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Scalia Defends Cross On Public Land, Claims It Represents Everyone
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/scalia-defends-cross-on-p_n_313...
I heard about an interesting book today.
The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
by Lierre Keith
My understanding is that, despite the title, the critique is more about agriculture and how it ruins top soil. She uses a term, which she may have coined, "fossil soil" referring to the fact that like oil our topsoil is the product of the long history of this planet.
She does have several critiques of vegetarianism which I think may be the source of some of the controversy around the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/160...
Thom,
I believe I was listening to your show a while back and you mentioned that Health Care in the USA used to be not for profit. Can you enlighten me on this? Or am I mistaken on what I thought I heard?
Thanks,
Mark
http://taibbi.rssoundingboard.com/short-selling-vs-naked-short-selling-a...
Short-Selling Vs. Naked Short-Selling: An Explanation
Refine, baby, refine...oh, nevermind
Whenever people were complaining about the price of gasoline over the last 5 or 6 years -- i.e., every time they pulled into a service station -- you always heard the same refrain. Which was that the real culprit wasn't the Saudis or the Russians or Dick Cheney or too many Hummers. The real problem -- that no one ever paid attention to, they said -- was that America needs more refineries.
Here's a typical story from 2004:
There are plenty of reasons gas costs so much, but one of them is that the United States doesn't have enough refineries. The National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association says that the last new refinery built in the United States was Marathan Ashland's Garyville, La., plant—and it was completed in 1976. According to this report, between 1999 and 2002 refining capacity in the United States rose only 3 percent, squeezing up prices since demand grew much faster than that. Who's to blame for the fact that refining supply can't keep up with our thirst for oil? Probably you.
Really? OK, then explain to me how this is my fault:
In a major attempt to cope with slumping global demand for fuel and a dismal profit outlook, Sunoco Inc. said yesterday it was indefinitely idling its Eagle Point oil refinery in Gloucester County and slashing its dividend in half.
The Eagle Point shutdown, which could turn out to be permanent if market conditions fail to improve, is scheduled to start today and is expected to take four to six weeks to complete. About 400 employees will be furloughed, with the option of taking severance packages.
The 145,000-barrel-per-day refinery is on the Delaware River opposite South Philadelphia.
Uh, drill, baby, drill...? Actually, I just noticed today, for the first time in months, a station selling gas for under $2.45 a gallon, so I guess it was time for the oil companies to do something to reduce the supply. Or who even knows if refining capacity was really the problem they said it was, as recently as last year. Two great ex-Philadelphia investigative reporters, Donald Barlett and Jim Steele, won a Pulitzer Prize in the mid-1970s for showing how oil companies manipulated supplies and prices during the first great crisis -- you don't suppose that could happen again, do you. My condolences to 400 hard-working local people who lose their jobs amid Sunoco's -- pardon the mixed metaphor -- shell games.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/
If anyone hasn't see Keith Olbermann's hour-long special comment delivered tonight (10/7) on Health Care -- you really must. It is Shakespearean and completely stunning.
Thom -- you have worked tireless to lay the foundation for a national (and global) Renaissance -- and I truly believe it is beginning. You did get me through the despair.... when all I could hear in the middle of the night was the wailing of widows and the weeping of children. I hear music now in the distance and it is coming closer....
I have a theory of how Obama might be playing Chess, not Checkers with health care reform.
It suddenly occurred to me today that president Obama might just have made a brilliant move in introducing health care reform from a position of compromise, with the public option, rather than the position we'd all hoped he'd take, Medicare for all. And here's why... moving the debate the furthest possible to the right without alienating the left gave Obama the support of most of big healthcare, the drug companies, most of the insurance companies. From this position, he gains positive input from these companies, rather than what would have happened otherwise. You see Harry and Louise supporting the president's plans instead of opposing them. And while this strategy is implemented, you keep your base hanging by a thread. Co-ops, triggers, maybe no public option at all, who knows. This ignites more activism in the base and public pressure is intensely magnified. Would the base have been as active were it not for the consistent threat of no true reform at all? You get people like Thom, and Ed Shultz, and Keith Olbermann banging their fists demanding the public option. It looks like the right is going to win again.
And this, I suppose, is where quite a bit of hope, faith and optimism in Barack Obama, and the democrats in general comes in. I pray this is his secret intention. Withdrawal your attention, make your base feel like you aren't listening. Intensify feelings in the base many times over. And you get a well-oiled machine, unified, on message and demanding real reform. At the last possible minute, you pull out your real plan, the strong public option open to everyone (though we all wish it would really be Medicare for all, I don't think even Barack Obama has the pills to go that far), and you throw a few bones to the right too with tort reform and the "health insurance marketplace". You unleash the full strength of your grassroots mailing lists. You threaten conservative democrats with withdrawing campaign funding and chairmanships. The plan takes a sudden turn to the left, and big health doesn't have enough time to unleash the full might of its power before the congressional vote. It's like taking a garden hose and holding it closed and then suddenly releasing the pressure.
If this truly is his plan, I stand in awe of the political genius at work here.
Let me say that Ibelieve Osama bin Laden is dead. He was gravely ill in 2001 and he cannot just miraculously be healthy.
The theory that I have why we start wars every so often is to test our research on the weaponry that has been developed from one war tp the next.
I've been meaning to get around to posting this link for a while. I wrote this a few years ago (2005 I think), and it just seems more justified than ever. Title "President of the Lambs," it's an essay that takes seriously the idea that sociopaths are running amuck in the GOP, Wall Street, and society in general. I ended by proposing that if we drug-test people for employment, why not Hare PCL/R test as a prerequisite for holding office or running any big corporation, etc. I think people could actually be sold on the idea, since even teabaggers would not admit they want sociopaths running the government, and they'd assume only the Bad Guys would have a problem passing the psych exams.
Not that it'd be easy to implement, but lots of not-easy things get done.
http://thenonist.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/president_of_the_lambs/
I think THOM mentioned a phrase in passing -- about the Rightwing's reaching their success through lies and scams or something or other -- ways we on the progressive side would not choose.
I want to see all of us rethink using the words 'success/succeed' and 'win' in relation to the techniques the Rightwing uses and has used. We know their brand of 'success' is anathema to our idea of what succeeding is (like denying healthcare versus our desire to DELIVER healthcare!). So let's use a word that better describes what the Rightwing's goal is: Their goal is DOMINATION; so I say we say that from now on. To use the words 'success' and 'win' in relation to their goal is confusing. Instead we need to say clearly that the Right is 'reaching it's goal to dominate', 'they are attempting to dominate the process', and so on.
Indeed, when we speak of our own desires for success, we should describe the way that success differs as well.
Just an attempt to get clearer on what we are talking about. Because I can't describe even one thing the Right desires to concretize that I would consider a 'successful' attainment!
Regarding THOM's mention of his favorite sci-fi author's method of creating financial worth based on energy. Not good enough for my vision of people working happily and well at what they enjoy.
And I bristle at the economic core being "making things".
Making things. Making things. Making things.
Sorry. As a basis for an 'economy' -- how can it ever be sustainable?
Sustaining things should have worth,too!
I say 'time' as well as 'energy' should be part of remuneration too. That way the idea that a garbage collector's time is less valuable than a brain surgeon's is reached. And people pursuing a vocation on the basis primarily on money would wither. We should choose our vocations based on talent and love of doing them. Pay everyone pretty much equally for their TIME then.
In cheap we trust? Is that why we are happy to import goods from China and other Asian countries, and let countries south of the border be the scapegoat to absorb all our anger over loss of jobs?
At the end of Wednesday’s show, Thom hastily mentioned that one possible reason that we may remain in Afghanistan for an indeterminate amount of time is that we want to get our hands on its untapped resources. I wrote here last week that this isn’t a practical excuse for us to remain. For one thing, its major untapped resources are natural gas and coal (not oil), which we already have in abundance, and in the case of natural gas, its export potential would remain largely a regional commodity. There are mineral resources including high-grade iron ore and copper in the mountains of Afghanistan, but the dearth of Afghans with the needed skills, the lack of infrastructure (governmental or otherwise), the difficult terrain and constant conflicts between factions (to say nothing of our efforts to alienate as many people there as we can) has prevented projects that might have properly developed these resources. Outside of natural gas, Afghanistan exports almost no mineral resources at all, save maybe on the black market; what was “mined” has been used to finance inter-tribal warfare over the years.
The question then is are we there to stabilize the country enough to develop mining operations ourselves? The former Soviet Union tried to do it, and were unsuccessful, and they had more technical resources readily available. I rather doubt that the Bush administration coveted the country’s resources because of the additional cost it would entail (not to mention causing an international backlash if resource looting was our true purpose there), or else it would have made a more concerted effort to develop the Afghanistan’s infrastructure. We are, after all, about to pull out of Iraq, having done little of what we promised to do on the ground.
At the end of Wednesday’s show, Thom hastily mentioned that one possible reason that we may remain in Afghanistan for an indeterminate amount of time is that we want to get our hands on its untapped resources. I wrote here last week that this isn’t a practical excuse for us to remain. For one thing, its major untapped resources are natural gas and coal (not oil), which we already have in abundance, and in the case of natural gas, its export potential would remain largely a regional commodity. There are mineral resources including high-grade iron ore and copper in the mountains of Afghanistan, but the dearth of Afghans with the needed skills, the lack of infrastructure (governmental or otherwise), the difficult terrain and constant conflicts between factions (to say nothing of our efforts to alienate as many people there as we can) has prevented projects that might have properly developed these resources. Outside of natural gas, Afghanistan exports almost no mineral resources at all, save maybe on the black market; what was “mined” has been used to finance inter-tribal warfare over the years.
The question then is are we there to stabilize the country enough to develop mining operations ourselves? The former Soviet Union tried to do it, and were unsuccessful, and they had more technical resources readily available. I rather doubt that the Bush administration coveted the country’s resources because of the additional cost it would entail (not to mention causing an international backlash if resource looting was our true purpose there), or else it would have made a more concerted effort to develop the Afghanistan’s infrastructure. We are, after all, about to pull out of Iraq, having done little of what we promised to do on the ground.
mstaggerlee,
Your story about your doctor is a perfect example of why life in these United States is such a nightmare, and becoming more so. When one can't expect that rationality would be the "default position" in our daily lives, one is left to question why he/she should trust the veracity of almost anything.
mistaggerlee the problem is fundamentalism in all religions i see just as much of a problem from fundamentalist Christianity as i do fundamentalist Islam
Money seems to be more an equation of value/time. If you want to call that function labor . . .I guess. I wrote a blog about this in the community section about 2 months ago entitled "The Illusion of Money". The piece tries to outline the change of money from a consistent means of equalizing a trade imbalance (very specific, fixed purpose), to an abstract being exchanged for an abstract. I wonder if it is still there . . .?
Benazir Bhotto's comment about the man who assassinated was probably a misstatement. Bhutto said that Omar Sheik killed bin Laden. Omar Sheik killed the journalist Daniel Pearl. And although Thom enthusiastically responded to the caller's mention of Bhutto's comment, it is in contradiction to the claim by David Ray Griffin (that Thom seemed to embrace) that bin Laden died of kidney failure. But who knows, maybe Omar Sheik shot bin Laden in the kidney. Hey, I think I solved the problem. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I have not used the banking industry in 10 years. I think it is absurd to pay some one to store my money, then lend my money; to in return, make a tidy profit for themselves, off of my money, and then only give me ~3%. Absurd!
Not to plug for them too hard . . .but there is a company (FDIC insured) called Netspend. They have a savings plan that has a 5% return interest and other features; a nice alternative.
Thom,
President Obama needs a runaway truck ramp to stop the so called war machine.
I don't know if Osama bin Laden is dead or alive, but let's not forget that David Ray Griffin has a stake in proving him dead and debunking the bin Laden "confession tape".
Griffin has spent much of his decade promoting the "9/11 was an inside job" theory. If bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks and confessed to that fact Griffin's reputation and revenue stream would both dwindle.
Another one of Thom's favorite writers Matt Taibbi wrote an article in Rolling Stone about why he doubts the credibility of the "9/11 Truth" movement. He doesn't challenge the individual claims and "facts". What he does is show is all the things that would have to be true for such an inside job to take place and be covered up and suggest it's unlikely such a conspiracy could be pulled off.
It's worth a read:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11818067/the_low_post_the_hop...
I love the Thom program. Feels like a Mensa meeting with fart jokes.
Re: our current presence in Afgnanistan is a consequence of the Pottery Barn rule – we broke it, so now it’s ours.
I did not brake it, nor did my children. It seems to me that who ever broke it, should be individually held responsible. But then again, that's not going to happen because "Somehow, we believe that the lower classes are capable of horrendous crimes, but never the upper classes, thus never members of our government."
It also seems to me that these sociopaths know full well in advance that if they break, "we" will have to stay and fix it. It's a win-win situation for them.
Hey Thom here its a video show how easy to manipulate a Bin Laden Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUiNiB2yVCQ&feature=related
Is Mullah Omar dead? Bush didn't find him either.
What the left needs to do to get a message to Obama is not to march on Washington, it does nothing. But instead we need to switch political parties from the Democratic to Independent. If we did this in a 5 day span, it would show a CLEAR message that NONE of them who oppose will hold another seat other than the local dog catcher. The right wing couldn't dispute it or spin it into anything other than what it is if they tried!
Medicare part E "ONLY!"