SuperMegaMonkey: Liberal Outrage: July 2008 Archives

Liberal Outrage

Exxon Mobil reported Thursday its best quarterly profit in history, lifted by the surge of prices at the pump, while the European giant Royal Dutch Shell also reported a sharp rise in earnings. ... The principal reason for the company's banquet of riches is rising fuel prices. Crude oil prices in the second quarter averaged more than $124 a barrel, 91 percent higher than a year earlier, according to Oppenheimer.

So shocking. It's pretty plain to see why they need to be on corporate welfare. They might have only made regular profits this quarter instead of the biggest profit ever, and we can't have that.

And, ofc, despite this, the investors are still not happy because they expected to benefit even more off the higher gas prices. That would be rich people profiting off of our hardship, the same hardship our politicians keep paying lip service to whenever they want us to vote for them all the while handing the oil companies bags of cash for "research and exploration".

Explain to me again why we shouldn't take all their money away and distribute it amongst the rest of the country. It's pretty clear that these people don't deserve it.

By min | July 31, 2008, 2:21 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

Joe Klein with a spine?

I'm vaguely impressed, even if i think he is whitewashing his support for the Iraq invasion a bit.

By fnord12 | July 30, 2008, 9:17 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

Straight answers to inanely stupid questions

It's nice to see the AFL-CIO addressing these ridiculous charges about Obama, but it's a shame that they have to.

They haven't gotten around to this one yet (plenty more where this came from, too):

DARSANO RAHARDJO - Childhood classmate of Barack Obama when he attended a madrassa in Indonesia. Was found with his head cut off in a Jakarta alley way in 1970. Many children at the school attributed Rahardjo's murder to the young Barack Obama. It was likely done as an initiation ritual, since Islam demands that a boy spill another's blood before the age of ten to prove their loyalty to Allah.

By fnord12 | July 29, 2008, 10:32 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

When Bush Quotes are Used as the Voice of Reason

So, i'm reading this article about how fuel subsidies results in higher prices for everyone, and i'm kinda going "right, yeah, i can see how that might be..." when i get to paragraph 7 and see this:

President George W. Bush warned about the effects of subsidies on July 15. "I am discouraged by the fact that some nations subsidize the purchases of product, like gasoline, which, therefore, means that demand may not be causing the market to adjust as rapidly as we'd like," he said.

I mean, ok, anything coming out of this man's mouth gets the automatic "bullshit" flag. He might be against "subsidies" but he's all for giving tax breaks to corporations in the name of free market economy. Corporate welfare, anyone?

I just don't know who writes an article, who isn't working for Fox News or the like, and puts in a quote from Bush to illustrate their argument and that argument isn't about what a moron Bush is or how badly our government's fucked things up. Granted, this is a paper owned by the NYT, but c'mon. It's not like it's Adam Nagourney writing it or something. It was filed in Indonesia, ferchrissakes.

By min | July 28, 2008, 12:56 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

Freedom Freaks

Glenn Greenwald:

When Jesse Helms died last month, there was a discussion about Helms in an online email group of prominent liberal Beltway journalists, and one participant asked whether the Left has any equivalent to Jesse Helms, and a well-known "liberal" journalist responded: "Yes -- the ACLU extremists." Time's Joe Klein said last year that objections to the Senate's warrantless eavesdropping bill were merely "fodder for lawyers and civil liberties extremists" -- a phrase which GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra then praised in National Review. The very same Beltway denizens who have so submissively enabled the radicalism of this administration simultaneously harbor and continuously spew contempt for those Shrill, Unserious "activists" -- such as the dreaded ACLU extremists -- who challenge and disrupt their little Beltway fiefdom.

Yeah, people who believe in the constitution are just civil liberties extremists, the left's equivalent of racist nincompoop Jesse Helms. God save the center!

(Image by Jack Kirby from Captain America #195 - Mar 76)

By fnord12 | July 25, 2008, 12:20 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

Recent food contamination problems due to lack of regulation

Wanyas recently pondered why were were suddenly having a number of food outbreaks and i offhandedly suggested that it was probably that the Bush administration was probably being deliberately slack on enforcing regulations. That seems to actually be the case:

The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sickens consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records that could be reviewed easily during a crisis to search for an outbreak's source. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers' favorite foods.
The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.

By fnord12 | July 25, 2008, 8:50 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

This test needs an extra credit question or something

It's not fair to get them all right and only get a 97%.

Take the Pew News IQ test.

This test is a lot harder. I didn't get a single one right.

By fnord12 | July 24, 2008, 4:49 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (4)| Link

The Democrat's support for FISA explained

If you squint really hard, you might see this is the goody bag that will be handed out at the Dem's presidential convention. Without squinting very hard, you might notice who will be sponsoring that convention, and very likely a number of re-election campaigns as well. This wasn't dubbed the "Protect AT&T" act for nothing.

By fnord12 | July 23, 2008, 2:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

Cranky old men: Hands off!

While Obama tours the Middle East and the puppet Prime Minister of Iraq cuts his strings to essentially endorse him, McCain tours a golf course with the elder George Bush.

By fnord12 | July 21, 2008, 8:52 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (3)| Link

I sent this guy some money

Anyone who does an extended xkcd homage gets my support.

By fnord12 | July 17, 2008, 5:06 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link

Change in the AP's reporting style

The Associated Press has made a conscious decision to use a more editorial based reporting style. I have previously advocated this king of reporting style as a solution to the problems of so-called "non-biased/objective" reporting that essentially acts as stenography, at best giving equal weighting to two sides regardless of factual accuracy and at worst acting essentially as press releases. I am re-thinking that position...

The ideal type of political reporting would print what politicians say and then attempt to analyze the accuracy of those statements - similar to what Jon Stewart does without the Dirty Sanchez jokes. The problem is that there are always enough facts out there to support a point of view and it is difficult to get anyone to try to sort through those facts objectively when they have a point of view. So the compromise solution is to still ask reporters to do that while identifying their political leanings so that the reader can take the information with a grain of salt.

The reporting i've seen recently from the AP has been horribly biased and now i see that is official policy, which makes a lot more sense. However, what i've seen has read more like political hit pieces, pro-candidate pieces, or fluff than editorial based reporting. This is the danger of this style: it is likely to devolve into pure punditry. For the AP, it seems to have happened rather quickly.

By fnord12 | July 14, 2008, 3:46 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

Senioritis

Link:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

We renamed our Politics category to Liberal Outrage a while ago as a Wanyas-inspired half-joke, but really, there comes a point where it just doesn't register anymore.

By fnord12 | July 11, 2008, 12:42 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

How weak we sound

More on FISA:

Now the phrase we get is "it's good enough." Literally, Nancy Soderburg says this bill is "good enough." Sorry, but some of us have slightly higher standards. One of the reasons the Republican establishment is about to be thrown out by the American people is because we're sick of being lied to. Dems should take that as a cautionary tale, and realize that we're just not that stupid.
That goes for our soon to be President, as well. We have a much better chance of continuing this battle, repealing this legislation, and having the information related to this program declassified with a President Obama than we do a President McCain, and I relish the opportunity to do just that.
That's why I'm supporting Obama fully in this election. He's got my vote. But truthy talking points are not going to fool us--we will not sit by while Dem leaders lie to us about what this bill does and and watch them confer the king-like powers on the office we hope he takes.

"This issue is of major importance. The candidate we support is on the wrong side of this issue for no good reason. But i support this candidate because i have no choice. Maybe once he's actually in office he'll be benign and fix it." Ugh. How desperately we need a multi-party system so that these losers can not hold us hostage.

By fnord12 | July 6, 2008, 3:12 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

Peak Metal

Here's some post D&D 3 am drive-by link blogging for you; just something else to worry about.

By fnord12 | July 6, 2008, 3:08 AM | Liberal Outrage & Science | Comments (1)| Link

Believe Me, It's Torture

Christopher Hitchens, who i often think of as a complete wanker, recently took the suggestion of critics, who took issue with his attempt to draw a distinction between "extreme interrogation" and "torture", and got himself water-boarded.

So what did it feel like? Hitchens recounts how he was lashed tightly to a sloping board, then, "on top of the hood, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose ... I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and - as you might expect - inhale in turn."
That, he says, "brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, flooded more with sheer panic than with water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal" and felt the "unbelievable relief" of being pulled upright.
The "official lie" about waterboarding, Hitchens says, is that it "simulates the feeling of drowning". In fact, "you are drowning - or rather, being drowned".
He rehearses the intellectual arguments, both for ("It's nothing compared to what they do to us") and against ("It opens a door that can't be closed"). But the Hitch's thoroughly empirical conclusion is simple. As Vanity Fair's title puts it: "Believe me, it's torture."

It's nice that he did try it and it did open his eyes. But he's still a wanker and a moron if he needed to actually have it done to him to know it was torture. Even Attorney General Mukasey knows without trying first hand that it would feel like torture if it were done to him.

By min | July 2, 2008, 11:46 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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