A friend of mine just made this long and profound statement on Facebook. I think it needs to be preserved for as many people to see as possible. I left her name out of it, but her identity does not matter. NO ONE should have to endure this!
Category Archives: Social studies
Why party labels in the USA are completely useless
Watch this video:
The anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War was NOT the party of Big Business from the 1870s to the 1930s. The party that defended slavery before and during the Civil War was NOT the party that fights for the rights of blacks and other minorities today. The Religious Right which infested the Republicans in the 1980s had almost nothing in common with the likes of Donald Trump now.
This is why we need a MULTI-PARTY system like in some European countries. The two-party system we Americans have always had is by nature misleading. The south has ALWAYS been conservative compared to the north. If the Ku Klux Klan was founded today, it would be founded by southern REPUBLICANS. Conservatism is the ideology we must always fight, no matter what party label it marches under.
For the record, it is not BIG government we should oppose, but STUPID government which is a problem no matter what its size. Did you know that Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, actually increased government by massive military spending….that we also never needed in the first place?! And why did Reagan do that? Because so many big businesses have had contracts with our military and profit from every war we end up fighting in! I can guarantee that if a Republican gets the Presidency in the next decade or so, then he will find an excuse, any excuse to get us into another overseas war like Bush Sr. did when he pushed us into war with Iraq in 1991. and his son did again in 2003. Consider yourselves warned!
As for illegal immigration, the rules were designed beforehand to exclude non-white people from Latin America, including Mexico. Ironic considering we conquered and annexed half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s. “Hey, thanks for all your land, but we do not want your people! GO AWAY!!!” Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which is majority Spanish-speaking and non-white, remains a mere possession of the USA and not a state. Go figure.
This corporate backstabber belongs in PRISON!
Read this outrageous story (emphasis mine):
EpiPen maker’s stock value plunges nearly $3 billion as investors panic
Mylan Pharmaceuticals — the company that makes the EpiPen rescue device — has watched its stock value plummet over the last five days as panicky investors jump ship.
According to U.S. Uncut, outrage over Mylan’s decision to jack up the price of the EpiPen has spooked shareholders, whose departures have reduced the value of Mylan stock by 12.4 percent. On August 19, Mylan stocks went from $49.20 per share to $43.11 on August 24, a net loss of nearly $3 billion for the company.
The EpiPen is a popular rescue device for food allergy sufferers who run the risk of anaphylaxis — a potentially lethal reaction to allergen exposure. The device rapidly delivers a dose of epinephrine to the system, which for severe allergy sufferers can mean the difference between life and death.
The device was conceived and developed for the U.S. Department of Defense by researcher Sheldon Kaplan. The studies and testing were all underwritten by U.S. taxpayer revenues. The device was originally created as an antidote to nerve gas, but it was released to the public as a rapid remedy to anaphylactic shock.
Tom Cahill at U.S. Uncut wrote, “However, in 2007, Mylan Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to the EpiPen and immediately started raising the price. After Heather Bresch, its former top lobbyist, successfully pushed for legislation in Congress that required all public schools to carry EpiPens for children with food allergies, its price hikes became more frequent and more severe, raising by at least 10 percent every other quarter from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2016. A score of U.S. Senators are calling for an investigation into the price hikes.”
Over the course of her tenure at the company, Bresch — daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — raised her own salary 617 percent and conducted an offshore reincorporation of Mylan, Inc. under the Netherlands’ looser corporate laws, but maintained the company’s headquarters and operations in the U.S.. This practice is known as “inversion” and it has become a popular way for U.S. companies to lower their effective tax rate while continuing to enjoy all the market rights and privileges of companies conducting all of their business domestically.
Bresch — who was one of Fortune magazine’s most powerful women of 2015 — gave a disastrous interview to CNBC on Thursday, attempting to pass off her $16 million salary hike and the 450 percent increase in EpiPen prices as perfectly normal business practices in the pharmaceutical industry.
Interviewer Brian Kelly pointed out that Bresch apparently used her power as a lobbyist-turned-CEO and her influence with heads of state to legislate a market for her company’s product, then inflated the price.
“I’m legislating in the access to EpiPens!” she protested.
An estimated 15 million Americans suffer from food allergies, including 1 in every 13 children under 18. Every three minutes, a food allergic reaction sends an American to the emergency room, totaling around 200,000 hospital visits per year.
This is exactly the sort of despicable thing about “Big Pharma” that progressives like Bernie Sanders were warning us about.
What is especially troubling about that is that the Senator who enabled his daughter to commit these unethical atrocities is a DEMOCRAT. This is one case in which I would be happy to see a Democrat voted out of office, even if a Republican does take his place.
What Heather Bresch did should get her and her father arrested, tried and convicted of a conspiracy charge, and imprisoned for many years! Food allergies are literally a matter of life and death! WE NEED SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!
First Amendment Issue?
I just noticed the following story on a right-wing internet news publication called the Federalist. I will post the parts from the original story in red and my responses to it will be in blue.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/08/04/how-to-fight-black-lives-matter-harassment-in-houston/ Continue reading
Cleaning up Congress
Read this story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-congress-approval-rating-drops-to-11-percent/
Congress’ approval rating drops to 11 percent
Congress’s approval rating has slipped to the lowest level this year, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup.
The poll found 11 percent of people in the United States approve of Congress, which is its lowest job approval rating this year.
It’s also only 2 percentage points higher than the all-time low of 9 percent approval from November 2013 after the last government shutdown.
Meanwhile, 86 percent of the public said they disapprove of Congress.
Gallup began tracking congressional approval ratings 41 years ago and the ratings since 2011 have been among the worst recorded. Congress experienced a record-high 84 percent approval rating in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The new survey also found 8 percent of Republicans said they approve of Congress while 13 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats said the same about lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The poll comes just weeks after Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was elected as speaker of the House and after Congress passed a major budget deal to raise spending limits and lift the debt ceiling into March 2017. Lawmakers still must pass a spending package before the Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government and avert another shutdown.
The poll surveyed 1,021 adults between November 4 and 8 with a 4 percentage point margin of error.
How is it possible for the general public to so despise Congress when they have two year and six year intervals to replace its members? Because, quite simply, they almost never do! Most Americans only pay attention to the Presidential races and usually the Governors’ races in their respective states and do not take much notice of the Congressional and state representative races. And yet it is Congress that makes the laws and decides the federal budgets for the United States, while state legislatures do the same at the state level. The President and the Governors have very little power, so merely electing them means almost nothing.
This is why the American people elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then watched in amazement when Republicans took control of Congress in 2010 and 2014, causing incredible amounts of gridlock later. If you do not vote in ALL elections and for ALL positions in government, you end up with a government that you do not approve of! It is the extremists that take advantage of the mid-term elections to get their stooges into Congress….and there are FAR more right-wing extremists in America than left-wing ones. You can blame dogmatic Christian denominations for that as well as the media being controlled largely by corporations with their own economic and political agendas!
Also, most Americans tend to support their own Representatives or Senators and assume that the “other ones” are the problem. That is not true! You can only replace the members of Congress that are supposed to represent you, so if you do not vote them out, you are to blame for the failures of Congress. Not other people in different states and districts.
And of course, there is gerrymandering too.
How to disable the Republican Party
Read this article:
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/07/19/24362128/dan-savage-on-jill-stein-just-no
Dan Savage said:
Yeah, let’s talk about the Green Party for just a moment, or third parties, getting a third party movement off the ground here in this country. Because we are sick of the two party system!
Here’s how you fucking do that: you run people not just for fucking president every four fucking years.
I have a problem with the Greens, I have a problem with the Libertarians. I have a problem with these fake, attention seeking, grandstanding Green/Libertarian party candidates who pop up every four years, like mushrooms in shit, saying that they’re building a third party. And those of us who don’t have a home in the Republican Party, don’t have a home in the Democratic Party, can’t get behind every Democratic position or Republican position, should gravitate toward these third parties. And help build a third party movement by every four fucking years voting for one of these assholes like Jill fucking Stein, who I’m sure is a lovely person, she’s only an asshole in this aspect.
If you’re interested in building a third party, a viable third party, you don’t start with president. You don’t start by running someone for fucking president.
Where are the Green Party candidates for city councils? For county councils? For state legislatures? For state assessor? For state insurance commissioner? For governor? For fucking dogcatcher? I would be SO willing to vote for Green Party candidates who are starting at the bottom, grassroots, bottom up, building a third party, a viable third party.
You don’t do that by trotting out the reanimated corpse of Ralph fucking Nader every four fucking years. Or his doppelgänger, whoever it is now, Jill Stein and some asshole-to-be-named four years from now. You start by running grassroots, local campaigns. And there’ve been — and I’m sure we’re going hear from lots of people out there listening — there have been a couple of Green Party candidates who’ve run in other races here and there across the country. But no sustained effort to build a Green Party nationally. Just this griping, bullshitty, grandstanding, fault-finding, purity-testing, holier than thou-ing, that we are all subjected to every four fucking years by the Green Party candidate.
Bernie Sanders tried to challenge the Democratic Party directly by running for President as a Democrat despite serving in the U S Senate as an “Independent”. But he ultimately went nowhere. So the same advice applies to him as to the Greens or other so-called third parties in the USA.
We need progressives among Democrats running for city council and for mayors, and after capturing many of those offices, some of those progressives can run for state legislative positions and then for governor of various states. After that, progressives can run for Congress. Only when many of them are in Congress can one run for the Presidency. Over time, the progressives could be so successful that they can afford to split themselves off from the other Democrats, while the progressives and the (conservative) Democrats together erode the popularity of the Republican Party to the point that Republicans can no longer function as a national political party.
Those who say they are for “Bernie or Bust” have no idea the damage that attitude can lead to. If they really believe in what Bernie Sanders favored,. they should stand up and run for public offices themselves. Otherwise, they will fail and they are useless.
I will back Hillary Clinton this year, not because I agree with everything she has done, but because the consequences of Donald Trump winning are simply unthinkable to me. He is not fit to be President, and Ms. Clinton is!
Tim LaHaye is no more
Read this news story:
‘Left Behind’ Co-Author Tim LaHaye, Leading Voice of Evangelicalism, Dies
Tim LaHaye, an intellectual and popular leader of the evangelical movement whose 16 “Left Behind” novels sold tens of millions of copies, died Monday at age 90 in San Diego following a stroke last week, his ministry and his family said.
The “Left Behind” novels, co-written with Jerry B. Jenkins, were enormously popular, crashing mainstream best-seller lists in the 1990s and the 2000s, which until then had been all but unheard of for Christian-themed fiction.
The books, which were based heavily on the Book of Revelation, chronicled the struggles of the unfortunate people “left behind” on Earth after the Second Coming of Jesus and the “Rapture” of believers into Heaven, introducing the frankly apocalyptic theology to a much wider audience.
“Thrilled as I am that he is where he has always wanted to be, his departure leaves a void in my soul that I don’t expect to be filled until I see him again,” Jenkins said in a statement Monday.
But the books were only part of the reason the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College named LaHaye the most influential leader in evangelical Christianity in 2001 — ahead of Billy Graham, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.
Falwell, who died in 2007, credited LaHaye with having inspired him to found the Moral Majority in 1979. And in a 2005 interview with Time magazine, Falwell called LaHaye and Jenkins’ “Left Behind” books the most influential Christian body of literature of the 20th century — behind only the Bible itself.
LaHaye also founded San Diego Christian College, 12 Christian secondary schools and the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia.
Among the first departments at San Diego Christian College was the Institute for Creation Research, which branched out as an influential young-Earth creationist research organization in 1972.
In 2005, Time enshrined LaHaye and his wife of almost 70 years, Beverly LaHaye — an evangelical leader in her own right as founder and chairwoman of the powerful conservative political group Concerned Women of America — as “The Christian Power Couple.”
Combined, their books and their radio and TV shows reached hundreds of millions of conservative Christians around the world for more than a quarter-century — and drew sharp criticism from liberal organizations and fellow pastors on the more progressive side of the Christian spectrum.
In 2009, LaHaye famously called President Barack Obama a socialist whose rise to power was possibly a signal of the approach of the End Times.
In an essay Monday in Christianity Today, Jenkins acknowledged that LaHaye was often called “opinionated, polemic, a right-wing conservative fundamentalist — and some will even accuse him of homophobia.”
But “the Tim LaHaye I got to know had a pastor’s heart and lived to share his faith,” Jenkins wrote. “He listened to and cared about everyone, regardless of age, gender, or social standing.
“If Tim was missing from the table at a book signing or the green room of a network television show, he could usually be found in a corner praying with someone he’d just met — from a reader to a bookstore clerk to a TV network anchorman.”
LaHaye’s ministry said that in addition to his wife, he is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, a brother and a sister.
I first heard about Tim LaHaye when I was still a thoroughly brainwashed Southern Baptist and I had the misfortune to pick up and read his book “The Battle for the Mind”, a right-wing extremist diatribe that demonized secular Humanism as a corrupter of American society. I wasn’t until I attended college and deconverted from Christianity that I realized the truth. I came to see that Humanists were to LaHaye what Jews were to Adolph Hitler and his Nazis; they were scapegoats that Christian bigots could focus their hatred on instead of the spiritual love that Jesus actually taught about.
As for that series of “Left Behind” novels LaHaye co-wrote with Mr. Jenkins, the entire premise behind those books was an outright lie, as I already showed in this blog entry:
Why the Rapture is a bogus concept
And that is why I prefer to call that fraud Tim LaHELL. He was just like Hal Lindsey, another self-styled expert on Bible prophecy no one should take seriously!
We must REFORM America’s democracy!
And here’s how I would do it:
- Abolish the Electoral College. Presidential candidates should be elected only by direct popular vote.
- Abolish primaries. Let all candidates of all parties go directly to the general election, provided they get a certain number of petition signatures in every state.
- Eliminate the Senate and thus make the U.S. Congress a unicameral body. The term length in the U. S. Congress should be four years, rather than two. The membership of Congress should be 1000.
- Forbid state legislatures from drawing and approving Congressional and state legislative districts. Only federal courts should do that.
- Allow voters to cast a vote for as many candidates as they wish in the general election at all levels and positions, instead of being forced to choose only one.
- Require that the Presidential candidate that gets the second most votes become Vice-President.
- Make Presidential terms four years long and make Presidential elections at the same years as Congressional elections.
- Impose term limits on Congressmen; they should be allowed to serve no longer than 16 years (four terms).
- Make electronic ballots illegal; only paper ballots should be counted in all elections.
The Fallen of World War II
This stunning video presentation speaks for itself, so here it is!
Here is the website it came from:
This is one of the best and most moving historical accounts I have ever seen. The mass deaths are horrible to consider, but at the end…….it is just beautiful!
Greens have limited credibility
So now it is official: Not only has Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination at last, but even her fierce rival Bernie Sanders has publicly endorsed her. The fighting among Democrats is over.
However, some diehard Bernie supporters refuse to vote for Clinton and may instead vote for the Green Party, which is indeed more progressive than most Democrats are.
I like most of what the Greens stand for, but there is one point that I strongly disagree with them on.
http://www.gp.org/social_justice/#sjHealthCare
Greens support a wide range of health care services, not just traditional medicine, which too often emphasizes “a medical arms race” that relies upon high-tech intervention, surgical techniques and costly pharmaceuticals. Chronic conditions are often best cured by alternative medicine. We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and, as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.
Unfortunately, most forms of “alternative” medicine are called that precisely because they have not been fully tested and confirmed to work via scientific methods. To illustrate the danger of being willing to uncritically trust such things, read this:
One of the things people need to understand about science is that it is not like a buffet restaurant where you can pick and choose what scientific ideas and products you can accept or reject. You either accept it all or you are not thinking scientifically.
Here’s another questionable part of the Greens’ platform:
http://www.gp.org/ecological_sustainability/#esAgriculture
We urge the banning of sewage sludge or hazardous wastes as fertilizer, and of irradiation and the use of genetic engineering in all food production. (Emphasis mine)
Genetic engineering itself is neither good nor bad, so banning the procedure completely is nonsense. We need to judge all such issues on a case by case basis.
The Greens need to modify their platform by removing these controversial and inappropriate statements if they expect to keep my support. Otherwise, I will just return to voting a straight Democratic ticket this November.
What sexism looks like in America
Here are two examples of how today’s young girls are being given short change (pun intended in the second case) by business leaders who are being held accountable thanks to the power of the internet to spread their shame for the world to see.
http://www.seventeen.com/life/real-girl-stories/news/a41324/shania-clifford-ohio-national-masonry/
Israel is a nation of BIGOTRY!
When I was a youth (and a Christian), I shared the common American perception of Israel as a state created to be a homeland for Jews in general and thus worth defending at all costs, since Jews throughout history have been subjected to discrimination and even atrocities, including the Holocaust of World War II. When Israel was first founded in 1948, it was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors, something I still consider to be one of the dumbest things the Arabs could have done since it made them look no better than the Nazis. Israel not only won that war, but then fought three more wars against its Arab neighbors in the 20th Century, until finally two of these countries, Egypt and Jordan, gave up and signed peace treaties with Israel. That should have ended all Israel’s problems and led to peace for good. But it didn’t!
Rewriting a bigoted article about religion
Read this news report on a Christian website:
The Tragedy of Excessive Tourism
Look at this web page:
http://beachmeter.com/thailands-most-beautiful-island/
This is Thailand’s Most Beautiful Island!
Jehovah, the Homophobe.
Recently, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, one of the many Christian based cults founded in the 19th Century, produced an attractive and professional looking video with a clear message: Jehovah will not allow gays and lesbians into Paradise.
Watch that video here:
Afterwards, consider the following questions.
How do we know that Jehovah invented marriage for us? Why him and not some other god?
What if Jehovah told us to reject interracial marriage too? The Mormons have a book that condemns people with black skin!
What if Jehovah ordered us to kill anyone above the age of 65?
How do we know there is a Paradise for us to go to?
How do we know that gays and lesbians will be excluded from Paradise?
Indeed, how do we even know Jehovah exists at all?
We KNOW that gays and lesbians exist and that some of them are PARENTS.
Using one or more things that may not be real to attack things or people that are certainly real is irrational.
And making something cute to teach BIGOTRY is the worst kind of brainwashing!
It does not matter if you say, “God hates fags!” or if you say, “Jehovah does not approve of your gay lifestyle and he will love you more if you change.” Sugarcoated bigotry is still bigotry, period!
Another look at Communism
With a professed Democratic Socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders, engaging and enraging the Democratic Party establishment as represented by Hillary Clinton, I decided to google “American Communism” to see if there was any remaining sign of the Communist movement in the USA. One would think that the downfall of Communism in eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union would have discredited that ideology forever. And yet…..
A better and peaceful world is possible — a world where people and nature come before profits. That’s socialism. That’s our vision. We are the Communist Party USA.
Oh, really?
Even Republicans are waking up!
In a previous blog entry, I wrote the following:
Notice what all these current front runners have in common? THEY ARE ALL WHITE MEN! And that is really all the Republicans are appealing to these days, as well as Christian bigots. And these different candidates are engaged in a brutal fight for the nomination that is splitting the party up…..all of them are appealing to a core constituency, white males, who are no longer the overwhelmingly dominant segment of the American population, even though they are still slightly more privileged than those who are non-white and/or female. The fact that John McCain lost in 2008 to Obama should have showed the futility of continuing to appeal to a base that is growing impotent. But the Republicans have not learned how to grow and diversify, have they?
This past year, we DID have a black man, a woman and a couple of hispanics running under the Republican ticket for President, along with several white men, but I’d swear every single one of them sounded like a white male bigot! Not one of them really took any positions or said anything that would be truly appealing to women or minorities. As horrible as Donald Trump may seem to be, at least he seems more honest about his bigotry and appealing to the bigotry of voters than most other conservatives out there. Continue reading
TERFs are no better than MRAs
Recently I have discovered a particularly insidious group of seemingly progressive women who have turned out to be using the same selfish, arrogant, and offensive impulses as anti-feminists or Men’s Right Activists (MRAs). These women are known as TERFs, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, and they are very dangerous!
Until tonight, I did not know all the bogus and hateful claims of the TERFs, but a blog entry seems to have finally assembled them together for all to see. Continue reading
Ophelia Benson vs. Richard Dawkins
A few months ago, in response to a rumor that Ophelia Benson, an atheist and feminist activist, was also a transphobe (a bigot against transgendered people), she was targeted by a massive witch hunt similar to the one on tumblr stirred up against Lacy Green years earlier. As a result, Benson left Freethought Blogs (FTB) in disgust and founded her own personal blog elsewhere, badly damaging the credibility of FTB, so much so that one of its founding members, Ed Brayton, also took down his blog there and moved to another network.
Now Benson has been attacked again, in reference to Richard Dawkins suffering a mild stroke recently. Around the same time, he was disinvited to a skeptics conference and then just as quickly reinvited to it. The battle between them produced the exchange of the following statements between them and one of Dawkins’ fanatical followers. Continue reading
Newton’s Laws of Politics, sort of
Conservatives often complain that poor and minority peoples are never satisfied, despite the gains supposedly made for them over the past two centuries. So they assume that their opponents are just being greedy and bigoted against whites and the rich. But there is another way of seeing what has happened and what can be done to stop the problems. Consider Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Continue reading
Buckley gets what Rebecca Watson bashers do not want to admit!
First, some past references to both persons involved to get you up to speed:
https://dalehusband.com/2014/06/01/adam-buckley/
https://dalehusband.com/2011/07/05/the-downfall-of-richard-dawkins-credibility/
Buckley just put out a video in which he discusses the issue of “Netflix and chill” and bluntly deals with it.
Which puts THIS part of Rebecca’s video in context:
Which is exactly why the uproar by a lot of sexist male pigs several years ago about her comments on this specific matter was so revealing, indeed!
Lizzy the Lezzy issues
Several years ago, I discovered a YouTube channel featuring a cartoon character named “Lizzy the Lezzy” which seemed to be dealing with lesbian issues in a humorous manner.
Another Conservative gets caught lying
Read this silly article on a right-wing propaganda website. The article itself will be in red and my direct responses will be in blue .
http://www.yesimright.com/heres-the-hilarious-difference-between-donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton/
Although we do try to report on hard-hitting issues, we’re not above a few good laughs at the expense of far-left nutjobs like Hillary Clinton. Here’s an amazing anecdote about the difference between a conservative and liberal, attributed to Jim Spivey on Facebook.
Right from the start, this writer starts misrepresenting one of her political opponents. Hillary, like her husband Bill, is not far-left. She is actually a fairly conservative Democrat. It is Bernie Sanders, who is also running as a Democrat for the Presidency, who can be called a “far-left nutjob” because he professes to be a democratic SOCIALIST. Yet he seems to have far more integrity than most other politicians, including Hillary herself.
It sums everything up perfectly:
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person. Trump gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his office for a job. He then took $20 out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.
Uh, NO! Usually when you fill out a job application, you must state your home address, thus preventing a homeless person from getting a job anywhere. This is exactly why being homeless is such a terrible trap!
Hillary was very impressed, so when they came to another homeless person, she decided to help. She walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. She then reached into Trump’s pocket and got out $20. She kept $15 for her administrative fees and gave the homeless person $5.00.
Welfare offices DO serve homeless people in ways that private industry does not. And the implication here is that liberals must “steal” from the rich in order to give away money and other gifts to the poor. But that is a lie on several levels: First, taxation by legal definition is NOT and can never be theft. Second, government officials must eat too, so they do have to be paid for their services. Or would you rather try to live without them and rely only on for-profit businesses for all your services? You will end up even poorer as a result! And why would the writer say $15 for administrative fees and not a more reasonable amount like $5? For hyperbole, of course. Note to right-wingers: Private industry MUST make a profit to function, while governments do not!
Now, do you understand the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal progressive?
No, but I know a bigoted LIAR when I see one! Of course, the incident never happened anyway!
The Louisiana “Purchase”
Imagine this scenario:
You are an Azari, a native of the planet Azar. Your people have developed a global civilization with technology comparable to that of mid 20th Century humans on Earth. One day, dozens of alien spaceships appear in the skies above your world and then land, disgorging thousands of alien troops and tens of thousands of alien settlers. The aliens tell you they are Marlos and they claim to OWN your world, having bought it from their neighbors the Carlics a few years earlier. You remember having contact with the Carlics a century ago and even trading with them, but you had no idea they claimed to own your world, let alone that they had “sold” it to another interstellar power. So you reject the Marlos’ claim and attempt to repel the invaders. But the Marlos use their superior technology to quickly defeat you! Most of your people are exterminated and the few survivors are forced into concentration camps of poor land where they can only survive by farming, while the Marlos take over the richest land and nearly all the resources of the world your people evolved on! Your civilization, which could have become an interstellar power in its own right in a few thousand years, is instead broken forever.
National Geographic has sold out!
Read this horrible story:
In a $725 million deal, the 127-year-old National Geographic magazine is leaving behind its nonprofit status and becoming a key piece of a new venture between its parent organization and 21st Century Fox.
The dramatic shift will place the venerable magazine, with its iconic yellow-rimmed covers, under a new venture called National Geographic Partners. Fox will own 73 percent of the new company, with the National Geographic Society owning 27 percent.
Those proportions are similar to the ownership split of National Geographic’s cable TV channels. The new deal is being called an extension of that partnership, which began 18 years ago and now reportedly reaches more than 500 million homes worldwide.
James Murdoch, who took over the post of CEO of 21st Century Fox from his father, Rupert, this summer, said:
“We are privileged to have the opportunity to expand our partnership to continue to bring to audiences around the world, ‘The world and all that is in it,’ as National Geographic Society’s second president Alexander Graham Bell stated more than a century ago. We believe in the Society’s mission of bringing the world to audiences through science, education and exploration.”
The new media company will be headed by CEO Declan Moore, a 20-year veteran of National Geographic who is currently its chief media officer. Gary Knell, the CEO of the National Geographic Society, will remain in that role.
“We will now have the scale and reach to fulfill our mission long into the future,” Knell said. “The Society’s work will be the engine that feeds our content creation efforts, enabling us to share that work with even larger audiences and achieve more impact. It’s a virtuous cycle.”
National Geographic Partners will combine the National Geographic TV channels with a list of media properties that, according to a news release, includes “National Geographic magazines; National Geographic Studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; children’s media; and ancillary activities, including travel, location-based entertainment, archival sales, catalog, licensing and ecommerce businesses.”
The deal will raise the value of the National Geographic Society’s endowment to nearly $1 billion.
21st Century Fox is in turn owned by News Corporation, which also owns…..FOX News!
Hasn’t the Murdoch family and their companies done enough damage to the mass media already?! Why take over National Geographic, one of the most respected publications in history?! HOW DARE THEY?!!
Let us not forget what happened to MySpace when it was part of the FOX empire.
Yes, all lives DO matter!
At First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church, a banner was put up that said, “BLACK LIVES MATTER”. A couple of weeks later, someone decided to “correct” the message:
And one of the church members came up with an excellent response.
I would go farther. If you as a white person are not willing to talk about what black people go through, if you as a Christian are not willing to talk about what Jews, Muslims or other non-Christians go through, if you as a man are not willing to talk about what women go through, and if you as a straight person are not willing to talk about what gays go through, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
Lying to fight racism.
Racism is one of the ugliest things about human societies. But even uglier is telling lies to fight it, because once you start doing that, people of all races would be justified in questioning the credibility of anything you say or do.
Read this article to understand why:
NAACP leader of Washington state chapter Rachel Dolezal leaned on adoptive kid brothers to help her lie about being black
The coming downfall of Wal-Mart
Seeing this news story made me laugh.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/25/the-most-hated-company-in-the-retail-industry.aspx
The most hated companies in America have a knack for angering people. Whether it’s due to inept management, subpar products, poor service, or lackluster stock performance, these businesses earn the wrath of customers, employees, and shareholders alike.
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John Wayne, Great Actor, Terrible Human Being
When I was a small child, John Wayne was one of the greatest celebrities in the world. He has been dead for decades, but his movies remain as his legacy. Sadly, he was also an incredibly blind and arrogant bigot.
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Three Muslims, an Atheist, and an anti-Christian Liar
Read this report:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/10/4545775_three-people-shot-dead-in-chapel.html?rh=1
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 