"Present and former members of the Green Bay Packers, all members of the National Football League Players Association, have signed a letter in support of the AFL-CIO's efforts to derail Gov. Scott Walker's plan to cut some union bargaining rights."
"A party that TAXES the richest among us who can most easily afford it.
A party that OPPOSES wars we can NOT win.
A party that PROTECTS consumers and workers over corporate profit.
A party with BALLS, that stands for social and economic justice.
FUCK the bullshit. Let's not mince words, either the Democratic party stands FOR workers and consumers and their interests as citizens or they do not, and then they are just as bought and owned as the Republican Evil Empire is. At that point, Democracy ends, and corporate feudalism is complete. If both parties are pro war, pro tax cuts for the rich, pro austerity level Hoovernomics, pro torture, pro corporate and mostly or wholly owned by the banks, then there is not much choice, let alone an opportunity for true 'change'. If both parties are trying to trash FDR's 'New Deal' then there is no point."
"The State Department plans to finance programs like circumvention services, which enable users to evade Internet firewalls, and training for human rights workers on how to secure their e-mail from surveillance or wipe incriminating data from cellphones if they are detained by the police."
"President Obama has chosen to fight fire with gasoline.
Republicans want America to believe the economy is still lousy because government is too big, and the way to revive the economy is to cut federal spending. Today (Sunday) Republican Speaker John Boehner even refused to rule out a government shut-down if Republicans don't get the spending cuts they want.
Today (Monday) Obama pours gas on the Republican flame by proposing a 2012 federal budget that cuts the federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years."
"Uhm, what do you mean 'we' dude? The government is not like a family figuring out how to cut back on expenses. (If it is Dad is a real deadbeat because he decided to give up half his income last December to some rich frat boys.) And this isn't really about programs President Obama 'cares about' or about how 'tough' it is for him. President Obama will not have to personally worry about these things and neither will his children, so the idea that he 'cares' is just a tiny bit abstract in this context. This is about actual human beings and their ability to survive now and build a decent future.
The main problem with all this, of course, is that he willingly signed a tax cut extension for the wealthiest people on the planet just two months ago even as they are making money hand over fist as it is, so any talk about 'shared sacrifice' rings just a little bit hollow now. If he wants to be honest about this and admit that he's catering to spoiled plutocrats and Wall Street Demi-Gods because he truly believes that he needs to sacrifice ordinary Americans on the alter of their egos, that's one thing. But blowing smoke about how this hurts him just as much as the college kid who has to drop out in a terrible labor market --- but he's willing to make the sacrifice and so should we --- well, it is too cynically cheap for words."
"Apple's foray into the social media music scene seemed to fall on deaf ears. The biggest fail? Ping doesn't actually let you see what your friends are listening to, which is largely the point of social media. As some critics put it, Ping could easily have been considered a marketing ploy gone wrong."
"US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a public speech in January 2010 championing Internet freedom as a vital tool to open governments and promote transparency, while criticizing 'dictatorships' who seek to target those who use technology to expose their transgressions.
'In many respects, information has never been so free,' Clinton said at the Washington, D.C. Newseum. 'There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.'
'This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic,' she added, invoking the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech."
"Iraqi-American Bilal, an assistant professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, has implanted a titanium plate into the back of his skull for the sake of his art. The plate allows Bilal to attach and remove a camera to the back of his head magnetically, for his project which is called 'The 3rd I.'"
"Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected."
"'They want a tiered Internet. 'Managed services' is what they call this. 'Gated communities for the Affluent' is what I call them.'"
"I'd like to save you folks in the White House a whole bunch of trouble. When you all look for your souls, you had better find something that looks like JOBS. That is your soul. Your soul is JOBS.
Your soul is not a smooth, orderly process. Your soul is not bipartisan compromise with Republicans. The GOP could care less about 'changing the ways of Washington.' What independents care about right now is results. Results = jobs. Plain and simple."
"Mr. President, when Mitch McConnell and John Boehner keep saying that they're not going to compromise on their principles, the amen corner on cable hails them as heroes. But if you say you're not going to compromise, they'll call you a tool of the left. Don't let it spook you. When you walk into that meeting with the Republican leadership, you've got to be seen as the best dealmaker in Washington, the kind LBJ was, the kind of mofo that Rahm Emmanuel was supposed to be until the course of the health care bill on the Hill revealed that he was something of a pussy.
Don't negotiate with yourself ahead of time. Trash talk the opposition. Play mind games with them -- freak them out with your confidence. Don't fall for their 'mandate' crap -- it's a con game. There's no evidence for it. Your tail is between your legs only if you say it is. You've got plenty of power, and it includes the power to define what victory is."
"Progressive populism won in California and it can gain more power across America if progressives get back to the basics of populist power we practice here: 1. Expose 2. Confront 3. Force Your Opponents To Make Mistakes 4. Make the Mistakes the Issue 5. Don't Let Go.
.....
Progressives need to raise more hell and worry less about raising money."
"A bill giving the government the power to shut down Web sites that host materials that infringe copyright is making its way quietly through the lame-duck session of Congress, raising the ire of free-speech groups and prompting a group of academics to lobby against the effort."
"It’s not hard to comprehend the far-reaching ramifications of this tool. Anytime you’re using an open Wi-Fi connection, anyone can swiftly access some of your most private, personal information and correspondence (i.e. direct messages, Facebook mail/chat)— at the click of a button. And you will have no idea."
"Is relief too strong a word to use? That seems to be the emotion that some fans are expressing after hearing that Martin Freeman – best known for his portrayal of Tim in the original version of 'The Office' will fill the role of Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming New Line film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit.'"
"If we were to draft a list of all the artists, writers and musicians who owed their muse to booze, it would pretty much just be a list of all artists, writers and musicians, period. Douglas Adams came up with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field, Jackson Pollock turned being a violent drunk into an art form, Charlie Parker once vomited onto his microphone during a live performance, and Ernest Hemingway was Ernest Motherfucking Hemmingway. But no act of creation so thoroughly embodies the drunken arts as the songwriting of Doug Ingle, from the band Iron Butterfly."
"A rotten political system: He compares politicians (Democrats and Republicans alike) to 'Mafioso' and says campaign contributions are really thinly disguised 'bribes and payoffs.'
Crony capitalism: Like in the USSR of old, Celente laments that so much of America's wealth (93%) is controlled by such a small group small portion of its population (10%). Owing to that concentration of wealth, the government makes policies designed to reward 'the bigs' at the expense of average citizens (see: Bailouts, banks).
Military-industrial complex: The USSR went bankrupt fighting the cold war and Celente fears the U.S. is 'squandering its greater but still finite resources on a gargantuan defense budget, fighting unwinnable hot wars and feeding an insatiable military stationed on hundreds of bases worldwide.'"
"The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city. In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. This new world is not -- and will not be -- one global village, so much as a network of different ones.
Time, technology, and population growth have massively accelerated the advent of this new urbanized era. Already, more than half the world lives in cities, and the percentage is growing rapidly. But just 100 cities account for 30 percent of the world's economy, and almost all its innovation. Many are world capitals that have evolved and adapted through centuries of dominance: London, New York, Paris. New York City's economy alone is larger than 46 of sub-Saharan Africa's economies combined. Hong Kong receives more tourists annually than all of India. These cities are the engines of globalization, and their enduring vibrancy lies in money, knowledge, and stability. They are today's true Global Cities."
"You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service.
You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone."
"SANTIAGO, Chile — A ban on miniskirts didn't last long in Chile, where a governor faced protests by women who otherwise share his conservative views.
Coquimbo region Gov. Sergio Gahona had banned public employees from wearing miniskirts or exposing their shoulders. He says he was merely trying to 'put things in order' and didn't mean to restrict anyone."
"But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers."
"It is my responsibility as an elected official to look out for the people back home, the voters who sent me to Washington. So, after 20 years representing Ohio's 8th District, I know what the good citizens of Montgomery, Preble, and Butler counties really want: someone who engages in the kind of calculated political gamesmanship that increases his standing in the Republican party while simultaneously hindering our country's legislative process at every conceivable turn.
I assure you, the last thing my voters need is some well intended, do-all-I-possibly-can-to-help-the-little-guy congressman running around Washington, working across the aisle, and fighting tooth and nail for jobs, health care, and financial reform to ensure their tax dollars never end up in the hands of banks capable of holding our entire economy hostage."
"Emanuel's greatest 'victory' before this one, of course, was the one upon which he earned his reputation: Getting a bunch of conserva-Dems elected in purple states in 2006, winning the party control of the House while at the same time crippling its progressive agenda. This is what Emanuel is all about. For him, victory is everything -- even if you have to give up your core values to win, and even if you could have won while sticking to them.
The Rahm Emanuel that Obama hired is the poster child for the timid, pseudo-pragmatism that is inimical to the idealistic Obama agenda so many excited voters responded to last November. And it's a pragmatism that is absolutely killing the Democratic Party in the long run, because American voters have an intrinsic distrust of politicians they see as tacking with the polls or shying away from a fight. This if nothing else is the lesson of two George W. Bush presidencies: American voters have a profoundly soft spot for people with clear, strongly-held principles, almost regardless of what those principles are."
"Britons' refusal to turn off their Blackberrys or mobile phones means they are effectively working an extra 10 days a year, a survey suggests."
"'Using a germanium laser as a light source, you could communicate at very high data rates at very low power,' said Jurgen Michel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who developed the new germanium laser. 'Eventually you could have the computing power of today's supercomputers inside a laptop.'"
"BEIJING — A Chinese college student fed up with his roommate's snoring, has confessed to stabbing him to death in the middle of the night."
"John Cole, a little more than a year ago:
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years."
Maher: And three, cult members always attribute all of their problems to one simple explanation. Now here's an amazing statistic. In a recent poll almost ninety percent of Tea Baggers said that they thought taxes had either gone up or stayed the same under Obama. Only two percent thought they went down. But the reality is taxes have gone down for ninety five percent of working families taxes went down.
Think about that. Only two percent of the people in a "movement" about taxes named after a tax revolt have the slightest idea what's going on...with taxes.
So, it would be easy to just mock, except that those who fall under the control of cults aren't necessarily weirdoes, they're victims. And we shouldn't forget that these people are our relatives, our neighbors and the folks at the next table in the restaurant. Especially if that restaurant is Hooters and it's dollar wing Wednesday.
"UPDATE: Sam Stein of Huff Post tweets that there have now been six teleprompter jokes at the conservative CPAC conference, all read off of teleprompters."
"'President Obama was in a grade school classroom speaking to elementary school children and he was using a teleprompter,' Pawlenty said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
'You've got to be kidding me,' he added. 'That's not a joke. That's a real story.'
Actually, it's not. The tale spread by bloggers over the Internet and in some media, including the Comedy Channel's Jon Stewart, blended together two Obama appearances Jan. 19 at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, to make it appear he used the teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of 30 pupils.
In reality, Obama sat on a chair and spoke with the pupils without the device.
In a different classroom, he used the teleprompter to give scripted remarks on education to television cameras."
"Either we believe, as lawyers, as lawmakers and as citizens, that there is value in laws, that laws that are passed have meaning and have a purpose, or we dont,' Barr said.
"There's no doubt the pimp costume story worked. (Raise your hand if you were duped.) My guess is if you polled Americans today, and even ones who followed the story closely last year (including right-wing partisans), at least 90 percent would say O'Keefe sat inside ACORN offices while decked out in his pimp costume.
But it's not true. At least there have not been any publicly released ACORN videos to suggest otherwise."
"This story is important. There's a long tradition of undercover muckraking that's initiated many an important social change in this country. But this isn't muckraking, it's political theatre. The level of cynical deception in this 'story' runs several layers deeper than anything I've ever seen before, tapping into some really nasty, subterranean veins of stereotype, prejudice and racism --- on everyone's part --- to make what ends up being a completely distorted point. The fact that what should have been instantly seen as an obviously absurd proposition was taken at face value even by the US congress and the major media institutions of this country should inform us a little bit about how tenuous our racial progress might just be. This was a shameful episode deserving of more scrutiny than it's gotten so far."
"Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, and more than half disagree with the theory that humans developed from earlier species of animals, according to the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll."
"“I see them as complimentary,” [Madsen] said. Browning is known for developing a variety of guns, including the gas-operated machine gun. Madsen said he plans to meet with the NAACP to discuss his proposal.
“We’ll see if they can take it in the spirit it’s intended,” Madsen said. [...]
“Guns keep peace,” [state Senate Majority Leader Scott] Jenkins [R] said. “I kind of like the idea of making his birthday a holiday. I’m all over that.”"
"It all began in the summer of 2004, when she 'felt something in my right breast that didn't feel normal,' Lyon told PEOPLE in October 2005. 'I thought it was probably scar tissue related to my breast implants. It was right along the ridge of the implant, so I let it go, and I let it go for a long time.'
Asked why she delayed seeing a doctor, Lyon said, 'I didn't have insurance, which is a big part of it. And it really wasn't changing much. But a year later, I felt another lump, and then I felt something under my armpit.'"
"What had gone wrong is that Coca-Cola had abandoned their core market strengths: Coca-Cola was associated with tradition, family, stability. People drank Coke not only for its taste, but for emotional reasons. They had a core emotional attachment to the brand, as one would for a loving parent. When Coca-Cola changed to be more like Pepsi, it abandoned the core elements that made consumers trust and love the brand.
The only difference between Coca-Cola and the Democratic Party is that Coke only needed one opportunity to wise up and learn its lesson, while the Democratic Party continues to roll out its own New Coke every decade or so."
"China is so far ahead in the race to create technology related to renewable energy, that 'the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China,' notes the New York Times. The United States, along with other countries, is trying to catch up, but it's an uphill battle. While renewable energy continues to be more expensive, China charges a fee to all users to help spread out the cost, an example of how the government takes a deep interest in energy policy. And it's not just about government regulations. In fact, part of the reason why China has been able to become a world leader in building this new technology is that its domestic market is growing. Demand for electricity in China is skyrocketing, so power companies have to constantly buy new equipment, making it easier to develop large-scale production lines."
"'What banged?' Sean Carroll, CalTech -Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology & Physics
Several of the worlds leading astrophysicists believe there was no Big Bang that brought the universe and time into existence. Before the Big Bang, the standard theory assumes, there was no space, just nothing. Einstein merged the universe into a single entity: not space, not time, but spacetime.
Proponents of branes propose that we are trapped in a thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos from which neither light nor energy -except gravity- can escape or enter and that that 'dark matter' is just the rest of the universe that we can't see because light can't escape from or enter into our membrane from the great bulk of the universe. And our membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, connect, and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions -a new frontier physicists call the 'brane world.' Stephen Hawking, among others, envisions brane worlds perculating up out of the void, giving rise to whole new universes."
"CNN) -- In a messy drug bust this week, investigators uncovered more than 700 pounds of marijuana stuffed in a septic tank truck full of human waste, Arizona police said Friday.
And the search of the truck was as awful as it sounds.
'Yeah, that really does suck,' Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves told CNN. 'It's a long way to go to make a bust.'"
"If you've ever wondered what people really think of you, now you can find out.
A new site, Failin.gs, provides a forum for your friends to point out your faults, whether it's what a cheapskate you are, or how poorly you listen."
"This was a decade during which a man with the equivalent of a sixth grade education appeared to run the Western World. This was a decade in which the political hacks who actually did took the “free” out of “free market” while pirating U.S. coffers like crack-addicted sexaholics in a Tijuana whorehouse. This was a decade in which the methodical thinker who replaced the Three Stooges in the White House was given eight weeks to recreate the Garden of Eden."
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"This was a decade during which the Dow opened around 11,600 and closed around 10,500. Meanwhile, the national debt began around $5.6 trillion and reached around $12.9 trillion. Don’t worry, though. Lots of people got rich. Just not us."
"Over the past 10 years, the phenomenal growth of the Web has fundamentally changed the way we live, work and communicate. In November, a Pew Research Center study showed some startling changes in how we use the Internet:
- 2000: 46% of adults used the Internet
- 2009: 77-79% of adults use the Internet
- 2000: 5% of households had broadband
- 2009: 63% of households have broadband
- 2000: 0% connected to Internet wirelessly
- 2009: 54-56% connect to the Internet wirelessly"
