Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he he hee ho ho ho ho ho.....aaahhhh! Oh gawd!

Pa Gov. Ed Rendell claims Fox coverage of the primaries is the fairest and best balanced...

ROFLCOPTER TRDMFFLASH (Tears running down my face from laughing and sides hurting!)

A woman would have to be crazy to enlist in the military

It's a dirty boys club. It stinks and I'm writing letters.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) writes in the LA Times:

Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.
[...]
A female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer.
[...]
At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of "insufficient evidence."
[...]
The absence of rigorous prosecution perpetuates a culture tolerant of sexual assault — an attitude that says “boys will be boys.”

"Boys will be boys" my ass. What the hell is wrong with our country? Doesn't anyone bother to psychologically evaluate enlistees? I still maintain that if you know anyone who is considering enlisting in the military, tie them up until their urge goes away. It's for their own good. They'll thank you one day.

Do not support the military industrial complex. Write your congress critters, your newspapers and make a stink. Wanna serve your country? Start writing.

FABULOUS READ.........(it's about Silver and Gold & JFK)

SILVER, GOLD & THE LAST AMERICAN HERO JFK (hero, def. a man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength)

News.

I want my REAL Jersey Tomato back........NJ Taking Garden Out of Garden State?

Monday March 31, 11:50 am ET
By Tom Hester Jr., Associated Press Writer
Farmers Worry Proposal to Cut Agriculture Department Could Take Garden Out of Garden State

This makes absolutely no sense at all. It apears that Gov. Jon Corzine is proposing to make New Jersey the third state without a Department of Agriculture as he looks to slash spending amid chronic state budget problems.

New Jersey needs its farmers. SPRAWL cannot win here. This is a HUGE slap in the face.
If I were still living in Jersey, this would be my next cause. I would be heading down to the legislative building right now. I still go back to Jersey in August to get my "Jersey Tomatoes"



(Did you know that the farmers in NJ wanted the state vegetable to be the The Jersey Tomato? the state vegetable.......wait a minute is a tomatoe a fruit, or is the tomato a vegetable?)

"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

Well, all I know is that during my time living in NJ, I lived for the farmer's stands ALL OVER THE GARDEN state during the summer. Oh that Jersey soil!

Knowledge is also knowing when to leave things be. I really can't imagine the old farmers in the state letting this happen.

WTF Corzine!!

I should round up some of the college students here in Connecticut to show these Joisey kids how to fight sprawl. Check out this fabulous opinion from yesterday's Hartford Courant on Seeing Sprawl from a Students' Perspective
Two students expressed profoundly skeptical thoughts on the topic. One said "sprawl is the perpetuation of segregation due to the systemic misuse of institutions promoting whiteness" and another added "through sprawl misery and success co-exist, one feeding off the other." The utopian suburb, she continued, does not exist: "it did not exist in 1950 and it still does not exist."


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


In Search of the Jersey Tomato (great little story)

HE STORY OF THE JERSEY TOMATO begins, not on an idyllic farm, but at the old Salem County Courthouse. On September 26th, 1820, just after noon, Robert Gibbon Johnson mounted the stairs of the courthouse carrying a basket of ripe, red tomatoes. A crowd began to gather. Johnson was going to eat a tomato! Doctor James Van Meter stood at his side as Johnson, one of the county’s wealthiest and most respected citizens, addressed the onlookers. Holding up one of the tomatoes, which were widely believed to be poisonous, he announced, “The time will come when this luscious scarlet tomato, rich in nutrition, a delight to the eye, a joy to the palate whether fried, baked, broiled or even eaten raw, will form the foundation of a great garden industry.” Then he bit into the tomato, and kept on eating until the basket was empty. From that moment on, The Jersey Tomato wasn’t just a booming New Jersey industry, but a round, red icon of summer.

It’s the perfect creation story for a food that defines the New Jersey summer as definitively as the cheesesteak defines Philadelphia, except for this: Robert Johnson’s often-recounted tomato-tasting is probably nothing but a myth. But then, maybe that’s fitting, because the ideal of The Jersey Tomato is also pure myth.

MAKE A MYTH A REALITY
(not the genetically modified reality though)

Aways down below in the comments...

Saborlas said,
"All these arguments cannot match my counter-argument of putting bacon in my ramen."

I realize it's either a little late, or awfully early for an OFSP but
Is this another way of describing the act of "porking somebody's hootenanny?"

Gun Laws vs. The Madness

First, most of the NRA terrorist enablers in this country will immediately and frothingly screech "Guns don't kill; PEOPLE kill!" in response to this post.

Fuck them. I own guns myself, and I have a 4th Amendment that says what's mine is mine, stays private and you'd better not try to screw with me.

I also have a 1st Amendment, and I'm not afraid to use it.

So there.

We have seen cases in just the past few months of people who've gone seriously sideways and started shooting up their places of residence, employment, education, etc. When asked (provided the perpetrator lives past the crime scene), we usually get the answer that the person was:

1. On drugs.
2. Insane at the time (but all better now).
3. Just plain pissed off.

The Republican-led Legislature of the State of Florida, who dwell within the

prophetically phallic Capitol Building in Tallahassee, are considering a bill foisted upon them by the NRA and a gaggle of pure psychotics who have apparently lost their senses entirely as well as their faith in institutions such as government, the police and the courts. Apparently believing that we are reverting to the Wild West, the bill would allow employees to take their guns with them to work, so that if someone shows up to start shooting, they can shoot back.

Uh-huh.

Let me lay a smidgen of wisdom down on you - the bulk of the workplace violence in this country comes not from a pissed-off customer, but from the workers in the workplace. That's right; your fellow employees.

It's bad enough that Florida allows anyone who can pass a simple criminal background check to own a concealed firearm (I've read editorial letters from rubes who want us to parade around with firearms openly showing, says it makes for a "polite society"), but we also have a law on the books that says you don't need to run if someone approaches you with a gun. You can stand your ground and shoot them as long as you can articulate that your life was in jeopardy.

I'll have 'OK Corral' for $600, Alex.

With so many people likely to lose even the moiety of their marbles that they still have after endless reruns of 24 and first-person shooter video games (which are dandy at teaching hand/eye coordination, aiming and the use of the one shot-one kill philosophy), what is the NRA driving at by insisting that their paid lackeys in the Legislature drive this bill forward?

Which brings me back to their screeching war cry at the beginning of this post.

Yeah. A gun's a tool, just like a hammer or a typewriter or a computer; it's what you do with it that requires personal responsibility. A gun, though, is the only of those four items that when used properly is designed to kill.

And recall the old adage that if you have a hammer, all your problems look like nails.

If you have a gun, all your problems look like targets.

Al Gore's New campaign (Tells 60 Minutes That Doubting Global Warming Is Man-Made Is Akin To Believing Earth Is Flat)

That's CBS's title (and subtitle)

Watch the full interview with Leslie




13 minutes long - here's a 4 page summary on cbs's webiste

discuss politely please

(my jury is still out on Al - blackdog please help me in the comment section - don't want to delete any - plus I might have to take a nap pretty soon)

The new.... "NEW FED SWAT TEAM"

Let's start at the very beginning

Oct/1999


Clinton, Republicans agree to deregulation of US financial system:

An agreement between the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans, reached during all-night negotiations which concluded in the early hours of October 22, sets the stage for passage of the most sweeping banking deregulation bill in American history, lifting virtually all restraints on the operation of the giant monopolies which dominate the financial system.

The proposed Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 would do away with restrictions on the integration of banking, insurance and stock trading imposed by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, one of the central pillars of Roosevelt's New Deal. Under the old law, banks, brokerages and insurance companies were effectively barred from entering each others' industries, and investment banking and commercial banking were separated.

(the rest is history.....or is it still being played out Hillary?)

This has GOT to be an April Fool's joke.....

From Surfing The Apocalypse:

It is almost beyond belief that Congress would allow the creators of the source of most of the country's woes to now possess this level of control and power.

The Republic is truly lost...

PPT to come out of the Closet

Here's the story from yesterday's NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.

Democratic lawmakers are all but certain to say the proposal does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis. Many of the proposals, like those that would consolidate regulatory agencies, have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial markets. And some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation.

(oh Eliot Eliot Eliot.....SO close.....why didn't you just send the 80 grand in cash???? -- stupid stupid stupid Eliot)

Con't from The Surfing The Apocalypse Network:

I would like to think that this is some sort of sick April Fools joke, but, alas they are serious! What happened to free markets?? This is the same blue-print as the now failed Bush Administration Preemptive Strike Foreign Policy. The notion that the "financial SWAT team" goons will muscle their way into the private dealings of an institution that THEY think poses a risk to THEIR fraudulent fiat money Ponzi scheme is frightening. Presumably fund managers will be secretly flown to detention centers where "water-boarding" will be allowed to extract critical information like where they are hiding their gold!

What about this little gem…

QUOTE
"Under the Treasury proposal, Fed officials would be allowed to examine the practices and even the internal bookkeeping of brokerage firms, hedge funds, commodity-trading exchanges and any other institution that might pose a risk to the overall financial system."

What a peach! The FED SWAT team can raid any institution, hedge fund, exchange, and see what key investment positions are and then pass it along to Goldman Sachs who can then make a fortune trading against them as they did with the position data they had confidential access to during the LTCM bail out!!

If you think I am a little over the top consider this…

QUOTE
"While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation."

So why would they want to have more scrutiny if they are not going to have tighter rules???? Hey, don’t pay any attention to the guys with the night vision goggles wandering around your office they just want to have a closer look at your financial dealings.

Is this designed to fix any problems for Joe and Jane America? Nope!...

QUOTE
"The blueprint also suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are being traded in foreign markets."

Oh! You mean like the self regulation of the mortgage industry that allowed mortgages for anyone with a pulse and the self regulation of the rating agencies that allowed a triple A rating for any re-packaged debt originated by someone with a pulse! And the re-packaged garbage instrument can be automatically approved as long as it is for export to some unsuspecting investor with a pulse overseas! That should help.

Here is the real killer quote from general Paulson

QUOTE
"I am not suggesting that more regulation is the answer, or even that more effective regulation can prevent the periods of financial market stress that seem to occur every 5 to 10 years," Mr. Paulson will say in a speech on Monday, according to a draft of the speech. "I am suggesting that we should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in, one that is more flexible."

WAKE UP FOLKS

I am awake, but I don't know what to do.

What should we do? Can we do anything? How would we even begin to do anything?

I DON'T KNOW I DON'T KNOW I DON'T KNOW

crossposted at BigBrassBlog

But will he be allowed to assume office if he wins this election THIS time?

Senior Democrats mull Al Gore's nomination

Plans for Al Gore to take the Democratic presidential nomination as the saviour of a bitterly divided party are being actively discussed by senior figures and aides to the former vice-president.

The bloody civil war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has left many Democrats convinced that neither can deliver a knockout blow to the other and that both have been so damaged that they risk losing November's election to the Republican nominee, John McCain. Former aides to Al Gore now believe he could emerge as a compromise candidate

Former Gore aides now believe he could emerge as a compromise candidate acceptable to both camps at the party's convention in Denver during the last week of August.

'Nuff said.

Since valium doesn't work;
Trying to follow Red's request...

Hillary and McCain video games

Bill Maher's team of writers came up with video games for Hillary and McCain. I'm sorry but the "John McCain's Virtual Fireplace" absolutely slayed me. Look at the hand holding the poker in the fireplace. I'm not anti-old people. I will soon be there... but still

Gay Scientists Isolate Christianity Gene

Finally, the idea that Christianity is a lifestyle choice can be put to rest. If you're a Christian, you cannot help it for you were born that way.



hat tip slatev

Connecticut's Superdelegates

First, let me state that I have no idea whatsoever how this process works. I am usually pretty good at searching, reading and then finally understanding. My head is spinning right about now, so I'll look to my blondesense family to help me. I do understand that WE THE PEOPLE do not elect these superdelegates. It seems to be a retarded process that I am not meant to understand. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) -- HELP!

Anywho - here is the Front page story from yesterday's Hartford Courant:

McCain-Clinton A Tossup

(But Poll Shows State's Voters Like Obama Vs. GOP Candidate)

John McCain could become the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Connecticut in 20 years if Democrats nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton, a new poll shows.

"It goes to the argument, 'I am electable, she is not.' That's a poll only for the superdelegates," said Nicholas Paindiris of Glastonbury, an Obama delegate. "In Connecticut, we already have eight."

A national Gallup poll this week favored Clinton on electability.

Electability is a concern for the superdelegates — senior party and elected officials who are not bound by primary results. Connecticut has a dozen, including Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr. of Brooklyn, who was chosen Tuesday night by the other delegates.

Obama is favored 8-1 over Clinton among the Connecticut superdelegates who have publicly expressed a preference. They include Williams, the co-chairman of Obama's state campaign.

The only publicly uncommitted superdelegates are U.S. Rep. Joseph Courtney of the 2nd District, Nancy DiNardo, the Democratic state chairwoman, and John Olsen, a member of the Democratic National Committee. ( Here's huffpo's off-the-bus scoop on DiNardo )



From democratic convention watch:

Wednesday was Connecticut's turn to name it's add-on superdelegate: The Connecticut Democratic superdelegate ranks are complete with the selection of State Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams, D-Brooklyn....he is a leader of the Obama campaign in Connecticut. More specifically, Williams is co-chair of Barack Obama's Connecticut Leadership Council along with Ned Lamont, and we will be adding him to the Obama column.





and here's the entire superdelegate list





“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

~ Mahatma Ghandi

Feds inspect radioactive cat

The feds are using sensors on I-5 to search for radioactive isotopes. The sensors are so sensitive that it detected a cat in a car traveling 70 miles per hour that had cancer and underwent treatment three days prior. Homeland Security is also randomly screening passengers for passports during domestic ferry runs in the San Juan Islands in Washington.
via current.com


Read the story here from Seattle Times:
Watch out, you're being watched


h/t to our reader Tom

Here's What I Hope

I hope that Karl Rove is sweating like the pig that he is tonight. How sweet would it be for someone to prove that he was behind the prosecution of Don Siegelman? There are allegations that his fingerprints are all over the prosecution. Congress is very interested and wants to talk to the governor. And then there was that CBS piece that somehow mysteriously disappeared from the airwaves in the governor's home state. Some very interesting (in a squirrely kinda way) things went on with Siegelman's indictment, trial and sentencing.

An appeals court has now overridden the trial judge and ordered Siegelman released during his appeal (after he'd sat in prison for over a year), finding the appeal raises several "substantial questions of law and fact." That's legalese for "there's a significant chance we are going to overturn this verdict."

The court that sprung him is a very conservative federal court. Two judges signed the order, one a Clinton appointee, the other a George HW Bush appointee. One of the judges (the Bush appointee) wrote the opinion on the Alabama sex toys case that many of us might recall.* So I don't think any of us might call her one of them there librul activist judges.

There's a lot of smoke right now. I think it would be hilarious if it turned into an inferno that burned Karl's house down.


* We stand in solidarity with our vibrator-deprived sisters in Alabama.

So much for the "Liberal Media"

On Sunday's Press the Meat, Chuck Todd, Political Director of MSNBC talked about the free ride they give McCain.

McCain's free media ride


Today, John Amato of C&L was on MSNBC to talk about those comments and when he did, Mark Mullen cut him off changing the topic to Al Gore!

Amato on MSNBC

We shoot them; we bomb them; we beat them to death...

And now:
Classified Memo Reveals Iraqi Prisoners as "Starving"
"A classified memo written by a top military official stationed in Western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic “minimal levels of hygiene for human beings."

"The conditions in these jails are so bad that I think we need to do the right thing in terms of caring for the prisoners even with our own dollars, or release them,” says the memo, written late last month by Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S forces in western Iraq.

"The classified document, leaked to the website Wikileaks, a website where whistleblowers can "reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations," was authenticated by the organization.

"The memo contains other shocking revelations about conditions at the jail, including a massive shortage of food and water. The prison is said to be run by Iraqi officials. US Marines ("The few, the proud, the well-fed") oversee operation of the facility."

I have NEVER been more sick to my stomach in my ENTIRE life - I can't even compose myself at the moment......

Hannity Hypocritically Defends Obama




Part 2




Here is Paster Manning's video "Obama is a Mack Daddy" that is being discussed:




Here is the story from News Hounds (They watch Fox so we don't have to). Unfortunately I HAD to watch because I was just over my parents house (Fox is on 24/7 over there) checking up on them, and Fox and Friends was "covering the story". I had to leave before I started a fight.

Can I Make A Suggestion?

Can we here at BlondeSense move away from all the invective and nastiness based on whom our chosen Democratic nominee might be?

Cruising the liberal blogosphere is not all that much fun right now. There is a lot of good political news (see, Seigelman, Don) that is being drowned out amongst all the screeching and biting and clawing between Clinton and Obama supporters. Obama's preacher's a racist! Hillary's a liar! Obama is using dog whistles! Hillary is playing the race card! GAH!!!

This is not healthy and it's not helpful to the real goal of getting the country back on a better trajectory than it is in right now.

The Republican house of cards assembled over the past eight (and more) years is about to come crashing down on their precious pointy heads. Nothing stands in the way of moving the country in a more progressive direction but our own inability to see the forest from amongst the trees. Threats from one candidate's supporters that they'll never vote for the other are simply silly if one sincerely believes that 7 years of King George's reign have been nothing more than an unmitigated disaster for the country and the world. We have far more in common than we have differences.*

So . . . PEACE!

And I'll start. Let me apologize to our long time reader Gaia sighs for taking in after her yesterday in one of the comment threads. It is not helpful to alienate one's allies. I was wrong and I admit it.

*And fer fuck's sake, please stop feeding the trolls. It should be pretty obvious that their goal is to cause bitterness and distrust between those who should be friends. What exactly would anyone hope to gain by arguing with them? Does anyone really think the trolls' comments "prove" anything? Do anyone really think their responses will "prove" to the trolls they are wrong? The trolls' own comments demonstrate they are cretins. Let's leave it there. Please.



(Graphic shamelessly stolen fron konagod's blog)

Interesting....

What's the true cause of anger?
Anger isn't really a bad thing, but the sometimes accompanying aggression isn't very pleasant. How one deals with anger may implicate serious biological or psychiatric disease.

Have you been bullied at work?
About 1/3 of us have been bullied at work.

Found! Oldest recording of human voice
A 10 second snippet of a woman singing 'Au clair de la lune' from 1860 has been found. A fascinating gadget called a "phonautograph" scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp. Imagine that? See also BBC

Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls
another great piece by Laura Knight-Jadczyk about how history may have been more casually influenced by flying space debris.

Spring is Aurora Season
The weeks around the vernal equinox are prone to northern lights, but how the does know what season it is in the northern hemisphere on earth?

'Earth Hour' to plunge millions into darkness
Twenty-six major cities around the world are expected to turn off the lights on major landmarks, plunging millions of people into darkness to raise awareness about global warming, organisers said.

U.S. military suspends Afghanistan ammunition deal
How the hell does a 22 year old kid from Florida get a $300 million dollar contract with the pentagon to sell ammunition to Afghan soldiers? Not only that... it's old crap from China. duh. See also Raw Story with picture of kid.

Obligatory Friday Sex Post - Weirdness Edition

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

NZ man sentenced after claiming to have been raped by a wombat
March 28, 2008 - 7:55AM

A New Zealand man who claimed to have been left speaking Australian after being raped by a wombat has been sentenced to 75 hours community service.

Arthur Ross Cradock, a 48-year-old orchard worker, admitted in the Nelson District Court yesterday to the charge of using a phone for a fictitious purpose, after calling police with the message, "I've been raped by a wombat".

Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court that on the afternoon of February 11 Cradock called the police communications centre, threatening to "smash the filth" if they arrived at his home that night.

When asked if he had an emergency, he replied "yes", Mr Stringer said.

On a second subsequent call to the communications centre, Cradock told police he was being raped by a wombat at his Motueka address, and sought their immediate help.

He called police again soon after, and gave his full name, saying he wanted to withdraw the complaint.

"I'll retract the rape complaint from the wombat, because he's pulled out," Cradock told the operator at the communications centre, who had no idea what he was talking about, Mr Stringer said.

"Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right you know, I didn't hurt my bum at all," Cradock then told the operator.

Mr Stringer said alcohol had played a big part in Cradock's life. However, defence lawyer Michael Vesty said alcohol was not a problem that day.

Judge Richard Russell said he was not quite sure what motivated Cradock to make those statements to the police.

In sentencing, he warned Cradock not to do it again.

"Unrest?"

More like "Round 2."

While the Bushite Junta, John McCain and the neoconservaties ("Getting Shit Wrong Since 1992") were crowing about how the Surge in Iraq was turning that benighted country into a Happy Land of Hearts and Flowers, things were happening.

The brass over there slowed down the release of hostages - er, soldiers - to their anxiously waiting families. Explanation? They wanted a pause to see what progress they've made. From a purely military standpoint, I can actually appreciate that; you need to stop and assess what's going on, then adapt. It's an organic, dare I say evolutionary process.

But at the same time we paused at 140,000 troops, the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki decided to impose the central government's writ upon the southern city of Basra. Basra has the distinctions of being Iraq's second-largest city, its major oil hub and almost completely dominated by sectarian militias and criminal gangs since Saddam Hussein's troops were pushed out by our invasion in 2003.

The British last year withdrrew their last forces from Basra proper, for the relative safety of the air base outside the city.

The major militia in Basra is the JAM, or Jamiat al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army, headed by a Shiite cleric named Moqtada al-Sadr. He declared a unilateral cease-fire last year, and even the US grudgingly concedes that the cease-fire helped with the surge to quiet things down a tad.

Now, here's where things get interesting; the core of the Iraqi Army is made up of two militias, that of the Dawa Party and that of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Guess who is the leader of the Dawa Party's militia?

Nouri al-Maliki.

It's been accused that al-Maliki is trying to crack down on the JAM in order to reduce its influence in the provincial elections coming up in October, although the official line is that the Army's just trying to impose order.

Meanwhile, armed clashes and protests sparked by the Army's incursion into Basra have spread into seven other cities and towns, including the Shiite holy city of Kerbala and Baghdad, where mortar rounds and rockets have been launched into the so-called Green Zone. People living in that walled compound have been told to stay close to reinforced shelters and keep their helmets and body armor handy.

Yep, looks like The Surge was working - but not any longer.

Will the Iraqi army finally manage to do a job all on its own? Or will JAM beat their ass?

Stay tuned.

Some Stuff


It is to cry! So sad!



Religion coming to the White House?



Hillary's Lincoln Bedroom Donors

Wright Effect had Wrong Effect for Hillary

Not that I believe in polls or anything, but after reading No apparent ‘Wright effect’ in new NBC/WSJ poll I see that Obama's popularity hasn't diminished among Democrats but Hillary's has. Republicans who once supported Obama, unsurprisingly, are a bit taken back by it all. Clinton's negative campaigning is taking its toll on her.

I'm surprised she took the low road knowing what she knows about politics first hand- the low road works for conservatives but not for progressives. Whose side is she on anyway? But then again, we can't really trust the press to report anything accurately, so who the hell knows?

This blonde would be happy to see no more religion bashing in politics. If candidate's pastors or religious beliefs are going to be scrutinized as a regular feature of seeking office, things will get so dirty, so nasty and so low that it will take a revolution to stop the madness... and this crap is going on with 3 supposed Christians, mind you. Just goes to show that a theocracy would never work in this country.

Stop Loss Makes Prisoners of 60,000 Americans

From Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans 'Prisoners of War' by Penny Coleman at Alternet.

"I was a great soldier once upon a time," Goldsmith says.

He graduated at the top of his class in basic training and was on the commandant's list in the Warrior Leadership Course with a 94.6 percent average. He aced every test, mental and physical, received commendations and medals and promotions, but by the end of his first deployment he knew he was in serious trouble.

His CSM (command sergeant major) Altman, however, had told his battalion, "If any of you go try to say you're depressed and thinking about killing yourself, you're going to get deployed anyway, and when we get there, you'll get to be my personal I.E.D. (improvised explosive device) kicker!" So he self-medicated; he drank. A lot. "All I wanted to do was black out."

What kept him going was the end that was in sight. He just had to hang on till his contract was up, and then he could go home, go back to school, and finally be a 20-year-old kid. Then days before he was scheduled to get out, his unit was locked down, stop-lossed as part of the surge. He was looking at another 18-month deployment.

At first he thought he was having a heart attack. It turned out to be a panic attack. He was diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder and adjustment disorder, given a lot of pills and told he'd be fine. Or at least fine enough to go back.

The day before his unit was to deploy, Memorial Day 2007, he went out onto the memorial field at Ft. Stewart, where trees are planted for every soldier from 3rd Infantry Division killed in Iraq. He mixed pills and vodka, and tried to die.

Meanwhile, while the scandaldates are squabbling:

There's a post over at Cryptogon where the headline sorta says it all:
"Wall Street Journal on Real Estate Collapse: 'Demolish some of the least-wanted houses, with taxpayer money if necessary'"
to which a commenter attaches a comment, "US is being sold off." and a link to EconomyinCrisis.org where you will find such juicy tidbits as:

FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF U.S.INDUSTRIES
Sound recording industries 97%
Commodity contracts dealing 79%
Motion picture and sound recording industries 75%
Metal ore mining 65%
Motion picture and video industries 64%
Wineries and distilleries 64%
Database, directory, and other publishers 63%
Book publishers 63%
and
Foreign Financing of U.S. Government Debt
Japan $517.2 Bn
China $405.5 Bn
United Kingdom $299.7 Bn
Brazil $128.8 Bn
Oil Exporters $126.7 Bn
Luxembourg $76.3 Bn
Hong Kong $54.3 Bn

The very height of propaganda

Oh for crying out loud.
Gag me with a spoon or one of those hand held metal detectors.

A US Senator and presidential contender must deal with this bullshit? Hell I wouldn't vote for McCain unless he was running against the evil dickster himself and there was no other choice and I hadn't had a chance to move to a foreign country yet, but McCain shouldn't put up with this (unless of course he did it for a photo op.)



Look. He's smiling. Isn't that cute?

Your face is too close to my crotch buddy. Come next January, the SS will have your hands tied behind your back if you try THIS again.

What could the AP Photographers be trying to tell us?

While Jenna reads a story to children at the WH Easter hoohah, a nearby child yawns widely.



This is the audience at a talk given by First lady, La La (Land) Bush at Rolling Ridge Elementary School in Olathe, Kan

Additional Weekly Douchebaggery

Penalty for Douchebag's refusal to dispense contraceptives upheld.

The Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board ruled in 2005 that the Douchebag in question failed to carry out his professional responsibility to get the woman's prescription to another pharmacist if he wouldn't fill it himself. The board reprimanded the Douchebag and ordered him to attend ethics classes. He was allowed to keep his license as long as he informs all future employers in writing that he won't dispense birth control pills and outlines steps he will take to make sure a patient has access to medication.

Said Douchebag not only refused to fill a woman's prescription for birth control pills, but also refused to transfer her prescription to another pharmacy where she might not be subjected to such douchebaggery. Naturally, he claimed it was against his (Roman Catholic) religious beliefs, and said that he didn't want to commit a sin by "impairing the fertility of a human being." Oy. Hey, Douchebag, what about that woman's right to have her prescription filled without having your douchebaggity religious beliefs crammed down her throat?

Douchebag was quoted as saying that the Board's discipline "critically devastated" his business as a traveling pharmacist because some pharmacies refused to hire him and he lost his liability insurance.

Boo-stinkin'-hoo, Douchebag. If your religious beliefs mean so much to you, you should be prepared to live with the economic consequences.

Just a thought

I got a chance yesterday to talk with a group of "undecideds" here in Western Pa. about the presidential race. These were people, mostly women, who couldn’t make it to Hillary’s Speech in Pittsburgh but were interested enough to gather at a local watering hole to watch just like guys watch sports. (The bartender is a friend who objected at first to changing the channel but changed his mind deciding discretion the better part of valor). Most were split on their opinions and impressions of the two Democratic candidates but all totally abhorred McShame.

The vast majority of these were women. There were only 3 men. I was sitting at a table close enough to be involved but far enough to stay out of the way until the speech was over. Women at a local pub during the day! Quite a site. But I was told they had planned this in advance.

Not much was said during the speech. Maybe a few grunts or “yeahs” and one or two "bullshits" but basically they sat and listened until it was over.

Afterward one woman asked about the Wright incident and whether that would affect how the others felt toward Obama. The ones who said yes (about 4 or 5) admitted to only getting their news and information from the 3 major networks. A few said they watched cable, mostly CNN and FOX. The rest were internet junkies and comments ranged from wanting facts on all the candidates’ travails to the obvious partisan coverage by the MSM. That almost brought a tear to my eye.

But one woman quieted the room with a question related to Hillary’s comment about “choosing her preacher.” She asked the other women in the room, would they still "choose" to be married to their husbands after their husbands had more than one extra-marital affair? To say you could hear a pin drop would be an understatement. Then everyone started talking at once.

The consensus was that Hillary had no business making that kind of statement with skeletons in her closet. The women commented that they thought the reason she stayed with Bill was so she could further her political ambitions. Had she divorced him, odds were high she wouldn’t have been able to run for Senator in New York. Another said that even though she heard Hillary has “money” she wanted to stay with the extra money that Bill would bring in.

I wonder just how many women out there stay with or would stay with their husbands who have had (multiple) affairs? I’ve heard the time-honored reasons of income and security, but do those apply to the upper class at a time when divorces occur simply because one spouse looks longingly at a member of the opposite sex?

They then talked about the double standard of men in that situation and especially the Republicans. They felt it was highly unfair for the media to give a pass to those who cheated on their wives, remarried and wrapped themselves in the bible. That brought about a chorus of invective comments. (Who'd have thought wimmens could have such a "manly" vocabulary!)

By the time the “discussion was over, 8 of the15 undecided women said they were inclined to vote for Obama simply based on how Hillary made the comment. The others were leaning that way.

One woman said that if she were to become president the way Hillary is trying, she sure wouldn’t just want a cigar! She then asked me what I thought about that! I told her I didn’t smoke but she could buy me a drink!

Is She Really THAT Bad?

I just read this headline at Buzzflash.

To Distract from Videotaped Confirmation That Senator Clinton Lied on Multiple Occasions About Bosnian Landing, Campaign Goes Nuclear in Attack on Obama While Bill Continues to Praise McCain. We are Seeing the Birth of the Second Joe Lieberman. On Top of It, Senator Clinton a Week Late Attacks Obama on Jeremiah Wright in Interview with -- Get This -- Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Clinton is Going to Bring Down the Democratic Party.

Is this all true? Seriously. (I know I haven't been paying enough attention, but you know, politics lately really gets on my nerves and I have to take breaks from the primary or I'd go mad.) I have been wondering if Bill Clinton was turning into Joe Lieberman though.

The link goes to Clinton: Wright 'would not have been my pastor'

Things are "being done."

An interview with Senator Harry Reid:

Q: Do you still think the Democratic race can be resolved before the convention?
Reid: Easy.
Q: How is that?
Reid: It will be done.
Q: It just will?
Reid: Yep.
Q: Magically?
Reid: No, it will be done. I had a conversation with Governor Dean today. Things are being done.

Ok. Let's guess how this will be done and who will be the champion and vice champion.

I'll give you a "Brief for Whitey," Pat Buchanan

Wow MSNBC Political analyst Pat Buchanan has really lost it in A Brief for Whitey. He doesn't get the reasons for the racial divide in this country, but thinks he does like many lily white rich men. And he wants black people to show gratitude towards white people. Really. He sounds like the rich, white, well to do racists I grew up with... he's got all their talking points down, but he misses the whole point. Sad.

Excerpt:

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Pat Buchanan doesn't speak for this white American and I would never dare to say such things to a black person like "You should be grateful that your slave ancestors came to America so that you could be saved by Gawd Almighty in our most christian country blessed by Gawd himself." If I were a christianist, I suppose I could console poor black Christians by saying, "At least you won't go to hell."

Oh but wait. Here's the stuff that when spoken by anyone in my presence causes me to get up and walk out of the room:

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? [YES, pretty much] Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent? [YES, pretty much]

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself? [Whitey]

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time? [I don't believe that. Prove it.]

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse? [I don't believe that. Prove it.]

Well another day, another step back in American history. Same old, same old.

Yogi Bear & Boo-Boo in Jellystoned Park (From CollegeHumor)

Watch Yogi Bear in the Great Forest Freakout before contemplating this possible scenario......OR, maybe you might prefer this read about The Coming Scalar Armageddon

Oh......

I forgot to mention: Minor Quake Rattles Parts of Yellowstone - 3/25/08

Ever since I saw the BBC documentary Supervolcano I can't help but think.......

Douchebag(s) of the week -- Rush Limbaugh & Ben Stein

The relatives were discussing this on Easter Sunday. Big time Rush (and Bill "Oh Really" ) fans. I couldn't believe it, so I had to check it out for myself.


March 18th
(from Rush's website which I will not link here)

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ben Stein has a new movie out. He brought it by my house Friday afternoon to screen it for me. It's called Expelled. It is powerful. It is fabulous. And here's the premise of his movie. The premise is that Darwinism has taken root, taken hold at every major intellectual institution around the world in Western Society, from Great Britain to the United States, you name it. Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God. His interviews with some of the professors who espouse Darwinism are literally shocking. The condescension and the arrogance these people have, they will readily admit that Darwinism and evolution do not explain how life began. One of these professors said it might have been that a hyper-intelligence from another planet came here and started our race. This from some professor either in the UK, I forget where it was, but can't be God. These people are so threatened by the existence of God, they will not permit intelligent design to be discussed. Professors have been fired, blackballed, and prevented from working who have deigned to try to combine the whole concept of evolution with intelligent design.

Ben Stein's new movie is going to open to a thousand screens pretty soon, it's not out there yet. It's called Expelled. But the point of it is that these people on the left are just scared to death of God. It threatens everything. We, on the other hand, recognize that our greatness, who we are, our potential, our ambition, our desire, comes from God, and as part of our Creation, this natural yearning to be free and to practice liberty. That is how we think this country came to be great. It is how we think this country will continue to be great and to grow.

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

UPDATE: Read PZ Myers' blog concerning this movie.
But start with this story about his experience being expelled from trying to see the movie, "Expelled" ... it's priceless and mind you, they were giving away DVD's featuring PZ!
-
liz

hat tip to Red State Blues for the links to PZ Myers.

The Fed is just an Extension of the Banking Establishment; The Bear bailout proves it (By Mike Whitney)

I was JUST wondering where Mike Whitney was and when we might be hearing from him.


You can read this article at

Information Clearing House

or

The Market Oracle

or


CounterPunch


and here is a related article of his at
lew Rockwell - "Bearly Alive"

4,000 American Soldiers Dead.

Bountiful Goddess, Mother of Mercy,
Take these warriors to Your bosom,
Comfort those they leave behind;
Conduct them gently to the Land of Youth,
Where there is no more sorrow, no illness
And no pain,
And all is Eternal Spring.

So mote it be.

4,000 Americans Killed in Iraq

more than enough

A Late Easter Post: A Peeps Show

Washington Post had their 2nd annual Peeps Show which was quite creative. I doubt that my usual Easter diorama, The Passion of the Peep, would have made it, but the winning entries were quite brilliant. You can view them here.

My favorite is Amy Winepeep Rehab

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

warning: the majority of what is to follow was found at wikipedia. seems to be unchallenged, but PLEASE feel free to correct as necessary.


The Pledge of Allegiance (as stated in this post's title) was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, a Christian Socialist and the cousin of Socialist Utopian novelist Edward Bellamy. Cousin Edward wrote Looking Backward (It was written in reaction to the disillusionment with an increasingly competitive and industrial society), and its sequel " Equality", dealing with women's rights, education and many other issues. Make sure to (or not) read about his father (baptist minister), mother (calvinist), and grandfather (was a baptist minister but kicked out cause he was also a freemason)

O.K......back to Francis:

The pledge was supposed to be quick and to the point. Bellamy designed it to be stated in 15 seconds. He had initially also considered using the words equality and fraternity but decided they were too controversial since many people opposed equal rights for women and blacks. He said that the purpose of the pledge was to teach obedience to the state as a virtue and that the United States supports the flag. Bellamy's original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published in the September 8th issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America.



Now Come the Changes


Official versions (changes in bold )

1892
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

1892 to 1923
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

1923 to 1954
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

In 1923 the National Flag Conference called for the words my Flag to be changed to the Flag of the United States. The reason given was to ensure that immigrants knew to which flag reference was being made. The words "of America" were added a year later. The U.S. Congress officially recognized the Pledge as the official national pledge on December 28, 1945.


1954 to Present
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

The Knights of Columbus in New York City felt that the pledge was incomplete without any reference to a deity. Appealing to the authority of Abraham Lincoln, the Knights felt that the words "under God" which were from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address were most appropriate to add to the Pledge. In New York City on April 22, 1951, the Board of Directors of the Knights of Columbus adopted a resolution to amend their recitation of Pledge of Allegiance at the opening of each of the meetings of the 800 Fourth Degree Assemblies of the Knights of Columbus by addition of the words "under God" after the words "one nation."


(The Knights of Columbus is the world's largest Roman Catholic fraternal service organization. Founded in the United States in 1882, it is named in honor of Christopher Columbus[1] and dedicated to the principles of Charity, Unity, Fraternity, and Patriotism.)

Though the Knights of Columbus tried, they were unsuccessful in their attempts to persuade the United States government to amend the pledge.


BUT - a Presbyterian minister was successful:

The minister was George MacPherson Docherty, a native of Scotland who was called to succeed Peter Marshall as pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church near the White House, where, in 1863, the same year as the address, Lincoln attended and even rented a pew. After Lincoln’s death, the pew that he rented became something of a national monument. It became customary for later United States presidents to attend services at the church and sit in the Lincoln pew on the Sunday closest to Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) each year.

As Lincoln Sunday (February 7, 1954) approached, Rev. Docherty knew not only that President Dwight Eisenhower was to be in attendance, but that it was more than just an annual ritual for him; while President, Eisenhower had been baptized a Presbyterian. Docherty's sermon focused on the Gettysburg Address, drawing its title from the address, "A New Birth of Freedom."

On the very next day, Eisenhower had the wheels turning in Congress to incorporate Docherty’s suggestion into law. On February 8, 1954, Rep. Charles Oakman (R-Mich.), introduced a bill to that effect. On Lincoln’s birthday, four days later, Oakman made the following speech on the floor of the House:

Last Sunday, the President of the United States and his family occupied the pew where Abraham Lincoln worshipped.The pastor, the Reverend George M. Docherty, suggested the change in our Pledge of Allegiance that I have offered [as a bill]. Dr. Docherty delivered a wise sermon. He said that as a native of Scotland come to these shores he could appreciate the pledge as something more than a hollow verse taught to children for memory. I would like to quote from his words. He said, 'there was something missing in the pledge, and that which was missing was the characteristic and definitive factor in the American way of life.' Mr. Speaker, I think Mr. Docherty hit the nail square on the head.

These words [“under God”] will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded

(Oh Liz...... I could really use a head banging, puke icon right about here!)

I can't help but wonder if I-Lie Joe (Lieberman that is) will be referencing "under God" and the Pledge connection as he prepares for the 10 commandment resolution.

Maybe he'll just do an e-mail blast to all his legal-eagle friends with this youtube video:




Forgive me Red
(I'm a big fan), but........

you're a hypocrite, just like most of us.

Silliness from the Senate

Brownback, Lieberman Introduce Ten Commandments Resolution
Thursday, March 13, 2008
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) today introduced the Ten Commandments Weekend Resolution, which would designate the first weekend of May 2008 as Ten Commandments Weekend.

"It is important for Americans to remember the importance the Ten Commandments have in our nation," said Brownback. "The Ten Commandments are the cornerstone to the faith of millions of Americans of many faith traditions, and are a cornerstone to a fair and just society. We as a nation should take a weekend to reflect on the impact the Ten Commandments have had on the foundation of America's national life."

S Res 483
(1) recognizes the first weekend of May 2008 as `Ten Commandments Weekend';
(2) celebrates the Ten Commandments as a significant aspect of the national life of the United States; and
3) encourages citizens of the United States to reflect on the integral role that the Ten Commandments have played in the life of the Nation.

There are lots of "Where as's" but this one stuck out:

"Whereas President Harry S Truman affirmed, "The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state.'';"

Oh Harry. The basis of our Bill of Rights? Really?

First Amendment – Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I didn't see anything else in the bill of rights pertaining to keeping the commandments except for how you might be tried for stealing, killing, lieing, etc.

Silly Senators. When I finished laughing at the resolution, I got to thinking about the 10 commandments themselves and how they do not influence the daily lives of elected lawmakers who support big business over the will or well being of the people. In fact, I don't think that most "devoutly religious" Americans really contemplate the 10 Commandments and if they did that on the first weekend in May every year, we might end up with complete anarchy and an overthrow of the government using our second amendment rights.

I also wonder how many people can name the 10 Commandments. Quick, ask a conservative politician what they are. Chances are that he hasn't a clue. Ask him to compare the Bill of Rights to the commonly accepted version of the 10 Commandments. Chances are he doesn't know the Bill of Rights offhand either.

There a couple of versions of the 10 Commandments and Catholics have a different version from the Protestants which seems rather divisive. The Jews have different ones as well. So do Muslims. Who decides which version is the official US version anyway? There are more than 10 commandments in each biblical version as well. Who decides which ones would be chosen? Furthermore, after studying Moses in a Catholic Seminary for my masters degree, we learned that scholars dispute Moses' authorship. Conservatives tend to not think about it and willingly accept that God did in fact dictate only 10 Commandments to Moses. People who think want to know how ALL the commandments were whittled down to 10 for religious purposes and how a burning bush means that god is near and not the result of a bolt of lightning or maybe an alien spaceship coming in to pick up Moses (which to me seems like the only logical explanation).

The first few commandments are unconstitutional but let's look at some of the others.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. According to the gospels, Jesus himself warns that if you get a divorce and then remarry while your previous spouse is still alive then you are in the state of adultery. More than half of marriages end in divorce... imagine how many people are adulterers according to the bible? But if you're Jewish, it's ok to remarry. If you have a chippy on the side, it's a huge scandal, but it's not against the law unless you pay for it.

Thou shalt not covet. Our economy runs on consumer coveting. What does the president tell you to do to help the ailing economy or recover from trauma such as that of 9/11? Shop. What motivates you to shop for non-essentials? Coveting. That's one sin that is encouraged by the powers that be.

A detailed version of thou shalt not covet is as follows and makes you think that not coveting would be positively anti-american:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.

Keeping the Sabbath Holy should be merged with 'not coveting' and then duly disregarded. For Jews the Sabbath is Saturday and for Christians it's Sunday. We used to have blue laws and Christians did sort of keep the Sabbath holy because there wasn't anything else to do on Sunday except go to church. Today the stores are jammed on weekends. If the Sabbath Day's are so holy to religious Americans, why is everyone shopping (and even working)? In the summertime, people go to the shore on the sabbath to swim and covet thy neighbor's ass.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Sure it's against the law, but hardly anyone takes it seriously, let alone Joe LIEberman. Or how about being lied into wars? How can an elected official even pretend to care about the 10 Commandments as long as this is an official commandment in all 3 versions?

Thou shalt not kill. It is only against the law if you are not legally authorized to kill. Sure it's against the law unless Congress or the President declare war or as it's commonly called today, liberating.

Thou shalt not steal. I don't think anyone needed a commandment from god to figure that out. Again, there are certain authorities in our country that steal and it's neither a crime nor a sin.

It's all just another perfectly ridiculous reason to preach from the Senate.

---------

In the gospel of Matthew when Jesus was asked which commandments one should follow, Jesus gives him 6, one of which is not in the "official" 10 commandments. Jesus added the concept of love to the mix.

19:18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
19:19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Jesus goes on about the biggest obstacle towards human perfection is having "too much stuff."

19:20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
19:22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
19:23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

This is hardly an American value as put forth by most religious organizations and our very own federal government.

But Jesus sums it all up in Matthew's Chapter 22 and it's really quite universal when you think of it:

22:36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

It's quite true. If you have love in your hearts, you won't need any other laws or commandments for we wouldn't hurt each other. Even if you don't believe in the "god" of the bible, loving all creation including the people, the animals, the plants, the fish, everything, the world will be in harmony. You can throw all the rules and regulations out there for people to follow, but guiding people on how to behave for fear for breaking a rule, does not a true harmonious society make.
----------------

Further reading:

1. S. RES. 483
2. Senate Resolution for "Ten Commandments Weekend"
3. Brownback, Lieberman, and the "Ten Commandments Weekend"
4. Which Ten Commandments?
5. Overview of the Ten Commandments
6. Text of George Carlin on the 10 Commandments
7. Video of George Carlin on the 10 Commandments
8. The Ten Commandments Hubbub

Some of my posts on the 10 Commandments:

Are the 10 Commandments the Basis for Our Laws? Part I
Are the 10 Commandments the Basis for Our Laws? Part II
Are the 10 Commandments the Basis for Our Laws? Part III
Are the 10 Commandments the Basis for Our Laws? Part IV
Are the 10 Commandments the Basis for Our Laws? Part V

Flaws in the Foundation

I was thinking back on Senator Obama's extremely timely and well-thought speech on racism in this country, and a commentator remarked that it is believed that slavery was America's 'original sin' - that the institution of slavery was the 800-pound gorilla in the room that gave the lie to all the high-minded talk about freedom and liberty.

I think that the flaw in the base architecture of America goes back about that far, but in a different direction.

'Puritan' used to be a pejorative, in much the same way that 'Christian' was back in about AD 200. The Puritans were a sect within Christianity that sought to purge the English Church of every last trace of anything that smacked of Catholicism (or anything that wasn't in the Bible), and they wanted the Kingdom to be a Republic under the leadership of Christ.

Elizabeth I smiled at these people, and tolerated them to a certain point; her successor James I (James VI of Scotland) tried hard to be tolerant, since he'd already met their attitude with the Calvinist Scottish Kirk. His son Charles I, imbued and educated with the tenets of absolute monarchy 'by the grace of God,' tried to enforce his will on a largely Puritan Parliament (which, coincidentally, had most of the money in the realm).

Charles I was beheaded for his trouble.

While these courtesies were going on, a band of people boarded the small ship Mayflower and headed for Virginia. Because they ran out of beer and a few other essentials they stopped quite a bit further north than they had intended, at what is now Massachusetts.

The Plimoth Plantation, as the colony was called, was where the Protestant Reformation would be perfected. In the words of one of them, John Winthrop, the little town would be "a shining city on a hill" that would impress everyone and convince them that a theocratic government whose chief executive was God was the right way to go.

That idea, the idea of exceptionalism, was and is the fatal flaw at the foundations of the edifice we now call America. Other colonies were established on religious toleration; the Puritans (also nicknamed Pilgrims for their wanderings) established a theocracy and ruled Massachusetts with an iron fist. Sermons and church attendance were mandatory, families spied on each other and on their neighbors to accuse backsliders and sinners.

Fear was rampant; the morbid fear of hell, the fear of being detected, the fear that you were just not sinless enough no matter what you did.

Small wonder that the Witch Trials took place in Massachusetts. Fear is a powerful motivation, and prolonged fear in a susceptible mind can lead to hysterics.

Throughout American history we see this type of exceptionalism, metastasized like a cancer, spreading with waves of migration and colonization. People would listen to their preachers or itinerant sermonizers with all the concentration and devotion that their medieval ancestors did, and always came the message that Americans were different from everyone else. We were special, and selected by God simply because we were Americans.

(Let me interject here by saying that many Puritans believed that they had taken over God's covenant with Israel.)

And you still see it today, in efforts by otherwise normal-looking and sounding people to make our country "a Christian nation," without an inkling of the horrors that would entail - perpetual fear, dissent become blasphemy - and we must never forget that dissent is democracy, or we'd still be an appanage of the British Empire.

We also see that exceptionalism is still rampant. One only has to witness the phobic response some people had to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks to agree with that assertion.

We must root out racism. There's no denying that.

But we must try to root out exceptionalism as well. It poisons our relations with other nations in a world where interconnectivity is the norm and growing more complex; it stifles criticism of the country, the government and the way America's headed; and it gives those who want to turn the clock back an excuse to turn the United States of America into another Islamic Republic of Iran.

So was slavery a flaw in the foundation? Of course.

But let's not forget the Puritans.

(This was posted as part of the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm.)

Mr. Acker Bilk - Stranger On The Shore 1988 (Live)

and now let's kick it up a notch with the Acker Bilk Band from 1962 - "In a Persian Market"




(you can read all about Mr. Acker Bilk here at wiki)

and here's his website

Saudi king rejects Cheney's belligerency

Well that's certainly a headline I like to read in the morning. Cheney's war mongering didn't cut it with King Abdullah on his visit to Saudi Arabia.

excerpt: King Abdullah is against any US military strike against Iran, Saudi official sources said.
[...]
Saudi Arabia, along with other Persian Gulf Arab countries, sees negotiations as the best way to resolve the standoff between the US and Iran.

The king also told Cheney that the Middle East should be free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, the sources added.

The Saudis say any nuclear non-proliferation efforts should include Israel, which is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East with around 200 nuclear warheads.

European explorers and their dicks in history

A genetic study of Latin America shows that European males mated with native American and African women and slaughtered the men.

An excerpt from Study unlocks Latin American past
The study examined 249 unrelated individuals from 13 Mestizo populations (people from a mixed European/native American origin) in seven countries, ranging from Chile in the south to Mexico in the north.

"There is a clear genetic signature," explained lead author Andres Luiz-Linares from University College London. "The initial mixing occurred predominately between immigrant and European men and native and African women."

He said that the study showed that it was a pattern that was uniform across Latin America.

"We see it in all the populations we examined, so it is clearly a historical fact that the ancestors of these populations can be traced to matings between immigrant men and native and African women."

The researchers found that within the genetic landscape of Latin America, there were variations.

"The Mestizo with the highest native ancestry are in areas which historically have had relatively large native populations," they reported.

This included Andean regions and cities such as Mexico City, where major civilisations were already established by the time Europeans reached the continent in the late 15th Century.

"By contrast, the Mestizo with the highest European ancestry are from areas with relatively low pre-Columbian native population density and where the current native population is sparse," they added.

Explaining the fate of native males when the Europeans arrived, Professor Luiz-Linares said: "It is a very sad and terrible historical fact, they were basically annihilated.

"Not only did the European settlers take away land and property, they also took away the women and, as much as possible, they exterminated the men."

He said the findings could help people change their perception of Latin American history.

Putting it all into perspective

Turns out that McCain's campaign sought out John Hagee's endorsement.

So nyah.

Remember the "Formaldehyde in the FEMA Trailers"?

You'd never guess where they've found it now:
Israel grounds F16s over cancer concerns
"Israel has suspended training flights on US-made F-16 I fighters after finding a cancer-causing substance in the cockpit, the air force announced on Friday.

"The decision was taken "after pilots complained of a nauseating smell in the cockpit," the air force said in a statement.

"Tests detected the presence of formaldehyde, which is considered a carcinogen."

Quote worthy

"Sorry."
Condoleeza Rice to Barack Obama whose passport file had been accessed without authorization.

An oldie but goodie of Jersey's Post Below:

"Right now a scary place to be is in the middle"

That's my quote for the day!

It's from this TIME article: Retail Stars of the Recession

One of my biggest gripes over the past few years has been the quality of practically everything I purchase, be it necessities or "extras". EVERYTHING IS MADE LIKE CRAP. EVERYTHING BREAKS WITHIN 6 MONTHS. EVERYTHING I EAT TASTES LIKE SHIT. ...and so on, and so on, and so on. Seems like I am constantly saying "if I could only find a half-way decent product or food item that didn't break or tasted somewhat palatable, I would pay the extra. By pay the "extra" I mean a few dollars more because I can't afford much more than the already ridiculously priced items out there.


Well......it looks like it's not going to get much better for us folks "in the middle".

According to the TIME article --

"If you have your product right, you want to be high-end or value."

I have been a value shopper my entire life and have always been able to find a decent, well made, built to last (more than 6 months) product that didn't break the bank. NOT ANYMORE.


At the link, take a look at some retailers predicted to "sail easily over the bumpy financial seas ahead"......

I'm sure you can guess who's first up on the list.

That's right folks - MORE CHEAP CRAP FROM CHINA

and the beat goes on.......

La de da de de........

la de da de da

Quotations of the Day

Published: 3/21/08, 4:25 AM EDT -- --- -- -- -- (ATT home page today)
By The Associated Press

AP) - "This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years." - Bill Burton, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, following the disclosure that three contract employees of the State Department had looked at the candidate's passport file.
___
"We cannot, I'm sure, take on another military action in Iran, and I hope no one is contemplating it. It would be a real disaster." - Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking to news reporters on the night he received the first MacArthur Award for International Justice.
___
"If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China and the Chinese in Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak out on human rights." - House speaker Nancy Pelosi, addressing a crowd of thousands of Tibetans in Dharmsala, India, as she arrived to meet the Dalai Lama.



Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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



By The Associated Press
Thu Mar 20, 12:48 PM ET -- -- -- -- -- -- (Yahoo home page yesterday)

"I believe in God and everything, but he does things sometimes that make you wonder." — George Slayton, whose Piedmont, Mo., home was flooded from the heavy rain that has hit the Midwest.



___

"During the last six years, the people of Afghanistan have made a bold, confident journey throwing off the burden of tyranny and winning your freedom. The process has been difficult, but the courage of the nation has been unwavering." — Vice President Dick Cheney as he stood beside Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

___

"I fully appreciate that British public opinion has been frustrated by sometimes our lack of progress." — U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain speaking in England about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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

This "Quotations of the day" was the top news story on my computer screen when I powered up this morning. I clicked on it, fully expecting so see your typical "inspirational, thought-provoking, humorous, literary, and special occasion" quotes. (The "AP" was not part of the headline.)

Is this a new "service" that the AP is providing?

Has anyone else noticed this on their home pages?

I have never seen this until today. At first I thought this was a new section just on my ATT home page until I googled AP Quotations of the Day and saw that Yahoo and others have it also.

Very interesting.........

Happy Birthday Mr. Rogers (Wear your sweater if you go out tonight!)

To all at Blondesense:


It's such a good feeling..............




to know we are all life long friends.



Mr. Rogers' Goodness Is Missed


Pass the kleenex box please.

Now This Is Just Sick

Screaming Headline on ABC News:

"Hillary At White House on 'Stained Blue Dress' Day"

Notice the declarative nature of the statement.

Much smaller, more equivocal subheading:

"Schedules Reviewed by ABC Show Hillary May Have Been in the White House When the Fateful Act Was Committed" (emphasis mine).

So, which is correct, ABC News? Was she definitely there? Or was she "maybe" there?

And why is this fucking important? Isn't there a war going on?

I'm disgusted.

Curious!

Update: Iraq:Five Years of War


When something is posted on a blog the items usually are scrolled down after another is posted. Many times you can view a post a number of days after it was the top story or even a side bar.


The Huffington Post works the same way. If you miss one of today's stories, it'll be available for a number of days until it cycles off the front page. And it should be available by search!



But the slideshow story I referred to on the Five Years of War is gone from the Huffington Post! Imagine that! Maybe I missed something but that article isn't there any longer, at least it's not easily accessible!

Where is it Arianna? Did someone make you remove it?

Maybe I'm wrong.

"Of the 10 greatest moments in the theatre, eight are Scofield's" -- Richard Burton

"Man For All Seasons" Scofield dies at 86
Having been out of the "business" for eight years now, I don't know who now is considered No. 1, but I do know that every actor in the world just moved up a notch.

Peter of Lone Tree, who once played "Senor Chapuys" in a Nebraska State Repertory Company production of "A Man For All Seasons" stands down.

Forgive me

This is not a "politically correct" thing to post, but a couple of things caught my eye.

McCain signals strong support for Israel
AFP - Thursday, March 20
SDEROT, Israel (AFP) - - US Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Wednesday showed vigorous support for Israel, where he made a highly symbolic visit to a town hit by near-daily rocket fire from Gaza.

"No nation in the world can be attacked incessantly and have its population killed and intimidated without responding," McCain said in the southern town of Sderot, where he visited a house hit by a rocket fired by Islamists in the Gaza Strip, just a few kilometres (miles) away.

The Arizona senator was in Israel on a fact-finding mission which has also taken him to Iraq and Jordan and has been widely seen as a bid to polish his credentials as a statesman.

"Seeing it first-hand, the situation here is one that is very compelling," McCain told reporters in Sderot after touring the town with Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

"Nine hundred rocket attacks in the last three months; this puts an enormous strain on everyone here, especially the children."

Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets and mortars shells at southern Israel in the past years, killing 12 people and injuring scores more.

On February 27, Israel launched a five-day blitz on Gaza in response to attacks from the Palestinian enclave, where Hamas routed the forces of moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June.

McCain said the situation underlined the urgency of moving forward the peace process that was revived at a US-hosted conference in November but has made little progress since.

Earlier in the day, the senator and his colleagues Joe Lieberman (Democrat) and Lindsey Graham (Republican) were taken on a helicopter tour by Barak, who briefed them on security issues.

McCain warned in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia threatened not only the Jewish state but also US and Western interests.

"If Hamas-Hezbollah succeed here, they are going to succeed everywhere.

• WAIT STOP HERE. How can the Palestinian militants be a threat to the whole west when after launching thousands of missiles over many years that they have only killed 12 people? I am sure that the families of the twelve feel terrible about this and my heart and prayers are with them.... but let's face it, the Palestinians are pretty lousy terrorists.

"They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for," the Republican candidate added.

• What "everything?"

He also called Iran "a threat for the region", expressing certainty Tehran was "pursuing nuclear weapons".

• Um no.

McCain held talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Wednesday, before travelling to Sderot.

Asked why he did not meet with US-backed president Abbas, the senator pointed out the two had "a good conversation" over the telephone on Monday. "I've had meetings with him in the past and I will have meetings with him in the future.

"I think he is sincere, I think the Palestinian people desire peace and I believe they deserve peace," McCain said of the Palestinian leader.

McCain has insisted the trip was not political, though he clearly stood to gain from being seen on the world stage at a time when Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continued to brawl at home.

The senators arrived in Israel on Tuesday evening after a visit to Jordan, where McCain said he supported "Jerusalem as the capital of Israel".

Israel annexed Arab east Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East war and declared it part of its eternal undivided capital, a claim not recognised by the international community.

• If it wasn't a political visit, he might have mentioned to the Israeli government that they ought to quit targeting Palestinian orphans because they aren't winning any points with me. I don't know a whole lot of American Jewish voters (actually none) who are on board with the massacre of the Palestinians either. I hardly think that Joe LIEberman speaks for them.
• Furthermore, he might have brought up the harsh interrogations by the Israeli authorities towards American citizens who happen to be of Palestinian origin and visiting relatives in Palestine. The American government warned Palestinian Americans of the hassles and apparently, the Israeli government does not consider proof of American citizenship enough for them. feh.
  

Jon Stewart covers Obama's speech

Barack's Wright Response




Open Discussion



As always -- Well done Jon and friends!

Very interesting piece of Photo-Journalism from Reuters. Thanks to Huffington Post

Iraq: Five years of War

What do you think?

Office of the President of the United States

Dear Mr. and/or Mrs. _______,

It is with extreme honor that I make this request of your family in light of the minor altercation you may have heard about in the middle east. I’m sorry if your son/daughter lost his/her life during those short five years of necessary conflict but I want to assure you that the people who benefit from his/her sacrifice are sincerely grateful.

Since we seem to be in need of strengthening our armed forces because of shortsightedness by previous administrations, I ask you to consider allowing us to enlist the aid of any children you might still have at home to help us in this inhumane, but necessary temporary struggle to bring Democracy to Iraq and Iran in the future and to ensure that the American Way of life most have come to enjoy will continue.

Please believe me when I tell you they will have the finest training and equipment money can buy; unlimited support in all their needs and reasonable duration of the term(s) of their short deployment.

Because of recruitment shortages, we are offering to pay up to $50,000 for your son/daughter for education after the successful completion of our involvement in Iraq/Iran/Syria/country to be announced. As an added bonus, we are offering to take care of your son/daughter at Walter Reed Hospital in the possible but unlikely event should anything unexpected befall them during their service to my country. Expense will be no object.

To make it easier to fulfill your obligation to provide any existing son/daughter to defend my country, the applications for enlistment are available at all Exxon-Mobile Stations, and with a fill up, you and your family will receive 10 free gallons of Iraqi-freed gasoline per year, compliments of this Administration. We’re also eliminating the outdated age clause for enlistment as we feel age discrimination works against a strong America. As a result, your 9^th, 10^th, 11^th or 12^th grader will certainly be welcome to finish his/her high school education after successful completion of his/her tour(s), all expenses paid.

If you don’t happen to have children that can fulfill your obligation to my country, or have already provided one and/or lost one or more, names, addresses and/or phone numbers of relatives, neighbors, minorities, illegal immigrants or other liberals will be considered as acknowledging your patriotic duty. Any information you provide will be held in the strictest confidence and very secure databases at the NSA, FBI, CIA, RNC and NRA and never released to any third party without your permission.

Thank you my fellow Americans, for your understanding of these urgent needs to
allow me to continue to provide a meaningful lifestyle to my many Americans who are entitled to one.

God Bless America,

George W. Bush (President)

Richard B. Cheney (Vice-President)

5 Years Later- Add this to bush's legacy

How Many Child Prostitutes Is Bush Responsible For?

George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls. The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.

Bush's invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association.

"70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

According to the Times, "inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club's parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates." continued

Excuse me while I weep

Economic meltdown a GIGANTIC FRAUD - A PONZI SCHEME.....Steve Watson/Larry Elliott

From Steve Watson at Infowars:


A leading economic journalist has described the current financial crisis as a "gigantic fraud", the fallout of a deliberate and preconceived profit agenda to enslave the middle classes in a debt bubble.
The economics editor of the London Guardian, Larry Elliott, has hit out at the global financial elite in a refreshing piece that marks a rare shift away from the establishment hackery we are used to from the corporate media.

In an article titled America was conned - who will pay? Elliot writes:
Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.
[…]
Business, of course, needs consumers to carry on spending in order to make money, so a way had to be found to persuade households to do their patriotic duty. The method chosen was simple. Whip up a colossal housing bubble, convince consumers that it makes sense to borrow money against the rising value of their homes to supplement their meagre real wage growth and watch the profits roll in.

As they did - for a while. Now it’s payback time and the mood could get very ugly. Americans, to put it bluntly, have been conned. They have been duped by a bunch of serpent-tongued hucksters who packed up the wagon and made it across the county line before a lynch mob could be formed.
Elliot also states that the debate is now not about whether the US faces a recession, but is about how deep it will be and how long it will last, comparing the downturn to the South Sea Bubble crisis in 1720, and declaring that the "Ponzi securitisation scam has been exposed."

A Ponzi scheme, named after Charles Ponzi, is one that offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays require an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going, meaning it is inevitable that it will eventually collapse.
Elliot, like former chief economist of the World Bank turned whistleblower, Joseph Stiglitz, points a finger of blame squarely at former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, stating:
"In the longer term, lessons must be learnt from the turmoil. One is that you don’t solve the problems of a collapsing bubble by blowing up another, which is what Alan Greenspan did after the dotcom fiasco in 2001 - the most irresponsible behaviour of any central banker in living memory."
Last week we highlighted the fact that Greenspan, instead of trying to act to reverse the damage he has done to the US economy, is actively encouraging its further demise by urging foreign states to abandon their dollar peg.
Another cogent point Larry Elliot makes is the following:

"If this is, heaven help us, The Big One, one of the only consolations will be that the repugnance at the orgy of speculation that has sapped the strength of the US economy will put a new New Deal on the political agenda."

It should be added that, given that this crisis has been engineered by a financial elite Ponzi scheme, we should be extremely wary of any "new deal" that is brokered by the financial and political elite posing as our saviors.
There are already talks of a "new world order" emerging from the fallout of the current economic meltdown. A consolidation among the big financial institutions does not spell good news for ordinary Americans and people across the world who have been effectively herded into this current crisis by the financial elite.
We, along with others such as Stiglitz, have repeatedly warned of the quickening of an agenda of economic catastrophe allied to the "solution" of predatory globalism.
Nevertheless, while CNN and other mainstream outlets continue to parade economic "experts" who ludicrously suggest that the destruction of the dollar and the economic downturn is "not necessarily a bad thing" for America, it is a refreshing change to read a mainstream report that actually hints at the reality of the situation the US and the rest of the world now faces at the hands of the elite.

From Larry Elliott - Economics Editor @ The Guardian -- America was conned - who will pay?


crossposted BigBrassBlog

Imagine an election where no one showed up?

From the Sun-Sentinel:As Broward County election results trickled in Tuesday night, some spectators wondered why no vote totals were shown for an annexation referendum near Tamarac.

The mystery's answer disappointed government officials. The election's final result, "0 votes," was accurate: Not one registered voter who lives in the unincorporated Prospect Bend neighborhood turned out for the annexation question.

The expression "every vote counts" was clear in this election. Had one a lone voter showed and voted yes, that voter would have decided the fate of the 200-person neighborhood, requiring all of it to be part of Tamarac. (continued)

Quote of the Day

"No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure, but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq."

-bush on the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq who also warns that if the US pulls out now, Iraq would descend into chaos leaving al Qaida to recruit more terrorists which would foment violence and have serious consequences to the world economy (huh?)

Will Wonders Never Cease?

Ah Jeez. Do I have to wake up to this on the cover of the morning paper?

My new governor is a cheater. Look at his wife's face. Good Lord!

Did he use taxpayer money to pay for illicit sex? No.



Good. Let's leave it at that.

-------

And from Dirruk in the Netherlands: "This is how we in the eastern part of of the western world, view the U.S.A., according to an article in Spiegel Online."

Why Sex Scandals Are Good for American Democracy
America's two main parties are suffering from the erotic escapades of some of their top politicians. As embarrassing as they are for those involved, the revelations are good for democracy. They expose a particularly audacious type of politician: the hypocrite whose supposed virtue is nothing but a sham.

read on

"A More Perfect Union" - by Barack Obama - March 18, 2008

Brief Story From Yahoo:
Obama confronts racial division in US




Speech in Full from CNN: (37 minutes)



Speech in Full at Obama's Website:
As Prepared for Delivery...“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Speech in Full for Blondesense Readers:

As Prepared for Delivery...

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

If America listens to what they say, the war would be over tomorrow.

Again another story that many "progressive" websites won't touch upon so as not to insult those who serve our country when in fact the opposite is true: Winter Soldier: America Must Hear These Iraq Vets' Stories by Penny Coleman at AlterNet.org

"One after another, veterans told conflicted stories, some with tears, some with rigid control, some with visible shakes, but all with hard-won moral courage and deep sorrow. John Michael Turner began his testimony by telling the audience that as far as he was concerned, "Once a Marine, Always a Marine" was history. For him it is now "Eat the apple and fuck the corps." Then he tossed his dog tags into the audience saying, "Fuck you, I don't work for you no more." Turner's first confirmed kill was on April 18, 2006. He shot an Iraqi boy in front of his father. It took a second shot to kill him. He had a photograph of the boy's open skull. Turner was personally congratulated by his commanding officer, who proceeded to offer a four day pass to anyone who got a kill by stabbing one of the enemy. Turner ended with, "I am sorry for the hate and destruction that I have inflicted on innocent people. I am sorry for the things I did. I am no longer the monster that I once was.""

If everyone actually knew the horrors of war, how we teach our kids to be the devil on earth, you'd see more mothers chaining their sons (and daughters) to their bed posts until the insanity of wanting to "serve" passed or there'd be more moms and dad's working as many jobs as it takes to put their kids through trade school, college, anything so that they wouldn't fall prey to recruiters who promise kids a "bright" future.

We had to endure stupid, ignorant parents decry Cindy Sheehan's righteous outrage at the failed bush policies and the futility of war... even so called "progressives" thought she was too much. TFB. I propose a war of words on weenies who cloak themselves in the flag and shut their minds. To hell with political correctness. If a particular war is so necessary, then our president ought to be required to physically lead the troops into battle and put his money where his penis is or STFU.

If military service consisting of teaching our children to kill and maim and torture others makes them "be all that they can be," then I am living in the wrong fucking country. But wait. I'm in the right country and our leaders are in the wrong country.

See also How to Become a Concentration Camp Guard Without Even Trying
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted March 18, 2008.
A reluctant Guantanamo Bay jailer, who found himself working in that "legal black hole" at age 19, tells his shocking story.

-------

- This post is just another rant by an American mom who didn't go through the trauma of childbirth and raising a kid according to our family values so that he could be a productive and useful member of society just so the military industrial complex could transform him into a killing machine.

CALIFORNIA - 3/7/08 --Homeschoolers' setback sends shock waves through state

California recently declared that parents who teach their own kids must possess teaching credentials. A judge in the case summed up what we are facing when he stated, "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."

Here's the story from sfgate:
A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.

The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.

The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.

Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children.

"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."

Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union.

Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she's ready for a fight.
Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree.

"I'm kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep," she said. "I'm ready. I have damn good arguments."

Here are some reactions (comments) from sfgate



Teach your children well........

A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq

Go read it, now. The website has just gone live.

Notice the first three sponsors are wimmun. Probably uppity wimmun, at that.

I bet they're blondes.

No shit, people, I know the economy is in the tank, and all, but there's still a war going on. People are getting wounded and people are dying. All this squabbling amongst the Democratic candidates is utter nonsense compared to that.

What color is your parachute?

What I Know About The Economy ...

you could probably fit on the head of a pin with room left over for some angels to do a reprise of Riverdance, but I do know a few things.

I know that direct intervention by the Federal Government is probably NOT the right way to go about things, especially in what is supposed to be a laissez-faire conservative Republican administration.

I know that JP Morgan has tried to bail out the stock market before, in 1929, and failed miserably, but now it's doing it with taxpayer dollars provided by the Fed.

I know that the Fed subsidizing $30 billion of Bear Stearns' worst exposure (backing bad paper with my money, thank you) is probably wrong.

I know that watching the Hang Seng drop 5% last night after Morgan bought Bear Stearns for a ridiculously low sum was like an anal douche of ice water for those who still delude themselves that this economy is not in a recession.

I know that after watching President Pollyanna of Sunnybrook Farm go on about the economy, I know with the sick feeling one gets as that little tropical low turns into a Cat 4 hurricane, that We Are Well And Truly Screwed.

Missing The Point Yet Again

I was a little concerned to see the teaser headline: US: New anti-Semitism emerging. If there's anything this presidential primary season has taught me, it's that we have not moved beyond race and gender issues, and certainly we are nowhere close to being past religion (especially of the Islamic variety). When I saw the headline, I assumed the article was going to be about the rise of hate crimes directed to Jews. Not so much.

But then I read the first paragraph of the article:

"New forms of anti-Semitism are emerging around the world, promoting prejudice against Jews by attacking Israeli policy and Zionism, the philosophic underpinning of a Jewish state, the State Department reported Thursday." (emphasis mine)

That's the US State Department folks. It is now the official foreign policy of the US government that criticism of Israel is strictly verboten.

Got that? If you criticize the Israeli government or question Zionism, you are anti-Semitic.

That is all.

The Old Double Standard.

Before anyone goes on the "Rev. Wright just ruined Obama's chances for being president," bandwagon, let's consider how the right wing evangelists summed up America's sins. They make it sound like American's are doing it in the streets and killing babies for folly. Don't forget all the horrible things that right wing evangelists said about our country when 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina destroyed NOLA- laying the blame squarely on particular "sinners" but not on the politics, policies and outright neglect that made these events all the more horrific because they could have been less catastrophic had those we pay taxes for to look out for shit like this not had their heads up their butts.

Oh wait, evangelists make up the voting block for the GOP- so they get a pass from the MSM. Churches like Obama's make up the base of the Democrats, therefore they are fair game.

I direct you to this piece by Frank Schaeffer, the son of radical preacher Francis Schaeffer, the darling of the right. If this story were to make it to the MSM, perhaps the talking heads would STFU.

Obama's Minister Committed "Treason"
But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero
Posted March 16, 2008 | 04:23 PM (EST)

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Continued

(Personally, I felt that Rev. Wright's comments were biblically sound, and since this IS a "christian" country, I don't know what the hoopla was all about except to maybe point out that Americans, even those so-called "progressive," are generally a bunch of racists after all.)

Quote of the Day

"It's good to be back in Iraq."
- Vice President DICK CHENEY
on a visit to Baghdad to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq

The Morning Benders - WAITING FOR A WAR

This is dedicated to all my fellow cubicle dwellers out there




it feels less important when you want to wait it out
i had enough......

either give me what i want or put me on the street
i'm getting tired
of living my life like nothing's happening

talk is cheap but lies are even cheaper
so it's really me
i want you to count the ways
you can make it up to me
i'm getting tired
of everybody talking and not doing a thing

here i am in the graveyard waiting for a war


.....there's nothing left to talk about but there's plenty left to do and if it's all the same to me you know it'll be different to you

To help you get through this manic Monday that is upon us, Check out Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle!!

and remember........

Cubicle walls do not offer much protection from any kind of gun fire.


1920 Attack and Bombing of Wall Street



(visit The Morning Bender's myspace) and don't forget to circle May 6th on your calendar so you can be first in line to get their new CD "Talking Through Tin Cans")

Eliot's Mess

The plot thickens.

I direct you to this post by Nicole Belle at C&L Eliot’s Mess: Spitzer Investigation Tied To Fed Bail Out and Greg Palast's article, Eliot's Mess which starts out like this:

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure."

You simply must read the whole article.

Nicole Belle goes on:

The whole Bear Stearns bail out is hilarious when you consider how horrified these ‘free market’ proponents are at the thought of say, socialized medicine, but barely bat an eye at socialized banking. Privatize profits and nationalize losses, anyone? Meanwhile, decades of Republican economic strategy has brought us to a recession, if not teetering on the edge of a depression (The similarities in the economy of the 1920s and today are there for the finding). What will be telling is what kind of bonuses will be handed out to Bear Stearns executives in light of this massive failure of management.

And while we're speaking of socialized banking:
Alan D Schwartz President/Director/CEO at Bear Stearns
Cash Compensation (FY November 2007) $35,734,422
Stock Options (FY November 2007)Total $52,907,900
Other income 378,335
Total:$89 million

Priceless.

You are simply UnAmerican if you don't applaud.

The Math

I hate to paraphrase Karl Rove, but the numbers are really important in this Presidential election cycle.

There are some troubling signs in these numbers. Obviously Barack Obama is ahead in pledged delegates, total delegates and popular votes also. This is due to the arbitrary apportionment of delegates by the Democratic Party Rules. (When the total votes split 57% to 33% in a State or district and the number of delegates is 5, you cannot cut a delegate in two or third, so the apportionment goes 3 and 2 which is not a fair split.)

Barack Obama's winning 27 States, does not reflect the electorate. The electorate goes by Congressional Districts: the "big states" as Hillary's supporters chant. Looking at the numbers above, if these Primaries were the national election, Clinton wins 231 Congressional Districts (electoral votes) against Obama's 216. If you add Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida, with a great probability that Hillary will win all those States (she has already won Florida and Michigan once) then Hillary Clinton wins the Electoral College with 292.

If you add the votes that didn't count in Florida and Michigan, Clinton is ahead in popular votes also.

I don't know if the Super Delegates will decide this election or not. It raises a few concerns, whether the Democrats will win at all in the fall election.

My greatest concern is whether America is ready to elect an African-American President. The last primary in Mississippi is a disturbing clue. Blacks voted for Obama 92% and whites voted 70% for Hillary. If this pattern persists, the Democrats are going to lose in the fall.

My other concern is his affiliation with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the reverend's "hitler like" oratory, that the Republicans are going to use to scare the living shit out of the white population, making the "swiftboat" ads look like a "walk in the park".

The third concern is this great square mileage support of Obama (if you look at the electoral map) which is probably one inch deep. Although, I understand the people caught up in the movement to have a president outside the traditional establishment, I am not sure if he is the man who can pull it off. He may be, but can I take the chance?

With Hillary Clinton, we know all the pitfalls; the myth, the reality, the distortions. There is nothing new they (the republicans) will use against her.

Perhaps this is just skepticism on my part ( the older I grow, the less I like change), perhaps it's a legitimate concern of mine. I'd like to hear your opinion.

I will vote for a Democrat in the fall, regardless who is the nominee.

Blogs Against Theocracy 2008

Next weekend, March 21-23, there will be another "Blogs Against Theocracy" blogswarm. The theme is the Separation of Church and State.

Visit blogagainsththeocracy.blogspot.com for details on how to participate and your post will be linked at Blog Against Theocracy's website.

I invite my fellow bloggers here to participate and let the rest of you know about this event, participate and spread the word.

It's bad enough that "religious ideals" have destroyed families and caused wars that have destroyed countries, it's time to make sure that we don't allow so called "religious values" to destroy our country as well. Our country was founded on religious freedom and it should stay that way before a civil war breaks out. What would be the chances that the bigoted snake-handlers working hard for a theocracy with our lawmakers would find a country willing to go along with their brand of "religion?"

See also this blog for inspiration. FirstFreedomFirst.org/blog

..that these dead shall not have died in vain...

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime - How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers

by Eliot Spitzer, February 14, 2008

Can't help but wonder if the ax would have ever fallen on Spitzer if he wasn't so determined to point out the bush administration's shenanigans with the banking industry.

Financial analyst Jim Rogers calls for the abolishment of the Federal Reserve on CNBC.

Part II



Maria......Makes me.........LAUGH!

Friday Funny

Redneck cat carrier.

MONSANTO. IS. EVIL.

(I stole that post title from Indigobusiness @ godisnotanasshole while taking a break from a post I was putting together called Got (Bovine Growth Hormone) Milk?

The Monstrous Monsanto Universe - By Dominique Dhombres - Le Monde:

The charge sheet is horrifying, inexorable and convincing. The multinational firm Monsanto, which sells 90 percent of genetically modified organisms (GMO), massively lies to many people and even the whole planet with great success - the power that money and the -apparently unlimited - support of the United States government bestows. You already know all that if you watched Marie-Monique Robin's extraordinary documentary, "Le Monde selon Monsanto" ["The World According to Monsanto"], March 11 on the Arte channel........





---------------------------------------------------------------
Milk fight shows PR apparatus on steroids:
Your guess will be as good as mine if the Ohio Agriculture Department has its way. Motivated by Monsanto, the multinational agricultural biotech corporation, state farm officials are considering regulations that would restrict what dairies can say about the milk they produce...........
---------------------------------------------------------------


AND.........

according to this article, guess who's one of the investors in that doomsday seed vault?
Investors Behind Doomsday Seed Vault May Provide Clues to Its Purpose


(Their mission statement is: "So that crop diversity can be conserved for the future".)


That's right. Accoring to this Natural News article --

The group of investors includes The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation, and the Government of Norway.......




"If you control the oil you control the country; if you control the food you control the population." ~Henry Kissinger

Quote of the Day

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

- Theodore Roosevelt, in the Kansas City Star, 149 May 7, 1918

hat tip to side bar of SOTT

It is not yet the hour...

...but it is the day.

Palm Beach Post:
"A crowd of more than 500 people waiting for hours this morning for housing voucher applications were dispersed by police in riot gear at the Boca Raton Housing Authority when the applications ran out sooner than expected.

"The action prompted complaints that officers used excessive tactics and housing authority officials were incompetent in their planning.

"Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal."

These people were looking for help with housing. If they had been starving, and looking for food, well...maybe they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be dispersed so quickly.

INCREDIBLE

In over 7 years we've heard incredible hypocrisy from George W. Bush, BUT...nothing beats this!

Bush "Envious" Of Soldiers Serving "Romantic" Mission In Afghanistan

President Bush let his inner adventurer out while discussing the state of the war in Afghanistan with military and civilian personnel. While those in Afghanistan detailed the logistical and diplomatic problems via teleconference, the President took a much more whimsical approach to their mission. Via Reuters:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said

OH.MY.GAWD! Praise the lahd and pass the martinis!

Blogger is going down for work at 5:00 P.M Pacific time.

Some encouraging news about FISA

over at Daily Kos.

Good News (?)

Some Good News (of a sort)

Sign of the Tymes!

Thanx George!

Earthlings Play God.

Plans for 'doomsday ark' on the moon
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor, Telegraph


Plans are being made for the first experiments to pave the way for a "doomsday ark" on the moon.

The ark would contain DNA, embryos and all the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated should Earth be devastated by a giant asteroid, a climate flip or nuclear holocaust.

The information bank would provide survivors on Earth with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race, said Bernard Foing, the executive director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG). continued

Add that to the Doomsday Seed Vault in Norway and the universe won't have to worry about being without earthlings for all eternity.

I wonder what kind of DNA they are going to put on the moon to restock humans?

Yay for New York

Call me a racist if you will because I really don't care. I'm rather sick of sighted white men in politics in any party. Color me rosy because I am thrilled that we are getting a new governor in New York State who's legally blind and black. David Paterson. He sounds fine to me. I mean, what the hell can you expect from a politician anyway?

I'm also officially sick of Eliot Spitzer and his prostitute. Is his sex life the new national obsession? Is he the new Britney? I am highly suspect of any other politicians who rag on him for his indiscretions as it turned out that the one's who hit Clinton the hardest were cheating on their wives at the same time. If anything, the pundits ought to go after Spitzer's politics, policies and law bending and not waste breath on his sexual escapades, as if they are so pure.

In the "You can't be serious" column.

Or maybe it's more accurate that exit polls?

Is your pet a Democrat or Republican?

.

FAZON - from The Miraculous Hump Returns From The Moon "REMASTERED 2006 CD"

STRASBOURG, France, March 9 (UPI) -- Plans are being made for the installation of an information storage bank on the moon, experts said at a science meeting in Strasbourg, France.

The so-called "Doomsday ark" would provide the tools for the reconstruction of the human race in case civilization is ever destroyed, The Sunday London Times reported.


The ark's basic version, which would be buried close to the moon's surface, would include hard discs containing DNA information and instructions for growing crops and metal making, the report said.

The underground vault reportedly would transmit data to strongly guarded receivers on Earth.

"Eventually, it will be necessary to have a kind of Noah's ark there, a diversity of species from the biosphere," scientist Bernard Foing said.

The first ark, which would have a 30-year lifespan, is expected to be installed on the moon by 2020 at the latest. The completed archive should be ready by 2035, scientists said.

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

Since it seems that I always identify EVERYTHING with a song, here is THE PERFECT tune from Sopwith Camel's recently "REMASTERED 2006" CD - The Miraculous Hump Returns From The Moon


FAZON




Whose going to live in all those cities underground?
If they move there, will they ever come out of the ground?
Are they going to raise the children in tiny caverns in the ground?

Send the children out to play in the sound they have found......


Who's going to go on all those trips in outer space?
All their lives in the dark of outer space
After a hundred generations
A billion miles from the sun
All these spaced out people
Finally find another one

You can sample the rest of the tracks here (astronaut food is my favorite) and read about the history of Sopwith Camel here


If you don't remember Sopwith Camel, I'm sure you will after listening to this song -Hello Hello

I See A Pattern Here

More here

Guaranteed to sadden your day...in a funny way!

Guaranteed to sadden your day...in a funny way!

Then there's this: from a Ron Paul video last year. You may have to pause it at times to read everything as it moves a little too quickly for the age impaired!

Stand by your man. Or not.

Dan Savage had a couple of posts about women who are married to politicians who get caught in "sex scandals." Here's one:

Re: Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Marry Politicians

Okay, let’s vote!

If you had to be one of these women—if you had to stand next to your husband while he conducted a humiliating, career-ending press conference about his hookers/gay lovers/adult diapers/airport toilet escapades—which of these women would you be?

WHO WOULD YOU BE?
Mrs. Spitzer
Mrs. McGreevey
Mrs. Craig
Mrs. Vitter

You can go and vote if you wish. The majority voted to be Mrs Spitzer. I didn't vote because I wouldn't want to be any of them and I wouldn't marry a politician in a million years. egomaniacs. I wonder if people voted for Mrs. Spitzer because it wasn't a gay scandal, but I'm not sure of that. Maybe they just voted for the first one so that they could see how other people voted (but you didn't have to.) Either way, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't stand by your man. Think Hillary.

Which brings me to this comic. What do you think?



The wicked witch of the west blames Mrs. Spitzer for the scandal because she didn't make him feel like a man.

"When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings — sexually, personally — to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman. […]

The cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged and to feed himself where he’s starving. But yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need."

I need to go vomit after that.

Go read EVERYTHING on Americangoy's blog - THAT'S AN ORDER

well......the order isn't for our gang, but for the majority of folks who are having a hard time with the big picture.

(His blog header pic says it all.)

Here's what it's all about:
This is the philosophy of the blog:

Don't get bogged down on detail - always strive to see the big picture.

When in a forest, look at the trees, but also make sure you don't miss the forest all around you.

Look at the news and analyze WHY it's happening, not just HOW and WHEN.

If you like this philosophy, this is the blog for you as I analyze today's news and tell you what is behind the scenes, who the real players are and what are their motivations.

In simpler English, I cut thru the bullshit for you.

For example, read his take on what's really behind Hillary's recent surge:

As we all know, Hillary Clinton won in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.

How come these states voted for Clinton when virtually all other states voted for Obama? Is it Hillary's new strategy? Did a scandal I missed happen to Obama? Perhaps the democratic voters in those states are contrarians, and vote for Hillary for fun?

No.

It's much simpler.

The GOP primary is done, and McCain won the republican nomination for president.

Now, all the republicans that live in the states that did not get to vote yet... won't. Because McCain ALREADY WON the republican nomination. There is no point.

There's only one republican left in the race - John "bomb bomb bomb Iran" McCain.

What's a republican voter to do?
It's simple - the republican voter will vote in the democratic primary for his state, and vote for the WEAKEST democrat nominee, that McCain could beat, to help his republican party.

That would be you, Hillary.

Don't believe me?
Rush Limbaugh on FOX "news":

I don't know if the audience is mobilizing or not. I am urging people — I am using a phrase — the Republicans — our nominee is chosen. It's John McCain.

Texas is open. And I want Hillary to stay in this, Laura. This is too good a soap opera. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically (...)

This is the presidency of the United States you're talking about. I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose. They're in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch, and it's all going to stop if Hillary loses.

So yes, I'm asking to cross over and, if they can stomach it — I know it's a difficult thing to do to vote for a Clinton — but it will sustain this soap opera, and it's something I think we need. It would be fun, too.

The Yoo Ess Ey election system is beyond broken - it truly is fucked up.

This would be all avoided of course if we as a nation had a one day national, direct vote (as in actual democracy) system to choose a president.

That way, the media won't be able to tell us that a candidate has no chance, because they wouldn't know it. We wouldn't need to worry about superdelegates, because one person = one vote eliminates this bullshit. You wouldn't worry if you are throwing your vote away voting for Kucinich, Ron Paul or Gravel... because as you cast your vote, no one will know who is winning and who is losing...

But we live in the Yoo Ess of Ey - and we get this farce shoved into our faces, and told it's a democracy...

O - M - F - G.....Is salvia the next marijuana?

not this salvia.......



this salvia (Divinorum)



On Web sites touting the mind-blowing powers of Salvia divinorum, come-ons to buy the hallucinogenic herb are accompanied by warnings: "Time is running out!" and "stock up while you still can."

"That's because salvia is being targeted by lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously.

"As soon as we make one drug illegal, kids start looking around for other drugs they can buy legally. This is just the next one," said Florida state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, who has introduced a bill to make possession of salvia a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Latin name Salvia divinorum literally translates to “sage of the seers”.[5] The genus name Salvia is derived from the Latin salvare, meaning “to heal” or “to save”.[6]
Salvia divinorum has a long continuing tradition of use as an entheogen by indigenous Mazatec shamans, who use it to facilitate visionary states of consciousness during spiritual healing sessions

Salvia divinorum has become increasingly well-known and more widely available in modern culture. The rise of the Internet since the 1990s has seen the growth of many businesses selling live salvia plants, dried leaves, extracts, and other preparations. During this time medical experts and accident and emergency rooms have not been reporting cases that suggest particular health concerns, and police have not been reporting it as a significant issue with regard to public order offences. Yet Salvia divinorum has attracted increasing attention from the media and some lawmakers.

The isolated and controversial case of Brett Chidester, a 17-year-old Delaware student who committed suicide in January 2006, has received continued attention. He reportedly purchased salvia from a Canadian-based Internet company some four months prior to taking his own life; his parents consequently blame this for his death.

The Great Michigan and Florida "Do Over" Debate

Should they or shouldn't they? Will they or won't they?

As we all now know, in contravention of the Democratic National Committee's explicit wishes, Michigan and Florida moved their primaries to an early date so that their states would be "relevant" to the nominating process. (Interestingly, in Florida, it was the Republican controlled legislature responsible for setting the new date, though it had the full support of all Democratic state legislators save one.) At the time, the state committes were warned that the DNC would strip the states of their delegates at the convention in August. All of the candidates (I believe) agreed to the rules set down by the DNC on this issue. The number of delegates required to achieve the nomination was lowered to 2025 to acount for the fact that there would be fewer delegates for the candidates to win.

Not to be deterred, Michigan and Florida went ahead with their primaries with the clear understanding that their votes were, essentially, beauty contests with no further meaning. In Michigan, all candidates except Hillary Clinton removed their names from the ballot. In Florida, the candidates names remained on the ballot. Ultimately, Clinton prevailed with 50% of the vote to Obama's 35%, with Edwards taking the remaining 15%. In Michigan, Clinton received 55% of the vote, while "Uncommitted" received 40%.

Flash forward to present day, with Clinton and Obama locked in a battle in which neither is likely to get the requisite number of pledged delegates to win the nomination outright.

So, what to do, what to do? Here are the options and rationales:

1. The DNC sticks to its guns and refuses to seat the delegates at the convention. The rationale is that the state committees knew what the rules were in advance and should be held to their prior decision. The problem here is that it very likely means that the nomination is decided by superdelegates because neither candidate can reach the pledged delegate threshold. After which, the American public goes nuts because it looks like the primary process has been hijacked by party insiders and the nominee has been chosen in the proverbial smoke-filled back room. And there's some truth to that argument.

2. Seat the delegates based on the results of the primaries that were held in January. The rationale here is that, regardless of what the state committees did, the voters should be heard and the contests were fair in that all the candidates were bound by the same restrictions (not to campaign in the states, etc.). This rationale has one big flaw in my view: It was widely publicized in advance that these were "meaningless" contests. So, while hundreds of thousands of people did vote, no one has any way of knowing how many more people would have voted if they thought they were engaging in a "meaningful" primary. To seat the delegates based on the existing primary results truly does disenfranchise these non-voters.

3. Divide the Michigan and Florida delegates evenly. This resolves precisely dick, because it increases (to around 2200) the number of pledged delegates required to get the nomination. While it might make Florida and Michigan voters "feel" enfranchised, as a practical matter it does nothing to advance the ball of providing a clear nominee.

4. Michigan should re-vote but Florida delegates should be allocated according to the prior vote. The rational here is that, while all candidates were named on the prior ballot in Florida, only Clinton's name was on the Michigan ballot, and therefore Obama should have the chance in a re-vote to be on the ballot. Here's the problem: Michigan has an open primary and some of its Democratic and Independent (and even Republican) voters may already have voted in the Republican primary, which did count. Since there's no paper trail, no one can be sure who voted in which primary previously, raising the prospect that some people might be voting twice, which is truly undemocratic. Also, see above re: who may or may not have voted in the Florida primary.

5. Florida and Michigan should both re-vote. The rationale here is that this is the only "fair" way of resolving the issue and making sure every vote is counted (how very 2000). The down side has already been covered in Nos. 1, 3 and 4, all of which apply to any re-vote: it rewards bad behavior, in all likelihood it won't resolve anything in terms of giving one candidate or the other a sufficient lead in pledged delegates to avoid the specter of the nominee being chosen by superdelegates, and it violates the "one person, one vote" principle. Not to mention the whole issue of the form that the re-vote would take (caucuses vs. primary vs. mail in votes) and who the hell is going to pay for it.

I'm sure many people smarter than me can come up with endless permutations of the foregoing, but no matter which angle this is viewed from, the possibilities all stink.

Congratulations, Democrats. You've fucking done it again.

Comedian in Chief

Comedy is the best truth teller.
Bush is saying "goodbye" at The Grid Iron Club:

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy

Karl Rove was taunted at an appearance at the University of Iowa.

At one point during the speech, Rove reportedly lashed out at some of the students, saying, "You got a chance to ask your questions later and make your stupid statements, let me make mine."

Rove went on to lie, mislead and make an ass of himself
Responding to a question about CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s outing, Rove, seemingly joking, added:

I haven’t been indicted yet, but I fully expect to be by the end of the year.

Rove may be eating his words one day.

Cheney ‘looks forward to helping’ McCain.

From Think Progress:

“Conservatives needed to hear an endorsement of Senator McCain from their standard-bearer, Vice President Dick Cheney,” writes Politico’s Mike Allen. And Cheney delivered last night in a speech in Georgia when he urged the crowd to support McCain:

"We won’t mind at all if you set another record this November — when you help John McCain become the next President of the United States."

Cheney added that he and President Bush “look forward to helping” McCain and other conservatives in the election. Applause for Cheney’s speech “started slowly and stretched to get into full gear.”

Dick Cheney is so funny.

Spitzer Got Spitzered

Spitzed. By the very kind of investigations he pioneered.

Meanwhile behavioral scientists wonder if politicians should be held to a higher ethical standard.
why yes.

"TUBTHUMPING" (in honor of today's Hilbama Stump) by Chumbawamba

Chumba - Man
Wamba - Woman


when we're winning......

I get knocked down, but I get up again
You're never gonna keep me down


Where are they today?

and how do you spell that.........
"Emma come first. Den I come. Two asses, they come together. I come again. Two asses, they come together again. I pee twice. Then I come once more."





all about the song and all about Chumbawamba

oh, and I gotta throw in some Austin Powers on speaking ENGLISH English!!!

Sinner or Saint?

The Vatican has decided that I am a sinner. I'll let you guess which of the "new and improved" sins I engage in.

Which, if any, of these new sins will have you running for the confessional?

One Nation, Under Prozac

And we wonder why our fish are becoming androgynous.

The Power Of Nightmares

Over the weekend, I watched The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, a BBC 3 part documentary by Jeff Curtis which aired on the BBC in 2004. I was terribly impressed by the excellent dot connecting done by the film maker. Four years later, I'd like to see even more dot connecting.

What did I learn about the world stage? It's an illusion, a fantasy played out by radical Islamicists and radical neocons who are failures in reality. There is no terrorist network. The USSR was not the threat they were made out to be. The Clintons were framed. Enemies need to be created in order to "scare" people into submission. The radical Islamicists and the radical neocons do just that. Strange bedfellows indeed. Don't be afraid though. Be informed.

From the BBC on Part I

At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended.

Together they created today's nightmare vision of an organised terror network.A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington. Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together.

The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.

From the BBC on Part II

On 25 December 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. Moscow was able to install a friendly government in a neighbouring country but at a price. The invasion gave a common cause to an extraordinary alliance of radical Islamists in Afghanistan and around the world and to the neo-conservatives in the US. It was a key battleground of the Cold War.

Washington provided money and arms including even Stinger missiles capable of shooting down Soviet helicopters. But it was Islamic Mujahideen fighters who would fire them. Among the many foreigners drawn to Afghanistan was a young, wealthy Saudi called Osama Bin Laden. Long before 9/11, he would have been seen by neo-conservatives in Washington as one of their foot soldiers, helping fight America's cause.

After nearly 10 years of fighting, Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan. Both the neo-conservatives and the Islamists believed that it is they who defeated the "evil empire" and now had the power to transform the world.

From BBC on Part III

There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas, and who will use the techniques of mass terror - the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organisation waiting to strike our societies is an illusion.

Wherever one looks for this al-Qaeda organisation, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the "sleeper cells" in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy.

But the reason that no-one questions the illusion is because this nightmare enemy gives so many groups new power and influence in a cynical age - and not just politicians.

I'd love to get a discussion group going about this documentary because it is so important and because four years later, we can see so much more to add to it.

Links that should be bookmarked if you are interested:
Google Video: Watch Part I Baby It's Cold Outside.
Read transcript of Part I

Google Video: Watch Part II The Phantom Victory
Read transcript of Part II

Google Video Watch: Part III The Shadows in The Cave
Read transcript of Part III

Interview with Jeff Curtis

Watch or download at archive.org

Make it into a DVD and share it.

Hallelujah - #1 Song on iTunes

Last night my eldest was on iTunes to check out the latest top ten songs and asks me "Who is Jeff Buckley ? he's #1 on iTunes". I answered "Jeff Buckley died about ten years ago in an unfortunate drowning accident." She said his song "Hallelujah" is #1 on iTunes". "Are you serious?" I asked - nice song but #1 on iTunes??? - I don't get it. I had the song in my library so I played it for her. She just gave me that puzzled, scrunched up nose look.

Here's the youtube video of Jeff performing Hallelujah
("embedding is disabled by request")

I checked further because I was still curious why it was #1.
According to Wiki: On March 7, 2008, Buckley’s version of the Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah”, went to number 1 on the iTunes chart after being performed by Jason Castro on the seventh season of the television series American Idol. He wasn't aired much in the leadup to the finals for legal reasons from the songs he performed.
("Daydream" The Lovin' Spoonful - "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" Andy Gibb - "Hallelujah" Leonard Cohen)

Obviously they must have worked out the legal issues for his March 7th performance.

Here's Leonard Cohen's video of the song he wrote





Oh Yeah! Today at a ceremony in New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Cohen will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the first Montrealer so honoured.

So many coincidences......

Re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act and Its Hidden Agenda - by Barbara L. Minton

From Natural News:

In summary:

What's the real agenda behind the No Child Left Behind Act?
NCLB may be one of the greatest travesties ever foisted on an unsuspecting populace. Not because its goals are unrealistic, its mandate is unfunded, it favors federal control, or that it is based on punishment. The great insult of NCLB is its unspoken goal of ensuring competence in reading, math, and science to the exclusion of all the other subjects which provide the tools needed to foster citizenship in a democracy.

Competence in reading, math, and science sounds like a worthy goal. But when the job security of teachers and administrators is threatened by standardized test results, it becomes a certainty that all the efforts of the school community will be geared toward enabling the passing of the tests at all cost, with little regard for anything else. One result of this pressure on school staff is that instead of attending their accelerated classes, high achieving students are now frequently used as 'peer tutors' to help lower-achieving students.

The message of NCLB is that reading, math, and science proficiency, to the exclusion of everything else, is what is needed for the job market in the 21st century. These are the skills required to find a place in the corporate world. The corporate machine does not require knowledge of history, economics, geography, philosophy, literature, communications or the arts. Knowledge of these subjects doesn't contribute to the bottom line and tends to create people with the propensity to question authority, something such regimented entities as corporations, governments, and militaries don't want or tolerate.

Being able to write or speak and thus being able to comment on the state of affairs are considered undesirable attributes of masses of people who must be controlled, manipulated and exploited. Proficiency only in reading, math, and science stamps out uniqueness among individuals and replaces it with standardization. It is from uniqueness that the individual gains value. Strip him of his uniqueness, and he becomes no more than a commodity to be valued accordingly. With the loss of uniqueness goes the loss of independence and the ability to advocate for one's self.

NCLB halts the rise of the individual in its tracks. Thinking, questioning, and creating are now out. NCLB returns us to the time of minimal education for the masses which stressed the ability to work and obey orders. This method of producing people for the new world order returns us to a time when almost no child got ahead, therefore no child was left behind.


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

Well I've got to go wake mine up now. It's their 2nd week of testing and it's going to take a great deal of effort on my part to convince them they've got to go to school today. After last week's testing experience my youngest said "THIS IS RIDICULOUS - that test was SO easy it took me only 20 minutes to finish and I had to sit there quietly until the time was up" to which I responded "well honey, be thankful that you're fortunate to be able to go to school and that you have half a brain!" or something like that. She's a bright kid whose thirst for knowledge is unquenchable. "But mom - practically EVERYONE finished in a half an hour or so - we learned all this stuff LAST YEAR!!!!".

I asked if any kids took the whole 90 minutes. She said maybe 2 or 3 needed the whole time but those were the kids who didn't pay attention and caused trouble in class.

"More Than 60,000 Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Diagnosed With PTSD"

Signs-Of-The-Times:

"Jonathan Schulze was awarded two Purple Hearts in 2005 after a lengthy tour of duty in Iraq.

"But the Marine veteran couldn't escape the war inside his head.

"Drugs and alcohol temporarily numbed his pain. Yet the guilt he carried around with him having been one of a handful of soldiers in his unit to survive combat was impossible to run away from.

"Schulze was suicidal.

"On January 11, 2007, he sought treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. His parents drove him to the VA hospital in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

"Schulze told the VA staff that he "felt suicidal," his mother, Marianne Schulze, recalled.

"The hospital didn't admit him. Instead, he was told to call back the following day. He did. He was given a number: 26. The VA staff told him he'd have to wait at least two weeks to be admitted. Apparently, there were other veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were also suffering from PTSD. It's unknown whether they met the same fate.

"On January 16, 2007, Schulze placed a framed photograph of his one-year-old daughter beside him. He wrapped an electrical cord around his neck and hung himself in the basement of a friend's house in New Prague, Minnesota. He was 25 years old."

More at the link.

This is sad, if true.

McCain engaged in propaganda for North Vietnam while a POW then he and Kerry tried to keep the documents secret as senators!

What do you think?

Madonna - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame???

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet. I can't believe I'm even going to expend one iota of energy on this subject.

I like some, but not much of her music. (Crazy for you is hubby's and my song)

Madonna will be inducted into the RRHF tomorrow.


Madonna: A true blue rock star

How about Madonna - true blue hypocrite?

Or maybe, Madonna - Pop Culture Hall of Sleaze?

I know I should be focusing on Madonna's music here and not Madonna the person, but I have always blamed Madonna for any advance that the woman's movement may have continued to accomplish. I truly believe she screwed up a lot of young innocent girls and set the stage for what we now have in the way of female "PoP" stars and female pop culture. The fact that she won't even let her children watch TV says it all.

Makes me sick to my stomach to see what our young american girls are morphing into. Not too many role models out there. Well, I know there are many great american women, however, our young girls today don't seem like they've come a long way baby! IF you know what I mean.....

I can only hope that the moms out there today are able to help their daughters differentiate between TV/Pop culture and reality. I'm not going to hold my breath though - considering what we have in the way of "reality" tv now. A lot of these new moms are the ones who were greatly influenced by Madonna during their formative years.

Since Jersey posted her more than apropos item about one of the necessities of life and how it should be ready to be applied, I looked into the research done on the subject and found the pre-eminent authority on the subject. Here is his scientific treatise on the matter (which should end the controversy once and for all!)

From:

Herr Dr. Philmore Buttz,

Perfesser Emeritus, Tidy Bowl University.

To get to zie bottom auf zis controversy, ve muss learn zum zings.

Virst, let me tell you zat zer are fier, er, four vays to use toilet papier; ofer und unter, und volding und ballink.

Aber virst; back in zie nicht zo olt days, 2 ply toilet papier vasn’t zie zame on both zides. Vun zide , zie top zide, vas zofter zan zie uzzer, und za uzzer zide vas coarse.

Ven you haf zie toilet papier coming vrum unter und you ball oder vold it, zen you naturally end up mit zie zofter zide up. Zie problem mit dis iz zat zie zofter zide ist too zlippery und you muss vork harder und be more careful, uzzervize your vingers could poke sthourgh! Dis iz nicht so gut! Ack! Ptooie!

If zie papier ist ofer zie roller den ven you vold oder ball it, you expoze zie rough zide auf zie papier, Dis hass zie advantage auf more vriction zo it vill collect more ztuff und clean better!

ZO! Aufter a lot auf rezearch, mein vindinks prove zat zie toilet papier zhould be ofer und nicht unter!

Health Update

An uncomfortable weekend ...

Fooling Mother Nature

Just when you've begun to enjoy sunlight streaming in your home when you wake up, it's taken away by an act of Congress [Energy Policy Act of 2005]. Supposedly to save energy. I imagine that more people are going to waste energy being pissed off since they have to wake up when it's dark out in March.

For the second year in a row, daylight savings time will happen 3 weeks earlier than the usual first week in April where it stood from 1966-2006. The exceptions since 1966 were during the "energy crisis" years where it began on Jan. 6 in 1974 and on Feb. 23 in 1975 and school children had reflective strips pasted to their little jackets and coats so that they wouldn't get run over by sleepy commuters.

There were concerns about moving the date up once again because school children will be heading out in darkness while there will be a lot of drowsy drivers hopefully avoiding the little angels but that didn't phase Congress who thought it was a fabulous idea to "save energy" by messing up our biological clocks earlier. Daylight savings time benefits industry though. Retailers particularly benefit from DST.

It turns out that daylight savings time isn't all that energy efficient. A study of Indiana which was once half in DST and half out of DST showed that when the whole state went along with DST, $8.6 million more in electricity bills followed. It was the extra heating and cooling that offset the lightbulb savings. People who get up when it's dark use more lightbulbs and turn on the heat. When they come home in the heat of the day, they turn on the a/c earlier.

Additional reading on the history of daylight savings time.

Saturday funnies - "THE CONTINENTAL"

Jerry Lewis is STILL my all time favorite comedian.
I just have to look at the guy and I start convulsing.

I happened to come across this gem at youtube while searching for some videos to share with my youngest. She didn't know who Jerry Lewis was. I told her he was the original Pee Wee! That got her interested. We've been laughing all night watching the Nutty Professor, The Disorderly Orderly and all the rest!

This has got to be one of his best. Jerry does a parody of "The Continental" while also doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando.


The Continental is a 1952-53 CBS television series that starred Renzo Cesana in the title role.

The series used a subjective camera, and Cesana spoke directly to women in the viewing audience.







Christopher Walken also does a great Continental skit for SNL

Enjoy.

Spring ahead!!!!

Photo courtesy ofmapsofworld



Like my body's clock isn't screwed up enough. Anybody else get messed up when we change the clocks? (Hey - I still have to hold my hand up to figure out right from left so you can imagine what time changes do to me.) I suffer for weeks! Usually the first couple of days I play the "it's 4am so it's really 3am game" as I lie wide awake in bed trying to figure out if I should get up or not. After about a week, I'm so confused it doesn't matter anymore. I just go into zombie mode until we "fall back" in November. You should have seen me last year when we had to add a few more time zone abbreviations. I had a job where I booked web exchanges with other companies across the country. What a challenge. You'd be suprised how many people didn't pay attention. Can't blame them I suppose. I only paid attention because I could really screw up the schedule at work if I was off an hour while booking the web ex's.

The United States uses nine standard time zones. From east to west they are Atlantic Standard Time (AST), Eastern Standard Time (EST), Central Standard Time (CST), Mountain Standard Time (MST), Pacific Standard Time (PST), Alaskan Standard Time (AKST), Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (HST), Samoa standard time (UTC-11) and Chamorro Standard Time (UTC+10).

The names in each time zone change along with Daylight Saving Time.
Eastern Standard Time (EST) becomes Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), and so forth.


How do you military folks ever get the MILITARY TIME ZONE CODES straight in your head:

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is also referred to as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The (-9h) in Alaskan Standard Time refers to that time zone being nine hours behind UTC or GMT and so forth for the other Time Zones.........



Remember when we only had 4 time zones to worry about -- Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. As a kid, I used to love walking to the bus stop in the dark for a few weeks. It seemed like it just took only one day to get things straight back then.

You should see me try to change the clock in my car. At least the cable and cell phone companies change it automatically (kinda creepy though).




The history of daylight-saving time:

1784 - Benjamin Franklin is thought to have come up with the idea for daylight-saving time. In a whimsical letter to a French journal, he said that Parisians could save thousands of francs a year by waking up earlier during the summer because it would prevent them from having to buy so many candles to light the evening hours.

1918 - The U.S. first adopts daylight-saving time, in the same act that created standard time zones, in an effort to save energy during World War I. It didn't prove popular, and, as a result, it was repealed the following year.

1942 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted "war-time," a year-round daylight-saving time to save energy during World War II. After the year-round shift ended in 1945, many states adopted their own summer time changes.

1966 - Congress established a national pattern for summer time changes with the Uniform Time Act. The act came in response from the transportation industry, which demanded consistency across time zones. The U.S. Department of Transportation now oversees time changes in the United States.

1973 - An oil embargo by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries led Congress to enact a test period of year-round daylight-saving time in 1974 and 1975. The test period was controversial; it ended after complaints that the dark winter mornings endangered children traveling to school. The U.S. returned to summer daylight-saving time in 1975.

1986 - The federal law is amended to start daylight-saving time on the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight-saving time was never changed, and remained the last Sunday in October through 2006.

2005 - On August 8, President Bush signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law. Part of the act will extend daylight-saving time starting in 2007, from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

2008 - Daylight-saving time begins on Sunday, March 9 and ends on Sunday, November

What kind of home do you live in......toilet paper OVER or toilet paper UNDER

I (ME) live in an UNDER home and it really really pisses me off when the other occupants try to live in their OVER home.

I just HAD to ask the Blondes the question after reading Kat's post over at
KEEP THE COFFEE COMING (one of my absolutely most favorite music blogs ever!) AND she's an incredible writer and has THE best photos ever. You will see your life in every picture and every story will bring back so many memories.

so

Over?

or


Under?

let 'er rip......

It's Friday. The Great Texas Dildo Wars

I shall point you toward's Amanda's The Great Texas Dildo Wars of 2008
(You may have read that a woman's right to masturbate had returned to Texas recently, however the decision is being reheard by the 5th Circuit Court as it upset the Texas AG. See also The Texas Dildo Massacre.)

You would think that the conservative anti-sex movement in Texas is to save babies and that's what they always say it is, but the deeper issue is that the conservative male legislators are deathly afraid of female sexuality. They should really be afraid of their own.

In order for the great dildo wars to make sense to the "saving babies" crowd, Amanda writes:

You see, dildos are just so big, and if you stick one up yourself and you've got a fertilized egg banging around in there and don't know it, you could just jostle the little fella and knock him right out. Or at least give the little guy quite a scare. There's no such threat coming from the average wingnut penis, so no need to ban those.

Indeed. That is the prevailing mentality in the Texas legislature. The Texas AG's birth mother must have banged him in the head with a dildo when he was a fetus because

"He argues that because criminal laws are generally based on society's moral judgments about right and wrong, the panel majority's decision could invite substantive-due-process challenges to other, previously uncontroversial criminal prohibitions -- suggesting that laws against incest and bigamy that would be the next to go if women are permitted to buy masturbatory aids in Texas.

He should have gone with the saving-babies argument. It's all to easy to point to other states that have not seen a complete breakdown of civilization despite large numbers of women hopping on Rabbits in the privacy of their own bedrooms."

You HAVE to watch the video at the link because Molly Ivins, god rest her soul, was the voice of reason in Texas. She gives you the lowdown on sex laws in Texas, "It is illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state." There is also a law against "mouth to chicken anus sex" in Texas. hmmm.

A Second Enlightenment? I wish.

One article at Wired Drugs, Body Modifications May Create Second Enlightenment that talks about a "smart pill" bringing on a second "enlightenment", inspired me to look up more information on the connection between coffeehouses and the enlightenment in Europe, particularly London, in the 17th century. Even without reading anything, one could easily surmise that caffeine served up in coffeehouses produced more intelligent discourse than alcohol in ale houses which were the common meeting places in the middle ages.

Open discourse frightened authority types who preferred a more "mellow" (and drunken) populace. During the middle ages, Europeans (were pretty loaded and) didn't have access to the news of the day, but when coffeehouses appeared in England, people began to get caught up with reading the news and then sharing new ideas.

"Runners were sent round to the coffee-house to report major events of the day, such as victory in battle or political upheaval, and the newsletters and gazettes of the day were distributed chiefly in the coffee-house. Most of the establishments functioned as reading rooms, for the cost of newspapers and pamphlets was included in the admission charge...

Naturally, this dissemination of news led to the dissemination of ideas, and the coffee-house served as a forum for their discussion. As the eminent social historian G. M. Trevelyan observed: "The 'Universal liberty of speech of the English nation'...was the quintessence of Coffee House life." (English Coffee Houses.)

This enlightenment started in cities where people lived closer together. The internet today may be part of a "second enlightenment" which could be even larger and more widespread simply because our ideas are not confined to our locality.

You might even say that the anonymity of the internet today gives people a chance to engage without class distinction as it did in coffeehouses in the past. From The Fall of Public Man By Richard Sennett

"...the talk [in coffeehouses] was governed by a cardinal rule: in order for information to be as full as possible, distinctions of rank were temporarily suspended; anyone sitting in the coffeehouse had a right to talk to anyone else, to enter into any conversation, whether he knew the other people or not, whether he was bidden to speak or not. It was bad form even to touch on the social origins of other persons when talking to them in the coffeehouse, because the free flow of talk might then be impeded."

If I recall clearly the 60's and 70's, when I was sort of a hippie, there was no class distinction among my peers. It could have been that we were high, but then again, we weren't always high. I wasn't anyway. It could have been that we dressed like "freaks" and let our hair down literally so that you could tell who was like minded or open to chatting about important issues of the day (war). You really couldn't tell who came from money or who was the most well educated and you didn't really care. After a while though, many people just got too fucked up on drugs, lost interest in fighting the man after the war ended and the advent of mindless disco music led way to the Reagan years and the rest is history.

The wired article suggests that the smart pill may inspire people to go on the internet to disseminate ideas and information, but quite frankly, there are already a lot of smart and philosophical people out there from all walks of life... and I don't think that the brainwashed are going to want anything to do with smart pills because they have Fox News and already think they are smart.

Douchebag of the Week

You know, in the grand scheme of things, this is not A BIG DEAL, but the senselessness of it makes Tripp Isenhour my nominee for Douchebag of the Week.

"PGA Tour golfer Tripp Isenhour was charged with killing a hawk on purpose with a golf shot because it was making noise as he videotaped a TV show."

snip

"According to court documents, Isenhour got upset when a red-shouldered hawk began making noise, forcing another take. He began hitting balls at the bird, then 300 yards away, but gave up.
Isenhour started again when the hawk moved within about 75 yards, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer Brian Baine indicated in a report.

Isenhour allegedly said "I'll get him now,'' and aimed for the hawk.

"About the sixth ball came very near the bird's head, and (Isenhour) was very excited that it was so close,'' Baine wrote.

A few shots later, witnesses said he hit the hawk. The bird, protected as a migratory species, fell to the ground bleeding from both nostrils."

Any other nominees y'all think are more worthy of the honor?

Bush: The War Has ‘Nothing To Do With The Economy’

><

Some Americans believe that they feel they’re carrying the burden because of this economy.

G. BUSH: Yeah, well…

CURRY: They say we’re suffering because of this.

G. BUSH: … I don’t agree with that.

CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing do with the economy, the war — spending on the war?

G. BUSH: I don’t think so.

I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs.

CURRY: Oh, yeah?

G. BUSH: Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working.

I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting.


and from the horse's mouth in 2003:

National Homeownership Month, 2003
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2003 as National Homeownership Month. I call upon the people of the United States to join me in recognizing the importance of offering every American the opportunity to realize their dream of homeownership and to help work towards making that dream a reality.



What. A. Jackass.


(Tanzanian Devil Maybe?)

Oh just shoot me now

Flag pins are for losers

Flag pins are for losers -- literally
by Jerome Doolittle at Salon

snippet
Rudy Giuliani, who probably wears a flag to bed, dropped out a week later after racking up a pathetic 15 percent of the vote in the Florida Republican primary.

Do we see a subtle pattern emerging here? Every presidential candidate of both parties who ever wore a lapel flag during the debates, even as briefly as Biden, bought himself a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

And every major party candidate who remains viable today -- John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- has seldom if ever been spotted with a flag in his or her lapel.

Don't think the press hasn't been noticing, either. To this day there has been a steady drumbeat of silence in the media over the flaglessness of Huckabee's, Clinton's and McCain's lapels.

Nor would Obama's disrespect have made news if only he had thought to point the finger at everyone else still in the race when a TV reporter posed his trivia question back in October. But instead he gave an honest if incomplete answer.

Obama said he had worn a pin after 9/11 but stopped once he began to notice, and here I paraphrase wildly but no doubt accurately, that most of the people still wearing lapel flags were assholes.

On the evidence of the campaign so far, Obama wasn't the only one who noticed.

oh boy, here we go

Police investigate Times Square blast

This morning in NEW YORK - An explosive device caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above "the crossroads of the world."

Police blocked off the area to investigate the explosion, which occurred at about 3:45 a.m.. No one was injured. The blast left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame.

"If it is something that's directed toward American troops than it's something that's taken very seriously and is pretty unfortunate," said Army Capt. Charlie Jaquillard, who is the commander of Army recruiting in Manhattan.

He said no one was inside the station, where the Marines, Air Force and Navy also recruit.

continued

Must Read: What we do to our own

McCain's Personal Genocide?
by lokywoky at Jesus' General

It appears that Senator John McCain has been systematically engaged in a "genocide" of sorts against the Navajo (Di'neh) People in his home state of Arizona. In order to further the interest of mining companies (Peabody Western and others) he has sponsored and passed laws to forcibly relocate thousands of Di'neh from their ancestral lands on the reservation that was guaranteed to them by Treaty in the 1870's....
Oh, but it's worse than just relocating them and breaking the treaties....read on

I wonder why the news blackout?

Torture Hits Home

The latest issue of Mother Jones has quite a few articles about torture which you can read online. It seems that just when I think I know pretty much all I need to know, there is more. I read all the articles and I'm sad to say that I am even more disgusted. How our congress and this administration can sleep at night is a testament to how far down the tubes the concept of America as a beacon of light to the rest of world has gone. Decorum forbids me from spitting in the face of any person I should meet in real life who supports torture. Torture is much more widespread that I even thought. Here's one article out of the many at Mother Jones:

From: Am I A Torturer By Justine Sharrock

"When I first set off to interview the rank-and-file guards and interrogators tasked with implementing the administration's torture guidelines, I thought they'd never talk openly. They would be embarrassed, wracked by guilt, living in silent shame in communities that would ostracize them if they knew of their histories. What I found instead were young men hiding their regrets from neighbors who wanted to celebrate them as war heroes. They seemed relieved to talk with me about things no one else wanted to hear—not just about the acts themselves, but also about the guilt, pain, and anger they felt along with pride and righteousness about their service. They struggled with these things, wanted to make sense of them—even as the nation seemed determined to dismiss the whole matter and move on."

This, perhaps, is the real scandal of Abu Ghraib: In survey after survey, as many as two-thirds of Americans say torture is justified when it's used to get information from terrorists. In an ABC/Washington Post poll in the wake of the 2004 scandal, 60 percent of respondents classified what happened at Abu Ghraib as mere abuse, not torture. And as recently as last year, 68 percent of Americans told Pew Research pollsters that they consider torture an acceptable option when dealing with terrorists.

This story is quite a good read because we need to know from the horses mouth, as it were, exactly how a good kid could get messed up in this, how ruined his life is, how he won't live up to his great potential and how really fucked up it is that his ill informed countrymen don't think that there's anything wrong with it. And let's not forget how many innocent people were wrangled up and tortured in Iraq and Gitmo.

I completely agree with Walt's post below that this is all going to come back and bite us in the collective ass (and on so many levels.) And speaking of biting, the presidential candidates can bite me for not addressing American torture. I am insulted by the Democratic campaign. I am hurt and I take it personally.

Sure, I shouldn't fill my sweet little blonde head with nasty things like torture when I should be golfing or swimming in Boca in the spring like the generation before me. I don't know why I care so much. In 2002, I was the mommy who gestured towards the military recruiters as if they were vampires at my son's high school's college fair and loudly asked the principal what THEY were doing at the school where I paid $5,000/yr tuition to keep him AWAY from such influence. To me, they were sleazy used car salesmen (no offense to non-sleazy used car salesmen.)

Oh My Fucking Gawd!

This piece of dogshit was recently published in the Washington Post. The Post, fer chrissakes. Well, it used to be a newspaper of some repute; obviously, it's fallen on hard times.

So, ladies, click the linky-thingy and enjoy the following gems:

"No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either -- although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn't some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat."

"Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example."

"The theory that women are the dumber sex -- or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents -- is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. "

"I don't mind recognizing and accepting that the women in history I admire most -- Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth I, George Eliot, Margaret Thatcher -- were brilliant outliers."

"The same goes for female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons . . . I predict that over the long run, however, even with all the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide, the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason. "

But the coup de grace was the finale:

"So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home . . . Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim."

The author should have a sex change as far as I'm concerned, since she obviously hates being a woman.

I am speechless.

So how fed up are you?