Monday, May 23, 2011

Headlines - Monday May 23

How Harold Camping marketed the Rapture. Like everything else Religious/Fox News related, this type of grifting can only happen when there are plenty of gullible people who want so badly to believe the fantasy. The rapturites may be amusing to make fun of, but the reality is that this episode shows the depressingly simplistic, medieval and superstitious mindset still so prevalent among humans, despite it being 2011. Thank the FSM there seems to be a slowly growing number of people like this guy around.
 
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Obama seems to be hitting his stride, and probably doesn't give a shit what the dumb-c*nt snowbillie spews. "Obliquely and with respect to his audience, in his speech to AIPAC today, President Obama also responded to Prime Minister Netanyahu's repeated lies about what President Obama said only the day before. ... Just as no man is an island, no country can be either. On its present course Israel is on its way to becoming a pariah state, a status in which it cannot indefinitely or even perhaps long survive. Neither the fact that Israel faces a profound cultural animosity among the region's Arab populations nor the bad faith that often greets its actions nor even the anti-Semitism that is sometimes beneath the animus changes this essential fact. The make-up of the 21st century world is simply not compatible with a perpetual military occupation of another people, especially one that crosses a boundary of ethnicity and religion. Only the willfully oblivious can't see that."

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Remember when everybody was saying we had to kiss the banksters collective ass because without them the economy would descend into ruin, even though their shenanigans caused the meltdown to begin with?

Well, they're gaming the system again, making easy money while
screwing the people from whom they make their money:

Whether or not you buy into the high values of social media, you probably noticed the stunning LinkedIn IPO last week. It opened at an expensive value and doubled. Now, many are asking questions about whether this was Wall Street's latest ripoff.

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The government can regulate everything the average American does, from smoking, to the breed of dog you can have, to what your kids learn in school, to how fast you can drive, to when the bars close at night, but heaven forbid we regulate the financial industry. Far be it for them to have a set of rules requiring ethical conduct and severe penalties for ignoring them.

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Good read in the non-aftermath of the fundieocalypse by William Rivers Pitt.

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Good piece by Jacob Weisberg on the fantasies modern Republicans must believe.
 
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Does anyone think that if Islamic terrorists had perpetrated over 6000 attacks against Americans, on American soil, that it would be ignored by the FBI and the Justice Department the way attacks by the Christian Taliban routinely are? Yeah, us either. The next target in the War on Women has been selected, and this time it's Dr. Mila Means, the woman who has refused to give in to the domestic terrorists who call themselves "pro-life" and forged ahead with her plans to open a reproductive health clinic in Wichita. If a letter addressed to her, warning her that "thousands" of people are looking into her background and learning her habits, and every day she will be looking under her car to see if this is the day a bomb has been planted -- isn't a credible threat and the gender-traitor who sent it walks free with a smirk on her smug, disgusting, should-be-pulped-with-a-baseball-bat face, then the word has lost all meaning. (Like the letter sent to Dr. Means, that last bit was meant to intimidate, but it wasn't a threat.)

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A little something for the "Go Galt" crowd A comprehensive list of 102 things you need to abstain from doing if you hate paying your fair share so damned bad.
 
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Did you know...that the Koch Brothers' dad did business with the Nazis and only developed his anti-Government views after he crawled in bed with Stalin and the Soviet state took his oil? He came back to the United States and started Koch Industries and the John Birch Society. But the second-degree relatives in Germany who served in the SS are the real colorful characters. Ilse Koch was the only woman tried for war crimes after WW II -- but her downfall came at the hands of the Nazis, who she double crossed and stole from. Her husband died in front of a German firing squad and she hung herself in her cell after several years in first German and then Allied prisons. They are direct decendants of the people who went first for the trade unionists...
 
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Pay off the debt: tax the freakazoids.
 
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Politically profitable rhetoric

Despite the right-wing's criticism which is at best, dishonest, of President Obama's speech regarding Israel and Palestinian peace, their own position on the matter is not exactly constructive or realistic either.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain joined Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday to reassure the world of this fact.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Sunday that as president, he would offer the Palestinians "nothing" as part of a peace deal with Israel.

"I'm not convinced that the Palestinians are really interested in peace," Cain told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"If we look at history, it has been clear that the Palestinians have always wanted to push Israelis and push Israel for more and more and more. I don't agree with that. I respect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for taking a stand and saying they cannot give that up."

He added: "Secondly, it's Israel's decision, not President Obama's decision to where the borderline will be."

When pressed for more details by Chris Wallace, Herman Cain revealed that he actually has no idea what he's talking about, coming as a shock to no one.

His point of view is not entirely inconsistent with the religious-right and neo-conservatives in this country, or the hard-right inside Israel, though. As far as they are concerned, the Palestinians deserve nothing and, as long as they each have a say in the matter, they will do everything in their power to ensure that they get nothing. This is why peace remains elusive.

President Obama is attempting to stake out a reasonable position which can be supported by reasonable people, but the right-wings of each party involved cannot accept a reasonable proposal because their political lives depend on unreasonable rhetoric.

Lives will continue to be lost as long as it remains politically profitable.

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Skippy's environmental news Sunday. 
 
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I think the cows are suffering more than the people.
 
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Blackwater founder creating private army of 'christian crusaders' in Middle East.
 
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Tennessee is redefining the "age of stupid"
 
 

It's obvious that Tennessee is determined to keep it's citizens shackled to the chains of ignorance for as long as they can.

A bill passed Friday by the Tennessee Senate would forbid public school teachers and students in grades kindergarten through eight from discussing the fact that some people are gay.

Way to go, fools. Stick your fingers in your ears, cover your eyes and pretend that millions of gay people do not exist. If the kids don't hear of  them, then they obviously don't exist, right?

In the demented, bigoted view of Tennessee's Republican legislators, passing laws to make guns permissible in bars and public parks, trying to to force creationism into science classes, demonizing all Muslims, denying the existence of climate change while teaching hate and intolerance is their solution for preparing a generation of young people who can contribute to the fabric of American life and prepare them for the challenges they'll face in a diverse and ever growing complex world. F***ing idiots.

Seriously, if these people ever get away with this shit and it becomes the norm across the country, in a couple of generations the U.S. would become a wasteland of ignorant fools who would be competing with the Congo as the poorest, least proficient nation on earth.

It won't happen, of course…but only because good, intelligent Americans are fighting the good fight each and every day. But it's a struggle for them. The idiot class is intent on forcing their world view of ignorance and hate onto the masses. It must be rejected.


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