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@Gerald - Thanx for spreading the sunshine, dude! :(
Thom, just a reminder--public libraries are not free. They are another example of the good we do with our tax contributions. We all buy all types of entertainment and educationsl resources/materials and share access to them via the public libraries. They just FEEL free :-) SUPPORT your public library!!
Moral decisions in and of themselves cannot be considered immoral unless you know proportionality. There are three actions to consider in proportionality, such as intentions, circumstances, and consequences. I cannot judge Bush and Obama but I have perceptual opinions.
Here are my perceptual opinions regarding Bush’s attack and Obama’s policies and practices upon Iraq.
1. Intention – Bush wanted to make him look like a big man to his father and to himself. Oil may have also been an intention as well as permanent military bases. Obama’s continuous policies and practices of the Bush administration reveal more clearly that oil is a big factor in our attack of Iraq.
2. Circumstances – Bush lied to Americans that Iraq was an imminent threat to America’s safety and security. Obama offers more elegance in his lying to the American people. If we do not go into Iraq, they will come here and we will no longer be safe and secure. Do we feel safer and more secure now? The American government controls Americans through fear. Our government will always find a scapegoat to blame and in turn to control our people more and more.
3. Consequences – Bush’s decisions laid the groundwork for war crimes, mass murders, crimes against humanity, torture, and rape of a foreign land. Americans have their freedoms and rights taken from them through the Patriot Acts. Obama has also embraced the Patriot Acts and the war in Iraq. Both Bush and Obama are war criminals.
America’s economy is such that the middle class is being dissolved. Contracts are given to boyfriends and Americans do not know where the money is going.
Bush’s attack upon Iraq raises proportionality to a level that his decision to attack Iraq is an immoral act. Obama continues a disproportional attack upon Middle Eastern countries, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen. There is also a sense of eagerness to attack Iran. Grave eternal consequences are upon these persons and their souls and also with the people and their souls who have agreed with these brutal and inhumane actions upon the Middle Eastern people.
Mark, I think that most people voted for Obama because they didn't buy into the red-necked, dumb-ass, Bible-thumping, science- hating, retrograde idiot throwback Sarah Palin. The war monger, old John wasn't that appealing either.
Here is my prediction. As Americans wise up, they will revolt to take back their country. With the U. S. Military Forces and the Blackwater Mercenary Group working in unison they will slaughter Americans who speak out against corporations and the government, American blood will flow on the American streets like raging rivers. We will have Americans killing Americans.
I have an idea for what Thom can use to cover the apple logo on his computer. Make up a bumper sticker like the one that appeared on The Colbert Report a while ago. After Sarah Palin said at the Tea Bag Convention, "How's all that hopy changy stuff workin' out for ya?" Colbert said her new slogan was: Palin 2012: Abandon All Hope Of Anything Ever Changing
Any Palin supporter who sees this will think you're with them, and everyone else will get the joke and think you're with them.
Here's my police story.
I'm 31 and from a small town. In my teens a neighbor got angry with my father for pushing his dog out of the way with his foot. He called him and accused him of kicking the dog. There was heated back and forth arguing, and my father hung up. The neighbor shows up at our house, yelling, and telling him to come out and fight him. My father calls the police. The police tell him that they have other things on their plate and they can't come. While he is on the phone with the police, the neighbor is still yelling. My father says, "Can you hear him?" The officer says that he can, but they still can't send anybody. Think that's bad? That's not the end of the story.
Years later, in my 20's, my father gets into an argument with a different neighbor. This time, he's in the wrong. But despite the fact that he was being a jerk, he didn't make any threats or say that he wanted to beat anyone up. Later that day, the police show up, and tell him that the neighbor said he was making threats. They said that if they got another call, he would be brought up on charges. Why is it that the police could show up for a neighbor who said my father was making threats, but they couldn't show up when they actually heard a guy on the phone threatening my father?
In my mid-twenties, a found out a possible reason why. I got called for jury duty for the first time. I don't follow local politics, so that was when I learned that a judge on the court and the neighbor for whom the police came share the same last name. I don't know if that were a coincidence, or if they were actually related, but I think that at the very least the police decided not to blow it off just to be safe.
Since then, I have had some moving violations, and have had to pay some fines. Had the police actually shown up when I needed them, I might have been able to stomach paying the fines. However, my experience has given me a negative view of police, and I feel that, for the most part, they are very deserving of the middle finger. Instead of getting upset at the person who gives them the finger, maybe they should talk to him and find out why. They need to ask themselves not what they should do about people giving them the finger, but what they can do to clean up their image so that no one has the desire to give them the finger. My story pales in comparison to many of the horror stories with police out there. If someone wants to give them the finger, it is protected free speech, and it is probably for a good reason.
Recession is when your neighbor loses their job
Depression is when you lose your job
Recovery is when Obama, Congress and bank CEO's lose their job!
Here is my belief. If you cannot have health insurance for a pre-existing health problem, you should be deferred from military service for the same health problem.
Tom just spoke about Barak Obama being uptight about standing against many things that GWB pushed/did or fear that he will be considered or called weak.
Did you notice that Obama signed off on a one-year continuation of the Patriot Act on Saturday evening?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html?scp=1&sq=clean%20water...
""Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. ""
This story appeared on NYTimes.com early in the morning and then disappeared from the front page cue. Please talk about this Thom. The Supreme Court represents a clear and present danger to our lives and liberties...
Flipping off a cop is incivility and indefensible, as is doing the same to anyone else. But illegal? Hardly.
However, much of the public wouldn't hesistate to call it a crime, depending on the context. for instance, if it is a black Harvard professor, it is clearly disorderly conduct and he deserves to be hauled off to jail. If it is a Tea Party protestor - he is a patriot acting in opposition to government tyranny - and should be seen as a hero.
Context is everything.
In response to flipping off a police officer, especially during a speed trap, I often wave or even blow a kiss. I know what I mean, and they are just confused.
I was travelling south of Toledo when traffic came to an abrupt stop, tail lights glowing and rear bumpers jutting up. The traffic almost immediately started moving only to repeat the process. Road rage set in as this happened a half-dozen times before I spied the cop positioned in the median. As I approached the officer, I exclaimed to my companions "Its just a f**king cop!" The cop pulled into traffic a few cars behind me and quickly preceded to pass cars until directly behind me. I kept looking in my rearview mirror as he tailed me for a short distance before he pulled me over. He initially claimed his reason for pulling me over was I had drifted across the yellow lane marker and suspected I was under the influence. I assured him I was not impaired and that I had most likely crossed the line while looking at my rearview mirror. He released after letting me know "I am not just a f**king cop."
What Henry Ford knew, but Today's Industrial Barons have forgotten -
The following occurred to me while digging out from under 3 feet of snow on Friday -
I have a grudging respect for Henry Ford. He was a racist, anti-semetic bastard, but one cannot deny that he knew a thing or two about making money in a manner that can be sustained across generations. So what was it that he knew that's been forgotten today?
Ford recognized that a great, and largely untapped, market could exist for the products his factory was turning out in massive numbers. This market was comprised of the people who worked in that factory. In order to cultivate this market, all he had to do was pay his employees well enough so that they could afford to buy what they were employed to build. Simple, huh.
This is the very simple fact that the neo-liberal economists got dead wrong. It's why I couldn't continue to read Tom Friedmann's "The World is Flat" after the first chapter or so - because every argument in that book follows logically from the flawed assumption that it doesn't matter where you build your factory, or who build your products, as long as you build them as cheaply as you can. Ford realized that it absolutely does!
There's a point of inflection on all the graphs that the Chicago School guys present to reinforce their arguments that they haven't projected their calculations far enough into the future to reach. The global economy depends in a large part on the American consumer market to sell their manufactured goods into. Back in the mid-20th century,
when the majority of those products were built by Americans, who were paid well enough to be able to buy those products, everything worked fine. Now that those same goods are being built in 3rd world nations, by people who have lived in abject poverty for generations and have never had any expectation of being able to acquire the fruits of their labor, we are closing upon that point of inflection.
IF YOU RICH BASTARDS WANNA STAY RICH, THEN YOU'D BETTER BRING OUR JOBS BACK!!!!
re: flipping-off cops: It's a stupid thing to do, first of all. I feel for cops. They're paid to clean up the messes left by our society. I don't blame them for being pissed off. Also, how a cop behaves depends on the quality of his/her supervision. Cops know what they can get away with and what they can't. I say be good to them, 'cause you don't know their hearts.
One thing that I have learned about police is that when they encounter people who can "articulate" their grievances against their behavior (like racial profiling), it tends to put them in an uncomfortable position in which they are the ones looking for a way out. In Kent, WA where I have had frequent encounters of this nature, I generally don't "flip-off" police when I see them, but if I see them driving by giving me the stare, I give them the Nazi salute, which puts my view across more concisely.
I'm a big fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books - I've read ALL of them, written between 1934 and 1975. Wolfe likes nothing better than tweaking the nose of the Police, and gets away with it because of the grudging respect he gets from closing the cases that they can't. This happens ONLY in fiction. In the real world, a private detective who "outperforms" the Police is more likely to find himself incarcerated than respected.
Time magazine had a couple of interesting articles last week, pointing out some “duh” facts, noting that the “revulsion” toward government can be explained by the failure to address the “big challenges” the country faces with “vigorous action,” which is exactly what Obama and Democrats have not done. “When government doesn’t take that action, it loses people’s faith.” Republicans, it was noted, use polarizing tactics to deliberately “stymie” government when Democrats are in power, while avoiding such talk when they are in power, because it isn’t useful to make themselves look ridiculous.
There was something on the tea party movement as well, but this time Time was way, way off, seeming to take little note that if 1 in 5 adult Americans “identify” with tea partiers, that leaves 4 in 5 who do not. The article also was entirely ignorant of its roots in extremist right-wing movements of the past. Once more, the “mainstream” media, instead of exposing the contents of the Pandora’s Box it helped open, gives it a more dangerous vitality.
There was also an article by someone name Ramesh Pannuru called “The Case Against College Education” arguing we have too many college graduates, and that some fields (like journalism) do not require a college education (he may be right). I don’t think that there are too many college graduates; the problem is that they are not receiving degrees in the fields that have the greatest need. Liberal Arts is the “easy” way to get a degree, but such degrees seldom are compatible with the needs of the marketplace. We need more people in the “hard” fields like the sciences, math and engineering. The shortage of degrees in these fields plays right into the smug, arrogant hands of people like Pannuru, who represents the “solution” to this problem: importing the educated, high-wage help.
Over the weekend, some annoying, self-important loud mouth on MSNBC named Irshad Manji “suggested” that young people voted for Obama because he was black; was this not racist? I seem to recall that this was the opinion of uber-feminists Geraldine Ferraro and Gloria Steinem when Hillary’s primary campaign began to tank. Thom had one or two discussions last week concerning why young people who voted for Obama do not seem to get as worked-up over the “tough” issues as older people do; is this “proof” that they voted for him because it was “cool” to vote for a black guy who gave inspiring speeches?
It can’t be that simple (or is it?). I voted for Obama mostly for the following reasons:
1. He was the Democratic nominee.
2. I don’t like Republicans, never did, and never will.
Now, you may ask why I preferred Obama over Hillary. Actually, I didn’t “prefer” either one. I signed an online petition begging Al Gore to step into the race. But once I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I leaned toward Obama because I didn’t think Clinton had the temperament to be president, seeing how she managed to alienate even fellow Democrats with her tart tongue during her previous foray into “executive” power back in 1993; noted the book “Game Change,” her many incomprehensible temper tantrums made even some of her own staffers muse that this person should not be president.
Anyways, Obama’s race could only have been a part of why young people were drawn to him; after all, he did seem “young” like them and spoke to them in a language they could understand. He spoke of the “future,” a concept that young voters could identify with. I suppose people did expect “change” to happen when Obama was elected, but there were different definitions of what that could mean. Some thought that “change” simply meant the historic election of a black man. Some thought (like me) that the country couldn’t afford to continue with another Republican in the White House, and that at the very least we needed a change in the environment in which policy was conducted; Obama’s claim to wish to bring people together also resonated with me, given the way the Bush administration allowed an atmosphere of racial paranoia (especially against Latinos) to exist in order to keep people’s minds off the crimes it was committing.
Diehard progressives, meanwhile, have chosen to believe that Obama, because he is black (or half black), would be more amenable to “radical” change; the problem is that Obama seems to be sincere about wanting to seen as please “all” the people, including people who hate him (because he’s black). For those people, Obama’s election itself was too “radical” for them to handle mentally; it meant “change” of much more fearsome nature. Obama the black man is going to take “everything” that belongs to them alone away from them, and give them to those “other” people. Obama is somehow going to turn the country into a Third World backwater, like Zimbabwe. This is the white man’s country, after all. Why Obama has to try to get these people on his side is beyond my comprehension, but it should be clear by now that Obama believes that being a “good” president means having the approval of all people—and in doing so has only alienated many people who hoped for “real” change while gaining none of the support of those who will never like him no matter what he does. There should be nothing “radical” about doing the “right” thing, even if some people choose not to know what is good for them.
“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” Obama, during the campaign
mebbe he should come out with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in front of a blank whiteboard and say “my republican ‘friends’ have been saying we should ’start from scratch.’ so here goes” and then writes on it on the left side “Medicare for all” then on the right side writes “tort reform” and then Nancy Pelosi writes the CBO verified cost savings on the left and on the right “sell across state lines” then Harry Reid writes “51 votes” and it goes back to Obama who says “how do you like those choices?”
March 1, 2010
Hey Thom - My name is Michael Scaccia. I am currently retired, having worked many years as a college painting and drawing instructor and later, after Prop 13 in California demolished my teaching positions, I worked in construction management and in the movie business. I have been an activist in the trenches for the greater part of my life as an artist and teacher fighting for the downtrodden, for civil rights, for Martin Luther King, for Native (First) Americans, and against war. We, my wife and I, are now activists in the public sense by necessity against the corporate for-profit prison industry that is foisting its dangerous and economy-ruining way into the midst of our beautiful rural desert community of Pahrump, NV, to which we have retired. We have been up against this prison and the special interests that support it for about two years now and with a number of others representing the majority of Pahrump - we are certain by meeting attendee numbers and by general canvassing- we are still at it, having delayed its completion but not having been able to stop its illegal methods of construction slated to finish in late 2010. In all our research we have come to realize that because of the record of unleashed dangerous brutal and heinous acts, lack of transparency, torturous cruelty, neglect, and slavery-promulgating, in the name of greed, the private for-profit prison industry is as much to be feared as and is on a par with or posing a greater threat to the world right now than the world problems viewed even on the news on free speech TV. Yes I know that you and others on Free Speech TV have spoken against the for-profit prisons and we appreciate your efforts. We thank the Great Mystery that we have found you and your show giving us fresh air and new hope. Perhaps it is because we are so close to the fight that we can see how these giant corporations in the prison industrial complex are a significant motivation and indeed an integral reason for some to profit from war. Thompson, IL may just be the precedent, the proverbial tip of the iceberg for future interment camps for war prisoner slaves. Why keep slaves way overseas to do your slave work when you can have them work right here in America; and you won’t have to pay all those shipping charges? Some may think that I am exaggerating but we have found that “the more these Machiavellians get away with, the more they get away with.”
Also of note is the collective private-for-profits’ purported main reason for building all of these prisons in the US: “immigration emergencies.” How hard is it to create an immigration emergency? Reagan brought the undocumented workers; they came and worked and raised their families. Now the workforce is overseas. According to the powers that be great numbers of immigrants are no longer needed in the US, so corporations and special interests now, for profit, want to deport these embedded folks with very limited rights after a long red-tape detention and a host of court dates of course. And what is happening to their children is yet another long sad story.
Please, if you can, tell us more about what is being done to stop this for-profit, prison system menace which is entrenching all over America, putting us in harm’s way, taking and ruining our desert water supplies, promoting the use of gas, and the horrible contamination of gas mining by fracking. And why would they not supply for their detainees, for-more-profit, GMO meat and vegetables engineered to look and taste like real prison food?
In our fight we have met local, state and federal corruption it seems at every turn. There are folks in town who have sued the County Commission, only to be shot down by local state and federal judges who by the way have been involved with the USMS (United States Marshals Service) regarding beginning scoping stages and also the monitoring of progress of the prison, clearly to find out when they can begin sending their detainees to the Pahrump Prison.
Also Pahrump citizens have a case against the OFDT (Office of the Federal Detention Trustee) for not noticing the public per due process; and a change of venue for this case is pending. We can, however, use all the help we can get.
Legendary Frank Smith, of PCI, (www.privateci.org) eloquent and fighting and winning against these for-profits for many years would gladly speak on your program.
The details of our fight are incorporated throughout www.pahrumplife.org
Thanks for being.
S'toon wrote: "I’ve got to disagree with Thom about the 4th Generation. You see, according to Thom it was the Baby Boomers who rejected the quiet building of society, and sought spiritual enlightenment, and then the Generation Xers destroyed society."
It's an intriguing theory... but while there are clear generations within families, it's not as if they exist within society as a whole. We just tend to fall into the trap that the decades we invented as part of our base 10 numerical system have some greater significance.
No lofty peak
Nor fortress bold
Could match my Captain's eye
band Procul Harem
song Salty Dog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7JBpRragNU
If there are approx. 40 million uninsured, ( & how many people in the U.S., over-all? ) then how about we each pay $1.00 per month ( there's 40 million per month, times 12 months) toward individual FULL coverage health care. I wouldn't have a problem paying $12.00 per year, if not getting a health care bill has to do with " how is the gov't gonna pay for it". ( I know,.... stop paying for all the wars & we would have the money for health care & a lot more. ) I also realize that there is a lot more to figuring out how to use this money & also, of course the ins. companys don't want this to happen. But why does it have to be this hard? And also, can some one direct me to info about the health care bills being considered , what public option is, & etc, that is not a bunch of mumbo jumbo? Thanks