Throw another bear in the canoe - because they had no time. Thank you to those who serve, or have served, or who have sacrificed that others may serve. Wars are unjust, and wars are complicated, and there's nothing simple in this world, but thank you anyway. “I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. --Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1973. Starship Stormtroopers. By Micheal Moorcock (From Michael Moorcock's "The Opium General" Harrap (1984), reprinted from Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review 1978) There are still a few things which bring a naive sense of shocked astonishment to me whenever I experience them -- a church service in which the rituals of Dark Age superstition are performed without any apparent sense of incongruity in the participants -- a fat Soviet bureaucrat pontificating about bourgeois decadence -- a radical singing the praises of Robert Heinlein.
If I were sitting in a tube train and all the people opposite me were reading Mein Kampf with obvious enjoyment and approval it probably wouldn't disturb me much more than if they were reading Heinlein, Tolkein or Richard Adams. All this visionary fiction seems to me to have a great deal in common. Some years ago I remember reading an article by John Pilgrim in Anarchy in which he claimed Robert Heinlein as a revolutionary leftist writer. H.G. The war helped. NOM’s Brian Brown: “A man can’t nurture and take care of a baby” « Prop 8 Trial Tracker. October 27, 2010 NOM Exposed NOM Tour Tracker-Iowa Right-wing By Arisha Michelle Hatch Despite Brian Brown’s warm greeting at the Des Moines Airport on Sunday — when he saw me he walked up to give me a hug — the nice act ended as soon as cameras began to roll. We were expecting this interview in Winterset to be the first installment of several exchanges throughout the week, but then Brown abruptly left the tour after Day 1.
It’s too bad Brian left the tour before we could ask him these hard questions brainstormed by Courage staff and the P8TT community (in the comments). On Monday, he did graciously speak to us for more than 15 minutes and the following video is one segment of our discussion (apologies for not getting it up sooner; we had some technical difficulties). Brown and others who oppose marriage equality frequently like to talk about the necessity of having one man and woman to raise a child. So I asked him, “what is it that a man can do that a woman can’t?” Paul supporters who clashed with liberal activist speak out. A Rand Paul supporter is being ordered to appear in court to face an assault charge after he was caught on camera stomping on a liberal activist. NEWSFIRST talked with the two men at the center of the whole ordeal. The man who is accused of stomping on the woman has been identified as Tim Profitt a former volunteer with Mr. Paul's U.S. Senate campaign.
On the same day the Paul campaign ran a full page newspaper ad displaying supporters' names, the group moved fast to disassociate itself from one of those names, Tim Profitt. The woman, 23-year-old Lauren Valle from Washington D.C., appeared to be following a specific set of instructions detailed on MoveOn.org's website designed to attract media attention. Lexington Police began an assault investigation identifying Profitt as a suspect. The Paul campaign is not alone in its reaction. And when asked if he would apologize to Valle. BofA Patents A Way Of Denying Overdraft Fee Refunds. Social Commentary. Republicans in Congress Push to End Consumer Protections, Let Wall Street Run Loose. Jen Psaki September 21, 2010 01:27 PM EDT Yesterday afternoon, Senator Richard Shelby laid out very clearly what Congressional Republicans consider to be one of their major priorities – rolling back legislation that will provide more security and stability to middle class families, and more accountability to Wall Street.
He joins the Republican Leader in the House who promised to try to repeal Wall Street Reform in July. Senator Shelby wants to go back to a time when there was no such thing as a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and when consumers were left without a voice at the table. This is an agency whose mission is to look out for American consumers and empower them with the clear and concise information they need to make the financial decisions that are best for them.
That's why the President fought so hard for the new CFPB and new rules to outlaw the tricks and traps that have punished the American people. Jen Psaki is Deputy Communications Director. Federal Eye - Senate fails in attempt to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell' By Ed O'Keefe Updated 5:49 p.m. ET Efforts to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" suffered a near-fatal blow on Tuesday as senators fell short of earning the 60 votes necessary to start debate on the annual defense policy bill by a vote of 56 to 43. Tuesday's vote does not end efforts to lift the military's 17-year ban on gays serving openly in uniform, but makes it almost impossible to ensure a repeal is included in the final House-Senate compromise version of the defense bill that lawmakers may vote on during a lame-duck session after November's midterm elections. The vote's fate was sealed early Tuesday, when Sen.
Susan Collins (R-Maine), who supports repealing "don't ask," said she disagreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. "For the life of me, I do not understand why the majority leader does not bring this bill to the floor and allow free and open debate and amendments from both sides of the aisle," Collins told reporters. Sen. Sen. Google releases censorship tools. 21 September 2010Last updated at 17:30 The map contains no data from China The US government asked Google for user information 4,287 times during the first six months of 2010. During the same timeframe the UK government put in over 1,000 such requests. This is just two snippets from Google's new Transparency Report, a set of tools designed to show censorship levels around the globe.
Civil liberty groups welcomed the tool but called on Google to provide even more detail about the requests. Earlier this year, Google released details about how often countries around the world ask it to hand over user data or to censor information. The new map and tools follows on from that and allows users to click an individual country to see how many removal requests were fully or partially complied with, as well as which Google services were affected. In the US, for example, there were seven court orders to remove content from YouTube from July 2009 to the end of the year. Free expression “Start Quote.
Little pink houses for you and me... One of the many under-reported stories from the world of politics is what Republicans plan to do if they gain control of Congress. Oh, we all know what the GOP is against…they have been holding a clinic on how to leverage the preserved failure of those currently in power to gain support. This is huge…massive…beyond important…because this is what voters will really be deciding in November. And the GOP’s definition of “reform” is to repeal, rollback and restrict – to block implementation of health care reform by any means necessary. Pause…sip coffee…continue. Should they gain power, the GOP would first tackle the mandates. And they acknowledge that, by denying funding and blocking the power of panels, they can pretty much starve the few health care reforms Congress managed to pass to death.
The GOP acknowledges that some measures within health care reform are popular...protections for people with pre-existing conditions, for example. They’ve already made up their mind. Blink.