at Tumblr
Today in “good uses for the Mitt app.” From our Viewpoint friends.
LOL Unicorn Mitt! ’ Cause his followers believe in the fairy tales of the GOP.
hopefulheathens replied to your post: What will Romney do? I agree with none of his…
Obama can’t fix everything that Bush did in only four years. That’s not enough time to really do anything major. I still support Obama. Romney’s surely not going to help the economy.
Actually Romney looks like the third election of Dubya. Wants to throw money at the military and cut it drastically everywhere else.
You’re right that Dubya was able with his pandering to the rich to fuck up our nation to so badly it will take a long time to heal, if it ever does. We could be the 21st century’s version of the Roman empire, which I don’t think is inevitable though MSM continues to recite the r/w mantra that we MUST bow down to China as our new rulers. Interestingly Republican leaning companies are advised to join with Chinese ones, seeing that China is actually almost in a trade war with the US. Then again Dubya’s grandfather supplied the Nazis so I guess not.
And the Koch bros daddy worked for Stalin building up the energy infrastructure of the Soviet Union.
Yeah, but China has a problem with original thinking. Finland I know from a recent report helps support original thinking in children. I figure Finland has a chance to become a fantastic society if it isn’t destroyed by the some future Republican administration for being an affront to extreme capitalism.
In the US on the other hand Exxon Mobil floods MSNBC with ads that seem to indicate they want to take over science and math education for the US at the least. Sure you’re kids may learn math better because they won’t be distracted by all that critical thinking, but they could grow up believing in intelligent design and creationism instead of natural selection and evolution. Even in math people from societies in which heavy propaganda goes along with education like China and Korea, students may be able to take tests better, but actual individual and critical thinking is low.
(via phroyd)
I’m an Iraq war veteran, though I very rarely tell people that. Partly because I never kicked in any doors or anything - I had about the cushiest of war zone duties possible, although being in Kirkuk in meant lots of random mo[r]tar/recycled rocket attacks and stuff. But the other reason I never tell anyone about it is the reaction, like everything about me being there was unambiguously positive.
Which brings me back to the idea of mandatory reverence around the flag, Memorial Day, July 4, etc… [I]t makes me angry when people are just unable to have two thoughts in their head at once - that we should be respectful of those who do the things no one else really wants to do, like kill people, and that sometimes, just maybe, the stuff we ask them to do is terrible…
Maybe it’s that I grew up in a world run by Baby Boomers (I’m 30), who seem especially incapable of understanding nuance of any sort, but it seems that most people who “fly the flag” and “support the troops” subscribe to this uncompromising approach to patriotism. I don’t know how exactly to fold some self-reflection into these holidays, but I think it would sure help those of us who see a lot more gray in the things we’ve done.
—Sullivan Reader, discussing Memorial Day. More like it here. (via humanformat)
It sounds like this guy could explain, better than most others, why Chris Hayes feels the way he does. I think a lot of people actually feel the same way, but are intimidated by creepy right wing warmongers who will do anything in their power to get us back to war to expand their paychecks and advance in the GOP.
I also think he lives in a red state or red area which would explain why he doesn’t know people who can hold two thoughts in their brain, but as a liberal I too will try not to let the horrors of war, especially one so cynically started like Bush’s invasion of Iraq to insure a second term and give massive contract to GOP connected businesses cloud the horrors that soldiers were asked to live through and create in Iraq. Most of those people had joined the Army or National Guard just for a decent job.
(via humanformat)
The thing about every military action is that you never know when one is going to develop imto a Vietnam type scenario. When is it appropriate to join with with one aside over the other, and when is it possible to win?
Because if you get that wrong, you just end up getting a lot more people killed (50,000 Americans and over 3 million Vietnamese) for nothing but increased carnage for already embattled people.
Lawyers can appeal within 14 days.
When I do it, it’s called “I’m going to fall now and break my nose.”
(via fall-to-the-sky)
-Barry Goldwater, “Conscience of a Conservative”
I don’t care a ton for labels, although theyre necessary to get to the money part of this quote: “Man’s political freedom is illusory if he is dependent for his economic needs on the State.” Preach, Barry. Preach.
(via rvernon)
So then we should be dependent upon the owners of firms?
What’s the fucking difference?
(via abokononist
What he said. ^
(via abokononist)
Though cesium levels are 10 times the norm, tuna is still safe to eat. Cesium, by the way, is a pleasantly sweet. Homer voice <on> “Mmmmm, delicious radiation…”
Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to US
ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer May 28th 2012
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.
“We were frankly kind of startled,” said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that’s still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.
(via inhellsdespair)
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
(click-through for full story)
Can we have this tech now please? I know coal is fun and everything, but yeah, renewable energy from the sun sounds pretty good right now.
(via littleblackkittycat)
From the team at Political Carnival.
During a Republican primary debate last week, Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin told voters that he may support eliminating the direct election of Senators — the right guaranteed by the 17th Amendment:
From the 05.25.2012 edition of KYTV’s KY3 Missouri Senate Debate:
A repeal of the 17th Amendment would make America fundamentally less democratic, and calling for the repeal shows a distrust of the American people. Moreover, the Amendment wasn’t enacted as some sort of federal power grab, as Akin suggests. Rather the call for the Amendment was driven largely by state legislatures and only one state, Utah, voted against it.
The 17th Amendment was adopted in no small part because state legislatures were caught selling seats or were unable to fill them because of electoral deadlocks.
Nevertheless, Akin’s main Republican rivals distanced themselves from him on the 17th Amendment. State Treasurer Sarah Steelman said she is favor of direct election of senators and implied that she worries about the kind of interests that would have influence if the state legislature chose Senators. Similarly, businessman John Brunner is also in favor of direct election of senators and said he is “highly sympathetic to the whole concept of the 17th Amendment, and doing everything we can to bring the power back to the people.”
Akin’s the biggest of the three goofballs running to be the MO-Sen GOP Nominee.
How Romney’s Allies Won the Class War
Link above goes to an Atlantic article of which the first 3 paragraphs should be read last to show how we are likely not to just be enslaved by the schemes of the very wealthy, but to be re-educated too. The New York Times has been working on that for decades and very wittily downgraded warnings of their own business writers and pundits that tried to inform the world of a pending massive economic upset and what was setting it up before 2007 when that started. Krugman for one was warning about it as early as 2004 if I remember correctly based on the writings of a Times business reporter.
But the fourth paragraph announces outside the NYT paywall that Tagg Romney partnered with Daddy’s chief 2008 fund raiser to start a private equity firm Solamere Capital after the campaign was over (they point out), which also welcomed others from his father’s donor list and at least one of this year’s donors. Their success would have been almost impossible without the name, which the Atlantic also notes.
But beyond those facts, and what is not mentioned is that Romney wouldn’t have had his opportunities without his father’s own name recognition, no matter what he says about how equal opportunities are available in the US.
In fact, unless the poor are aided in getting proper food, education, shelter, and advancement there isn’t equality of opportunity now and there will be less in the future. Why would you hire the child of a poor person when you know that you might be able to get investments from wealthy parents if you hire their child all other things being equal.
After reading the fourth paragraph on down you might want to return to the top and read about the plans of one of the elites to try to re-educate Americans and apparently believes that the wealthy should be able to influence government. He’s even warned about that by one time chief economic adviser to Dubya (at the time of his first inauguration) and now Romney’s economic adviser who Rachel Maddow wrote about in April here).
Picture above of iconic cliff in La Jolla California (R-hobo’s shack would be worth $1 million), where Mitt Romney reportedly owns a mansion is used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0). Thanks to Flickr user Theodore Scott who has no connection to this blog or blogger. Clicking on picture will take you to original Flickr page for it, but there is no higher definition version of it.
Elusive Jellyfish Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Gerhard Bachmayer
Ah all those little stars are screaming “I got stung!”
