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INTRO
Feb. 19th, 2012 | 07:55 pm
The 12 Word Platform:
Medicare For All.
End the Wars.
Soak the Rich.
Hug the trees.
(deep bow to Riverdaughter for the first three lines)
On most issues I'm way left of Obama and somewhat left of the Clintons and Gore.
My Political Views
Left: 6.09, Libertarian: 2.16
Political Spectrum Quiz
I support Wikileaks; I favor single-payer health care for all; full equality for GLBT; immigration reform; free contraceptives, abortion, and childcare for all; legalizing recreational drugs; jail for violent crimes only; Deep Ecology; animal rights; strong environmental action; alternate energy; organic agriculture; etc etc.
I sometimes post defenses of corporate media targets such as the Tea Party people and Sarah Palin, for these reasons.
1. sense of fairness
2. civility improves outcomes
3. no one else is doing it
----------------------------------------
Testing this for searching my site.( Read more... )
Medicare For All.
End the Wars.
Soak the Rich.
Hug the trees.
(deep bow to Riverdaughter for the first three lines)
On most issues I'm way left of Obama and somewhat left of the Clintons and Gore.
My Political Views
Left: 6.09, Libertarian: 2.16
Political Spectrum Quiz
I support Wikileaks; I favor single-payer health care for all; full equality for GLBT; immigration reform; free contraceptives, abortion, and childcare for all; legalizing recreational drugs; jail for violent crimes only; Deep Ecology; animal rights; strong environmental action; alternate energy; organic agriculture; etc etc.
I sometimes post defenses of corporate media targets such as the Tea Party people and Sarah Palin, for these reasons.
1. sense of fairness
2. civility improves outcomes
3. no one else is doing it
----------------------------------------
Testing this for searching my site.( Read more... )
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Writer's Block: State of the Union
Jan. 21st, 2012 | 06:53 am
Hillary Clinton. She and Bill were always a team. So she already has 8 years experience with the job of President (very successfully) plus the 12 years they spent in the job of governor of Arkansas (again successfully, the longest term governor at that time, iirc).
She's also the most admired woman, and the most admired Democrat, in the USA (and high on that list worldwide).
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http://supervillainornewt.com/
Dec. 19th, 2011 | 11:44 pm
http://supervillainornewt.com/
Welcome to the Supervillain or Newt Game, where you have to decide whether an idea comes from an indestructible megalomaniac hell-bent on ruling the world, or from a fictional supervillain.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
Welcome to the Supervillain or Newt Game, where you have to decide whether an idea comes from an indestructible megalomaniac hell-bent on ruling the world, or from a fictional supervillain.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
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Petition for Hillary
Dec. 19th, 2011 | 06:12 pm
Hillary is noticeably further to the Left than Obama on many issues*, as well as more likely to be elected than Obama is.
http://www.petition2congress.com/4606/w
*For example, she voted against FISA (Obama flipped and voted for it), she wanted a moratorium on home foreclosures in 2007 and a new Home Owners Loan Corporation in 2008, she wanted to withdraw all AMericans from Iraq in mid-2008, she wanted Single Payer and other health care choices, she made student loan interest an issue in early 2008, etc.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
http://www.petition2congress.com/4606/w
*For example, she voted against FISA (Obama flipped and voted for it), she wanted a moratorium on home foreclosures in 2007 and a new Home Owners Loan Corporation in 2008, she wanted to withdraw all AMericans from Iraq in mid-2008, she wanted Single Payer and other health care choices, she made student loan interest an issue in early 2008, etc.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
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Does Gingrich even exist?
Dec. 11th, 2011 | 10:26 pm
http://4thofeleven.livejournal.com/1461
In the wake of Newt Gingrich’s discovery that territories formerly part of the Ottoman Empire cannot claim statehood, governments from Hungary to Kuwait are struggling to deal with the revelation that their national identities are a fraud.
( Read more... )
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
Asked whether he considers himself a Zionist, he answered: "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state ... Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire" until the early 20th century…”
- Gingrich calls Palestinians ‘invented’ people, al-Jazeera News
In the wake of Newt Gingrich’s discovery that territories formerly part of the Ottoman Empire cannot claim statehood, governments from Hungary to Kuwait are struggling to deal with the revelation that their national identities are a fraud.
( Read more... )
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
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When the Rightwing and OWS agree on something....
Nov. 30th, 2011 | 11:19 pm
From a Cato Institute writer:
In recent years there has been a redistribution of power in the US from government to private. The US now resembles an oligarchy of private interests. The most powerful ones are Wall Street, AIPAC, the military/security complex, the oil industry, agri-business, insurance and pharmaceuticals. These private interests control economic and foreign policy, write the legislation that Congress passes and the President signs, and have achieved the monopolization of the US economy by large-scale commercial organizations. As far as I can tell, traditional conservatives scarcely exist in the US today. They have been eliminated by the neoconservatives, essentially militarists committed to US world hegemony.
[....]
American elections are meaningless as the vast majority of those elected are dependent, or become dependent, on the campaign contributions from the private oligarchic interests. Today government bureaucracies (Child Protective Services and police, for example) have unaccountable power over private individuals, but the power of government over organized private interests has been beaten back. Today the private interests rule the state.
Daily Bell: Can you give us some other examples?
Paul Craig Roberts: The examples are endless. President Obama broke his campaign promises and renewed America's aggression against Afghanistan, because that was what the military/security complex demanded. The health care "reform" was written by the private insurance companies and was designed to provide the insurance companies with 30 million involuntary new customers. Environmental restraints on deep-water drilling were removed at the instruction of the oil industry, resulting, for example, in the extraordinary environmental destruction in the Gulf of Mexico. Wherever one looks, the external costs that private companies are able to impose on others are rising.
http://thedailybell.com/1220/Paul-C
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
In recent years there has been a redistribution of power in the US from government to private. The US now resembles an oligarchy of private interests. The most powerful ones are Wall Street, AIPAC, the military/security complex, the oil industry, agri-business, insurance and pharmaceuticals. These private interests control economic and foreign policy, write the legislation that Congress passes and the President signs, and have achieved the monopolization of the US economy by large-scale commercial organizations. As far as I can tell, traditional conservatives scarcely exist in the US today. They have been eliminated by the neoconservatives, essentially militarists committed to US world hegemony.
[....]
American elections are meaningless as the vast majority of those elected are dependent, or become dependent, on the campaign contributions from the private oligarchic interests. Today government bureaucracies (Child Protective Services and police, for example) have unaccountable power over private individuals, but the power of government over organized private interests has been beaten back. Today the private interests rule the state.
Daily Bell: Can you give us some other examples?
Paul Craig Roberts: The examples are endless. President Obama broke his campaign promises and renewed America's aggression against Afghanistan, because that was what the military/security complex demanded. The health care "reform" was written by the private insurance companies and was designed to provide the insurance companies with 30 million involuntary new customers. Environmental restraints on deep-water drilling were removed at the instruction of the oil industry, resulting, for example, in the extraordinary environmental destruction in the Gulf of Mexico. Wherever one looks, the external costs that private companies are able to impose on others are rising.
http://thedailybell.com/1220/Paul-C
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
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A sort of global Black Friday?
Nov. 29th, 2011 | 01:10 pm
http://www.ianwelsh.net/whats-happening-in-europe-is-what-matters-rules-of-t he-financial-rich/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IanWelsh+%28Ian+Wel sh%29
The oligarchs have taken down two governments in the past two weeks – Italy and Greece. [....] Note that once again, neither an election nor a referendum was allowed.
[....]
Being rich is about being liquid when everyone else isn’t, so you can buy up assets on the cheap. When the rich are properly under control [....] they can’t create such buying opportunities, they have to wait for them, and the government makes it so that the rich can’t take too much advantage of them, because taking advantage of them means taking advantage of other people when they’re most vulnerable.
Right now the rich can and are crashing asset prices by forcing countries into austerity through attacks on their currencies and control of their elites. They then buy up assets for fire-sale prices.
[....]
These attacks on currencies are deranged. The countries are not in that much difficulty, certainly the idea that France is in enough difficulty to be under attack is crazy. These attacks are about power: the global rich were bailed out after the crash, now they are using their hot money in attack after attack, demanding austerity, which will cause semi-permanent depression in those countries which accept it. That allows them to buy up what they want, keeps their labor costs down, and lets them divert what money they spend on investment which creates actual real economic growth into developing countries which are cheaper for them.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/whats-happening-in-europe-is-what-matters-rules-of-t he-financial-rich/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IanWelsh+%28Ian+Wel sh%29
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
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"New" climate email "leak" is political, and not new
Nov. 27th, 2011 | 01:35 pm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet
===============
Ah, but further down in that same article we get the real news about this "new" leak.
Today's leak may also be timed to disrupt the next session of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change next week in South Africa.
[....]
The emails have been released in the form of quotes carefully 'chosen' to show bias, or that scientists were pursuing a particular agenda in their research.
The unnamed individuals who released them chose the 5,000 emails from keyword searches, saying, 'We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics.'
The emails were posted on a Russian server - Sinwt.ru - as a downloadable ZIP file in an apparent attempt to cause disruption in advance of next week's climate change conference in Durban.
They were rapidly reposted on climate-sceptic blogs such as The Air Vent.
It is not clear, though, whether they are new, or indeed whether they indicate any kind of conspiracy.
[....]
The identity of the people who posted it was not revealed - although the clear political statement is new.
The file also contains more than 200,000 other emails, which are encrypted, and no password is provided.
Presumably, this is to protect the individuals involved - or simply because the material is so non-controversial or boring that it's not worth releasing.
NASA thermal satellite image showing the world's arctic surface temperature trends: Today's emails appear to show scientists interested in painting a particular picture of such trends - but the information is not new
The University of East Anglia has not confirmed whether the material is genuine.
None of the material appears to be new, either: it seems to date from the first release in 2009.
It also occurs against a rather different scientific background, after the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature review of climate-science data by prominent climate sceptic Richard Muller, which analysed 1.6 billion temperature records, and concluded that global warming was a genuine effect.
[....]
Professor Mann, speaking to the Guardian, described the release as 'truly pathetic.'
'Well, they look like mine but I hardly see anything that appears damning at all, despite them having been taken out of context.
'I guess they had very little left to work with, having culled in the first round the emails that could most easily be taken out of context to try to make me look bad.'
A police investigation is ongoing.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
===============
Ah, but further down in that same article we get the real news about this "new" leak.
Today's leak may also be timed to disrupt the next session of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change next week in South Africa.
[....]
The emails have been released in the form of quotes carefully 'chosen' to show bias, or that scientists were pursuing a particular agenda in their research.
The unnamed individuals who released them chose the 5,000 emails from keyword searches, saying, 'We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics.'
The emails were posted on a Russian server - Sinwt.ru - as a downloadable ZIP file in an apparent attempt to cause disruption in advance of next week's climate change conference in Durban.
They were rapidly reposted on climate-sceptic blogs such as The Air Vent.
It is not clear, though, whether they are new, or indeed whether they indicate any kind of conspiracy.
[....]
The identity of the people who posted it was not revealed - although the clear political statement is new.
The file also contains more than 200,000 other emails, which are encrypted, and no password is provided.
Presumably, this is to protect the individuals involved - or simply because the material is so non-controversial or boring that it's not worth releasing.
NASA thermal satellite image showing the world's arctic surface temperature trends: Today's emails appear to show scientists interested in painting a particular picture of such trends - but the information is not new
The University of East Anglia has not confirmed whether the material is genuine.
None of the material appears to be new, either: it seems to date from the first release in 2009.
It also occurs against a rather different scientific background, after the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature review of climate-science data by prominent climate sceptic Richard Muller, which analysed 1.6 billion temperature records, and concluded that global warming was a genuine effect.
[....]
Professor Mann, speaking to the Guardian, described the release as 'truly pathetic.'
'Well, they look like mine but I hardly see anything that appears damning at all, despite them having been taken out of context.
'I guess they had very little left to work with, having culled in the first round the emails that could most easily be taken out of context to try to make me look bad.'
A police investigation is ongoing.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/12
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purple
Nov. 17th, 2011 | 03:09 pm
As an old woman who supports Occupy Wall Street, I'm wearing BRIGHT purple. ;-)
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/18
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/18
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BoingBoing has links to opposition to a bill which would censor the Internet
Nov. 17th, 2011 | 12:25 am
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/11/stop-s
The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. This bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality. PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites.
[....]
Every site which has user-generated content, posts links or videos to anything copyrighted in it could face new legal threats. If a copyrights holder disliked links you have on your site, they could simply file a complaint with a payment processor (Visa, PayPal), who would then have 5 days to respond to their request or risk legal ramifications. If bills like this are allowed to pass, we'll be spending another $47 million dollars every year to help corporations fill out and enforce Internet blacklists.
Sites that would be legal under the DMCA and its safe harbor provisions would now risk losing everything for allowing user generated content. It also has added in the streaming felony bill that would make it so ordinary Internet users are at risk of going to jail for 5 years for post any copyrighted work that would cost $2,500 to license.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/17
The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. This bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality. PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites.
[....]
Every site which has user-generated content, posts links or videos to anything copyrighted in it could face new legal threats. If a copyrights holder disliked links you have on your site, they could simply file a complaint with a payment processor (Visa, PayPal), who would then have 5 days to respond to their request or risk legal ramifications. If bills like this are allowed to pass, we'll be spending another $47 million dollars every year to help corporations fill out and enforce Internet blacklists.
Sites that would be legal under the DMCA and its safe harbor provisions would now risk losing everything for allowing user generated content. It also has added in the streaming felony bill that would make it so ordinary Internet users are at risk of going to jail for 5 years for post any copyrighted work that would cost $2,500 to license.
Supporting LJ vs the Russian DDOS by crossposting from DW. Comment anywhere. This entry was originally posted at http://bemused-leftist.dreamwidth.org/17
