Thursday, August 20, 2009

Why Does the Media Pay Attention to the “Opinions” of Fucking Idiots?

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by Richard Metzger


There should be a SPECIAL Darwin Award for Pamela Pilger, the crazy lady who yelled "Heil Hitler" to an Israeli Jew in Las Vegas the other day at the health care town meeting, I'm sure she needs no further introduction, we've all seen her act like a complete fool in this clip.

But have you seen this one? Gawker posted this hilarious… well, at least unintentionally comic video of Pilger being interviewed about her "political views" before the meeting started. This lady is one SERIOUSLY stupid human being. She fits into the category of "so stupid she doesn't know how stupid she is." How do I know this? Because her husband has "two, no three jobs" and he doesn't have health insurance… and she is still against universal coverage! Amazing but true. How much dumber could you be than Pamela Pilger?!?!?! She's the new low IQ poster child!

But I ask you, how is it possible that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh can convince these poor dumbasses to be against the very things that would actually benefit them the most—guaranteed health care in a cruel fuckin' world—in the one life they'll ever get?!?! It boggles the mind. Pamela Pilger in her staggering stupidity is a one-woman microcosm of the wider conservative KNOW-NOTHING mindset these people have. Facts? Who cares about FACTS? THIS is who is fighting against health care for all, a woman whose very own husband lacks coverage!

WHY ARE THE MEDIA PAYING ATTENTION TO THE OPINIONS OF FUCKING IDIOTS?

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/why_does_the_media_pay_attention_to_the_opinions_of_fucking_idiots/

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Hippocrates taking his oath

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News Break: Record Month for Renewable Energy in the U.S.

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By

wind_energy_purple_hazeThe latest Electric Power Monthly Report released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows net U.S. electrical generation from renewable sources (biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind) reached an all-time high in May of 2009, comprising 13% of the total electrical generation for the month.

Renewable sources for May '09 generated 40,395,000 Megawatt hours (Mwh), 7.7% higher than for May of 2008, and thus far the highest figure ever reported by the EIA.

Total generations for all sources, including fossil and renewable, was down for May of 2009 from the previous year by 4.1%, representing the third-largest percentage decline in national power generation since 1974.

Of the 13% from renewable for May of '09, 9.4% came from conventional hydropower and 3.6% from non-hydro renewables. From that 3.6% of non-hydro, 1.8% came from wind, 1.3% from biomass, 0.4% from geothermal, and 0.3% from solar thermal and photovoltaics (the numbers are rounded). Compared to May of 2008 wind net generation increased by 12.5% (with generation increases in the state of Iowa representing 52.2% of the national increase). Conventional hydro increased by 10.2% from May of 2008, and solar thermal and photovoltaics were up 3.5%.

Coal generation fell by 14.8% and petroleum liquids by 8.3% from May of 2008 to May of 2009. This is the fifth consecutive month of historically steep declines in coal-fired generation as compared with the same month from the previous year.

http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2009/08/16/news-break-record-month-for-renewable-energy-in-the-u-s/

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Bible Study in Public Schools: Let's Pray on It

by Jeff Schweitzer

The Legislature in Texas in a fit of religious fervor mandated in 2007 that starting in 2009 public schools must teach the "literature and history" of the Good Book. To avoid the obvious constitutional problems of separating Church and State, the law is carefully worded to provide a fig leaf to cover true and rather obvious intent , much akin to how Creationists attempt to hide religious purpose behind the guise of academic freedom.

But rather than continue to engage in this tiresome battle, I say let's fight fire with fire, or at least brimstone with brimstone. Let's agree to teach the bible in all of its bloody, misogynous, murderous, fratricidal glory. Let's teach our impressionable children the following facts about the word of god:

• Exodus 21:20-21
It's OK to kill a slave, because he is nothing but property, but only as long as he does not die from a beating until at least one day later.

• Exodus 21:7
If in need of a little extra income, a father could simply sell his daughter. And of course a female slave is worse off than a male slave; a male slave is automatically freed after 6 years; the woman is never freed.

• Exodus 21:17
The penalty for cursing your parents is death. Perhaps this is not such a bad idea...

• Deuteronomy 22:21
If a woman presents herself as a virgin but is not, on the wedding night, she is to be taken to her father's house and stoned to death. Notice that men do not suffer such a fate. Coincidentally, only men wrote the 66 books that constitute the bible. Women might have fared better with a bit more gender diversity in authorship.

• Leviticus 20:13
Of the exclusively male homosexual acts prohibited by the bible, the penalty for any transgression is death. (Nothing in the bible prohibits lesbian sex).

• Leviticus 16:1-34
God seems to kill people simply for disobeying his word; to get on his good side, these passages in the bible tell how to sacrifice bulls, rams and goats to atone for sins and please god.

But don't think only the Old Testament is nasty and brutish.

• Matthew 10:34
Jesus is no man of peace by his own words: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I come not to send peace, but a sword.

• Matthew 10:21
Jesus will tear families apart: brother will kill brother, father will kill child, and children will kill parents. That is all OK because it is more important to love Jesus, as we learn next:

• Matthew 10:36
A man's foe shall be they of his own household. Jesus tells us here that if we love our mother and father more than him, we are not worthy. Now there are some family values!

• Matthew 11:20-24
Jesus condemns entire cities to dreadful deaths and eternal damnation because they did not like his sermons.

• Mark 7:9-10
Jesus supports the Old Testament view that disobedient children should be killed, and then criticizes the Jews for not following that law.

• Luke 12:5

Jesus says that we should fear God since he has the power to kill us and then torture us forever in hell; classic effort by religion to frighten people into belief

• John 3:36
If we didn't get the point in Luke, John tells us here that if you don't believe in God, you will feel his wrath forever in hell. Again, not a loving God, but one to be feared as mean and spiteful.

Let us also teach our kids about the amazing inconsistencies in the bible about critical issues. The many authors, none of whom ever met Jesus, can't even agree on when Jesus was born.

• Matthew 2:1
Here Matthew claims that Jesus was born when King Herod was alive:
"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king..."

Matthew goes on to say Joseph and Mary only returned to Egypt with their infant son after Herod died. The timing is unambiguous.

• Luke 2:1-5

Luke claims that Jesus was born when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, which did not take place until at least ten years after Herod's death.

He specifically mentions the time Mary is pregnant with Jesus when Caesar Augusts imposes a new tax when Cyrenius was governor of Syria; but he did not become governor of Syria until at least 10 years after Herod died.

So even with the most generous interpretation, Matthew and Luke differ by more than 10 years on the year Jesus was born. That diminishes the credibility of both given that they cannot even get correct this basic bit of biography.

Genesis is equally confusing, giving us two completely different accounts on the creation of man between two passages just a stone's throw apart one chapter away. On the one hand we are told god made Adam, anesthetized him to extract a rib from which he made Eve, and sewed him back up, completing the world's first surgical procedure. We are then informed that no, in fact god made Adam and Eve at the same time. Specifically,

• Genesis 1:26
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

But wait, that is not quite right. We are told just a few passages later that god made only Adam first, and then Eve.

• Genesis 2:7
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

• Genesis 2:19
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

The bible cannot even get the story of creation right. If Adam had his rib removed for nothing we could be witnessing the first case of medical malpractice.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/bible-study-in-public-sch_b_254677.html

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Seniors reliving prohibition days

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Weed making inroads among retirees

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laguna woods villageAlthough California has a huge population of residents carrying prescriptions for medical marijuana, the social stigma attached to the drug has led the elderly to be very hesitant about adopting it as a palliative for age-related problems such as loss of appetite, nausea and chronic pain.

Now a luxury retirement community in Orange County, Laguna Woods Village, whose residents have discovered pot's benefits, has made weed easier to obtain by establishing its own pot collective.

The community set up its collective because, although there are thousands of clinics in the state selling marijuana, none were convenient to the residents, some of whom have very limited mobility.

For the greatest generation, taught to believe that marijuana was as addictive and deadly as drugs such as heroin, the reality has come as a pleasant surprise to many. NPR reports on the epiphany of a 73-year-old Leisure World resident and synchronized swimmer who found it effective in countering her nausea.
The fact that the retirees are receiving recommendations to try pot for their ills from their peers leads me to believe that the use of it on the West Coast has reached a critical mass. We could well see demand for legalization, at least for medical reasons, swell among the retiree community across the country.
 
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It's Time to Legalize Drugs

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By Peter Moskos and Stanford "Neill" Franklin

Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn't know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested.

In many ways, Dante Arthur was lucky. He lived. Nationwide, a police officer dies on duty nearly every other day. Too often a flag-draped casket is followed by miles of flashing red and blue lights. Even more officers are shot and wounded, too many fighting the war on drugs. The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. Perhaps counterintuitively, better police training and bigger guns are not the answer.

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) -- college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers -- can deal indoors.

Six years ago one of us wrote a column on this page, "Victims of the War on Drugs." It discussed violence, poor community relations, overly aggressive policing and riots. It failed to mention one important harm: the drug war's clear and present danger toward men and women in blue.

Drug users generally aren't violent. Most simply want to be left alone to enjoy their high. It's the corner slinger who terrifies neighbors and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with guns.

In high-crime areas, police spend much of their time answering drug-related calls for service, clearing dealers off corners, responding to shootings and homicides, and making lots of drug-related arrests.

One of us (Franklin) was the commanding officer at the police academy when Arthur (as well as Moskos) graduated. We all learned similar lessons. Police officers are taught about the evils of the drug trade and given the knowledge and tools to inflict as much damage as possible upon the people who constitute the drug community. Policymakers tell us to fight this unwinnable war.

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601758.html

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Death panel

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

GOP logic

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The Fifty Top U.S. War Criminals Who Need To Be Prosecuted

 
The former Bush administration officials rank at the top of the list of the 50 most nortious war criminals living in the U.S.
The former Bush administration officials rank at the top of the list of the 50 most notorious war criminals living in the U.S.

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

The list below does not include those responsible for war crimes prior to 2001. Nor does it include those currently in power who are making themselves complicit by failing to prosecute or cease commission of these crimes. The list could be greatly expanded. It could also be narrowed. I would argue, however, that it presents a more reasonable starting place than Holder's reported proposal to investigate only CIA employees who failed to comply with criminal torture policies, of whom there are no doubt more than 50.

Because each of the people on this list should be nonviolently protested everywhere they go (more on that below), I have organized them by location. Please post updates on where they are as comments at http://afterdowningstreet.org/warcriminals

CALIFORNIA

1. John Yoo: Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California, with house at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, (but a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it) counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result. Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child. Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and defended by the Washington Post, and again confronted in the classroom.

Additional collaborators:
2. Robert J. Delahunty, Yoo colleague, should be disbarred in NY
3. Patrick F. Philbin, Yoo colleague, Deputy, should be disbarred in D.C. and MA

4. Jay Bybee: federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, California (but Bybee based in Las Vegas), counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by helping Yoo draft the memo linked above. He signed not only torture memos but also a memo purporting to legalize illegal and unconstitutional wars. BYBEE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. He works, among other places, at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, — This is a giant marble building in the center of the city represented in Congress by the Speaker of the House.

5. William J. "Jim" Haynes, II: was General Counsel to the Department of War ("Defense"). He is now Chief Corporate Counsel at the Chevron Corporate Office in San Ramon, California. He counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by drafting memos for Yoo. Works at Chevron Headquarters, 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583. Member of bar in GA, NC, DC.

More collaborators:
6. Major General (Ret.) Michael E. Dunlavey, (now Judge, Erie County Court, Common Pleas, Erie, PA
7. Diane Beaver, top military lawyer at Gitmo
8. Jack Landman Goldsmith, III, [the illegal transfer memo in March 2004], DoD General Counsel's Office at Pentagon
9. Ms. Eliana Davidson, International Law Division, Office of the General Counsel, Office of the Secretary of "Defense"

10. Colin Powell: strategic limited partner with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, appears as a speaker in a series of motivational events called Get Motivated, board member of Revolution Health and of the Council on Foreign Relations, took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people, lied to the United Nations about the grounds for war in a failed attempt to legalize a war of aggression, and was in fact a leading liar in making the false case for an illegal war of aggression.

Remember: Not every man in a dark suit is a war criminal. Check for blood under their fingernails to confirm identification.

http://pubrecord.org/commentary/3717/fifty-criminals-prosecuted/

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Backbone

dems-spine

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NASA Researchers Make First Discovery of Life’s Building Block in Comet

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PASADENA, Calif., (NASA) — NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

This is an artist's concept of the Stardust spacecraft beginning its flight through gas and dust around comet Wild 2. The white area represents the comet. The collection grid is the tennis-racket-shaped object extending out from the back of the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL
This is an artist's concept of the Stardust spacecraft beginning its flight through gas and dust around comet Wild 2. The white area represents the comet. The collection grid is the tennis-racket-shaped object extending out from the back of the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL

Elsila is the lead author of a paper on this research accepted for publication in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The research was presented during the meeting of the American Chemical Society at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, D.C., August 16.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which co-funded the research.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins.

Stardust passed through dense gas and dust surrounding the icy nucleus of Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt-2″) on Jan. 2, 2004. As the spacecraft flew through this material, a special collection grid filled with aerogel – a novel sponge-like material that's more than 99 percent empty space – gently captured samples of the comet's gas and dust. The grid was stowed in a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth on Jan. 15, 2006. Since then, scientists around the world have been busy analyzing the samples to learn the secrets of comet formation and our solar system's history.

http://spacefellowship.com/2009/08/18/nasa-researchers-make-first-discovery-of-lifes-building-block-in-comet/

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Even more advertisers leave Glenn Beck

by Stephen C. Webster


When RAW STORY ran a blog just last week detailing the stunning success of a campaign to knock advertisers off the Glenn Beck television show and radio program, our story was stunningly successful, with almost 3,000 votes on Digg and tens of thousands of page views.

But that kind of response is likely just a taste of the pressure to drop Beck currently being applied to numerous major U.S. corporations.

Because of that pressure, Color of Change announced today that Walmart, a key bank with GMAC Financial Services, Best Buy, CVS, Travelocity, Re-Bath, Broadview Security and Allergan have all backed out, bringing the list of former Glenn Beck advertisers to Twenty.

Other high-profile companies shaken loose from the Fox editorialist's fold include Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, State Farm, S.C. Johnson, GEICO, Men's Wearhouse, Sargento, ConAgra, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis and RadioShack.

"We are heartened to see so many corporate citizens step up in support of our campaign against Glenn Beck," said James Rucker, executive director of Color of Change, in a media advisory. "Their action sends a clear a message to Glenn Beck: Broadcasters shouldn't abuse the privilege they enjoy by spewing dangerous and racially charged hate language over the air. No matter their political affiliation, hate language doesn't belong in our national dialogue."

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/even-more-advertisers-leave-glenn-beck/

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Rethink Afghanistan (Part 6): Security

The war in Afghanistan is increasing the likelihood that American civilians will be killed in a future terrorist attack.

Part 6 of Rethink Afghanistan, Security, brings you three former high-ranking CIA agents to explain why.

There is no "victory" to be won in Afghanistan. It is the most important video about U.S. Security today.

Become a Rethink Afghanistan Producer: http://rethinkafghanistan.com
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Obama tells veterans Afghanistan is a 'war of necessity'

His speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference gave the president a chance to tout efforts to modernize the military, boost veterans' medical care and eliminate wasteful spending.

 
President ObamaReporting from Phoenix - Speaking to more than 5,500 veterans, President Obama on Monday renewed his commitment to dismantling Al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- a struggle he said was "fundamental to the defense of our people" -- and offered assurances that his healthcare overhaul would not touch veterans' medical benefits.

"This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity," Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference -- cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

With U.S. forces scheduled to leave Iraq by 2011, Obama pledged that in the future, he would only send service members "into harm's way when it is absolutely necessary."
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Fox News's Live Desk completely misplaces Iraq






By GottaLaff

Via Raw Story:

As Tweetpic'ed from user stefanoscalia, this image was broadcast by Fox News on July 27, 2009, during Live Desk.

Maybe you can spot the problem here ...

http://www.rawstory.com/images/new/foxnewsfailsgeography.jpg



Pssst... ClusterFox! Hint:

http://www.godweb.org/maps/img/middle_east_pol_2003.jpg
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What if Democrats behaved more like Republicans???

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New Rule: A-hole in One Shouldn't Be Obama's Game

by Bill Maher

New Rule: President Obama must give up that awful habit that sets such a bad example for young people. I'm talking, of course ... about golf.

Golf, if you're not familiar, is a pastime where you basically walk outdoors with a bag, muttering and cursing. It's like being homeless in loud pants. Anyway, Time magazine is reporting that since he became president, Barack Obama has taken up golf with a passion, playing almost every weekend for the past few months -- and I feel betrayed. He campaigned as a basketball player. It said to us, "I'm urban and athletic and hip and a team player." Golf says, "I like Lipitor and white collar crime." And it's not just golf -- he's been purposefully eating a lot of hamburgers in public lately, to prove he loves meat. And he said that, unlike before he became president, he prays all the time now and that his Faith and Neighbor Initiatives Director sends him scripture on his Blackberry to start every day. Jesus, is there something about that house that turns people into assholes?

I kid the Commander in Chief, he's very far from an asshole, he's a cool dude, and I want to keep him that way! I don't want a regular guy running the country. We tried that for eight years and New Orleans still smells like mildew. Obama was different. He wasn't Joe Six-Pack. He had a six-pack. And when he gave a speech it didn't make English teachers cry. He wasn't some regular schmuck who spent five hours a weekend on the golf course. Why? Because he actually likes his family!

But Democrats have this bad habit of letting the Republicans scare them into acting more "regular guy" than they really are, and then they look inauthentic. Like Hillary drinking shooters. Like Dukakis in the tank. So I'm putting you on notice, Barack Obama: you're from Chicago, the day I see you in a duck blind, I'm taking my hope elsewhere.

So that's why I'm so worried when I see my president playing golf, because golf is a slippery slope. First comes the golf attire, then the golf stories and pretty soon you're telling black jokes. What's worse is that you know Obama doesn't really wanna be golfing, he's just doing it because he thinks it will relax the white people. "How could I be a socialist, I'm putting!" Well, I've got news for you, Mr. President, the people who think you want to kill their Great Aunt Millie aren't going to be swayed by a photo-op on the golf course. They see those photos, they're not thinking you're just like Tiger Woods, they're thinking, "Here comes the Angel of Death, and he's got a nine iron."

There is also a more serious side to this, because golf, hamburgers, and religion are all things that are incredibly bad for the environment. According to the U.N., in 15 years almost two billion people will be living in conditions of absolute water scarcity. And yet, a golf course in Palm Springs consumes as much water per day as an American family uses in four years. Golf courses in America consume over 114 million gallons of water a year on grass that doesn't even get you high. Golf courses also need large quantities of fertilizers and pesticides whose run-off pollutes the ground water for miles around.

This isn't just a third world problem -- there's a water shortage right now in the western United States. If I surpass my monthly water allotment here in Los Angeles, I'll get fined by the city. If I do it twice, they'll send 40,000 prisoners to live in my backyard.

But when it comes to bad for the environment, nothing -- literally -- compares with eating meat. The business of raising animals for food causes about 40 percent more global warming than all cars, trucks, and planes combined. If you care about the planet, it's actually better to eat a salad in a Hummer than a cheeseburger in a Prius.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-a-hole-in-one-sh_b_259281.html

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Who's a Nazi now?

If Obama's a goose-stepper, according to Rush, then what about Ike, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dubya?

The GOP and far-right media have been working hard to define socialism down. Now everything is socialist: healthcare reform, the New Deal, the Great Society, even presumably Bo Obama, the president's federally housed dog.

Even GOP icons are socialists under the new definition: Ike's Interstate Highway system, Teddy Roosevelt's parks, Richard Nixon's Environmental Protection Agency, George W. Bush's enormous government debt and spending. The only people who aren't socialists: Conservatives who take Social Security, use Medicare, farm on land irrigated and electrified by the feds, grow crops according to the latest federal farm program giveaways, drive on freeways, listen to FCC-licensed talk radio stations, and have their mail delivered by a uniformed agent of the federal government six days a week. No, these people hate socialism.

Now that we've established who's a socialist, the new argument is whether or not you're a Communist socialist or a Nazi-style National Socialist. Last April, I wrote about the right's creeping Nazi rhetoric against Obama in a story on fake populism called "Sieg Heil Obama". One of the dangers is that formerly fringe ideas and claims are being mainstreamed. The healthcare debate, with Congressional representatives being branded as Nazi eugenicists for programs that don't even exist (the so-called "death panels"), is a logical, planned outcome.

The result can be seen in absurdities like a lecture on National Socialism by Rush Limbaugh. Hitler, he tells us, was a socialist. Well kind of. He was an anti-communist fascist dictator who fused the nation's and corporate interests under an iron hand. He was a kleptomaniac who ran a regime that looted Germany and numerous other countries for the benefit of a few. He went to war against the world and massacred millions of people in the Holocaust. Limbaugh says, when discussing National Socialism, you have to put the Holocaust aside — the implication being, aside from not killing Jews and gypsies, Obama, the Democrats, and healthcare reformers are in the same Hitler mold.

Some Republicans are honest enough to call this insane, from David Brooks to former Reagan administration supply-sider Bruce Bartlett, who bravely says what the GOP ragers are really mad about is George W. Bush. It was he, even more than Bill Clinton, who grew government, broke the financial system, failed to address health care. He also expanded the national security state. Republicans, like Limbaugh, spent years defending these depredations. Now they're out of power and they've only got themselves to blame.

Thus, it's easier to hurl the worst insults to obscure the fact that your guy screwed up. As Bartlett wrote on The Daily Beast: "Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect. They can start building some by admitting to themselves that Bush caused many of the problems they are protesting."

http://crosscut.com/2009/08/18/mossback/19169/

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Woman yells ‘Heil Hitler’ to Jewish man praising Israel’s national health care system.

Conservatives have strenuously denied that there is any anti-Semitism on display by anti-health reform protesters at town hall meetings nationwide — despite all the evidence to the contrary. Last week, Las Vegas radio station KDWN AM720 sponsored a "contentious" town hall, emceed by conservative morning show host Heidi Harris. At the event, local news stations were interviewing an Israeli man who was praising the "fantastic" "national health care" in Israel. During his remarks, a woman yelled out, "Heil Hitler!" The man stopped, became visibly upset, and exclaimed, "Did you hear this? She say to a Jew, 'Heil Hitler'! Hear? I'm a Jew! You're telling me, 'Heil Hitler'? Shame of you!" After he angrily confronts her, the woman mocks him by making a crying sound to imply he is a whining baby. Watch it:

 
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DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

 
 

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

"You can just engineer a crime scene," said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. "Any biology undergraduate could perform this."

Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.

The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.

Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyone's DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Celebrities might have to fear "genetic paparazzi," said Gail H. Javitt of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.

Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome.

"DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints," she said. "We're creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=1

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The Lanny Davis disease and America's health care debate

Davis' history is as long and consistent as it is sleazy.  He was recently hired by Honduran oligarchs opposed to that country's democratically elected left-wing President and promptly became the chief advocate of the military coup which forcibly removed the President from office.  He became an emphatic defender of the Israeli war on Gaza after he was named by the right-wing The Israel Project to be its "Senior Advisor and Spokesperson."  He has been the chief public defender for Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman and the Clintons, all of whom have engaged his paid services.  And as NYU History Professor Greg Grandin just documented:

Recently, Davis has been hired by corporations to derail the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize, all the while touting himself as a "pro-labor liberal."

Davis was also the chief U.S. lobbyist of the military dictatorship in Pakistan in the late 90s and played an important role in strengthening relations between then President Bill Clinton and de facto president General Perez Musharraf.

Most recently, Davis has aggressively attacked progressive critics of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey after Mackey, whose company targets progressive consumers, published a Wall St. Journal Op-Ed opposing health care reform.  Needless to say, Davis had been hired by Whole Foods, serving as its lawyer in a protracted and expensive (i.e. profitable for Davis) antitrust battle with the Federal Trade Commission.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/18/davis/index.html

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Republican moron

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Townhall beatings

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Are Democrats too scared of losing to win?

 
c

By Steven C. Day

According to the generally dependable Nate Silver, Democrats have a lot to worry about in 2010. Not only does he predict that the party will lose seats in Congress, he sees some risk, small but not trivial, that the GOP could actually win back the House. But what's particularly interesting is the reason for Silver's pessimism: it seems that there's an enthusiasm gap between the two parties -- one that favors the Republicans. Right now, Republican voters are much more motivated than Democratic voters.

So, what is the Democrats' response? Will they, at long last, start playing to the base a little? Perhaps even start aggressively pushing liberal priorities in an effort to fire up the troops? Or at a very minimum, will they at least start feeding the base a little red meat by raising holy hell over GOP lies and obstructionism?

That would be a no.

Quite to the contrary, it would seem that Obama & Co. have chosen this very moment to declare war on the Democratic Party's progressive base by abandoning their support for a public option in the healthcare reform bill. Yeah, that's the ticket: continue to suck up to a fraud such as Chuck Grassley, who, not satisfied with merely endorsing the "death panels" lie, has also taken to hawking books for ultra-nut Glenn Beck. Or how about throwing the entire progressive base under the bus so as to please Kent Conrad as he continues to undercut efforts at real reform?

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/9216

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Picasso's Guernica in 3D

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Sixty House Liberals To White House: No Public Option, No Health Care Reform

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by Greg Sargent

One interesting side plot in the health care wars: The debate over the public option has suddenly reminded us that there are in fact two houses of Congress, something that's been easy to forget amid the media obsession with the "bipartisan" negotiations in the Senate.

Case in point: This very tough letter sent last night by House progressive leaders to Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, stating unequivocally that 60 House Dems will not support a health care plan without a public option:

Dear Secretary Sebelius,

We write to you concerning your recent comments about the public option in health insurance reform.

We stand in strong opposition to your statement that the public option is "not the essential element" of comprehensive reform. The opportunity to improve access to healthcare is a onetime opportunity. Americans deserve reform that is real-not smoke and mirrors. We cannot rely solely on the insurance companies' good faith efforts to provide for our constituents. A robust public option is essential, if we are to ensure that all Americans can receive healthcare that is accessible, guaranteed and of high-quality.

To take the public option off the table would be a grave error; passage in the House of Representatives depends upon inclusion of it.

We have attached, for your review, a letter from 60 Members of Congress who are firm in their Position that any legislation that moves forward through both chambers, and into a final proposal for the President's signature, MUST contain a public option.

The letter, via Jane Hamsher, is signed by House proressive leaders Raul Grijalva, Lynn Woolsey, and Barbara Lee.

The letter's unequivocal: Five dozen House Dems say, No public option, no support.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/sixty-house-liberals-to-white-house-no-public-option-no-health-care-reform/

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Report: Gay men systematically targeted for torture, death in Iraq

 

"Iraq's leaders are supposed to defend all Iraqis, not abandon them to armed agents of hate," says Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Turning a blind eye to torture and murder threatens the rights and life of every Iraqi."

The report includes documentation of horrific and systematic torture, rape, and murder of victims. Some of it is really hard to read. One gay man who was targeted says,

They came to my parents' house a day later. I was out of the house when it happened. The neighbor's son has the same given name and so they kidnapped the wrong guy. When they found out they let the boy go, but they beat him severely-they wanted to kill him. They tortured him with electricity, they beat him with cables. He looked like a roast chicken when he came home.
In a BBC report, Iraqi gay rights campaigner Ali Hilli believes Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, and says that even during the Saddam years, there was greater sexual freedom for citizens: audio link.
 
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/17/report-gay-men-syste.html
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Cash for Clunkers didn't boost hybrid sales

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The federal Cash for Clunkers program is getting a lot of trucks and sport-utility vehicles off the road, but it hasn't made best-sellers out of the Prius or other gas-efficient hybrids.

The purpose behind the program was twofold: boost anemic consumer spending while lowering gasoline consumption. There's no doubt that Cash for Clunkers accomplished the former, though interest now appears to be tapering off. It's less clear what the trade-in program has accomplished on the environmental front.

Much to the chagrin of public-interest groups, a fair number of U.S. consumers are turning right around and buying new light trucks with their credits from the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS.

The Toyota Prius and Honda Insight, two of the most popular and fuel-efficient hybrids, are noticeably absent from the top-10 list of new cars purchased to replace turned-in clunkers.

"It appears that despite some of these glowing (federal) reports we've seen on the environmental benefits of the program, a lot of light trucks and SUVs are being purchased through the program," said Lena Pons, a policy analyst Public Citizen, the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

http://www.sacbee.com/business/story/2117337.html

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Fiji Water: The Earth-Friendly Choice for Military Juntas Everywhere

by David Friedlander

fiji water.jpg
Image from Beverage World

A recent exposé in Mother Jones called "Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle" confirmed my common sense notion that drinking bottled water shipped from the South Pacific is a silly and wasteful idea. It also added myriad other reasons to not to drink Fiji Water.

Junta-Aid
Fiji has had 4 military coups in the last 25 years. The government du jour is lead by Commander (and now prime minister) Frank Bainimarama and President Ratu Josefa Iloilo. Because of a ruling last spring declaring the current government illegitimate, Iloilo suspended their constitution, appointed himself president and declared there wouldn't be elections until 2014. This totalitarian approach to government recently earned Fiji an expulsion from the Pacific Island Forum, an inter-governmental organization that represents the many independent island nations in the Pacific.

The author of the article Anna Lenzer was in the country when martial law was declared and was the subject of police intimidation. Amnesty International reports of Fijian freedoms, "there is a very strong military and police presence….[and there] is a constant and intimidating reminder that the new military regime will not tolerate dissent and will follow through on the warnings it has issued to critics."

In a response to Lenzer's article, the Fiji Water website claims of their relation to the recent political turmoil:

We bought FIJI Water in November 2004, when Fiji was governed by a democratically elected government. We cannot and will not speak for the government, but we will not back down from our commitment to the people, development, and communities of Fiji.

Besides conveniently sidestepping the specious circumstances that this "democratically elected government" came into power (i.e. through a 2000 coup), the company not speaking out about recent activity by Iloili et al appears like a self-preservationist strategy for a company that enjoys tax-free status.

In a rebuttal to the response to her article, Lenzer notes the contradiction between the company's touts of being a socially progressive company and its "no comment" policy on the junta's recent crackdown. She makes a good point saying:

It's worth remembering that there aren't very many countries ruled by military juntas today, and Americans prefer not to do business with those that are. We don't import Burma Water or Libya Water.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/fiji-water-the-earth-friendly-choice-for-military-juntas-everywhere.php
 
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U.S. tests system to break foreign Web censorship

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet.

The "feed over email" (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system.

The news feeds are sent through email accounts including those operated by Google Inc, Microsoft Corp's Hotmail and Yahoo Inc.

"We have people testing it in China and Iran," said Berman, whose agency runs Voice of America. He provided few details on the new system, which is in the early stages of testing. He said some secrecy was important to avoid detection by the two governments.

The Internet has become a powerful tool for citizens in countries where governments regularly censor news media, enabling them to learn about and react to major social and political events.

Young Iranians used social networking services Facebook and Twitter as well as mobile phones to coordinate protests and report on demonstrations in the wake of the country's disputed presidential election in June.

In May, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese government blocked access to Twitter and Hotmail.

Sho Ho, who helped develop FOE, said in an email that the system could be tweaked easily to work on most types of mobile phones.

The U.S. government also offers a free service that allows overseas users to access virtually any site on the Internet, including those opposing the United States.

"We don't make any political statement about what people visit," Berman said. "We are trying to impart the value: 'The more you know, the better.' People can look for themselves."

In addition to China and Iran, targets for the FOE technology include Myanmar, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57C5OQ20090813

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Calamity Sarah

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The Great Marijuana Book Bomb,

The Great Marijuana Book Bomb of 2009 - August 20, 2009

 The Bomb         About the Book         Endorsements         About the Authors 

Marijuana is SAFER
A book about marijuana has never hit #1 on Amazon.com. With your help that could change, and we can demonstrate to the country the depth of support for marijuana policy reform in this country. If it reaches #1, we will also draw national attention to the book's basic message -- that marijuana is safer than alcohol.

If you are planning to get yourself a copy of the critically acclaimed, Marijuana is Safer, we hope you will join hundreds of other supporters of more rational marijuana laws by making your purchase on August 20, 2009. (We would have preferred 4/20, but 8/20 will have to do.)

Just enter your email address below and we will send you a reminder about the Book Bomb before and/or on August 20.

If you are not yet familiar with the book, use the navigation bar above for a quick overview or make a non-purchasing visit to the Marijuana is Safer Amazon.com page, where you can read part of the book's Introduction and see additional endorsements.

http://www.marijuanabookbomb.com/

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Fuck the Man

Two New Anticorporate Books

Fuck the Man
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF Marketing himself.

When Douglas Rushkoff was mugged in front of his apartment building in a posh Brooklyn neighborhood, he did what just about any affluent white academic would do in response: First he felt guilty for his part in gentrifying Park Slope and leading his young attacker to a life of crime, and then he wrote the introduction to his new book, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (intro title: "Your Money or Your Life: A Lesson on the Front Stoop"), citing the mugging as a symptom of colonialism and, therefore, corporatism. This is classic Rushkoff, taking a personal experience or opinion and, without any supporting information, exploding it to the broadest scope possible. His book does not improve from this inauspicious beginning.

Rushkoff has been a cultural critic since 1994, the author of books with titles like Media Virus!: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture and Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say. You can find Rushkoff's influence everywhere in the alternative media: Most of the writers who contribute to antiadvertising magazine Adbusters plagiarize Rushkoff's tone if not his content, and his work has been published by virtually every countercultural publication worth noticing over the last 15 years. He even hosts a show called The Media Squat on grizzled independent radio station WFMU, in which he gleefully picks apart the corporate media for a worldwide audience...

While Rushkoff ­whines luxuriantly, other authors are actually fighting meaningful battles on the anticorporate front. Mark Thomas's Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola isn't as flashy a book as Life Inc. It received a low-key paperback original release in the United States, and it didn't make national best-seller status like Rushkoff's book. But instead of airing bloated complaints against Coca-Cola's advertising strategies, Thomas actually travels the world, discovering injustices and unfair business practices committed in the name of cornering the world's soda market.

In chapter after chapter, Thomas investigates dubious activities around the world that can be attributed to the Coca-Cola corporation. He lists eight trade unionists who have been killed after speaking out against Coca-Cola, and he uncovers legal agreements that would require other Colombian pro-labor activists to never criticize Coca-Cola again. In El Salvadoran sugarcane fields, he witnesses children being forced to work in clear violation of international child-labor laws. He interviews citizens of an Indian village whose water has been stolen—at a rate of just under a million liters a day—from beneath them by a local bottling plant. With the help of an internal informant, he levies charges that Coca-Cola deliverymen are—sometimes by force—removing competitor's sodas from neighborhood bodegas in Mexico. And he discovers a church in Mexico that has incorporated the soda into its rituals, inciting belches that purportedly push out negative energy.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/fuck-the-man/Content?oid=1972967

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One giant step for jumbo: Amputee elephant Motola is fitted with state-of-the-art artificial leg

Motola the elephant shows off her prosthetic leg
Leg up: Motala, 48, has been fitted with a prosthetic limb after her leg was blown off by a landmine
 
By Daily Mail Reporter

One small step for Motola the elephant, a giant leap for the world's injured animals.

Motola lost her foot and most of her left leg when she walked over a landmine ten years ago.

But yesterday, she stepped out happily - if a little tentatively - after being fitted with a state-of-the-art artificial limb.

In her first stroll with the prosthesis, 48-year-old Motola walked out of her enclosure for a few minutes, grabbed some dust with her trunk and jubilantly sprayed it in the air.

'It has gone very well - she has walked around twice,' said Soraida Salwala, founder of the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation in Thailand.

'She has not put her whole weight on it yet, but she's OK.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1206967/One-giant-step-jumbo-Amputee-elephant-Motola-fitted-state-art-artificial-leg.html#ixzz0OYHb9aR1
 
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Scalia says there’s nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent.

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scalia-gesture

By Ian Millhiser

Almost two decades ago, Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Since then, seven of the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, and some have even implicated Sylvester "Redd" Coles, a witness who testified that Davis was the shooter. In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable.

So in Justice Scalia's world, the law has no problem with sending an innocent man to die.  One wonders why we even bother to have a Constitution.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/17/scalia-actual-innocence/

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Campaign to win official apology for Alan Turing

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by Yakub Qureshi

The brilliant mathematician, who spent his key years at Manchester University, is hailed as one of the founders of modern computing.

But a conviction for homosexuality effectively ended his career. Troubled Turing went on to commit suicide in 1954, aged just 41.

Now a group of admirers of the scientist - named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time Magazine - are lobbying the government to make a posthumous apology.

Codebreaker

The Cambridge graduate was one of Britain's best wartime codebreakers - part of the team at Bletchley Park which unravelled the secret of the Enigma code machines used by German U-boats. Turing was awarded an OBE in 1945 for his wartime services to the Foreign Office and moved to Manchester to help work on the pioneering Mark 1 computer.

He was prosecuted for gross indecency for having sex with a man in 1952, but escaped jail after being offered an alternative of taking an experimental hormone treatment to reduce sex drive.

However, the case effectively ended his career and Turing fell into despair. His body was found by a cleaner at his Wilmslow home in 1954 - next to him was a half-eaten apple laced with cyanide. It was not until 1967 that laws against gay men were lifted.

More than 500 people have now signed the petition on the 10 Downing Street website to call for an official apology 'recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended his life and career'.

Hounded

John Graham-Cumming, a leading British computer expert who launched the campaign, said: "I think that Alan Turing hasn't been recognised in Britain for his enormous contribution because he died in his forties and almost certainly because he was gay.

"It is atrocious that we don't recognise this man and the only way to do so is to apologise to him. This man was a national treasure and we hounded him to his death.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1132035_campaign_to_win_official_apology_for_alan_turing

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Truth for Tea Baggers

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Monday, August 17, 2009

The Full of Shit Girl

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There's Just No Way Sarah Palin's Writing Her Facebook Notes

Just before midnight, a "note" was posted on Sarah Palin's Facebook page titled, "Concerning the 'Death Panels.'" Predictably, the media latched onto it and reported her thoughts. However, there's a problem: there's no way in hell Sarah Palin wrote it.

How do I know this, you ask? Well, the answer to that question is perhaps best explained by a comment someone named Marvin Settle posted under Palin's note. He wrote:

Wow, and the public thought she wasn't educated enough to be President? That is some of the most well researched and thought out material I have ever read. Thanks Sarah.

Exactly! Thank you Marvin Settle. Thank you very much.

The note in question is supposed to be Palin's response to Obama's response to Palin's infamous "death panel" Facebook note. Here's a sampling of it:

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these "unproductive" members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

"Let me just be specific about some things that I've been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't, it's too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they're ready on their own terms. It wasn't forcing anybody to do anything." [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled "Advance Care Planning Consultation." [2] With all due respect, it's misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often "if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain "the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice," and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now, let's just stop there because it doesn't even really take a careful examination of the entire note to deduce that it simply could not have been written by Sarah Palin, which leads one to pretty much dismiss all of the points it attempts to make. In fact, a cursory glance is more than sufficient to come to that realization as the note is obviously meticulously researched and footnoted, appears to be entirely grammatically correct (It even contains semicolons!), presents rather cogent arguments in a reasoned attempt to persuade, and on the whole is written articulately. In short, whoever composed this particular note is everything that Sarah Palin is not: thoughtful, patient, dedicated, thorough, and rational, traits that any casual, non-delusional observer of Sarah Palin would never, ever associate with her.

http://gawker.com/5336475/theres-just-no-way-sarah-palins-writing-her-facebook-notes

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