil and stall our efforts to create jobs” in the clean energy sector.
UPDATE: The Republican resolution was voted down.
BP Censoring Media, Destroying Evidence – BP is using federal agencies to shield itself from public accountability. For example, while flying on a small plane from New Orleans to Orange Beach, the pilot suddenly exclaimed, “Look at that!” The thin red line marking the federal flight restrictions of 3,000 feet over the oiled Gulf region had just jumped to include the coastal barrier islands off Alabama.
“There’s only one reason for that,” the pilot said. “BP doesn’t want the media taking pictures of oil on the beaches. You should see the oil that’s about six miles off the coast,” he said grimly. We looked down at the wavy orange boom surrounding the islands below us. The pilot shook his head. “There’s no way those booms are going to stop what’s offshore from hitting those beaches.”
BP knows this as well — boom can only deflect oil under the calmest of sea conditions, not barricade it — so they have stepped up their already aggressive effort to control what the public sees.
At the same time I was en route to Orange Beach, Clint Guidry with the Louisiana Shrimp Association and Dean Blanchard, who owns the largest shrimp processor in Louisiana, were in Grand Isle taking Anderson Cooper out in a small boat to see the oiled beaches. The U.S. Coast Guard held up the boat for 20 minutes – an intimidation tactic intended to stop the cameras from recording BP’s damage.
With oil undisputedly hitting the beaches and the number of dead wildlife mounting, BP is switching tactics. In Orange Beach, people told me BP wouldn’t let them collect carcasses. Instead, the company was raking up carcasses of oiled seabirds. “The heads separate from the bodies,” one upset resident told me. “There’s no way those birds are going to be autopsied. BP is destroying evidence!”
American Family Association Claims ‘Gay Sex = Domestic Terrorism’ – In opposition to repealing the U.S. Military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the American Family Association (AFA) declared in a Thursday blog headline: “Gay sex = domestic terrorism”. In the article, the AFA states, “If open homosexuals are allowed into the United States military, the Taliban won’t need to plant dirty needles to infect our soldiers with HIV. Our own soldiers will take care of that for them.” However, gays are serving in the military now. The current “head-in-the-sand†policy, doesn’t allow anyone to admit it, or ask about it. The premise of the AFA argument is non-existent.
Humble Oil Predicted the Future in Their 1962 Ad – In 1962 Humble Oil (now Exxon-Mobile) ran an ad in Life Magazine that stated, “EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!”
To Republicans, Young Means Not So Young – The National Republican Congressional Committee, this means coming up with a group of so-called Young Guns, a changing roster of candidates who represent, in the party’s eyes, a “new generation of conservative leaders.†In fact, the current crop of the 22 Young Guns looks very much like the old generation of conservative leaders. These upstarts together average an age of 49.6 years old. More than half of the Young Guns, have celebrated the big 5-0, and are already eligible for an AARP membership.
(Republicans like to come up with great-sounding labels for things that aren’t what the labels would lead you to believe. – JLV)
Regards,
Jim
Andy Hailey