It sometimes seems all of these articles are bad news, and this issue is especially so....so much corruption.....so little hope things will change......I suppose that's why we need the jokes.....
So if anyone is getting too depressed by all of this, just send back unsubscribe....but if you want to continue to get a reality check and try to protect yourself from the forces that want your money and manipulate your mind, read on.....
Article #1 is truly required reading.....recommended....
1/ Regular readers of DDD should be becoming aware of how our government and institutions have been captured by the corporate oligarchy and superrich individuals, so it has been especially depressing to watch President Obama completely cave in to these forces and become just another corporate puppet. The most galling thing was to read of his visit last week to the Chamber of Commerce, the nastiest and most aggressive entity trying to bring him down, in a search for "common ground". Pathetic.
So here are we now? The middle class is in deep trouble, and the poor are screwed. Actually we are all screwed.....we're on the downhill slope folks......
This column from Bob Herbert says it all, explains what is happening clearly and precisely.....I wish I had the confidence things will turn around, but the oligarchs control most of the media, and have tons of money to buy air time to persuade the country it's all the Messicans' [or the gays, or athiests, or Osama's] fault why you are losing your standard of living. Not the elites...or the rich....or the corporations....
Read the whole column folks....3 minutes to tell you what is really happening to this country.....
As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.
While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.
So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.
The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.
n an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.
2/ On the same theme as #1, the States are getting on the bandwagon of cutting spending, but only on the poor and vulnerable. They are also pushing legislation on all of the hot button issues for the Republican base, like immigration, gay marriage, abortion, more guns, drug testing for welfare recipients and more......get's the votes of the Fox News stupids, so "the boys" can cut taxes for their buddies who run the rich corporations and get campaign contributions.....
Excellent article by Charles Blow....and will ring especially true for Florida residents....just listen closely to what Big Rick is saying, and you'll get it....
Republican state lawmakers, emboldened by their swollen ranks, have a message for minorities, women, immigrants and the poor: It’s on!
In the first month of the new legislative season, they have introduced a dizzying number of measures on hot-button issues in statehouses around the country as part of what amounts to a full-throttle mission to repeal, restrict and repress.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
As Reuters pointed out this week, in the midterms, “Republicans gained nearly 700 state legislative seats and now have their largest numbers since the Great Depression, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.”
Judging by the lead-up to those elections, one could have easily concluded that the first order of business on Republicans’ agendas would be a laserlike focus on job creation and deficit reductions to the exclusion of all else. Not the case.
3/ This cartoon from Tom Tomorrow is soooooo relevant....
4/ You truly have to wonder if our government is insane with the recent decision to approve genetically modified corn that will be easier to make into ethanol, but which could also cross-pollute real corn.....
The insanity is also related to #5, which details India's problems with feeding itself. The world's food supply is in trouble because of increasing demand from China, India and Brazil etc., and since weather extremes are disrupting crop production the more ethanol we grow, the less we have to export to countries who need it to counter the rise in food prices. Egypt's problems were partially food price-related.
But no, the Dept. of Agriculture isn't insane, just hopelessly corrupt like the Senate and the Congress. Bought and sold by the Big Ag oligarchs.......
A type of corn that is genetically engineered to make it easier to convert into ethanol was approved for commercial growing by the Department of Agriculture.
The decision, announced Friday, came in the face of objections from corn millers and others in the food industry, who warned that if the industrial corn cross-pollinated with or were mixed with corn used for food, it could lead to crumbly corn chips, soggy cereal, loaves of bread with soupy centers and corn dogs with inadequate coatings.
“If this corn is comingled with other corn, it will have significant adverse impacts on food product quality and performance,” the North American Millers’ Association said in a statement on Friday.
The corn, developed by Syngenta, contains a microbial gene that causes it to produce an enzyme that breaks down corn starch into sugar, the first step toward making ethanol. Ethanol manufacturers now buy this enzyme, called alpha amylase, in liquid form and add it to the corn at the start of their production process.
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Two weeks ago, it approved the unrestricted cultivation of biotech alfalfa over the objections of some environmental groups and the organic food industry. Last week, it cleared biotech sugar beets for planting, with some restrictions. Both the alfalfa and beets have a gene making them tolerant of the herbicide Roundup.
With Syngenta’s corn, however, the opponents are not only the usual anti-biotechnology groups but also a powerful industry that is normally receptive to biotechnology. The millers’ association, which has led the opposition, represents 43 companies, including giants like General Mills, ConAgra Mills and ADM Milling.
The association said that Syngenta’s own data indicated that as little as one amylase corn kernel mixed with 10,000 conventional kernels could be enough to weaken the corn starch and disrupt food processing operations.
Another concern of some in the food industry is that if the amylase corn is found in food supplies it could lead to recalls or disrupt exports.
5/ India has become a force to be reckoned with in the tech world, and it's manufacturing industries are growing fast.....but it's agriculture is stuck in the last century....interesting story.....
For lack of modern agricultural systems in this part of rural India, his land does not have adequate drainage trenches, and he has no safe, dry place to store onions. The farmer, Arun Namder Talele, said he lost 70 percent of his onion crop on his five-acre farm here, about 70 miles north of the western city of Aurangabad.
“There are no limits to my losses,” Mr. Talele said.
Mr. Talele’s misfortune, and that of many other farmers here, is a grim reminder of a persistent fact: India, despite its ambitions as an emerging economic giant, still struggles to feed its 1.1 billion people.
Four decades after the Green Revolution seemed to be solving India’s food problems, nearly half of Indian children age 5 or younger are malnourished. And soaring food prices, a problem around the world, are especially acute in India.
Globally, floods in Australia and drought in China have helped send food prices everywhere soaring — on fears the world will see a repeat of shortages in 2007 and 2008 that caused food riots in some poor countries, including Egypt.
6/ You need to be careful around the house, and Onion News has tips on how to wax your floors without severing your spine....2 minutes.....
7/ Carl Hiaasen with a reasoned article on how the vicious Mexican drug cartels are a much bigger danger to our national security than 50 Afghans holed up in a cave in Waziristan....but we are spending untold hundreds of billions on the Osamas, and peanuts on the dangerous situation in our closest neighbor.....fuelled by the stupid drug laws in this country.....
Beats me why this isn't a Tea Party issue - "the gumminent is telling me what I can ingest?"
Good article.....
Some of the world’s most vicious terrorists live a short drive from San Diego, and lately they make al Qaeda look like the Simpsons.
With well-founded fearlessness, the bosses of Mexico’s drug cartels routinely slaughter police officers, politicians, journalists and innocent bystanders, sometimes within sight of the U.S. border.
There is no American military presence, covert or otherwise, to deter the narco-terrorists. Our government is expensively preoccupied chasing jihadists on the other side of the world.
Perhaps that explains why the mayhem in Mexico has received relatively modest attention, and appears not to be a burning priority of either the Obama administration or the new Congress.
Yet, if body counts are a measure of true public menace, the Mexican drug barons are a force to be feared. About 30,200 people have died since President Felipe Calderón initiated a campaign against the cartels in 2006.
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A case could be made that what’s happening in Mexico is a more pressing threat to America’s homeland security than what’s happening in Afghanistan or Yemen. The daily drug violence is at our doorstep, and spilling over.
Cartel-connected shootings have been reported in Arizona, Texas, California and even Alabama. According to federal authorities, the Mexican smuggling organizations have criminal networks in 230 U.S. cities, from Miami to Billings, Montana.
South Florida knows too well about lawless fallout. In the crazed days of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when cocaine lords were shooting up Colombia, the streets of Miami-Dade became a mini-war zone, too.
Then, as now, the drugs themselves weren’t the big danger. It was the killings, the easy cash and, of course, the corruption.
Although they also traffic in heroin and methamphetamine, Mexican cartels specialize in moving marijuana, which should have been decriminalized and regulated a long time ago in this country. It would have put guys like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman out of business, instead of making him a black-market billionaire. (El Chapo’s gang claimed responsibility for the recent Acapulco massacre).
8/ If you believe the military budget is "about right" at 25% of the overall budget for this country and larger than the rest of the world's defence expenditure combined, don't read this story. Go and attend your Tea Party meeting.
But if you are outraged at the way the military-industrial complex web of corruption has captured the Congress and benefited some really bloated corporate oligarchs, this won't surprise you.
The Pentagon is reassuring it's contractors they will continue to make them profitable. Wow.....blatant.....
If you’re wondering what high-ranking Pentagon officials were doing at an investment conference, well, suffice to say that this was not a question on the minds of the people in this room. They’ve gotten used to it. For the last few months, beginning with a secret meeting last October, Defense Department officials have been making the rounds of analysts and investors.
Their main message, to put it bluntly, is that even in an era of tighter budgets, the Pentagon is going to make sure the military industry remains profitable. “Taxpayers and shareholders are aligned,” Mr. Carter intoned on Wednesday. Then he laid out a series of reforms that he said would both increase competition and maintain, as he put it, “profitability over the long term” — a phrase he repeated for emphasis.
He told the assemblage that the Pentagon would frown on mergers among the five giant military contractors — the so-called primes: Lockheed Martin,General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman and Boeing. However, he added, the Defense Department was going to encourage mergers among smaller military contractors. And, he said, “we will be attentive” to innovative smaller companies that provide services (as opposed to weapons systems) to the Pentagon.
If you were an investor in the military industry, would you find this useful information? You bet — this is the stuff that can move markets. Although Mr. Carter made several references to “market forces,” the only market for the military industry is the government, which spends some $400 billion a year on weapons systems and other purchases. In economic terms, the Pentagon is a “ monopsony,” a single buyer with life-or-death power over its vendors. If the Pentagon wants the military industry to be healthy and profitable, it can pretty much ensure that outcome.
9/ Wonder what it's like to be beautiful and talented? You won't completely find out by watching this Taylor Swift video "Mine", but you will get a few clues..... light C/W.....
10/ Not often you see a major media screwup like the Groupon ads during the Super Bowl - you need to watch them again to really see how tasteless and frankly offensive these ads were.....and confusing as well. The first 15 seconds serious, then the last 15 a joking tone. I didn't get this during SB [probably due to adult beverages], but I do now......
Groupon by the way is an online discount coupon retailer. "Group[coup]on....get it? Sigh....
Groupon is ending a campaign that made its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, days after making changes in response to considerable criticism of the ads.
The decision is a major setback for Groupon, the purveyor of online discount coupons, because the campaign represented its first national mainstream advertising.
The withdrawal of a Super Bowl ad after the game in the face of complaints is not unprecedented. Mars stopped running a spot for Snickers after the game in 2007 because it was deemed homophobic.
But such a corporate about-face, given the attention and costs involved, is a very public black eye.
Groupon - Tibet ad with Timothy Hutton
Groupon - Cuba Gooding and the whale spot.....
Groupon - the lovely Elizabeth Hurley and Brazilian rain forest......
11/ Ah Florida.......like it or not our collective intelligence is judged in the media and the rest of the country by the indisputable fact we elected Rick Scott.....roll on 2014....
We all voted in November by a 63% margin for Fair Districts, amendments 5 and 6, but since this will affect the status quo for our scum in the Legislature they have hired lawyers to try to kill or at least derail our initiatives.....and we're paying for this. These bastards are out of control.......
Good column by Scott Maxwell in the Orlando Sentinel...
By now, you probably know that some of your elected officials are fighting to overturn your vote for Fair Districts.
But did you know they're spending your money to do so?
Yes indeed — to the tune of $300-an-hour legal bills.
How much total? Well, that's what I wanted to know.
But did you know they're spending your money to do so?
Yes indeed — to the tune of $300-an-hour legal bills.
How much total? Well, that's what I wanted to know.
Interesting story from Lauren Ritchie on Gov. Rick's visit to Eustis....I love the way she describes the crowd, which is about as far as she could go without getting in trouble. But I have it first hand most of the crowd was old, white, fat and stupid.....trailer trash like the WalMart pictures.....
Why Gov. Rick Scott wanted to debut his first budget before a screaming mass of supporters hardly requires much brainpower to discern.
On Monday, Scott unveiled in Eustis a budget that probably isn't going to be smooched by either the Republican or Democratic members of the Legislature.
So, the governor took his message to the folks he figured would love it — the white-haired, sensibly-shod crowd from the Tea Parties around Florida. The handful of gray Armani suits in the First Baptist Church of Eustis on Monday definitely were imported from Tallahassee. They were also wearing conspicuous earpieces and talking quietly into their shoulders. Let's just say they didn't blend in with the rest of the crowd that ranged from Boy Scouts to bikers.
Lots of folks sported ball caps and tattoos. Some wore the signature yellow T-shirts bearing the old-timey "Don't Tread on Me" snake logo. Others toted bags of sandwiches and water bottles, having anticipated a day in Ferran Park, where the event was scheduled before lousy weather pushed it indoors.
This was the Tea Party's big day.
The title of this article is "Menace to Society - 7 reasons Rick Scott is bad for Florida"....it's long but worth a read, if you can stand reading more about this asshole......
When Rick Scott was running for Florida governor, he tagged his “let’s get to work” jobs plan “777.” Now that he’s in office and has issued his first budget, the numbers that come to mind are more like “666.” How bad is Scott for Florida? Let me count the ways …
1. He doesn’t understand the difference between campaigning and governing. Scott unveiled his budget plan at a tea party gathering. And while that might make Florida’s tea party activists feel important, the election is over. Scott is going to have to come to terms with the fact that while he didn’t win a majority of Floridians’ support, he is stuck governing everybody, including people who are not part of the tea party movement.
12/ Movie Review and a couple of movie trailers.....
"Just Go With It" with Adam Sandler, Jennifer Anniston.....which sounds like a typical Sandler movie, not bad but not memorable either......out this weekend....
I should start by confessing that I spent a lot of time before the screening of “Just Go With It” — and a few stretches while it was actually going on — trying to remember what the darn thing was called. I may have to look up the title a few more times before this review is done, and the movie is likely to live on in my memory (to the extent that it will) as “that one with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in Hawaii.” Which pretty much sums up both the appeal and the limitations of this passive-aggressive, naughty but nice, sometimes obnoxious and occasionally quite funny late-winter romantic comedy.
Now this looks cool - "The Adjustment Bureau" with Matt Damon.....something about time travel perhaps? Never mind, it's "Inceptionish".....coming in March.....
Oh lordy - this one may be a little grisly....set in the 13th century.....also in March....
Set during the time of the first outbreak of bubonic plague in England, a young monk is tasked with learning the truth about reports of people being brought back to life in a small village.
Todays video - The Juggler At first it just appears to be an ordinary juggler but then, you realize that the juggling is being done in time to the music and it takes on a whole new life. Definitely worth watching, even more than once. It's not very often you see a juggler get a standing ovation. Todays jokes for intellectuals...... Puns for Educated Minds 1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian . 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption. 5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery. 6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart 8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. 9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. 10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. 11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.' 13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me. 14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.' 15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. 16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 17. A backward poet writes inverse. 18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes. 19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. 20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris , you'd be in Seine . 21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.' 22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says 'Dam!' 23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too. 24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.' 25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication. 26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did. |
Todays redneck joke
The redneck went to the hospital as his wife was having a baby.
Upon arriving, the nurse says, "Congratulations, your wife has had quints... 5 big, baby boys."
The redneck says, "I'm not surprised, I have a penis on me like a chimney."
The nurse replies, "You might want to consider getting it cleaned, the babies are all black."
Todays religious joke.....
Turpentine -vs- Holy Water
A little boy was sitting on the footpath with a bottle of Turpentine...
He was shaking it up and watching all the bubbles.
A Priest came along and asked the little boy what he had..
The little boy said, 'This is the most powerful liquid in the world;
it's called Turpentine.'
The Priest said, 'No, the most powerful liquid in the world is Holy Water.
If you rub it on a pregnant woman's belly, she'll pass a healthy baby.'
The little boy replied, 'If you rub turpentine on a cat's ass, he'll pass a Harley Davidson. '
He was shaking it up and watching all the bubbles.
A Priest came along and asked the little boy what he had..
The little boy said, 'This is the most powerful liquid in the world;
it's called Turpentine.'
The Priest said, 'No, the most powerful liquid in the world is Holy Water.
If you rub it on a pregnant woman's belly, she'll pass a healthy baby.'
The little boy replied, 'If you rub turpentine on a cat's ass, he'll pass a Harley Davidson. '
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