Posts Tagged ‘sean hannity’

WHAT A CIRCUS!

January 21, 2011

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Change reports 81 companies quit advertising on Beck’s Fox News show and Media Matter 100, including those who haven’t withdrawn ads yet.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

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Cheney Jumpstart

Txs! SeedsofDoubt.com

“Hell of a job, Brownie!”

November 20, 2009

"Hell of a job, Brownie!"

Rising CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Sea Level Rise Finds Antarctic Study by Louise Gray, Environment CorrespondentThe Telegraph/UK

Sea levels could rise by up to six metres if the world fails to get pollution under control, according to the latest study in the Antarctic.

The British Antarctic Survey is the latest research to warn of the consequences of increased greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate. Carbon dioxide is rising at record rates putting the world on a pathway for a 6C rise in temperature, which will cause a sea level rise of up six metres, threatening coastal cities like London, New York and San Francisco.

The recent studies add pressure on world leaders to agree to an international deal on climate change at a UN summit in Copenhagen this December.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/18-6

How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply By Yasha Levine, AlterNet.

A group of water oligarchs engineered a disastrous privatization scheme to make a fortune out of California’s most precious natural resource.

A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they’ve pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California’s most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us — and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California’s increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California’s environment.

California is in year three of a fairly nasty dry spell. And some very powerful forces are not letting this mini-crisis go to waste, fiercely lobbying Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, paying off corporate shills like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and capitalizing on people’s fear of drought to push a massive waterworks project that will pump more water, build more dams and keep sucking the state’s rivers dry. …This drought hysteria is nothing more than political theatrics, a scare tactic backed by big agribusiness to strong-arm California voters into building a multi-billion dollar system of dams and canals that would not really help small farmers — of which there are very few anyway — but would deliver more water to corporations, subsidize their landholdings, fuel real estate development and enable large-scale water privatization. At its core, it is a war waged for water by California’s megarich on everyone else.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/water/144020/how_limousine_liberals%2C_water_oligarchs_and_even_sean_hannity_are_hijacking_our_water_supply

Rachel Maddow Interview with Former Evangelist Frank Schaeffer: Christian Right Is ‘Trolling for Assassins’ AlterNet.

Schaeffer: “There is a crazy fringe [receiving] messages that have been pouring out of FOX News … talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him.”  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/rights/144054/rachel_maddow_interview_with_former_evangelist_frank_schaeffer%3A_christian_right_is_%27trolling_for_assassins%27

Shocking Benefits of Legalizing Pot By Ami Cholia, AlterNet.

There are some pluses to legalization that you probably haven’t heard about.

The war on drugs may be a noble intention, but the illegal growing of marijuana is destroying our environment.

Primarily run by Mexican drug cartels California’s illegal growers aren’t your typical peace-loving hippies of the 70s. These men live illegally on farms all summer, putting tons of waste into the soil and water. Pesticides drain into creeks and enter the food chain, sickening wildlife.  Each plant also uses about 15 gallons of water per day soaking up a large part of the water resources around.

Organized crime groups who cash in on the drug war’s distortion of supply and demand dynamics have little regard for the environment. Even illegal growers of organic marijuana impact the environment by felling trees in national forests to make room for illicit grow sites. The plants are seasonal, but the environmental damage lasts forever.

There is a serious exception to be made. Many medical – legal – marijuana growers are among the most responsible citizens around. They buy soil in bulk, use rat traps instead of poison, water with timers and drip systems. They have very little physical impact on the land.

Outside of the obvious benefits of hemp — bio-diesel, burns cleanly, soil builder, better cheaper paper, etc. — organic and sustainable practices for growing marijuana would bring in tons of revenue for the states, clean up the environment, and save the government $150 billion on policing and courts, since 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related.

We’re not promoting drug addiction.  The positive benefits to the environment by making marijuana legal definitely seem enough to take action.

Even Glenn Beck seems to think this is worth it.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/144052/world%27s_biggest_polluters_strike_a_deal%3A_u.s._and_china_agree_to_comprehensive_clean_energy_and_climate_plan?page=3

World’s Biggest Polluters Strike a Deal: U.S. and China Agree to Comprehensive Clean Energy and Climate Plan By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress.

The overall plan is much more ambitious in scope and depth than anticipated.

A comprehensive plan for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change was announced in Beijing by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao. The plan contains directives to create various institutions and programs addressing a wide array of cooperation on clean-energy technologies and capacity building, including very important efforts on helping China build a robust, transparent and accurate inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions.

These efforts include cooperation in the following areas:

1.      Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

2.      Joint Clean Energy Research Center. (Factsheet)

3.      Electric Vehicles. (Factsheet)

4.      Energy Efficiency. Building on the Ten Year Framework on Energy and Environment Cooperation, government officials of both countries will “work together (Factsheet)

5.      Renewable Energy. (Factsheet)

6.      21st Century Coal. The two countries will “launch a program of technical cooperation to …develop clean coal and carbon capture and storage technologies.” (Factsheet)

7.      Shale Gas. The U.S. and China will “assess China’s shale gas potential, promote environmentally-sustainable development of shale gas resources, conduct joint technical studies to accelerate development of shale gas resources in China, and promote shale gas investment in China through the U.S.-China Oil and Gas Industry Forum, study tours, and workshops.” (Factsheet)

8.      Nuclear. The two countries reaffirmed the goals of the Third Executive Committee Meeting of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to promote the peaceful use of civilian nuclear energy, and “agreed to consult with one another in order to explore such approaches—including assurance of fuel supply and cradle-to-grave nuclear fuel management so that countries can access peaceful nuclear power while minimizing the risks of proliferation.”

9.      Public-private partnerships on clean energy. A new U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program (ECP) will “leverage private sector resources for project development work in China across a broad array of clean energy projects, to the benefit of both nations.”

The two countries hope that the upcoming United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen will follow this example and focus as much on bottom-up technological strategies for achieving real reductions in emissions as it will on top-down targets for carbon caps.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/144052/world%27s_biggest_polluters_strike_a_deal%3A_u.s._and_china_agree_to_comprehensive_clean_energy_and_climate_plan?page=3

Push to Curb Credit-Card Rates Fades as Democrats resist consumer outcry by Michael KranishThe Boston Globe

WASHINGTON – Efforts in Congress to cap credit-card interest rates are faltering because of opposition from Democrats and a lack of specific support from the White House, despite growing consumer outrage over a rush by banks to impose rates as high as 30 percent.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to back a strict limit on credit-card interest rates. But the White House is not yet behind any plan.

The Senate soundly defeated legislation in May introduced by Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont Independent, to cap most credit-card interest rates at 15 percent. Nearly half of the Democratic senators joined Republicans in defeating the measure, 60 to 33.

Consumer groups say the problem of skyrocketing interest rates has worsened since that vote, as banks scramble to boost rates in advance of a new rule scheduled to take effect in February, requiring banks to give consumers a 45-day advance notice of rate increases.

Sanders said many of the credit cards in the hands of American consumers are issued by four banks that received taxpayer bailout money after last year’s economic meltdown: Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

“People are disgusted. We bailed these [companies] out and they then had the gumption to raise interest rates on the American people,” Sanders said in an interview. Sanders said he plans to reintroduce his proposal to cap rates at 15 percent; he predicted it will have more support this time.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/18-7