| Shame on Torrey Utah! 1 Day, 23 Hours ago | Karma: 20 |
| Yesterday Torrey had a parade for the Fourth of July. In the parade there was not a single American Flag! Pretty darn sad. I wonder if this is what John Adams had in mind? Feel free to comment if you saw a flag. ### | |
...We couldn't get to the Moon if we wanted to anymore. We're breeding a race of morons and mystics who believe America is still a great nation just because Hannity, or Beck, or Lintball, told them so. We believe only what we want to hear and anyone who speaks fact or reality is labeled a traitor, a socialist, a communist, or a fascist. We're more interested in some stupid 'reality' show (How much time have so-called 'news' organizations spent on the latest Bachelorette dustup, Lebron James, or Kobayashi?) than we are in how we got into this mess and how to fix it.
What these very well paid talking heads (who probably couldn't tell a florence flask from Florence Henderson) failed to bring up during their lament on the state of American ingenuity is that our lack of innovation, creativity and scientific leadership is a deeply endemic problem that cannot be fixed by a bunch of suggestions or changes in policy. Our plunge in to the abyss of stagnancy has been years in the making. And this drop off the cliff is constantly being reinforced by long-term neglect to our education system, the rise and loud voice of evangelical religious dogma (which generally hates science), an obsessive fixation on money, a youth culture which values fame above everything else and the media's need to sell soap as opposed to selling development.
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When news and entertainment inhabit the same wide, gray area, when mysticism is put on the same level as science fact, when a good chunk of the nation believes we should coddle the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor, and when we look for scapegoats to pin our problems on instead of looking in the mirror, we can consider ourselves finished as a great nation.
Business Insider, links and videos:
Are you sure that you want to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? In a previous article we documented a number of the health dangers from this oil spill that many scientists are warning us of, and now it has been reported on CNN that the vast majority of those who worked to clean up the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska are now dead. Yes, you read that correctly. Almost all of them are dead.
In fact, the expert that CNN had on said that the life expectancy for those who worked to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill is only about 51 years. Considering the fact that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now many times worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster, are you sure you want to volunteer to be on a cleanup crew down there? After all, the American Dream is not to make big bucks for a few months helping BP clean up their mess and then drop dead 20 or 30 years early.
Perhaps BP CEO Tony Heyward and other high ranking BP executives could roll up their sleeves and go down there and start cleaning up all of that toxic sludge.
It's their mess, so let them clean it.
Fat chance. There are plenty of peasants who can die early in the service of BP's bottom line.
Re: Steele and the RNC: Allow me to chime in with my usual observation on this subject: This is a job for Sarah Palin. Palin would be a much better RNC chairman than presidential candidate or freelance kingmaker. She'd raise tons of money and help recruit good candidates, i.e., she'd excel at doing the things Steele should have been doing instead of appointing himself Republican pundit-at-large.
Please let this happen.
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Menace to Society
These sentence guidelines seem a little over the top, no?
A 60 year-old environmental activist who hung two banners in a government building will be sentenced Tuesday—and faces up to three years in prison.
Bloomfield, NJ resident Ted Glick will be sentenced Tuesday for unfurling two banners saying "Green Jobs Now" and "Get to Work" from the Hart Senate Office Building's 7th floor into the atrium on Sept. 8, 2009, the day the Senate returned from its summer recess. Glick and approximately 30 demonstrators were attempting to pressure the Senate to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House in June 2009.
Meanwhile, creeps like this, go free. And war criminals like Bush and Cheney walk the streets.
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If George Carlin weren't already dead, seeing the fruits of corporatism would kill him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=player_embedded#!
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Climate scientists are receiving death threats -- which escalate every time Rush Limbaugh opens his piehole.
Meanwhile, back in reality: A sobering new report warns that oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.
There is going to be a time, and it's not long off, when these idiots insisting that climate change is either nonexistent or not caused by anything we do, will be faced with the reality that our profligate ways over the last fifty years have doomed us to a world of hunger and instability. And even then, Rush Limbaugh will tell them it's all imaginary -- from the comfort of his guarded, gated mansion.
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"A massive oil spill ain't gonna be no big deal"
This shit is just way too depressing.
Oh, and if you are curious about what the State of Louisiana has done to combat the effects of British petroleum's catastrophic deep-sea gusher, then you might want to know that Governor Bobby "Drilling is Cool" Jindal has ordered the state records to be sealed.
"My daddy didn't invade Afghanistan to loose it to Michael Steele."
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Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.It's a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure".
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'Slightly toxic'
The EPA has been running various tests on the chemical dispersants. Tell me what's wrong with this item:
The EPA tests concluded that Corexit 9500, the dispersant BP has been using most in the Gulf, WAS "practically non-toxic" to fish and "slightly toxic" to shrimp.
If you said, "What the crap is 'slightly toxic?'" you're half right. Here's the rest...
Yet Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, notes that the chemicals were tested alone, rather than in combination with oil.
Ah. Right. The oil. And have they factored into the equation the sheer volume and duration of the dispersant-oil poison in the water? Nope.
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Can't figure out why Republicans are acting clueless or confused when it comes to extending unemployment insurance benefits to the millions who have seen their benefits run out? You counter, to no avail, conservative arguments that increased benefits make the jobless lazy by pointing out that there is but a single job available for every five individuals looking for work and therefore all that is accomplished by holding back the extension is to worsen their suffering. You say these things and they still appear to not understand. Why?
Paul Krugman has the answer by way of a quote.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something," said Upton Sinclair, "when his salary" — or, in this case, his hope of retaking Congress — "depends upon his not understanding it."
That simple line does a fine job of explaining the last eighteen months of Republican politics.
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Sharron Angle has resorted to an unusual maneuver to counter Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attacks on her past quotes and positions, the Reid campaign has announced: A cease-and-desist letter, demanding that Reid no longer republish Angle's previous campaign website.The short version of the story is as follows: After the former state Rep won Nevada's Republican Senate primary, Angle's campaign took down most of its website, and later replaced it with a relaunched version that in some ways toned down her right-wing rhetoric. But Internet pages are rarely ever forgotten -- the Reid campaign saved the old version, and put up a website called "The Real Sharron Angle," reproducing the old content.
Then, they say, the Angle campaign sent them a cease-and-desist letter, claiming misuse of copyrighted materials in the reposting of the old website -- which was, of course, being posted for the purposes of ridiculing Angle. The Reid campaign has in fact taken down the site, rerouting visitors to another website that goes after Angle's positions, "Sharron's Underground Bunker."
Now that's a record to be proud of when you threaten to sue your opponent for accurately quoting you and laying out your actual positions. And it is still 16 weeks until election day. Oh my.
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Of course it doesn't work - BP made sure of that by dumping toxic dispersants. "Tests of a giant tanker refitted to scoop up oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico have been inconclusive because of high seas, operators said. The tests were supposed to be completed on Monday. But Bob Grantham, spokesman of ship owner, TMT Shipping Offshore, said that there would now be an additional testing period. If it works, the so-called "super skimmer" could boost efforts to clean up the BP oil spill. The Taiwanese vessel - called "A Whale" - is designed to vacuum up oily water, separate the oil and return the water to the sea. Mr Grantham told Reuters news agency: "After an initial 48-hour testing period results remain inconclusive in light of the rough sea state we are encountering. "Therefore, working in close coordination with the US Coast Guard, we will be undertaking an additional testing period to make operational and technological adjustments aimed at improving skimming effectiveness given the actual conditions we are encountering in the Gulf," he said."
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You already might have heard that it costs the United States $1 million for each solider per year in Afghanistan, to cover the cost of the soldiers' benefits, troop transports and other materiel. What you might not have heard is that your hard earned taxpayer dollars are also being used to buy well-connected Afghans posh villas in Dubai.
