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Big Brass Blog is a group blog founded in February of 2005 by Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend and Melissa McEwan of Shakesville (formerly Shakespeare's Sister). The mission of this collaborative effort is to stand as the premiere forum where strong, enduring voices of Progressivism provide what liberal politics has been missing: the unapologetic, unrelenting voice of liberalism in the darkness visited upon our world by Right-wing extremists, their ruinous policies, and their hypocritical beliefs.
* U.S. less healthy than nations with universal healthcare
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects -- obesity, traffic accidents and a high murder rate -- are not to blame, researchers reported on Thursday.
Instead, poor healthcare may be to blame, the team at Columbia University in New York reported.
They found that 15-year survival rates for men and women aged 45 to 65 have fallen in the United States relative to the other 12 countries over the past 30 years.
Maybe that's why the population of America is 200 million instead of 300 million.
Toxicologist now dealing with at least three autopsies in Gulf � �People who�s esophaguses are dissolving.. these people have oil in their bodies�
We recently heard from his self-coronated, exalted majesty that:
On his radio show today, Beck wondered how many people in the country believe in evolution, and said he doesn't: "I don't think we came from monkeys. I think that's ridiculous. I haven't seen a half-monkey, half-person yet." "If I get to the other side and God's like, 'You know what, yep, you were a monkey once,' I'll be shocked, but I'll be cool with it," he said.
(First off, He's presuming he's going to meet with a divine being after living such a pious life)
Here's the question:
If a man is born with 6 fingers on each hand and should meet and marry a woman who also has six fingers on each hand, what kind of odds would allow for their offspring to be born with 6 fingers on each hand?
And if they were born thusly and met and married others with similar attributes would their progeny become the "norm" in succeeding generations?
Is it possible that someone running for office in this country, a 40 year old (virgin, she says), could actually be stupider than Sarah Palin? This moron makes you wonder at the intelligence of those who claim to be tea baggers. Are all you tea bigots as bright as O'Donnell?No wonder you support Republicans and hate yourselves.
AMENDMENT 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, or petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O�Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons� position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.
Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn�t belong in our public schools."
"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O�Donnell asked him.
When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O�Donnell asked: "You�re telling me that�s in the First Amendment?"
Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.
During an oil change, the mechanic for a gentleman named Yasir Afifi, a rather unexceptional college student and computer salesman, found that his car had been rigged by the FBI with a GPS tracking device. Why? Most likely because he is Muslim and supports his two brothers who live in Egypt. Some courts are ruling that these GPS tracking devices constitute unlawful warrantless searches, but others are finding that no warrants are needed, and the Supreme Court will probably agree, given that it has found that warrantless searches are perfectly fine on "public property."
If it's fine with you, too, don't check your car for a tracker. If it's not fine with you, perhaps you can remove it; but if you do, resist the urge to destroy the nasty little device, since the FBI will come to demand its "government property" back, and you most certainly want to avoid an indictment for destroying government property (or selling it on eBay, for that matter, what with how the hapless buyer might not give you a five-star rating after the FBI's SWAT-style paramilitary honkers come rappelling down through his roof with flash-bang grenades and action-movie Ninja-wear outfits).
Oh, yes, one more thing: the Obama Administration supports the warrantless use of these trackers. Let's give President Hope-'n-Change a free oil change and a nice round of applause for once again not letting that silly old Fourth Amendment interfere with good old authoritarian excess for the new American century.
With the help of his Unholy Legion already on the bench at the Supreme Court, Mr. Hoover's sponsor on the throne in Hades may soon approve a fiscal stimulus package that includes the much-anticipated Teabagger Moose Lodge & Trailer Park at the Capitol Building in Washington.
Let's see Mrs. Obama's "clean spirits" deal with that rezoning nightmare.
I�m going to let you guys in on a little secret and a great, make that super great investment tip. It�s a secret I�ve learned from an economics professor who has had the uncanny ability to correctly predict the disasters we�ve faced for the last 6 years and his insights and writings have enabled me to make this bit of financial advice available to you for free.
Now, normally you�d pay big bucks to some Wall Street Broker or Financial Advisor for this kind of tip, but here it is for free:
Forget about gold! Forget about oil investments. Even forget about buying up land with water under it. Take all your money out of your banks, liquidate your 401Ks (if you have anything left in them), cash in any CDs and insurance policies, sell your new gas guzzler and buy a 1986 Corolla, sell your house and live with your parents or kids, take every penny you have or can get and invest, buy or steal every bit of stock in the companies that make Vaseline and Preparation H!
The return on just those two over the next 10 years will put you in the 36% tax bracket while you sip Grand Marnier (served by brown people) off the French Riviera on the deck of your yacht as you stuff your face with the most expensive cheese money can buy.
Why?
It seems the banks we bailed out are delaying the foreclosure stint so they will �appear� to lose money (they say they're doing everything the can. Does that sound familiar? Eh, Barry?), then since every politician knows those same banks are too big to fail, Congress and our �chains we can believe in� president will bail them out again! Simple, no?
So. Banks give out huge bonuses (from the bailout they�ve already gotten from the taxpayers), stop lending to people and small business and sit on the money until the stock they owned drops low enough to buy it back at a huge profit, waste time telling America they're doing everything you can to help (someone!), then since their 1980s Reagan matured accountants, lawyers and financial usurers have made sure the books are as intelligible as a 25 inning score sheet, they'll cry to Congress for more money to bail them poor boys out.
The only problem they might face is not with the Republicans but whether the Democrats in Congress will prostrate themselves for the banks again.
Oh, they�ll use the same excuses they used the last time, because the public is even stupider this time and Congress knows it. And the politicians will do it with a smile this time instead of the feigned shock just like the last time.
Get ready to kick in even more of your tax dollars than you did last time and tighten your belts, save your pennies or whatever other clich� will be the phrase du jour. Oh, and Kleenex and toilet paper (but please don't squeeze the Charmin!) might not be a bad investment either.
Gold? Don�t make me laugh! A mere pittance. Sitting on cold, shiny metal can cause abnormal growths in certain areas and it really doesn't clean as well or provide healing or physical relief.
But if you invested in the stocks I mentioned, you should be sitting pretty, so to speak, while the rest of the country can�t get enough Vaseline and Preparation H!
�unless you think parts of your anatomy are already calloused enough to ignore the "coming" intrusions.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
--Thomas Jefferson
If you do nothing else today, watch this video clip. You will then begin to grasp the magnitude, as I did, of the levels of fraud being perpetrated against American citizens - tax-paying homeowners. And now, the government is looking for ways to let it slide.
(For all you smug, sanctimonious assholes out there who dismiss this as just being a problem of poor people with bad mortgages, guess again: YOUR HOME COULD BE SEIZED IF YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A MORTGAGE! IT HAS HAPPENED IN SITUATIONS IN WHICH HOMEOWNERS PAID CASH FOR THEIR HOMES! WAKE UP, DUMMY! THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS ARE ROBBING US BLIND!)
None this year. None the next. The government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through a second straight year without an increase in monthly benefits....Bette Baldwin won't be able to travel or help her children as much. Dorcas Eppright will give less to charity. Jack Dawson will buy cheap whiskey instead of his beloved Canadian Club.
Billions for bankers; not one red cent for Joe Shit the Ragman.
I have read so much in the news of tragic teen suicides, incredibly awful bullying, beatings, torture, and hideously regressive rhetoric from politicians in the last few weeks. Just yesterday the Tea Party candidate in New York unleashed a torrent of hate on the gay community.
Hatred & ignorance are born of a lack of understanding and exposure. Assumptions are made about a people or a class of people from hearsay. These urban legends become common beliefs in the absence of meaningful experience. Visibility of the gay community is the only way to educate and soften the views of the heterosexual majority. I think every person in America knows and perhaps admires a great person who is gay. The trouble is that they don't know the gay part. Knowing that lifts us all up.
Knowing that can cause reflection, revelation, and perhaps even support in the place of hate, taunts, and trauma.
Not only is their safety in numbers. In numbers we have power. In numbers we offer exposure. With this visibility, we step closer to equality. With visibility we tell those kids that we understand. With visibility we tell politicians they are wrong and why. With visibility we change long held beliefs of the unexposed to the new support and understanding of friends.
So, like I did so many years ago. Come out! Be proud. You are NOT who they say you are! You are a PROUD, BRAVE American living the dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
So...if CEO John Doe AND the Board hates politician John Smith and decides he should be eliminated and has one of his employees "volunteer" to do the deed, who gets hung for the crime? After all the corporation IS an individual entity (see Citizens United). Could the investors vote on whether or not to literally kill any competition or any person or persons standing in the way of their making money? That would be novel!
Should the corporation be charged with murder? COULD the corporation be charged with murder? The knee-jerk reaction would be the individual murderer would be the one charged, right? Not so fast. Are there instances in the past of corporations committing crimes and not being punished because the crime and if the crime were committed by an individual would get that individual sent to jail? Yet the corporation merely pays a fine even though the corporation knew and wanted the act done (we're not admitting to guilt but we'll pay the fine anyway!)? You or I would enjoy the luxuries of three bland meals per day, occasional visitation and prison rape.
What if mythical corporation "Jesus for Butterflys" decides the advocacy group "Collect Butterflies for Research" or even someone in the political arena is not their cup of tea and has that politician or that competitor killed? Further, the CEO asks for volunteers to do the job. There may be a standing line of people, from minimum wage nuts to MBAs to board members to investors wanting to be martyred. Many who would want the infamy of history associated with their names.
Now the individual is caught. He confesses that he was given instructions by corporate memo to complete the job. The CEO admits that they did want the politician killed. Do we go ahead and prosecute the individual or the corporation? Hmmm?
Now that's no different from a regular murder case. But what if a corporation intentionally decided to eliminate an entire group of people? Maybe in the name of some god or for corporate profit? Say, with the (covert) release of a poison gas in a city they consider sinful? Or the selective elimination of individuals through contaminated "flu shots" or medicines or food poisonings (bad onions, lettuce or hamburger!)?
The corporation is guilty but can it be charged as a murderer? If it's an individual it probably can. But who gets charged? The one who made the decision or the one who carried it out? Can you prosecute a family if the son kills someone the father and mother wanted dead? Nope! Does the same apply to a corporation...since its now an individual? Forget the accomplice thing, too many people involved. Can Scalia interpret that damn piece of paper with 60 degrees of separation to make it legal?
Imagine as an example, partisan "Jesus for Butterflys" radical Evangelical Right-Wingers being on the jury (don't think bias can be on a jury? Remember O.J.?) to determine the guilt or innocence of the corporvidual. Imagine further a hung jury or worse, a verdict of innocent. The corporation couldn't be then retried because of double indemnity. And should the corporation be found guilty, do you incarcerate ALL the corporation, even those who wanted the deed done and should be accomplices? No chance! Poof! Legal murder!
So the corporation lives on to kill again if it chooses. Select another martyr and...next!
Congratulations Chief Justice Roberts. You and the "Gang of FIve" just "legalized", beyond any doubt, murder by corporations in the United Corporate States of America.
Far fetched? Maybe. But these corporations have some really shrewd, traitorous, well stocked legal departments with zealous highly paid lawyers who don't care a wit about people outside the corporation. And if money and lobbying can't buy what the corporation needs or wants to run its business, then I guess...anything goes.
What we call little things are merely
the causes of great things; they are the beginning,
the embryo, and it is the point of departure
which, generally speaking,
decides the whole future of an existence.
One single black speck may be the beginning
of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution
--Henri Frederic Amiel
If you add a little to a little
and do this often,
soon the little will become great
--Hesiod
--I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
----Yes, sir.
--Are you listening?
--Yes, I am.
--Plastics. --The Graduate (1967)
___________________
This is a small story about small things observed in a day.
It began chatting with Josh, the guy cleaning up my computer and co-founder of one of our local internet providers. He's also a nature photographer, and a beautiful scene from the back door of his sister's home in the Bahamas led to talk of the Texas+-sized plastic Island in the North Pacific, so toxic for wildlife as the bits that compose it are mostly small and ingestible. We also have one forming in the Atlantic, which only seems right.
I have witnessed the result of this sort of pollution in our little town in one of our only lakes, when a paddling of ducks was trying to remove a partially-swallowed plastic bag from the mouth of one of its members. It was brave and heartbreaking at once, as each member would take its turn swimming beside the distressed bird, trying with its beak to dislodge the offending item. Finally, the bird swam close enough to lake's edge that I could walk out and retrieve what was a bag -- almost completely swallowed -- filled with some food garbage which someone had thoughtlessly tossed out.
Josh also discussed how he had wanted solar panels when they built their offices, but the contractor told them the weight and number of panels needed would have been prohibitive. Europe has the technology, but as the U.S. has no end of foul oil partners, it is not as pressing a concern here. We further discussed the waste materials from discarded hardware, and how the average person does not know how to properly dispose of such materials, which later clog our landfills.
As the repair was lengthy, he continued on with a story of poor home construction, and how so many openings were left between the wall and the floor of an addition that a snake had recently entered his home! He used some of that canned aerosol foam insulation and feels the cracks have been sealed, but the cedar facing will have to come down and he will now have to make the corrections himself.
For many of our shoddy local builders a wall is a token separation of one space from another, versus a well-insulated barrier from the elements which when done correctly reduces the squandering of electricity. FSU has a prototype of the ideal home of the hopefully not-too-distant future on their campus, dubbed the OGZEB (Off-grade, zero emissions building.) Water is the only city resource used. The NYT featured the Lumenhaus recently, using a similar idea. Europe's Passive Houses accomplish the goal today.
Two shopping transactions followed: a "super soft" toothbrush purchased at the health food store impressed as it was made entirely from recycled yogurt containers, and included a label and a mailer (the brush case) in which to return the old brush for recycling. It was also an excellent product. Next stop was the chain grocer, Publix.
I was returning an item, and wanted to re-load my Publix gift card with the amount. It is a minor matter that brings this to mind: The card has a pretty winter scene, and I wished to keep it for awhile. However, I learned the cards cannot be reloaded, and must be discarded after one use, and so was issued a new plain green card in its place, no more or less suitable than the one just discarded.
As an aside, Publix recently inaugurated their Greenwise section of mostly organic food, presumably appealing to the environmentally-conscious consumer. But there is a disconnect here in the small matter of hundreds of plastic cards hitting their garbage daily.
If one is committed to conservation, coloring your cards green instead of recycling them falls short of convincing.
"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl, June 12, 1895
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
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