Do We Look Racist

dot dot dot....

Weekend Edition
September 3 - 5, 2010

CounterPunch Diary

Obama's Ridiculous Mid-East Summit

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

It has been impossible to read the agenda for the Oval Office summit between Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas without laughing out loud at the absurdity of its pretensions. The American plan was that President Obama would inform Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, representing the Palestinian Authority, that this is make-or -break time for a peaceful settlement. The US wants an agreement within a year, with the stipulations in this agreement to be phased in over a decade.

At issue: the illegal Jewish settlements, the status of East Jerusalem, the treatment of Palestinian refugees and final borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.

The man greeting Netanyahu and Abbas was no longer the icon of change who aroused the world with his address to Muslims in Cairo and who tasked former US Senator George Mitchell with setting the stage for a just settlement of issues that have remained unsettled for more than half a century.

Obama is now in poor political shape. The economy is spiraling down. The midterm elections loom as a possible bloodbath for Democrats in which they may lose at least one, if not both, houses in Congress. As the Israel lobby knows well, the Democrats crave Jewish money and Jewish votes. When it comes to Israel ‘s interests the US Congress jumps to the Lobby’s commands. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech , laden with honorifics for Netanyahu, could be construed as a fund-raising appeal for her next lunge at the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gone was any notion of twisting Netanyahu’s arm, or trying to, as when the Administration criticized one illegal Jewish settlement four months ago and when vice president Biden relayed in Tel Aviv Gen. Petraeus’ concerns that Israel’s obduracy was imperiling US security interests in the region.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09032010.html

I cut & paste, you decide

Morrissey reignites racism row by calling Chinese a 'subspecies'

Remark came in context of an attack on China's animal welfare record, with singer having been criticised on a number of previous occasions for negative race comments

"...Morrissey said in a statement tonight: "If anyone has seen the horrific and unwatchable footage of the Chinese cat and dog trade – animals skinned alive – then they could not possibly argue in favour of China as a caring nation. There are no animal protection laws in China and this results in the worst animal abuse and cruelty on the planet. It is indefensible."

His latest comments are not the first time the singer has provoked accusations of racism. Some of his song titles and lyrics have attracted criticism, including the tracks Bengali in Platforms – "He only wants to embrace your culture/And to be your friend forever/ … Oh shelve your western plans/ … life is hard enough when you belong here" – and National Front Disco.

In 1992 NME accused Morrissey of "flirting with disaster" and racist imagery after wrapping himself in the union flag while on stage in Finsbury Park, north London.

In the same year, the singer, now 51, was quoted in Q Magazine stating that he did not want to be "horrible or pessimistic" but he didn't "really think, for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or like each other. I don't really think they ever will." While in 1994 he told Select magazine that the National Front should be given a clear voice or platform in order for them to be "less of a threat"."

Morrissey, a vegetarian and animal rights advocate who last year abandoned the stage at the Coachella festival in California because of the smell of cooking meat, described the treatment of animals in China as "absolutely horrific", referring to recent news stories about animals in Chinese circuses and zoos. He told interviewer Simon Armitage: "Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies."

A spokesman for Love Music Hate Racism, which received a donation of £28,000 from the singer in 2008 after his apparently anti-immigration comments made in music magazine NME convulsed the media, said it would be unable to accept support from Morrissey again if he did not rescind or dispute today's comments.

"It really is just crude racism," said Martin Smith. "When you start using language like 'subspecies', you are entering into dark and murky water. I don't think we would, or could, ask him to come back after that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/03/morrissey-china-subspecies-r...

"They’re Running the Economy Into the Ground"
Discrediting Neoliberal Alternatives
By Kevin Young

Source: NACLA Report on the AmericasFriday, September 03, 2010

[The following is a slightly revised-and-updated version of an article appearing in the September/October issue of NACLA Report on the Americas.]

Washington policy makers and their loyal press corps have a well-developed toolkit for discrediting foreign governments that oppose U.S. policies. One important strategy, which has been increasingly apparent since the global economic crisis hit the headlines in late 2008, is to assail their economic policies as foolish, naive, and devastating. In particular, the U.S. corporate media have taken aim at Latin American economic policies that diverge from Washington’s neoliberal prescriptions—despite those prescriptions’ contribution to the financial crisis.

Venezuela is a favorite target. Reporter Juan Forero of The Washington Post wrote in April that while energy blackouts cause problems in Venezuela, “the economy is flickering and going dark, too, challenging Venezuela’s mercurial leader, Hugo Chávez, and his socialist experiment like never before.” The reasons for the flickering economy, according to Forero and his sources—a World Bank official, the president of the Venezuelan business organization Coindustria, an opposition governor, and a regional chamber of commerce president—are the “profligate state spending,” “the nationalization of industries,” and “years of state interventions in the economy” since Chávez was first elected in 1998. “Venezuela’s performance stands in stark contrast to [that of] the rest of Latin America, where some central banks worry about overheating economies in 2010,” Forero asserted. Citing the IMF, he added: “In Peru, Chile and Brazil, all of which embrace globalization [a codeword for U.S.-promoted trade policies], growth could indeed go well beyond 4 percent” [1].

Editorial pieces in the Post and other papers have been even more indignant. In February The Miami Herald editors declared that “Mr. Chávez has run the economy, and the country, into the ground.” The Venezuelan government’s policies, according to the editors, have done nothing good for the economy: “Rolling blackouts, currency devaluation and price inflation (the worst in Latin America), water shortages and scarce commodities—this is what 11 years of a Chávez presidency have produced,” they wrote. In May the Herald published an op-ed by Marifeli Pérez-Stable, a historian of Cuba with strong anti-Castro views, who contended that Chávez’s “pathological mismanagement has run the economy into the ground.” Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl wrote a very similar piece in January, titled “A Revolution in Ruins” [2].

In addition to “profligate state spending” and “state intervention in the economy,” another explanation for Venezuela’s recent economic downturn came in an April Post editorial berating the Chávez government for its military spending after Venezuela purchased “another $5 billion in weapons” from Russia. As they have done before, the Post editors sharply criticized the U.S. government’s “nonchalance” toward Venezuela’s defiance of the unspoken rule that only Washington and its allies are allowed to arm themselves [3]. The editors did not mention a plausible reason for the U.S. government’s failure to react to the arms purchase with greater alarm: Venezuelan military spending is 1/600th of that of the United States, as Obama himself told the Post in April 2009 after conservatives protested his handshake with Chavez at the Summit of the Americas [4].
http://www.zcommunications.org/they-re-running-the-economy-into-the-grou...

Federal investigators have decided a suspicious fire that damaged construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Tennessee was arson.

U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Steven Gerido said Friday that lab tests confirmed an accelerant was used in the fire early Saturday in Murfreesboro.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9250266

the good ole boys from Murfreesboro burned a mosque? have you ever been to Murfreesboro ? I have

get SAG royalties? otherwise it might be considered animal abuse.

on a serious note Thats bullshit is dead on this week!

What does that mean taozen?

I remain agnostic

I actually spent my day attempting to focus on the sky.

screen actors guild , a union with health care and overtime. ronald reagan was the president for many a year
just a silly joke bro.

http://www.sag.org/ronald-reagan

What does Labor Day mean anymore other than another day off, another store sale and, in some cities, parades ever smaller and more devoid of passion for elevating the well-being of working people?

Philosopher/mechanic Matthew B. Crawford, in his recent, embracing book, Shop Craft as Soulcraft has a thoughtful consideration. He deflates the high-prestige workplace and makes the case for millions of Americans who still make and fix things with their hands.

“I want to suggest we can take a broader view of what a good job might consist of, and therefore what kind of education is important. We seem to have developed an educational monoculture, tied to a vision of what kind of work is valuable and important — everyone gets herded into a certain track where they end up working in an office, regardless of their natural bents.

But some people, including some who are very smart, would rather be learning to build things or fix things. Why not honor that? I think one reason we don't is that we've had this fantasy that we're going to somehow take leave of material reality and glide around in a pure information economy.”

Dr. Crawford has a PhD in political philosophy and is a mechanic who runs Shockoe Moto, an independent motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia. This gives him a deep sense of skill and broader perspective with which to evaluate these ways of satisfying one’s value of locally-rooted work. He contrasts these traits with the deadening assembly line and computer focused office work, both of which can be outsourced on the whims of a boss.

The Winsted, Connecticut Deck’s Fix-It Shop, operated joyously by an aunt and her nephew, until they retired last year, would have been exhibit A for Dr. Crawford. They fixed hundreds of different products brought to them by the townspeople. Their small shop was filled horizontally and vertically with items donated, about to be fixed or were unfixable by the manufacturers’ design. They could have charged a museum entrance fee for browsing if their shop had more room. Oh, what pride they regularly took in their work.

Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, painters, tailors, car and bike repairers, restorers of stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, furnaces, locks, windows, sidewalks and streets enjoy a special kind of personal job gratification that is alien to the pre-designed, robotic labors of their friends who come home every day with clean clothes.

I’ve often wondered why the knowledge of tradespeople about the best, middling and worst brands of equipment, products and materials they work with or have to install (such as furnaces) isn’t collected by some magazine or consumer group. After all Angie’s List is surveying what their customers around the country think about the quality of the service.

Along with the repairers, we should recognize the inspectors—millions of them working for government agencies and companies to assure that health and safety laws are observed and quality controls are maintained. They are the meat and poultry inspectors, OSHA and Customs inspectors, sanitation inspectors of food stores and restaurants, motor vehicle inspectors, nuclear, chemical and aircraft inspectors, inspectors of laboratories, hospitals, clinics, building code inspectors and the insurance inspectors assigned to loss prevention duties.

The more conscientious of these inspectors are vulnerable to being over-ridden by their less committed superiors (such as meat inspectors for the U.S. Department of Agriculture) or harassed (inspectors for the U.S. Forest Service on corporately exploited federal timber land.) Sometimes inspectors so commit their conscience to their work that they become whistle-blowers about safety hazards or hanky panky, which too often invites career-ending retaliation.

How little attention we devote to those inspectors who are sentinels for the well-being of the American people. As a result, the courageous are not honored—if only to motivate the young to choose these careers. Moreover, a culture of corruption, that can erode their alertness or burdens them with weak standards to enforce, escapes exposure.

Then there are the near invisibles—the cleaners who do their thankless but essential jobs in hotels, airports, bus and train stations, office buildings, factories, schools, libraries, museums, streets, restaurants and homes.

Strange how we don’t react to cleaners—rarely thanking them or greeting them with salutations. Notice how airline passengers rush past them on the jetway while they wait to clean up the messes under severe time pressure. People who babble incessantly at airports or bus and train stations, while waiting for their departure, ignore the sweepers and dusters, automatically averting their eyes, and almost never acknowledging their work.

Taxi drivers are often tipped and thanked. How many hotel maids, who clean twelve or more soiled rooms and toilets a day, receive any thanks or tips by the guests? Cleaners are among the lowest paid workers, often handle not the safest of chemicals, and receive very little respect or recognition. Their lowly status has to affect their morale and maybe their performance.

Yet what would we do if these workers went on a general strike from the nursing homes to the garbage trucks? We’d feel it a lot more than if the overpaid Wall Street traders went on strike.

One day I was at BWI airport and went to the crowded men's room. As I entered, the elderly cleaning man erupted in frustration. “I’m sick of this job,” he shouted to no one in particular. “Hour after hour I clean up, come back, see the crap, clean up some more. It never ends,” he wailed. The men who were wiping, flushing, washing, drying and zipping were stunned and silently shuffled out, as if he wasn’t there. I thanked him for his work and candor, calmed him down and gave him a gratuity. The others looked at me blankly as if I was dealing with a ghost they never see as a human being.

Cultures can be astonishing. The hands-on workers who harvest our food, clean up after us, repair our property, look out after our health and safety conditions and serve as nannies to our children receive few honors, status or anywhere near the compensation of those who gamble with our money, entertain us or drive us into wars they don’t fight themselves.

Shouldn’t Labor Day be a time to gather and contemplate such inverted values and celebrate those who toil without proper recognition?

http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2209-Honoring-Those-Who-Toil.html#e...

I think it means... - Buy a car.

I understand what is said and thus all Actions...

Published on Friday, September 3, 2010 by TV Multiversity
Vandana Shiva: Resisting Hegemony
Excerpt of Vandana Shiva speaking about 'food and seed sovereignty' at the International Meeting on Resisting Hegemony held 2-5 August 2010 in Penang, Malaysia. The complete presentation and others from the meeting are available at the TV Multiversity channel on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/channels/tvmultiversity
SEE COMMENTS here:
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/09/03-1

bat & kewl red car {yet she can move - but can't dance ;):(? please :D

funny you mentioned Wilco . i just helped Nels Cline from Wilco get some instruments to a recording session Fernando.
and Wooden Nickel too. the lead mandolinist Chris is one of the best in the business Mrs-A

buy a car alice but it better be a tesla.

--------
I am a little dissapointed the big storm blew by way east of nyc and it didnt even rain here.
yet I did notice a lot of service personel heading out to help the rich ( white) folk at the cape. Nothing like the New Orleans Katrina response.

hahateahe

That was worth watching.

;)

http://www.vandanashiva.org/

Nora has brought her up before. i am a big fan of this woman. she is right up in the face of monsanto and other unethical corporations. it is hard to get over on her.

You are a good man. it is good to see you around these parts!

what are our similarities is better than what are our differences eh?

(I actually spent my day attempting to focus on the sky)

Super resource--

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/timeline.html

;)

OK - Here's what I was getting at a few minutes (several years possibly) here: LIfe sucks sometimes, y'know? Still, "It's so fucking great to be alive" (Zappa): http://tinysong.com/yfCV

http://www.keynesatharvard.org/author.html

http://hnn.us/comments/117011.html

The Fabian Society founded in 1884 by British socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw and others, the Fabian plan is to implement world socialism incrementally through legislation.
==============
http://www.fabians.org.uk/

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/General-Strike-after-Attack-on-Pakis...

Red Book (Jung) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (Latin for A New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(Jung)

==================
I wish I had $130 dollars extra for this book.

what a nice prize for a contest on some progressive blog

;)

Tony Blair Pelted With Eggs at Book Signing
August 4, 2010
Lauren Frayer, Contributor

AOL News (Sept. 4) – Tony Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes by anti-war protesters this morning in Dublin, where the former British prime minister held a book-signing event to promote a new memoir in which he defends his decision to help invade Iraq.

About 200 activists clashed with Irish police trying to defend a security barrier on Dublin's O'Connell Street, where Blair arrived this morning to sign copies of his book, "A Journey." Tram service in the area was suspended, and roads closed around the Eason's bookstore.

"Hey, hey, Tony, hey! How many kids have you killed today?" chanted dozens of protesters who also threw eggs, shoes and other projectiles at Blair as he emerged from a car surrounded by bodyguards. Members of his security team shielded him with umbrellas at one point, and the eggs did not hit him.

They also called him a war criminal and said the former prime minister has "blood on his hands." Blair's book chronicles his political career, and includes a passionate defense of his policies, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today's Dublin event is his first signing since the book's release earlier this week.

Book buyers lining up to get their copies signed appeared to outnumber the protesters, but just barely. People had to hand over their purses and cell phones before entering the store. Plainclothes security agents mingled in the crowd and recorded people's names. Details were reported by several news agencies

|
|...I like when that happens (Read below)
V

In addition to today's protest, thousands of Facebook users have joined a group on the social networking site called "Subversively move Tony Blair's memoirs to the crime section in book shops." Users posted photos of "A Journey" relocated to several bookstores' fiction, crime and even "dark fantasy" shelves.

Blair's book also recounts power scuffles and disagreements with his successor, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Facebook user Val Baker wrote of the plot to move Blair's memoirs to the crime section: "I bet Gordon is having a gentle chuckle to himself about this!"
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/tony-blair-pelted-with-eggs-at-book...

and continue on your useless path to rehabilitate your legacy.!
Oh and I hope you donate all your book profits to a worth children's aid organization, maybe even to the Good wing of Hamas. So many could use some money for medicine and clean drinking water.

This week’s Ring of Fire Radio, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and David Bender: Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

This week on Ring of Fire Radio, the phone lines are open, and David Bender will be taking your calls LIVE at 866-389-FIRE (3473.)

We’ll also hear from Jonathan Alter, author of the best-seller “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” and senior editor for Newsweek Magazine, who will tell us about Obama’s uphill climb to stem GOP tide before November.

We’ve also got Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, author and founder of The Daily Kos, who will be discussing his latest book “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.”

Weekend Edition
September 3 - 5, 2010

The Consequences of Muslim-Bashing

Chronicle of a Hate Crime Foretold

By JOHN COX

The inevitable finally occurred last week: On August 24, an American Muslim taxi driver was violently attacked and nearly killed by a fellow New Yorker who was influenced by the hateful rhetoric and vicious propaganda that has flourished recently. Ahmed Sharif, who was born in Bangladesh and has lived in the United States for twenty-five years, picked up 21-year-old Michael Enright, who, after a few innocuous comments, established that his driver was Muslim and began taunting his religion.

“As the cab inched up Third Avenue and reached 39th Street [in Manhattan], Mr. Sharif said in a phone interview, Mr. Enright suddenly began cursing at him and shouting ‘This is the checkpoint’ and ‘I have to bring you down’,” the New York Times reported. “‘He was talking like he was a soldier,’ Mr. Sharif said. He withdrew a Leatherman knife, Mr. Sharif said, and, reaching through the opening in the plastic divider, slashed Mr. Sharif’s throat. When Mr. Sharif turned, he said, Mr. Enright stabbed him in his face, on his arm and on his thumbs. Mr. Sharif said he told him: ‘I beg of you, don’t kill me. I worked so hard, I have a family’.”

Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Fox News bear considerable responsibility for this attack and for any other hate crimes committed against Muslims in the immediate future. If you continuously shout that “Islam equals Nazism” and “all Muslims are responsible for 9/11,” which has been the explicit message of the leaders of the campaign against the Park51 community center, someone like Mr. Enright will eventually translate your rhetoric into action.

While Gingrich and Fox lead the charge, lesser-known local politicians are conveying the anti-Islam message to their communities. Allen West, who is running for Congress in Broward County, Florida, “told a group of supporters that ‘Islam is not a religion’ but rather ‘a vicious enemy’ that was “infiltrating” the United States.” Elsewhere in Florida—not far from the site of a planned Quran-burning on September 11—Congressional candidate Ron McNeil “told a group of high school and middle school students last week that Islam’s plan ‘is to destroy our way of life’.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cox09032010.html

Flying the Flag; Faking the News
Friday 03 September 2010
by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society" and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country." Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations."

The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he made cigarettes "torches of freedom." In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company's monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a "liberation."
http://www.truth-out.org/flying-flag-faking-news62920

A Would-Be Paul Revere in Germany
"The Muslims Are Coming!"
By Victor Grossman

The "mosque menace" is not confined to Lower Manhattan or the USA. In many European countries similar alarms are sounded, usually in tones recalling Paul Revere: "The Muslims are coming!" Although according to Sarkozy in France, Berlusconi in Italy, and the militarized neo-fascist Jobbik party in Hungary the danger is more from the Roma people (also called Gypsies), more often than not it's those scary Muslims who are seen as the most menacing threat. Yes, we better watch out! Switzerland had its referendum against minarets, bleached-blond rabble-rouser Wilders won third place for his "Hate Islam" party in the Netherlands, and now barroom brawlers in Germany are being called to struggle against the Turks and any or all of their Islamic fellow religionists.

The best-known crusader for Germanic purity at the moment is Thilo Sarrazin, no typical rabble-rouser but a finely dressed, proper-looking Prussian-type banker, with bristly mustache and a slightly drooping right eye. To the embarrassment of some of its leaders he has long been a member of the Social Democratic Party and for years was minister of finance in the city-state of Berlin.

In those days his righteous anger was not focused against immigrant groups but against "lower castes" in general, and he wielded sharp scissors against social programs. Since Berlin has been heavily in debt for years, this was long accepted as unpleasant necessity. His notoriety began with comments that the jobless should be satisfied with the dole money they got, or even less; a sausage and some sauerkraut made a good, inexpensive dinner, he pointed out, and as for heating, he found that ". . .people should consider whether they can't get along at home quite sensibly with 15-16 degrees (c. 60 degrees Fahrenheit) by putting on a heavy sweater."
http://www.zcommunications.org/a-would-be-paul-revere-in-germany-by-vict...

;)

How is everyone today? Oh, no response? Good. Good.

^Seder, that video is fucking hilarious, man

"Do I look racist" PHOTO OP!!!!

god, that is embarassingly hilarious

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

skip ahead to 3:33

"It is about restoring a part of America. The people here are inarticulate about what they lost, but they know they want to gain something back."

lmao

They lost a white presidency, I guess.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

that will give them some strength, some insight. a community feeling. they need a book club and an sport to get them moving around. they need to go give a little help at the local charity. they need a trip into their subconscious, they need to take boat cruise or a camping trip to visit sarah palins alaska home. do something people but get off the public radar for a while . did I say they need to have book club and discuss stuff over coffee and bagels( they eat bagels don't they? maybe they could build a pyramid in honor of the perfected white man. yes hand carry heavy stones from thousands of miles away and build a pryamid to the sun. or the Son ,maybe they should do a haj to the nevada testing grounds..

sure could produce a modern version of a tv show to help them (U.S) f igure their prejudices out. castle Rock has the money Sam could very easily write and act in a Archie Bunker 2010 for the times we live in show here he could combine all his skills and talent and social consciousness political interests. I 'dwatch it if they had sponsors like Tesla Motors and Dr pressman's vitamins or Sam Weiser's book publishers. or Bagels to Boggle your Mind,made only from organic North American ingredients.

remember George Carlin? never forget those that have come and gone like Richie Pryor
and In my case John Lennon. . any ideas for the theme music?

http://www.richardpryor.com/home.cfm

boy your going to carry
that weight,carry that weight along time

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/goldensl.htm

Golden Slumbers is the full name of my labrador retriever. he has many nics but Golden Slumbers is on his papers when he travels to AZ for the Winter.

= "...a "good" right hook to GOPs "chin". :D

"... And I will sing a lullaby 2 u..."

Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times
WEST ALLIS, Wis. — Senator Russ Feingold says he should not be considered the front-runner in his bid for a fourth term. If that self-appraisal is true, Democrats face a greater risk of losing their majority in the Senate than they believed when summer began.

Ron Johnson

“Frankly, I love being the underdog,” Mr. Feingold said. “Let me have it.”

As the senator talks to voters across Wisconsin, that description is perhaps an exaggeration for an incumbent with a national reputation, but it has become a central part of his pitch. He is not eager to concede that control of the Senate could hinge on his seat — though it very well could — but he hopes the warning cry will prompt his loyal Democratic followers to rally to his side in a challenging election year.

“Clearly if somehow I lost, it would be a sign that we’re getting close to the line,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview on a recent day of campaigning. “We won’t lose, but it is something that is legitimate for me to mention — this seat could determine things.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/us/politics/01wisconsin.html?_r=1

By mid-century the planet will be uninhabitable for us anyway:

Mich. man gathering corn confronted by alligator

A man gathering sweet corn in southern Michigan is the latest to have an unexpected encounter with an alligator. The animals have been showing up far north of their traditional habitats this summer...

Alligators also have been seen in recent weeks in the Chicago River, a Boston suburb and New York City.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9251262

Antony Flew Abandons Atheism
Former Atheist Believes in God on Basis of Argument to Design

HABERMAS: Tony, you recently told me that you have come to believe in the existence of God. Would you comment on that?

FLEW: Well, I don’t believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that. But it seems to me that the case for an Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence, is now much stronger than it ever was before. And it was from Aristotle that Aquinas drew the materials for producing his five ways of, hopefully, proving the existence of his God. Aquinas took them, reasonably enough, to prove, if they proved anything, the existence of the God of the Christian revelation. But Aristotle himself never produced a definition of the word “God,” which is a curious fact. But this concept still led to the basic outline of the five ways. It seems to me, that from the existence of Aristotle’s God, you can’t infer anything about human behaviour. So what Aristotle had to say about justice (justice, of course, as conceived by the Founding Fathers of the American republic as opposed to the “social” justice of John Rawls (9)) was very much a human idea, and he thought that this idea of justice was what ought to govern the behaviour of individual human beings in their relations with others.

HABERMAS: Once you mentioned to me that your view might be called Deism. Do you think that would be a fair designation?

FLEW: Yes, absolutely right. What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings.
http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/

"No American taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank."

Afghans continue pulling money from troubled bank

Nervous Afghans pulled more deposits out of the nation's largest bank on Saturday, despite assurances from government leaders that their money was safe...

"Kabul Bank has lost the trust of the people. Even the chairman resigned so all the people are concerned," said Mohammad Nawaz, head of an Afghan aid group who had tried for three hours to withdraw the $15,000 in his account.

The bank run that began earlier in the week undermines efforts by the central government to build an efficient political and financial system to drag Afghanistan out of its dire poverty.

Problems at the bank could also have wide-ranging political repercussions since it handles the pay for Afghan public servants, soldiers and police in the unstable nation beset by a Taliban insurgency, widespread drug trafficking and the plundering of aid money.

Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said that while American officials were providing technical assistance to the Afghan government, "This is an Afghan issue. They are taking immediate steps to ensure the stability of Kabul Bank and to protect the financial assets of the Afghan people. ... No American taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank."

Meanwhile, the deputy commander of the international coalition in Afghanistan said contingency plans were being drawn up to respond in the event of unrest...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9251290

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/05/ground-zero-civil-liberties-...

is a lot more together than many papers? I am sure it will go down if Murdick gets it.

Forbes Is Going To Start Digging Up Dirt On Everyone On Its Billionaires List
Joe Pompeo | Sep. 2, 2010, 12:55 PM

It's been a month since Forbes.com launched a new landing page for its blogs, to which every editorial staffer and a growing number of external writers now contribute.

As part of that expansion, Forbes.com has recruited a handful of freelance journalists to blog about the people on its annual World's Billionaires List, with news, analysis and, of course, inside dirt, sources familiar with the plans told us.

"It's going to be a great initiative and I expect you'll make a superlative contribution to launching the next stage of Forbes.com as a major presence in online news," outgoing Forbes.com consultant Michael Roston wrote to the contributors in an email obtained by The Wire.

Each blogger will cover billionaires in specific areas of the country and around the world, and their posts will be aggregated into a single feed on a new Forbes 400 website scheduled to launch later this month.

The bloggers include LA Biz Observed editor Mark Lacter and freelance financial journalists Dan Fost and Teri Buhl, who will be reporting on New York's and Connecticut's billionaires, a la Michael Bloomberg, Carl Icahn and Steve Cohen.

Throughout the summer, Roston, who had been brought on with recently-installed chief product officer Lewis D'Vorkin in May through the True/Slant acquisition, was recruiting bloggers and devising editorial guidelines for the new Forbes.com. He just took a job as a homepage editor at The New York Times.

Coates Bateman, executive producer of Forbes.com (who also came over from True/Slant), will be overseeing the billionaire bloggers.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/forbescom-has-some-big-billionaire-bloggi...

September 2010
Investigative Shortfall
Many news outlets are doing far less accountability reporting than in the past, bad news indeed for the public. New nonprofit investigative ventures have emerged, but they can’t pick up the slack by themselves.

By Mary Walton

On her last day at Fort Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel, Mc Nelly Torres knew another round of layoffs was in the works. She went out for coffee, came back and said a prayer. The phone rang and a familiar name flashed on the screen. It was the editor they called the "Angel of Death." Earlier in the day, Torres learned she had won a Green Eyeshade Award in consumer reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, her second in as many years. Now she was out of a job.

Roberta Baskin, director of the investigative team at WJLA, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., was waiting to take the bus back from New York City, where she had collected her third duPont-Columbia Award. Her cell phone rang. It was her news director telling her she had been let go, along with 24 other employees.

Tom Dubocq didn't wait for the ax to fall. At the Palm Beach Post, an era of fat budgets was dissolving like lard in a hot frying pan. In a single month in 2008, the staff of roughly 300 was reduced to 170, greased by a buyout offer that included health benefits for life. Dubocq's prize-winning probes of local corruption had put three county commissioners and assorted others in jail. He had his eye on a fourth commissioner, but instead signed up for the buyout. He was, he says, making too much money. "I knew ultimately I would get laid off. It was time to make the move."

What happens, I ask Dubocq, when people like him vanish from the newsrooms of America?

"The bad guys get away with stuff."

Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them. In Washington, bureaus that once did probes have shrunk, closed and consolidated.

The membership of Investigative Reporters and Editors fell more than 30 percent, from 5,391 in 2003, to a 10-year low of 3,695 in 2009. (After a vigorous membership drive, this year the number climbed above 4,000.) Prize-seekers take note: Applications for Pulitzers are down more than 40 percent in some investigative categories, a drop reflected in other competitions.

"There is no question that there are fewer investigative reporters in the U.S. today than there were a few years ago, mirroring the overall loss of journalists at traditional media outlets," says IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit. While he concedes that the situation is alarming, Horvit points to positive developments. New organizations dedicated to investigative and watchdog coverage have sprung up, and some mainstream news outlets are renewing a commitment that had been lost.

In July, a major investigative project underscored the importance of journalists as watchdogs of democracy: the Washington Post series "Top Secret America," on the nation's bloated security establishment. Would that more journalists had been on duty when subprime mortgage peddlers were running amok and the federal Minerals Management Service was sitting on a potential oil disaster.

"Eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty," Andrew Jackson declared in his 1837 Farewell Address. But what if the people don't know what's going on? "All citizens have a right to petition the government for redress of grievances," former Newsday Editor Anthony J. Marro, a onetime investigative reporter and a champion of accountability journalism, told a gathering of the Vermont ACLU last year, "but, as simplistic as it sounds, without a strong press they often don't know what the grievances are."
Continue reading (lengthy):
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4904

email me please.

i lost your email in a tragic outlook pst file explosion...

email me please.

i lost your email in a tragic outlook pst file explosion...

two times.

SJ

It's your birthday...!

Let's find some party favors...shall we?

haiku

birthday for sunshine
a day like any other?
I surely hope not.

7 layers all different, incredibly delicious!

you a sweetie A.!

your b-day was this day - yet it is Sunshine Jim's Weekend = Super Kewl ;)

Happy Labor Day Weekend Sederistas!

So the SCOTUS Citizens United somehow made UNIONS equal to CORPORATIONS when it comes to campaign advocacy spending. BUT what's left out of the coverage is that less than 10% of U.S. workers are unionized still, most in the public sector which means the unions are COMPLETELY OUT-GUNNED when it comes to dollar resources. Beginning with Reagun's War on Unions against our Air Traffic Controllers unions have been demonized in the mass corporate media ever since. Cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers come to mind as the biggest unions and these groups of workers are under constant assault.

Some Labor Day, eh?

Never Fear! Brick TeeVee is here!
Brick TeeVee Peaceful Labor Day!
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5965

Sunday Funnies 4U!
Throw Bricks!

Enjoy your holiday!

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/090210d.html

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Unilateral-Disarmament-Has-by-Cenk-Uygu...

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/09/why-americans-elect-awful-presidents/

Japanese public schools are reintroducing whale meat in their lunch menus at low prices to expand consumption, according to a survey released today.

Of about 29,600 public elementary and junior high schools nationwide offering lunches for students, 5,355 schools, or 18 per cent, responded they had served whale meat in their lunches at least once in fiscal 2009 through March 2010, according to the survey conducted by Kyodo News.

The Institute of Cetacean Research, which undertakes the government’s research whaling, provided whale meat to local municipalities for school lunch use at one-third of the market price, which was 2,060 yen per kilogram in 2009.

Whale meat is made available as some whaling towns are trying to pass on traditional food culture to children, the survey said.

Japan, which aims to resume commercial whaling, is hoping to increase consumption of whale meat as meat stocks of whales captured by the institute in its research mission have piled up to around 4,000 tons.

When whaling was at its peak, the annual amount of meat supplied in Japan totaled around 220,000 tons in 1962, but plunged sharply to around 1,000 tons in the 1990s after an international ban on commercial whaling was introduced in the 1980s.

more

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article615655.ece

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/09/rupert-murdochs-war-on-th...

http://www.dream-catchers.org/ojibwe-history.php

Bid to suspend California global-warming law gets $1 million from billionaire brothers' firm
The donation to the Proposition 23 campaign comes from a subsidiary of Kansas-based Koch Industries, which owns refineries and controls 4,000 miles of oil pipelines.
September 04, 2010|By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times

The fight over a November ballot initiative to suspend California's global warming law has escalated sharply with the Koch brothers, oil billionaires and "tea party" backers, making a million-dollar entry into the fray.

The contribution to the campaign for Proposition 23 came Thursday from a subsidiary of Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries, the nation's second-largest private company (after the agribusiness giant Cargill). A spokeswoman for the subsidiary, Flint Hills Resources, said the company "may consider additional support." The Kochs' company has estimated annual revenues of $100 billion, owns refineries in Alaska, Texas and Minnesota, and controls about 4,000 miles of oil pipelines.

{grrr} ...it just punches certain projects fast forward. :|:|

{Bloody Hell ...yet it did punch the wind out of me.}

Cereal crops on fire in Russia The summer heatwave destroyed crops in many parts of Russia

The United Nations' food agency has called a special meeting of policy makers to discuss the recent rise in global food prices.

The announcement came after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin extended the country's ban on grain exports on Thursday.

This added to fears that prices of food staples would continue to rise.

The meeting will take place on 24 September, probably in Rome, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said.
Continue reading the main story

"In the past few weeks, global cereal markets experienced a sudden surge in international wheat prices on concerns over wheat shortages," the agency said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11177346

Teshuva’ should be the foundation for the renewed Israeli-Palestinian discourse.

snip
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are not primarily about atonement and being forgiven for our sins. While that was the original intent in the Bible, the rabbinic tradition shifted the focus to the human responsibility to repent and change our behavior.

The possibility of teshuva is founded on a number of principles. The first is the belief that change is possible. Our tradition is not naive about human beings. It knows that perfection is impossible and failure endemic. At the same time, an implication of our belief in free choice is that no particular failure is inevitable, and that no particular failure is incapable of being overturned.

Placing the focus on repentance is founded on a noble and ennobling vision of humankind as agents who are both responsible and, at the same time, always capable of self-transformation, and that the future is not predetermined. A second principle is that, unlike atonement which could be attained through someone else’s efforts, repentance is an individual responsibility that requires a focus exclusively on one’s own behavior.

To do that, one must free oneself of self-aggrandizement and self-righteousness.

snip

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as you go to Washington, my blessing to you is that you go as a Jew. I pray that you allow the spirit of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur to define the attitude and spirit of the policies you represent. They must be about bringing back the belief in the possibility of a new and better future for us all. They must be about recognizing that attaining this future begins with giving an account of what we might have done to impede it and what we can do to help make it a reality.

They must be about recognizing that greatness is not achieved through atonement but by shaping one’s destiny through the difficult and noble path of teshuva.

The writer is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=186750

If you prefer to pay by check, please make your check out to "Committee to Elect Alan Grayson" and mail it to Grayson for Congress, P.O. Box 536447, Orlando, FL 32853.

My question is: Why can't we DEMS & GRNS & "intelligent" INDS realize that whatever The Media "posts", no matter the venue in the National media, has a rethug twist?

look at all the edward bernay's posts here recently.

I watched maria barf aroma for one minute today on WNBC/WSJ show. what a sack of distortions and their agenda is so transparent. as if Meet the Nation tv show wasnt enough , they had to follow it here on the eastcoast with Jack Welsch's courtisan ( a more polite term )

Do you use facebook or no?

Lotta dream talk in my world this morning already...that's interesting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N1wnJoFAl4

practice was moved to 10 am and goes for 2 1/2 hours...I'll skate at the end and then hopefully hang out with ma girlzzzz I miss so much...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8962000/8962747.stm

no, not at all though i think i signed up for it when it first got going.

what does it do for you?

i like to keep things fairly simple lately

Day of Atonement of
the Karaite Jews in 1844

By Robert K. Sanders

The Karaite Jews has now confirmed that the "Day of Atonement" in 1844 was late September and not Late October. Their research is presented further down in this topic, but first we need to preface why this is important.

Why is the Karaite date of the Day of Atonement important?

Seventh-day Adventists claim that in 1844, a very small Jewish sect called the "Karaites," used a different calendar and thus celebrated the Day of Atonement (10th of Tishri) on October 22, one month later than the Rabbinical/Orthodox Jews who did so on September 23. Thus the entire Seventh-day Adventist teaching regarding the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14, the Investigative Judgment, the Great Disappointment, and Jesus' entrance into the Most Holy Place, hinges only on the words of their prophet Ellen White and on their claim Karaites celebrated the Day of Atonement on October 22 in 1844. If either of these assertions is incorrect, then Seventh-day Adventism is in serious theological trouble.

The Rabbinical Day of Atonement in 1844 is easy to for anyone to prove from Jewish sources, that it came on September 23, 1844.

See "Day of Atonement."

Samuel Snow, was first to espouse the October 22, 1844 date and claimed that it was from the calendar of the Karaite Jews.

"SNOW, SAMUEL S. (1806-1870). A Congregationalist, then a skeptic, later a Millerite minister; initiator of the "seventh-month movement." Beginning with an article written Feb. 16, 1843, he emphasized the tenth day of the Jewish seventh month, Tishri, the Jewish Day of Atonement, as the true ending date of the prophetic 2300 years. Later he set forth the specific day as Oct. 22, 1844, our calendar equivalent of the tenth day of the seventh month in that year according to the old Karaite Jewish calendar. At first there was but little interest or response, but when Snow preached on July 21 in the large Boston Tabernacle on the text, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh [on the tenth day of the seventh month]; go ye out to meet him," some began to be roused." From the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia Volume 10, p. 1357.

Ellen G. White put her prophetic stamp of approval on the false Karaite date that S. S. Snow thought up. Ellen was not aware that the Karaite "Day of Atonement," was the same as the Rabbinical date of September 23, 1844.
http://www.truthorfables.com/Day_of_Atonement_of_the_Karaite.htm

Hag Ha-Sukkot

On Sukkot (Succos/ Tabernacles) we are commanded to build a Sukkah (Booths) using as building materials the "4 species" listed in Lev 23,40, which the Rabbanites claim are to be carried as a bundle.

The word Sukkah comes from the root S.KH.KH. meaning "to cover" and the main part of the Sukkah is the roof or covering which must be made from one or all of the above materials. The walls can be made of any material available.
http://www.karaite-korner.org/sukkot.shtml

In just 9 days, voters will decide two critical primary races for the U.S. House. Here's what's at stake:

Annie McLane Kuster -- a pro-choice bold progressive running in New Hampshire to fill the seat being vacated by Paul Hodes -- is a lifetime community activist and public policy advocate that fought for improved access to quality healthcare and affordable education.

David Segal -- a progressive super star in Rhode Island running for Patrick Kennedy's open House seat -- led the fight as a State Legislator to force the Democratic mayor of Providence to implement a local ordinance that creates a pipeline to employ the unemployed residents of his district.

One week from today, we start a 3-Day Get-Out-The-Vote PhoneBomb to make sure these progressive Democrats win. The calls are easy and fast. We're only calling already-identified Democratic voters. The key is getting Democrats out to vote in a non-presidential election year. We'll provide the script, the numbers, everything. Annie and David just need you to provide the people-power.

Yes! I'll call for Annie one week from today.
Yes! I'll call for David and join the GOTV Phonebomb.
I can't call, but I'll contribute $3 to each campaign and fuel the Get-Out-The-Vote program.

Last week, Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced a series of PhoneBombs for candidates across the country from now to Election Day.

The first PhoneBomb was a huge success. Our nationwide movement made over 17,000 calls for David Segal in just one day!

Now, I've got a calendar on my desk, and its telling me something else incredibly important. 58 Days. That's right -- activists like you and I have started counting down the days -- and we've got just 58 to go until the Election Day this November.

We are going to have some tough fights on our hands this fall But every time I hear one of the pundits out there talking about an "enthusiasm gap," the only thing I can say is that they must not have met a DFA member! Because when Democrats with conviction run campaigns that champion our progressive values, DFA members step up up every time to push them over the top.

;) Boney M
Submitted by Leah on Sun, 09/05/2010 - 8:53pm.

hahahateahee kewl... ;)

Sequitur Cunctator
Submitted by ellwort on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 2:20am.
-------------
Cunctator is a handy word and fun to say.

I hope to use it someday if I ever get around to it.

…
By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer – Sun Sep 5, 1:05 pm ET
BILLINGS, Mont. – Government agencies are seeking broad new authority to ramp up killings and removals of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes, despite two recent court actions that restored the animal's endangered status in every state except Alaska and Minnesota.
Various proposals would gas pups in their dens, surgically sterilize adult wolves and allow "conservation" or "research" hunts to drive down the predators' numbers.
Once poisoned to near-extermination in the lower 48 states, wolves made a remarkable comeback over the last two decades under protection of the Endangered Species Act. But as packs continue to multiply their taste for livestock and big game herds coveted by hunters has stoked a rising backlash.
Wildlife officials say that without public wolf hunting, they need greater latitude to eliminate problem packs. Montana and Idaho held inaugural hunts last year but an August court ruling scuttled their plans for 2010.
"As the wolf populations increase, the depredations increase and the number of wolf removals will increase. It's very logical," said Mark Collinge, Idaho director for Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture branch that removes problem wolves, typically by shooting them from aircraft.
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/49-49/3223-endanger...

:):(

is like endorsing a coffee shop for auschwitz.

Listening to the Radicals: US History's Lessons on Compromise and the 'Politically Impossible'
By Kevin Young

It's not politically possible...The Republicans in Congress will block it... We need a bipartisan agreement...The health care industry is too powerful...There's no reason we have to do it all now...Let's wait until the economy's out of recession...The public won't support it...The "public option" is better than nothing...We have to compromise...

...thus posting a bit...

That's enough spam for one night.

Egad, these corporate parasites stick together!

If the Japanese culture/identity/expression is so inextricably connected to killing and eating whales -- then after the Japanese have killed off and eaten all the whales, what will constitute being "Japanese" to the Japanese? What is a culture that defines itself by its appetites only -- whether for whale meat or any other consumptive notion? Just asking.

September 5, 2010
Congressional Charities Are Pulling In Corporate Cash
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — Representative Joe Baca has achieved near celebrity status in his suburban Los Angeles district, as much for his record of giveaways — Thanksgiving turkeys, college scholarships, spare boots for firefighters — as for anything he has done in Congress.

That generosity is made possible by the Joe Baca Foundation, a charity his family set up three years ago to aid local organizations. It provides another benefit, too: helping the Democratic congressman run something akin to a permanent political campaign.

Joe Baca T-shirts and caps are given out at the charity’s events, where banners display his name. Local newspapers mention the charity’s donations, and cable stations show appearances by Mr. Baca and his family at functions his foundation supports.

“It’s great,” said Laura Goodloe, 36, as she watched her 8-year-old son, Jordan, play at the arena in San Bernardino, Calif., where the Baca Foundation offered a free basketball clinic last month. “He is giving back to the community.”

But unlike most private foundations, Mr. Baca’s gets little of its money from its founders’ pockets. Instead, local companies and major corporations that have often turned to Mr. Baca’s Washington office for help, and usually succeed in getting it, are the chief donors.

A review by The New York Times of federal tax records and House and Senate disclosure reports found at least two dozen charities that lawmakers or their families helped create or run that routinely accept donations from businesses seeking to influence them. The sponsors — AT&T, Chevron, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley, Eli Lilly and dozens of others — contribute millions of dollars annually in gifts ranging from token amounts to a check for $5 million.

Since 2009, businesses have sent lobbyists and executives to the plush Boulders resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a fund-raiser for the scholarship fund of Representative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana; sponsored a skeet shooting competition in Florida to help the favorite food bank of Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida; and subsidized a spa and speedway outing in Las Vegas to aid the charity of Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada.

Just last month, they touted their largess with flags bearing their names near the tees at a golf tournament benefiting the foundation of Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.

Despite rules imposed in 2007 to curb the influence of special interests in Congress, corporate donations to lawmakers’ charities have continued, thanks to a provision that allows businesses to make unlimited gifts to them. And while business executives say they want to give to a good cause, their pattern of spending — contributions that often are not disclosed, in apparent violation of ethics rules — suggests another reason.

Altria, the cigarette maker, for example, sent at least $45,000 in donations over a six-week period last fall to four charitable programs founded by House members — including Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, and Mr. Clyburn, the Democratic whip — just as the company was seeking approval of legislation intended to curb illegal Internet sales of its cigarettes. An Altria spokesman said the donations were not related to the measure, which all four congressmen backed. (The other two are Mr. Boyd and Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan.)
Continue reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/politics/06charity.html?_r=1&om_rid=NFw2$z&om_mid=_BMhO5SB8UiB94F

{... ;) ... okay, I'm done. ;D
;} *Poof*

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
06 September 10
Here's the situation: The US economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president's policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.

The president in question is Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the year is 1938. Within a few years, of course, the Great Depression was over. But it's both instructive and discouraging to look at the state of America circa 1938 - instructive because the nature of the recovery that followed refutes the arguments dominating today's public debate, discouraging because it's hard to see anything like the miracle of the 1940s happening again.

Now, we weren't supposed to find ourselves replaying the late 1930s. President Obama's economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment - and now it's fading out.

Monday 06 September 2010
by: Dick Meister

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka protests outside the San Francisco Hilton. (Photo: Steve Rhodes / Flickr)
Labor and Democratic Party leaders are concerned - and rightly so - that labor's rank and file may not turn out in November to support labor-friendly Democrats in the massive numbers that played a major role in the election of President Obama and Democratic Congressional majorities in 2008.

AFL-CIO officials are hoping to turn the anger and frustration that so many working people feel into votes, financial support and campaigning on behalf of pro-labor Democrats. But the officials worry about an "enthusiasm gap" among unionists and their supporters stemming from the relatively slow pace of the progressive economic and political changes that they had very much expected from Obama and the Congressional Democrats.
http://www.truth-out.org/most-crucial-election-75-years62620

CHICAGO — The hallucinogen psilocybin -- known by the street name magic mushrooms -- may help ease the anxiety that often accompanies late-stage cancer, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Cancer patients given a moderate dose of psilocybin -- a hallucinogen with effects similar to LSD -- were measurably less depressed six months after a single dose compared with a placebo. Patients seemed somewhat less anxious, they reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The pilot study of 12 cancer patients was designed to prove that hallucinogenic drugs could be studied safely as a way to relieve the distress of advanced cancer.
It revives a promising field of study lasting from the 1950s to the early 1970s that suggested some patients experienced powerful and sustained improvement in mood and anxiety from hallucinogens.
Researchers said the studies were abandoned in the early 1970s when hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD -- lysergic acid diethylamide -- became widely used on the streets, leading to strict federal laws regulating their use.
"Forty to 45 years ago, the culture was going through tremendous upheaval. These compounds were associated with a very politically active counterculture," said Dr. Charles Grob of Harbor-University of California Los Angeles Medical Center and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute.
"It was something of a public health crisis. Everything had to be shut down," Grob said in a telephone interview.
Federal law prohibits the use of the magic mushroom compound for any purpose. If it proves effective among late-stage cancer patients, U.S. regulators would need to make special accommodation for its use, Grob said.
'TIMES HAVE CHANGED'
Grob's study looked to see whether psilocybin could help ease some of the anxiety of dying cancer patients.
During the treatment phase of the study, patients were given a moderate dose of psilocybin and watched closely for six hours. They were told to lie still with their eyes closed as they wore headphones and listened to soothing music.
During the placebo phase, each of the 12 patients received a dose of niacin -- a vitamin that raises levels of good cholesterol -- and given the same instructions.
The treatments were given in random order and neither the doctors nor the patients were told which compound was administered.
All the volunteers tolerated the treatment sessions well, with no signs of severe anxiety or a "bad trip." Most patients showed a trend of improvement in their symptoms of anxiety and at six months, and there was a statistically significant improvement on one depression scale.
Grob said the pilot study proved the drug could be studied safely in cancer patients. He said two other academic research institutions in the United States -- Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and New York University -- were doing similar studies using a slightly higher dose.
"Times have changed and it's now possible to pick up this research model again," he said.
As many as 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes, and California voters in November will vote on whether to legalize pot.
"I think that is an indication that there has been a very strong shift within society to move away from the old cultural bias and politics of the process many years ago. I think there is a greater capacity to be open-minded and let science dictate our conclusion, not politics," Grob said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39028828/ns/health-cancer/

;) calms me "weirdly"

The British Medical Journal on Monday said GlaxoSmithKline PLC's diabetes drug Avandia should never have been licensed and should be withdrawn from sale, a claim the company rejected.

An investigation by the journal found the U.K. Commission on Human Medicines in July advised the country's drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, to withdraw Avandia from sale because its risks outweigh its benefits.

It also found members of a European panel that reviewed the drug prior to its European Union-wide approval in 2000 had concerns about the long-term risks and benefits of Avandia, also known as rosiglitazone. The journal raised concerns about the quality of the data GlaxoSmithKline use to show Avandia didn't lead to increased heart problems compared with other diabetes drugs.

Currently, the European Medicines Agency is reviewing Avandia and will recommend whether or not it should stay on the market later this month. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also due to make a decision on Avandia following a U.S. advisory panel vote in July to keep it on the market but with additional warnings.

Avandia was once Glaxo's second-biggest drug, raking in about $3 billion a year. But its sales have plunged since a U.S. study linked it to heart attacks in 2007.

GlaxoSmithKline Monday rejected the BMJ's claims. It said it has carried out an extensive research program involving more than 50,000 patients to analyze the safety and benefits of rosiglitazone.

"We have rigorously shared our data relating to the cardiovascular safety of Avandia in a timely and transparent manner and have made extensive efforts to publish our clinical trial findings in peer review journals, at scientific meetings and via our own clinical trials website," said Glaxo.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870371350457547589085265949...

Anthony Blair yesterday took a last-minute decision to cancel his key book signing in central London because of security fears, after unrest at a signing in Dublin saw the former prime minister pelted with eggs and shoes.
Blair said he was cancelling the event, due to take place tomorrow at Waterstone's bookshop in Piccadilly, central London, "to avoid the inconvenience to the public it would have caused".
He said in a statement: "I very much enjoyed meeting my readers in Dublin and was looking forward to doing the same in London. However, I have decided not to go ahead with the signing as I don't want the public to be inconvenienced by the inevitable hassle caused by protesters. I know the Metropolitan police would, as ever, have done a superb job in managing any disruption, but I do not wish to impose an extra strain on police resources, simply for a book signing."
Blair called for understanding from those who were hoping to attend the event. He will sign copies of his memoir, A Journey, for the bookseller, which will be available from the store from 9am on Thursday.
A spokesman for the former PM had earlier said that the majority of the people who had gone to the book signing in Dublin on Saturday had wanted to meet Blair and get their books signed, but a small and vocal minority had grabbed the headlines. Blair met with a hail of shoes and eggs at the event, his first public signing, at Eason's bookshop on O'Connell Street. Four men were arrested.
Blair added: "I'm really sorry for those – as ever the majority – who would have come to have their books signed by me in person. I hope they understand."
Blair first raised the possibility of cancelling the planned appearance during an interview on the new ITV morning show Daybreak, saying that he feared it could cause unnecessary "hassle and cost" for police. Anti-war protesters had planned to rally outside the Piccadilly bookstore. Blair said he was also worried the far right British National party might attempt to cause trouble.
Waterstone's confirmed that the scheduled book signing had been cancelled, "according to the wishes of the author". The managing director, Dominic Myers, said: "Our job as a bookseller is to bring books to our customers, and where possible enable them to meet authors as well. It is a matter of regret that because of the likely actions of a minority, our customers are now not able to meet a three-times elected prime minister of the United Kingdom, whose book has become our fastest-selling autobiography ever."
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) said it was planning to protest at a launch party for Blair's book at the Tate Modern in London tomorrow night. Lindsey German, convenor of StWC, said: "It's a stain on the reputation of Tate Modern, to host a gathering of war criminals."
The limited number of signed copies of A Journey will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis, one copy per customer.
Waterstone's is also having to cope with a number of anti-Blair protesters moving his memoirs to the crime area of their stores, after thousands joined a group entitled "Subversively move Tony Blair's memoirs to the crime section in bookshops".
The Facebook page, which now has almost 8,000 members, urges them to "make bookshops think twice about where they categorise our generations [sic] greatest war criminal"

...especialy re Cancer Patient Studies.
Let The Sun Shine, Let The Sun Shine in,...the Sun Shine in...

*** ***

...buzzzzz Sunny J ;)

When they gave 'mushrooms" to soldiers they didnt want to fight!

When they treat severe alcoholics with hallucinogens there is some success with the patients not returning to the heavy drinking.

.

top of the day t'ya!

Cockroaches, far from being a health hazard, could be a rich source of antibiotics.

A study of locust and cockroach brains has found a number of chemicals which can kill bugs like MRSA.

Scientists hope these could become a powerful new weapon to boost the dwindling arsenal of antibiotics used to treat severe bacterial infections.

The research was announced at a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology.

The researchers discovered nine different chemicals in the brains of locusts and cockroaches, which all had anti microbrial properties strong enough to kill 90% of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) while not harming human cells.

Cockroaches have a reputation for tenacity and for thriving in dirty environments.

Simon Lee from Nottingham University is the author of the study. He said that it is this capacity to live in dirty, infectious conditions that mean insect brains contain these kinds of compounds.

"They must have some sort of defense against micro organisms. We think their nervous system needs to be continuously protected because if the nervous system goes down the insect dies. But they can suffer damage to their peripheral structures without dying," he told BB News.

He hopes the compounds could go on to be used to treat multi drug resistant infections like E. Coli and MRSA which are becoming increasingly difficult to treat using some of the most powerful antibiotics available to medicine.

"A kill rate of 90% is very very high, and I diluted the substance down so there was only a minute amount there. Conventional antbiotics reduce the number of the bacteria and let your immune system cope with the rest. So to get something with such a high kill rate that is so potent at such a low dose is very promising," he told BBC News.

The compound would need years of testing for safety and efficacy before any drugs developed from them could go on the market

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11182437

Fidel Castro has addressed a rally for the first time since handing control of the government to his brother Raul in 2006.
In a speech at Havana University, he warned of nuclear war arising from the dispute that has pitted the US and Israel against Iran.
Some 10,000 people gathered to listen to the 84-year-old former president.
His speech was the latest in a string of appearances since he re-emerged in July from seclusion after surgery.
Last month, Mr Castro spoke briefly at a session of the National Assembly, urging the US to prevent a "nuclear holocaust".
Victory 'possible'
Speaking from the same steps where 60 years ago he urged fellow students to rise up against the Batista regime, Mr Castro attacked the US for creating a "system that threatens the survival of humanity".
"The problem of people today, the more than seven billion human beings, is to prevent such a tragedy from happening," he said.
"In this, as in many struggles in the past, it is possible to be victorious."
The crowd shouted "Fidel, Fidel, Fidel" and applauded at several points during the nationally televised address.
"This is a historic act," student Jose Gonzalez Abreu told the Reuters news agency afterwards. "Maybe he's preparing to return to the kind of big, historic speeches he gave before he fell ill."
Mr Castro said he "never thought" that he would be able to address another rally because of his health problems. Despite his apparent recovery, the event was held early in the morning "before the sun is too hot", he said.
The return of the leader of the revolution, who remains first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, has ignited widespread speculation that he is seeking to be more active again in the day-to-day running of the country.
But he has stayed out of domestic politics, making no comments at all about his younger brother's economic changes or the release of political prisoners.

A Breakthrough study claims to have demonstrated for the first time that bisphenol A (BPA) can cause changes in male human sex hormones.
An international group of researchers, led by the Peninsula Medical School and the University of Exeter, in the UK, said it has found a correlation between higher BPA exposure and a small increase in levels of testosterone in the blood. The findings justify the need for human safety studies to gauge its effect on the population, they added.

The team came to its conclusions after analysing data from the Italian population sample, InCHIANTI and measuring the amount of BPA excreted per day in urine samples. Some 715 adults aged between 20 and 74 years were studied and any “statistical associations” between the amount of BPA exposure and serum oestrogen and testosterone concentrations were measured.

Testosterone increases

The researcher found that the average BPA daily exposure level in this European study population – at over 5 micrograms per day - was slightly higher than recent comparable estimates for the US population. The study found that higher BPA exposure was statistically associated with endocrine changes in men, specifically small increases in levels of testosterone in the blood.

The scientists stated that BPA has a similar molecular structure to oestrogen and said it has been proved that the chemical does cause some disruption of sex hormone signalling in laboratory animals. The significance of theses findings is that this is the first large human study to suggest that it may have similar effects in adults at 'background' exposure levels, they added.
more

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/Bisphenol-A-alters-mal...

they needed new "super" antibiotics to combat & ...

..."could become a powerful new weapon to boost the dwindling arsenal of antibiotics used to treat severe bacterial infections."
{...but from roaches ... eek & teahee ... I need more tea...;}

snip

LInda S. Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (part of the National Institutes of Health), said that a new round of government-financed studies with uniform methods, now under way with animal subjects, should help to resolve unanswered questions. In the meantime, Mrs. Feinstein’s ambitious plan to ban BPA from baby bottles, sippy cups, baby food and formula was blocked by partisan battling. She had hoped that the ban would be included in the food safety bill, not merely in an amendment to be considered separately.
But after months of wrangling, she gave up. The food industry, mostly supportive of the food bill, threatened to oppose it if the BPA provision got in. So did many Republican senators. In August, Mrs. Feinstein’s Democratic colleague Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan made public a letter in which he urged her to back off on BPA for the sake of the bill, which will broaden the authority of the Food and Drug Administration over the food supply — a measure widely seen as essential to reducing food-borne illnesses like the recent salmonella outbreak from eggs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/science/07bpa.html?th&emc=th

-----------------
the take AWAY from the BPA scandal is STAY away from plastic with a # 7 code on the bottom

While the major food safety agencies continue to back BPA, individual countries such as Canada, France and Denmark have already outlawed its use in food packaging for young children. Earlier this year, leading Australian retailers vowed to phase out the substance and Heinz Australia said it would follow suit on its baby food packaging within 12 months.

http://www.ap-foodtechnology.com/Packaging/Bisphenol-A-free-polymer-coat...

French workers have launched a day of mass protest against Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age.

Unions called Tuesday's strike in order to derail the pensions overhaul bill, the centrepiece of the president's political agenda, which was to be presented to parliament later in the day.

By mid-morning, rail and air traffic services had been disrupted while schools and hospitals were also expected to be affected.

However, it was too early to tell whether they had matched the level of a similar protest in June, when between up to two million people marched in towns and cities across the country.

"We can see that employees are mobilised," Francois Chereque, leader of the CFDT union, told RTL radio, predicting that the turnout would match or more likely exceed that of June.

"It looks like a success."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/09/20109782653743714.html

;) Perhaps I will listen whitst cutting flowers and leaves of Dandelions. ;)

Austerity for workers, Welfare for bankers

European Banks Still on the Brink

By MIKE WHITNEY

The EU banking system is in big trouble. That's why European Central Bank (ECB) head Jean-Claude Trichet continues to purchase government bonds and provide "unlimited funds" for underwater banks. It's an effort to prevent a financial system meltdown that could wipe out bondholders and plunge the economy back into recession.

"We have the best track record on price stability over 11 1/2 years in Europe and among the legacy currencies,” Trichet recently boasted. “What we have done and what we do with the same purpose is to help restore an appropriate functioning of the monetary-policy transmission mechanism.”

Nonsense. EU banks and other financial institutions are presently holding more than 2 trillion euros of public and private debt from Greece, Spain and Portugal. All three countries are in deep distress and face sharp downgrades on their sovereign debt. The potential losses put large parts of the EU banking system at risk. Trichet knows this, which is why he continues to support the teetering system with "unlimited funds". It has nothing to do with restoring the "functioning of the monetary-policy transmission mechanism". That's deliberately misleading. It is a straightforward bailout of the banks.

Imagine that you are deeply in debt, but the bank offers to lend you as much money as you need to keep you from bankruptcy. To help maintain appearances, the bank agrees to accept the worthless junk you've collected in your attic in exchange for multi-million dollar loans. Does the bank's participation in this charade mean that you are not really broke after all? Does it increase the value of the garbage collateral you've exchanged for cash?

The ECB is providing billions of euros per week to maintain the illusion that the market is wrong about the true value of the bonds. But the market is not wrong, the ECB is wrong. The value of Greek bonds (for example) has dropped precipitously. They are worth less, which means the banks need to take a haircut and write down the losses. More liquidity merely hides the problem.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09072010.html

http://www.zcommunications.org/mujeres-libres-presentation-by-marie-trig...

By Sherwood Ross

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

President Obama is not only losing support among the general public but also of the liberals and college students who did so much to energize his presidential campaign. Now, even some Democratic incumbents whose seats had been considered safe are in trouble.

According to Rasmussen pollsters, Obama's general approval rating plunged from 65 per cent upon taking office to 45 per cent today. Larry Sabato, director of the Center For Politics at the University of Virginia, says the Republicans are poised to have a net gain of 47 House seats and likely eight Senate seats. “If anything,” says Sabato, “we have been conservative in estimating the probable GOP House gains...”

What's turning off liberals is that on issue after issue, Obama appears to be little more than a slicker copy of his stumbling predecessor. When the Republicans under George Bush elected to bail out Wall Street, Obama helped them finish the job even though congressional mail ran overwhelmingly against it.

Instead, he might have created a massive jobs program to restart the economy with paycheck power as FDR did with his New Deal. But Obama's half-hearted make-work blueprint appears to be too little and too late. “For Vulnerable Democrats, Economy Fuels Election Fears,” The New York Times reported September 4th. “Seeking to keep the focus away from Mr. Obama and the national economy, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona emphasizes her work for rougher border controls and support for the stimulus money that saved the jobs of local teachers and public safety workers,” the paper said. Her campaign manager, Rodde McLeod, says, “We're running our own race.” Translation: the man in the White House is now a liability, not an asset.

A related article in the same issue is titled, “In a Shift, Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats.” Reporter Kirk Johnson writes, “The college vote is up for grabs this year---to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama.” He quotes Mandi Asay, 22, spokeswoman for the University of Colorado's College Democrats, as saying: “People are angry---about the budget deficit, health care plan, angry about this and that. I feel like Republicans definitely, definitely have a chance of getting back on their feet.” The percentage of collegians who identify themselves as Democrats has dropped about five points to 57 percent in roughly two years, according to Pew Research Center.

On health care, perhaps the No. 1 concern of liberals after the wars of aggression in the Middle East, Obama surrendered on the public option issue when he might have campaigned for it dramatically in person on hospital doorsteps around the country. Instead, the public got the idea that he regarded it as, well, optional.

And liberals who saw the president as a champion for ecological sanity, are also disillusioned. Writing in the July issue of “Sojourners” magazine, which defines itself as “Faith in Action for Social Justice,” author Bill McKibben writes Obama's honeymoon with progressive Americans “took what looks like a lethal blow” when oil began washing ashore in the marshes of Louisiana last Spring.
http://www.zcommunications.org/obama-losing-liberal-base-and-youth-by-sh...

It’s probably too negative to suggest that all is lost when it comes to the November elections. But right-wing media is rife with hate speech, lunatic theories abound and misinformation is the coin of the realm for a distressingly large segment of the electorate.

The rants of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and a host of other radical miscreants continue to surface as if they were serious news. But often ridiculing them just seems to make supporters distrustful of the very news sources that strive to observe journalistic principles. Glenn Beck warns of a possible “Reichstag moment” when events would precipitate a fascist takeover of the country. In better times such claptrap would be dismissed as the ravings of a troubled mind, but these are not better times, and people, far too many of them, are mesmerized by the false prophets of doom who fill the airwaves and newsprint with hysterical nonsense disguised as concern for the nation’s well-being.

The truth is that many Tea Party rallies are far more like the unruly crowds that voted Hitler into power than any group in the current Washington establishment. Obsessed with gun rights and ‘free’ markets and hoisting signs that question the president’s birth-right and his credentials, the movement’s participants are the vanguard of an unhealthy assault on our form of government. Their allegiance to what they insist were structures designed by the founding fathers and embodied in the Constitution is an exercise in ignorance - - suggesting for example that religion should be woven into the fabric of our government is profoundly at odds with the original intent of those first freedom fighters.

in this place?

;) i must "brew" ;)

100/60 . stay calm hold your ground , paint and sing , happy new year!

Submitted by Leah on Tue, 09/07/2010 - 8:19pm.
----------------

The DNC is NOT the people's democratic party. it reminds me of the Cancer Charities that takes well intentioned donations and lives high on the hog without bank rolling any change in research or discussions of the envirnmental and nutritional co -factor's in much of the causes of Dis Ease.

stay strong , know that your are not alone with your fears . The retrograde mercury cycle will change shortly.

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Non-food/Disease/swine_flu_milder_th...

------------------

because fear makes some people rich. and those that went along with it with out speaking up have a lot of mis placed trust in the system.

Obama went along with the game , I thouight he was so educated? . He lives in a stock market world of banks and is not being honest with his "change". 50 billion should have gone out to fix the roads way before fixing the crumbling false investment markets.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 27, 2006. The law was pushed through Congress by wealthy biomedical & agri-business industry groups such as the Animal Enterprise Protection Coalition (AEPC), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), with bipartisan support from legislators like Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative James Sensenbrenner. The new law replaced its predecessor, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA), which had become law in 1992.
The AEPA was put on the books in 1992 by well-funded industries that exploit animals. Proponents of the AEPA argued that the number of violent attacks committed by so-called animal rights extremists on farming and research facilities was escalating, and that the AEPA was necessary to protect these facilities. They claimed that (1) existing state & federal laws had failed to curtail such acts, and (2) these attacks disrupted vital services relied on by millions of Americans. Despite these assertions, the language of the AEPA swept up constitutionally-protected free speech activities, even though legislators believed they had struck a balance between the right to protest and the need to provide additional criminal penalties for violent acts. Despite the claims of the corporate interests that this law was vital, the law has only been used twice during the last 16 years.

your such a hard worker and I value all your efforts. I have learned alot of history from your links.

"What we created was absolutely beautiful," Vince Rose said. "No, I'm not going. We're not letting them run us out of this country."

An American couple in Belize struggled Tuesday to figure out their future, their dreams literally up in smoke after a mob of indigenous Mayans burned down their animal sanctuary in the belief the foreigners fed two missing children to crocodiles on their property.
Cherie and Vince Rose moved to the tiny Central American nation in 2004 to form a 36-acre sanctuary for two species of endangered crocodiles found in Belize -- the American and Morelet's crocodiles.
Bit by bit, their hope turned into reality. They built a two-story octagonal-shaped house that rested on stilts and reached 30 feet into the air. They constructed two smaller cottages for researchers and students to stay in. They dug out two acres of canals for the crocodiles. They acquired two boats.
They called the place the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary.
Most of it vanished Sunday morning, when a throng of angry villagers from a settlement about 10 miles (16 km) away torched the buildings on their property. The villagers had been told by a local psychic that the Americans had fed the two missing children to the 17 crocodiles at the sanctuary, police say.

read the complete story
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/07/belize.american.house.torch...

Monophysitism [Gr.,=belief in one nature], a heresy of the 5th and 6th cent., which grew out of a reaction against Nestorianism . It was anticipated by Apollinarianism and was continuous with the principles of Eutyches , whose doctrine had been rejected in 451 at Chalcedon (see Chalcedon, Council of ). Monophysitism challenged the orthodox definition of faith of Chalcedon and taught that in Jesus there were not two natures (divine and human) but one (divine). Discussion of this belief was clouded by misunderstandings of terms and by the lack of knowledge of Greek in the West. In the East the Council of Chalcedon was declared (c.476) invalid by Basiliscus, the imperial usurper. Later, Emperor Zeno, restored to his throne, issued the Henoticon (482), based on the doctrines of St. Cyril of Alexandria, in an attempt to settle the dispute. It recommended a formula that, ostensibly

The bigger the Democratic defeat the better. After this loss they'll move further to the right, and hopefully people will reject them completely for that. The working class will either demand a real progressive party, or they will become peasants. I believe they will become peasants; which is fine. They need to relive the 1880's for a decade or two to wake up.
I'm voting for Virg Bernero, because I trust him. Other than that, its straight Rethug for me-- and I've got some real fascists to vote for.

Today's latest liberal outrage is classic Dem rubbish. All the liberal talkers are denouncing the racist, wacko Dove church. A perfect, typical Dem foe. While the Dems rail about some so-called minister, they are embracing the "grave" warnings from our friend, General Gates: 'Look over there. See, the problem are those fifty bigots in Florida.' The problem isn't a government with a neutron bomb pointed at the rest of world. Let's demonstrate against those clown, bigots, and not against our government with its 800 billion dollar budget and 800 overseas bases. Always remember, Yoda Gates knows that what Muslims really hate, is not killing them, but burning their satanic, holy book.

Uncovering the secrets of the brain requires an intense network of collaborative research. Building on a tool that was co-developed in his laboratory and described in a recent issue of Brain, Dr. Yaniv Assaf of Tel Aviv University's Department of Neurobiology is collaborating with an international team of scientists to understand how different parts of the human brain "connect" — and to turn this information into a "brain atlas."

Brain researchers already know that autism and schizophrenia are not localized disorders — there is no one place in the brain they can be found. That's why a brain atlas will be an invaluable resource for understanding how parts of our brain connect to other parts within, leading to a deeper understanding of these diseases.

"It's currently impossible for clinicians to 'see' subtle disorders in the brain that might cause a life-threatening, devastating disability," says Dr. Assaf, whose most recent research was done in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Developmental disorders like autism are believed to be a function of abnormal connections among different regions within the brain — like wires between telephone poles. In his research, Dr. Assaf looks at clusters of brain wiring, or axons, to help scientists produce a better working map of the brain for future research.
continues

http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12901

In other news:

Deaths in Pakistan 'drone attack'

Two suspected US drone attacks targeting Haqqani network leave at least 14 people dead in North Waziristan region.

At least 14 people have been killed in two suspected US drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal region, near the border with Afghanistan, officials said.

The attacks took place hours apart on Wednesday near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region.

At least 10 people were killed in the first attack, when missiles struck a compound, which officials say was used to house fighters allied with the Taliban an al-Qaeda.

The house targeted by the drone reportedly belonged to members of the Haqqani network - a faction fighting alongside the Taliban against US-led forces in Afghanistan.

A second drone attack later targeted a vehicle carrying other suspected Haqqani members...

A Taliban spokesman on Tuesday threatened more suicide attacks on security forces and government offices in response to the suspected US drone aircraft strikes.

"Americans are carrying out drone attacks with the permission of Pakistan and we will take revenge with suicide attacks on security forces, police and government offices," Azim Tariq, a Taliban spokesman, told Reuters news agency.

"Drone attacks have killed dozens of innocent women and children but America has never expressed its regret."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/2010/2010/09/201098827440883...

dont you have any kind third party where you live?

I want cheney to die and for all his friends to go to the funeral and then I hope for a cyclone

but I hear you and i see how you got there,but I am not jumping in on that band wagon.

You know hoping for the failure of the democratic party is not going to fed and doctor those slipping thru the cracks.. The rethugs want chaos to prevail so they can take back the throttle of the class warefare they thrive on.

just listen maybe Kali Yuga is here but i feel it is imperative to help those around you and giving a vote to speed up the calamity is so agasinst my Raison d'être.

the decline of civilzation is moving at a fast enough clip. . .

turn the old Democratic party into a new independent enity.

I dont see things as irrepairable

show strength in numbers.

works for cancer patients facing their own mortality or alcoholics comsumed by depression. I wont let the dark forces think they are winning any converts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L-GOHa5-YQ&feature=related

Dedicated to Hillary-- The peace maker.

Qur'an burning day to go ahead despite death threats

Pastor Terry Jones to go ahead with Qur'an burning day despite Hillary Clinton saying plan is disrespectful and disgraceful
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/08/hillary-clinton-plan-to-burn...

(I guess it's actually General Betray Us, that's the champion of religious liberty):

David Petraeus, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, warned of retaliatory action against US troops after protests took place in the capital Kabul at which effigies of Jones were burned alongside the American flag.

could change the path that the DNC leadership is continuing on. Yes it is an age thing. . arent there more young people willing to get involved..

and the anti war rally that never really got up steam? maybe oct 2nd RALLY could inspire people to demonstrate en masse?

as a live (life) long pacifist I feel that motivating this numb electorate to get active and stand up to the MIC
( which is the cause of all the world's dilemas) is the best I can do. If i have to Join with Big Ed and his push I can easily do that.

PARIS – French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Wednesday to press ahead with his contested overhaul of the country's pension system and unions promptly announced new national strikes and protests, a day after bringing more than 1 million people to the streets.
The conservative leader said he is "attentive to the worries that were expressed" by protesters, who protested in 220 French cities Tuesday. But Sarkozy reiterated it was "out of the question" to give up on the plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 under the reform.
With baby boomers reaching retirement age and life expectancy on the rise, the government insists the raised retirement age is necessary, so the money-draining pension system can break even by 2018. The reform is seen as a cornerstone of Sarkozy's political agenda and a key test for the conservative French leader ahead of 2012 presidential elections.
Unions said it's a threat to hard-won social benefits and want the reform drastically scaled back. Mobilized by Tuesday's protests, six leading unions met Wednesday and announced new nationwide strikes and demonstrations for Sept. 23.
Speaking Wednesday during a Cabinet meeting, Sarkozy conceded the government's willingness to negotiate on smaller details of the reform, including measures for the disabled and people in physically difficult professions. Sarkozy's office reported his remarks in a statement.
The reform is "a lasting and just response that will allow us to save our pension system," government spokesman Luc Chatel told reporters following the Cabinet meeting.
Chatel added that Labor Minister Eric Woerth has been charged with amending the bill to reflect the small changes, which is to be voted on by the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, next week.
Labor leaders have called Tuesday's strike a major success. The strike forced the closure of schools and snarled traffic throughout the country Tuesday, as more than 1.1 million people demonstrated throughout France, according to the Interior Ministry. The CFDT union put the number of protesters at 2.5 million.

get some long lense cameras to focus on the faces of those crazies. hope it goes viral

please explain going viral to those idiots so they might Think twice about their foolishness.

or the bible that much because of all the contradictions. anyway I am still busy with the vedas and Buddhist philosophies. or that Carl Yung with his interpretations of ancient symbols, like the I__ching and the taoist classics, usually while I am listening to black music like james Brown or Curtis mayfield . ( flea market funk)

A is for Alice
A is for Acid another music site Acid At Home what a trip down memory lane i think it is in polish and
english
A is for the better cut on the 45.(not always) but management thinks so.

Nora and Cee Cee and Gloryoski and Alce and Bridge, Sunshine Jim Green Tea ,fernando, and ALL the others who have been busy doing other things to speak up about oct 2nd and what it means?

Axelrod: Rahm Emanuel Would be a Great Chicago Mayor

In an interview with CBS News Radio this morning, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said that Emanuel has yet to make a decision about whether to leave his White House job and jump into the race.

"He and I both learned at the same time yesterday that mayor wasn't going to run," Axelrod said. "We were stunned, having both worked for him and knowing how much he loves that job. Rahm hasn't really had a chance to really digest that news."

Axelrod added that Emanuel would be "a great mayor because he's a larger than life personality, a personality who loves the city. He's not afraid to make decisions and to tackle hard problems."

Emanuel is "vital to the president" in his capacity as chief of staff, so he will have a hard decision to make, Axelrod said.

If Emanuel were to run, Politico suggests the most likely

candidate to replace him as chief of staff could be

Tom Donilon,

a deputy national security adviser.....
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20015827-503544.html

Michael Moore Teaches Rahm Emanuel a F**cking Economics Lesson

...Then a Republican fired all the air traffic controllers, a Democrat gave us NAFTA and millions of jobs were moved overseas (hey, didn't you work in that White House, too? "Fuck the UAW, baby!"). Unions got scared and beaten down, a frat boy became president and, like a drunk out of control, spent all our fucking money and our children's money, too. Fuck.

And now your assistant's grandma has to work at fucking McDonald's. Ask her for pictures of what the middle class life used to look like. It was effing cool! I'll bet grandma doesn't say "Fuck the UAW!"...
http://www.alternet.org/economy/148106/michael_moore_teaches_rahm_emanue...

Thomas E. Donilon

He worked as Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae, the federally-chartered mortgage finance company. This line on his resume raised eyebrows when his appointment to the Obama transition team was announced, given that the company had been seized by federal regulators.[11] The Washington Times reported that Donilon made millions for work that including supervising Fannie Mae's lobbying against increased regulation.[12]

Before his appointment to the Obama Administration, Donilon was a partner in the Washington law firm O'Melveny & Myers, where he advised companies and their boards on a range of "sensitive governance, policy, legal and regulatory matters." [9] His previous year's income, in a 2009 report, was reported by The Wall Street Journal to have been $3.9 million; his clients included Citigroup, Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Obama fundraiser and heiress Penny Pritzker.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Donilon

It's time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9o84OSt78Y&feature=related

democrats rally around Rahm for mayor.

would be funnier.

Anyway, If I had enough money I'd live today.

wanted to build a study center near The WTC would there be as much of an outcry ?

If the catholic church built a Rectumotory near the Tribeca Childrens School would there be much noise from the sheeple?

ON the info about Terrible Jones from the Der Spiegel

http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/hgovernick/blog/2010/09/9-09-2010-der-...

Sep 8, 1935:
Huey Long is shot

In 1928 Long became the youngest governor of Louisiana at age 34. His brash style alienated many people, including the heads of the biggest corporation in the state, Standard Oil. Long preached the redistribution of wealth, which he believed could be done by heavily taxing the rich. One of his early propositions, which met with much opposition, was an "occupational" tax on oil refineries. Later, Long would develop these theories into the Share Our Wealth society, which promised a $2,500 minimum income per family.

Long also abolished the state's poll tax on voting and gained free textbooks for every student. His motto was "Every Man a King." His populism led to an impeachment attempt, but he successfully foiled the charges...
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/huey-long-is-shot

...Long began an unprecedented public works program, building roads, bridges, hospitals, and educational institutions. His bills met opposition from many legislators, wealthy citizens, and the corporate-controlled media, but Long used aggressive tactics to ensure passage of the legislation he favored. He would show up unannounced on the floor of both the House and Senate or in House committees, corralling reluctant representatives and state senators and bullying opponents. These tactics were unprecedented, but they resulted in the passage of most of Long's legislative agenda. By delivering on his campaign promises, Long achieved hero status among the state's rural poor population.

When Long secured passage of his free textbook program, the school board of Caddo Parish (home of conservative Shreveport), sued to prevent the books from being distributed, saying they would not accept "charity" from the state. Long responded by withholding authorization for locating an Army Air Corps base nearby until the parish accepted the books.[6]
[edit] Impeachment attempt

In 1929, Long called a special session of both houses of the legislature to enact a new five-cent per barrel "occupational license tax" on production of refined oil, to help fund his social programs. The bill met with fierce opposition from the state's oil interests. Opponents in the legislature, led by freshman Cecil Morgan of Shreveport, moved to impeach Long on charges ranging from blasphemy to corruption, bribery, and misuse of state funds. Long tried to cut the session short, but after an infamous brawl that spilled across the State Legislature on what was known as "Bloody Monday", the Legislature voted to remain in session and proceed with the impeachment.

Long took his case to the people using his characteristic speaking tours. He inundated the state with his trademark circulars. He argued that Standard Oil, corporate interests and the conservative political opposition were conspiring to stop him from providing roads, books and other programs to develop the state and help the poor....After the impeachment attempt, Long received death threats. Fearing for his personal safety, he surrounded himself with armed bodyguards at all times.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long

(Reading the whole wiki entry is really worthwhile. I doubt today there are ten Dems in Congress that would fight half as aggressively for the working class.)

If the Atheist Movement
new
Submitted by taozen on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 2:58pm.

wanted to build a study center near The WTC would there be as much of an outcry ?

Sure, if that were the boogy man corporate interests needed use to further their interests. But this WH had made it especially easy to demonize Muslims by failing to leave the Middle East. Officially, we are war with Muslims. And they will remain official "enemies" until we change our foreign policy. At the time, the only one who had a problem with internment of the Japanese in the this country, were the internees.

Monday 06 September 2010

Dutch painter Corneille, one of the founders of the avant-garde Cobra movement, died on Sunday at the age of 88.

Corneille, born in Belgium to Dutch parents, died in France where he had lived and worked for many years. He was the last of the founding Dutch Cobra artists.

The Cobra movement was founded in 1948 and takes its name from the cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/09/corneille_last_of_the_dutc...

Explosion Rocks Honeywell Uranium Facility Run by Scab Workers
Tuesday 07 September 2010
by: Mike Elk | The Huffington Post | Report

Union workers have been locked out at the uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, Illinois for two months now after contract negotiations broke down over Honeywell's demand that workers give up their retiree health care coverage and pension plans. The Metropolis uranium facility is the only one in the United States that can convert U308 into the extremely deadly UF6.

Because the plant is the only conversion facility of its kind in the United States, familiarity with the Metropolis plant, and not just generic experience in the field, is essential to ensuring the plant's safety. Concerns have been raised by local community members and union officials that replacement workers at the Honeywell facility cannot safely operate the plant since they have no site-specific experience in this type of conversion facility.

Workers claim that Cote is far more interested in keeping his record profits high than actually protecting workers and the surrounding community. They believe that Honeywell CEO David Cote is willing to risk nuclear fallout in order to demand that uranium workers cut their retiree health care and pension plans.

On Saturday, nuclear regulators allowed Honeywell to start up core production at the facility, where core production had been shut down for over two months due to concerns about the training of replacement workers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission delayed reopening the plant for several days after questions were raised about the unusually high levels of uranium that were appearing in the urine tests of several nuclear workers.

The following day, a hydrogen explosion rocked the plant. The blast shook the ground in front of the plant and could be heard a mile away, according to local reports. State Trooper Bridget Rice said that police were called to investigate to the scene of the explosion after receiving several phone calls reporting an explosion at the plant. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah also confirmed that there was indeed "a small hydrogen explosion that was very loud" at the Metropolis facility.

The plant splits hydrofluoric acid into hydrogen and fluoride. The hydrogen then gets scrubbed and released into the atmosphere and fluorine goes into the process. If the hydrogen and fluorine recombine, it can be very reactive and cause a non-radioactive hydrogen explosion. On Saturday, hydrogen was accidentally recombined with fluorine causing a massive explosion that could be heard a mile away and leading to the plant being temporarily shut down.

Honeywell Spokesman Peter Dapel released this statement: "There was a noise at Metropolis Works yesterday that occurred as a result of the normal venting of one of our systems.... The union workforce is very familiar with the procedure that caused yesterday's noise, having executed similar processes on at least two occasions earlier this year prior to the work stoppage with the exact same outcomes. It is common to plants that work with fluorine, and characteristic of plants that are following correct procedures."

However, union spokesman John Paul Smith claims that the workers who worked at the plant for decades said very minor explosions had occurred, but no explosion of such a magnitude that it could be heard outside of the plant. State police also could not cite an incident where they had been called to the plant to investigate an explosion at the Metropolis facility that had been reported to them by local community members.
Workers and local community members see this explosion as evidence that the quickly trained replacement workers are not qualified to operate the plant.
Continue reading here:
http://www.truth-out.org/explosion-rocks-honeywell-uranium-facility-run-...

AFL-CIO Backs October 2 March in Washington, DC for Jobs, Justice and Peace
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2010-07-20 12:04 ActivismTake Action

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

We learned this morning that the National Executive Council of the AFL-CIO has voted to support and mobilize its members for the October 2, 2010, march on Washington to demand "jobs, economic security, comprehensive immigration reform, a safe and renewable energy policy and a reversal of national priorities from making wars to meeting human needs." This march was initiated by SEIU Local 1199 and the NAACP.

NAACP President Ben Jealous announced the October 2 march at the NAACP convention in Kansas City in early July, explaining that "marchers will demand the change they voted for when Barack Obama was elected," and emphasizing the urgent need to "create jobs and stop moving money out of education and into wars and prisons." (Kansas City Star, July 12, 2010)

Indeed, while there are many issues of concern among working people, having a job ranks by far at the very top of the list, since so many other basic needs are directly tied to employment. The current Great Recession -- some are calling it a depression -- has spawned a surge in joblessness, with little recovery in sight. Temporary downward dips in the unemployment rate are resulting from workers becoming discouraged; they stop looking for work because they do not think they can find any, so they are no longer counted as unemployed.

Not enough jobs are being created in the private sector to keep up with the number of new workers who are entering the labor market. According to an AFL-CIO blog (June 7, 2010), 38 percent of Americans report that either they or someone close to them has lost a job. There are officially almost 15 million Americans now out of work, mostly due to the current economic crisis. But if those who are involuntarily working part-time and if discouraged workers are taken into account, the number is much higher.

Claiming that the federal deficit is the greatest threat to the economy, politicians of both major parties are displaying a stark lack of interest in aggressively attacking the problem of joblessness. Recently, Congress callously refused to extend unemployment benefits, thereby cutting a crucial lifeline for over one million unemployed workers. Many believe that this inflated focus on the deficit is simply an excuse by politicians to terminate popular government programs, where the politicians claim the government simply cannot afford to maintain them. Motivated by special interests instead of what is good for the country as a whole, these politicians propose privatizing the programs or eliminating them altogether.

It is within this context that we applaud two significant developments. First, as we have already mentioned, SEIU Local 1199 and the NAACP are organizing the October 2 march on Washington, DC. SEIU Local 1199 President George Gresham has predicted that this demonstration will be a "massive -- and we believe historic -- march." It might, in fact, mark a turning point for organized labor as it launches this fight-back.
Continue reading here:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54067

More info on October 2, 2010
http://www.naacp.org/pages/one-nation-faq

From SEIU 1199
http://1199seiu.org/media/news.cfm?nid=2206
The New York campaign to bring hundreds of thousands to the 10-2-10 One Nation rally in Washington, D.C. kicked off on Sept. 1 with a mid-day rally at the Federal Building in lower Manhattan.

The Wall Street site was chosen to dramatize the organizers’ commitment to force elected officials to focus on the suffering Main Street unemployed and working people as opposed to the captains of finance who have returned to profitability.

“Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” roared NYS AFL-CIO Sec-Treas Terry Melvin, who chaired the rally. This theme was echoed by speaker after speaker who declared that true economic recovery for our nation means putting people back to work.

“Washington has to make putting American back to work the first priority,” said Rep. Charles Rangel of Manhattan, the dean of New York’s congressional delegation.

Speakers also discussed the need for action on issues as varied as education, immigration reform, civil and human rights, gender equality, the environment and the slashing of the bloated military budget in favor of funding human needs.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/2/11434/93025
Buses to the 10.2.10 Rally: Find One Here
War on Error
Thu Sep 02, 2010 at 09:49:43 AM PDT
In an effort to find you a seat on the bus, I have gathered contact information for you. See other contact info at end of diary.

Buses are lined up for Local 1199 SEIU members and up to six (6) of their friends in these states:
New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, or Florida.
...and other details.

US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies'

Soldiers face trial over secret 'kill team' which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war

Twelve American soldiers face trial over an secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven other soldiers are accused of covering up the killings as well as a violent assault on a new recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians...

Anybody hear about this?
Submitted by CeeCee on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 7:43pm.

Here's a similar story from my state of corporate pigs combining worker exploitation with environmental destruction:

Published on Tuesday, September 7, 2010 by The Washington Independent
In Mich. Cleanup, a Missed Opportunity for Local Workers and Abuse of Undocumented Ones
Investigation Into Serious Labor Violations in Oil Spill Cleanup Leads to Broader Questions

Staff Report

....n Enbridge Energy subcontractor bused in undocumented workers to labor for up to 100 hours a week, clearing debris and cleaning up oil in unsafe conditions. In response to the Messenger investigation, Enbridge fired the subcontractor, who sent the workers back to Texas. There, the undocumented workers, awaiting cash payments for their efforts, met with local authorities – and many were detained.

The scandal has gone national, with politicians expressing dismay at the conditions at the Michigan cleanup site and the labor abuses, and authorities turning their attention to the companies doing the dirty business of getting America’s waterways clean.

An Unsafe Cleanup

After the Michigan oil spill, Enbridge hired contractor Garner Environmental Services to aid in the cleanup of the river. Garner, in turn, hired Texas-based Hallmark Industrial to supply workers. Last month, Hallmark bused scores of undocumented workers to the cleanup site. Living in hotels, the workers spent 12 to 14 hours a day cleaning oil-soaked islands and shorelines along the Kalamazoo River. The workers received $800 per week in cash for their efforts.....

Workers, Seeking Pay, End Up Detained

The buses stopped in Winnie, Texas, behind a bank. Reportedly, the workers on the buses were expecting cash payments from Phillip Hallmark, the head of Hallmark Industrial. Soon after, neighbors complained to the police about the buses, which were blocking a street. When sheriffs arrived, the men held in the buses ran.

Local authorities took custody of 59 of the Battle Creek workers, and about 40 men got away. Authorities say 42 of the 59 detained workers were undocumented, and they were sent to a detention facility in Houston. Legal residents were released and allowed to collect their belonging from the buses. Authorities continue to search for men who escaped during the detention process.

Chambers County Sheriff Joe LaRive spoke with the Messenger after the incident. “The [charter bus] drivers were told to drive them to this small house in our little community,” LaRive said in a phone interview. “They were to meet Mr. Hallmark once they got there. Of course, he was nowhere around when we showed up.”

LaRive indicated that law enforcement is looking for Phillip Hallmark. “I’m sure the federal authorities will be very interested in talking to him,” he says....
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/09/07-7

"...Forty U.S. senators are millionaires, while Russ Feingold, who was elected to Congress on a promise not to accept pay raises while in office, has so far returned tens of thousands in such raises to the U.S. Treasury. In addition, he is notoriously frugal in his office spending and sends back the money that he does not use..."
Read more about him and his opponent:
http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20100907/SHE0601/9070382/Letters-F...

http://www.russfeingold.org/

Submitted by Leah on Tue, 09/07/2010 - 11:37pm.
Is there a pulse in this place?

Submitted by ghettodefender on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 8:44pm.
Here's a similar story from my state of corporate pigs combining worker exploitation with environmental destruction:
http://samsedershow.com/node/5964#comment-415325

...we are all a means for their ends.

Posted: Sept. 5, 2010
Cute kids available to boost candidates
Staff writers Kathleen Gray and Todd Spangler

Candidates at last week's Republican state convention at the Breslin Center in East Lansing went onstage with their spouses and kids to wave to the crowd at the end of a boisterous demonstration.

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson commented to the crowd on state Sen. Mike Bishop's three cute kids: "If I'm a candidate, I want to rent those kids," he said.

Apparently, kids were available for loan.

State Sen. Cameron Brown, R-Sturgis, and his wife, Helen, were handed a cute, chubby baby and darling blond-haired girl wearing Brown for Secretary of State T-shirts when they came onstage.

The loaner kids belonged to a staffer and a volunteer. As the Browns left the stage, the little girl was briefly left behind.

The scene won't be repeated this fall. Brown lost.
http://www.freep.com/article/20100905/COL05/9050434/1001/NEWS/Cute-kids-...

Just dropped in for a bit. Please, what's happening on Oct. 2nd?

EVERY home...

http://mind-mart.com/holistic-health/dangers-of-wi-fi

[excerpt]

One of the first groups that has come against wireless of technology is firefighters–although they might not want it publicized. Firehouses are often the targeted by cellular phone companies as ideal places to place antennas. Because firefighters work and sleep in the same location, they opposed the continuous exposure to non ionizing radiation and were able to litigate against it. The International Association of Firefighters has taken the position that firehouses should not be the site of cellular base station antennas until more is known about the long term effects of exposure.

The firefighters found that they could not respond as well when exposued to continuous radiation. They understood that by using wi-fi, you never give your body a break. Many people sleep in close proximity to wireless devices–cell phones, routers, PDAs. The intensity of the exposure is not the issue. Chronic exposure to low intensity exposure is considered to be worst than a single high intensity exposure.

The work of Canadian scientist Magda Havas is frequently referenced to demonstrate the adverse biological impact of electromagnetic radiation. Her research focuses on the effects of radio frequency radiation (RFR) used by cell phones and other wireless technologies. There is little funding in the United States for research of the biological and health effects of RFR or and EMF by government agencies. Available studies are often funded by the wireless industry, and not surprisingly, these studies often find no adverse effects.

So what are the potential health effects? Keeping in mind that much of the information is conflicting, potential health effects are:

cancer.
genetic effects such as damage to DNA,.
cellular and molecular effects such as a reduction in enzymes critical to the central nervous system.
changes in electrophysiology such as reduced activity between nerve cells, and.
physiological and behavioral changes such as impairment of peripheral vision

...

Continue reading here:
http://www.truth-out.org/explosion-rocks-honeywell-uranium-facility...

=========================

ALSO--

Protect your children from cell phone and WiFi radiation before it's too late
August 25, 2010

The Canadian Charger
http://www.thecanadiancharger.com:80/page.php?id=5&a=554

Barrie Trower, a physicist and former British Secret Service Microwave Weapons Specialist, said he came out of retirement because microwave technology that was used for weapons is now being used in schools.

Speaking at the University of Toronto recently, Mr. Trower said he refuses all gifts and all money; consequently he tells it "exactly as it is."

He said there is a lot of proof that microwave radiation – used for cell phones and WiFi - is harmful and governments have known this for many years.

"Your government (Canadian) is one of the world leaders in microwave radiation research. The U.S. joined Canada in conducting research ... The first symptoms of microwave sickness were documented in 1932."

He added that there are 13 secret code names of microwave radiation research used by Canada, the U.S. and Britain.

Research results show that lung damage, destroyed brain cells and damage to the blood brain barrier are among a litany of ill-effects of prolonged exposure to low levels of microwave radiation; and children are the most susceptible because their cells are close to the size of the microwaves. Mr. Trower said this means children act as antennae for the microwaves.

"Children are not small adults. Their systems have not yet formed. It takes a few years for the blood brain barrier to form. It's like a fish net that surrounds the brain and keeps toxins out (of the brain). Microwave radiation makes the wholes (in the blood brain barrier) bigger so toxins leak into the brain. This can cause psychiatric problems."

Auditory hallucinations that make people think they're hearing sounds, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, sleeplessness and irritability are among the symptoms of blood brain barrier damage researchers have documented.

Damage to the immune system, which takes 18 years to develop in children, is another effect of exposure to microwave radiation Mr. Trower cites.

He also said we have electric cables in our bodies, formed by mile-long, inch-thick sheets of layers of proteins, that take 22 years to develop in children; and microwave radiation affects the protein synthesis.

Mr. Trower said there isn't a school in the world that hasn't seen an increase in aggression and other bad behavior when WiFi was introduced.

He cites paranoia, hallucinations, suicidal tendencies and inability to make decisions, among the deleterious effects of exposure to low levels of microwave radiation.

Then he gave an explanation for why little is being done about this issue.

"By 1971 we knew everything that needed to be known. This document (a 1976 summary of U.S. Defense intelligence agencies' research) is the saddest most despicable document ever published in history. Lack of concentration, menstrual disorders, headaches and irritability are some of the effects of exposure to microwaves, listed in this document," Mr. Trower said, followed by this statement: 'This should be kept secret to preserve industrial profit.' "

He added that as far back as the 1950's profit was deemed what needed protection, not people's health.

"In the 1950's researchers conducted experiments on the effects of microwave radiation. Their report contained this statement: 'If this paper becomes known around the world, it will threaten military and commercial investments.'"

Remarkably, the European Parliament has decided that it can't even trust the World Health Organization's (WHO) guidelines for acceptable levels of microwave radiation.

Mr. Trower said the European Parliament wrote to its 27 countries urging them to ignore WHO guidelines and set exposure limits at lower levels. And what was the WHO's response?

"The WHO said they will not comment on microwave radiation effects on people until 2015, when it will be able to establish effects on human beings. They are watching people to see how many will become sick. We're being experimented upon."

He added that the WHO only began studying microwave radiation effects on children in 2009 and it said it won't be able to comment until 2020.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trower said Russia is banning any children under 18 from microwave exposure, when possible, and Britain said children under 12 should have no microwave radiation exposure at all.

This is in the wake of reports made to the British parliament detailing the cases of 11 children under 11 years old who have leukemia. Mr. Trower said this is how the government responded:

"The minister said we're within international guidelines and sat down. This happened four times."

However, as a result of research that documents the harmful effects of microwave radiation on fetuses, the British government said that pregnant women must not be exposed to microwave radiation.

"The head of the fetus has multiple connections going on in the brain of the fetus. Microwave radiation gives the fetus an innumerable amount of electrical shocks. This can cause brain blood barrier damage that can result in severe psychiatric disorders later in life."

And this is but one of a number of risks to fetus development microwave radiation causes.

"It's a serious thing, even low levels of microwave radiation," Mr. Trower said. "It affects ovarian follicles and eggs. It can damage genes and eggs and the damage is irreparable. Generations will carry genetic defects. It's threatening the health of future generations, so it must never be put in schools."

He said there is no known safe level of microwave radiation for a child. "No scientist in the world has published a safe level for a child."

http://weepnews.blogspot.com/2010/08/protect-your-children-uk-expert-war...

Appeals Court Decision Denies Extraordinary Rendition Victims Their Day in Court
ACLU Press Release

SAN FRANCISCO - September 8 - A federal appeals court today dismissed a case against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Northern California filed the lawsuit in May 2007 on behalf of five men who were kidnapped by the CIA, forcibly disappeared to U.S.-run prisons overseas and tortured. The Bush administration intervened in the case, improperly asserting the "state secrets" privilege in an attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out.

In April 2009, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the government must invoke the state secrets privilege with respect to specific pieces of evidence - not over an entire lawsuit. The Obama administration appealed that ruling, and in December the appeal was heard by an en banc panel of all 11 Ninth Circuit judges. According to the ACLU, today's ruling all but shuts the door on accountability for the illegal program. The ACLU intends to seek Supreme Court review of the decision.

The following can be attributed to Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU, who argued the case before the Ninth Circuit:

"This is a sad day not only for the torture victims whose attempt to seek justice has been extinguished, but for all Americans who care about the rule of law and our nation's reputation in the world. To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture program has had his day in court. If today's decision is allowed to stand, the United States will have closed its courtroom doors to torture victims while providing complete immunity to their torturers. The torture architects and their enablers may have escaped the judgment of this court, but they will not escape the judgment of history."

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/09/08-10

Published on Thursday, September 2, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)
Can You Say, Fascism? The Political Consequences of Stagnation
by Walden Bello

"...Toward a Progressive Strategy
The right wing has the momentum now and will probably win big in the U.S. elections in November. They will tie Obama and the Democrats so firmly to the crisis that people will forget it exploded during the reign of market fundamentalist George Bush. But with their primeval market economics, the fiscal hawks and tea partiers are unlikely to provide an alternative to what they have caricatured as Obama's "socialism." Allowing the economy to implode in order to be ideologically correct will invite an even greater repudiation from an economically insecure population.

But progressives should not take comfort from the dead end offered by tea party economics. They should try to understand what has led to the failure of Obama's pallid Keynesianism. Beyond the tactical mistake of taking responsibility for the crisis and the failure to advance an aggressive anti-neoliberal narrative to explain it, the central problem that has plagued Obama and his team is their failure to offer an inspiring alternative to neoliberalism.

The technical elements of a progressive solution to the crisis have been thrashed out by Keynesian and other progressive economists: a much bigger stimulus, tighter regulation of the banks, loose monetary policies, higher taxes on the rich, rebuilding the national infrastructure, an industrial policy promoting green industries, controls on speculative capital flows, controls on outward bound foreign investment, a global currency, and a new global central bank.

The Obama administration has tried to enact some of these measures. But owing to its eagerness for bipartisanship, the ties of some of its prominent people to the economic elites, and the failure of key technocrats like Summers and Geithner to break with the neoliberal paradigm, it failed to present them as elements of a broader program of social reform aimed at democratizing control and management of the economy.

For progressives, the lesson to be derived from the stalling of Obamanomics is that technocratic management is not enough. Keynesian moves must be part of a broader vision and program. This strategy must have three key thrusts: democratic decision-making at all levels of the economy, from the enterprise to macroeconomic planning; second, greater equality in the distribution of wealth and income to make up for lower growth rates dictated by economic and environmental constraints; and third, a more cooperative, as opposed to competitive ethic, in production, distribution, and consumption.

Moreover, such a program cannot simply be dished out from above by a technocratic elite, as has been the fashion in this administration, one of whose greatest mistakes was to allow the mass movement that brought it to power to wither away. The people must be enlisted in the construction of the new economy, and here progressives have a lot to learn from the Tea Party movement that they must inevitably compete against in a life-and-death struggle for grassroots America..."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/02-6

...calling you out! Maybe walking the walk on Saturday, October 2, 2010?

Yup...

Maybe the other blog has changed the face of Demotards by now...?

...No where near either of the two alleged parties...20 more emails from Grayson are not going to change how I feel about politics and politicians and parties...period. I will always vote for the one who most represents me, no matter which party they affiliate with...no matter how much money they have...etc...

I've seen what I would call progress just by being myself in my regular old world of situations and people that I can immediately contact and interact with...and that is good stuff that we all do each day...

Crank would be LONG gone if he didn't care about us as fellow humans...it's ok Crank..You can admit it... :)

sweeter...

Submitted by CeeCee on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 11:11pm.
...calling you out! Maybe walking the walk on Saturday, October 2, 2010?
-------------
You're kidding, right?

nora is scheduled to chase chemtrails with a butterfly net that day. bridge will be busy fortifying her new bunker. Their news sources do not print silly stuff like 10-2-10.

No Effin' Way
Submitted by Crank Bait on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 12:05am.
Submitted by CeeCee on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 11:11pm.
...calling you out! Maybe walking the walk on Saturday, October 2, 2010?

...can I count on meeting you there, Crank? Maybe, we'll get interviewed by Sam! :)

Free Democracy

"SJ
the herbs are going out tuesday...i'm going to pick the lemon verbena the day i pack it...but chances are that it maydry out before it gets too you...would probably still work to cook with dry...but i know when my friends use it on fish they wrap a fresh leaf around it..."

Posted by: shell September 4, 2004

i still have some left Shell, and they are superb )

Thank you so much for sending them.

-too you-

What am I thinking!?

(it's very embarrassing that you chose this one while Crank is visiting...) ;)

Weird stuff... how is it that we did not coordinate on IM and we are both here? WEIRRRRD.

-No Effin' Way
Submitted by Crank Bait on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 12:05am.-

Yes. Something can be funny AND mean.

Philadelphia, also known as Alasehir, was a Lydian city founded between 159-138 B.C. by Attalus II Philadelphus of Pergamum. In commemoration of the king's love and loyalty for his brother Eumenes II, the city was called Philadelphia, which in Greek meant "city of brotherly love". The ancient city is perhaps most famous as the location of one of The Seven Churches Of Revelation.
The city is located in Asia Minor, today southwestern Turkey. Built on an elevated terrace, the city overlooked the nearby Hermus Valley, in which ran a Persian Royal Road.

The area is very susceptible to earthquakes (see Earthquake!), and in 17 A.D. the city was completely devastated. Apparently right above the fault line, the city continued to be severely shaken by periodic aftershocks for another 20 years after the great quake.

And just what did Jesus Christ (Revelation 1:1) prophesy (see Bible Prophecy) about the ancient city through The Apostle John while he was on Patmos?

"To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:"

"These are the words of Him Who is holy and true, Who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept My Word and have not denied My Name. I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars - I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Since you have kept My command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth."

Among the many opponents of the Christian faith, Marxism is certainly not the most important, imposing or impressive philosophy in history.
But it has, until recently, clearly been the most influential. A comparison of 1917, 1947 and 1987 world maps will show how inexorably this system of thought flowed so as to inundate one-third of the world in just two generations — a feat rivaled only twice in history, by early Christianity and early Islam.

Ten years ago, every political and military conflict in the world, from Central America to the Middle East, turned on the axis of communism vs. anti-communism.

Even fascism became popular in Europe, and is still a force to be reckoned with in Latin America, largely because of its opposition to “the specter of communism,” as Marx calls it in the first sentence of his “Communist Manifesto.”

The “Manifesto” was one of the key moments in history. Published in 1848, “the year of revolutions' throughout Europe, it is, like the Bible, essentially a philosophy of history, past and future. All past history is reduced to class struggle between oppressor and oppressed, master and slave, whether king vs. people, priest vs. parishioner, guild- master vs. apprentice, or even husband vs. wife and parent vs. child.

This is a view of history even more cynical than Machiavelli's. Love is totally denied or ignored; competition and exploitation are the universal rule.

all the kitties come inside...My chances of finding a comfortable spot in bed tonight are slim and none...

protests I was on - yet I see/sea and can understand.

http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/dr-steven-best-the-le...

Photobucket

By Jon Hoch

Dr. Steven Best co-founded the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, whose representatives speak on behalf of the militant animal rights movement. His activism has earned him a lifetime ban from the United Kingdom and nearly cost him his teaching job. I spoke with him on April 29.

JH: Why do you think there’s so much hostility between the anti-capitalist Left and the animal rights movement?

SB: The Left has disdain for the animal rights movement because the Left is humanist and speciesist. The Left politics are always about human rights above all else. The highest ethic that the Left has been able to reach in terms of animal rights is animal welfarism, which is the ethic of the industry and which is a euphemism for animal torture…it’s like their peddling ‘Clean Coal’ or something….Now, the Left also sees animal rights people as elitist. Some people of color, rightly so, see (them) as, maybe not racist, but certainly not anti-racist. There is a problem of white elitism in the animal rights and vegan movement; there is no doubt about it. The composition of the movement is overwhelmingly white, middle class. It promotes all these expensive cruelty free products. It doesn’t take its message into the inner city. It never targets people of color. There’s a huge gulf between black vegans and white vegans. It really is a very isolated movement. ..... .....continued...at above link
;)

departure at 8:30AM tomorrow...yes that would be the person who rallied the 'important people' in this county to stand up at the board of supervisors meeting and basically BEG for the position..Whilst allowing the position I've been waiting for, and DOING for five years, to be 'let go due to due budget constraints'...At one point this past Summer she also asked three of us to reduce our hours, (so she could get this job).

I don't know why I'm venting here now...I can't sleep...that's probably why...

-living in a Wigwam
Submitted by ghettodefender on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 2:20pm.-

Now that is a fine word. IMHO.

Submitted by Alice on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 1:00am.
Yes. Something can be funny AND mean.
--------------
Providers of sensationalized pseudo-information exploit crazy and unsophisticated people. Read a tabloid someday.

Direct your moral outrage at them.

Lucky I'm in a jovial mood....

One more comment for Alice.

It cannot be mean to repeat nora's belief in chemtrails and bridge's intention to hunker down for the apocalypse.

You cannot deny that chemtrail fans are generally regarded as crazy people and, when you meet one, the stereotype is proved true more often than not.

You cannot deny that survivalists are generally regarded as crazy people and, when you meet one, the stereotype is proved true more often than not.

The butterfly net comment reflects the real world.

Technically, it was bridge who last touted chemtrails, so you can fault me for exercising editorial license. I'm sure nora has been, is, or will be fascinated with chemtrails. That's how it works with stereotypical nutbags: They tend to be attracted to the same shiny objects.

Bat boy lives.

...

there are no 'chem-trails' and all that means..before ya go...

Who dat?

;)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,716409,00.html

Thank Thom Hartmann for this story which he discussed on yesterday's radio show

http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Fidel-Castro-tells-Ahmadin-in-General_...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Bush-Holdover-Might-Be-Pla-by-Roger-Shu...

Oh and please provide all of your resources that prove that
Submitted by Alice on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:18am.
there are no 'chem-trails' and all that means..before ya go...
---------------
I'll give you something better. A few days ago bridge posted a long, rambling rant admonishing "you people" for not waking up to the truths that she sees. Very shortly thereafter, the entire comment was scrubbed (Wed, 09/01/2010 - 12:12am).

Perhaps a nice lady in a white smock is charged with seeing that bridge isn't a danger to herself and others? Whatever the case, "you people" are among the unenlightened people who don't live in bridge's head.

He or She tiz KEWL. I understand what iz being "proclaimed"...
in soooo MANY WAYS...

It All Has Been Said & Done Before Again & Again & Again & etc...

WAR AGAINST INNOCENT HUMANS & INNOCENT ANIMALS

We starve, look at one another, short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Somewhere, inside something there is a rush of
Greatness, who knows what stands in front of
Our lives, I fashion my future on films in space
Silence tells me secretly
Everything
Everything

Manchester, England, England
Manchester, England, England
Across the Atlantic Sea
And I'm a genius, genius
I believe in God
And I believe that God believes in Claude
That's me, that's me, that's me

We starve, look at one another, short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/let-the-sunshine-in-lyrics-hair.html ]

Singing our space songs on a spider web sitar
Life is around you and in you
Answer for Timothy Leary, dearie

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in

;)

Tomgram: Juan Cole, The Media as a Security Threat to America
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog//175292/

The Great Deluge in Pakistan passed almost unnoticed in the United States despite President Obama’s repeated assertions that the country is central to American security.  Now, with new evacuations and flooding afflicting Sindh Province and the long-term crisis only beginning in Pakistan, it has washed almost completely off American television and out of popular consciousness...
-------------------------------------

By: Scarecrow Thursday September 9, 2010 7:17 am

We live in an age of media hungry religious charlatans, from Glenn Beck to the 700 Club to Franklin Graham and Ralph Reed and Father Carpi, to the nationalist Jewish zealots and "Families against other people who aren’t Christians like us." And the two things they all have in common are: they all have an enemy to sell you, and they’re more than happy to take your money and/or your obedience and keep you fired up with hatred and fear to sustain their perpetually prosperous religious campaigns.

If it were up to me, I’d give them Mars, free and clear, and contribute to their space ship. Let them have the entire defense budget to fund their one-way ticket, but leave us out of this, please. But of course, they need us, because we’re the consumers of their hatred and prejudices, and most of us are buying one way or another.

The hateful, unchristian charlatan who realized he can become richer and a celebrity by threatening to burn Korans has now received a plea from the President of the United States not to endanger our troops by giving al Qaeda another recruiting tool. The President’s statement on ABC was quite eloquent, as you can see here. More from the transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you about Pastor Terry Jones. He gave a press conference today. Says he’s going to go through with burning the Korans. Is there anything you can say to him to convince him not to?

OBAMA: If he’s listening, I just hope he understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values of Americans. That this country has been built on the notions of religious freedom and religious tolerance. And as a very practical matter, as commander of chief of the Armed Forces of the United States I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan. We’re already seeing protests against Americans just by the mere threat —

But Mr. Obama has a slight credibility problem, an inconvenient coincidence intruding on the apparent sincerity of his plea. His Justice Department just won a 9th Circuit appeal allowing his Administration to prevent anyone who was ever kidnapped, rendered, imprisoned without trial and/or tortured by his or Mr. Bush’s regimes ever to seek a remedy in the courts of the United States. The message we’re sending to ourselves and our enemies is we can’t have justice in America, because our crimes are state secrets and thus cannot be examined, let alone be the basis for judicial remedies. Marcy Wheeler covered this yesterday; the NYTs Charlie Savage has more.

With the official complicity of one of our highest courts, Mr. Obama is helping to cover up war crimes, and the manner in which he’s doing it — denying access to courts of law and using state secrets to cover up government-sponsored war crimes — should also be seen as crimes.

When someone burns a religious text as a protest against the assumed beliefs of the followers of that religion, there is no doubt the act is Constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. Moreover, depending on your point of view, protesting the violence and hatred of religious zealots — whether they are Christian, Jewish, or whatever — can be seen as a moral act, whatever you may think of the efficacy of burning a book.

The same cannot be said for kidnapping people, rendering them to another country to escape the rule of law, imprisoning them without judicial review, torturing them, and then concealing the truth and denying them any judicial remedy. These are not moral acts; they are all crimes. No Constitutional doctrine should protect them. And yet is there any doubt these criminal acts are being/will be used as recruitment tools?

If the President of the United States is concerned about endangering US troops, as he should be, and he worries about handing an enemy a recruiting tool, I suggest he reconsider his policies of covering up war crimes against people who often aren’t even enemies. It would undermine those recruiting efforts if those swayed by our enemies saw we were trying to be a just nation and that our judicial and executive branches both honored principles premised on our just being decent human beings.

More:
New York Times, Torture is a Crime, Not a Secret

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/70002

National Press Club, Washington DC, 2:00 pm, Thursday, September 9, 2010

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 PRNewswire-USNewswire -- On Thursday September 9, 2010, Mike Gravel and Richard Gage will host a central press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, presenting hard evidence that all three WTC skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, in NYC were destroyed by explosive controlled demolition.
Senator Gravel notes, "Critically important evidence has come forward after the original government building reports were completed."

This press conference will be webcast at AE911Truth.org and hosted concurrently in cities throughout the world.* Following the conference, there will be a mock debate during which public statements made by government investigators and other defenders of the official account will be presented and responded to in multimedia format. "They refuse to debate us in person," says Gage, "so we will let their public statements represent them."

Gage will release a media-friendly summary of his organization's findings, which are based on forensic evidence as well as video and eyewitness testimony that were omitted from official reports.

He will show evidence that the WTC Twin Towers were not destroyed by jet plane impacts or fires, but by pre-set explosives and incendiaries. The non-profit organization, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, will also call for a grand jury investigation of government report lead engineers Shyam Sunder and John Gross of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "They were in a position to know the evidence we have been presenting," says Gage.

Also speaking will be Florida State Professor Lance deHaven-Smith, who coined the academic term State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD). Prof. deHaven-Smith has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, CBS Nightly News with Dan Rather, and other national TV/radio shows.

The DC press conference will be accessible via webcast AE911Truth.org, 2:00 pm September 9, 2010.

* For information on satellite press conferences in your area, contact CongressionalOutreachTeam [at] ae911truth.org.

To arrange print/broadcast interviews, with Richard Gage, AIA, contact Tania at 510-292-4710, or via email at 1000 [at] ae911truth.org.

CONTACT: David Slesinger 410-499-5403

SOURCE Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Congress is prepared to pass S. 510, the shockingly mis-named "Food Safety Bill"

Stop S. 510 NOW!

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY...

Take Action now to make sure that YOUR Senators place a "HOLD" on this bill to insure that it is not passed by "Unanimous Congressional Consent". One Senator, placing, and sustaining, a hold on the bill can force it to be delayed, despite the demands of Monsanto and their friends. HOLD it until December and it dies with the close of this Congress.

This just in: we have word that a Senator from an important western State opposes the bill and may be willing to face down Big Agribiz. Take this Action Item IF there is support from other Senators.

It is urgent that you take action now even if you have raised your voice on this topic before because massed protesting voices are OUR SIDE's lobbyist!

Ban GMOs NOW! Once-And-For-All Before There Is No Going Back

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY...

http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/

“If he’s listening, I just hope he understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans,”...

Rendition challenge dismissed in US

Citing issues of national security, federal court throws out a case challenging the CIA's controversial programme.

Rendition challenge dismissed in US

Citing issues of national security, federal court throws out a case challenging the CIA's controversial programme.

A sharply divided US federal appeals court has thrown out a case challenging a controversial CIA programme that flew terrorism suspects to secret prisons.

The complaint was filed by five terrorism suspects who were arrested shortly after September 11, 2001, and say they were flown by a Boeing subsidiary to prisons around the world where they were tortured. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals cited national security risks when it dismissed the men's case in a 6-5 ruling on Wednesday.

The case could have broad repercussions on the national security debate as it makes its way towards the supreme court, and it casts a spotlight on the controversial "extraordinary rendition" programme the Bush administration used after 9/11.

Under the rendition programme, the CIA transfers suspects overseas for interrogation. Human-rights advocates said renditions were the agency's way to outsource torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted practise.

In 2007, one of the programme's targets, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, told an American journalist, Amy Goodman, about his ordeal.

Blindfolded and beaten

Bashmilah, one of the former prisoners named in the complaint, told Goodman that he was picked up in Amman, Jordan, and was blindfolded and beaten until he signed what he says was a false confession.

"... they said that if I did not confess, they will bring my wife and rape her in front of me. And out of fear for what would happen to my family, I screamed and I fainted. After I came to, I told them that, 'Please, don't do anything to my family. I would co-operate with you in any way you want,' " Bashmila told Goodman. He was then stripped naked, bound and subjected to humiliating treatment.

He was transfered to his home country of Yemen about a year and a half later, and was released a year later after Amnesty International intervened.

The Obama administration said it would continue to send foreign detainees to other countries for questioning, but rarely -

and only if US officials are confident the prisoners will not be tortured....
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/2010/2010/2010/09/201099...

...By the summer of 1971, the state prison in Attica, New York, was ready to explode. Inmates were frustrated with chronic overcrowding, censorship of letters, and living conditions that limited them to one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Some Attica prisoners, adopting the radical spirit of the times, began to perceive themselves as political prisoners rather than convicted criminals...

...On the rainy Monday morning of September 13, an ultimatum was read to the inmates, calling on them to surrender. They responded by putting knives against the hostages' throats. At 9:46 a.m., helicopters flew over the yard, dropping tear gas as state police and correction officers stormed in with guns blazing. The police fired 3,000 rounds into the tear gas haze, killing 29 inmates and 10 of the hostages and wounding 89. Most were shot in the initial indiscriminate barrage of gunfire, but other prisoners were shot or killed after they surrendered. An emergency medical technician recalled seeing a wounded prisoner, lying on the ground, shot several times in the head by a state trooper. Another prisoner was shot seven times and then ordered to crawl along the ground. When he didn't move fast enough, an officer kicked him. Many others were savagely beaten.

In the aftermath of the bloody raid, authorities said the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. One hostage was said to have been castrated. However, autopsies showed that these charges were false and that all 10 hostages had been shot to death by police. The attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congressional investigation.

The Attica riot was the worst prison riot in U.S. history. A total of 43 people were killed, including the 39 killed in the raid, guard William Quinn, and three inmates killed by other prisoners early in the riot. In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures. The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.

In 1974, lawyers representing the 1,281 inmates filed a $2.8 billion class-action lawsuit against prison and state officials. It took 18 years before the suit came to trial, and five more years to reach the damages phase, delays that were the fault of a lower-court judge opposed to the case. In January 2000, New York State and the former and current inmates settled for $8 million, which was divided unevenly among about 500 inmates, depending on the severity of their suffering during the raid and the weeks following....
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riot-at-attica-prison

Published on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 by Al Jazeera English
During War There Are No Civilians
Sitting in on the Rachel Corrie trial alarmingly reveals an open Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians.

by Nora Barrows-Friedman

"During War there are no civilians," that's what "Yossi," an Israeli military (IDF) training unit leader simply stated during a round of questioning on day two of the Rachel Corrie trials, held in Haifa's District Court earlier this week. "When you write a [protocol] manual, that manual is for war," he added.

For the human rights activists and friends and family of Rachel Corrie sitting in the courtroom, this open admission of an Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians -- Palestinian or foreign -- created an audible gasp.

Yet, put into context, this policy comes as no surprise. The Israeli military's track record of insouciance towards the killings of Palestinians, from the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem to the 2008-2009 attacks on Gaza that killed upwards of 1400 men, women and children, has illustrated that not only is this an entrenched operational framework but rarely has it been challenged until recently.....
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/09/08-5

We need this here:

Oh the French...

French Strike Shows Resistance to Austerity

by Amitabh Pal

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/09-6

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/sharron-angles-second-amendm...

She makes a good point. How long will extremists be able to wave their guns around like toys with the intent of nothing more than intimidation?

When is enough enough?

When there is an actual shootout at a rally?

Submitted by Bob26003 on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 2:56pm.
How long will extremists be able to wave their guns around like toys with the intent of nothing more than intimidation?
When is enough enough?
When there is an actual shootout at a rally?

...a good possibility.

Mexican Crime, American Guns
Study of ATF Trace Data Says Three Of Four Guns Used in Mexican Violence Come From US Border States
By RICHARD ESPOSITO
Sept. 7, 2010 —

A shocking new report obtained by ABC News says that as many as three out of four guns used in crimes in Mexico and recovered and capable of being traced can be traced to gun stores just across the border in the U.S. The numbers bolster complaints by Mexican officials that the country's unprecedented bloodshed  28,000 people have died in drug-cartel violence since 2006  is being fueled both by the U.S. appetite for drugs, and by American weapons.

"We can say that there is enormous violence in Mexico and most of the killing is done with guns and most of the guns used in the killing are originally from gun dealers in the United States," said Arkado Gerney, one of the report's authors.

The study, based on Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) data and prepared by the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, shows that three out of four guns used in crimes in Mexico and submitted for tracing were sold in the four U.S. states that border Mexico.

According to the report, from 2006 through 2009, 19,000 guns used in crimes in Mexico were traced to an original sale at a US gun dealer, and the bulk of the guns came from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Texas supplied four in ten of those weapons, and the other three border states provided an additional one third.

Mexican law places stringent restrictions on gun purchase and ownership, though it does permit ownership of shotguns and pistols.
Continue reading here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mexican-crime-american-guns/story?id=11574...

I just wanted to say bravo re Oct 2 "meet" info ... even in Open Mic
;)

WHY do WTP {We The People} Allow?
{...just wonder'n ;}

Credo Action

Subject: Add your name to help Stop Texas oil

Howdy Campers, :)

Texas oil companies are spending millions of dollars to reverse California's landmark global warming law with a deceptive ballot initiative this November.

Fighting them won't be easy, but we can do it by showing how many Californians oppose this dirty proposition, and exposing the out-of-state oil companies behind it.

I just added my name as a citizen endorser of the "Stop Texas Oil: Hell No on 23" campaign.

I thought you might want to add your name as well, and help build the grassroots campaign against the Texas oil companies who are trying to abolish our global warming law.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/noon23_citizen_endorser/?r_by=10963-...

Thanks

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

;)

Your cowardly, hit and run,posts here show you for what you are,a gutless turd.You are someone who i refer to as 'fact lacking'.You have never backed up anything you spew forth with a fact.Your smug attitude reminds me of a fox news host,except not as smart.

So here i present you with a fact, backed up by documentation.After reading,and learning,you may crawl back to Ann Coulter's blog to lick your wounds and seek comfort from like minded trolls.

Rep. Kucinich's HR 2977
Names Chemtrails As
An 'Exotic Weapon'
By Lorie Kramer
seektress@ev1.net
1-10-2

After years of denial from government, military, and environmental agencies, the reality of the controversial issue regarding the covert programs known as Chemtrails has been acknowledged.

On October 2, 2001 Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio introduced H. R. 2977 during the 1st Session of the 107th Congress of the United States. The "Space Preservation Act of 2001" seeks to "preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benfit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons."

In the bill Chemtrails are listed as an "exotic weapons system". Ironically in Section 7 - Definitions. The complete text of the bill may be found at Clifford Carnicom's website, "Chemtrail Crimes and Coverup Documented".

The bill also addresses such things as particle beams, electromagnetic radiation, plasma, or extremely low frequency (ELF) or ultra low frequency (ULF) energy radiation, and mind-control as weapons. All of these areas have been researched and pondered by those investigating chemtrails and working to gain accountability for those programs.

They can't have it both ways. Water vapor is not a weapon.

This is a call to all those of conscience. This is a time when action is needed. It is time. The lies have gone on long enough. We can tell the Air Force and the Navy and the other agencies involved in this criminal activity, "No, You may NOT own the Weather ...Period!" We may not have another chance.

On behalf of the members of Chemtrail Tracking USA, Clifford Carnicom's Board, Chemtrail Central and the many other groups and individuals working diligently to get accountability, we urge your listeners to respond. Contact government and media, demand answers. If not now, when?

We know what we see. We did not consent. We want it stopped.

To see text of HR 2977:
http://www.carnicom.com/hr2977.htm

Rep. Kucinich's Bill is also listed at this US Government site:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/L?c107:./list/c107h.lst:2901

...striving for:

R-E-F-O-R-M spells 21st Century Change!
Submitted by nora on Wed, 02/04/2009 - 7:29pm.
Repeal the Military Commissions, Patriot, Telecom Immunity Acts
Establish MEDICARE for all
Fortify the Infrastructure
Originate Green Solutions to energy, industry, agriculture
Reverse U.S. Militarist Imperialism
Master the Corporations for they must be our servants, not our masters -- regulate, tax, trust-bust them down to size

WHEN WE DEMAND AND WORK FOR THESE THINGS, WE ARE doing something positive and this IS solution-oriented.
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/4376#comment-304507

...just wanted you to know it came to my e-mail & I already signed. {...batting of eyes ;} Tea Cheers... {... terror terrier says ...ARF. ;}

here here

Lest we forget? My favorite post and what we all should be...
Submitted by CeeCee on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 5:45pm.
...striving for:

-----------------
Nice to read you Guy Fawkes!

Now you won't need to watch:
Saints 36
Vikings 20

...Clinton said the Obama administration was considering a type of "Plan Colombia" for Mexico and central America where Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are also plagued by drug-related violence.

The Colombia plan, introduced by Clinton's husband, Bill, bolstered Colombia's security forces with US military personnel, equipment and training. A decade and $7.3bn later Colombia's once-mighty guerrillas are reeling but drug trafficking continues almost unabated.

"There were problems and there were mistakes but it worked," said the secretary of state. The administration needed to figure out "the equivalents" of Plan Colombia for Mexico and Central America, she said....

Hillary Clinton: Mexican drugs war is Colombia-style insurgency

US secretary of state angers Mexican politicians and raises indignation with idea of sending in American military

Hillary Clinton has sparked anger in Mexico by comparing its drug-related violence to an insurgency and hinting that US troops may need to intervene...

Mexico's government rebutted the insurgency analogy. "We do not share these findings, as there is a big difference between what Colombia faced and what Mexico is facing today," said Alejandro Poire, a national security adviser to the country's president, Felipe Calderón.

Mexico had not, for instance, elected a drug lord such as Pablo Escobar to congress, and Mexico's aggressive military-led confrontation of drug cartels showed the country was acting "in time" to spare itself Colombia's fate, said Poire. One valid comparison was that "enormous, gigantic demand for drugs in the United States" continued to nourish narco-traffickers....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/hillary-clinton-mexican-drug...

US INTERFERENCE IN VENEZUELAN ELECTIONS

BY EVA GOLINGER

[Ver este artículo en español aquí]

In 2002, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) arrived in Venezuela with a mission: Remove Hugo Chavez from power...........
http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/09/us-interference-in-venezuelan-election...

I hope everyone is doing okay :-)

I had to take a break from the net cause I
suffered from a nasty root canal infection and repeated visits
to the dentist gave me lots of pain but made him rich - next scary visit is on Monday (Yikes!)
I'll be back soon I hope ... once I feel better.

I wasn't able to read the last two threads except for the last few posts. I have to agree with taozen. Nice to read you Guy Fawkes. Thanks for looking into the Chemtrail subject, too. Thanks goodness for Rep. Kucinich.

Greetings
bridge
xo

Do these pants make my ass look racist?

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/txrcccmkcd--maddow-20100831-IRAQ-WAR-...

Dr. Rachel Maddow, of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, details and gives credit where it is due regarding the recent history of and our exit from, the Iraq War.

Hello ...
Submitted by bridge on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 9:20pm.
=
good you are getting attended to.

Submitted by Guy Fawkes on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 4:49pm.
Your cowardly, hit and run,posts here show you for what you are,a gutless turd.You are someone who i refer to as 'fact lacking'.You have never backed up anything you spew forth with a fact...
----------
Nice try. You could have informed your audience that HR 2977 was scrubbed of references to chemtrails and mind control, and replaced with HR 3616 in 2002 with wording explicitly designed to ban the weaponization of space...as in outer space...but you did not.

You could have added that Kucinich introduced legislation again in 2005, again devoid of references to chemtrails and the like, and again designed to ban the weaponization of space.

Of course, providing such information would damage your cause...which is why it is omitted on nutbag web pages that cite HR 2977 as proof of chemtrails, or that cite HR 2977 as proof of Kucinich's belief in chemtrails, or that cite HR 2977 as evidence to support similarly bogus claims.
------------------------------
http://contrailscience.com/kucinich-chemtrails-and-hr-2977/

One of the more pervasive myths regarding “chemtrails” is that current presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich tried to have them banned by an act of congress, but was pressured by the government to modify the act to remove the mention of “chemtrails”.

So what really happened? In a nutshell, Kucinich did not write the bill (or read it, until too late), the focus of the bill is nothing to do with chemtrails, it was written by UFO enthusiasts trying to:

1.Nullify a vast conspiracy by the “military-industrial complex”
2.Allow the use of suppressed alien technology for free energy
3.Avoid accidentally shooting down (or scaring away) visiting aliens.

They listed a bunch of weird weapons, including mind control, tectonic weapons and (very briefly) chemtrails. The bill was re-written several time in less unusual language to give it chance of passing, but ultimately fizzled in committee.
The specific act was HR 2977, the “Space Preservation Act of 2001″, the stated goal of which was:

“To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons.”

The initial version of the act is the only one that makes mention of “exotic weapons systems”, listing several technologies that will be familiar to conspiracy theorists:

(i) electronic, psychotronic, or information weapons;
(ii) chemtrails;
(iii) high altitude ultra low frequency weapons systems;
(iv) plasma, electromagnetic, sonic, or ultrasonic weapons;
(v) laser weapons systems;
(vi) strategic, theater, tactical, or extraterrestrial weapons; and
(vii) chemical, biological, environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons.

Yes, it even includes “extraterrestrial weapons”, meaning weapons created by aliens (or created from alien technology from crashed flying saucers at Roswell), as well as psychotronic (mind control) weapons. Yet somehow “chemtrails” gets all the attention here...
-------------------------------
There are many refutations of arguments from chemtrail conspiracy fans because chemtrail conspiracy arguments are various and not necessarily supportive of each other. The best place to start a refutation is with physics.

Aerosols (or atomized particles) deployed at 5,000 or 10,000 or 30,000 feet don't fall like rocks. They move laterally in upper level winds. They move laterally in lower level winds. They disperse. They can require days to reach the ground. Migrating birds and insects take advantage of the gravity-countering effect of winds.

If this were not true, clouds would fall on your house instead of passing by. Clouds can dissipate entirely. Clouds can grow larger. Clouds can change altitude.

The complex physics involved in atmospheric conditions, and the unpredictability of where a deployed particle will arrive and when, make "chemtrails" an unreliable candidate to accomplish anything with specificity.

That's just the physics part of the deal. Conspirators are not likely to waste resources on a deployment plan that is unpredictable and rarely hits its intended target, or is diluted in the atmosphere, or settles onto their own houses.

"But what if the target is the entire earth?" say the fans of conspiracy. If that's the case, it can be done from trucks. Or squirt guns. Or from the top of high rise buildings.

Chemtrails are fantasies for obsessive conspiracy idiots who would do well to find a more productive hobby. The visible condensation trail is all that they have to arouse their suspicions. It is doubtful that a nefarious chemtrail could not be designed so that it is invisible to people on the ground.

Oh, and enjoy your bunkers.

So the cops called me...again (for the second time tonight).They wanted to know what to do with this car that had caught fire in front of my workplace melting the plastic letters on our awning.

(They had my number because I was parked in by their traffic stop around Yoo time. I am the only one they could find.)

So...you can't really say "How the fuck should I know?" in so many words to a cop...

----
I had a request (no not from Sam; or not-Sam) that I change the original title of this post, which was "The cops called me...Again." OK. I don't really think it will be understood at all unless and until one reads what's underneath...should one care to...

But um...whatevs. I can certainly understand why people would be jumpy. I'm not playing anymore. So, with that in mind, I wouldn't misinterpret or over-interpret anything I might post here.

the Norman Goldman show.

thought I'd share these.

• More picts and Video_ Here _<

I listen to Norman Goldman, but I thought only on weekends. :o
:):(

A coalition of environmental and farming groups has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) accusing it of sidestepping a ban on the planting of genetically modified (GM) sugar beets.

A federal judge ruled last month that the planting of GM sugar beets should be halted until the USDA completes an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), expected to take two years. This year’s beets will still be allowed to be harvested and processed as usual, the judge ruled, but sugar farmers have warned that US sugar supply could be disrupted from 2011. GM sugar beets account for 95 percent of those being grown in the US, according to USDA figures, with beet sugar providing about half of the total US sugar supply.

Last week, the USDA said it would work out temporary rules to allow further planting of GM sugar beets despite the ban, saying that such steps “respond to the concerns of producers while complying with the court's ruling”.

But a coalition of organic farmers and conservationists – represented by Earthjustice and attorneys from the Center for Food Safety – has challenged the USDA in a federal district court in San Francisco, claiming that its issuance of temporary permits for the planting of GM sugar beets violates the court’s ruling.

Executive director of the Center for Food Safety Andrew Kimbrell said in a statement that the USDA is “acting as a rogue agency in illegally allowing these crops to be planted without the required hard look at their environmental and economic dangers.”

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said last week that it was working with sugar beet seed producers to allow planting of seedlings in the fall, under the strict condition that they should not be allowed to flower.

However, the plaintiffs argue that the beets could still contaminate neighboring fields.

Currently Monsanto is the only supplier of GM sugar beets, which have been modified for resistance to its Roundup-brand herbicide. No one from Monsanto was available to comment on the lawsuit prior to publication.

You must be so tired and overworked from all the lefty blogs your paid to troll,you only went to one website to try to save yourself(the first site to pop up on google by the way,and a chemtrail debunking site at that)

As you are to lazy to do the research yourself let me show you what Rep. Kucinich said about his bill(which he did read before it was introduced )

The bill, HR 2977, specifically outlaws a variety of weapons detailed in the December 6, 2001, Columbus Alive article "Stormy Weather," which exposed allegations of secret government aerial spraying activities. Kucinich's bill explicitly outlaws "chemtrails."

Alive asked Kucinich why he would introduce a bill banning so-called chemtrails when the U.S. government routinely denies such things exist and the U.S. Air Force has routinely called chemtrail sightings "a hoax."

"The truth is there's an entire program in the Department of Defense, 'Vision for 2020,' that's developing these weapons," Kucinich responded. Kucinich says he plans to reintroduce a broader version of the bill later this month. "Plasma, electromagnetics, sonic or ultrasonic weapons [and] laser weapons systems" were among those banned by HR 2977.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FIT203A.html

As all right wing trolls do,you tried to equate Kucinich's bill with UFO's and aliens to discredit and confuse.That tactic is so old and,frankly,lazy,i'm suprised you didn't put more effort into it.

As to why the bill was shelved,do you really think a congress controlled by Bush,cheney and Tom delay would allow this bill to go forward.Come on man you know better than that.

The article continues:

As for chemtrail skeptics, they might want to consult Rutgers University Political Science Professor Leonard Cole's book Clouds of Secrecy: The Army' s Germ Warfare Test Over Populated Areas. Chemtrail deniers are apparently happy with the thought that their beloved paternalistic government would engage in aerial spraying over densely populated areas.

U.S. Representative Marty Sabo, a Democrat from Minnesota, denounced "the secret Army program to spray Minneapolis and other cities with chemicals in the 1950s and '60s," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in September 1994. "The idea that the government would use its own citizens as guinea pigs is appalling, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Sabo told a House subcommittee investigating the secret spraying, which used fluorescent tracers to mark wind patterns.

As for the Army, it argues that the secret Cold War-era spraying was not "human experimentation" since it didn't target any specific individuals and the zinc cadmium sulfide used was harmless. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists all cadmium compounds as known cancer-causing agents.

Former students of Clinton Elementary in south Minneapolis told an investigating panel from the National Research Council that the Army's secret chemical spraying adversely affected their health, according to the Star Tribune.

Skeptics who continue to insist the government would never be involved in secret aerial spraying, particularly in Ohio, may want to address their questions to the C-130 aircrews from the 910th Airlift Wing stationed at Youngstown's Air Reserve Station. In July 2000, an Air Force press release bragged, "Fifteen service members from military installations in Germany and England were at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, 8-12 May, learning how to use chemicals to destroy the enemy. The seven airmen and eight soldiers learned how to plan, execute and oversee the entire process of applying pesticides by air." The press release said the Youngstown air unit will only be used against "insects with their deadly diseases."

Apparently insects take many forms. During the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in November 1999, CNN reported that a military air unit with pathogen capacity to induce sickness in humans was deployed against the demonstrators.

Yes,insects do take many forms indeed.Give my best to Ann Coulter.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says he's considering a White House run.

President George W. Bush's top arms control official and later the nation's top diplomat at the U.N., Bolton told Fox Business Network on Thursday that he is weighing a White House bid against President Barack Obama in 2012 because he feels national security has faded from the public debate.

"I am thinking about it because I think legitimate issues of national security should be more at the center of the national debate than they have been for the last two years," said Bolton, who also worked for the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/10/2211665/political-insider-john-bolt...

Now we get the real neoliberalism:

President Barack Obama has chosen Austan Goolsbee as the new head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, U.S. administration officials said on Thursday, promoting a longtime adviser from his inner policy circle.

The announcement will ensure continuity within Obama's economic team at an important time as the president tries to lift the faltering economy, and as speculation swirls around the future of other senior White House players, particularly the president's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Obama is to announce his pick to replace Christina Romer as chair of the CEA at a White House news conference planned for 11:00 a.m. Eastern time (1500 GMT) on Friday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6890C720100910

At Yale, Goolsbee was a member of the Yale Political Union, the improv comedy troupe Just Add Water, Skull and Bones, and the Yale Debate Association....

He is known in political circles as a centrist....

Jon Stewart describes him as "Eliot Ness meets Milton Friedman"

...And unlike Ms. Romer or most past chairmen, Mr. Goolsbee has a previous, friendly relationship with the president. Mr. Goolsbee was an economics professor at the University of Chicago when Mr. Obama taught at its law school. He provided economic advice when Mr. Obama ran for the Senate and for president.

Mr. Goolsbee was at the center of a controversy during the Democratic race for the presidential nomination when it was reported that he had told a Canadian official in Chicago that Mr. Obama’s protectionist campaign talk was “more reflective of political maneuvering than policy” he would support as president. While Mr. Goolsbee denied the account, as an economist he does espouse a free trade philosophy....

Mr. Goolsbee, who has a free-market bent, opposed bailing out Chrysler. He did not prevail, but Mr. Obama personally sought his arguments....

(But Mr. Geithner, who did not know Mr. Obama previously, has become one of the president’s most trusted advisers, credited with successfully managing the financial bailout and recovering most of the taxpayers’ money. He is expected to remain for some time.

Asked on PBS’s “NewsHour” this week about the calls for him to be fired, Mr. Geithner quipped, “It’s an old idea. A lot of people have had it, and my wife had it first, I think.” He added, “I’m going to do this as long as the president asks me to do it.”

Similarly, Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council, is not expected to leave soon, officials say, despite his history of run-ins with other advisers, and Mr. Obama’s occasional impatience with the policy vetting process that Mr. Summers oversees.

Mr. Obama and the other advisers nonetheless value Mr. Summers’s contributions as a renowned economist and former secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, these officials say....)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/business/10adviser.html?hp

Fucking perfect. Hopefully, the Rethugs will start impeachment proceedings next December, and just tie-up the Administration completely for two years.

Root Canal pain sounds too horrifying to even ponder...! I'm so sorry you're going through that...Clove oil is good for relieving tooth pain, as you probably already know...But oh man...my heart goes out to your mouth...(but not in a weird zombie way.. :)

Another reason why I think it is important

-----------------------
This week on Ring of Fire Radio, author Andrew Bacevich
http://www.bu.edu/ir/faculty/alphabetical/bacevich/
will be here to tell us why the US must shift resources
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-bacevich/the-end-of-military-histo_...
away from the military and stop acting like the world’s police
officer, in order to help solve the major problems facing us in our
own country.

On the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Dr. C. Welton
Gaddy http://www.stateofbelief.com/
, president of the Interfaith Alliance
http://www.interfaithalliance.org/
, will enter the Ring to discuss the dangerous rise of religious
intolerance in America.

Blogger Chauncey DeVega
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/02/when-stupid-people-dont-k...
will be here to talk about some of the biggest threats posed by Glenn
Beck, including the fact that he’s convinced his less than
intelligent followers that they are, in fact, some of the brightest
people on the planet.

And political satirist Matt Filipowicz http://matthewf.net/
will be here to run through some of the most ridiculous news stories
from the last week, including the ongoing gibberish from the Right
about the need for “trickle down economics.”

~~~~

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5975#comments

Submitted by Guy Fawkes on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 9:39am.
You must be so tired and overworked from all the lefty blogs your paid to troll,you only went to one website to try to save yourself(the first site to pop up on google by the way,and a chemtrail debunking site at that)...
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Another nice try. You get extra bonus points for creating another conspiracy theory (Bait as paid provocateur) as is your fanatical wont.

Where to begin? I should begin by stating that I am fully aware that I am wasting my time. Religious fanaticism, in all its guises, cannot be swayed. Guy Fawkes (the infamous one) was a religious fanatic first and foremost which speaks to the theory that other, including sociopolitical, fanaticism taps into the same brain receptors.

Despite the damning evidence you present (that I Googled keywords unknown to you and picked the first hit), my awareness of The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy reaches back decades. Despite what Wikipedia states on the subject, The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy dates back to Gunner Joe and The Great Commie Conspiracy that, in turn, was birthed on the heels of the Potsdam conference. Over the years, the conspiracy genre has gained adherents as disparate as the John Birch Society and End Times Protestantism. The subjects within the conspiracy genre have steadily increased to include unrelated fantasies extending from water supplies adulterated with mind-control agents to moonwalks faked to [fill in the blank...the conspiracy theories proffered to explain the purpose behind that one vary wildly].

Thanks to Science Fiction in literature and other art forms (which I enjoy to this day), we have Frankenstein and Charly. We have Godzilla and On The Beach. We have The Time Machine and Fahrenheit 451. Most of the examples touch on social science fiction even if they are not dedicated to it. The fascination with science gone horribly awry, and the secretive antagonists who make it go awry (either intentionally or accidentally) is undeniable.

There are three elements (among many) to note in social science fiction. The first is widespread dissemination or unleashing of a scientific creation (air and water supplies are perennial favorites). The second is a secretive individual or cabal behind the dissemination of a scientific creation. The third is either the intentional result of the dissemination (i.e. "the diabolical plan") or the accidental (and incidental) result realized in pursuit of an unrelated goal.

The differences within the third element are very important. Dr. Frankenstein did not set out to kill a child. The villagers identified his creation as a threat to everyone. A Supervillain sets out to dominate the world with his scientific creation (see Dr. Simon Bar Sinister for details).

The creators of air pollution did not set out to poison us all. They were chasing dollars via organic chemistry (science) to create molecules to do work for society. Air (and water) pollution was an unintended consequence that, after it was identified, was entrenched in a societal system that had grown to depend upon the scientific creations. At that point it was easy to find villains who were resisting new pollution standards because it hurt their profits, but their goal is (and always was) to make money by selling a useful product, not to poison their customers. In some cases they are guilty of choosing greed over the common good. In other cases they are simply making a living in a business that happens to produce pollution, which could be said of damned near all of us.

Back to my awareness of The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy. In the late Eighties I lived one-hundred yards away from a turbine engineer who was among the local group of friends and acquaintances. He was a private contractor hired to consult on large engine problems and applications (marine engines, electrical generation engines, aircraft engines powered by various fuels, usually diesel or jet fuel). He was also an organic gardener who sold his food and food products. He was also interested in religion as a cultural influence throughout history. He was interested in all cultural influences as anyone interested in the cultural influence of religion must necessarily be.

In the late Eighties and prior, the Internet was not available to The Everyman but, as you might imagine, a turbine engineer who was also interested in cultural phenomena was privy to The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy. As a turbine consultant schooled in organic chemistry, he was randomly privy to liquids being hauled to airports and loaded onto ships and being produced in refineries. Needless to say, The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy crossed his territory from different angles. He understood turbine engines and the condensation trails emanating from aircraft. He understood marine and aircraft payloads. He had insider information on what was being produced in quantity at petroleum refineries. He was part of a world-wide engineering community that included discussions of military applications among many other subjects.

So he studied The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy and sometimes regaled the rest of us with the claims being made on several different fronts. Frankly, it seemed like an odd interest at the time although detailed scientific analysis was always interesting to someone in our group that included, but was not limited to, pilots and sailors and military contractors and an airport fireman.

Many years later, long after we had gone our separate ways, I accidentally discovered on the Internet that he has continued his study of the cultural phenomenon that is The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy...as well as continuing his interests in organic farming and the influence of religion on societies. It is as odd as it is funny that Guy Fawkes would conclude that my awareness and knowledge of The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy began with a Google search yesterday rather than decades ago during conversations with an organic gardener who happened to also be a turbine engineer. I have researched every Conspiracy Theory as it has been presented to me over the years. The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy is so old that no human could possibly read in a lifetime all of the garbage published about it on the Internet, let alone read the garbage and the bona fide information in toto.

I feel the same way now about The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy as I did in the late Eighties: It's interesting as a cultural phenomenon, just as all Conspiracy Theories are interesting as a cultural genre akin to religion in the zeal of its adherents: People can live in fear of a wrathful god or people can live in fear a wrathful cabal of conspirators. It's all the same to me. Fear is fear and, after a person is addicted, it is difficult to get the monkey off his back.

More importantly, my former friend's dedication to the specifics of The Great Chemtrail Conspiracy is, in my opinion, as unproductive as the dedication of chemtrail believers. All of that time would be better spent solving air and water pollution problems which have been positively identified and are unequivocal.

But, hey, to each his own. Some people would prefer to search for the arsonist, who may or may not exist, while the fire burns. Other people would rather find a hose to put the fire out. To his credit, my former friend has dedicated far more time to research and development of organic farming techniques that to debunking conspiratorial fantasies.

"to Bait" The Crank regarding ChemTrails...? ;);(

;)