Lego Silence of the Lambs

Priceless... F Bomb warning.

Labels: Humor, Music, YouTube

posted by Stash @ 8:06 PM

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Religion as News

A couple weeks ago, John Stewart pulled back the curtain on the wizards of the Ozians at the cable business channels revealing, to mix the metaphore, that the emperors had no clothes.     “They were part of the broken system,” commented Cank Uygur, “There was no journalism going on at CNBC.” 

Last Saturday, in our own little corner of the world, The Daily World proved that “no journalism going on” is not unique to the big city folks.  On the back page of the main section of the paper, in a spot where one usually finds state-wide or national news, The Daily World ran a story with the headline, “It’s Lent - - So What?  So What, indeed!, under the byline Faces of Faith, Dale McQueen.  To the left of the McQueen piece the paper printed information from the stock market from Friday and to the right a story headlined, “Suspect had a knife at police station,” from Perugia, Italy. 

Now, the last time I checked, a story about how “we prepare our hearts, minds and souls for the sacred observances of Christ’s death on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter,” did not qualify as news.  Since when does a celebration of belief in a deity, concocted in the Bronze age, that arose out of primitive ignorance and superstition, qualify as news?  The only thing crazier than the belief itself, is, as Dennis Rahkonen wrote recently, “to believe said deity created us, governs our affairs, and deserves our blind obedience.” 

A quick glance at the most recent studies about religious belief in the United States should give the editor at The Daily World pause the next time he wants to publish this religious opinion as news.  

According to the latest research, you are “certainly friends with at least one atheist, agnostic, nonbeliever, skeptic, or unaffiliated humanist, whether you know it or not.  Your friend certainly endures prejudice and unequal treatment, whether you know it or not.  And your friend is roughly as decent, good, loyal, honest, courageous, and generous as your other friends, and you know it.”  In Grays Harbor County 30 percent of us are atheists, agnostics unbelievers, people who don’t care or want to know, undecided or just plain have no opinion.  That amounts to a significant number of people. 

To have our local newspaper print religious propaganda masquerading as news is insult added to injury.  “Those who get along without God are noy lynched or stoned in this country,” David Swanson wrote recently, “but neither do they have equal rights or acceptance.  They encounter prejudice and cruelty on a personal level often.”  We saw our taxes used to establish an office in the Bush White House pushing religious-based initiatives and now President Obama has not only continued that unconstitutional program, he has enlarged it.  All around the country we see “religious based, pseudo-science imposed” on children in schools.  While there are, according to Swanson, “probably 20 atheists in Congress,” only one member has the courage to admit his position.  I’m convinced that President Obama is an atheist but he made a pragmatic political calculation, years ago, recognizing that no open atheist could be elected to office, to find himself the most politically advantageous church and join it.  Unfortunately that decision later came back to bite him when the remarkable Reverend Wright became a political liability. 

Since, as Frank Rich pointed out in the New York Times, the almighty has fallen significantly - - organized religion being “in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale,” I’d like to make a suggestion to The Daily World:  keep you religion page if you must but please, please don’t try to pass off any more religious stories as news.  It really turns off those of us who do not hold religious views and also read your paper. 

Labels: Atheism, Frank Rich, religion, The Daily World

posted by Gary Murrell's What's Left @ 4:00 PM

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Just another crazy day in Religiousland!

Official newspaper: Church 'cannot approve' of the film
By Eric J. Lyman

ROME -- The Vatican could be gearing up for an official call for a boycott of "Angels & Demons," Ron Howard's big-budget follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code."

Avvenire, the Vatican's official newspaper, ran a story in Friday's edition noting that the Church "cannot approve" of such a problematic film. The Turin daily La Stampa, meanwhile, said the Vatican would soon call for a boycott of the film, though the same article also quoted Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, who warned against a "boomerang effect" that could call attention to the film and eventually make it more popular.

The Vatican press office declined comment on the reports when contacted.

Producers requested permission from Church officials to film parts of "Angels & Demons" in the Vatican, but were denied.

Scores of Church officials called for a boycott of "The Da Vinci Code" when it was released in 2006, but the calls had little effect on the popularity of the thriller, which is based on the best-selling novel by Dan Brown. The film earned an estimated $760 million in worldwide boxoffice receipts.

"Angels & Demons" features many of the same characters as "The Da Vinci Code," but the story itself takes place before the events portrayed in the earlier film. The film is set to open worldwide May 15.


*Editor's note*
After all these years, hasn't The Vatican learned this only drives more people to the box office? (See emphasis added above) Dan Brown's book was very good. We can only hope Howard has brought the same amazing skills to the prequel that he did to "The Da Vinci Code".

Labels: Hollywood, religion, Vatican

posted by Stash @ 8:10 AM

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New Mexico Abolishes Death Penalty

SANTA FE, N.M. – Gov. Bill Richardson, who has supported capital punishment, signed legislation to repeal New Mexico's death penalty, calling it the "most difficult decision in my political life."

The new law replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The repeal takes effect on July 1, and applies only to crimes committed after that date.

"Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Richardson said.

Europe's human rights watchdog on Thursday hailed the decision as "a victory for civilization." The American Civil Liberties Union called it "a historic step and a clear sign that the United States continues to make significant progress toward eradicating capital punishment once and for all."


More...

Labels: Bill Richardson, Death Penalty

posted by Stash @ 4:00 PM

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Six Years of War

For what?
Three days from now, on the 19^th of March, the United States invasion of Iraq will mark its sixth year. A million dead Iraqis, more than 4,000 dead U.S. military persons, an eventual cost, according to the economist Joseph Stiglitz, of 3 trillion dollars.

Many people who voted for President Obama believed, quite irrationally as far as I’m concerned, that once elected, Obama would remove all U. S. troops from Iraq within sixteen months. I said many times on my radio program that Obama was being too clever by half with his semantics about withdrawal. He said then, and he confirmed my worst suspicions a couple weeks ago, that he would remove “combat” troops from Iraq, as if every service person there is not in combat. His intension during the campaign, confirmed in a late February speech, was to leave thousands of U.S. military personnel in Iraq beyond the now 19 month period of his supposed withdrawal. 50,000 troops to be exact. Non-combat troops to be sure. I suspect that by the time August 2011 rolls around the 50,000 will have grown considerably, more in line with the 60 to 90,000 I predicted during the campaign.

According to the withdrawal agreement drawn up by W. and his puppet in Iraq, the United States must have all troops out of Iraq by the end of 2012 - - just in time for the November 2012 election. Don’t count on it.

The speech Obama gave at the end of February could very well have been delivered by W. We found no mention in the speech of the on-going and worsening conflict between the Shia and the Kurds that will undermine any Iraqi government. We heard no mention of what is now to happen to the Suni forces the United States has been paying not to kill U. S. soldiers for the last two years.

According to the highly respected military correspondent Tom Ricks, author of The Gamble, Obama’s plan for exiting Iraq is the “sixth plan he has covered that attempts to get U. S. forces out of Iraq.” Mr. Ricks warns in his book that Bush’s war is about to engulf Obama. He writes that the United States will be in Iraq for many years to come, “and that in the end, we will be the losers.” What will emerge, Ricks told MSNBC’s Keith Olberman, “is not a democracy, not an American ally, run by a strongman, probably tougher, smarter and more adept than Saddam Hussein and who is, ironically, an even worse guy.” The winners, as far as I’m concerned, are the mullahs in Iran who will be quite content to have the war continue to bleed billions from the United States every month.

If you are concerned about the continued occupation of Iraq and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, join with your fellow citizens for an anti-war vigil on Thursday, 19 March, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm at Zelasko Park, in Aberdeen, Washington.

Labels: Afghanistan, costs of war, Iraq, Iraq War, war crimes, war dead

posted by Gary Murrell's What's Left @ 4:21 PM

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Irony... or Conflict of Interest... you decide

Senator David Vitter, (R-LA) sponsored a bill called the No Cost Stimulus Act. This is the same Sen. Vitter that got caught with the DC Madamn after spending a small fortune to have his Diaper Fetish satisfied.

It is no wonder David Viter would be seeking "no cost" stimulus after blowing his wad to have his diapers changed.

Labels: David Vitter, hypocrites, Republicans, Sex Scandal

posted by Stash @ 6:27 PM

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Class Warfare

There are, right now, a couple of terms floating around in the corporate media and right-wing blogosphere that are driving me crazy:  “class warfare” and “Marxist Socialist.”  I’ll have to deal with “Marxist Socialist” in a later commentary but for now let’s turn to “class warfare.”

In the LA Times from late last month, “Obama’s budget: Taxing for fairness or class warfare"?  The reactionary, David Horowitz, changed the question to an inflammatory accusation on his web site:  The Budget as Class Warfare.

Funny how, whenever the oligarchic rule by the few is questioned, suddenly there are rumors of class war in the air and Bolshevism is only just around the corner. 

Now, I’d agree that there is class warfare going on, has been going on in the United States for more than a century, but it certainly is not the kind where the proletariat rises up to overthrow the bourgeoisie. 

In the late nineteenth century the wealthiest 1 percent of families owned 51 percent of the real and personal property in the United States.  The 44 percent of families at the bottom owned only 1.2 percent of the property.  Together, the ruling class, the top 10 percent of families owned 86 percent of the wealth.  The working class, the 90 percent of families, owned 10 percent of the wealth.  As you might suggest, this inequality of wealth sparked numerous uprisings among the working class and led to the rise of the Populist Party.  The ruling class, who understood their position and had achieved class consciousness, was able to use force of arms and the political system to repulse the class warfare undertaken by the less-conscious working people and farmers.

Throughout the 20^th century the ruling class well understood their place in society and waged an unrelenting war on working people to maintain oligarchic supremacy: in other words, class war by the ruling class. 

By the 1980s, writes Felice Pace, “the chief concern of the ruling elite became making sure that when the reckoning finally came,” when the economic reality of their recklessness could no longer be hidden from working people,  “it would be working [people] - - not the rich - - who would bear the brunt of the adjustment.  That required transferring wealth from working people to the rich in advance of the reckoning.  This has been the main projects of the ruling class since the election of Ronald Reagan.”

The transfer of wealth to the ruling class in the late 20^th century, the rich’s class war, “has been spectacularly successful.”  While worker’s wages have gone down every year since 1973, the rulinhg class consolidated their share of the national income.  “Since 1979 through 2005, the income of the top one percent skyrocketed by 228 percent.  The Wall Street Journal reports that the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, or 14,000 families, hold 22.2% of the nation’s wealth . . . ,” 10 percent of families own 96% of the wealth, “while the bottom 90% [of families], have just 4%.” 

Yes, there is class war going on in the United States.  The ruling class has been remarkably successful in maintaining their position for more than a century.  What really surprises me is how docile the working class is, how seemingly helpless the working class has been to bring about a redistribution of wealth.  If Obama really wants to redistribute wealth then I say bring on the class war.

Labels: class war, class warfare, David Horowitz, Horowitz

posted by Gary Murrell's What's Left @ 4:41 PM

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Proof of Global Warming?

We found this humorous AND revealing.

Labels: Humor

posted by Stash @ 2:23 PM

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The media's tax fraud

An article worth reading from Media Matters on the fraud corporate media plays with President Obama's tax policy.

The money quote:

See, when the Republican Congress passed, and President Bush signed, the tax cuts in 2001, they decided not to make them permanent, scheduling them to expire in 2010. Obama's proposal simply allows that to happen for the top rates -- it makes no change to what is already going to happen under current law.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, media, Republicans, Taxes

posted by Stash @ 7:23 AM

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Make My Filibuster

DAVID E. RePASS
New York Times


PRESIDENT OBAMA has decided to spend his political capital now, pushing through an ambitious agenda of health care, education and energy reform. If the Democrats in the Senate want to help him accomplish his goals, they should work to eliminate one of the greatest threats facing effective governance — the phantom filibuster.

Most Americans think of the filibuster (if they think of it at all) through the lens of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” — a minority in the Senate deeply disagrees with a measure, takes to the floor and argues passionately round the clock to prevent it from passing. These filibusters are relatively rare because they take so much time and effort.

To reduce deadlock, in 1917 the Senate passed Rule 22, which made it possible for a supermajority — two-thirds of the chamber — to end a filibuster by voting for cloture. The two-thirds majority was later changed to three-fifths, or 60 of the current 100 senators.

In recent years, however, the Senate has become so averse to the filibuster that if fewer than 60 senators support a controversial measure, it usually won’t come up for discussion at all. The mere threat of a filibuster has become a filibuster, a phantom filibuster. Instead of needing a sufficient number of dedicated senators to hold the floor for many days and nights, all it takes to block movement on a bill is for 41 senators to raise their little fingers in opposition.

Historically, the filibuster was justified as a last-ditch defense of minority rights. Under this principle, an intense opposition should be able to protect itself from the tyranny of the majority. But today, the minority does not have to be intense at all. Its members have only to disagree with a measure to kill it. Essentially, the minority has veto power.

The phantom filibuster is clearly unconstitutional. The founders required a supermajority in only five situations: veto overrides and votes on treaties, constitutional amendments, convictions of impeached officials and expulsions of members of the House or Senate. The Constitution certainly does not call for a supermajority before debate on any controversial measure can begin.

And fixing the problem would not require any change in Senate rules. The phantom filibuster could be done away with overnight by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. All he needs to do is call the minority’s bluff by bringing a challenged measure to the floor and letting the debate begin.

Some argue that this procedure would mire the Senate in one filibuster after another. But avoiding delay by not bringing measures to the floor makes no sense. For fear of not getting much done, almost nothing is done at all. And what does get done is so compromised and toothless to make it filibuster-proof that it fails to solve problems.

Better to risk a filibuster — an event that, because of the great effort involved, would actually be rare — than to save time and accomplish little or nothing.

It also happens to make a great deal of political sense for the Democrats to force the Republicans to take the Senate floor and show voters that they oppose Mr. Obama’s initiatives. If the Republicans want to publicly block a popular president who is trying to resolve major problems, let them do it. And if the Republicans feel that the basic principles they believe in are worth standing up for, let them exercise their minority rights with an actual filibuster.

It is up to Mr. Reid. He can do away with the supermajority requirement for virtually all significant measures and return majority rule to the Senate. This is not to say that the Democrats should ride roughshod over the Republicans. Republicans should be included at all stages of the legislative process. However, with the daunting prospect of having to mount a real filibuster to demonstrate their opposition, Republicans may become much more willing to compromise.

Labels: Democrats, Harry Reid, Obama, Senate

posted by Stash @ 4:15 PM

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Third Parties and Mass Movements

Whenever I see the by-line of Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist Dave Lindorff, I know that I’ll find something provocative and useful to read. While I usually agree with Lindorff’s opinion, I picked up an article of his the other day that prompted my immediate disagreement. So, using the tactics of many letter writers in The Daily World, I thought I’d make a public comment about Lindorff’s article.

That dirty, commie, pinko, faggot Lindorff!!! That low life has no conscience and is an un-American slob who should be fired from his job, tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail!

On a more rational note . . .

While I did have that immediate disagreement with Lindorff, I later realized that his article did make a very pertinent point on which we both agreed.

Lindorff wrote about being bombarded with criticism from the radical left for “calling for pressure on Democratic politicians to do the right thing, whether that is impeaching the last president and vice president for war crimes or in the case of our new president, standing and fighting for a people’s bailout, instead of a Wall Street bailout.” Lindorff dismisses, too easily I think, the radical’s claim that the Republicans and Democrats are the same. That is an old argument from the radical left and correct as far as I’m concerned. The great W. E. B. Du Bois called the Republicans and Democrats the right wing of the one party in the country.

Nonetheless, Lindorff’s critics then castigated him, and other leftists who voted for Obama as being part of the problem. Radicals claim that a principled leftist should have voted for third-party candidates like Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney.

While claiming to have nothing against McKinney or Nader, “that ticket would make for a wonderful administration,” Lindorff wrote, “third parties have not played a significant role in American politics since the 1930s and earlier, when the Socialist Party . . . managed to make a significant dent in the political equation, though even it had no shot at winning.”

In fact, we do have, in our history, a stunning victory by a relatively new third party. In 1860, after only six years on the scene, the Republican Party captured the presidency and solidified its place and the “other” in our two party system. Obviously, in 1860 the country was in a state of catastrophic social, political and economic turmoil over the issue of slavery. The Republican and Democratic parties really stood for something and, while most members of both parties were deeply racist, one did have a definite choice. - - there was no mistaking the philosophical differences between the two directions the parties would take the country.

Certainly Lindorff would not disagree that the parties today really are dominated and controlled by the same corporate sponsors. They are pursuing the same end, capitalist, imperial hegemony, just by different means. He sympathizes with third parties while noting that “the system of winner-take-all elections is structured against them . . . but calls to change that system so that third parties might have a chance bump up against the reality that the two parties that have a duopoly on power have no interest in changing the rules of the game to make it easier to bump them off.” Says Lindorff, “it simply ain’t gonna happen.”

Well, maybe or maybe not.

And here is where Lindorff and I agree. Later in the article he recalls the great progressive triumphs in U.S. history, triumphs brought about by mass movements that have forced change that the major parties resisted almost to the death. Universal man and woman suffrage, the end of slavery, the initiative process, progressive income taxes, civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, Social Security, labor unions, the end of the Vietnam War - - the list goes on. These victories did not come about because power decided to relinquish itself. These changes came about because people took power and demanded change.

Where Lindorff at one point in his essay encourages working with Democrats, his most powerful point, at the end of the essay, rests in his call for a new mass movement demanding progressive change. The movement has to confront the Republican and Democratic duopoly - - in the streets - - demanding “an end to this country’s pointless wars, a huge cut in the military budget,” single payer health care, “a jobs program, a break-up of the large banking and other corporate monopolies, an end to the national security state, reform of the labor laws, and a restoration of a real progressive tax system.”

Lindorff is right - - mass movements make history. “We need one badly.”

Check out my blog for these commentaries and more: What's Left

Labels: Mass movements, third parties

posted by Gary Murrell's What's Left @ 5:31 PM

0 Comments

Third Parties and Mass Movements

Whenever I see the by-line of Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist Dave Lindorff, I know that I’ll find something provocative and useful to read. While I usually agree with Lindorff’s opinion, I picked up an article of his the other day that prompted my immediate disagreement. So, using the tactics of many letter writers in The Daily World, I thought I’d make a public comment about Lindorff’s article.

That dirty, commie, pinko, faggot Lindorff!!! That low life has no conscience and is an un-American slob who should be fired from his job, tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail!

On a more rational note . . .

While I did have that immediate disagreement with Lindorff, I later realized that his article did make a very pertinent point on which we both agreed.

Lindorff wrote about being bombarded with criticism from the radical left for “calling for pressure on Democratic politicians to do the right thing, whether that is impeaching the last president and vice president for war crimes or in the case of our new president, standing and fighting for a people’s bailout, instead of a Wall Street bailout.” Lindorff dismisses, too easily I think, the radical’s claim that the Republicans and Democrats are the same. That is an old argument from the radical left and correct as far as I’m concerned. The great W. E. B. Du Bois called the Republicans and Democrats the right wing of the one party in the country.

Nonetheless, Lindorff’s critics then castigated him, and other leftists who voted for Obama as being part of the problem. Radicals claim that a principled leftist should have voted for third-party candidates like Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney.

While claiming to have nothing against McKinney or Nader, “that ticket would make for a wonderful administration,” Lindorff wrote, “third parties have not played a significant role in American politics since the 1930s and earlier, when the Socialist Party . . . managed to make a significant dent in the political equation, though even it had no shot at winning.”

In fact, we do have, in our history, a stunning victory by a relatively new third party. In 1860, after only six years on the scene, the Republican Party captured the presidency and solidified its place and the “other” in our two party system. Obviously, in 1860 the country was in a state of catastrophic social, political and economic turmoil over the issue of slavery. The Republican and Democratic parties really stood for something and, while most members of both parties were deeply racist, one did have a definite choice. - - there was no mistaking the philosophical differences between the two directions the parties would take the country.

Certainly Lindorff would not disagree that the parties today really are dominated and controlled by the same corporate sponsors. They are pursuing the same end, capitalist, imperial hegemony, just by different means. He sympathizes with third parties while noting that “the system of winner-take-all elections is structured against them . . . but calls to change that system so that third parties might have a chance bump up against the reality that the two parties that have a duopoly on power have no interest in changing the rules of the game to make it easier to bump them off.” Says Lindorff, “it simply ain’t gonna happen.”

Well, maybe or maybe not.

And here is where Lindorff and I agree. Later in the article he recalls the great progressive triumphs in U.S. history, triumphs brought about by mass movements that have forced change that the major parties resisted almost to the death. Universal man and woman suffrage, the end of slavery, the initiative process, progressive income taxes, civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, Social Security, labor unions, the end of the Vietnam War - - the list goes on. These victories did not come about because power decided to relinquish itself. These changes came about because people took power and demanded change.

Where Lindorff at one point in his essay encourages working with Democrats, his most powerful point, at the end of the essay, rests in his call for a new mass movement demanding progressive change. The movement has to confront the Republican and Democratic duopoly - - in the streets - - demanding “an end to this country’s pointless wars, a huge cut in the military budget,” single payer health care, “a jobs program, a break-up of the large banking and other corporate monopolies, an end to the national security state, reform of the labor laws, and a restoration of a real progressive tax system.”

Lindorff is right - - mass movements make history. “We need one badly.”

Check out my blog for these commentaries and more: www.garymurrell.blogspot.com

Labels: third parties

posted by Gary Murrell's What's Left @ 5:31 PM

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Michael Steele kisses Rush Limbaugh's Ass!

Another Republican rolled over to hand his nuts to radio entertainer, Rush Limbaugh.

First, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) genuflected to El Rushbo after being critical of the Republican Grand Poohbah.

Now, RNC Chair Michael Steele felt it necessary to clarify remarks made to D. L. Hughley. What were the offending statements? He had the audacity to call the entertainer, an entertainer and to suggest Rush was not the leader of the Republican Party.

Labels: Michael Steele, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh

posted by Stash @ 4:28 PM

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