Here's a funny Gilbert & Sullivan-inspired musical spoof called "Obama: A Modern U.S. President!"

Some people consider Jeff Beck Group's Truth to be the first Heavy Metal album. I wouldn't go that far, but I do love the heavy blues and sleazy grooves that the super-group laid down. The band consisted of Beck, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood on the bass, and Mickey Waller on the drums. Check it.

Truth
	Artist: Jeff Beck Price: $26.44 (As of 10/15/10 05:16 pm details)

It's time to stand up to violent rhetoric and demand change. And that's exactly what Drummond Pike, CEO of the Tides Foundation has decided to do by going to the advertisers of Glenn Beck's program--the one that so inspired and motivated domestic terrorist Byron Williams (and yes, I'm going there)--and telling them their continued sponsorship makes them equally culpable:

Drummond Pike, who along with his organization was recently targeted by an assassin inspired by Beck's program, penned a letter on Friday to the Chairmen of the Boards of JP Morgan Chase, GEICO, Zurich Financial, Chrysler, Direct Holdings Americas, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Lilly Corporate Center, BP, and The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.

In it, he detailed the alarm he felt over having a "person carrying numerous guns and body armor" attempt to start a "revolution" by murdering "my colleagues and me."

To say we were "shocked" does not adequately describe our reaction. Imagine, for a moment, that you were us and, had it not been for a sharp eyed highway patrolman, a heavily armed man in full body armor would have made it to your office with the intent to kill you and your colleagues. His motive? Apparently, it was because the charitable, nonpartisan programs we run are deemed part of a conspiracy to undermine America and the capitalist system, which is hogwash.[..]

I respectfully request that you bring this matter of your company's sponsorship of hate speech leading to violence to the attention of your fellow directors as soon as possible. I believe no responsible company should advertise on Fox News due to its recent and on-going deplorable conduct.

While we may agree to disagree about the role our citizens and our government should play in promoting social justice and the common good, there should be no disagreement about what constitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse - even when allowing for and encouraging contending diverse opinions intelligently argued. This is not a partisan issue. It's an American issue. No one, left, right or center, wants to see another Oklahoma City.

The next "assassin" may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands. The choice is yours. Please join my call to do the right thing in this regard and put Fox News at arm's length from your company by halting your advertising with them.

Now, because I can already hear the pearl clutching from the right wing blogs: THIS IS NOT CENSORSHIP OF GLENN BECK. Glenn Beck can continue to say anything that floats through the transom of that brain of his and no one--including the government (which is how the First Amendment applies)--is stopping him from speaking. But Glenn Beck (or anyone, in point of fact) is not guaranteed a national platform with corporate sponsors. This, you right wing lurkers, is your vaunted free market at work. There's nothing wrong with pointing out that their advertising dollars is sponsoring rhetoric that is inciting violence. Those corporations simply have to decide if it's worth the possible business lost if they continue to do so.

There are multiple campaigns that reach out to Beck's sponsors. My personal favorite is StopBeck.com and they've been very successful. The NY Times reported a total of 296 sponsors have dropped Beck. In fact, they reported that due to combined efforts, Glenn Beck's program in the UK have not had a sponsor for almost EIGHT MONTHS. That should also give you an idea of how this is not a profit-driven move for Murdoch and Ailes, because there's no way they're making a profit off Beck's program. You can get a list of Beck's remaining sponsors here.

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Credit: Sallie Davies

Over the last ten years, I have become increasingly politicized about my food choices. I try to buy my produce from local farmers' markets; I won't buy from Whole Foods; I generally look for organic choices. I've also eliminated fast food from my kids' diets. That last item was/is the hardest part. Being kids, getting a toy with lunch is a big bonus.

One of the things I did was make my kids watch Morgan Spurlock's "SuperSize Me" to help them understand that Mommy wasn't being an arbitrary meanie, but that I cared about what went into their bodies. The bonus features included this scene where Spurlock bought McDonald's food and watch to see if it decomposed, and that brought it home for my kids.

That's some scary stuff there. If it doesn't break down in air, what the hell is it doing in your body? My kids won't eat at fast food restaurants any more. Artist Sallie Davies recreated the experiment for her Happy Meal Project.

That's the disturbing point brought home by the latest project of New York City-based artist and photographer Sally Davies, who bought a McDonald's Happy Meal back in April and left it out in her kitchen to see how well it would hold up over time.

The results? "The only change that I can see is that it has become hard as a rock," Davies told the U.K. Daily Mail.

She proceeded to photograph the Happy Meal each week and posted the pictures to Flickr to record the results of her experiment. Now, just over six months later, the Happy Meal has yet to even grow mold. She told the Daily Mail that "the food is plastic to the touch and has an acrylic sheen to it."

Don't expect it to decompose any time soon:

Wellness and nutrition educator Karen Hanrahan has indeed kept a McDonald's hamburger since 1996 to show clients and students how resistant fast food can be to decomposition.

Fourteen years? That's not a happy meal...that's sick.

I do get a little tired of the fact that war seems to be our major export these days. Now we're all upset because Great Britain is making defense spending cuts? I don't get it:

The US has made an eleventh hour intervention in the highly charged defence review as Britain's top military brass launched a last ditch attempt to persuade David Cameron to water down the cuts.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Robert Gates, the defence secretary, both voiced concerns about the planned cuts as the heads of Britain's three armed services marched into No 10 in uniform to express unease about plans to cut the Ministry of Defence budget by 10%.

As the prime minister welcomed General David Petraeus to Downing Street, Washington highlighted concerns that Britain will scale back military spending to the level of weaker NATO members.

In an interview with BBC Parliament's The Record Europe in Brussels, Clinton was asked whether she was worried about the planned cuts in Britain. "It does, and the reason it does is because I think we do have to have an alliance where there is a commitment to the common defence. NATO has been the most successful alliance for defensive purposes in the history of the world I guess, but it has to be maintained. Now, each country has to be able to make its appropriate contributions."

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Bill O'Reilly's controversial appearance on The View Thursday gave MSNBC's Keith Olbermann just the excuse he needed to let loose on the conservative pundit.

O'Reilly may have become Thursday's most talked about story after his comments caused two hosts of ABC's popular daytime show to walk off the set.

The Associated Press detailed the walk off:

Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the stage of "The View" during an argument with Bill O'Reilly over the proposed Islamic center near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The women objected to the Fox News Channel host saying that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

Olbermann, who has a longstanding feud with O'Reilly, couldn't let the opportunity pass without using his "Worst Person in the World" segment to call out the Fox News host.

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Crossposted from DownWithTyranny

Yesterday's widely read, though Murdoch owned, NY Post ran a story by Stephen Meister about how the big bad Democrats are bullying the poor banksters. If only!

If Democrats get their way, we'll soon have a nationwide freeze on home foreclosures -- imposing vast new losses on mortgage lenders and taxpayers, sidelining panicked homebuyers and pushing off a housing-market recovery for years. You can thank bullying politicians, from President Obama on down to most state attorneys general.

I have yet to see news of a single borrower coming forward to say the bank foreclosed on his home when he wasn't in default on his mortgage. On average, one of every three homes being foreclosed on is vacant, and the borrowers haven't made a single payment for a year and a half.

Yet millions of pending foreclosures will now be halted. This is a massive overreaction to technical faults in affidavits.

Sure, banks cut corners in dealing with a never-before-seen flood of millions of foreclosures. That's not right-- but it's also not right that 18.9 million homes are vacant and millions of homeowners aren't paying their mortgages.

The lending industry should fight back-- but it's too fearful of being demonized by opportunistic pols.

This doesn't only fit in with the wall of sound from Murdoch's vast broadcast empire-- thanks for that, Bill Clinton-- it also fits in with an e-mail chain letter reaching millions of deluded right-wing voters from coast to coast. It's all about the old children's story-- that goes back to the time of the Ancient Greeks-- of the hardworking ant and the profligate grasshopper.

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:

Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, It's Not Easy Being Green...

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.

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This back and forth must be nervewracking for gay members of the military, because they know nothing's final yet. The administration's DoJ has announced they will appeal the ruling:

The Pentagon announced Thursday that it will comply with a court order to stop enforcing its "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring gays from serving openly in the military, even as the Obama administration asked a federal judge to delay implementation of the ruling.

Officials say they need time to institute new policies to ensure that the change won't affect combat readiness or morale. The administration has said it will appeal the ruling to the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

In the meantime, "the Department of Defense will of course obey the law," Col. Dave Lapan, a department spokesman, said in an e-mail to reporters. The Pentagon will cease investigations and discharges of service members found to be in violation of the policy, officials said.

Despite the Pentagon's announcement, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund, a group that supports ending the ban, has encouraged gay military members not to disclose their sexual orientation.

"It is clear there is confusion, and this interim period is dangerous for service members," Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis said in a statement. "Our service members need finality."

So I've been endeavoring of late to learn more about the past history of elected officials, often through books on my nightstand or browsing through past blog posts by colleagues. For example, at my home blog, OpenLeft.com, where we do some Senate race rankings, I noted recently then-Rep. Barbara Boxer's work in the 1980s to obtain federal funding to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic when no one would touch "gay cancer", as it was often called at the time, or when she marched on the Senate to protest the Judiciary Committee's treatment of Anita Hill. It's not that "what have you done for me lately" doesn't matter, but I like to look at a body of work to determine how valuable someone is.

And so I came across this piece of nostalgia from Russ Feingold, posted by my fellow OpenLefter Matt Stoller several years ago:

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Nothing like more fearmongering from Republicans and pushing the myth that we need to turn the Social Security trust fund over to Wall Street in order to "save it", but that's what we heard from Sharron Angle during her debate in Las Vegas with Harry Reid.

The moderator asks Reid about the Social Security trust fund and Angle’s claim that Reid helped to raid the fund to offset the deficit. Reid defended his position on Social Security and talked about fighting against George Bush’s attempt to privatize it and also pointed out that the fund is solvent for the next thirty five or forty years and after that even if they don’t do something to fix it, the short fall would be about fifteen or twenty percent.

Reid asked to stop the fear mongering over Social Security and whether those T-bills would be paid back or not. Here was Angle's response.

Man up Harry Reid. You need to understand that we have a problem with Social Security. That problem was created because of government taking that money out of the Social Security trust fund. In 1990 you said it was stealing to use Social Security for anything but Social Security and then you voted to take that Social Security money into the general fund where it leads to general use for generally anything.

When you did that you left IOUs there, the special Treasury bonds that are kept in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg West Virginia. What we need to do is keep our promises to our senior citizens by putting the money back in the trust fund and going forward allowing our workers to have the option of a personalized Social Security retirement plan that becomes an asset plan to them just like your THRIFT savings plan is an asset to you. If it’s good enough for you, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

I'm still trying to figure out what "vote" she's talking about, because the money does not go into the general fund whether they've borrowed against it or not as noted in the link below, and as FDR's grandson pointed out back in August. Angle appeared to be reading straight from the writings of Dr. Allen Smith who claims that the trust fund has been "embezzled" because the politicians have allowed the funds to be borrowed against. While I agree that they should not have borrowed against those funds, and I think they should be paid back, Sharron Angle's "solution" of privatization is utterly ridiculous. You notice that she also says that the money need to be "put back" into the fund to take care of seniors, but doesn't say where that money should come from.

Listening to the doublespeak out of this woman is enough to give a person whiplash, but she's not the only one doing this. She was simply reading straight out of the Republican playbook. They all hate Social Security and always have and want to dismantle it. They'd get rid of it for seniors and everyone else who is collecting those benefits now except they know they'd be run out of town on a rail if they tried.

From the Social Security government web site and their myths and misinformation about Social Security.

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