August 2009 archive

Aug 19 2009

WorldNet Daily Wingnuttery On Health Care Reform

There is always value in knowing what our opponents are saying in any fight. Since Matt Barber of Liberty University and the Liberty Counsel insists in spamming the Dog’s public e-mail with his toxin, malignant idiocy, the Dog figures he might as well share it with his fellow Netroots activists.  Just a little background on the odious Mr. Barber; he is a graduate of Colorado Christian University, and has a J. D. from Regent University Law School, the same school that brought us Monica Goodling and so many other illegally hired ideologues in the Department of Justice. This slime ball is also a member of the Anti-gay group Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

Aug 19 2009

How much security did $1 trillion buy?

I’m not going to add anything, I’ve been saying what this video, and the series Robert Greenwald is putting together for eight damn years, and I haven’t been alone!!

Rethink Afghanistan (Part 6): Security

Aug 19 2009

Obama’s War Rhetoric



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Now we seemingly have the Democrats back on track for some type of real health care reform which includes a public option, though we must concede the reform is TINY in the scheme of things, let’s see if we can’t get the Democrats to end these illegal, irresponsible and immoral wars.

Aug 19 2009

Time to Jump Start the Anti War Movement

BARACK OBAMA: WAR CRIMINAL

With the final betrayal of the progressive left still stinging like salt rubbed into a raw wound and the Pope of Hope’s filthy Judas administration in full damage control mode after Sunday’s slip by Health and Human Services Secretary Katherine Sebelius that the public option was about to have its life support unplugged. The public option (without it any ‘reform’ of health care is no more than garbage)was the feckless fallback position for the corporate puppet Obama rather than the right thing which would be national single payer insurance and in true form the white flag was already run up by the reigning lord of the jackass party. You would think with armed thugs now carring assault weapons prowling Obama town halls that he and his rotten liar cabal of Wall Street and insurance water carriers that he would be a bit less likely to alienate those who are the true base but once again it is made evident of how much we are all being played for fools and chumps and have been ever since the DLC decided to throw in with the Reagan Revolution.

Aug 19 2009

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Science

1 Smoke-spewing Trabant poised for rebirth as electric car

by Audrey Kauffmann, AFP

Sun Aug 16, 7:53 pm ET

BERLIN (AFP) – Once the much-mocked symbol of drab communist East Germany, Trabant cars are revving up for a dramatic rebirth as electric cars — 20 years after they drove through the fallen Berlin Wall to freedom.

A team of German firms is developing the “new Trabi” or Trabant NT, a revamped version of the famously unreliable and unattractive cars, and is aiming to unveil a prototype at the Frankfurt motor show in September.

And in contrast to the old model, whose noisy two-stroke engine sent a polluting cloud of burnt oil and petrol into the air as it chugged slowly through the streets behind the Iron Curtain, the new 21st century Trabi could hardly be greener.

Aug 19 2009

NECN and Guardasil

Channel 6, my wife said.  One our cable system this is NECN. She swore there was a story about Guardasil.  Doctors refusing to give it, 300 deaths.  Magically it is nowhere to be found.

http://www.necn.com/

http://vaccineawakening.blogsp…

Ah, but lamestream media never lies, do they?

Aug 19 2009

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

2009 Poems:  Dreamcatcher


Dream Catcher #8

Hardscrabble Progress

Structure

begets structure

hope gives birth

to greater hopes

dreams are dreamt

even by beings

existing only

between the breaths

of a dreamer

The present

condenses

out of untold

alternate futures

and drags the past

forward

like a ball and chain

Life is endurable

if only one can find

the beauty

amidst the ugliness

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–March 19, 2009

Aug 19 2009

Corporate fascism: a classic example

Coca Cola’s adroit, questionable practices during the Second World War are legendary. The company managed to play both sides of the European front against each other with breathtaking chutzpah, opportunism, and outright greed.

I stumbled upon this facet of history (or to be more accurate it whopped me over the head with a 2×4) as I wandered an area on Long Island steeped in history, looking for my bottles n’ cans. I was going to get more than I bargained for today.

There’s a building in Garden City – now boarded up and abandoned – just past the Roosevelt Field shopping mall on Old Country Road that used to host a data center for a gigantic hospitality industry “octopus” company called Cendant. Cendant had purchased the Avis rental car agency headquarters and made it their own, so most locals still knew it as the Avis building.

I made waves at Cendant during my first few weeks at Sun Microsystems by solving a three-month-old “severity 1” NetBackup tech support escalation in fifteen minutes. As a result there were those within the company who respected my skills, and for a period of time they became one of my regular clients, until they rolled up the sidewalks and moved their headquarters to New Jersey.

It didn’t hurt that an old college friend worked there, albiet in a completely different department. She was the one who explained to me that the building had been a munitions factory in World War II, and that was why the walls were three feet thick in places, and why it’s hallways were laid out in a maze that otherwise would have made no sense.

Several years later – oh, the rich irony – I stumbled upon the disused railroad tracks that obviously had led between the factory and the Roosevelt Field airfield.

It was rather bewildering. The dusty bottle I’d pulled out of the ground said “Sparkling New Orange Soda” in stylized applique paint that indicated that it would date anywhere from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. OK, fine, there were lots of weird little fly-by-night soda brands that came out back in the day, but on the back of this one it said “Coca Cola Bottling Company”.

I was boggled. WTF?!? This was obviously a Fanta bottle. Come on now, everybody knows that Coca Cola’s version of orange soda is Fanta. Right?

But for whatever reason, it wasn’t being CALLED Fanta. Why?

I found out why.

Aug 19 2009

Doc’s Prescription for Health Care Reform 2009

Every thinking person agrees that the health care (actually, sick care) system in the United States is not performing as well as it should.  I say “every thinking person”, because special interest money can turn off one’s thinking cap very quickly.  This is what is happening now.

People, by our genetic makeup and millennia of experience, are averse to change.  We like thinks to be predictable, especially when it is fundamental to our survival.  We like our homes, familiar abodes of safety, just as well today as we liked our caves, or our hunting and gathering grounds, or any number of things that gave us a sense of security thousands of years ago.  Change, and the uncertainty associated with it, is scary for most of us.

Aug 19 2009

Overnight Caption Contest

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Aug 19 2009

Cradle-to-Grave Crazy, Cradle-to-Grave Reckless

The insanity of truth denying is

somewhat staggering to considering, with people who are so disconnected from the real world that they seek to create some form of near 50 year long conspiracy of how Barack Obama wasn’t actually born in the United States (as long as you consider Hawaii as one of the 50 United States of America).  From the “birthers” the insanity extends to “death”, with those fighting health care reform outright lying with their assertions that a proposal to have reimbursement of counseling and writing a living will is somehow a devilish path to put Americans to death.  Tom Toles captured this insanity with a cartoon and term with a clarity that shows the power of an insightful political cartoonist: Cradle-to-Grave Crazy

Cradle-to-Grave Crazy … this truly does capture a stream in the American dialogue that seems to be striving to make members of the Flat Earth Society look like deep thinkers with their feet solidly on the ground.

Aug 18 2009

School of the Americas: Still Training Hondurans

From School of Americas Watch:

A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. — formerly known as the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas — is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned.

A day after an SOA-trained army general ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint, President Barack Obama stated that “the coup was not legal” and that Zelaya remained “the democratically elected president.”

The Foreign Operations Appropriations Act requires that U.S. military aid and training be suspended when a country undergoes a military coup, and the Obama administration has indicated those steps have been taken.

However, Lee Rials, public affairs officer for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the successor of SOA, confirmed Monday that Honduran officers are still being trained at the school.

“Yes, they’re in class now,” Rials said.

Asked about the Obama administration’s suspension of aid and training to Honduras, Rials said, “Well, all I know is they’re here, and they’re in class.”

And, inside Honduras, nothing has changed either:

The ongoing training of Hondurans at Ft. Benning is not the only evidence of unbroken U.S.-Honduran military ties since the coup.

Another piece was discovered by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch, while on fact-finding mission to Honduras last week.

Bourgeois — accompanied by two lawyers, Kent Spriggs and Dan Kovalik — visited the Soto Cano/Palmerola Air Base northwest of Tegucigalpa, where the U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Task Force-Bravo is stationed.

“Helicopters were flying all around, and we spoke with the U.S. official on duty, a Sgt. Reyes” about the U.S.-Honduran relationship, Bourgeois said. “We asked him if anything had changed since the coup and he said no, nothing.”

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.soaw.org/presente/i…

And the US is still continuing aid to Honduras, according to Narconews:

http://www.narconews.com/

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