WHAT AN ASSHOLE!

Bush gives his friend one last gift that doesn't belong to him

He talks of doing the right thing, of not worrying about "callow" popularity - he's callow alright. And he wants to be popular with a crowd, that crowd just isn't the American people. And I hope his life is nothing but ash.

This filled me with real grief. Just leave one thing alone.

Final Days Fire Sale
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: December 13, 2008

Imagine if President Bush, on his last day in office, invited his friends to lift the Lincoln portrait from the White House Dining Room, take the 18th- century furniture from the Map Room and — for good measure — poison the Rose Garden on the way out.

In essence, he is doing the same thing this month with land that belongs to every American — the magical redrock country of the Southwest.

Well before it was a bumper sticker and a chant at Sarah Palin rallies, “drill, baby, drill” became the overriding mission of the political hacks who oversee more than 200 million acres of public land for Bush. At a frantic pace, they have opened up to oil and gas leasing canyons of golden slickrock, mesas once known only to hunters and pronghorn antelope, and little hideaways near the open-aired art galleries of the Anasazi.

Take what you want, they said — and get while the getting is good. It was a plunderfest that produced a gangster culture, with dozens of high-level Interior Department employees exchanging sex, cocaine and gifts with the industry they were supposed to be doing arms-length business with, according to a scathing and quickly forgotten report this year by the agency’s inspector general.

At the time of the report, with gas reaching $4 a gallon, many people shrugged and said we need the oil — drill, baby, drill. Now gas is selling for a pittance, but that hasn’t stopped the fire sale. Everything must go!

On Election Day, the Bush administration announced it would open 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas leasing, including about 100,000 acres near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and Dinosaur National Monument.

As with the $700 billion bailout that Bush insisted had to be given to the very bankers, insurance companies and other tassel-loafed failures who got us into the economic meltdown, the president now wants every dead-ender in the energy business to have one last treat.

Solitude and ageless stone may not be commodities as easily quantified as a couple of thousand barrels of oil. But to the American inheritance, they are the equivalent of those first-edition Audubon books and presidential portraits in the White House.

The administration never even consulted with the parks before announcing they would have oil and gas rigs on their borders.

The giveaways went far beyond public land. For the coal industry, the parting gift was a federal rule that makes it easier to dump mining waste into streams. Anyone who has spent time in Appalachia of late has seen the handiwork — entire mountaintops lopped off in an end-of-days rush for a dirty fossil fuel.

On Thursday, Bush handed out another goodie: a rule that largely frees federal agencies from having to consult independent biologists before constructing something that could lead to the extinction of birds, fish or other endangered species.

Following a storm of outrage by park officials and the incoming Obama team, the government has now backed off from some of the more egregious sales in the Southwest. But on the upcoming Friday before Christmas, it will still auction off more than 150,000 acres near some of the most stunning scenery in the world.

In a concession, officials promised that oil and gas operations would be camouflaged — the rigs and drills painted a desert red so that visitors to the wildlands of Utah would not have industrial clutter marring their sunset picture.

It would be one thing if we needed the fuel. Of nearly 9,000 oil and gas permits approved on public land in Utah, barely a third of them have been drilled. The way this game works is that oil companies buy the leasing rights — in some case for as little as $2.50 an acre — then wait for Saudi Arabia to force another oil price spike. Then they drill.

And the impact on price or domestic supply? Nothing. Even if all the accessible oil and gas were taken from federal land in Utah, it would have zero impact on prices, according to several studies.

But the loss is incalculable — “geologic architecture that has inspired our American character,” and places where “the curvature of the earth is not only seen but felt,” as the ever-lyrical Terry Tempest Williams wrote in a recent essay in The Los Angeles Times.

So why do it? Because they still can. The only urgency is Jan. 20.

Eight years ago, in an act of frat-boy vandalism during their departure from the White House, members of Bill Clinton’s staff ripped W’s off computer keyboards and glued shut some shelves. If only Bush could revert to his college character type, and leave us with such a benign exit mark.

Jeff Kent: YOOOGE ASSHOLE

Jeff Kent opens his checkbook and takes a stand against gay marriage
Jeff Kent, who played second base for the Los Angeles Dodgers this season, has stepped into the emotional world of same-sex marriage, giving $15,000 to backers of the California proposition on Tuesday's ballot that would ban it.

In a disclosure filed with the California secretary of state, Kent listed his occupation as professional baseball player for the Dodgers and his address as Austin, Texas. He gave the $15,000 in a transaction dated Monday but which only now is public.

Proposition 8 would ban same-sex marriage by imposing a California constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being between one man and one woman.

With both sides spending upward of $30 million each, the measure has become the most costly ballot measure ever dealing with a social issue, and the spending is by far the most for any proposition anywhere in the country this year.

Kent, a free agent who is considering retiring, is a potential Hall of Famer who is best known for his years with the San Francisco Giants. A Bellflower native, Kent also played baseball at University of California, Berkeley.

A review of campaign records shows no other donations to federal or California state campaigns by Kent.

Frank Schubert, managing the Yes-on-8 campaign, said he was unaware that Kent had weighed in.

"He has had a stellar career and will no doubt one day be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame," Schubert said. "I wish the Giants had kept Kent and traded [Barry] Bonds."

~

Plot remarkably like their brainz...

Skinhead plot to assassinate Obama wasn't fully formed: authorities (AP)

BELLS, Tenn. – Two white supremacists charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Barack Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxes were likely too disorganized to carry out the plot, authorities said, and their planning was riddled with blunders.

Paul Schlesselman, 18, of Helena-West Helena, Ark., and Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells are accused of dreaming up the plan. While authorities say they had guns capable of creating carnage, documents show they never got close to getting off the ground.

Among the blunders: They drew attention to themselves by etching swastikas on a car with sidewalk chalk, only knew each other for a month, couldn't even pull off a house robbery, a friend ratted them out to authorities, and their brains have been deprived of oxygen since birth...

~

a shocking development from the Do Nothing Administration

White House issues climate report 4 years late

Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist who was not involved in the effort called it "a litany of bad news in store for the U.S."

"Finally, climate change is very likely to accentuate the disparities already evident in the American health care system," the report said. "Many of the expected health effects are likely to fall disproportionately on the poor, the elderly, the disabled and the uninsured. Though who gives a shit about those losers? Certainly not us."

ASSHOLES ALERT:

The report was required by a 1990 law which says that every four years the government must produce a comprehensive science assessment of global warming. It had not been done since 2000.

Environmental groups got a court order last summer to force the Bush administration to produce the document by the end of this month. Hays said the White House has preferred issuing studies on individual global warming issues, such as an agricultural effects report that was released on Tuesday.

"It's totally begrudging," said Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, a whistleblowers' organization. "It's important the government go on record honestly acknowledging this stuff."

22 Republican Senators Who Don't Support the Troops

75 Senators Stand With Veterans: GI Bill Passes in a Landslide

NAYs ---22
Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Bennett (R-UT) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Hatch (R-UT) Kyl (R-AZ)Lugar (R-IN) McConnell (R-KY) Sessions (R-AL) Voinovich (R-OH)

Even though Obama and Clinton made it to DC to vote, McCain couldn't be bothered (though he was on the record as not supporting the bill).

Even Larry Craig voted Yea. Of course, he does like a man in uniform.

Republicans running out of groups to hate on...

You know they will have reached the pinnacle of pettiness then they vote against "Plutocratic Rich White Guys Day"...

"Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens."

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.
"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.
Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

makes ya feel all warm inside...

This is what George Bush and his band of cronies have turned America into. This is on all of our hands, whether we accept it or not.

An innocent man loses 5 years of his life at Guantanamo Bay

k-mad finds something to get pissed off enough about to get off his ass and post something cranky (cont'd)

News item -- Public schools Tibetans attend give short shrift to the Tibetan language, emphasizing Chinese instead. Ethnic Chinese hold most jobs, and Tibetan civil servants can be fired if their homes contain the traditional Buddhist shrine: a Buddha statue with incense sticks in front. Portraits of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader who has been in exile since 1959, are prohibited.

Why aren't all of these phokking @$$HOLES in prison?

Let's start with this @$$hole:

Rove taunted in Iowa

Former top Bush aide Karl Rove didn’t get the friendliest of receptions at the University of Iowa Sunday, CNN affiliate KCRG reports.

Rove, who was paid $40,000 to speak at the University, was confronted with an at-times hostile crowd of 1,000, and was interrupted on several occasions.

$40,000 to be lied to for an hour? Er, YOU ARE A UNIVERSITY...people learnin' and s#i+...has no one there been reading the papers since January 2001?

I still love those cute turtles though -- hilarious!

News item: Comcast acknowledges that it hired people to take up room at an F.C.C. hearing into its practices.

the subtle difference between the news business and the blog business

News Headline: McCain, Romney battle over who is more conservative

Blog Headline*: McCain, Romney battle over who is the bigger asshole

*dis one

Things That Suck (Special Ed.)

The New England Patriots.

Frauds.

I told you they would lose - just like I've been tellin' ya all year. And it all started with that game they should have lost against the Eagles and A.J. Feeley.

Tom Brady (pretty boy): can't win the big one. But hey, he was a 2nd stringer at Michigan.

Belichick: Loser. I guess the NFL wouldn't allow him to get a camera in the Giants huddle. Also, really classy leaving the field with 2 seconds to play.

Add NFL dynasties to the list of things that aren't what they used to be...

East Coast asshole opens luxury hotel here

News item: Travelers who want to be the first to sleep at Donald Trump’s new Chicago hotel Wednesday will pay $325 to $1,425 for the privilege...

Those are the posted rates for the 339-room riverside inn, which will take on the city’s most expensive hotels, a group that includes the Peninsula and Four Seasons...

For $325 a night, a guest can stay in a 600-square-foot unit with a king-sized bed and a kitchen, according the hotel’s Web site. Guests who want more space can pay $1,425 for a 2,140-square-foot suite with two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room and lake view...

Clip & Save

Who is the biggest @$$HOLE Republican running?

Smiff ranks 'em:

1) Fred Thompson - I really HATE this asshole. Every time he opens his mouth i want to pound his face into a bloody pulp.
2) 9/11 - He's got his own t-shirt.
3) Mitt Romney - Seems the most hated by the other candidates, and if the other assholes hate you most - that should tell us something. And his real first name is Willard.
4) John McCain - He's old and ornery. I can see it, "You damn kids, get off my property!"
5) Ron Paul - Appears rather non-offensive, but did anyone see the sickening racist comments in the newsletter he used to publish? Even though it was HIS newsletter, he said he didn't write that stuff. Or edit it out, apparently...
6) Mike Huckabee - Seems almost human for a Repoop.

If i included non-factors Duncan Hunter and Alan Keyes, it would be a three-way tussle for 3rd place with Mutt. Unfortunely, you don't see enough of these two clowns to truly measure how big of assholes they are.

more SHOCKING revelations!

Kevin Brown, Todd Hundley and John Rocker were named in the Mitchell Report.

and don't get them started on that "phokking bitch" Mother Theresa

China says Canada-Dalai Lama meeting "disgusting"

Fire: wid da tarrists (cont'd)

Fox News Fans Flames

A Smffian Nightmare?

There must have been enough hypocritical bombast here to dwarf the Bush White House.

Thanks to the Corporal for pointing out the story.