If you are a regular on Facebook, have a look at #7.....a scary article from the Times on how much information corporations have about you through social media.....
1/ Fascinating article in Slate that takes a look at the seriousness of Stephen Colbert's drive to educate the public about SuperPac's, and how he alone is undermining the authority of the Supreme Court by explaining how awful their Citizens United decision was.....
Excellent article.....
The Supreme Court has always had its critics. Chief Justice John Marshall had to contend with the temper of President Andrew Jackson (“John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”). And Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes went toe-to-toe with FDR, who wouldn’t let up with the court-packing. But in the history of the Supreme Court, nothing has ever prepared the justices for the public opinion wrecking ball that is Stephen Colbert. The comedian/presidential candidate/super PAC founder has probably done more to undermine public confidence in the court’s 2010 Citizens United opinion than anyone, including the dissenters. In this contest, the high court is supremely outmatched.
Citizens United, with an assist from a 1976 decision Buckley v. Valeo, has led to the farce of unlimited corporate election spending, “uncoordinated” super PACs that coordinate with candidates, and a noxious round of attack ads, all of which is protected in the name of free speech. Colbert has been educating Americans about the resulting insanity for months now. His broadside against the court raises important questions about satire and the court, about protecting the dignity of the institution, and the role of modern media in public discourse. Also: The fight between Colbert and the court is so full of ironies, it can make your molars hurt.
When President Obama criticized Citizens United two years ago in his State of the Union address, at least three justices came back at him with pitchforks and shovels. In the end, most court watchers scored it a draw. But when a comedian with a huge national platform started ridiculing the court last summer, the stakes changed completely. This is no pointy-headed deconstruction unspooling on the legal blogs. Colbert has spent the past few months making every part of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizen United look utterly ridiculous. And the court, which has no access to cameras (by its own choosing), no press arm, and no discernible comedic powers, has had to stand by and take it on the chin.
2/ Another video of people flying, this one in China.....professionally done, good sound track, interesting shots of street life in China, lots of cams on the fliers and how the hell do they get away with this shit without ploughing into a tree or something......wow.....4 minutes.....
The next three items are about the Susan B. Komen controversy.......
3/ Excellent interview with Andrea Mitchell and Nancy Brinker, head of the Susan G. Komen charity......a rare moment when a TV news person actually does a decent interview, not letting this corporate weaselette off the hook. You can also see the bitch start to get pissed when Andrea presses her.
Go Andrea! Seven minutes.....
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell had some tough words for Susan G. Komen chief Nancy Brinker about thegrowing firestorm over Planned Parenthood.
Mitchell and Brinker were discussing the controversy that has erupted around Susan G. Komen's recent decision to end its funding to Planned Parenthood. The funding supported Planned Parenthood's ability to provide breast cancer screenings for its patients.
4/ A clip from 2010 with Stephen Colbert defending Planned Parenthood against Senator Jon Kyl in one of his funnier segments - he loses it [laughing] for a few seconds......
This is a year old, but still relevant today......really good
clip......3 minutes....
5/ Charles Pierce in Esquire with some commentary on the Susan G. Komen Foundation and their collapse under pressure from [of course] a Florida wingnut Congressman....
t is very possible that the women in this country who want to control their reproductive systems, to say nothing of their lives, are going to get fed up very soon with having their freedom to do just that get mucked with by Bible-banging pests, meddling congresscritters, gutless foundations, and the members of the Clan of the Red Beanie. I do not know what vengeance they will undertake, but I suspect it will be fierce.The latest entrant in the parade of chickens is the Susan G. Komen For The Cure, the country's leading charity dealing with breast cancer, and the organization behind all those pink ribbons you see everywhere, and a group formidable enough to get NFL players wearing pink shoes once a season. A group, then, with some considerable muscle. Which it, sadly, has declined to use on behalf of Planned Parenthood. Instead, it has pulled its funding from PP, spewing a considerable amount of bureaucratic ink to cover its cowardly retreat:
"While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a long-standing partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission."
Please tell me specifically how the Komen group has "evolved" in such a way that contributing money to Planned Parenthood no longer can "best meet the needs of the women" it serves, and how it no longer helps the Komen group "fully advance [its] mission." I'm dying to know. I need a good laugh.
Of course, the real reason is a politically motivated audit undertaken a part of a general jihadagainst Planned Parenthood undertaken by Florida congresscritter Cliff Stearns, the chairman of an oversight subcommittee and a real freaking prize in his own right. Stearns is the guy who added to the Zadroga bill, which provided for federal relief to the first responders who worked on the pile at Ground Zero in New York, the ludicrous requirement that the names of all applicants for such relief first be checked against all terrorist watch-list. He also once attacked PBS because the South Africanversion of Sesame Street introduced a character who was HIV-positive. Like I said, a real prize. Nevertheless, he was enough to scare off the Komen group.
6/ The Doors with "The End", from the movie Apocalypse Now......revisit the movie opening scenes with the helicopters, fire, and Charlie Sheen's face with the Doors playing in the background....
Apocalypse Now Redux is the version you want to watch again.....
And just for fun I've thrown in Robert Duvall and his "smell of napalm in the morning" speech....90 seconds....
7/ Facebook - I'm on it.....rarely post anything, but it's interesting to see the pulse of what the general public is feeling, and some of the things posted by my "friends" end up in DDD.....but as this article says the thing that makes Facebook valuable to the stock market and their recent IPO is you - your data - you are naked to the eyes of the search engines.....
This article is really an eye opener....
LAST week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion. But unlike other big-ticket corporations, it doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones. Facebook’s inventory consists of personal data — yours and mine.
Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us. Advertisers choose key words or details — like relationship status, location, activities, favorite books and employment — and then Facebook runs the ads for the targeted subset of its 845 million users. If you indicate that you like cupcakes, live in a certain neighborhood and have invited friends over, expect an ad from a nearby bakery to appear on your page. The magnitude of online information Facebook has available about each of us for targeted marketing is stunning. In Europe, laws give people the right to know what data companies have about them, but that is not the case in the United States.
Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85 percent of its total revenue. Yet Facebook’s inventory of data and its revenue from advertising are small potatoes compared to some others. Google took in more than 10 times as much, with an estimated $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, by analyzing what people sent over Gmail and what they searched on the Web, and then using that data to sell ads. Hundreds of other companies have also staked claims on people’s online data by depositing software called cookies or other tracking mechanisms on people’s computers and in their browsers. If you’ve mentioned anxiety in an e-mail, done a Google search for “stress” or started using an online medical diary that lets you monitor your mood, expect ads for medications and services to treat your anxiety.
Ads that pop up on your screen might seem useful, or at worst, a nuisance. But they are much more than that. The bits and bytes about your life can easily be used against you. Whether you can obtain a job, credit or insurance can be based on your digital doppelgänger — and you may never know why you’ve been turned down.
8/ Poor Newt. You know he's doomed when the opening skit for SNL is one of his ideas.....and he's President..... of the Moon! - very funny.....four minutes.....
9/ Jefferson Bethke did a video on how he hates religion, but loves Jesus, which seemed to connect with a lot of younger people as the video went viral [18 million hits].
Indeed David Brooks in the Times did a column on it......but used the second part of his piece to lament the fact this young man didn't have a follow through plan that would use his disgust of organised religibusiness to fix it.
Brooks, a voice of the oligarchy, doesn't get it. Ordinary people are waking up to the fact the system doesn't work for them, it only works for those at the top.....
A few weeks ago, a 22-year-old man named Jefferson Bethke produced a video called “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus.” The video shows Bethke standing in a courtyard rhyming about the purity of the teachings of Jesus and the hypocrisy of the church. Jesus preaches healing, surrender and love, he argues, but religion is rigid, phony and stale. “Jesus came to abolish religion,” Bethke insists. “Religion puts you in bondage, but Jesus sets you free.”
The video went viral. As of Thursday, it had acquired more than 18 million hits on YouTube. It speaks for many young believers who feel close to God but not to the church. It represents the passionate voice of those who think their institutions lack integrity — not just the religious ones, but the political and corporate ones, too.
Right away, many older theologians began critiquing Bethke’s statements. A blogger named Kevin DeYoung pointed out, for example, that it is biblically inaccurate to say that Jesus hated religion. In fact, Jesus preached a religious doctrine, prescribed rituals and worshiped in a temple.
Bethke responded in a way that was humble, earnest and gracious, and that generally spoke well of his character. He also basically folded.
“I wanted to say I really appreciate your article man,” Bethke wrote to DeYoung in an online exchange. “It hit me hard. I’ll even be honest and say I agree 100 percent.”
Bethke watched a panel discussion in which some theologians lamented young people’s disdain of organized religion. “Right when I heard that,” he told The Christian Post, “it just convicted me, and God used it as one of those Spirit moments where it’s just, ‘Man, he’s right.’ I realized a lot of my views and treatments of the church were not Scripture-based; they were very experience based.”
Bethke’s passionate polemic and subsequent retreat are symptomatic of a lot of the protest cries we hear these days. This seems to be a moment when many people — in religion, economics and politics — are disgusted by current institutions, but then they are vague about what sorts of institutions should replace them.
Here is the four minute video.....nicely done....it's a cross between poetry and rap, with titles.....
10/ An article in the Guardian UK that truly states the obvious - follow the money, because the money in politics always wins.....
Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".
Given the general state of the Republican party, such comments now attract precious little attention. Truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.
So the oft-touted notion that these debates have been responsible for shifting the trajectory of this primary race would be worrying if it were true. It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."
The good news is, with the exception of Perry's demise, the debates have not been pivotal. The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.
This is not new. But since a 2010 supreme court ruling allowing unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and unions, it has become particularly acute. Moreover, the contributors can remain anonymous. The organisations that are taking advantage of this new law are known as Super Pacs. Even at this early stage of the presidential cycle, their potential for framing the race is clear. In the whole of 2008 individuals, parties and other groups spent $168.8m independently on the presidential election. This year on Republican candidates alone, where voting started less than a month ago, the Super Pacs have reportedindependent expenditures of almost $40m. In 2008 election spending doubled compared with 2004. This year industry analysts believe the money spent just on television ads is set to leap by almost 80%compared with four years ago.
Money in American politics was already an elephant in the room. Now the supreme court has given it a laxative, taken away the shovel, and asked us to ignore both the sight and the stench.
11/ Nelly Furtado with "All Good Things Come to an End"........lovely song, interesting video of the "robe in the surf, hunk getting greased up" genre, but she's a beautiful girl......very nice video......
12/ A rare defeat for the most evil corporation in the world, Monsanto. France has refused to let them market a genetically modified seed to it's farmers....
FRANCE HAS held firm in its opposition to Monsanto’s genetically modified MON 810 maize – and the agri-chemical multinational has admitted defeat.
Monsanto had been putting legal pressure on the French government to lift its 2008 cultivation ban on MON 810, firstly with a successful appeal to the European Court of Justice, then with a follow-up case heard in France’s own highest court, the Council of State.
But despite both these institutions ruling that the ban was “insufficiently justified in law”, the French Government, backed by President Sarkozy, has insisted that it will still not allow cultivation of the biotech maize.
Now Monsanto has announced that it would not be selling seeds for MON810 in France this year.
13/ Watch the Superbowl? Nice to see an exciting game go down to the last minute.....wow....
One of the commercials that you might have noticed was the Clint Eastwood spot for Chrysler......this has caused a firestorm in the right wing media, because he dared to mention working together and saying "this is halftime in America".......but they are finding it tough to attack Clint, because he's a icon and a Republican....and he cares about this country.....
So watch the commercial again, and make up your own mind.......we report, you decide......
I found it pretty moving......
Here's part of the news story on the commercial from the Times this morning.....
The most talked-about advertisement of the Super Bowl did not have a barely clothed supermodel, a cute puppy or a smart-aleck baby. It was a cinematic two-minute commercial featuring Clint Eastwood, an icon of American brawn, likening Chrysler’s comeback to the country’s own economic revival.
And within 12 hours of running, it became one of the loudest flashpoints yet in the early re-election campaign of President Obama, providing a reminder, as if one were needed, that in today’s polarized political climate even a tradition as routine as a football championship can be thrust into a partisan light.
Some conservative critics saw the ad as political payback and accused the automaker of handing the president a prime-time megaphone in front of one of the largest television audiences of the year.
Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who served as President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, said Chrysler was trying to settle a debt to the Obama administration for rescuing Detroit carmakers with billions of dollars in loans.
“The leadership of auto companies feel they need to do something to repay their political patronage,” Mr. Rove said on Fox News, where viewers of the network’s morning program “Fox & Friends” rated the ad their least favorite of the game. “It is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”
David Axelrod, President Obama’s chief political strategist, seized on the commercial almost immediately. He sent out a Twitter message shortly after it ran, declaring, “Powerful spot.” And, as if to underscore the Obama campaign’s lack of involvement in it, “Did Clint shoot that, or just narrate it?”
14/ Occasionally some stories just hit you as a sign of the times....
The first is a town in Texas that has to truck in water to supply its residents....
SPICEWOOD BEACH, Tex. — The water that once nourished this central Texas community never traveled far: it came from a fenced-in well at the edge of Lake Travis, down a winding street next to the golf course. These days, the water that flows from kitchen and bathroom faucets takes an extraordinary journey that can be measured not in feet but in miles.
This drought-stricken place in the scenic hills outside Austin has been forced to bring in water by truck from more than 10 miles away because its sole well came close to running out of water. Spicewood Beach is one of four subdivisions in Burnet County that became the first communities in Texas to run so low on water that it had to be hauled in by truck. The four subdivisions, made up of about 1,100 people in a part of Texas known as the Hill Country, all relied on the Spicewood Beach well.
Several times a day, a truck carrying 4,000 gallons of treated water from another subdivision has pulled up to a beige storage tank in Spicewood Beach. Workers pump the water from the truck to the tank through a long green hose. A crowd of reporters and residents watched the first delivery on Monday. But by Wednesday morning, the deliveries had become a part of life here, and no one watched as the water that residents use to wash dishes and take their showers flowed out of a truck from an aptly named company, H2O2U.
Droughts are deceptive disasters: they knock down no buildings, spread no debris. But they are disasters nonetheless. The Texas drought that started more than a year ago has cost ranchers and farmers billions of dollars in lost income or additional expenses. It has forced hundreds of towns and cities to restrict water use and has turned lakes into ponds. Last year was the driest in Texas since 1917, with a total statewide rainfall of 15 inches, much lower than the average of 27.64 inches, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist.
The second is a crisis in Maine where most of the homes use oil for heating - a double whammy of cuts in assistance for heating oil to poor people and the inexorable rise in oil prices are leading to people in Maine at risk of freezing to death.....
But they're poor, so the Republican Governor of Maine and of course Mitt Romney could care less....
With the darkening approach of another ice-hard Saturday night in western Maine, the man on the telephone was pleading for help, again. His tank was nearly dry, and he and his disabled wife needed precious heating oil to keep warm. Could Ike help out? Again?
Ike Libby, the co-owner of a smalloil company called Hometown Energy, ached for his customer, Robert Hartford. He knew what winter in Maine meant, especially for a retired couple living in a wood-frame house built in the 19th century. But he also knew that the Hartfords already owed him more than $700 for two earlier deliveries.
The oil man said he was very sorry. The customer said he understood. And each was left to grapple with a matter so mundane in Maine, and so vital: the need for heat. For the rest of the weekend, Mr. Libby agonized over his decision, while Mr. Hartford warmed his house with the heat from his electric stove’s four burners.
“You get off the phone thinking, ‘Are these people going to be found frozen?’ ” Mr. Libby said. No wonder, he said, that he is prescribed medication for stress and “happy pills” for equilibrium.
..............................
Maine is in the midst of its Republican presidential caucus, the state’s wintry moment in the battle for the country’s future. But at this time of year, almost nothing matters here as much as basic heat.
While federal officials try to wean the country from messy and expensive heating oil, Maine remains addicted. The housing stock is old, most communities are rural, and many residents cannot afford to switch to a cleaner heat source. So the tankers pull into, say, the Portland port, the trucks load up, and the likes of Ike Libby sidle up to house after house to fill oil tanks.
This winter has been especially austere. As part of the drive to cut spending, the Obama administration and Congress have trimmed the energy-assistance program that helps the poor — 65,000 households in Maine alone — to pay their heating bills. Eligibility is harder now, and the average amount given here is $483, down from $804 last year, all at a time when the price of oil has risen more than 40 cents in a year, to $3.71 a gallon.
As a result, Community Concepts, a community-action program serving western Maine, receives dozens of calls a day from people seeking warmth. But Dana Stevens, its director of energy and housing, says that he has distributed so much of the money reserved for emergencies that he fears running out. This means that sometimes the agency’s hot line purposely goes unanswered.
15/ Yup - the month of January was one of the driest and warmest on record, and this article from Scientific American explains why.....and this is science, not Fox News, so yes - it was the driest January on record..........
You remember science, don't you? We once believed in it, didn't we? Before science became politicized by oil and coal money so the stupids don't believe in reality any more?......
A little snow and rain are falling in a few states today, but the 2011–12 winter has been extremely warm and dry across the continental U.S. Meteorologists think they have figured out why.
First, a few records: The initial week of January was the driest in history. And more than 95 percent of the U.S. had below-average snow cover—the greatest such percentage ever recorded—according to some intriguing data maps generated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During December, approximately half of the U.S. had temperatures at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average, and more than 1,500 daily record highs were set from January 2 to 8. Europe has seen similar extremes.
The chief suspect behind the mysterious weather is an atmospheric pressure pattern called the Arctic Oscillation, which circles the high Northern Hemisphere. Its lower edge is known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Together, the related features influence the path and strength of the jet stream. The jet itself is an air current that flows west to east across the northern latitudes of the U.S., Europe and Asia, altering temperature and precipitation as portions of it dip southward or crest northward. A strong jet stream that flows in a somewhat straight line from west to east, with few southward dips, prevents cold arctic air from drifting south. "The cause of this warm first half of winter is the most extreme configuration of the jet stream ever recorded," according to Jeffrey Masters, a meteorologist who runs theWeather Underground, a Web site that analyzes severe weather data.
By "extreme," Masters means that the jet stream was far north and fairly straight, and stayed that way for an unusually long time. That position allowed warm southern air to prevail over the entire U.S., and prevented cold fronts from descending from the north and clashing with warm fronts, creating large snow- and rainstorms. The jet stream has been locked in that position by the NAO for most of the winter, and Masters says it has sustained the largest pressure gradient since tracking began in 1865.
Todays video.....Born this Way.....
Todays ethical question joke
Bus Stop Quiz
You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:
1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
2. An old friend who once saved your life.
3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.
Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car?
Think before you continue reading.
This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.. You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first.. Or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.
You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:
1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
2. An old friend who once saved your life.
3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.
Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car?
Think before you continue reading.
This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.. You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first.. Or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.
The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer. He simply answered: 'I would give the car keys to my old friend and let him take the lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the partner of my dreams.'
Sometimes, we gain more if we are able to give up our stubborn thought limitations.
Never forget to 'Think Outside of the Box.'
HOWEVER...., The correct answer is to run the old lady over and put her out of her misery, have sex with the perfect partner on the bonnet of the car, then drive off with the old friend for a few beers.
God, I just love happy endings!
Sometimes, we gain more if we are able to give up our stubborn thought limitations.
Never forget to 'Think Outside of the Box.'
HOWEVER...., The correct answer is to run the old lady over and put her out of her misery, have sex with the perfect partner on the bonnet of the car, then drive off with the old friend for a few beers.
God, I just love happy endings!
Todays Texan Joke
Two Texans were out on the range talking about their favourite sex positions.
One said, "think I enjoy the rodeo position the best."
"I don't think I have ever heard of that one," said the other cowboy. "What is it ?"
"Well, it's where you get your wife down on all fours and you mount her from behind. Then you reach around and cup each one of her breasts in your hands and whisper in her ear, 'Boy, these feel just like your sister's.'
Then you try and stay on for 8 seconds."
Todays stress joke......
Colbert was very funny. On the other hand,I have no sympathy for Gingrich. He dug his own grave by all the negative attacks against his opponents instead on issues that matter like economy and high unemployment,deficit and many more. Bad,bad tempered too.
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