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Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 15:24:39 PST
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(9 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Like a lot of people, I'm insanely frustrated with our elected representatives' actions. I'm constantly asking myself, am I doing enough, are we making any difference at all.
My local supermarket was about to go on strike. My cashier had a button on reading "I don't want to go on strike but will if I have to". I told her she and her coworkers deserved a decent wage and if they went on strike I wasn't coming back to that store until the strike was over. I told her she had my complete support. I don't know how many other customers offered support. I'm only one person but I figured offering my support was the least I could do on that day, in that line.
I'm constantly getting mailings from the DCCC and others from the Party Establishment looking for money. I'm answering each one, telling them why they have lost my support. They always provide a business reply envelope but ask you to save them postage by using your own stamp. I never provide my own stamp. I make them pay to open my empty envelope and find my two cents worth. It may only be punishing them a few cents at a time, but if a hundred people do it too, or maybe a thousand people, it starts to add up to real money.
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Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 00:00:00 PST
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 03:00:00 PST
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Muse in the Morning |
Wings 7 |
(Click on image for larger view)
Dva...
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 17:47:55 PST
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(midnight - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
larger here
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Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 22:19:10 PST
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(10PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
"Remember the Maine!"
That was the slogan used by William Randolph Hearst and The New York Journal to stoke American public opinion into war with Spain after the U.S.S. Maine sunk in Cuban waters in 1898. However, Hearst started in the publishing business in 1887, when he took over the San Francisco Examiner.
William Randolph Hearst bought the failing New York Journal in 1896. His sensational journalism style, now called "yellow journalism", drove the failing paper to prominence. While there is no historical evidence of collusion between the government and the Journal to get public support for the war, and, in fact, the government wanted no part of going to war with Spain, there is plenty of evidence that there was collusion later. After spending time in the House of Representatives from 1903-1907, Hearst started several new papers in various cities with the help of the Democratic National Party in the 1920's.
The story of William Randolph Hearst is now history, but, history has a way of repeating itself. You see, Hearst saw profit in the Cuban revolt that occurred in 1895 and had been selling papers for years sensationalizing the Ten Years War in Cuba.
War meant selling papers and that meant profit.
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 17:00:00 PST
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Jane Hamsher at FDL took more hyperbolic criticism at GOS for calling out Lynn Woolsey on her political naivity Lynn Woolsey: Closing Barn Doors Since 1993
Lynn Woolsey writes an op-ed in Roll Call today on her commitment to a public option, pandering to liberals who would indeed have to be "f*#king re#!rds" for it to make any sense. It comes on the heels of her public announcement that she will break every single pledge she's ever made to vote against a health care bill without a public option.
It's a paean to the importance of said public option, but the kicker is at the end:
Piecemeal tweaking of the health insurance system will not address this growing problem. We need to reform our health care system, and the public option must be included.
I will fight to include the public option in the final version of the health care reform legislation.
If it is not included, however, it will rise from the dead once again.
The day after the health care legislation is passed, I will introduce a bill calling for the public option.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Well, I agree with Jane. If either Woolsey is that politically naive about the Senate or thinks that progressives are that stupid to believe that a stand alone bill with a public option has a snowball's chance, then she should step down as the chair of the Progressive Caucus.
But there is more that really had me amazed at those who so loudly claim that this bill is the beginning of health care reform
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 03:12:55 PST
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(6PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Four score and twenty betrayals ago, when Barack Obama was posturing as a transformational leader, when he was promising government of the people, by the people, and for the people, he spoke of the core values progressives have always believed in as the solution to America's problems . . .
That spirit of looking out for one another, that core value that says I am my brothers keeper, I am my sister's keeper, that spirit is most evident during times of great hardship, but that spirit can't just be restricted to moments of great catastrophe. Because as I stand here and look out at the thousands of folks who have gathered here today, I know that there's some folks who are going through their own quiet storms.
Hurricane Ike had just hit the gulf coast of Texas, Wall Street was about to implode, the foundations of the economy were crumbling, Americans everywhere were losing their jobs, their homes, their last remnants of trust in the government . . .
All across America there are quiet storms taking place. There are lives of quiet desperation. People who need just a little bit of help. Now, Americans are a self-reliant people, we're an independent people. We don't like asking somebody else to do what we can do ourselves, but you know what we understand is that every once in awhile, somebody's going to get knocked down.
Every once in awhile . . .
Yes, and every once in awhile, the sun comes up. Then, every once in awhile, it goes down again.
Low income Americans get knocked down every day, middle class Americans get knocked down every day, seniors on fixed incomes get knocked down every day. Republicans knocked them down for 30 years, and now Barack Obama and that gang of corporate enforcers that used to be the Democratic Party are doing it. A punch in the face is a punch in the face. Analyze that, Beltway Republicrats. When Americans are flat on their back all the time, they don't give a damn whether the fist that knocked them down was a Republican fist or a Democratic fist. A corporate fist is a corporate fist. Whistle past that graveyard, Obamabots. Have an "ideologue" diary contest, fill that wreck list of yours with "ideologue" ravings and let's all see who can clap the loudest.
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 13:10:19 PST
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Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread
| From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Pope denounces 'atrocious' Nigeria bloodshed
by Aminu Abubakar, AFP
2 hrs 22 mins ago
| JOS, Nigeria (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday denounced the "atrocious" bloodshed in Nigeria after a massacre of Christian villagers, as police said 49 people would be charged over the killings.
As new gunfire added to the tensions around the flashpoint city of Jos, the Catholic Pontiff added his voice to a chorus of international revulsion over the weekend slaughter which police now say left 109 people dead.
About 8,000 Nigerians have also fled their homes around Jos in the wake of the violence, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. |
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 11:00:00 PST
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One of the most ubiquitous arguments made on the issue of immigration is that before we can do anything of a progressive nature we need to "secure our borders."
If we don't "secure our borders," heaven alone knows what will happen! The terrists will get in, that's for sure. And millions of Mexicans and others from Latin America will descend upon our fair nation like a hail of locusts and we shall all be destroyed in the horror.
Over at Migra Matters, Duke Reed has a post entitled The down-payment's been paid, when will the goods be delivered?.
To those who are convinced enforcement-only policies are paramount, the question all progressives should ask is: How much enforcement is enough?
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 10:00:00 PST
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Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 19:21:08 PST
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(noon. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Oh man I just had the most horrible dream! You see I went to this diary, wherein I was told, join, join, join them, and you can change it. Learn the joys of coffee... then I went to this facebook page.....
Then I found myself somehow whisked to this town. It was a strange town where people wore these strange clothes, like it was the 1800's, but underneath the 19th century duds and bow ties and hats they all had on instead of a button downed white shirt and blouse, an Obama T-Shirt.
No sooner had I appeared, than a man with a vacant grin approached me.
"Civility and reason to you, friend!", said he.
"Uh, civility and reason to you!" I replied, my eyes widening at this odd greeting.
"Coffee hour approaches," the man went on, as if in the same vein. "What will you have? Mocha? Latte? Frappucino? Maybe a triple espresso cappucino?"
Well, I was getting a bit wigged out at the cognitive dissonance, you understand. Little alarm bells were going off in my head, but I couldn't place it. "Uh, maybe some decaf?" I evaded, hoping to buy time.
"Isn't Obama the best president evah?" The man prompted me.
"Uh, yeah, he's great," I answered, trying not to sweat too much. The man nodded and walked on, seeingly forgetting he had offered me coffee. "Coffee hour approaches," the man mumbled, apparently to himself. "It is the will of Obama."
"Hey!" I shouted at the man. He turned. "Aren't you supposed to be a grass roots organization?"
"Yes," the man smiled. "Civility and reason, and accountability, and equal justice for all. All together in the grassroots. Obama knows all, he sees all. You will see. Are you not of the body"? Suddenly the man's expression changed. From vacant and pleasant to suspicious and demanding.
"Yeah, I'm of the body, dude. Whatever you say!" I smiled back weakly, then ran.
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Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 19:36:33 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Anybody remember this?
Monday, April 14, 2008 Obama would ask his AG to "immediately review" potential of crimes in Bush White House
Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."
The question was inspired by a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects.
Or this
Turley: Obama 'owns' Bush 'war crimes' if he looks the other way
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
President George W. Bush's offhand acknowledgement in an interview Sunday with Fox's Brit Hume that he personally authorized the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may create thorny legal and moral problems for incoming President Barack Obama.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Monday, "We now have President Bush speaking quite candidly that he was in the loop, we have Dick Cheney who almost bragged about it. The question for Barack Obama is whether he wants to own part of this by looking the other way."
Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, "We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."
All most bragged about it? How about admitted it. Not only did the media "yawn", so did the Obama and the Justice Department
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Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 23:09:54 PST
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Once again the debate over a "soda tax" is going strong here in New York and throughout the entire nation. The pros and cons of this tax are complicated but something needs to be done. Except what is being floated around here and by many governments in a nation of drinkable disasters is really both a natural sweetener tax and a promotion of artificial sweeteners.
The embattled Governor David Paterson proposed it last year as an "Obesity Tax" before public outcry temporally crushed it. The outcry was over this tax being a regressive tax that poor people would be forced to pay with little thought about parents telling their children "No you cannot have 87¢ for a Coke but you can have 75¢ for a Diet Coke." When diet sodas are exempt, since budget conscious shoppers will find drinks with artificial sweeteners and other chemicals to be money saving choices, it translates to government preaching better living through chemicals.
This tax seemed dead until Michael Bloomberg began presenting it as what it really is, an income generator. Now with Bloomberg's endorsement this tax is getting the "full court press" again and Paterson is holding multiple meeting on taxing sugary drinks. Meanwhile there are dueling TV ads here now but little thought about what is being taxed to curtail empty calories through a straw. In this battle of interest groups is anyone actually thinking?
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Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 16:53:28 PST
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(9 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
The New Yorker and The Atlantic are running twin puff pieces on how - they hate to admit it but - Timmy G saved the economy.
The New Yawker sezzie poohs:
Economists are still debating what it was that ended the financial crisis and turned the economy around. It is inarguable, though, that Geithner's stabilization plan has proved more effective than many observers expected, this one included.
Whereas the Atlantians suggest that our fabled civilization was not destroyed by the gods for excess greed and corruption, 'cause Timmeh held back the thunderbolts with hizown chest:
Yet when the history books are written, Geithner will be recognized as Barack Obama's key lieutenant in the struggle to right the economy and fix the finance system. Economically, Geithner's plan has worked better and more cheaply than anyone could have imagined a year ago.
The twin, virtually interchangeable pieces appearing at the same time and having extremely similar, if not identical overall angles is prolly just a coincidence, as opposed to a controlled marketing campaign, don'tcha think?
Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know they can relax. Everything's hunky dory now and Tim G is an elfin sizzle chest whose athleticism "inspires an adolescent awe in male colleagues."
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 04:54:44 PST
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Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread
1 Curious whales give boost to Mexican fishermen
by Sophie Nicholson, AFP
Wed Mar 10, 1:20 am ET
| SAN IGNACIO, Mexico (AFP) - When the massive, barnacle-spotted head of a Pacific gray whale slid alongside Pachico Mayoral's wooden boat, he nervously reached out to touch it.
Like other fishermen, he usually beat his boat with a stick to try to frighten the giant mammals away, but for once he hesitated.
"The whale insisted, going from one side of the boat to the other, and at one point I was curious and, very gently, I stroked the whale's face. And nothing happened. It stayed calm," Mayoral said, driving a boat of tourists across the San Ignacio lagoon some 40 years later. |
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Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 03:00:00 PST
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Muse in the Morning |
Wings 5 |
(Click on image for larger view)
Another...
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Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 19:29:50 PST
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(midnight - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
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March on Washington
Saturday, March 20
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