Invest in energy research and development. […] Find a way for utilities to make money from the CO2 produced by their coal plants.
Real men don’t need experts to tell them whose asses to kick.
According to the New York Times, the oldest oyster-shucking operation in the country shucked its last oyster on Thursday. Towards the end of the piece is this quote from the requisite owner/operator:
We were just hopeful they would have capped that thing by now [such that we wouldn’t be forced to shutter the business]
Uh, even if they had completely and forever capped it yesterday, your business model (harvesting food products from the gulf) is over. Probably for decades. Remains unclear to me why the media, so obsessed with idiotic minutiae, utterly fails to comprehend The Big Picture. All these gulf-based industries except oil are going away. And in terms of those living on the Earth today, they are likely going away forever. Oh, right, “obsessed with idiotic minutiae.”
MSM: If you want a guvmint-should-be-doing-more story, how’s about the guvmint should be actively retraining these folks, starting now for some sort of useful job that they’ll be doing for the rest of their lives, because shrimping, shucking oysters, and the various other food-related gulf industries are over. Forever. It’s just that the media, and by extension America, doesn’t seem to grasp this yet.
Thomas Banacek: Just because the cat has her kittens in the oven doesn’t make them biscuits.
Chuck Turner: You can bake cats but that doesn’t make them biscuits.
On the one hand, Republicans have had a major role in shaping [the healthcare reform, financial regulation, and climate change bills]. On the other hand, they haven’t had to vote for these bills, and so they could cleanly campaign against legislation that a member of their party helped write. And as an added bonus, Democrats are stuck trying to defend a bill that their base doesn’t like very much and that’s thick with compromises that annoy political elites.
And, of course, one more I forgot:
That would be the very same Erick Erickson who unleashed this gem on David Souter:
The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court.
Far from being fired for that remark, he was hired. As part of the “best political team on television.” But let’s all thank Lord Jesus that Helen Thomas is safely out of the way. The White House press room can now again serve as a refuge for the kind of deeply probing intellect exemplified in these recent gems (h/t Balloon Juice ):
Q: Can you talk about the criticism that the President isn’t making that emotional connection with people over the spill?
Q: Does the White House believe that it was a mistake for the President not to meet with fishermen or other local business people during his last visit?
Q: Did anyone in the White House yell [BP’s Tony Hayward] for making those comments?
Helen Thomas says something stupid (about Israel, no less) and what happens to her:
Thomas had been dropped by her speakers’ agency; upcoming appearances were being canceled; the White House was unlikely to call on her ever again; and perhaps most importantly, the board of the White House Correspondent Association (WHCA) was considering whether to revoke her front-row seat. The board was not likely to deliver a response Thomas would like – in a statement, the WHCA called her comments “indefensible.”
Glenn Beck, on the other hand, offers no apology this morning for his latest edition of fetid spew:
This morning on his radio program, Glenn Beck responded to the general outcry over his approving comments last week for the work of Elizabeth Dilling, a virulent anti-Semite who actively supported Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. Beck’s response contained neither an apology nor a disavowal nor any indication whatsoever that he was at all contrite over using his considerable media presence to promote a discredited and hateful woman’s writings.
Rush Limbaugh likewise offered no apologies on his recent work re: the Nazis:
Rush Limbaugh, last week unfurled shocking rhetoric in which he compared the Obama White House to a Nazi organization and even likened Obama to Hitler. (“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”) The outlandish attacks seemed to be a case of Limbaugh playing catch-up to Fox News’ Glenn Beck (Limbaugh = Beck Lite?), who had been pounding the noxious Nazi angle for weeks.
There is literally nothing a right wing pundit can say that will get him or her removed from the “serious people” commentariat. Nothing. Concomitantly, almost any comment, no matter how banal, will, can, and probably has already been used to permanently silence someone with known left-wing tendencies. I don’t pretend to defend Helen Thomas, but her near-instant defenestration is absolutely without context relative to the treatment of far more horrifying offenses taking place daily from the mouths of commentators with far more reach and impact than Helen Thomas has ever had. Unforgivable. Your Liberal Media at work.
Just last week, we crossed five billion downloads [from the App Store]. This next thing is my favorite thing is my favorite stat of the whole show. As you know, 70% of revenue goes to the developer. How much have we paid you to date? Just a few days ago we crossed a billion dollars.
Lemkin 