From Penn State to Europe, Pro-Rape Forces Regroup After Week Of Setbacks

It was a tough week for the pro-rape forces. Child-raping former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was dragged off in shackles Saturday, and his enablers were fired Wednesday. Voters in Mississippi Tuesday turned back a law banning abortions for rape victims. Even environmental rape was dealt a blow when the media reported the U.S. government had known all along that thrusting long, hard probes into mother earth and spewing disgusting fluids into her caused earthquakes, like the ones that rattled Oklahoma last weekend.

Even jovial GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was coming under fire just for inappropriately groping some women and making a few disgusting personal suggestions.

In Pennsylvania's formerly Happy Valley college football enclave, a grand jury found in excruciating detail that Sandusky was a serial rapist who'd violated numerous young boys over decades. Aside from his eight Pennsylvania victims, Texas authorities revealed they were investigating allegations Sandusky sexually assaulted another victim while he and the Penn State Nittany Lions football team were at the 1999 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.

In Mississippi, voters rejected Amendment 26, which would have effectively banned all abortions in the state, including for cases of rape or incest. Right-wing activists had sought to define a fertilized egg as a person, forcing women to bear the children of rapists.

As earthquakes rumbled across Oklahoma, media reports revealed the U.S. Army and the U.S. Geological Survey had long ago concluded that injecting water into deep underground rock formations caused earthquakes.

The U.S. Army's Rocky Mountain Arsenal tried in the 1960s to get rid of liquid waste by injecting it deep into the ground. From 1962 to 1966, the RMA injected salty waste water containing metals, chlorides and organic waste into a 12,000-foot-deep well, but discontinued the practice because they discovered it was causing earthquakes.

"Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established," stated the 1990 Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection - A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The magnitudes 5.6 and 4.7 earthquakes in Oklahoma last weekend set off a new flurry of speculation that hydrofracking for gas and oil was causing earthquakes in that state. Oklahoma averaged about 50 earthquakes a year until a couple years ago. Gas and oil moguls began widespread hydrofracking in the state, and, in 2010, Oklahoma experienced 1,047 earthquakes.

By Wednesday night, the pro-rape forces had had enough of the persecution onslaught. It was getting so a multi-millionaire pizza mogul couldn't grope women and say filthy things to them without some sort of backlash.

Thus, on Wednesday night, as multi-millionaire pizza mogul and GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain was harassed with yet another question about his harassing women, the pro-rape empire struck back.

In a scene reminiscent of GOP audience members jeering health care access at the September CNN/Tea Party debate, the pro-rape, pro-harassment audience, apparently fed up with the relentless assaults on their God-given right to defile and subjugate all around them, broke into a cascade of boos and catcalls when CNBC debate moderator Maria Bartiromo broached the subject of Cain's grabby-handed, potty-mouthed conduct.

"Why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?" Bartiromo asked, and the audience howled and screamed in protest. The audience let it be known that if anyone on the right wanted to grab someone's genitals and make lewd suggestions, his or her victim had better like it.

Cain, who'd been accused of sexually harassing at least four women, and had paid undisclosed settlements to several of them, brashly retorted, "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion." Or, tried at all.

Rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney had Cain's back, as the jeering audience tried to shout down moderator John Harwood's question to him about whether he would have fired Cain for his conduct.

"Would you keep Herman Cain as a CEO knowing what you know?" Harwood asked Romney.

"Herman Cain is the person to respond to these questions," Romney replied, in the Mormon mogul-turned-politico's best impression of a Roman Catholic archbishop.

With "Tora! Tora! Tora!" apparently flashing across the pro-rape com net, hordes of rabid pro-rape partisans roared onto the streets of College Station, PA, battling police, tearing down light poles, and overturning vehicles.

They were enraged that Penn State's Board of Trustees had fired university president Graham Spanier and, especially, football head coach Joe Paterno for covering up and enabling Sandusky's serial child rapes. Paterno, a football coaching legend, had in 2002 brushed off then 28-year-old graduate assistant Mike McQueary when he said he'd seen Sandusky in the school football facility raping a child. Instead of reporting the alleged crime to police as required by law, Paterno pawned McQueary off on the school's athletic director.

The grand jury indicted Athletic Director Tim Curley and school business and finance VP Gary Schultz on obstruction and perjury charges.

The imperious 'JoePa' had turned back school officials' 2004 plea that he retire, and had declared he would finish out the current football season, warning the Board of Trustees not to "spend a single minute" considering his removal.

A crowd of apparently pro-rape partisans rallied outside Paterno's home. Videos showed Paterno leading them in a call-and-response, "We are: Penn State!" chant, as most viewers mentally filled the blank following "we are" with terms other than the name of a school.

Displaying utter contempt for the children who'd been Sandusky's and Paterno's victims, the mob then tore through town, throwing rocks at police, overturning a TV van, and tearing down light poles.

"I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for JoePa going down," said Penn State student Mike Clark, making the point that raping children and covering up the rape so you could rape more children was a-okay with Mike.

"We got rowdy. We got maced," Jeff Heim told the New York Times. "But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend," he said. Apparently to Jeff, raping children and sitting idly by while your friends raped children weren't reputation-tarnishing acts.

Zealots eager to force women to bear rapists' children regrouped as well. Opponents of Mississippi's Amendment 26 "lied to voters and they said lies often enough that they persuaded voters," complained Keith Mason, president of  Personhood USA, an organization apparently dedicated to forcing women to bear the children of persons who were hoodlums. "The people here in Mississippi are mad, and they are ready to come back and do it again," he said, threatening serial action.

Zealots in Florida gussied up their proposed state constitutional amendment to ban abortions for rape victims with the title 'Florida ProLife Personhood.'

"We're continuing on," Personhood Florida ringleader Rev. Bryan Longworth said. "Obviously, the defeat in Mississippi means we have to work all the more harder." As did the Mississippi measure, the Florida measure would define a fertilized egg as a person, clearing the way for rapists to procreate. Supporters aimed for a 2014 vote.

By week's end, pro-rape forces had regained the initiative worldwide. Financial markets in Europe, Asia and the United States rallied Friday on news that Italy and Greece had dumped their political leaders and had voted to mollify bankers and financiers by adopting the most draconian austerity measures yet.

Nothing buoyed the pro-rape crowd more than seeing the rich rape whole countries.

Obama Betrayal Train Smashes Environment En Route To Axing Medicare, Social Security

The rate and breadth of President Barack Obama's betrayals accelerated to breakneck speed in an apparent bid to utterly destroy the Democratic brand and ingratiate himself with Republicans and plutocrats. Neither the GOP nor the ultra-wealthy were impressed, but Obama did succeed in discouraging Democratic supporters from coming out in 2012.

The Obama Administration barrelled ahead with plans to rubber-stamp the Keystone XL pipeline slated to transport raw Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico, so the toxic sludge could destroy the Ogallala Aquifer en route to turning colossal profits for oil moguls shipping the refined end product to overseas markets. Oil moguls cheered.

Then, the Obama Administration Friday declared it was suspending implementation of new ozone regulations, as stunned environmental activists reeled dumbfounded in slack-jawed astonishment. Oil moguls and coal magnates cheered.

Those betrayals, atop Obama's heinous laundry list of previous capitulations, paled in comparison to the Betrayer-in-Chief's schemes to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Obama planned to announce his greatest perfidy in the weeks following his grandstand Aug. 8 jobs speech.

Despite bipartisan opposition by activists, movie stars, Nebraska farmers and even a Republican governor, the Obama Administration moved relentlessly toward approving the Keystone XL pipeline scam. Obama and the oil moguls conspired to obliterate Canada's priceless Boreal forests, gouge uber-polluting tar sands from the lunarized landscape, and pipe toxic "dilbit" across six states to Port Arthur, TX refineries, where it can be processed for overseas markets.

More than 1,000 demonstrators protesting the pipeline boondoggle have been arrested as they gathered across the street from the White House over the past two weeks. Those arrested included actress Darryl Hannah, Maryland state senator Paul Pinsky, and the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hanson, the Riverdale Park-University Park Patch reported.

Obama followed up coddling oil moguls and busting green activists with more coddling of oil moguls and coal magnates, while shunning the green activists who had naively helped put him into the Oval Office. Environmentalists rocked by Keystone XL reeled when Obama Friday ditched new air pollution rules designed to cut smog-forming pollutants.

Instead of cutting atmospheric ozone from 75 parts per billion to 60 parts per billion, Obama deemed what was good enough for George W. Bush, who had set the old standard, was good enough for America.

In his Republicanesque pro-pollution statement, Obama wheezed, "I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."

Obama's recovering economy added exactly no jobs in August, tumbling equity markets around the globe.

If Obama wanted to create certainty for employers, he could simply announce any money corporations weren't spending to hire Americans and to invest in American plants and equipment would be taxed to within an inch of its bottom line. Then, his administration could launch an aggressive stimulus plan to rebuild the nation's $2 trillion worth of crumbling infrastructure, create a high-speed rail network, link the nation with broadband, and support advanced research to develop future technologies.

Instead, Obama's free pass to polluters only promised to create $100 billion worth of additional respiratory ailments annually, while handing polluters $90 billion worth of pollution abatement passes, according to The Hill.

But, all of this miserable perfidy was nothing compared to Obama's defacto plan to destroy the Democratic Party and hand Republicans in 2012 unfettered control of the White House and the Senate on top of the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court.

No sooner than Obama had coddled his air polluters, the White House Friday announced the Republicanizer-in-Chief would follow up his jobs speech with the launch of his Medicare-busting, Medicaid-gutting, Social Security-slashing deficit-reduction ploy, reported the Politico.

Obama's scheme to gut the nation's safety net entitlements promised to re-introduce means testing for Social Security, reducing benefits for the wealthy, so lobbyists and lawyers for the rich could get started on labelling FDR's landmark old-age pension plan as an unsupportable giveaway to worthless, shiftless poor who hadn't had the foresight to be born into the monied elite; to re-introduce incrementally rising age eligibility for Medicare, so the rich could taunt and gloat while millions went broke and died scrambling to bridge the gap between employer-sponsored health coverage and the entitlement to which they were rightfully entitled; and to refloat reducing Medicaid to block grants so industrial medical combines could abscond with the funds while abandoning millions to misery, pain and death.

Obama had been horny to plunder the Big Three entitlements during the recent Republican hostage-taking of the nation's debt ceiling, but Republicans balked at his $4 trillion deficit reduction vision. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) ostensibly backed away from Obama's grand vision because a few piddling tax tweaks were unacceptable to Republican sensibilities. In hindsight, Boehner, a seasoned Capitol Hill insider, might simply have had second thoughts about strapping himself to the Third Rail of Politics and waiting for the Express while a couple trillion volts fried his mortal carcass.

Without having to haul such timid baggage as Boehner with him, Obama could plunge ahead unfettered, and claim his biggest scalp, the Democratic Party itself.

Democrats commanded the high ground by doggedly defending Medicare against Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) unconscionable plan to hand all its money to insurance industry cronies while pawning off future seniors with worthless coupons. Democrats commanded the high ground by doggedly defending Social Security against reprehensible GOP plans to hand all its money to Wall Street cronies while abandoning future seniors to poverty and destitution. Democrats commanded the high ground by doggedly defending Medicaid against incessant Republican schemes to hand all its money to medical industry cronies while forsaking the poor and disabled.

Democrats commanded high ground no Republican could assail. Democrats commanded high ground vulnerable only to unprecedented perfidy and treachery: the perfidy and treachery of a single mortal conglomeration of tissue and blood and bile who had, for the sake of shameless self-aggrandizement, betrayed the grandmother who had loved and nurtured him in her small apartment; betrayed the prominent pastor who had taken him in and raised him high in the community from which he launched his political ambitions; betrayed the seasoned political veteran who had mentored and guided the rising junior Senator from Illinois; betrayed countless aides, advisers, and appointees who had daily toiled to serve a young President and a great nation; betrayed the voters, supporters, organizers, and pavement-pounding canvassers who had risen to heed the call for hope and change.

Betrayed the very soil, and water, and air of a nation and a planet.

The perfidy and treachery of Barack Obama, who, with a single speech in late September 2011, would surrender the high ground Democrats defended for seventy years, and open wide the gates for yet another Republican populist from Texas.

Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Promises Profit for Moguls, Perils for Everyone Else

For mile after mile, the ancient boreal forests of Alberta and British Columbia formed a lush emerald empire of evergreens and wildlife that, dotted with lakes and traced by rivers, stretched over hills and mountains from horizon to horizon. Elusive woodland caribou, called the grey ghosts of the forest, foraged on lichen that had taken a hundred years to grow amidst the ancient woods. Black bear and lynx hunted among the pines. 40% of North American migratory birds, thousands upon thousands of mallard, blue-wing teal, northern shoveller and black duck, nested and bred in the boreal forest.

The boreal forest, with its thick, lush carpet of moss and peat and composted vegetation, was the world's largest above-ground carbon sequestration system, storing countless tons of organic carbon.

Like a vicious black cancer, huge expanses of devastated wasteland gouged at the boreal forest, churned earth stripped bare of trees, of brush, of grass, of hundred-year-old lichen. That no living thing could exist in the scarred wasteland tearing into the ancient old growth boreal was starkly obvious. To call it moonscape only sanitized the toxic tailings ponds and horrific cancer clusters in the small downstream communities.

The oil moguls had come, and had ripped the earth asunder to scrape from it the thick, sludgy muck called tar sand.

The primeval boreal forest was being ripped open to get at the Athabascan oil sands, 173 billion barrels of oil, worth some $15 trillion. Republicans and oil moguls were orgasmic with the prospect of destroying a priceless wilderness and lining their pockets with wealth beyond imagining.

The only problem was how to get that 173 billion barrels of oil to the international markets, and to get that $15 trillion into their pockets.

Thus, while Republicans in Congress balked and blustered at any suggestion of addressing the $2 trillion of infrastructure repairs America desperately needed, they rabidly pursued one particular $7 billion infrastructure project: TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL would wind 1,661 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, right through the heart of the American Mountain West, across or under 1,900 rivers, streams and reservoirs, across the Sand Hills of Nebraska, through the Ogallala Aquifer, to Port Arthur, Texas.

Congressional Republicans pushed through a bill demanding the Keystone XL be granted Presidential approval before environmental impact studies could be completed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at first supportive of the pipeline, backed off when apprised of safety concerns. As TransCanada was a foreign corporation, and the pipeline an international affair, Clinton and the US State Department was in the thick of it.

Pipeline skeptics and environmental activists planned two weeks of civil disobedience in Washington, D.C. beginning August 20 to raise Keystone XL awareness.

Protest organizer Bill McKibben said he hoped it would be "the biggest civil disobedience protest in the environmental movement for many, many years."

While Republicans thumped their chests and howled about securing a 'domestic' oil source for America, the raw tar sands oil slated for Port Arthur's refineries wasn't necessarily meant for domestic consumption.

"This oil is not for domestic consumption," Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said aghast. "This oil is for foreign export. It has very little to do with domestic oil supply, or might have very little to do with domestic oil supply."

"If we do not tap this valuable resource, the Chinese or other countries will," Bill Flores (R-TX) whined, his eyes doubtless glazing over at the thought of thrusting 15 trillion dollar bills into some stripper's g-string.

The US Energy Department revealed existing pipelines had enough capacity to double the amount of oil the United States was importing from Canada. An existing Keystone pipeline, without the racy-sounding XL suffix, ran from Canada and terminated in Oklahoma.

The primary attraction of the Keystone XL was its terminus at the refineries of Port Arthur, on the Gulf of Mexico, with its ready access to the sea lanes that could carry refined product to international markets.

The primary problem of the Keystone XL was that the 1,661 miles of its 36-inch pipe was designed to carry ordinary processed oil products much thinner than the gooey muck that was raw tar sands oil. The raw tar sands oil would have to be forced through the pipeline at much higher pressure than regular oil, and posed special safety challenges.

TransCanada claimed potential for accidental spills would be limited to just 11 over the 50-year lifespan of the pipeline, but TransCanada's existing pipeline accomplished 12 spills in just one year.

While most Americans were riveted by the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, a four-foot rupture in Canada-based Enbridge, Inc.'s pipeline dumped a million gallons of toxic sludge into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, devastating riparian habitat.

"I am deeply concerned about the effects of the oil spill near Marshall, including the environmental impact, and the disruption to residents and businesses," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). "It is also deeply worrisome that the oil from the spill has made its way into the Kalamazoo River."

Enbridge's spill went unchecked for 12 hours, because of particular uncertainties associated with transporting raw tar sands oil. Raw tar sands oil mixed with toxic additives that helped it move through pipelines, called dilbit, or diluted bitumen, tended to form bubbles of a natural gas-like substance that can cause the flow to get stuck. The prescription for dealing with these gas-bubble 'column separations' was to pump more gas down the line. But, if the pipeline had actually burst, pumping more gas into the line made the resulting spill worse.

Which was what happened in Michigan. A flow interruption diagnosed as a column separation had actually been a pipeline rupture. 12 hours elapsed before the spill was stopped.

The Keystone XL would carry 910,000 barrels of dilbit a day across 1,700 miles, under the Missouri River, across the heart of Nebraska wheat fields, and through the Ogallala Aquifer, a 174,000 square mile natural freshwater reservoir that provided drinking water for 2 million people and irrigation for 20% of America's agriculture.

Conservative Nebraska farmers and progressive environmental activists were alarmed at the prospect of more than 300 million barrels of dilbit traversing the nation's spine every year, destined to become refined petroleum product slated for sale to the highest international bidder.

The bill House Republicans pushed through in July requiring the Obama Administration to make a decision on the Keystone XL was largely symbolic, as it had little chance of surviving in the Senate.

"If we're going to rush through the environmental permitting process for a project that has questionable benefits for our nation, we ought to at least acknowledge the risk," said Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT).

"Some environmental extremists are against the project," said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), apparently barely able to hear himself think over '$15 trillion!' screaming in his brain. "They are against every type of energy that comes from below the ground!"

Senate Democrats sent Clinton a letter calling on the State Department to review the Keystone XL project in light of leaks on TransCanada's existing pipelines and recent spills in the Mountain West.

The Obama Administration said it would decide the Keystone XL's fate by the end of the year.

In Canada's boreal forest, the caribou called the grey ghost nibbled its hundred-year-old lichen, billowing condensation from its nostrils into the chill morning air, another waft of carbon dioxide to be absorbed by towering woods that had done so since time immemorial.

What the Frack? Despite Desperate Drought, Texas Water Going to Hydrofracking

The folks of Kemp, in north Texas, gathered in a local park last week, joined hands and bowed their heads in prayer. It was another day of searing heat.

"In Jesus' name, we will have water and rain, and that all our problems here in Kemp will be solved," one of the townsfolk said.

The townsfolk had one thing to be grateful for. The night before, the town restored water service to Kemp's taps and faucets. Still under Stage 5 water restrictions, folks could at least turn on their taps and get a flow. 37 consecutive days of triple-digit temperatures had overwhelmed the town's aging water system, and the parched, baking earth had ruptured 14 water mains in the preceding three weeks. The mayor had been forced to shut off the town's water.

"No water," Mayor Donald Kile said. "Zero water."

While Texas roasted in the worst single-year drought on record, the state's lucrative hydrofracking industry continued to pump billions of gallons of water into the ground to shatter underground shale formations and extract natural gas.

The Texas Water Development Board reported 37,000 acre-feet of water, some 12 billion gallons, would be mixed into a toxic cocktail and pumped into the Texas earth for hydrofracking this year. The volume of water needed for hydrofracking was expected to rise to 120,000 acre-feet, or 39 billion gallons, per year within the next twenty years.

Leaving the folks of Kemp with a whole lot of powerful praying to do.

All across the state, the drought was devastating whole ecosystems. Ponds and rivers and streams and creeks had dried up, leaving fish bones scattered on the desiccating mud. Deer nibbled on parched scrub. Desperate wild turkeys pecked at red ants.

"It has a compound effect on a multitude of species and organisms and habitat types because of the way it's chained and linked together," said Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist Jeff Bonner. "So, there's a domino effect that goes out in however many more branches than you can actually ever keep count of."

Since the beginning of the year, Texas has seen less than half the amount of rain that normally falls on the state, 6 inches instead of 13. Half the state's 3,700 rivers and streams were below normal flow rates. Seven reservoirs were effectively empty.

Yet, Texas continued to divert billions of gallons to the state's hydrofracking biz. Hydrofracking along a single sickle-shaped shale formation slicing across south Texas, the Eagle Ford, consumed 6,000 acre-feet of water in 2010, and was slated to consume even more this year. When production peaked in the Eagle Ford sometime around 2024, hydrofracking was expected to devour 45,000 acre-feet, or 14 billion gallons, of water.

Aside from the titanic environmental problems posed by pumping billions of gallons of toxic water into the ground, which everyone making piles of money off the projects insisted was completely harmless, Texas was facing the more immediate problem of where it might get all that water when its rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers were running dry.

Which showed how silly people had been worrying that hydrofracking might contaminate drinking water. Hydrofracking wasn't about to leave any drinking water left to contaminate.

"I'm a capitalist person," Dr. Marcus Sims, who owned a small spread near Ozona, said to make sure folks understood he was a real Texan and not some pencil-necked California pinko liberal, "and you do what's most economically feasible for your business to make a profit, and I don't have a problem with anybody making a profit. But, if it depletes the underground water tables, then we're all going to have a problem."

"I want them to quit using fresh water for fracking," said Crockett Groundwater Conservation District manager Slate Williams. He warned water levels in the 34,000-square-mile Edwards-Trinity Plateau Aquifer have been declining steadily for decades, and didn't get replenished except during years when Crockett County got at least 80% of its normal 15 inches of annual rain.

"It is declining year after year, so fracking or any little thing makes it speed up that much more," Williams said. Crockett County had only seen two inches of rain since October.  

The amount of water required to frack a well ran anywhere from 50,000 to 13 million gallons. Oil and gas companies have descended upon thousands of wells previously considered tapped out that were producing natural gas again because of hydrofracking. When hydrofracking shatters the shale layers deep underground, natural gas trapped in the shale is released like you'd cracked the cap off a shaken-up soda pop bottle.

In Texas, almost all the hydrofracking was done with massive amounts of fresh water trucked to the site and stored in huge containers until it got mixed into toxic "frac fluid" that's pumped into the ground.

"For some purposes, brackish water is just fine, but for fracking, and given the specific sort of engineering and pressure they're using...fresh water works better," said Ben Sheppard of Permian Basin Petroleum Association, a hydrofracking advocacy group.

While hydrofracking advocates were advocating fresh water for fracking, some ordinary folks were left with recycled sewage for drinking water.

"When you talk about toilet-to-tank, it makes a lot of people nervous and grossed out," said Terri Telchik of the Big Spring city manager's office.

"We're taking treated effluent, normally discharged into a creek, and blending it with (fresh) water," Colorado River Municipal Water District manager John Grant said.

"We're going through a real bad drought," Telchik said for the benefit of anyone who hadn't noticed.

The drought in Texas had reached into every corner of the state except the oil and gas industry. While towns and municipalities urged their residents to curb outdoor irrigation and save whatever water that was left, while some towns were mixing treated sewage effluent with their drinking water, while wildlife clung precariously to existence and some small hamlets flat ran dry, the hydrofracking industry continued to mix billions of gallons of fresh water with toxics to pump into the ground.

The universal Texas solution of prayer seemed only to work for oil and gas moguls, and they only seemed to be repeating the catechism of another Texan from bygone days: "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?"

Not Satisfied With Wasting Energy, GOP Wastes Time As Well

While the Grand Old Party - that's what it stands for, not "Gas & Oil Party," like everybody thinks - was spinning its wheels, sending mixed signals on whether it wanted to destroy the world by not raising America's debt ceiling and causing a catastrophic cascade failure in the global financial markets, or to just let President Barack Obama do any darned thing he wanted with it, House Republicans were set to tackle something really, really important for The American People, aka the Koch brothers and Rush Limbaugh.

Or not. Just as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) proposal to let the President just raise the debt ceiling any old time he wanted so long as he promised to cut spending - without actually requiring the spending he promised to cut be cut - would, if enacted, reduce the interminable rounds of debt ceiling haggling to the most egregious waste of time in the history of egregiousness, the House Republicans' shadow puppet show over destroying the thundering, evil, malicious threat of the heinous twisty Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb was, in fact, just another excruciating, if less interminable, waste of time.

Rep. Joe Barton's (R-TX, where else?) HR 2417, the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act of 2011 (BOOB - no wait - BULB, sorry), a dim attempt to rid America of the horrible twisty illuminators, was scheduled for a House vote Monday. Or whenever. Well, it was set for Monday, but after an exhaustive 40-minute debate, the vote was postponed, although it was not immediately known whether that was just because it was getting dark, and everyone was too frightened of the twisty bulbs to try turning them on.

However, Barton's BOOB, sorry, BULB bill, had been sent for its floor vote under the "suspension of rules" rule, which meant it required a two-thirds vote to pass, and since none of the Democrats lounging around the deepening gloom were afraid of the twisty bulbs, BULB hadn't had any chance of being turned on anyway.

While we all ponder the arcane existence of a rule used when rules were suspended, it should be pointed out that even if BULB had been lit up in the House, it would certainly have been killed (get it? lights? killed?) in the Senate, where the Democratic majority had no fear of curly illuminators. And, in the interminably unlikely event it got through the Senate, President Obama would have vetoed it anyway (ha! you though I was going to say "turn out the lights" or something), in deference to the only halfway decent thing George W. Bush ever did, namely signing the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which marked the ascendancy of helically enhanced lighting.

Republicans, in case anybody hadn't been keeping track of the box score, have for years had their collective panties in a bunch over the looming menace of Compact Fluorescent Lights, and everyone from Rush Limbaugh (yes, he's still alive) to Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has had a Brain-from-Pinky-and-the-Brain-esque obsession with doing away with the Horrors From Home Depot.

Using CFLs and LED lights could, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an outfit listed under "A" for "Anathemas" in the Big Republican Handbook of Spells and Demons, yearly save American households upwards of $200, and prevent 100 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, as though such things were of any importance to folks making $9 billion a quarter and Global Climate Change wasn't some sort of scientifically-concocted fairly tale.

So, it was no wonder the You-Know-Whats were immediately identified for ex-communication or exorcism or whatever Evangelicals do with Unspeakable Horrors. After all, anything preventing 100 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere obviously first prevented the burning of hundreds of millions of tons of whatever fossil fuel one had to burn before one got 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, which would understandably be enough to give any Koch brother palpitations. Republicans and their benefactors launched a lengthy, thorough, and no doubt excruciatingly expensive disinformation campaign against the bulbs.

Rupert Murdoch took valuable time from rummaging through people's voicemails to unleash Fox News talking heads Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Steven Milloy, both on Fox News and as the "junk science" guru under the auspices of the Koch brothers' Competitive Enterprise Institute, screamed about the devastating health effects and impending ecological disaster the tiny, tiny amounts of mercury in CFLs threatened to wreak. Bachmann, to no one's surprise, in 2008 drafted HR 5616 to do away with They That Shall Remain Unlit, but, doubtless due to meddling by some bespectacled English kid with a lightening-bolt scar on his face, the bill went nowhere.

And now, the current iteration of the Grand Obsessed Party's grand plan to save America from efficient lighting appeared to face the same ignominious descent into that long good night.

Even anti-CFL Republicans considered the bill with some humor. "Here's the bottom line," quipped Rep. Micheal Burgess (R-TX), "those of us of a certain age, under a Compact Fluorescent Light, we don't look as good as we do under an incandescent bulb."

The battle against You Know Whats appeared to be progressing much like anything else coming out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Of the 417 bills and resolutions referred to that august body, only 12 have gotten to the House Floor, and none have gotten to the President, pretty much making the whole enterprise a gigantic waste of time and, well, energy.

Fortunately for Republicans, Bushy old George had left the grand old partiers a bone for their wrinkled countenances. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 continues to permit incandescent bulbs of less than 40 watts, for oldsters between botox tuneups seeking forgiving lighting, and more than 150 watts, for coal magnates worried that people wouldn't be able to meet their lighting needs while consuming as much energy as humanly possible.

Update: As expected, BULB Tuesday failed to garner the required two-thirds vote for passage. The measure received 233 yeas and 193 nays. Five Democrats voted for the bill, and 10 Republicans voted against it.

Republicans Sharpen Knives To Greet Commerce Secretary Pick

He's been a director at Boeing and Disney, and the US Chamber of Commerce's boss said he had "extensive knowledge of the private sector and years of experience successfully running a major company...."

So why are Republicans sharpening their knives and foaming at the mouth to shank John E. Bryson, President Barack Obama's nominee for Commerce Secretary?

Although Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said, "we hope Mr. Bryson will be a strong voice for American business," words that might normally send GOP pols bowing and scraping, Republicans have displayed nothing but disdain for the appointment necessitated by former Commerce Secretary Gary Locke's posting as Ambassador to China, and former China Ambassador Jon Huntsman's abandoning his post to seek personal glory and fortune as a GOP presidential candidate. Republicans rarely need any excuse to obstruct any Obama appointment, but Bryson is guilty of a singular offense in the Republican eye:  Bryson has something of an environmentalist background.

Not such a rabidly extreme environmentalist background that it would have precluded Bryson running the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which Bryson's company for twenty years, Edison International, owned. But, enough of an environmentalist background that he hadn't spent 24/7/365 for twenty years defiling the nation's air, water and land by spewing toxic waste and sludge over every available rock, tree and plant. To Republicans, anyone who hasn't actively clear-cut every forest, pumped toxins into every well, slimed flaming oil sludge onto every coast, and actually wrapped the planet with enough greenhouse gases to eradicate all life is just a limp-wristed, pencil-necked enviro-commie.

As a callow youth, Bryson helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has grown to be a leading environmental group. Bryson also headed up BrightSource, a - horrors! - solar energy company.  Now, Republicans figure anybody who has anything to do with solar power, unless it's smashing their panels and setting their factories on fire, has got to be an enviro-commie.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said as much, calling Bryson a "green evangelist," meaning that was somehow a negative thing. "With gas prices at nearly four dollars a gallon...the nomination of John Bryson...seems deeply out of touch with our current energy challenge."

Issa is the one who seemed out of touch, as gas is way over $4 a gallon anywhere people don't speak with a twang or a drawl, and that first-class rocket-ship ticket to the planet Republitopia where you can go after you've made Earth uninhabitable was just a joke. Darrell, listen carefully: There's no such planet, there's no such rocket-ship, and whatever you paid for that ticket has already been spent on booze and hookers.

Besides, Darrell, Edison International already greased your palm with $56,000 for you and your PACs. Isn't it enough that San Onofre has been spilling sulfuric acid and hydrazine regularly over the past couple years? Must there be a full nuclear meltdown and explosion wiping out all of LA and San Diego to make you happy? They're your constituents, fergawdsakes.

Apparently, Issa looks at footage from the Fukushima nuke disaster in Japan and pouts, "How come we never get anything good like that?" And, the $56K Issa got from Edison is chump change compared to the $140,000 oil companies shovelled his way. Highest bidder, and all that.

Issa and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), another well known oil industry - let's see, what's a word that means someone who would do filthy, disgusting, immoral and unhealthy things for money?  oh, yeah - advocate, fears Byrson won't be on board when the oil moguls and coal magnates want to turn America into an open pit they can suck hydrocarbons out of to sell to the highest bidder. Republicans love talking about drilling babies, some sort of sick paedophilia fixation, so Americans can enjoy lower gas prices, but in fact, their oil and coal mogul cronies just want to pump more profits by selling anything they get overseas.

In recent months, the US exported more oil than it imported. After all, what oil company in its right mind would want to pump more oil to make gas prices lower?

Inhofe has vowed to sink the Bryson nomination, musing that he may place a "hold" on it because of Bryson's environmental bona fides. Inhofe will vilify Bryson as supporting cap and trade, as though that, too, were some sort of bad thing.

"By selecting John Bryson... President Obama is clearly demonstrating that he has no intention of backing down from his job-killing agenda," Inhofe sneered. Well, at least Obama's slightly oil-mogul inconveniencing agenda. Inhofe wouldn't want anyone inconveniencing the oil industry that's plied him with $1.2 million over the years.

Inhofe, incidentally, is not some sort of ancient Egyptian demon. Let's quash that rumor right away. You're thinking of Imhotep, who helped build the Step Pyramid of Saqqara in the 27th century, B.C. There is no need to ask Inhofe for a birth certificate.

Other Republican Senators vowed to hold the Byrson nomination hostage until Obama sends them trade agreements with South Korea, Columbia and Panama. The President favors the agreements, but he has refused to send the deals to Congress unless Republicans okay extending a program that helps get health care and financial aid for any workers who lose their jobs as a result of the deals.

Business groups want both too, but, apparently, Republicans would rather see displaced American workers beaten, poked, stabbed, set on fire and eaten by rats. That's why they're trying to wipe out Medicare and Social Security. John Yoo probably just deletes RNC emails without even reading them nowadays, because he just can't think of any more ways to torture people.

So, unless Republicans get someone who will uproot and burn every tree and plant and blade of grass, who will poison and putrefy every lake and river and stream and well, who will bulldoze and blast every mountain and hill and pile of rock, who will grind every square inch of America into a toxic radioactive wasteland strewn with the broken bodies of desperate survivors bereft of medicine or shelter, there will be no Cabinet Secretaries confirmed anytime soon.

After all, Republicans all have first-class seats on that rocket-ship to that other planet, where most of them, at least mentally, live already.

BP Showers Republican Leaders with Cash as Oil Spill Anniversary Nears

As the one year anniversary of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and Gulf Coast megaspill approached, the oil giant greeted the milestone by hollering, "Sooeey!" and Republican pols responded by running to the trough.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) thrust their snouts into the best part of the trough, gobbling down $5,000 each. BP Corporation North America also contributed $5,000 to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), and $5,000 each to the Republican National Congressional Committee and the Republican National Senate Committee.

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) got $1,000 from BP, and Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN), the only Democrat on BP's "Nice" list, got $3,000

BP had laid low with its political contributions since the April 20, 2010 explosion and fire at its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which eventually dumped millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and slimed hundreds of miles of coastline. The company had limited political contributions to state and local officials in the Gulf region during the past year.

As far as oil company largess goes, the BP contributions were relatively modest. The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas company trade group, kicked in $27.6 million, mostly to Republican candidates, during last year's elections, as well as another $7.3 million lobbying Congress and the White House. The Independent Petroleum Association of America dumped $19.6 million into GOP troughs last year. This was in addition to contributions from individual companies and their well-heeled execs. Exxon Mobil gave Republican candidates over $1 million.

That's a good deal of slop for the trough. Fortunately, the oil industry can pass those costs to consumers $4 per gallon at a time.

Even more fortunately, the oil companies can look forward to getting all that money back and more from taxpayers, as House Republicans dutifully voted to extend oil industry subsidies. McCarthy, Upton and Camp were among 249 Republican oil company vassals who voted against a March 1 bill that would have ended billions in oil company subsidies.

President Barack Obama's budget had proposed ending $3.6 billion in oil and gas subsidies in 2012. Despite oil topping $100 per barrel and gas topping $4 per gallon, Republicans lined up to defeat any attempt to end raining the dumptruck loads of cash on oil companies that even some former oil company executives saw as excessive.

BP, showing British restraint, had refrained from shovelling cash into national GOP Congressional and Senate campaigns last year, and some of the local pols BP backed wouldn't take their money. Oklahoma state legislator Jason Nelson didn't cash his check from BP. Many politicians probably felt accepting BP's money would make them look bad at a time when the oil company was nearly as unpopular as President Barack Obama in the region. There were, after all, plenty of other oil companies and industry PACs topping up the slop in the troughs.

BP North America's decision to begin slopping their hogs again became public when its political action committee filed a campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission Tuesday. It was not immediately known whether the timing of the report, on the eve of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, was a classic example of the famous dark British humor.

Republican Push to Destroy America Goes On Straight Through Lunch

The Republican politicos’ hatred of America is so virulent, their disdain for the nation so unrelenting, their contempt of country so utterly complete that they couldn’t choke down their lunches unless they could assure themselves that the very act of eating was helping to destroy the land.

Since the Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives, they have reversed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s "Green the Capitol" initiative and replaced the compostable cups and utensils in the Congressional cafeteria with non-recyclable plastics.

Republicans gleefully replaced the eco-friendly dining ware with polystyrene cups, plates, and containers so they could more fully attack the environment even while they were at lunch. Aside from styrene being a possible carcinogen, manufacturing polystyrene, also called Styrofoam, is a major source of hazardous waste.  The stuff overflows landfills, never biodegrades, and eventually breaks up into smaller and smaller plastic bits that enter the food chain and remain in the environment forever.

Republicans have fought to cripple the Environmental Protection Agency, subvert clean air and water rules, and reverse restrictions of dirty-energy coal plants. Apparently, pleasing their plutocrat masters with these efforts wasn’t enough for them.  They felt compelled to defile and destroy even during the few lunch breaks when they weren’t out being wined and dined by their big-money corporate overlords.

In yet another example of how deeply they despise America, the Republicans have revealed that there is no action against the people and resources of the country that is so small that they would overlook it. It is no surprise they would extend gratuitous tax subsidies to their cronies among the oil moguls, and that they would suspend any oversight of belching coal plants.  It is no surprise they would promote the despoiling of ground water through fracking for natural gas.  But, the fastidious attention to even this tiniest detail – how to increase the waste and pollution coming out of the Capitol’s cafeteria - reveals an obsessive hatred and spite for the US unmatched by any antagonist in the history of conflict.

Attila the Hun slaughtered his enemies, burned their homes and villages, stole their horses and raped and enslaved their women and children. Republicans would do all that to America, and shovel garbage on top of the ruins as well.

Republicans, having gutted American business and industry with mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, and off-shoring, having emptied pension funds and broken unions, having dumped toxic wastes and greenhouse gases, now scheme to plunder Social Security and Medicare, Americans’ final safety nets.

Even still, Republicans aren’t satisfied unless they can bury everyone under piles of garbage as well. Republicans look at the miserable favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the wretched slums of Calcutta, the squalor and filth of countless Third World cardboard-and-rusting-corrugated-tin ghettos rising from steaming heaps of fetid garbage and sigh, “That’s how Americans should live.”

Of course, that is how they would feel. Then, they would be assured that they had squeezed every penny from the nation, and had handed it to their plutocrat masters.