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I worry a whole lot more about the damage from ethanol refining. Not to mention the subsidies the government gives out every year.
Republicans and tea partiers have proven quite clearly that they literally do not care what happens to anyone but themselves. In fact, the leaders and the people who fund the republican party and the tea party, do not even care what happens to the middle class and poor people in the republican party and the tea party. Those leaders and rich people have a very long history of consistently harming the very people who support them, and then they say, "The liberals did this to you."
The republicans and tea partiers who are middle class and poor, have not yet caught onto this fact. (But when they do catch on- and it's only a matter of time- what do you think they will do?)
Who owns and controls the companies that do fracking? Republican-controlled oil companies and the republican-controlled natural gas corporations.
Now I will adopt the republican method of politics: The earthquake that happened on our east coast the other day, happened because God hates people who hate gay people. He told me so. (That is a joke. Sort of.)
Some may awaken, but probably not in time. The rest will keep their heads buried where the sun don't shine. And the rest of us better prepare for a world we all thought couldn't get any worse than this. Remember HOPE? Remember CHANGE? Remember all those pre-election speeches? WHAT HAPPENED?
Campaign finance is just another disingenuous liberal deception.
Clean Money - Clean Elections (CMCE) is an example of how liberal reformers merely seek to alter the appearance of something that's wrong, rather than end it... only striving to paint over rot that should be removed.
For any true political alternative there were/are many problems with CMCE. It maintains the focus of elections on the cultivation of funds, rather than ideas. It entices emerging parties to channel their efforts toward meeting public fundraising donation thresholds — difficult to achieve for any small party that's actually an alternative to the corporate party, but easily met by any of the corporate party's (R)s and (D)s. The more an actual alternative party focuses upon fund raising the less it becomes an alternative. Small nascent parties are likely to spend most of the funds they raise just complying with CMCE’s detailed reporting requirements. Liberal campaign finance reforms serve to seduce real political alternatives into the corporate party's culture of perpetually fundraising to raise more funds than before.
CMCE advocates have much heralded a few short term gains for alternative parties, in the early states that adopted CMCE legislation. This will change the longer CMCE is in place, especially if it becomes law in all or most states. The corporate party's factions (its Republican and Democrat tag team) will suck up near all the public funding, using it to provide taxpayer subsidization for their sham campaigns, where through districting they have mutually agreed to predetermine the outcome of most elections before any votes are cast. This allows the corporate party to conserve enormous private cash assets for their more important campaigns of mass distraction, where they desire great media exposure; or to crush any true alternative party campaign that poses a serious threat to any corporate party incumbent (R) or (D).
A fundamental flaw with CMCE legislation has been that participation in its reduced spending is voluntary, which allows those with great financial assets to continue to purchase elections. The excuse liberals have used to justify the voluntary aspect of CMCE is the Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo, which determined the limiting of campaign contributions (in certain provisions of the 1971 Federal Elections Campaign Act) to be unconstitutional; and in so doing, established the concept of money having a right that should rightfully be reserved only for natural persons — free speech. The logic that follows from that court decision is that any natural (or corporate) person's freedom of speech is determined by how much money they have, and are willing to spend. That concept is an egregious assault upon the ideal of democracy, and in its practice has precluded the existence of any actual democracy.
If liberals ever really wanted elections to have been clean, fair, and about ideas, rather than merely have greater regulation of the bribery and extortion competition between corporate party factions, they wouldn't have merely sought (and still be seeking) only modest campaign finance reforms that simply serve to spread tax revenues around among the corporate party's candidates. They'd have used their massive numbers (back when they could have been successful if they wanted to be) to demand the elimination of **ALL** money from elections, which is something that would have been both technologically and procedurally possible... if liberals hadn't been so irredeemably (D) dedicated to preserving the corporate-state (now a failed-state entity that is just the mercenary military subsidiary of the global Market-State).
Whenever there's ever been the possibility of a popular uprising that might have provided some serious systemic change needed, the liberals have always reliably MovedOn in with their "reforms" to protect the rot that should have be removed.
Democrats haven't done the good they could have when they could have, because they haven't had good intentions.
The Devolution of Liberalism:
http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id...
pro-nuke-profit Repubs will *wake-up*and*stop-the-fracking* when they get socially-responsible or donkeys fly…(whichever comes first).
BRAVO Well said We must Speak out and do so often Hammer them till they listen
www.whitehouse.gov call WH M-F till 5 pm 202 456 1111
www.congress.gov People power worked in WIS & Ohio Keep fighting
Which correspondant ? was it meant as a factual statement or comment on what Cons think of Ryan ?
Agreed Millions of low info / loyal Fox followers put theses crooks in power. Now we must take them out !
I was just reading from today's Newsletter, the Lewis Powell memo predating his appointment to the Supreme Court.
The following seems contemporarily and ironically observant when one strikes "enterprise system" and replaces it with "working class today", "One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction.
Today Thom suggested that the dam at Lake Anna could fail during the possible hurricane rains, causing the reactor to fail due to loss of cooling. Check out the dam on Google Maps at 38° 0'47.43"N 77°42'47.00"W. It's mostly an earthen dam, and due to it's position relative to the topography, it's unlikely a dam failure would lower the level of the lake enough to stop cooling water availability to the reactor. It is "high" relative to the reactor intake. My family has lived there for over 25 years, and I feel completely safe. The lake is not "un-natural", it is man-made and took advantage of natural topography.
As a Senior I can't believe that this has happened to our country again Its 1939 all over again. Why is there no discussion of why we needed all regulations in the first place. Its history repeating itself. Most people don't realize why.
That was the 1960s! Things were relatively civil then.
If that is meant as sarcasm, you'd better do more reading on fracking and the damage it causes. It's not a laughing matter.
"Hartmann largely steers clear of the on-air rants favored by big-time conservative talkers such as Limbaugh, Beck and Sean Hannity."
This person obviously has never heard your show. You are the "rant king"
Will this be a wakeup call for the republicans and tea party? Well, let's see: do any of them live close to and downwind from that nuclear plant? Because the thing is, being pretend Christians, they don't care if OTHER people get hurt by a nuclear meltdown. In fact, some of them think it's funny when other people get hurt or killed. Or at the very least they think those people must have sinned and this is God getting revenge on them, because you know, their God is real into that whole thing of getting Divine Revenge against liberals.
However, when it is republicans or tea partiers getting harmed or killed, then yes, of course this latest earthquake has been a wakeup call for them. When republican and tea party people get hurt or killed it is never God getting revenge against them. It is the democrats' fault. (And when, say, Newt Gingrich cheats on all of his wifes, that's the democrrats's fault too, because Newt only cheated on his wives because he was so worried about what the democrats are doing to America.)
A clear understanding of everything the republicans and tea party say and do, is as close as looking up the word sociopath on wikipedia. They are very simple, very sick people who have made a craven image of a very sick God that they worship.
Lest we need reminding
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1
A century since the last powerful earthquake, and it was only a 5.8. While that sounds close to a 6, it's actually one-third as big (the scale is logarithmic). Why were the earthquake detectors removed? They weren't needed. As proven by the fact that the generators kicked in and performed their job. Yes, we need to review safety at ALL nuclear power plants, and do what we can to shore them up. But I don't see any basis for criticism in the current case.
To save money for the corporation in charge, no doubt!
Will this shake up wake up the Democrats? The Republicans have already decided that the earthquake was God's way of punishing America because Barack Obama is president. Nothing will wake up the Republicans. We have to count on the Democratic leaders to do what is right. Remember, the Republicans wanted the government to default. If they want us to become a third rate nation they should be cheering for a core meltdown. Do not expect any Republican to give an ounce of support for better safety at nuclear profit plants. They will argue that these private industries are already "over-regulated" and that is their problem. Imagine, a nuclear profit plant that was designed to be safe for 40 years is still operating after fifty years with no new safety devices. I am more worried about whether the progressive Democrats will do what is right.
Great Poem
Money Hi-Jackers Make Monument Crackers
by leighmf, on the present state of things
Washington's Monument cracked and swayed,
another round of golf was played.
Nancy took a library slip,
Rubio slippers caught her, Pip! Pip!
The Dome of the Capitol too might have fallen.
From Union Station, God was a-callin'-
"Boy, this place is going to Hell.
They never did fix the Liberty Bell."
Remember the Maine! Remember the Cole!
Speaking of coal, the Virginian Soul-
another form of coal is coke
one way or another we drink, snort and smoke.
Raised politicians, Dumb, Dumb, and Dumber,
how they loved being on TV all summer!
Primping and pimping in shiny silk ties,
make-up and lighting- where are our cream pies?
Brothers and Sisters, it's time to throw food!
Lunch wagons for Wall Street, wieners for their brood.
Let them spread asphalt and dig the new sewer,
wearing leg irons caked with manure.
XXXXX
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-august-17-2011/indecision-2012---e...
When I heard the MSNBC correspondant at 1:30 in say that Paul Ryan had moderate appeal I nearly tore my hair out. This sociopath corporatist makes his staff read Ayn Rand and he is blatently for sale, and he is considered 'moderate'? What in the world is going on Thom!???
How much "fracking" went on offshore causing the Japanese earthquake?
How about a very simple constitutional ammendment that is essentially a definition of 'person', to be ..."A Person, in context of constitutional protections afforded to 'the people', is here by determined to be a breathing human being, capable by law of voting or enlisting in the armed forces of the United States".
I listened to the bit on the VA quake yesterday and quickly wanted to give some info. I am a licensed professional geologist and I live in Chicago. The United States Geological Survey set the quake at 5.8. Which is a moderate sized quake. The focus of the quake (the point at which th quake actually occurs below the epicenter) was at a depth of 3.7 miles. It's unusual but not unheard of. VA is near the middle of a tectonic plate and considered stable. However, 400 million years ago when the Appalachian mountains were being built it was a zone of active subduction. This created many passive faults in the area. Matter of fact 99 percent of all faults are dormant or inactive. The quake was too deep to be human induced. An old fault probably got reactivated to compensate for the Earth's constant movement elsewhere. I have a podcast on my blog about the subject in more detail. It's in 2 parts totaling about 4.5 minutes at migeweb.org/wordpress on the podcast page. I hope this helps.
Steve