Cain proposes deadly fence for border with Mexico

Deadly force? Really?

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Saturday that part of his immigration policy would be to build an electrified fence on the country’s border with Mexico that could kill people trying to enter the country illegally.

The remarks, which came at two campaign rallies in Tennessee as part of a barnstorming bus tour across the state, drew loud cheers from crowds of several hundred people at each rally. At the second stop, in Harriman, Tenn., Mr. Cain added that he also would consider using military troops “with real guns and real bullets” on the border to stop illegal immigration.

The remarks were among the most pointed yet by Mr. Cain about illegal immigration, and they come as he is enjoying a surge in national political polls on the back of his victory in a recent Florida straw poll. They also follow on remarks made by Representative Michele Bachmann on Saturday during a speech on illegal immigration in Iowa, in which she also advocated a border fence.

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Obama clears BP for new Gulf oil drilling

Apparently the Obama administration believes that BP's record is not too bad. Uh huh. Besides that one particular incident that involved death and destruction, BP's record is fine. The Guardian:

The move – seen as a major step in the company's political rehabilitation as an offshore driller following the Deepwater Horizon accident – was revealed by the head of the US safety regulator after a congressional hearing in Washington.

"They don't have a deeply flawed record offshore," said Michael Bromwich, head of the newly formed Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. "The question is: 'Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?', and we have concluded that's not appropriate."

Drilling rights are sold off on a regular basis but many believed BP would be ruled out as unsuitable after the gulf well blowout that killed 11 workers and polluted the beaches of southern states. The next sale comes up in December, when more than 8m hectares (20m acres) of offshore rights will come up for grabs.

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The GOP lies, the economy suffers, and the media does nothing about it

The Republican response to the President's radio address yesterday was an outright lie. Practically every credible expert, including economists on Wall Street even, agree that the stimulus did save/create jobs, boost GDP, and help cut back on unemployment. Everyone. But the Republicans keep outright lying and claiming the stimulus didn't do a thing. And the media just quotes them diligently and doesn't explain to the reader that it's a lie.  WSJ:

Offering the Republican response, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy criticized what he called the continuation of a "stimulation strategy that's led to more debt and fewer jobs."

Both the CBO and Moody's concluded that the stimulus did work - the only problem was that it wasn't big enough, not that it was too big. Had we done what Kevin McCarthy is saying, had we failed to pass the stimulus in early 2009, we'd be in another Great Depression right now - Moody's has already said the GOP plan won't work. But the President's stimulus, Moody's says it was absolutely worth it because it worked:

All this help comes at significant cost. While the fiscal stimulus has been vital, it helped produce a $1.4 trillion budget deficit this past fiscal year and will lead to another $1 trillion-plus deficit in the current one. Yet the cost to taxpayers would have been measurably greater if policymakers had not acted aggressively. The recession would still be in full swing, undermining tax revenues and driving up government spending on Medicaid, welfare, and other income support for distressed families. It is a tragedy that the nation has been forced to spend so much to tame the financial crisis and end the Great Recession. Yet it has been money well spent. The fiscal stimulus is working to ensure that the recent dark economic times will soon be relegated to the history books.

As for the GOP claim, that McCarthy also made in the article, that government regulations help cause unemployment, AP concluded the other day that it too is a lie.

And the lie grew worse over the past few months. As we pointed our previously, the new Republican talking point, that I first hear on Fox, of course, is that the stimulus actually CAUSED the economy to worsen.

Outright lie. And the media still doesn't sufficiently call them on it. How about a story asking the Republicans why they think lying is an answer to our economic troubles? Why their party so easily, and willingly, embraces lies instead of facts?  Reporters should be asking Kevin McCarthy if he's a liar, crazy, or just stupid.

This why our political system is broken. Because the checks and balances are broken too. Read the rest of this post...

NYPD arrests guy for doing what they tell him to

A protester wants to walk down the sidewalk, the cops tell him no. He say, there are pedestrians walking down the sidewalk, why can't I just walk down the sidewalk too. The cop appears to finally tell him it's ok, so he does it, and they jump him.

And New York City's reputation gets that much creepier.

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California Medical Assoc. calls for legalizing marijuana

Wow, this is a really big deal.

The state's largest doctor group is calling for legalization of marijuana, even as it pronounces cannabis to be of questionable medical value.

Trustees of the California Medical Assn., which represents more than 35,000 physicians statewide, adopted the position at their annual meeting in Anaheim late Friday. It is the first major medical association in the nation to urge legalization of the drug, according to a group spokeswoman, who said the larger membership was notified Saturday.

Dr. Donald Lyman, the Sacramento physician who wrote the group's new policy, attributed the shift to growing frustration over California's medical marijuana law, which permits cannabis use with a doctor's recommendation. That, he said, has created an untenable situation for physicians: deciding whether to give patients a substance that is illegal under federal law.

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Occupy Wall Street protests spread across Europe

It's an interesting question, raised by a CNN article, as to whether OWS is spreading across the globe, or whether the Spanish protests begun months and months ago helped to create OWS. But to some degree, it doesn't matter. The protests speak for themselves. At least in the US. I have to say I'm always skeptical of protests in Europe. Honestly, they've always struck me as too easy. When I lived in France, there were protests for everything - and every time hundreds of thousands of, if not a million, people would show up. It was a bit too Stepford for my tastes.

It's awfully hard to organize a good protest in America. And maybe in the same way that some say death gives value to life, Americans' inherent disinterest to protest makes an actual successful protest on our soil that much more meaningful when it's pulled off well. So whether it started in Spain or started in NYC, it's surprising and impressive that it's gone on this long and seems to be spreading.

The Republicans manufactured fake protests motivated by a lie and the media naively accepted it as a sign of something new in American life.  It wasn't new.  It was the same old trick they tried in 2000 during Bush v Gore.  Just get a GOP crowd to yell and scream and the Democrats will back down, while the media fawns. The Tea Party isn't a party, it isn't a movement.  It's the work of Dick Armey and the Koch brothers, and its members are conservative Republicans who are naive enough to believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, and that they create something real.  No.  It was created by liars and run by fools.

OWS, in spite of Reuters' best effort to claim the contrary for about 6 hours before they got caught, isn't a front for anybody, and it's not based on a lie.  While a lot of us still aren't sure who exactly is attending the protests, and whether we're kindred spirits on every political issue, it's hard to disagree with the real anger people are feeling against the brightest minds of Wall Street who screwed a nation, and the world, and got away with it.

We've got one political party that's lost its mind, and seems hell bent on making things worse, and another that's too afraid of its own shadow to truly make things better.  A little righteous anger based in truth may be just what the doctor ordered. Read the rest of this post...

Video: A squirrel seriously enjoying a peanut jar

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