SHRED
SHRED's JournalI will take talk of cutting the military seriously ...
...when they get rid of the for-profit weapon corporations and also promise not to cut the services afforded our men and women who have, and are currently serving.
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No, you are not a "bad person"
Colorado’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has just fired its first big advertising salvo, and it looks to be an effective one.
A new billboard unveiled Thursday by the group just blocks away from Mile High Stadium in Denver shows a smiling woman with her arms folded, next to the text: “For many reasons, I prefer… marijuana over alcohol. Does that make me a bad person? http://regulatemarijuana.org/
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/06/regulate-marijuana-billboard-goes-up-near-mile-high-stadium/
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As the SCOTUS reviews the "Affordable" Care Act
I can't help wonder how, or if, we will ever get to away from the grip of our privatized system here in the USA.
Sure I like many would love to see a single-payer public insurance system. In fact I think health care, in it's totality, should be a public service career, but that is a different story.
But I look at how the current for-profit system is integrated into our economy. From investments in mutual funds which many retirements rely on, to drug manufacturer stocks that these same funds invest in, to all kinds of inroads our privatized medical system has spread to within the economy like a malignant cancer. Extracting these tentacles to secure a public based system without affecting the overall economy in an extremely negative way seems impossible to me unfortunately.
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Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War
The scale of our state-sponsored murder is masked from public view. Reporters who travel with military units and become psychologically part of the team spin out what the public and their military handlers want, mythic tales of heroism and valor. War is seen only through the lens of the occupiers. It is defended as a national virtue. This myth allows us to make sense of mayhem and death. It justifies what is usually nothing more than gross human cruelty, brutality and stupidity. It allows us to believe we have achieved our place in human society because of a long chain of heroic endeavors, rather than accept the sad reality that we stumble along a dimly lit corridor of disasters. It disguises our powerlessness. It hides from view the impotence and ordinariness of our leaders. But in turning history into myth we transform random events into a sequence of events directed by a will greater than our own, one that is determined and preordained. We are elevated above the multitude. We march to nobility. But it is a lie. And it is a lie that combat veterans carry within them. It is why so many commit suicide.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/murder_is_not_an_anomoly_in_war_20120319/
Chris Hedges once again hitting home...hard.
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When Repubs say, "...this is not about birth control"
I think the counter should be, "We know...it's worse than that".
Point out that they want ALL categories of insurance coverage to be filtered through the company owner's, or religious institution's, "moral" filter.
What would a Scientologist, a Mormon, a Hindu, a Muslim, a RW Bible thumping kook filter?
I cannot see how this latest attack on everyday people, by the Republican Party, will help them in any way whatsoever politically...but keep going idiots...you too Rush.
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“...get us that oil from Canada that we deserve.”
Rmoney uttered this nonsense in regards to Keystone XL last night.
Is he pandering or is he really this dense?
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Propaganda we pay for...in more ways than one
The scheme is simple: The Pentagon allows studios to use military hardware and bases at a discounted, taxpayer-subsidized rate. In exchange, filmmakers must submit their scripts to the Pentagon for line edits.
Forgetting the Past, One Military Movie at a Time
When the entertainment industry gets in bed with the Pentagon, censorship is inevitable.
David Sirota
When philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” he meant it as an admonition–not as an endorsement of mass amnesia or historical revision. This should be obvious.
Yet those operating at the shadowy intersection of the Pentagon and Hollywood either don’t understand–or, more likely, refuse to understand–the thrust of the aphorism. Instead, with this week’s release of a much-awaited film, Santayana’s omen has been transformed into a public mission statement for a burgeoning Military-Entertainment Complex
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12791/forgetting_the_past_one_military_movie_at_a_time
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7 Biggest Lies At Arizona Republican Debate
Lie: Rick Santorum claims Obamacare adds to the deficit.
Lie: Mitt Romney claims government employees earn more than private sector workers.
Lie: Mitt Romney Says He Will Ban Earmarks.
Lie: Newt Gingrich, “Obama voted for infanticide.”
Lie: Mitt Romney denies ever mandating contraception in religious hospitals in 2005
Lie: Mitt Romney Claims Obama Is Shrinking The Military
Lie: Rick Santorum, “Obama will have the national media behind him.”
http://www.politicususa.com/en/republican-debate-fact-check
We subsidize the oil companies and...
...they export overseas.
And people still think it is "our" oil. If we could just "produce more".
It's a CON game.
In a first, gas and other fuels are top U.S. export
~SNIP~
There's at least one domestic downside to America's growing role as a fuel exporter. Experts say the trend helps explain why U.S. motorists are paying more for gasoline. The more fuel that's sent overseas, the less of a supply cushion there is at home.
Gasoline supplies are being exported to the highest bidder, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. "It's a world market," he says.
Refining companies won't say how much they make by selling fuel overseas. But analysts say those sales are likely generating higher profits per gallon than they would have generated in the U.S. Otherwise, they wouldn't occur.
[url]http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-12-31/united-states-export/52298812/1[/url]
Oil boomlet sweeps U.S. as exports and production rise
~SNIP~
Looking at your heating bills or gas prices, you may find it surprising that the United States is enjoying a mini oil boom. It's producing more crude oil and, for the first time in decades, has become a net exporter of petroleum products such as jet fuel, heating oil and gasoline.
[url]http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-12-16/us-oil-boom/52053236/1[/url]
What's to blame for gas price spike?
"Right now, we're at an 11-month high," said Indianapolis commodities broker Lannie Cohen, with Capitol Commodity Services, referring to the price of crude oil. "It's really a supply-based rally. Everybody's worried about future supplies."
But back at the pump, Scott Imus, who heads the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, which represents some 3,000 gas stations and convenience stores statewide, disagrees with Cohen’s assessment.
"Supply is not the problem,” he said. “Demand is off. If you look year-to-date, it's down 5 to 7 percent in terms of demand. Demand is not the issue. The issue is fears of the unknown and what's going to happen in the Middle East."
Those fears, he said, are prompting speculators to bid the price up, pushing the price you pay at the pump away from simple supply and demand.
[url]http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/indiana/whats-to-blame-for-gas-price-spike[/url]
"Pushing President Obama from the Left...
...and defending President Obama from the Right."
I think we need to keep the above principle first and foremost.
Here is an article that woke me up (again) from the SOTU speech.
This, I consider, is a "pushing from the Left" albeit a somewhat bitter reality for some here I am sure:
Obama’s Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton
Posted on Jan 26, 2012
By Robert Scheer
~snip~
When Obama declared Tuesday evening “no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas,” wasn’t he aware that Jeffrey Immelt, the man he appointed to head his jobs council, is the most egregious offender? Immelt, the CEO of GE, heads a company with most of its workers employed in foreign countries, a corporation that makes 82 percent of its profit abroad and has paid no U.S. taxes in the past three years.
It was also a bit bizarre for Obama to celebrate Steve Jobs as a model entrepreneur when the manufacturing jobs that the late Apple CEO created are in the same China that elsewhere in his speech the president sought to scapegoat for America’s problems. Apple, in its latest report on the subject, takes pride in attempting to limit the company’s overseas suppliers to a maximum workweek of 60 hours for their horribly exploited employees. Isn’t it weird to be chauvinistically China baiting when that country carries much of our debt?
I’m also getting tired of the exhortations to improve the nation’s schools, certainly a worthy endeavor, but this economic crisis is the result not of high school dropouts as Obama suggested, but rather the corruption of the best and brightest graduates of our elite academies. As Obama well knows from his own trajectory in the meritocracy, which took him from one of the most privileged schools in otherwise educationally depressed Hawaii to Harvard Law, the folks who concocted the mathematical formulas and wrote the laws justifying fraudulent collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps were his overachieving professors and classmates.
If he doesn’t know that, he should check out the record of Lawrence Summers, the man he picked to guide his economic program and who had been rewarded with the presidency of Harvard after having engineered Clinton’s deregulatory deal with Wall Street.
FULL ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_faux_populism_sounds_like_bill_clinton_20120126/
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Encinitas, CA
Member since: Sat Nov 22, 2003, 01:17 AM
Number of posts: 28,136
