God is to blame

Indignant Bible thumper and fierce advocate for "the family" and "family values" Mark Souder (R-IN) was caught a few weeks back carrying on affairs with someone who was not his wife or the Lord. He resigned. It was a tremendous shock to everyone. I mean a moralizing blowhard being hoisted on his own petard and being revealed as a gross hypocrite? Hardly ever happens. Especially not to right wing religious fundamentalists. Actually, it was kind of shocking that he wasn't a closeted gay guy like about 90% of the others.

Not content to slink off in shame and not embarrass himself in public any further, Souder decided he needed to let everyone have another go around and mocking him.

"I prayed multiple times a day, sang hymns with emotion and tears, felt each time that it wouldn't happen again, read the Bible every morning. . . . So how in the world did I have a 'torrid' (which is an accurate word) many-year affair?"

Is it because you seemingly expected an invisible bearded man in the sky to get up off his golden throne, teleport down to earth, and zip your pants up for you? That you sang songs about Hos-an-na in the high-est instead of focusing on not fucking another person or dealing with emotional or marital problems you were having? That you never realized that prayer is easily defeated by bare breasts?

No, clearly God is to blame here. He failed to stop you after you clearly said His magic words and sang His magic songs. Maybe He did hear your cries, it's just that in the immortal words of Frank Zappa: Jesus Thinks You're A Jerk. Maybe you were confusing Yahweh by yelling "Oh God! Oh God!" during the various affairs.

Anyway, He clearly let you down, Mark. Expect a handwritten apology letter to appear in a torilla in Juarez sometime over the summer.

We've found our scapegoat

The UK papers are going mad over Obama and the entirety of the United States spectacularly hating on BP just because they massively fucked up the Gulf. That is when the papers can spare the time they're spending trying to drive Robert Green to suicide. You see, BP used to be regarded as a safe investment across the pond and as such was viewed as a safe centerpiece for pension investments and the like. Now with BP stock tanking and being rated as worth just barely above junk, that's looking like something that could be disastrous.

Of course to the nationalist press, that's all Obama's fault. They're much like our tea baggers. It's not so much BP spilling all that oil and failing to clean it up that's causing the stock problem, it's that Obama is pointing it out and complaining about it that's causing the problem. We, on the other hand, are giving England a right bollocking as if they were to blame for BP's awful, awful safety record, oil spilling, and attempted media chokehold.

Instead of fighting and misplacing blame on each other, let us place blame where it belongs. No, not a corporation. A scapegoat.

Primary responsibility for safety and other inspections rested not with the U.S. government but with the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean.

And the Marshall Islands, a maze of tiny atolls, many smaller than the ill-fated oil rig, outsourced many of its responsibilities to private companies.
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Under International law, offshore oil rigs like the Deepwater Horizon are treated as ships, and companies are allowed to "register" them in unlikely places such as the Marshall Islands, Panama and Liberia — reducing the U.S. government's role in inspecting and enforcing safety and other standards.
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Different types of rigs are classified differently, and the Marshall Islands assigned the Deepwater Horizon to a category that permitted lower staffing levels.

OOOOH! MARSHALL ISLANDS!!! YOU ARE AT FAULT!!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!! THIS IS AN ATTACK ON US!!! Look UK, you hold the Marshall Island's arms and we'll punch them in the gut! Lax standards, loopholes, insufficient regulatory structure, uncomfortable closeness with and industry they're supposed to regulate... who do you think you are, Marshall Islands... us? A tiny country in the Pacific should regulate Gulf oil rigs better. For shame.

So world, if you're looking for the country to blame, it isn't the US or UK and it certainly isn't BP. Don't hate the player, hate the game. And a small collection of atolls with a population that could fit in an NFL stadium concocted the rules of the game and reffed it poorly. It's their fault. J'accuse.

No one can do anything right

Well what do you know, the World can't get its shit together either. We spend so much time here chronicling the failures of our own government to do things that other industrialized nations did 4-5 decades ago, that it's nice to see that they have the same problems we do on the issues of today. Shame it's going to kill us all. Ah well, at least I live far enough in from the coast to avoid drowning.

I'm speaking, of course, of the Copenhagen climate conference. With proceedings being described as an "elaborate sham" and the possibility of any deal getting done dramatically in question, today we learn that even the measures they were preparing to sign off on were woefully inadequate.

The emissions cuts offered so far at the Copenhagen climate change summit would still lead to global temperatures rising by an average of 3C, according to a confidential UN analysis obtained by the Guardian.

With the talks entering the final 24 hours on a knife-edge, the emergence of the document seriously undermines the statements by governments that they are aiming to limit emissions to a level ensuring no more than a 2C temperature rise over the next century, and indicates that the last day of negotiations will be extremely challenging.

A rise of 3C would mean up to 170 million more people suffering severe coastal floods and 550 million more at risk of hunger, according to the Stern economic review of climate change for the UK government – as well as leaving up to 50% of species facing extinction. Even a rise of 2C would lead to a sharp decline in tropical crop yields, more flooding and droughts.

Worldwide action needed, experts all saying the same thing, consensus reached on solutions, but leaders can't seem to do anything other than pass half-measures and paens to the industries that caused the problem in the first place. Where have we heard this before? At the very least, people are saying that this isn't America's fault; it's China's. America, on the other hand, is being described as helpful and "pulling things back from the brink." Weird to hear that, I know. Hell, Obama even took to trying to shame and put pressure on those who were trying to hold up a deal. A nice attempt, but still a little hollow knowing that anything the Copenhagen conference agrees to and Obama wants to sign on to will still have next to no chance of passing the US Senate.

But as we approach the end it seems that our world leaders have come up with one concrete plan of action: work their asses off to draft a weak, face saving agreement with which they can use to pretend something was done. Because what you want in a comprehensive climate agreement is a draft that has the words "ought to", "scout's honor", "Totally promise", "It would be nice if...", and "let's hope and pray" prominently featured. So as the world shows us how to fail on a global scale, we in America can take solace in a few things: this time it wasn't our fault, we tried to help, and anyway it's the developing countries that are going to be most negatively affected by the temperature changes. We win again.

Quote of the Day

Joe Lieberman (Scum Fuck-CT), moving beyond merely lying about the public option and health care reform to openly advocating for you to heap your loathing and disdain on him as well as begging you to test out any type of voodoo doll on him.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But is what you're also saying is that nothing is better than a government health insurance or a gov- health insurance reform that includes a public option. Nothing is better than that?

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Well, the truth is that nothing is better than that because I- I think we ought to follow, if I may, the- the doctors' oath here. In Congress says we deal with health care reform, do no harm.

I don't know Joe, I think maybe to the 45,000 people each year who die because of a lack of health care, nothing isn't really a great option, though they do appreciate how relevant you now feel. To the countless thousands who are bankrupted each year because of medical costs, I'm sure that the option of doing nothing isn't that great either, thought they do really sympathize with just how sandy your vagina is after Ned Lamont beat you in the Democratic primary way back when.

But not content to merely play with people's lives because he wasn't getting enough media attention, Joe decided that he wanted to up the ante and blame everyone else for forcing him to join with Republicans to filibuster health reform.

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Yeah, but I'd say to the people who are all of a sudden making the public option a government health insurance company, the litmus test here, they're stopping us from getting something done.
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I'd say to them, don't stop us from getting something important and good done for the Americans.

Joe, when around 57-59 Senators are all in agreement about a public option, they aren't the ones holding things back and stopping things from getting done. I know around 60% of the populace would like a public option too, but you've already explained that: we're not as smart as you, the man who doesn't understand anything he's actually saying about health care.

I'll say this for Joe, he may be a contemptible, back stabbing, self important, third rate liar, but he lets you know just how badly he wants to fuck you over and lets you know where he stands. Even if it is the opposite of where he used to stand.

That little son of a bitch

J'Accuse!!!!!!

The health professionals in the US, Mexico, and at the WHO have finally given us the one thing we need to know during this potentially deadly flupocalyse: a scape pig goat. No, not a large multi-national farming concern with large pig herds producing rivers of shit right near villages, it was all the demented, devious plan of a four year old boy. Probably. They've narrowed it down to the boy and Smithfield.

A Mexican village whose inhabitants were overwhelmed by an outbreak of respiratory illness starting in February has emerged as a possible source of the swine flu outbreak which has now spread across the world.

The state government of Veracruz in eastern Mexico has confirmed one case of swine flu in the village of La Gloria with the sufferer named locally as a four-year-old boy, Edgar Hernández Hernández. The federal government said tonight that he tested positive for the same strain of the virus which has claimed lives in Mexico.
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"The sample of one of the cases, that of a four-year-old boy, was kept," said federal health minister José Ángel Córdova. "It was among the samples sent [to labs abroad] and that came back confirmed."

What a little shit. He comes down with the earliest known case of swine flu and doesn't even have the decency to inform everyone.

The piece also goes into the Mexican investigation of Smithfield on the premise that the kid's village, the 60% infected, and the proximity to a pig farm are somehow related. Smithfield says that none of it's pigs are sick, mostly because they've pumped them so full of antibiotics the pigs are legally classified as four legged penicillin, but that they are willing to work with health organizations to clear up this convergence of timelines, geography, names, outbreaks, and series of unrelated coincidences that all happened around their "farm". Everything is a coincidence.

By the by, if you happen to be in Veracruz and notice the smell of BBQ in the air, that is in no way the disposal of evidence. Smithfield is just having a massive BBQ to celebrate the fact that they've exonerated themselves. No further need to look into things. Just stop by and have a free rack of ribs. On the house.

Quote of the day

Brit Hume, warning that he doesn't want the news to be so damn partisan....it's just that those damned blaggers and their blagmidifying machines are making things so toxic.

HUME: What are we getting?…We’re getting bloggers and websites and all sorts of individual entrepreneurs, and we have a vaster menu of choices today than we’ve ever had. But I think that we also have the danger that everything will be presented from one political viewpoint or the other, and that the media that confront us are going to be more partisan than ever — which means that the Media Research Center will have a mission for many years to come, and a good thing that is.

Of course this is Brit Hume of Fox News and he was speaking at the Media Research Council gala slamming the "liberal media" and getting a journalism award named after William Buckley (what's that Irony, you can't stop throwing up in your mouth?). So when he means 'danger' and 'partisanship' he's talking about the danger/partisanship posed by those dirty liberals. What he does over at Fox is fair and balanced and other various slogans that appear in their ads.

Maybe if Brit spent more time working on the partisan news problem instead of giving partisan speeches at partisan events, receiving partisan awards for partisan journalism, he'd find a solution. But he's just worrying about the other side doing it too. In any event, like everything, it's all the fault of bloggers.

It's not my fault: Madoff edition

THE SEC WATCHDOG WHO MISSED MADOFF

The Securities and Exchange Commission's New York watchdog, under fire for failing to uncover Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme - despite a dead-on tip by a whistleblower - yesterday tearfully defended herself, arguing that she and the agency did the best job possible.

"Why are you taking a mid-level staff person and making me responsible for the failure of the American economy?" an upset Meaghan Cheung, with eyes tearing up, told The Post.

"I worked very hard for 10 years to make a career, and a reputation, and that has been destroyed in a month," said Cheung, who was the SEC's branch chief of the New York enforcement division during that unit's earlier probe of Madoff's brokerage business.

The 37-year-old has been singled out by whistleblower Harry Markopolos as the woman who failed to detect the scam despite his lengthy warnings. It was Cheung who signed off on a 2006 SEC investigation that effectively gave Madoff the all clear.

First off, you are a Branch Chief. That's not mid-level. Secondly, you received extremely specific warnings about the exact type of scheme Madoff was running and you failed to even come anywhere close to finding out what happened, in fact you said everything was on the level. Ponzi schemes are possibly the easiest fraud schemes to figure out and bust. The fraud behind a Ponzi scheme is that they don't have the amount of money or holdings that they say they do. Whether or not they are telling the truth is a matter of you looking at what they claim they hold and then going to the custodian/banks who are holding all that money/filthy lucre and seeing if the numbers match up. You couldn't even do that.

Boo hoo, you fucked up horrifically. Of course your career should take a drubbing. Despite a detailed map, flashlight, and a sherpa, you couldn't hack it up the mountain. Maybe you're an idiot, maybe you didn't want to take on the guy who was buddy-buddy with everyone important in the financial industry, including the SEC. Either way you told everyone the guy who defrauded people for $50 billion was squeaky clean, despite him running one of the oldest, most obvious, and most easily verifiable scams in the books. You didn't notice any of this, but it wasn't your fault. Thanks for taking responsibility and showing so much dignity, somewhere there's a four year old who's embarrassed for you.

Karl Rove is a whiny baby

Karl Rove is pissed off. Not over the burning shambles of the country he helped set ablaze, but because mean people who don't like his buddy George. He's gonna write a book about it. About all those ingrates who were unwilling to accept the constant and unceasing partisanship from Rove and the Bush White House.

Much of Washington, Rove said, never accepted Bush as a legitimate president and "acted accordingly."
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Also reserved for between the covers of Rove's book is his checklist of the "great many of the political actors in this town (who) never accepted him as a legitimate president."

"I've got behind-the-scenes episodes that are going to show how unreceiving they were of this man as president of the United States," Rove said, adding: "I'm going to name names and show examples."

Oh great, 400 pages of "And this guy totally wouldn't talk to me at a cocktail party and then this other asshole totally went to the media to complain about my total politicization of government." Quit bitching, you largely got everything you wanted, enacted everything you wanted to enact, especially after 9/11 when you went on a concerted campaign to tar anyone with even the mildest opposition with being anti-American and 'not supporting the troops'. Or electing Democrats would guarantee terrorist attacks.

That you got everything you wanted and then proceeded to ruin this country with it is not the fault of some guy at some think tank who thought you were doing irreparable harm to the country, some Democrat who didn't like being called a terrorist appeaser, or some reporter who reported on the myriad of crimes and clusterfucks you watched over. But I guess I shouldn't be talking to you like you're an honest man trying to sort things out on the level. Here's a tip: since you can't actually put the names of 70%+ of the country into a memoir, put your enemies list/obstructors/people who stood in your way name namery up on the web so people can see if they are on it or add their name to it. I want my credit for standing in the way of your 'permanent Republican majority'. It's still funny to remember you said that.