This week TVA deliberately dumped massive amounts of toxic corporate waste matter into a shared public resource: America's broadcast media. Why did the PR flacks who ooze around TVA's headquarters give America such generous piles of steaming corporate lies for Christmas? Aside from the fact that's what PR flacks do for a living, the well-paid professional liars on TVA's payroll had an extra-special motive to stuff our Holiday stockings with deceit: TVA failed to construct dikes that actually worked. TVA's professional liars had a bonus motive, as well: two months after the October 2008 annual inspection showed the dike had a "wet spot" indicating a leak, TVA's crack inspectors hadn't finished their formal inspection report. So last Sunday when the dike at TVA's Kingston Plant leaked for the third time in six years, and TVA's toxic wastes clogged the Emory River on their way to the Tennessee River (the Ohio River's largest tributary), TVA was neck deep in apparent liability. For their emergency response, TVA trundled out the usual PR zombies to clog US media with bald-faced lies. So...what will TVA run out of first: toxic corporate PR, or toxic power plant coal waste?
Without knowing how much PR waste (and how many PR zombies) TVA has stockpiled along with their toxic coal wastes, we may never know the answer. If the size of TVA's two Big Lies this week is any indication, the Carbon Lords from the Volunteer State have amassed vast stockpiles of first class Grade A PR sludge. TVA's first Big Lie? TVA simply lied about the volume of the toxic waste spill. TVA's second Big Lie? TVA lied when they claimed the public waterways contaminated with their toxic waste were "safe". Who knows what their PR zombies are concocting for the next Big Lie. At the rate they are going -- and failing -- I wouldn't be surprise if for Big Lie # 3 they tell us what spilled into the river was actually reindeer muck from Santa's stables.
Also, check out the local news media's coverag:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/24/ash-spill-two-prior-breaches-retention-site/
RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show.
Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members.
The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”
Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.
The song, which debuted on Limbaugh’s show in late March 2007, latches onto an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times of the same title. That column, penned by cultural critic David Ehrenstein, argued that Obama could serve as a balm to whites who felt guilty about past treatment of African Americans.
Limbaugh first highlighted the column the day it ran, according to a contemporary report by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog agency. Media Matters reported Limbaugh repeated the phrase more than two dozen times the day the column ran.
The following month, Shanklin debuted his version of the song, sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and performed in Shanklin’s impression of Al Sharpton.
“See, real black men, like Snoop Dogg, or me, or Farrakhan, have talked the talk, and walked the walk, not come in late and won,” one verse in the song says.
Saltsman said he meant nothing untoward by forwarding what amounts to a joke more at Ehrenstein’s expense than at Obama’s.
“Paul Shanklin is a long-time friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for the Rush Limbaugh show are light-hearted political parodies,” Saltsman said.
Republicans searching for ways to attack Obama have been hesitant to embrace any reference to his race. Limbaugh presciently predicted his allusion to the column nearly two years ago would win attention from left-leaning organizations that would suggest he was using Obama’s race against him.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A burst dike at a coal-fired power plant in eastern Tennessee spilled millions more cubic yards of ash than originally estimated, officials said Friday, and residents fear the muck coating their neighborhood is endangering the area's drinking water.
The state, however, said Friday that tests show water entering the local treatment plant is safe.
About 5.4 million cubic yards of coal fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal, broke out of a retention pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman John Moulton said.
The TVA, which as the nation's largest utility company supplies electricity to 8.8 million people, first estimated that Monday's breach had spilled less than half that amount.
Moulton could not explain the discrepancy but said TVA's first tests showed no threat to the area's drinking water. The spill damaged 12 homes and covered 300 acres with sludge in Harriman, about 35 miles west of Knoxville.
"We are cleaning it up," he said. "That's where our efforts are focused and we are making some headway. Both on land and in the water, we are containing it and skimming it off the water."
Christopher Copeland, a resident whose land is covered in ash and debris, said he is not drinking the local water and is keeping his children inside until he can send them to a relative's house, "because I don't feel comfortable with them around here."
Optimistic emptywheel:
One of the critical problems in the auto industry is the absence of credit (I've heard folks under 750 can't get a car loan, for example). By making GMAC a bank, you relieve one of the biggest problems in the sickest parts of the auto industry, and thereby stimulate one of the key segments of the economy, and you begin to get to get money the economy moving again.
Pessimistic emptywheel:
Dan Quayle and John Snow have an (increasingly limited) ability to suck at the federal teat to make their private profit.
The small print:
GM must now reduce its stake in the auto lender below 10 percent, from 49 percent. GM has three years to sell the rest of its shares, which in the interim will be placed in a trust that the company does not control. The automaker and GMAC also agreed to unwind a number of exclusive agreements, freeing GMAC to offer financing on equal terms to customers of other car companies.
Cerberus and its chief, Steve Feinberg, must reduce their stake below 15 percent, from 51 percent. The private equity fund plans to distribute its GMAC shares proportionally among its investors.
As sure as Christmas comes once a year, so do the morons claiming that there is a war on Christmas. Led this year by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and Gretchen Carlson, the true war is between these blowhards and reality. So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from everyone at GoLeft TV, and we hope you enjoy this special Christmas Media Moron poem.
T’was the night before Christmas,
And shakin in their shoes,
Spewing hatred and lies,
Were the folks at Fox News.
“There’s a war on Christmas!”,
Shouted Bill O’Reilly,
Being the skeptic I am,
I doubted this highly.
They’ll remove all our trees!,
Said the shrill Fox & Friends,
I guess atheists and Christians,
Will never make amends.
Sitting up in his chair,
Looking dazed and confused,
O’Reilly continued,
Our holiday we will lose!
“There’s no war on Christmas!”
I shout at my screen,
This cat named O’Reilly,
Gets marked down as mean.
And Gretchen, though pretty,
She’s still quite insane,
As for Doocy and Kilmeade,
They still need a brain.
You now get the point,
There’s no need to go on,
That’s why all of Fox News,
Is my media moron.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR
From Goleft.Tv
This 2008 year!
Summary: On Hannity & Colmes, Newt Gingrich falsely asserted that following 9-11, Dennis Hastert "did not get a private plane," adding that "[t]here's no reason for anyone but the president and vice president of the United States to have that level of security." In fact, at the time, the House sergeant-at-arms, the Defense Department, and the White House agreed that military planes should be made available to the speaker of the House for national security reasons, and Hastert was the first speaker to use one.
Full story at Media Matters.
Yesterday, BarbinMD noted the GOP's use of the Holder nomination to try and rehash a greatest hits of Clinton Administration-era scandals:
Senate Republicans have requested information about Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s role in the Elian Gonzalez controversy as part of a broad probe into his tenure with the Clinton administration and potential ties to presidential scandals during that era.
...the move to focus attention on the highly controversial Gonzalez case indicates the confirmation of President-elect Obama’s top law enforcement official will be anything but smooth.
Seeking information about Gonzalez suggests Republicans are seeking issues that will resonate outside the Beltway, unlike the Rich pardon. [...]
In a separate letter to current Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the senators ask for information tying Holder to 17 separate issues including the Rich pardon and the Gonzales case, but also Vice President Al Gore’s 1996 fundraising scandal and Clinton’s history of special prosecutors in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals from 1993 to 2001.
What's most interesting to me about this, aside from Senate Democrats giving Republicans all the time in the world to prepare for their smear attack, is the nature of these so-called "scandals":
Let's see. 1) A father was reunited with his son, 2) a rich undeserving guy was pardoned, 3) the vice-president may have raised an illegal $65,000 at a Buddhist Temple, 4) a failed small-time Clinton real estate investment, and 5) Monica!
Quaint, huh? What with two failed wars, a deep recession, the collapse of Wall Street, the collapse of the banks, the collapse of AIG, the SEC's blind eye to Bernard Madoff $50 billion scam, Blackwater, Katrina, and on and on and on.
So after eight years that have cost us trillions, and will cost us trillions more to emerge from this economic armageddon, and eight years that have cost millions more their jobs, and hundreds of thousands their lives in Iraq and elsewhere ... this is how Republicans respond?
Monica! Whitewater! Elian! Rich!
If the worst we get out of the Obama Administration are trite and barely consequential "scandals" like those we "suffered" during the Clinton years, we'll all be able to rest much easier.
Best Part of Thanksgiving? Leftovers!!
When Tesla failed to secure a $100-million investment round earlier this month, Musk cut 24 percent of the company's work force and delayed development work on a battery-powered electric sedan, known internally as the "Model S."
He also took the CEO post from Tesla's former chief executive, Ze'ev Drori.
"We didn't raise the $100 million but we still need to raise some money to get to cash flow positive," Musk said. "We actually probably only need on the order of $20 million to do that. We're going to raise more than that, but we only need about $20 million."
How about a head of lettuce.
Worked for David Frost once.
The show needs no host. The guests show up with the week's talking points and run thru them regardless of the question (a media training goal, I might add) so just let them line up, approach the mic and let rip. Next in line follows... asst producer keeps them to tigth time limits.
Voila! Another 30 minutes of puntificating history.
No need to thank me.
As you might expect there were a lot of Palin costumes at Halloween parties last night, including this very clever and detailed one in Sonoma. Photo by Gale Mead, Sonoma, CA.
Had a chance to check out a Tesla electric car yesterday in San Rafael which was part of a presentation to Autodesk employees. If you are not familiar with this car, which is what all electric vehicles want to be when they grow up, go to their website:
Forgot to mention that one of the reasons for going to the festival in the first place was to see a singer named Tift Merritt, from NC and Nashville. She opened early on Saturday so it was easy to get near the stage for a photo or two. Still using my Nikon CoolPix 5700 for most of this stuff, even tho it is practically an antique these days.
