Welcome to your TGIF open thread. I guess our taste of summer is over today. At least the rain will keep the pollen level down (*crossing fingers*).
Massey Energy CEO Don Blakenship really is a monster:
Massey’s chief executive officer, Don Blankenship, continued to defend his company’s record and disputed accusations from miners that he puts coal profits ahead of safety.
“To some extent the fact that there were more survivors than those that are lost suggests that the mine was in pretty good shape relative to what mines would have been in the past and hopefully by today’s standards,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. There were 61 miners in Upper Big Branch when it was rocked by the blast.
More than half survived! I’m surprised that Blakenship hasn’t been run out of town on a rail.
Pat Buchanan defends slavery on MSNBC (with partial transcript):
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Buchanan: They (the South) wanted to be free of the Union.
Matthews: They wanted to keep slaves.
Buchanan: Jefferson wanted to keep slaves; Washington wanted to keep slaves.
Matthews: 600,000 Americans were dead because these guys wanted to keep slaves.
Buchanan: That is complete nonsense, Chris, the founding fathers had slaves.
Matthews: That was wrong.
…
Matthews: Who was right in the Civil War?
Buchanan: Who was right in the Civil War? I think in a way both sides were right; Lincoln had a right to save the Union; I think they had a right to go free.
Matthews: Was it right to fight that war?
Buchanan: Robert E. Lee was right to fight for his fellow folks in his state…
Matthews: Maybe if he said, “we’re not gonna fight,” there wouldn’t have been a Civil War…
No Pat, both sides weren’t right. We simply had to go to war to force our fellow Americans to do the right thing because they wouldn’t do it any other way.