"Virtually Speaking Tuesdays featured Dave Johnson and Natasha Chart, something I'd been looking forward to, but I'm not sure they took the full meaning of Stuart Zechman's point in his most recent Z-Files:
Z-Files, 02/28/2012 "Extremists"
I'm Stuart Zechman, and I've heard something that really disturbs me.
I've heard that the Republican Party is now populated with wild extremists, right-wing lunatics who are completely divorced from reality, and so, like never before in American history, the GOP is now totally unreasonable and insane, and, if they get into power in Washington, the will enact the most dreadful, terrible, awful policy...ever.
Have you been hearing this, lately, too?
See, I thought that the Republican Party has always advocated the worst kind of policies and agenda.
Since, like, as far back as the 1990s, I remember Republicans being in favor of all kinds of anti-Bill of Rights, pro-endless war, anti-New Deal and pro-big corporate monopoly proposals, and performing all of these crazy political hostage-taking maneuvers to try to get that horrifying agenda through the government.
I vaguely --really vaguely-- remember way back when that Christian fundamentalist and televangelist fraud Pat Robertson actually ran for President as a Republican, I think that was in the 1980s, actually.
I remember, in the late 90s, when Congressman Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, was so freaking nuts that he actually staged a supposed "re-enactment" of how Hillary Clinton murdered a White House staffer named Vince Foster, by shooting a pumpkin in his back yard, and telling reporters to imagine that this was Foster's head. I remember when he said things like "If I could prove 10 percent of what I believe happened, he'd [Clinton] be gone. This guy's a scumbag. That's why I'm after him."
Just to give you some idea of what I'm talking about, Dan Burton, I swear to you, once proclaimed in a 1995 House hearing on the War on Some Drugs, that
"the US military "should place an aircraft carrier off the coast of Bolivia and crop dust the coca fields." It was later pointed out to him that a) Bolivia is landlocked and has no coast (Burton was chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee); b) the Bolivian coca fields (in the yungas and Amazon lowlands) are beyond the reach of any carrier-borne crop-duster, being separated from the nearest coastline (the Pacific coast of Peru and Chile) by the 20,000+ feet high peaks of the Andes; and c) F-18s cannot crop-dust." [Link]
I'm telling you, this is well-documented. The Republicans from the 1990s were like this. If you listened to talk radio, like I did, or had enough time on your hands to watch the Christian conservative religious broadcasters, like I did, you were more than likely to hear Hillary Clinton referred to as a secret lesbian murderess. I'm not kidding. They literally told people that Clinton was Satan. These guys made today's "War on Religious Freedom" hucksters look like college Democrats. It makes Romney's references to Obama as a "European-style socialist" look like an endorsement."
more at link above!
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Monsanto files patent for new invention: the pig
Greenpeace researcher uncovers chilling patent plans
On this page
Help us stop patents on life
Feature story - August 2, 2005
It's official. Monsanto Corporation is out to own the world's food supply, the dangers of genetic engineering and reduced biodiversity notwithstanding, as they pig-headedly set about hog-tying farmers with their monopoly plans. We've discovered chilling new evidence of this in recent patents that seek to establish ownership rights over pigs and their offspring.
zoom
The Earth is flat, pigs were invented by Monsanto, and genetically modified organisms are safe. Right.
In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating what consumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto will get paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.
Oneway or another, Monsanto wants to make sure no food is grown that they don't own -- and the record shows they don't care if it's safe for the environment or not. Monsanto has aggressively set out to bulldoze environmental concerns about its genetically engineered (GE) seeds at every regulatory level.
So why stop in the field? Not content to own the pesticide and the herbicide and the crop, they've made a move on the barnyard by filing two patents which would make the corporate giant the sole owner of that famous Monsanto invention: the pig.
The Monsanto Pig (Patent pending)
The patent applications were published in February 2005 at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva. A Greenpeace researcher who monitors patent applications, Christoph Then, uncovered the fact that Monsanto is seeking patents not only on methods of breeding, but on actual breeding herds of pigs as well as the offspring that result."
more at link above... this is so ridiculous and frankensteinian... we got to stop these psychotic mad men who have money. Fuck money. Prosecute for treason against human kind. And animal kind. Dumbfucks think they are God.
On this page
Help us stop patents on life
Feature story - August 2, 2005
It's official. Monsanto Corporation is out to own the world's food supply, the dangers of genetic engineering and reduced biodiversity notwithstanding, as they pig-headedly set about hog-tying farmers with their monopoly plans. We've discovered chilling new evidence of this in recent patents that seek to establish ownership rights over pigs and their offspring.
zoom
The Earth is flat, pigs were invented by Monsanto, and genetically modified organisms are safe. Right.
In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating what consumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto will get paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.
Oneway or another, Monsanto wants to make sure no food is grown that they don't own -- and the record shows they don't care if it's safe for the environment or not. Monsanto has aggressively set out to bulldoze environmental concerns about its genetically engineered (GE) seeds at every regulatory level.
So why stop in the field? Not content to own the pesticide and the herbicide and the crop, they've made a move on the barnyard by filing two patents which would make the corporate giant the sole owner of that famous Monsanto invention: the pig.
The Monsanto Pig (Patent pending)
The patent applications were published in February 2005 at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva. A Greenpeace researcher who monitors patent applications, Christoph Then, uncovered the fact that Monsanto is seeking patents not only on methods of breeding, but on actual breeding herds of pigs as well as the offspring that result."
more at link above... this is so ridiculous and frankensteinian... we got to stop these psychotic mad men who have money. Fuck money. Prosecute for treason against human kind. And animal kind. Dumbfucks think they are God.
Don Cornelius, the host of Soul Train. (another sad and costly suicide)
"When the Saturday morning cartoons drifted from relevance, we always had Don Cornelius, the host of Soul Train. His voice had a resonance from another world. Soul Train was the American Bandstand for Soul Music. From humble beginnings on WCIU in Chicago to world domination, Soul Train remains an instantly recognizable touchstone for music that lives forever.
Staple Singers-Respect Yourself. Released the year that Soul Train debuted. Don’t miss Mavis at this year’s Chicago Blues Festival. There have been so many times that I’ve played songs on this list on the air and said, “As relevant today as the day it was released.”
James Brown-It’s Too Funky In Here. Actually, not possible. The Godfather from 1979. Local music trivia: The Nicholas Tremulus Orchestra used to do a monster version of this in the ’80′s.
The Isley Brothers-Climbing the Ladder. You want to talk guitar solos? Share this with a friend who can handle the funk...."
View More Essential Soul Shots From Lin and videos at link above
Staple Singers-Respect Yourself. Released the year that Soul Train debuted. Don’t miss Mavis at this year’s Chicago Blues Festival. There have been so many times that I’ve played songs on this list on the air and said, “As relevant today as the day it was released.”
James Brown-It’s Too Funky In Here. Actually, not possible. The Godfather from 1979. Local music trivia: The Nicholas Tremulus Orchestra used to do a monster version of this in the ’80′s.
The Isley Brothers-Climbing the Ladder. You want to talk guitar solos? Share this with a friend who can handle the funk...."
View More Essential Soul Shots From Lin and videos at link above
Pioneering Artist Mike Kelley Dies at 57:Gallerist:NY
"Over four decades, through bands, writing and his art, Kelley altered the course of contemporary art
By Dan Duray, Andrew Russeth and Michael H. Miller 2/01 1:29pm
Tweet
Mike Kelley.
Mike Kelley, one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his generation, has died at the age of 57, at his home in South Pasadena, Calif. According to several sources close to the artist that Gallerist has spoken with, the cause of death was suicide.
The artist had recently been selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, an exhibition that he has participated in seven times in the past. He has had major one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Louvre, MUMOK, Vienna, and numerous other museums.
> Click to see images of Kelley’s art.
A sergeant in the South Pasadena police department told Gallerist that officers responded to the apparent suicide following a 911 call made at 7:47 p.m. by a friend who had stopped by Kelley’s house to check up on him. The friend hadn’t heard from Kelley since Sunday and, unable to gain entry to the home, called the police. Kelley was pronounced dead on the scene. Though police records show no mention of a note, officers said the friend who called 911 mentioned that Kelley had been depressed following a September break-up.
Kelley’s work spanned numerous mediums and source materials, encompassing unorthodox objects from sculptures made of knitted stuffed animals (which provided the cover art for Sonic Youth’s 1992 Dirty album) to banners emblazoned with abrasive self-proclamations (“PANTS SHITTER & PROUD P.S. JERK-OFF TOO,” memorably) to large-scale installations inspired by the bottle city of Kandor, an object housed in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in the comic books.
Kelley was born in 1954 in Detroit (he described himself as a “blue-collar anarchist”), and his childhood there provided material for many of his works. In 2010, he produced a sculpture modeled on his childhood home and carted it around the city on the back of a flatbed truck, for a special project with the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 1974, he founded the band Destroy All Monsters with Cary Loren, Niagara (Loren’s then-girlfriend) and Jim Shaw. They made noisy, feedback-drenched music that was influenced by the other local bands at the time, The Stooges and the MC5. Destroy All Monsters was recently the subject of two retrospectives, at the Prism Gallery in Los Angeles and at the Boston University Art Gallery. Kelley left the band in 1976, to attend graduate school at CalArts."
more at above line... fascinating artist! Sad he committed suicide. We need more people like him to help us see the ambiguity that can see us free.
By Dan Duray, Andrew Russeth and Michael H. Miller 2/01 1:29pm
Tweet
Mike Kelley.
Mike Kelley, one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his generation, has died at the age of 57, at his home in South Pasadena, Calif. According to several sources close to the artist that Gallerist has spoken with, the cause of death was suicide.
The artist had recently been selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, an exhibition that he has participated in seven times in the past. He has had major one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Louvre, MUMOK, Vienna, and numerous other museums.
> Click to see images of Kelley’s art.
A sergeant in the South Pasadena police department told Gallerist that officers responded to the apparent suicide following a 911 call made at 7:47 p.m. by a friend who had stopped by Kelley’s house to check up on him. The friend hadn’t heard from Kelley since Sunday and, unable to gain entry to the home, called the police. Kelley was pronounced dead on the scene. Though police records show no mention of a note, officers said the friend who called 911 mentioned that Kelley had been depressed following a September break-up.
Kelley’s work spanned numerous mediums and source materials, encompassing unorthodox objects from sculptures made of knitted stuffed animals (which provided the cover art for Sonic Youth’s 1992 Dirty album) to banners emblazoned with abrasive self-proclamations (“PANTS SHITTER & PROUD P.S. JERK-OFF TOO,” memorably) to large-scale installations inspired by the bottle city of Kandor, an object housed in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in the comic books.
Kelley was born in 1954 in Detroit (he described himself as a “blue-collar anarchist”), and his childhood there provided material for many of his works. In 2010, he produced a sculpture modeled on his childhood home and carted it around the city on the back of a flatbed truck, for a special project with the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 1974, he founded the band Destroy All Monsters with Cary Loren, Niagara (Loren’s then-girlfriend) and Jim Shaw. They made noisy, feedback-drenched music that was influenced by the other local bands at the time, The Stooges and the MC5. Destroy All Monsters was recently the subject of two retrospectives, at the Prism Gallery in Los Angeles and at the Boston University Art Gallery. Kelley left the band in 1976, to attend graduate school at CalArts."
more at above line... fascinating artist! Sad he committed suicide. We need more people like him to help us see the ambiguity that can see us free.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Mitt Romney tweets that “more Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history”
With the perception swelling that he will be the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney has increasingly moved his attention away from his party rivals to President Barack Obama.
On Jan. 16, 2012, Romney sent a tweet blasting Obama for his jobs record.
"More Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history," Romney wrote.
Several readers asked us to check it out.
First, we should mention that there is no useful statistic for "Americans (who) have lost their jobs" during a given time period. The labor force is fluid, so people who lose their jobs often move quickly into another one. Instead, economists use the concept of net jobs gained or lost -- how many more (or fewer) people were employed on Date B than on Date A.
When we asked the Romney campaign for backup material, they confirmed that they were talking about net jobs lost under a given president. So that’s the measure we used.
We found that Obama is indeed the only president to have a net job loss if you count from inauguration day until the end of the presidency. But it’s not necessarily fair to credit or blame presidents for jobs created or lost during the first year on the job, since the president’s policies have not had time to take effect.
Instead, if you start the count at one year into a president's term and end it one year -- a somewhat arbitrary method, but a defensible one -- it turns out that the Obama administration has presided over a net increase in jobs. So using this method, the premise of the Romney claim -- that the net jobs change for the nation as a whole under Obama was negative -- evaporates. In fact, using this method means that Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, becomes the only president to lose jobs on his watch.
Let’s dig deeper into the numbers.
The numbers starting at inauguration day
As we noted, the numbers provided by the Romney campaign used jobs figures for the president’s first and last days in office. To replicate the campaign's math, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal agency that tracks employment figures going back decades. Due to BLS data constraints and Romney’s use of the term "modern" presidents, we limited our search to presidents from Harry Truman on.
In previous fact checks, we’ve tried to adjust for the time each president has spent in office. But since the Romney tweet was clear about referring to total numbers of people who lost jobs, rather than the rate at which people were losing jobs under each president, we did not take that additional step for this item.
We first calculated how many jobs were gained or lost during each president’s tenure on a net basis. We also tried to adjust for the size of the population by dividing the net job gain or loss by the nation’s estimated population during the president’s first year in office. (Comparing jobs gained or lost under Obama, when the U.S. population is more than 300 million, to the changes under Truman, when the population was below 140 million, is comparing apples and oranges.)
In this chart, the first number refers to the net jobs gained or lost during the president’s tenure starting at the very beginning of his term, and the second number refers to the net change in jobs as a percentage of the U.S. population. The presidents are listed in descending order by most jobs created:
1. Bill Clinton + 22,744,000 +8.8 percent of population
2. Ronald Reagan + 16,102,000 +7.0 percent of population
3. Lyndon B. Johnson + 12,183,000 +6.3 percent of population
4. Jimmy Carter + 10,339,000 +4.7 percent of population
5. Richard Nixon + 9,181,000 +4.5 percent of population
6. Harry Truman + 8,083,000 +5.8 percent of population
7. John F. Kennedy + 3,538,000 +1.9 percent of population
8. Dwight Eisenhower + 3,572,000 +2.2 percent of population
9. George H.W. Bush + 2,592,000 +1.1 percent of population
10. Gerald Ford + 2,073,000 +1.0 percent of population
11. George W. Bush + 1,094,000 +0.4 percent of population
12. Barack Obama - 1,663,000 -0.5 percent of population
So by this measure, Romney is right: Obama is the only president who saw a net job loss during his presidency. This means it’s reasonable for him to say that "more Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history."
But, as we noted, that’s not the only way to look at it.
More at link above...
On Jan. 16, 2012, Romney sent a tweet blasting Obama for his jobs record.
"More Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history," Romney wrote.
Several readers asked us to check it out.
First, we should mention that there is no useful statistic for "Americans (who) have lost their jobs" during a given time period. The labor force is fluid, so people who lose their jobs often move quickly into another one. Instead, economists use the concept of net jobs gained or lost -- how many more (or fewer) people were employed on Date B than on Date A.
When we asked the Romney campaign for backup material, they confirmed that they were talking about net jobs lost under a given president. So that’s the measure we used.
We found that Obama is indeed the only president to have a net job loss if you count from inauguration day until the end of the presidency. But it’s not necessarily fair to credit or blame presidents for jobs created or lost during the first year on the job, since the president’s policies have not had time to take effect.
Instead, if you start the count at one year into a president's term and end it one year -- a somewhat arbitrary method, but a defensible one -- it turns out that the Obama administration has presided over a net increase in jobs. So using this method, the premise of the Romney claim -- that the net jobs change for the nation as a whole under Obama was negative -- evaporates. In fact, using this method means that Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, becomes the only president to lose jobs on his watch.
Let’s dig deeper into the numbers.
The numbers starting at inauguration day
As we noted, the numbers provided by the Romney campaign used jobs figures for the president’s first and last days in office. To replicate the campaign's math, we turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal agency that tracks employment figures going back decades. Due to BLS data constraints and Romney’s use of the term "modern" presidents, we limited our search to presidents from Harry Truman on.
In previous fact checks, we’ve tried to adjust for the time each president has spent in office. But since the Romney tweet was clear about referring to total numbers of people who lost jobs, rather than the rate at which people were losing jobs under each president, we did not take that additional step for this item.
We first calculated how many jobs were gained or lost during each president’s tenure on a net basis. We also tried to adjust for the size of the population by dividing the net job gain or loss by the nation’s estimated population during the president’s first year in office. (Comparing jobs gained or lost under Obama, when the U.S. population is more than 300 million, to the changes under Truman, when the population was below 140 million, is comparing apples and oranges.)
In this chart, the first number refers to the net jobs gained or lost during the president’s tenure starting at the very beginning of his term, and the second number refers to the net change in jobs as a percentage of the U.S. population. The presidents are listed in descending order by most jobs created:
1. Bill Clinton + 22,744,000 +8.8 percent of population
2. Ronald Reagan + 16,102,000 +7.0 percent of population
3. Lyndon B. Johnson + 12,183,000 +6.3 percent of population
4. Jimmy Carter + 10,339,000 +4.7 percent of population
5. Richard Nixon + 9,181,000 +4.5 percent of population
6. Harry Truman + 8,083,000 +5.8 percent of population
7. John F. Kennedy + 3,538,000 +1.9 percent of population
8. Dwight Eisenhower + 3,572,000 +2.2 percent of population
9. George H.W. Bush + 2,592,000 +1.1 percent of population
10. Gerald Ford + 2,073,000 +1.0 percent of population
11. George W. Bush + 1,094,000 +0.4 percent of population
12. Barack Obama - 1,663,000 -0.5 percent of population
So by this measure, Romney is right: Obama is the only president who saw a net job loss during his presidency. This means it’s reasonable for him to say that "more Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history."
But, as we noted, that’s not the only way to look at it.
More at link above...
Monsanto & Cancer Milk: FOX NEWS KILLS STORY & FIRES Reporters
FOX NEWS Reporters (Reporters Steve Wilson & Jane Akre) uncover that most of the Milk in the USA and across some parts of the world is unfit to drink due to Monsanto Corporation's POSILAC®, which has been proven to be a cancer-causing growth hormone.(known in short as "BGH" "BST" or "rBGH" ), but they were fired for trying to tell people the truth. (Important note: After a long court battle, the Court dismissed the whistle blowers protection for the reporters because the Court stated that there was no law to force that the NEWS state the truth! Fact! Going on to say the NEWS was no different than other TV shows/reality shows!!) But the FDA has turned a blind eye once again! If you consumed or fed regular milk to your family today (8/21/08), there is more than a 90% chance that it was from a cow injected with BGH (Bovine somatotropin developed by using recombinant DNA technology). You could be killing or harming your child every time you pour them a glass of milk, the same as pouring them a glass of slow acting poison. Please take action to ensure our children's safety, for they can not protect themselves. What first alarmed farmers was the massive amount of PUS in the milk but Monsanto and the FDA still had no concerns by stating that the PUS was not harmful to be ingested by consumers! If you have little children, at least feed them certified BGH free Milk, Organic Milk or Organic/BGM free milk equivalent like Organic soy milk.
Tags: fox news censored steve wilson jane cancer monsanto milk kills
Tags: fox news censored steve wilson jane cancer monsanto milk kills
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Kucinich Announces ‘Game Changing’ Constitutional Amendment to Publicly Finance Federal Elections
Congressman Kucinich
Washington, Jan 19 -
On the eve of the second anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United, which opened the floodgate of unlimited, shadowy corporate spending in public elections, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced H. J. Res. 100, a constitutional amendment to rescue American democracy from corporate money’s corrupting influence.
“Because of the decision by the Supreme Court majority in the Citizens United case, more money was spent on campaigns in the 2010 election than has ever been spent in a mid-term election.
“Because of the Citizens United case, more money will be spent in the 2012 elections than has ever been spent in an election in the history of our country.
“Because of the Citizens United case, American democracy has been put up on the auction block,” said Kucinich.
Read more: http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=275443
Washington, Jan 19 -
On the eve of the second anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United, which opened the floodgate of unlimited, shadowy corporate spending in public elections, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced H. J. Res. 100, a constitutional amendment to rescue American democracy from corporate money’s corrupting influence.
“Because of the decision by the Supreme Court majority in the Citizens United case, more money was spent on campaigns in the 2010 election than has ever been spent in a mid-term election.
“Because of the Citizens United case, more money will be spent in the 2012 elections than has ever been spent in an election in the history of our country.
“Because of the Citizens United case, American democracy has been put up on the auction block,” said Kucinich.
Read more: http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=275443
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