Starting off the new year by shooting ourselves in the foot?

Warren is outraged AIG is thinking about suing the government... which means the very people who saved their sorry ass.

KBR wants us to pay for their negligence.

Australia is on fire.  And the world is overheating...

And then there's this: Gun-toting soccer mom found shot dead and another school shooting in California and YouTube gun activist Keith Ratliff  is found shot dead and NRA Vows To Stop Tucson From Destroying Guns and NRA: White House Meeting 'Had Nothing To Do With Keeping Our Children Safe' and  Tactical Response CEO Threatens To 'Start Killing People' Over Possible Obama Gun Measure  (and an update where he tries to clarify things) and Steven Colbert agrees with the NRA (*cough*) and NTodd notes the historical silliness and Alex Jones goes off about guns talking with Piers Morgan.

(updated)

OMG!

Senator Al Franken!!!



Update: His speech on the floor:

Blog sprinkles

US Drought meter.

Tengrain: The day Bush got the memo titled Bin Laden Determined to Attack US. We will never forget.

Bryan warns us about the crow/squirrel cabal.

Go Rick Sanchez!

A CNN anchor today tore down Rick Scott, the founder of an organization that's been funding anti-health care reform protests and the former CEO of a hospital company that, as Sanchez pointed out, paid $1.7 billion to settle charges of overcharging Medicare and Medicaid.

It was brutal.

Brutal but delicious!



Camping with vampires...

Eli posts the map that proves only 4 states are now solidly Republican. Maybe if we can get the birthers and the screechers calling for lynchings to keep it up, we may even get those states....

Garbage, the next frontier!

Biomass is a word that’s new to most people, and you aren’t likely to hear it tossed around over Sunday dinner at Auntie Myrtle’s. But you can bet you will be exposed to it plenty in coming years.

Although the term has several definitions, here it is used to mean piles or containers of organic matter that can be tapped for energy. The list of biomass materials is long—agricultural and food waste, wood chips, yard clippings, microorganisms, animal byproducts and many other things.

Among the prime fodder of biomass scientists are hundreds of substances that aren’t bashful about giving off sinus-clearing scents. Yes, many of today’s biomass pioneers just love castoffs that reek. These men and women dance through a universe of aromas that are not welcome in the better parts of town. The stink from cow pies. From chicken dirt. From festering mountains of garbage. And, hold on to your tear glands, even rivers of onion juice.

KBR poisoned our troops and doesn't give a shit.

At the hearing, the Senators heard about an incident at a facility in Qarmat Ali where several hundred troops from the Oregon National Guard (and some from Indiana and West Virginia) were exposed to a chemical called sodium dichromate. (Seen the movie Erin Brockovich? That's the stuff that got all those folks so sick.)

Buddhist treasures found again in Gobi desert.

Mudflats of Alaska cringes at the teabagging over the stimulus.

Murdock demands payment for news....

News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

The media giant is looking for additional revenue streams after announcing big losses.

The company lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which chief executive Rupert Murdoch said had been "the most difficult in recent history".

News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

... and people go elsewhere. Bye!

Update insert: Newsy is an interesting new media site offering many different viewpoints for the same news story. Excellent idea!



Avendon celebrates a fiery liberal.

Cookie Jill posts the list: Top 20 Largest Cases of Companies Caught For Committing Fraud Against the Government

Distributorcap NY notes the theme of old bags on airplanes.

Athenae: Just how many kids have faced the wrong end of a gun?

Doing what greedy unethical people do when given a truckload of government money

They totally pig out and ignore what they were supposed to be doing with it:

From prostitutes to Super bowl tickets, a federal probe reveals how contractors in Iraq cheated the U.S.

Are we suprised at this? No accountability, no oversight, no consequences. Bush literally opened the vault and invited these people to steal our tax dollars.

ROCK ISLAND, Ill.—Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out.

Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand.

Notice how these contractors knew long before the US citizens knew we were absolutely going to war. Bush's statements about not wanting to attack Iraq and trying to the last for diplomatic solutions were obvious lies.

The graft continued well beyond the 2004 congressional hearings that first called attention to it. And the massive fraud endangered the health of American soldiers even as it lined contractors' pockets, records show.

Bush's defense contractors were in it for the money. They ripped off the US military, in their indifference, they put our soldiers' lives at risk. Rumsfeld's glorious war plan was just giving money away.

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show.

Indictments and jail time are fine.

But I want my money back.

I want it back from every 'defense' contractor that signed up and didn't deliver. I want it back from the twits who drove empty trucks about Iraq because that and only that was on the contract. I want it back from those who were signed up to supply food and water to our troops and gave them unclean water and old food, or no food at all because, being contractors, a war zone was a scary place. I want it back from incompetent body armor manufacturers that made soldiers take off good armor to wear their mandatory inefficient stuff and then were wounded. I want it back from Blackwater and DynCorp and other mercenary groups whose business is war and see no reason to try and help fix the country. I want it back from every warmonger in the Bush administration who plans to leave office and go into the ever so conveniently waiting defense contractor boardroom.

I want my money back and I want every business who benefited from Bush's idiot war to be fined. In fact, put them out of business and give the CEO jail time. Let them learn that we demand accountability, oversight, and justice. Let them learn that actions or non-actions have consequences.

I want my money and my country back.

A peek into future corporations

If we hold no one accountable for their actions:

Former Halliburton/KBR employees have described an atmosphere of “rampant sexual harassment.” Poe has also confirmed that his office has heard from multiple other women who were victims of sexual assault while working for KBR in Iraq.

But... no one will pursue Jamie Leigh Jones' rape case:

The Bush administration has been anything but cooperative. Both the State and Justice departments refused to give Poe “answers on the status” of the investigation. The DoJ “refused to send a representative” to a Congressional hearing last month, and the State, Defense and Justice departments all missed Nelson’s deadline for answering questions.

Now, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense has written to Nelson and other lawmakers, saying that his agency will not investigate the allegations:

In letters to lawmakers, DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter said that because the Justice Department still considers the investigation into Jones’ case open, there is no need for him to look into the matter.

“[T]he U.S. Justice Department has issued a statement that they are investigating the allegations,” wrote Kicklighter’s office to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who had requested he look into the matter. “No further investigation by this agency into the allegations made by [Jones] is warranted.”

Creating all that new 'reality' really went to their heads:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The 'new empire' has been run by barbarians who have little regard for human suffering.