Open Thread
By bluegal Thursday Oct 22, 2009 8:00pmI made this video one year ago this week and can't believe I didn't run it then. My, how times have changed: now the entire GOP is in the toilet.
Open thread below....
John Amato’s virtual online magazine…OK, It’s a blog!
©2009 Crooks And Liars
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McCain introduces bill to block net neutrality here
As usual, the Reptiles seeks to turn the English language upside down so that the bill sounds like it means to do the exact opposite of what it would do. Which is allow ISPs to slow down or block access to any number of sites.
This must be stopped. A neutral net is the only thing between us and a new dark age.
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Ruth Conniff here
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BanksterUSA.org here
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Democracy Now here
.............is indeed the only thing that would preserve us from the next PUKIE Dark Age. Please, if there is a God, make it go away. This scares me like nothing they have done, so far.
The Afghan police haven't recruited anyone new for a month and a half - and the last lot all ran away to Iran. Official U.S. military reports have been fiddling the figures by counting 10,000 people who were already policemen, but were only now getting their first training. "We will stand up as they stand down" is a bad-taste joke which the White House and Pentagon must come clean about.
Regards, Steve
Very funny, bluegal!
English language; namely, GHWB and his disdain for "the cables."
Darn those people on the cables and the blogs on the internets for ruining Dubya's legacy!
/ snark ;)
and darn those sick puppies Keith and Rachel!
;)
both! :D
They wear it proudly!
More like KKKarl would sit there and take a whole load...
Looking for the relevant Bill Hick's clip about GHWB, but I can't find it now.
Very funny, Bluegal.
Another question brought to light by Consortium News.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/090109a.html
.
Medical Marijuania Parody moved.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForYourFreeMind#p...
DID NOT respond to controllers for 75 minutes! They flew 150 miles past the destination which was Minneapolis International Airport.
Who is in charge these military jets? Whoever they are I demand they be demoted or dismissed from duty. After all that has happened, is our military protocol still so laxed? The airline pilots have been suspended pending investigation.
http://www.startribune.com/local/65619367.html
Well, Wisconsin isn't exactly a target rich environment for terrorists.
a terrorist would probably pick the most unlikely target but what do I know?
Others could be engine trouble, extreme loss in cabin pressure causing the pilots to pass out, landing gear would not go down, etc.
Fighter Jets are needed to take a closer look to help rule out some of these as well get a better assessment.
... set up so that mindless drones getting paid minimum wage can hew to 'policy' and protect us against the evils of nail clippers and Swiss Army knives Just In Case.
And the Congresscritters get to crow about how seriously they take our national security.
If any of these clowns were serious, a strict attempt-to-contact procedure would be followed, then a military flight scrambled to make visual contact and force-to-land, then a shoot down order on a failure to comply.
The reason none of that happened? Because nobody in Congress wants the REAL outcome of an unthinking, strict security policy: SHOOT THE PLANE DOWN IMMEDIATELY. There'd be hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing, and then it'd all be blamed on some junior intern in the tower.
ONLY the president is to have the authority to order a civilian aircraft to be shot down.
I simply want the protocol written and designed to avoid any confusion in situations such as this to be executed appropriately.
Every commercial and civilian plane that takes to the air in the U.S. has to fill and file a specific flight plan. Along this flight plan, there are required 'fix points' that the plane has to hit along the way in order to keep the skies safe and clear. When a plane misses one of these 'fixes', air traffic controllers are alerted, and they attempt to make contact with the pilot.
If the pilot fails to respond appropriately, the military is contacted, and a fighter jet is usually scrambled to investigate. The military and NORAD are directly linked into the sophisticated radar and air traffic control systems of the FAA. And even a private pilot in a small off-course plane 'will likely find two F-18s on their tail within 10 or so minutes' of unapproved movement.
In order for NORAD and the FAA to save themselves from embarrassment, they will probably say there was a problem with the communication equipment on the plane that prevented ground control to reach them. Even if such an excuse is given, it still doesn't excuse jets not being in the air to track the plane.
By PETER WONACOTT
LEH, India -- In the brewing discord between two giant, ambitious nations, even a remote meadow in the Himalayas is worth fighting over.
Some two-dozen Chinese soldiers converged earlier this year on a family of nomads who wouldn't budge from a winter grazing ground that locals say Indian herders had used for generations. China claims the pasture is part of Tibet, not northern India. The soldiers tore up the family's tent and tried to push them back toward the Indian border town of Demchok, Indian authorities
Chering Dorjay, the chairman of India's Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, says he arrived on the scene with a new tent and Indian intelligence officers and urged the herders to stay put. "The Chinese, it seems, are gradually taking our territory," he says. "We will feel very insecure unless India strengthens its defenses."
Dueling territorial claims along this heavily militarized mountain border, coupled with economic tensions between the two nations, are kindling a 21st-century rivalry. The budding distrust has created a dilemma for the U.S. about how to court one nation without angering the other.
China and India cooperate occasionally. But in recent years, they have competed vigorously over trade, energy investments, even a race to land a man on the moon. Some Indians want their nation to move closer to the U.S. as a hedge against a rising China -- a strategic shift that's likely to complicate ties among all three.
"China is trying to become No. 1," says Brajesh Mishra, a former national-security adviser for India. "This is the seed of conflict between China, India and the U.S."
A sign in the village of Spangmik in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir marks the last stop for tourists.
The prime ministers of India and China are expected to meet this weekend at a summit of Asian leaders in Bangkok, following several weeks in which their nations traded barbs over trade and disputed territory. "Both sides will exchange views on issues of mutual concern," China's assistant foreign minister, Hu Zhengyao, told reporters Wednesday.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1256251734297...
wipe your Palin and flush the McCain after you take a Bush!
Soupy Sales dies at 83- R.I.P.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-mew...
Soupy Sales - Complete Show 1965 - Part 01
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8VtY_li3Sc&fe...
Soupy Sales - Complete Show 1965 - Part 02
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLdyaI1DXig&fe...
Soupy Sales - Complete Show 1965 - Part 03
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLFvFTRf8s0&fe...
SOUPY SALES/Come Pie With Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT5TKTt5BeA
life and views of Ayn Rand
Capitalism's martyred hero
Oct 22nd 2009
From The Economist print edition
Most intellectuals don’t have much time for Ayn Rand with her “glare that could wilt a cactus”. But her uncompromising views are still worshipped by many
Getty Images
Ayn Rand and the World She Made. By Anne Heller. Nan A. Talese; 592 pages; $35. Buy from Amazon.com
Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. By Jennifer Burns. Oxford University Press; 384 pages; $27.95 and £16.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
FOR all its faults socialism is manifestly superior to capitalism in one area: the making of myths. Capitalists can never equal the emotional appeal of socialism’s martyred heroes. Ayn Rand, however, is a conspicuous exception to this rule. She has been given short shrift by the intellectual establishment. Literary critics bemoan her cardboard characters and tabloid style. Political theorists dismiss her as a shallow thinker whose appeal is restricted to adolescents. But such disdain has done nothing to damage her popular appeal.
Rand’s books have enjoyed impressive sales since her death in 1982. But America’s shift to the left—the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and Barack Obama’s election two years later—has put her back at the heart of the political debate. Conservative protesters carry posters asking “Who is John Galt?”, referring to one of Rand’s heroes. Conservative polemicists suggest that Mr Obama, by stepping in to rescue the banks and industrial behemoths such as General Motors, is ushering in the collectivist dystopia that Rand gave warning against. Sales of “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” have surged. Rumours swirl that a film based on “Atlas Shrugged” is in the works.
So the publication of these two books could not have been better timed. Anne Heller is more informative on Rand’s early years in Russia. Jennifer Burns is better versed in conservative thought. Both are well worth reading, partly because Rand’s life was so extraordinary and partly because the questions that she raised about the proper power of government are just as urgent now as they ever were.
Rand was the single most uncompromising critic of the collectivist tide that swept across the capitalist world in the wake of the Depression. For her, government was nothing more than licensed robbery and altruism just an excuse for power-grabbing. Intellectuals and bureaucrats might pose as champions of the people against the powerful. But in reality they were empire builders who were motivated by a noxious mixture of envy and greed. Rand’s heroes were a different breed: the businessmen and entrepreneurs who felt the future in their bones and would not rest until they had brought it to life.
This might sound like libertarian boilerplate: Nietzsche repackaged for the Chamber of Commerce crowd. But three things gave her work its hypnotic power. The first was her background as a Russian Jew—she was born Alisa Rosenbaum—who witnessed the revolution and its aftermath at first hand. This filled her with contempt for the Communist fellow-travellers she encountered in Washington and Hollywood, and sensitised her to the similarities between the New Deal and central planning. The second was the absolutism of her vision. Confronted by an almost uniformly hostile elite, she went out of her way to pick a fight with a possible ally, Friedrich Hayek, dismissing his “The Road to Serfdom” as pure poison because he conceded there might be a limited role for the state.
But her most important attribute was her talent for myth-making. Rand perfected her literary art as a screenwriter in Hollywood. And she dealt in Hollywood-style dichotomies between good and evil, between white-hatted capitalists and black-hatted collectivists. Greys don’t interest me, she once said. “Atlas Shrugged” conjured up a world in which all creative businessmen had gone on strike, retreating to Galt’s Gulch in Colorado, and culminated in a dramatic court scene in which Galt detailed the evils of collectivism.
The woman behind these right-wing myths was exceedingly odd. She had “a glare that could wilt a cactus” according to a writer in Time, and wore a broach in the shape of a dollar sign. She was even odder to live with. Ms Burns points out that she obliged her long-suffering husband to wear a bell attached to his shoe so that she could hear him come and go. She all but obliged her leading acolyte, Nathaniel Branden, to meet her for sex twice a week, informing both her husband and Mrs Branden that the arrangement was rational. She picked fights with “frightened zombies”, as she called her fellow intellectuals, and yet was mortally offended when anybody dared to criticise her writing.
Ms Heller and Ms Burns both dwell on the contradictions of Rand and Randism. Rand was an uncompromising rationalist. But she was also the plaything of powerful emotions. She devoted her life to fighting collectivism. But she would not tolerate dissent among her followers—and even playfully called her inner-circle “the collective”. There was more than just a right kind of politics, one of her followers recalled. There was also a right kind of interior design, a right kind of dancing. She loathed communism. But many of her readers reacted to her writings in much the same way that leftists reacted to reading Marx.
Both authors point to the tragedy of her career even though her book sales turned her into a multimillionaire and a cultural icon. She lived to see laissez-faire triumph over collectivism and one of her leading acolytes, Alan Greenspan, appointed to the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. But nothing was ever good enough for her and she felt surrounded by traitors. Ms Heller is particularly informative on the way that the “collective” fell apart when she fell out with Branden.
Yet Rand’s appeal has been undimmed by either the vituperation of her critics or the peculiarity of her admirers. Her insight in “Atlas Shrugged”—that society cannot thrive unless it is willing to give freedom to its entrepreneurs and innovators—has proved to be prescient. Even if John Galt is under threat once again in the West, he is back in business in China and India.
http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.c...
I know,I know, dumb comparison but for those who wish to wax nostalgic on apple pie capitalism, Atlas Shrugged should be considered an historic tip of the hat to what capitalism once collectively aspired to be.
Since the rise of GOP laissez-faire and Democratic laissez-passer governance, Corporate hegemony have been relinquished to Hedge Fund, and Private Equity Groups, that could not care less about quaint notions such as entrepreneurs and innovators and to the detriment of society as a whole.
With the removal of oversights and mismanagement by poor corporate governance and piss poor (Bush) leadership and partnership between the two we now have "Peter Pan and the Lost Boys Capitalism", and with the lack of desire among Democrats to set things right, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys Capitalism once again will bring us to the brink of disaster sooner than you can say.........Peter Pan three times.
BTW something that I like to point out.......Galts Gulch was a communist collective farm with wage, and price controls and a central control of goods and services.
Rand described Objectivism as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” The only social system consistent with this morality, Rand insisted, is pure, unfettered capitalism, and the only function of government is the protection of individual rights. Rand attracted a group of disciples, known, with self-conscious irony, as the Collective, which included former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. It wasn’t just her ideas that inspired the group, it was Rand’s charisma. At the height of her popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, Rand cut a highly exotic figure with her bobbed hair, Russian accent, dollar-sign brooches, and long cigarettes, smoked through a holder. She saw smoking as a Promethean symbol of creativity and regarded health warnings as a socialist conspiracy. When she died of lung cancer, in 1982, a 6-foot-high floral dollar sign was erected by her open coffin.
Michigan is moving to import out-of-state prisoners and even alleged terrorists who are detained by the Federal Government at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The effort could make Michigan an unlikely player in the increasingly lucrative business of transporting prisoners across borders. Already, several states grappling with overcrowded prisons — including California, Pennsylvania and Vermont — spend millions each year sending inmates to private and public prisons in Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee and elsewhere.
(See TIME's photo-essay "The Remains of Detroit.")
One of Michigan's key selling points is that the capacity at two prison facilities that are scheduled to close by the end of the year could be significantly increased by double-stacking beds. Michigan would charge some $30,000 a year for each domestic inmate brought to its maximum-security prison at Standish, about a 90-minute drive from Detroit. California has thus far balked, partly because of the cost, but Michigan officials say they are still negotiating with Pennsylvania and other states.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,859...
a public option where states can opted out, why not have a trigger for when states can opted out if it's not working in their state?
I grew up watching this guy hit famous people in the face with pies! It was so much better than Captain Kangaroo!
My thoughts go to his family.
... than enormous gluts of ping pong balls.
I bought three books at Border's the other day:
Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the value of work
by Matt Crawford
No Impact Man: The Adventures of a guilty liberal who attempts to save the planet and the discoveries he makes about himself and our way of life in the process, by Colin Beavan
Taking the Leap: Freeing ourselves from Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist Nun
Does anybody else read?
I don't read nearly as much as I should, but thanks for reminding me. There's a Border's just down the street from where I'm staying in O'town that I'll hit tonight.
The "Shop Class" title sounds interesting. I always got a lot out of shop (and building stuff with my dad). Got to figure that many kids these days probably don't have the benefits of such classes in school (budget cuts) and at home (broken families/absent fathers).
I was attracted to its title because I felt like I had experienced it in my life, most recently with construction. I worked as a carpenter and as an estimator. I can tell you which is better wiring a home from scratch to finish and making a bunch of third-party rip-off software programs talk to each other.
A hand job beats mental masturbation any day.
Burning Bush in Montreal, Canada.
DON't MISS IT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQeAfzcj1zc
(Makes me a proud Cannuck.?!)
No audio but it is always nice to see any member of that family on fire.
(Makes me ashamed to be an American)
How are things in Prague Edwin?
YouTube mentioned a copyright violation, so they muted the audio.
So far, things are going well. I found a great little (tiny) apartment in the old city centre. My neighbourhood is gorgeous!! It's all new: pipes, heat, tiles, wood floors, and kitchenette, and freshly painted, with drapes too! Not bad, and I walk to the river in 3 minutes.
Sounds really cool. I was there in 95 but didn't get to see the old side of the city. I actually had a better time in Pilsen (I think) a little trains stop town west of Prague. Drank some good beer there. The place had a middle of nowhere feel about it.
It's a bit change from Korea, which I wanted, but I also miss Asia a lot and want to go back. I will finish in June and spend the summer in Europe, and then... ??? It's a working vacation for me.
I'm going to be very careful when looking at Crooks and Liars from now on. This is the second day in a row I laughed until I choked. This is evil stuff, scariest almost since the Checkered Demon.
Bands don't take kindly to the use of their music for "interrogation" purposes @ Gitmo. The Japanese town in The Cove continues to defend murdering dolphins. An actual report on the Tokyo screening. Arne Duncan says teachers don't need no over-priced and out-of-touch education. The manufacturers of ACORN-gate continue to lie. Colleges continue to extort students. Twenty-three states had higher unemployment last month. The ten most impoverished cities in the country. Apparently, you can do even worse than Flint. Obama insists we're leaving Iraq. More Americans are drinking the anti-global warming kool-aidd. They should visit L.A., where it's 80-fucking degrees in October. Will algae save us from climate change? Oil companies don't need any excuses to rip us off this time. China's already recovered from its recession. No fuck you, John. You had your chance to demonstrate international expertise in '04. Two-year old girl was too small for her insurance company. Snowejob wants to continue to be an obstructionist. Seven thousand employed Americans lose their benefits every day. Three AIG execs manage to "convince" the Treasury not to give 'em paycuts. The White House takes Cheney to school over his "opinion" on Obama's work in Afghanistan. Congress finally supports hate crimes for the LBGT community.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I love that 1.
The family profiling by PA state police disgusts me.
The internal drug coruption and illegal sting ops make me sick.
The lies and manipulation by adult police officers against young adults, pisses me off.
The police ingnoring specific familys from criminal activitys get my blood boiling, the blue blood that I have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDcI2hTUDB8&NR=1
"Now the entire GOP is in the toilet."
Tapdancing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbDiujuv6rQ
Along the same lines, this video about GOP re-branding efforts was far fetched when it was a made just a few months ago, and now seems eerily
accurate:
Folks, you can't use shortened urls here in the threads. We've had too many spammers trying to get around the filters with those options. Sorry about that -- Sitemonitor
I tells ya...we need more Frankens, Graysons and Kucinicheses!
http://ellipticalpress.blogspot.com/2009/10/w...
F'ing awesome!
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009...
...author of "Crazy for God".
[Ed Note: Frank Schaeffer will be my guest on "Live from the Left Coast" which I will be guest hosting on San Francisco's Green960 from 6p-8p PT (8p-10p ET) tonight (Friday). Please tune in or listen live online at Green960.com... - Brad]
Here's a sample (compiled with the help of Media Matters and the online magazine Crooks and Liars) of just a small stock of the incendiary rhetoric and bare-faced lies your money pays for. :-)
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