About Us
Mission Statement
Rules of Conduct
 
Name:
Pswd:
Remember Me
Register
 

Unfit for Hope & Change?
Author: Raine    Date: 10/14/2009 13:34:04

On Friday, I awoke to a pleasant surprise: The President of the United States of America won the Nobel Peace Prize. The media and the right wing were predictably apoplectic. Yesterday, upon my return to the land of the intertubes, I found another surprise: liberals were in agreement with the right wing about this award. Undoubtedly hundreds of people may deserve it more than President Obama, as he himself has said, but the negative reaction has been so swift and so shrill that Americans wouldn't even take a moment to reflect on what this means.

I thought winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a good thing, not just for Barack Obama, but also for the United States of America. I don't believe, as some have said, that this is a repudiation for the actions of the previous administration. If we were to use the standards by which people think the President doesn't deserve this award, then Martin Luther King was not deserving either since the Civil Rights acts was signed into law after his death. The same goes for Teddy Roosevelt. He did not by any means spend his life agitating for peace. He fought in the Spanish-American War as a roughrider, if you will recall.

A friend of mine posed a question, and it is one that I think should be asked of all Americans:

Have we become so cynical and spoiled as Americans that we can't enjoy a moment which recognizes that the American Dream can and has inspired people all over the world; but here in the U.S. we use it as another excuse to highlight our differences and exult in division and create controversy where there is none?

Continue reading...

65 comments (Latest Comment: 10/15/2009 01:35:22 by trojanrabbit)

Ask a Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/13/2009 10:45:43

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,400th day in Iraq.

We'll do things a little differently this morning.

Do you think President Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize?

Matthew Rothschild of "The Progressive" doesn't think so.


I’m sorry, there’s a lot I admire about Barack Obama, but he doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

Not while he’s waging a war in Afghanistan, which he’s already escalated, and may be about to escalate again.

Not while he still hasn’t pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq, nor while he’s going to keep tens of thousands of private military contractors there indefinitely.

Not while he endorses Bush’s heinous policy of “extraordinary renditions.”

Not while asserts the right to indefinitely detain people without habeas corpus rights at Bagram Air Base.

Not while he fails to successfully prod Israel to give up the Occupied Territories.

And not while he keeps our nuclear arsenal on hair-trigger alert.

The Nobel committee actually praised him for his position on nuclear weapons, but he hasn’t taken this first, crucial step toward making the world a safer place.

The Nobel committee rewarded Obama’s rhetoric.

I love Obama’s rhetoric, too.

I loved his speech on the nuclear issue.

I loved his speech where he unambiguously renounced torture.

I loved his speech in Cairo, which marked a huge break from George Bush, by showing respect to the Muslim world and owning up to some of the past crimes of U.S. foreign policy.

And I loved his speech at the Summit of the Americas, which promised a noninterventionist approach to this hemisphere. That would be quite a departure from 100 years of U.S. imperial policy.

But he doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize just because he isn’t George Bush.

And he doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize just on the basis of rhetoric.

No, the Nobel Peace Prize should reward a career of bold peace activism.

And, to say the least, the jury is still out on Obama on that one.


Continue reading...

32 comments (Latest Comment: 10/14/2009 04:23:03 by BobR)

The death of AM radio
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/12/2009 13:11:31

Posted by TriSec, due to technical issues....but written for us today by Trojan Rabbit!

Note: I was afraid I'd get too technical with this and I probably did. But I feel this is important because most of the progressive stations are smaller AM stations and it looks like they could be squeezed out by the large corporate stations if HD become more prevalent. This little bloggie post is just scratching the surface.

We all know the state of the print media world, as many long established newspapers are unable to deal with shrinking ad revenues and a shrinking reader base as people get their information elsewhere in more immediate forms.

Another form of media, around since the turn of the last century, is heading towards the same cliff towards oblivion. Many of its problems are of its own doing, aided and abetted by a government agency more interested in creating revenue streams and bowing to lobbying pressure than insisting upon technical feasibility.

AM radio used to be king, of course it was also the only broadcast entertainment available. During the day, the small local stations could keep you abreast of what was going on in your home town. At night, when the sun went down, your favorite network shows could be easily heard from the stations in the big cities, hundreds of miles away. All it took was a bit of imagination on the part of the listener to transport you anywhere the shows writers wanted to take you. And while reception was more or less dependable, the listener would have to deal with static from thunderstorms on many nights or the occasional passing motorist with bad spark plug wires.

Along came [WIKI=Edwin_Armstrong]Edwin Armstrong[/WIKI] (the inventor of the [WIKI=Superheterodyne_receiver]superheterodyne[/WIKI] system which is the basis of just about every receiver made) with his new invention - [WIKI=FM_broadcasting]FM[/WIKI], promising near noise free reception and greater fidelity. The AM radio industry (most notably RCA), and AT&T, who saw FM as a threat to their voice transmission line business fought fiercely against it, lobbying the FCC to delay its widespread acceptance as long as possible, even going as far as to have the original FM band moved, instantly making useless thousands of radios.

It took many years for FM to become the predominant medium for music, thanks to pioneering (read - desparate for listeners and willing to try anything) stations like [WIKI=WBCN_%28FM%29]WBCN[/WIKI] where progressive and album rock became a staple. And AM became mostly a medium for news, sports and talk radio.

Continue reading...

19 comments (Latest Comment: 10/13/2009 02:52:51 by Mondobubba)

Don't Ask..... It Smells.
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 10/11/2009 14:15:42

(b) Policy.— A member of the armed forces shall be separated from the armed forces under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense if one or more of the following findings is made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in such regulations:
(1) That the member has engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts unless there are further findings, made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in such regulations, that the member has demonstrated that—
(A) such conduct is a departure from the member’s usual and customary behavior;
(B) such conduct, under all the circumstances, is unlikely to recur;
© such conduct was not accomplished by use of force, coercion, or intimidation;
(D) under the particular circumstances of the case, the member’s continued presence in the armed forces is consistent with the interests of the armed forces in proper discipline, good order, and morale; and
(E) the member does not have a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.
(2) That the member has stated that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual, or words to that effect, unless there is a further finding, made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in the regulations, that the member has demonstrated that he or she is not a person who engages in, attempts to engage in, has a propensity to engage in, or intends to engage in homosexual acts.
(3) That the member has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex.


That's just a snippet from the fabulous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military code.
Continue reading...

8 comments (Latest Comment: 10/12/2009 15:25:13 by AuntAzalea)

Catastrophe in the Pacific
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/10/2009 12:55:40

Have you been following the news coming out of the Pacific in recent weeks?

The vastness of the Pacific region is often difficult for Americans to grasp; the ocean itself covers nearly the entire hemisphere, and the distances are vast.

I've flown across the Pacific twice; going from Manchester (NH) to Detroit, to Nagoya, Japan, and finally Manila and back again. It's a flight of over 8,500 miles and it took well over 24 hours in both directions.


On September 29, a magnitude 8.0 earthquate triggered a tsunami that struck the Samoa archipeligo.


Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- More than 3,000 people are homeless in the Pacific Island nation of Samoa and face the risk of disease, a week after a tsunami wiped away 20 villages, the United Nations said in a statement today.

The Sept. 29 tsunami, spawned by a magnitude-8.0 earthquake, killed 137 people, injured 310 and left six still missing in the nation of 177,000, the UN said. Damage to Samoa’s roads, sewers and other infrastructure could reach $150 million, the international organization said.

The World Health Organization and UN agencies are working with the Samoan government to plan the islands’ reconstruction and ensure that it has a system in place to monitor medical needs and outbreaks of disease, according to the statement.

The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said 9,000 children need assistance and 2,000 of those have been forced from their homes by the disaster.

On the island of Niuatoputapu, part of Tonga, the tsunami left nine dead and more than 300 homeless, the UN said. The island’s fresh water supply has been restored, and sufficient food supplies are available.


Just today, a video was released by the FBI office on American Samoa that showed the tsunami coming ashore in their parking lot.
Continue reading...

7 comments (Latest Comment: 10/11/2009 01:43:56 by clintster)

Conversation with Caricatures
Author: Random    Date: 10/09/2009 11:21:46

Conversation with Caricatures
A dialogue with a Liberal, Conservative, and myself

(Something unrelated. But I have just been informed that Obama has one the nobel peace prize.)

Episode 01: Patriotism

Myself: Welcome one and all to Conversation with Caricatures. Here we discuss the issues through lenses so distorted you’d swear this wasn’t real. As always we are joined by Liberal and Conservative. Now, let’s start with Conservative, what does Patriotism mean to you?
Continue reading...

51 comments (Latest Comment: 10/10/2009 01:25:14 by TriSec)

They Know Not What They Do (obviously)
Author: clintster    Date: 10/08/2009 12:10:15

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, it seemed that there were a couple of things you could rely on: conservatives would always support the US no matter what, and religious conservatives would always refer to the King James Version of the Bible as the "authentic" version of that book. The Moral Majority was pretty much founded on these two principles. And they succeeded in intimidating lawmakers, packing school boards and generally making people long for the good old days of Roger Williams and William Penn.

Recently, however, the religious and patriotic Right have seen their respective stars diminish as liberals and moderates have attempted to take back the moral and patriotic high ground. In the aftermath of the 2008 election, it even appears to have made conservatives go a little... what's the word I'm looking for? Ohhhhh yes: crazy! Witness the following examples and see for yourself

Continue reading...

46 comments (Latest Comment: 10/09/2009 02:08:24 by Random)

More then Zombieland
Author: wickedpam    Date: 10/07/2009 12:39:21

It’s October, the time when the air turns crisp, the leaves change color and the dead walk the night and day. I love this time of year. I’ve loved scary movies, books and TV shows since….jeez….I think I saw the Creature Double Feature on the UHF station when we lived in the Philly suburbs. Those horror movies are a far cry from the blood porn most movies of this genre are today. Vampires worked themselves into the culture and become sexy instead of scary…well maybe that hasn’t changed to some extent (and I’m not counting Nostforatu). The un-killable serial killers like Jason, Freddie and Mike Myers all have pasts that we should be sympathetic too. And monsters have become computer generated and too big to take seriously, i.e. Cloverfield (which is a great movie but I’m not that scared of giant praying mantis from outer space).

There is one thing in horror movies, however, that has always made my skin crawl since I first saw it when MTV did its week of scary movies for Halloween back in the ‘80’s, that’s The Night of the Living Dead. I’m talking Zombies!!!!!!
Continue reading...

32 comments (Latest Comment: 10/08/2009 12:34:20 by wickedpam)

Ask A Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/06/2009 11:25:52

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,393rd day in Iraq.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4347
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4208
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3884
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3488
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 119

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 325
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 856
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 573
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,395
Journalists - Iraq: 335
Academics Killed - Iraq: 431

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:
$ 917, 303, 150, 000 . 00



You may have missed it during the past week while the Republicans were busy howling over Mr. Obama's trip to the Olympic Committee for Chicago's failed bid to host the 2016 games....but he's spent an awful lot of time recently reviewing Afghanistan. We always count the days we've been in Iraq....but lest we forget, we've been in Afghanistan longer.

Continue reading...

23 comments (Latest Comment: 10/07/2009 02:47:18 by trojanrabbit)

The Golden Bootstraps
Author: Raine    Date: 10/05/2009 13:11:39

I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" yesterday morning. Although I knew what I was going to see, and knew many of the items of interest in the move before going in, I came away shaken and as the day went on I became distressed. The corporate powers are so great in this country I wonder if We the people... is going to disappear forever.
Continue reading...

19 comments (Latest Comment: 10/05/2009 20:48:23 by livingonli)

<<  497  498  499  500  501  502  >>
Order by most recent comment   Complete Blog Entry List