July 2010
128 posts
Watch“It Felt Like a Kiss”, by Adam Curtis.
Adam Curtis is a genius. If you haven’t watched The Century of the Self (1 2 3 4), The Power of Nightmares (1 2 3) or The Trap (1 2 3), do so. Seriously. If I could force you to, I would. Just do it!
WatchMinnesota DFL Gubernatorial Candidates Debate
Watch
“In protest of what it calls a religion “of the devil,” a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an “International Burn a Quran Day” on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website...
WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File →
In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.”
The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page...
Congress Is Rethinking Its Ban on Internet... →
Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the Financial Services Committee, has been the legislation’s champion.
“Some adults will spend their money foolishly, but it is not the purpose of the federal government to prevent them legally from doing it,” Mr. Frank said.
WatchBarack Obama as your internet navigator.
UN Declares Water and Sanitation Basic Human... →
When the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) back in December 1948, 58 member states voted for a historic document covering political, economic, social and cultural rights.
On Wednesday, nearly 62 years later, a widely-expanded 192- member General Assembly adopted another memorable resolution: this time recognising water and sanitation as...
Cameron calls Gaza 'prison camp' →
“Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp,” Cameron said, according to a transcript of the speech provided by his office.
Residents of Gaza say they have suffered greatly under an Israeli goods blockade implemented since Hamas took...
Kucinich Vs. Obama On Afghanistan War Leaks →
Barack Obama: “I’m concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations.”
Dennis Kucinich: “We can no longer look the other way, or pretend that the war is something that is it not. Occupying Afghanistan does not help further the freedom of the Afghan people. It is not the leak of documents that endangers ...
Pentagon can't account for how it spent $2.6... →
Because of poor record-keeping and lax oversight, the Department of Defense cannot account for how it spent $2.6 billion that belonged to the Iraqi government, according to the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
An audit of a $9.1 billion fund of Iraqi oil proceeds showed that most American military agencies entrusted with spending the money on reconstruction projects failed to...
“We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we...”
– WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on the ‘War Logs’
click through for the rest, it is good.
Gingrich to give speech drawing on ‘lessons’ from... →
The irony here is that both French philosopher Albert Camus and British author George Orwell subscribed to political ideologies that Gingrich, who recently wrote “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” would find anathema. Camus was an avowed atheist and one of the founders of humanist existentialism. He also was a member of several left-wing socialist and communist...
U.S. Falls To 12th In The World In Percentage Of... →
To get a sense of how much has to be done to catch up, consider that “the U.S. would have to add 1 million college degrees per year through 2025, on top of the 2 million degrees already awarded annually, to reach 56 percent.” Part of the problem here is that the U.S. is also falling behind in terms of percentage of the population that even attends college. Just 35 percent of 18-24 year olds...
Studies: Roberts Court Most Conservative In Over... →
If anything, this data understates the Roberts Court’s rightward drift. Because the Supreme Court largely gets to choose which cases it wants to hear, a conservative Court will not simply move the law to the right by handing down conservative opinions, it will also do so by hand-selecting cases that achieve conservative results. In 2008-09 term, for example, the Supreme Court handed down...
President Obama To Become President of Daytime... →
Barack Obama is going to be on The View on Thursday, because he is not too popular now, and he was popular in 2008 when he was on that show last, so certainly viewers who don’t have jobs and commercials for cleaning products are the magic he needs to get back that ‘08 touch. According to Barbara Walters, THIS IS HISTORY, as no sitting president has wasted his time on daytime television...
“BP CEO Tony Hayward has been exiled to Siberia, where he will oversee TNK-BP, a...”
– BP’s Tony Hayward gets exiled to Siberia
awesome.
Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under... →
In a bid to remake the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25...
Lutherans Welcome Seven Gay Pastors →
“Today the church is speaking with a clear voice,” the Rev. Jeff R. Johnson, one of the seven gay pastors participating in the ceremony, said at a news conference just before it began. “All people are welcome here, all people are invited to help lead this church, and all people are loved unconditionally by God.”
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, known as the E.L.C.A., with 4.6...
Afghanistan: The war logs →
WatchThank You For Not Breeding
Michele Bachmann: If GOP Wins House, "All We... →
The often controversial Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann said yesterday that if Republicans will the House in November, “all we should do” is subpoena and investigate the Obama administration.
achmann went on to claim that while prior to President Obama’s election, “the private economy was 100 percent held in private hands,” while “today 65...
"Grassroots" Rove-linked group funded almost... →
Virtually all of the $4.7 million raised by Karl Rove’s new conservative outfit was contributed by just four billionaires, three of whom are based in Dallas, Texas, and two of whom made their fortune in the oil and gas industry.
The IRS filing of American Crossroads, an outside 527 group that was conceived by Rove and ex-RNC chair Ed Gillespie, gives a good taste of who is funding...
“Critical fire and gas leak alarm systems had been disabled for at least a year...”
– Gulf oil spill: Alarms, detectors disabled so top rig officials could sleep
No To Oligarchy →
And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance. Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner...
