Monday, October 5, 2009

Headlines - Monday

 
 
...Some say people in Utah are viewing porn more than any other state in the country after a study earlier this year by a Harvard economics professor. Professor Benjamin Edelman tracked subscriptions to online porn sites. He discovered that Utah is number one in the nation in online porn.
 
That's what I love about religions in general. They always have someone handy to blame (Satan) for their 'sins'. If they do something 'wrong', they were under the power of the Devil. Sorry, but "the Devil made me do it" doesn't fly here. Try taking responsibility for yourselves before you yell and scream about others' moral fiber.
 
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"Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it's a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred - religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word 'conservative' you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They're not, they're fascists."  Gore Vidal  Link
 
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Krugman: conservatives have the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.
 
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Stop wildlife poisoning on public lands:
 
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History unfolding  Link

Excerpt:
We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy.. Why?

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funny pictures of cats with captions
 
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Roll out the aluminum tubes

In the days after the successful talks between Western powers and Iran, which yielded more in one day than eight years of threats by the Cheney Administration, those who profit off of belligerence and confrontation with the world had clearly circled the wagons and planted their stories in the nation's newspapers. If people got the idea that Iran was moving toward cooperation, why, what would the foreign policy "establishment" that thrives off of conflict and military deployment do? Where would the next enemy be found? It's very bad for business.

So out came the links. Helene Cooper typed up the fears of anonymous officials wondering if the agreements in the first round of talks, including a deal where Iran would ship its enriched uranium to Russia to ensure that it would be used for peaceful purposes, were just a tactic by the Iranians to "buy time." Practically the same article popped up in the LA Times, as "experts and government officials" questioned whether the timeline for IAEA inspectors to visit the recently revealed facility at Qom represented another stall tactic. Amid this suspicion, neocon emeritus Elliott Abrams surmised that Iranians would not oppose a military attack on their own country, because there's nothing dissidents enjoy more than bombs raining on their heads (the reformers don't want sanctions either, it will hurt ordinary Iranians rather than the ruling regime). And today, this bombshell is splashed across the New York Times:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/roll-out-aluminum-tubes-by-dday-in-days.html

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The Bee Drinks The Kool-Aid: http://www.sacbee.com/838/story/2227149.html

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6 important life lessons from the Twilight Zone - here's one:
 
The End of The World Isn't The Worst Thing That Can Happen


The Twilight Zone loved to threaten us with the end of the world over and over again. And every time good character or bad, the end of the world is always eclipsed by something even worse happening. Take the little man with the huge glasses, Burgess Meridith. All he wanted was peace and quiet so he could read, then the world ends and he's the last man on the face of the Earth with plenty of reading material. Then he breaks his giant coke-bottle glasses. Even fake end of the world can get one-upped by our neighbor's gusto to break down our doors to get into the only shelter.

More here.  
 
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Today's Lie From Fox News

Of course they'll say they just "accidentally" left the decimal off the real number, 14.9M.

 
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The oldest story in the world
 
 
A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots. A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth. The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior. Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.
"An overcompensation to hide his past." Now where have we seen that kind of behavior? Answer: In the actions, lies, and insults of virtually every hate-filled homophobe in the history of the world. The rest of the planet may be shocked to learn of Ahmadinejad's Jewish heritage. But for us on this here website thingy, it's just a slightly different version of the same old story.

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Getting beaten by your husband is a "pre-existing condition
 
And, of course, that means no medical insurance for you. This goes on in eight states: Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming, as well as the District of Columbia.
 
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h/t Dick:  

Some H1N1 advice - ...although it fails to mention that the second phase of the 1918 H1N1 flu pandemic killed 100,000,000 people worldwide.

Frank Rich -  The Rabbit Ragu Democrats

 
Cargille's version of Russian Roulette - So, when you are in the supermarket and you are looking at a package of ground beef, knowing that if it is contaminated with E. coli, that it could really f**k up your life, you have to ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?
 
Let's hope these pilots never fly again.
 
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Mark Sanford simply won't go away
 
... The never-ending Mark Sanford saga is interesting not just because it demonstrates a man with one hell of a pathological narcissism monkey on his back, but also one whose very belief system has been shaken to its core. It's easy to understand why pathological narcissists would be attracted to the doctrine put forth by "The Family" (of which Sanford is a member), because it elevates "clean slate Christianity" to an entirely new plane, one where there is an even smaller "elite" than the huge number of worldwide Christians, one that is, according to David Coe, heir apparent to the group's founder Douglas Coe, exempt from the rules of conduct according to which the rest of us are obligated to live.
 
And in a related story ...
 
Summer beach reading for next year 

Jenny Sanford, the wife of the GOP sex-lizard and notorious Apallachian trail hiking, amateur castanet playing Loathrio, South Carolina Governor Mark "Kiss Me South of the Border" Sanford, plans to release her memoirs in May of next year.

Hmmmm, midterm elections, oh yeah.

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Here's a great site that acts sort of as a clearing house for good deeds. I know that we are in a crippling recession, and that squeezing blood from a rock is harder than ever, but you might be interested in The Animal Rescue Site, regardless if you have nothing more than only a little time to give. You see, they have set up a click program that gives 100% of the proceeds to charity.

It's simple: you click the purple button, your click is counted and you see a page full of adds that run on the site and the money from the click goes to help rescue animals. There's no obligation to do anything more.

So go give 'em a click.

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WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the United States which pays its CEO roughly $10 million, announced that it is cutting back on the health benefits it offers to its own employees. WellPoint also announced that it was eliminated some jobs at the company, while raising deductibles and premiums for some of its employee health benefits.

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The socialists have won Greece's national elections! Technically, now, Barack Obama is the first black president of Greece. WSJ

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$4 million.  For a House race.  "The suddenly national congressional contest between Rep. Joe Wilson and challenger Rob Miller has blown past the $4 million fundraising record for any U.S. House race in South Carolina - and is on pace to challenge the most expensive campaigns in the country's history.  Despite saying they want to move beyond Wilson's now famous "you lie!" yell at President Barack Obama, Wilson and Miller continued to capitalize on the national attention the Springdale Republican's outburst has brought their campaign."

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Quote of the Day It's important to remember that every day about 295 million Americans get up and fail to tune in to Rush Limbaugh. ~ Garry Trudeau  

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Republicon senators Lindsey Graham and Saxy Chambliss aren't content with waging war on Iraq and Afghanistan and continually bombing Pakistan - they think we (not Israel) should also attack Iran.
 
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Least shocking news of the day: the Bushies lied when they said the banks were healthy a year ago.
 
 
 

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