Recent comments

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    It's Very Important To Start to Build a Culture of Resistance
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0dT_x1XQuQ
    Please have Derrick Jensen on. It's important!

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    TSA & US Citizens

    What I've never understood is why the TSA can't treat citizens with respect and still do their job and provide good security. Seems to me you could still thoroughly screen even a terrorist while behaving respectfully, let alone a citizen from whom the governement derives its authority (at least that's what they taught me in school years ago). In fact, respecting even your enemy gives you an advantage, because you're not as prone to underestimate them. Sure, deal with someone who is violent or abusive appropriately - but never loose sight of who the security is for. And why can't the TSA and Homeland security be subject to a citizen review board? At what point are we so afraid of terrorists that we can't trust ourselves?

  • FBI agents claim they prevented a potential terrorist attack in Oregon. Right? Well, Not Really.   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Problem with Somali teen;

    Recall the "generation gap" popular in the 60s and 70s? In addition to the generation gap, there is likely a cultural gap between the Somali teen and his parents, it is not uncommon with children of immigrants; the children tend to assimilate more quickly than the parents. This being caught in the middle between cultures can manifest in different ways; but there can be two extremes. On one end the children are repressed by the parents and end up not fitting in --- being nerdy, loners, etc. for lack of better term coming to mind. On the other end of the spectrum, the children rebel against the parents ---more so than the norm for teens-- and this could be the source of the problems the father in Portland had with the son.

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    What do you do if your child is in contact with people you consider to be destructive? Well perhaps the first thing to do is seek profession help such as a therapist or psychologist. If that doesn't work, if that doesn't seem to be working let your child know you will be contacting governmental authorities because you can't trust the judgement they have been exhibiting. If that doesn't work, then perhaps you do call the authorities, but when doing so, expect that your child will be taken to prison, if you don't expect that to happen, then you're fooling yourself. First and foremost, you really need to seek constructive help for your child, perhaps you may even want to consider that prior to your child seeking destructive paths.

    N

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Conform to living in the United States? If you believe someone has to conform to living in the United States, you don't have any concept about what the United States main principles are such as, Freedom of Speech, Religion and the Right to Privacy to start with. Conform to living in the United States, what an oxymoronic statement. What the hell are these right wing callers on?

    N

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    I have a cousin who is TSA employed and she just married a TSA employee. He is a first class yahoo (a-hole). He is a self-centered jerk. Sharing his idiocy with you would take too long.

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    The rich are protected and the working poor are screwed!!!!!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago
  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago
  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago
  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Let's cut the working poors' salaries is very stupid! Most Americans need to make more money!!! Let us stop the richs' welfare and socialistic tax cuts.

    http://www.opednews.com/articles/End-Dynasty-Welfare-Start-by-Rob-Kall-101129-246.html

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Average Americans and Slave Wages

    Slave Wages

    $5,000 per year $1 per hour 100 hour work week!

    -1250 25% federal taxes

    $3750

    -375 7 and one half% employer does not pay into social security because the program is privatized!

    ____________________

    $3,375 annual salary

    Minimum Wages

    $15,000 per year $7.50 per hour 40 hour work week!

    -3,750 25% federal taxes

    ____________________

    $11,250

    -1,125 7 and one half% employers match employees’ SS payments!

    ____________________

    $10,125 annual salary

    ____________________

    Had minimum wages kept pace with cost of living

    $38,000 $19 per hour 40 hour work week!

    -9,500

    ____________________

    $29,500

    -2,850 7 and one half% employers match employees’ SS payments!

    ____________________

    $26.650 annual salary

    With slave wages and no matching SS payments the employer can save $33,000 in salary plus $2,850 in SS matching payments for a total of $35,850. I did not include state income taxes. Michigan State Income Tax is 4.35%. Here is the percentage a working American pays in taxes for Michigan – 25% federal taxes, 7 and one half% in SS, and 4.35% state taxes for a total of 36.85%.

    I did not include property taxes and goods and services taxes. An average employee is paying at least 50% in taxes.

    Average Americans are screwed again and again. Average Americans pay more in taxes and the American rich and American corporations pay less or nothing in taxes. Average American taxes are Socialism Taxes to subsidize the American rich and American corporations from paying little or no taxes. The American rich and American corporations are Socialists.

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Let's cut peoples wages, that'll be helpful. Let's make sure everyone is evenly treated like serfs and peasants under the rule of the lords and nobles. Because once everyone is poor we'll all be better off.

    Is it ignorance, envy or just foolishness that drive that kind of thinking?

    N

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    I am about five minutes from booking a flight to anywhere, having a videographer and attorney present and going through the screening.

    I'm trying to decide whether I should strip to the buff OR go for a full Fourth Amendment press and demand to have a licensed physician/radiographer present to run the unqualified medical equipment.

    NO. Not sheeple . . . This is about completely wiping out middle-class mobility AND busting any unionized TSA and privateer-izing the whole airport security industry.

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    No we aren't being turned into a nation of sheeple... can't change something into something it already is.

    N

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Both the left and right are protesting the TSA over-reach.

    But notice that the righties are using the TSA kerfluffle to push for racial profiling. They are framing prejudice and racism as a social benefit to travelers ...

    The Israeli's on the other hand use behavioral profiling - on everyone. The few righties who directly address that, rather than trying to conflate it with racial profiling, claim that the Israeli system can only work on a small scale. (And besides, it doesn't require us to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on dubious made in Malaysia machines sold by Michael Chertoff).

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    The human rights violations our government is subjecting our citizens to here in the U.S. are insignificant in contrast to the human rights violations our military is subjecting foreign citizens to--in their own countries!

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    TSA Administrative Directive: Opt-Outters To Be Considered “Domestic Extremists”

    If the information recently acquired by Doug Hagmann of Northeast Intelligence Network is accurate, then something really big is happening in America right now - and it’s most certainly not a step towards individual liberty.

    According to Mr. Hagmann, he was contacted by a source within the DHS who provided an alarming memo detailing a new administrative directive agreed upon by DHS chief Janet Napolitano and the head of TSA John Pistole. The memo, according to Doug Hagmann, “officially addresses those who are opposed to, or engaged in the disruption of the implementation of the enhanced airport screening procedures as ‘domestic extremists’.”

    The United States government, under complete control and direction of our elected President, is now actively labeling anyone who exercises their 4th amendment Constitutional right which protects against warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures as, essentially, engaging in terrorism as defined by Section 802 of the USA Patriot Act:

    http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16840&Itemid=14

    Hmmm, I wonder if there is anything to this claim. I must admit it would not surprise me.

  • Daily Topics - Monday November 29th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    The right & WIKI leaks

    Isn't it interesting that the government tells the citizens that if you have nothing to hide, you should not object to being searched?

    If the government has nothing to hide (wrong doing), then it shouldn't mind either.

  • American businesses posted the largest profits ever – and moved our jobs to China!   14 years 29 weeks ago

    Here's what cartoonist Toles thought of Reagan's time in office:

    http://gizmology.com/ReaganTermedOut.jpg

    (I don't think I can post pictures on this blog, so please follow the link...)

    73, Garitron

  • Daily Topics - Wednesday November 24th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

    "The world will be saved by beauty..."

    In The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the main character, Prince Myshkin, is mocked by another character for having reportedly made the statement, "The world will be saved by beauty." As Advent approaches this year, I find myself haunted by the quote.

    I live in a Catholic Worker House through which broken people pass every day. I work for any organization that every day is neck deep in the challenges presented by injustice, violence, greed, and war. I sometimes am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all.

    As advocates and activists it seems that the only power we can draw on is the power of our pain, or the power of our anger at the way things are. But there is another power afoot in the universe, a power we are sometimes lucky enough to glimpse if we only have eyes to see. We can call it God, or Love. I think maybe Dostoevsky understood it as Beauty.

    This Advent, as the days grow shorter and the nights grow darker, let us wait together for the birth of Love, for the birth of Beauty. And attune our eyes to see that which will save the world.

    In peace,
    Johnny Zokovitch
    Program Director, Pax Christi USA

  • Daily Topics - Wednesday November 24th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago
  • American businesses posted the largest profits ever – and moved our jobs to China!   14 years 29 weeks ago

    We'll realize how dysfuntional this relx with CEOs is when we have soup lines as in the Great Depression. In the meantime, it'll probably take 2 election cycles to get rid of corporatist presidents and elect one who isn't -- maybe Marcy Kaptur or Alan Grayson. Maybe ranked choice voting would help -- a 3rd party candidate might take enough votes from both major parties with it. I heard someone on MSNBC recently suggest that one simple measure would be a starting place: require tax cut recipients to use the tax breaks to hire employees. I would also suggest that any corporate-friendly legislation be tied to tougher regulation, enforcement, and reigning in of abusive practices. Btw, it might help if the corporate media told its listeners the real story instead of the sugar coated one.

  • American businesses posted the largest profits ever – and moved our jobs to China!   14 years 29 weeks ago

    I suggest we work at ways to keep our dollars in our country. One suggestion I have is to set a national price of $2 gallon for E-85 fuel. It would save struggling Americans a lot of money and help bring jobs back to this country. The current price for e-85 should be $ 2.40, but states don't enforce the price and retailers charge a much higher price, close to what regular unleaded is. E-85 burns more fuel and gets about 20 percent less milege. However, at 2$, it would cost $1 less per gallon and you could pay $30 for 15 gallons of gas instead of 45. A hefty savings that most americans with e-85 capatible cars would take advantage of. It would help farmers, ethanol producers, fuel pump manufacturers, and create additional jobs in these sectors all while reducing our dependence on foriegn oil. The added cost in subsidies would be offset by the economic benefits and would be a win-win for Democrats and Obama.

  • Daily Topics - Wednesday November 24th, 2010   14 years 29 weeks ago

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