Last Comic Standing

Iliza won.

Yessssssssssss!!!!!

Whiny titty baby repugnant thuglicans circle jerk

instead of telling their asinine trader buddies to quit fucking the world with their speculation.

Assholes.

Stopping the greedy f*ck$

S.D. agents help bust massive ID-theft ring

The thieves hacked into wireless networks of retailers, including BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 and DSW, as well as TJX Cos., owners of Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, authorities said.

I remember watching some news magazine show and they rode around in a van with a laptop computer that had some program downloaded from the internet on it that literally got your credit or debit card number out of the air outside the stores.

40 million of them in this bust.

The stores who lost the numbers in the newgazine that I watched had already lost millions of numbers and knew that they needed to upgrade to a more secure network and it was more expensive so they didn't.

So are these scumbag assholes who got busted (who look like they are from what used to be communist countries, where generally people survive by bribery, corruption and ruthlessness) to blame or are the stores who refuse to protect their own revenues, profits and your card numbers?

Ok, on to more soutions to greedy fucks that are making our lives harder.

Obama Nails It: Calls For Release of 70 Million Barrels From The Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Raymond J. Learsy
Posted August 4, 2008 05:35 PM (EST)

...Nothing would be more immediately effective than a willingness to release oil from the SPR to rein in oil prices. It would immediately impact the psychology of the traders, having them begin a run for the exits. It would be a signal to oil producers, most especially OPEC that our days of being patsies to their cartel corruption are at an end. And it would have an immediate and salutary impact on the price of oil. Witness today simply mentioning the possibility broke the price of oil almost immediately by over $5 per barrel to under $120/bbl ending the day a shade under $4 barrel lower...

Military spying

Controversial military counterspy office closed
By PAMELA HESS – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Monday officially dissolved an intelligence office that once created a controversial database about potential threats to military bases, shifting it to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Oh, so they won't be spying on Quakers anymore?


DIA's new mission adds to intel arsenal
By PAMELA HESS – 3 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Intelligence Agency, long a home for intelligence analysis, is joining the spy vs. spy game.

Mmmmmmm, OK.

Russian Judge Rules Sexual Harrassment is Ok as it Ensures Survival of the Human Race

Does this surprise me?

Nope, I'm still reading Anne Applebaums's Gulag. And chapter 11 in Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine is all about the Pinochet style economic shock treatment applied in Russia.





Not surprising to me either is that Amazon Warrior Priestess graves have been excavated on the Russian Steppes.

Some answers, but not all, likely in anthrax case

What? This tiny little article is just baffling. What's the point?


Yeesh, the whole case, and the reporting on it is giving me a headache. Anthrax Vaccine -- posts by Meryl Nass, M.D. is covering the updates and other articles.

Moving on, sort of, I can't help but be cynical about the anthrax case because I read TomDispatch on a pretty regular basis.
Today's post is no exception to a long line of must reads.

PS this made me laugh:
San Diego Company Helped with Anthrax Case

Why would it make me laugh?

I got an e-mail recently asking me how life was in "the black heart of the military-industrial-complex?"

A perfectly valid question.

The Navy needs PR help

The Navy hopes to award the contract in September.

Oh OH OH, My hand's up, Pick me. Pick Me . Piiiiiiiicccckkk Meeeeeeeeeee.
BWWAAAA HAA Ha ha ha ha, just kidding.

Democracy Now covers the anthrax case

Amy Goodman talks to Glenn Greenwald and Dr. Meryl Nass. Links to more from them on the Democracy Now page (click on title link).


Bradblog

Olbermann



TPM Muckraker

Am I the only one who automatically looks for the defense contractor, Homeland Security contractor, and who in the administration sits on the board? All those guys sit on a million different boards. They all make money off of this shit.

Better to convict (in the mainstream media) the dead guy who had a patent on some of his anthrax vaccine work than to look at what might be hinky connections right?

Bullshit.

Cui Bono?

Rummy made money at Gilead, Cheney made money at Halliburton; they got their war, and that's all war is to those sick fucks, it's cha ching time, and Oh, who's this?
From Brownieland, it's Joe and this little board that he's director of got two federal grants totaling $4.5 million for development of its botulism and next-generation anthrax vaccine candidates, reported here July 29, 2008

Local stuff

Regulators say San Onofre nuclear plant is safe
Not all neighbors of the facility are reassured as another inquiry begins.
By Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 1, 2008

Despite the launch of its third special inspection in a year at Southern California Edison Co.'s San Onofre nuclear plant, federal regulators Thursday night assured the public that the coastal power plant is safe.

oh, Ok, sure, if the Regulators in the United States of De-Regulation say that it's safe it must be safe, right?

Desalination plan going back to coastal panel
By Michael Burge
STAFF WRITER
August 4, 2008

CARLSBAD – The long-running tug of war between a developer and the California Coastal Commission staff over the state's first large-scale ocean-water desalination plant continues this week as the two sides wrangle over environmental issues...

...MacLaggan said even if that is so, it's beyond the control of Poseidon (Yeah, what an appealing name, eh?) and its customers. Moreover, Poseidon officials say the greenhouse gas law doesn't apply to their operation.
“Under the Coastal Act, (coastal commissioners) don't have the authority to require greenhouse gas mitigation,” said Scott Maloni, a Poseidon vice president.

map

Gulag by Anne Applebaum

So far this book is telling a story of horrors unimaginable to me, or most Americans, I would hope. I'm curious now as to what young Stalin had to do with the Czarist secret police?


Update 5:42 PM 8/3/2008
Last struggle is over for Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
From The Times
Tony Halpin in Moscow
August 4, 2008

more on Solzhenitsyn

OK, then I guess I picked a weird time to read this book eh?

Dead whales and oil companies' seismic testing

Mmm, missed this last month.
Whales stranded off Madagascar
BBC News - news.bbc.co.uk
09 Jun 2008

Same old shit, different company.

Whatever.

Missed this one,

and this one

Shit. All of these articles go on and on about algae blooms and chasing fish, and eating sand and blah blah blah. Most of these mass beaching have one of two things in common:

Seismic testing (generally for oil or gas), or Navy Sonar testing in the area recently, both of which are so fucking loud that the bones in ceteceans' ears break.

I'm not a scientist, but I'm not a freaking idiot either. I became a liberal after taking business classes, how's that for defiant?

The militaries which depend upon oil probably don't want me connecting the dots, eh?

Fuck 'em. This planet is so fucked because of human activity.

Friday Squirrel Blogging