The News We Lose While Americans Snooze

Your military industrial complex is hard at work, while your main stream media is acting like jerks to ignore it. They are setting the stage for the next 9/11, while some celebrity gets all the headlines. A brief blip. A quick explanation. A mistake is claimed (an unacknowledged first!) A revision of the facts. First there were six and now there are five. And...someone in the USAF has stolen a nuclear weapon.

Six nuclear weapons are locked and loaded on a jet in Minot, ND. 13.5 hours later (after a 3.5 hour trip,) five nuclear weapons are discovered locked and loaded on a jet in Barksdale, LA.

To write this off as a mistake is to overlook the frothing at the mouth for a war with Iran by the Resident and his puppet master. The domino's are in place for martial law on the homefront. I used to be paranoid. Lately, I'm just sad.

Now...into the circle file.

Politics as it should be talked about.

One step forward, two steps back. When Bob Shieffer derided the scramble to interview Paris Hilton, I applauded the man. There is so little to applaud on Sunday AM talk shows. The next Sunday he’s back in the style of all the bubble heads. Everyone’s talking about the London car incidents as cars filled with explosives. Gasoline is NOT an explosive! To create an explosive using gasoline as a part, the air/fuel ratio is critical and must be controlled. In essence, those three cars weren’t even good Molotov cocktails. Of course that label, "Three badly made Molotov Cocktails," is not as titillating or fear inducing as propaganda necessitates, which explains the terminology. Excited fear is the need Du’ Jour in order to mold public backing for bombing Iran. Funny that the same tired, talking point spouting, chicken-hawks that fed us the lies that led to the debacle that exists in Iraq, now have carte blanque credibility on their prognosis of the threat Iran poses.

I’m watching Ralf Nader, thank you Amy Goodman and Democracy Now, and I’m reminded, once again, why I voted for him every time he’s been on the ballot. Twice when he wasn’t. Did he cost Al Gore the election? No, Gore won. It was only the media and the Supreme court that thought $hrub should win and worked to give the office to him. Even the Repugs know he stole it. “Washington, DC, is Corporate occupied territory,” is a quote that is missing from all current Presidential candidates. You can’t fix anything till you know the root cause of the problem. Which leads to the next paragraph.

Two items for your consideration. Over half the budget is for the military. What, no waste or unneeded programs? How about the F-22 which has rizen in cost from $40 million to $400 million each. The US government pays more than half of all medical payments. By paying all, it would immediately reduce costs by at least 30%. A practical, radical solution towards resolving the world’s health care and the US's fiscal crisis': Stop using war to resolve political and economic problems. Not only does it not work, it is in fact, counter productive.

Now, into the circle file...

Cheney Flip Flops and other's News on Freedom

Funny how us ordinary people could see the writing on the wall when the SCOTUS nominees were up for confirmation. Now, with freedoms and rights being slapped down from on high, the dumb Demos are beginning to catch on (Thank you ICH):

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) echoed that sentiment in a statement: "When they were nominated, John Roberts and Samuel Alito insisted they would be neutral umpires. Now that they are on the Supreme Court, every big call seems to go in favor of corporate and government power, and against ordinary citizens."

Freedom of Corporate speech? Schools ability to limit student speech?

Speaking of freedom of speech, Eva Liddell has a good piece on ICH

From the first grade on and up through the university system citizens are systemically taught not to judge for themselves. We are taught we have freedom of speech but we are trained not to think. We think we have academic freedom because we are trained to believe we are free. The ultimate goal of our educational system, the dogmatic smothering of minds is overseen by the Department of Education, state boards of regents and the university education departments.

Real free speech at work, concerns untested vaccines given to troops headed to Iraq. What Washington's version of supporting our troops really looks like.

"They asked us our name. We stood on these yellow footprints, and they gave us this shot, and we got the rest of the day off," he recalled. "After that shot, I started swelling up. I gained 30 pounds of water. My eyes swelled up where I couldn't see. I started snoring. I developed a rash on my hand."

Now, into the circle file...

Bye Bye Democracy

Once again Paul Craig Roberts not only hits the nail on the head as to where our country is heading if we don't wake up the sheeple and do a 180* fishtail, but drives it home with clear, simple language that not only connects the dots, he does so in an irrefutable manner. In this age of empty talking heads and propaganda puppet pundits, it is easy to see why he cannot be found in the arena of the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Congressional-Media. Even Joe Six-Pack would understand and respond to his message. His commentary deserves a full read, so no quotes here.

On a note more complicated, yet still vital, Columbia, the media giant not the Country, is on the verge of eliminating our electronic privacy. They have a court order (pending appeal) that is requiring an ISP to begin keeping records of all data passing through RAM to be used in the future as evidence of past transgressions. Everything you type, say, see, and hear with your computer passes through its RAM which makes this a prosecutors wet dream, but in reality points out the ignorance that inundates our society. Sorry, but that's as simple as I can explain it. The upshoot goes as follows:

For example, if you have a VOIP-based phone system (where conversations appear momentarily in RAM in your data center), are you responsible for recording every phone call for potential disclosure in litigation?

The article ends simply:

If you're worried about government-issued wiretap orders, maybe it's time to start worrying about Hollywood-issued ones too.

An other Alternet article concludes this rant. Statistical analysis (.pdf) of talk radio proves the lie of a "Liberal" bias. Not that any Neo-Con-Repug bothers with facts.

Now, into the circle file...