Saturday, July 26, 2008
McCain coming to Springfield, Mo. - Political action at local gas station.
Yes, he's coming to Missouri and readers are already organizing protests. A reader forwards notice of a one in Springfield against McCain's energy policies supporting Big Oil and the environment. Here's the skinny at: MoveOn.org Political Action
Richest Americans See Income Share Grow - MarketWatch
Gee, this one must be about the many happy face Republicans out here in the Flyover Zone, out here "we is stoned" on Bob Dole selling viagra and keeping the grand-daughters off birth control (until they reach the age of 45). The primary elections are coming up, and since there is only one party in Kansas and nobody runs against them; the Republican mafia is flourishing with happy-face news, "things are great in Kansas." Sen. Pat Roberts is filming his campaign commercials in nostalgic sepia through gauze and former Congressman Jim Ryun is running again across our television screens. It's just wonderful out here. Quit complaining, it's peachie-keen and apple pie. Support the state highway anti-littering motto, "Kansas, Don't spoil it!" Now get back in the $4 a gallon chain gang, shut-up and get back to work for us Republicans. Read how we are the Richest Americans and we like it that way.
How Wall Street Wrecked Your Retirement | AlterNet
A reader sends this along to the "cheerful idiots in Kansas" celebrating the rising price of grains, big box chain stores, the rise of gambling and growing booze (ethanol) to burn in our cars. Read more
Friday, July 25, 2008
We're a Nation of Lemmings | This Can't Be Happening!
And the cliff is coming up real soon .... Dave Lindorff writes: "Listening to the endless stream of cars passing my house every day, and knowing, from watching them from my mailbox, that they are almost all carrying just one person, either commuting to work or running some kind of errand, I know we are headed for disaster. ..." Fellow Lemmings, it's a happening at This Can't Be Happening!
Prediction markets | Fortune telling | Economist.com
One of the old and more shallow reasons to be a Republican was it meant you were rich! Sort of like a status symbol, it went along with having a "trophy" wife, gambling, etc. Now that has all fizzled away with the base being more likely a religious tongue talking Christian Zionist enslaved to Neoconning bankers, televangelists and big media moguls. Here is a reader forward where now you can get rich off betting on a country going broke! Get your kicks at the Economist
New Interest in Vertical Farms for Urban Areas - NYTimes.com
They better do it, quick! Another reader forward from the cornucopian techno-future.
Beware Charismatic Men Who Preach ‘Change’.. - John McCain
An independent leaning conservative reader forwards this interesting post. [excerpt] "I’ve thought a lot about the anniversary this year. The election-year rhetoric has made me think a lot about Cuba and what transpired there. In the late 1950s, most Cubans thought Cuba needed a change, and they were right. So when a young leader came along, every Cuban was at least receptive. ..." Read more
Mike Whitney: Visualizing Dow 6,000
A reader forward with the comment "let's hope he's wrong, but he 'visualized' the housing bubble before it happened." [excerpt] "Going to the bank? Don't forget the protective head-gear!
The truth is the banking system is built on a foundation of pure quicksand and its only a matter of time before the Bush's truncheon-wielding Robocops start tasering old ladies and gassing portly white guys for massing in front of the boarded up doors of their local bank. Move along, now. ..." Read Whitney
The truth is the banking system is built on a foundation of pure quicksand and its only a matter of time before the Bush's truncheon-wielding Robocops start tasering old ladies and gassing portly white guys for massing in front of the boarded up doors of their local bank. Move along, now. ..." Read Whitney
Palestinian family fight settlers, The National, 24 July 2008
Not to be missed - "on-the-ground" correspondent Jonathan Cook writes: "It must be the smallest Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories: just half a house. But Palestinian officials and Israeli human rights groups are concerned that it represents the first stage of a plan to eradicate the historical neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, cutting off one of the main routes by which Palestinians reach the Old City and its holy sites. ..." While those photo moments of Obama with the Israeli saturate U. S. media and McCain jokes with the Neocons, as one of their own, you can still find out what's really going on Read more
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Jim Hightower | DHS’S BORDER FENCE WILL SPLIT CAMPUS
Gawd dammit, I forgot to run Jim Hightower's radio commentary yesterday, as well as the Lawrence Sustainability Network news. Hell between the crazy atmospherics fouling up my satellite connections and the spotty cell phone coverage so notorious in rural Kansas - I'm lucky my horse still lets me ride her, sometimes I feel like some electro-magnetic sponge. Here's Jim's latest, hear tell he's up in Minnesota this week. Read "America's #1 Populist" (until he meets some Kansans I know) always controversial and a tad bit funny - Jim Hightower
It's a Class War, Stupid : Rolling Stone
A smart reader sends along this forward, just in time for the Obama mania sweeping "Old Europe" ever hopeful for some change from the morbidly malignant foreign policy of the current administration. Rolling Stone writer, Matt Taibbi pounds a drum with:
[excerpt] "In these pieces we already see the candidates trying on, like shoes, the various storylines we might soon have hammered into our heads like wartime slogans. Most hilarious from my viewpoint is the increasingly real possibility that the Republicans will eventually decide that their best shot against Obama is to pull out the old "He's a flip-flopper" strategy — which would be pathetic, given that this was the same tired tactic they used against John Kerry four years ago, were it not for the damning fact that it might actually work again. (I'm actually not sure sometimes what is more repulsive: the bosh they trot out as campaign "issues," or the enthusiasm with which the public buys it.)..." Read it now because It's a Class War, Stupid
[excerpt] "In these pieces we already see the candidates trying on, like shoes, the various storylines we might soon have hammered into our heads like wartime slogans. Most hilarious from my viewpoint is the increasingly real possibility that the Republicans will eventually decide that their best shot against Obama is to pull out the old "He's a flip-flopper" strategy — which would be pathetic, given that this was the same tired tactic they used against John Kerry four years ago, were it not for the damning fact that it might actually work again. (I'm actually not sure sometimes what is more repulsive: the bosh they trot out as campaign "issues," or the enthusiasm with which the public buys it.)..." Read it now because It's a Class War, Stupid
Senate Republicans attacking Slattery for reducing national deficit in 1993
Like bulls in a china closet these Senate Republicans are thrashing about at election challengers, like Jim Slattery, while running up the largest deficit in the history of the country. Immoral hypocrites, run them out of office!
Willie Nelson agrees to Farm Aid-type event in support of Impeachment - Democracy For the Heart of America | Google Groups
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Chris Hedges: "Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy"
Imperialism wins ... now come home and fight like Hell for a future!
If there is a God, that slippery Devil of a notion - then it knows I suffer the Dear Readers who forward posts like this, almost as much as I suffer the Dear Leaders running this country into the landfill of corruption and slavery.
A Pulitzer prize winning war correspondent, has written one of the most damning essays on the dark future ahead for enlightened citizens wanting a responsive government. I have friends who can't find jobs, graduates from the blow dried Department of Journalism (name your university) talented, decent and fair people who do not deserve to have their sharp brains dashed against the tree of commerce. I have for decades long railed for more J. A. Waylands in this land to no avail. I shall continue to do so with some new tools and blood in my hand.
I take to the internet like any other foolhardy worker with a new tool to be turned into a weapon against the war-loving capitalist class of parasites running this asylum of lunatics called the United States. Hedges sends his readers off on an empty endless search for "trustworthy and impartial sources of information" that journey is wrought with idealism dependent on a readership that can read. Julius Augustus Wayland, founding editor and publisher for the largest socialist newspaper ever printed in the United States, in 1895 Girard, Ks. said, "The great battles of the world have not been fought and won by polished humanity."
If there is a God, that slippery Devil of a notion - then it knows I suffer the Dear Readers who forward posts like this, almost as much as I suffer the Dear Leaders running this country into the landfill of corruption and slavery.
A Pulitzer prize winning war correspondent, has written one of the most damning essays on the dark future ahead for enlightened citizens wanting a responsive government. I have friends who can't find jobs, graduates from the blow dried Department of Journalism (name your university) talented, decent and fair people who do not deserve to have their sharp brains dashed against the tree of commerce. I have for decades long railed for more J. A. Waylands in this land to no avail. I shall continue to do so with some new tools and blood in my hand.
I take to the internet like any other foolhardy worker with a new tool to be turned into a weapon against the war-loving capitalist class of parasites running this asylum of lunatics called the United States. Hedges sends his readers off on an empty endless search for "trustworthy and impartial sources of information" that journey is wrought with idealism dependent on a readership that can read. Julius Augustus Wayland, founding editor and publisher for the largest socialist newspaper ever printed in the United States, in 1895 Girard, Ks. said, "The great battles of the world have not been fought and won by polished humanity."
You, dear reader, are not "polished humanity" and I beseech you, demand of you - to stand up with your eyes wide open, fight and win our future. Let us take history into our hands!
I am not happy with Mr. Hedges. I consider his words too important to discard into a rubbish heap in my backyard to compost and rot with the advert soaked follies called "newspapers" today. Someone should rage at this man for answers to the here and now, not pieties on some spiritual plane - useless, futile religious spheres of influence. Mr. Hedges, I love you, but please go back to your monastary or your ivory towered sanctuary - we need a fighting partisan populist and lively press.
Chris Hedges is like so many I know now days what I call a "closet comrade"; educated, once bright and shining, but rusted from lack of use, because the readers are too stupid, or thick-headed and obsessed with getting rich - they have the medicine in their minds but refuse to say it - socialism and individual liberty.
[excerpt] "The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print. ..."
Read Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy at the important Truthdig, but with a critical eye and never forget to keep in mind - "We can do more and better, together."
I am not happy with Mr. Hedges. I consider his words too important to discard into a rubbish heap in my backyard to compost and rot with the advert soaked follies called "newspapers" today. Someone should rage at this man for answers to the here and now, not pieties on some spiritual plane - useless, futile religious spheres of influence. Mr. Hedges, I love you, but please go back to your monastary or your ivory towered sanctuary - we need a fighting partisan populist and lively press.
Chris Hedges is like so many I know now days what I call a "closet comrade"; educated, once bright and shining, but rusted from lack of use, because the readers are too stupid, or thick-headed and obsessed with getting rich - they have the medicine in their minds but refuse to say it - socialism and individual liberty.
[excerpt] "The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print. ..."
Read Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy at the important Truthdig, but with a critical eye and never forget to keep in mind - "We can do more and better, together."
Mike Whitney The Democrats are the Real Problem
We are really out there, alone in the wilderness with only savage choices ahead. Despair will prolong our suffering, time is stalking us like a predator and our inaction and grief will bring our deaths. The only question is what shall we do, before it is done to us? Read Whitney
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Informed Comment: Obama in Iraq; Der Spiegel Proves al-Maliki Story Correct; Series of Bombings hit Baghdad
A reader forwards this eye-opening post that refutes much that is being reported in the media today about the surge working. Professor Juan Cole writes about Barack Obama's visit to Iraq, as well as the recent attempt by the Bush administration to "muddy the waters this weekend regarding the interview of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with Der Spiegel, in which he expressed approval of Barack Obama's plan to get US troops out of Iraq within 16 months of next January." - FCF emphasis. Peel the scales off your eyes by reading more at Informed Comment
Vindictive? Fed "watch list" suffers blowback
Ivan Eland writes: "TSA’s swollen terrorism watch list" with: After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA’s swollen terrorism watch list. ..." Read more at: Consortiumnews.com
t r u t h o u t | Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship writes: [excerpt] "Guess who gave the most money to candidates in this 2007-08 federal election cycle? That's right, the financial services and real estate industries. They stuffed nearly $250 million into the candidate coffers. The about-to-be-bailed-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together are responsible for about half the country's $12 trillion mortgage debt. Lisa Lerer of Politico.com reports that over the past decade, the two financial giants with the down-home names have spent nearly $200 million on campaign contributions and lobbying. According to Lerer, 'They've stacked their payrolls with top Washington power brokers of all political stripes, including Republican John McCain's presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis; Democrat Barack Obama's original vice presidential vetter, Jim Johnson, and scores of others now working for the two rivals for the White House.' ..." Read more
Slattery for Senate
Slattery campaign HQ has put out an "adopt an ad" note to counter the barrage of Roberts television ads bombarding Kansans. Go to: Slattery for Senate and watch Jim's first comeback. "Go get him Jim!"
Former Top Criminal Prosecutor on Terrorism Watch List | ABA Journal - Law News Now
Geezus, I sure like posting this stuff sent along to you the reader from another Dear Reader! Here's the comment sent along with it: "It's amazing that the Justice Department would take the position that no one is entitled to a procedure for determining whether he or she is on such a list by mistake, considering the inconveniences the government imposes upon those whom some functionary puts on it, whether maliciously or in good-faith error. But that's where we are. ..." Even the lawyers are feeling the heat! "Take your shoes off now and prepared to get strip searched!" Hold it, first read this post in the prestigious ABA Journal
You Say You Want a Revolution? - CommonDreams.org
Forwarded by yet another Dear Reader, as brain fodder for the commons with this comment: "Note: Grace Boggs is a legendary figure in the history of American radical/progressive political movements...there are a number of parallels between what is going on in Detroit (70,000 vacant lots!!) and in Kansas City, though they seem to be ahead of us in organizing... "
Don't wait for the elections to make change. Read You Say You Want a Revolution? and get out there and do it.
Don't wait for the elections to make change. Read You Say You Want a Revolution? and get out there and do it.
Senator Obama Goes to Africa | Documentary Films .NET
A reader forwards this link to a film review. Thank you! Read it here.