Michael Savage: Why is he still employed?

Why does Michael Savage still have 350 stations on which to spew his racist garbage? If Don Imus lost his job, why is Savage still working?

On The Savage Nation, a caller identified by Michael Savage as "Kojo" asked Savage: "[D]o you know how the AIDS got there [Africa]?" Savage responded: "It got there because it was spread from eating green monkey meat, my friend. If you study the science -- but I don't think you have the capacity to understand science, my dear friend Kojo." Later, Savage stated: "See, we don't live in Africa where people settle arguments with machetes. We live in a country where we settle it with arguments. Something you apparently don't know anything about. ... Couldn't use the machete so his mind went blank. There, that's what we got. There's multiculturalism for you. There's immigration for you. There's the new America for you. Bring them in by the millions. Bring in 10 million more from Africa. Bring them in with AIDS. Show how multicultural you are. They can't reason, but bring them in with a machete in their head. Go ahead. Bring them in with machetes in their mind."

Goodbye, John

John Edwards is dropping out of the race today. According to reports, he's not going to immediately endorse Clinton or Obama, but he has been seen recently having closed-door meetings with Clinton, most recently after one of the debates. It's sad that those most qualified to be president can't get any traction with voters. Most voters seem to only be attracted to "pizzazz" and "star quality." That said, Edwards would be a great choice as a VP running mate for either remaining Dem candidate.

Big Oil fat cats bathing in cash

Here's something I want you to remember every time you drive by the gas station and notice that prices keep getting higher and higher, and as you turn on the news and listen to the oil companies express their sympathy for your plight and shrug their shoulders as they say, "Hey, prices are going up for us too, we can't help you." Big Oil is getting ready to announce another round of record high profits... as in, the highest profits they've ever had in history. And it wasn't that long ago that previous years' profits were in record territory too.

Shell will be at the centre of a political storm this week when it posts profits of almost $27 Billion, the highest earnings ever made by a British company. The record-breaking profits, on the back of soaring oil prices, seem likely to stir fresh allegations of profiteering. Texas-based Exxon Mobil, the world's largest privately-owned oil company, is expected to improve on its own previous record on Friday by reporting earnings of $39.6 Billion, the biggest annual profits that the US has ever seen.

Obama props

Obama won in South Carolina, but he didn't just win, he won BIG. Obama's margin of victory isn't the only noteworthy thing, it's also the fact that Democratic voter turnout in a solidly Republican state was HUGE. Where the Republicans seem dispirited, depressed and disheartened, Democrats are excited and energized. And oh, are we supposed to be upset that Barack and Hillary are biting each other? Um, hello? Weren't we just complaining that Democrats are weak and nothing but pushovers? I think it's nice to see some fire, some scrappiness, some junkyard dog snarling. Now, if they'll only use that fire against the Republicans when the primaries are over, we'll do great.

Where o where have all the emails gone?

A White House chart shown to Congress indicates no e-mail was archived on 473 days for various units of the Executive Office of the President. Rep. Henry Waxman says a White House spokesman's comments suggesting no e-mail had disappeared conflicted with what congressional staffers were told in September. He also said the White House has refused to make the chart public. And yet, the administration absolutely INSISTS they should have the right to monitor and read all emails you and I send and receive.

Torture

Former Bush man Tom Ridge says he has "no doubt" that waterboarding is torture. But he also insists we don't torture. So is he saying the US hasn't waterboarded prisoners? The CIA says it has, at least up until 2003. Meanwhile, a foreign nation warns that prisoners of the United States are in danger of being tortured. That foreign nation is Canada.

A Canadian Foreign Affairs Department document includes the United States and Israel in a series of countries where prisoners are at risk of being tortured and abused, according to the document released Friday. The training manual for Canadian diplomats also includes Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria as places where inmates could face torture. The manual lists such U.S. interrogation techniques as stripping prisoners naked, blindfolding them and sleep depravation as torture, and names Guantanamo Bay as a site of possible torture and abuse. Canada said the manual is for training and does not amount to official government policy.

Your credit score will determine if you live or die

Imagine this scenario. You've got a bad case of the flu -- you have trouble breathing, it's been going on for days, and your fever hasn't subsided. Or, you've slammed your toe into furniture and broken a bone. Or, you're feeling dizzy and faint and are experiencing chest pains. So you go to the doctor or the hospital, and after you've signed in you wait the requisite hour and a half or so. Finally, a nurse comes out and explains, "Thanks for your interest in seeing Dr So and So, but we've checked your medical credit score and it's just too low for us to treat you. We'll send you a letter in a few weeks explaining the details. Have a good day!" It seems that a few years ago you were late in paying a hospital or doctor bill, so the doctor (or the corporation that employs the doctor) has decided that you're not a good risk for payment for treatment. Some say that reality is already here as far as insurance coverage is concerned, but more doors on health care are set to close if certain businesspeople have their way: The same folks who invented the credit score system for lenders are working on a similar credit score system for the health care industry. More and more, the entire value of your life is based on how much profit corporations can make on you. If this is not a setting for a dystopian novel, I don't know what is.

The project, dubbed “MedFICO” in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient’s ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive. Fair Issac Corp., developer of the FICO credit score, is one of several investors in Healthcare Analytics, the Massachusetts start-up that is developing the hospital risk tool. Another investor is Tenet Healthcare Corp, one of the nation's largest hospital operators. Stephen Farber, who resigned as chief financial officer of Tenet in 2004, is the CEO of Healthcare Analytics. Several published reports have described Healthcare Analytics product as a MedFICO score, computed in a way that would be familiar to those who've used credit scores. The firm is gathering payment history information from large hospitals around the country, according to a magazine called Inside ARM, aimed at “accounts receivable management” professionals. It will then analyze that data to predict how likely patients will be to pay future medical bills. As with credit reports and scores, patients who've failed to pay past bills will be deemed less likely to pay future bills.

Republican terrorist

A former Republican congressman has been indicted in a terrorist-financing scheme. Not just a Republican, but a theocratic, religious right-wing Republican who once described himself as a "poster boy for Jerry Falwell."

Fox News, of course, somehow forgot to mention Mark Siljander was a Republican when they reported on him.

Where is the outcry over Mike Huckatalibani?

There's certainly an outcry in the left blogosphere over Huckabee's comments (see below). But what I'm surprised about is that there isn't more of an outcry in the mainstream media. Or perhaps, people just don't care when a candidate for president tells us quite explicitly that he believes his own religious views take precedence over the Constitution. And that, my friends, means if Huckabee -- er, Huckatalibani -- were to win (I doubt he will), he cannot possibly take the oath of office in good faith. He has announced he will NOT defend the Constitution if, for whatever reason, he sees some part of it in conflict with his own ideas of what his god wants. In other words, the Law of the Land, the Law that governs all of us -- Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, believer, unbeliever or other -- should be made to conform to HIS religion. That a candidate announces publicly and explicitly the Constitution of the United States should be rewritten to conform to his own interpretation of the Bible, and is not run out of the country in deafening cries of disgust, appalls me.

Reasons to fear Huckabee

At a Michigan campaign event, Huckabee gave an interesting reason for why the Constitution should be amended to ban abortion and gay marriage: It's to make sure that Constitution would not be in conflict with God. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God," Huckabee said. "And that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." Cold shivers run up and down the spine. Is not the example of the Taliban enough to convince us that theocracies are bloody, unforgiving and dangerous to liberty?

You don't need no stinkin' privacy

It's so funny that this administration believes Americans don't really have any right to privacy at all, as they make plans to read every email and watch everything we do online. But then they turn around and insist that their emails and memos must remain secret from Congress or else the evil terrorists will kill our babies. Tell you what. I'll consider letting the White House look at every email I send if they let me look at theirs. Including all the emails that got "accidentally" deleted.

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today. Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

But things are going so great...

We've heard lots of news recently how much the situation in Iraq is improving... Most of this news is being trumpeted by the White House and the warmongering Republican candidates for Bush's job. So you'd think some more troops might be coming home, right? Wrong. Bush says no. No more troops coming home on his watch. Let's ask the Repub candidates what they think.

Some punishment

Imagine being the CEO of a big company. Unfortunately, your company has been run into the ground... and you had a hand in running it there. The failure of your company causes the failure of other businesses, not to mention the thousands of people who have invested in you and with you. Your failure causes the suffering and ruin of many, many others. Because of you and your company tanking, millions of people lose their homes. What should be your punishment for such malfeasance? How about 48.1 million dollars in compensation? And as you walk away from the smoldering ruins of the company your mismanagement helped destroy, you also get 115 million bucks, 13.3 million in accelerated vesting of stock grants, and a one-time cash payment of 88 million dollars. Some punishment, eh? Bet you'll never mismanage another company into ruin, will you? That's the story of Angelo Mozilo, the co-founder of mortgage giant Countrywide, which crashed and burned and is now being bought out by the Bank of America.

Huckabee's theocratic authoritarianism

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee has said that Christians need to win America "back to Christ."  I guess anyone who doesn't want to be a Christian can't really be an American in Huckabee's Christian world order.

While Huck hasn't been so explicit lately, he is still using theocratic code words that the evangelical crowd understand.  For example, there's his talk of "vertical leadership."  What does that mean?  No surprise, it's codespeak for authoritarian theocracy.

Controlling your temperature

Who controls the thermostat in your house?  If California legislators have their way next year, it'll be them.

Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

My impeachment heresy

Shortly after the 2006 Democratic takeover, Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment was off the table.  There was a very loud uproar from the left.

But now I'm thinking Pelosi wasn't crazy.

Imagine -- it wouldn't have happened -- but just imagine that impeachment had gone forward and Bush and Cheney were removed from office.  I dare say the current crop of Republicans running for office might be doing a little bit better, because the dead weight of George W. Bush would have been removed from their necks. 

Whatever Republican caretaker administration that came in just might have kept their heads down and at the very least not done anything to cause more damage.  That would have been seen as a relief by the American public, and the approval ratings of Republicans might have just recovered a tiny little bit.

But as it stands now, Bush/Cheney are still in office dragging the party down.  Maybe Pelosi was shrewd, either purposely or by accident.

Mom kills "possessed" kids

It's a sad and tragically clichéd story: A mom, most likely mentally deficient, also believes in religious claptrap and because of it, kills her children.

As U.S. marshals armed with eviction papers began to clear out her town house, Banita Jacks sat on the steps leading to the upstairs bedrooms, intending to block their path, authorities said.

One managed to sidestep the 33-year-old woman and spotted the bodies of three children on the floor of an unfinished bedroom, prosecutors said Thursday. He then opened the door to another bedroom and found the body of a teenager on the floor of the bare room.

Authorities estimate the four girls — ages 5 to 17 — had been dead for at least two weeks. Jacks told police they were "possessed by demons" and had died in their sleep, one by one, within a week of each other, court documents say.

Ron Paul: racist

As the spotlight shines on Ron Paul, his 90's newsletters are coming back to haunt him. In them, he ranted against blacks and gays, among other targets -- AIDS victims, Martin Luther King, etc. One newsletter claimed the L.A. riots ended when blacks went to "pick up their welfare checks." But now that he's running for president, he claims he never wrote those articles. However, there are no bylines and the newsletter had his name on it, so apparently we are to believe that he published it without knowing what was in it and what was going out in his name. Sure thing, Ron. That explains why you refused to return that donation from a white supremacist a few weeks ago, right?

Kerry endorses Obama

John Kerry has decided to endorse Barack Obama, passing over Hillary Clinton and his former running mate, John Edwards.

Some pundits will fault Kerry for "stabbing his former running mate in the back" (I'm sure that's how Drudge and Fox will portray it), but on the other hand, it could just be that Kerry believes Obama is the best candidate.

Maybe the pollsters DIDN'T screw up

From Crooks & Liars:

Keith Olbermann talked with Craig Crawford today on Countdown about the polling nightmare surrounding yesterday’s New Hampshire Democratic primary. Crawford proposes that it wasn’t the polls or the polling itself, it was the reporting and interpretation of them that led to the fiasco.

Record high gas prices

Think you've been paying a lot for gasoline? You'll be paying even higher prices this spring.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumers will pay record prices for gasoline this spring, with national monthly pump costs peaking near $3.50 per gallon when the busy driving season begins, the government's top energy forecasting agency said Tuesday. Tight supplies caused by global oil demand growing faster than new oil production is behind higher petroleum costs. And consumers should not expect a break any time soon. High gasoline prices are cutting into consumer spending and raising business expenses, hurting a U.S. economy that is already suffering a slowdown.

The importance of teaching evolution

Why is it important? Because it's the basis for almost all modern biology.

(AP) Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools. The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find. The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution views. "Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes," the report says.

Bill O'Reilly in shoving match with Obama staffer

The Big Head apparently doesn't like the "little people" who get in his way. The first word that comes to mind is, "asshole."

(CNN) — Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly had a confrontation with a staffer for Barack Obama’s campaign that the aide and several eyewitnesses claim became physical. The incident began when O’Reilly tried to get Obama’s attention after a Nashua campaign event. He allegedly began yelling at Obama’s National Trip Director Marvin Nicholson to get out of the way. O’Reilly then, according to eyewitness accounts, shoved the staffer. Nicholson told CNN O'Reilly grabbed him by the arm and started "pushing" him. Nicholson also said that when he asked O'Reilly to stop pushing him, the talk-show host responded that he was "low class."

Hillary beats Huck in Iowa

On the Republican side, theocrat-in-chief wannabe Mike Huckabee wins easily in the Iowa caucuses. On the Democratic side, Obama wins hands down. But it's interesting to note that even though Hillary Clinton came in third on the Dem side, she still garnered twice as many votes as Republican winner Huckabee.

Ron Paul's theocracy

We've seen Ron Paul's racist leanings, but now we're discovering a bit about his theocratic leanings. Ron Paul: Theocrat by his own words