From Pine View Farm

The Rude Pundit takes on Ann Coulter (WARNING: language).

Excerpt:

. . . I’m calling on the Republican leaders in the Senate to stop holding America’s small businesses hostage to politics, and allow an up-or-down vote on this small business jobs bill.

At a time when America is just starting to move forward again, we can’t afford the do-nothing policies and partisan maneuvering that will only take us backward. I won’t stand here and pretend everything’s wonderful. I know that times are tough. But what I also know is that we’ve made it through tough times before. And we’ll make it through again. The men and women hard at work in this plant make me absolutely confident of that.

Nothing much to add to this, except that all these locations are in the Upper Bay, where I used to go boating and where my kids went to scout and YMCA camps.

The team took water samples before and after significant rainfall at seven beaches and recreation spots along five rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay. Their goal was to gauge the impact of stormwater — one of the fastest-growing pollution sources in the Chesapeake Bay — on bacteria levels in the water.

For comparison, the team also took two water samples from a household toilet: one while it was clean, and another after human feces had sat in it for four hours.

After rain on July 15, the tests showed that three of the seven sites had bacteria levels far higher than Maryland and Virginia standards for safe recreation, and five were above the level for safe swimming. Two — Savage Park in Howard County and Middle Branch Park in Baltimore — had bacteria levels much higher than the dirty toilet.

Deregulation will undoubtedly fix this.

Also, you may already have won.

Steve Benen wants to know, when Ensign is facing criminal charges and Rangel is facing (probably) censure at best . . . .

No reporters staked out in front of Ensign’s home. No op-eds speculating about the need for Ensign to resign in disgrace. Instead, the media’s fascinated with Charlie Rangel.

Rangel is facing a probe from the House ethics committee, while Ensign is under scrutiny from the FBI.

Is this just the IOKIYAR rule taken to the extreme? Was there some kind of memo stating that only Democratic scandals deserve media attention in an election year?

I think there’s more to it than IOKIYAR. Most reporters and pundits with a national audience cluster in New York and Washington; the major news organizations are headquartered in New York.

Rangel is local news for them. Except for conventions on the Lost Wages Strip, Nevada is just some place out there somewhere that they rarely visit and know little about.

They’ve decided what to write for their columns and commentaries each day before folks in the Mountain Time Zone are getting to work.

Unless it happens to Lindsey Lohan or Jennifer Anniston, they have no idea what’s going on west of Leesburg, Virginia.

More here.

Via the Richmonder, who spells it out.

Arizona racial profiling on hold:

(Judge) Bolton’s ruling stops four of the law’s more than a dozen provisions from going into effect. “The court also finds that the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm if the court does not preliminarily enjoin enforcement of these sections,” she states in the ruling. “The balance of equities tips in the United States’ favor considering the public interest.”

Key parts of (Arizona) SB 1070 that will not go into effect Thursday:

• The portion of the law that requires an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there’s reasonable suspicion they’re in the country illegally.
• The portion that creates a crime of failure to apply for or carry “alien-registration papers.”
• The portion that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to solicit, apply for or perform work. (This does not include the section on day laborers.)
• The portion that allows for a warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe they have committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.

The ruling says that law enforcement still must enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent of the law when SB 1070 goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Individuals will still be able to sue an agency if they adopt a policy that restricts such enforcement.

Bolton did not halt the part of the law that creates misdemeanors crimes for harboring and transporting illegal immigrants.

Reactions from Arizona pols and their promises to appeal are at the link.

Aside:

The slap at Iran may be good marketing, but it ignores that Iran imports more fuel than it exports; I believe I’ve read that it has the resources, but not the refining capacity.

Via the Richmonder.

It was pretty clear things weren’t going well.

It was not clear that they were going this badly.

And, no, “potentially embarrassing” is not sufficient reason for hiding official actions from public view, at least not and maintain any level of democracy.

Yet that, natch, is why governments dislike leaks and, in particular, are gunning for Wiki-Leaks–it’s not the potential for the dangerous; it’s the potential for the embarrassing.

It has nothing to do with the Republican Party.

Via BartCop.

Good news from Maryland: Anne Arundel County (home of Annapolis) approves private energy windmills.

The wrong things go up, the wrong things go down:

Existing home sales fell 5.1 percent to an annual rate of 5.37 million units, the National Association of Realtors said. Financial markets had expected sales to fall 8.1 percent. The median home sales price in June was $183,700, a 1.0 percent increase from the prior year.

“It’s still a horrible number. It’s just not as horrible as what people were looking for. Do you really view that as good news? Apparently the stock market does,” said Mary Ann Hurley, vice president of fixed-income trading at D.A. Davidson & Co in Seattle.

A separate report from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 464,000 last week, more than erasing a decline in the prior week.

Rigell hearts Wall Street banksters:

Sign the petition.

Via the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Date: Saturday, July 24th Time: 9-10:30 a. m.

Location: Bubba’s Deli & BBQ, 3600 Dam Neck Rd, Virginia Beach (west side of Dam Neck Rd. between Princess Anne Blvd. and Rosemont Rd.; access via service road at Lansdowne Ct. next to the Farmers Market).

Cost: Adults $10.00, Under 12 &6.00 for all-you-can-eat buffet (it’s a pretty good buffet, too–plenty of variety).

Willard Smith, Executive Director, Vetshouse, which serves homeless veterans, will speak; $2.00 from every adult meal and $1.00 from every kids’ meal will go to Vetshouse. Donations are also welcome.

More information and suggested items to donate here.

Read it here.

“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves . . . .”

Mike Littwin in the Denver Post:

There’s an old political axiom in this state, after all, that goes this way: If Tom Tancredo is the answer, you should immediately come up with a new question.

No further comment is needed.

At the Booman’s place.

Excerpt:

Now in the past, Presidents and Congresses of both parties have treated unemployment insurance for what it is – an emergency expenditure. That’s because an economic disaster can devastate families and communities just as surely as a flood or tornado.

Suddenly, Republican leaders want to change that. They say we shouldn’t provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed. They’ve got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help. And every day this goes on, another 50,000 Americans lose that badly needed lifeline.

Excerpts and summary here.

At Religion News Service.

Via Article IX, which suggests that “no new drilling” would be a more palatable and accurate term than “moratorium.”

Received via email, origin unknown:

Did you know that the words “race car” spelled backwards still spells “race car”?

That “eat” is the only word that, if you take the 1st letter and move it to the last, spells its past tense, “ate”?

And if you rearrange the letters in “so-called tea party Republicans,” and add just a few more letters, it spells: “Shut up you free-loading, progress-blocking, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, violent, hypocritical *******s, and face the fact that you nearly wrecked the country under Bush.”

How weird is that?

The local rag today told a powerful story of an Iraq vet whose life fell apart after his return from the war and who received no assistance from his chain of command.

His life fell apart to such an extent that, for a reason even he cannot explain, he attempted armed robbery.

Local rag has hidden the story behind a login wall.

Even though we pay happily for a dead-tree subscription, I refuse to create yet another innertube password. (If you let me read it on paper, you should damned well let me read it in electrons.)

If you want to read the story, here’s the link; you can register for the site.

hamptonroads.com/2010/07/iraq-veteran-posttraumatic-stress-help-never-came

The story relates to this:

Transcript here.

And I am certain it’s not just in LalaLand. From the San Jose Mercury-News:

A lobbyist has an idea to make life better — but only for his client. The lobbyist writes the bill, shops for a willing lawmaker to introduce it and lines up the support. The legislator? He has to do little more than show up and vote.

This is the path of the “sponsored bill,” a method of lawmaking little noticed outside California’s capital but long favored on the inside. In many states lobbyists influence legislators; in
California, they have — quite baldly — taken center stage in lawmaking.

Although lawmakers in recent years have routinely failed to grapple with health care, the state budget and other matters of public interest, they’ve managed to do the bidding of the private interests who tout sponsored bills at an impressive clip.

.

John Cole points out the intellectual incoherence of “shoot first, ask questions later” Neocon foreign policy.

From the Toimes:

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

“The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist.

Via John Cole, who wonders

how Republicans (will) try to pin this . . . on black people and Fannie Mae and Barney Frank.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., on the “no-fly” list:

• They won’t let you fly.
• They won’t tell you why.
• They won’t show you the list.
• They won’t take your name off the list.
• They won’t give you any way to appeal.

The list, then, is a purgatory to which one can be consigned in perpetuity with neither due process nor judicial review, because one’s name happened to be similar to that of some bad person. And there is no form you fill out or person you can talk to to have the error corrected. You’ve simply got to live with it.

I can understand a desire to keep the list confidential.

The no appeal thing, though, is beyond the pale.

Via Bob Cesca.