WHAT A CIRCUS!

Dynamic Duo Dump

Philadelphia Too! And Fox!

Weeks after getting dropped from New York, Glenn Beck – and fellow-hate-monger Sean Hannity – got dumped from WPHT in the City of Brotherly Love. Ever classy, Beck promptly trashed the city where he got his start, making residents even less crazy about him. And a poll finds people aren’t so crazy about Fox anymore either! –Abby Z

 Glenn Beck And Sean Hannity Dropped From Philadelphia Radio Station

Yesterday, hate radio hosts Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity had their nationally syndicated radio shows dropped from WPHT in Philadelphia, the second radio station to drop both.

Two weeks ago, Beck was dropped from WOR in New York, but cancellation in Philadelphia hurts more. Beck started in Philadelphia, and many of his radio staffers still live in Philly, including Beck’s side-kick Stu. Beck immediately said, “Philly sucks.”

Last October, Hannity was dropped by Deseret Media Companies (DMC) in Utah a for-profit arm of the Mormons. Hannity’s drop may be a clash between DMC’s “Mission Statement,” which calls for “light and knowledge” and advancement of “integrity, civility, morality, and respect for all people,” and Hannity’s constant lack of civility.

Recent cancellations may be a pattern; advertisers and broadcasters grow wary over hate radio rhetoric. Color of Change reports 81 companies quit advertising on Beck’s Fox News show and Media Matter 100, including those who haven’t withdrawn ads yet. READ MORE: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/19/beck-hannity-philly/#

 Beck on Philly: Bluster of typical accuracy by Chris Satullo January 19, 2011. Glenn Beck, ubiquitous pundit and hawker of gold bullion, slandered our fair city. He fulminated about how no one in his right mind would walk the “killing streets around Independence Hall” after 6 p.m. for fear of being shot or stabbed. Here’s the audio. READ MORE: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/11450-beck-on-philly-bluster-of-typical-accuracy

"Excessive regulations" hamper business.

President Obama’s second year in office has been like his first: good news/bad news. Unfortunately, it’s been a little worse.

On endangered species, he revoked some damaging Bush-era policies and protected 120 million acres of habitat for the polar bear, but he also relegated 254 imperiled species to the unprotected “candidate” list and illegally removed gray wolves from the endangered species list. On climate, he began Clean Air Act regulation of CO2 from the largest smokestack polluters but blocked progress toward a science-based climate treaty in Copenhagen and Cancún and adopted a Bush-era decision to ban regulation of emissions to save polar bears. On oceans, he issued a positive decision on protecting Atlantic bluefin tuna, but exempted BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling projects and hundreds of others from environmental review — even after the Gulf oil-spill catastrophe.

Overall, the Center for Biological Diversity gives Obama’s two-year environmental record a disappointing “C-.” Check out President Obama’s report card for yourself.

Tunisians protest in central Tunis. Tunisia's interim president promised a "total break" with the past and hailed "a revolution of dignity and liberty," as prosecutors opened a vast inquiry against the previous leader. (AFP/Fred Dufour)

 Arab Leaders Warn of More Revolts Amid Growing Anger. Summit agrees $2bn aid for region as family of Tunisia’s former president is arrested. Catrina Stewart and Kim Sengupta in Tunis January 20, 2011 by The Independent/UK

 Tunisia began to search for millions of pounds believed stolen by the country’s ousted leader and his family. Arab leaders were warned that dire economic conditions could provoke a Tunisian-style revolt elsewhere in the region. Events in Tunisia inspired similar demonstrations, often at the risk of violent crackdowns by powerful security forces that are quick to stamp out dissent. In Algeria, thousands marched the streets to vent anger at rising food prices, while Jordanians staged demonstrations against high unemployment. Egypt, Oman, Yemen and Libya all witnessed large-scale protests for leaders to address high unemployment, soaring food prices and other economic woes.

A Tunisian-style revolt may not sweep across the region, but protesters and political opposition are nevertheless emboldened. The street vendor who triggered the Tunisian revolt when he set himself on fire sparked a wave of copycat self-immolations. At least 12 people set themselves on fire – seven in Algeria, three in Egypt – in the past week!

In an attempt to provide some relief, Arab League countries said they would back a $2bn aid program. Analysts warned that joblessness could only be tackled through a loosening of state control over the economy, a trend that prevails in many Arab states, and encouraging the growth of a private sector.

STUPIDOLOGY, a serious subject

READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/20-5

The only question is, "Is it a Disaster, or a Catastrophe?"

2010 Matches Record for World’s Hottest Year. UN climate scientists panel says human greenhouse gas emissions stoke climate change that will bring more floods, droughts and rising sea levels.  Stephanie Nebehay January 20, 2011 by Reuters

GENEVA – Last year tied for the hottest year on record, confirming a long-term warming trend, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.

The first ten years of the millennium are the hottest since records began in the 1900s. The trend will continue for years, how high depends on how much greenhouse gas is released. The difference between the three hottest years was less than the margin of uncertainty in comparing the data, from land-based weather and climate stations, ships, buoys and satellites. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/20-0

 

Uncle Sam Lost

 

Reversing ‘Citizens United’ by Katrina vanden Heuvel January 19, 2011 by The Washington Post 

It will be a year this week since Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative activist colleagues on the Supreme Court joined together in a dramatic assault on American democracy. Their decision in the Citizens United case overturned more than a century’s worth of precedent by awarding corporations the rights of citizens with regard to electioneering, allowing unlimited contributions from corporate treasuries to flood the electoral landscape. As The Nation noted, “This decision tips the balance against active citizenship and the rule of law by making it possible for the nation’s most powerful economic interests to manipulate not just individual politicians and electoral contests but political discourse itself.” Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), himself a victim of Citizens United spending, said, “It is going to be worse in 2012 unless we do something – much worse.”

Opportunity exists: Justice Roberts and allies overreached so brazenly that they opened a way for genuine reform. At the modest end is reviving the Disclose Act to require corporations to show how they spend money and provide disincentives for spending. However, this is triage if not accompanied by a broader push for bolder reform.

The Fair Elections Now Act has been introduced in Congress, but best is a constitutional amendment that corporations are not people and have no right to buy elections.

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) introduced such an amendment to beat back the court. “Justice Brandeis got it right,” she noted. ” ‘We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.'”

An August 2010 poll found 77 percent of all voters view corporate spending in elections as bribery. Broad majorities favor limiting corporate control over our political lives.

In a nation where recovery feels like recession, the suffocating grip of corporate money is anything but abstract. There is the clearest possible link between the rise of corporate power and the challenges of everyday lives. Corporate money can be blamed for watering down consumer protections and diluting health-care and financial reform. There is almost no conversation we have in American politics in which corporations don’t occupy all the seats at the table. Reversing Citizens United is about more than any one issue or court case – it is, at its base, a question of whether American democracy itself can beat back a corporate takeover, whether our most cherished principles of self-government can ultimately prevail. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/19-13

RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH » Corporate Marquee

Corporations are not persons

Corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings. Support a constitutional amendment to reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to firmly establish that money is not speech. Votes and participation count. Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments. Move to Amend

  Sachs Sucks

Goldman Defies Public Fury With Another £10bn Bonus Payout.  Stephen Foley in New York January 19, 2011 by The Independent/UK

Just say, "Yes!"

Goldman Sachs, mightiest of investment banks will reveal more bumper bonus payouts, averaging $450,000 (£280,000) per person, showing that bankers’ pay behaviour has failed to change. Goldman dominates trading and the continuing high level of bonuses comes despite declines in trading activity.

Goldman is viewed as “a giant vampire squid, wrapped round the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” (Matt Taibbi). Last week, Goldman published a 63-page report promising to tie bonuses to ethical practices. Earlier the bank was looking to raise $1.5bn in an exclusive share offer, known as a private placement, for the bank’s top clients, a “special purpose vehicle” set up to avoid US Securities and Exchange Commission rules that a private firm with more than 500 shareholders register and file public statements. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/19-0

LAST TAG:

 

Cheney Jumpstart

Txs! SeedsofDoubt.com

LIFTING THE VEIL

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Reform by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship March 27, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

That wickedly satirical Ambrose Bierce described politics as “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

Bierce vanished to Mexico nearly a hundred years ago — to the relief of the American political class of his day, one assumes — but in an eerie way he was forecasting America’s political culture today. It seems like most efforts to reform a system that’s gone awry — to clean house and make a fresh start — end up benefiting the very people who wrecked it in the first place.

Which is why Bierce, in his classic little book, The Devil’s Dictionary, defined reform as “a thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation.”

Give the victors their due: the bill Obama signed expands coverage to many more people, stops some very ugly and immoral practices by the health insurance industry that should have been stopped long ago, and offers a framework for more change down the road, if there’s any heart or will left to fight for it.

But reformation? Hardly. For all their screaming and gnashing of teeth, the insurance companies still make out like bandits. Millions of new customers, under penalty of law, will be required to buy the companies’ policies, feeding the insatiable greed of their CEO’s and filling the campaign coffers of the politicians they wine and dine. Profits are secure; they don’t have to worry about competition from a public alternative to their cartel, and they can continue to scam us without fear of antitrust action.  READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/27-0

Earth ‘Entering New Age of Geological Time’ by Murray Wardrop March 27, 2010 by The Telegraph/UK

The Earth has entered a new age of geological time – the epoch of new man, scientists claim.

Humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes on the planet that we may be ushering in a new period of geological history.  It is feared that the damage mankind has inflicted will lead to the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history with thousands of plants and animals being wiped out.

The new epoch, called the Anthropocene – meaning new man – would be the first period of geological time shaped by the action of a single species.  Although the term has been in informal use among scientists for more than a decade, it is now under consideration as an official term.

A new working group of experts has now been established to gather all the evidence which would support recognising it as the successor to the current Holocene epoch. It will consider changes human activities have brought to Earth’s biodiversity and rock structure as well as the impact of factors including pollution and mineral extraction.

It is hoped that within three years, their case will be presented to the International Union of Geological Sciences, which would decide whether the transition to a new epoch has been made. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/27

Celebrating (Mourning) a Culture of Lies by Robert Freeman March 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Tomorrow, March 29th, marks the thirty-seventh anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. You won’t hear it celebrated in any mainstream media, though it should be. Or more precisely, it should be mourned. Vietnam is the first war America ever lost.

It should be remembered so that we might learn the lessons of that loss. They are many, they are profound, and they could inform so many of our policy decisions today: that withdrawal from immoral wars doesn’t mean the end of civilization as we know it; that even America’s seemingly limitless resources are, in fact, limited; that masses of engaged, moral individuals can constrain the reckless, destructive folly of renegade elites.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Vietnam is that policies based on lies will ultimately fail, for in an open society it is the consent of the governed that is required to sustain major policy initiatives. A government can either earn that consent, or it must forfeit the essence of its democracy. If lying becomes its essential modus operandi, a nation ceases to be a democracy. Rather, it becomes a criminal conspiracy of self-interested insiders donning the trappings of democracy in order to gull the credulous.

It is time to grow out of our materialistic fetishes and begin cultivating the personal and civic maturity we like to fancy we possess, but which we don’t. It is time to grow up and accept the burdens of mature citizenship, among the most important of which are a capacity and a willingness to tell the truth, letting go the comforting but corrosive lies in the confidence that courage mustered now will yield not only greater self respect today but a more sane, a more decent, and a safer society in the future.

It is important that we commemorate Vietnam, both to mourn the objective horror of what it was, but also to redeem our capacity to tell the truth, to ourselves, about ourselves. Only in that way can we begin to reclaim the country and the people we want to imagine ourselves to be.

Robert Freeman writes on economics, history and education. His earlier piece, “Is Iraq Another Vietnam?” was also published on CommonDreams.  He can reached at robertfreeman10@yahoo.com. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/28-3

Related:  https://johnlegry.wordpress.com/politics-mostly/organized-irresponsibility/

The Rage Is Not About Health Care by Frank Rich March 28, 2010 by The New York Times

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television.  On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber – instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company.  Frank Rich is a regular columnist for The New York Times.  He is the author of many books, including The Great Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.  READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/28

INTRODUCING WORLD WAR III

Have a Nice World War, Folks by John Pilger March 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence” Robert Gates complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.

According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a “war of perception”. Thus, the recent “liberation of the city of Marja” from the Taliban’s “command and control structure” was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.

Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a “pre-fascist era”. Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. “Fascism” is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is “more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent.”

This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.

In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud “our boys”. The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a “partner”. We should interrupt their fun.

John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of “Journalist of the Year,” for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.  READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/28-5 

SOME LIGHT, SOME DARK

State of Mind

COAL:

We can’t afford the fiction of “clean” coal anymore.  Coal is dirty.  It cannot be cleaned within the foreseeable future by any known technology – all lies, wishful thinking and futuristic theory certainly not withstanding.

We will kill all life as we know it on this planet if we do not reduce our current rate of carbon emissions.  Trust the science, not the propaganda spin of the coal merchants.  Time is running out for human survival on this earth – and if not this one, which one?  Coal burning accelerates our suicide.

Earth is in the midst of its Sixth Great Species Extinction.  Do we want to go the way of the dinosaurs?  Do we want to watch our sons and daughters, grandchildren, spouse, friends or ourselves die in our own waste and secondhand smoke?

Stop coal energy production at once.  Lead and start mass development of alternative clean energy resources today: wind, water, solar.  Protect life from ignorance, superstition, lack of vision, and selfish greed.

We have to change our basic survival assumptions if we are going to cope with this self-inflicted disaster.  Bite the bullet: stop it now.  Coal is a fuel for dead men on a dead planet.

Spokane Considers Community Bill of Rights by Mari Margil YES! Magazine

Thousands of people voted to protect nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

Of all the candidates, bills, and proposals on ballots around the country yesterday, one of the most exciting is a proposition that didn’t pass.

In Spokane, Washington, despite intense opposition from business interests, a coalition of residents succeeded in bringing an innovative “Community Bill of Rights” to the ballot. Proposition 4 would have amended the city’s Home Rule Charter (akin to a local constitution) to recognize nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

A coalition of the city’s residents drafted the amendments after finding that they didn’t have the legal authority to make decisions about their own neighborhoods; the amendments were debated and fine-tuned in town hall meetings.  READ MORE:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/05-8

How a Public Jobs Program Could Put America Back on Track By Julianne Malveaux, The Progressive.

The same nation that created a Works Progress Administration in the 1930s should create another one in the 21st century.

Eighty years ago this week, the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression. We need to apply the lessons from that era to our own to relieve the needless suffering of the Great Recession.

In just two days, between Oct. 28 and 29, 1929, the stock market plummeted by 25 percent. Between September and November of that year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 40 percent of its value. By July of 1932, the Dow had lost nearly 90 percent of its value.

By then the Great Depression was raging, with unemployment rates rising to 25 percent.

To combat unemployment and alleviate poverty, the federal government engaged in a massive public works and jobs program through the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Private markets weren’t about to create jobs, and the public sector became the employer of last resort. The job creation from the WPA provided survival and sustenance for millions of American families. Where is the contemporary WPA?  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143710/how_a_public_jobs_program_could_put_america_back_on_track

Thousands of Right-Wingers Rally at Capitol to Hear Lies About Health-Care Reform, Courtesy of Bachmann and GOP Leaders By Adele Stan, AlterNet.

Days before a health bill is expected to pass the House, Republicans rallied their flock with the help of FOX News, Michele Bachmann and leading conservative groups.

Thousands of right-wingers rallied yesterday on the lawn on the U.S. Capitol building to hear a parade of Republican lawmakers warn them of an alleged threat to their freedom embedded in the secret channels of the health-care reform bill unveiled last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Lawmakers expect to vote on the bill this Saturday.

Congressional star power was provided on the podium by the likes of Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who called for the rally from the hallowed platform of Sean Hannity’s FOX News program. Other big names on the Capitol podium included House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio; Joe “You Lie” Wilson, R-S.C., (who got a huge ovation from the crowd) and Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., who promised that he was doing all he could to ensure that “not one Republican” votes for the health-care reform bill.

Actors Jon Voight and John Deszo Ratzenberger (the guy who played Cliff on Cheers) provided the glamor quotient.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/politics/143768/thousands_of_right-wingers_rally_at_capitol_to_hear_lies_about_health-care_reform%2C_courtesy_of_bachmann_and_gop_leaders

REPUBLICAN INSURANCE NAZIS

Jon Stewart Gets Teary-Eyed Over the Plight of Glenn Beck’s Internal Organs

Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet