I was trying to forget

I guess, but today's an Anniversary:

Behold our libertarian future

I can see this John Galtian sort of thing growing in this country, little-by-little until something like this happens.

...perhaps no one wielded power more brazenly than Sohel Rana. He traveled by motorcycle, as untouchable as a mafia don, trailed by his own biker gang. Local officials and the Bangladeshi news media say he was involved in illegal drugs and guns, but he also had a building, Rana Plaza, that housed five factories. 

Upstairs, workers earned as little as $40 a month making clothes for retailers like J. C. Penney. Downstairs, Mr. Rana hosted local politicians, playing pool, drinking and, the officials say, indulging in drugs.

Now Mr. Rana, 35, is under arrest, the most reviled man in Bangladesh after the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza last week left nearly 400 people dead, with many others still missing. On Tuesday, a top Bangladeshi court seized his assets, as the public bayed for his execution, especially as it appears that the tragedy could have been averted if the frantic warnings of an engineer who examined the building the day before had been heeded.

But if Mr. Rana has been vilified, he is partly a creation of the garment era in Bangladesh, during which global businesses have arrived in search of cheap labor to keep profits high and costs low. Directly or indirectly, international brands are now sometimes interlinked with men like Mr. Rana, and placed at risk by them.

And then watch some other outrage end up get the populace as a whole shut out while the perp gets their own talk show before running for Congress.

And then he went off and picked up his Viagra

Which is what old pricks do:

During an appearance on a local radio show this week, [Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom] Corbett sought to explain away Pennsylvania’s less than stellar performance, arguing that the state gained 111,000 private sector jobs since he took office and is “doing better than other states.” But then he grew defensive and complained that “a lot” of businesses are still having trouble filling their ranks because too many Pennsylvanians use illegal drugs

Logic goes down in a hail of gunfire

Cue Lee Greenwood.

Investigators now believe that the Tsarnaev brothers had a single gun between them, a Ruger 9mm semi-automatic handgun that they are suspected of using to kill an MIT police officer, Sean Collier, and to engage in a fearsome firefight with police in Watertown, a suburb of Boston. Tamerlan died after the gunfight, in which up to 250 rounds were discharged; his younger brother Dzhokhar was captured alive.

It remains unclear how the brothers obtained the Ruger, which had its serial number scratched off. But the existence of the gun, combined with the disclosure last week that in 2011 Tamerlan Tsarnaev was placed on a classified FBI watch list for suspected terrorists, has brought the so-called "terror gap" back into the political debate.

Under current laws, individuals can still buy weapons at gun shops even though a requisite FBI background check reveals that their name is stored on a central database of potential terrorists.

Can't get on an airplane...can by a semi-automatic weapon.

Thanks NRA.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

When HTML and a blogger have the mind of a teenage boy

"Magic" (such as it is) can happen.


http://www.politicususa.com/elizabeth-colbert-busch-blows-desperate-mark-sanford-south-carolina-debate.html

*If by magic you mean stupidity

All hail the most important thing ever

In Arizona you cannot even abort an unwanted gun.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill into law that bars cities and counties from destroying guns turned over to police at community buyback events and instead requiring that they be resold.

The bill signed Monday was supported by Republicans and the National Rifle Association and opposed by Democrats.

Backers in the GOP-controlled Legislature argued that destroying any property turned over to the government is a waste of taxpayer resources.

Democrats argued that destroying the guns keep weapons owners no longer want off the streets.

What? Evidence required

I cannot believe we're not gonna get another war on so soon!

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the administration had no deadline for determining definitively whether Syria had used chemical weapons. "What I won't do is speculate about how much time might be required to gather the evidence necessary to be able to assess clearly, in a way that has been corroborated and reviewed, whether or not this red line has been crossed," Carney said. "I think all Americans would hope and expect that on a matter this serious that we would be very careful in this process and insist that we gather all the facts."

I'm pretty sure that answer would not be allowed at the Bush Library in any fashion.

And as we know, historically this guy has an sterling record.

William Kristol wants to go to war in Syria, but he won't say what that war should look like. Appearing on Fox News Sunday to discuss reports of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, the Weekly Standard editor (and noted Iraq war hawk) attacked President Obama as "totally irresponsible" for indicating that he doesn't want "to start another war," saying: "You've got to do what you've got to do." 

Solid advice...no doubt...like the result of a healthy dose of fiber.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

It's pretty much 11/22/1963 at ESPN headquarters

Apparently politicked out this morning

But hot on the heels of 'Arrested Development's' new episodes being less than a month away comes this.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon Confirm Season 2 of 'The Trip' Will Shoot in Italy

'The Trip' was perhaps my favorite movie of the year (it was condensed down from a British 6-part series) when it came out (in 2010?). I think it is still available on Netflix.

Vas ist "side-boob"?

Congratulations Germans.

How Could Anything go Wrong?

Oh the merits of the KeystoneXL pipeline. Undeniable -- why it will produce almost three dozen permanent jobs! And at such limited risk too.

The EPA says another lesson of is that tar sands spills can send harmful air pollution, such as benzene, into nearby communities. "Given these concerns, it is important to ensure that the future response and remediation plans will protect communities from impacts due to spills," the EPA's letter statesThe EPA wants the State Department to require TransCanada to be ready, in case of a spill, with special equipment on hand to contain and clean up sunken oil. It also wants TransCanada to set up additional systems to detect leaks early, especially in ecologically sensitive areas and places where the pipeline crosses streams or near drinking water wells.

Apparently the State Department (and really who better to contemplate pipelines?) thought it would just be another pipeline system, as opposed to a toxic timebomb. It's almost as if they just took what the lobbyists told them at face value. But still, as we've been repeatedly told by our brave politicians, the whole point of the pipeline is to get all that delicious crude into America's gas tanks for energy independence.

Oil Change International, a group fighting the Keystone pipeline, argues that is clearly not true. The group used census and U.S. energy data to figure out how much is now exported from the Texas refineries expected to handle the majority of Keystone oil. They found 60 percent of the finished gasoline produced last year in those refineries was exported. “Keystone XL proponents are saying this is about energy independence and obviously it’s not,” Oil Change International executive director Steve Kretzmann said in an interview.

It is really just about someone saying in about two-decades they couldn't have anticipated such a disaster, while all the decision-makers have retired to considerable pensions -- far away from the middle of the country. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

The highest standards of journalism-ism

Some mucky muck at Politico left their "quality" notes at Nerd Prom last night.   Probably in a rush to get home and masturbate.

Hey look

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Get ready for "Draw Lucky -- the Exhibition"

Because by 2014 or so, we're going to read columns by Peggy Noonan where she writes about her unexpected moistness at the world's worst art gallery showing.

David Greene: Your husband has kept a pretty low profile since leaving office. But one thing that’s gotten some attention recently is his new hobby, painting. How did that come about?
Laura Bush: He was looking for a pastime. He got an app on his iPad where he could draw pictures. He communicated with me if I was on the road and with Barbara and Jenna with funny drawings.
David Greene: He was drawing you pictures to send you while you were on the road?
Laura Bush: Yeah, like he’d draw a picture of him in bed with Barney and the cat.

I'm going to guess it was a mix of 3-year old, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Dogs Playing Poker.

Masturbation NRA Leadership Style

Obviously just a person exercising their Second Amendment Rights the way Wayne LaPierre thinks they should.

The hunt is on for a gunman who police say sprayed two North Philadelphia blocks using a high-powered assault rifle in separate shootings that killed one and wounded three others earlier this month.

“We’ve already had one person killed and three others shot,” Homicide Unit Capt. James Clark said during a news conference Friday. “Quite frankly, we could have a lot more killed.”

...

“As he’s running away, he’s sort of just firing in the air, so he’s a very dangerous person,” Clark said. “We have to get him off the street as quickly as possible.”

A week later, on April 13, a gunman matching the description of the gunman opened fire on two men at 7th and Clearfield streets – about seven blocks from the scene of the first shooting. Police said the 23 shell casings recovered at that scene matched those found at the scene April 6. Both victims in that shooting, men aged 19 and 36, survived their gunshot wounds, said 25th District Capt. Frank Vanore.

Surveillance video from the second shooting shows sparks flying as bullets ricochet off the street and buildings and the victims running to escape the gunfire.

Behold the kind of state your average Randian covets

And the results that would occur:

Rescue workers in Bangladesh on Friday rushed to find survivors of Wednesday's horrific garment-factory collapse—but the death toll nevertheless climbed above 300, more than three times as high as initial reports...

 The collapse is the worst workplace accident in Bangladesh history, surpassing the fire that killed 112 five months ago, and workers have taken to the streets around the capital of Dhakar in protest of poor safety standards and workplace conditions , in some cases forcing factories to shut down. In response, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas.

The rubber bullets and tear gas for protesting mass deaths from negligence is a nice touch the Koch Brothers could appreciate.

This is what happens when you elect comic-book villains to high office

Another "shining" example of assholery from Florida.

Florida violated federal civil rights law with its new and unusual requirement that unemployment claimants file online and take math and reading tests before they can receive benefits, the U.S. Labor Department determined this month.

They also want drug-testing while the guy (and you know it was a guy, a white guy, a white Republican guy) who wrote it is probably addicted to prescription medication and cannot add or write beyond a 4th degree level -- or as it is known in Florida, a State University Grad.*



*Sorry, Floridian Collegians and Alums in advance.

Why not just spend this on coke or heroin?

At least you'll get high for a while...so it has more value than this.

The New York Times Global Forum: Thomas L. Friedman’s The Next New World, scheduled for June 20, promises to “explore the complex dynamics of new-world infrastructure, especially the transformative electronic, digital and mobile environment,” impart “invaluable insights into strategies for success in today’s new world order,” and answer the question: “What World Are You Living In?” Invitees can attend the one-day forum for the early-bird price of $995.

If you do not learn enough, fear not I'm sure "The Mustache of Understanding" will have all the answers for you within six months.

Via Balloon Juice.

Austerity continues to work its "Magic"!

Every sentient person anticipated the Spanish Disposition (and how it would suck):

More than six million Spaniards were out of work in the first quarter of this year, raising the jobless rate in the euro zone's fourth biggest economy to 27.2 percent, the highest since records began in the 1970s.

The huge sums poured into the global financial system by major central banks have eased bond market pressure on Spain, but the cuts Madrid has made in spending to regain investors' confidence have left it deep in recession.

30 days until all of the nation's Comedy Nerds have a Sunday of Worship

I shall be in attendance: