While Americans fret and argue about wars in Afghanistan, teabaggers, cutting taxes for the rich, idiot politicians from Alaska and Delaware and mosques in New York, here is what's happening half a world away which will have more impact on the well-being of Americans than any of the rest. Thomas Friedman:
"China is doing moon shots. Yes, that's plural. When I say "moon shots" I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers — from America — giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country's leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars."
"Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan."
"We're out of balance — the balance between security and prosperity. We need to be in a race with China, not just Al Qaeda."
So while Americans screw around with politics and nonsense, China is quietly and firmly establishing itself as a true superpower. And as Friedman notes, you will soon be "importing your new electric car from China just like you're now importing your oil from Saudi Arabia."
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Continue reading 'Biden Laments The "Lethargy" of Democratic Voters'
"Ann took them straight on and gave them some straight talk I doubt they were ready for. There is no amount of sugar that will help this medicine go down. According to the leftwing website Politico.com, she complimented the Christian audiences before whom she speaks by telling these homosexuals that the people who get her 'gay jokes are gays.' Christians get them, she hinted, but 'out of sweetness they don't laugh at the gay jokes.' Alas, she was suggesting, if only Christians were as mean-spirited as everyone says they are! I have to leave my gay jokes in the green room because those Christians are just too darned civil and courteous and kind!"Then she let the air out of the tires on the tired argument that homosexual marriage is the civil rights issue of our day. Reminding them that blackness is an innate characteristic but sexual behavior is a choice, same-sex marriage, she said pointedly, 'is not a civil right -- you're not black.' As Gen. Colin Powell himself said, the comparison between homosexual behavior and race is 'convenient but invalid.' People are born black, but they are not born gay. And many people who enter the homosexual lifestyle later leave it. So there are plenty of ex-gays, but you will never meet an ex-black.
"So Christians are too tolerant to make fun of gays, homosexuals have no civil right to marry, and homosexuals can't claim oppressed minority status. This from the keynote speaker at HomoCon, who got at least five figures to get right in the grill of her hosts. Anybody at HomoCon want their money back?" - American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer, who says he now takes back all the rotten things he said about Ann Coulter when he first learned about her Homocon appearance.
Protecting rights has taken an odd turn in Sioux City, where a faction on the city's Human Rights Commission has itself been filing religious discrimination charges with the state - against its own director, a fellow commissioner and a newspaper. Critics allege an anti-gay agenda linked to members' affiliations with a particular church. By law, the commission must protect gay civil rights. Director Karen Mackey, married to her female partner, was reportedly charged and cleared in what some call a witch hunt. Efforts against her included a retention vote, though she was retained 10-0 after city attorneys warned of the potential for a costly lawsuit.Cornerstone World Outreach is 120-acre church complex and teleministry on the outskirts of Sioux City.
These activities, some claim, are part of a broader mission to pack city boards and elective offices with people who share a religious viewpoint that homosexuality is a sin, and are intolerant of other religions. Three of 11 commissioners and a City Council member, Aaron Rochester, reportedly belong to the Cornerstone Church, which holds that view. Rochester is also co-founder, with a Cornerstone pastor, of the PeaceMakers PAC. Calls to Rochester and two commissioners were not returned.
The poll found that about four in 10 adults think the new law did not go far enough to change the health care system, regardless of whether they support the law, oppose it or remain neutral. On the other side, about one in five say they oppose the law because they think the federal government should not be involved in health care at all.
A whopping 40% call for even more reform to which Michael Tomasky notes.
Interesting how the healthcare debate has been entirely framed by the 20%, while the 40% had very little voice in the whole thing. These are the people who actually have very little representation and power in Washington, because their interests and desires clash with the interests and desires of wealthy people and corporations, but that of course is class warfare, and in America, why that's just wrong.
This is another clear example of why Dems should be making the health care bill the center piece of their midterm election platform. Instead of running away from it, they should be forcing Republicans to call for its repeal as often as they can. Once you get past the noise and misinformation, Americans are asking for reform and Republicans have shown they have nothing to offer.
If Dems do not speak up on the benefits of the health care bill pointing out that it's a start to total reform, then I'm just not following the logic.
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I thought this interesting but not surprising. Sarah Palin found it necessary to mention the President's middle name in defense of her buddy from Delaware.
"Funny, Greta, we are learning more about Christine O'Donnell and her college years and her teenage years and her financial dealings than anybody ever even bothered to ask about Barack Hussein Obama as a candidate and now as our president."
Dumb. After four years of Obama present on the national scene and with conservatives and Republicans doing their best to take him down by any means possible, what is it that Palin believes has not yet been revealed about the President's past? And what is preventing her cohorts on the right from revealing it?
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Maybe BPs oil spill payment team was on the job. What's the problem here?
Fending off demands that he resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that he had found a legal way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces."
"It's the right thing to do," Rumsfeld said. "And it is my intention to see that we do."
Six years later, the U.S. Army is unable to document a single payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
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Here's another breach of personal privacy from Hopey.
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Chicken-shit House Dems declare they are not really Dems and to ignore the (D) following their name. Really!!
Aware that their stock has taken the same tumble as home values, Congress' most vulnerable Democrats are declaring their independence from their party's agenda in Facebook profiles, television advertisements, news interviews and campaign websites leading up to the Nov. 2 election.I can't blame them though, I wouldn't admit it either.The Democrats, in 18 months, went full bedwetting retard at full speed.
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And don't let the door hit ya in the ass: It appears that we are about to hear Rahm Emanuel is about to announce his departure as White House Chief of Smack.
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Digby looks at the "Security State":
Essentially what they are saying is that at American airports if the government finds someone's behavior "suspicious" they have a right to detain them and search them for evidence of terrorism. If they don't find evidence of terrorism, but they still find the person "suspicious" they can then call in police, who will look for evidence of non-terrorist related crimes. What constitutes suspicious behavior? Only the "specialist" knows for sure. And if you demand to know why they are calling the police, that constitutes "escalating behavior" which gives them cause for further inquiry.
This is how the creeping police state slowly takes over. They use the excuse of national security to chip away at the constitutional constraints that prevent the government from abusing its authority. The citizens are in a constant state of paranoia, worried that what they know is innocent will "look" guilty and afraid of asserting their rights because the act of asserting them is considered evidence of something to hide. There are thousands and thousands of people in every aspect of American life now granted the authority to do this in the name of anti-terrorism. [my ems]
...
"Yessir, he just looked guilty."
And it's getting worse.
It makes it easy for them to control the masses but what they forget is that one day, the masses will have had enough.
