Thursday, January 22, 2015
OMG! Joni Ernst and her reply to Obama's state of the union speech TOO FUNNY!
And then there was her tale of how poor her family was....letting us know that Republicans can actually identify with poor people. Her "breadbags over our shoes" story reminded me of the classic Monty Python "We Were So Poor that..." It's one of my favorites.. Following is the script -- and you can See it performed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAdlkunflRs
Monty Python's
We Were So Poor Script
Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar. Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable. Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah? Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah. Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine? MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea. GC: A cup ' COLD tea. EI: Without milk or sugar. TG: OR tea! MP: In a filthy, cracked cup. EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper. GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth. TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor. MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness." EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof. GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING! TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor! MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph. EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US. GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake! TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road. MP: Cardboard box? TG: Aye. MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt! GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY! TG: Paradise. We had 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 tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife. EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah." MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'. ALL: Nope, nope..
Colonoscopy endoscope bacteria kills 11 Seattle patients
Entered healthy--had test--died from test. Oops...
HOW MANY DIE FROM MEDICAL MISTAKES IN U.S. HOSPITALS EACH YEAR?
From NPR.org
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/09/20/224507654/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in-u-s-hospitals
Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher than previously reported — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death.
That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second. These estimates were developed by John T. James, a toxicologist at NASA's space center in Houston who runs an advocacy organization called Patient Safety America. James has also written a book about the death of his 19-year-old son after what James maintains was negligent hospital care.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Could you fall in love with someone just by asking them 36 questions?
I think it would be possible to fall in love through answers to the suggested questions, if each person were giving honest answers straight from their heart. You would get to know a lot about a person's true feelings and character from their answers. It could be a good exercise to do with your partner, no matter how long you have been with them. Might be some surprising results...in all kinds of ways. (~.~)
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
New Hymn for our times - very beautiful
I think you might enjoy hearing this beautiful hymn…also a very interesting quote from President Obama when asked by actor Will Smith's son about the existence of Extraterrestrials. His response was: "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of Extraterrestrials."
http://youtu.be/lWw1oHkiq0k
Friday, January 09, 2015
Nat Geo Photo Contest-truly amazing photos
http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewtucker/the-most-astonishing-photos-that-won-awards-in-2014?ref_src=email#.egkBxrWqG
America - land of the shooters
Americans now more likely to die from getting shot than in car accidents
There are nearly 320 million people in the U.S. and nearly as many firearms. While the percentage of households that own guns has gone down, many firearms enthusiasts are buying up as many weapons as they can.
Alabama shooting range promotes gun safety with photographs of armed infants and children
A shooting range in Montgomery, Alabama is coming under fire for posting photographs of children and infants with firearms on its Facebook page.Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Important We The People petition needs your signature
This petition is something everyone, regardless of political ideals or affiliation, should be interested in as it affects all of Earth's population -- and beyond. I just signed it -- we need 100,000 signatures for the issue to be considered by the White House and Congress. Will you please be one of them? Thank You for signing and for passing along this message to y our e-mail list.
we petition the obama administration to:
support congressional hearings for government/agency/political witnesses to extraterrestrial related events and evidence
Disclosure Petition VII - Congressional Hearings
by Paradigm Research Group
On 9/22/11 PRG petitioned the President to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. The White House response on 11/4/11 from the Office of Science and Technology Policy stated, "The U.S. government has no evidence any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye."
There are scores of government/agency/political witnesses of rank and station prepared to testify under oath before congressional committees now about the evidence the White House states doesn't exist. See: www.citizenhearing.org
Tuesday, January 06, 2015
From JFK to 9/11: Everything is a Rich Man's Trick
The who, how & why of the JFK assassination. Taken from an historical perspective starting around World War 1 leading to present day. After watching this video you will know more about what happened in the past and how the world is run today.
This is a superb truth-telling documentary of the real history of our world. I am sending this only to those who I think are open-minded and curious enough to want to know real truth--and who would want to view a 3-hour long video. I watched it in 2 segments, half last night and half this morning. There is much to learn -- and we are responsible to educate ourselves.
Valuable advice: Back up your ID: do it now!
Thanks to my friend Bob for this valuable info. I am passing it along to everyone I know. Tech Support Pits From: Jean on the Dear Webby site Re: Back up your ID 1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put 'PHOTO ID REQUIRED.' 2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the 'For' line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won't have access to it. 3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks. (DUH!) You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have It printed, anyone can get it. 4. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We've all heard horror stories about fraud that's committed on us in stealing a Name, address, Social Security number, credit cards. In case your luggage is lost, take another list in your carry on bag, especially if you are abroad and need immediate access to those numbers. Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here's some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know: 5. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call.. Keep those where you can find them. 6. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc.., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one). But here's what is perhaps most important of all: (I never even thought to do this.) 7. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.. Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, if it has been stolen: 1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285 1-800-525-6285 2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742 1-888-397-3742 3.) Trans Union : 1-800-680 7289 1-800-680 7289 4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271 1-800-269-0271 Jean
Saturday, January 03, 2015
Jan. 7 petition re UFOs coming up: should be of interest to all
EXCERPT:
A petition will be launched on January 7th, 2015 by Steven Basset encouraging the United States government to hold congressional hearings regarding all of the information that has surfaced over the past few years pointing to the fact that an extraterrestrial presence has been interacting with the human race for quite some time. If the petition receives 100,000 signatures the White House will respond.
I am creating awareness about it now to let people know, and will also be doing the same when January 7th comes around with a link posted to where you will be able to sign, so keep a look out for it.
Eileen
Friday, January 02, 2015
American Schnooks: The People Who Can Be Fooled Again. And Again. And Again
One Reader's Comment included below in blue type is better than any I could make. Read it and then read the article -- Both SO TRUE! The conservative nay-saying ideologues are like a heavy albatross hanging around the neck of the country, preventing all of us from living what could be a far better life than we have today. (Except for the vastly wealthy and corporate set, who are enjoying the Best Days they've ever had since the Victorian times. The Robber Barons and corporate monopolies are alive and thriving today, thanks to Republican-granted deregulation and tax breaks -- and to the conservative Supreme Court that has declared corporations to be people).
American Schnooks
Wonderful analysis and so tragically true. Loved "Babbity country club hobnobbers"(sadly, how many will get that reference)?, plus others you come up with. I was educated in the Sixties, and highly influenced, as were many in my generation, by "Language in Thought and Action" by the great S. I. Hayakawa, later best known as "the old Asian congressman who kept falling asleep". Critical Thinking was to me, always the most important underlying need to be taught. As a parent, teacher and sub, as well as teaching semi "delinquent" and "at risk" kids, I always thought this needed to be the ultimate, underlying focus, and tried to make it so. Starting teaching in the late sixties, I quickly realized that critical thinking was being undermined by the Powers That Be running our schools. It has continued to get worse. I won't bore you with a lot of examples you are surely well aware of... Thank you
American Schnooks: The People Who Can Be Fooled Again. And Again. And Still Again. Not to Mention a Time or Two After
By Jaime O'Neill
If you are inclined to be optimistic, you want to believe that people learn from their mistakes. You think that if people are lied to or misled, they'll be dubious or more cautious the next time someone tries to pull a fast one on them. But, in the United States of America, in the 21st century, there's a bunch of people you can fool over and over again. They're the people who watch Fox "News," and they're the 21 to 25% of the population who consistently turn up in polls supporting just about anyone or anything the Republican Party dishes out, no matter how deluded or squirrelly. They're known as "the base," a collection of aging high school drop outs, religious fundamentalists, so-called pro-lifers who love fetuses but are less concerned about living children, Babbitty country club hob- nobbers, hard-hearted rich pricks, gun nuts, xenophobes and racists, anti-government nimrods, and assorted yahoos whose understanding of American politics was almost entirely formed during stints in the U.S. military. They just never catch on.
In one of the classic spoken idiocies for which George W. Bush is remembered, he managed to mangle an attempt to repeat a rather simple idea. Speaking before an audience in Nashville in 2002, President Bush said: "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
What he was trying to say, of course, was "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." It's not a complicated thought, but Bush had, and has, the mind of a simpleton, not an organ quite able to track a thought through the syntax required to express it.
But if he thought that being fooled once was enough to inoculate people against being fooled in the future, he wasn't thinking of the Republican base, the people who voted for him twice, despite the fact that the most devastating attack against us occurred on his watch, and he followed up that rather major lapse by conducting a retaliatory invasion of country that had nothing to do with the attack he'd failed to prevent. He'd also revealed rather generously just how clueless he was, mouthing a sizeable number of non sequiturs and moronisms that would have alerted a smarter nation to the fact that it wasn't being led by the sharpest knife in the drawer. This was the guy, after all, who sympathized with people who found it hard to "put food on their families," and who reassured us by saying "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
That last comment may have been one of those gaffes that have the side effect of being pretty near the truth, though not the kind of truth people who are fooling us ever want us to hear. But the right wing has learned that there really is nothing they can do to alienate the schnooks who hang on their every ill-chosen word. Tell 'em that they'll eventually get richer if we just transfer most of the money to the wealthiest people and wait for that filthy lucre to trickle down on us. They've been hearing that little fairy tale for decades now, and the true believers still have faith that they'll be getting wet any day now. Instead, we all just keep getting soaked.
And when Dick Cheney told the faithful that the war in Iraq would be over in a matter of months, if not weeks, the schnooks bought it, along with the idea that we'd be "greeted as liberators." We later found out that the whole thing was based on lies, but now, more than a decade later, the Republican base still can't bring themselves to believe they were played for fools, and they still aren't mad about it. Cheney, the draft evader, the guy who had "other priorities" when he was supporting the war in Vietnam, but didn't want to fight in it, the guy who rose to oversee the entire American military despite that reluctance to serve, and the all-around man on the make, can still do no wrong with a wide band of Republicans who prove that fooling 'em twice is a piece of cake, and fooling them ad infinitum ain't all that much harder.
The GOP faithful keep getting hosed on the subject of job creation, for instance. Every time Boehner or McConnell wanted to pick a fight with Obama about something else he was doing, they urged him to focus on jobs. But when he did, they didn't like that, either, and they never came up with so much as a single idea of their own on the subject, except for the moldy oldie about tax breaks for the rich as a path to more jobs, a bit of rotten goods they've peddled all-too-successfully for decades. Meanwhile, unable to gain so much as a burble of support from the right wing, Obama soldiered on and brought the jobless rate down to under 6%, which was lower than what Mitt Romney, the off-shoring- of-jobs specialist promised he would deliver by the end of his first four years in office. Obama met that goal in half the time, but it's pretty likely we'd be still above 8% if the Romnoid had won, After all, almost every idea he ever had was antithetical to job creation. Here at home, anyway.
But the Republicans sell the schnooks the idea that they're the party of business, the guys who are savvy about money and know how to create prosperity. And they do. They create ever greater wealth for the people at the top of the heap. Anyone who points that out, however, is engaging in "class warfare," just as anyone who points out the racism that is the glue binding the right wing together is playing "the race card," and is therefore, a "racist." In the tradition of the Big Lie, they repeat that certifiable nonsense over and over, and the schnooks take the bait, again and again, voting against their self interest, and for the interests of the people who wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, but happily trickle on them most any other time. .
Facts don't interest the schnooks, however, and they are unmoved by anything that tends to be objectively verifiable. They don't like science, and the ideas that draw their approval tend to fall in the category of "voodoo economics," the term George W. Bush directed at Saint Ronald Reagan's ideas on the subject.
On the subject of fooling people, they've retired the jersey Ronald Reagan wore when he was busy fooling so many Americans, and the more time passes, the more stuff the right wing is able to ascribe to Reagan whenever they want to pull the wool over the eyes of the sheep who can be persuaded to believe anything so long as Reagan's name is stuck on it.
I mean, really, what does it take for people to not only buy such simpleminded bullshit by the ton, over and over again, but to buy it from salesmen as unappealing and unconvincing as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, or Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity? Does the word "gullible" seem sufficient to describe such people?
Abraham Lincoln once observed, mostly sagely, that "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." What with Fox "News," right wing radio, and the thin but tall tales spun by the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the Republican Party is clearly the place for those people who can, apparently, be fooled all of the time.
Thursday, January 01, 2015
Good News: Pope Francis at odds with GOP in 2015
Pope Francis At Odds With GOP In 2015
One of the high points of 2014 was the way Pope Francis started to redirect the church's dogma away from being radical social conservatives to a more enlightened and less conservative religious organization and Republicans in the US are not happy at all.
To say it's causing a rift between the two is an understatement.
Pope Francis is increasingly driving a wedge between conservatives and the Catholic Church. The magnetic pope has sparked new enthusiasm around the world for the church and has flexed his political muscles internationally, most recently by helping to engineer a new relationship between the United States and Cuba.
But Francis's agenda, which also includes calls to address income inequality and limit climate change, is putting him at odds with Republicans, including GOP Catholics in the United States.
Hours after President Obama announced moves to ease trade and travel restrictions to Cuba, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a practicing Catholic and potential 2016 presidential candidate, criticized the deal and Francis's role in it.
"I would also ask His Holiness to take up the cause of freedom and democracy, which is critical for a free people, for a people to truly be free," Rubio told reporters.
Listening to Republicans cry about human rights is always ludicrous, as they revel in torture, the death penalty and the police state, but it's been a blessing that Pope Francis is having as profound effect as he has so far.
Since his papal inauguration in March 2013, the pontiff has publicly made policy remarks about income inequality and the environment that many American Catholics weren't used to hearing coming from the Vatican, and not just from the pulpit.
"Inequality is the root of social evil," Francis tweeted in March, after months earlier slamming "trickle-down" economics as a "crude and naïve" theory.
Next year, as part of a speech he'll give to the United Nations General Assembly, Francis will issue an edict urging the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to do what they can to fight climate change.
"He's modeling the church as a place for open disagreement," said Vincent J. Miller, who chairs the University of Dayton's Catholic theology program. "In that sense, one of the most important changes he's making is that conservative politicians are now openly disagreeing with him," Miller said.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
GOOD BOOK - Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
I'm glad to see that this is one of the books President Obama is reading on his vacation. It ought to be on every thinking person's reading list. It's about time someone is saying what really matters as we age and approach the end of earth life. As the author, Atul Gawande, says, Death always wins in the end and should not always be thought of as the enemy. In trying to fight off death, our medical world has often caused intense suffering, rather than alleviating it. For proof of that, just go to any hospital or nursing home and take a look around.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Monday, December 22, 2014
FINALLY - A major media call for the prosecution of Cheney, Bush, et al
And if you want to see someone who truly has called the criminals in high places to justice, watch Stephen Colbert's roast of G.W. Bush at the Press Corps dinner a few years back. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FTF4Oz4dI
WOW! Talk about speaking truth to power!!! Viewing that performance again does my heart so much good! Makes you long for a courageous genuine reporter to step forward from the ranks of the timid yes-men and women our fourth estate has turned into. Where is such a journalist????? WHERE???????????? Looks like the NY Times is finally getting a bit of a spine...but compared to Colbert's talk, it sounds mealy-mouthed. However, I applaud that the mainstream media are at least mentioning the possibility of Cheney/Bush being criminals. Good God. At long last.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Jingle Bells played by supermarket cashiers in Germany
Viewing this will give you a joyful laugh! Merry Christmas!
Thursday, December 18, 2014
A Must-See: Stephen Colbert's take on Super PACs
If ever there was a video to bring laughter and tears together, it's this one! It can also bring out a sobbing "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" as we contemplate the impact of the latest deadly assault on our long-cherished government "of the people, by the people, for the people." That kind of government no longer exists.
Unregulated power and greed, mixed with ignorance of the masses who happily accept (and actually applaud!) what is being done to them, has finally and completely wormed its way around all the checks and balances set up by our forefathers who hoped and prayed they could keep greed and power plays at arm's length. If they could be aware of how their democratic republic has been destroyed in the year 2014, their bodies would be rolling in their graves.
Monday, December 15, 2014
One woman who truly cares about the people
You've got to see what Elizabeth Warren said to Citigroup executives. It's electrifying. It's historic.
And it could put Elizabeth Warren "into serious contention to be the next President of the United States."1
The video is 10 minutes long, and it's worth every second—so I hope you'll turn up your speakers and watch the whole thing.
When big banks wrecked our economy, they went to Congress for a half-a-trillion-dollar bailout. Now—six years later—Citigroup thought they could quietly sneak a provision into a must-pass spending bill to let them gamble with taxpayer money again. But Senator Warren fought back hard, and is winning in the court of public opinion.
Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech launched him into the running for president. This could do the same for Elizabeth Warren.
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