Archive for October, 2008

31
Oct
08

Democricans and Republicrats Holloween Ghost Hunters Live

Give politics a rest while treating the tricksters. Real Ghost live and in person on TV!

Give the vote to all Ghost!

-

Ghost Hunters Live | Hosted by Josh Gates and Steve Valentine

Ghost Hunters Live on SCI FI: This Halloween. Hosted by Josh Gates and Steve Valentine, with guest star Amanda Tapping. This Halloween– Friday, Oct 31 at

-

My ghost has an agent?

31
Oct
08

THE PLANET VIDEO

-

From Link TV, THE PLANET series

-

About this video:

The Planet is an alarming 4-part series from Sweden on Global Change. This environmental wake-up call from filmmakers Michael Stenberg, Linus Torell and Johan Soderberg hits hard on the issues of Increased Emissions, Diminished Rainforests, Species Extinction, Depleting Natural Resources and the looming phenomenon of Environmental Refugees. In The Planet, scientists across the globe deliver a staunch warning that “the earth has its limits” and we must act now to reverse the damage imposed by the age-old practice of human enterprise.

Watch all 4 episodes online:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

-

31
Oct
08

LYING IN POLITICS

McCain and Palin Are Trying to Take Political Lying to the Next Dimension
By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted September 15, 2008.

McCain and Palin reach a new level of campaign dishonesty as they tell lies about their records and their opponent. But will they pay a price?

{Here from Alternet: Other Alternet info. below article by Robert Parry.}

Despite all the chatter about how “historic” Campaign 2008 has been, it is the McCain-Palin ticket that it is truly testing the limits, not of race or gender politics, but whether the United States is ready to enter into a new dimension of political lying.

Until two weeks ago, it would have been hard to believe that any political figure would have had the audacity to step into the national spotlight by telling the bald-faced lies that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has. Yet, many Americans have embraced her enthusiastically and don’t want to hear anything negative about her.

Palin’s most obvious lie is one that she has repeated over and over: “I told Congress, ‘thanks but no thanks’ about that Bridge to Nowhere.” Now, however, anyone who has bothered to fact-check this claim knows that Palin supported the bridge until Congress removed the earmark and then she kept the money to use on other state projects.

Palin also presents herself as a “reformer” who can’t stand earmarks or the lobbyists who arrange such wasteful pork-barrel spending — except that she hired Alaska’s top Washington lobbyists to secure millions of dollars in earmarks for her town, Wasilla, and for her state, including sending off a wish list of nearly $200 million just this year.

With the help of the lobbying firm and her annual treks to Washington, Palin secured a stunning $27 million in earmarked funds for Wasilla, a town then with about 6,000 residents. Some of Palin’s projects were considered such prime examples of Washington pork that they were cited in anti-earmark reports compiled by none other than Sen. John McCain earlier this decade.

When ABC’s news anchor Charles Gibson asked Palin about her past support of earmarks and her backing for the Bridge to Nowhere, Palin simply refused to acknowledge that she had made misleading or false claims about herself.

“It has always been an embarrassment that abuses of the ear form — earmark process has been accepted in Congress,” Palin said. “And that’s what John McCain has fought. And that’s what I joined him in fighting.”

But Palin is not alone in simply denying reality. Her partner, John McCain, has shown his own ability to not blush while lying.

On the ABC-TV show “The View,” McCain was confronted with Palin’s contradictory record of arranging earmarks while selling herself as a reformer. McCain simply ignored the facts and declared, “not as governor she didn’t.”

McCain’s Lies

But McCain now has his own long trail of stunning lies, both about his opponent Barack Obama and McCain’s dubious reputation for clean politics. After presiding over a convention notable for its partisan rancor — including endless mocking of Obama as a “community organizer” — McCain said his presidency would be about eliminating “partisan rancor.”

Earlier in the campaign, McCain approved ads accusing Obama of everything from causing $4 a gallon gasoline (a silly charge) to stiffing wounded U.S. troops in Germany by canceling a visit because he couldn’t bring along cameras (a false accusation).

More recently, McCain and his team have blamed Obama for passing a law that would require sex education for kindergarteners and for calling Palin a “pig” when the Democratic nominee criticized McCain’s economic package by saying it was like “putting lipstick on a pig.”

Though McCain himself had applied the common expression to Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan, Obama’s use of the image was ripped from its context and twisted into a “sexist” attack on Palin.

As for the kindergarten sex-education ad, the McCain campaign had contorted Obama’s support for a program that would teach young school children how to avoid sexual predators into providing them “comprehensive sex education.”

When confronted on “The View” about these two dishonest ads, McCain insisted that “actually they are not lies.” He then went on to argue that his own use of the “lipstick on a pig” remark was different because he was talking about Clinton’s health-care plan.

Barbara Walters, one of the program’s co-hosts, challenged this excuse, noting that Obama was speaking about change, not Palin.

McCain’s response was that Obama “chooses his words very carefully,” suggesting apparently that when McCain has used the phrase he doesn’t. McCain added as his defense that harsh things have been said about him, too, and that “this is a tough campaign.”

At the end of McCain campaign ads — including others that have compared Obama to Paris Hilton and distorted his positions on taxes, health care and energy — the voters hear McCain intoning, “I approved this message.”

Successful Strategy

All of this might not be so troubling to Americans who care about the future of their democracy, except that the smears are working.

The McCain-Palin ticket is surging in the polls behind this strategy of deliberate lies and deceptive rhetoric. Many national polls now put the Republicans ahead in the presidential race and show them quickly closing the gap with Democrats in congressional races.

Not only has the lying worked well in raising fresh doubts about Obama and lifting the spirits of Republican activists, but it’s had a curious impact on the national press corps, which has difficulty standing up to what might be called strategic lying that saturates the media’s capacity for fact-checking and plays on the desire to appear “even-handed.”

For weeks, the national press corps essentially has followed a “plague on both their houses” approach to campaign distortions, even though the McCain campaign was by far the more egregious — and systematic — in its pattern of misrepresentations.

Indeed, it seems that the McCain strategy included preemptive berating of the news media for “bias” as a way to scare journalists away from taking note of how McCain’s strategic lying was reshaping the electoral landscape.

It took the New York Times until Sept. 13 to publish a comprehensive story about McCain’s cynical approach to politics.

The Times story noted that McCain’s “strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his ‘Straight Talk’ image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.”

The Times added that “for all the criticism [of the lies and distortions], the offensive seems to be having an impact. It has been widely credited by strategists in both parties with rejuvenating Mr. McCain’s campaign and putting Mr. Obama on the defensive since it began early this summer.”

Times columnist Bob Herbert made a similar point in a Sept. 13 op-ed, writing: “While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.”

McCain’s Record

Beyond the studied anti-intellectualism — even anti-realism — now surrounding the McCain-Palin campaign, there is another longer-term question of whether McCain’s current behavior is just a “campaign mode” aberration or whether he ever deserved the favorable depiction as a “maverick” and a “reformer.”

Though McCain has bucked his party on some high-profile issues, such as campaign finance reform and earmarked spending, his actual record reveals him to be a doctrinaire conservative with his own checkered past on ethics.

McCain, in effect, reinvented himself as a “reformer” in the 1990s after he got caught in the late 1980s in a savings-and-loan influence-peddling scheme with Cindy McCain’s business partner, Charles Keating.

Even in recent years while cultivating his reform image, McCain — as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee — has maintained cozy relationships with business lobbyists and, indeed, stocked his campaign staff with many of the insiders he rails against.

Yet, because of his long history of flattering press clippings — he once called the journalists on his “Straight Talk Express” his “base” — McCain seems to always expect gentle treatment, regardless of his actions. That confidence has enabled him to get away with stating the opposite of obvious truths and suffering little consequence.

For instance, when the New York Times published an article on Feb. 21 describing McCain’s relationship with a telecommunication lobbyist, his campaign issued a statement declaring that “John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country [in Congress] with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.”

McCain issued this statement despite the clear public record about his role as one of the so-called “Keating Five,” senators who did favors for savings-and-loan wheeler-dealer Charles Keating.

In 1987, Keating wanted to frustrate oversight from federal banking regulators who were examining his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. At Keating’s urging, McCain wrote letters, introduced bills and pushed a Keating associate for a job on a banking regulatory board. McCain then joined several other senators in two private meetings with federal banking regulators on Keating’s behalf.

Two years later, Lincoln collapsed, costing the U.S. taxpayers $3.4 billion. Keating eventually went to prison and three other senators from the Keating Five saw their political careers ruined. McCain drew a Senate reprimand for his involvement and later lamented his faulty judgment. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” he wrote in his 2002 memoir, Worth the Fighting For.

But some people close to the case thought McCain got off too easy — and actually may have been the senator most deeply entwined with Keating. Not only was McCain taking donations from Keating and his business circle, getting free rides on Keating’s corporate jet and enjoying joint vacations in the Bahamas — McCain’s second wife, the beer fortune heiress Cindy Hensley, had invested with Keating in an Arizona shopping mall.

In the years that followed, however, McCain not only got out from under the shadow of the Keating Five scandal but found a silver lining in the cloud, transforming the case into a lessons-learned chapter of his personal narrative.

Nevertheless, years later when the Times article questioned just how ethical the “new” John McCain really was, McCain lashed back with a categorical statement that was categorically untrue, saying he had “never done favors for special interests.”

When one considers how other recent presidential candidates, such as Al Gore in 2000, were treated for perceived misstatements about their personal records, it’s striking how effectively McCain has escaped serious criticism for lying — and how he has sustained his reputation as a supposed “truth-teller.”

So, perhaps, the current pattern of McCain approving dishonest ads and embracing a calculated strategy of false statements about Barack Obama shouldn’t come as a surprise.

McCain now seems to have located a soul-mate in Sarah Palin, who shares McCain’s assuredness in making public statements that are clear-cut lies and then insisting they are absolute truth.

The only remaining question is how well this strategy will work.

-=======================================================

Olbermann: Ayers a guest in McCain’s glass house
In a Special Campaign Comment, Keith Olbermann points out that not only does John McCain have a closer relationship with Rashid Khalidi than Barack Obama does, that relationship means McCain is has a connection to William Ayers as well.
=======================================================

-

-

And a whole lot more from Alternet

-

Evangelicals and Rural Americans Are Breaking Big for Obama

By Robert S. Eshelman, Tomdispatch.com

Election 2008: A mass defection from the Republican Party may be underway in counties that were once GOP strongholds. Call it the reverse Bradley Effect.

The Nasty Truth: Free Trade Agreements May Scuttle Green Jobs Plans

Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Many of the promises the candidates make on the stump would have trouble passing muster with the WTO — that’s the whole point of “free trade” deals.

A Solar Gold Rush Is Spreading From California to New Jersey

Dara Colwell, AlterNet

Environment: With new solar-powered movie theaters and factories, the solar industry is exploding. But how far can it take us toward a clean energy future?

How the Economy Is Affecting Your Sex Life

Vanessa Richmond, The Tyee

Sex and Relationships: Softening up, going down, losing firmness — it seems sex and the economy have more in common than language.

How Much Damage Has Eight Years of Conservative Rule Done to Americans’ Psyches?
Mark Klempner, AlterNet

Health and Wellness: The Bush administration used a politics of fear to diminish our ability to think critically and to erode our capacity to love.

Patients v. Big Pharma: Supreme Court to Decide Landmark Case
Niko Karvounis, Health Beat

Health and Wellness: Should patients have the right to sue drug companies for personal injuries from FDA-approved prescription drugs?

Why I Love Taxes — And Most Americans Do, Too
Sally Kohn, Movement Vision Lab

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Conservatives talk about “starving the beast” of government. But given that government feeds and nurtures us, we’d only be starving ourselves.

It’s Time for a Trillion-Dollar Tag Sale at the Pentagon
Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: When we want to get serious about a long-term bailout strategy, we’ll start dismantling the American empire and Pentagon programs.

Can You Guess a Person’s Politics by Their Personality? Psychologist Team Says Yes
Maria Luisa Tucker, AlterNet

Election 2008: A map illustrating regional personality differences across America is surprisingly similar to the red state/blue state map of the nation.

Will the Economic Crash Take Down Our Hopes for Clean Energy?
David Morris, AlterNet

Environment: This happened before, in 1981. But this time the renewable energy industry is in better shape for a fight.

Michelle ‘McCarthy’ Bachmann — The Hate Monger of Minnesota
Max Blumenthal, The Daily Beast

Election 2008: How a Minnesota congresswoman became the poster child for the GOP’s election 2008 crack-up.

The New York Times’ Biggest Screw-up Since They Sold the War in Iraq
Mark Ames, The Nation

Media and Technology: Deconstructing the NYT fairy tale of the poor innocent small democracy of Georgia attacked by a cruel Cold War Russian monster.

Don’t Look Now, There’s a Huge Wave of Inflation Coming Toward Us
Kevin Phillips, Huffington Post

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Paulson and Bernanke’s “rescue” have only begun to do their full long-term damage.

Can “Card-Check” Lead to Labor’s Comeback?
Kim Moody, Labor Notes

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Despite innovations in unionizing through the card check process, a bold initiative waiting in Congress is the big hope.

Where Have All the Water Fountains Gone?
Richard Girard, Polaris Institute

Water: New buildings are being constructed without water fountains, and existing buildings are decommissioning older fountains.

Obama vs. McCain: Progressive Voter Guide to Reproductive Justice and Gender
AlterNet

Reproductive Justice and Gender: Find out how the candidates compare on the 10 most important reproductive justice and gender issues, from abortion to equal pay.

How McCain Turned His Back on the Vietnamese Man Who Saved His Life
Norman Stockwell, AlterNet

Election 2008: Forty-one years after McCain was shot down in Vietnam, the man who saved his life has died in obscurity.

Republicans Face Huge Losses in the House and Senate Across the Country
Hans Johnson, In These Times

With public dissatisfaction at record highs, Democrats are set for another round of pickups.

Obama Campaign Takes the Fight to FOX
ZP Heller, Brave New Films

Video: Watch Obama spokesman Bill Burton stand up to FOX’s Megyn Kelly.

A Class Analysis of Palin’s Classy New Clothes
Sue Katz, Consenting Adult

PEEK: All this criticism is not sliding off Palin’s silk-covered back.

The Great Porn Misunderstanding: Pornography Is Mostly About Fantasy, Not Reality
Michael Bader, AlterNet

A response to Robert Jensen’s recent AlterNet article, “Porn’s Dirty, Dangerous Secret.”

5 Reasons Why Wall Street’s Bailout Won’t Work
Danny Schechter, AlterNet

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Markets are volatile and trending down while banks are still not lending despite frequent projections of massive unemployment and stagflation.

Why Straight People Need to Get into the Fight for Marriage Equality
Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Reproductive Justice and Gender: Pragmatism doesn’t mean leaving your core principles at the door.

Facing Substantial Delays at the Polls, Voters Sue the State of Pennsylvania
Danielle Ivory, American News Project

Default: With the help of Voter Action and the NAACP, voters filed a complaint in a Philadelphia federal court.

Getting to the Bottom of the Deceptive, Secretive and Artificial Iraq-U.S. Negotiations
Phyllis Bennis, Foreign Policy in Focus

War on Iraq: Whatever the U.S.-Iraqi “agreement” ends up looking like, it is unlikely to have much of an effect on the occupation.

Obama vs. McCain: Progressive Voter Guide to Water Issues
AlterNet

Water: See how Obama and McCain compare on eight water issues from privatization to pollution.

If the GOP Had Listened to ACORN’s Advice, the Mortgage Industry Wouldn’t Be in Meltdown
Peter Dreier, John Atlas, The Nation

Election 2008: Desperate Republicans are scapegoating the respected community advocacy group for Wall Street’s disastrous lending spree.

Michael Moore: No More Socialism for the Rich!
CNN

“McCain is going to make sure the wealthy get another incredible tax break while everybody else suffers.”

Sen. Ted Stevens Found Guilty on All Counts in Corruption Trial
Amanda Terkel, Think Progress

PEEK: The Senate’s longest-serving Republican may end his career with jail time.

Families of the Victims Tortured by Chicago Detectives Rejoice at First Arrest
Liliana Segura, AlterNet

Rights and Liberties: A 25-year fight to bring Jon Burge and police who systematically tortured black men to justice makes a critical breakthrough.

The Devastation in Iraq Is Systematic — And It’s About to Get Much Worse
Michael Schwartz, Tomdispatch.com

War on Iraq: Iraq’s state of complete disrepair has created a population in steaming discontent.

Some Voters Are Going to Have to Lose Their Homes Before They Connect the Dots
Garrison Keillor, Tribune Media Services

Election 2008: It’s clear that some Americans are beyond persuasion. Thankfully, it seems that most of us are willing to recognize BS when we see it.

Bush Undermines Democracy with Attack on 200,000 New Ohio Voters
Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Democracy and Elections: How far will an already politicized Justice Department go to assist Republicans win on November 4?

Manufacturing Thirst: The Hidden Water Costs of Our Industrial Economy
Kari Lydersen, Earth Island Journal

Water: From the mining of raw materials to energy production to the manufacturing process itself, industry guzzles tons of water.

Obama vs. McCain: Our Democracy and Elections Are Both Vibrant and in Peril — Voter Guide
AlterNet

Election 2008: From voter suppression to trust in public elections, a look at the candidates’ positions on 10 important voter issues.

Republican Fears of an Obama Landslide Victory Unleash Civil War within the Party
Tim Shipman, The Telegraph (UK)

Election 2008: Senior Republicans believe Barack Obama will have more political power than any president in a generation.

Palin: ‘I Don’t Know’ If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists
Jed L, Daily Kos

Election 2008: Palin gives a wink and a nod to right-wing extremists, with whom she shares radical views about the reproductive rights of women.

Bono: “Let’s Put Humanity Back on Earth”
Bono, AlterNet

Health and Wellness: In a recent speech, the pop star makes an impassioned call for Americans to resist the urge to turn inward during our troubled times.

I’ve Got a Bad Case of Election Sickness
Annabelle Gurwitch, TheNation.com

Election 2008: Incessant cries for help — and money — from people running campaigns are destroying my peace of mind.

Military Mom: Why I’m Sour About Sarah Palin
Pat Alviso, AlterNet

After all, if my son can buck up and do yet another tour of duty in Iraq, I can face a crowd of Palin supporters.

Good Thing We’re Going to Have to Live with Less Stuff — We’ll Stay Alive on Earth for Longer That Way
Stan Cox, AlterNet

Environment: If we scale down economic activity — especially if the rich do — we could all live in a cleaner world.

The Long Road Ahead — Are You Ready for the Worst the Economy Has to Offer?
James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Are we headed for a deflationary period followed by a tidal wave of inflation?

California’s Big Chance to Stop Locking up Harmless Drug Offenders
AlterNet

DrugReporter: Supporters of California’s Prop 5 argue it would dramatically improve the way non-violent offenders are treated.

The Debt Trap: How Banks Push Troubled Borrowers Deeper Into Debt
Brad Stone, The New York Times

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Big Finance’s pursuit of struggling American consumers is one of the overlooked causes of the debt boom and the resulting crisis.

Thirteen Election Integrity Experts: E-Voting Problems and How to Stop Them
Jim Cirile, Velvet Revolution

Democracy and Elections: Thirteen election integrity experts and activists discuss the e-voting challenges and solutions for 2008.

Obama vs. McCain: Where Would the Election Be without Net Neutrality? — Media & Technology Voter Guide
AlterNet

Media and Technology: A look at how Obama and McCain compare on everything from net neutrality to the digital TV transition.

=

=

30
Oct
08

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES or kids say the darndest things

-

This was an e-mail I received without known authors or origin. Yet I think we can all have a non political interlude in this nation. The same nation where during the Pledge of Allegiance I would say; … “and to the Republic where witches stand.”

-

Here it is;

-

KIDS WERE ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. THE
FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ABOUT THE BIBLE WERE WRITTEN BY CHILDREN. THEY HAVE NOT
BEEN RETOUCHED OR CORRECTED. INCORRECT SPELLING HAS BEEN LEFT IN.

-
1. IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE, GUINESSIS. GOD GOT TIRED OF
CREATING THE WORLD SO HE TOOK THE SABBATH OFF.

2. ADAM AND EVE WERE CREATED FROM AN APPLE TREE. NOAH’S WIFE WAS
JOAN OF ARK. NOAH BUILT AND ARK AND THE ANIMALS CAME ON IN PEARS.

3 .. LOTS WIFE WAS A PILLAR OF SALT DURING THE DAY, BUT A BALL OF FIRE
DURING THE NIGHT.

4. THE JEWS WERE A PROUD PEOPLE AND THROUGHOUT HISTORY THEY HAD
TROUBLE WITH UNSYMPATHETIC GENITALS.
5. SAMPSON WAS A STRONGMAN WHO LET HIMSELF BE LED ASTRAY BY A JEZEBEL
LIKE DELILAH.
6. SAMSON SLAYED THE PHILISTINES WITH THE AXE OF THE APOSTLES.

7. MOSE S LED THE JEWS TO THE RED SEA WHERE THEY MADE UNLEAVENED BREAD

WHICH IS BREAD WITHOUT ANY INGREDIENTS.
8, THE EGYPTIANS WERE ALL DROWNED IN THE DESSERT. AFTERWARDS, MOSES
WENT UP TO MOUNT CYANIDE TO GET THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

9. THE FIRST COMMANDMENTS WAS WHEN EVE TOLD ADAM TO EAT THE APPLE.
10. THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT IS THOU SHALT NOT ADMIT ADULTER Y.

11. MOSES DIED BEFORE HE EVER REACHED CANADA THEN JOSHUA LED THE
HEBREWS IN THE BATTLE OF GERITOL.

12. THE GREATEST MIRICLE IN THE BIBLE IS WHEN JOSHUA TOLD HIS SON TO
STAND STILL AND HE OBEYED HIM.
13. DAVID WAS A HEBREW KING WHO WAS SKILLED AT PLAYING THE LIAR. HE FOUGHT
THE FINKELSTEINS, A RACE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN BIBLICAL TIMES.
14. SOLOMON, ONE OF DAVIDS SONS, HAD 300 WIVES AND 700 PORCUPINES.
15. WHEN MARY HEARD SHE WAS THE MOTHER OF JESUS, SHE SANG THE MAGNA
CARTA.

16. WHEN THE THREE WISE GUYS FROM THE EAST SIDE ARRIVED THEY FOUND
JESUS IN THE MANAGER.

17. JESUS WAS BORN BECAUSE MARY HAD AN IMMACULATE CONTRAPTION.
18. ST. JOHN THE BLACKSMI TH DUMPED WATER ON HIS HEAD.
19. JESUS ENUNCIATED THE GOLDEN RULE, WHICH SAYS TO DO UNTO OTHERS
BEFORE THEY DO ONE TO YOU. HE ALSO EXPLAINED A MAN DOTH NOT LIVE BY SWEAT
ALONE.
20. IT WAS A MIRICLE WHEN JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD AND MANAGED TO GET
THE TOMBSTONE OFF THE ENTRANCE.
21. THE PEOPLE WHO FOLLOWED THE LORD WERE CALLED THE 12 DECIBELS.
22. THE EPISTELS WERE THE WIVES OF THE APOSTLES.
23. ONE OF THE OPPOSSUMS WAS ST. MATTHEW WHO WAS ALSO A TAXIMAN.
24. ST. PAUL CAVORTED TO CHRISTIANITY, HE PREACHED HOLY ACRIMONY WHICH
IS ANOTHER NAME FOR MARRAIGE.
25. CHRISTIANS HAVE ONLY ONE SPOUSE. THIS IS CALLED MONOTONY.

-

-

30
Oct
08

UGLY LOYALTY TO MCCAIN?

My analysis of notorious conservative apologist Ben Steins stated political imperative.

Last night on the Craig Ferguson show, Ben Stein gave his rationalizations for supporting John McCain. He seemed to actively not support Sarah Palin however. Claiming he was never attracted to her, and when he first saw her in person, thought she was someones call girl.

He cavalierly rejected any of Obama’s strengths as mere illusionary. He went on to give his strongest recommendation for McCain, which was, (and I condense the implications of his position); We owe McCain anything he ever wants since he was a prisoner and all. This was termed in this way; ‘I can not turn my back on John McCain. Since he did what he did for us.’ So why do I call such reasoning ugly?

I am sure people like John McCain do not serve their country so they can have a permanent free pass for absolutely anything they decide to do. Turn ones back? It is obviously an ad-hominem idea of persuasion akin to sophistry. We could say that anything anyone once in the military wants to do has an imperative for our support. Well. Then we do not really have a free market or a free country. Implied is; Whenever one from the military runs for office, we cannot turn our backs on them. Now that is a scary precedent custom fit to a military dictatorship.

-

Do all those interrogated and confined at Abu Ghraib, then come home to their respective nations, now all deserve to lead them by this same reasoning; can not ‘turn ones back’ on their soldiers? Where does such reasoning lead? The world is in for horrendous trouble if all or any who fall captive while bravely serving are seen in this light of entitlement. It is a phony reason, seemingly meant to sway the non rational, but those suitable to feeling guilty.

The reasoning is a familiar “logic” on the right; make people guilty and or fearful, and have them act from there. Ignore reality for manipulable emotional “connection”.

It is odd this alleged loyalty to the troops. For which party is most often not helping veterans benefits? Which party implies that the soldiers “know what they are getting into.’, so do not require any more socialistic consideration? McCain, who some feel has unresolved emotional issues from his service, is in the party that tries to not treat PTSD ills acquired by returning troops. I guess being against big government equals cutting veterans benefits as well.

Not turn ones back. It is an insult to all who serve and have served. To think that they are entitled to the keys to run the nation for serving, is quite an insult to our citizens who serve. As if then it is a known that joining the military sets one up for life, and we should owe them absolutely anything they dream up. Including being president since; ‘I cannot turn my back’. A clever piece of pandering propaganda, true. I saw how fast my cousins two volunteer terms as a sniper in Vietnam was forgotten with no societal quilt or culpability shown.

America’s finest serve this nation to do just that; serve and protect it. We honor them by being free to chose as we will, no entitlements, as if in a military dictatorship. We do owe veterans for what they have sacrificed; They may well need health care including emotional care. They my need other job training. They may need more thank you’s from all of us, and more pride shown them for their service. But owe one the presidency? Absurd nonsense in a still free country.

What Ben Stine should be asking himself instead is; What kind of leader would John McCain be, when he is known to have picked Sarah Palin as his first appointment act of his possible presidency? Someone who many, even some noted Republicans believe, demonstrated how little they know of the lower 49, or how government works here. This is who he chose to succeed him, as if the rest of We the People were some kind of a reckless gambling joke.

There may be more to Ben Steins guilty philosophy which we can infer from their places in society. The super rich may well feel quite a debt to one of their owns sacrifice for them. Unfortunately, turning ones back on ones troops as an entitlement for one who served, to be emotionally mandated as a reason to be president is beyond mere harmless opinion. It may well be turning ones back on the very nature of a free country and a free civil society. Seems a luxury some who benefit so much from their societal positions might entertain. But it has little reasonable place in a real democracy. And that is the rub…

Maybe millionaires like Ben Stein, and hundred millionaires like the McCain’s, have a bond here stronger than this ugly interpretation of loyalty given as a just cause for voting last night.

-

——————————————-

More on McCain’s character issue questions

LYING IN POLITICS

——————————————-


Voice of America
Today, even though he once voted for Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, Creed is co-chairman of Connecticut Veterans for Obama, an affiliate of Barack
Hartford Courant

-

Veterans for Obama | Facebook

Welcome to the official Facebook Page of Veterans for Obama. Get exclusive content and interact with Veterans for Obama right from Facebook.

-

New Vote Vets Ad: The Real Phony Is Rush Limbaugh | Crooks and Liars

Another powerful ad from Vote Vets, and they really let Limbaugh have it. Rush can’t help himself as he continues his attacks on our troops and veterans,

-

From Truthout
McCain’s Integrity
Wednesday 10 September 2008
»
by: Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Senator John McCain at a campaign rally in Virginia. (Photo: Reuters)
Editor’s Note: Historically a John McCain supporter, conservative journalist and blogger Andrew Sullivan takes on the issue of John McCain’s integrity as he strives to win the presidency. – vh/TO

For me, this surreal moment – like the entire surrealism of the past ten days – is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It’s about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country’s honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama’s virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent’s patriotism.

And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That’s all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country’s safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country’s national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain – no one else – has proved it.

-

JOHN MCCAIN — 61 FLIP-FLOPS AND COUNTING
By Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report
McCain argues that flip-flops are an example of a political
leader who can’t be trusted — so he might as well drop out
of the race.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/90956/

-

30
Oct
08

VOTING LIES

Will the Democrats lose again to a rigged election?

Is our democracy an easy to rig fraud?

Having a secret ballot is one thing, but non transparency in voting systems is a road to dictatorship.

A democracy requires its citizens to account for the underlying truth of elections.  Surrendering that duty surrenders the nation to authoritarianism.

How did the USA ever get reduced to such corruption of our constitutional core values?

-

Short clip describes the film; murder, spies, voting lies.

-

-

-

-

-

The BRAD BLOG

The BRAD BLOG covers your electoral system, fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to
www.bradblog.com/ – 291k – CachedSimilar pages

-

29
Oct
08

FRACTAL LANGUAGE

[The words below are a speculation on some ideas of fractal theory extended into sound and words]

.

fractal--070326-1.jpg
fractalcomputer generated patternsfrac1979

.

.

FRACTAL LANGUAGE

numbers drifted through air

fell off of fractured trees

their leaves counting ground

shapes suddenly unveiled mystery

organic mathematical formulas

plowed by segmented worms

soil becoming full of potential

chaos itself grew into order

conquering randomness

taming uncertainty’s

hush of nothingness

with natural algorithms

.

It was only a moments birth

before vibrations showed numbers

words suddenly fell into rhythmic order

vowels red in their heart beating emotion

encased by consonant body’s pointing

these spoke from a numerical center

folding in and unfolding onto

infinite equations of now

an always ever-present

origami sound calls upside

language braking down

until it showed a soul

but Spirit of What

or Whom?

.

How could we now use words

knowing they too are creatures

forged at Life’s Center to shine

much larger than any lone thought?

Do these custodians of consciousness

form out of helix molecular chains?

With their lively interpretations

of crystalline certainty

and it of smaller comment

geometric angles dictation

molecular singularities intent

in calculations of 1’s desire

we guess at what things are.

.

We are wandering

closer still to quark tales

and quintessence confidentiality

language with its broken tongues

its alien misunderstandings

on Babble these waves break

are they all now immaterial

sounds from  our 1 center;

this Ghost in the Machine

Cause of eternal Revelation?

29
Oct
08

THERE SARAH PALIN GOES AGAIN

Who clicked their heels?

Latest conspiracy theory hypocrisy points those other fingers right back. How is so much backwards flying mud possible?

-

I’m beginning to wonder about all these coincidences; does Truth (or Something much Bigger) have a thing against McCain and Palin?

Palin drug out another one of those really suspicious connections that they say Obama has, this time about some guy connected somehow with the PLO. Story here ; Seth Couter Walls at HuffPo . As it turns out, John McCain can be said to have helped fund this guys work to the tune of nearly $500.000.00. Ya just gatta be loose with the facts like the finger pointing dynamic duo are.

Yet, I am beginning to wonder; What does the Truth have against the McCain and Palin ticket? Seems nearly every-time they indict Obama on something or other, they themselves are already convicted of it.

Now that is some Mighty strange synchronicity!

-

The foot in mouth Express? Or is it out there recklessly meandering near OZ somewhere, looking for more scarecrows?

I wonder which one is which witch?

-

Palin’s video of pride in Alaskan Independence Party

-




Welcome

 

October 2008
M T W T F S S
« Sep   Nov »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Archives

HI

Just one of the lives in One Life

Blog Stats

  • 128,754 hits

Pages

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

RSS A Journey in One Life

  • A Movie Being Made Of Your Life ; No Really!
    0 –Creativity– The Artist You Are No Matter Who You Are . You Are The Star I should correct the title, by including that you will be the one writing your movie, and not some ghost or other writer. You will be narrating the plots storyline, doing the set production, including designing landscaping, rooms, buildings and even planets and qualities o […]
    benafia
  • Emma And The Angels
    - = With presents gone, Emma settled beneath the Christmas tree to be comfy with the angels. - - -=================================== - Another cat has removed most of the ornaments one at a time, starting first with the Santa’s. Happy New Year! Posted in days journal, home photos, Life, pet cats photo, Photos Tagged: Between Christmas And New Years, C […]
    benafia
  • America Falling Through The Memory Hole
    = America Falling Through The Memory Hole m Last night, Christmas night, there was much dog barking at what seemed like quite regular intervals, of approx 10 min spans.  This had the feel of those times the “illegals” come by our neighborhood; when the Border Patrol seems absent.  For some time I was aware of this holiday window [...]
    benafia
  • What I Don’t Need For Christmas
    = Christmas No Wish List - I do not need an I-phone or anything like it. - Never had nor required a new car, so forget about it. - I have no need for computer games.  No thanks. - Not wanting any wine, beer or other liquor. Sorry. - Please, no sport tickets or any pop performers. Thanks. - I will not be Tweeting, so not wanting any [...]
    benafia
  • Late December Skyscapes In The Southwest US
    = = == = Late December Skyscapes In The Southwest US - -A schizophrenic tree? - - -More on my nature blog below- Colors Of Arizona - = - - - - - - - Posted in home photos, nature, Photos, weather Tagged: Arizona scenes, December Moon, Fall Foliage, Tree Colors, With Reason To Wonder
    benafia
  • Taxing Away Your Freedom!!! ; NOT!
    = WHY CUTTING TAXES, AS A POLITICAL POSITION MANDATE, IS ACTUALLY CUTTING INTO FREEDOM = –WONDER HOW “CONSERVATIVE” SURFACE POLITICAL SHELL GAMES ARE ACTUALLY GAMING YOUR RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES AWAY? = From Truthout, an article about the relationships between taxes and freedom. Not the same as the “tax and spend liberals” ruse use […]
    benafia