sitemeter

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Chile

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



Update 12:16 PM 3/3/2010
Published on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Published on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Chile's Socialist Rebar
by Naomi Klein

Saturday, February 27, 2010

wolves



There might not be any connection here, but I can't help wondering if energy interests who basically controlled the Bush administration are afraid they might not be able to do whatever the fuck they want to do any more. Not that Obama is having much luck re-regulating what the Bunnypants/Cheney administration managed to get deregulated.

8.8 earthquake in Chile causes tsunami watch

Huge Quake Hits Chile; Tsunami Threatens Pacific
February 27, 2010
by The Associated Press
Earthquake Strikes Chile

122 dead so far, but the toll will not be like Haiti because the building codes are followed. They are used to quakes in Chile. I find it amusing that we are under tsunami advisory here in San Diego. The lifeguards here didn't sound that freaked out. It's raining here. The scariest thing about storms here are the idiots on the road.

I do not feel well today. I am going back to bed and watch stuff on Netflix. I've been watching the 1st season of the Brotherhood. I dunno what's easier to hate, the obnoxious accents or the nasty things some of the characters do.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Bush V Gore legal adversaries team up to push back Prop h8

Theodore Olson and David Boies speak with Bill Moyers

February 26, 2010
Once adversaries in 2000's Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, now two of the nation's premier lawyers – one conservative and one liberal – have teamed up to make the constitutional case for same-sex marriage.

Watch here

I loved watching them. I haven't watched the actors go over the trial, but here it is.

If you want to check out the spoofalicios responses to the h8 ad Moyers shows, they are much funnier.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Climate change deniers: let's connect the dots, shall we?

The Attack on Climate-Change Science
Why It’s the O.J. Moment of the Twenty-First Century
By Bill McKibben
February 25, 2010

"...Not surprisingly, perhaps, the latest poll on the American public’s attitude toward climate change shows startling drops in the belief in the very existence of climate change, in humanity's role in causing it, and in its import for the planet: a 14-point drop since October 2008 in Americans who believe climate change is happening at all (to 57%), a 10-point drop in those who believe that human activity is at the root of the problem (to 47%), and a 13-point drop in those who claim to be “somewhat” or “very” worried about the problem (to 50%). .."

Americans are affected by spin, because many don't know any better. They don't understand how news delivery gets paid for. The big money runs with any doubt. The same thing helps them win in the court room over and over again. That is my opinion, based on years of looking up how the news is delivered; TV is expensive, somebody sponsors it, finding out who owns what , and using a bit of common sense. And oh yeah, these guys helped...a LOT. So did figuring out that more often than not, the congress is bought and paid for by large corporate interests in the form of campaign contributions.

"...So let’s figure out how to talk about it. Let’s look at Exxon Mobil, which each of the last three years has made more money than any company in the history of money. Its business model involves using the atmosphere as an open sewer for the carbon dioxide that is the inevitable byproduct of the fossil fuel it sells. And yet we let it do this for free. It doesn't pay a red cent for potentially wrecking our world

Right now, there’s a bill in the Congress -- cap-and-dividend, it’s called -- that would charge Exxon for that right, and send a check to everyone in the country every month. Yes, the company would pass on the charge at the pump, but 80% of Americans (all except the top-income energy hogs) would still make money off the deal. That represents good science, because it starts to send a signal that we should park that SUV, but it’s also good politics...."

Read the Economist article, it's the last link in the last copied paragraph of McKibben's article ( ↑ ).

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Exposing the Great American Bubble Barons: Join Us in the Investigation

Join AlterNet's collective investigative project into the bubble barons who got obscenely rich as they destroyed our economy. Help hold them accountable with Citizen Journalism.

Wow. Sounds an awful lot like what the author of the book I'm still slogging through has been trying to tell us. Unfortunately, this shit is not confined to within the United States borders.

This disgusts me

From Israel, a plan to win friends and influence people by working on its image

The government of Israel is launching a citizens' campaign to change their image, including 70 workshops for Israelis on how to hold a civil discussion when they travel abroad.

What? No, I'm not disgusted that Israel needs some good PR, I know that. I've always known that, we lived in a Jewish neighborhood when I was little. Just read the article and see if you can spot why I'm disgusted.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

If I were nicer

I might not be hoping that


Darth Cheney would croak this time.


Unfortunately, just today I was reading about a kid who was stationed here locally who died from lung cancer after 4 months at 25 years old. The kid didn't smoke. His parents didn't smoke.



Darth Cheney couldn't wait for KBR to get contracts in Iraq. KBR is being sued by over 300 people who's health has been seriously affected by the burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I wonder if all the war casualties from both sides of the conflict are worth anything to Darth Cheney other than financial profits that he scooted out of the country?

If there is a hell I hope he burns in it. He sure doesn't care who or what he burns in his quest for financial gain.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Arianna Debates Partisanship On ABC's 'This Week'


The only bipartisan agreement happening these days is amongst the corporatocracy. The rest is all show, and like your 70% of people wanting a public option, all meaningless.

The banksters, the corporatocracy and the congresshos don't care that 70% of the people want the public option.

They don't have to care.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, February 19, 2010

What timing

I just finished watching The Insider again, which made me curious about who Lowell Bergman was so I watched Conversations with History with Lowell Bergman.

Then I decided to watch Susan George Speaking Freely (on neoliberal globalization and inequality) and went to look at the headlines of some of the blogs I have linked and what do I come across?

Richest 400 Taxpayers See Incomes Double, Tax Rates Halved
By Jon Perr Friday Feb 19, 2010 5:30pm

One of the phrases that Susan George used that stuck with me was "The free market works for those that have."

Reminded me of this (very short) clip of W, whose dumb ass will always be taken care of because he took care of these schmucks.

George W. Bush and his base.

11:39 PM 2/19/2010 Whoa boy the hits just keep coming:

Bll Moyers Journal
Justice for Sale

About corporate money and judicial elections.



Frontline PBS The Warning

About the woman who figured out that the derivatives market needed to be regulated in order to protect the American people's money. Boy was Greenspan blind-sided by his own ideology, he was an Ayn Rand fan. He obviously didn't spend any time with kids. That or he just made his money, did his job as a tool for the banksters that are still raping the poor with impunity and got the hell out of the game while those putzes are still safe in their country clubs and 5 star hotels around the world.

Chirping squirrel

This week's annoying rodent.



Close up


Part of the reason for the chirping (saw this cat later with a bird in it's jaws, no mighty squirrel hunter there. Nifty since they are cutting the trees back to naked trunks 12-15 ft high, this complex is going to suck in the summer with no shade and no birds)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Banksters never change

Did you know that in 1833 President Jackson tried to reign in and destroy the greedy central banksters and their European central bankster buddies and one named Biddle actually boasted that he was going to create a depression and blame it on Jackson.

Jackson proceeded to kick some bankster ass, with much popular support, and the Second Bank of the United States failed. That was not all that long after after the First Bank of the United States failed.


The 19th-Century Bernanke
Tuesday, September 01, 2009 by J. Grayson Lilburne



The only trouble I have with blogging the above information is that some of it is pushed out there for public consumption by (stealing this term from BadTux ) glibertarians and goldbugs. I generally don't agree with glibertarians and goldbugs.



Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash
MATT TAIBBI Rolling Stone
Posted Feb 17, 2010 5:57 AM

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Dianne Feinstein Signs On To Public Option Push


Good. When the majority of doctors and constituents in the US want the public option the Senate needs to know it and respond to it appropriately.



Dr. Flowers bravery should be rewarded. All she wanted was to do was put the truth of the above statement out there for our "representatives" to see.



http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/watch3.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tesla Motors Executive Reportedly Killed In Palo Alto Plane Crash


"A Note from Elon Musk



February 17, 2010



"Three Tesla employees were on board a plane that crashed in East Palo Alto early this morning. We are withholding their identities as we work with the relevant authorities to notify the families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us."



- Elon Musk, CEO"

http://www.teslamotors.com/
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Davos Confidential

“it’s like twitter, facebook and michael arrington had a drunken 3-way. twitter gets pregnant. 7 months later there’s a premature delivery and the afterbirth ends up in your gmail inbox.”

(stolen snark left as comment for Google CEO at Huffpo article)

— The best description of Google Buzz I’ve read so far (via) and via


Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dead dude killed a soldier in 1989?

February 16, 2010
British investigate ID theft by 'Mossad' hit squad in Dubai

British authorities were today investigating whether any its nationals had their identities stolen by the assassination squad who killed a Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel.


Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to, but hey, Mossad doesn't make a fucking bit of sense to me anyway.

Neither do idiots like this.

Hey, let's rent a billboard like this, but not mean to imply that Obama has done anything impeachable.

Guy's a fucking genius, he thinks that Obama can control the banksters.

Monday, February 15, 2010

stuck in my head this morning



Must be the book I'm reading.

Could be the stuff I watch also. Personally, I don't think US college student should be allowed to graduate unless they have seen this. High school would be better, but it would make military recruitment damn near impossible.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

the MSM sucks donkey dick

Fear Inc.

Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 5:25pm, February 14, 2010.

Hold Onto Your Underwear
This Is
Not a National Emergency
By Tom Engelhardt



Mmm hmmm. And why do they feed us all this garbage about terrorism? Because they make money carrying the water for some rich fucks who make money roping the government into buying very expensive anti-terrorism shit that is protecting us from....

e-coli?

Nope

drunken idiots on the road?

Nope

tobacco use?

Nope.....


an incompetent buffoon underwear bomber.

Update 1:21 PM 2/24/2010
“The Media-Lobbying Complex”: Investigation Exposes Undisclosed Corporate Ties of Network Political Pundits
Media-lobbying-nation

A four-month investigation into the covert corporate influence on cable news found that since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials have repeatedly appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure that they are paid by corporate interests. We speak to journalist Sebastian Jones, who carried out the investigation for The Nation magazine.


yeah, like I said.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

this made me laugh



click on link or pic

The Creature from Jekyll Island cont'

D) Loan money to both sides of a conflict, you can't lose that way.

interesting show

Friday, February 12, 2010

The Creature from Jekyll Island



Still slogging through this book. Slowly. Ever so slowly. Because it's fucking depressing.

Watching The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America 3:35:19

The basics.

A) Ain't nothing fucking Federal about the Federal Reserve. It's a bunch of greedy fucking asshole bankers and it's privately owned.

B) Money ain't nothing but our indebtedness to these rich assholes.

C) War makes these greedy assholes richer.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

NY senator who dragged girlfriend fights expulsion

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN Associated press Writer

I swear my kid was more mature than some of these asinine politicians when she was ten years old.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

In the Loop


Frankly, I didn't need a snippity little British flick to remind me that my country is run by a bunch of greedy fucking morons who can't think further than their wallets. They supply the old stupid fucks at the Pentagon with Viagra.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Sarah Palin


Sarah Palin assails Obama at 'tea party' gathering

Her fee was $100,000 for the appearance at the for-profit event.

Any excuse to show off Molly McMooseturd in her flaming costume.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Friday night TV

February 5, 2010
Pediatrician Margaret Flowersspeaks about protesting for change and her recent arrest in an effort to get a Medicare-for-all plan back on the table.

What the hell kind of fucked up political system do we have when the majority of the people and doctors want a public health system and they are shut out of the discussion?

A Roberts Supreme Court System if you ask me. A country not run by We the People, but a country run by the elites for the benefit of the elites to the detriment of We the People.


Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie and legal scholar Lawrence Lessig discuss public financing of campaigns and the effects of money on politics.

I was so distracted by the thought that Mr. Reason magazine reminds me of a mix between a bad 70's porn star and a goombah that I almost missed how he brushed off legal concerns that he obviously didn't understand. Then again, I don't have much patience with libertarians, or Reason magazine.

The essay was awesome tonight also.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Oil, gas and food

This post is leading me, not the other way around.

January 29, 2010
What about Haitian oil and gas?
...At the high end of the estimate the holdings could be 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas...


Posted on Tuesday, 01.26.10
Haiti earthquake may have exposed gas, aiding economy
...Abraham Lincoln's consul to the Dominican Republic reported oil seeps there in 1862. Neither nation produces oil or gas. As much as 1 trillion cubic feet of gas may be trapped in a border formation near the earthquake fault, Pierce said....


I dunno how much natural gas we use, but that's around 44 days usage for the US and around 11 days world usage of oil.

As I passed by my bookshelf I picked up Paul Roberts' The End of Oil © 2004, some of which can be read here and briefly thumbed through it. Here is a 12 minute edited clip of the author speaking Oil and the Global Economy on YouTube.

Not sure how old these clips are.

I found out that Roberts had another book published called The End of Food.

Here he speaks about the food system. Part II is here .

I know the titles of his books sound incredibly gloomy, but the author is not gloomy, but rather optimistic that there is time to change things before they hit the crisis stage as long as the changes begin rather quickly in this country at least.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn -RIP

Howard Zinn, Historian and Activist, Dies at 87
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87

January 27, 2010 07:12 PM

...As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."...

How Will SCOTUS Decision Affect Corporate Media?
Karl Frisch
Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America
Posted: January 26, 2010 12:44 PM

After that god-damned Supreme Court decision last week , d'ya blame his heart for pooping out finally?

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ohhhhh, so that's it

Teen Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage
by Michelle Trudeau

"...What remains unknown, says Tapert, is if the cognitive downward slide in teenage binge drinkers is reversible."

Oh, so that's my problem? Binge drink as a teenager and kiss your career in engineering bye-bye? That's why my dad is a math whiz and I couldn't learn my times tables in 4th grade? 4th grade is pre-teen, right? Have I forgotten that?

I wonder if the fucking genius brain experts ever asked the teens what might have motivated them to binge drink?

Have I mentioned before that the education system reminds me of of a cubby storage system? Tell me what in nature is like this?