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Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Statue of Liberty Inscription

“Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

― Emma Lazarus

Someone-please do a cartoon of a bunch of Republican governors carrying off the Statue of Liberty!

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As one of your average armchair observers, I depend on what media has to tell me about current events. I read my local newspaper, “The Daily Journal”, though sometimes out of date. I receive email alerts on world news, from the SacBee, NYT, WAPO, KCRA, Tribune (Chicago), and ABC. I used to read a few others now defunct. I have not subscribed to SfGate, CNN or FOX, because I got tired of their bullshit. I used to read the others when they were free; I have not paid for monthly subscriptions to the above publications. I used to get AP and Reuters, IATimes, Japan Herald and Hong Kong News, VOA, and KUAM, but the emails stopped. I do spend a fair amount of time surfing various sources from different perspectives.

So, I did a review of my emails, and my local paper. Not one of the alerts mentioned Lebanon or Beirut until the events in Paris.

Yesterday I did an Google and Yahoo search for “Beirut”. Only CNN popped up with an article on the Beirut attack with the appropriate date. Today I did an similar search for “Beirut, 2015/11/12. Low and behold! There were pages of date appropriate articles from all kinds of media sources, including the ones for which I receive alerts.

This leads me to a few conclusions:

Clearly I am not engaging with news media in such a way as to receive a broad view of world events.

The journalistic sources that deign to send me email alerts are deciding what I should read, and it isn’t enough.

Google and Yahoo are not neutral news sources because they are search engines and they rank news on number of hits, not news.

When a person spends the time, as I did yesterday, reading 10 pages of search hits in the vain hope of finding date appropriate information on the Beirut explosion, the resulting frustration over my personal  obliviousness, seemed in the long run, to actually be a symptom for something else.

For all our current internet technology, we average armchair observers are still pretty much in the dark. Why?

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Here find the transcript for the Iowa Democratic debate: Democratic debate transcript

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151113 – Paris is Attacked

images

Update: the Death Tones were in Paris and scheduled to play in that concert hall on Saturday.

Correction: the Band was from Palm Desert CA:

Eagles of Death Metal

Their schedule was widely available online.

At least 60 people killed, bombing at the Stade de France with 80 thousand fans, a resturant and a concert hall where a Def Metal concert was just finishing and hostages were taken. If you aren’t watching you should be:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34814203

Though there are reports that the gunmen yelled this is for Syria, there is no claim of responsibility yet. However, a CIA rep mentions Yemen and ISIS as possible culprits.

Attacks in Paris (If you are there.)
Emergency number: 0800 40 60 05 For any information listen to 107.1 FM

Shelter inside.

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Below find the Transcript of the Benghazi hearing:

Full text: Clinton testifies before House committee on Benghazi – The Washington Pos

The darn thing ran just under eleven hours, with breaks. It was pretty ridiculous. To suggest that there was new information is spurious thinking. Except for Tammy Duckworth, no one had reasonable questions. Elijah Cummings was a great  defender and Adam Schiff presented wonderful data on how often questions on things like emails and Sidney Blumenthal were asked, versus items that related to Benghazi. The whole hearing reeked of Tea Party bile, and is still spewing all over the blog links on the House Website, members of which are found here:

Republicans
Trey Gowdy, Chairman (SC-04)
Susan Brooks (IN-05)
Jim Jordan (OH-04)
Mike Pompeo (KS-04)
Martha Roby (AL-02)
Peter Roskam (IL-06)
Lynn Westmoreland (GA-03)

Democrats
Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member (MD-07)
Adam Smith (WA-09)
Adam Schiff (CA-28)
Linda Sanchez (CA-38)
Tammy Duckworth (IL-08)

Secretary Clinton was  amazing. There could be no better recommendation for President than  her outlasting the over ten hours of “in your face” partisan assholery, I witnessed, on the live video today.

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NFCD_DevelopmentPoster

Are your cats neutered yet? Why the heck not? It is possible and pretty easy to maintain a feral cat population. Alley Cat Allies has this to say about our cat population:

Feral Cat Facts

  • Cats have lived alongside humans for more than 10,000 years. They are part of the natural landscape. Feral cats are the same species as pet cats. Feral cats, also called community or outdoor cats, live in groups called colonies and can thrive in every landscape. They are just as healthy as pet cats, but they are not socialized to humans and are therefore unadoptable.
  • Trap-Neuter-Return—a humane approach to managing and caring for community cats—is the only effective method of stabilizing cat colonies. In the last decade, the number of local governments with official policies endorsing TNR has increased tenfold, with hundreds of cities and towns successfully carrying out TNR programs.
  • However, in the majority of cities, cats are still caught and brought to animal pounds and shelters where they are killed. The shelter system is the number one cause of death for cats in the United States. About 70% of cats who enter shelters are killed there, including virtually 100% of feral cats. That’s why it’s so important for people like you to join us for National Feral Cat Day®, and every day, to help change society and create compassionate communities for cats.

Adams Co. Pet Rescue (WA)

Solano Feral Cat TNR task Force (Solano Co. CA)

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Below find the transcript for the first 2015 Democratic debate:

The Democratic presidential candidates met in Las Vegas for a primetime debate on CNN.

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I hope pretty soon we will get beyond the flaming idiotic discussion of whether or not a perfectly competent human knows what to do with her email.

I hope too, that folks will start to understand most polls for what they are-useful tools of attack. NBC’s involvement in the recent New Hampshire poll represents a sad low for media.

What I want to talk about is a thing brewing around the edges of liberality-me being a liberal-that I have been stewing over a while now. (Or perhaps I should say I am a democratic socialist. Don’t muck about with me over this apparent political bifurcation; I believe many of us non-politicos are more fluid in their thinking in this area.)

I read a lot of different blogs. One I like is Dandelion Salad, because it provides an open format for a wide variety of writers who are on the left side of the political spectrum. I received a recent post, from a writer there, named StormCloudsGathering, entitled: “World War III, Who will be blamed?

Now, the posts for StormCloudsGathering may your cup of tea. They are not mine. Here is why. First, in going to StormCloudsGathering’s “Facebook “about” page, we learn that the person is a self-proclaimed “public figure” who identifies as an “it, or gender neutral”, interested in “truth”. Now I get that not everyone wants to be out loud and proud on FB. There are lots of considerations to be made, safety for one. However, “public figures” interested in “truth” typically want you to know who they are. In fact, he is Aaron Hawkins. (If I could find him easily, the NSA can, so he isn’t hiding from anyone but you.)

In his post Hawkins says:

[If you want to start a to war, the unwashed masses must be convinced to send their brothers, sons and fathers to die on the front lines. The specter of an external enemy must be etched into their collective mind through trauma, exaggeration and repetition. History must be whitewashed, twisted and cherry picked down to a politicized nursery rhyme. At no point should the real motives or consequences of such an endeavor be discussed. ]

Well, to start, most of us have been pretty well washed for a while. (Though the drought and global warming might affect that.) Second, If we ever have a third world war, the status of women will change how it is fought, who will fight it, and what will happen afterwards. Third, I find his pronouncements on mind bending and history changing troubling in light of what I found on his website.

Take for instance his 3-year-old uTube “The Road to World War 3”. I stopped listening when he said Iran had not attacked anyone since 1798, since my personal understanding of history includes the Iran/Iraq war 1980-1988. (It was kind of like hearing that the Holocaust never happened.)

Seriously.

This is male chest pounding in its worst form-disguised as tired, and old, rhetoric. It’s insulting to the audience that might otherwise listen and the rhetorical abuser is ignoring what might really be happening politically because HE just wants to push HIS own persona.

With the dingy music, and perpetually flashing images Hawkin’s uTubes wear you out. He doesn’t want you to think calmly and rationally about what you have just seen. There is no way to verify for yourself, without a mountain of research, how much he said is true. If you think you might believe some of it, then, he has just sucked you into some portion of his mythology. Where do you stop? This is no different than listening to the right wingnuts World Net Daily or following Judicial Watch for fun and profit.

With their format, absolutely, I think Dandelion Salad should have Hawkins as a contributing writer. Where was the discussion about his post? Only one of nine even addressed the sensationalism of Hawkin’s videos. I know you wouldn’t be reading the Salad if you were all sheepies.

I am beginning to wonder if it is possible for a man to be a liberal and feminist at the same time.

And that is sad for Bernie Sanders. As much as I admire him, I probably won’t be voting for him, because you all don’t get it yet. He represents YOU and you haven’t changed. You don’t see the future the way I do. You aren’t making amends to your 2008 past.

Women are closer to having a say in our government than they have been since the 70’s, maybe ever. The evolution is coming. There is still time for you male lefties to get your act together, imagine what the future will be with women as real partners and bosses, and start inventing words, speeches and behaviors that match.

http://christophercantwell.com/2014/04/02/anarcho-capitalism-storm-clouds-gathering-wrong/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zeitgeist_Movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco#The_Venus_Project_and_later_career

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Goldberg

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Yep, worth a read:

Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Not Learned by Walter Brasch.

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Reblogged From Dandelion Salad. A reminder; the TPA/TPP House discussions are going to start on Monday all over again. Call your Representative!

The Alice in Wonderland World of Fast-tracked Secret Trade Agreements by Ellen Brown.

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