Politics

With gas prices going up daily the Republicans are using this as an attack against President Obama. Right now Drudge is pushing an article talking about $6 a gallon gas in Florida as his main story. The story does explain the cause of the price increases, however:

One reason for the high prices is the conflict with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the waterway due to the European Union sanctions leveled against the country over its nuclear program, causing the price of crude to skyrocket. Trading on a barrel of crude today is a little over $106.

Another reason for the high gas prices: positive economic news. The drop in the unemployment rate and improved housing market numbers have caused gas and oil prices to rise.

Now reading those two problems, I want to pose these two questions to the Republicans out there:

It takes a very sick and demented individual to think of rape as a tool for jokes or insults, but that's exactly what the GOP does over and over again. The latest example was last weekend at CPAC when drunken fat fuck Andrew Breitbart decided to call a bunch of occupiers 'rapists'. Last night Keith Olbermann decided to take him on:

Raw Story adds this part to the story:

After DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas appeared on Olbermann’s show on Tuesday and accused Breitbart of “mak[ing] stuff up,” Lee Stranahan of Big Journalism demanded an on-air retraction and apology. He cited a list of 17 news stories of rape and other sexual crimes at “Occupy” protests.

But Olbermann said that list include some stories twice and could not be attributed to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. In four of the stories, he noted, neither the victim nor the assailant were even associated with the protest. In seven other stories, the protesters were the victims, not the assailants.

These assholes are taking one of the most horrendous crimes and using them as a political tool. Welcome to being in the same mentality as terrorists, you pricks! There is a very, very cold place in hell for monsters like you.

Utterly disgusting:

The measure, proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) would amend the Affordable Care Act to allow any employer to exclude any health service coverage, no matter how critical or basic, by claiming that it violates their religious or moral convictions. Moreover, according to the National Women's Law Center, the amendment would remove critical non-discrimination protections from the Affordable Care Act. For instance, an insurer could deny maternity care coverage to a same-sex couple, an interracial couple or a single woman for religious or moral reasons.

So what if I decided that I wanted to exclude healthcare coverage because someone is a Catholic or even a Republican? Somehow I got a feeling these closed minded twits would be up in arms over that, screaming discrimination at the top of their lungs. But this is just exactly how sick and twisted the Republican Party of today has become.

Did you hear about that $8 billion "abortionplex" Planned Parenthood is opening? Well Congressman John Fleming (R-La) sure did and he even went to Facebook to complain about it:

But apparently the rock Fleming already lives under doesn't realize that The Onion is a satire site. Here's the original article:

Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday the grand opening of its long-planned $8 billion Abortionplex, a sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.

During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation's heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group's long-standing mission and values.

You can read the rest of it here. What really amazes me is that if Fleming was so pro-life then why wouldn't he of heard about this "long planned" huge complex going only a couple of states away? Perhaps that should have been indicator number one. Of course realizing indicators INDICATES thinking, and we are talking about a Republican here. Nuff' said.

"The Fix" in today's Washington Post offers up this headline:

Obama: The most polarizing president. Ever.

When you look at how divided this country is that could be easy to conclude, but is it President Obama's fault? First let's take a look at how they come to this conclusion:

For 2011, Obama’s third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in Gallup tracking polls, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That’s a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president’s third year in office — ever. (The previous high was George W. Bush in 2007, when he had a 59 percent difference in job approval ratings.)

In 2010, the partisan gap between how Obama was viewed by Democrats versus Republicans stood at 68 percent; in 2009, it was 65 percent. Both were the highest marks ever for a president’s second and first years in office, respectively.

But consider what this President has had to go through. Before he even took the oath of office, one of the biggest voices proudly proclaimed that he wanted to see "this President fail". Now many try to say "Rush Limbaugh is just a radio personality", but that sentiment was quickly picked up by actual politicians, including Rick Santorum, who is currently a Republican presidential candidate. Furthermore, any Republican politician who tried to soften Rush's words ended up on his show apologizing to him.

Awesome!

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) announced today that the House Judiciary Committee, which he heads, "will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution." Smith added that he has taken critics' concerns "seriously."

"It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products," Smith said in today's statement.

The decision to wave the white flag on SOPA comes just hours after U.S. Senate leaders announced they had postponed their vote on the Protect IP Act (PIPA) scheduled for Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that the recent criticism on both SOPA and PIPA forced his hand, but Reid did acknowledge that he hopes to reach an agreement with the bill's foes "in the coming weeks."

This is what happens when the people speak and democracy takes action. Or, if you're Chris Dodd, it's an "abuse of power" by we the people.

The following statement was just released by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act.

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.

“I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”

This is a good start, but we still must work to make sure there are significant changes to both PIPA and SOPA. The problem with these bills is that they were written by the music/movie industry. I don't have problems with interest groups suggesting what goes into bills, but for them to write them is a slap in the face to our democracy. Congress should act as a filter between what is right and what shreds the foundations of our democracy. In this case they failed.

As a former firefighter this pisses me off to no end:

Officials with the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, representing thousands of federal firefighters, complained this week to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee after learning that some committee staffers ran an office pool to guess how many acres are burned by wildfires each year.

The contest, run since 2003 by veteran staffer Frank Gladics, was open mostly to Republican staffers on the House and Senate energy and appropriations committees that oversee federal firefighting operations. While no money exchanged hands, Gladics would bequeath the winner one of several hats in his office, including a Wizard hat, a “When Pigs Fly” hat and the mechanical “Holly-Jolly Christmas Hat.”

News of the contest was first reported last week by the environmental news service Grist.org, which quoted the committee’s Republican spokesman, Robert Dillon, as saying the contest was for the benefit of eastern lawmakers less familiar with wildfire season.

Frank Gladics used to work close with former Senator Conrad Burns. Remember this one from him?

"See that guy over there? He hasn't done a God-damned thing. They sit around. I saw it up on the Wedge fire and in northwestern Montana some years ago. It's wasteful. You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It's gotta change."

[SNIP]

"Bullshit!" Says Burns. "They're lazy, overpaid bums."

That was this sorry sack of shit talking about firefighters who had been battling huge wildfires for weeks.