Whisperings from the AetherSnippets scarffed off the internet and more. Congrats and Best Wishes to President OBThe web is buzzing with people trying to tell the future. They offer advise to and critique on the new administration. It's mostly a lot of bull****. I'll tell you all a secret: Nobody knows which way The President Elect is going to move yet. Because he is black his presidency will be viewed under a microscope forever. That's a heavy burden at a pivitol period. There's a good chance that he will be the best president ever. Things look tough. One thing he has going for him is that he has broad support. Every sane person wants to see him succeed. Another is that he's smart. We all know what the issues are and what's at stake. I'm not going to think too much about what he's going to do until he does it. You know I liked Rev. Wright. He's correct about some things. To me that's a good sign. Illiteracy in the USThere are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. Hmm, Cuba has a 98% literacy rate. Dirt poor but they have a lower infant mortality rate, higher life expectancy and higher literacy rate. Is that embarrassing or what? "Public"? BroadcastingNPR and PBS are subject to the same pressure from advertisers as other broadcasters. In addition they are subject to pressure from politicians who have power over a part of their budget. NPR and PBS participated in the Pentagon Propaganda Program. NPR has shilled for Walmart and takes money from Clear Channel Communications. PBS has run ads from the National Mining Association that promote Mountaintop Removal Mining. Good people in both organizations have resisted pressure from private and government interests but the fact remains that some have also tailored content to placate those same interests (ie: The ads portraying Exxon as a "green" company and Pentagon PSYOPS contributor Robert H. Scales Jr.). Examination of issues like Mountaintop Removal Mining could have been done but I believe it hasn't been because funding from energy companies would be cut. Examination of governmental issues might be more truthful without government funding on the line. Freedom of Speech is a Joke“I join many Nebraskans in disappointment that Bill Ayers has been invited to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, his past involvement in a violent protest group and incendiary comments are not consistent with the agenda of unity that we need in America today.” One might not be surprised if such a comment came from Sarah Palin but it came from Ben Nelson, a Democrat Senator from Nebraska. Not only does Mr Ayres have to put up with death threats but now has to deal with hypocritical politicians who think free speech applies only to their views. The Party view. The corporate view. Nelson says he wants "unity" but how do you get that when you're trying to exclude the views of others? Nelson is a blatant ass wipe. Mr Ayres must have something important to say otherwise a big man like Ben Nelson wouldn't bother trying to suppress him. Nacy Pelosi Approves of Torture-- So Pelosi knew about torture in 2002, and had no problems with it. It now seems apparent to many members of the impeachment movement that, sometime after the CIA briefing, Pelosi realized that her acquiescence on torture cost her any presumed moral stature, and had robbed her of any ability to challenge Bush and Cheney on anything, including funding for the Iraq war. If Pelosi were to have joined those calling for Bush and Cheney to be held accountable for, to be formally impeached for, the many, many crimes with which they have been accused, Bush and Cheney could, quite fairly, say, “Too late, Pelosi! We told you all about our torture programs way back in 2002, and you gave a big thumbs-up -- if we’re impeachable, YOU’RE impeachable!” -- Read More Nancy Pelosi approved tortureAsperger's SyndromeIt's not a pretty thought: If Bush had gone into Iraq, subdued the populace, secured the oil, few in the US would have complained no matter how many Iraqis died. If a million babies were killed the war would have been successful as long as we got out quick and clean with the oil. The world would have been at his (Bush's) feet. We'd be in Iran now killing those heathens. If we got out of there "clean" Bush would be hailed as the "Great Liberator" we'd have a parade and a triumphal arch to commerate his victory. Americans would go along with that. Go along even at the price of their civil liberties. That's what kind of nation we are. Let's face it. We gladly consume the spoils of human slaughter. We're cannibals. My friend the medicine man was telling me about Asperger's Syndrome which is a form of autism where a person can't judge the outcome of their actions. They lack empathy for others so they can't foresee the reaction to their behavior or respond "properly" to the actions of others. America has a sort of Asperger's. A wilful denial of where our actions are going to lead which is why we are in the mess we're in now. People who should know better, don't. Our behavior mimics a mental disorder. As a nation we are in deep denial and the prognosis is not good. Democrats Betray Us AgainPut a smiley face on a Republcan and you get a DemocratObama’s betrayal is the betrayal of the Democratic Party. The Democrats gave us the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which ripped down the firewalls that were put in place by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The 1933 act, designed to prevent the kind of meltdown we are now experiencing, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). It set in place banking reforms to stop speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street speculators. Read the whole nasty story here. Elergy to a rubberstampWhat we now know as the “news media” serve at the pleasure of the corporate sponsor, their purpose not to tell truth to the powerful but to transmit lies to the powerless. Like Russert, who served his apprenticeship as an aide-de-camp to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, most of the prominent figures in the Washington press corps (among them George Stephanopoulos, Bob Woodward, and Karl Rove) began their careers as bagmen in the employ of a dissembling politician or a corrupt legislature. Regarding themselves as de facto members of government, enabling and codependent, their point of view is that of the country’s landlords, their practice equivalent to what is known among Wall Street stock-market touts as “securitizing the junk.”
He Thinks We're StupidBy: Rabbit Democrats always try to put the Bum's Rush on progressives, painting themselves as better than Republicans. I've taken the view that in a Bum's Rush to the bottom there is no better. Just faster or slower. I've looked it up. Democrat politicians hate regular people. NAFTA: Democrats. Telecommunications act of 1996: Democrats. Mandatory minimum sentences to make us the prison society: Democrats. Welfare "reform": Democrats. Fund the overthrow of democracies: Democrats. Lately they've taken to helping Republicans everyway they can, like in aggressive war and spying on citizens. Torture and bombing weddings. It looked like Democrats could have elected Bozo the Clown for president. Now all of a sudden Obama is having a bit of a struggle. How did this happen? Well...He's loosing progressive votes. He's loosing the votes of working people who see him as another corrupt politician. Why would a Democrat suddenly want to help them after the Party has done everything it can to make their lives harder? Democrats are anti-worker. Sorry, anti-American worker. Anti-fairly paid worker. He's lost the high ground. He's acting like a "Liberal". Finger pointing but doing the same dirty sell out as the other guys. In other words a typical Democrat. He lied by saying he would filibuster immunity for telecom spying. He voted for immunity and spying, then took money from AT&T, to sponsor the Democrat Convention. That telecoms committed felonies is forgot. If you get caught tapping phones, you go to prison. Immunity was a sham anyway. It was all about extracting the maximum contribution (bribes) from the telecoms. The rest was just a show. An illusion for voters. Some of the information that has been gathered was probably used to suppress the protesters and reporters at the Republican Convention. The telecoms are going to make a ton of money from future contracts to spy on citizens. Yea, he lied. Lied about something really important. His backtrack on Iraq wasn't helpful either. I'll only mention Joe "MasterCard" Biden. He dissed progressives by telling us to live with it. Led us down the LaLa Trail and tells us to forget it. Voted for spying, supports spying on citizens and now thinks that maybe the Bush tax cuts aren't so bad. He thinks we're stupid. Here's how he can win. Stand up for workers, habeas, privacy. Get out of Iraq ASAP. Quit taking money from corporate dogs. Come to the mountain, drink a beer with the people. Most West Virginians won't vote for a man who wouldn't drink with them. Stop worrying about Ohio. If West Virginia goes for him Ohio will follow. You should have heard the laughing when he accused the Republicans of being liars. Hell, politicians invented lying. I just stared in disbelief. How could he be so stupid? Well it's his to loose. I won't vote for him unless he starts making some positive commitments. Being black is not enough. Democrats don't usually vote Republican, why should a progressive person vote for a Democrat? Especially now? We see Democrats the same way they see Republicans. That's the real deal. I'm interested in hearing how others have negotiated this dilemma. Use the contact box. Update: OB acknowledged the right of citizens to bear arms. That's a step in the right dirrection. "Liberals" have a nasty habit of pointing their fingers at gun owners, among others, then bemoan lost elections. Now if he can drink a whole Bud Lite without gagging... or holding his nose. The CIA Hauling Dope?Cummon. Of couse they are.The CIA is the world's largest dope wholesaler. Do ya think they're hauling smack from Afghanistan too? They have a track record and Olie North is there. RIP Gary Webb Roger D. HodgeNot only have we been made to witness the betrayal of almost every promise made by our Founding Fathers, and seen their direst prophesies confirmed, we must also suffer the indignity of seeing our constitutional ideal turned into a shabby mockery of itself. Somehow, by a trick of dialectical cunning, the United States of America has vaulted over the tragic phase of history in favor of a relentless pursuit of historical farce. Dave LindorffAnd from the looks of things, it may not be much better even if Obama takes over the White House. The first day of the Democratic Convention in Denver saw anti-war protesters penned into the same kinds of “free-speech zones” that the Bush/Cheney administration has made into standard features of any “public” appearance they put in, while AT&T, the company that brought us the convention, kept even credentialed reporters away from a private party the company threw for those Democrats in Congress who obligingly passed immunity legislation to protect the company from lawsuits by those whose communications were spied on by Bush’s National Security Agency. (Obama supported the immunity legislation.) DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist from Philadelphia. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). http://thiscantbehappening.net InvictusI guess we live in a State where the leaders simply use the Corporate Controlled Capitalist Media to spin propaganda and the "electoral" process is manipulated to select our rulers. Once elected, the House and the Senate know now that they must be in lock step with the Corporate powers that paid their way or they will be funded out of office. So we have the best Corporate Government money can buy. Looks like we need a new definition for our country. It's not a democracy of by and for the people. It's a corporate government of by and for the Super Capitalists. And it looks like things are a whole lot worse and more entrenched then we ever imagined. American Phychological AssociationAPA Works with CIA and RAND to Hold Science of Deception WorkshopOn July 17-18, RAND Corp. and the APA hosted a workshop entitled the "Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory" with generous funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The workshop provided an opportunity to bring together individuals with a need to understand and use deception in the service of national defense/security with those who investigate the phenomena and mechanisms of deception. Meeting at RAND headquarters in Arlington, VA, the workshop drew together approximately 40 individuals including research psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists who study various aspects of deception and representatives from the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense with interests in intelligence operations. In addition, representatives from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security were present. Following brief introductions and welcoming remarks from Kevin O'Connell, Director of the Intelligence Policy Center within RAND's National Security Research Division, workshop participants divided into break-out groups to discuss thematic scenarios following a format used in a previous conference on counterterrorism held at the FBI Academy in February 2002. The scenarios dealt broadly with issues such as embassy walk-in informants, threat assessment, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement interrogation and debriefing. Participants were prompted in advance to think about research issues and practical considerations they wanted the broader group to consider. Across the two days, there were a number of thought-provoking discussions suggesting the need to develop both short-term and long-term research programs on deception. Workshop participants will review transcripts from the meeting toward the goal of developing a more detailed summary suitable for public consumption. My profound thanks to both Scott Gerwehr, Associate Policy Analyst at RAND, and Susan Brandon, Program Officer for Affect and Biobehavioral Regulation at NIMH, who jointly conceived of this project while Susan was still Senior Scientist here at APA. Special thanks to Kirk Hubbard, Chief of the Research & Analysis Branch, Operational Assessment Division of the CIA, for generous financial support and for recruiting the operational expertise and to RAND for providing conference facilities and other logistical support.
M.J. Rosenberg"I'm not a self-hating Jew. I like myself. It's you I can't stand." That Pig Phu____ Cheney. Screw HimCome here you buttwipe. Say that to my face. By: DearestJune 2008 by: AnnonymousMay 2008 In other news, I was skating down 13th street, when of all people who do I see? THE (Rabbit edit)XXX POPE!!! I literally crashed into the side of a fedex truck, pratfall style. EVIDENTLY THERE IS A WAX MUSEUM WITH EXTREMELY REALISTIC LIFE SIZE WAX FIGURES. |
