Thursday, April 27, 2006

INCOMING: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Permission!

You gotta give it to 'em for giving their hatchet-jobs names with irony: Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind, New Freedom and now Sunset Commission. Even seniors have a rosier take on what "sunset" should be than this:
OMB Watch - In Congress - Sunset Commission -: "Whether you care about farmers' markets or battered women's shelters, workplace safety or clean air -- important federal programs are all at risk from proposals that would put them on the chopping block.

Learn more about 'sunset commission' proposals, that would force federal programs to plead for their lives before an unelected commission with the power to recommend whether they live, die, or get 'realigned.'"

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

OPEN THREAD: 04-25-06

Wow!! I have been gone soooo long. I think this is the longest break in posts I've had in over a year. Apologies. Not that I'm not up on the news (I get material from several news feeds) but I just don't have time to get a post up before the next packet of news arrives--each one even more bizarre then the one before--oh my.

Don't despair though. I have a surprise brewing for all my avid (dozen or so) readers in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

So hey, how 'bout them nukes?

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Paris Hilton Takes Steak Out of the Mouths of Veterans!!

I don't know whether the folks who run Fran O'Brien's vote left or right--or straight down the center. I do know that Hilton Hotels is a huge contributor to Republican campaigns.

Regardless of the political bent of Fran O'Brien's, I support this cause:
Fran O'Brien's Loses It's Lease: For the past 2 1/2 years, O'Brien and business partner Hal Koster have made their thick steak dinners and a night of bottomless drinks one of the rites of passage for the soldiers who are steeling themselves for their postwar lives in wheelchairs or with prosthetic limbs.

They come to the subterranean restaurant, at the corner of 16th and L streets NW in the basement of the Capital Hilton, in volunteer's vans and trucks. They're carefully wheeled down the stairs or slowly negotiate the steps on crutches. It has become a tradition so beloved among veterans that Garry Trudeau featured the dinners in his Doonesbury comic strip.

Jim Mayer, a veteran who works at the Department of Veterans Affairs and who helped start the steak dinner tradition, is concerned that the hotel wants to eliminate the spectacle of hundreds of severely disabled soldiers coming in and out of its building or that the restaurant's repeated requests for a new elevator or escalator to accommodate them was too much.

What You Can Do

Lisa Hoffman's Letter on this in Capital Blue

Save Fran's Letter you can send Hilton

Save Fran's Website

Other than the patriotic nature of the good work Fran's owners are doing is the broader question of how corporations undo that work, without compunction, at their whim.

And yes, it is whim, when the question at hand is an escalator or a chair lift, especially when the owners of the corporation support a party that would gut the very legislation requiring corporations to accommodate those in need of them!!

And I'm convinced that it is not the good voters of either persuasion who are hurting this country. It is the moral-free zone we agree to support and in which we allow corporations to operate--for the one and only good of profit!

Argue my position on this all that you want, but at least answer me this: how can the population--people--who must move in increments of time dictated by children in school, the price of a home, a raise in 6 months or an elderly parent dying at home, be served by corporations that can operate with concern that is touched by none of these? That can pull up roots in a year and dump assets, workers and an entire regional economy just to ship their profit motivations overseas?

Without people, there is no profit.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Why is Israel Running U.S. Middle East Foreign Policy?

Anyone remember the brouhaha over Supreme Court judges considering foreign law as a component of their decisions? Remember the conservative outcry; such influences were not only the curse of zealous liberal forces but damn near treasonous!

So when a tiny foreign country that has not one resource for use in American trade interests can (continue) to push us toward region-wide war in the Middle East, nobody has anything to say?

Well, I did here (in 2004) as well as in other posts. This influence is allowed thanks to the Zionist neocon cabal and it's brainchild PNAC. Read the PNAC statement for your self. Then read this:
Iran Showdown Tests Power of "Israel Lobby": "One month after the publication by two of the most influential international relations scholars in the United States of a highly controversial essay on the so-called 'Israel Lobby,' their thesis that the lobby exercises 'unmatched power' in Washington is being tested by rapidly rising tensions with Iran.

Far more visibly than any other domestic constituency, the Israel Lobby, defined by Profs. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as 'the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction', has pushed the government -- both Congress and the George W. Bush administration -- toward confrontation with Tehran."
Come on wingers--are you going to fall for another fear campaign from the administration that bold-faced lied to you about the last "necessary preemptive" war? The one they've rather intentionally blown to hell so this could happen? How dumb does he think you are?

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Happy Easter?

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Into Iran: The Bush Death Wish

As I get closer to winning my dinner bet that Bush will attack Iran, I am far less willing to win. From the Atlantic Monthly online: why attacking Iran will be a disaster:
About Iran’s intention to build a bomb, there is no serious disagreement among Russia, China, France, and the United States. Iran has dropped its pretense of benign intent. It refused the compromise that Russia formally proposed late in 2005 (though a new round of negotiations was announced early in March). Last year’s elections, the most democratic in that nation’s history, transformed the leadership—by making it more anti-Western and harder-edged. The attainment of an Iranian bomb might provoke Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other neighboring countries to begin nuclear programs of their own, and might make the terrorist groups Iran supports throughout the region feel they can attack with greater impunity. Dealing with Iran is now considered an international crisis. As it has watched Iran’s evolution, the United States has delivered more and more studied warnings that “all options remain open”—code to the Iranians that they should worry about an attack. In different ways, George W. Bush and two aspiring successors, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, have expressed this view. Government officials in Israel have been more explicit still, with the defense minister saying that Israel “will not accept” Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Intellectuals, activists, and out-of-power politicians from Newt Gingrich to Benjamin Netanyahu have all urged their leaders to stand firm.

The biggest change has been in what Soviet strategists used to call the “correlation of forces.” Every tool at Iran’s disposal is now more powerful, and every complication for the United States worse, than when our war-gamers determined that a pre-emptive strike could not succeed. Iran has used the passing time to disperse, diversify, conceal, and protect its nuclear centers. Instead of a dozen or so potential sites that would have to be destroyed, it now has at least twice that many. The Shiite dominance of Iraq’s new government and military has consolidated, and the ties between the Shiites of Iran and those of Iraq have grown more intense. Early this year, the Iraqi Shiite warlord Muqtada al-Sadr suggested that he would turn his Mahdi Army against Americans if they attacked Iran.

Economically, Iran also has far greater leverage than before. Through 2004, the price of a barrel of oil averaged less than $40. In 2006, it has been above $60, an increase of more than 50 percent. Rising demand from China, India, and, yes, the United States has left virtually no slack in the world’s oil markets. OPEC’s “spare” production capacity—the amount it could quickly supply beyond current demand—is about 1 million barrels a day. Iran now supplies about 4 million barrels a day. If it chose to, or had to, remove much of its oil from the market, a bidding war could send the price of a barrel of oil above $100. Eventually, everyone would adjust. Eventually, the Great Depression ended.

The Grinch Goes Anti-War on Iraq

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany. "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003," Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. "We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it."

Saturday, April 08, 2006

LC2E Coming to Phoenix

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Creators of “Loose Change” Internet Video Sensation to Meet with Scottsdale Community College Filmmakers & Appear at Public Screenings in Phoenix Area Scottsdale, Mesa, & Tempe, Arizona

---Riding the tide of a meteoric and ever increasing Internet popularity, the three young creators of the 9/11 indie documentary Loose Change 2 will appear at Valley screenings from Tuesday, April 11, through Friday, April 15, 2006.

New York filmmakers Dylan Avery, 22, Korey Rowe, 23, and Jason Bermas, 26 decided to include the Phoenix area in their screening tour because of the number of communications they have received on their website from Arizonans, particularly from within the college communities.

Written and directed by Avery, and produced by Rowe, with research and production assistance by Bermas, Loose Change 2nd Edition, is at the forefront of a growing grassroots “9/11 Truth Movement” that is reaching millions through alternative forms of distribution, primarily via the Internet and through private and public screenings. The deliberately non-copyrighted film, oftentimes referred to online as LC2E, has created such a stir in the blogosphere that it is fast approaching movie cult status as viewers spin off links and compressed video versions around the world through computer lines while others burn DVD copies for friends, family, and strangers.

Loose Change is a jaw-dropping film about the fateful events that occurred on September 11, 2001. The documentary challenges the official explanations...


LC2E Phoenix Area Schedule:

Tuesday, April 11, 2006
—Radio call-in KWSS 106.7 AM (kwss1067.com)
Time: 2-4 p.m -- 480-699-5525 -- “Driving with Gas” (host Kevin Gassman)
Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” followed by Panel
Discussion with Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe, & Jason Bermas
Time: Starts at 7:00 p.m.
Location: Motion Picture/Television Studio A (Applied Sciences Building, Room AP209)
9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale, Arizona
Directions: Loop 101 to Chaparral Rd.; campus map at http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sccmap/
Parking: Lot H, east side of campus
Cost: No Charge

Wednesday, April 12, 2006—Luncheon with students of the Motion Picture/Television
Department, Scottsdale Community College
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Motion Picture/Television Studio B (Applied Sciences Building, Room AP211)
9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale, Arizona
Directions: Loop 101 to Chaparral Rd.; campus map at http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sccmap/
Parking: Lot H, east side of campus
Cost: No Charge, MP/TV students

Wednesday, April 12, 2006— Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” followed by
Q &A with Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe, & Jason Bermas
Time: Starts at 4:00 p.m. (4-6 pm)
Location: Bookmans (in the Community Room)
1056 S. Country Club Dr., Country Club & Southern (NW), next to Gold’s Gym
Cost: No Charge

Thursday, April 13, 2006— Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” followed by
Open Forum with Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe, & Jason Bermas
Time: Starts at 7:00 p.m.
Location: Harkins Shea 14 Theatre
7354 E. Shea Blvd., Scottsdale, Arizona
Directions: Loop 101 to Shea Blvd.; west on Shea between Hayden & Scottsdale Rds.; on
north side of Shea Blvd.
Cost: No Charge

Friday, April 14, 2006—Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” followed by Q & A
with Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe, & Jason Bermas
Time: Starts at 3:00 p.m. (3-6 pm)
Location: Bookmans (in the Community Room)
19th Ave/Northern (NW), Phoenix
Time: Starts at 8:00 p.m.
Location: 3 Roots Coffee House
1020 S. Mill Ave., Tempe, Arizona
Directions: Just south of University Dr. on the west side of Mill Ave.; directly across from
Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium
Parking: Park behind 3 Roots or along adjoining side streets
Cost: No Charge

[UPDATE 04-10-2006]

PHOENIX AREA SCHEDULE UPDATE

TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2006
• 7:00 am to 8:30 am:
Video production with MP/TV students, Scottsdale Community College
Location: Motion Picture/Television Studio B (Applied Sciences Building, Room AP211)
• 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm:
Live radio show with KWSS 106.7 FM “Driving with Gas” host Kevin Gassman
Call-in #: 480-699-5525
Internet: http://www.kwss1067.com
• 6:00 pm:
Radio recording with MP/TV students, Scottsdale Community College
Location: Motion Picture/Television Radio Studio (Applied Sciences Building)
• 7:00 pm:
Free Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” at Scottsdale Community
College followed by Panel Discussion with the Filmmakers
Location: Motion Picture/Television Studio A (Applied Sciences Building, Room AP209),
9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale
Directions: Loop 101 to Chaparral Rd., east on Chaparral, on north side of road off of freeway;
campus map at http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sccmap/
Parking: Lot H, east side of campus

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2006
• 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm:
Luncheon with students of the Motion Picture/Television Department, Scottsdale
Community College
Location: Motion Picture/Television Studio B (Applied Sciences Building, Room AP211),
9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale
Directions: Loop 101 to Chaparral Rd., east on Chaparral, on north side of road off of freeway;
campus map at http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sccmap/
Parking: Lot H, east side of campus
Cost: No Charge, MP/TV students

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2006 (cont.)
• 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm:
Free Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” at Bookmans (Mesa) followed
by Q&A with the Filmmakers
Location: Bookmans (in the Community Room), 1056 S. Country Club Dr., Mesa
Phone: 480-835-0505
Directions: U.S. Hwy. 60 to Country Club Dr., north on Country Club past Southern Ave., on
west side of road; map at http://www.bookmans.com/PublicSite/store.aspx?OrgID=17

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006
• 7:00 pm:
Free Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” at Harkins Shea 14 Theatre
(Scottsdale) followed by Open Forum with the Filmmakers
Location: Harkins Shea 14, 7354 E. Shea Blvd., Scottsdale
Directions: Loop 101 to Shea Blvd.; west on Shea between Hayden & Scottsdale Rds.; on
north side of road.

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2006
• 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm:
Free Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” at Bookmans (Phoenix)
followed by Q&A with the Filmmakers
Location: Bookmans (in the Community Room), 8034 N. 19th Ave., Phoenix
Phone: 602-423-0255
Directions: I-17 to Northern Ave.; continue east; turn north at 19th Ave. intersection; on west
side of road; map at http://www.bookmans.com/PublicSite/store.aspx?OrgID=19
• 8:00 pm:
Free Public Screening of “Loose Change (2nd Edition)” at 3 Roots Coffee House
(Tempe) followed by Q&A with the Filmmakers
Location: 3 Roots Coffee House, 1020 S. Mill Ave., Tempe
Phone: 480-966-4949
Directions: Just south of University Dr. on the west side of Mill Ave.; directly across from
Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium
Parking: Park behind 3 Roots or along adjacent side streets

Crumbling Under Debt

Most people I know work two jobs. Some work three. The big money players are in foreign currencies, not equities. I just started another business so that I can sock the money away because like everybody with whom I talk I believe a depression is coming: if you aren't able to eat, you will be eaten.
Crumbling Under Debt: "According to Business Week, both the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have raised their interest rates -- which could signal that the days of foreign investors propping up the U. S. economy may soon be on the wane. Bottom line, this potentially will have serious consequences for all Americans, but especially for average Americans living on the edge of poverty.

The first consequence will be a rapid decline in Americans' standard of living. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke insists the economy is strong, because many of the traditional measures of economic growth remain solid. Inventory levels, corporate profits and unemployment statistics all point towards continued growth. But what about the $3 billion a day that Americans cumulatively spend on interest payments? What about the estimated $834 billion that Americans have borrowed off their mortgages last year alone? Do average Americans have any kind of savings to use as a cushion in the event of a 'hard landing?' Can an already-hard-working single mom just go back into the job market to make ends meet when serious inflation kicks in?

Second, should our debt levels continue to increase at unsustainable rates, we will soon reach a point where foreign investors demand an interest rate premium for lending to us. Or worse yet, they may simply decide to put their money in other financial instruments than U. S. Treasury bonds, which will suck the wind out of the U. S. economy very rapidly and likely lead to recession or a depression.

Third, weaknesses in the U. S. economy will cause the value dollar to weaken relative to foreign currencies. When this happens, as it inevitably must, everything Americans buy from abroad will cost more. And considering that America's manufacturing base has all but evaporated, we buy just about everything from abroad. With our dollar worth increasingly less, virtually every industry will start to feel inflationary pressures, leading to layoffs and a further downward cycle for the economy.

Fourth and most fundamentally, our debt crisis has serious implications for America's status as a world leader. When Britain was the world's most powerful country, it was the world's leading moneylender. But when England became a debtor nation, their stature in world affairs rapidly declined. The lessons of history are clear: A nation's borrowing from abroad is generally a precursor to decline. Harvard economics professor, Benjamin Friedman, says in the TIME-BOMB documentary, 'Again and again it has always been the world's leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence and cultural influence. Today we are no longer the world's leading "

Friday, April 07, 2006

Stanley Tools: The Disposable American

This is a lengthy and fascinating look into the history of lay-offs at Stanley Tools and its effect on American workers: The Disposable American


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