Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Ok I think one crosses the line into official political wonkdom when one can a) identify even relatively minor pundits and members of the current administration with barely a glance (me this weekend: "Oh that's Karen Hughes...wait, how do I know that?"), and b) one reads that Sandra Day O'Connor has retired this morning and is immediately flung into a deep depression.

*sigh*

Well, I guess it's going to be an interesting summer.

For those concerned about what the retirement of this Supreme Court Justice means to your right to choose, I direct you here.

Also more shennanigans from home via elenderel, apparently the local politicans are making a sweetheart deal with one of the main companies responsible for creating one of the most polluted lakes in the country. From the article she sent me today:


“The plan pushed by the State and Honeywell will remove only some of the toxic waste, put a temporary cap on only some the toxic waste that’s left, and pretend that the superfund sites leaching their poisons into Onondaga Lake don’t exist,” said Joe Heath, attorney for the Onondaga Nation. “The only thing this plan cleans up is Honeywell’s corporate liability, leaving the taxpayers to foot the bill once the long-term public health threat is exposed.”

From 1884 to 1986, Allied Chemical and AlliedSignal, who since merged with the Honeywell Corporation, used the region’s natural salt brines and limestone to produce soda ash and other industrial chemicals on the southwest side of Onondaga Lake. The pollution from these facilities turned the Lake, a former resort destination, into one of the most polluted bodies of water in North America. Although the site has been designated a Federal Superfund Site for over a decade, the United States Environmental Protection Agency ceded its authority for clean up to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

Some quick facts for those who've never even heard of the lake:

Toxic Chemical

Estimated concentration in Onondaga Lake bottom sediment after clean-up and the factor by which this concentration exceeds safe level defined by NYS-

mercury 2,924 ppm 1,329 times higher

benzene 208 ppm 1,387 times higher

chlorobenzene 114 ppm 266 times higher

dichlorobenzene 90 ppm 377 times higher

naphthalene 20,573 ppm 22,435 times higher

xylene 142 ppm 253 times higher

ethlybenzene 1,655 ppm 9,043 times higher

toluene 2,626 ppm 62,524 times higher


Part of me is tempted to avoid all further political news for the day, but I'm just optimistic enough to hope that things can only get better from here...

(no subject)

( Pretty Dr. Who icons behind the cut, not spoilery, but just in case... )

Sorry, I am a political animal today

Contemplating creating Cafe Press bumperstickers and t-shirts reading "They'll take my right to choose from my cold, dead hands."

But this I also just have to share:

Several Senate Republicans denounced other lawmakers and the news media on Thursday for unfavorable depictions of the Iraq war and the Pentagon urged members of Congress to talk up military service to help ease a recruiting shortfall.

Families are discouraging young men and women from enlisting "because of all the negative media that's out there," Sen. James Inhofe (news, bio, voting record), an Oklahoma Republican, said at a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.


Mostly 'cause Jesse at Pandagon offers up the definitive smackdown on it:

You know, I wish that the FDR-era Congress hadn't outlawed the First Amendment for Republicans. The massive institutional advantages they enjoy are all for naught, as none of those institutions are allowed to speak out lest they be assaulted by scary men in black ninja gear (and believe you me, Depression-era ninjas were fucking brutal).

Rarely has this assault on the free speech of the right been discussed, but today is the time. Republicans may control the most popular cable news network, but in vast portions of urban and suburban America, large portions of the channel are simply blacked out or replaced with lesbian-oriented public programming. Despite the fact that they control the legislature and executive branch, a cabal of Secret Democrats lords over our airwaves, letting the FCC dance like tiny, insignificant marionettes as they go about the business of photoshopping in explosions to peaceful Baghdad streets and retroactively editing in a crapload of references to WMD in 2002/2003 speeches on the Iraq War.

As a party, this is something we Democrats have to take a look at. For instance, I know our Ironic Subtlety division fabricated those comments yesterday by Inhofe and Roberts referenced in the article, but think of all the good things we could do, the tyrants we could stop. If our press organs simply reported that Kim Jong-Il called himself "a fruitcakey little shitcan" in a "rare public speech", we could take down North Korea from the inside within weeks!

Alas, my party focuses instead on making Iraq a really shitty Bruckheimer film, and that's just sad.

I blame Ravenmb for this entirely

ALL YOUR SQUIB ARE BELONG TO US