Todays quote, from a Times Editorial.......
The fast-food workers who have been walking off their jobsillustrate a central fact of contemporary work life in America: As lower-wage occupations have proliferated in the past several years, Americans are increasingly unable to make a living at their jobs. They work harder and are paid less than workers in other advanced countries. And their wages have stagnated even as executive pay has soared.
1/ I know I seem to put everything Frank Rich writes into DDD, but he makes so much sense I have to do it - look at this column for instance. Even though this is just his opinion on our politics of the week, it's an informed opinion by someone who isn't part of the corporate media.....i.e. it's more likely to be true than anything else you see or read.
So.....for the scoop on the Republican snit about the Hillary films, the Amazon billionaire's purchase of the Washington Post and President Weenie on the Jay Leno show, read on.......
Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Reince Priebus throws an ill-considered fit, Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post, and Obama yucks it up with Jay Leno.
RNC chairman Reince Priebus delivered an ultimatum to CNN and NBC earlier this week: Pull the plug on your planned Hillary Clinton film projects, or we won't allow you to air the 2016 GOP primaries. Priebus's stance against the Hillary films (if not his petulant threats) has been backed by some unlikely allies, among them David Brockand Maureen Dowd. Do you think the RNC chair has a point? And, tactically, is this a smart fight for him to pick?
2/ The latest Republican plan for food stamps is just amazing.....stomp on the poor again, the ones who need help the most. The irony is that most of these vicious bastards call themselves Christians.....
Unemployed? No Food Stamps for You
By DAVID FIRESTONE
Earlier this year, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, announced plans to rebrand the Republican Party, improving “health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families.” In case you took any of that seriously, take a good look at the food stamp proposal Mr. Cantor unveiled a few days ago, one of the more brutal actions Republicans have taken against the poor since they took over the House in 2011.
In June, the Republican plan to cut food stamps by $2 billion a year led to the failure of the farm bill—because House conservatives wanted even bigger cuts. House leaders then revived the bill to provide $196 billion to big agriculture, dropping the food stamp program entirely and promising to bring it back “later.”
Later has arrived, and the plan is worse than ever. Mr. Cantor wants to cut $4 billion a year, double the earlier cut, by removing up to 4 million people from the food stamp program. His method of kicking all those people off is particularly diabolical, considering the Republican refusal to stimulate the economy: he wants to punish those unable to find a job. Anyone who is unemployed and not raising children will be limited to three months of food stamps every three years.
Later has arrived, and the plan is worse than ever. Mr. Cantor wants to cut $4 billion a year, double the earlier cut, by removing up to 4 million people from the food stamp program. His method of kicking all those people off is particularly diabolical, considering the Republican refusal to stimulate the economy: he wants to punish those unable to find a job. Anyone who is unemployed and not raising children will be limited to three months of food stamps every three years.
This requirement has been on the books since 1996, but it was routinely waived by most states during and after the recession, as high unemployment caused widespread suffering. Mr. Cantor wants to eliminate those waivers, with no exceptions. Under Mr. Cantor’s plan, it won’t matter how hard people are looking for work, or how high unemployment might be in their state.
Mr. Cantor’s plan would slash benefits for many of the poorest people in the United States, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Their average annual income is $2,500; many are desperate for work but cannot find any. Joblessness may have been reduced in the last two years but it is still far too high, particularly among those with the least skills.
3/ John Oliver on the Daily Show with some commentary on sexual assaults in the Military.....an amusing but occasionally serious three minutes. I like the way Oliver is becoming a journalist as well as a comic.....
John Oliver used Thursday night’s Daily Show to spotlight the scourge of sexual assault in the military, and more so than usual, the comedy was balanced out with a fair amount of outright disgust. Upon hearing that there are 26,000 reported cases of sexual assault in 2012, Oliver said that is 27,000 too many: “There should be negative one thousand sexual abuse incidents when it comes to involving our military personnel!”
Oliver declared, “After everything they do for our country, they deserve only magical, majestic consensual sex with unicorns!” He found it insane how President Obama merely weighing in on the case is putting the fairness of impending trials at risk, asking exactly how the leader of the free world is supposed to be neutral on sexual assault.
4/ And for the other journalist who speaks truth to power, Matt Taibbi looks at the recent announcements that the Feds are going to get tougher on Wall Street.....and concludes it's just more BS. Nothing is going to happen except some low level people may get nailed and some big sounding fines will be levied, i.e. a weeks profit will be paid to the gumment.
And he compares the penalties for this billions of dollars in fraud to what happens if you lie to try to get food stamps.
Corruption, thy name is Wall Street.....
A lot of interesting things happening on the white-collar enforcement front. Evil hedge fund SAC Capital and its villainous ruler Stevie Cohen were run through the gauntlet, Goldman Sachs patsy Fabulous Fab took a beating in civil court (I love the detail that emerged, that Goldman executives now call him "the poor kid"), and now, apparently, a pair of high-profile investigationshave been launched against Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase for subprime mortgage fraud. The latter investigations seem to be designed to answer criticisms that nobody is going after the real doers of evil systemic crimes.
The Chase case apparently involves a criminal investigation, which is indeed interesting. The company admitted as much yesterday, saying federal investigators out West have "preliminarily concluded" that Chase brazenly violated securities laws when it sold subprime mortgage-backed instruments in 2005-2007.
But I'm skeptical it will turn into a real criminal investigation. All of the stories that broke in the last day or two noted the same detail, that Chase has beefed up its estimates for litigation/settlement costs:
As the investigations drag on, the bank is racking up significant legal costs. To help cushion against potentially hefty payouts to the authorities, JPMorgan recorded a $678 million expense for additional litigation reserves in the second quarter, up from $323 million in the same period a year ago, according to the filing on Wednesday.The bank also estimated it could incur up to $6.8 billion in losses beyond its reserves, nearly $1 billion more than the first quarter of the year.
The government may very well decide to go after Chase in what it considers a big way. It may do the same for Bank of America, and then it may keep going on down the line to other banks, until it has collected a billion dollars or so from all the usual suspects, who were virtually all engaged in the same kinds of schemes, gathering and selling to customers radioactive mortgage bonds they knew were likely to explode, or were ridden with fraud and faulty underwriting.
But to me, these investigations will be meaningless unless one of two things happens, once they reach the inevitable stage of concluding painstakingly-crafted settlements with the inevitable teams of high-priced lawyers for the offending firms:
1) Someone goes to jail.
2) The company is ordered to break itself up into smaller pieces.
5/ Men - this is the summer compilation of fails from TwisterNederland, and a doozey it is. The mayhem is amazing, and some of the accidents are incredible....you wonder where they get this stuff from.....13 minutes of pain, physical and financial!
There are some fails that have to end up in the hospital, so this is not for the sensitive.......
6/ A story that makes one think - it details eight ways privatisation has failed America, by making some services more expensive, less efficient and anti-consumer.....
Very interesting and rings true.....unless you are a Republican free market fanatic.....
Some of America's leading news analysts are beginning to recognize the fallacy of the "free market." Said Ted Koppel, "We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another." Fareed Zakaria admitted, "I am a big fan of the free market...But precisely because it is so powerful, in places where it doesn't work well, it can cause huge distortions." They're right. A little analysis reveals that privatization doesn't seem to work in any of the areas vital to the American public.
Health Care
Our private health care system is by far the most expensive system in the developed world. Forty-two percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Some of the documented tales: a $15,000 charge for lab tests for which a Medicare patient would have paid a few hundred dollars; an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, which was covered for $2,000 under a private policy.
As the examples begin to make clear, Medicare is more cost-effective. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, Medicare administrative costs are about one-third that of private health insurance. More importantly, our ageing population has been staying healthy. While as a nation we have a shorter life expectancy than almost all other developed countries, Americans covered by Medicare INCREASED their life expectancy by 3.5 years from the 1960s to the turn of the century.
7/ Louis CK is a different kind of comedian because he uses irony a lot, and this interview with Jay Leno is a classic.....on race and "two little white girls in America'......three good minutes....
8/ The wonderful George Carlin on pro lifers, abortion and the sanctity of life......
It would be hard for anyone to beat his opening line of this excellent 9 minute segment from his stage show...
9/ Interesting story in the Times written by a neonatal surgeon who saves preemie babies that raises all kinds of moral questions, and when you read the story of "Miracle" who was born at 23 weeks and the suffering this poor child went through and the short, desperate life she would have, you wonder is this worth it?
And another thing - nowhere in the article does it mention cost.....whether it's Medicaid, private insurance or the emergency room we all ended up paying for this baby to live.
But noone will stand up and make the tough decisions because of the "sanctity of life", but the quality of that life is never mentioned.........
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
End of Life, at Birth
By APRIL R. DWORETZ
Published: August 4, 2013 248 Comments
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ATLANTA — FIFTY years ago this Wednesday, Americans were gripped by the fate of a baby — Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the first child born to a sitting president since the 19th century, and John F. Kennedy’s last. He arrived on Aug. 7, 1963, five and a half weeks premature. Despite medical heroics, including the use of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, he died 39 hours later.
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Neonatal care has improved greatly since then. Were he born today, Patrick, who was delivered at 34 weeks’ gestation, would very likely survive and have a healthy life, too.
For all the biomedical advances, though, the key ethical problems surrounding premature birth remain. Today, babies as much as 11 weeks younger than Patrick can be saved at birth. The problem is that their prognoses are often much worse than his would have been.
I am a neonatologist. I save babies. Most of them, especially those born after 28 weeks, will at most suffer mild or moderate disabilities. But of those born before 28 weeks — 30,000 of the half million babies born prematurely each year in this country — many will have serious physical, social or cognitive problems.
Consider that a one-pound, one-ounce girl born unexpectedly at 23 weeks’ gestation has a 92 percent chance of dying early or having moderate to severe neurodevelopmental impairment.
Most extremely premature babies will experience at least one complication — bleeding in the brain, infections, intestinal perforation, severe lung damage — before discharge. Many will need treatment long after birth, sometimes for life, at great financial and emotional cost to them and those around them.
A few months ago I cared for just such a child. Let’s call her Miracle. She was born at 23 weeks’ gestation and weighed a little over a pound. Despite the bleak prognosis, her parents asked that we resuscitate her in the delivery room.
So we did. But over the next eight weeks, to keep her alive, we had to prick Miracle’s heel so many times she developed scarring. We suctioned her trachea hundreds of times. We put tubes through her mouth and into her stomach, we stabbed her again and again to insert IVs, and we took blood from her and then transfused blood back. We gave her antibiotics for two severe infections.
Each of these events created suffering, for Miracle and her parents. Her mother visited daily and developed an anxiety disorder. Her father came in only once a week, the pain and sadness was so great.
After eight weeks, Miracle came off the ventilator we had put her on. But three days later we had to turn it back on, and it was possible she would die or remain on the ventilator permanently if we didn’t give her steroids, which can have side effects as serious as cerebral palsy. Her mother opted for the steroids. But Miracle’s father was angry. He muttered to me: “Why do you do this? Why do you keep these babies alive?”
I’ve been thinking about that question for decades and haven’t found a simple answer. Some parents believe that withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment will prevent their infant from suffering and living a life not worth living; others consider it murder. Some families soar in caring for their disabled kids; others disintegrate.
10/ Neil De Grasse Tyson is the "everyman" astrophysicist, and in five minutes he explains 10 reasons to love science ......
Click on any of the links to see the full video of each of the 10 science clips......
11/ Sometimes you read things that fill you with despair - this asshole in Washington State blew up his dog at 4 am in his front yard, but can't be charged with animal cruelty because the dog's death was instantaneous......
Ponder that for a minute......
Is this a great country or what? Or do we truly deserve to crumble as a society, because it seems the dog-exploders are gradually taking over.....gun fanatics, gay haters, abortion loonies......crazies everywhere......
Christopher Dillingham Blew Up Family Dog, Won't Face Animal Cruelty Charges: Police
The Huffington Post | By Andy CampbellPosted: 08/06/2013 12:22 pm EDT | Updated: 08/06/2013 3:34 pm EDT
FOLLOW:
Cabella, a Labrador Retriever, was killed with an explosive device on Sunday, allegedly by his new owner.
A Washington State man arrested for allegedly attaching explosives to the family dog and blowing him up won't face animal cruelty charges because the dog didn't suffer, a law enforcement official said.
Christopher W. Dillingham, 45, of Stevenson, was charged with reckless endangerment and possession of an explosive device after the incident Sunday, according to KATU.
Sheriff's deputies responded to Dillingham's home at about 4 a.m. when neighbors heard an explosion. Body parts of the Labrador Retriever, named Cabella, were found strewn across the yard.
Investigators say Dillingham -- who owns a fireworks stand and has a history of domestic violence -- attached an explosive device to Cabella's neck and detonated it.
Dillingham told deputies that his ex-girlfriend gave him the dog and "put the devil in it," KOIN reports.
Undersheriff Dave Cox told the station that Dillingham wasn't initially charged with animal cruelty because the "death [to the dog] was instantaneous." He said prosecutors may add more charges later.
12/ A primer on GMO's [genetically modified organisms], what is a GMO and what are you eating right now that is likely to be GM.......and some surprising items you might think are GM, but aren't.
A good, unemotional and informative article.....
Roll on mandatory labelling......
5 Surprising Genetically Modified Foods
GE rice may soon be approved for human consumption. Photo illustration/Photos from IRRI, WIkimedia Commons
By now, you've likely heard about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the controversy over whether they're the answer to world hunger or the devil incarnate. But for right now, let's leave aside that debate and turn to a more basic question: When you go to the supermarket, do you know which foods are most likely to be—or contain ingredients that are—genetically engineered? A handy FAQ:
So what exactly are genetically modified organisms?
GMOs are plants or animals that have undergone a process wherein scientists alter their genes with DNA from different species of living organisms, bacteria, or viruses to get desired traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance of pesticides.
GMOs are plants or animals that have undergone a process wherein scientists alter their genes with DNA from different species of living organisms, bacteria, or viruses to get desired traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance of pesticides.
But haven't farmers been selectively breeding crops to get larger harvests for centuries? How is this any different?
Over at Grist, Nathanael Johnson has a great answer to this question—but in a nutshell: Yes, farmers throughout history have been raising their plants to achievecertain desired traits such as improved taste, yield, or disease resistance. But this kind of breeding still relies on the natural reproductive processes of the organisms, where as genetic engineering involves the addition of foreign genes that would not occur in nature.
Over at Grist, Nathanael Johnson has a great answer to this question—but in a nutshell: Yes, farmers throughout history have been raising their plants to achievecertain desired traits such as improved taste, yield, or disease resistance. But this kind of breeding still relies on the natural reproductive processes of the organisms, where as genetic engineering involves the addition of foreign genes that would not occur in nature.
Am I eating GMOs?
Probably. Since several common ingredients like corn starch and soy protein are predominantly derived from genetically modified crops, it's pretty hard to avoid GM foods altogether. In fact, GMOs are present in 60 to 70 percent of foods on US supermarket shelves, according to Bill Freese at the Center for Food Safety; the vast majority of processed foods contain GMOs. One major exception is fresh fruits and veggies. The only GM produce you're likely to find is the Hawaiian papaya, a small amount of zucchini and squash, and some sweet corn. No meat, fish, and poultry products approved for direct human consumption are bioengineered at this point, though most of the feed for livestock and fish is derived from GM corn, alfalfa, and other biotech grains. Only organic varieties of these animal products are guaranteed GMO-free feed.
13/ The Republicans have a problem - new polling about attitudes to the Republican Party.....and it's not good news.
It is becoming increasingly plain that the most formidable obstacle to national progress and global security is the Republican Party — and specifically the extremist factions that currently dominate the GOP.
Now Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and political strategist James Carville have announced what they plan to do about that pressing problem: namely, "The Republican Party Project," which will provide extensive survey research devoted to "exposing, monitoring, and confronting" the Republicans while helping Democrats and progressives to regain the political offensive.
According to Carville and Greenberg — whose presidential polling proved the best national voter survey in 2012, predicting the popular vote with pinpoint accuracy — Republican extremism is leaving the party increasingly isolated, even from many of its own members.
At the moment, only 31 percent of voters identify as Republicans, compared with 38 percent who identify as Democrats and 30 percent who call themselves independents. (Aggregated surveys collected by Pollster currently confirm an even worse scenario, with Democrats at 34 percent and Republicans at 23 percent.)
The project's polling also uncovered bad omens for Republicans among almost all age cohorts.
While the Republicans can cite a statistically meaningless 1 percent advantage among Generation X voters, the party has no "generational base" and is strongly disfavored by both Baby Boomers and Millennials.
Indeed, the gap between the parties among upcoming Millennials is nearly 20 points, with only 21 percent identifying as Republican — a data point that Republican leaders may well find terrifying. Moreover, the Republican base is holed up in rapidly depopulating rural areas, while cities and suburbs strongly favor Democrats.
It is also worth noting how alienated moderate Republicans are from their own party, with nearly half regarding it as "too extreme." Up to 40 percent of moderate Republicans regard their party as "out of touch," a statement that resonates with 46 percent of Republican-leaning independent voters. Nearly 40 percent of moderate Republicans believe the party is "dividing the country."
14/ Mumford and Sons are rare for a popular music group - they have a sense of humour! Have a look at this satire of a music video....it grows on you......
15/ Wow. An essay by a reporter assigned to Beijing and how dangerous it is to live there raising a family.....dangerous environmentally, that is......
Life in a Toxic Country
Li Wen/Xinhua, via Corbis
A baby being given nebulizer therapy at Beijing Children’s Hospital.
By EDWARD WONG
Published: August 3, 2013 292 Comments
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BEIJING — I RECENTLY found myself hauling a bag filled with 12 boxes of milk powder and a cardboard container with two sets of air filters through San Francisco International Airport. I was heading to my home in Beijing at the end of a work trip, bringing back what have become two of the most sought-after items among parents here, and which were desperately needed in my own household.
Related News
Chinese Search for Infant Formula Goes Global (July 26, 2013)
Pollution Leads to Drop in Life Span in Northern China, Research Finds (July 9, 2013)
Liu Jin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The China Central Television headquarters building in Beijing, wreathed in haze.
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China is the world’s second largest economy, but the enormous costs of its growth are becoming apparent. Residents of its boom cities and a growing number of rural regions question the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat. It is as if they were living in the Chinese equivalent of the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disaster areas.
Before this assignment, I spent three and a half years reporting in Iraq, where foreign correspondents talked endlessly of the variety of ways in which one could die — car bombs, firefights, being abducted and then beheaded. I survived those threats, only now to find myself wondering: Is China doing irreparable harm to me and my family?
The environmental hazards here are legion, and the consequences might not manifest themselves for years or even decades. The risks are magnified for young children. Expatriate workers confronted with the decision of whether to live in Beijing weigh these factors, perhaps more than at any time in recent decades. But for now, a correspondent’s job in China is still rewarding, and so I am toughing it out a while longer. So is my wife, Tini, who has worked for more than a dozen years as a journalist in Asia and has studied Chinese. That means we are subjecting our 9-month-old daughter to the same risks that are striking fear into residents of cities across northern China, and grappling with the guilt of doing so.
Like them, we take precautions. Here in Beijing, high-tech air purifiers are as coveted as luxury sedans.Soon after I was posted to Beijing, in 2008, I set up a couple of European-made air purifiers used by previous correspondents. In early April, I took out one of the filters for the first time to check it: the layer of dust was as thick as moss on a forest floor. It nauseated me. I ordered two new sets of filters to be picked up in San Francisco; those products are much cheaper in the United States. My colleague Amy told me that during the Lunar New Year in February, a family friend brought over a 35-pound purifier from California for her husband, a Chinese-American who had been posted to the Beijing office of a large American technology company. Before getting the purifier, the husband had considered moving to Suzhou, a smaller city lined with canals, because he could no longer tolerate the pollution in Beijing.
16/ Elysium opens this week.....and two reviews for you - one from the Times, and one from Entertainment Weekly, both positive.....both reviews have the trailer in the stories....
The Times likes the movie very much, a dark vision of the future......
Not since Charlton Heston struggled to save humanity from itself have movies looked this grimly, resolutely fatalistic. The man who was Moses began fighting the fantasy good fight in 1968, battling damn dirty apes in “Planet of the Apes,” before going on to face zombie hordes in “Omega Man” and an overpopulated nightmare in “Soylent Green.” (Psst: It’s people!) Heston may be gone, but the zombie hordes have kept coming, along with other new and unusual annihilating threats, and now it’s back to the dystopian future with“Elysium,” a cautionary shocker from the director Neill Blomkamp about a Hobbesian war of all against all from which only Matt Damon can save us.
Mr. Damon plays Max, an Everyman living, though often just struggling, in 2154 amid the devastation known as Earth. Mr. Blomkamp knows how to set the stage and, as cameras race over the wreckage like vengeful or fleeing angels, taking in the digitally rendered horrors and real locations, some introductory text explains the basics. Disease, poverty and overpopulation — and, from the churning dust, presumably ecological ruin — have transformed the planet into a global ghetto. While the multicultural many crawl through the terrestrial dirt, the privileged few live in the ultimate gated community, a wheel-shaped space habitat, Elysium, that brings to mind an orbital Mercedes-Benz logo. Up close, it looks like one of the costlier coastal swatches of Southern California.
Entertainment Weekly rates it B+......which is pretty good.....
In Elysium, Neill Blomkamp's shrewdly revved-up and exciting dystopian thriller, Matt Damon sports a shaved head, which gives him a spooky ghost-face vibe, and his character, Max, spends most of the movie with a spidery black-metal exoskeleton implanted in his skull and spine. The surgically attached machinery serves several functions at once. It's there to make Max strong — a boost he critically needs, since he's been exposed to a dose of radiation that will leave him dead in just five days. It also allows him to download the contents of someone else's brain. But the most important purpose served by that added hardware may be visual and symbolic: It transforms Max into a hulkingly damaged yet superheroic man-machine — a variation on the title character ofRoboCop. And it has the unmistakable look of a cross that he's been nailed to. Max isn't just fighting to save himself or his fellow earthlings. He's a guy who's been souped up into a postapocalyptic action-movie Christ.
Elysium confirms the talent — for razory mayhem and shocking satire, for the crazed spectacle of future decay — that Blomkamp showcased in his amazing first feature, District 9 (2009). I've never forgotten that film's images of gargantuan alien spaceships hovering in the air, or of droid wars as bloody and frenzied as a heavy-metal version of the Crusades. In Elysium, Blomkamp comes up with sci-fi conceits that sear themselves into your imagination. The film is set in 2154, and much of it takes place in a crumbling shantytown Los Angeles that suggests the concrete ghettos of Rio--meet--Blade Runner with the sun up and the lights turned off. Earth has become a great big slovenly police state, with citizens kept in check by clanging robot officers programmed to presume that you're guilty. Max, a former car thief who now works on an assembly line (that's where he gets zapped with radiation), is hauled before his parole officer, who turns out to be an old carnival mannequin that speaks like a voicemail menu and says things like ''Stop talking!''
Todays video - Terminator 2 gets some clothes......
Todays jokes - fifty great Jon Stewart quotes
1. “And try as I might, I am having difficulty giving a f**k.”
2. “As an adolescent, Vonnegut made my life bearable.”
3. “Being a superpower is like being a Santa Claus that everyone hates.”
4. “By the way, when you finish the bottle of Crown Royal, you can still use the pouch to hold your broken dreams.”
5. “Donald Rumsfeld. Love him or hate him, you’ve gotta admit: a lot of people hate him.”
6. “Get there early because hope does not park your mother-f##king car.”
7. “Here’s how bizarre the war is that we’re in Iraq, and we should have known this right from the get-go: When we first went into Iraq, Germany didn’t want to go. Germany. The Michael Jordan of war took a pass.”
8. “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
9. “I thinking gay and straight people use the same putters, it’s not a matter of putters but a matter of hole selection.”
10. “I was born with an adult head and a tiny body. Like a ‘Peanuts’ character.”
11. “I’m not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance”
12. “If “con” is the opposite of pro, then isn’t Congress the opposite of progress? Or did we just f##king blow your mind?!?”
13. “If America leads a blessed life, then why did God put all of our oil under people who hate us?”
14. “If everything is amplified, we hear nothing.”
15. “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”
16. “If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.”
17. “In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can’t get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.”
18. “Insomnia is my greatest inspiration.”
19. “It’s not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It’s that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.”
20. “I’ve been to Canada, and I’ve always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days.”
21. “Most world religions denounced war as a barbaric waste of human life. We treasured the teachings of these religions so dearly that we frequently had to wage war in order to impose them on other people.”
22. “No one is better at not beating America than England.”
23. “Parenthood is an amazing opportunity to be able to ruin someone from scratch.”
24. “Pigmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot.”
25. “Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality.”
26. “Religion. It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
27. “So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.”
28. “The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict, and laziness.”
29. “The internet is just a world passing notes around a classroom.”
30. “The more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.”
31. “The problem with the Tea Party is they’re all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too.”
32. “The reason I don’t worry about society is, nineteen people knocked down two buildings and killed thousands. Hundreds of people ran into those buildings to save them. I’ll take those odds every f*cking day.”
33. “The Westboro Baptist Church is no more a church than Church’s Fried Chicken is a church.”
34. “Thomas Jefferson once said: ‘Of course the people don’t want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.’ I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot.”
35. “To have not shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.”
36. “To the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to things they don’t like: welcome to the f*cking club. Reimburse me for the Iraq war and oil subsidies, and diaphragms are on me!”
37. “We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.”
38. “We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.”
39. “We’ve come from the same history – 2000 years of persecution – we’ve just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.”
40. “What are you so mad about? That we still have a government? We still have “traffic lights.” We’re sorry. The government’s not perfect, but some people wish it was better, not gone.”
41. “What would Jesus, or any human being who isn’t an asshole, do?”
42. “When did fact checking and journalism go their separate ways?”
43. “Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.”
44. “Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.”
45. “Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion… perhaps around their necks? And maybe — dare I dream it? — maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively.”
46. “Yesterday, the president met with a group he calls the coalition of the willing. Or, as the rest of the world calls them, Britain and Spain”
47. “You can use your idealism to further your aims, if you realize that nothing is Nirvana, nothing is perfect.”
48. “You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn’t that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.”
49. “You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed, f**k it.”
50. “You wonder sometimes how our government puts on its pants in the morning.”
Todays Detroit joke
Jack was sitting on the plane when a guy
took the seat beside him. The guy was an
emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking, moaning in fear.
"What's the matter?" Jack asked.
"I've been transferred to Detroit, there's
crazy people there. They've got lots of
shootings, gangs, race riots, drugs,
poor public schools, and the highest
crime rate in America."
Jack replied, "I've lived in Detroit all my life.
It's not as bad as the media says. Find a
nice home, go to work, mind your own
business, enroll your kids in a nice private school.
It's as safe a place as anywhere in the world."
The guy relaxed and stopped shaking and said,
"Oh, thank you. I've been worried to death.
But if you live there and say it's OK, I'll take your
word for it. What do you do for a living?"
"Me?" said Jack. "I'm a tail gunner on a Budweiser truck."
And to finish, a heartwarming story......
Truly, one for the books!
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