Yesterday, a few thousand New Yorkers participated in a Wisconsin solidarity/pro democracy rally in Manhattan in City Hall Park and on the other side of Broadway. It was part of a collection of protests nationwide aimed at fighting the corporate oligarchs and the corrupt politicians they have bought.

Here's some of a promotional email I received about yesterday's protest from Democrats.com.

This Saturday we're drawing a line in the sand. The entire progressive movement is putting everything we have into one massive display of progressive solidarity nationwide.

We won't let Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker - or any other billionaire-bought TeaParty Governor - break the unions. Unions created America's middle class and if they disappear we'll all end up as corporate slaves.

The entire progressive movement - Netroots, unions, environmentalists, and community groups - will hold solidarity rallies in major cities, including every state capital, this Saturday around noon.

We'll demand an end to the attacks on workers' rights and public services across the country. We'll demand investment to create jobs. And we'll demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share of taxes.

People may not be familiar with Democrats.com. It is not an official arm of the DNC. It is a site of grassroots, liberal Democrats who push the party to the left while opposing the rightist campaigns of the GOP.

There are a couple of things I should mention about the photos that follow:

1. Like it says on more lascivious queer blogs than this one, "click to embiggen."

2. The photos that I took towards the end of the protest didn't turn out at all. I think my cell phone was too low on power at that point. It's a shame because I didn't get shots of some great signs. But, as you can see, I got quite a few pics that did work.

Across America, the far right is working to gut government's ability to protect the most vulnerable among us, while at the same time attacking the middle class. If we let them succeed, our communities will be hit first, and hit the hardest.

Instead of asking the wealthiest of us to contribute their fair share in tough times, these politicans are trying to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, WIC, Americorps, Head Start, and even trying to destroy the right of workers to organize for better workplace conditions — all of which help uplift and protect our communities. And they're doing it while many elected officials in both parties overlook the corporate recklessness that has squeezed budgets across the country in the first place.

MoveOn.org played a major role in organizing and promoting the protests. They certainly deserve credit for that. I've noticed that MoveOn.org is great at mobilizing action when Republicans do horrible things. Yet, when Democrats do horrible things, they usually look the other way. Sometimes they even support horribe rightist policies from Democrats like Harry Reid's efforts to fund the Iraq War during the last two years of the Bush regime and Obama's wealthcare plan for the HMOs, health insurers, and Big Pharma. MoveOn.org promised their members not to support a bill without a strong Public Option and broke that promise when it was time for the actual vote.

In the future, I would really like it if MoveOn.org held Democrats to the same standards as Republicans. Maybe the Democrats wouldn't act like Republicans so often if groups like MoveOn.org were a bit less partisan in their approach.

I also would like to express my appreciation to all the people who showed up to the NYC protest in the cold on such short notice. There are plenty of people in NYC who are more than happy to take stands for social justice if there are opportunities to do so.

 

The extreme right always has held people who work for a living in utter contempt, but seldom do they put that contempt for hard work out on the Internet for people to see. But, the fringe right website which ironically refers to itself as the "American Thinker"...(I'll give you a chance to stop giggling.)...really went overboard on this one.

From a 2/21/11 Rant from the "American Thinker": (bolding mine)

That really frosted me. Why in hell was I bothering to get a postgraduate degree while a semiliterate guy who barely made it through high school got $400 a week for not working half the year? The scales fell from my eyes. Management wasn't the root of all evil. Union workers were just as lazy, greedy, and corrupt. I now saw the union as a grand rip-off. The union working man wasn't some noble, virtuous saint, fighting the good fight against the Robber Barons, as I'd always been taught. He was a drunken, stoned, uneducated, vulgar slob, ripping off a piece of the action for himself. And in my state he had the full force of the law and the state government behind him. So private sector employers fled.

I've been in grad school, and I've done temp work in a factory. In the real world, factory work is a lot harder and mind numbing than graduate school. But, the extreme right doesn't respect real work. They are propagandists for the idle rich who consider actual work to be far beneath them.

In spewing nonsense for the wealthy elites, the rightist pundits start to identify with the wealthy, including aping their prejudices. Vicarious classism and elitism become the sports of the day.

And, if you think that they only hate working people who belong to unions, think again. The right's efforts to cut programs that benefit working people like public education, Social Security, and Medicare so they can give ever larger tax cuts for the lazy, do nothing, rich proves that the right hates and sabotages all workers. They focus more venom on union members because union members aren't getting screwed over as badly as the rest of working people.

When it makes so money spewing propaganda for wealthy parasites, I guess it isn't surprising that the rightist noise machine projects its own worst qualities on people who do real work for a living. Making false accusations against unions and union workers is intellectually lazy.

 

DistributorCapNY did a great public service by posting a list of the evil corporations advertising on Glenn Beck. Check it out!

Thanks to DCap for doing this.

By the way, it's important to boycott every Fox/Murdoch media outlet, entertainment or "news" because one subsidizes the other.

 

People in this country are realizing that the pro democracy protests in Wisconsin and Ohio are an important part of resisting the totalitarian tactics of the wealthy oligarchs in this country. A lot of queers really get this. For instance, Pride at Work, an LGBT labor group sent out a message to its members in support of Wisconsin. From that email:

Rallies. Crowds spilling into the streets. Seas of people marching together in solidarity. Every day this week, nonstop.

This isn’t just happening in Egypt...but in Madison, Wisconsin.

Schools are closed. Workers, high school and college students, community members, faith groups and concerned citizens have dropped their daily lives to rally against Gov. Scott Walker’s draconian attacks on middle-class jobs and his proposal to strip Wisconsin teachers, nurses, social workers and other public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

Walker’s immediate attack is aimed directly at some 200,000 public workers—but the brave men and women taking to the streets come from every walk of life and recognize that all working people—public and private sector—are in jeopardy. And they know that if we don’t all speak out and stand together, we’ll all be targets.

The right to collective bargaining is vital for all workers, and particularly so for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. For example, Wisconsin state laws do not include protections against discrimination based on gender identity and expression - so a union is likely the only form of protection for transgender workers.

Even for cis queers, having a union as backup can really help. If you are being discriminated by an employer, courts are an important venue for justice. However, it's your meager resources for lawyers vs. the employer's array of expensive corporate lawyers. Having union support really can help even things out. Of course, making workers of all sexual orientations and gender identities vulnerable is what a corrupt politician like Scott Walker is all about.

Pride at Work is asking people on Facebook to like the We Are One solidarity page.

The grassroots queer group, GetEQUAL, who played a major role in passing LGBT civil rights legislation in the last Congress, is supporting the protests on it's Facebook page. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force also is supporting the peoples' movement.

This shows that there are queer organizations that understand Harvey Milk's vision of queer civil rights as part of a larger movement for civil rights and social justice. The HRC is ignoring the pro democracy protests, showing that all it cares about is big money donations from wealthy donors. Middle class and poor LGBT people don't even appear on the so called "Human Rights Campaign's" radar screen. However, they are happy to profit off of Harvey Milk's name by renting his former shop in the Castro to sell their tacky crap.

The Green Party also is supporting the pro democracy protests. From their 2/22/11 press release.

Green Party leaders declared today that the party solidly supports Wisconsin's public-sector employees protesting a bill introduced by Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate their benefits and collective bargaining rights.

"We in the Green Party are standing out front on this issue by standing with our labor and public service brothers and sisters here in Wisconsin," said AJ Segneri, co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party (http://www.wisconsingreenparty.org).

On Feb. 17, the Wisconsin Greens issued a statement affirming that their party "salutes the state's public workers, and stands in solidarity with their fight to retain full collective bargaining rights with their employers" (http://www.wisconsingreenparty.org/?q=node/97).

Notes: This is not a prioritized list. This is part of a series of blog postings that will appear over the next few weeks.

21) Negotiated a corporate controlled trade deal with South Korea.

22) Opposes the US withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.

23) Opposes the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, and other corporate controlled trade agreements.

24) Continues Most Favored Trade Nation status with China.

25) Opposes increasing tariffs to balance budgets.

26) Opposes making it a felony to ship US jobs abroad.

27) Supports Israel's military siege of Gaza.

28) Gone along with Israel's illegal settlements in Palestinian territory.

29) Opposes the Gaza flotilla and has refused to challenge Israel's violations of the human rights of Americans involved in it.

30) Has used the IMF and World Bank (which the US dominates) to impose The Shock Doctrine on Greece and Ireland.

31) Opposes Medicare for All.

32) Opposes even the Public Option.

33) Participates in unconstitutional National Hate Breakfast.

34) Opposes moratorium on foreclosures.

35) Opposes subjecting hedge funds to the same regulations as legitimate mutual funds.

36) Opposes criminalizing derivatives.

37) Obnoxiously flaunts Christianity even though this is not a Christian nation. (at least according to George Washington and other founders)

38) Opposes a ban on all offshore oil drilling.

39) Continues government contracts with Halliburton, KBR, Xe, etc. despite their blatant misconduct.

40) Opposes closing unnecessary military bases abroad.

Stay tuned. There's more to come.

Please put other items in the comments. I've already done more of this list in posts scheduled in the future, but there is room for new items at the end.

It's another year, and the pro child molester RCC clergy are meddling in politics again to fight against birth control and abortion. Obviously, misogyny and racism play a huge role in these violations of the Roman Catholic Church's tax exempt status, but we all know the biggest reason for this: they want an ever increasing supply of children to molest.

The RCC clergy continues to protect the identities of child rapists among its ranks. Their insincere public apologies are coupled with behind the scenes political pressure on law enforcement to prevent criminal investigations of the rampant child rape in that church.

Enough!

It's time to take serious action to stop the constant child molestation in the Roman Catholic clergy. It's time to bar entrance to RCC churches and schools to anyone under the age of 18.

Pro child molestation activists might claim that such a rule is unconstitutional. They would claim that the RCC is exercising its constitutional rights by engaging in its business activities including religious services and religious brainwashing.

However, adult bookstore operators have a constitutional right to engage in their activities too. However, we protect children by making those businesses adults only. If we can put age restrictions on constitutionally protected businesses so that children don't see visual images of sex, than we certainly can put age restrictions on constitutionally protected churches to prevent children from being raped.

I'm sure that supporters of child rape will be deeply offended by this. Tough shit. This is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate proposal to dramatically reduce a heinous, inexcusable crime that the RCC's clergy continue to actively promote.

 

Wal-Mart's favorite dictatorship, the fascist regime in China, is joining the list of totalitarians in suppressing dissent. (Reuters: 2/21/11)

Over the weekend, Chinese police and censors showed the Communist Party has little to fear from protesters hoping to emulate the unrest that has unseated Egypt's long-time president, Hosni Mubarak, and now threatens Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Police dispersed dozens of people who gathered in central Beijing and Shanghai on Sunday after calls spread on overseas Chinese websites urging "Jasmine Revolution" gatherings. The police and foreign reporters outnumbered aspiring participants and curious passers-by caught up in the crowd.

There were no signs of protests in Beijing on Monday.

It's a small start, but a start nevertheless. After what the murderous Chinese regime did during the last series of pro democracy protests and how they ruthlessly suppress dissent, it isn't terribly shocking that people there are reluctant to try again.

If the Chinese eventually do win their freedom, I wonder where Wal-Mart will start shipping American jobs to.

Meanwhile, a study has shown that most US corporations and corporations that do business here in the US pay no federal income tax. (Those that do pay income tax pay far, far less than they should.)

It's bad enough that those fuckers keep shipping our jobs to foreign countries like China, but it's even worse that most of them pay nothing in taxes.

 

If you have followed the New York Times' coverage of the pro democracy protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, you can't help see how that once proud newspaper has become a Faux News style propaganda rag for the rich, for their corporations, for the GOP and against middle class and poor Americans.

I for one am sick and tired of that paper's content being comparable to that which one flushes down the toilet. If you don't like this, you should contact their circulation department, the one that is responsible for newspaper sales. As a customer, former customer, or someone who refuses to pay for their biased garbage, that's where you have the most leverage.

circulation@nytimes.com

Whenever you see a biased article, it also is a good idea to directly email the reporter(s) propagandist(s) who wrote it.

I'm sure you have a list of grievances against that rightist propaganda rag. Here are some of mine.

1) Refusing to acknowledge the fact that the Wisconsin and Ohio protests are pro democracy protests.

2) Failing to acknowledge the fact that the teabagger counter protests which the Times is promoting are tiny and completely staged by the Koch brothers.

3) Running public relations pieces glorifying Scott Walker instead of doing actual news coverage.

4) Censoring the fact that Wisconsin's deficits could easily be converted to surpluses by making Walker's rich campaign contributors pay their fair share in taxes.

5) Failing to acknowledge that the right to organize unions and the right to strike are universally recognized human rights.

6) Giving far more ink and pixels to the side of the rich and the Republicans than to the side of middle class Americans.

7) The general pattern of rightist propaganda at the NY Times.

8) The heavy news censorship at that paper which rivals that under Soviet Pravda.

You don't need to live in NY to take part in this action. This is a national propaganda rag, and they want circulation dollars from throughout the US. Please contact them now!

circulation@nytimes.com

Photos: Nemo's great uncle

qnr

 

Economic issues have played a role in pro democracy protests in the Middle East and the US.



Hat Tip: Monkey Muck

The video points out that Scott Walker started with a budget surplus only to give money to corporate special interests, which created the deficit.

 

It's good to see that the pro democracy protesters in Wisconsin are too patriotic to buy the anti American propaganda pushed by the foreign propaganda network, Faux News. That network is part of a broader terrorist propaganda network controlled by the infamous Australian fascist, Rupert Murdoch.



(Hat Tip: Freak Out Nation)

Note: I had to replace the video.

 

Photo: doomyeti

This is a wonderful idea!

Stand with Wisconsin workers against the right-wing attack on their rights.

Public employees are teachers, police officers, sanitation workers, firefighters, snow plow drivers ... they are our friends, family and neighbors ... most are not rich, but they work hard and earn their benefits. I oppose attempts by politicians to gut their benefits and take away their rights, all to satisfy a partisan, political agenda.

I stand in support of Wisconsin's public employees, the Wisconsinites across the state protesting on their behalf and the state senators who have left the state in order to prevent Gov. Walker's draconian proposal from passing in the legislature.

Signed,

Please Sign the Petition!

In the eyes of the wealthy and corporate overlords, including the execrable Koch Brothers, every middle class American is a Wisconsin public employee. In other words, they are lowering public employee benefits and taking away basic freedoms from public employees as part of a broader strategy to keep stealing more and more from the middle class and the poor so they can hoard it for themselves.

We need to stop letting politicians in both parties get away with lying about phony "budget crises" that are purely imaginary. Making the rich pay their fair share in taxes would obliterate every state budget deficit and would generate budget surpluses that could be used to create desperately needed jobs and meet important human needs of the non rich.

The vast majority of the money held by the wealthy elites and their corporations really is rightfully ours. It's time that we insist that the politicians that supposedly represent us take it back for us.

 

Pro democracy protests keep spreading against fascism, corruption, rigged elections, violations of human rights, and economic attacks against the middle class and the poor. This time, they have spread to Ohio. (Labor Notes 2/18/11)

Thousands of workers, mostly public employee union members but also from the private sector, rallied at the Capitol in Columbus, Ohio, Thursday to stop a senate bill that would end public workers’ collective bargaining rights.

The proposed law would take away public employees’ right to strike and make them pay 20 percent of their health care costs. Teachers would lose automatic step increases. The bill would end binding arbitration to resolve deadlocks in union-management negotiations. Republican Governor John Kasich ran on this anti-worker program.

And the "election" Kasich "won" was rigged by the same corrupt forces that rigged the "election" in Wisconsin that put Scott Walker in power.

4-5,000 pro democracy activists joined the protest. There were roughly 200 Astroturf teabagggers staging a fake counterprotest, inevitably on the orders of their corporate employers.

Check out some video from the protest.



These are real, hard working Americans. They aren't the parasitical idle rich that demand more and more of our money.

 

Photo: trader_john

The Gold Bubble hasn't burst yet, and it already is causing misery and destruction. A 2/11/11 Alternet article talks about the environmentally destructive nature of gold mining and processing.

Thinking of giving your sweetheart gold jewelry for Valentine's Day? You might want to first know what goes into making it. Extracting enough gold for one ring takes an average of two pounds of cyanide (a teaspoon will kill you). Processing the gold in one ring uses over 1,400 gallons of water, enough to meet the daily needs of 100 people. Left behind is a toxic sludge containing heavy metals, cyanide compounds, and arsenic. Each gold ring produces an average of 20 tons of waste - millions of tons over the life of a mine.

This article focuses on gold for jewelry, apparently because that is the consumer behavior that Alternet's readers are most likely to change. However, the largest cause of increased gold mining is the rapidly and ridiculously escalating gold prices on speculative markets. Every time someone tries to con people into believing that a highly volatile commodity like gold is a "safe haven," gold mining increases. Even worse, as gold gets more difficult to find, the environmental destruction per unit of gold increases because the gold gets more difficult to extract.

Since gold jewelry is the way that the average person speculates in gold, I suppose it is worth mentioning.

This gold fever also creates enormous human misery.

Producing gold can also come at great human cost. Mines are often imposed on communities that don't want them, and cause communities to lose their lands and livelihoods. Human costs also include the use of child labor in mines in Mali, dangerous conditions in mines in Ghana, and armed violence and human rights violations that have been linked to gold mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last year, I complained about the Gold Bubble and the inevitable gold crash just waiting to happen.

I'm sorry, but gold is not worth anywhere near $1200 per ounce.

Yet, despite a drop on Friday, gold was trading at the astronomical level of $1194. This is just plain crazy.

Today, gold traded at $1,372.50 per ounce in New York.

WTF?

The gold bubble isn't just financial idiocy, it is destructive and dehumanizing.

Sigh. Remember how, in 2005, people warning about the Housing Bubble were treated like paranoid idiots? People never seem to learn.

Second Photo: SanFranAnnie

 

Photo: paulbaker

The wave of pro democracy protests that started in Tunisia is spreading farther and farther. First, it was Arab countries. Then, it Iran. Now, the pro democracy wave has hit the state of Wisconsin. (AFP 2/17/11)

A bill aimed at busting public workers unions in the US state of Wisconsin prompted mass protests and a statewide police hunt for Democratic lawmakers who fled to block the measure's passage Thursday.

Police estimate that more than 20,000 protesters flooded the state capital of Madison, some even sleeping overnight in the public galleries of the statehouse.

Normal life was brought to a halt by the legislative crisis, with scores of schools closed as teachers and other government workers called in sick and hit the streets to fight for their collective bargaining rights.

Just as was the case in pro democracy protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere, there is a major economic element to the pro democracy protests in Wisconsin. In all of these cases, you had corrupt illegitimate leaders stealing from ordinary people in order to enrich the wealthy elites of those societies. The AFP coverage acknowledged that the protesters see the connections.

Many protestors appeared to be taking inspiration from the recent democratic uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, with some even wearing King Tut hats.

Keep in mind that the fringe right extremist Scott Walker is illegitimately holding the office of Governor of Wisconsin as the result of massive election rigging involving big money campaign contributions from wealthy donors (including the Koch brothers), corporatist PAC money, direct corporate campaign spending, and a highly censored and propagandistic corporate press which is reminiscent of the non free press in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states.

The "election" that put Walker in power was as fake as the "elections" that Hosni Mubarek held and the ones that Stalin staged in the USSR.

The similarities between Walker and totalitarian dictators doesn't there. Walker has utter contempt for basic human rights like the right to strike and the right to organize unions and negotiate for wages and working conditions.

Walker also is fond of using deliberately deceptive propaganda to push his fascist, anti American political agenda. He is fond of lying about a phony "budget crisis" in Wisconsin despite the fact that making his wealthy donors pay their fair share in taxes would convert the state's deficits into surpluses that could create jobs throughout Wisconsin. It isn't a budget crisis. It's a corruption crisis that is bought about by the very kind of election rigging that put Walker into office in the first place.

I'm glad to see that the pro democracy movement has reached the USA. It's long overdue.

 

This is downright scary. (NY Pop Culture and Politics 2/11/11)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has found enough state grant money to save Long Island College Hospital, NY1 reported. Because of the deal, 2,500 employees, who work at the Brooklyn hospital, will be able to keep their jobs.

In the time that Christine Quinn has been Speaker of the New York City Council, at least eight city hospitals have closed :

- North General Hospital in Harlem declared bankruptcy in 2010 ;
- St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village was shut down in 2010 after shady backroom meetings ;
- St. John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst went bankrupt in 2009 ;
- Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica went bankrupt in 2009 ;
- Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills decided to close in 2008 ;
- Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan closed in 2008 ;
- Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge closed in 2008 ; and
- St. Vincent's Midtown in Manhattan closed in 2007.

Three things struck me right away on this one.

1) Bloomberg has been mayor during this period and hasn't lifted a finger to save any hospital.

2) Before they were cash poor from the child molestation lawsuits, the Roman Catholic clergy were buying up hospitals so they could deny women patients access to birth control and abortion. As you can see, they have an execrable record in terms of managing hospitals.

3) "Policy experts" here and in other parts of the country have been babbling on about "excess hospital beds" for at least a couple of decades. If they had IQs over 60, they would realize that it is necessary to have extra hospital capacity in case of disasters. This includes terrorist attacks in NYC. These "efficiency experts" have no clue about the role that hospitals are supposed to play in the security of their cities, towns, and neighborhoods. You would think that NYC would learn from 911, but Bloomberg obviously has not.

Penny pinching HMOs and health insurers along with cutbacks in government funding for healthcare over the years have had devastating effects on hospitals and the people who need them. We need Medicare for All ASAP. What we don't need is what we have: a government that makes big money campaign contributions, reprehensible wars, other subsidies for corporations, and tax cuts for the rich higher priorities than human needs.

Photo: Edwin Martinez1

 

Notes: This is not a prioritized list. This is part of a series of blog postings that will appear over the next few weeks.

1) Opposes reinstating the Glass-Steagall restrictions on the banksters and brokesters.

2) Supports the coup government in Honduras.

3) Continues to involve high profile misogynist and heterosexist preachers in public events and public policy.

4) Continues to drag out the Iraq War.

5) Continues to drag out the Afghanistan War.

6) Is making our military increasingly dependent on mercenaries.

7) Continues to kidnap and torture people under "extraordinary rendition."

8) Refuses to prosecute crooked Bush regime officials.

9) Refuses to prosecute Wall St. crooks.

10) Opposes moratorium or even limits on interest rate increases on predatory mortgages.

11) Is expanding Bush's Hate Based Initiatives.

12) Cut taxes on the rich.

13) Raised taxes on the poor.

14) Opposed seizing British Petroleum and revoking its corporate charter.

15) Has barely funded public transportation in his budgets while making roads a high priority.

16) Supports the military dictatorship in Egypt against the Egyptian people.

17) Illegally wiretaps Americans without warrants.

18) Opposes nationalizing the banks and brokerages.

19) Compared homosexuality to bestiality and necrophilia in DOMA court filings.

20) Opposes government funding for abortion, a perfectly legitimate medical procedure.

Sadly, there's a lot more fodder for this list. Stay tuned.

Please put other items in the comments. I've already done more of this list in posts scheduled in the future, but there is room for new items at the end.

 

From TruthOut 2/15/11:

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved plantings of three genetically engineered (GE) crops in as many weeks, including Monsanto Co.'s Roundup Ready sugar beets and alfalfa that are engineered to tolerate Roundup Ready weed-killing herbicide.

The USDA on February 11 also legalized, without restriction, the world's first GE corn crop meant for biofuel production. Biotech giant Syngenta's Event 3272 seed corn will simplify ethanol production and is not meant to feed animals or humans.

Farming corn for ethanol is a process that contributes to Global Warming because it takes more energy from fossil fuels to grow the corn in this country than the ethanol generates. Corn millers also are afraid that this corn will contaminate the food corn supply as well.




The alfalfa and sugar beet approvals are even more dangerous. Alfalfa is used for animal feed, and sugar beets get refined into sugar that goes into all sorts of processed foods without any knowledge by the people eating it.

You may have read biotech interests claiming that genetically modified food crops are the same as regular food crops. They even claim that they are being "scientific." However, it is not economically feasible to make a genuinely scientific claim that the food produced is the same.

1) There are too many non protein biochemicals alone to test.

2) There are too many proteins to test for the levels of each one.

3) It would be necessary to sequence every protein and RNA sequence or the corresponding DNA sequences. (This would be needed to guard against multiple DNA sequence insertions into the genome, modifying the structures of protein and RNA.)

4) The levels of pesticides and herbicides would need to be tested.

5) The levels of every biologically active air and water pollutant would need to be tested as well, since genetic changes could affect absorption and secretion of these chemicals. (For instance, if any corporate shill says that their frankenfood is the same, ask them to cite a specific study showing that the levels of hormones in common birth control pills are the same. Ask for similar citations about Viagra and Cialis while you are at it. Or, try Lipitor...maybe Naproxen.)

Think that's bad enough? It gets worse.

Instead of Truth in Labeling laws so people can be informed about the food they are eating contains genetically modified organisms, the laws are set up so that the chemical/biotech companies can actually sue food producers who put the fact that their items do not contain genetically modified organisms.

The only way to be sure that genetically modified foods are safe is to do long terms studies like the famous "nurses studies" where people report when they are eating the GMO foods and when they are eating non-frankenfoods. The chemical/biotech industry has made damned sure to make those studies impossible.

As usual, the Obama administration has put short term corporate profits above human needs and peoples' safety. Corporate pseudoscience is being tarted up like it was the actual product of the Scientific Method. It's as if Bush is still in the White House.

Photo: jurvetson

 

I know you are shocked, just shocked that a queer Republican doesn't like queers.



Hat Tip: Back to Stonewall

GOShame is one pathetic group of people.

 

This is absolutely sickening. (WTAQ 2/13/10)

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee says the transfer of $75 million over the last six years wasn't an effort to shield its assets from sex abuse settlements.

The families of sex abuse victims implied moving the money was something like a shell game during a bankruptcy hearing before a federal trustee. An attorney for the victims also asked about another $55 million put into a trust a year after the Wisconsin Supreme Court opened the door for victims to sue the archdiocese.

A spokesperson for the church denies the allegations, saying it has been liquidating all non-essential assets for years to help pay the costs of therapy and voluntary settlements. The spokesperson says the archdiocese had been holding the $75 million for local parishes in an investment account, then returned it when it quit offering those services.

The church says it only has $7 million available for settlements, but the families of victims apparently intend to challenge that figure.

Enormous money transfers like these are what you would expect from corporations evading taxes through offshore scams. This definitely should result in a criminal investigation.

By the way, there is a NYC angle to this story. Current NYC Archbishop Timothy Dolan was in charge of that subsidiary of the Roman Catholic Church when those incredibly suspicious money transfers took place. If the Roman Catholic Church were an accountable organization, Dolan already would have been forced to resign. However, it's far more likely that Ratzi or a future pontiff will make the scumbag into a "saint."

madhavaji

 

Here's some food for thought. (Hat Tip: Tim Scared Stiff)



That reminds me of how advertising of Big Pharma's drugs has made it difficult for people to get accurate information about drugs in this information overload.

The criticism of Wal-Mart as job killing has been verified by a study by Hunter College and New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. Yet, Mubarek Michael Bloomberg insists on shoving their job killing stores down our throats.

 

Here are some interesting news stories that haven't been emphasized by the US corporate media.


Hundreds of Iraqis protest lack of basic services (Reuters 2/11/11)

Lawyers lead anti-government protest in Baghdad (AP 2/11/11)

Iraqis step up protest in job and food crisis (The National - Abu Dhabi 2/6/11)

Iraq's Maliki says he won't seek 3rd term, in possible reverberations from Egypt (Washington Post 2/11/11)

Someone who hasn't followed the Iraq story might be asking, "But, isn't Iraq a democracy?" Hardly. George W. and Barack Bush have rigged all the elections there to keep a divided and impotent government in place, a government that was so weak it couldn't even kick out Blackwater (now Xe) after that employees had gotten caught killing Iraqi civilians. If this vote rigging sounds shocking, remember that the 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections were stolen.

If freedom and democracy keep spreading in the Middle East, would it really be that surprising if the Iraqis decided they want some too? No one could blame them for taking what supposedly had been given to them by Saddam Hussein and then by George W. Bush.

Let's hope the Iraqis finally get their freedom.

 

Today is Darwin Day!

The website has a history of Darwin's life and accomplishments.

Did your school censor evolution partially or entirely out of your Biology classes, leaving them an incomprehensible mess? Learn the basics of evolution.

Here's some reasons to celebrate Darwin Day:



Props to the American Humanist Association for all they have done to support Darwin Day!

 

Check this bullshit out. (CNN International 2/12/11)

The plan focuses on three tiers of training:

-- Tier one for experts who may frequently deal with "don't ask, don't tell" repeal matters, like chaplains and military lawyers.

-- Tier two for senior leaders who will need to oversee education and training of the troops in their command.

-- Tier three for the rank-and-file, active-duty service members, reservists and civilians working for the Defense Department.

On March 1 Clifford Stanley, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, will provide a progress report on the preparation for repeal to the White House, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The memo says the "don't ask, don't tell" law will not be repealed until, among other milestones, the tier one and tier two training is complete and tier three training is underway.

That's correct. The first "progress report" will be due on March 1. Big fucking deal!

Lifting the ban isn't some highly complicated military maneuver. All that is needed is an order to end all the discharges and witchhunts. That's it.

I smell a rat.

Remember a couple of months ago when the military ban supposedly was lifted? There was legislation overturning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Bill Clinton's more draconian version of the military ban that passed early in that heterosexist administration.

The Obama Administration's record on the military ban hasn't been good either. They have given us a steady diet of foot dragging. When pressed by queer activists on the issue, Obama and his toadies kept saying they had "more important" things they had to get done. Those "more important" things always involved stealing from the middle class and the poor to give to the rich and the corporations they own.

Although President Obama claimed to be so worried about government spending, he insisted on spending government funds on appealing two rulings in separate court cases which overturned the ban as unconstitutional. His PR people flat out lied when they said he was obligated to appeal the cases.

In Congress, Obama and the Democrats responded to LGBT activists with delay, delay, delay. It was only after liberal and moderate voters were horrified at their deal to continue and expand on tax cuts for the rich (while raising taxes on the poor), that the Democrats threw their base and voted to "overturn" the current version of the military ban.

However, there was a catch. The ban would only be lifted when Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a homophobic holdover from the Bush regime, felt like it.

He hasn't felt like it.

I'm starting to wonder if Obama is deliberately delaying again in hopes he can make another "compromise" with the GOP that keeps the ban in place after all. After all the lies and betrayals we have seen from this administration, there is no way that anyone with an IQ over 60 will trust them on anything.

Photo: afagen

 

Scapegoating public employees has become a favorite pastime of corporate media outlets, and Faux News is leading the way. Never mind that states are in fiscal troubles for two reasons:

• - The Great Recession directly resulting from misconduct by corporations and the wealthy.

• - Rich people not paying anywhere near their fair share in taxes.

Of course, Falafel Man cites Rupert Murdoch's wildly unreliable New York Post as his first source. What do you call it when Rupert Murdoch's propagandists start citing each other as sources?

Circular Unreasoning

Don't Delay! Order Today!

Photo: sskennel

The venomously bigoted, corrupt, extreme right organization, the "Democratic Leadership Council" which was really an organization that followed the lead and ideology of the Republican extreme right, is gone, gone gone. That's right. They are following their ideological clones at the Crystal Cathedral into bankruptcy.

The group was once chaired by Bill Clinton because Bubba thought the Democratic Party wasn't sufficiently corrupt, racist, sexist, and homophobic to satisfy him. He pushed through their hateful, GOP style policies throughout his time as President. Those very DLC policies drove Democratic voter turnout way down and kept it down, handing Congress to the GOP in 1994 and keeping them in power throughout the rest of his presidency.

(Lieberbush was Chair from 1995-2001, providing an example of just how reprehensible that organization truly was.)

The DLC proved itself to be sleazy all the way up to the bitter end. If you check their website, their main focus of late was trying to ship more American jobs abroad during the Great Recession.

One of the comical sideshows to all of this is that the corporate media keep portraying an organization whose political views are far to the right of the overwhelming majority of Americans as "centrist." Maybe the DLC's agenda was towards the center of the ideology of the rich Republicans who own these media outlets, but it sure was loony right for the bulk of us.

Obviously, the wealthy interests behind the Democratic Liquidation Council still have enormous power over the Democratic Party. However, it is nice to see one less organization in this world promoting bigotry, discrimination, and blatant political corruption.

Illustration: ddogbreath

 

There's so much room in our political system for parody.



 

I keep reading and hearing about the right's latest round of obsessive drooling over one of the most evil figures in US History, Ronald Reagan.

When I think of Ronald Reagan, I think of all the people who died because of his AIDS policies. Some of those people were people I knew.

Reagan should have been prosecuted for mass murder and genocide. He deserved to die in a prison hospital for his crimes in universal condemnation. Praising Ronald Reagan is the moral equivalent of tattooing a swastika to one's forehead. There's just no excuse for it.

 

Image: bjornmeansbear

The fab folks at the American Humanist Association have done something special for this year's Darwin Day. They have set up ecards to mark the occasion. (For folks who like the paper old school way, they even let your print the cards rather than emailing them.)

Here's a brief description of Darwin Day for the uninitiated from the Darwin Day site.

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
February 12, 1809 to April 19, 1882
A Global Celebration
Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin -- the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

The International Darwin Day Foundation website provides resources and publicity for individuals and institutions across the world to celebrate science and humanity every year, on, or near, February 12, Darwin's birthday. In addition to information about the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, this website provides practical examples, advice and templates for organizing and publicizing Darwin Day events. It also provides a directory of events where you can find celebrations taking place near you or register your own event for others to find.

Recognizing science as an international language accessible to all individuals and societies, the International Darwin Day Foundation provides a new global holiday that transcends separate nationalities and cultures. Darwin Day can be celebrated in many different ways: civic ceremonies with official proclamations, educational symposia, birthday parties, art shows, book discussions, lobby days, games, protests, and dinner parties. Organizers may include: academic societies, science organizations, freethought groups, religious congregations, libraries, museums, galleries, teachers and students, families and friends. In Darwin Day, we are able to recognize the diversity among us, while celebrating our common humanity and the universal understanding we share.

Remember: Darwin Day is February 12th.

 

Photo: Kenny Miller

Mayor for Life Michael Bloomberg has thrown a fit because parents didn't passively go along with his plan to close public schools so he can replace them with useless, for profit charter schools. (From CBS New York 2/4/11)

The educational panel was given a tongue-lashing Thursday night by an angry crowd. Another tongue-lashing came on Friday, this time from an irritated mayor who accused the crowd of overstepping its bounds, reports CBS 2′s Sean Hennessey.

Before the hearing about the school closures even began, parents, students and teachers chanted, help up posters insulting new Schools Chancellor Cathie Black.

Schools Chancellor Cathie Black, who mixed it up with a crowed during another schools closure meeting earlier this week, was again drowned out by shouting protesters. Black has come under withering criticism since Mayor Michael Bloomberg tapped her to succeed former Chancellor Joe Klein.

That's right. Parents, mostly poor, dared to stand up to the rampant corruption of the Bloomberg administration and its past two Schools Chancellors. According to Mayor for Life Bloomberg, that is unacceptable.

The mayor said what happened wasn’t one of the city’s finest moments. “This is embarrassing for New York City, for New York State, for America,” Bloomberg said.
...
“This is not democracy. Letting people yell and scream, that’s not freedom of expression,” Bloomberg said. “That’s just rying to take away somebody else’s rights.”

Obviously, these are deeply classist and racist lies by our pathetic excuse for a mayor. They also are the height of hypocrisy. Bloomberg is in no position to lecture anyone else about democracy when he has used hundreds of millions of dollars of money from his personal fortune and from his fascist Bloomberg media empire to buy the mayor's office three times in a row. Not only has Bloomberg repeatedly shown his fanatical hatred of middle class and poor New Yorkers, he has shown an equally uncompromising hatred of democracy and everything else America stands for.

Under the grossly unqualified and incompetent previous Schools Chancellor Joe Klein, the public schools in NYC fell further behind private schools that educate the children and grandchildren of Bloomberg's parasitical rich friends. Under Bloomberg's direction, Klein kept his focus away from educational improvement and pushed for poorly run but profitable charter schools. Klein also followed the Mayor for Life's instructions to change our city's public schools from educational institutions to test taking academies. That has been profitable for educational testing corporations, but it has damaged a school system that needs improvement, not corporate raids and hollowing out under The Shock Doctrine.

Now, Mayor for Life Bloomberg has put in another unqualified corporate shill, Cathie Black, in charge of slowly bleeding the public schools and trying to keep the vast majority of New Yorkers so horribly educated so that they won't be able to figure out Bloomberg and other super rich, corporatist parasites are doing to them and our society.

Bloomberg sees those of us who live in NYC as his personal serfs, who better be grateful for the abuse his administration heaps on us. He reminds me more and more of Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali every day.

 

These are some of the Koch Industries subsidiaries you may decide not to do business with. (Source: Wikipedia viewed 2/3/11)

Among Koch Industries’ better known subsidiaries across various industries are:
- Georgia-Pacific paper and pulp company, maker of Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper, Mardi Gras napkins and towels and Quilted Northern toilet paper.
- Invista, a polymer and fibers company that makes Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra fiber, among other products.
- Koch Pipeline Company LP, that owns and operates 4,000 miles of pipeline used to transport oil, natural gas liquids and chemicals.
- Flint Hill Resources LP, that operates oil refineries in six states.
- Koch Fertilizer, LLC, owns or has interests in fertilizer plants the United States, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and Italy, among others. In October 2010, a plant in Venezuela was nationalized by the government.

You also might be interested in a protest a few days ago against the Koch's secretive meeting with other rich rightists in posh Rancho Mirage, CA.


Photo: losinghand

 

I received this Action Alert in an email from Credo/Working Assets (It has been edited for brevity.):

Call Attorney General Eric Schneiderman: Hold Wall Street criminals accountable!

Call New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at (800) 771-7755.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has a chance to make sure some of Wall Street's biggest criminals don't get away with cheating millions of foreclosure victims. But we need you to make a call right now.

Less than a month ago, the lead Attorney General in a 50-state investigation of the mortgage industry, Tom Miller of Iowa, promised a group of foreclosure victims and their advocates that the investigation would "put people in jail."1

This was in response to revelations from Congressional hearings and news articles documenting pervasive abuses by mortgage servicers — the companies that collect the mortgage payments, impose late fees, negotiate loan modifications and initiate foreclosures.

But now AG Miller has changed his tune, calling the investigation "inherently civil," not criminal.2 And just last week, when AG Miller once again met with foreclosure victims, he refused to repeat his pledge to prosecute those responsible.

That's why we're teaming up with our friends at National People's Action for a national call campaign targeting the attorneys general of every state. Join thousands of activists across the country in calling your state's attorney general to demand that Wall Street's biggest criminals are held accountable for their crimes against foreclosure victims.

Call New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman now and demand criminal penalties for corrupt mortgage servicers.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — (800) 771-7755

I would mention that Schneiderman should go after all the other crimes being committed routinely by Wall St. as well.

Andrew Cuomo did very little as Attorney General to crack down on the Wall St. banksters and brokesters. However, Schneiderman campaigned on a promise to be "The Sheriff of Wall St." I do know that politicians try to weasel out of campaign promises when interests that make big campaign contributions are involved. That's why it is so critical for people to remind our new Atty. General of his responsibilities.

On a lighter note, here are some great quotes about banksters I ran in a previous posting about a year ago.

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.
Bertolt Brecht

I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They`re first in with their fees and first out when there`s trouble.
Earl Warren

But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.
Josiah Stamp

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.
James Garfield, 20th US President
Assassinated, 1881

Photo: wot_nxt