Archive for November, 2010
A Modest Proposal to Republicans on How to Trim the Budget
Originally posted by D. J. Pangburn on death + taxes:
Dear Republicans,
Without a doubt, you will hold up Reagan as a symbol of fiscal responsibility. Bush 41 lost on the economy and tax increases, Clinton balanced the budget by working with Republicans, and it’s common knowledge that Bush 43 grew the national budget to epic proportions in his time in office — most of it on Defense spending. And he did nothing to balance the budget — which, of course, you already know, as evidenced by your new House Budget Committee Chairmen’s comment on how the 2006 elections were a “repudiation of Republicans who strayed from their principles and got soft on spending and government.”
A closer look at Reagan’s economic maneuvers reveals the budget deficit in 1980 (his first year in office) was $1 trillion and in 1988 it was $3 trillion. Why? Tax cuts and increased spending. Defense spending. W. followed…
Building What? 9/11 Building 7 TV Ad Now Airing in New York
Via BuildingWhat.org:
The “BuildingWhat?” TV ad will air 350+ times from November 2 through November 10 and is estimated to be seen by millions of viewers in the New York Metropolitan Area, reaching core target audiences multiple times.
The ad will appear on thirteen channels including MSNBC, CNN, Comedy Central, HGTV, Logo TV, Bio TV, Versus TV, MSG, Sports NY, VH1, HLN, CNBC and Bravo.
The Information Super-Sewer: The Internet Is Hijacked By Corporate Interests
Interesting article from Chris Hedges on Global Research earlier this year. Author Jaron Lanier is quoted in this article as saying, “Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.” Chris Hedges writes:
The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.
Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The Web…
A ‘Brand’ New World: Attachment Runs Thicker Than Money
Brand mashup by Brazilian graphic designer Mario Amaya.
From LiveScience:
Can you forge an emotional bond with a brand so strong that, if forced to buy a competitor’s product, you suffer separation anxiety? According to a new study from the USC Marshall School of Business, the answer is yes. In fact, that bond can be strong enough that consumers are willing to sacrifice time, money, energy and reputation to maintain their attachment to that brand.
“Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude Strength: Conceptual and Empirical Differentiation of Two Critical Brand Equity Drivers,” a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Marketing, is co-authored by USC Marshall’s C. Whan Park, Joseph A. DeBell Professor of Marketing; Deborah J. MacInnis, Vice Dean of Research and Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Professor of Business Administration; and Joseph Priester, Associate Professor of Marketing; along with Andreas B. Eisingerich, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Imperial College…
33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True: What Every Person Should Know…
What follows are some of the most shocking modern conspiracy theories that turned out to be true, after thorough investigation.
At the New World Order Report, Jonathan Elinoff provides a much more extensive presentation of how I introduce 9/11 in my lectures and essays. (He barely mentions 9/11 as it turns out — but he doesn’t really need to because of all the other Truth he presents that paves the way!)
My own approach to 9/11 has been not only about the reality of the dark side of human nature, but all about context — amply demonstrating that 9/11 is just one more monstrous manipulation of world events — and that OF COURSE “our leaders” would do it, because just look at how many times they’ve done it before!
But of course that means newbies coping with the SHOCK that almost all of the U.S. and World History we’ve been taught is JUST…
Virgin Birth Discovered in Boa Constrictors
"Virgin born" boa constrictor. Photo: Warren Booth.
Does this mean Jesus can now return as the Serpent? Good sense of humor, Almighty. Charles Q. Choi writes in Live Science:
For the first time, scientists have discovered a boa constrictor that reproduces by virgin birth.
Intriguingly, these giant female serpents only gave birth in this fatherless manner in years when males were present, researchers added.
Asexual reproduction is common among invertebrates (animals without backbones), and is rare in vertebrates, but not unknown. For instance, the komodo dragon, the world’s largest living lizard, has given birth via parthenogenesis, in which an unfertilized egg develops to maturity.
Scientists investigated a female boa constrictor at the Boa Store in Sneedville, Tenn., an online store that sells captive-bred boa constrictors. The female had given birth to litters of young this year and last. These offspring were all female and, unusually, were all caramel in color like their mother. This rare…
Ben Goldacre: Berating Bad Science
For those who love a good bit of debunking, Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks is going to be compelling reading. As Katherine Bouton notes in the New York Times,
Ben Goldacre is exasperated. He’s not exactly angry — that would be much less fun to read — except in certain circumstances. He is irked, vexed, bugged, ticked off at the sometimes inadvertent (because of stupidity) but more often deliberate deceptions perpetrated in the name of science. And he wants you, the reader, to share his feelings.
He explains to New Scientist some of his favorite peeves:
Twins with Conjoined Brains Share Sensory Information
This via BoingBoing, Ken MacQueen at Macleans.ca reports on two Canadian twins who share a brain:
The odds of their conception were astronomical; of surviving in the womb, let alone a live birth, slim to none. The odds of living past their first day, worse than a coin toss, though not if the small army deployed by Vancouver’s Children’s Hospital had a say in it. And they did. And today, approaching their fourth birthdays on Oct. 25, Tatiana and Krista Hogan are wearing pretty velvet dresses, red and purple respectively. They greet you at the door of their sprawling, unruly home in Vernon, B.C., carrying a bouncy ball, and issuing a command: come play.
You have just enough time to add your shoes to the pile at the entrance and to give their mother, Felicia Simms, a quick greeting before you’re led through the living room and kitchen, to a long, sloping hallway that leads…
Noam Chomsky Admits There’s No Evidence Al-Qaeda Carried Out 9/11
From PressTV:
Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky says US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal since to date there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks.
“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program A Simple Question.
“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”
The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.
“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably…
“The Moral Underground” Explores How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy
Kathleen Burge at the Boston Globe has this review:
As Newton resident Lisa Dodson, a Boston College sociology professor in the thick of a research project, was interviewing a grocery story manager in the Midwest about the difficulties of the low-income workers he supervised, he asked her a curious question: “Don’t you want to know what this does to me too?’’
She did. And so the manager talked about the sense of unfairness he felt as a supervisor, making enough to live comfortably while overseeing workers who couldn’t feed their families on the money they earned. That inequality, he told her, tainted his job, making him feel complicit in an unfair system that paid hard workers too little to cover basic needs.
The interview changed the way Dodson talked with other supervisors and managers of low-income workers, and she began to find that many of them felt the same discomfort as the grocery store…
Moogfest: Remembering Robert Moog
Moogfest, a celebration of music made with the unique and wonderful Moog synthesizer, just wrapped in Asheville, NC, the place inventor Bob Moog called home for the last 30 years of his life.
The New York Times‘ lead music critic Jon Pareles has written an excellent account of the three-day festival, which you can read here, but I thought fans of Moog music might enjoy the liner notes written in 1999 by Bob for the first (and only) disinformation CD, Best Of Moog: Electronic Pop Hits From The 60’s & 70’s:
We began making electronic music instruments in 1964 and began calling them “synthesizers” in 1967. Back then, most of our customers were experimental composers in universities and conservatories. Their music was “at the fringe”, to say the least. Meanwhile, out in the mainstream of our musical culture, record producers and performing musicians tended to think of the Moog Synthesizer as an instrument that could make…
Israeli “Nationals” Detained Approaching National Guard Blackhawk – & No Coverage from ABCNNBBCBS?
Israeli "Nationals" Detained Approaching National Guard Blackhawk
On October 19, three Israelis start acting suspicious near a Blackhawk Helicopter in Groton, Connecticut, which is also home to a U.S. Navy Submarine facility. And nobody at ABCNNBBCBS reports the story?
Imagine if three Arab men were arrested in a restricted zone near a National Guard Blackhawk Helicopter! The corporate media would blast their pictures across the world and claim that they were terrorists linked to Al Qaeda.
[Media's name "Nationals" = Mossad/IDF/Shin Bet...]
From WTNH.com:
“Groton, Conn. – Three Israeli nationals who got a little too close to a military helicopter at Groton-New London Airport are being questioned by police.
The incident happened Tuesday morning around 8:20.
The men told police that they wanted to get a closer look at the Black Hawk helicopter, which was in an area of their Cessna and not cordoned off. Officers from the National Guard stopped the men when they approached the…
Recession Advertising: The Multiproduct Commercial
With companies cutting costs, is this the future of advertising? I’m not sure how large the divide between parody and reality truly is.
Google Maps Error Causes Nicaraguan Invasion
The disputed border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, shown on Google Maps.
Good job Google. Even better job Nicaraguan military commander Eden Pastora. Via Time’s News Feed:
A border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica was off by 3,000 meters on Google Maps. This sparked Nicaraguan military commander Eden Pastora to invade Costa Rica and order troops to take down Costa Rican flags in a disputed territory.
A Google spokesperson said the source of the error was unknown, but two entire countries have felt its effects.
We can’t really blame Google for this snafu; we can only blame Pastora for using Google Maps for military business. Official maps for both countries say the land in question belongs to Costa Rica. And, Fast Company reports, Bing had the border correct. Score one for Microsoft, the true victors in this battle.
Keith Olbermann Suspended by MSNBC
Photo: kirstenlovesputi (CC)
Wow — Comcast (owners of NBC) didn’t waste any time coming to terms with the United States’ political shift to the right! The leading liberal television commentator Keith Olbermann is left in the dust… From the New York Times:
Keith Olbermann, the top anchor on MSNBC, was suspended on Friday after the channel discovered that he had made campaign contributions to three Democrats.
The MSNBC president, Phil Griffin, issued a statement saying, “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
No one at NBC News would speculate about what this might mean for Mr. Olbermann’s future, though one NBC executive suggested this was not a step toward firing him.
Politico had reported Friday morning that Mr. Olbermann’s contributions were in apparent violation of MSNBC policy.
Mr. Olbermann hosts the most popular program on MSNBC, “Countdown.” He worked…
Young Man Disguised As Elderly Man On International Flight Seeks Refugee Protection
Who would suspect an elderly white man? Nobody. At least, that’s what the young man from Hong Kong thought. While the facial disguise was quite impressive, he forgot to make his hands appear aged as well, which was what raised suspicion as he boarded the plane. CNN reports:
Canadian authorities are investigating an “unbelievable” incident in which a passenger boarded an Air Canada flight disguised as an elderly man, according to a confidential alert obtained by CNN.
The incident occurred on October 29 on Air Canada flight AC018 to Vancouver originating in Hong Kong. An intelligence alert from the Canada Border Services Agency describes the incident as an “unbelievable case of concealment.”
“Information was received from Air Canada Corporate Security regarding a possible imposter on a flight originating from Hong Kong,” the alert says. “The passenger in question was observed at the beginning of the flight to be an elderly Caucasian male who…
Rep. Peter DeFazio Investigating Impeachment For Chief Justice John Roberts
Rep. Peter DeFazio
From the Huffington Post:
With Democrats increasingly outraged over the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that allowed unlimited corporate spending in elections — a change conservatives have been more successful at taking advantage of — a Democratic congressman is raising the prospect of impeaching the Supreme Court’s chief justice over the issue.
“I mean, the Supreme Court has done a tremendous disservice to the United States of America,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “They have done more to undermine our democracy with their Citizens United decision than all of the Republican operatives in the world in this campaign. They’ve opened the floodgates, and personally, I’m investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn’t be a judicial activist, and he wouldn’t overturn precedents.”
In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts famously said, “Judges and justices are servants of the law, not…
UN Calls on Obama to Investigate Human Rights Abuses
From the Guardian:
The UN has called on Barack Obama to order a full investigation of US forces’ involvement in human rights abuses in Iraq after a massive leak of military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
A map of parties to the UN Convention Against Torture, as compiled from the OHCHR's ratification list. Parties in dark green, countries which have signed but not ratified in light green, non-members in grey.
The call, by the UN’s chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, came as Phil Shiner, human rights specialist at Public Interest Lawyers in the UK, warned that some of the deaths documented in the Iraq war logs could have involved British forces and would be pursued through the UK courts. He demanded a public inquiry into allegations that British troops were responsible for civilian deaths during the conflict.
The Guardian has analysed the 400,000 documents, the biggest leak in US…
