Sunday, June 26, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Michele Bachmann is a dangerous person
Read the following article that tells about her beliefs--and note that it appears in a usually rightwing website. I guess she is even too much for them to bear: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/14/michele-bachmanns-unrivaled-extremism-gay-rights-to-religion.html
Michele Bachmann's Unrivaled Extremism
by Michelle Goldberg, dailybeast.com
EXCERPT: In the statehouse, Bachmann made opposition to gay marriage her signature issue. Both she and her husband, by all accounts her most trusted political adviser, believe that homosexuality can be cured. Speaking to a Christian radio station about gay teenagers last year, Marcus [her husband], who treats gay people in his counseling practice, said, "Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn't mean that we're supposed to go down that road."
In 2004, Bachmann gave a speech warning that gay marriage would lead to schoolchildren being indoctrinated into homosexuality. She wanted everyone to know, though, that she doesn't hate gay people. "Any of you who have members of your family in the lifestyle, we have a member of our family that is," she said. "This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay."
She was clearly talking about her 51-year-old stepsister, Helen LaFave, who had lived with her partner, Nia Wronski, for more than 15 years. ...In a Star Tribune story headlined "Bachmann, stepsister hold opposing views," Bachmann claimed that she'd polled her siblings and stepsiblings, and that six of the nine agreed with her. Her stepbrother Mike LaFave was horrified. "The reality was she hadn't taken a family vote count, nor would my family ever do such a thing," he says. "I just find it terrible that when Michele was taken by surprise by a question she wasn't prepared for, the first thing she did was throw not only my sister but her whole family under the bus." (Such a good "Christian" thing to do. Lies come so naturally to her. If she could do this to her family, imagine what, given the power, she could do to strangers like "we, the people")
Clarence Thomas -- the GOP will never rid us of this devil
CLARENCE THOMAS MUST GO
By William Rivers Pitt
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/36956/clarence-thomas-must-go
EXCERPT: The lifetime appointment for a Supreme Court Justice is not set in stone, as Justice Abe Fortas found out to his woe forty years ago. Fortas, who was appointed to the bench by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, was found to have taken large sums of money from litigants who appeared before the high court, including Phillip Morris. After a second pay-for-play arrangement benefiting Fortas was discovered, he was forced to resign in disgrace. As Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress argues:
It is difficult to distinguish Fortas' scandal from Thomas'. Like Fortas, Thomas accepted several very valuable gifts from parties who are frequently interested in the outcome of federal court cases. One of Thomas' benefactors has even filed briefs in his Court since giving Thomas a $15,000 gift, and Thomas has not recused himself from each of these cases.
Of course, Thomas is also the least likely Justice to actually follow the command of precedent. Thomas embraces a discredited theory of the Constitution which would return America to a time when federal child labor laws were considered unconstitutional. His fellow justices criticize him for showing "utter disregard for our precedent and Congress' intent." Even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia finds Thomas' approach to the law too extreme - in Scalia's words, "I am a textualist. I am an originalist. I am not a nut."
But Thomas' disregard for what has come before him changes nothing about the precedent he faces. If Abe Fortas had to resign his seat, so too should Clarence Thomas.
Given the simple, unavoidable fact that Mr. Thomas is bereft of both shame and a code of personal ethics, it is highly unlikely he will resign, especially if his wife is raking in the cash thanks to his decisions. In that event, the final remedy of impeachment must be deployed. The Supreme Court must not be a place for partisan political fundraising or friendly-donor back-slapping. It is the place of last recourse in our system of laws, and must be as far above reproof as can be humanly managed. Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to the ideals of our system of government, and must go. He can choose to leave, or be removed by Constitutional remedy, but his time on the bench must be concluded.
He and Ginni will just have to go find honest work like everyone else.Thursday, June 23, 2011
Best performance ever of Hallelujah - k.d. lang
The audience erupted in prolonged cheers -- and for good reason! When Leonard Cohen (the song's composer) heard k.d. sing this in 2005 in Canada, he said, "I think we can put that song to rest now. It's been done to its ultimate perfection." I love Leonard's singing/talking (he's got the best/sexiest male voice I've ever heard) and his version of Hallelujah, too -- but k.d.'s rendition takes you as close to heaven as we can get here on earth... Listen to this and see what you think.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE&feature=related
Area 51 story -- employees poisoned by toxic material being burned onsite
But don't ask for compensation. It's the secret government and they don't admit anything, or pay anything to afflicted ex-employees. Those employees can get nothing but death from their years of working there...
Another great story of America the Beautiful--land of the free, etc. etc. Are you a cynic yet? If not, why not?
Monday, June 20, 2011
Man robs bank of $1 so he can get health care in prison
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/james-verone-robs-bank_n_880660.html
Trouble in Amish Paradise - documentary
An extraordinary insight into the secretive world of the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. When two radical Amish men, Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus, start to question some of the most fundamental aspects of their Amish culture, they face excommunication from their church and total rejection by their friends and family.
The Amish arrived in America 300 years ago and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, today home to around 30 000 hardworking Amish whose lives revolve around their church, families and land.
As well as a strictly plain dress code, they don’t use cars, electricity and eschew modern technology. This program follows two men who let us into their private world because although their Christian faith is strong they begin questioning the all-powerful bishops’ authority and rules. They are ultimately excommunicated for not following strict Amish law, but that’s not the end of the story.
See the full documentary at: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/trouble-in-amish-paradise/
The Ground Truth: powerful documentary about soldiers returning from Iraq
Hailed as powerful and quietly unflinching, Patricia Foulkrod’s searing documentary feature includes exclusive footage that will stir audiences. The filmmaker’s subjects are patriotic young Americans – ordinary men and women who heeded the call for military service in Iraq – as they experience recruitment and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home – with personal demons, an uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield the most powerful weapon of all – the truth. (Excerpt from thegroundtruth.net)
Einstein quotes
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. (My very favorite--I accept that conclusion as true, as proven by quantum physics. Our everyday reality is exactly like last night's dream, which seems real...until we wake up (~.~))
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. (Another good one)
Few are those who can see with their own eyes and hear with their own hearts. The only source of knowledge is experience.
It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment.
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service.
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. Never lose a holy curiosity.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
The only real valuable thing is intuition. When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
The physicist's greatest tool is his wastebasket.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Texas Governor throws in his ten-gallon hat
Borowitz Report
AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report) – Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination today, unveiling his official campaign slogan, “What Harm Could a Governor from Texas Do?”
In throwing his hat into the ring, Gov. Perry explained his earlier reluctance to run: “I promised the people of Texas I would destroy the state by 2012, and now it looks like we’re on track to do that.”
Gov. Perry said that he hoped to bring down the cost of the federal government the same way he reined in costs in Texas, “by making the state no longer habitable for human life as we know it.”
He said that his plan to eliminate the states one by one was picking up steam, with support from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Florida Governor Rick Scott.
As President, Gov. Perry promised, he would push a three-part agenda: “Eliminate education, eliminate healthcare, and pray for Rapture.”
He said his one regret about his tenure as governor was that Texas never seceded from the United States, but added, “As President, I promise that the United States will secede from Planet Earth.”
In related news, the GOP presidential candidates "are pretty much perfect," according to a new poll of voters named Barack Obama.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Republicans have no sense of humor -- look at this Obama impersonator
He's good, looks a lot like Obama and has the voice and mannerisms down pat. He got in many stabs at Democrats (at a GOP gathering), but when he got too close for comfort on Republicans, they turned off his microphone and ushered him off the stage.
Bilderberg 2011 discussions leaked by mole inside
http://current.com/1bnu6kc
VERY interesting article for anyone curious to know how our world is run. The Bilderberg group is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of influence. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labor, education and communications. Meetings are closed to the public and often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names As the article says: The idea behind each and every Bilderberg meeting is to create what they themselves call THE ARISTOCRACY OF PURPOSE between European and North American elites on the best way to manage the planet. In other words, the creation of a global network of giant cartels, more powerful than any nation on Earth, destined to control the necessities of life of the rest of humanity.
EXCERPT: In the world of international finance, there are those who steer the events and those who react to the events. While the latter are better known, greater in numbers, and seemingly more powerful, the true power rests with the former. At the centre of the global financial system are the financial oligarchy today represented by the Bilderberg group....
It´s a meeting of people who represent a certain ideology. Bilderberg is a medium of bringing together financial institutions which are the world´s most powerful and most predatory financial interests. And at this time, it is that combination which is the worst enemy of humanity.
Not One World Government or New World Order as too many people mistakenly believe. Rather, the ideology is of a ONE WORLD COMPANY LIMITED. Back in 1968, at a Bilderberg meeting in Canada, George Ball, the then Under-secretary for Economic Affairs with JFK and Johnson said: “Where does one find a legitimate base for the power of corporate management to make decisions that can profoundly affect the economic life of nations to whose governments they have only limited responsibility?”
The idea behind each and every Bilderberg meeting is to create what they themselves call THE ARISTOCRACY OF PURPOSE between European and North American elites on the best way to manage the planet. In other words, the creation of a global network of giant cartels, more powerful than any nation on Earth, destined to control the necessities of life of the rest of humanity.
Read on if you want to hear the elites' newest plans for the rest of us (from notes taken by the mole at the meeting): http://current.com/1bnu6kc
Keith Olbermann's 10 Best Special Comments
and a good article on Keith's return to TV -- on Current TV. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/keith-olbermann-on-why-he-left-msnbc-and-how-he-plans-to-get-even-20110607
Short video: cat barks like a dog, until noticed--then starts meowing
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/sanity-break-cat-that-barks-like-a-dog-until-someone-notices/
Monty Python "Back in the old days" sketch -- guaranteed to make you laugh
FOUR YORKSHIREMAN SKETCH
(Hawaiian music)
Man#1 (Michael Palin) Aye! Very fussable, eh? Very fussable bit, that? eh?
Man#2 (Graham Chapman): Grand meal, that was, eh?
Others: Yes, wonderful, yes very good..
Man#2: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau le Shlasseler, eh, Guissay?
Man#3 (Terry Jones): Oh, you're right there, Robidaier.
Man#4 (Eric Idle): Who'd 'ave thought, thirty year ago, we'd all be sitting here drinking Chateau de Shlasseler, eh?
Man#1: Aye, in them days we was glad to have the price of a cup of tea!
Man#2: Aye, a cup of cold tea!
Man#4: Without milk or sugar!
Man#3: Or tea!
Man#1: Aye, in a cracked cup and all!
Man#4: Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper!
Man#2: Aye, the best we could manage in those days was to suck on a piece of damp cloth!
Man#3: Aye, but we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
Man#1: Because we were poor! My old dad used to say to me: Money doesn't buy you happiness!
Man#4: Aye, he was right, I was happier then and I had nothing. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
Man#2: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We had to all live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, and we were all huddled together in a corner for fear of falling!
Man#3: You were lucky to have a room! We used to 'ave to live in a corridor!
Man#1: Oh, we used to DREAM of living in a corridor. It would have been a palace to us! We used to have to live in an old water tank in a rubbish pit. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House! Huh!
Man#4: Well, when I say house, it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!
Man#2: We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!
Man#3: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us, living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!
Man#1: Cardboard box?
Man#3: Aye!
Man#1: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down at the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt.
(slight pause)
Man#2: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of damp gravel, work a twenty-hour day at the mill for tuppence a month, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
Man#3: Well, of course, we 'ad it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and lick the road clean with our tongue. We 'ad two bits of cold gravel, and worked a twenty-four hour day at the mill for six or seventy-four years, and when we got home, our dad would slash it to us with a bread knife.
Man#4: Right. I had to get up at ten o'clock at night, half an hourbefore I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down at the mill and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our mother and father would kill us and dance on our graves singing Halleluja.
Man#1: Aye, and you try telling young people of today that. And they won't believe you.
Man#4: Aye, they won't!
— Monty Python
Very interesting 5-minute video of CNN discussion on life after death
Interesting, also, to note that a poll mentioned on this Larry King program shows 30% of Catholics believe in reincarnation...and half of all Americans have experienced a religious or mystical experience.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Online documentary: Is there Life After Death? Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman
Many good documentaries like this one (and different subjects in multiple categories) can be seen in their entirety online at: http://bestonlinedocumentaries.com
Where are we heading? Online video tells all about it
National Geographic channel last night presented a documentary called "Prophets of Doom," in which 6 men from different fields of expertise/analysis gave their opinions on how the world will go completely to ruin: financial disaster, lack of water, nuclear terrorism, etc. Although each expert focused on the field of his own research, ALL of them agreed on one thing: that we are already in the midst of a great world decline that will eventually (actually, very quickly) lead to oblivion for millions on the planet--and huge lifestyle changes for those who survive.
If interested, you can see this documentary online for free at: http://bestonlinedocumentaries.com/prophets-of-doom/
It doesn't take long to notice that GREED and POWER LUST on the part of the few against the many are the major factors that have brought us to the place where we find ourselves. Constant wars causing over-the-top national debt, jockeying for power, deregulation of corporations, tax cuts for the wealthiest, wanton disregard for the rights of the working middle class and poor, and profligate use of natural resources -- Well, here we are, folks, at the end game. Notice that Republicans, in particular, think this game plan has worked so well, they would like even more of this strategy.
So what else is new dept.: Boehner has had affairs for years: Olbermann
Watch this video from NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, broadcast May 16, 2011: http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/olbermann-tells-fallon-about-boehner-sex-scandals/
Keith Olbermann says Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) isn’t the only one in Congress having inappropriate relationships.
There have been rumors of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) having affairs for years, according to the Current host.
“You know what’s next, right?” Olbermann asked Fallon. “Something with John Boehner. Boehner. B-O-E-H-N-E-R. You know what his nickname is? Is — is ‘boner.’ He answers to that.”
“All sorts of rumors about him too,” the liberal host continued. “Oh, yes. For a long time.”
So what else is new dept.: Boehner has had affairs for years: Olbermann
Watch this video from NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, broadcast May 16, 2011: http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/olbermann-tells-fallon-about-boehner-sex-scandals/
Keith Olbermann says Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) isn’t the only one in Congress having inappropriate relationships.
There have been rumors of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) having affairs for years, according to the Current host.
“You know what’s next, right?” Olbermann asked Fallon. “Something with John Boehner. Boehner. B-O-E-H-N-E-R. You know what his nickname is? Is — is ‘boner.’ He answers to that.”
“All sorts of rumors about him too,” the liberal host continued. “Oh, yes. For a long time.”
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
US is suffering from a severe case of "Palin-osis"
Once again, an excellent essay from David Michael Green. I agree with everything he says--both about Palin and about Obama. Read the entire article at: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-michael-green/36792/i-regret-to-inform-you-that-your-country-is-suffering-from-a-severe-case-of-palinosis Everything is upside down and backwards in our world today. Naivete, stupidity and ignorance in the electorate rule the day, as "leaders" (Palin, Bachmann, Santorum, and their ilk--and, yes, Obama, too--all of whom are puppets of the true rulers) are praised and extolled by the oblivious common people who are being most harmed by the leaders and the policies they carry out. Nowhere in sight is there anyone of substance to assume the presidency, challenge the string-pullers, and bring the ship of state back on course. The corporations/Wall Street/Pentagon, who really rule, have bought the votes of our supposed "representatives" in Congress--and the voice of the people has been stifled and stilled. If, by some miracle, an honest, intent-on-real-change man (or woman) should ever make his way to the presidency, with full support of "we, the people," his days would be numbered--and he would quickly become another assassination statistic (by a patsy "lone gunman," of course. That "solution" has worked so well in the past, it would assuredly be continued).
I Regret to Inform You that Your Country Is Suffering from a Severe Case of Palinosis
by David Michael Green
EXCERPT: ...ours is the strangest political moment, perhaps in human history. I say that not only because the tropes in our public discourse are so bizarre, but because, above all, the stakes are now so high. We live at a time when those who are the most angry and agitated in their politics are the very ones who have driven the country (and, in many respects, the world) off the cliff. And yet they endlessly preach to us about responsibility and morality.
There are no depths to the levels of duplicity and hypocrisy plumbed here, and there is no limit to the destruction being contemplated. Think about the damage that already litters the landscape, and the lies necessary to wipe away the fingerprints upon it.
What's worse than dictating to everyone else what their sexual practices must be, while simultaneously engaging in every manner of debauchery themselves?
Perhaps it would be ranting endlessly about the virtues of the "free market" while constantly shilling for all forms of corporate welfare and bleeding the country dry.
Or perhaps it is selling massive tax cuts for the wealthy on the premise that such giveaways would provide us a great economy, and then delivering the Great Recession instead.
Or maybe it's exploding the national debt to pay for wars and tax cuts and corporate welfare and a giant 'defense' establishment against no real enemy, and then demanding that seniors and the poor and the middle class be kicked to the gutter because there is no money left to pay for social programs.
Or perhaps instead it would be plunging the country into a war that claimed as many as a million lives, all on the basis of lies.
Or maybe lying about and ignoring global warming, the planet's greatest threat ever, in order to protect the short-term profits of a handful of oil and coal tycoons.
These are among the worst gifts of regressivism, whose greatest exemplar in our time is Sarah Palin. She is the ultimate nothingburger, herself. History will regard her as a cheap and rather harmless latter day Joe McCarthy.
But her politics are our national disease - Palinosis - and we have a lethal dose.
It is the politics of insecurity.
It's the politics of hate.
It's the politics of deceit.
It's the politics of hypocrisy.
It's the politics of laziness.
It's the politics of irresponsibility.
It's the politics of ignorance.
It's the politics of destruction.
But, most of all, it is the politics of greed.Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Natl. Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society skewered in new book by leading cancer expert
Let's face it, folks -- we are not living in a country with a government "of the people, for the people, by the people" (if we ever did). I'm thankful for the Internet, which gives us access to information about real cures. I hope that won't soon be taken from us with regulation by the military/industrial complex that has taken over our government, as Eisenhower sternly warned us about in his farewell speech to the nation. See short video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnaM8TqAzzo and NPR program at: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132935716/eisenhowers-warning-still-challenges-the-nation.
His somber warning was strongly stated: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals."
Eisenhower's warning was all the more powerful coming from a five-star general. As his grandson David Eisenhower has stated: "Eisenhower's farewell address, in the final analysis, is about internal threats posed by vested interests to the democratic process," he says. "But above all, it is addressed to citizens — and about citizenship."
But we paid no attention to his warnings. And now it is too late. The takeover of our government is complete, and we live in an oligarchy instead of a democratic republic. If we are diagnosed with cancer or other diseases that Big Pharma assures us they are working on, we know we can't depend on them for real cures. We must do our own online research while we still can.EXCERPT: A new book by leading cancer expert, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, skewers the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society and blames the organizations for America losing the war against cancer.
The cancer drug industry is even more lucrative than mammography with annual sales over $12 billion. The intimate association between ACS and the pharmaceutical industry is illustrated, Epstein said, by the unbridled aggression which ACS directs at its critics.
"ACS maintains a Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, which periodically reviews unorthodox or alternative therapies," Epstein wrote. "This committee is comprised of volunteer health care professionals, carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or unproven therapies that are generally cheap, and minimally toxic."
Periodically, the committee updates its statements on unproven methods, which are then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheerleader science writers, and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with unproven methods, he or she is blackmailed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused quack becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment.
"The highly biased ACS witch-hunts against alternative practitioners are in striking contrast to its extravagant and uncritical endorsement of conventional toxic chemotherapy. This despite the absence of any objective evidence of improved survival rates or reduced mortality following chemotherapy for all but some relatively rare cancers."
The cancer industry's favor of pharmaceutical products is evidenced, Epstein said, "by the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved approximately 40 patented drugs for cancer treatment, while it has yet to approve a single nonpatented alternative drug."
According to Epstein, "Dr. Samuel Broder, NCI director from 1989 to 1995, frankly admitted, in a 1998 Washington Post interview, that 'the NCI has become what amounts to a government pharmaceutical company.' Taxpayers have funded R & D and expensive clinical trials for over two-thirds of cancer drugs on the market. These drugs are given, with exclusive rights, to the industry, which sells them at inflated prices.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Important to read: A doctor's cancer cure -- and how the govt. has tried to suppress it
Important! The producers of this powerful film are allowing a full and FREE preview through June 13th! Please tell everyone you know to watch this film in its entirety through June 13, 2011.
Visit the Mercola Video Library
Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food and Drug Administration in American history.
In the 1970’s, Dr. Burzynski made a remarkable discovery that threatened to change the face of cancer treatment forever. His non-toxic gene-targeted cancer medicine could have helped save millions of lives over the last two decades had his discovery not been criminally suppressed by the US government, as his therapy, called “antineoplastons,” have been shown to effectively help cure some of the most “incurable” forms of terminal cancer.
It became clear that ever since 1977, when Dr. Burzynski first tried to get antineoplastons approved, the FDA had begun scheming to eliminate the threat he and his discovery posed to the entire cancer industry...
This documentary takes you through the treacherous 14-year journey Dr. Burzynski and his patients have had to endure in order to finally obtain FDA-approved clinical trials of antineoplastons.
His story is yet another testament that fact can be far stranger than fiction, as the film exposes the powerful, unscrupulous forces that work to maintain the status quo of the medical- and pharmaceutical industry at any cost—including the lives of millions of people.
Sources:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/11/burzynski-the-movie.aspx
EXCERPT: It's been stated many times that a crime can be solved simply by following the money, and this case is no exception. The FDA and the pharmaceutical industry had realized that if Dr. Burzynski's discovery—which he owned the patent for—received a fair review, chemotherapy and radiation would rapidly dwindle into obscurity, effectively crippling the industry. Not only that, but if antineoplastons were approved, billions of dollars of cancer research funds would get funneled over to one single scientist who had exclusive patent rights...
Dr. Richard Crout, Director of the FDA Bureau of Drugs, once wrote in a 1982 newsletter:
"I never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited finances."
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Learn all kinds of subjects -- algebra, history, physics, etc. ONLINE for FREE
One man's way of helping to educate the world. What started out as Salman Khan making a few algebra videos for his cousins has grown to over 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises and assessments covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history. Watch Salman Khan on one of the TED shows -- video on this site.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
To be expected: Palin fans are trying to rewrite Revere's wikipedia page
True to form, Tea Party fans of Sarah Palin are trying to rewrite the Wikipedia site on Paul Revere, in order to make it compare favorably with Palin's idiotic claims on the purpose of Revere's ride ("to warn the British" by calling out, "The British are coming!"). Just what you would expect from the right-wing apologists, to whom truth is utterly unimportant (i.e., they listen to FOX for their creative "news"). In fact, they consider Truth to be obstructive when it gets in the way of the concocted lies they have come to prefer. When they hear one of their heroes/heroines spouting even the most ridiculous of lies, they will rush to support this new "truthiness" as absolutely correct. I suppose in other times there have been people this naive, who would believe anything told to them by lying narcissists like a Rush Limbaugh or dumbbells like a Sarah Palin. But, in our time, when we have supposedly advanced in intelligence, it's hard to understand how non-thinking followers like these still exist. They even take pride in being called "dittoheads" by Limbaugh. Go figure.
Monday, June 06, 2011
Fascinating: American armchair explorer finds a built structure on Mars via Google Mars
We haven't seen anything about this in American newspapers; this was published in the UK Daily Mail. Scroll down on the site and look at the video of this thing -- pretty remarkable! As the visual zooms in, you can see clearly that this is definitely not a rock or something natural -- It is a built structure, 700 ft. long by 150 ft. wide.
Little by little, piece by piece, sometimes planned and sometimes by accident, truth is making its way to the people of Earth. In this vast universe, we are not alone.
The guy even lists the coordinates 49'19.73"N 29 33'06.53"W so others can go see the surprising anomaly for themselves. MailOnline has tried to contact both NASA and Google for a response to the image, but neither has replied.
EXCERPT: 'It could be a power station or it could be a biological containment or it could be a glorified garage - hope it's not a weapon.
'Whoever put it up there had a purpose I'm sure. I couldn't imagine what the purpose was. I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to live on Mars.
'It could be a way station for weary space travelers. It could also belong to NASA, I don't know that they would admit that.
'I don't know if they could pull off such a project without all the people seeing all the material going up there. I sort of doubt NASA has anything to do with this.
'I don't know if NASA even knows about this.'
Three reactors melted down after quake -- the truth is finally coming out
The entire world has been exposed to far more radiation than was admitted to. As physicist Michio Kaku says, "The effects were 500 times worse than Chernobyl." But we're not hearing much about the radiation exposure in our mainstream news, are we? In fact, it has been played down, in order to calm the public. Do you think we have been told the truth? Really? Read the following before you make up your mind...
EXCERPT:
The earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi, causing the three operating reactors to overheat. That compounded a natural disaster by spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Tokyo Electric avoided using the term "meltdown," and says it was keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN after the company's announcement in May said that while it may have been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.
"On the basis of what they showed, if there's not fuel left in the core, I don't know what it is other than a complete meltdown," said Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant. And given the damage reported at the other units, "It's hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors."
A massive hydrogen explosion -- a symptom of the reactor's overheating -- blew the roof off the No. 1 unit the day after the earthquake, and another hydrogen blast ripped apart the No. 3 reactor building two days later. A suspected hydrogen detonation within the No. 2 reactor is believed to have damaged that unit on March 15.
See also:
Famed Physicist Michio Kaku says that we could be in a nuclear free fall with one of the reactors leaking plutonium, the most toxic substance known to man.
This could move into a tragedy far beyond Chernobyl creating permanent dead zones in Japan.
Expert: Japan Nuke Disaster Now Worse than Chernobyl Everything is Fine: Rising Levels of Fukushima Radiation Reported Throughout US More Than A Quarter of US Nuke Plants Failed to Report Serious Equipment Defects
Radioactive Seawater Offshore Disabled Fukushima Plant 1250 Times NormalThe New Chernobyl: Russian Survivor Warns, "Run Away!" Japan's Nuclear Nightmare Will Play Out over Years and DecadesDiablo Canyon and 13 Other US Nuclear Plants had Recent "Near Misses" Conspiracy Not to Mention Nuclear Waste, Instead Called "Spent Fuel" National Academy of Sciences: Low Levels of Radiation Cause CancerThe Greatest Nuclear Danger to the American People Not From Japan: A Look at High Risk Earthquake Prone US Nuke PlantsNRC Warned in 1985, Chance of Severe US Meltdown in 20 Years 50/50New York City Overdue for Significant Quake: Will Indian Point Nuke Plant Be Able to Handle It?
"A Terrible Situation and It's Only Getting Worse:" Spent Fuel Pond Believed to have Been Breached What US States Will Be Affected if a Major Meltdown?
Bill Maher on Sarah Palin and her version of history
Sarah Palin and her History Lessons to the nation: Borowitz Report
June 6, 2011
Palin: ‘We Must Never Forget the Wisdom of Jefferson, and his Wife, Weezy’
Former Gov. Gives History Lesson
| |
Gov. Palin said that “at a time of our history when the American people needed leadership, it was Jefferson who said the immortal words, ‘We’re movin’ on up.’”
The former Alaska Governor, criticized in recent days over her grasp of American history, used the Monticello speech to demonstrate her knowledge of the country’s founding fathers.
“Let us have the ingenuity of Benjamin Franklin, who invented the electric chair,” she said.
“Let us have the honesty of George Washington, who told his father that he chopped down a cherry tree because it was blocking his view of Russia,” she added. “And let us have Washington’s perseverance, which he demonstrated during that harsh winter at Sweet Valley High.”
But she saved her most fulsome praise for her favorite American hero, Paul Revere: “In his famous cry, ‘One if by land, two if by sea,’ Paul Revere proved that you don’t have to know how to count higher than two to be a great American.”
At the end of her speech in Monticello, Gov. Palin said that she was looking forward to the next stop on her bus tour, Philadelphia, “the home of the Taco Bell.”
Sunday, June 05, 2011
OOPS MOMENT: FOX News shows Tina Fey in on-screen graphic for Sarah Palin
It seems they can't tell the difference. Ya' gotta' love it!
http://www.therightscoop.com/fox-news-shows-tina-fey-in-on-screen-graphic-for-sarah-palin/
A post on this with more detail as well as a back story -- go check this out.
For a video of this in action: Click over to watch.
Palin Doubles Down on Her Revised American Revolution History
From smirkingchimp.com:
Sarah Palin said today, in answer to Chris Wallace who told her she messed up on Paul Revere: "Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there that, 'Hey. You’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not gonna beat our own well-armed, uh, persons, uh, individual private militia that we have.' He did warn the British. And in a shout-out, gotcha type of question that was asked of me, I answered candidly. And I know my American history."
...
If Palin knows her American history, this latest bit of jujitsu shows no evidence of it. The purpose of Revere’s ride was to inform John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other colonial American patriots that the British Army was marching from Boston to Lexington. As such, secrecy and stealth were essential. So, contrary to Palin’s claim that Revere warned the British they would not succeed, Revere attempted to avoid all contact with British troops or British loyalists already living in the colonies. The entire point of Revere’s mission was to inform the patriots of the British movements without the British knowing they had been so informed.
Republicans Propose Another Recession
By Brent Budowsky, smirkingchimp.com
Listening to Republican leaders discuss the awful and miserable jobs report today, I am reminded why most recessions are caused by Republican policies, from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush.
Republicans want to lay off more state workers, they want to lay off more city workers. They want to lay off more federal workers. They want to cut spending that would lead to more layoffs of private-sector workers.
When they are not calling for average Americans to pay much more for Medicare, so wealthy insurers can make more money, Republicans are calling for no programs to create jobs, proposing more policies that will destroy jobs and suggesting less help for those who have no jobs while they fight for tax cuts for millionaires, and special benefits for oil companies and oil futures speculators.
There are reasons that the Great Depression followed Herbert Hoover and the Great Recession followed George W. Bush and in between there were little recessions during various Republican years.
Now, make no mistake, I have criticized Democrats as well as Republicans, as recently as my column Thursday. It is too bad I could not write a follow-up jobs column Friday, and another Tuesday, and another Wednesday, until Washington figures out that the No. 1 issue is jobs. I suspect after today's jobs disaster this will change.
The big problem with Democrats is they don't fight hard enough against Republican policies. I am in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. It amazes me, with historical evidence that Republican policies so often cause recession, that some Democrats are so relucant to stand up as Democrats, for Democratic policies.
It is an outrage and tragedy that there is no major jobs program being seriously considered in Washington today. I predict this, too, will soon change.
Unfortunately, there is not even an intelligent discussion in the media, including all cable channels, most newspapers and even the network news, about the urgent need for a major jobs program.
Of course, cable has far more important matters to discuss at length, such as Weiner's alleged underpants, Arnold's love-child, Trump's birtherism, Gingrich's jewelry, Edwards's love-child and other idiot nonsense by some in the media who believe that Americans are idiots interested in this stuff.
Ladies and gentlemen, look at the jobs numbers today and understand that huge swaths of the American people face their own personal recession, and many of them face their own family Great Depressions, and few in politics or media seem to care.
Republicans keep causing recessions, Democrats keep failing to fight them, voters keep suffering the pain, and the demand for change is greater than ever.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
WHO now admits cell phones cause cancer
Dear NaturalNews readers,
After years of denials, the World Health Organization (WHO) is now admitting that mobile phones do cause cancer after all. It's now official: Holding an active cell phone next to your head can give you brain tumors.
All of us who have been warning about this for years were, of course, blasted as "conspiracy theorists." Yet again, it turns out we were absolutely right. Just as we're right about the toxicity of fluoride in the water, aspartame in the diet soda and the dangerous side effects of GMOs in the food supply. The WHO remains at least ten years behind what holistic health advocates already know on a variety of subjects.
Read more about the WHO's announcement that mobile phone use promotes brain tumors:
http://www.naturalnews.com/032609_cell_phones_cancer.html
The stupidity of GOP voters cannot be overestimated
THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICAL DERANGEMENT
By William Rivers Pitt
EXCERPT: Every available scrap of poll data indicates that a large majority of Americans are stoutly opposed to the Ryan plan that seeks to end Medicare...and every scrap of poll data also indicates that a majority of Americans are dead-set against raising the debt-limit ceiling.
Who the what the where the when the why the hell is that?
Simple answer: the GOP pulled a bait-and-switch on America's most vulnerable voters by claiming that Obama and the Democrats wanted to destroy Medicare, and with this gambit clawed their way into majority control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Once they were in, they turned on a dime and started laying the groundwork to annihilate the very Medicare program they had been sounding the alarm over.
The looming vote on raising the debt limit - a vote that had previously passed unremarked every year since time out of mind - is now the Line of Death, a doomsday deadline the GOP is using to force Democrats into savage cuts in the social contract. With savvy messaging, the GOP has managed to hoodwink a majority of Americans into thinking that failing to pass the debt ceiling increase is a good thing, our "mainstream" news media has coddled such viewpoints, and the Democrats are only just beginning to figure out how to message against such madness.
The people want to keep Medicare, but they also apparently want to eviscerate the national economy just as the most recent dour economic reports are coming in, because they want big cuts in spending...so long as it doesn't involve the social safety net or any of the hundred other programs they benefit from on a daily basis. They have reached this demented point of view for the same reason old-school computer programmers came up with the acronym GIGO - garbage in, garbage out - to describe how disruptive and destructive bad information can be to any process.
For the record: if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by the drop-dead date in August, the economic calamity we suffered through two years ago will seem like a Cape Cod clambake by comparison. Interest rates will skyrocket, delivering a body blow to the all-important Treasury bond market. The already-anemic housing market will further collapse, crushing the construction industry. Worst of all, the rest of the world (which believes at this moment that America would never be utterly stupid enough to let this happen) would immediately lose confidence in the United States, and a global Depression would fold its wings over us like a funeral shroud.
Ever paid $50 for a Big Mac? You will, if this deal goes down.
Too bad we didn't follow Teddy Roosevelt's advice on unregulated capitalism
EXCERPT: Roosevelt sussed out the perils of unregulated capitalism early on. "The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them wherever need of such control is shown but it is in duty bound to control them," he said in 1901.
No president since Nixon has followed TR's advice. The result of unbridled corporate corruption is disparity of wealth worse than much of the Third World, and 20 percent unemployment.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Secrets of the Tribe -- a documentary
New Yorker article: http://www.li.suu.edu/library/circulation/Dean/anth1010edTiernyFierceAnthropologistFall08.pdf
Review of documentary by anthropologist at UCSC: http://www.counterpunch.org/johnston03192010.html
EXCERPT: I was also frustrated, as I suppose many involved in this enterprise will be, as there was such minimal attention to what I saw to be the central question: why was the Atomic Energy Commission funding this sort of research in the Amazon?
The answers to this question lie in the very large and very alarming record of human radiation experimentation conducted by the United States. Declassified after the Clinton-era Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experimentation, this record was available on the web between 1997-2001 when the Bush Administration began to remove key documents and, in 2003, shut down the website on the grounds that such information constituted a threat to security. (Hard copies of this record are still available at George Washington University's National Security Archive). The Atomic Energy Commission and other US agencies and departments funded numerous Cold War-era human population research projects with indigenous communities serving as human subjects in experiments involving the administration of radioisotopes with research goals that included, among other things, how the human body functioned at different altitudes, adjusted to intense cold, and what role was played by thyroid in this process (the thyroid being especially vulnerable to injury from the uptake of radioiodine present in the nuclear weapons fallout that was then blanketing the globe). These and other research questions -- such as how radioisotopes move through the environment, food chain, and human body, and to what effect -- led to US-funded research using biologically-discrete populations who largely live off the land: Indigenous groups living in the Amazon, Andes, Arctic, Pacific and the American Southwest.
Ah, but this is the stuff of a bigger story that perhaps may be told in some future film. Clearly, Padilha had more than enough on his plate with the consequences and controversies surrounding the 1968 Yanomami expedition.
http://www.documentary.org/magazine/anthropologists-behaving-badly-jose-padilhas-secrets-tribe-does-some-digging-its-own
Pieces of Jean-Pierre Marchand's collaboration with Jacques Lizot, Les indiens Yanomami (1968), stands in for Lizot, who declined Padilha's request for an interview. (He is now sought by French police on an unrelated molestation charge and is thought to be in Morocco.) "The film is very candid on Lizot, yet I did not touch the surface of what he did," says Padilha. "The French injected the Yanomami with radioactive isotopes. The French side is much uglier than it looks in the film."
The French arm of ARTE is one of the co-production partners on Secrets of the Tribe and, it turns out, protective of Jacques Lizot and the Collège de France, where Lizot's mentor Claude Lévi-Strauss was chair of social anthropology. ARTE asked Padilha to put Lizot's pederasty in context. "Many of these [commissioning] editors come from liberal arts, anthropology backgrounds," says the filmmaker. "No one thinks about the kids." For his part, he sent the filmed testimony to Interpol in Brazil, which sent it on to France. "Lizot can be active somewhere right now," he notes. "When I showed [the footage] to the French, they didn't even consider this. If Lizot had molested French boys? Yanomami kids are far away. They intellectualize it as somehow excusable."
Anthropologists behaving badly is nothing new. Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, asked Arctic explorer Robert Peary to bring him back "a middle-aged Eskimo, preferably from Greenland," for the American Museum of Natural History's live dioramas. Within eight months, four of the six Inuits Peary delivered had died of tuberculosis. Congolese pygmy Ota Benga lived at the museum and later at New York's Bronx Zoo before killing himself. Ishi, the last of the California Yahi Indians, lived at the University of California's Museum of Anthropology, and some of his remains were shipped off to the Smithsonian. Robert Flaherty--whose Nanook of the North unleashed a controversy in ethnographic filmmaking that continues today--fathered an Inuit son he later refused to acknowledge, or help. Even the ethically meticulous Margaret Mead admitted to having considered a sexual affair with one of the Samoans she was studying.
Today, anthropology is going through another round of soul-searching. Barbara Rose Johnston, who saw Secrets when it premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, invited Padilha and his film to the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting, held in November in New Orleans. "I think it is a trap," Padilha joked back in April. "Maybe they will try to kill me." The film, minus its director, became part of a panel exploring the ethics of the discipline and, in a move that cannot be coincidental, the AAA decided to drop the word "science" from its statement on long-range plans. "The thing is, I think that biology has a lot to do with behavior," Padilha says." But the science is clumsy. Chagnon is an embarrassment to sociobiology. This film will help that."
No matter how anthropology decides to settle its debates, it is clear from the film that the Yanomami reached a verdict long ago. "Look here, they are taking my picture again," one man points at Padilha's camera. "You should be ignorant of us."
Sarah Palin's history rewrite on Paul Revere's ride and the "Statute" of Liberty
Intelligent Republicans are aghast at what has risen to the top in their party, but they should have seen it coming. When you espouse an ideology that promotes welfare for the rich while denying it to the poor, and allows racism/prejudice/hatred/ignorance/stupidity to dictate core policies of the party, this is the result.
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/sarah-palin-badly-mangles-the-story-of-paul-reveres-ride-in-statement/
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/6140-worst-person-of-the-day-sarah-palin Sarah says she will be visiting the "Statute of Liberty"
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
House Republicans Vote Against Raising the Debt Ceiling
Ah, but not to worry, folks -- "Wall Street is in on the joke" (Sigh! This is what we have come to in American politics... :-( )
By John Amato, www.crooksandliars.com
I know the House Republicans bastardized the debt ceiling vote yesterday to set up some sort of a trap for the Democratic Party and usually I would have posted about it quickly, but watching it go down, it just left me numb to the whole scam.
It was such a blatant hoax that Bruce Josten of the Chamber of Commerce even was quoted saying as much.
Republicans had hoped their legislation would embarrass Democrats while demonstrating their willingness to force the United States into default on its fiscal obligations, but because the legislation included a partisan attack blaming President Obama for the debt accrued under President Bush and because Republicans privately assured their corporate backers that the vote was a charade, nobody is taking the vote seriously. For example:
And for all the talk of economic crisis should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling by August, the financial markets are likely to yawn at this vote — if only because Republican leaders have privately assured Wall Street executives that this is a show intended to make the point to Mr. Obama that an increase cannot pass absent his agreement to rein in domestic programs.
“Wall Street is in on the joke,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The debt ceiling isn't something to play with, but I'm glad Republicans are having a good hoax day. Hey, should we dock their salaries for this bullshit? If you or I spent all day playing practical jokes at work, I doubt we'd get paid for it.
Digby makes a great point about the fact that Republicans were willing to weaken market confidence over their political ploy after they live and breath at the feet of the free market alter..
I don't know what kind of sick nihilism makes a scenario like that remotely possible, but again, I don't believe it. We are talking about Big Money here and there are a lot of things that aren't working right in this country right now, but the greed mechanism isn't one of them. I don't believe "the markets" are going along with that plan. And I don't think even the Republicans are going to take that kind of risk going into an election year.
But if these people are actually planning a financial panic in order to destroy the safety net, can someone explain to me just how it is they can possibly be considered anything but criminals? This isn't a joke. Panics have a way of getting out of hand --- it's not like you can wave a magic wand and it stops. At the very least can we at least admit that every single sentence they've ever uttered about the desperate need for market "confidence" and "uncertainty" was unadulterated rubbish? (If this happens keep an eye on the short sellers because somebody's going to make money on it and you have to assume the people who caused it are among them ...)
I don't trust Joe Biden's group at this point until they prove to me otherwise, but looking on it today, it's pretty depressing to see the House used like a pinata since House Republicans passed Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing budget, and now they have seniors, a usually reliable vote for them, freaking the f*&k out. This proves they'll do anything, anything at all to besmirch their own jobs.
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