I know we don’t post often on NT anymore….we are trying to get back to the good ol’ days when we had new content daily…..

Anyways…if you haven’t noticed, the corporate media has been beating the war drums lately when it comes to Iran. I know President Obama isn’t a dumb guy…..but after awhile, even the smartest folks could end up believing that if Iran gets a nuke, then the world as we know it will change forever! We have heard this before……and we’ll hear this again. Just remember, when you hear this mass display of yelling about the end of the world……they did this with Iraq, we heard it with North Korea…we heard it with Afghanistan…..just remember that the same people who own 95% of our media outlets also have a big financial stakes in the defense industry. War is very profitable for some folks….and those same folks couldn’t give a fuck about the people who are directly affected….these include the victims in the war zone, and the soldiers who have to leave their families in order to fight.

I know I haven’t posted in sometime now…..but I wanted to take some time to discuss what’s happening in the Gulf.

The past decade saw an increase in the thought that government, in any form, was a bad idea. Why let the government fix education, lets give it to private contractors (no child left behind). Lets privatize Social Security….the government can’t do it! Lets privatize the war effort, this got to a point that there were more private contractors then soldiers in Iraq. There’s no need to regulate the markets, it’ll correct itself! So on and so on and so on…..

Well, look what this got us? We now have a government that is being put back together, piece by piece because the GOP and all their fuckin idiotic followers, ya Tea Party…that includes you, decided they’d follow a monkey who resided in the White House. Now this monkey, who had already had a shitty track record in Texas…was allowed to trample a lot of safety measures that were put into place to avoid the bullshit we’re now experiencing.

I look back on the 2008 campaign and remember the chants of “drill baby drill”. And how that ditz Palin was screaming daily why we should drill off the coasts…and how safe it was. Now…you look at what states went to the GOP in that election, and guess what, a lot of them are on the Gulf Coast.

For years, we have been telling people who read NT that for a majority of Republicans….they actually vote against their own best interests. Here is just another example!

My message to Republican and those fucking morons who have tea bags hanging off of their hats at these rallys: OPEN UP A BOOK, READ A MAGAZINE, READ INDEPENDENT THINKERS WHO WRITE ON REAL DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN TOPICS, TURN OFF FOX NEWS, ACTUALLY, TURN OFF THE TV. IT’S ALL GARBAGE! TURN OFF THE CONSERVATIVE RADIO. THEY MAKE MAD $$$$ OFF OF YOUR STUPIDITY! WAKE UP AND REALIZE THAT YOU ARE BEING SCREWED!

If you’re one of those folks who says: I don’t know where to start! Well, I know we don’t post as much as we should, but go through our archives. Read about what happened over the last 6 years. Learn how the GOP and the Dems divided this country and then conquered us…which allowed them to put through legislation that was only good for the rich and elite…and fucked over the rest of us. As one of our founders of this country said:

This Nation was founded on the hope that the people would always question the government

–Thomas Jefferson

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet

Once again members of the mainstream media are running wild with the notion that marijuana use causes schizophrenia and psychosis.

To add insult to injury, this latest dose of reefer rhetoric comes only days after investigators in the United Kingdom reported in the prestigious scientific journal Addiction that the available evidence in support of this theory is “neither very new, nor by normal criteria, particularly compelling.” (Predictably, the conclusions of that study went all together unnoticed by the mainstream press.)

Yet today’s latest alarmist report, like those studies touting similar claims before it, fails to account for the following: If, as the authors of this latest study suggest, cannabis use is a cause of mental illness (and schizophrenia in particular), then why have diagnosed incidences of schizophrenia not paralleled rising trends in cannabis use over time?

In fact, it was only in September when investigators at the Keele University Medical School in Britain smashed the pot = schizophrenia theory to smithereens. Writing in the journal Schizophrenia Research, the team compared trends in marijuana use and incidences of schizophrenia in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005. Researchers reported that the “incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia and psychoses were either stable or declining” during this period, even the use of cannabis among the general population was rising. (more…)

Matt Taibbi has a new article in the latest Rolling Stone issue that paints the real picture of our current economic situation and where this country is headed. When President Bush came on TV in September of 2008 and insisted that the economy was in a tailspin, and that we needed to bailout the banks…..I saw red flags pop up all over the place. It didn’t help that this guy had lied about virtually everything in his 8 years as head of this country. But something didn’t seem right……Bear Stearns had collapsed back in March of 2008 and the world didn’t come to a halt. Lehman Brothers failed and Earth didn’t stop rotating. So why this need to bailout a few institutions?

Well folks….the answer to that question is another question:
What happens when Wall Street and the Government come together in a “lets fuck over everyone” romance?

Read Taibbi’s article….then head over to your bank and move your money from those greedy, piece of shit financial institutions that don’t care about ethics or this country.

side note: Here we go again….just another lie put into motion by the criminals who ran our government the last time around! Isn’t it unbelievable that they put a lie in motion, and then justify their actions around that lie. Saddam has WMD’s…..we must go into Iraq. They leak that story to the press, and then go on national tv and say “look, even the press knows about it! Didn’t you read the NYTimes today?!?!” Al-Qaeda has ties with Iraq….we must go to Iraq. The story about the aluminum tubes that that discredited journalist wrote about for the NYTimes…..yep, another reason we had to go into Iraq. Or hey…we know that our country has had the torture debate in the past…we even helped prosecute other people based on that policy. But we want to do it now…so lets have a bunch of lawyers come up with some legal mumbo-jumbo and we’ll be able to do it to! Or the Downing Street Memos that were discovered…….or they pay off journalists to promote their agenda, remember that? And now this…..the guy that “proved” that waterboarding worked….well, he wasn’t even there! This piece of shit should be charged with a crime…..for allowing other criminals to cover up their crimes. He’s a traitor in my eyes……nothing like being angry at 9am!

BY JEFF STEIN
Foreign Policy
A study in “enhanced reporting techniques.”

Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency’s intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC’s Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA’s application of the medieval confession technique.

The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou’s claim.

“It works, is the bottom line,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou’s ABC interview. “Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works.”

A cascade of similar acclamations followed, muffling — to this day — the later revelation that Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times. (more…)

side note: You god damn right I refer to those nimwits watching fox as idiots…..they’re lucky I’m in a good mood, b/c they deserve a lot worse!

side note: We were talking about this at the office today. The scenario we imagined starts at about 50 seconds.

side note: The problem with most Americans is that they have no friggin memory! This is why politicians can get away with the same bullshit over and over and over again. How many times did we hear from a high ranking general that “next year we should be able to start pulling troops out of Iraq”? You wanna know how many? Count up the number of years we were in Iraq under Bush….there’s your answer! This is one reason I left the Democratic party…..they would say similar things to the public and then they’d wait for our dumbass populace to forget, and then repeat. I do think President Obama has done some good in cleaning up DC, he isn’t God, so to change the culture in a town like that is one tough task…..he is getting rid of lobbyists that help create policy that benefits their corporations….but he promised us he’d do more during his campaign, and you know what, I expect it!
BTW..this article at Salon’s site has tons of external links siting sources, check em’ out.

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
The “new” approach to Afghanistan touted by White House officials seems quite old

In order to prepare Americans for Obama’s Afghanistan escalation speech tonight at West Point (at least he’s not wearing a fighter pilot costume), White House officials have been dispatched to speak to the media (anonymously, of course) to preview all of the new and exciting aspects of the President’s plan. As a result, media accounts are filled with claims that there are major changes ordered by Obama that will transform our approach there.

But to anyone with a memory that extends back for more than a few weeks, all of this seems anything but new. In December, 2007, George Bush delivered a speech to the nation announcing his escalation in Iraq — that one only 20,000 troops, compared to the 30,000-40,000 Obama has ordered for Afghanistan. It’s worthwhile to compare what Obama officials are excitedly featuring as new and innovative ideas with what Bush said; I’m not comparing the Iraq and Afghan escalations: only the rhetoric used to justify them.

ABC News: “While tomorrow night’s speech will have many audiences … a senior administration official tells ABC News one key message will resonate with all of them: ‘The era of the blank check for President Karzai is over. . . The president will talk about, this not being ‘an open ended commitment’…” Bush:

I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act.
(more…)

side note: Another great article by the folks at TNR. I have been sick of the “Common Sense” argument for years…and frankly, I don’t know what the hell it means when tools like Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh use. They wouldn’t know common sense if it jumped up and bit them in the face.

by Damon Linker
The New Republic

Conservatives would have us believe that they hold a monopoly on common sense. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and many other right-wing rabble-rousers regularly portray themselves as defenders of the good, old-fashioned common sense of average Americans against an out-of-touch liberal elite. A growing cadre of ambitious politicians likewise aims to lead a crusade in the name of “commonsense conservatism [1].” Glenn Beck has even gone so far as to publish a runaway bestseller [2] that explicitly piggybacks on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to argue against the danger of “out-of-control government” and the forces of organized foolishness that would foist it on the American people.

The unanimity is impressive. But it is also ridiculous. The fact is that the right’s appeal to common sense is nonsense. Unfortunately, though, it is a form of nonsense with deep roots in the American past and a very long history of political potency. Whether it continues to prove effective in the future will depend in no small measure on how cogently the rest of America responds.

The United States is a nation founded on an egalitarian creed—on the supposedly self-evident (commonsensical?) truths that all men are created equal and that all legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed. In such a nation, public appeals to authority would be much less persuasive than they had been throughout most of human history. Tradition, the divine right of kings, the will of God as interpreted by his designated clerical representatives—in America none of these authorities would benefit from the deference they have typically enjoyed in other times and places. Add in the ever-increasing social pluralism of modern life, and it becomes perfectly understandable why political actors and commentators in the United States would seek to win public disputes by appeal to the only authority still available—the authority of the people and their common sense. Whether such appeals are coherent is another matter.

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine famously inaugurated the American tradition of attempting to win contentious public arguments by praising the good judgment of average citizens. When Paine’s incendiary pamphlet first appeared, in January 1776, the colonies were divided about whether to declare their independence, with many colonists still loyal to the crown. Those on both sides of the issue recognized that taking up arms against the King of England demanded justification. Those who favored revolution did so for complicated reasons flowing from the ineptness of George III’s rule, which was increasingly viewed as arbitrary, dictatorial, and contrary to the economic interests of the colonies. A few, including Thomas Jefferson and Paine himself, went further, to supplement their case with abstract philosophical arguments about natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. But regardless of the rationale, it was almost universally acknowledged that proposing insurrection against British rule was a profoundly radical act—one involving a dramatic break from precedent and tradition. And yet Paine chose to portray the case for rebellion as transparently obvious—based, in fact, on nothing more than “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.” Today Paine’s tract is thought to have done more than any other piece of writing to foment the American Revolution. (more…)

side note: I’m not always the biggest Matthews fan…but this time he made me proud. I am sick and tired of the church (u can pick from the 10,000 different religions out there, this time it happens to be the Catholics) wanting to stick their belief system into our laws. When the 10,000+ kids were getting abused by 100+ priests out there, they didn’t want to be apart of our judicial system….b/c if they were, those scumbags would be in jail, where they belong! Instead, they just decided to cover it up and move the child abusing priests to different cities, so they could prey on other young children…some as young as 8 years old! Where’s the “moral clarity” from the Catholic Church? Oh ya…..hypocrisy screams loud and clear on this one!

side note: A few things as I just wrapped up watching this video…..first and foremost, well done to the folks at New Left Media. Second, for those fuckin twits out there, FOX news in the #1 news source on TV…..they are the main stream media people! That’s why we have so many fuckin idiots in this country. Third…..speaking of FOX news…..watch an evening of that garbage, and then watch this video…..these people, like robots, repeat the talking points they here on such shows as Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly. They are like little talking FOX parrots…….except this time around, Polly needs a friggin brain!

side note: This is why we need to continue to have conversations with everyone we can. At my last job, I was fairly outspoken about where I stood on many subjects. During the run-up to the 2008 election, I took my role of educating people who clearly didn’t pay attention seriously. One of my co-workers, who I had spoken to previously sent me one of those chain emails going around. Remember when Obama didn’t put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem? Well…this email said that it wasn’t the Anthem, it was the Pledge of Allegiance. And this woman sent a nasty email to me showing me how little “Obama cared about this country”. Of course, I emailed her the YouTube video showing her that it was the Anthem and not the Pledge, and then emailed her 10 videos of Americans at sporting events, singing the Anthem without covering their heart. One of the owners of my past company came out of her office and told me that this wasn’t the place or the time, and that I shoudn’t bring that stuff to work. And I flatly disagreed with her….WE NEED TO BE TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE EVERY CHANCE WE GET….THEY ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION, AND IF THEY ARE, THEY’RE TURNING ON FOX NEWS FOR 5 MINUTES A DAY! She didn’t like my answer….but sometime you need to stand up for what you believe in, especially if you think you’re making a difference. With that being said, it helped that I was in the owner’s good graces, b/c someone else may have fired me…..but that’s a chance i was willing to take. BTW…that woman, who sent me that email, who was calling Obama…Osama during the summer of ‘08….ya, she voted for Barack in November!! Touchdown Superbowl!!

Media Matters releases new video showing right-wing media’s leading role in driving movement

Washington, DC – Today, Media Matters for America released a new video demonstrating how the conservative echo chamber operates in the age of President Obama. Conservative activists – aided by Fox News, a political organization disguised as a news network – use distortions, lies, and smear tactics to shape public opinion and influence national policy.

Media Matters

side note: There’s a reason that the health care industry was spending 1.4 million dollars a day (not a typo), on lobbying DC politicians to make sure they got the bill they wanted. And now we see the results of that coordinated effort. At the end of the day…..our politicians do not represent the people of their state or district….they represent the corporation who help them get re-elected. This is biggest downside of our system….campaign financing. We need to rid ourselves of this so these snakes in DC can get back to representing their constituents, not big business……..ya, I know, when pigs fly! (Which makes me think of one of my favorite scenes from The Simpsons:

By Noam N. Levey and Lisa Girion
LA TImes
The final bill may well reflect an industry group’s strategy of shaping universal coverage to benefit companies.

As President Obama’s push for a healthcare overhaul moves toward its final act, the oft-vilified health insurance industry is on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests.

That achievement, should it stand up in the final legislation, would be the capstone of a sophisticated lobbying and strategic campaign that began even before Obama was elected president.

The specifics of the healthcare legislation are still being hashed out on Capitol Hill, and key details will evolve in the days ahead. Even so, there is broad agreement that the final plan will, for the first time, require Americans to buy health coverage, with taxpayer subsidies for millions who cannot afford it.

For the health insurance industry, that means millions of new paying customers. What’s more, there are likely to be no limits on what insurers can charge, while at the same time the plan is expected to limit competition from any new national government insurance plan that lawmakers create.

These anticipated wins — from an initiative that has at times been portrayed as doomsday for health insurers — is the result of a strategy developed by one of Washington’s savviest lobbyists, Karen Ignagni. Under Ignagni’s leadership, the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans adopted the goal of universal coverage while setting out to shape it in a way that benefited insurers — a crucial move that aligned their interests with those of other groups, including consumers and hospitals.

Insurers poured campaign donations into the coffers of key sympathetic members of the House and Senate, and loaded up on lobbyists. And when Obama and other Democrats began attacking the industry, insurers made a strategic choice not to walk away from the negotiating table.

“While so many in this town have been playing checkers, Karen has been playing chess,” said Mark Merritt, a veteran lobbyist who heads the Pharmaceutical Care Management Assn. (more…)

This is why our media fucking sucks in this country:
Bob Cesca is right on!

side note: I have had quite a few conversations with folks concerning vaccines lately and I think it’s an important topic b/c it ties into the Big Pharma issues we have in this country. I am not a doctor or scientist, so I have really nothing credible to backup my beliefs, but I do know that Big Pharma companies will do anything to make a buck, even hurting people. It’s tough for me to put my trust in an industry that’s built on making as much money as possible. With that being said, my beliefs are that not everyone needs the H1N1 vaccine. If you are old, very young, or susceptible to getting sick, then yes, you should get one. The “every year” flu hasn’t hit us yet, that usually comes a bit later in the winter season, currently the only flu that people are getting sick from is the H1N1, and the people who are dying from it fall into the above 3 categories of who should get vaccinated for it. The other people who are dying from it are the ones who had an unknown preexisting condition. I do agree with this article about pseudoscience. There is no medical studies that link autism and vaccines. Without a shred of proof that shows a connection, we really need to continue to move forward to protect those who could die. If you are worried about the preservatives in the vaccine, then use the nasal spray vaccine that doesn’t have the mercury based preservatives in it. I just hope that most people continue to trust the medical studies out there and try not to form their own opinions based on an uneducated belief system. This part of the article really stood out to me:
Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. Much like infectious diseases themselves — beaten back by decades of effort to vaccinate the populace — the irrational lingers just below the surface, waiting for us to let down our guard.

By Amy Wallace
Wired.com

To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams Offit as a “biostitute” who whores for the pharmaceutical industry. Actor Jim Carrey calls him a profiteer and distills the doctor’s attitude toward childhood vaccination down to this chilling mantra: “Grab ‘em and stab ‘em.” Recently, Carrey and his girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, went on CNN’s Larry King Live and singled out Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, as one of many unnecessary vaccines, all administered, they said, for just one reason: “Greed.”

Thousands of people revile Offit publicly at rallies, on Web sites, and in books. Type pauloffit.com into your browser and you’ll find not Offit’s official site but an anti-Offit screed “dedicated to exposing the truth about the vaccine industry’s most well-paid spokesperson.” Go to Wikipedia to read his bio and, as often as not, someone will have tampered with the page. The section on Offit’s education was once altered to say that he’d studied on a pig farm in Toad Suck, Arkansas. (He’s a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Maryland School of Medicine).

Then there are the threats. Offit once got an email from a Seattle man that read, “I will hang you by your neck until you are dead!” Other bracing messages include “You have blood on your hands” and “Your day of reckoning will come.” A few years ago, a man on the phone ominously told Offit he knew where the doctor’s two children went to school. At a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an anti-vaccine protester emerged from a crowd of people holding signs that featured Offit’s face emblazoned with the word terrorist and grabbed the unsuspecting, 6-foot-tall physician by the jacket. (more…)