Whose Tea Party?

Tea party activists said that a campaign that submitted 60,000 petition signatures to the state Wednesday to qualify candidates for office under the banner of the Tea Party is a trick to help Democrats. The activists said the group that submitted the petitions wants to siphon votes from tea party conservatives running as Republicans.

A Tuscola County man who described himself as head of the party that turned in the petitions, issued a statement Wednesday criticizing both major parties and claiming "the tea party is a grassroots movement that belongs to everybody. No one person, click (sic) or party boss owns the tea party."

"This is absolutely not legitimate," said Mark Graham, an organizer of a tea party group in Tuscola County.

A similar dispute is under way in Florida, where Republicans and tea party activists have accused Democrats of financing so-called Tea Party candidates for local office in an attempt to dilute the anti-Democratic Party vote.

Most of Michigan's public tea party activists, like those elsewhere in the country, have dismissed the idea of forming an official third-party alternative as counterproductive to their goal of reining in the cost and size of government. "We don't need another party," said Bill Hollister, chairman a Macomb County-based tea party organization. "The tea party is trying to cleanse the Republican Party." Hollister said Wednesday's filing was "as bogus as it can get. They don't have support from anybody in the tea party movement in this state."

So the only people allowed to use the term Tea Party are people who don't think there should be a Tea Party?

Build The Dang Fence!

No, not that one.

Federal officials had already committed $80 million to control the spread of the Asian carp - a voracious eater which biologists fear will outmaneuver native fish and cause a collapse in the lakes' multibillion-dollar commercial and recreational fishing industries. But the control effort, which included the construction of an underwater electric fence, has apparently failed, and politicians in the region are pressing for further action.

China Arrests Environmentalist

China Jails Tibetan Environmentalist
By REUTERS

BEIJING, July 3 (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Saturday sentenced a Tibetan environmentalist who organized villagers to pick up litter and plant trees to five years in jail for inciting to split the nation, his lawyer said.

The environmentalist, Rinchen Samdrup, is the third brother in his family to be jailed. Mr. Samdrup ran an environmental group in the Tibet Autonomous Region near Sichuan Province that organized about 1,700 local villagers to reforest the area and report poaching, and also ran a small magazine. His group worked with international conservation groups and was praised by Chinese media.

Exile Tibetan groups say Mr. Samdrup ran afoul of powerful local interests after accusing a local police officer of poaching.

Mr. Samdrup was accused of posting a favorable article about the Dalai Lama on his website, his lawyer, Xia Jun, said. He pleaded not guilty But the Chamdo prefecture court convicted him of incitement to split the country, the lawyer said, and deprived him of his political rights for three years.

Did Manute Bol Invent "My Bad"?

Perhaps he did:

USA Today, Jan. 27, 1989: After making a bad pass, instead of saying "my fault," Manute Bol says, "my bad." Now all the other Warriors say it too.

Either way he was a very generous guy and a good example for other professional athletes.

Israel Rejects Demands for International Probe of Gaza Raid

June 6 (Bloomberg) -- Israel turned down demands for an international probe of its raid on a ship bringing aid to the Gaza Strip, which left nine dead, saying it would launch its own investigation.

“We are rejecting the idea of an international commission,” Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. said, speaking on “Fox News Sunday. “We are discussing with the Obama administration the way in which our inquiry will take place.”

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OUR MEDIA NOT THEIRS ---- THIS WEEK: CULTURE OF TRUTH & WATERTIGER
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Culture of Truth writes The Bobblespeak Translations, political satire wherein he recaps the Sunday morning talk shows and major appearances of national political figures. "What They're Really Saying When They're Saying What They're Saying" just about sums it up.

Watertiger
NYC-based aquatic feline that likes long walks on the beach, illuminating the hypocrisies of "family values" Republicans, and engaging in snarling snarkitude.


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ABOUT VIRTUALLY SPEAKING SUNDAYS
A weekly news review and counterpoint to the network opinion shows. Each week, two well regarded bloggers discuss the events of the week, with an emphasis on U.S. politics and policy.

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Obama Meets with BP Executives

Obama: Hello. My name is Barack Obama. You killed the Gulf of Mexico. Prepare to die.

BP: Hi Mr. President. We'll try to pay for the clean up-

Obama: Hello!! My name is Barack Obama! You killed the Gulf of Mexico. Prepare to die!

BP: Naturally we'll meet our legal obligations-

Obama: Hello!! My name is Barack Obama!! You killed the Gulf of Mexico!! Prepare to die!!

BP: we'll try to make restitition to the people affected-

Obama: Hello!! My name is Barack Obama!! You killed the Gulf of Mexico!! Prepare to die!!

BP: Will please you stop saying that?!?

Obama: Offer me anything I want!

BP: yes billions, free oil, an apology, anything... just don't kill us!!

Obama: I want the Gulf Coast back you son-of-a-bitch!

All Was Well!

Wall Street Journal:

In the minutes after a cascade of gas explosions crippled the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, confusion reigned on the drilling platform. Flames were spreading rapidly, power was out, and terrified workers were leaping into the dark, oil-coated sea. Capt. Curt Kuchta, the vessel's commander, huddled on the bridge with about 10 other managers and crew members.

Andrea Fleytas, a 23-year-old worker who helped operate the rig's sophisticated navigation machinery, suddenly noticed a glaring oversight: No one had issued a distress signal to the outside world, she recalls in an interview. Ms. Fleytas grabbed the radio and began calling over a signal monitored by the Coast Guard and other vessels.

"Mayday, Mayday. This is Deepwater Horizon. We have an uncontrollable fire."

When Capt. Kuchta realized what she had done, he reprimanded her, she says.

"I didn't give you authority to do that," he said, according to Ms. Fleytas, who says she responded: "I'm sorry."

Swim Club

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Northeast Philadelphia synagogue that bought a swim club accused of racial discrimination last year says it plans to use the property for recreation for its 2,000-plus members. The Congregation Beth Solomon bought the Valley Club property in Huntingdon Valley for $1.46 million at a bankruptcy auction on Thursday. The club filed for bankruptcy in November following discrimination lawsuits.

FOX FORCE FIVE!

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has hand-picked a team of five scientists “extraordinarily intelligent” scientists from around the country with reputations for creative problem solving.

Members of the Chu team are credited with accomplishments including designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles.

Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, and Alexander Slocum, who holds more than five dozen patents for devices
related to biotechnology, robotics and computer science.

“He has a lot of creative ideas. One in 10 are really brilliant ideas, but nine are dumb,” said MIT professor Wai K. Cheng, a colleague in Slocum’s department. “You can’t miss that one that is brilliant.”

The team is rounded out by Tom Hunter, 64, President of Sandia Laboratories, which conducts research for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, and which houses all alien technology retrieved by the U.S. military.

“We’re using some, uh, innovative-type technology that Sandia labs has,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said today in an interview on CNN.

Clearly Obama has authorized use of our secret alien technology to build a wormhole.

You go, nerds!

Palin Fact Check

Phillip Elliott, Associated Press:

Palin said Obama is "the most pro-abortion president ever to occupy the White House" and asserted that the health care law
would fund abortions.

In fact, Obama's health care law would not allow federal dollars to pay for elective abortions. Catholic hospitals and organizations of Catholic nuns backed the measure. U.S. Catholic bishops and major anti-abortion groups opposed it, arguing that federal dollars could end up paying for abortions.

Good for Phil

Ex-Mexican Governor Laundered With Lehman, U.S. Says

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- A former Mexican governor was scheduled to appear in federal court today in New York today to face federal drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges, using a Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. account.

Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, the former governor of the state of Quintana Roo, was charged in two indictments, one that accused him of conspiring to import “hundreds of tons” of cocaine into the U.S. and a second alleging he laundered almost $19 million through accounts at Lehman Brothers, said Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

How charming.

Snark Alert

May 10 (Telegraph) -- Raquel Welch, the actress, has blamed the Pill for the decline of the institution of marriage. Miss Welch said the widespread use of oral contraceptives had led to a breakdown in norms of sexual morality and fuelled the growth of rampant promiscuity among the young. She said that the situation has grown so grave that "these days nobody seems able to keep it in their pants or honour a commitment". While it carried some benefits, the enduring legacy of the Pill, she argued, has been social anarchy.

Miss Welch found fame in the 1966 movie One Million Years BC and was voted by readers of Playboy magazine as the "most desired female of the 1970s".

She said that in spite of her own three failed marriages she still believed that marriage is the "cornerstone of civilisation, an essential institution that stabilises society, provides a sanctuary for children and saves us from anarchy".

Nobody's Fault

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- James “Jimmy” Cayne, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Bear Stearns Cos., will blame market forces and loss of confidence in his firm for its collapse in 2008, according to a person who has reviewed his testimony before a U.S. investigative panel. “The market’s loss of confidence, even though it was unjustified and irrational, became a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Cayne said in written testimony

Alan Schwartz, who succeeded Cayne as CEO and negotiated Bear Stearns’s fire sale to JPMorgan will blame the fall on rumors. “We did not foresee the extent to which housing prices had been driven to unsustainable levels,” Schwartz will say.

Cayne, who loved to play bridge, pulled away from hands-on management roles, spending more time away from his office even while Bear Stearns was running into trouble. When the firm ran out of money in March 2008 and faced a bank run from its hedge-fund clients and short-term creditors, Cayne was at a bridge tournament in Detroit. He couldn’t fly back to New York in time to take part in talks to sell the firm to JPMorgan under
government pressure.

No worries.

Digby & Stuart Zechman Tonight

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THIS WEEK: DIGBY & STUART ZECHMAN

DIGBY
An American political blogger and founder of Hullabaloo, digby has contributed to Campaign For America's Future's blog The Big Con, Salon Magazine, Huffington Post, Eschaton, Crooks anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd Liars and Firedoglake.



STUART "Centrism IS an ideology" ZECHMAN - is a frequent commenter at TIME Magazine's political blog "Swampland" and co-founder with Jay Ackroyd of the blog "Political Lagoon." He brings the perspectives of entrepreneur and technologist to a New Liberal analysis of policy and politics.

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210,000 Gallons Per Day

The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, is gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount.

TV ALERT

Fab Tourre and Lloyd Blankfein will appear before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on April 27.

BAG OF PUS

Goldman Sachs' London units will be formally investigated by Britain's financial regulator after U.S. authorities sued the bank for fraud. Financial-market regulators in France and Germany are reviewing the lawsuit filed against Goldman Sachs last week by the SEC.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on the FSA, which he created in 1997, to investigate Goldman Sachs two days ago, accusing employees of the bank of "moral bankruptcy."

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said today that regulators need to take urgent steps and that the charges against Goldman Sachs had "huge ramifications." Darling, who described the securities Goldman sold as "a bag of pus," said the government would look at changing the law if necessary.

COOPER UNION PART DEUX

President Barack Obama plans to travel to New York City April 22 for a speech to push his legislation for financial overhaul, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

The remarks at Cooper Union comes “almost one year after the administration first laid out a detailed plan for holding Wall Street accountable and protecting consumers,” Gibbs said in an e-mailed statement.

Obama will talk about “what is at stake if we do not move forward with changing the rules of the road,” Gibbs said, as the Senate prepares to debate legislation that’s drawn Republican opposition.

THIS WEEK IN GOD

Beirut (AP) -- A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."