Fact-esque

Friday Palin: Question of the Week

Who is writing these editorials under her name? Because it clearly isn't her. Try to imagine Teh Cuda writing this all on her own, I dare you:

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue. 

Sarah Palin doesn't know how to spell "articulate", let alone what it means, although it is amusingly ironic to see that word in the first graf of an op-ed supposedly written by the least articulate figure in American politics today - which all by itself is saying something since she's up against the likes of John Cornyn, Jim Inhofe, Jittery Jim DeMint, and a host of Bushian Texans who wouldn't know an apostrophe from a ligature.

They Said It Couldn't Happen Here. They Lied

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.

In the Midwest, foreclosure played a role for 15 percent of newly homeless people, according to the survey, reflecting soaring rates of unemployment — Ohio’s reached 10.8 percent in August — and aggressive lending to people with damaged credit.

This is what happens when a govt is focused on saving the rich and lets the middle and lower classes go pound sand: the other class gets slammed by the defenestration of the economy and voila! they're suddenly on the streets.

Friday Palin on Saturday: Oops! Ratings Drop!

Thanks to a Gallup poll this week, it has suddenly occurred to the corporate media to think John Edwards and Sarah Palin are somehow fraternal twins. Why Gallup came up with this odd pairing is a mystery but as a result there have been several articles recently comparing them. UPI thinks that Edwards' career is over while Palin's is just beginning even though the Gallup numbers show Sarahcuda's favorable rating has fallen significantly.

Edwards' favorable ratings dropped 27 points between July 2004 and January 2008. The decline was the steepest in consecutive polls since Gallup began using its favorable/unfavorable format in 1992, the Gallup Poll said Friday.

***

Despite a decline in Palin's ratings, however, Gallup said her ability to stay in the news – particularly since her surprise resignation as Alaska's governor -- may allow her to move from being a vice presidential candidate in one election to being a presidential candidate in the next.

Palin went from a 53 percent rating right after her nomination as Arizona Sen. John McCain's running mate at the Republican National Convention to 42 percent at the time of the ticket's defeat at the polls in November. Her ratings have dropped an additional two percent since then, the poll indicted.

I mean, I suppose it's possible that this isn't a blatant attempt to shore up Cuda's otherwise-15-mins-of-fame and pretend it isn't, like, fading as fast as Rush's drug dealer but it isn't easy to come up another reason that passes the giggle test.

Don't Mess with Rome's Trade Routes

I saw this piece about piracy at the HuffPo several days ago and wanted to link to it but didn't.   Thankfully, Corrente Wire pointed me to it again and so here it is: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates. 

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

If I Were Writing a Movie pt 6

I would have the factory taken over by workers demanding their fair compensation produce energy efficient doors and windows. 

It's a Gas

Offered without comment as anything I could say would be superfluous.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.

The Irving, Texas-based company has reported unprecedented back-to-back quarters, the end of the most recent coinciding with a rapid plunge in crude prices. Benchmark oil prices fell another $2.21 to $65.29 Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, about 56 percent off record highs in July.

Exxon said net income jumped nearly 58 percent to $2.86 a share in the July-September period. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago.

The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set in the last quarter, when Exxon Mobil earned $11.68 billion.

Our Heroes, Back (Down) from the Battle with Bush

Well, sure as gawd made little green apples (did he?), the Democrats yesterday rolled over for Bush and let the Pubs, led by Sarah "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Palin, stomp all over their prone and wasting bodies, screeching, "Please don't hit us, Mommy Sarah! We'll be good!"

Pah.

Congressional Democrats bowed to political pressure yesterday and agreed to let the ban on offshore oil drilling expire, a decision that would allow exploration just three miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines unless the next president reinstates an executive branch order that prohibits drilling.

Democrats said they gave in to White House demands rather than risk a showdown over the "continuing resolution" Congress must pass to fund the federal government through March. A new drilling moratorium would have been included in that wide-ranging measure. Provisions seeking money for home heating assistance for the poor and a loan program for the auto industry remain in the bill.

I've long since lost count of how many times I've read the same sentence in the WaPo, the NYT, and other newspapers in the last couple of years. It's always the same. "Democrats said they gave in to White House demands rather than risk a showdown over X." It's becoming fair to ask just what the Democrats do think is worth "risking a showdown" for.

Is there anything, anything at all, these corporate footmats will fight for besides their own careers?

Why Ford Won't Sell Its 65mpg Car in the US

It's - wait for it - us. From Business Week:

If ever there was a car made for the times, this would seem to be it: a sporty subcompact that seats five, offers a navigation system, and gets a whopping 65 miles to the gallon. Oh yes, and the car is made by Ford Motor, known widely for lumbering gas hogs.

The ECOnetic will go on sale in Europe in November.

Ford's 2009 Fiesta ECOnetic goes on sale in November. But here's the catch: Despite the car's potential to transform Ford's image and help it compete with Toyota Motor and Honda Motor in its home market, the company will sell the little fuel sipper only in Europe. "We know it's an awesome vehicle," says Ford America President Mark Fields. "But there are business reasons why we can't sell it in the U.S." The main one: The Fiesta ECOnetic runs on diesel.

Automakers such as Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have predicted for years that a technology called "clean diesel" would overcome many Americans' antipathy to a fuel still often thought of as the smelly stuff that powers tractor trailers. Diesel vehicles now hitting the market with pollution-fighting technology are as clean or cleaner than gasoline and at least 30% more fuel-efficient.

Yet while half of all cars sold in Europe last year ran on diesel, the U.S. market remains relatively unfriendly to the fuel. Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline. Add to this the success of the Toyota Prius, and you can see why only 3% of cars in the U.S. use diesel. "Americans see hybrids as the darling," says Global Insight auto analyst Philip Gott, "and diesel as old-tech."

I've wondered for years why the US didn't switch over to diesel like Europe. It's more efficient, cheaper to produce, and it isn't as hard on engines because the new diesels burn cleaner. The diesel Mercedes Benz's and Volvos they have in Europe routinely get 50+ mpg and run for 1,000,000 miles.

Everybody who thinks they won't sell it here because of "image" raise your hands. OK. Now everybody who thinks they won't do it because the oil companies wouldn't like it, raise your hands.

That's what I thought.

Demand an Economic Recovery Package Now

This is an email from the Coalition on Human Needs:

Lipstick and pigs are not the biggest issues facing the country right now.

Unemployment is up.
Millions are struggling to pay for food, gas, and housing.
Heating costs will rise 40 percent this winter, and many households just don't know how they can possibly manage.

Congress must not go home
without passing an economic recovery package!

Call your Rep. and Senators on Wednesday, September 17 to tell them they must act now!

Use this toll-free number:  1-888-245-0215

Tell them: Please do not leave this month without passing an economic recovery package that helps low-income people avoid hardships, helps the jobless, maintains needed public services, and boosts the economy.

Wednesday September 17 is the best day to call.  But you can call any day that week - Sept. 15-19.  You'll be connected to the Capitol Switchboard - please call three times to be connected to your Rep. and to your 2 Senators.

Background:  The House leadership is expected to bring up a recovery bill soon.  If constituents are heard from, Reps. and Senators will not just talk about doing something - they will take action.  If they do not hear from you, they will leave millions of Americans without enough to pay for food and fuel, with no more unemployment insurance and no help in sight.

Advocates have been urging more funds for food and home energy assistance, additional weeks of unemployment benefits, more aid to states for rising Medicaid costs and to keep collecting child support owed to millions of children, more funds for Head Start, and more jobs through infrastructure repair and jobs programs for youth.  For explanation of these proposals, see Towards Shared Recovery, at http://www.chn.org/pdf/2008/stimulus9908.pdf  Mention some or all of these important items when you call.

We know making these calls is not your favorite thing to do.  But Congress needs to know we're tired of diversions - we need action to turn the economy around and protect people.

Many thanks - please forward this to everyone you can think of.

Thomas Frank on Drillgate*

It matters for two reasons: first, because this obscure little office is the second-largest source of revenue for the Federal Government after the IRS. What they let slide you and I will have to make up on April 15.

Second, because this bungle-dee-botch is what government looks like when you make it "market-based," as George W. Bush once put it. This kind of government answers not to the public but to the party with the most money. It's the same virtually wherever you look in conservative history: The FAA describing the airlines as its "customers"; officials at the Labor Department thinking of business as the "primary customer"; officers at the FDA allegedly regarding Big Pharma as "our client"; and, back in the Reagan years, even officials at the EPA speaking of business as the "primary constituent."

A third reason: Because this is not democracy. It is plutocracy.

* I know.  I hate the "gate" thing too but tying it to drilling while the Dems are getting ready to roll the dice against some steep odds and venal opposition, makes me happy.