Investigate the Propaganda Pundits

From Free Press:

Dear Friend,

The Pentagon is infiltrating the media with pro-war propaganda.

The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of “military analysts” to spread favorable views of the war via every major news channel — without revealing they were working from Pentagon scripts and often lobbying for major military contractors looking to cash in on the war.

This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism — and possibly of federal law.

Take action at:  https://secure.freepress.net/site/SPageNavigator/Punditsol

(more…)

Published in: on May 30, 2008 at 7:41 pm Comments (1)

Hey you libertarian deregulation devotees and believers in the benevolence of Business…

Endocrine disruptors are perfectly okay! The plastics industry says so and they must have our best interests at heart! Right?

Learn about BPA, what it is and why you should care that it leaches from the plastic in baby bottles, the lining of all of the alumimum cans we drink from, and more… It’s in 93% of us. Studies funded by corporations found no problems with the chemical. Independent studies showed that BPA causes testicular, breast cancer, diabetes, obesity, miscarriage, hyperactivity in lab animals. Hmm. And where do our [corporatist] government regulators stand? On the side of the industry of course.

Find out more by watching Bill Moyers Journal which aired today.

and by reading the expose referenced in it…

Chemical Fallout

WARNING: The chemical bisphenol A has been known to pose severe health risks to laboratory animals. AND THE CHEMICAL IS IN YOU.

Published in: on May 23, 2008 at 10:04 pm Comments (0)

Sen. Robert Byrd, one-time KKK member, backs Barack Obama

Byrd, as an outspoken foe of the Iraq war from the start, was attracted by Obama’s similar credential, as he mentions in his endorsement statement. But Byrd, having passed on active involvement in his state’s primary, could have remained neutral; the fact that he chose not to is more evidence that, in the view of most Democratic bigwigs, Clinton’s nomination hopes range from slim and none.

Published in: on May 19, 2008 at 9:27 pm Comments (1)

Obama tells Tenn.’s GOP: ‘Lay off my wife’

“The GOP, should I be the nominee, can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record,” Obama said. “If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.”

Official Urged Fewer Diagnoses of PTSD


A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

“Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out,” Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they “consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder.”

Published in: on May 16, 2008 at 7:04 pm Comments (0)

All the President’s Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush

Dear Mr. Bush,

Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable.

Published in: on at 3:08 pm Comments (0)

Obama criticizes McCain, Bush on appeasement talk

“I’m a strong believer in civility and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days, ” Obama told about 2,000 voters at a town hall-style meeting in a livestock barn.

Obama said McCain had a “naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism.”

Any full-blooded Americans around here?

I didn’t think so.

Read it and weep

By the way, didn’t we eradicate the full-blooded ‘Americans’ we met when we got here…?

…oh, and F@ck You, Kathleen Parker.

Published in: on May 15, 2008 at 10:03 pm Comments (0)

Mr. President, the war isn’t about you — or golf

Published in: on at 6:32 pm Comments (0)

Dems fire back at Bush’s ‘appeasement’ accusation

Democrats on Thursday condemned President Bush’s accusing them of appeasing terrorists, with one [Biden] going so far as to call his remarks “bullsh**t.”

The president, at Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem, suggested some Democrats were acting in the same way some Western leaders did when they appeased Hitler in the run-up to World War II.

Published in: on at 2:50 pm Comments (0)

Clinton wins W.Va., but Obama still leads

Published in: on at 2:26 pm Comments (0)

John Edwards finally makes his choice: Barack Obama

His support was long sought by Obama – who wants to prove he can unite the Democratic Party — and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who vows to fight until the Montana and South Dakota contests are over.

Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause

For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

Published in: on May 13, 2008 at 8:44 pm Comments (1)

SNL gets Hillary right… finally

Hillary Clinton, played by Amy Poehler, gave three reasons why she would be the strongest Dem candidate to take on John McCain.

1.) I am a sore loser.
2.) My supporters are racist.
3.) I have no ethical standards.

“So there you have it: Sore loser, racist supporters, no ethical standards — qualities Sen. Obama simply cannot match. That’s not an attack on my opponent. It’s just the truth. When you consider that, the choice is obvious.”

Via Keith Olbermann, video here.

Published in: on May 12, 2008 at 8:48 pm Comments (0)

Washington University is giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate?

Published in: on at 8:27 pm Comments (0)

Return to Sender - Iraq Veteran Gets the Call Again

Colby Buzzell


When I voluntarily enlisted in the Army, I remember asking my recruiter about the fine print on the contract about being called back up to active duty once my enlistment was completed.
He assured me not to worry, that every contract said that and it would only happen if “World War III” broke out.

Published in: on May 11, 2008 at 10:12 pm Comments (0)

Party Like It’s 2008

By FRANK RICH

ANOTHER weekly do-or-die primary battle, another round of wildly predicted “game changers” that collapsed in the locker room.

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to impersonate a Nascar-lovin’, gun-totin’, economist-bashin’ populist went bust: Asked which candidate most “shares your values,” voters in both North Carolina and Indiana exit polls opted instead for the elite and condescending arugula-eater. Bill Clinton’s small-town barnstorming tour, hailed as a revival of old-time Bubba bonhomie, proved to be yet another sabotage of his wife, whipping up false expectations for her disastrous showing in North Carolina. Barack Obama’s final, undercaffeinated debate performance, not to mention the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s attempted character assassination, failed to slow his inexorable path to the Democratic nomination.

Published in: on at 9:34 pm Comments (0)

Again. And Again. And Again… (Sean Bell)


Thank you to all Mothers

I miss thee, my Mother! Thy image is still
The deepest impressed on my heart.
~Eliza Cook

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together. ~Pearl S. Buck

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~Honoré de Balzac

The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. ~Author Unknown

[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled. ~Emily Dickinson


A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~Washington Irving

..
Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. ~Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987

The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories. ~Honoré de Balzac

With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood. ~Isadora Duncan

One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. ~George Herbert

Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. ~Erich Fromm

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My mother.
~Ann Taylor

The precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face. ~D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 1971

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. ~William Makepeace Thackeray

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated. ~Washington Irving

I cannot forget my mother. [S]he is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely. ~Renita Weems


A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is.” ~Keith L. Brooks

Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world. ~Kate Douglas Wiggin

If I was damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’mine.
~Rudyard Kipling

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not. ~James Joyce

My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart - a heart so large that everybody’s joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation. ~Mark Twain

Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her. ~Francis Thompson

One lamp - thy mother’s love - amid the stars
Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before
The throne of God, burn through eternity -
Holy - as it was lit and lent thee here.
~Nathaniel Parker Willis


Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate.
And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
~Phyllis McGinley


Because I feel that in the heavens above
The angels, whispering one to another,
Can find among their burning tears of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore, by that dear name I have long called you,
You who are more than mother unto me.
~Edgar Allan Poe

Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~Oprah Winfrey

Published in: on at 8:52 pm Comments (1)

Assault and Batteries


High-tech horror:
Widespread cell-phone violence against women in Iraq and the Congo.

by Harkavy

Published in: on May 7, 2008 at 6:53 pm Comments (1)

Sami al-Haj Released from Guantánamo After More than Six Years

Published in: on at 6:32 pm Comments (0)

The Night the Old Politics Died

The old politics died on May 6, 2008, as the predictable and inevitable happened and the voters said no to business as usual.

The voters said no to the most phony and fraudulent proposal in memory for a gas tax cut that would never happen, that would profit the oil companies that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) falsely said she was fighting with it, that would do nothing for the people she falsely claimed she was helping with it.

Published in: on at 6:10 pm Comments (1)

Hillary Plays the Crazy Card

In this protracted and often dispiriting prelude to the general election, few remarks have been as poorly chosen as Senator Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran. What she obliterated with just those two words were her own boasts of superior diplomatic experience—and she managed at the same time to tar America’s international image with all the subtlety of the man she hopes to replace.

Joe Conason

Published in: on at 6:09 pm Comments (1)

Indiana nuns lacking ID denied at poll by fellow sister

Published in: on at 6:06 pm Comments (1)

McGovern, former Clinton backer, urges her to drop out

Former Sen. George McGovern, who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race.

McGovern said Wednesday he has decided to endorse Barack Obama.

After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern says it’s virtually impossible for Clinton to win the nomination.

McGovern says he is calling former President Clinton to tell him of the decision and adds that he remains close friends with the Clintons.

There’s something wrong with us.

Overkill and Short Shrift

BOB HERBERT

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we’ve seen over the past week is major media overkill — Jeremiah Wright all day and all night. It’s like watching the clips of a car wreck again and again.

Moving up the food chain: PFCs present in nursing mothers’ breast milk

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The Clintons and the ‘War on Obama’

Ben Stein is Bonkers

Published in: on May 3, 2008 at 3:16 am Comments (1)

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Blasts Clinton, Backs Obama

Published in: on May 2, 2008 at 9:25 pm Comments (1)

The Campaign Nonsense Du Jour


By Eugene Robinson

There’s something maddening about this presidential campaign.

Published in: on at 7:15 pm Comments (0)