Category Archives: Politics

May 10, 2011 · 5:35 am

Gas prices expected to drop 50 cents by summer – The Washington Post

Of course, gas prices will drop right after we get back from our driving vacation…

And before the public can shame Congress into ending government subsidies for Big Oil….

As Church Lady used to say, “How convenient!”

Some relief from suffocating gas prices will likely arrive just in time for summer vacation. Expect a drop of nearly 50 cents as early as June, analysts say.

After rocketing up 91 cents since January, including 44 straight days of increases, the national average this past week stopped just shy of $4 a gallon and has retreated to under $3.98. A steady decline is expected to follow.

It might not be enough to evoke cheers from people who recall gas stations charging less than $3 a gallon last year. But it would still ease the burden on drivers. And it might help lift consumer spending, which powers about 70 percent of the economy. A 50-cent drop in prices would save U.S. drivers about $189 million a day.

Typically, gas prices peak each spring, then fall into a summertime swoon that can last several weeks. This year’s decline should be gradual but steady, said Fred Rozell, the retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service.

via Gas prices expected to drop 50 cents by summer – The Washington Post.

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May 9, 2011 · 11:49 pm

Romney’s GOP Supporters Tilt Upscale; Palin’s, Downscale

There is so much I could say about Palin’s supporters, but I’m not going to say any of it….

But, oh how I want to say it !!!

PRINCETON, NJ — Republican college degree holders are more likely than those without a degree to support Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, 21% vs. 13%. Similarly, Romney’s support climbs from 9% of Republicans earning less than $24,000 annually to 21% of those earning $90,000 or more. The reverse is true for Sarah Palin, who is favored by nearly twice as many Republicans without a college degree as those with one, 16% vs. 9%, and her support decreases by income from 22% among the lowest income group to 7% among the highest.

via Romney’s GOP Supporters Tilt Upscale; Palin’s, Downscale.

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May 9, 2011 · 11:30 pm

Leonard Pitts: How two busloads of kids changed America

I’m really looking forward to this documentary…

As usual, a great column from Leonard Pitts:

WASHINGTON — Fifty years later.

This morning, if all goes according to plan, a group of college students will board a bus here, bound for New Orleans. The young people in the group represent diverse heritages — a Mexican-American guy born in Yucatan, a white girl from Santa Monica, a black girl studying journalism in Tallahassee. The fact of them traveling together will be unremarkable.

Fifty years ago.

A group of college students boarded two buses here, bound for New Orleans. They were joined by members of the African-American press, and officials of the Congress of Racial Equality, including its national director, James Farmer, who had organized the journey. Six of the riders were white, 12, black. The fact of their traveling together would prove incendiary.

Fifty years later.

There will be 40 students on this commemorative ride, chosen from more than a thousand applicants. They will spend a little over a week rolling across an America vastly different from the America of 1961. In the new America, mom ‘n’ pop have gone out of business, driven into retirement by Subway and Wal-Mart, telephones are portable, computers are ubiquitous and the son of an African from Kenya is president of the United States.

The students are traveling in part to publicize Freedom Riders, a documentary that will air on PBS’ American Experience program beginning May 16. They will go where a bus was burned, people were beaten and the guilty imprisoned the innocent. They will share the journey with many of the original Freedom Riders, men and women now well into their 70s and 80s, and absorb lessons in the nonviolent tactics and philosophies that helped make the old America into the new.

You wonder what that will be like. It is always difficult for young people to imagine old people young, to look upon aged faces and experienced eyes and glimpse there any kinship of spirit or reflection of themselves. It is perhaps more difficult, having come of age in the new America, to envision the old, to gaze upon a landscape of Subways and Wal-Marts and see just beneath it the ghost of the Eat-A-Bite diner or Hardwick’s Hardware, and the metal sign creaking gently in the Dixie breeze, an arrow pointing to the back of the building, beneath the single damning word, Colored.

MORE:   Leonard Pitts: How two busloads of kids changed America – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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May 9, 2011 · 6:34 pm

Renewable energies could supply 80 percent of world’s demand by 2050: UN report

If the Oil Companies didn’t own our government, we would be moving faster to recognize this and prepare for the future….

Our oil dependency is rapidly making us a third world country….

Think of all the jobs we could create if we really dedicated ourselves to oil independence and clean energy…

Governments approved on Monday a U.N. report projecting that renewable energies such as solar, wind or hydropower could leap to supply almost 80 percent of the world’s demand by 2050, with the right policies.

The study broadly matched a draft written by scientists before the meeting, but environmental group Greenpeace said some findings were watered down due to opposition by OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia and also by Brazil.

The report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also said that a shift to cleaner energies would help cut greenhouse gas emissions, which it blamed for climate change including floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

“Close to 80 percent of the world energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies,” it said in a statement after government delegates approved a special report at talks in Abu Dhabi.

“This will be the standard book for renewables,” said Sven Teske of Greenpeace, one of the authors.

He said he was happy with the overall report but that the summary for policymakers had toned down, for instance, formerly clear statements that renewable energies were often already cost effective.

“Parts have been watered down,” he said of the report, which was agreed at the IPCC meeting in Abu Dhabi which began on May 5. The final session lasted through the night.

via Renewable energies could supply 80 percent of world’s demand by 2050: UN report | The Raw Story.

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May 8, 2011 · 12:25 pm

Navy SEALs Forgot to Bring a Tape Measure

I love the President’s comment….

The odds that Osama bin Laden was the mysterious figure seen walking around the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan were estimated by U.S. intelligence at between 60 and 80 percent. When the Navy SEALs shot the tall figure on the upper floor of the compound, fatally hitting him in the chest and near his right eye, the next step was to get a positive ID. They planned to use several reference points, including facial recognition and eventually DNA when the body was transported back to Bagram airbasein Afghanistan.

Another measurement was to determine the height of the corpse. Bin Laden is listed on his FBI most wanted poster as being between 6-feet 4-inches and 6-feet 6-inches and weighing about 160 pounds.

However, the heavily-armed, electronically wired SEALs didn’t come with a tape measure to get an accurate height reading. According to reports, a Navy SEAL of about 6-feet laid out next to bin Laden’s corpse to gauge the Al Qaeda leader’s height. The corpse was several inches taller.

The Washington Post’s legendary reporter Bob Woodward came up with some inside the Situation Room conversation while the raid was underway and the president and his team were watching a muted feed of the action.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House (Credit: AP Photo/The White House, Pete Souza)

After Mr. Obama learned of the improvised height measurement technique, he reportedly said, “We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?”

The helicopter in his remark was the stealth technology-outfitted bird that crash-landed as the raid began and had to be destroyed by the SEALs.

via Navy SEALs forgot to bring a tape measure – World Watch – CBS News.

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May 7, 2011 · 10:59 pm

The Cost of bin Laden: $3 Trillion Over 15 Years

This is something to think about…

The most expensive public enemy in American history died Sunday from two bullets.

As we mark Osama bin Laden’s death, what’s striking is how much he cost our nation—and how little we’ve gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down.

What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden’s terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt, which threatens to hobble the economy unless lawmakers compromise on an unprecedented deficit-reduction deal.

All of that has not given us, at least not yet, anything close to the social or economic advancements produced by the battles against America’s costliest past enemies. Defeating the Confederate army brought the end of slavery and a wave of standardization—in railroad gauges and shoe sizes, for example—that paved the way for a truly national economy. Vanquishing Adolf Hitler ended the Great Depression and ushered in a period of booming prosperity and hegemony. Even the massive military escalation that marked the Cold War standoff against Joseph Stalin and his Russian successors produced landmark technological breakthroughs that revolutionized the economy.

via The cost of bin Laden: $3 trillion over 15 years – Yahoo! News.

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May 6, 2011 · 9:31 pm

Margaret and Helen are Back!

My favorite 80 something year old bloggers have been quiet for a while and I was growing concerned…

Well, they’re back with a new post.

I’m glad to see the old girls are still alive and kicking!

Margaret, I wish Harold could have lived to see this day.  As a veteran, he was always hopeful that we would one day get Bin Laden.  He would have been very proud and then he would have been pissed.

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have never believed it.  FOX found a way to turn even this into a negative for Obama.  I tuned in after you called and watched Sean Hannity make a fool of himself like you were saying.  Honestly, that is exactly what I would have expected from FOX – complaining because the US military took the time to follow Muslim traditions before eventually ditching the son-of-a-bitch at sea.   Sean, of course, wanted something a bit more flashy.  Had we done it Hannity’s way, the body would have been photographed wearing Princess Beatrice’s hat.  Honestly FOX, why don’t we just  hang him on a cross and see if his followers retaliate?  Sean is an idiot.

Of course Greta and Glenn were vying for stupidest person on FOX as well, but a race to the bottom on that network is over before it begins.  Was I the only one who noticed all three of them kept accidentally saying Obama rather than Usama? I bet not.  But I bet I am the only one who points it out.

It’s called honor Mr. Hannity, Mr. Beck and Mr. Van Susteren… you jackasses.  Obama understands it.  The US military has it.   FOX needs it. It makes us better than them.  But I guess the morons over at FOX are more worried that 72 Virgins really were waiting for him.  And yes, I know I typed Mister Van Susteren… plastic surgery can only get you so far.

Ten years were a long time to wait for the end of Bin Laden.  I ask you, how long before we see an end to FOX?

Change the channel America.  I mean it.  Really.

via Margaret and Helen.

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May 6, 2011 · 8:36 pm

Osama bin Laden’s Death May End Afghanistan War

Even more good news….

This is now the longest war in U.S. History.

Hopefully, now we can get the hell out…

Word from the Obama administration is that with al Qaeda spiritual leader Osama bin Laden dead, U.S. forces may now have found the fast-track to exit the Afghan occupation.

It won’t be easy, and it will require more than just political capital in the U.S., but unnamed officials tell The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran that, with a negotiated settlement between America and the Taliban, the Afghan war’s “endgame” will be nigh.

On one key front, the president can now put negotiators at the table with Taliban forces without being criticized for “negotiating with terrorists,” Chandrasekaran noted. On another, Taliban faction leader Mohammad Omar will likely be under tremendous pressure to end his alliance with al Qaeda, breaking another key barrier to U.S. withdrawal.

“Bin Laden’s death is the beginning of the endgame in Afghanistan,” an unnamed senior official reportedly said. “It changes everything.”

via Osama bin Laden’s death may end Afghanistan war sooner than planned | The Raw Story.

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May 5, 2011 · 11:05 pm

The Dog That Took Down Osama Bin Laden

Talk about Man’s Best Friend….

From The Huffington Post:

Of the 80 member team that was deployed to take down bin Laden, few draw more speculation than the one on four legs.

Most likely a Belgian Malinois (though officials say it could also have been a German Shepherd), there was one non-human member of the SEAL team that raided Osama bin Laden’s compound, according to the New York Times. The heroic pooch was strapped to a Navy SEAL as they were lowered from a hovering helicopter.

The news of the dog’s use in the raid broke Wednesday, but like the other members of the team that was deployed, its identity remains unknown.

While the dog is known for its bomb-sniffing prowess, it has other capabilities that make it a wonderful dog-of-war. According to the Atlantic, the dog may have been trained to “sniff out enemy troops from up to 2 miles away.”

The sensory perception brought by these dogs in a wartime situation is unparalleled. “The capability they bring to the fight cannot be replicated by man or machine,” General David H. Petraeus said last year, calling for more use of dogs.

But the coolest thing about these guys? Many SEAL dogs come equipped with “titanium fangs capable of ripping through enemy protective armor,” at a cost of “about $2,000 a tooth,” according to the Daily. That’ll get the job done.

via Belgian Malinois: The Dog That Took Down Osama Bin Laden?.

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May 5, 2011 · 7:57 pm

What’s your Political Type?

I’m a “Winter”…

Oh, that’s something else….

Here’s a great quiz from the Pew Research folks to see where you fall as to your Political “type”.

I had fun taking it….

No surprise, I came out as “Solid Liberal.”

Here is the link to the Quiz:

Where Do You Fit? 2011 Pew Research Political Typology Quiz | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

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