(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
With the imminent shut down of the Federal government looming and the past couple of week’s news dominated by Japan’s nuclear crisis and the Libyan revolt, here are a few of the background bits and pieces that make you go hmmmmmm
Glenn Beck’s Fox News show ending ‘later this year’
By Stephen C. Webster
Conservative conspiracy host Glenn Beck announced plans Wednesday to “transition off” his Fox News program in favor of a realigned agreement between Fox and his production company, Mercury Radio Arts.
The deal will see Beck’s company designing unspecified new media for the Fox News Channel and other Fox online properties, a news release said.
The release was not specific as to when he would be off the air, saying only that it would happen “later this year.”
Moments after the announcement, Beck’s website The Blaze, which hosted the release, went offline.
Too embarrassing even for Rupert and Roger?
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and “three colleagues on Tuesday announced a bill that would restrict” birthright citizenship, a move that is likely unconstitutional. “It is astounding that the U.S. government allows individuals to exploit the loopholes of our immigration system in this manner,” said Vitter of his legislation.
Damn that Constitution we swore to uphold.
Republicans Have an Infinite Supply of Crazy Ideas to Distract the Public from Dealing with the Country’s Pressing Issues
Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. When are we going to get wise to their tactics?
Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. Morality praised as the key national issue.
American politics are getting more bizarre and in some cases, border on the nutty. Current politics include Republican legislatures in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Minnesota fighting for their “rights” to reject energy efficiency light bulbs, while South Carolina will manufacture their own state’s rights incandescent bulbs.
Alaska wants to eliminate federal protection of salmon, polar bears, seals and wolves in favor of “state sovereignty.” Dozens of states pledge to roll back “Obamacare,” and protect their citizens’ right to high-priced monopoly healthcare.
A GOP legislator in New Hampshire recommends sending the disabled and homeless to Siberia where it’s cheaper to live.
Read on, there are two pages of brilliant ideas to take America back to the 18th century or better.
C Street Senator, Christian Right Prop Up Ivory Coast’s Murderous Dictator
You’d think the right-wing, Christian, power-mongering group, the Family, would have learned its lesson about supporting African dictators when news of Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill blew up in its face. But no. After all, ties to power don’t fray easily, especially when your best friend in the mineral-rich Cote d’Ivoire — or Ivory Coast — is a nominal Christian, while his legitimately-elected opponent is a Muslim.
Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the Family’s stalwarts, turned his back on the Obama administration and the Ivoirian people, reports Salon’s Justin Elliott, when the administration asked Inhofe to use his friendly ties, cultivated through the Family, to ask Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo to step down after he lost an internationally certified election to longtime rival Alassane Ouattara. Never mind that Inhofe’s intervention might have stopped the spread of a civil war. Never mind that Gbagbo’s security forces gunned down seven women in the streets of Abidjan, the nation’s capital. Never mind that Ouattara’s election was certified by international observers. Inhofe said no.
snip
Then there’s the Rev. Pat Robertson, the dean of the religious right and founder of CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network. Elliott posts a clip of Robertson defending Gbagbo that will take your breath away. It all brings to mind Robertson’s support of another African dictator whose praises Robertson sang: Charles Taylor of Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire’s next-door neighbor.
Turns out Robertson had a financial interest in seeing Taylor retain his grip on power: a little mining operation called Freedom Gold Ltd., that licensed Robertson and friends to reap the profits of whatever gold they could find in the mineral-rich country in return for what essentially amounted to a kickback to Taylor. Now, Liberia, free of Taylor, is host to hundreds of thousands of traumatized refugees from Cote d’Ivoire, which is also a gold-mining nation.
How will they rationalize this on “Judgment Day”?
Peter King Calls For Ethnic Profiling In Addition To Religious Profiling
In a public television appearance aired today with Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), King elaborated on his exclusive focus on Muslim Americans as terrorist threats. In his remarks, King justified racial or ethnic profiling as well as religious profiling. King reasoned that if racist white terrorists were suspected of an attack on an African American community, the same standard against Muslims could be applied to “a white guy walking down around Harlem”:
KING: I’m just saying, a person’s religious background or ethnicity can be a factor, one of the things to look at. For instance, if I’m told the White Citizens Council, the Ku Klux Klan, is going to attack Harlem, I’d be more suspicious of a white guy walking down around Harlem in a very African American neighborhood. To me, that’s a logical a thing. Should you harass? No.
PASCRELL: We gotta be above it as leaders. I know you are, I would think most of the time, you have to be above what the suspicion ordinarily should be and point out what is right and what is wrong.
KING: There can be reasonable suspicion though. There can be reasonable suspicion though.
Let’s just wall ’em all off in internment camps
Petraeus may be Obama’s next CIA director: report
By David Edwards
General David Petraeus, commander of all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, could become CIA director, multiple sources have reportedly told NPR.
The public radio network reported Monday that Petraeus is being “seriously considered” to be the next spy chief, and ” would take the job if offered.”
NPR sources included more than one government official.
Leon Panetta, the current CIA Director, was also reportedly being seriously considered to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to NPR.
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