open

Thank you, Sam.

or as Vonnegut would say:
.

*

The questions we need to ask are why is he panicking and why has he been so invested in health care failing?

I think you should spell out the logical leap you made, as though correlation and causation here were utterly inseparable. (I am not saying there's no possible connection, in this case...That would be stupid.)

Plenty of people believe a lot of that stuff Bedell did--maybe not all of it, maybe not in the totalizing way he
did. Some of these people are still very high functioning. Some are even committed pacifists. And most, for sure, do not attack the Pentagon as an army of one.

On the other hand, someone could have gone and shot up the Pentagon because they were super tweaked and thought the building was a humungo spider--with no conspiracy theory or political rationale at all.

But maybe you were just taking a cheap shot like...

Sure had some gynormous ears, this Bedell.

(Utterly dorky and lacking-in-edge, true. About equally unfunny as yours. But less presumptuous, and less monotonous. Zzzzzz.)

Thanks Harbinger...you have a good weekend too.

terisk. Had forgotten all about it.

But you wouldn't believe how many of those I had in the margins of various books in hs.

When really I should have saved them for graduate school.

:)

nite

----
Everyone in that vid is weirdly skinnified. Just thought I'd mention it. Since I already did the gynormous ears...

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/03/womens-history-month-remembering-vietn...

[excerpt]

Buried all throughout Vietnam, in both well-tended cemeteries and lost locations known to no one, lie the remains of thousands of Vietnamese females who gave their lives so that their homeland could be spared foreign domination.

America’s Vietnam intervention was no “mistake.” Allegiance to absolute truth over patriotic prejudice forces every honest soul to fully acknowledge that our friends and family members — and, in countless cases, we ourselves — were on the wrong side in a dirty conflict in which the Vietnamese were most definitely the “good guys.”

As we’ve noted, many of them weren’t men at all.

For as long as females have compelling reason to resist male abuses and political or religious constructs rooted in injustice, powerful inspiration will be drawn from what the “beautiful and brave” women of Vietnam did to help guarantee their country’s sovereign self-determination.

[end excerpt]

Glaxo Smith Kline...Paxil, Avandia..now PolyGrip poisoning...?

Recall issued for Super PoliGrip in Japan

by JANET ST. JAMES / WFAA

Posted on March 5, 2010 at 6:49 PM

DALLAS - After GlaxoSmithKline's recent announcement to halt production of Super PoliGrip with zinc, the product is now being recalled in Japan.

Zinc, an ingredient in Super PoliGrip has been linked to serious nerve damage called neuropathy.

A spokesperson for GlaxoSmithKline said they have issued the voluntary recall in Japan, claiming the reason why it hasn't been recalled anywhere else is because the product is safe to use as directed.

GlaxoSmithKline recently posted a video to its web site teaching consumers how to use denture adhesive safely.

"Do not apply more than once a day without your dentist's advice," the video warns.

The company now admits consumers with poorly fitting false teeth often use too much, too often - swallowing the excess cream that oozes out. The body then absorbs the zinc.

"Six years ago, I woke up and I couldn't walk," said Sherry Mosley, who regularly used Super PoliGrip. "My feet burned so bad and hurt."

Following a WFAA report with Mosley last year, GlaxoSmithKline admitted it received about 400 reports from other longtime denture cream users, all suffering from neuropathy.

The company has promised to reformulate Super PoliGrip to make it zinc-free. Store shelves will not be restocked with product that's already been manufactured.

The company also mailed out a letter to about 200,000 doctors and dentists nationwide. It alerted health professionals to the potential health risk of denture adhesives and zinc poisoning and urged them to assess and report possible cases.

For the first time, GlaxoSmithKline has provided the phone number 866-640-1017 to report possible denture paste poisoning cases.

Link

GSK is having a run of bad luck...

Another one from Dissident Voice--

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/03/imf-style-austerity-comes-to-america/

[excerpt]

IMF-style Austerity Comes to America
What "Fiscal Responsibility" Means to You

by Ellen Hodgson Brown / March 5th, 2010

In addition to mandatory private health insurance premiums, we may soon be hit with a “mandatory savings” tax and other belt-tightening measures urged by the President’s new budget task force. These radical austerity measures are not only unnecessary but will actually make matters worse. The push for “fiscal responsibility” is based on bad economics.

When billionaires pledge a billion dollars to educate people to the evils of something, it is always good to peer closely at what they are up to....

[end excerpt]

"Should Progressives give up on Obama? Chris Hedges vs. Rabbi Lerner"

http://www.alternet.org/news/145871/should_progressives_give_up_on_obama...

CHRIS HEDGES:

[excerpt]

Isolation and ridicule—ask Nader or McKinney—is the cost of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. And it is vital that this anger become our own. We have historical precedents to fall back upon.

“Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name,” the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said in a lecture a year ago at Binghamton University. “Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored.”

Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony of the corporate state and the power elite. The longer socialism is identified with the corporatist policies of the Democratic Party, the longer we allow the right wing to tag Obama as a socialist, the more absurd and ineffectual we become....

The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wider public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can continue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back. This means refusing to support the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable socialist movement. It is the only alternative left to save our embattled open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.

[end excerpt]

-------------

MICHAEL LERNER:

[excerpt]

Many of the specific failures highlighted by Chris Hedges' recent article, Nader was Right about Obama, criticizing the performance of the Obama Administration are legitimate points. But the way Hedges's positions are stated, and the conclusions drawn from them are not the path of spiritual progressives, in my view.There was too much anger in his statement overshadowing our spiritual progressive commitment to compassion and a spirit of generosity toward others with whose politics we disagree. And not enough sympathy for the problems anyone would face trying to get elected as President and to repair the damage of the past 30 years.

...There was too much anger in his statement overshadowing our spiritual progressive commitment to compassion and a spirit of generosity toward others with whose politics we disagree....

I know that this has not been anything close to what I've wanted. But the party remains a mechanism by which liberal and progressive ideas can be communicated to ordinary Americans, and, if we could get enough of those Americans to actually vote in primary elections, we could get candidates at every level of government who shared a progressive agenda. Yes, we are up against huge odds, because the wealthy will step in to fund the most conservative and corporate-friendly and rich-friendly candidates. But in the final analysis, if enough of us reach out to other people in our own communities and convince them of the need for a spiritual progressive politics, it is we who could win in the primaries and even in the general elections. I know that this is a very difficult route, but primarily difficult because it takes a lot of effort on our part to make it happen. But the Democratic Party could be taken over by people who share the analysis of the spiritual progressives.

I salute liberals who are trying to do this very thing, but I don't believe that they will succeed unless they adopt a language that is more loving, compassionate, and generous than that reflected in the piece that Hedges wrote....

...It is wrong to describe Israel as an apartheid society....

Hedges is correct in saying that the intensity of that assault has been aided by the failure of Obama and Congressional Democrats to passionately advocate for a different ethical vision, but instead to seem to be in bed with the corporate interests. But we should also acknowledge that at least some part of the anger against Obama stems from the same racism that has led many Americans to hate Obama with passionate intensity far out of proportion to anything he has done or failed to do.

-------------------
=======================

Lerner charges that Hedges is not peaceable enough. Phooey.

When Hedges supports Nader and McKinney, it is just a call to Progressives, telling them there's no longer any time to waste trying to figure out a way to be ALLOWED to be TOLERATED to have a voice in the Dem Party. Move on already, Progressives. Hedges sounds perfectly logical to me. Progressives have been used in the election process, and abused in the policy-making process. Enough already.

and sweet dreams... work tomorrow.

Instead of sheep, count Greens, maybe!

This is quite an amazing list!

http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/

http://www.peoplesworld.org/worker-rights-are-key-to-economic-recovery-u...

[excerpt]

Worker rights are key to economic recovery, union leaders say

by: John Wojcik

..."Today in countries all over the world, workers get a union when only 30 percent sign union cards. The Employee Free Choice Act standard of majority sign-up, which management spends millions of dollars to prevent, is actually a far tougher standard than the one required today in countries like South Africa and Peru."

"This is an issue for not just the labor movement, but for our country as a whole," he declared. "Germany has been hit with the same economic crisis that hit us, but the suffering you see there is far less than the suffering you see here."

"The crucial difference," Cohen said, "is the higher degree of workers' rights in that country."

"Yes, we need a second stimulus and yes we need to fix regulations, but we must move ahead on workers' rights, particularly the right to collective bargaining, and that is why we are pushing so hard for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act."

"Unfortunately," he said, "there is no current path for passage of the EFCA with the Republicans able to filibuster in the Senate."

According to Cohen, however, that roadblock will not prevent the labor movement from continuing to push on several other fronts.

The first of these, he said, is the push to get President Obama to fill National Labor Relations Board vacancies during the congressional Easter Recess. The Republicans filibustered his appointment of Craig Becker, a labor attorney, to that board, but the president has the power to make recess appointments which would last until the end of the year. He refrained from making the NLRB appointments during the President's Day recess in exchange for Republican votes for many of his other nominees to non-controversial posts.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who came to the executive council meeting here, was asked whether the president would make the appointments during the upcoming recess. Although she would give no commitment, she said she had spoken to the president about the matter and indicated that "labor will be pleased with the outcome on this issue."

In addition to filling the NLRB posts, the second approach to advancing workers' rights, Cohen said, is to press ahead on some "gigantic organizing drives." These, he said, would result in 200,000 more union members. Among them are a drive under way by the American Federation of Government Employees at the Transportation Security Administration, efforts by the Machinists and Flight Attendants to organize workers at Delta, a successful push by the United Auto Workers at Foxwoods Casino and numerous campaigns to organize hotels and manufacturing outfits.

The third approach, Cohen said, is to push for passage of the Public Safety Workers Collective Bargaining Act, which would require states to allow public workers to form unions.

The fourth, he said, "is to link organizing to political work."

[end excerpt]

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenberg02262010.html

[excerpt]

Talking with Gail Collins About the Women's Rights Movement
By MARTHA ROSENBERG

New York Times columnist Gail Collins' new history of the women's rights movement in the 1960s, When Everything Changed, has just been published by Little Brown. I interviewed her about her book last week.

Rosenberg: Your new book, When Everything Changed (Little, Brown) covers the cascade of rights women won between 1964 and 1972 from equal pay and the right to their own credit rating to the right to wear pants and to be called by the honorific "MS." Why was this second women's rights movement necessary fifty years after women won the right to vote?

Gail Collins: While the suffragists succeeded in getting the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920, they also believed that women's role should be at home as mothers and wives. Without the economic power of participating in the workplace and positions of influence in society, women's status after getting the vote could really not change much.
...
[end excerpt]

As in "Manchurian Candidate" emotionless?

http://www.newser.com/story/82488/cops-id-pentagon-shooter-eye-second-ma...

Also, a list of articles--

http://www.legitgov.org/pentagon_shooting_oddities.html

So Nora is it this dark morn-time that we are now on GraveYard? {weak joke ;}

I still havn't mastered this digital camera yet,
but a few picts are good to share.

Chicago From Addison illinois, 21 Miles west.

Back in the 90's when I lived in DuPage Co. iL.,
I took lots of Sunrise pictures from a little park that's hidden
in an industrial area.

During March & September when the Sun Rises
Directly from the East, Behind the Chicago Skyline,
Nice pictures can be had with a telescope & camera adapter
or super telephoto lens.

took these Thurs., & Friday

a few more in new windows:

• 20100304-01a.jpg

• 20100305-03a

_
• 20100305-04

Meade 1000mm scope/lens & role film cam

• 20100305-05
_
• 20100305-11
• 20100305-13
• 20100305-15a

or
• Here

http://www.sunrisesunsetmap.com/

I'm leaving shortly to try and do better this
morning while the sky is still clear.
_ _ _ _
brr

Obama promises progressives he’ll revisit public option after bill passes ~

Progressives may be denied their overriding health care priority this time around, but according to President Barack Obama, it won't be over with this bill.

Obama urged leading progressive Democrats in a closed-door meeting Thursday evening to back the health care bill, placating their concerns about the public option and warning them that the liberal agenda was at stake.

Obama told the group of House members he thought the public plan didn't have the votes this time, but reportedly assured them he'll revisit it after the bill's passage, warning that failure would imperil the issue for a generation.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said after the meeting that Obama's message was, "If this opportunity passes, much of our agenda, on the progressive side...it would be difficult, if not impossible for a generation to get back to this issue," according to Talking Points Memo.
"To maintain a strong presidency we need to pass this bill," Grijalva summarized Obama's remarks.

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/obama-promises-progressives-revisit-public-o...

How U been - I hope Good! :)

'mornin' Sederville
Submitted by Jmach1JP on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 6:13am.
==
around the equinox the setting sun might reflect off all those windows?

Last week I got a bushnell digiscope bracket for my monocular...

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

Christian Hate Group ‘Repent Amarillo’ Terrorizes Texas Town, Harassing Gays, Liberals, And Other ‘Sinners’ - -

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town.

"

around the equinox the setting sun might reflect off all those windows?

In about 5-8 Minutes from now:

Today, Saturday, March 6th, 'This is Hell!' airs a 100 minute
broadcast beginning at 9 AM (US central) on WNUR 89.3 FM
Chicago, streaming live at http://wnur.org, and podcast shortly after
here.
Our guests on this morning's abbreviated This is Hell! will be:

• live from Mexico City, Laura Carlsen is a program director
at the Center for International Policy's Americas Policy
Program. Laura's recent writing includes, "Murder Capital of the World."

• live from Beirut, Meris Lutz is a freelance journalist who
contributes regularly to the Los Angeles Times. Meris writes
for the Times' Babylon & Beyond blog. Meris recently wrote
extensively on the mysterious assassination of Hamas
operative Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai last month.

• economist Robert Johnson is a member of the United
Nations Commission of Experts on Finance as well as being
Senior Fellow and the Director of the Project on Global
Finance at the Roosevelt Institute. Rob was on the panel
that authored the new report, "Make Markets Be Markets," on strengthened financial regulations.
_ _ _ _
brr

this morning over Chicago was nice,
I shot some Video and will upload and
share later or tomorrow.
_ _ _ _
brr

Not real christians because they
forget the part where we are to forgive
others, & not judge others.

Too many of those redneck southern rural types
for me.
_ _ _ _
brr

My Travel Agency was in Addison. What park are you talking about? Is it off Fullerton Ave Industrial area? East or west of Addison Road?

toniD's Ya Think?

their web server requires the www. prefix

Is advertising the Coffee Party

http://www.chicagoprogressivetalk.com/

toniD's Ya Think?

in her community and in Mexico in general...

Maggie's Maddness

Whenever I hear programs about Mexico like the one on wnur right now, her safety immediately comes to mind...

in so many different funny ways~

MSG AND HVP AND FOOD ADDITIVES.

I should have started with this video posted on drpressman.com web site under
THE LATEST VIDEOS 'THE TRUTH ABOUT MSG'

http://www.drpressman.com/contact/#video-365

save your self some time and start here first

_________________
http://www.drpressman.com/category/videos/

in fact all these videos on presman's web site are pretty good.
People might complain this nutrition stuff is not right for a Political blog,but I think it fits in quite nicely.

Source: AP

By MIKE ROBINSON (AP) – 7 hours ago

CHICAGO — A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm.

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen's ruling did not say the two contractors had proven their claims, including that they were tortured after reporting alleged illegal activities by their company. But it did say they had alleged enough specific mistreatment to warrant hearing evidence of exactly what happened.

Andersen said his decision "represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting."

Andersen did throw out two of the lawsuit's three counts but gave former contractors Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel the green light to go forward with a third count alleging they were unconstitutionally tortured under procedures personally approved by Rumsfeld.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gBaIp2FW3RTKSDqXVXyhJa...

toniD's Ya Think?

Source: Boston Globe

Three weeks after Governor Deval Patrick warned that his administration might turn down health insurance premium increases it deemed excessive for individuals and small businesses, insurers have asked the state to approve rate hikes of 8 to 32 percent for April 1. Patrick last month said the state Division of Insurance would review rate increases exceeding 4.8 percent as part of a broader effort to rein in health care expenses. If the insurers’ latest round of increases is rejected, it would mark the first time Massachusetts has capped health insurance rates.

Insurers say such a move would cause confusion in the marketplace, as they already have negotiated contracts with many individuals and small businesses at the new rates. Capping the rates would also result in immediate financial losses, insurers assert, forcing them to cut payments to health providers and threatening the viability of weaker hospitals.

Executives from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest health insurer, have asked state officials to delay their decision on rates. And the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, a trade group representing 11 other insurers in the state, has asked for time to let insurers propose cost-savings alternatives of their own.

“Rushing into this could be perceived as putting price controls on health costs rather than making decisions based on sound actuarial data,’’ said Blue Cross-Blue Shield vice president Jay McQuaide, who blamed the increase in premiums mostly on the rise in medical spending. “This would cause significant disruption in the providing of health services.’’

http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2010/03/06/health_rat...

toniD's Ya Think?

Blackwater Iraq allegations prompt US review

Source: BBC News

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is to review allegations of misconduct in Afghanistan by the security company formerly known as Blackwater.

The review comes a day after a leading Democrat said the Pentagon should consider barring it from applying for a contract to train Afghan police.

The Pentagon said it could not bar the company from applying for the billion-dollar police training contract.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8553104.stm

toniD's Ya Think?

Rep. Massa's Early Exit From House May Ease Passage of Health Care Bill

Source: Christian Science Monitor

The planned resignation of Rep. Eric Massa (D) of New York on Monday may ultimately help fulfill President Obama’s goal of passing healthcare reform soon.

The freshman congressman voted against the bill when it passed the House in November by the narrow margin of 220 to 215. Mr. Massa was one of 39 Democrats to vote no.

He said he favored a single-payer healthcare system, and felt the House bill did not go far enough to bring down healthcare costs. Massa’s departure will eliminate one of the “no” votes that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to overcome as she seeks support to pass the Senate version of reform.

Massa is leaving Congress sooner than he had originally planned – at 5 p.m. on Monday, his office confirmed Friday.

http://www.truthout.org/rep-massas-early-exit-from-house-may-ease-passag...

toniD's Ya Think?

...please....

They're even peeing on the brown paper floor covering around the edges of the rooms that the painter put down to catch paint...

Anyone used Feliway? In what form?

Or Bach's remedy in the water?

Or should I just lock them out when the house is done and let the cats fall where they may?

After the painting there will be a sub-floor and vinyl floor put in...I fear they will race to piddle new zones for themselves...

toniD:
its called Nike Park,
On rt.53, N. of Fullerton, &
South of Army Trail Rd.
It's behind a Truck Rental business.
_ _ _
brr

Thank you! I have many friends who are planning to retire to mexico soon. This post is very helpful. Probably no place will remain safe if the world's citizens dont regroup and take back our government's that have been taken over by MIC and corporate business interests that violate natural laws of co -existence and natural living.

Army Trail is south of Fullerton.

I know that Park. I used to deliver tickets in that area.

toniD's Ya Think?

Banks shuttered in Fla., Ill., Md., Utah

Source: By IEVA M. AUGSTUMS and MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Regulators on Friday shuttered banks in Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Utah, boosting to 26 the number of bank failures in the U.S. so far this year following the 140 brought down in 2009 by mounting loan defaults and the recession.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Sun American Bank, based in Boca Raton, Fla., with $535.7 million in assets and $443.5 million in deposits. Also seized were Bank of Illinois of Normal, Ill., with $211.7 million in assets and $198.5 million in deposits; Waterfield Bank in Germantown, Md., with $155.6 million in assets and $156.4 million in deposits; and Centennial Bank in Ogden, Utah, with $215.2 million in assets and $205.1 million in deposits.

First-Citizens Bank & Trust Co., based in Raleigh, N.C., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of Sun American Bank and to share losses with the FDIC on $433 million of the failed bank's loans and other assets. It was First-Citizens' fourth acquisition of assets of a failed bank since last July; the others were First Regional Bank of Los Angeles, Venture Bank of Lacey, Wash., and Temecula Valley Bank of Temecula, Calif.

...The pace of bank seizures this year is likely to accelerate in coming months, FDIC officials have said...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100306/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bank_closures

toniD's Ya Think?

Left there at 10:30 last night. Should have slept there!

Later

toniD's Ya Think?

talking about the "Shit My Dad Says" guy getting a development deal for a teevee show?

I already wondered. Then I came here and saw about the Mexico blog in re WNUR so I thought I'd ask.

Thanks again JMACH for posting about this show (This Is Hell_ because I did NOT know about it and I REALLY like it.

caught the early show of alice in wonderland yesterday. our local paper panned it, but that just makes them wrong.

Submitted by nora on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 2:26am.

You Nora must be the sexiest woman I have never met.

If you youtube him you ca see how he has done things to change things that we only dream (read and watch) about...Such as...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52BGI5_fcUM

V. cool...

Submitted by taozen on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 11:23am.

just what I needed to see before a long dull, busy day at work.... :)

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Considering Stepping Down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any updates? I am reminded of 6 Feet Under's Nate when pondering Roberts. Man with a corporate soul. And he is probably not the worst one of the gang of 4.

Many believe that Turkey's denial for the Armenian genocide is because they fear being forced to pay billions and billions in reparations for the crimes of the interim Young Turks (CUP) government. Turkey is not a wealthy country.

or puddling?

http://www.michaelteachings.com

Michael carries a blue sword with which he can cut and detach your being from things you are attached to...

I am rooting for the underdog big time. When everyone goes after him there must be a bigger reason. .

(didn't rudy guilliani live at Yankee stadium?)

Turtlehead Bloomberg smells. go back in your shell and Hide from the needs of the people.
The NY press is out of control. When will people wake up and see they are being manipulated. It must be those food additives keeping them complacent. salt peater anyone?

THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPLOITATION OF JEWISH SUFFERING (Second Edition)

In 2007, Raul Hilberg, most distinguished historian on the Nazi holocaust and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, said:

"...Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."
('World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure', Democracy NOW!, 05.09.2007 )
Hilberg comments on the first edition of The Holocaust Industry:

"When I read Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry , at the time of its appearance, I was in the middle of my own investigations of these matters, and I came to the conclusion that he was on the right track. I refer now to the part of the book that deals with the claims against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the research, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results. I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years, will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough."

More of Hilberg's statements on The Holocaust Industry and Finkelstein here.

"Informing Finkelstein's analysis is a universal ethics... He, and not the Jewish organizations he criticizes, is following the example set by the great Jewish prophets."

-- The Nation

"...clever, explosive, sometimes even wryly funny."

-- Salon.com

"... a short, sharp and copiously noted polemic."

-- Times Higher Educational Supplement

"... his basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due."

-- The Economist

"... Finkelstein has raised some important and uncomfortable issues... examples cited can be breathtaking in their angry accuracy and irony."

-- The Jewish Quarterly

"Finkelstein is at his best when he skewers those who would sacralize the Holocaust..."

-- Los Angeles Times Book Review

ARTICLES AND REVIEWS RELATED TO "THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY"

12.27.2008
* The Jewish Week:
"Survivors Balking At Lawyer's Fee" (More on pro bono Holocaust huckster) 03.02.2006

* Raul Hilberg interviews on The Holocaust Industry & Finkelstein (2000/2001)

* Survivors Protest Holocaust Industry Shakedown (08.29.2000)

07.08.2008 New evidence of Swiss Banks' Perfidy; Alfonse D'Amato, Burt Neuborne, Alan Hevesi, Edgar Bronfman, Rabbi Israel Singer demand U.S. impose sanctions; House and Senate to hold hearings; Stuart Eizenstat named official White House liaison

07.03.2008 U.S. Jewish leaders call on Lithuania to pay Holocaust compensation for "needy Holocaust victims." Recent study shows that as many as 10,000 Holocaust victims are being born everyday without adequate prenatal care.

03.01.2008 Another Holocaust Remembrance Day, another Holocaust Industry Fraud

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=3

yes this is hell is great.
Chuck M. a regular guy who
does great full lenght interviews.

When I lived further east I could listen
while driving in my car early Sunday mornings,
when there is little traffic.

Now I have to listen at home online, or
with My rooftop Antenna aimed at Evanston il,

Maybe someday i'll be able to afford an iphone or
internet streaming radios will be factory installed
in cars. - or maybe they are?
I'm so behind the times.
_ _ _ _
brr

Do you think Roberts ever even tried working with dogs?

:)

(Or are you talking about the suspense...?)

(Don't mind me...[Please :}]

Saturdays are good b/c Leah comes and kicks it. Another very sexy brain.

------
Alice: Kevin Zeese. Very cool.

-----
Oh, except...I have to leave...tons to do. Gotta take advantage of the dead day...so far. (HopeIhopeIhope it stays that way.)

Nate was fiction; Roberts is real--and deadly.
I do hope he resigns and lives a long life.

I was referring to the brain disorder of Nate's. My understanding is that Roberts's disorder is similar. Or is it plain old epilepsy that will affect his reasoning on occasion?

I agree! and You (gloryoski) my little pet are included in my wonderlust for truth and
satiation.

That is why the Vulcan mind meld is illegal in many bible belt states

Today we heard many rumors of John Roberts stepping down. The decision would have been made due to personal reasons, however these rumors were proved to be false. According to information on The Daily Beast , these rumors might have started on Professor Peter Tague's criminal law class on Georgetown University Law Center. On his class, he said that they couldn't tell, but from an unknown source he heard John Roberts would be stepping down. Half an hour later, he told this was just a joke...

Senate Has the Votes for Health Care Reform
Open Left now counts 50 Senators that have made public statements supporting the use of the budget reconciliation to pass fixes to the previously passed health care reform bill.

That would move the spotlight to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to round up the 216 votes she needs to pass the measure through her chamber.

http://openleft.com/diary/17708/mark-begich-open-to-reconciliation-for-h...

toniD's Ya Think?

Q: How do they take over democratic decisionmaking?

Grossman: As soon as a corporation is chartered- corporations are chartered in the states-at the very moment of conception, the corporate form is endowed with certain rights and privileges. They can shape elections, shape the development of ideas, write the laws, and shape public debate. They can do what Enron did-transform thinking at the federal level about energy, and shut people up and out at the state and local level.

Look at the next steps. Why is it that people in communities, municipalities, and states believe they can't pass laws that ban corporations from spending any money on election campaigns, or that they can't pass laws that even ban particular products of corporations from their communities? If a community set out today to say "within our jurisdiction, no genetically modified food is allowed to enter," or if it passed a law that banned any corporate contribution to public discussion of ideas or to referenda, the corporations' lawyers would run right to federal court. The court would end up throwing the laws out, claiming constitutional rights and privileges of the corporation dating back to the Commerce Clause, the First Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Q: It sounds almost conspiratorial to say that corporations shape how we think. How does that work?

Grossman: Well, I'm not sure what conspiratorial means. There's a corporate class that has enormous wealth, and the power of law behind it, and it dominates the way issues are framed. I mean, is it really true that the majority of the American people over the last twenty-five years didn't want a major transition in energy to move to efficiency and solar, didn't want universal health care, but wanted pig genes in fish?

Isn't it extraordinary that despite shelves and shelves of books and all kinds of practical experience on all these issues, the dominant view on everything from energy to corporate agriculture is that big technology, chemicals, and the most complex energy systems possible are the best? Where do these ideas come from, and how are they sustained? They're surely not the ideas that people believe are going to make their communities more harmonious, democratic places.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Controlling_Corporations/RichardGrossm...

The loss of 36,000 jobs in February is better than expected but it's still miserable. 26,000 were lost in January, according to the government's revised figures. And the "underemployment" rate -- including jobless workers who have given up looking for work and part-time workers who want full time jobs -- rose from 16.5% in January to 16.8% in February, offsetting some of January's gains.

And don't blame it mostly on the weather. Although the surveys on which the report is based were done in mid-February during winter snowstorms in the east, the major impact of bad weather was on hours worked, not the numbers of jobs. If you had a job in February but were snowed in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported you as having a job.

This complicates the president's final push for health care reform. With employers still shedding jobs and consumer confidence down, Americans are worried first and foremost about paying their bills. Because most people aren't aware of how much of their paychecks are being eaten up by rising health care costs, but can easily be persuaded they'll be paying more to cover those who don't have health insurance under any new health plan, the continuing bad news on the jobs front makes it harder for the president to make his health-care sale.

The bad news on jobs also allows economic illiterates (and scoundrels who know better) to continue to claim the stimulus is failing and what's needed is less government rather than more, including not only a smaller "jobs bill" but less or no health care reform.

In politics as in economics and love, timing is everything. Obama can't wait much longer if he wants to convince wavering and worried conservative Democrats to join him in a last ditch 51-vote reconciliation measure to get health care through the Senate. We're already in the gravitational pull of November's mid-term elections. But the economy is taking a longer time to turn around than anyone expected, and telling Americans the jobs numbers are getting worse more slowly isn't exactly reassuring.

One small political consolation is the worst job numbers continue to be on the coasts and the old rust belt where Democrats are relatively safer, and the best numbers in the midwest and mountain states and south where Democrats are weakest. So at least Blue Dog Democrats who are under the most pressure from their conservative constituents on health care aren't grappling with the biggest job losses. More...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-jobless-rate-makes-he_b_4...

My friend Rita called me crying this morning. She's not been able to find a job, she's overweight and has diabetes and told me her numbers were up because of the stress and she only has 6 months left of Cobra.

She'll be 62 this year but even if she retires early for SS she won't have health insurance because you have to be 65 to get Medicare and she's afraid of what insurance will cost. She's really devastated. I'm trying to help her with programs but it's hard to find because she's in that place where she would make just a bit too much for medicaid.

What a mess.

toniD's Ya Think?

ABC is in talks with Christiane Amanpour for the "This Week" hosting job, Politico's Michael Calderone reports.

Amanpour, the star CNN international correspondent who recently launched a new Sunday show on CNN, is known mostly for her global reporting, making her a somewhat surprising consideration for a show that has mostly focused on domestic politics.

George Stephanopoulos left the show to join "Good Morning America." Since his departure, a mix of ABC News talent — including Barbara Walters, Jonathan Karl, Jake Tapper, Terry Moran, and Elizabeth Vargas — has filled in. ABC political analyst and former Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd guest-hosts this Sunday.

"On Sunday morning, we're looking for someone who is very intelligent and a strong interviewer and can engage in a discussion," ABC News president David Westin, who added that he hopes to make a decision in a matter of weeks, said recently. "Someone who can bring out conflicting points of view" and who "has a broad sense of public policy."

A CNN spokesperson had no comment to Politico; neither did ABC News Senior Vice President Jeffrey Schneider, who said the network has "talked to lots of people inside and outside" regarding the position.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/05/christiane-amanpour-abcs_n_4878...

toniD's Ya Think?

Have a great day all

Later

toniD's Ya Think?

I, for one, was psyched about the Let Markets Be Markets held last week but I never got to hear or read about what was discussed/proffered. Luckily Lawrence Lessig found time to go, below he offers his take on the conference.

Systemic Denial

Submitted by taozen on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 12:02pm.

That is why the Vulcan mind meld is illegal in many bible belt states
-----
Can't seem to find much I wanna do that's legal down here...

-----
I meant the South, not "downstairs." :}

Bloody Hell Are They Talking About?"}
{...but after TMNT ;)(in a bit - in background)}
...& more tea 2 brew 2...yum
;)

(...had scones but they met a horrid fate & had 2b thrown away... :):( )

...if you're one of the ones tuned in right now.

:)

"Te**&a+**)Party Pa&&tri==[[[ots Ht T Radio 2day! Listen excloosively onlyne @"

---
kill self was a lyric when I first started typing. then customers...so...probably not even mb understood...

FON

and good day blog....

I was out piddling around on the Cougar. Ran errands in it so it was actually useful for the first time. Got home in bright sunshine and thought I'd wash the Dodge. Instead of paying to get it done like normal, I decided I'd take advantage of the sunshine and wash it myself so I got back in the Cougar and bought all the stuff I needed to wash a car as I haven't actually washed a car in a decade.

I came out of the auto parts store literally 10 minutes later to 100% clouds and dark skies. If you don't like the weather here you just have to wait about 10 minutes.

As far as violence in Mexico, I'd be hard pressed to say the dangers are worse there than here. I've never had any fear or threat while walking around unarmed on any street at any time in Mexico the many months and years I've been there. I can't say that living here. You are however at a higher risk of living in a flood zone as zoning isn't very developed in Mexico.

but for the record. I've never lived in the war zones of Chiapas. Chiapas is in peril because it is like heaven and too many want to take it from the indigenous people.

overlooks the characters who post on the blog

she knows a Crank call (bait)
a call to arms(ghetodefender et al.)
a call for alms ( mhappenow)
A Nora warning
a misty mire age photograph
a skate in the park with alice of wonderland
a sunday morning postman's delivery (maggies boy)
a petition to stay involved( MM rules)
a greek delicacy (toniD) where does she get that energy?
a cry for animal rights (smigey and Ms-A and more
a speeding car racer chasing fleeting moments of ecstasy) (nando)
a breakfast tamale ( with a smokey Blue berry dessert) 60th st.
boys in the band (gbasin)
a Canadian sunrise surprize (sunny boy williams aficionado)
the value of 2 cents worth insight
++++++++++++
Robyn stays quiet because she is wanted in a few states for challenging the status quo with her hin jew sharp tongue and take no prisoners attitude)
luckily for me she likes my cooking and remembers my faithful attempts at her post lymphoma nursing .

there are many more who deserve attention but I think I haved nursed this riff along a little too much.

...blah, blah, blah

?

Soliciting ideas on how to stop cats from peeing in the house
new
Submitted by Alice on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 10:45am.

Sorry bout the kitties peeing in house - I've had a similar
problem - also on a really nice couch (which is now out in the garage wrapped in heavy duty plastic - until I can afford to get it re-upholstered)
I have used Feliway - works - also have used "Bottled Blessing" No Spray which is an all natural liquid.
http://www.bottledblessings.com/

Good Luck & let me know how it works out dear - love ya:)

i'm not a siskel or ebert so take it with a grain of salt.

i thought the movie was great. i don't know the original story so they could take libertys with it and i wouldn't know. the biggest surprise for me was the number of small kids but then it is pg-13. if you go to see it, you might want to choose a later time. the characters that i recall were all there. the visual effects were good.

I'm not crying, I'm chopping onions plus it's a bad allergy day and I just whacked my thumb with an hammer.

kind words in a rough 'n tumble world go a long way

you realize that was just a stripmall...

I can't stay on this bus much longer!

Who Are the Actual 'Crazy' People in American Politics?
by Glenn Greenwald

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/04-10

I am just sinning against everything sacred 2day.

Alice...you got any kitties out there peeing on your floor that maybe are meowing in Portuguese...? I may need a peace offering

----
Oh nevermind. Cancel the bbk. I'm good.

SOONER PANTIES in a bunch. :P

A 13 year old kid saw it & passed along this gem.

"this machine kills fascists"

to a friend's daughter. Poor innocent thing, little does she know it's the instrument of the devil. When folks asked Maggie if I played guitar she would say "Lord no, he's only in prison!".

;-)

Back later

bring back the workhouse. bring back public hangings for pickpockets. bring back debtors prison. nobodys special unless you are born rich.

your last video post helps me stay focused.

The rabbi's tone of voice is music to my ears

Who Are the Actual 'Crazy' People in American Politics?
by Glenn Greenwald

sounds very interesting - always looking 4 good books
2 read.

Looking forward to seeing "Alice in Wonderland"
Tim Burton's work is different & I love that in
a movie maker, directer, whatever u want to call
it.

I couldn't finish watching that faux show thing on Mr
Rogers - that is pitiful. 60th thanks - that just goes
to show ya how lame they r.

Organizing the unemployed:

You lost your job. You're not alone. 31 million Americans face the same challenges. You want your job back. You want your life back. But you can't do it alone. Neither can anyone else. You all need each other. That's what UCubed is here to do: Help you and 31 million other Americans organize, work together and get back to work. Let UCubed help you connect. Form a cube, and multipy your political and economic power by 6. Then by 36. Eventually, by 31 million. Take Control.

http://www.unionofunemployed.com/

(h/t to http://www.rall.com/rants.html )
__________________________________

In Search Of:
The Democrats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkDQN0j2Oys

Good pie.

You lost your job. You're not alone. 31 million Americans face the same challenges. You want your job back. You want your life back. But you can't do it alone.

_____________________

Did Hemingway write these sentences? wtf?

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

slamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- More than two dozen militants were killed Friday in a Pakistani military airstrike that targeted high-value Taliban leaders, a Pakistani military official told CNN on Saturday.
The strike on militant hideouts in the country's tribal region killed Taliban leader Fateh Mohammad, Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Pakistani station Express TV.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/06/pakistan.militants/index.htm...

{& a break yeah pant pant yeah}
;) early Monk show on ch. 2

you are telling me. I washed a car between pit stops. It rains tomorrow and Monday.

Grand-Am has nearly 30 minutes to go.

There were six wild horses on my mail route today Ms. A...
new
Submitted by gbasin on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 1:27am.

Some of them had pooped right in front of some mail boxes! Really, no shit!

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/nevadas-wild-horses-an-endangered-speci...

Then less than a mile from this nitrogen rich and somewhat aromatic postal encounter were about 20 pelicans soaring in a V formation that turned into an arabesque spiral as they rode a thermal towards Pyramid Lake.

Al Franken's Radio show on Air America Blast from past...
new
Submitted by toniD on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 7:56am.

Al Franken's Radio show: secret tape of the hunting trip Scalia had with Cheney -- April 13, 2004

Hey toniD - Thanks 4 that - I LMFAO!!!

American Scott Pruett and Mexican Memo Rojas took the Telmex Riley first to the finish line in the Miami Hempstead Grand-Am! They came in 2nd in the 24hr. -

Te-Cheers, yet ATT still Tea Time ;)
...yet I must ask an organic "blend" type of question...

The famously long-lived people of the Talysh Mountains are now said to be dying younger, reports the BBC's Tom Esslemont from Azerbaijan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8550374.stm

enquiring minds want to know: how many times have we killed this one?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8552106.stm

Saddam Hussein's Baath party is banned in Iraq, but the doors of its office in the heart of the Syrian capital, Damascus, are wide open.
"That's our hero," says Khudeir Rashidi, the party spokesman, pointing at Saddam Hussein who looks down from portraits on the walls.
Iraq's dictator may be dead, but his supporters in Damascus insist that his party lives on.
"We have millions of members in Iraq who are working for the cause," Mr Rashidi says.
The cause, he says, is the liberation of Iraq from the American occupiers through military resistance.
"We have many weapons, we manufacture bombs, we are working very effectively underground," he says.
(continues)

Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama
Email this item Email

Posted on Aug 10, 2009

...

We owe Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party an apology. They were right. If a few million of us had had the temerity to stand behind our ideals rather than our illusions and the empty slogans peddled by the Obama campaign, we would have a platform. We forgot that social reform never comes from accommodating the power structure but from frightening it. The Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists who battled for women’s rights, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement knew that the question was not how do we get good people to rule—those attracted to power tend to be venal mediocrities—but how do we limit the damage the powerful do to us. These mass movements were the engines for social reform, the correctives to our democracy and the true protectors of the rights of citizens. We have surrendered this power. It is vital to reclaim it. Where is the foreclosure movement? Where is the robust universal health care or anti-war movement? Where is the militant movement for sustainable energy?

“Something is broken,” Nader said when I reached him at his family home in Connecticut. “We are not at the Bangladesh level in terms of passivity, but we are getting there. No one sees anything changing. There is no new political party to give people a choice. The progressive forces have no hammer. When they abandoned our campaign, they told the Democrats we have nowhere to go and will take whatever you give us. The Democrats are under no heat in the electoral arena from the left.

“There comes a point when the public imbibes the ultimatum of the plutocracy,” Nader said when asked about public apathy. “They have bought into the belief that if it protests, it will be brutalized by the police. If they have Muslim names, they will be subjected to Patriot Act treatment. This has scared the hell out of the underclass. They will be called terrorists.
...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090810_nader_was_right_liberals_ar...

...I'm getting desperate...and those feliway diffuser refills are expensive... :)

You'll be the first to know if one of my cats says anything in Portuguese.... :)

Open war over Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's master of the dark arts

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's outspoken chief of staff, has become embroiled in a public row with his critics amid accusations that he has damaged the standing of the presidency and undermined his boss.

Emanuel has become the subject of an intense war of words between those who blame him for the failings of Obama's tough first year in office and those who insist that Obama should have listened to him more. If the controversy deepens any further, some feel that he may be forced to resign.

The development has been remarkable for a man in Emanuel's job, which calls for him to adopt a behind-the-scenes role similar to that of a Mafia boss's consigliere, whispering advice in the ear of the president and then strong-arming political targets into obeying his master's will.

But critics say the row shows just how much of a strain Obama's first year of office has taken on his top White House team after a series of political setbacks, especially over healthcare. Officials in Obama's administration, who once appeared so united, now seem to be in siege mode and starting to fight among themselves. more..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/07/war-rahm-emanuel-barack-obam...

toniD's Ya Think?

In Europe, Volcker Makes Case For Bank Trading Limits

Source: Reuters

Commercial banks will come to resemble hedge funds over time unless new rules are introduced setting limits on proprietary trading, White House economic adviser Paul Volcker said on Saturday.

In a speech at the Bellevue presidential palace in Berlin, Volcker made the case for proposals being pushed by the administration of President Barack Obama that would lead to a clamp down on risky bank activities.

The proposals have been dubbed the "Volcker rule" after the former Federal Reserve chairman.

"Without any limitation on proprietary activity by commercial banks, they will, indeed, over time come to take on the characteristics of hedge funds," Volcker said in the text of a speech provided to Reuters before delivery.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/03/06/business/business-us-financial...

toniD's Ya Think?

How 'Free Market' Snookers Americans

Corporate America | Economic Policy
by Don Monkerud | March 5, 2010 - 11:48am

Under the guise of "the free market," conglomerates merged and bought up smaller companies, until, today, they dominate their respective markets in every commodity offered for sale in the U.S.

In this race to consolidate, companies "rationalized" their offerings, in many cases dropping up to 40 percent of what they formerly produced. They buy from the same suppliers, use interchangeable parts and common ingredients, and re-name similar brands, essentially placing the same product in different packages.

-snip-

Before Ronald Reagan we accepted inefficiencies to protect a free political system," says Lynn. "In 1981, we changed laws to a consumer welfare test, measured by price and economies of scale; hence, any consolidation can appear to promote the welfare of the consumer. Unlimited growth was made acceptable. This was a revolutionary overthrow of our antimonopoly laws."

Today libertarian think tanks such as the CATO Institute, serve as "the vanguard of a neofeudalist movement" to attack democratic government. They and other conservative propagandists have spent $30 billion in the past 30 years to promote their agenda and convince people that massive layoffs, foreign competition, and higher prices are the result of "natural free-market forces."

Squeezed from all sides, some Americans react by becoming corporate shock troops attacking their own government.

"Those who control our corporations managed an Orwellian achievement to redefine the use of brute corporate force as 'market forces,'" says Lynn. "We still believe in a consumer utopia, but we have an illusion of choice. Corporate powers manipulate our decision-making and direct us to buy certain goods at certain prices."

Institutional power shifted to Wall Street and large financial institutions. Today a small elite runs corporations to serve themselves as they concentrate their power. Some Americans are waking up to the reality of their situation, but Congress lacks the will to regulate corporate power.
"If we choose to protect our republican way of government, which depends on the separation of powers within our economy and our political system-then we have only one choice, says Lynn."We must restore antitrust law to its central role in protecting our economic rights and breaking up dangerous concentrations of power."
_______

More at.........

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/27171/don_monkerud/how_free_market_s...

toniD's Ya Think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWvG9L1jqq0&feature=player_embedded

toniD on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 10:03pm
His cabinet are mostly DLC.

I have a question for Mw_A /|\?
Are there bad witches that resemble the DLC?

Is there a binder for that?

Just a ?

Submitted by gloryoski on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 12:57am.
I think you should spell out the logical leap you made, as though correlation and causation here were utterly inseparable. (I am not saying there's no possible connection, in this case...That would be stupid.)
-----
Should I comment on the inanity above? Of course I should.

gloryoski implied that whatever I said (I said nothing beyond 'no comment') would be illogical, then she immediately followed the implication with the contradiction that it could easily be logical.

I agree with gloryoski. It could be Yes or it could be No. In fact, everything in the universe could be Yea or Nay. This circular deductive journey through passive-aggressive, wishy-washy, comme ci comme ça, uninformative assumption has been thoughtlessly brought to you by gloryoski.
---------------------------------------------
Submitted by gloryoski on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 12:57am.
But maybe you were just taking a cheap shot like...

Sure had some gynormous ears, this Bedell.

(Utterly dorky and lacking-in-edge, true. About equally unfunny as yours. But less presumptuous, and less monotonous. Zzzzzz.)
----------
I guess I got me a lesson in cheap shots, didn't I?

Keep in mind that I wrote four words (a fact that gloryoski neglected to mention). They are "Should I comment? Naaaw."

gloryoski created her own comment. The device I used is intended to nudge the reader toward formulating his/her own determination which is exactly what gloryoski did. Unfortunately, she applied the ideas created within her own mind to me.

For her next trick, she pronounced my 'no comment' to be a cheap shot, then she followed it up with four shots directed at my non-comment (i.e. unfunny, presumptuous, monotonous, and sleep inducing) and a fifth directed at anyone who has protruding ears.

gloryoski---I can make dozens of logical links between establishment-paranoid shooters and establishment-paranoid non-shooters. They are polemics, for one. They are obsessively contrarian, for another. They reflexively blame somebody (actual human beings having names, exactly as Conservatives do, exactly as racists do, exactly as Nationalists do) for whatever unfairly imposed plight they claim for themselves.

The term "tin foil hat" is universally accepted as perched atop paranoid musings. "The black helicopter crowd" does not refer to aviation buffs. I did not create these ubiquitous expressions of craziness; they entered the lexicon to describe a mindset that exists and is easily recognized.

Relentless Contrarians are generally believed to be nuts because they are. Knee-jerk polemicism has, at best, no better odds of being correct on any particular issue than a flip of a coin does of coming up heads. Valid reasoning does not begin with a preordained conclusion and flow backwards to the same "truth" every time. That's how we define racism. That's how we define a fanatic. That's how McCarthyism thrived.

It is possible for bad things to happen as the result of chaos or happenstance or a long series of events beyond the control of one or more persons. Not every occurrence in a complex world can be blamed on evil intent...unless you are a nutbag, in which case every occurrence will most certainly be blamed on the wicked.

Some people need enemies to hate every day. Their participation in a "cause" is a means to that end. Their world view is Old Testament Authoritarianism: They have a bloodlust to expose and punish people. It has no relationship with problem solving. It is hatred and resentment. It can be recognized in the language they use and from which they rarely stray.

Not every enthusiastic soldier is a patriot. Some of them are enthusiastic because they are batshit crazy. Either you figure this out on your own or you go to your grave with the misconception that anyone wearing your team colors is as sane as you are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2CoVcvPvM

An amazing series of three articles by David McGraw.

Part I:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/the-economic-elite-vs-the-people-of-th...

Part II:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/the-rise-of-the-economic-elite/

Part III:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/exposing-our-enemy-meet-the-economic-e...

There's one...On my head!

Right! Now!

Unfortunately he's not speaking Portuguese.

This is one thing I don't like about them. How they lay in wait to pounce...Cats, I mean.

This is why I am a dog person.

As to the rest, I'll just say "no comment." (Seriously. No time dude.) Because I have just had implicit instruction as to how that could never be passive aggressive.

:)

Obama's meeting with the BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE at which he declares he is a free market capitalist--

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/02/obama-to-the-business-ro...

[excerpt]

Contrary to the claims of some of my -- some of my critics, and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market,” Obama told the group from the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C this afternoon. “I want everyone in this room to succeed. I want your shareholders to do well, I want your workers to do well, I want you to do well. Because I firmly believe that America's success in large part depends on your success, internationally.”

Added Obama, “And I also believe this: Government has a vital, if limited, role to play in fostering sustained economic growth and creating the foundations for you to succeed.”

The President said that too often this is greeted with rhetoric of a “government takeover” or “socialism.”

“Rather than hurling accusations about big government liberals or mean-spirited conservatives,” the president said that it should all be about being “pro-growth and pro-jobs.”

[end excerpt]

-----

Obama's remarks to CEO's Business Roundtable in written form:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/24/obamas_remarks_to_t...

[excerpt]

Over the last year, we've worked together on a number of issues -- from economic recovery and tax policy to education and to health care. And more often than not, we've found common ground.

[end excerpt]

==============

Education, too? I thought the CEOs just wrote the bills on tax exemptions and healthcare insurance mandates....

-------

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcDyN2juFUY

those who don't understand cats,
and those who think cats are kind of douchebags."

http://www.cracked.com/article/226_6-adorable-cat-behaviors-with-shockin...

Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel.
True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.

– Missy Dizick

Personally, I loves me some furry little bastards.

Education too...Bigtime.

That Duncan is a nasty-ass piece of work. (And then, of course, there's "how he was able to gain employment.")

I'd rather have Spelling back. At least she did her ass-clownery more out in the open.

FONTTMWAE (true to my word, as ever).

Hola Sederville!

In case you missed these...

STUDY: Atheists and Liberals Are Smarter than Most
I’m sure this comes as a complete shock to you all, but apparently we value reason over fantasy because we are smart, and by smart I mean, “not completely devoid of thought”.

Via Science Daily:

More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

And this one...

A New Timely Study Links Religion and Racism, Duh.

The study’s abstract reads:

A meta-analytic review of past research evaluated the link between religiosity and racism in the United States since the Civil Rights Act. Religious racism partly reflects intergroup dynamics. That is, a strong religious in-group identity was associated with derogation of racial out-groups. Other races might be treated as out-groups because religion is practiced largely within race, because training in a religious in-group identity promotes general ethnocentrism, and because different others appear to be incompetition for resources. In addition, religious racism is tied to basic life values of social conformity and respect for tradition. In support, individuals who were religious for reasons of conformity and tradition expressed racism that declined in recent years with the decreased societal acceptance of overt racial discrimination. The authors failed to find that racial tolerance arises from humanitarian values, consistent with the idea that religious humanitarianism is largely expressed to in-group members. Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant.

So don't be too surprised at what the Corporopress presents this week. See
Brick TeeVee Oscars Special: It's all an act!
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5698
Your Sunday Talkies Guest Lists and MORE!

ALSO I have to ask all of you for some help. You may have seen OH SoS Jennifer Brunner's posts at the Big Orange Place (see Jennifer Brunner Diary Page "I'm Ohio Secretary of State and I'm running for the U.S. Senate.") She is running against milque-toast long-time OH pol & current Lt Gov Lee Fisher in the OH DEM primary May 4th (yes the same day as the 40th Anniversary of the Kent State shootings) to fill retiring Voinovich's Senate seat. If you live in Ohio, know people in Ohio or have an Ohio connection please sign up and help at www.jenniferbrunner.com and tell your friends in Ohio! Fisher is on the ODP "Endorsed Candidates" list, so many OH Dems will get their ODP Candidate Card to take with them into the polling booth to vote "the ticket". This is an uphill battle and the latest poll has JB down about 8 points. We only have about eight weeks to mobilize and Get The Vote Out for Jennifer Brunner. I can personally attest to her activism and progressive creds, having worked back in 2006 to get her votes for SoS in NE OH (not a paid staffer, just a grasssrooter putting out signs, making calls, etc.) If you have some sofa change please donate via Act Blue HERE.

If you think this isn't serious see DSCC threatens Jennifer Brunner in OH-SEN, over money! UPDATE by Tim Russo @ kos: "The people who brought you Joe Lieberman are gearing up to knee cap the only Democrat who can win the US Senate seat in Ohio."

Thanks for your support for Jennifer Brunner!

Soliciting ideas on how to stop cats from peeing in the house
Submitted by Alice on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 10:45am.
...please....
...
============================

First, my condolences.

Next, the only times I've seen this problem is when a cat is ill or stressed or territorial, when the cat's box isn't clean enough, or when the cat has to share a box with a new cat in the house.

We have had a great streak of good luck for 6 years now since we bought a catbox for everyday of the week -- seven cat boxes! -- for our two cats. (I know it looks like conspicuous consumption, but stay with me.)

We replace the catbox every morning with a clean box, and clean all the soiled boxes on Saturday (our household chore day). I wish I had learned this trick years ago; it has made such a big difference in our lives. We don't succumb to (the VERY human weakness of) putting off cleaning the box (such an unpleasant task) or just adding more clean litter to the soiled in a lazy way. We no longer face our inevitable human failures on a daily basis. (What a psychological relief for the human involved!)

AND we find we actually use LESS catlitter, because we put just enough litter in the box to accomodate one day's needs (a shallow layer is all that's needed for our two cats). It is much more pleasant too. Overpowering odors from number one are a rarity now; also a rarity is the tracking of stinky wet litter out of the catbox (-- no more of that, thank heaven!).

I also read in a pet newsletter we used to receive that vets recommend each cat have its own litterbox when there are multiple cats in the household. That sounds okay; however the same problem could happen where the human is just too tired or busy to go through the trouble of keeping the litterboxes as fastidiously clean as the cats require; I think this method also could be improved by purchasing plenty of boxes so that all one has to do is replace the soiled one with a clean one (and do the cleaning part all at once when there is time on a weekend or designated time).

I built a sort of tall table on my porch and cover it with a nice piece of fabric that covers the whole thing to the floor. On top I put some newspaper and that's where I feed the cats. Tucked away under the table, unseen because of the fabric draped 'tablecloth', I store all the stacked CLEAN catboxes, each filled with clean litter and ready to be brought in come morning. The soiled boxes I put in the side yard camouflaged by some shrubs until cleaning day. All our boxes have latch-on lids with just an open door hole for the cat to get in an out, so even when they are outside waiting to be cleaned, the smell doesn't escape them readily to be a nuisance. But I think one could still do this once a week cleaning thing with the litterboxes that have no lids at all; my solution to that would be to put them under a piece of plastic or cardboard to keep them from smelling until cleaning day.

Maybe your cats are just upset about the whole inconvenience of the redecorating process. Maybe they'll calm down when it is over.

Good luck.

Submitted by Leah on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 12:16pm.
I was referring to the brain disorder of Nate's. My understanding is that Roberts's disorder is similar. Or is it plain old epilepsy that will affect his reasoning on occasion?
======================

Are the Federalist Society and Corporatists worried Roberts could suddenly do an epilepsy-induced switcharoo and make progressive rulings instead of reactionary rulings? This notion taken to this political extent brings a chuckle of irony to me.

Are the Federalist Society and Corporatists worried Roberts could suddenly do an epilepsy-induced switcharoo and make progressive rulings instead of reactionary rulings? This notion taken to this political extent brings a chuckle of irony to me.
----
I had not thought of that. I was thinking that Roberts's brain flashing disorder may disturb his reasoning and force him to resign. But if he turns anti-corporat, WTF!

The Nicole Sandler Show: Just got home from seeing Alice in Wonderland. LOVED IT, even without any mind-altering help... Visually stunning, dialog was interesting enough and story complex enough to make me want to go back again (perhaps next time see it in IMAX). Anyone else venture down the rabbit hole yet?

Thich Nhat Hanh:
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Thich-Nhat-Hanh

Taliban leader in Swat Valley killed in airstrike
Submitted by dan on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 8:54pm.
enquiring minds want to know: how many times have we killed this one?
==================

And how many civilians were killed in the airstrike. The usual 'guesstimate' of 15?

STOP THE MADNESS.

(On the progressive station I hear these PSAs with Obama reading about how to be a "good father", and I cringe everytime I hear it. Does a "good father' bring more unnecessary war, death and destruction to the world? Hypocrisy. The script says something like -- spend quality time with your kids. I guess that means after one has okayed the drone airstrikes on ancient tribal villages? Can a split personality do that, or what other psychological state? But I would not consider anyone who can do that the best model for good parenting.)

NPR Finds Right-Wing Crank to Spit on Howard Zinn's Grave

David Horowitz in ATC obituary with substance-free attack

-----

After quoting Noam Chomsky and Julian Bond, NPR's Allison Keyes turned to far-right activist David Horowitz to symbolically spit on Zinn's grave. "There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect," Horowitz declared. "Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse."

Horowitz's substance-free attack contributed nothing to an understanding of Zinn's life or work, other than conveying that he's disliked by cranky right-wingers. (Horowitz has been best known in recent years for his race-baiting and Muslim-bashing--Extra!, 5-6/02; FAIR report, 10/1/08.) He seems to have been included merely to demonstrate that NPR will not allow praise for a leftist to go unaccompanied by conservative contempt.

Needless to say, it is not the case that NPR has a consistent principle that all its obituaries be thus "balanced." Take its coverage of the death of William F. Buckley, a figure as admired by the right as much as Zinn was on the left. Upon his death in February 2008, NPR aired six segments commemorating him, none of which included a non-admiring guest. In two segments, All Things Considered (2/27/08) presented the remembrances of Rich Lowry (Buckley's successor at National Review), his son Christopher and his biographer Sam Tanenhaus.

One of the All Things Considered segments did include a soundbite of Noam Chomsky debating with Buckley: "No, I don't believe that.... In fact I think that..." But what Chomsky did not believe was unclear, let alone what he actually thought.

Talk of the Nation (2/27/08) featured admirer William Kristol, while Day by Day (2/27/08) had an extended interview with protegee David Brooks. Morning Edition (2/28/08) just quoted Buckley himself.

The celebration of Buckley culminated with Weekend Edition host Scott Simon (2/29/08), who turned the cause of death into a eulogy: "Emphysema, such an unseemly thing for a man who was so often a breath of fresh air."

In fact, there was much to criticize about Buckley, who was a supporter of, among other things, white supremacism in the U.S. South and South Africa, McCarthyism, nuclear war against China and the tattooing of AIDS patients' buttocks (Extra!, 5-6/08). Reporting his death, however, NPR didn't think it was worth bringing on a critic who would take a negative view. Why the same outlet took a different approach when the subject was an intellectual on the left rather than the right is perhaps something the NPR ombud could answer.
-----

ACTION: Please ask NPR ombud Alicia Shepard why All Things Considered brought on David Horowitz to trash the late Howard Zinn when NPR's extensive coverage of William F. Buckley included no critical guests.

CONTACT: You can contact NPR ombud through this web form, or call 202-513-3245.

Please post copies of your letters in the comments section on the FAIR Blog.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4009

and Amy G. I wish , I wish for a female with an intense acrid attidude ...I guess my type of attidude...and "sweet" smile...:D ...

Peter B. & Jeff F. ... & Sam WITH &/or with a segment with Cenk & TYTs. SAM BALANCES Cenk.

{hahaha edit... on this perfect day...hahaha}

Rockefeller pushes to rein in EPA

Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-WVa.) will introduce legislation Thursday to impose a two-year moratorium on the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants and other stationary emitters, a move that could undermine the Obama administration's plan to pursue a cap on carbon emissions in the face of congressional opposition.

Rockefeller's bill pdf, one of several recent congressional efforts to curb the EPA's authority to address climate change under the Clean Air Act, highlights the resistance the administration will face if it attempts to limit carbon dioxide through regulation. Obama and his top deputies have repeatedly said they would prefer for Congress to set mandatory, nationwide limits on greenhouse gas emissions, but the EPA is moving ahead with plans to do so if legislation fails to pass this year.

"Today, we took important action to safeguard jobs, the coal industry, and the entire economy as we move toward clean coal technology," Rockefeller said. "This legislation will issue a two-year suspension on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources (aka COAL FIRED PLANTS! Not like MOBILE sources like coal-fired STEAM ENGINES! -Ed.)--giving Congress the time it needs (the time it needs for Big Coal to craft THEIR FAVORABLE LEGISLATION. -Ed.) to address an issue as complicated and expansive as our energy future. Congress, not the EPA, must be the ideal decision-maker on such a challenging issue."

That is, J ROCK IV wants to STOP the EPA from even BEGINNING ANY INVESTIGATIONS on this. FOR TWO YEARS!

Call your pols!
http://www.thomhartmann.com/contact-congress/

Class Irritant. Kewl. ;D

President Obama is best for Human Issues, as every other president...
Now we must show Prez O the Correct Way - INCLUDING WITH and for Animals & Wilderness & Wildlife, not doin' same ol', same ol'. I'm just say'n...
IMHO ;)

A six-minute education in this CEOs' club and their self-proclaimed 'accomplishments' at dismantling democracy; from Alex Carey's "Taking the Risk Out Of Democracy":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFbyJ0a4DxM

h/t jen

Catholic Bishops Want To Change Senate Rules To Restrict Choice In Health Care
By: David Dayen @ FDL

~snip~
Essentially, the bishops would opt to try and change the reconciliation process and the Byrd rule to accommodate their restrictions of women’s choice. And they would threaten all Senators, Republican or Democrat, who didn’t vote their way, to break the rules.

Those are the words of a group that considers themselves more powerful than the government, and I suppose with good reason.

Now, I have no idea why they would think that Republicans in the Senate would vote affirmatively to untangle the only remaining piece between the Democrats and a health care bill. But, they cite as evidence of their power the initial vote on the Stupak amendment in the House in November, which every Republican voted for.

The precedent of waiving the reconciliation point of order whenever the mood strikes would be potentially powerful for essentially ending the filibuster. But my suspicion is that, if it comes to this, waiving the rules to make allowances for the Catholic bishops to crusade against women would be seen as a one-time deal. “We HAD to do that,” you see, and it’s not applicable to anything, you know, progressive.

If this actually happens – and if Pelosi has no other options to find the votes, I’ve little doubt that she’d at least explore it – you’ve basically ended the separation between church and state in this country.

...
I have a question for Mw_A /|\?
Are there bad witches that resemble the DLC?

Is there a binder for that?

Just a ?

*** ***

Mwah HaHa ... I do not know what "bad" means...

...now there is Evil everywhere...
*** ***
I was dealing with The Mustang for The Mustangs and now hope to have time to KickAss {as a wee irritant} regarding The Kewl Cougar...MEOW ;)

...in 2nd Life.
That is why I went there years ago and still trying to have time to learn what I need to do. but tres kewl...:D

*** ***
Catholic Bishops Want To Change Senate Rules To Restrict Choice
Submitted by FilthyRich on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 3:53am.
h/t jen

Catholic Bishops Want To Change Senate Rules To Restrict Choice In Health Care
By: David Dayen @ FDL

~snip~
Essentially, the bishops would opt to try and change the reconciliation process and the ****** see above POST for further info ******

I LOVE movies. I love to see how the Big Money can produce a singular fantasy world in 90-minutes on the Big or small Screen.

But THIS stuff (at link below) is even more jaw-dropping to me. Bits and pieces of a story that counters the packaged and sold Official Story. Amazing.

Mohammed Atta's Florida lifestyle, German friends, gobs of money and drugs, and mention of The Family (?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGYVD4A7eo&feature=related

William Cooper and his intuition/insight that indicated to him that he was witnessing a lead up to an event (like 9/11). This also can be filed under 'Stranger Than Any Fiction':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phKiT2-94XU&feature=related

What a can o'worms.

I love Separation of Church and State. And I do NOT like Theocracy.

Because pollinators love flowers too.

This is a newsletter from a plant nursery company, but this is such a great idea, I wanted to share it despite the commercial aspect--

http://highcountrygardens.com/ezine/march10.html?utm_source=ezine&utm_me...

===========

I remember reading a description once of the farm fields in Russia with blue cornflowers (bachelor buttons) filling the rows between the crops. Now that seems as practical as it sounded beautiful!

Really enjoyed that Alex Carey audio and went and looked up more. Thanks.

Tiger Woods infidelity press conference got world-wide, non-stop coverage. Dateline Feb. 19, 2010.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/02/18/DI201...

But, when there's another press conference about a topic of concern to many, a concurrent press conference in 38 cities in six countries, and it gets NO COVERAGE? Dateline Feb. 19, 2010.

How can that be?

http://world911truth.org/1000-architects-engineers-call-for-new-911-inve...

Especially when the event that second press conference was talking about is the reason that in excess of a million civilians have been killed at a cost of $1.5 TRILLION, and the death and war-profiteering continues unabated still....

War costs here:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

============

Is this comparison of press conferences a good example of irony?

irony -- n. -- an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected

==================

Or, is this comparison a good example of a (Feb. 29, 2010) coincidence?

coincidence -- n. -- a striking occurence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance

==================

But what can we call the fact that only one got media/press coverage? What word fits?

ehm, i wonder how that compares to "constitutionally tortured"

good morning blog, i wonder if there's gonna be a yathink today

i've been outta loop the last coupla days

nice pics, jmach

memo to self: buy a tripod (at least)

"On Sunday morning, we're looking for someone who is very intelligent and a strong interviewer and can engage in a discussion," ABC News president David Westin, who added that he hopes to make a decision in a matter of weeks, said recently. "Someone who can bring out conflicting points of view" and who "has a broad sense of public policy."

the studs terkel of our time

too bad he gets pidgeonholed as a comedian, or an ex aar talkshow host...

no, serious, no hyperbole here; sam's interviewing skills are outstanding... just never got given much of a hearing or a chance so it's still a too well-kept secret unfortunately

you guys were raving about rachel on the latest yathink, and raves are certainly due, but think about what sam coulda done had he been given a chance

bt-laced GMO crops -- eewwww

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/genetically_engineered_cor...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/06-0

[excerpt]

Published on Saturday, March 6, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
In the Shadow of Power
by Ralph Nader

Our just published In the Shadow of Power is a penetrating collection of 92 black and white photographs about life in Washington, DC, by Venezuelan photographer Kike Arnal.

After scores of books and reports by our groups over forty-five years, where the premise was that "a thousand words is worth one picture," I am reminded of the impact of the reverse saying "a picture is worth a thousand words."

If you want to see the power of these 92 pictures aided by the discerning eye of a masterful interviewer, visit Brian Lamb's one hour C-SPAN program about Mr. Arnal's book (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/292161-1).

...

Henry Allen, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for photographic criticism when he was at the Washington Post, summed up his reaction: "This book comes in close on Them, who are not to be confused with Us. We do well to know as much as we can and should about Them - we're all in the same boat after all."

[end excerpt]

I shot this Friday Morning

___________________

Fri. MArch 5 ~ 4:30 pm

1:38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX02RyE3Q9E

___________________

Fri. MArch 5 ~ 5: pm

1:19
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUM8DZAPMeE
___________________

Sat. March 6 6:22 am CST

5:47
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSzh_6_w9sk
____________________________________

by Leah on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 12:14pm.
that Alex Carey audio IS good, thanks Leah
_ _ _ _
BRR

knowing howard zinn, he probably would consider this a badge of honor, still for us to put up with this constant barrage of right wing crap everywhere we turn, we're surrounded by it, it gets tiresome and disgusting

nice!

nice!

nice!

Some "Avatar" fans say they experience the Avatar Blues--

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.ht...

[excerpt]

On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," Baghdassarian said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

[end excerpt]

too many times!

off to do some youtubbing of my own... will be back in a bit

nobody answered my question yet, is there gonna be a yathink this morning or not? I need to start planning my sunday activities

The Moyers Legacy
Editorial

March 4, 2010

Even in an age of old-media uncertainty,
much is still made of the transfer of network
anchor and host positions.
Too often the discussion is purely about personality,
but there's more to it than a celebrity shuffle:
the character and content of programs with rich
histories and the potential for crucial
contributions to civic discourse are at stake.
So oceans of ink are spilled when CBS shifts the
news anchor chair from Dan Rather to Bob Schieffer to
Katie Couric; or when Tim Russert's Meet the Press
post goes to David Gregory.
Unfortunately, scant attention has been paid to
the coming shift of what over the past decade has
become the most significant seat in broadcast journalism-
-the Friday night position occsupied by Bill Moyers.

Moyers has been the most radical presence on broadcast and
cable television since 2002, when ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/editors
^ Continued ^

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for the heads up
http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/10053519050
_ _ _ _
brr

I will start the show, but I never know if folks are gonna call in! ;-)

Angry at Everyone
"Congress, it turns out, isn't the only institution held in low esteem by voters this year. According to a Politico review of publicly available polling data, numerous state legislatures are also bottoming out, showing off-the-charts disapproval ratings accompanied by stunning levels of voter cynicism."

"It all adds up to a toxic election-year brew for legislators inside and outside Washington."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33967.html

toniD's Ya Think?

Pennsylvania: Dems Pick Critz for Murtha Special

By Shira Toeplitz | March 6, 2010 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Democratic officials in the 12th district on Saturday picked Mark Critz, a former top aide to the late Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), as their preferred nominee for the May 18 special election to fill Murtha's seat.

Critz won Saturday's vote over former state Treasurer Barbara Hafer and other Democrats, and he is expected to be confirmed by statewide party officials later this month.

Critz won 46 votes, and Hafer came in second with 22 votes. Cambria County Comptroller Ed Cernic Jr. received 14 votes and Navy veteran Ryan Buccianeri got one vote from the roughly 80 local Democrats who voted Saturday morning in Delmont, Pa. Critz, Hafer and Bucchianeri have indicated they plan to file the paperwork to seek the nomination to run for a full term in the regularly-scheduled May 18 Democratic primary.

Critz will face off against either 2008 GOP nominee Bill Russell or businessman Tim Burns, who are vying for the Republican nomination for the special election. Democrats are favored to win the special election because their party has several competitive statewide primaries on the same day.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/eyeon2010/2010/03/local-dems-pick-critz-as-t...

toniD's Ya Think?

i'll stand by

(gym is out for today :) as i ready for yathink listening duty yeayee)

Giannoulias Leads Kirk In New Illinois Senate Poll

By Shira Toeplitz | February 25, 2010 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) leads Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R) in the race for the Senate in Illinois, according to a new poll paid for by the liberal Web site Daily Kos.

Giannoulias leads Kirk, 43 percent to 36 percent in the poll taken by 600 likely voters on Feb. 22 to Feb 24 and administered by Research 2000. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the geographical breakdown in the poll:

Statewide:

Giannoulias -- 43

Kirk -- 36
Continue reading Giannoulias Leads Kirk In New Illinois Senate Poll.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/eyeon2010/2010/02/giannoulias-leads-kirk-in-...

toniD's Ya Think?

please don't give me any more of that coffee party buddist tolerance of all points of view including asshole teapartiers please

(got me slightly irritated on the last podcast listen)

or i will call it the latte party and go on an offshoot triple espresso party formation, ok?

can't bring a sling to a gun fight, and we need to harness some of that malloy rage to fight fire with fire, and these teaparty jerks do bring fire to the fight (dowdy old white seniors as they may be)

The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency
By FRANK RICH

WEDNESDAY’S health care rally was one of President Obama’s finest hours. It was so fine it couldn’t be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show.

Obama’s urgent script didn’t need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called “my proposal,” stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America’s broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with “honest and substantial differences” on fundamental principles wasn’t happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss — insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times.

There was only one problem. This finest hour arrived hastily and tardily. At 1:45 p.m. Eastern time, who was watching? Of those who did watch or caught up later, how many bought the president’s vow to finish the job “in the next few weeks”? We’ve heard this too many times before. Last May Obama said he would have a bill by late July. In July he said he wanted it “done by the fall.” The White House’s new date for final House action — specified as March 18 by Robert Gibbs, the press secretary — is already in jeopardy.

“They are waiting for us to act,” Obama said on Wednesday of the American people. “They are waiting for us to lead.” Actually, they have given up waiting. Some 80 percent of the country believes that “nothing can be accomplished” in Washington, according to an Ipsos/McClatchy poll conducted a week ago. The percentage is just as high among Democrats, many of whom admire the president but have a sinking sense of disillusionment about his ability to exercise power.

Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama’s signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts. And it won’t even be the opposition’s fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead. The G.O.P. would be able to argue this fall, not without reason, that the party holding the White House and both houses of Congress cannot govern.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Obama does eke out his victory. Republicans claim that if he does so by “ramming through” the bill with the Congressional reconciliation process, they will have another winning issue for November. On this, they are wrong. Their problem is not just their own hypocritical record on reconciliation, which they embraced gladly to ram through the budget-busting Bush tax cuts. They’d also have to contend with this country’s congenitally short attention span. Once the health care fight is over and out of sight, it will be out of mind to most Americans. We’ve already forgotten about Afghanistan — until the next bloodbath.

The 2010 election will instead be fought about the economy, as most elections are, especially in a recession whose fallout remains severe. But that battle may be even tougher for this president and his party — and not just because of the unemployment numbers. The leadership shortfall we’ve witnessed during Obama’s yearlong health care march — typified by the missed deadlines, the foggy identification of his priorities, the sometimes abrupt shifts in political tone and strategy — won’t go away once the bill does. This weakness will remain unless and until the president himself corrects it.

Those who are unsympathetic or outright hostile to Obama frame his failures as an attempt to impose “socialism” on a conservative nation. The truth is that the Fox News right would believe this about any Democratic president no matter who he was and what his policies were. Obama, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan and proved reluctant to reverse extra-constitutional Bush-Cheney jurisprudence, is a radical mainly to those who believe a conservative Republican senator like Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is a closet commie.

The more serious debate about Obama is being conducted by neutral or sympathetic observers. There are many hypotheses. In Newsweek, Jon Meacham has written about an “inspiration gap.” He sees the professorial president as “sometimes seeming to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.” In The New Yorker, Ken Auletta has raised the perils of Obama’s overexposure in our fractionalized media. (As if to prove the point, the president was scheduled to appear on Fox’s “America’s Most Wanted” to celebrate its 1,000th episode this weekend.) In the Beltway, the hottest conversations center on the competence of Obama’s team. Washington Post columnists are now dueling over whether Rahm Emanuel is an underutilized genius whose political savvy the president has foolishly ignored — or a bull in the capital china shop who should be replaced before he brings Obama down.

But the buck stops with the president, not his chief of staff. And if there’s one note that runs through many of the theories as to why Obama has disappointed in Year One, it cuts to the heart of what had been his major strength: his ability to communicate a compelling narrative. In the campaign, that narrative, of change and hope, was powerful — both about his own youth, biography and talent, and about a country that had gone wildly off track during the failed presidency of his predecessor. In governing, Obama has yet to find a theme that is remotely as arresting to the majority of Americans who still like him and are desperate for him to succeed.

The problem is not necessarily that Obama is trying to do too much, but that there is no consistent, clear message to unite all that he is trying to do. He has variously argued that health care reform is a moral imperative to protect the uninsured, a long-term fiscal fix for the American economy and an attempt to curb insurers’ abuses. It may be all of these, but between the multitude of motives and the blurriness (until now) of Obama’s own specific must-have provisions, the bill became a mash-up that baffled or defeated those Americans on his side and was easily caricatured as a big-government catastrophe by his adversaries.

Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan — of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a “pragmatic agenda.” But pragmatism is about process, not principle. Pragmatism is hardly a rallying cry for a nation in this much distress, and it’s not a credible or attainable goal in a Washington as dysfunctional as the one Americans watch in real time on cable. Yes, the Bush administration was incompetent, but we need more than a brilliant mediator, manager or technocrat to move us beyond the wreckage it left behind. To galvanize the nation, Obama needs to articulate a substantive belief system that’s built from his bedrock convictions. His presidency cannot be about the cool equanimity and intellectual command of his management style.

That he hasn’t done so can be attributed to his ingrained distrust of appearing partisan or, worse, a knee-jerk “liberal.” That is admirable in intellectual theory, but without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America’s future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat anyway. His domestic policies, whether on climate change or health care or regulatory reform, are reduced to items on a standard liberal wish list. If F.D.R. or Reagan could distill, coin and convey a credo “nonideological” enough to serve as an umbrella for all their goals and to attract lasting majority coalitions of disparate American constituencies, so can this gifted president.

He cannot wait much longer. The rise in credit-card rates, as well as the drop in consumer confidence, home sales and bank lending, all foretell more suffering ahead for those who don’t work on Wall Street. But on these issues the president, too timid to confront the financial industry backers of his own campaign (or their tribunes in his own administration) and too fearful of sounding like a vulgar partisan populist, has taken to repeating his health care performance.

And so leadership on financial reform, as with health care, has been delegated to bipartisan Congressional negotiators poised to neuter it. The protracted debate that now seems imminent — over whether a consumer protection agency will be in the Fed or outside it — is again about the arcana of process and bureaucratic machinery, not substance. Since Obama offers no overarching narrative of what financial reform might really mean to Americans in their daily lives, Americans understandably assume the reforms will be too compromised or marginal to alter a system that leaves their incomes stagnant (at best) while bailed-out bankers return to partying like it’s 2007. Even an unimpeachable capitalist titan like Warren Buffett, venting in his annual letter to investors last month, sounds more fired up about unregulated derivatives and more outraged about unpunished finance-industry executives than the president does.

This time Obama doesn’t have a year to arrive at his finest hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the clock runs out on Nov. 2.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/opinion/07rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=pri...

pledge being another word i don't like, in this context

hey i was one of the firsts to bring up this coffee party thing on the blog - i don't know if you remember - and was excited about - but this pledge thing turns me totally off

sounds too "decaf"

we can't cede the caffeine advantage to the teaparty for godsakes

_ _ _
Ya Think ?

The Democratic Party's Plan To THROW The Next Couple Elections, And What We Must Do About It Inbox

date Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 8:38 AM

The Democratic Party's Plan To THROW The Next Couple Elections

Facing reality is a tough job but somebody's got to do it. And we
foretell for you the events of the future NOT because we want them to
happen, but to get you to act to keep them from happening. But to do
that you need an action page, so here it is.

Put The Public Option Up For A Vote:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1038.php

And now we will explain why this action page is so critical. To
understand the current political dynamic, first you must understand
that the Democrats are PLANNING on losing the next couple election
cycles. UNTIL you understand that, the events to unfold in the next
couple years (unless you act to derail them) will make no sense to
you.

You don't have to believe us. Just listen to the way the Democrats
themselves are talking. Nancy Pelosi concedes that they will likely
suffer substantial losses in the House come November, though she
still will not admit that they will lose their majority in the next
round. Barack Obama says doesn't "know" how his ever more determined
push of the universally despised Senate health care scam will play
politically. He doesn't know??? Was the loss of the eternally
Democratic senate seat in Massachusetts not enough of a wake up call?

Their original plan, which we told you about no later than last
September (and we can point you to our published article at the time
to prove it), was to lull the liberal/progressive base into thinking
a "public option" was some kind of mumbling substitute for a single
payer reform system (that would have represented REAL change), with
the INTENTION of throwing even that option over the side before final
passage. We saw it all coming, and we tried to warn you how important
it was to keep speaking out to demand better.

For the corporate special interests controlling the whole legislative
process (but only in the absence of your voices of course) this was a
heads they win, tails the people lose, proposition. By getting the
Democrats to squander their mandate and political capital for actual
change, by getting them to meekly abandon their professed principles
in favor of a bill that would benefit as a bottom line the insurance
corporations only, the people en masse would justifiably conclude
that the Democrats had completely betrayed them. And the Republicans,
who by the tactic of enfeeblement of government in fact just empower
the same ultimate corporate agenda, even as disliked as they are
themselves, would be swept back into office in the next election. Net
result ... reform and change discredited, hopes dashed, defeatism
rules, the corporations win again, one grand circular tag team.

That was the MASTER plan. But then it hit a bump in the road in
Massachusetts. For you see, Scott Brown was not SUPPOSED to win. What
he was supposed to do was to stir the pot of public anger as a
prelude to November, to build a record of opposition, to fire a shot
across the public bow of the Democrats, but he was not supposed to
actually hit anything. It was strategically premature. Because having
lost their shaky super majority, depending even as it was on
regressive bad cops like Nelson and Lieberman, the Democrats could
then no longer just waltz the fatally compromised health care bill
through with a unilateral conference committee.

What to do? What were the corporate fascists to do? Now keep in mind
that the EXCUSE the Democrats had been giving all along to their own
base, as to why not only single payer, but in the end even a feeble
public option, had to be taken off the table, was that they could not
muster a full 60 votes for that in the Senate, that they could only
manage something like 53-56. But now suddenly, the only way to force
this destined to be hated bill through was have the Democrats in the
House bend over for the worst case Senate bill as it was, and clench
their noses long enough to pull some kind of corrective
reconciliation shenanigans that would only require 51 votes. Why, the
people would ask themselves, can't we at least have a public option,
since we were trying to get Congress to use reconciliation to make
THAT happen all along?

And the inescapable answer is ... that was not the plan. Suddenly
people like Senator Rockefeller, who had PRETENDED to be for a public
option before, dramatically reversed their position. Suddenly people
like Senator Harkin, who declared himself to be at heart a "single
payer guy" live on TV with Ed Shultz just the other day, would in the
next breath not even ADMIT that he would support a public option IF a
vote for it came up. Suddenly, people who were all for the public
option when their vote did NOT count became equivocal, or against it,
when they COULD possibly cast the deciding vote.

No, the plan was for the Democrats to pass a bill that would be so
despised that they would be swept out of power again, that would cost
them even their simple majorities. That was the PLAN. That was the
plan of the corporations all along. There has never been any other
plan. And that REMAINS the corporate plan with what can only be
described as an obstinate and renewed determination.

Now, it would be one thing if Barack Obama and the Democratic party
"leadership" were going to the wall for what the PEOPLE want. But
they are not. They are bracing to go to the wall for what the
corporations want. As perverse as George Bush was, at least he always
had his most dedicated and delusional core base on his side when he
thumbed his nose at the rest of us. The exact opposite is the case
here. Barack Obama is standing in diametric opposition to his own
base, and willfully so, displaying all the leadership qualities of a
bull in a bull fight.

We can read from the last 25 messages function of our own action
pages, just as you can. It breaks our heart to read people talking
about how they worked so hard for Obama and now feel so betrayed. It
breaks our heart to read independents write that they were willing to
give the Democrats a chance, but will never vote for a Democrat
again. It breaks our heart to read people declaring that they will
never even turn out to vote again, for anyone. Because this is all
nothing but surrender talk. But we fight on undeterred, even with our
broken heart.

Put The Public Option Up For A Vote:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1038.php

And we tell you now, that if this health care bill is rammed through
without at least a semblance of a public option in it, the one we
were promised at a MINIMUM, there will be massive hemorrhaging at the
polls come November. The American people are out there right now
asking themselves, "Was Massachusetts not enough ... how big a 2x4
will we have to hit these mules in the head with before they finally
get it?" The Republicans will not need to talk about any other issue
to campaign on. They will get a total pass on an secret agenda that
is, if anything, in every respect more hostile to the real public
policy interests of the people whose anger they will arouse.

And if the Democrats DON'T lose their majorities in a single
election, guess what? Same rallying war cry for 2012, "Got to vote
out more Democrats so we can repeal the hated bill, including getting
a getting a president who will sign the repeal bill." Try to tell us
you don't hear it happening already. Even if the Democrats don't lose
their majorities in 2010, they will be so reduced that they will not
be able to accomplish anything in the next two years, not that they
have been able to accomplish anything with the majorities they had,
meaning nothing to run on in 2012 either. Of course the latest
promise never meant to be honored is that the Democrats will fight
for a public option LATER. But if they can't muster the votes to do
it now, with the majorities they have now, only the most terminally
gullible would believe they could do it with fewer votes in the
future, even if they actually wanted to, which they do NOT!

And if there is a historic landslide in November and both houses of
Congress go Republican, guess what the first bill from the new
Congress will be ... repeal the health care bill. And guess what
happens if Obama tries to veto it, or the Democrats try to filibuster
(after passing it on 51 votes in the first place)? In short, Obama
becomes an instant lame duck, the people will be hell bent on getting
rid of him too, and the entire Democratic party is just a dead man
walking. Either way, pushing this bill now avails nothing, since it
WILL be repealed before it ever goes into meaningful effect.

And when the repeal bill does become law there will be people
celebrating and dancing in the streets, not even realizing that they
are just dancing on their own graves. No pack of lemmings have ever
hurtled so foolishly to their own demise as this Democratic Congress.
No pod of whales have ever beached themselves so senselessly. We are
talking about the biggest act of deliberate mass suicide in the
history of the animal kingdom.

UNLESS, and we would concede that this is a big unless, we can
somehow get enough people to speak out to DEMAND a vote on a public
option, and not just the weak public option passed by the House, but
instead the proposed Medicare expansion to 55 from December quashed
putatively by Lieberman alone, and additionally for an option for
ANYONE to buy in to Medicare, for the PURPOSE of calling the
Democrats out, to at least demand something better. Democratic
members of Congress are under corporate orders (including direct from
the White House and being cajoled) to take a dive. The only thing
that can countermand that order are your voices speaking out. Your
voices ... if you will use them while you still can. Please submit
the action page now.

Put The Public Option Up For A Vote:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1038.php

Or folks can just keep lapping up the diminishingly persuasive happy
face emails from the Obama never-ending campaign machine with ever
more promises of ponies and rainbows, in which case all will
transpire just as we have revealed it.

And here is the Facebook links for the action page further above.

[Facebook] Public Option Vote Action:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1038

And this is the Twitter reply for the Public Option Vote action

@cxs #p1038

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/in.htm

Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function
at http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/out.htm

usalone378b:128693

-----
This will

1. Piss off Alice. (Sorry. "Does not necessarily reflect," [in its entirety; although they are more concerned with the results of the how of the throwing and the results of the throwing than the who of the throwing,sounds like, so...]But thought it was interesting perspective and the action worth putting up.)

2. Piss of Ono (Sorry, but I wouldn't know what to cut and that I can see there is no link that will lead to all the text that is here [in this email] for those that want to see.)

3. Piss off Bait. (Bonus!!!)

do you think it is worth talking to the teaparty faux news types in away that might bring them out of the swamp of racism and ignorance? or are they a lost cause and the time to make more noise than them is now ?

and how should the democrats who act like republicans be treated? Kindness and tolerance hasn't worked with them. Should WTP try to scare them with a break from routine like strikes and shut downs and talks of new faces from a third party movement?

I see the _Christmas Carol_ motif is making a resurgence...

----
I do have to say though, I really don't think that it is physically possible to clench one's nose. That's an Al-Capone-ism, if you will.

President Obama: Replace Rahm with Me ...an open letter from Michael Moore

Dear President Obama,

I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff.

I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement.

I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that's been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp.

And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do. I don't need much, just a cot in the White House basement will do.

Now, don't get too giddy with excitement over my offer, because you and I are going to be up at 5 in the morning, 7 days a week and I am going to get you pumped up for battle every single day (see photo). Each morning you and I will do 100 jumping jacks and you will repeat after me:

"THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ELECTED ME, NOT THE REPUBLICANS, TO RUN THE COUNTRY! I AM IN CHARGE! I WILL ORDER ALL OBSTRUCTIONISTS OUTTA MY WAY! IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON'T LIKE WHAT I'M DOING THEY CAN THROW MY ASS OUT IN 2012. IN THE MEANTIME, I CALL THE SHOTS ON THEIR BEHALF! NOW, CONGRESS, DROP AND GIVE ME 50!!"

Then we will put on our jogging sweats and run up to Capitol Hill. We will take names, kick butts, and then take some more names. If we have to give a few noogies or half-nelson's, then so be it. In our pockets we will have a piece of paper to show the pansy Dems just how much they won by in 2008 -- and the poll results that show the majority of Americans oppose the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and want the bankers punished. Like drill sergeants, we will get right up in their faces and ask them, "WHAT PART OF THE PUBLIC MANDATE DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, SOLDIER?!! DROP AND GIVE ME 50!"

I know this is the job Rahm Emanuel was supposed to be doing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have always admired Rahm Emanuel (if you don't count his getting NAFTA pushed through Congress in the '90s which destroyed towns like Flint, Michigan. I know, picky-picky.). He is what we needed for a long time -- a no-apologies, take-no-prisoners fighting machine. Someone who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and pound the right wing into submission. Far from being the foul-mouthed bully he has been portrayed as, Rahm is the one who BEAT UP the bullies to protect us from them.

That's certainly what he did in 2006. After six long, miserable years of the middle-class getting slaughtered and the poor being flushed down the toilet, Rahm Emanuel took on the job of returning Congress to the Democrats. No one believed it could be done.

But he did it. Big time. He put the fear of God into the party of Rush and Newt. They had never been so scared. More importantly, though, he instilled a sense of hope in the Democrats that they could actually score the mother of all hat tricks in 2008 -- and with you, an African American no less, in the pole position!

It worked. The Darkness ended. The vast majority of nation wept with joy on the night of the election (those who weren't weeping went out and bought a record number of guns and ammo). Unlike the last president, you didn't "win" by 537 votes in Florida (although Gore won the popular vote by a half-million), you beat McCain nationally by 9,522,083 votes! The House Democrats got a walloping 79-vote margin. The Senate Dems would caucus with a supermajority of 60 votes unheard of in over 30 years. The wars would now end. America would have universal health care. Wall Street and the banks would, at the very least, be reined in. Hardworking citizens would not be thrown out of their homes. It was supposed to be the dawning of a new age.

But the Republicans were not going to go quietly into the night. You see, instead of having just one Rahm Emanuel, they are ALL Rahm Emanuels. That's why they usually win. Unlike most Democrats, they are relentless and unstoppable. When they believe in something (which is usually themselves and the K Street job they hope to be rewarded with someday), they'll fight for it till the death. They are loyal to a fault to each other (they were never able to denounce Bush, even though they knew he was destroying the party). They dig their heels in deep no matter what. If you exiled them to a lone chunk of melting polar ice cap, they would keep insisting that it was just a normal "January thaw," even as the frigid Arctic waters rose above their God-fearing necks ("See what I mean -- this water is COLD! What 'global *warming*'?! Adam and Eve rode dinos...aagghh!!... gulp gulp gulp").

We thought we were all done with this craziness, but we were mistaken. Like a beast that you just can't cage, the Republicans convinced not only the media, but YOU and your fellow Dems, that 59 votes was a *minority*! Precious time was lost trying to reach a "consensus" and trying to be "bipartisan."

Well, you and the Democrats have been in charge now for over a year and not one banking regulation has been reinstated. We don't have universal health care. The war in Afghanistan has escalated. And tens of thousands of Americans continue to lose their jobs and be thrown out of their homes. For most of us, it's just simply no longer good enough that Bush is gone. Woo hoo. Bush is gone. Yippee. That hasn't created one new friggin' job.

You're such a good guy, Mr. President. You came to Washington with your hand extended to the Republicans and they just chopped it off. You wanted to be respectful and they decided that they were going to say "no" to everything you suggested. Yet, you kept on saying you still believed in bipartisanship.

Well, if you really want bipartisanship, just go ahead and let the Republicans win in November. Then you'll get all the bipartisanship you want.

Let me be clear about one thing: The Democrats on Election Day 2010 are going to get an ass-whoopin' of biblical proportions if things don't change right now. And after the new Republican majority takes over, they, along with a few conservative Democrats in Congress, will get to bipartisanly impeach you for being a socialist and a citizen of Kenya. How nice to see both sides of the aisle working together again!

And the brief window we had to fix this country will be gone.

Gone.

Gone, baby, gone.

I don't know what your team has been up to, but they haven't served you well. And Rahm, poor Rahm, has turned into a fighter -- not of Republicans, but of the left. He called those of us who want universal health care "f***ing retarded." Look, I don't know if Rahm is the problem or if it's Gibbs or Axelrod or any of the other great people we owe a debt of thanks to for getting you elected. All I know is that whatever is fueling your White House it's now running on fumes. Time to shake things up! Time to bring me in to get you pumped up every morning! Go Barack! Yay Obama! Fight, Team, Fight!

I'm packed and ready to come to D.C. tomorrow. If it helps, you won't really be losing Rahm entirely because I'll be bringing his brother with me -- my agent, Ari Emanuel. Man, you should see HIM negotiate a deal! Have you ever wanted to see Mitch McConnell walking around Capitol Hill carrying his own head in his hands after it's just been handed to him by the infamous Ari? Oh, baby, it won't be pretty -- but boy will it be sweet!

What say you, Barack? Me and you against the world! Yes we can! It'll be fun -- and we may just get something done. Whaddaya got to lose? Hope?

Retardedly yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Just to give you an idea of the new style I'll be bringing with me, when a cornhole like Sen. Ben Nelson tries to hold you up next time, this is what I will tell him in order to get his vote: "You've got exactly 30 seconds to rescind your demand or I will personally make sure that Nebraska doesn't get one more federal dollar for the rest of Obama's term. And then I will let everyone in your state know that you wear Sooner panties, backwards. NOW DROP AND GIVE ME 50!"

"...or i will call it the latte party and go on an offshoot triple espresso party formation, ok?"
- mire on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 8:52am
_ _ _
_ brr

In the end,here's what the history of this attempt to Right-wing critics howl that using reconciliation to pass sweeping policy changes like health care is an abuse of power — the tactic, they say, is supposed to be limited to spending measures — but they're full of shit. Newt Gingrich used it to pass the Contract With America in the mid-1990s, and Tom DeLay used it to pass the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. And here's the good news: The only way to use reconciliation for health care is to get the House to sign off on the process. That means the White House, which pre-Massachusetts and pre-Scott Brown had planned to toss aside the far more progressive House bill and pass the horseshit Senate version packed with industry giveaways, now needs the votes of reform-minded congressmen like Dennis Kucinich to get health care passed. The good guys, in other words, have regained some leverage, giving them a chance to bargain for significant improvements to the shitty Senate bill. "A reconciliation bill would almost automatically be better than what we had," the Senate aide concedes.

Among the big-ticket changes being discussed are more "affordability credits" to help the poor pay for health insurance, reducing or eliminating drug co-pays for people on Medicare, and scaling back the proposed tax on high-cost plans enjoyed by union workers. There's even a very, very faint hope that a public option could be pushed through — although that would require 27 more Democrats in the Senate to grow DeLay/Gingrich-esque spleens in the next few weeks.

And therein lies the larger issue at stake. Democrats and Republicans are basically the same on a lot of issues: They both voted for the Iraq War, they both love pork and useless weapons programs, they both lift their skirts for Wall Street. But they have one major stylistic difference: Republicans are unafraid to exercise power, while Democrats try to run government like one of those pansy-ass T-ball leagues, where every kid gets to have a hit, nobody loses, and nobody has to go home with an ouchie or hurt feelings.

Well, T-ball is over. If Obama wants to pass any kind of reform — even one as riddled with industry giveaways as the current measure — he is finally going to have to take a swing in anger. If he doesn't, it may well mark the moment when our government conceded that it can never force any powerful industry to accept any kind of change, no matter how minimal. If the Democrats fuck that up, they're going to leave us living in a hell of a world for the next generation or so. Let's hope they grow some guts before it's too late.

from rolling stone

I have been firmly enjoined ixnay on the eewordpay, so I cannot be anymore specific than that.

And now there are two "p-word" words in my vocab.

or speak into it more loudly

The Democratic Party's Plan
new
Submitted by gloryoski on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 9:06am.

The Democratic Party's Plan To THROW The Next Couple Elections, And What We Must Do About It Inbox

date Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 8:38 AM

The Democratic Party's Plan To THROW The Next Couple Elections

Facing reality is a tough job but somebody's got to do it. And we
foretell for you the events of the future NOT because we want them to
happen, but to get you to act to keep them from happening. But to do
that you need an action page, so here it is.

Put The Public Option Up For A Vote:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1038.php

*******

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

MB turn up your mic

Submitted by taozen on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 9:16am.
or speak into it more loudly

*******

I second that.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Thank you for the lovely mental image of Judge Roberts convulsing into a liberal turrets tirade from the bench while enduring a massive epileptic shit storm.

Happy race day to you and thank you for starting it out in such a cheerful manner.

What will I wear?

I just heard the weather man say "It looks like spring's not over yet".

yes that was me trying to call you!

i think his media criticism was from the right though, saying he was tired of being pummeled by liberals

he's not gonna be missed, wasn't funny or particularly savvy

you really have to wonder about these liberal talsk show hosts inviting contributions from lame people when sam seder is out there and available, as far as i know

Insurers Set To Raise Prices, Walk Away From Consumers: Goldman Report

The market concentration for health insurance is so monopolized in some areas that insurance companies are willing to raise prices and lose customers in an effort to improve their bottom line, a leading insurance broker told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday.

In a conference call organized by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, Steve Lewis, a highly regarded broker at the world's third largest insurance broker, Willis, painted a picture of the health insurance market in which employers seem likely to be priced out of coverage.

Noting that "price competition" between insurers was "down from a year ago," Lewis relayed that "incumbent carriers seem more willing than ever to walk away from existing business."

The phenomenon of insurers pricing their policies beyond where consumers can afford it seems to be already taking place. Last month Anthem Blue Cross told customers it would hike their health insurance premiums by as much as 39 percent (with the expectation that some would drop coverage altogether). In December, the Huffington Post reported that Aetna was planning on losing more than 600,000 customers by raising prices on their consumers in 2010.

Insurers are able to do this in part because the markets in which they operate have no adequate competition, suggests Lewis. The broker noted that "the smaller client segment" was "increasingly frustrated" with the renewal of their coverage and was "evaluating potential self-funding with stop loss protection" instead. Lewis added that employers in many markets knew "that they're not going to be able to trade down pricing very significantly" (i.e. find cheaper coverage) and, as such, would likely only change plans or become self-insured if there was a "fairly significant" disruption in service.

"As I mentioned at the outset, it was without a doubt the most challenging renewal cycle in my 20 years of this business with employers really struggling with how and what was going to drive their decision, combined with the lack of aggressive and competitive pricing in the marketplace," Lewis said.

The remarks are as clear an indication as any that while the health insurance industry suffered greatly from the recession it remains remarkably well positioned to recoup those profits going forward -- principally because companies can raise prices without worrying about the market hit it will take.

The Democratic-authored health care package would eliminate the anti-trust exemption that health insurers enjoy, require insurers to spend a high percentage of their funds on medical costs and create a commission that would oversee unexpected hikes in premiums. And yet, Lewis says that the clients he represents (employers who purchase health care coverage) have largely soured on the reform process even if they are favorable towards the overall goals.

"I think most people would acknowledge that there's a need for health care reform, employers continue to be very frustrated," he said. "But I would also say that many of them still view the legislation and the partisanship coming out of Washington as possibly the medicine worse than the disease. So, many employer groups that we're talking to feel like it would be a shame to lose an opportunity to do something with respect to health care reform. But many are starting to feel like maybe nothing is better than something in this current environment."

A call to Lewis for additional comment was not immediately returned. Below is the full transcript of his remarks....at link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/05/insurers-set-to-raise-pri_n_487...

toniD's Ya Think?

He's been ranting about it for at least the last 36 hours.

Only the super-rich can save me.

http://twitter.com/JOHN_ICEKNIFE

thanks all
_ _ _
Ya Think?

I saw Ricki Lee win a Amateur Hour back in the late 70's..

I voted for her..

She's great..

**

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Bart Stupak Abortion Claims Debunked: Health Bill Would NOT Force Federal Spending On Abortion

ABC News found that one of Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) biggest contentions in his fight against health care reform legislation -- that federal money will go to "directly subsidize abortions" -- is not true in all cases.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly asserted that there is "no federally funded abortion" in the bill.

According to ABC's Jonathan Karl: "Pelosi is right in that the bill makes it clear, there can be no federal money for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother."

Stupak argued that "when you read the legislation, $1 per month for all enrollees must go into a fund for reproductive care which includes abortion coverage."

Karl's research of the wording of the bill finds this statement to be false. "That's actually wrong," Karl reports. "In fact, you only pay the $1 abortion fee if you choose a plan that covers abortion. To anti-abortion advocates like Stupak, the only acceptable solution is a complete ban on abortion coverage by any insurance policy that accepts any federal money at all."

Watch the report: at link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/05/bart-stupak-abortion-clai_n_488...

toniD's Ya Think?

Where has all the income gone? Look up.
March 3, 2010
By Lawrence Mishel

The 400 American households with the highest incomes also have enjoyed a much faster pace of income growth than the vast majority. And, because tax rates applied to their income have fallen by a third, their after-tax incomes grew substantially faster than their pre-tax incomes. The figure looks at inflation-adjusted pre-tax and after-tax income growth for the 400 top-income families between 1992 and 2007, based on new data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service. It shows that while pre-tax income grew by a staggering 409% over that 15-year period, after-tax income increased even more, by 476%.

The third line in the figure offers some perspective by showing the change in the pre-tax median household income over the same period, which grew just 13.2%. The median pre-tax household income for a family of four in 2007 was $50,233, while the top-earning 400 households earned a median $345 million, almost 6900 times as much income. In contrast, in 1992 the ratio was just a sixth as large, with the top 400 households having 1124 times as much income.

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/where_has_all_the_income_gon...

toniD's Ya Think?

For the 20th time.. ;)
Submitted by MMRules on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:16am.

he-he-he

March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney Co.’s WABC-TV cut its signal to Cablevision Systems Corp. subscribers on the eve of the Academy Awards broadcast, after the two companies failed to agree on fees to carry the New York station.

Elena Becatoros and Nicholas Paphitis, Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel avoided giving debt-plagued Greece a commitment of financial assistance Friday, as Athens was rattled by more strikes and violent protests by unions outraged by harsh economic austerity measures.

Merkel met Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and said the country had not made any request for financial support and she called for an end to market speculation that the indebted country will default.

Papandreou's visit to Berlin was part of a tour by the Greek leader that started in Luxembourg and will take him to Paris on Sunday.

"Germany can express its solidarity," Merkel said, adding that she made it clear that "we are here to help, show understanding."

Her comments echoed previous remarks made this week amid market and media speculation that the European Union may be preparing some sort of bailout aimed at helping Greece cope with its economic woes.

Lawmakers in Greece approved a new austerity package worth euro4.8 billion ($6.5 billion), but faced fierce union opposition to the plan, with strikes Friday grounding flights for four hours and halting public services.

Merkel called the new program an "inordinately important step" even as Greeks protested vehemently against it.

Earlier Friday in Greece, riot police used tear gas and baton charges to disperse rioters who chased the ceremonial guards in 19th-century kilts and tasseled garters away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the parliament. A top trade union leader was roughed up by left-wing protesters, while rioters smashed banks and storefronts.

It was the worst violence since Greece's debt crisis escalated late last year. Police said they arrested five people, and seven officers were injured.

Papandreou defended the measures.

"We had to take difficult decisions, but these decisions were necessary if we are to lead our country out of the crisis," he said in Berlin.

About 7,000 people took part in the marches. Protesters also occupied a government printing press in a bid to stop the government formally publishing the new law sanctioning the austerity.

Greece's financial troubles have shaken the European Union and its shared euro currency, whose rules were supposed to prevent governments from running up too much debt.

The center-left government said it is seeking a total euro16 billion ($21.87 billion) in savings this year to reduce a budget deficit of some euro30 billion that is over four times the EU limit as a percentage of annual output.

Despite raising euro5 billion ($6.83 billion) from a successful 10-year bond issue Thursday, Athens remains under intense pressure from high borrowing rates.

Papandreou has warning that Greece could go outside the EU and request financial help from the International Monetary Fund unless it gets a commitment of support.

He seemed satisfied with Merkel's pledge.

"We need political and moral support and we got that today from the German government," Papandreou told reporters.

Earlier Friday in Luxembourg, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the informal eurogroup, said after meeting Papandreou: "We have to deal with the problem as a euro area."

He said it was acceptable for the IMF to offer technical assistance. But he insisted: "As the chairman of the euro group I'd like to exclude any further involvement of the IMF."

Papandreou will travel to Paris to meet Sunday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and head to Washington to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on March 9.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Friday that Sarkozy would back Greece if its debt woes got it into real trouble.

Speaking to LCI television, she said Sunday's meeting would focus on how the Greek government's new austerity plans will be enacted. She gave no details of the potential emergency support.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/05/greeks-riot-over-nations_n_4878...

toniD's Ya Think?

all my worst fears have come to fruition

He is led around by big business and we voted him in to be the leader. he is the leader of the lemmings

Michelle is more of a man than he ever will be.

is cheney still in the hospital?

have you had your MDR of HVP?

ToniD is afraid of the militia movement so am I !

We will see solar power when some corporation can patent it.
80 percent of women in jail in CA are there because of drug violations
My father who was a republican said many times just don't get caught
real progressives will never come back to the dems if they have any balls

ANY WOMAN AND CONSCIOUS MAN IN THE CONGRESS THAT BACK TRACKS ON WOMAN'S ACCESS TO ABORTIONS AND CONTRACEPTION/SEX EDUCATION
FOR A JIVE HEALTHCARE BILL IS PERPETUATING THE FRAUD THAT I ACCUSE OBUMMER OF doing.
I am warm and friendly in my day to day life but i will not continue to be that way with my politicians.

For the 21st time.. ;) I know .........
new
Submitted by smcgee43 on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:33am.
For the 20th time.. ;)
Submitted by MMRules on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:16am.

he-he-he

*******

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

visual animation may be needed
to show to the low intellegent
voters who can't or won't understand
that income & wealth needs to be
distributed more fairly.

_ _ _ _
brr

I have the urge to visit a Borders Books & Music.
I want a hard copy of that Moyers Legacy editorial
in the 3/22 issue of The Nation, if it's available
yet.
_ _ _ _
brr

I was part of a crew that interviewed him before he left channel 13 the first time.

I took my moment with him to discuss alternative cancer practioners and how they were arrested and harassed. He had a gleam in his eye he took my books and I knew he was the real deal. Life without bill Moyers on the TV will be very unrewarding!

mainly for my own use, but if you want to you can watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9442C83A8E47A939

Not sure I will keep it up. Who the fuck knows with me. If I do I'll put up everything with the possible exception of e.g. disgusting music videos about finger-fucking(if I don't like them).

Anybody objects I will make it private.

you might stumble upon some of the very few denizens who are actually anti-neocon/pro-constitution.

Which some people might think is useful--united-front wise.

Obama is a fraud
new
Submitted by taozen on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:55am.

I cant get that Isley brothers song out of my head. Love to hear that on the BRR along with some Curtis mayfield.

(after passing it on 51 votes in the first place)? In short, Obama
becomes an instant lame duck, the people will be hell bent on getting
rid of him too, and the entire Democratic party is just a dead man
walking. Either way, pushing this bill now avails nothing, since it
=========================
Here is our chance to create a real party of, by and for the people when the social movement killing Democrats get smashed by the Republicans in November.

On to the barricades!

They operate under the true laws of nature!
smcgee43 on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 11:59am.

I am a little sad because I needed to go to the Chinese Dr.( the only one I can afford) and he is out of town until the 18th

I really don't think any good has come out of the US response in Iraq and the neighboring regions. I think America is getting deeper and deeper into a hole we cant get out of. Obama is not a progressive he is a speech giver and he is
not a very couragous LEO in my book.

I am out to get some free vitamin D.

WE try they lie. I appreciate everyone who puts effort into the discussion. It is our time and we ain't getting any younger.

Consider three bills -- two of them passed under budget reconciliation, the third heading for budget reconciliation. Each had an effect on the fiscal health of the nation, calculated by the Congressional Budget Office. The first two, the tax cuts pushed by President George W. Bush, blew a hole in the budget. The third, the Senate's health reform bill? As you can see from the CBO projection, that's a different story.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/03/04/3978658-best-graph-ever

toniD's Ya Think?

Switzerland referendum on providing lawyers for animals
6 hours ago · A nationwide referendum is taking place in Switzerland on a proposal to give animals the constitutional right to be represented in court. Animal rights groups say appointing state-funded animal lawyers would ensure animal welfare laws are upheld, and help prevent cases of cruelty.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8554012.stm

toniD's Ya Think?

Update your iTunes or listen to it on demand at the website if ya want .

Mitch McConnell On RNC Fundraising Presentation: 'I Don't Like It,' No One Does

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blasted the Republican National Committee on Sunday for producing a fundraising presentation that mocked the President and congressional leadership as cartoon villains and socialists.

Asked about the document -- which outlines how "ego-driven" wealthy donors could be persuaded to take out their checkbooks -- the Kentucky Republican called it "certainly not helpful" to the Republican cause.

"I can't imagine why anybody would have thought that was helpful," McConnell added. "Typically the way parties raise money is because people believe in the causes they advocate. I think the way we raise money from donors across America is to stand for things that are important for the country."

Appearing on ABC's This Week, McConnell was asked whether someone at the RNC should resign over the fundraising snafu, which was first reported by Politico's Ben Smith.

The Senate leader didn't take the bait.

"Well look, I don't run the RNC," he said. "That's up to them. But I don't like it and I don't know anybody else who does."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/07/mcconnell-on-rnc-fundrais_n_489...

toniD's Ya Think?

Sebelius says efforts to win GOP support delayed progress in passing health care overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday that health care reform would have been "dead on arrival" if the White House had sent a finished proposal to Congress last year.

The secretary also blamed delays in passing the measure on President Barack Obama having to spend "far too much time talking about what's not in the bill" and trying to counter "wild accusations" by Republicans.

Under a new push to get the measure through Congress, Obama set a March 18 deadline for the House to pass the Senate version of the legislation before he leaves on a trip to Asia.

Sebelius said she thought the deadline would hold but indicated the president would not walk away from the key agenda item of his presidency should the House not act by then.

She said Obama still hoped for some Republican votes on the health care bill, "but I'm not sure there will be."

The fundamental conflict, she said, centers on Republican beliefs that "insurance companies should have less regulation than they do now, less consumer protection, less oversight."

Republicans argue that the Obama plan amounts to a government takeover of the U.S. health care industry and would increase an already burgeoning budget deficit.

Another stumbling block for House passage has arisen with renewed objections by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., over what he sees as federal funding for abortion in the Senate bill. The White House and most of those who support the measure insist that is not true.

Sebelius says "conversations will continue" if necessary to overcome Stupak objections. He has insisted on a House-passed plan that says no health insurance plan receiving federal subsidies can pay for abortion, except under exceptions already allowed by federal law.

Sebelius appeared on ABC's "This Week" and NBC's "Meet the Press."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-us-health-overhaul-se...

toniD's Ya Think?

morning Bloggie
Submitted by Jmach1JP on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 7:16am.
==
Nice. I like the shot where you zoom in and the movement of the sun in relation to the buildings is most evident. And when the railing is just in the pic and the camera adjusts for the sky.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Blue Roots Radio

or rather good afternoon at this point

i don't know how to answer your question - all i know is that i cannot pledge civility in dealing with assholes.

in my backyard in this gorgeous 75 degrees weather

...but a sunny 53!

raining :(

Oh well, not like I don't have a billion things to do always :)

I think we scared off Michelle's friend on FB! Opp, no, he was just winding up...sucker! >:)

"this machine kills fascists"

I had to bite my tongue hard not comment on his post about having his own Hannity and Colmes podcast. Guess he's not ready to take on a real LIBERAL

i always thought it was some sort of s/m act between hannity and colmes when i watched it years ago before i caught on that faux news was the rnc propaganda channel.

Colmes was a failed standup, self described centrist. He was paid to play the role. Hence his 7 member fan club. He could make a million if he'd just spill the beans but must have signed one mo' fo' of a contract.

Jeanane pegged him when she called him a Stockholm Syndrome sufferer...

Janeane Garofalo Trashes Air America Over Rhodes Suspension

behind the trees, happens around 4pm

time to move to the front porch - the sun there goes down behind the house across the street around 5pm (sound like a bad impression of jmach)

on an unrelated question: are the oscars tonight? I did say i been outta loop

has anyone heard if Cheney ( chi knee) is out of the hospital yet?
That mild heart attack must have been more severe than was reported.
--------------

i have been working with (editing) and enjoying the videos of my grandkids - a joy that will have to carry me thru to their next visit

this one is hilarious imo

playing doctor lol

I insulted the intelligence of the primates when I compared Colmes' listeners to my brothers from the animal kingdom

I think the Colmes callers should be checked for vestigial tails
(caudial appendage). reverse evolution or devolution can now be proved
You have to be double blind not to see that.

Never argue with an idiot; People watching may not be able to tell the difference.

toniD's Ya Think?

and who are the chimps?

Or should that be obvious?

when you need him? I need enough copies of Crisis and Command moved so there can be an audio book by midweek. It's gonna happen anyway.

I'm not going to read it and I am most certainly not going to BUY it and read it. No, there's gonna be dishes done etc during the time at least.

Wish I had a Kindle like SOME. If I had a Kindle like SOME, my Kindow would weed it to mee. But I don't I don't I don't.

WhYYYYYYY?

well, in public at least

Never argue with an idiot :)
Submitted by mire on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 5:53pm.
well, in public at least

------------

IS the perfect crime..."

--Jonatha Brooke (emphasis mine)

India's Maoist extremists ask Arundhati Roy to mediate in conflict with state

Booker prize winning author rejects offer to become go-between but urges Maoists and India to call a ceasefire

Booker-prize winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy was personally invited today to "mediate" by the leader of the guerrillas fighting a violent insurgency against the Indian state.

Roy ruled out becoming directly involved in any talks, as suggested by Koteswar Rao, the leader of the main force of India's Maoist extremists, but told the Guardian that she considered the offer "serious" and said she felt "both sides should call a ceasefire".

Repeated offers of talks by the guerrillas – who face a government offensive against their forest and hill bases in central India in the coming weeks – have been rejected by New Delhi.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, has described Maoist violence as the "biggest internal threat to India since independence".

Rao, better known by his nom de guerre Kishengi, had telephoned the BBC from an undisclosed location to say that the Maoists would halt their campaign if the government invited intellectuals and rights activists like Roy to mediate in peace talks.

Roy, whose work The God of Small Things won the Man Booker prize in 1997, said she was "a writer, not a mediator. I don't think I would be very good at it," she said.

"It's a serious responsibility and there are people who would be good at it." She was reported to have told the BBC Hindi language service that she would consider being an "observer".

Roy and a range of other leftwing Indian intellectuals have campaigned on behalf of the tribal people – some of India's most marginalised and poor communities descended from the original inhabitants of the Asian subcontinent – who compose a substantial proportion of the Maoists.

"What you are seeing is a Maoist ideology that is 40 years old being superimposed on a tribal community that has a tradition of resistance that predates Maoism by 40 years," Roy said.

A first wave of Maoist agitation was rapidly crushed in the early 1970s. However, in recent years Maoist guerillas have carved out enclaves in the central states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. It is thought that the rebels now have a presence in 223 out of about 600 districts in India, including many with immense untapped resources of minerals and timber.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/07/arundhati-roy-maoist-mediato...

oscar night is tonight; i wish they would just show the movies, announce the winners and then show the movies, instead of the endless stream of commercial breaks, pageants and silly jokes

ok, if not the whole movies, i would settle for several clips, enough to really get a sense of the movies, not those 5 seconds tantalizing bits, all too fast to take in

i haven't seen any of the movies in the running yet, so i don't really have a favorite yet. Nor do i have any expectations that the best one will win - in short, i'll probably start snoozing pretty early into the show....
don't even know why i bother mentioning it here

yawn

CORREO DEL ORINOCO INTERNATIONAL - ENGLISH EDITION - WEEK OF MARCH 5, 2010

Our Number 1 is full of interesting and in depth articles on the new Uruguayan president, Pepe Mujica, and the consolidation of unity in South America; the battle over the Malvinas Islands off Argentina's coast, currently under English colonization and control; the demonization of Venezuela through human rights reports that don't seek to judge the Chavez administration for its advances in human rights, but rather to distort and manipulate the facts; the absurdity of an opposition that blames everything on President Chavez, even the current drought the country is facing; Cindy Sheehan's productive and inspiring visit to Venezuela and her discovery of how the People's Power impulsed by the Bolivarian Revolution is transforming lives across the nation; a new radio station for the Global South, uniting voices from Latin America, Africa and Asia - a project of Hugo Chavez himself; and an intelligent analysis of poverty and the deception of wealth in the United States, by renowned scholar, Michael Parenti.

We continue to seek your submissions, commentaries and letters. Please feel free to write us at editor.correoenglish@gmail.com .
http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/03/correo-del-orinoco-international.html

Iran unveils new cruise missile

Iran has been manufacturing its own missiles for 20 years, and now has produced a cruise missile [AFP]

Iran's defence minister has announced a new production line of short-range cruise missiles which he says are highly accurate and capable of evading radar.

General Ahmad Vahidi told state news agency IRNA on Sunday that the Nasr 1 would be capable of destroying targets such as warships.

"The Nasr-1 missile is able to destroy 3,000-tonne targets," he said.

The missile is launched from the ground but will eventually be modified to fire from helicopters and submarines, he said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201037133643451414....

..."ya big ape" for nuthin'

ducking and running I bid you adieu!

whats up with darth vader?
Submitted by taozen on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 5:33pm.

Egypt president surgery successful
Mubarak, right, was on a state trip to Germany when he complained of gallbladder pain [AFP]

Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president, has successfully undergone a gall bladder operation in Germany.

Lionel: "Love lift us up where we belong"
Seder: "Where the eagles fly over mountains high"
Schultz: "Far from the world below"
Seder: "Where the fair winds blow"

In unison: "LOVE LIFT US UP WHERE WE BELONG"

....Yeah, it would be gay as hell.. But also funny. Also funny.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

What a great idea!

Greeks Riot Over Nation's Financial Crisis
Submitted by toniD on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:43am.

Iceland rejects bank payback deal

Sigurdardottir, Iceland's prime minister, said she
saw no reason to go to the ballot box

Icelanders have rejected a deal to pay Britain and the Netherlands billions for their losses in the collapse of the Icesave bank, the government said after partial referendum results.

Some 93.1 per cent of voters cast ballots opposing the deal, partial results showed after 32 per cent of ballots were ounted, RUV public broadcaster, which compiles all electoral statistics, said.

Only 1.6 per cent of voters so far voted "yes" to the Icesave deal.

Magnus Arni Skulason, a founder of the Indefence movement, which is opposed to the repayment deal, said the agreement being voted on was "obtained through coercion, with threats from both the British and the Dutch".

He also noted that most Icelanders felt the demanded 5.5-per cent interest rate was particularly unacceptable.

"You're basically sending the bill to tax payers for the failure of a private bank," he was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

"The referendum is a chance for the Icelanders to vent their anger - their anger at their government and at Britain for using anti-terror laws to seize Icelandic bank assets, which accelerated the implosion of the banking system."

In the aftermath of the Icesave collapse, the UK invoked so-called anti-terror laws to take control of Landisbanki assets held in Britain. Icesave was the the online arm of Landisbanki.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/201036224143997328.html

Pakistan arrests al-Qaeda spokesman

Pakistani intelligence officers have arrested Adam Gadahn, the American-born al-Qaeda spokesman, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, according to government officials.

The arrest of Gadahn, seen as a major victory for the US in its battle against al-Qaeda, was reported on Sunday, the same day the American appeared in a video calling on Muslims to fight.

Obama is a fraud
Submitted by taozen on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:55am.

all my worst fears have come to fruition

"By any measure this was an important milestone in Iraqi history," Obama said. "In a strong turnout, millions of Iraqis exercised their right to vote with enthusiasm and optimism."

yes, the Iraq war is the gift that keeps giving....

Greece is in the EU, isn't it?

What's the use of being in the EU if there's no solidarity in rough times? Strange.

ya got that right, nora...

I LIke eveything that u said !!!! ;-)
Submitted by smcgee43 on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 11:59am.
Obama is a fraud
new
Submitted by taozen on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:55am.

»

_____________

"Have you had your MDR of HVP?"

LOL!

I watched that video you recommended, Taozen. Aspartate and Glutamate in large quantities (via MSG and Nutrasweet) upsetting the neuro-chemistry. Ick! Thanks for the refresher! I liked when the presenter said the Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (glutamate) is so powerful it can make dirt taste good; wow [shiver].

;)

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5701

colmes...
Submitted by cent on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 4:37pm.
Jeanane pegged him when she called him a Stockholm Syndrome sufferer...

Janeane Garofalo Trashes Air America Over Rhodes Suspension
...
===============

That was great! (Makes me miss all the Seder venues, and since today is Sunday, makes me miss 'Seder on Sunday' in particular.)

I love the way Luddite Janeane said "cahm-pooter" (instead of the usual "cum-pewter").

"The state is made for man, not man for the state. And in this respect science resembles the state." -- Alber Einstein