Presents
Issue #2.02
of the new Los Angeles Free Press
Quote on cover
from Mike Miliard: White hunters, black
hearts - Scambaiting turns the tables on Internet con men. But when the
clever pranks turn dangerous and degrading, where does the moral
compass point? -
 The Editorial We
by Michael Dare
Putting our own writing aside for the moment (we
can talk about that later), what we're looking for when we browse
through the writing of others is clarity of vision. Readers can sniff a
compromise a mile away because the rest of the world called news is all
predigested, clearly filtered through someone with a bigger vision of
what they think you need to know. A Free Press gives you the pure
stuff, unsullied by the corporate agenda, while intentionally sullied
by our own agenda, which you can find hidden somewhere in this
paragraph.
Of the thousands of items that floated past the
Mike-roscope this week, here are the ones we've decided to pass along.
Some are unpleasant, some outright infuriating, but others comforting
and passive, like a puppy, you just want to tickle them, c'mere news
item, let us rub your belly.
The Bad News outpaced
The Good News in the Good
News/Bad News column last week, but this week it's the
opposite. Now it's the bad news column that seems
to waste a lot of space that could be filled with advertising, which
would indeed be good news. Some items seem to be both Good
and Bad news. Should we print them twice?
With Inscriptions in The Book of Life -
I don't feel like apologizing to wicked people, Baron
Dave Romm shares with us his thoughts on Rosh Hashanah
and George W. Bush. Whether he succeeded in amalgamating the alien
concepts of his Jewish heritage and the heart of his hatred for those
who torture or simply displayed the schpilcus in his bling bling in the
most erudite possible manner is now up to you.
Paul Krassner isn't
sure how many more Assholes of the Week he's got
in him. "I don't really want to spend my week looking for assholes,"
says Paul. We don't blame him, so sometimes his column will be called Zen
Bastard just for old time sake, like this week, when he's
hot on the trail of a magnificent travesty of justice. The
Power of Laughter ends with something you can actually do
about the situation, dial the phone number of the district
attorney with his head up his ass. Meanwhile, anyone else want
to go searching for assholes? I understand they're not hard to find.
In his commentary on excess and inequality, Sam
Pizzigati asks a question that the 30,000 millionaires
created by Microsoft might not want to answer, When the Rich
Make Too Much: Is it time for a Maximum Wage? Non-millionaires
take note. Don't think TOO big.
If
there
were anything in this issue of the LA Free Press by P.J.
O'Roarke, this is where we'd mention it.
Bad
Food, Lynette Sheffield's intimate examination of the
Doritos mystique fulfills our promise to deliver a food column. We
never said it would be about something you'd actually want to eat.
If
we were
you, we'd avoid reading Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda
Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields By Joshua
Holland. There is no conceivable way it can be
interpreted as good news.
There's
no I Was There and You Weren't column
this
week because apparently we were everywhere.
Who'da
thought the New World Order would start in North Carolina. Read all of New
World Odor if you want to keep up with the global
conspiracy to piss you off.
Don't
go
blaming us for anything anyone said in Don't Take Our
Word For It. We're just quoting.
With
our
unfettered access to the inner workings of hell, we're proud to tell
you a few things Satan Doesn't Want You To Know.
Just don't tell him we told you.
Add
a Google
Smackdown of the Week, Ask Dr. Hollywood, a
High Coup,
a Jean-Paul Sartre joke, a free ad, some embedded YouTube
videos, throw in a modicum of outrage with just a
smidgen of discombobulation, a coupla ridiculous graphics,
and whatayuh got? The all new Los Angeles Free Press.
 
I spent this past weekend at the 11th annual Earthdance celebration, a
global festival for peace held in northern California, uniting with
over 250 locations in 50 countries, providing a wide variety of live
music, workshops, speakers, inspiration and a worldwide sense of
community.On Saturday, I was among a large group of men and women participating in the International Elders Forum. Each one had six minutes to share their wisdom with an overflowing crowd in the huge Electronica Dome. A native American, David of the Blackfoot tribe, would play the flute after five minutes of talk as a signal that there was one minute left. When my turn came, I began, “Whatever wisdom I have to share is in the form of comic relief, but just remember, if you don’t laugh you’re only helping the terrorists.” After seven minutes, I still didn’t hear any notes from the flute, so I decided to pass the microphone on to the next person. On Sunday afternoon, David told me that he had been laughing so hard he simply couldn’t play his flute. He tried again and again, yet the best he could do was spit into it. Of course, this was gratifying feedback to a stand-up satirist, but over lunch our conversation became deadly serious. Last November, he wanted to sell a piece of equipment, and a man who saw the ad invited him to his apartment. There, David was told to help himself to a soda from the refrigerator, which he did. When he turned around, four guys - biker/skinhead/Aryan-Nation types - burst through the door and attacked him with 2-1/2 inch metal pipes, first striking him on the forehead, then beating and kicking him while calling him a “dog” and a “prairie nigger.” He tried unsuccessfully to defend himself and finally dove out the first-floor window, landing in a carport. He pounded on somebody’s door - yelling “9-1-1!”- and collapsed in a puddle of blood. He regained consciousness in a hospital where he got 40 stitches for a cracked cranium and a head brace for his broken neck. His shoulder and hand were also injured. He was rescued by a friend and stayed at her home to heal. He could no longer do physical work, but she has since helped him open a small business. Two weeks after the incident (the night before Thanksgiving), police arrested David for missing a court date on a traffic violation. He had missed the date because he was unconscious in the hospital. At the Sonoma County jail, the guards kicked him, removed his head brace, refused him all medical attention, placed him in solitary confinement, forced him to sleep on a concrete bed without a mattress, and did not allow him to shower for six days. They eventually brought him to court, chained to a wheelchair. After he was released on probation, the district attorney demanded that David testify against the skinheads. Knowing the nature of the Aryan gang, he immediately expressed concerns about his safety, regardless of what his testimony might be. A couple of months later, the DA agreed to place him in a witness protection program. It turned out to be at the Pink Flamingo, a hotel in Santa Rosa, the same city in which he was attacked. On the third day, he walked out of the hotel and saw a bunch of bikers and skinheads outside. Not knowing they were there for a tattoo convention, he panicked and smoked a cigarette in his no-smoking room. For that offense, he was taken out of the witness protection program and left homeless, afraid to put anyone he knew in danger. The DA made it very clear to him that “We have ways to make you testify.” The day before the trial, David was arrested again, on the way to the Indian Health Center, for driving with a suspended license. Again, he was denied medical attention, his head brace was removed, and he was thrown into solitary confinement. A week later, he was again brought into court chained to a wheelchair - unbathed and looking like a wild Indian - and threatened with three years in jail. The DA was in the courtroom at his sentencing, pow-wowing directly with the judge. Immediately before the sentencing, David’s friend stood up and asked to speak out on his behalf, since his court-appointed lawyer had done so little to defend him. With the bailiff bearing down on her and contempt of court looming, the judge surprisingly agreed to let her talk. She stated how jailing David was cruel and unusual punishment, because he would have to be placed in solitary confinement throughout his incarceration in order to avoid any contact with Aryan gang members, due to his status as a hate-crime victim. Moreover, he was in violation of driving with a suspended license only because he couldn’t afford to pay the fines; his injuries prevented him from being able to work in his chosen field to earn the money to pay those fines. Was driving with a suspended license actually worth three years of anyone’s life, or was there another agenda lurking in the courtroom that needed such leverage to pressure David into testifying against the assailants? Was it justice to, in effect, condemn him for the heinous crime of poverty? The judge weighed the case and the next day released David on probation, warning him not to drive. Almost a year later, the DA is still hounding David by phone and subpoena, putting his life in danger by coercing him to testify. And where was Victims Assistance during all this horror? A Victim Witness Advocate told David, “I can’t help you. You’re on probation. Our hands are tied.” Since David was a victim, he does not have the right to an attorney. He was due to appear in court on September 18, but the case has been postponed for a month. He plans to say in court that he will not testify because, “If concern for my safety is not addressed, I could die.” He expects to be charged with contempt and, once again, to be put in solitary confinement. Whatever you can do to help extricate him from this profane injustice would be most appreciated. His tormenters, DA Anne Masterson and her investigator Denise Urton, can be reached at (707) 565-2311. You can contact David at iamhollowreed@yahoo.com. I’m grateful to be in a position to communicate the details of this nightmare, none of which I would have known had David been able to play his flute after five minutes of laughing. Paul Krassner
is the author of One Hand Jerking: Reports From an
Investigative Satirist, published by Seven Stories Press; he
publishes The Disneyland Memorial Orgy at www.paulkrassner.com.
 When the Rich Make Too
Much: Is it Time for a
Maximum Wage?
A
Commentary on Excess and Inequality
by
Sam Pizzigati
Can our contemporary world be
saved from the problems that ail us, from climate change and oil
dependency, from AIDS and religious extremism, from poverty and
inequality? Foreign Policy, the world's most
prestigious global affairs journal, is tackling this weighty question
head on, in a
new issue that asks 21 of our earth's most thoughtful
observers to suggest the "one solution that would make the world a
better place."
That "one solution," suggests Howard
Gardner, the Harvard-based psychologist whose widely
acclaimed books on human intelligence have been translated into 26
languages, ought to be a cap on the income and wealth that any one
individual can accumulate.
The United States
needs an income cap, Gardner posits in the
new Foreign Policy, that limits the amount of
money a single individual can annually take home to no more than "100
times as much money as the average worker in a society earns in a year."
"If the average worker makes
$40,000," Gardner proposes, "the top compensated individual may keep $4
million a year."
Gardner's Foreign
Policy contribution also advocates a cap on wealth,
proposing that "no individual should be allowed to accumulate an estate
more than 50 times the allowed annual income."
If that allowed annual income
were $4 million, then Gardner's proposal would allow no one, at death,
to bequest a fortune greater than $200 million. Any individual wealth
above that would have to "be contributed to charity or donated to the
government."
What's driving Gardner, a
psychologist, to an economic prescription?
"Most people in the United
States cannot even envision a society that doesn't revolve around an
untrammeled market," Gardner writes, noting the "widespread
assumption," particularly among today's young people, "that the most
accurate measure of success is how much money you have accumulated,
indeed that general merit can best be gauged by one's net worth." These
assumptions, says the Harvard psychologist, have nurtured a society
where accumulation "has gone way too far," where a "hedge fund manager
can take home a sum reminiscent of the gross national product of a
small country."
A cap on income and riches,
Gardner adds, would raise billions, even trillions, "to begin to solve
the problems about which others are writing in this collection of
solutions to save the world."
Attacks on Gardner's proposal
are already emerging. One nationally syndicated critique -- from
foundation president Clifford May -- labeled Gardner's antidote to
inequality "preposterous."
Gardner's Foreign Policy piece anticipates that
sort of outraged reaction.
"To those who would scream
'foul' to such limits on personal wealth," Gardner notes, "I would
remind them that just 50 years ago, this proposal would have seemed
reasonable, even generous."
Sums up the Harvard
scholar: "Our standards of 'enough' have
become irrationally greedy. Were these proposals enacted, I predict
that they would be accepted with amazing speed, and individuals would
wonder why they had not always been in effect."
Yo Yo, I Got Schpilcus in my Bling Bling
"During the last two years writing my first book, Other People's
Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America,
I've found that, over the past three decades, white people have used
hip-hop as a safe, virtual space to tackle or elude the complicated
legacy (and present) of race in our country. Every time we buy a Ying-Yang
Twins CD or bust a backspin or attempt to use Ebonics, we
are telling ourselves a story about America, about race, and about
ourselves.
"So what story are Jews, specifically, telling ourselves? What draws so
many of us to keep it (Is)real? (Full disclosure: that joke was stolen
from respected Jewish hip-hop blogger Dan
Charnas. See? We're
everywhere!) My fascination with hip-hop has always intrigued and
amused my third-generation Italian wife, Denise, who grew up in the
more ethnically explicit suburbs of Long Island and always wondered
what could possibly link my laid-back, West Coast, manicured-lawn
childhood with the drive-by ghettoes of Compton.
"But after that fascination impacted the trajectory of our lives - the
book deal led me to leave work to sit in my pajamas and play Criminal Minded over and over again - she felt it was time to get
to the bottom of it. Not long ago, we sat down for a conversation, one
in which my beloved wife called me a wimp with an attraction for black
men:"
- Jason Tanz: Assimilation and its Discontents - Why Jews love
hip-hop (and try so hard to befriend black people) -
Inscriptions in The Book of Life
I don't feel like apologizing to wicked people by
Baron Dave Romm
Rosh Hashanah, New Years Day, began on the
first of Tishrei, 5768 (evening of September 12, 2007CE). This marks
the beginning of the High Holy Days, culminating on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on
the tenth day of Tishri (English spelling varies), evening of September
21, 2007CE.
The High Holy Days, and Yom Kippur in particular, are a time of
reflection, and a time when Jews celebrate G_d's goodness and atone for
all sins realized or not. We are also supposed to cleanse our spirit
and make things right here on Earth; you can't apologize to G_d for an
injustice to a fellow human. It's one of the great things about Judaism.
The problem is, as I wrote last year, I don't feel like apologizing to
wicked people. Wicked people are inscribed
in the book of death and too many in the middle are dangerously close.
I'm sorry for any slights or transgressions along the way, whether I
know about them or am too thick to get it. But I'm not even remotely
sorry for holding up a mirror to the far right. If anything, I'm
annoyed at myself for not doing a better job. To use Christian imagery,
America has lost its soul.
This year is an important one, religiously and politically. Both
Judaism and Islam use a lunar calendar, and the holidays move in and
around the solar year. This year, The Muslim observance of Ramadan overlaps the Jewish High
Holy Days, and I optimistically hope that this symbolic confluence will
help each understand the other better, so we can tread on common ground
rather than pry apart the differences.
Politically this year is important as a run-up to a Presidential
election in 2008, with various Congressional and local primaries and
ballots also to be decided. One of America's great strengths is that
faith guides our political decisions; one of our great weaknesses is
that too often misguided faith is mistaken for political wisdom. The
Bible is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it. We can and should
use the lessons of the Bible as well as the lessons of history and the
knowledge of science to guide our voting choices.
For pointing this out against the hue and cry of radical Christians,
fundamentalist Muslims and ultra-orthodox Jews, I am not sorry. I
regret that I sometimes don't express my views more effectively, but at
some point I don't suffer fools gladly. I will try to do better, even
as the extremes move farther and farther away from the world G_d
created.
Flashback: As a youngster in Hebrew School, I asked the Rabbi why Jews
celebrate the New Year in the Fall. Many cultures start their new year
at the Winter Solstice, when they know (from science) that the days
will get longer again. Others celebrate the Summer Solstice, when the
days are longest. Yet we start our calendar as the days are getting
shorter, just when we need to hunker down for the winter. The Rabbi's
answer (paraphrased from memory): "Jews are most optimistic when things
look bad." This was not very satisfying. I suspect that the ancient
Israelis simply took the time of the Harvest Festival for their major
holiday, and the time of abundance as a the major Fast Day to prepare
them for potential hard times. I'll note that it worked, as a cultural
imperative: Few other peoples have lasted, as a group, for this long.
I'm
sorry, but not for everything.
So as we slide into the future, here are a few things I don't regret.
Some of these I still don't regret, having talked
about them last year. Given that the 2008 elections are after Yom
Kippur next year, I might talk about similar issues for 5769. I'm sorry
for personal slights to people who don't deserve it, especially the
ones I was too uncaring to notice. For people who deserve it, I don't
regret telling them forcefully.
I'm
not going to apologize to - and will continue to rail against - anyone
who supports torture, or who votes for anyone who supports torture.
As of the passage of the bill allowing torture, it is the opinion of
the US Senate that we should undo Magna Carta. While undoing basic
human rights is a Republican initiative, too many Democrats have let
the travesty slid by, and continue to vote, however hesitantly, for
extensions. I cannot. This is still a sore spot from last year, with
few Congressional voices being raised.
We have become what we hate.
In some ways, I'm madder at the Democrats who reluctantly supported the
bill and they backed down under threat of the GOP slime machine. But
that doesn't change the primary responsibility of Bush or the
Republicans who stayed on their knees the whole time. In the same way
that the Iraq debacle will is "Bush's War", the erosion of rights is a
right-wing plan. Conservatives just don't believe in America.
Portions of the Patriot Act
overturned.
Sept. 7, 2007CE: "The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in
New York said the FBI's use of secret "National Security Letters" to
demand e-mail and telephone data from private companies for
counterterrorism investigations violates the First Amendment and
constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI
can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have
little opportunity to review the letters, according to today's
Washington Post."
Bush's legacy is that of a liar and a coward. Even when his provisions
for the FISA bill were passed with many Senate Democrats, Bush lied. His arrogance is the mark
of a bully, and he just doesn't have the guts to take the high road.
I'm
not going to apologize to gun nuts.
For decades, the NRA and those who love their guns more than they love
their family have been whining about the 2nd Amendment. This was never
really the issue: Despite their lies, no one seriously proposed any
sort of law or regulation that would take guns out of the hands of
responsible gun owners. And yet, too many people (including many
friends of mine) made this non-controversy the key issue
in their voting. They are single issue voters on the wrong issue.
Their final, mom-and-apple-pie-who-could-disagree? defense was the
claim that owning guns protected "citizens" against politicians. Well,
guess what? They lied. The conservative politicians strongly supported
by the NRA and gun owners, notably George W. Bush, are the very ones
that took away your rights.
Responsible gun ownership was never the real issue; the issue involving
guns was about the rights of drunken idiots. 2nd Amendment Absolutists
are on the wrong side of that issue, but that's not what I'm mad about.
I refuse to apologize for telling the truth, that the slippery slope of
"gun rights" has led to the most repressive laws in US history. As is
often the case, conservatives invented a culture war and now find
themselves on the wrong side of it.
So even though it won't do any good, and the knee-jerk gun lobby will
have crafted their response before they got tot his paragraph, let me
reiterate: I'm not against gun ownership, and think that all
responsible adults should have the right to own a firearm. I'm against
drunken idiots, whether they have a gun or a car or beat their wives
with their hands. I'm against the gun nuts who's minds are so befuddled
by this one falsely-defined issue that they are solidly behind the
people who have eroded our rights as American citizens.
I'm
not going to apologize to Senator Vitter or Senator Craig or any of the
Republicans who demanded Clinton's impeachment while their personal
lives were so much sleazier.
Last year I railed against Mark Foley, and Republican leadership in the
House that ignored this sexual predator. This year, we have even more
Heartland Perverts that have come to light. I don't care if people like
Larry Craig are gay, but I do care that he doesn't have the guts to
admit it.
These sleazeball conservatives went after Bill Clinton for imaginary
crimes. (It's amazing to watch the flip-flops: In the 90s, the White
House Travel Office was sacrosanct, and replacing them was too
political. Bush fires eight US Attorneys, and all of a sudden all
Federal employees serve at the whim of the president. Sad.) They
finally caught him doing something that didn't have anything to do with
running the country, and pilloried him. Real issues, such as the hunt
for Osama bin Laden, were not nearly as important to Republicans as a
stained dress. Pathetic.
Sen. Craig voted to impeach Clinton. Vitter replaced Livingston who
replaced Gingrich, and famously agreed with their pursuit of nothing.
I'm disgusted by the whole party. Republicans have a lot to apologize
for, and not just to their wives. Until I start hearing some mea culpas
and see real change in their behavior: zero tolerance for Republicans.
I'm
not going to apologize coming down hard on the conservative news media.
The media in this country is not only conservative, it's very
conservative, to the point where they should be ashamed to call
themselves "journalists". Fox "News" is as bad as Pravda under the
communists. Too many right-wing media elites think they
are the story, and real news falls by the wayside. This is a very big
issue, but for now I'm just doing to talk about this one article.
The top 10 big stories the US
news media missed in the past year. San Francisco Bay Guardian,
September 5, 2007. The article is long and detailed, so here are the
headlines (and my quick sub heads):
1. Suspension of Habeas Corpus (they can throw YOU in jail at any time
for any reason and you can't say a word)
2. Martial Law (basically repealing the Posse Comitatus Act)
3. AFRICOM (re oil imports from Africa)
4. Secret Trade Agreements (Multinationals making the rules, not
elected governments)
5. Slaves Construct Iraq Embassy
6. FALCON (numbers don't add up on arrests of sex offenders)
7. Blackwater (and, presumably, other mercenary armies)
8. Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (captive customer base for
genetically modified foods)
9. Privatization of Infrastructure (don't raise taxes: outsource and
put unregulated construction in a different budget line)
10. Vulture Funds (Poor countries default on loans to governments, who
sell them to companies who sue for more than the amount owed)
I'm
not going to apologize for holding Republicans and conservatives
accountable, even if I occasionally have to lower myself to their level
just to get their attention.
Republicans don't believe in Democracy. Conservatives don't believe in
America. That's harsh but true. Further, the right starts whining when
you point this out. A further truth: The Sphincter Conservatives are
much, MUCH nastier. When they whine about getting a fraction of their
own rhetorical style thrown back in their face, they demonstrate their
cowardice. They can dish is out but they can't take it. Pathetic.
A prime example is the MoveOn.org ad, General Petraeus or General
Betray Us.
As usual, the right wing resorts to lies (the NYTimes did not
lower their ad rates). Not only do the cowards blame the messenger,
they blame the messenger of the messenger. Pathetic.
At
no
point do they address the issues raised in the ad: That Gen. Petraeus
is a man "constantly at war with facts". In point of fact, even
Petraeus' superior officer called him an ass-kissing little chickenshit over the surge. Point to
MoveOn.org.
Further, they right doesn't have the guts to do right by their nasty
ads in the past, from their attack on Sen. McCain (and his wholly made
up black baby) to their traitorous attacks on Democrats (morphing war
hero Sen. Max Cleland into Osama
bin Laden).
Sphincter conservatives need constant stroking by hate radio and Fox
"News" just to let them live with lies. Well paid verbal hit men supply
the latest right-wing PC rant. The ultra-right will always
be better at insults than you. They don't know how to do anything else.
Facts aren't on their side, they must rant. They
simply can't hear anything that doesn't sound like a drug-addled Rush
Limbaugh.
I do not regret seizing the opportunity to show the extremists the
error of their ways and take control of the debate. It may save my
life; it may save their life.
I'm
not going to apologize for pointing out how Bush and co. have made the
world a more dangerous place, especially for Americans.
When we're attacked, it's 'You're either with us or with the
terrorists'. When London or Madrid is attacked, Bush brags about not
having a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. Not only is this a
major flip-flop, it's wrong. We are less safe, not just from Anthrax
spreading anti-government terrorists at home or Christo-Fascists who
toss bombs at medical clinics, but from the wrath of G_d. George W. is
relatively safe: He doesn't have a first born son.
Bush and company don't live in
the world G_d
created. During this religious observance, I cannot remain silent. Can
you?
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a
noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for
obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs,
interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks
to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
"If
God lived on earth, people would break his windows."
- Jewish proverb  I Don't Get It
-
Listed as the worlds funniest joke from the Laugh Lab experiment done
by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, 2002 -
High Coup
 AT
FIRST GLANCE I SAW
A GLORIFIED WATER TANK NOT A CATHEDRAL - zEN mAN - (observing the still under construction "Cathedral of Light" catholic church in Oakland.....cost to parishioners.....$175 million) Go to Health
"Forget
Cancer, forget AIDS, Diabetes is fast becoming the king of all chronic
disease which is decimating the human race. ('The Centers of Disease Control
in Atlanta declares that 33% of the babies born this year will be
diabetic by the year 2050.' - Dr. Alan Cantwell)
"Diabetes,
which is expanding almost exponentially in the world today, can in part
be traced to the increasing radiation to which we are all being
exposed. Every physician knows that radiation can lead to cancer, but
making a connection between depleted uranium (DU) and diabetes seems
ludicrous at first glance is anything but. Most medical doctors have
never heard of this but neither have they paid attention to the fact
that mercury and other toxic chemicals are also primary causes of
diabetes. Even though there is little research into the connection
between radiation poisoning and diabetes we should not remain blind,
deaf and dumb about it.
"Diabetes is a
fundamental disease that
affects the entire colony of cells in a person because it has to do
with energy metabolism and the vastly important hormone insulin and its
receptor sites.
"Type two diabetes,
which is fundamentally
due to nutritional deficiencies (especially a lack of magnesium),
colliding head on with a host of chemical poisons and heavy metals, is
also being triggered by the heavy metal toxicity and radioactivity of
uranium oxide and other radioactive isotopes that are circulating
widely in the environment. Unfortunately, exposure levels
are increasing dramatically with each ton of vaporized depleted uranium
but that is not stopping the American and British governments from
manufacturing, selling and using depleted uranium weaponry."
-
Mark Sircus Ac., OMD: DNA
and Mitochondrial Time Bombs: Uranium, Mercury and Diabetes -
Free Ad
 This 300
piece Spiderman 3 Photomosaic Puzzle was MADE IN AMERICA.
US Ally in Iraq Comes
Out in Favor of Abortion
"Now,
I swear to God, if we will hear anyone is with Al Qaeda, even if he is
still inside his mother's womb, we will kill him."
-
Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman in response to
the assassination of Sunni sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha -
Hypocrite of the Week
"You
know, if it's good, I smoke it."
-
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, an outspoken advocate
of Cuban sanctions, defending his large collection of Cuban cigars -
 Hell's Caterers
"It doesn't rival the Pentagon's $600 toilet seat, but the Justice
Department can fork over a mean $4 meatball.
"An internal Justice audit, released Friday, showed the department
spent nearly $7 million to plan, host or send employees to 10
conferences over the last two years. This included paying $4 per
meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of
snacks around to each participant at a movie-themed party.
"There was plenty, too, for those
needing
to satisfy a sweet tooth.
"More than $13,000 was spent on
cookies
and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day 'Weed and Seed'
conference in August 2005, according to the audit by Justice Department
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. And a 'networking' session replete
with butterfly shrimp, coconut lobster skewers and Swedish meatballs at
a Community Oriented Policing Services conference in July 2006 cost
more than $60,000.
"The report, which
looked at the 10 priciest Justice Department conferences between
October 2004 and September 2006, was ordered by the Senate
Appropriations Committee. It also found that three-quarters of the
employees who attended the conferences demanded daily reimbursement for
the cost of meals while traveling effectively double-dipping into
government funds.
"Auditors 'found
that using appropriated funds to pay for expensive meals and snacks at
certain DOJ conferences, while allowable, appear to have been
extravagant,' the report concluded."
-
Lara Jakes Jordan: Snacks
Take Big Bite Out of DOJ Budget -
New World Odor
 New
security logo on the reverse of North Carolina's driver's licenses
"The first 'North American Union' driver's license, complete with a
hologram of the continent on the reverse, has been created in North
Carolina.
"'The North Carolina driver's license is "North American Union" ready,'
charges William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration.
"Gheen provided WND with a photo of an actual North Carolina license
which clearly shows the hologram of the North American continent
embedded on the reverse.
"'The hologram looks exactly [like] the map of North America that is
used as the background for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of
North America logo on the SPP website,' Gheen told WND. 'I object to
the loss of sovereignty that is proceeding under the agreements being
made by these unelected government bureaucrats who think we should be
North American instead of the United States of America.'"
- Jerome R. Corsi: North American Union driver's license created - Logo intended to standardize documentation across continent - "Our American way of life is under
attack. And it is up to us to save it. The world's elites are busy
forming a North American Union. If they succeed, as they were in
forming the European Union, the good ol' USA will only be a memory. We
cannot let that happen. The UN wants to confiscate our firearms and
impose a global tax. The UN elites want to control the oceans with the
Law of the Sea Treaty. And they want to use our military to police the
world. Our right to own and use property is fading because bureaucrats
and special interests are abusing eminent domain."
- Ron Paul -
-
Mr. eMan -
Dumb Cops
"A US man has been rejected in his bid to become a police officer for
scoring too high on an intelligence test.
"Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join
the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points,
the equivalent of an IQ of 125.
"But New London
police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory
that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and
leave soon after undergoing costly training."
-
Freedom's Phoenix: Police
reject candidate for being too intelligent -
No Exit
Strategy
"The
United States has committed and sponsored the crime of genocide in
Iraq. Outlining the legal meaning of genocide and following Jean-Paul
Sartre's analysis of the nature of colonial war, this paper asserts
that on the basis of patterns of purposive action a case for
intentional genocide can and should be made under the provisions of the
Genocide Convention. While the United States has destroyed the state of
Iraq, contaminating its environment and creating conditions of mass
societal trauma, including the killing of 2,500,000 over 17 years, it
has failed and cannot succeed to destroy the nation of Iraq. Being the
lynchpin of US attempts to pursue empire by military means, it is the
duty of all who struggle for justice to oppose the US genocide wrought
on Iraq, move to ensure the prosecution of all those responsible and
complicit, and stand firm in solidarity with the Iraqi people and its
legal and legitimate resistance."
-
Dr. Ian Douglas with the cooperation of Hana Al Bayaty and
Abdul Ilah Albayaty: US Genocide
in Iraq -
BAD FOOD
 Doritos
by
Lynette Sheffield
Just when you were running out of ways to waste time, Doritos comes to
the rescue!
Yay!
I don't even buy Doritos, at least on purpose. When I am at the grocery
store buying nutritious food for my family, somehow rogue Doritos leap
into my cart. I don't even notice until I am midway through check-out.
By that time, it would be disruptive to the check-out process to return
the illicit contraband to its proper place so I am forced by the rules
of etiquette to buy all that is in my cart.
I do not intentionally purchase Doritos because I have a severe
allergic reaction once I have scarfed down an entire bag without
pausing to chew: my butt swells up. I phoned my doctors office to ask
if I could get allergy shots for Doritos-intolerance but they hung up
on me.
There is precious little sympathy for those of us who suffer so.
But apparently, there are enough bags of Doritos flinging themselves
into grocery carts everywhere that the demand has generated a real,
actual website at www.doritos.com, I swear to God. The site celebrates all
that is Dorito-ey.
On the front page, Snack Strong Productions (really) asks you to
Prepare to take snacking to a new level and lets you explore the
following after entering the site:
Snack Tech: Games and downloads in a Doritos theme.
Crash the Super Bowl: Shows the top 5 amateur videos as Doritos
advertisements that were aired during the last Super Bowl.
Flavor Lab: Levitating bags of chips in the different flavors of
Doritos and for some reason, someone riding a Segway back and forth
over and over again. Yes, I was sober when viewing this part.
X-13D: Announcing the mystery flavor as cheeseburger in much the same
way one would announce the arrival of Christ.
Collisions: Missy Elliott asks you to help create various versions of a
Doritos jingle. However, once I saw the style options were country,
disco, reggae, punk, Missy only and mariachi, without having the choice
of classic rock, I quickly lost interest.
Just know when you go to www.doritos.com everything takes a minute or two to load and
if you click Back, you will leave the site.
Most of this hoo-hah is to promote the new Doritos concept: two flavors
of chips in one bag.
I'll give you a moment to absorb this information and to recover from
the resulting heady excitement.
The marketing geniuses in the Doritos laboratories are now offering
Doritos Collisions that are either hot wings & blue cheese or
zesty taco & chipotle ranch. That is, I think it is zesty taco
and chipotle ranch. On www.doritos.com, when you go to the Collisions part of the
site and click on product info, chipotle is misspelled chipoltle. I
cannot find a definition of chipoltle in any of my dictionaries and the
use of the alternate spelling has sent my spell check into a snit. One
must assume that the action of colliding zesty taco and chipotle ranch
caused a nuclear reaction that resulted in the additional l. Perhaps
Snack Strong Productions has stumbled on a new energy source.
I certainly hope they have because we will probably need it. Those of
us who are trying our dead-level best to reduce our carbon footprint
face a catastrophic dilemma: Should we use Earths corn supply to make
ethanol or Doritos?
Those aren't the only two options for corn. If you want to be too
afraid to close your eyes at night, go to http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_17.html and if you dare, read the frightening
tragedy that would befall us In a World Without Corn. Not even Stephen
King would tackle this nightmare. There would be no frozen pizza, tacos
or marshmallows. Wallpaper, plaster board and cardboard boxes would be
affected. Ice cream would suffer from freezer burn and snack foods
would lose their crunch. We would be forced to watch movies without
popcorn and artificial butter flavoring. My God, people; without corn
syrup to help hold moisture, lollipops would become drippy. Drippy
lollipops! Is this the kind of world you want to leave to your
children?
I shudder at the very idea.
With Snack Strong Productions introducing Collisions Doritos, I wonder
if we might be facing a corn shortage AND a fuel shortage.
Maybe we can burn those chipoltles.
- Lynette Sheffield can be found in Bend, Oregon and at lynetteisfunny.com.  Dear
Dr. Hollywood, Gary, Send your questions to stupidquestion"at"dareland.com |
|
The Good News
 STATEMENT OF THE REPUBLICAN MAYOR OF
SAN DIEGO
Mayor
Jerry Sanders on 9/20:
With me this afternoon is my wife, Rana
I am here this afternoon to announce that
I will sign the resolution that the City Council passed yesterday
directing the City Attorney to file a brief in support of gay marriage.
My plan, as has been reported publicly,
was to veto that resolution, so I feel like I owe all San Diegans an
explanation for this change of heart.
During the campaign two years ago, I
announced that I did not support gay marriage and instead supported
civil unions and domestic partnerships.
I have personally wrestled with that
position ever since. My opinion on this issue has evolved significantly
- as I think have the opinions of millions of Americans from all walks
of life.
In order to be consistent with the
position I took during the mayoral election, I intended to veto the
Council resolution. As late as yesterday afternoon, that was my
position.
The arrival of the resolution - to sign
or veto - in my office late last night forced me to reflect and search
my soul for the right thing to do.
I have decided to lead with my heart - to
do what I think is right - and to take a stand on behalf of equality
and social justice. The right thing for me to do is to sign this
resolution.
For three decades, I have worked to bring
enlightenment, justice and equality to all parts of our community.
As I reflected on the choices that I had before me last night, I just
could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our
community that they were less important, less worthy and less deserving
of the rights and responsibilities of marriage -- than anyone else --
simply because of their sexual orientation.
A decision to veto this resolution would have been inconsistent with
the values I have embraced over the past 30 years.
I do believe that times have changed. And
with changing time, and new life experiences, come different opinions.
I think that's natural, and certainly it is true in my case.
Two years ago, I believed that civil
unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have since
changed.
The concept of a "separate but equal"
institution is not something that I can support.
I acknowledge that not all members of our
community will agree or perhaps even understand my decision today.
All I can offer them is that I am trying
to do what I believe is right.
I have close family members and friends
who are members of the gay and lesbian community. These folks include
my daughter Lisa and her partner, as well as members of my personal
staff.
I want for them the same thing that we
all want for our loved ones - for each of them to find a mate whom they
love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow
old together and share life's wondrous adventures.
And I want their relationships to be
protected equally under the law. In the end, I could not look any of
them in the face and tell them that their relationships - their very
lives - were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my
wife Rana.
Thank you.
- Posted by Andrew Tobias Recession Good for Mosquitoes
"Among the
jobs to be lost in coming months are up to 12,000 positions at the
giant mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. Like other mortgage
companies, Countrywide is having a hard time these days palming risky
loans off on sucker investors. This means that they can only make
prudent loans, which translates into less business.
"Of
course, some professions thrive in tough economic times. Business
should be brisk for bankruptcy lawyers. And we will need auctioneers to
help unload foreclosed properties.
"There
will also be growth in certain 'niche' occupations, such as mosquito
control technician. It seems that swimming pools behind abandoned homes
in Southern California are turning green, a sign of mosquito
infestation. That is a health hazard. Thus, local governments are
hiring mosquito control technicians to fumigate."
- Froma Harrop: Green
Not Always the Color of Money -
The Death of DRM
(Digital Rights Management:encryption to protect intellectual property from copyright infringement) "eMusic.com, the number two player in the digital music market, will start selling audiobooks tomorrow, in an unprotected MP3 format (at 64 kbps) that will play on all devices. The announcement follows our report from last month on Random House Audio advising partners that it was evaluating a world in which it expected DRM to "ultimately disappear." Indeed, the NYT reports that RH Audio is contributing approximately 500 titles, or about 20 percent of its catalog, to eMusic's program. RH's audio publisher Madeline McIntosh says, 'We're very interested in testing this, but we didn't think it was appropriate to put all of our titles in a test program.' (Random will watermark their audio files and monitor file-sharing services for abuses.) "The NYT
notes, "EMusic's lack of piracy protection is the reason no major music
label has signed on with it, and why only a few audiobook publishers
have so far. But the site is enormously popular," with about 10 percent
of the music download market. The willingness of some publishers to
participate in this venture implies that some publishers may stand
ready to do the same thing with Amazon."
Toilet of the Week
"The newest tourist attraction in
Minneapolis is the airport bathroom made famous by Sen. Larry Craig's
(R-ID) arrest. 'People have been going inside, taking pictures of the
stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door - man,
it's been crazy,' said Royal Zino, who owns a shoeshine shop
next to the bathroom."
|
The Bad News
Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian
Killing Fields
By
Joshua Holland
According
to a
new study, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since
the 2003 invasion, the highest estimate of war-related fatalities yet.
The study was done by the British polling firm ORB, which conducted
face-to-face interviews with a sample of over 1,700 Iraqi adults in 15
of Iraq's 18 provinces. Two provinces - al-Anbar and Karbala - were too
dangerous to canvas, and officials in a third, Irbil, didn't give the
researchers a permit to do their work. The study's margin of error was
plus-minus 2.4 percent.
Field
workers asked residents how many members of their own household had
been killed since the invasion. More than one in five respondents said
that at least one person in their home had been murdered since March of
2003. One in three Iraqis also said that at least some neighbors
"actually living on [their] street" had fled the carnage, with around
half of those having left the country.
In
Baghdad, almost half of those interviewed reported at least one violent
death in their household.
Before the
study's release, the highest estimate of Iraqi deaths had been around
650,000 in the
landmark Johns Hopkins' study published in the Lancet, a
highly respected and peer-reviewed British medical journal. Unlike that
study, which measured the difference in deaths from all causes during
the first three years of the occupation with the mortality rate that
existed prior to the invasion, the ORB poll looked only at deaths due
to violence.
The poll's
findings are in line with the rolling
estimate maintained on the Just Foreign Policy website, based
on the Johns Hopkins' data, that stands at just over 1 million Iraqis
killed as of this writing.
These
numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the
great crimes of the last century -- the human toll exceeds the 800,000
to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is
approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia's infamous
"Killing Fields" during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.
While the
stunning figures should play a major role in the debate over continuing
the occupation, they probably won't. That's because there are three
distinct versions of events in Iraq -- the bloody criminal nightmare
that the "reality-based community" has to grapple with, the picture the
commercial media portrays and the war that the occupation's last
supporters have conjured up out of thin air. Similarly, American
discourse has also developed three different levels of Iraqi
casualties. There's the approximately 1 million killed according to the
best epidemiological research conducted by one of the world's most
prestigious scientific institutions, there's the 75,000-80,000 (based
on news reports) the Washington Post and other commercial media allow,
and there's the clean and antiseptic blood-free war the administration
claims to have fought (recall that they dismissed the Lancet findings
out of hand and yet offered no numbers of their own).
Here's the
troubling thing, and one reason why opposition to the war isn't even
more intense than it is: Americans were asked in an AP poll
conducted earlier this year how many Iraqi civilians they thought had
been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation, and the median
answer they gave was 9,890. That's less than a third of the number of
civilian deaths confirmed by U.N. monitors in 2006 alone.
Most of
that disconnect is probably a result of American exceptionalism -- the
United States is, by definition, the good guy, and good guys don't
launch wars of choice that result in over a million people being
massacred. Never mind that that's exactly what the data show;
acknowledging as much creates intolerable cognitive dissonance for most
Americans, so as a nation, we won't.
But there's more to it than that. The
dominant narrative of Iraq is that most of the violence against Iraqis
is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our
responsibility. That's wrong morally -- we chose to go into Iraq
despite the fact that public
health NGOs warned in advance of the likelihood of 500,000 civilian
deaths due to "collateral damage." It's also factually
incorrect -- as Stony Brook University scholar Michael Schwartz noted a few
months ago, the Johns-Hopkins study looked at who was
responsible for the violent deaths it measured and found that coalition
forces were directly responsible for 56 percent of the deaths in which
the perpetrator was known. According to Schwartz's number crunching,
based on the Lancet data, coalition troops were responsible for at
least 180,000 and as many as 330,000 violent deaths through the middle
of last year. There's no compelling reason to think the share
attributable to occupation forces has decreased significantly since
then.
Like the
earlier study in the Lancet -- one that relied on widely
accepted methodology for its results -- this new research is
already being dismissed out of hand. The strange thing is that common
sense alone should be enough to conclude that the United States has
killed a huge number of Iraqi civilians. After all, it's become
conventional wisdom (based on several studies) that about 90 percent of
all casualties in modern warfare are civilians. We know that the
military, in addition to deploying 500 missiles and bombs in the first
six months of this year alone, has had trouble keeping up with the
demand for bullets in the Iraqi theater. According to a 2005 report by
Lt. Col. Dean Mengel at the Army War College, the number of rounds
being fired off is enormous (PDF):
[One news
report] noted that the Army estimated it would need 1.5 billion small
arms rounds per year, which was three times the amount produced just
three years earlier. In another, it was noted by the Associated Press
that soldiers were shooting bullets faster than they could be produced
by the manufacturer.
1.5
billion rounds per year more bullets fired than can be manufactured.
Given that the estimated number of active insurgents in Iraq has never
exceeded 30,000 -- and is usually given as less than 20,000 -- that
leaves a lot of deadly lead flying around. Everyone agrees that the
U.S. soldier is the best-trained fighter on earth, so it's somewhat
bizarre that war supporters believe their shots rarely hit anybody.
If it
weren't for the layers of denial that have been dutifully built up
around the American strategic class, these figures might put to rest
the notion that U.S. troops are preventing more deaths than they cause.
Recall
that the stated reason for the invasion was to reduce the number of
countries suspected of having an illicit WMD program from 36 to 35.
Amid all the talk of troop deaths and the billions of dollars being
thrown away in Iraq, it's important to remember that it is the Iraqis
that are paying such a dear price for achieving that modest goal.
With a
Congress frozen into inaction, all that remains to be seen is what the
final death toll from the Iraq war will be. The sad truth is that we
may never know the full scope of the carnage.
|
|
Walter Cronkite after the Tet Offensive, 1968
The
moment that turned America against the war in Vietnam
Rev. Lennox Yearwood Attacked, Arrested, and
Hospitalized
A
fascinating piece of public journalism,
make all
the more profound
without
any comment
as though
there could be a rational explanation
for
treating a Reverend this way.
Satan Doesn't Want You
To Know
What's the biggest reason autopsies are
rarely performed nowadays? Liability. You see, were autopsies routine,
their findings would call into glaring relief the frequency of
misdiagnoses (or mistreatment) on the part of hospitals and emergency
medicine providers. In other words, they'd definitively expose the
mistakes modern medicine makes which sometimes end up harming or
killing us. What does skipping the autopsies really mean to
hospitals? Avoiding
expensive malpractice lawsuits.
Google Smackdown of the
Week
 vs.  And the winner is "you are an idiot" by 5,200. "There are in me
the
seeds from which, if necessary, the universe could be constructed. In
me somewhere there is a matrix for mankind and a holograph for the
whole world. Nothing is more important in my life than trying to
discover these secrets."
- Ted Simon: Jupiter's
Travels -
"Once the people
begin
to reason, all is lost."
- Voltaire -
"I am saddened
that it
is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the
Iraq war is largely about oil."
- Alan
Greenspan -
"If the
definition of
a 'Police State' is that we have to get permission from the government
for everything we do, then my friends, we're nearly there. There are
300 million of us, and about 2 and a half million government workers
and Armed Services. Does it seem right to you that 8% should be able to
totally dominate the other 92% of the population? Wake up! Do your
part!"
- Ron Paul -
"The
constitutional
powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United
States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent
involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,
are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific
statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack
upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed
forces."
- 1973 War
Powers
Act, section 2, paragraph c -
"Lawmakers, who
were
assured before the war that weapons of mass destruction would be found
in Iraq, and many of whom voted to give this Administration a sweeping
grant of authority to wage war based upon those assurances, have been
placed in the uncomfortable position of wondering if they were misled.
The media is ratcheting up the demand for answers: Could it be that the
intelligence was wrong, or could it be that the facts were manipulated?
These are very serious and grave questions, and they require immediate
answers. We cannot - and must not - brush such questions aside. We owe
the people of this country an answer. Every member of this body ought
to be demanding answers."
- Senator Robert
Byrd -
"Happiness isn't something you experience; it's
something
you remember."
-
Oscar Levant -
"No paper wants to
gratuitously offend the reader. Pity, because gratuitous offence, when
performed with aplomb, is the funniest thing in the world. There's more
unpretentious joie de vivre in a single issue of vintage-era Viz
than most artists or singers manage in a lifetime. I'd like nothing
better than to fill the rest of this page with an unnecessarily florid
description of something utterly disgusting happening to a well-known
public figure - an 850-word fantasy in which, say, David Miliband
unexpectedly develops extreme and explosive diarrhea while entertaining
a group of foreign dignitaries in a pod on the London Eye on the
hottest day of the year, to take just one example. But I can't, because
a tiny handful of you would complain.
"In my view, the
delight such
an unnecessary and puerile description would give to myself and others
far outweighs the pain it would cause these oversensitive life-spoiling
idiots. The offended people.
"I hate offended
people. They
come in two flavours - huffy and whiny - and it's hard to know which is
worst. The huffy ones are self-important, narcissistic authoritarians
in love with the sound of their own booming disapproval, while the
whiny, sparrowlike ones are so annoying and sickly and ill-equipped for
life on Earth you just want to smack them round the head until they
stop crying and grow up. Combined, they're the very worst people on the
planet - 20 times worse than child molesters, and I say that not
because it's true (it isn't), but because it'll upset them
unnecessarily, and these readers deserve to be upset unnecessarily,
morning, noon and night, every sodding day, for the rest of their
wheedling lives."
- Charlie Brooker: I
hate offended people and I love offending them. They're the very worst
people on the planet -
"No one gossips
about
other people's secret virtues."
- Bertrand
Russell -
"Happiness is
always a
by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I
know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded
from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about
it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of
unhappiness."
- Robertson
Davies -
"Education is
the
ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your
self-confidence."
- Robert Frost -
"Check the record.
These are all lies."
- William
Greider: The
Lies of Alan Greenspan -
"Causing the
right
amount of trouble is an art form."
- Judith Coche -
"To gain order
and
tranquility, not to win battles and provinces, is our goal. Our grand
and glorious masterpiece is to live suitably."
- Michel de
Montaigne -
"You can't make
up
anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is
recording it."
- Art Buchwald -
"You can
discover what
your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
- Eric Hoffer -
"The NLRB the agency
responsible for protecting employee rights is flagrantly violating the
bargaining rights of its own employees. Here's the story: In 2005, NLRB
employees petitioned an administrative law authority for the right to
organize themselves into a union bargaining unit within the labor
agency. NLRB officials opposed this, but the authority ruled in favor
of the employees.
"Having jumped through
all
the legal hoops and been certified, the union set out to bargain with
NLRB management but the labor agency's top officials refused! The union
went back to the authority, which investigated the situation and has
now ruled that the NLRB is in violation of federal law. That should
have been that, but Bush's hand-picked head of the labor rights agency,
Ronald Meisburg, said to hell with labor rights. He is contemptuously
refusing to bargain with the employees.
"Meisburg is pulling a
stall
tactic that corporate violators routinely use, hoping to outlast the
unionizing effort. By defying the ruling, he is forcing the issue into
federal courts a process that he smugly estimates will delay any
bargaining past the expiration of his term in 2010.
"Will it surprise you
to
learn that the guy Bush chose to protect the rights of workers from
corporate abuse has spent most of his career in service to corporate
employers that seek to undermine workers rights?"
-
Grabel's Law -
"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time." -
H. L. Mencken -
"Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution." -
Dr. David Schwartz -
"If you ain't the lead dog, the view never changes." -
Lewis Grizzard -
"I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up." -
Tom Lehrer -
"Smaller than a grain of rice, smaller than a grain of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a grain of millet, smaller even than the kernel of a grain of millet is the Self. This is the Self dwelling in my heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than all the worlds." - Chandogya Upanishad -
"Melancholy
may enter your soul, and ambush your happiness; but it will prepare you
for true joy. Melancholy drives out all other emotions and feelings, so
the source of all goodness may occupy the whole house. It shakes the
yellow leaves from the tree, allowing fresh leaves to grow. It pulls up
old bodily pleasures by the roots, allowing divine spiritual pleasures
to be planted. Melancholy takes many things from the soul, in order to
bring better things in return."
-
Rumi: Mathnawi -
"Charity
is equal in importance to all the other commandments combined."
- Babylonian
Talmud: Bava Bathra -
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The Best of Disinfotainment Today - 2006 A Year of Journalism with the Crap Removed  |