Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Obama's latest poll numbers not good

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/30/most-americans-think-obama-does-not-deserve-re-election-according-to-new-poll/

The latest poll reflects the president's sliding fortunes in other studies, with a full 50 percent now saying that he does not deserve to stay in office beyond 2012.

Researchers also found that only 13 percent of Democrats disapprove of the president's actions. (Surprisingly low percentage. The number should be much higher, seeing that Obama has proven to be more of a Republican than a Democrat! But who/what is the alternative? Just look at the Republican lineup of candidates for 2012. No wonder the Dems figure it's best to stay with Republican-lite Obama!  Republicans hate him, mostly because of his skin color ["uppity black man"] than his policies, which, for the most part, have been continuances of Cheney/Bush. But Republicans can't admit they are racist, even though they send out racist materials against Obama and his wife. They have a big blind spot about themselves in that regard and, in their denial, take great umbrage if you point it out.)

They're joined by 81 percent of Republicans, Quinnipiac noted, who fiercely oppose Obama -- even in spite of the fact that much of his policies, both foreign and domestic, are the same as or similar to his Republican predecessor's.


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If You're Rich...you're living your American Dream

It's sad that many Republicans don't realize the truth of what their party has done to the American dream for the middle class. Mesmerized and hypnotized by Rush Limbaugh and FOX "news" (Rupert Murdoch), they continue to vote against their own interests. They remain loyal to a Party that is dedicated to doing away with them, their families, their homes, and their most cherished dreams -- and yet they still continue to vote for the representatives who are being paid off by lobbyists for BIG BUSINESS. BIG BUSINESS pays no taxes. GE, EXXON Mobil, Chevron, Citigroup, Bank of America -- None of them pay any taxes. They let the dying middle class shoulder the load, while they rake in billions, taking advantage of off-shore tax havens. They continue to take jobs away from Americans and invest in cheap labor overseas. Oh, but your average Republican voter doesn't pay any attention to that -- they still believe the Cheneys and Bushes who tell them, "Be patient and it will trickle down to you" and who convince them the big, bad unions are to blame if it doesn't trickle down fast enough, or at all. And these voters, in the face of all contrary evidence, believe that. What can you do when people refuse to open their eyes and blindly continue to support the very forces that are tearing down our government and our way of life? The following article tells the truth about what is happening, but the average Republican voter will pay little or no attention to it. Fueled by Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter and the like, they have their own vision of how things should be (but aren't) -- and no amount of actual fact will get in the way of their beliefs. There is no way to get through to these voters. And so we will all go down together. One reader's comment is included at the end of the article -- it's a good one, making the point that we're all in this together, and the short-term gains of the rich will eventually lead them to disaster along with the rest of us.
A short excerpt from it:

Exxon, BA, Chevron, Citigroup, etc.? Yes, they're greedy, miserly, psychotic, amoral and immoral. But more than anything else, they're stupid. They have benefited themselves and ruined us for short term gains; for the long run, they've killed themselves and the rest of us equally. They sought to squeeze out every drop of a dying global economy from the very earth that makes it die, giving no thought to how they are going to live on a planet deprived of resources and favorable climates and ecosystems.

You know, they CAN drink bottled water. But what is really telling is that they can't breathe bottled air. And they can't protect themselves from the cancers in it. These people are incredibly stupid, driven so much for the almighty buck (let's call it what it REALLY is: the almighty billion buck) that they...ACTUALLY VIEW THE MELTING OF THE ARCTIC SNOW CAP AS AN F-ING OPPORTUNITY TO DRILL FOR OIL UNDER THE NOW SUDDENLY ACCESSIBLE SEAS.


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/35262/the-new-american-dream

THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM
By William Rivers Pitt

EXCERPT: If you are wealthy, you are living in the Golden Age of your American Dream, and it's a damned fine time to be alive. The two major political parties are working hammer and tong to bless you and keep you. The laws are being rewritten - often by fiat, and in defiance of court orders - to strengthen the walls separating you and your wealth from the motley masses. Your stock portfolio, mostly made by and for oil and war, continues to swell. Your banks and Wall Street shops destroyed the economy for everyone except you, and not only did they get away with it, they were handed a vast dollop of taxpayer cash as a bonus prize.

The little people probably crack you up when you bother to think about them. Their version of the American Dream is a ragged blanket too short to cover them, but they still buy into it, and that's the secret of your strength in the end. So many of them walk into the voting booths and solemnly vote against their own best interests, and for yours, because the American Dream makes them think they, too, will be rich someday. They won't - you've made sure of that - but so long as they keep believing it, your money will continue to roll in.

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision swept away the last tattered shreds of the façade of fairness in politics and electioneering, and now you own the whole store. You can use your vast financial resources to lie on a national level now, lie with your bare face hanging out, because it works. You're not the bad guy in America. Teachers, cops, firefighters, union members and public-sector employees are the bad guys, the reason for all our economic woes. NPR and Planned Parenthood are the bad guys. You did that, and when governors like Scott Walker rampage through worker's rights on your dime, you chuckle into your sleeve and enjoy your interest rate.

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Why Gingrich Should Never Be President

Gingrich's arrogance alone should put voters on their guard, but his continued flip-flopping back and forth on important issues proves he is the consummate politician, always putting his finger to the wind -- and changing positions at the slightest breeze.  A typical Republican of these times. Just the fact alone that he left his first wife while she was in the hospital with cancer tells SO MUCH about this man's character.  But character defects don't matter to most Republican voters--in their own candidates.  Gingrich was one of the loudest denouncers of Clinton's sexual escapades, while he himself was heavily involved in (but keeping secret) his own extramarital sexual escapades. Hypocrite should be his middle name. He is a dangerous immoral man who never owns up to his errors in judgment and action. but tries to blame others for them.  Just the kind of man we DON'T want in the White House.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/29/shooting_from_the_lip_109368.html

Newt Gingrich: Shooting from the Lip
By Eugene Robinson

EXCERPT:  
Why does it matter if a man known for rhetorical bomb-throwing happens to lob a few contradictory grenades? Because when Gingrich said on "Fox News Sunday" that he hopes to announce his candidacy for president within a month, nobody laughed. There's no clear front-runner for the Republican nomination, and one has to assume that anything can happen.

In that same interview, Gingrich completed the final full twist in a "flip-flop-flip" maneuver that would have merited perfect "10s" in an Olympic diving competition -- demonstrating why he should never, ever be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

Gingrich... reflexively shoots from the lip. On any conceivable subject, he's always ready to tell you more than he knows. He is certain that his view is 100 percent right -- until he decides it's 100 percent wrong.

I realize his criticism of Obama from all sides of the Libya question is fundamentally a political tactic -- go on the attack, make a lot of noise, attract some attention. But his cavalier recklessness on a matter of war and peace should send chills up the spine of anyone who sees the words "Newt Gingrich" and "presidential candidate" in the same sentence. Heaven help us.

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How Safe Is Nuclear Power in Our Country? NOT AT ALL!

Our nuclear power plants are accidents waiting to happen (with many close calls) -- read this article for more info.....  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-nuclear-power-plants-safe/story?id=13246490

Records Show 56 Nuclear Plant Violations in U.S. In Past Four Years

EXCERPT:

Among the litany of violations at U.S. nuclear power plants are missing or mishandled nuclear material, inadequate emergency plans, faulty backup power generators, corroded cooling pipes and even marijuana use inside a nuclear plant, according to an ABC News review of four years of Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety records. And perhaps most troubling of all, critics say, the commission has failed to correct the violations in a timely fashion.


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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Twin Babies' Secret Language -- adorable!

http://www.lilsugar.com/Video-Twin-Baby-Boys-Talking-15309376  The inflections in this "babbling" are so much like language -- question marks and everything.  And the twin brother is laughing as if he has just been told a joke.  Really funny!

Two more twin brothers:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgABrcnNrLU    Three Little Buddhas in a fireplace

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Video showing abuse of elephant in UK circus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/elephant-abuse-video_n_842092.html

This video is terrible to see, but hopefully it will touch hearts and raise awareness about the kinds of things that are going on in our world.  Right now, we are living on a low-consciousness planet, caused by our own apathy and ignorance -- just look at the present carnage going on in Libya against humans.  This video had me in tears for the poor elephant and other animals chained, confined and subjected to abuse by the circus employees.  Our planet could be a much different place--a true Garden of Eden--with higher consciousness beings living on her.  She and her innocent animal inhabitants deserve better than this. The animals are a simple expression of Nature, just being who/what they are, with no hidden agendas. But we humans bring our troubles all on ourselves.  Warring and fighting over self-concocted, ever-changing borders, and claiming territories of Earth as "our own," we wantonly kill others and lay waste to the planet itself, stupidly making it uninhabitable for ourselves and our children.  After centuries of repeating the same greed-and-power-based actions over and over, and experiencing the same terrible results, we still haven't learned very much, have we?

Religions haven't solved anything, either; in fact, they've made things worse, as their "believers" hate and kill in the name of God, each one claiming God to be on "our side."  This, to me, seems to be great arrogance, trying to reduce an all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful God to our low level of understanding.   This is sheer ignorance on the part of the people, abetted and encouraged by the also ignorant authority figures in the pulpits all around the globe.  Only a few sages down through time have pointed the way to true and lasting peace--and it must begin within ourselves.  How different it could all be if everyone would really hear and follow the teachings of their chosen masters: 

Christ: "The kingdom of God lies within you." and "Love one another." and "
Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place;  for those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
and "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth... Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy... Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." and "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.   If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?   For even sinners love those who love them.   And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same."

Mohammed: "Whoever is kind to the creatures of God is kind to himself." and "Riches are not from abundance of worldly goods, but from a contented mind." and "Every good act is charity. A man's true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows." and “The best richness is the richness of the soul.” and “You will not enter paradise until you have faith; and you will not complete your faith till you love one another.”

Instead, we make up our own religions to suit and justify our greedy, self-serving desires--and then proclaim them to be "the word of God."

And should someone in a powerful position step up and speak truth--and try to change things, they are soon silenced by those who would rather serve their own interests than allow wisdom and love to penetrate the minds and hearts of the people.  Take note of the following men who did speak up--and remember what happened to them:

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
~John F. Kennedy

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everybody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Each time a person stands up for an ideal,
or acts to improve the lot of others,
or strikes out against injustice,
he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.
Crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring,
those ripples build a current that can sweep down
the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
~Robert F. Kennedy


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Typical FOX "news" lies -- one finally admitted

Anyone who thinks FOX delivers "fair and balanced" "news" is a fool. But we know the country is full of fools like this.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/29/fox-news-executive-admits-his-attempt-to-link-obama-to-socialism-was-a-lie/

EXCERPT:

During the 2008 presidential campaign one Fox News executive repeatedly tried to smear Barack Obama with charges of "socialism."

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters has uncovered audio that indicates Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon was just engaging in what he called "mischievous speculation."

In 2009, Sammon told an audience aboard Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college that his 2008 attempt to link Obama to socialism was "a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched."

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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Interesting article about how history repeats itself -- over and over, with the same results, EVERY TIME

Good article about the demise of education.  Should be read by all (but will be ignored by those who most need to read it).   We are headed for serfdom for the majority (the middle class is pretty much in it already) -- and the wealthy will make out for a few more years, until the serfs rebel (we're now seeing signs of it in Wisconsin, and the unrest is spreading).  Anyone up for a repeat performance of the French Revolution?  Off with their heads!  The greed for wealth and power by the elite has led to poverty and hardship for millions throughout the centuries -- but they never seem to learn that the worm eventually turns.  On and on the story goes...you'd think the human race would be tired enough of it by now to have learned something. 

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/alicia-morgan/35191/sorry-son-no-magnet-school-for-you-the-koch-bros-need-to-pay-less-taxes

As one reader of the article comments: 

The Koch bros and others like them are blithering idiots.

The Koch bros, for example, are heavily invested in forest products like Georgia Pacific and in other industries that thrive off of cheap hourly wage labor. These guys make a mint from the "excess" labors of their workers so they want to force every one of them into poverty.

What these Koch dumbasses cannot fathom is that after they get a majority of the citizenry into poverty, those same citizens will not have enough money to purchase the products that these morons have their impoverished workers produce. The Koch morons sell paper towels and paper plates and other home products, but I can remember when we used the same glass plates daily and used and washed cloth dish towels. When people become impoverished, they will return to this.

Right now, Republicans are still cruising off of the wealth three generations of progressive Americans created. When that runs out, and it will, these assholes will be whining and crying to the rooftops and wondering what went wrong.

I taught technology for many years. Without the skills to create new technology, our nation will quickly lag behind the entire world, including militarily, and we have few real allies left after all of the killing we have done in other nations around the world.

Now, as far as music and art are concerned, we must all ask ourselves what in the world are we working for? Apparently, the Koch's and other lowbrows like them think that success is measured by the amount of money a person makes and is able to display with pretentious McMansions and fancy, oversized foreign cars and being able to fly around the world in jets to have a perverted liason with some gold digging skanky mistress somewhere.

These narrow minded folks will never know the joy of learning to play a beautiful song on a fine musical instrument, or to create one in their minds and make it come to life. Without art and music, our world would be far less joyful.

Without educated citizens, our world will become very course and brutal, and a place that will not sustain wealth and progress. People like the moronic Koch's and other Republicans will soon discover that all they have is rather worthless when people are trying to destroy them to take it away from them. This is what eventually happens when people become angry and the wealthy can no longer control them. Seems that all arrogant wealthy folks delude themselves more and more until they find themselves defending against the masses with little support for their causes left.

History is clear about this.

The Koch bros are no exception.

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Friday, March 25, 2011

There are Republicans who think Michele Bachmann is great

but most sane Republicans know this woman is a dingbat. The Tea Party crowd loves her because she is exactly like them -- not too swift in the intelligence department, and that is just what they want. Somewhere along the way in America, a large group of not-too-well-educated people decided what they really need is a President who is not smarter than they are, but one who shares the same brain gene pool with them. Thus, we got Duhmbya Bush--and you saw how that turned out. And now they want to give us Bachmann, Palin, O'Donnell, and other walking disasters of that intelligence level. That the media is taking this seriously tells the sad truth about journalists today. We can't count on most of them for a wise (or even basically intelligent) analysis of the political scene. And so we have to endure the loud-mouthed, no-brains Tea Bagger nincompoops shouting out their ignorance from FOX "News" and any other channel stupid enough to cover idiot candidates. The main objective of these fools is to get broad enough coverage and enough "dittohead" followers to interest FOX in hiring them as "political commentators" with million dollar salaries. Hey, it worked for Sarah Palin!

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/69-69/5412-stop-taking-bachmann-seriously
STOP TAKING BACHMANN SERIOUSLY!
By Eric Alterman

EXCERPT:

Bachmann has about as much chance of actually getting the nomination as Lindsay Lohan. Does anyone in the world, even Bachmann herself, sincerely believe that this would be anything other than an exercise in vanity and self-delusion?

Bachmann, whom the Tea Party appointed to give its response to President Obama’s State of the Union address (which CNN thought worthy of broadcasting live, in full) knows less American history than the students of Ms. Ajami’s seventh grade MS 54 Humanities class.

But what is really craziest about the story of Bachmann’s candidacy—and most disturbing about the fact that it will be treated as an actual “hard news” story by so much of the media in the coming months—is the lady herself.

Global warming is “all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax," says climatologist Bachmann. But here’s my point. What does it say about our national media that this woman is considered a serious person? And how can any reporter expect anyone, anytime to take him or her seriously if they treat the “Bachmann for President” boomlet as anything but a symbol of a political system that has run itself off the rails of sanity?
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Republicans won't rest until the middle class is dead and buried

Can you believe what is happening while the people sleep?  Republicans are determined to deny workers all rights in our country, which was originally founded on the rights of the people!  Republican governors are gleefully taking on the task of stifling the voice of the workers in favor of more power and profits to the already-inflated-to-bursting Wall Street/big business profiteers.  Everything in this country is upside down.  And yet I have Republican friends and relatives who support--and strongly defend!--this takeover of our country by the rich. They vote against their own interests, without even realizing it.  How to cure ignorance/stupidity of this magnitude?  Read this revealing article by Robert Reich:
 http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/5396-why-we-need-a-fighter-in-the-white-house

GOP'S WAR ON LABOR:  Why We Need a Fighter in the White House
By Robert Reich

EXCERPT:  Big business and Wall Street have emerged from the Great Recession with their pockets bulging. Profits and bonuses are as high as they were before the downturn. And they're spending like mad on lobbying and politics. After the Supreme Court's disgraceful Citizens United decision, there are no limits.

Pro-business goals are breaking out all over. Governors across America are slashing corporate taxes as they slash state budgets. House and Senate Republicans are intent on deregulating, privatizing, and cutting spending and taxes so their corporate and Wall Street patrons will do even better.

But most Americans are still in desperate trouble. Few if any of the economic gains are trickling down.

That's why the current Republican assault on workers - on their right to form unions, on unemployment insurance and Social Security, on public employees, and even (courtesy of Governor LePage) on our common memory - is so despicable.

And it's why we need a President who will fight for workers and fight against this assault - just as Perkins and FDR did.


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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

American Soldiers -- Losing Their Morality

This is what happens to the young men and women we send to fight wars.  Killing becomes ordinary to them.  And then they come home....

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/the-kill-team-photographs.html#ixzz1HUmaGQz1

The "Kill Team"
by Seymour Hersh,
the New Yorker Magazine


EXCERPT: As someone who has been writing about war crimes since My Lai, though, I have come to have a personal belief: these soldiers had come to accept the killing of civilians—recklessly, as payback, or just at random—as a facet of modern unconventional warfare. In other words, killing itself, whether in a firefight with the Taliban or in sport with innocent bystanders in a strange land with a strange language and strange customs, has become ordinary. In long, unsuccessful wars, in which the enemy—the people trying to kill you—do not wear uniforms and are seldom seen, soldiers can lose their bearings, moral and otherwise. The consequences of that lost bearing can be hideous. This is part of the toll wars take on the young people we send to fight them for us. The G.I.s in Afghanistan were responsible for their actions, of course. But it must be said that, in some cases, surely, as in Vietnam, the soldiers can also be victims.

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Glenn Beck may quit FOX and start his own channel

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/business/media/23beck.html?_r=1

I have a suggestion for the name of Beck's new venture: The HATE Channel, since that is all he spreads in his diatribes.  One thing Beck has done is separate out those who are easily stirred to hatred for others.  They will follow him, wherever he goes.  The Tea Party fanatics will be among them. 

I can imagine his stable of "stars":  Sarah Palin (if he can pay her the millions she now gets from FOX), Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Joseph Farah, Charles Krauthammer, Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, and Joe the Plumber.  Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly will not be interested, as they couldn't possibly sublimate their own egos enough to work under Top Dog Beck.

It will be a favorite channel for Ku Klux Klanners, White supremacists, neo-Nazis, born-again "Christians" of a certain Southern flavor, and "Compassionate Conservatives" (of the Cheney/Bush type) everywhere.  I can imagine the lineup of shows: Pollute the Planet, How to Survive a Black (ugh) President, Torture Can Be Fun Reality Show, Nuke 'Em! military show, starring Jon Voight and Ron Silver, Meet Your Favorite Supreme Court Justice, starring Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Sam Alito and good ol' pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can Clarence Thomas, No Taxes for Millionaires, Thanks to YOU! (featuring the lifestyles of Wall Street barons, corporate CEOS and greedy politicians), and cooking shows like Feeding Your Family on Road Kill.

Oh yes, a remarkable lineup, especially dedicated to all non-thinkers who like to be motivated by fear and vote against their own interests.

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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Egads! What a disastrous group!

If these are all the Republicans can come up with, Obama has no worries....

GOP Candidates for President  (not even to mention Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Christine O'Donnell -- all feminine "gems" of the party.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/22/gop-primary-election-2012_n_838891.html

EXCERPT: Mitt Romney is the godfather of what Republican critics call Obamacare. Newt Gingrich is an adulterer on his third marriage. Tim Pawlenty is too green – environmentally, that is.

Jon Huntsman worked for President Barack Obama. And Haley Barbour has come off as dismissive of racial segregation.

Is any potential Republican presidential nominee without vulnerabilities that could alienate voters, especially those in the GOP primaries, and provide ready-made attacks for opponents?

Not in this crop.

The 2012 Republican field is deeply flawed, lacking a serious GOP contender without a personal misstep or policy move that angers the party base. Each of those weighing bids has at least one issue that looms as an obstacle to White House ambitions, and that could derail the candidate if not handled with care.

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Triangle of Life during the Earthquake - Read this for your Future Safety


Subject:  Triangle of Life during the Earthquake - Read this for your Future Safety

 

WORTH THE READ

 

EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP'S ARTICLE ON THE: "TRIANGLE OF LIFE"

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries...

I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years.. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

                

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn't at the time know that the children were told to hide under something.

Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the "triangle of life".

The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the "triangles" you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.

                 TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply "ducks and covers" WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake.... It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake.  If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created.. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on The back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different "moment of frequency" (they swing separately from the main part of the building).  The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

8) Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway... The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact.  Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

Spread the word and save someone's life... The Entire world is experiencing natural calamities so be prepared!

"We are but angels with one wing, it takes two to fly".

In 1996 we made a film, which proved my survival methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul, University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test. We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did "duck and cover," and ten mannequins I used in my "triangle of life" survival method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results.. The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions, relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover.  There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the "triangle of life."  This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe, and it was seen in the USA, Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.

 

 

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If You Are Old Enough, You Can Remember...

WHEN THINGS WERE DIFFERENT  (My comment and an astute reader's comment on this article are at the end.)
By Sam Smith

Editor, Progressive Review

One of the ways that bad policies, ideas, and values spread is because the system, especially the media, portrays them as normal. One of the ways one knows this to be untrue is to be old enough to remember when life was different.

I’ve been jotting down things of a political, social and economic nature that have been happening lately for the first time or in record quantity since I covered my first Washington story 54 years ago. Here are a few of the things that are new with me:

- The most radical and irrational Republican Party. To be sure, there had been Joe McCarthy but among those who eventually put him down were normal conservatives who found him embarrassing. Those people don’t seem to exist anymore in the GOP.

- The most conservative Democratic president. In an earlier time, there would have been a name for Obama: Republican.

- People who would have formerly been considered political jokes are now talking about running for president, such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump. To be sure there was a Pogo for President movement and comedian Pat Paulsen’s campaign, but neither had a PAC.

- An unprecedented level of political nastiness. I can’t, for example, remember a segregationist politician calling for blacks to be shot and killed by helicopter like “feral hogs” as recently proposed for immigrants by a Kansas legislator.

- A record bipartisan contempt for civil liberties. Never has a Democratic president or a Republican Party been so eclectically contemptuous of constitutional rights. As William Shirer, author of a great book Nazism, pointed out, “You don’t need a totalitarian dictatorship like Hitler’s to get by with murder . . . You can do it in a democracy as long as the Congress and the people Congress is supposed to represent don’t give a damn.”

- A decline in the respect for facts. In America’s political debate, facts are now treated like just another ad hominem argument to be dismissed with colorful rhetoric. And numbers are considered simply another form of adjective.

- A Democratic administration without a single cabinet member one can truly admire.

- A Democratic Congress with only a tiny handful of party members who might have supported either the New Deal or the Great Society. But you can’t save the republic just relying on Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and Anthony Weiner.

- A stunningly vacuous cultural leadership and a weird willingness to let Jon Stewart take care of it all for us.

- Massive passivity by, rather than reaction from, the nation’s young.

- The extraordinary level of bipartisan contempt (depending on who is in which office) for the constitutional powers of the Congress and states.

- The sense one has of Obama seeing himself as a CEO rather than a political leader of multi-faceted democratic institutions. And our treatment as either consumers or employees.

- The level of mind-blowing bureaucratic complexity of new policies such as the healthcare legislation, which no one has truly figured out.

- The willingness to replace legal argument with euphemisms to accomplish violations of the Constitution and international law.

- The bipartisan indifference and ineffectiveness regarding the ecological crises around us, all the more striking because the evidence of ecological danger is now far stronger than when the modern environmental movement started four decades ago.

- The unprecedented willingness by Democrats – from Obama on down – to dismantle great programs of the New Deal and the Great Society.

- A loss of privacy unlike any time I have experienced.

- A record number of people on food stamps.

- A record collapse in housing prices.

- The first decline in family net worth since the 1950s

- Record high average temperatures.

That’s just for starters.

One Reader's Comment:  (This reader states exactly how I feel about it all at this point.  Nothing is ever done to right the wrongs done by those in power, which are so blatant everyone can see them.  Our so-called "representatives" don't represent us, so the will of the people is never even considered in Congress. The Republican Party is definitely NOT the party it used to be. My father would faint to see it now.  And the Democrats could easily be called "Republicans" these days.  NO ONE is representing the will of the people. Discouragement doesn't even begin to describe the way most of my Democratic friends feel these days.)

The banksters? Hell, we have a former President and Vice-President who have admitted a policy of torture. Let's start there and show we really are a nation of laws. Because right now - our country looks a damn awful lot like Egypt under Mubarak - who helped with the torture, by the way. Then let's go after the banksters because they need to be held legally responsible, too. And how about impeaching Supreme Court justices who over-step, who go to conventions with people then enact precedent-shattering rulings to put into practice the requests they got at that convention. Then let's go after the media who wouldn't recognize fact and reality if it bit them in the ass.

Oh, hell, wasting my breath. Look what happened in Wisconsin. They did everything they could legally to stop legislation that 75% of the people hated - and the Republicans did it anyway under the guise of a "mandate" from the last election. I'd say repeal them - but the Dems won't stand up for anything if they are in power. We're screwed and we have no recourse. All this is just venting - it's not gonna change a thing. All the money has shifted to a few who now have all the power. Maybe we aren't Egypt. Maybe we are pre-revolutionary France and those in power are saying "Let them eat cake."


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Monday, March 21, 2011

What is HAARP Really?

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Non-toxic house cleaning products you can make yourself

http://eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_solutions.htm

this is a good list to print out and keep handy....

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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Right Wing will do away with National Public Radio

The right wing conservatives won't be satisfied until the whole field of journalism is like FOX "News".  We're very close to that now, with mainstream journalists and their papers/TV channels owned by corporate conglomerates who dictate the news that We, the People are allowed to hear.  NPR is the last place for serious news, investigative news -- and the Republicans want to do away with it.  I know many Republicans who are good people.  They don't realize that they are voting against their own interests when they put Congressional representatives in power who will pull the rug out from under them--and us all.  I often think of these voters who seem to be blind to their own interests -- and wish that a glimmer of light would penetrate their rigid ideological stands and wake them up to what they are doing.  The following article could be a ray of light, if they would read it.  But most probably won't.  They don't like Bill Moyers, one of the authors -- perhaps because he worked in the Johnson administration. Or perhaps because he tells the truth.  FOX News listeners aren't used to hearing truth.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-moyers/35040/npr-the-saga-continues

NPR: THE SAGA CONTINUES
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

EXCERPT: Once upon a time, in the early glory days of radio, corporate media took on the challenge of providing Americans with the kind of information critical to citizenship. No longer. Conglomerates long ago bought up the country’s commercial radio stations, closed down the news departments, and auctioned off the airtime to partisan polemicists or pre-packaged content devoid of journalism. Serious news on radio -- "the news we need to keep our freedoms," as the historian and journalist Richard Reeves once put it – has become the province of NPR (Full disclosure: We two have spent most of the last forty years toiling in the vineyards of public broadcasting, although never for NPR.)

In just the last few weeks, NPR has provided unique coverage of the job crisis in the United States, upheavals in the Middle East, and anxiety over the safety of nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese earthquake – as a matter of fact, many of the issues the House of Representatives should have been debating instead of posturing and pandering to its rightward political base.

Hear Steve Benen of Washington Monthly on the House Judiciary Committee’s vote the other day reaffirming “In God We Trust” as our national motto: "For months the new House Republican majority has wasted time on health care bills they know they can't pass, abortion bills they know they can't pass, climate bills they know they can't pass, and budget bills they know they can't pass. They've invested considerable time and energy on defending the Defense of Marriage Act, recklessly accusing Muslim Americans of disloyalty, going after NPR, and pushing culture-war bills related to vouchers, English as the 'official' language, and now 'In God We Trust.'"

And yes, on Thursday, following a number of missteps by NPR executives, including what has now been indisputably exposed as a disingenuous and dishonestly-edited video by a disreputable right-wing smear artist of the network’s chief fundraiser expressing some personal opinions,  the House passed a bill cutting off government funding for NPR – all of this part of the "vanity project," as Benen calls it, that House Republicans have been running in order to feed red meat to Fox News and the partisan talk radio hosts who have turned the public airwaves -- remember, the airwaves above our fair and bountiful land belong to you, Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. America – into a right-wing romper room.


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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Love that truth teller Bill Maher!

See video at: http://slothropia.com/?p=1500

Bill Maher took a shot at Republicans in his New Rules segment by showing us that they have absolutely no interest in governing and instead are just trying to whip their base up into a frenzy fear mongering over the latest faux outrage of the day.  Republicans, said Maher, focus on "useless distractions," making mountains out of molehills, while ignoring the real issues facing the country: "Climate change, loose nukes, debt, infrastructure, the wealth gap, our addiction to oil from weird, distant places run by monsters that want us dead, like Alaska." 

MAHER: New Rule – Fantasies are for sex, not public policy. When you go down the list of useless distractions that make up the Republican Party agenda; public unions and Sharia law, anchor babies and a mosque at ground zero, ACORN and National Public Radio, the war on Christmas, the New Black Panthers, Planned Parenthood, Michelle Obama’s war on desserts…

…you realize that one reason nothing gets done in America is that one of the political parties puts so much more into fantasy problems. Governing this country with Republicans is like rooming with a meth addict.

You want to address real life problems like when the rent is due and they’re saying “How can you even think of that stuff when there’s police scanner voices coming out of the air conditioning unit?”

Among Maher's slams:
   --On ACORN: "Republicans are obsessed with people cooking up wild, nonexistent schemes to vote, ignoring one important truth: this is America. No one wants to vote."
   --The lunacy of Oklahoma banning Sharia when the Muslim population there is "rapidly approaching zero."
   --The New Black Panthers, in which he said about Republicans, the truth is, "every black person scares you." Then, in a local joke for Californians, he put up a video slide of the two black guys standing outside the polling station in Philadelphia, he pointed to the audience and said, a guy from Orange County saw the photo and look, he's leaving the studio. (Orange Country is heavily white, heavily Republican.)
On Thursday, the day the House would vote on NPR funding, Ron Paul chastised his Republican colleagues for pretty much doing the same thing by obsessing over NPR when the cost of the war in Afghanistan is a far more important issue to address.
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Friday, March 18, 2011

Miso, seaweed, etc. also good for radiation detox

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/natural-remedies-for-radiation-and-toxic-overload.html  Following the bombing of Nagasaki, a group of surviving macrobiotic doctors and their patients avoided radiation sickness by eating brown rice, miso soup, seaweed Hokkaido pumpkin, and sea salt and were told to avoid sugar and white flour products. These patients did not get leukemia, though the hospital was only one mile from the bombsite!

French green clay is also good for detoxification.  See:
http://www.frenchclayforall.com/info.html

You can get French Green Clay in the bulk herbs area of most health food stores. 
Here is some info. regarding its ability to detoxify:

The degree of the adsorbing power of this clay is another key to its wonderful healing abilities.

Let's keep things simple enough to understand...

Absorption of the impurities in the tissues, neutralizing and draining these impurities.. extra cellular level.

Adsorption means the pulling out of the impurities that are in a state of suspension in the body liquid (blood, lymph, bile) and then draining and eliminating them... Intra cellular level.

Clay considerably reduces the toxicity of harmful substances.

A famous incident that happened in France in which many dogs have been poisoned, but survived, thanks to the clay which had been put in their drinking water.

According to Dr Camberg ( a European doctor), clay takes care of any poisoning, even such as arsenic! One teaspoon of clay mixed in a glass of water every hour for 6 hours to be out of trouble.

As with all natural remedies, clay does not act specifically on one or several bacteria varieties; rather it prevents their proliferation by reinforcing the defenses of the organism.

Contributing to the elimination of acids, clay favors a good pH of the blood.

This wonderful adsorbing power has a magnet effect.

For healing and therapeutical purposes, this clay may be used externally and orally.

Eating clay can be a wonder-working cure!

Applied in poultices and compresses, clay provides numerous benefits.

It can heal sores and ulcers and aid in the rebuilding of healthy tissues and cells, and even of fractured bones and vertebrae.

Everything unhealthy and emiting negative radiations is irresistibly attracted to clay ( a brilliant positive pole) and becomes subject to immediate elimination.

Wherever there is a deficiency, clay seems to supply the needed substance regardless of whether or not the clay itself is rich in that substance.



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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Map showing radiation levels all over the U.S. - updates itself automatically



This map shows radiation levels all over the U.S. - it's updated automatically every few minutes.  Will let us know if we are on Alert.

 http://Radiationnetwork.com/





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Wikileaks is our only way of getting truth in news these days

Wikileaks: Japan Was Warned About Fukushima

from Keith Olbermann FOK NEWS CHANNEL

We are now at this stage in the life of our country and our world: WikiLeaks revealed that the Japanese Government was warned three years ago that earthquake preparedness at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant was dangerously insufficient.

Naturally, the leaders of the world are – or wish to start – prosecuting WikiLeaks, and not the Japanese Government.

The IAEA was saying in 2008 that Japan’s nuclear safety guidelines were dangerously out of date. A government whistleblower in that country was quoted in a cable to Washington the same year that a Japanese ministry was “covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.”

And our government, in our name, continues both to seek ways to prosecute WikiLeaks, and to stick by the President’s ludicrous 2009 suggestion that we accelerate our national Nuclear Power program. The uncensored real oversight, and the truth about Japan’s irresponsibility, are both buried because the illusion of Japan as a successful safe nuclear nation is necessary to President Obama’s pitch, and President Obama’s pitch is necessary to some labyrinthine political calculation, and to the bottom lines of sundry international corporations.

We could say that the worsening news from Japan is coming by drips, except that the latest information from our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggests that there’s nothing to drip; that the water in the cooling system for Dai-Ichi Reactor 4 has evaporated and NHK broadcasts, late night our time, were filled with images of helicopters trying to douse the facility with seawater, as if it were a forest fire.

Most ominously are reports that read like the worst days of the dark, sick humor of the Bush Administration, when Americans were told to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect their homes from radiation (and memorably one poor soul in Connecticut put it up on the wrong side of his windows). Why, truly, do you think people around Fukushima are being told to stay in their homes and offices? Because going outside somehow significantly reduces the chances they will be exposed to radiation? Because they’re safer indoors in the event the worst-case scenario develops and the thing spews out a kind of nuclear holocaust? Or is it because it’ll be easier to keep track of the victims of a best-case scenario if they stay where they are and don’t try to flee the area, and thus no effort will be required to see where they go and if they have taken radiation with them?

And the saddest story of them all: Gregory Jaczko, the head of our NRA stating this, bluntly, matter-of-factly, and even blandly:

We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation. It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time. This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives. It’s very difficult for me to contemplate that, but it may have reached that point.

As you think of Japan, and you think of the aging nuclear plants in this country, and their nearness to our major metropolitan areas, remember that there are 180 human beings – our brothers and sisters – working around this Doomsday Machine that their government was warned about at least three years ago, about which it did nothing!

180 men and women, the same as any Americans, and very possibly the forerunners of any Americans, who are facing this reality: “This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives.”

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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Don't you dare tell truth to the American People

Living in today's world is much like being in a dark and nightmarish fairy tale. The one that compares best to our modern existence is "The Emperor's New Clothes."  All the people in the story pretended their emperor was wearing beautiful clothing as he paraded down the street, even though he was completely naked.  He had been sold a bill of goods by con-men "tailors" who praised him, telling him how beautiful he looked in the clothing they had "made" for him.  There was only one citizen in the town who dared to tell the truth -- an innocent little boy who could very well see the emperor had no clothes and pointed it out, loudly, as the emperor passed by.  We have many truth tellers like that little boy in our country today -- but when they speak the truth, they are quickly punished and silenced...or they are ridiculed and ignored.  No longer dedicated to bringing truth to the people, journalists and the government-ruled newspapers tell polished stories that have the approval of the government and of those who rule it, behind the scenes.  The columnist below tells this well.  I encourage you to read the full article by clicking on the link provided.  I have included several excerpts, but it is all well worth reading:

PUNISHING THE TRUTH TELLERS
By Robert Parry

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/031511.html

EXCERPT: If
only the Democrats would be half as aggressive in enforcing laws that were violated by the Bush administration as they’ve been in pursuing and punishing people who tell the truth.  It appears the most serious offense you can commit in Washington these days is telling the truth. You get a pass on torture, aggressive war, killing civilians, lying, destroying evidence and such, but don’t dare give honest information to the American people.

The penalties can range from possible life imprisonment for Pvt. Bradley Manning, who allegedly disclosed classified information to the public via WikiLeaks, to getting fired, like what happened to State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley for calling the Pentagon’s harsh and humiliating treatment of Manning “counterproductive and stupid.”

Yet, no one suggests that what Manning allegedly released wasn’t true; nor could you dispute Crowley’s assessment that the forced nudity and the maximum security treatment of Manning hurt the U.S. image, especially since these acts recall George W. Bush’s mistreatment of “war on terror” detainees.

But it seems President Barack Obama is especially eager to go the extra mile to show the Establishment that he can be trusted with the secrets, that his administration can hide the truth as assiduously as the last one, if not more so.

There’s also the recent case of NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller who was secretly videotaped noting that the Tea Party included some “racist” individuals. For making that startling comment, Schiller was not only canned by NPR but was stripped of a prospective job at the Aspen Institute.

Yet, Schiller may have been thinking about Tea Party activists who insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and was raised with Mau Mau influences inherited from his father, causing the President to view the English as, god forbid, “imperialists.”

Oddly, some of these Tea Partiers, who are known for dressing up in American revolutionary garb, are now up arms over someone looking at English history and detecting imperialism. To do so may qualify you to be portrayed in Tea Party posters like Obama was, dressed as an African bushman.

But just as you must not see evidence of imperialism in the British Empire, you must not see racism in how the Tea Party reacts to the first African-American president. To do so in Washington makes you unemployable.


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Australian kid fights back against bully -- becomes a hero on the internet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7JX1sZnmk   Video

Heartening video for all bullied kids everywhere!  The bully learned a hard lesson -- let's hope it sticks. Some of the best lessons in life are the ones that hurt the most.

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Wall St. Journal article by author who champions nuclear energy

This is what we have to contend with in conservative-ruled journalism.  Read this article -- and then look at the news coming out of Japan.  Which do you believe? This guy who is desperately trying to salvage his own reputation -- or your lying eyes?  Moral: Don't believe what you read in the Wall St. Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html

Headline:  JAPAN DOES NOT FACE ANOTHER CHERNOBYL
The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here.
By William Tucker

Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).


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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A good article re. protection from nuclear fallout

Should be printed out, iodine bought, and kept on handhttp://www.jonbarron.org/detox/preparing-nuclear-fallout-Japan-iodine
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Speaking up re. nuclear power

http://www.mercurynews.com/california-earthquakes/ci_17612421?nclick_check=1
Republicans ought to be embracing Obama as one of their own, because he champions their causes and is eager to do their bidding.  But he's half black, which makes him anathema to most Republicans, so that will never happen.  I am sorry to say I have no faith at all left in him.  Either he is a bought puppet, like Clinton, of those who really rule us (my strong suspicion) or he has been threatened with a Kennedy solution by those who could pull this off very easily.  Below is one of his 'wise' comments from the past.  I wonder if he thinks the same way now.  He probably does, because his administration just OK'd more off-shore drilling for oil in Alaska, with seemingly no remembrance at all of the Gulf Oil disaster (see: http://www.theolympian.com/2010/12/02/1573409/obama-administration-oks-review.html )


http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/179-179/5288-thank-you-mr-science
From Keith Olbermann:
EXCERPT: [Here's an] unfortunate quote from the President from October, 2009, that was not disavowed Monday by the new Press Secretary:

“There’s no reason why, technologically, we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way. Japan does it and France does it, and it doesn’t have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way.”

Stupid. Maybe President Obama would like to circle that word and rethink its meaning. It would be stupid to keep pushing nuclear power at the exact hour that the “safe and effective way” in Japan is proving to be "that slight increase in radiation in Tokyo is nothing to worry about. But if you’re within 20 miles of the plant please stay indoors because we don’t know if the thing is going to meltdown, blow up, shoot nuclear rods into the sky or into the ground water, or what. Have a nice day.”

 

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