Hour One - Ira Lechner: www.clw.org Reducing the threat of/from nuclear weapons...SALT Treaty is up for renewal this year
Ira will be speaking on Wednesday night (3/10) in Seattle at 8pm at Mulleady's Pub, 3055 21st Avenue West in Seattle, WA and Thursday in Portland, OR at 6:30 pm at Davis Street Tavern 500 NW Davis Street.
Hour Two - Frank Schaeffer www.frankschaeffer.com The rise if right wing fundamentalist hate groups
Hour Three - Chris Hedges www.truthdig.com Should progressives give up on Barack Obama?
Upcoming Events with Thom Hartmann:
Friday, March 19th, 6-8pm Demos and the New York Law School Chapter of the American Constitution Society present an evening with Thom Hartmann - "When Corporations Became People." Thom will also talk about his updated book "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights"...event is at New York Law School Auditorium, 185 W Broadway, New York, NY...free tickets atwww.demos.org (and click on events)
I watched the movie "Throne of Blood" (part of the March TCM film festival celebrating the work of the wonderful Akira Kurosawa) last night. The movie was Kurosawa's interpretation of Shakespeare's "MacBeth."
Tho I've seen the movie many times, I suddenly had the image of corporate CEOs driving the desire for power and and property through force and bloodshed. Kurosawa said, in so many words, such forces are eternal, lead to self-destruction and need to be overcome.
Glenn Beck personifies the last desperate vestige of the aquisitors Ravi Batra lays bare in "The New Golden Age". He is part of the cult that utilizes every means to grow and protect its wealth. Christians served the purpose of retaining power. Now that Christians are tasting the bile of the snake oil they have been sold and are returning to the fundamentals of Christ's teaching, the cult must demonize those espousing charity and compassion as belonging to an evil plot.
Kos Calls Out Kucinich
Markos Moulitsas (The Daily Kos) told Lawrence O'Donnell on Countdown that, If Dennis Kucinich stands in the way of passing health care legislation, as he seems to be promising to do, Kucinich should have a primary challenge, just as Blanche Lincoln and other naysaying Dems. do. Min. 4:20 of 6:49 - video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olb...
P.S.
I'm not sure that I agree with Kos' assessment of Nader's legacy.
I occasionally like to read a book that challenges my preconceived notions (as opposed to your average FOX viewer, who picks and chooses only those opinions and facts that completely agree with his own). We've set up a lending library in the lunch room where I work, and a couple weeks ago, I spotted a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" there - the novel that the Libertarians take as an allegory of Biblical proportions.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through it (i. e., about 400 pages!). Interestingly enough, Charles, this book also seems to put forth the meme that charity is evil. Rand, of course, is NOT attempting to speak from a religious point of view, but from an objective one. The whole idea behind it is that an entrepreneur does society the greatest service possible when he serves HIMSELF.
Few of the books characters are presented as REAL entrepreneurs, though. Most are shown as lazy riders of the coat-tails of the GOOD people. The story progresses through several trade-limiting agreements, reached first by industrial consortiums and then by the government, all (apparently predictably) leading to ever-greater disasters. Those who favor these policies are referred to by the story's apparent "heroes" as looters.
Rand's world is full of absolutes - everything is either black or white, thoroughly good or unspeakably evil. Characters leap from the heights of euphoric hopefulness to the depths of abject despair, often in the space of a paragraph. Without exception, every major character in this tale, it seems to me, would benefit greatly from a course of SSRI's.
I probably will finish this book - unlike the last "challenge" book I selected (Tom Freidmann's "The World is Flat", which I abandoned because every argument presented therein follows logically from one that I do not accept - that, from a purely business standpoint, where you manufacture your product does not matter). There are a enough good mysteries in the plot to be solved that my interest is piqued, even if I find the politics abhorrent.
"This bill doesn't change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it from the consumers," says Kucinich, who argues that, "The insurance companies are the problem and they are getting a bailout."
"Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance, guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies?
Kucinich continued:
Is this the best we can do? Government negotiates rates which will drive up insurance costs, but the government won't negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies which will drive up pharmaceutical costs...
Is this the best we can do? Eliminating the state single payer option, while forcing most people to buy private insurance.
If this is the best we can do? Then our best isn't good enough and we have to ask some hard questions about our political system: such as Health Care or Insurance Care? Government of the people or a government of the corporations.
Taken from: Kucinich's Health Reform Dissents Merit Consideration
by John Nichols
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/09-13
@Quark
The only good point Markos made is Kucinich might score some favor within his party. But comparing him to Blanche Lincoln is disingenuous. Kucinich opposes the Senate bill because it does not go far enough to help the poor and disadvantaged while Lincoln opposes a public option that will hurt the insurance industry.
The House needs 216 votes from the 253 Dems. Kucinich should not be vilified for standing with the poor. The Blue Dog Dems standing with the insurance companies should feel our wrath.
Hi All!! As someone who has HAD, (I was in a medical procedure-I'd rather not go into it it because I got in trouble for walking out last week), to watch Glenn Beck's show, (it was on a large screen TV with Volume turned all the way up-and NO, they refuse to change the channel), off and on for most of the past 9 months. (4 days/week). I also live in a VERY small town FULL of Beck Zombies-who used to think he was the next Walter Cronkite-but now seem to revere him as almost a god!! It STILL shocks me to either go to my appointment, or be in some other place here in town between 5 & 6 everyday, absolutely glued, almost hypnotized, watching this idiot. This town is also full of vulnerable people, people who are unemployed due to manufacturing jobs disappearing over the past 15 years. There's also the proverbial bar on every corner.
As for leftist violence: Beck points out on at LEAST one of his show a week, "leftist violence"-films, usually from Copenhagen, the G20, Anti-War rallies, even "old hippie" rallies--MOST of which it was LAW Enforcement which intervened FIRST, over-reacting and causing the demonstrators to push back.
But, of course, Beck has NEVER mentioned THAT. His main roll of film that he replays over and over--kind of like "ACORN"-is a personal video of people outside a town hall last summer where Beck says that SEIU "Thugs" attacked an "innocent black man who was ONLY quietly handing out brochures that had "Don't Tread On Me" on them. AND the fact that the local police have not, or as Beck says, "REFUSED" to arrest any of these so-called "Union Thugs".
Beck also never fails to re-iterate that these are just a VERY few of examples of left-wing violence, as he says that the "liberal media" NEVER shows the "real" violence us Progressives are supposedly guilty of.
Of course there is also Becks "Documentary" last month which were clips and Becks interpretation of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Che. He never came out and said it; but if you're a regular viewer-or Beck Zombie, as I like to call them, he insinuated through-out this self-produced "documentary", that these were ALL Progressives and that this is where Obama is leading this Country.
THIS is where the right-wingers are getting this "violent left-winger" crap from.
@Than
Not Chris Hedge's words, but I think he might agree, I do.
"There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop, And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all." (1964) Mario Savio
"A great deal more is at stake than who killed President Kennedy," he said, reading quickly and awkwardly from a prepared statement. "What is at stake is nothing less than the faith of the people in our institutions."
Maj. John Newman PhD., who gets many references in "Ultimate Sacrifice."
Professor of History and International Relations, University of Maryland. Former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency, former military attaché in China, with a 21-year career in U.S. Army Intelligence (Major John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army) questions the government's version of the events of 9/11.
Proof that 9/11 Truthers Are Dangerous
by Washington's Blog
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18006
++++++++++++
I think it's the same guy...
Not too long ago I said, "we were on the precipice of disaster" in Marja. While it was disasterous for too many civilians, the overstatement I made may be explained by:
So how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000 people get started?
The idea was passed on to the news media by the U.S. Marines in southern Helmand. The earliest references in news stories to Marja as a city with a large population have a common origin in a briefing given Feb. 2 by officials at Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. Marine base there.
The Associated Press published an article the same day quoting "Marine commanders" as saying that they expected 400 to 1,000 insurgents to be "holed up" in the "southern Afghan town of 80,000 people." That language evoked an image of house to house urban street fighting.
The same story said Marja was "the biggest town under Taliban control" and called it the "linchpin of the militants' logistical and opium-smuggling network". It gave the figure of 125,000 for the population living in "the town and surrounding villages". ABC news followed with a story the next day referring to the "city of Marja" and claiming that the city and the surrounding area "are more heavily populated, urban and dense than other places the Marines have so far been able to clear and hold."
The rest of the news media fell into line with that image of the bustling, urbanised Marja in subsequent stories, often using "town" and "city" interchangeably. Time magazine wrote about the "town of 80,000" Feb. 9, and the Washington Post did the same Feb. 11.
Share147 Fiction of Marjah as City Was US Information War
Monday 08 March 2010
by: Gareth Porter
http://www.truthout.org/fiction-marja-city-was-us-information-war57470
The worse case possibilities from stopping all wars now, both Iraq and Afghanistan return to terrorist breeding grounds. Waiting to stop until we are out of resources, they return to terrorist breeding grounds. Fighting until strong governments can take control then stop, slowly returns to terrorist breeding grounds. Stay after strong government ... See Moretakes firm control and beyond, continue conflict between the peoples due to varied beliefs causing continuous violent. What does it take to bring lasting peace? It took crossing an ocean, starting over from nothing, fighting off a world power, setting up for the people by the people government experiment to bring democracy to America. The key was the people had the same goals and agreed on a set of principles they all could live with and that were for the common good. If the people of a country cannot agree on a set of basic principle or on supporting the common good, little solid or durable peace is attainable. You cannot give that to a people they must want it and fight for it when they are ready, not when someone tells them when or how to do it.
re: Markos Moulitsas @ Quark (way above):
As an antidote to Mr. Kos' poisonous little screed and in common sense support of Dennis Kucinich and Wendell Potter dubbing the Senate bill the Insurance Profit Protection Act
[mandate without public option political suicide]
try 1 :-p Bill Maher w/Lawrence O'Donnell 3/10 Countdown #2
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olb...
and 2 :-0 Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow 3/10
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#3580...
Furhtermore, the combination of poor [literally] ignoramuses voting for Bush (tens of millions?!?) and illegal Republican caging of Blacks and Latinos in Florida (disqualifying tens of thousands of voters), these did more to get Bush elected than Nader's candidacy. For myself and as a Green, I could not in good conscience vote for Al Gore after the shredding of the safety net for single mothers, the giveaway of the E-M spectrum and the 'great sucking sound' of NAFTA displayed the corporate greed and insensitivity of the 8 years of the Clinton-Gore administration.
Al Gore blew it when he didn't demand a recount of the entire state of Florida - he had plenty of time to do it before AND after the Supreme Court rightfully overturned the partial recount as undemocratic. Before you attack the Greens please remember this: Gore actually won the recount done by Miami Herald who made the proper suit to win the people's right to know the whole truth.
On the way into work this morning, I found myself behind a tanker truck bearing the company name “Big Green Oil”. Let’s step right on past the hypocrisy inherent in that name (another rant for another day, as TH would say), and talk about the pure unadulterated laziness in the selection of that name. “Huh – everybody’s talking about this “Green Energy” stuff. We’re an Oil company. Oil is Energy.” And that, apparently is as far as the “thinking” applied to the decision went.
This same kind of laziness is apparent in some of the advertising for some pretty big players in the corporate world, too. Consider the case of Toyota, whose flagship products are currently plagued by problems with (1) uncontrolled acceleration, and (2) unreliable braking – yet ALL of their current advertiaments STILL contain the slogan “Moving Forward”. Irony, anyone?
On the Sunday AM talking-point-fests this past weekend, I noted a new ad for the investment product known as Spiders (SPDRs – Standard & Poor’s Depositary Receipts). They actually use the first linr childhood ditty “The Eensy-Weensy Spider” in the ad. Does anyone recall the SECOND line of that song? Yup … that’s what we want – to see our investments “washed out” in the next rainstorm.
The classic example of the above, of course, was Microsoft’s campaign for the Windows95 launch. Win95, you may recall, introduced the now-ubiquitous “Start” button, and MS threw their budget to the wind, obtaining the rights to use the Rolling Stones tune “Start Me Up”. That song, of course, has the recurring lyric “You make a grown man cry”. Surprisingly accurate, when you think about it – how many of us were driven close to tears by our early Win95 experiences?
Here’s what I wonder about … Has this become accepted practice because THEY don’t take the trouble to think just a little bit ahead, or because they know that they can count on US not to?