Be INFORMED

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Facts That You Have No Use For

    This has been one of those days in witch  I could care less about politics or any of the usual news that may be going on today,so I’ve decided to hunt the internet for useless information that you and I will never have a need for.

1) 1,525,000,000 miles of telephone wire a strung across the U.S.

2) 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

3) 160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world's widest road.

4) 315 entries in Webster's Dictionary will be misspelled.

5) 7% of Americans don't know the first 9 words of the American anthem, but know the first 7 of the Canadian anthem.

6) 5% of Canadians don't know the first 7 words of the Canadian anthem, but know the first 9 of the American anthem.                       Tealdragon

    7) If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

    8) If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

    9) A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.

    10) Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.    Dysan

   I nay have more of this junk the next time that I feel like being useless.

Maher Blasts Tea Party Over Comparison To Founding Fathers

  

For the teabaggers to compare themselves to the founding fathers of the United States is stretching things a bit. The Tea Party claims to be in line with the things that those founders thought and believed in,which is not quite true. Actually,it is nowhere near true.

 

Friday, January 14, 2011

Political Humor:Saturday Satire

   It has been one hell of a week,has it not? Especially if you are Sarah Palin,who has hit  many all-time lows and pissed off many people,her own included.   Oh well,that is what happens when you give an idiot more than their 15 minutes of fame.

PoliticalHumor

Jay Leno:

"Sarah Palin should pick The Situation from 'Jersey Shore' as her vice president. That way, we can get rid of two reality shows at once."

"Chinese President Hu Jintao will be at the White House next week. The good news is, he has no plans to foreclose. We can stay another month."

"Sad news. It looks like 'Sarah Palin's Alaska' won't be back for a second year. How does that make her feel? She was governor, almost vice president. She gets one year. Snooki's on her third year."

"Police are looking for a man in Phoenix who robbed a bank and told the teller he wanted the money in twenties, forties and sixties. Authorities believe he could be one of President Obama's economic advisers."

Conan O'Brien:

"San Francisco celebrated the opening of the nation's first gay history museum. The museum is called 'San Francisco.'"


"The blizzard was three hours of howling wind — kind of like Rush Limbaugh's radio show."

Craig Ferguson:

"The two biggest websites right now are Wikipedia, where you go to learn about things you care about, and Facebook, where you go to learn about people you stopped caring about years ago."

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Spruce Mine Permit Gets A Veto

  

 The Obama administration EPA just vetoed the largest single mountaintop removal permit in West  Virginia history.  It is about damned time that at least one of former President Bush’s corporate mining friends got stopped in their tracks.

WVGazette

EPA officials this morning were alerting West Virginia’s congressional delegation to their action, and undoubtedly preparing for a huge backlash from the mining industry and its friends among coalfield political leaders.

In making its decision to veto the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the 2,300-acre mine proposed for the Blair area of Logan County, EPA noted that it reviewed more than 50,000 public comments and held a major public hearing in West Virginia. EPA officials said their agency is “acting under the law and using the best science available to protect water quality, wildlife and Appalachian communities who rely on clean waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Tea Partiers and Progressive Democrats, Two Peas In A Pod

by rossl
Tue Jan 11, 2011
So often, those in the tea party equate progressives and Democrats with socialists, communists, Nazis, and whatever other word fits their particular hatred.  Meanwhile, in the Democratic Party, progressives can't seem to go a day without reminding themselves why it's a great thing to live in fear of the latest loon on the right.

Despite great rhetorical and, yes, political differences between the tea party and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the view presented in Adam Levine's recent piece in CounterPunch, "Shared Delusions," is absolutely correct.  Both groups have allowed themselves to be entirely deluded by the ruling class, enabling the corporatization of America.

What makes this possible are the many disempowered voters who are impervious to reason and indifferent to facts; people who fervently believe, for example, that the way to stick it to the Wall Street schemers and gamblers who do them harm is to funnel wealth their way, immiserating themselves...

...Obama apologists have a long way to go too, but their folly is of a different kind. They are like abused spouses who hold on to the belief that their abuser is a "good man" (read "progressive") despite everything.

I have had this thought for a while, but Adam Levine's recent piece in CounterPunch verbalized some of my feelings before I had a chance.  The "shared delusions" of the tea party and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party lead them to similar follies, at a high cost for everyone except those in power.

The tea party, as is obvious to most of the readers here, is one of the more easily co-optable movements in a long time.  Instead of being a movement that drives fundamental change - although that would probably be a bad thing in this case - they have largely limited themselves to the Republican Party.  They've become an electoral engine rather than a broad movement.

And their electoral action is based on sheer delusion, as Levine pointed out.  This is a so-called populist movement that is empowering big business.  We have yet to see the end of the tea party, but it will likely not be pretty.

As for progressives, they have the same problem, only worse.  The only thing progressive Democrats are uncompromising on is their blind loyalty to the Democratic Party.  While an economy based on war, a privatized prison system, the destruction of public education, targeted action against political dissenters, ecological devastation, and the plutocracy all continue to expand under Democratic government, these people who hold reform high in their hearts continue to lend significant support to this same party!

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not a movement.  It's barely even a caucus within the party.  It was co-opted before it even began.  The Democrats didn't even have a chance to destroy it like they did the antiwar movement, because progressives gave up any power they could have ever hoped to have the minute they committed solely to the Democrats and electoral activism.

This is the thinking of victims of abuse who stand by their abuser no matter what; the thinking of those for whom the only defense is no offense at all. Organized labor is a case in point. Although they were promised little – basically just the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a reform nearly as milquetoast as Obama's health care reforms -- no one has worked harder to elect Democrats. Yet, from Day One, Obama, continuing Bush's teach-for-tests-and-thinking-be-damned (mis)education reforms – rebranded, of course, and polished over -- took aim at teachers' unions. His next move was to license the Republican-Tea Party assault on what remains of the labor movement, and to legitimize their anti-deficit nostrums, by freezing the salaries of federal workers, even as he turned over billions to bankers and acquiesced in massive tax breaks for the rich. Now even "good Democrats" like Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown are following suit. Is there any question why, with "progressives" like these, Republicans, smelling blood, have taken aim at public employees and their unions? And yet labor is still there for Obama!

There are two faux populist "movements" in this nation that serve only to enable the metastasis of corporate power within America.  One is, as has so clearly been pointed out by so many lately, the tea party.  The other is made up of progressive Democrats.

No doubt. But the calculations of our greediest capitalists hardly make the belief that Obama is a beleaguered "progressive" up against insurmountable odds any less delusional. Apart from a few vacuous speeches given during the campaign and in the first months of his administration, is there any evidence for that belief at all? The problem is not that Obama hasn't advanced a vision of a qualitatively better society as a true progressive would or even that his reforms, though beneficial, enhance plutocratic power. It is that he has done almost nothing to restore the minimal decencies that preceded America's Reaganite turn. Is there any reason to think that he would if he could? Like Obama's enemies, his apologists think so; they continue to believe, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Obama is a progressive at heart.

It is time to abandon our illusions, and abandon our undeserved loyalty to the established powers.  They are not acting in our interest, so let's stop propping them up.  Neither progressive Democrats nor the tea party are hopeless - at least they recognize something is wrong.  But we must cease to be afraid of radicalism and meaningful dissent.

As long as Obama apologists stand by their man [and progressive Democrats stand by their party] in the way that abuse victims stand by theirs, as long as they subordinate their interests to the conventional view of how best to enhance his electoral prospects, the kakistocrats [servants of plutocrats] will remain in charge. The world cannot wait for Tea Party supporters to outgrow their folly as per Blake's proverb. There is already too much hell to pay. It is therefore urgent that Obama apologists be disabused of their delusions and that those who remain steadfastly recalcitrant be marginalized by the real partisans of "change."

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Limbaugh Spouting More Junk On Tucson Shooting

  This piece of crap is obviously overdosing on his medication or either he isn’t taking enough of it. Dear old Rush has come out and said that the Democrats are supporting the shooter in Tucson. The nerve!

DailyKos

by Jed Lewison      Tue Jan 11, 2011
You'd have to be on some pretty strong drugs to believe this rant from Rush Limbaugh:

What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that...the Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. He's the latest in a never-ending parade of victims brought about by the unfairness of America...this guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder - but something lesser.

As Steve Benen points out, it'll be interesting to see if any Republican out there is finally willing to repudiate this nonsense.

Pima Co. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik Had Words For Limbaugh…

   ‘’’’and I must say that it is damned time that someone other than bloggers started to call out this piece of trash for what he really is.

Original Article

Pima Co. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik calls Limbaugh "irresponsible"

by Lefty Coaster     Mon Jan 10, 2011
Today on his show Limbaugh attacked Sheriff Dupnik:

"it has led to a number of people making abject fools of themselves. The Sheriff of Pima County has made a fool of himself," Rush Limbaugh said.
Fox

Then Dupnik called out Limbaugh:

Arizona Sheriff Blasts Rush Limbaugh for Spewing 'Irresponsible' Vitriol

The Arizona sheriff investigating the Tucson shooting that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded had harsh words today for those engaging in political rhetoric, calling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh "irresponsible" for continuing the vitriol.

"The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said today. "[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences."

Huzzahs for Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for standing up to the Bully of the American Right and calling out Limbaugh's message laced with intolerance and bigoted smears for what it really is.

"To try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week has impact on people," the Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik said.

Fox

Clarence Dupnik doesn't back down to Bullies like Limbaugh. I LOVE THAT!

Rush Limbaugh: Democrats Seek "to Profit Out of Murder"

In his first comments on the tragedy, Limbaugh lashed out at the Democratic Party as one that "seeks to profit out of murder," Roll Call reports, citing Limbaugh's comments as aired on a Tucson station. The Roll Call report also quotes Limbaugh saying that the political left "openly wishes for such disaster in order to profit from it."

The transcript of the program posted to Limbaugh's website, which appears to be incomplete, does not include those quotes.

That Limbaugh has to edit out his more inflammatory diatribes today of all days speaks volumes about the toxic garbage he broadcasts on a daily basis.

Then Rush really starts frothing at the mouth and making wild charges of a sinister Democratic conspiracy:

Don't kid yourself.  What this was all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it. Criminalizing policy differences, at least when they differ from the Democrat Party agenda.  One of the more disturbing things about this incident is that someday the left will finally get their wish.  One of these days it's going to happen.  This is all setting the table for it.

How anyone can take Limbaugh's fantasies seriously is beyond my comprehension, but Rush's Dittohead listeners eat this stuff up.

Beck, Limbaugh Playing with Facts in Giffords Blame Game

Rush Limbaugh is also playing with the facts when he claims no one has real facts. Limbaugh said defendant Jared Lee Loughner's family has "hired" defense attorney Judy Clarke who also represented the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. The New York Times says she is a public defender and has been assigned to Loughner and not hired by the family.

Limbaugh asks where's the evidence to blame the right wing? Perhaps he should be asking where he gets his facts from--being wealthy enough to hire a defense attorney and having a public defender are two very different details which Limbaugh ought to be able to get right if he's going to argue the minutiae of facts versus opinion.

Everyone who denounced the atrocities in Arizona said so hours after the shooting and didn't wait until Monday. Why the delay from commentators Beck and Limbaugh? It's not because they didn't want to jump to conclusions. Anyone can post a message and take a few moments to add their voices to the outcry of outrage at the shootings.

The vicariously viscous gasbags of the Right can strike up a chorus of "Who us?" all they want, but most Americans aren't their gullible listeners. Americans have heard Right Wing Hate Talk Radio first hand. Its message dripping with vitriol, and filled with historical revisions that would have made Stalin blush with embarrassment. 

Monday, January 10, 2011

Jared Loughner's Political Affiliation

  Ever since Mr. Loughner went ballistic in Tucson,Arizona,there has been much debate over which political party he was “endeared” to.

  For the record,this punk was actually registered as an

Independent according to Chris Roads, Pima County's registrar of voters. So naturally,we now have the bigger right-wing websites having a hissy fit and calling out the Liberals for posting what is definitely a fake pic of Jerad’s voter registration.

   No matter which side faked that pic,we all lose because all that shit is going to do is to start even more name calling, and and another touch of hate to an already sorry state of affairs in the United States.

   Let us get one thing straight here. I am one of those Independent voters who both political parties clamor after when election time comes around. At this site,you will notice that I generally rag the Republican’s and their Party because the Liberals are in most cases correct when they say that the GOP and their hate groups are filled with the bulk of the assholes in this country. I have NEVER voted for any Republican candidate and at their current rate of slinging bullshit and bad laws,I see no reason to vote for one of those clowns in the near future. Add to that the fact that I have yet to see any Republican vote for my best interest in any matter. I guess that I do not make enough cash for them to consider me.

   That being said,it is quite possible that Jerad Loughner did like the Republicans and what they stand for. It is also possible that he was one of those nutcases who watched to much FoxNews,listened to Glen Beck,and other members of the hate crowd and that a switch finally clicked in his warped little mind.  We all know what the result was after he lost it.

 

 

Sunday, January 09, 2011

The Shooting In Tucson Has Been Coming For A Long Time

   So what do our friends on the other side of the Atlantic think about Fridays savagery in Tucson,Arizona?

Watching America

“Today's Republicans and conservative commentators, however, surely understand the fire they're playing with. But they do it, and a tragedy like Saturday's won't stop them, as long as they can maintain a phoney plausible deniability and as long as hate continues to pay dividends at the ballot box.”

In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time

The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of rightwing rage, but it is encoded in conservative DNA

Michael Tomasky Michael Tomasky   guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 January 2011

It was instructive to read elected Republicans' official statements in response to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting for what they did not say. The House Speaker, John Boehner, said: "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society. Our prayers are with congresswoman Giffords, her staff, all who were injured and their families. This is a sad day for our country." Arizona Senator John McCain issued the following: "I am horrified by the violent attack on representative Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people by a wicked person who has no sense of justice or compassion. I pray for Gabby and the other victims, and for the repose of the souls of the dead and comfort for their families. Whoever did this, whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race."

All well and good, and I have no doubt every word is sincere. But you'll note that they are silent on the question of the violent rhetoric that emanates from the rightwing of American society. You don't have to believe that alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, is a card-carrying Tea Party member (he evidently is not) to see some kind of connection between that violent rhetoric and what happened in Arizona on Saturday.

Is he a nut? Of course he's a nut. By definition, anyone who shoots innocent people like that has a screw loose. But nuts come in many varieties. There are some who think Dick Cheney planned 9/11, others who believe the CIA has installed eavesdropping devices in their fillings, and still others who insist they're the reincarnation of Mary Queen of Scots. So what particular type of nut is Loughner? We don't have a full picture yet. But we have enough of one. His coherent ravings included the conviction that the constitution assured him that "you don't have to accept the federalist laws". He called a female classmate who had an abortion a "terrorist".

In sum, he had political ideas, which not everyone does. Many of them (not all, but most) were right wing. He went to considerable expense and trouble to shoot a high-profile Democrat, at point-blank range right through the brain. What else does one need to know? For anyone to attempt to insist that the violent rhetoric so regularly heard in this country had no likely effect on this young man is to enshroud oneself in dishonesty and denial.

I would like to report to you that my nation is in shock, and that we will work together to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. Alas, neither of these things is close to true. Of course an event like this is hard to believe in the moment; but in the context of our times, it's really not surprising at all. Last summer, a California man armed himself and set off for San Francisco with the express intent of killing liberals at a nonprofit foundation that had been pilloried by Glenn Beck and others. Only the lucky accident of his arrest en route for drunk driving prevented the mayhem then.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has documented more than two dozen killings by or arrests of rightwing extremists who intended to do serious political violence since 2008. One Tennessee man killed two worshippers at a liberal church, regretting only that he had not been able to ice the 100 liberals named by author Bernard Goldberg as those most responsible for destroying America. Giffords herself received threats after voting for the healthcare reform bill, and shots were fired through the window of her district office. An event like this has been coming for a long time.

As to the future, some things will change, at least for a while. Sarah Palin will be deeply diminished by this. Speaking about the now well-known cross-hairs imagery over the map of Giffords' congressional district on Palin's website, Giffords herself last year expressed concern about "consequences". Palin pooh-poohed this at the time. Her unctuous and hypocritical "prayer" for Giffords and the other victims will mollify only those who think she can do no wrong. But in general, this hastens that blessed day when we no longer have to pay attention to her self-serving lies and idiocies.

Republicans and even Tea Partiers will have the sense – again, for a while – to steer clear of directly gun-related rhetoric. We won't be hearing much in the near term about "second amendment remedies" and insurrection and so forth. But this will be temporary. Guns are simply too central to the mythology of the American right, as is the idea of liberty being wrested from tyrants only at gunpoint. For the American right to stop talking about armed insurrection would be like American liberals dropping the subjects of race and gender. It's too encoded in conservative DNA.

In addition, contemporary American conservatism has been utterly arrested by this ridiculous paranoid fantasy that our government is a tyranny. Here was Republican Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, speaking in Washington last April on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing: "Fellow patriots, we have a lot of domestic enemies of the constitution, and they're right down the Mall, in the Congress of the United States – and right down Independence Avenue in the White House that belongs to us. It's not about my ability to hunt, which I love to do. It's not about the ability for me to protect my family and property against criminals, which we have the right to do. But it's all about us protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government." The year before, this same Broun singled out then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, as one such "domestic enemy of the constitution". He was re-elected last November with 67% of the vote.

This kind of rhetoric will go into hibernation now, but only for a bit. Because not only is it too central to rightwing mythology; it is central to Republican electoral strategy. This is one of those things that no one says, because it can't really and truly be proved forensically, but everyone knows. Get people to hate liberals. Get them to think not only that liberals have ideas for the country that are wrong – get them to believe that liberals despise the country and are actively attempting to hasten its demise. Say progressivism isn't just invalid or even dangerous, but "evil" and a "cancer," as Glenn Beck says. Fear gets people to the ballot box.

Direct responsibility for what happened Saturday? No. Mentally ill people are mentally ill. The Beatles weren't responsible for the messages that Charles Manson heard in their music. But there's a difference. Paul McCartney had no earthly reason to think that an innocent song about a fairground ride (Helter Skelter) would lead a man to commit barbarous acts of murder. Today's Republicans and conservative commentators, however, surely understand the fire they're playing with. But they do it, and a tragedy like Saturday's won't stop them, as long as they can maintain a phoney plausible deniability and as long as hate continues to pay dividends at the ballot box.

Arizona Shootings: Keith Doberman's Special Comment

  Everyone has heard about the stupid shooting which took place on January 8 in Tucson Arizona, and I am not going to say anything on the subject. What can be said that is not being said already?

   Keith Olbermann had something to say on his “Special Comments” broadcast on Friday night,and he pretty much nailed problems such as this shooting right on the head.