Some good articles today, and I would recommend #1 and #3 if you want to be informed about what is really going on.....
1/ If you read one thing today, read this column from Bob Herbert. He encapsulates the anger, the frustration, the blatant unfairness of our allegedly democratic system that celebrates the rich and powerful, and leaves the average worker and the middle class twisting......
Look out the window. The Ronald Reagan crowd loved to talk about morning in America. For millions of individuals and families, perhaps the majority, it’s more like twilight — with nighttime coming on fast.
More and more Americans are being left behind in an economy that is being divided ever more starkly between the haves and the have-nots. Not only are millions of people jobless and millions more underemployed, but more and more of the so-called fringe benefits and public services that help make life livable, or even bearable, in a modern society are being put to the torch.
Employer-based pensions, paid vacations, health benefits and the like are going the way of phone booths and VCRs. As poverty increases and reliable employment becomes less and less the norm, the dwindling number of workers with any sort of job security or guaranteed pensions (think teachers and other modestly compensated public employees) are being viewed with increasing contempt. How dare they enjoy a modicum of economic comfort?
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For a variety of reasons, there are not enough tax revenues being generated to pay for the basic public services that one would expect in an advanced country like the United States. The rich are not shouldering their fair share of the tax burden. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to consume an insane amount of revenue. And there are not enough jobs available at decent enough pay to ease some of the demand for public services while at the same time increasing the amount of taxes paid by ordinary workers.
The U.S. cannot cut its way out of this crisis. Instead of trying to figure out how to keep 4-year-olds out of pre-kindergarten classes, or how to withhold life-saving treatments from Medicaid recipients, or how to cheat the elderly out of their Social Security, the nation’s leaders should be trying seriously to figure out what to do about the future of the American work force.
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For American corporations, the action is increasingly elsewhere. Their interests are not the same as those of workers, or the country as a whole. As Harold Meyerson put it in The American Prospect: “Our corporations don’t need us anymore. Half their revenues come from abroad. Their products, increasingly, come from abroad as well.”
American workers are in a world of hurt. Anyone who thinks that politicians can improve this sorry state of affairs by hacking away at Social Security, Medicare and the public schools are great candidates for involuntary commitment.
Here's a view on how the middle class are coping - from Derfcity
2/ Two themes to this column from Frank Rich - one is the assumption by a lot of the media the revolution in Egypt is being driven by Twitter and Facebook social media - it isn't.
The second is the demonisation of anything Muslim has made the vast majority of Americans completely ignorant of anything to do with the Middle East.....one of the amazing stats is that even now, after 9 years in this pisshole, only 30% of Americans can find Iraq on a map.....
A month ago most Americans could not have picked Hosni Mubarak out of a police lineup. American foreign policy, even in Afghanistan, was all but invisible throughout the 2010 election season. Foreign aid is the only federal budget line that a clear-cut majority of Americans says should be cut. And so now — as the world’s most unstable neighborhood explodes before our eyes — does anyone seriously believe that most Americans are up to speed? Our government may be scrambling, but that’s nothing compared to its constituents. After a near-decade of fighting wars in the Arab world, we can still barely distinguish Sunni from Shia.
The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video — even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. Even now we’re more likely to hear speculation about how many cents per gallon the day’s events might cost at the pump than to get an intimate look at the demonstrators’ lives.
Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché.
3/ Fox News - There's no such thing as climate change.......
There is of course the other 98% of the world who realise there are strong forces afoot in our global climate that are changing our lives, and one of the major effects is on the food supply, which is one of the causes behind the Egyptian demonstrations.
Paul Krugman says this is just the beginning.....
We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.
The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.
So what’s behind the price spike? American right-wingers (and the Chinese) blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve, with at least onecommentator declaring that there is “blood on Bernanke’s hands.” Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France blames speculators, accusing them of “extortion and pillaging.”
But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story. While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.
4/ This is the Black Eyed Peas halftime show at Superbowl, all 12 1/2 minutes of it......if you're like most people, about the time this came on you had eaten a huge, unhealthy but delicious "football" meal and washed it down with a few adult beverages....so here's the chance to see this show again in case you were distracted. Or in the bathroom.
This show got mixed reviews, but if you consider the venue and the pressure they are under it's pretty good. The dancing is excellent, Will.I.Am does his political song about the 9 minute mark and the closing number is amazing .... B+.....
But they could have got Usher pants that at least fit him....oh well.....
5/ You may have heard the phrase "peak oil", and what this means is that the worlds oil supply is at it's maximum and the supplies will soon start to diminish, leading to price rises we haven't seen before. According to a Wikileaks cable Saudi Arabia is very close to it's limit.....
This makes the lack of policies in place in this country to conserve oil so incredibly irresponsible, and reflects the big oil oligarchy's influence on our legislators. Belay that - Congress and the entire government are wholly owned by the large energy corporations.
A Wikileaks cable has reportedly revealed that Saudi Arabia may not have enough oil to stop prices from skyrocketing. That is, depending on how you define the country's oil reserves.
Cables from the U.S. embassy in Saudi capital Riyadh reviewed by the Guardian, describe a warning from a senior Saudi oil executive, who said the country's crude oil reserves have been overstated by nearly 40 percent, some 300 billion barrels.
The Guardian reports that Sadad al-Husseini, former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, told the U.S. consul general in Riyadh that the Saudi oil company could not keep up with the 12.5 million barrels a day needed to keep prices low. Peak oil, he said, could be reached as early as 2012.
6/ Here's a video you haven't seen.....and it's obvious why. This is up for 1/ best new song and 2/ best video in the Grammy awards.....it's Ce Lo Green with "Fxxk You"......
It's actually a charming video if you like very large guys in electric blue suits, and seeing a 12 year old sing the title of the song for a while.....3 minutes....
Watch this, and the Roman Empire, or the ancient City of Babylon might come to your mind.....but hey you may like it.....we're like Fox News here...."we report, you decide"......
7/ If you're an intelligent and aware person and have the occasional medical problem, you will probably go on line to check symptoms, treatments etc.
You may be visiting Web MD - but this article says don't......Web MD has been captured by the drug industry and a lot of their medical recommendations are pharmaceuticals. There is a better alternative......so read on......
If you’re looking for the name of a new pill to “ask your doctor about,” as the ads say, the Mayo Clinic HealthInformation site is not the place for you. If you’re shopping for a newly branded disorder that might account for your general feeling of unease, Mayo is not for you either. But if you want workaday, can-do health information in a nonprofit environment, plug your symptoms into Mayo’s Symptom Checker. What you’ll get is: No hysteria. No drug peddling. Good medicine. Good ideas.
This is very, very rare on the medical Web, which is dominated by an enormous and powerful site whose name — oh, what the hay, it’s WebMD — has become a panicky byword among laysurfers for “hypochondria time suck.” In more whistle-blowing quarters, WebMD is synonymous with Big Pharma Shilling. A February 2010 investigation into WebMD’s relationship with drug maker Eli Lilly by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa confirmed the suspicions of longtime WebMD users. With the site’s (admitted) connections to pharmaceutical and other companies, WebMD has become permeated with pseudomedicine and subtle misinformation.
8/ Paul McCartney's upcoming death is getting his fans very excited......Onion News has the rather ghoulish story.....2 minutes.....
9/ This makes sense - making airport security more efficient.....as the article says the present system assumes everyone, grandmothers, kids, people in wheelchairs, all are treated as potential terrorists.....
The bad news is that to get pre-cleared means giving all kinds of personal information to Homeland Security.....so what have you got to hide? Eh?
But in the wake of the furor last fall over pat-downs and body scanners, several industry organizations are working on proposals to overhaul security checkpoints to provide more or less scrutiny based on the risk profile of each traveler.
While the proposals are in the early stages, they represent a growing consensus around a concept that has the support of John S. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration: divide travelers into three groups — trusted, regular or risky — and apply different screening techniques based on what is known about the passengers.
“Today we have T.S.A. agents looking at TV screens, but they don’t know anything about the person going through the system,” said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. “The idea is to take data that the government and the airlines are already collecting about passengers and bring it to the checkpoint.”
10/ In the market to buy a new house? Know anyone who is in the process of getting a mortgage? Is it a Pulte home? Walk away now.....slowly, then pick up the pace and get out of there!!! They are going to screw you.....here are some case histories that will get your attention.....
Her local bank approved her for amortgage. But then a Pulte Homes saleswoman told her that she would get a $4,000 credit toward closing costs if she took out aloan with the homebuilder’s banking unit instead. Ms. Calderone, 38, agreed. She deposited $20,000 in earnest money and set aside $80,000 more for a down payment on the $347,000 house. Her closing date, documents show, was scheduled for late summer, about six months later.
Then her troubles began. Although she had been “preapproved” by Pulte, the company ultimately denied her the loan. Then, contending that Ms. Calderone had defaulted on the purchase agreement by failing to close on time, Pulte kept her $20,000 deposit. The house went back on the market.
11/ Of all of the countries in Africa, the Congo is the nightmare - no functioning government at all, lots of easily acessable riches - gold, diamonds, copper, tin. One of the nastiest problems is the rampant sexual violence on the women of the Congo....
But there's hope - fragile, just a beginning, but hope.....
For years, diplomats, aid workers, academics and government officials here have been vexed almost to the point of paralysis about how to attack this country’s staggering problem of sexual violence, in which hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, many quite sadistically, by the various armed groups who haunt the hills of eastern Congo.
Sending in more troops has compounded the problem. United Nations peacekeepers have failed to stop it. Would reforming the Congolese military work? Building up the Congolese state? Pushing harder to regulate so-called conflict minerals to starve the rebels of an income?
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Eastern Congo is one of the poorest and most dysfunctional places on earth, but it is also one of the most beautiful, a land of sculptured green mountains and deep, clear lakes and trees upon trees. It is teeming with riches: gold, diamonds, timber, copper, tin and more. And though the people here, especially the women, have been brutally abused for years — many have had assault rifles thrust inside them, others raped with chunks of wood and left incontinent and sterile for life — their spirits have hardly been crushed.
12/ Ah Florida......low information voter heaven.......
Amusing Fred Grimm column from the Miami Herald on some of the more looney gun bills introduced into the Florida legislature.....
Boredom, maybe. What else explains the confounding flurry of gun bills bobbing up in the Florida Legislature?
It’s almost as if the National Rifle Association, having dismantled even the most tepid gun-control measures and won all the big battles in the courts and legislatures, now tosses out ever more outlandish proposals just for the hell of it.
No legislator has been able to quite explain just why Florida needs a gun law (a felony with a $5 million fine) to gag physicians, even psychiatrists treating suicidal teenagers, from inquiring about firearms in the home. It’s not as if lawmakers suspected Florida doctors were compiling a secret gun registry (to feed UN invaders in black helicopters swooping down to seize Uncle Elbert’s deer rifle). No. The NRA, bored, wants to measure the far parameters of its unassailable political power.
Another inexplicable gun bill percolating through the 2011 legislative session (and endorsed by Gov. Rick Scott) would allow Florida gun slingers to tote firearms openly, in holsters. One might wonder why a state beholden to tourists, many from nations where vigilante justice is not a celebrated ideal, would want such infamy splashed across newspapers in London or Paris or Madrid or Berlin.
The same bill, poking a sharp stick into the eye of those outside the gun culture, would also legalize guns on college campuses. The legislation does include a special gun toting exception. No one can carry a gun “into any meeting of the Legislature or a committee thereof.”
Our Governor, Big Rick, really is an easy target......this "budget" is a joke.....Scott Maxwell from the Orlando Sentinel calls him out....
But first, the lies.
That's actually a word I don't use very often. In fact, I checked our archives to confirm that, in all my years of writing a column for theSentinel, I've never called someone a flat-out "liar."
That changes today.
Rick Scott claimed time and time again that he wouldn't cut school spending.
He said it a variety of different ways. He vowed to "keep the school budgets the same." He said he'd hold education harmless. He even summed up his entire education budget plan in two words: "No cuts."
Those assurances allowed moderate and conservative voters who also cared about education to feel comfortable voting for him.
And yet, on Monday, he unveiled a budget that proposed more than $3 billion worth of cuts to Florida schools.
He cut it based on nearly every measure — total revenue, general state revenue, even per-pupil funding, a category in which Florida already lags the rest of the nation.
Scott tried to rewrite history this week by claiming he never really promised not to cut school funding. But the Pulitzer Prize-winners over at Politifact.com shot down that claim, too, rating it "False."
That's actually a word I don't use very often. In fact, I checked our archives to confirm that, in all my years of writing a column for theSentinel, I've never called someone a flat-out "liar."
That changes today.
Rick Scott claimed time and time again that he wouldn't cut school spending.
He said it a variety of different ways. He vowed to "keep the school budgets the same." He said he'd hold education harmless. He even summed up his entire education budget plan in two words: "No cuts."
Those assurances allowed moderate and conservative voters who also cared about education to feel comfortable voting for him.
And yet, on Monday, he unveiled a budget that proposed more than $3 billion worth of cuts to Florida schools.
He cut it based on nearly every measure — total revenue, general state revenue, even per-pupil funding, a category in which Florida already lags the rest of the nation.
Scott tried to rewrite history this week by claiming he never really promised not to cut school funding. But the Pulitzer Prize-winners over at Politifact.com shot down that claim, too, rating it "False."
13/ Good book - "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness......romance, vampires, witches, demons......it's got everything!!! Well almost everything...there's no zombies.....but overall sounds like a very enjoyable read.....download it today!!!
Does this sound familiar? A woman falls in love with a moody, chiseled vampire with a great wardrobe and a quick temper. Of course it does, and comparisons between Twilight and Deborah Harkness' extraordinarily fun debut — the first in a planned trilogy — are unavoidable. But A Discovery of Witches, a thoroughly grown-up novel packed with gorgeous historical detail, has a gutsy, brainy heroine to match: Diana Bishop, a renowned scholar of 17th-century chemistry and a descendant of accomplished witches. Diana has spent most of her life resisting the magic within her. The power she's long denied swirls to the forefront, however, when she opens a bewitched manuscript in Oxford's famous Bodleian Library. Suddenly every vampire, witch, and daemon — yes, they walk among us; we humans are just oblivious to their presence — is up in her grill, hungry for the secrets she's unknowingly unlocked. It's 1,500-year-old vampire Matthew who makes the biggest impression. Diana falls madly for him, breaking every rule about interspecies dating.
Todays video.....referee training.....
Todays church joke
Church Fart
This says it all about getting older & the whole aging thing.
An elderly couple are attending church services…
About halfway through, she writes a note and hands it to her husband.
It says, "I just let out a silent fart, what do you think I should do?"
He scribbles back, "Put a new battery in your hearing aid."
Todays Tommy Cooper jokes [a British comedian from the 60's/70's]
1. Two blondes walk into a building..........you'd think at least one of them would have seen it.
2 Phone answering machine message - '...If you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key...'
3. A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only Clingfilm for shorts. The shrink says, 'Well, I can clearly see you're nuts.'
4. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.
5. I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 quid that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, 'No, the steaks are too high.'
6. My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli. A strong currant pulled him in.
7 . A man came round in hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, 'Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!'
The doctor replied, 'I know you can't, I've cut your arms off'
8. I went to a seafood disco last week and pulled a muscle.
9. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly.. They lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it.
10. Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself
11. Man goes to the doctor, with a strawberry growing out of his head.
Doc says 'I'll give you some cream to put on it.'
12. 'Doc I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home'
'That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome. '
'Is it common?'
'It's not unusual.'
13. A man takes his Rotteweiller to the vet. 'My dog is cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?'
'Well,' said the vet, 'let's have a look at him'
So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then he checks his teeth. Finally, he says, ‘I’m going to have to put him down.' 'What? Because he's cross-eyed?'
'No, because he's really heavy'
14. Guy goes into the doctor’s. 'Doc, I've got a cricket ball stuck up my bottom.'
'How's that?'
'Don't you start.'
15. Two elephants walk off a cliff...boom, boom!
16. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
17.. So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me 'Can you give me a lift?'
I said 'Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it..'
18. Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. There are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my Dad, or my older brother Colin, or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think it’s Colin.
19. Two fat blokes in a pub, one says to the other ‘Your round.' The other one says 'So are you, you fat .................!'
20. Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, and the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.
21. ‘You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen. It said, 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice.'
22. A man walked into the doctors, he said, 'I've hurt my arm in several places'
The doctor said, ‘Well don't go there anymore’
23. Ireland ’s worst air disaster occurred early this morning when a small two-seater Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery. Irish search and rescue workers have recovered 2826 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night.
Todays aging joke
Will I Live to see 80?
Here's something to think about:
I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age. (I just turned sixty-something.)
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?'
He asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?
'Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then he asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?
I said, 'Not much... my former doctor said all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
He asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have lots of sex?'
'No,' I said...
He looked at me and said...'Then, why do you even give a shxt?
Here's something to think about:
I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age. (I just turned sixty-something.)
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?'
He asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?
'Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then he asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?
I said, 'Not much... my former doctor said all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
He asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have lots of sex?'
'No,' I said...
He looked at me and said...'Then, why do you even give a shxt?
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