Ian was on the radio talking about this album. It's topical, I thought I would pass it on:
Showing posts with label 2012 presidential election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012 presidential election. Show all posts
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Mitt's Full o' Cash
Real freedom is not being poor and carrying a gun everywhere.
Real freedom is opportunity in a safer society that does not embrace the violence which characterizes our gun culture.
We have lost our position, our success at upward mobility, we are at record breaking levels in our history of economic disparity, compared to other countries, notably Europe.
The economic policies put in place by the Republican governor of Indiana while working in the Bush White House were disastrous, they are in large part why we are in the current economic crisis. Those are the exact same disastrous policies advocated by the current crop of Republicans, doubling down on bad ideas that create that economic disparity.
And nobody points that out better than the Daily Show, which is factually consistently more accurate than the right wing media like Fox News, Rush Ludicrous, and the rest.
Real freedom is opportunity in a safer society that does not embrace the violence which characterizes our gun culture.
We have lost our position, our success at upward mobility, we are at record breaking levels in our history of economic disparity, compared to other countries, notably Europe.
The economic policies put in place by the Republican governor of Indiana while working in the Bush White House were disastrous, they are in large part why we are in the current economic crisis. Those are the exact same disastrous policies advocated by the current crop of Republicans, doubling down on bad ideas that create that economic disparity.
And nobody points that out better than the Daily Show, which is factually consistently more accurate than the right wing media like Fox News, Rush Ludicrous, and the rest.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Indecision 2012 - I Know What You Did Last Quarter | ||||
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
The Latest Interview Accusing Herman Cain of an Extramarital Affair
Nothing about this woman's demeanor suggests, to me, either that she is doing this for money, or that she is acting out of revenge as a motive. Rather that she is coming forward to be in front of this coming out from other sources seems to be very plausible.
I'm betting that Herman the Philanderer will be ending his campaign soon, if not this week. He was already taking a downward spiral in the polls; his surge had apparently peaked. He continues to make gaffe after gaffe, doing more to hurt his campaign than any opponent could, either Republican or Democrat.
The following is from ABC's Good Morning America exclusive interview:
I'm betting that Herman the Philanderer will be ending his campaign soon, if not this week. He was already taking a downward spiral in the polls; his surge had apparently peaked. He continues to make gaffe after gaffe, doing more to hurt his campaign than any opponent could, either Republican or Democrat.
The following is from ABC's Good Morning America exclusive interview:
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Is This Right Wing Racism?
Herman Cain has been promoting lies, including the most convincing kind of lies, the ones that have some grain, some detail, of truth in them.
Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States
August 2011INCIDENCE OF ABORTION
• Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.[1] Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.[2]
• Forty percent of pregnancies among white women, 67% among blacks and 53% among Hispanics are unintended.[1] In 2008, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. However, between 2005 and 2008, the long-term decline in abortions stalled. From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions occurred.[2]
• Each year, two percent of women aged 15–44 have an abortion. Half have had at least one previous abortion.[2,3]
• At least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45, and, at current rates, one in 10 women will have an abortion by age 20, one in four by age 30 and three in 10 by age 45.[4,5]
Cain’s False Attack on Planned Parenthood
Herman Cain has offered an alternate version of history in claiming that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to prevent “black babies from being born.” We find no support for that old claim. Cain also states that the organization built 75 percent of its clinics in black communities, but there’s no evidence that was true then. And today, only 9 percent of U.S. abortion clinics are in neighborhoods where half or more of residents are black, according to the most recent statistics.
The GOP presidential candidate made these comments back in March, telling an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation that “[w]hen Margaret Sanger — check my history — started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world.” He called it “planned genocide.”
In an interview on “Face the Nation” on Oct. 30, Cain did not back down from those allegations. Here’s his exchange with host Bob Schieffer:
Schieffer: … you said that it was not Planned Parenthood, it was really planned genocide because you said Planned Parenthood was trying to put all these centers into the black communities because they wanted to kill black babies –Cain isn’t the first to believe that birth control advocate Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) wanted to stop the birth of black babies. Just do an Internet search and see what happens. Sanger made more than her share of controversial comments. But the quote many point to as evidence that Sanger favored something akin to “genocide” of African Americans has been turned on its head.
Herman Cain: Yes.
Scheiffer: — before they were born. Do you still stand by that?
Cain: I still stand by that.
Schieffer: Do you have any proof that that was the objective of Planned Parenthood?
Cain: If people go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger’s own words, that’s exactly where that came from. Look up the history. So if you go back and look up the history — secondly, look at where most of them were built; 75 percent of those facilities were built in the black community — and Margaret Sanger’s own words, she didn’t use the word “genocide,” but she did talk about preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born.
Sanger, who was arrested several times in her efforts to bring birth control to women in the United States, set up her first clinic in Brooklyn in 1916. In the late 1930s, she sought to bring clinics to black women in the South, in an effort that was called the “Negro Project.” Sanger wrote in 1939 letters to colleague Clarence James Gamble that she believed the project needed a black physician and black minister to gain the trust of the community:
Sanger, 1939: The minister’s work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.Sanger says that a minister could debunk the notion, if it arose, that the clinics aimed to “exterminate the Negro population.” She didn’t say that she wanted to “exterminate” the black population. The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University says that this quote has “gone viral on the Internet,” normally out of context, and it “doesn’t reflect the fact that Sanger recognized elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow south, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”
It goes on to characterize beliefs such as Cain’s as “extremist.” The project says: “No serious scholar and none of the dozens of black leaders who supported Sanger’s work have ever suggested that she tried to reduce the black population or set up black abortion mills, the implication in much of the extremist anti-choice material.”
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Herman Cain Wants an Elecrified Fence to Kill Would-be Illegal Immigrants
President Obama has been tougher on immigration, as reflected in the expenditure of resources to patrol our borders and in deportations of criminal illegal immigrants. But as is always the case, one should be careful what you wish for. Illegal immigrants are one of the biggest ways that the right terrifies its base into support. Unfortunately, they don't seem fully to realize what happens when they are gone.
From al.com, I'm posting this here because what the right believes about illegal immigrants is too often inacurate myth:
View full sizeJeremy Gonzalez picks tomatoes on a farm in Steele, Ala., Monday, Oct. 3, 2011. Much of the crop is rotting as many of the migrant workers who normally work these fields have moved to other states to find work after Alabama's immigration law took affect last week. The same problems are occurring in Georgia, its agriculture commissioner reported to US lawmakers on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 201. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)ATLANTA — A farm labor shortage that left crops rotting in the fields after Georgia passed a law cracking down on illegal immigration shows the need for a retooled or expanded guest worker program for migrant laborers, Georgia's agriculture commissioner told a panel of Washington lawmakers Tuesday.
Commissioner Gary Black testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on immigration enforcement and farm labor that an informal survey showed farmers of onions, watermelons and other handpicked crops lacked more than 11,000 workers during their spring and summer harvest. Farmers say that's because the Georgia immigration law scared off many migrant workers. Similar complaints are being heard in Alabama with its tough new law.
Financial incentives aimed at getting unemployed Georgians and even criminals on probation to take their place picking crops were marginally successful, Black said, because the new workers were too slow and often quit because of the strenuous labor involved.
"A robust agricultural guest worker program, properly designed, will not displace American workers," Black said in remarks prepared for the hearing. "As my testimony shows, in Georgia, even with current high unemployment rates, it is difficult for farmers to fill their labor needs."
Black said it's still unclear how much the labor shortage will ultimately cost farmers. But one group says growers have already lost tens of millions of dollars.
Charles Hall, director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, released figures from an upcoming industry-funded study Tuesday that says farmers lost at least $74.9 million in unpicked crops harvested by hand last spring and summer because they didn't have enough labor. The farmers said they lacked 40 percent of the total work force they needed.
The numbers come from self-reported surveys completed by 189 farmers of onions, watermelons, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, blueberries and blackberries, said John McKissick, director of the University of Georgia Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, which is compiling the report.
It's a snapshot of just a small fraction of Georgia's farmers overall. The surveyed farmers hold just short of half the state's overall acreage for those seven crops.
And the seven crops examined in the study accounted for just 5 percent of Georgia's $11.3 billion in farm products from 2009, according to the agribusiness center's last annual report.
The growers association reported other figures estimating even broader economic losses, based on the $74.9 million figure, but McKissick said those numbers were not scientifically derived.
From al.com, I'm posting this here because what the right believes about illegal immigrants is too often inacurate myth:
Crackdown on illegal immigrants left crops rotting in Georgia fields, ag chief tells US lawmakers
Published: Tuesday, October 04, 2011, 6:00 PM Updated: Tuesday, October 04, 2011, 6:00 PM
View full sizeJeremy Gonzalez picks tomatoes on a farm in Steele, Ala., Monday, Oct. 3, 2011. Much of the crop is rotting as many of the migrant workers who normally work these fields have moved to other states to find work after Alabama's immigration law took affect last week. The same problems are occurring in Georgia, its agriculture commissioner reported to US lawmakers on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 201. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)Commissioner Gary Black testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on immigration enforcement and farm labor that an informal survey showed farmers of onions, watermelons and other handpicked crops lacked more than 11,000 workers during their spring and summer harvest. Farmers say that's because the Georgia immigration law scared off many migrant workers. Similar complaints are being heard in Alabama with its tough new law.
Financial incentives aimed at getting unemployed Georgians and even criminals on probation to take their place picking crops were marginally successful, Black said, because the new workers were too slow and often quit because of the strenuous labor involved.
"A robust agricultural guest worker program, properly designed, will not displace American workers," Black said in remarks prepared for the hearing. "As my testimony shows, in Georgia, even with current high unemployment rates, it is difficult for farmers to fill their labor needs."
Black said it's still unclear how much the labor shortage will ultimately cost farmers. But one group says growers have already lost tens of millions of dollars.
Charles Hall, director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, released figures from an upcoming industry-funded study Tuesday that says farmers lost at least $74.9 million in unpicked crops harvested by hand last spring and summer because they didn't have enough labor. The farmers said they lacked 40 percent of the total work force they needed.
The numbers come from self-reported surveys completed by 189 farmers of onions, watermelons, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, blueberries and blackberries, said John McKissick, director of the University of Georgia Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, which is compiling the report.
It's a snapshot of just a small fraction of Georgia's farmers overall. The surveyed farmers hold just short of half the state's overall acreage for those seven crops.
And the seven crops examined in the study accounted for just 5 percent of Georgia's $11.3 billion in farm products from 2009, according to the agribusiness center's last annual report.
The growers association reported other figures estimating even broader economic losses, based on the $74.9 million figure, but McKissick said those numbers were not scientifically derived.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Jon Stewart and the Daily Show on the Perry Niggerhead Controversy - Part 2
I have to applaud the Daily Show for taking a look at the larger context of offensive geographical names that are slurs not only to blacks but to other groups.
What I'm not persuaded to believe however is that this in any way lets Perry and those around him off the hook for apparently tolerating and actively participating in keeping the name for an extended period of time.
It seems, despite the humor and satire here, that these names do reflect a past derogatory intolerance, and the extent to which those names continue should be recognized as being derogatory and offensive to members of those ethnicities or groups, and as continuing racism and bigotry. It is important for the history of these locations to be preserved, to reflect what actually took place in those earlier eras. I'm not in favor of sanitizing either history or geography. But we can document those events without continuing the slurs in place names. To leave the slurs in those place names is inconsistent with seeing people as the individual human beings they are, and doing so creates an unequal and imbalanced 'playing field' on which people engage in all aspects of life.
In that respect, the Daily Show makes a point that goes well beyond a controversy that has been specific to Perry, which is an excellent perspective to bring to understanding the issue of - in this case - southern bigotry. But we have northern intolerance and bigotry as well, it is not uniquely southern. Stewart and his staff of comedians, and his writers, do well to underline that with humor more pointedly than other media could do. They do it, and they do it well.
(A minor biographical note - Cenac was born in New York City, but did attend high school in Texas, and college in North Carolina.)
What I'm not persuaded to believe however is that this in any way lets Perry and those around him off the hook for apparently tolerating and actively participating in keeping the name for an extended period of time.
It seems, despite the humor and satire here, that these names do reflect a past derogatory intolerance, and the extent to which those names continue should be recognized as being derogatory and offensive to members of those ethnicities or groups, and as continuing racism and bigotry. It is important for the history of these locations to be preserved, to reflect what actually took place in those earlier eras. I'm not in favor of sanitizing either history or geography. But we can document those events without continuing the slurs in place names. To leave the slurs in those place names is inconsistent with seeing people as the individual human beings they are, and doing so creates an unequal and imbalanced 'playing field' on which people engage in all aspects of life.
In that respect, the Daily Show makes a point that goes well beyond a controversy that has been specific to Perry, which is an excellent perspective to bring to understanding the issue of - in this case - southern bigotry. But we have northern intolerance and bigotry as well, it is not uniquely southern. Stewart and his staff of comedians, and his writers, do well to underline that with humor more pointedly than other media could do. They do it, and they do it well.
(A minor biographical note - Cenac was born in New York City, but did attend high school in Texas, and college in North Carolina.)
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Amazing Racism - Geographical Bigotry | ||||
| ||||
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