Tuesday, October 27, 2009

D.L. Hughley: Frank Schaeffer Author of Crazy for God on What's Left of the GOP

Check this guy out...he is speaks truth...
http://www.frankschaeffer.com/


check out PETER MAASE's new book........http://www.petermaass.com/articles/

CRUDE WORLD: The violent twilight of Oil

An examination of oil’s indelible impact on the countries that produce it and the people who possess it.
Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by oil’s unfortunate power to worsen existing problems and create new ones. Crude World explores the troubled world oil has created—from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela and beyond. The book features warlords in the oil-rich Niger Delta, petro-billionaires in Moscow, American soldiers and oilmen in Baghdad, the gesticulations and politics of Hugo Chavez, as well as officials in Riyadh who avoid uncomfortable questions about Saudi reserves. Crude World also ventures into Equatorial Guinea, the setting for misrule and corruption as well as a race for oil between American and Chinese firms.
Rebels, royalty, middlemen, environmentalists, indigenous activists, CEOs—their stories tell the larger story of petroleum in our time. Crude World is a journey into the violent twilight of oil that answers the questions of what we do for oil and what oil does to us.

Inside the Soul of an Oilman
The Big Money September 22, 2009
Are petro-execs intrinsically more corrupt than other businessmen?
Scenes from the Violent Twilight of Oil
Foreign Policy September 8, 2009
It succors and drowns human life. And for the last eight years, oil — and the people and places that make it — was my obsession.
Situation Normal
Slate July 18, 2008
What “Generation Kill” Gets Right About Iraq
Who’s Africa’s Worst Leader?
Slate June 24, 2008
Hint: It’s probably not Robert Mugabe
Fuel Fixers
The New York Times Magazine December 22, 2007
How the scarcity of oil may be making our antibribery laws obsolete.
Slick
Outside March 2007
Alan Dershowitz, meet Steven Donziger. On behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of Ecuador’s remote Oriente region, this New York lawyer is putting it to Big Oil. But will his multi-billion-dollar lawsuit establish a global precedent—or is he just looking for a scapegoat for one of the nastiest messes on earth?
Check this out....wild and wooly........
The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Bare-Knuckles Battle Over Food Rights by David Gumpert
Beginning in 2006, the agriculture departments of several large states-with backing from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-launched a major crackdown on small dairies producing raw milk. Replete with undercover agents, sting operations, surprise raids, questionable test-lab results, mysterious illnesses, propaganda blitzes, and grand jury investigations, the crackdown was designed to disrupt the supply of unpasteurized milk to growing legions of consumers demanding healthier and more flavorful food.
The Raw Milk Revolution takes readers behind the scenes of the government's tough and occasionally brutal intimidation tactics, as seen through the eyes of milk producers, government regulators, scientists, prosecutors, and consumers. It is a disturbing story involving marginally legal police tactics and investigation techniques, with young children used as political pawns in a highly charged atmosphere of fear and retribution.
Are regulators' claims that raw milk poses a public health threat legitimate? That turns out to be a matter of considerable debate. In assessing the threat, The Raw Milk Revolution reveals that the government's campaign, ostensibly designed to protect consumers from pathogens like salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, and listeria, was based in a number of cases on suspect laboratory findings and illnesses attributed to raw milk that could well have had other causes, including, in some cases, pasteurized milk.
David Gumpert dares to ask whether regulators have the public's interest in mind or the economic interests of dairy conglomerates. He assesses how the government's anti-raw-milk campaign fits into a troublesome pattern of expandinggovernment efforts to sanitize the food supply-even in the face of ever-increasing rates of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, and allergies. The Raw Milk Revolution provides an unsettling view of the future, in which nutritionally dense foods may be available largely through underground channels.


http://www.thecompletepatient.com/
Chelsea Green Publishing - $19.95 - 9781603582193

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

FROM THE WEBSITE OF DEMOCRACY NOW.....
The Yes Men Pull Off Prank Claiming US Chamber of Commerce Had Changed Its Stance on Climate Change
The business community got a shock on Monday when its leading advocacy group appeared to make a startling announcement. A statement purporting to come from the Chamber of Commerce said the group had dropped its opposition to congressional climate change legislation and would now even support taxing carbon emissions. The news wires quickly picked up the story, and within minutes it was being reported on the websites of outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post. It also made its way onto cable news, including the Fox Business Network. It was all a prank pulled off by the Yes Men.


See a video of this amazing stunt at Democracy NOw......http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/20/yes_men_pull_off_prank_claiming
Check out the interview at Democracy Now...... http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/21/cashing_in_the_war_dividend_as
Jo Comerford, a TomDispatch newcomer, runs the National Priorities Project, whose mission is to analyze "complex federal spending data and translate it into easy-to-understand information about how federal tax dollars are spent." Its site even has a "cost of war" counter, constantly twirling as the dollars rise in dizzying fashion. Here, as a numbers cruncher, she makes the most basic point of all: Whoever may be losing in our country, others are cashing in their chips and I'm not just talking about Goldman Sachs. After all, there's also the "war dividend."


Cashing in the War Dividend The Joys of Perpetual War...By Jo Comerford
So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what do you know, especially with the price of the American military slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?
Forget about the butter. It's bad for you anyway. And sheer military power, as well as the money behind it, assures the country of a thick waistline without the cholesterol. So, let's sing the praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast in sight tells us that it's our future.
The tired peace dividend tug boat left the harbor two decades ago, dragging with it laughable hopes for universal health care and decent public education. Now, the mighty USS War Dividend is preparing to set sail. The economic weather reports may be lousy and the seas choppy, but one thing is guaranteed: that won't stop it.
The United States, of course, long ago captured first prize in the global arms race. It now
spends as much as the next 14 countries combined, even as the spending of our rogue enemies and former enemies -- Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria -- much in the headlines for their prospective armaments, makes up a mere 1% of the world military budget. Still, when you're a military superpower focused on big-picture thinking, there's no time to dawdle on the details.
And be reasonable, who could expect the U.S. to fight two wars and maintain
more than 700 bases around the world for less than the $704 billion we'll shell out to the Pentagon in 2010? But here's what few Americans grasp and you aren't going to read about in your local paper either: according to Department of Defense projections, the baseline military budget -- just the bare bones, not those billions in war-fighting extras -- is projected to increase by 2.5% each year for the next 10 years. In other words, in the next decade the basic Pentagon budget will grow by at least $133.1 billion, or 25%.
When it comes to the health of the war dividend in economically bad times, if that's not good news, what is? As anyone at the Pentagon will be quick to tell you, it's a real bargain, a steal, at least compared to the two-term presidency of George W. Bush. Then, that same baseline defense budget
grew by an astonishing 38%.
If the message isn't already clear enough, let me summarize: it's time for the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, and Veterans Affairs to suck it up. After all, Americans, however unemployed, foreclosed, or unmedicated, will only be truly secure if the Pentagon is exceedingly well fed. According to the Office of Management and Budget, what that actually means is this: 55% of next year's discretionary spending -- that is, the spending negotiated by the President and Congress -- will go to the military just to keep it chugging along.
The 14 million American children in poverty, the millions of citizens who will remain without health insurance (even if some version of the Baucus plan is passed), the 7.6 million people who have lost jobs since 2007, all of them will have to take a number. The same is true of the kinds of projects needed to improve the country's disintegrating infrastructure, including the 25% of U.S. drinking water that was given a barely passing "D" by the American Society of Civil Engineers in a 2009 study.
And don't imagine that this is a terrible thing either! There's no shame in paying
$400 for every gallon of gas used in Afghanistan, especially when the Marines alone are reported to consume 800,000 gallons of it each day. After all, the evidence is in: a few whiners aside, Americans want our tax dollars used this way. Otherwise we'd complain, and no one makes much of a fuss about war or the ever-rising numbers of dollars going to it anymore.
$915.1 billion in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending to date has been a no-brainer, even if it could, theoretically, have been traded in for the annual salaries of 15 million teachers or 20 million police officers or for 171 million Pell Grants of approximately $5,350 each for use by American college and university students.
Next March, we will collectively reach a landmark in this new version of the American way of life. We will hit the $1 trillion mark in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending with untold years of war-making to go. No problem. It's only the proposed nearly $900 billion for a decade of health care that we fear will do us in.
Nor is it the Pentagon's fault that U.S. states have laws prohibiting them from deficit spending. The 48 governors and state legislatures now struggling with budget deficits should stop complaining and simply be grateful for their ever smaller slices of the federal pie. Between 2001 and 2008, federal grant funding for state and local governments lagged behind the 28% growth of the federal budget by 14%, while military spending outpaced federal budget growth with a 41% increase. There is every reason to believe that this is a trend, not an anomaly, which means that Title 1, Head Start, Community Development Block Grants, and the Children's Health Insurance Program will just have to make do with less. In fact, if you want a true measure of what's important to our nation, think of it this way: if you
add together the total 2010 budgets of all those 48 states in deficit, they won't even equal projected U.S. military spending for the same year.
Take the situation of Massachusetts, for example. Yankee spirit or not, that state will see a
17.3% decrease in federal grants in 2010 no matter how hard Governor Deval Patrick wrings his hands. True to the American way, Patrick's projected $5 billion fiscal year 2010 deficit will be his problem and his alone, as is his state's recently-announced $600 million budget shortfall for 2009. Blame it on declining tax revenue and the economic crisis, on things that are beyond his control. No matter, Patrick will have to make deep cuts to elderly mental health services and disabled home-care programs, and lose large chunks of funding for universal pre-kindergarten, teacher training, gifted and talented programs in the schools, and so much more.
Still, that Commonwealth's politicians are clearly out of step with the country. On October 9, 2009, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino joined with Congressman Barney Frank in calling on President Obama to find extra money for such programs by reducing military spending 25%. President Obama, cover your ears! Menino, who actually believes that a jump in military spending contributed to "significantly raising the federal deficit and lowering our economic security," asked the federal government to be a better partner to Boston by reinvesting in its schools, public housing, transportation, and job-training programs, especially for young people. Of course, this is delusional, as any Pentagon budgeteer could tell you. This isn't some Head Start playground, after all, it's the battlefield of American life. Tough it out, Menino.
One principle has, by now, come to dominate our American world, even if nobody seems to notice: do whatever it takes to keep federal dollars flowing for weapons systems (and the wars that go with them). And don't count on the Pentagon to lend a hand by having a bake sale any time soon; don't expect it to voluntarily cut back on major weapons systems without finding others to take their place. If, as a result, our children are less likely to earn high school and college diplomas than we were, that's what prisons and the Marines are for.
So let's break a bottle of champagne -- or, if the money comes out of a state budget, Coke -- on the bow of the USS War Dividend! And send it off on its next voyage without an iceberg in sight. Let the corks pop. Let the bubbly drown out that
Harvard University report indicating that 45,000 deaths last year were due to a lack of health insurance.
Hip hip...

Tuesday, October 13, 2009


Yes, I too was a bit irritated by the choice of the nobel prize committee, "what has Obama done?"..... on one side of me ~ the other side of me was deeply thrilled and felt it validated that the consciousness of humanity is changing..I have to say....This piece by Michael Moore, put it all into perspective....my hat is off to you, Michael.......


Michael MooreOscar and Emmy-winning director
Posted: October 10, 2009 06:10 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index
Get Off Obama's Back: Second Thoughts From Michael Moore

Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. "No, I don't think so," I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he's now conducting the two wars he's inherited. "Yeah," she said, "but to tell him, 'Now earn it!'? Give the guy a break -- this is a great day for him and for all of us."
I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack's big day. Did I -- and others on the left -- do the same?
We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation -- financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?
Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to get out the vote last November? C'mon! We're the majority now -- the majority by a significant margin! We call the shots -- and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say -- or else.
All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is 202-456-1414). But don't abandon the best hope we've had in our lifetime for change. And for God's sake, don't head to bummerville if he says or does something we don't like. Do you ever see Republicans behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican presidents and they still couldn't get prayer in the public schools, or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that, but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came up nearly empty handed. No wonder they've been driven crazy lately. They'll never have it as good again as they've had it since Reagan took office.
But -- do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering, we just pack up our toys and go home.
So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere are celebrating -- that America now has a sane and smart man in the White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two daughters.
Many, for the past couple days (yes, myself included), have grumbled, "What has he done to earn this prize?" How 'bout this:
The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man -- a man who opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning -- offered to end the insanity. The world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson light the fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped off the nations on this planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn't attack us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.
And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.
So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.
One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio).
The fact that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur -- and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as "Barack Hussein Obama"!) -- is more than reason enough he should be in Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along with him. 'Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its hat to all of us -- we, the American people, had conquered some of our racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans -- and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate -- we had all seen enough. It was time for change.
Thank you, Barack Obama, for giving us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you promised to do. We need it. The world needs it.
My prediction for the future? You become the first *two-time* winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!
Fred (that's Norwegian for "Peace"),
Michael Moore


Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/get-off-obamas-back-secon_b_316480.html

Saturday, October 10, 2009



ODE Magazine brings us something amazing.......check it out
We recently have expanded our mission to protecting the honey bees and have launched http://www.beeguardian.org/
Whether you are interested in caring for bees or supporting those who can please visit us at http://www.beeguardian.org/ or email us at info@beeguardian.org.
While it is apparent that an evolution in beekeeping needs to emerge, it is imperative that a bee-caring Guardianship is immediately put into place as we face this moment of instability of the planets' biosphere.
We are committed to establishing bee colonies in broad ecological regions that are cared for and maintained by independent backyard Bee Guardians.
A sufficient number of Bee Guardians preserving healthy colonies will offer substantial pollination relief to these areas, while also acting as insurance in the case that science and the beekeeping industry cannot secure a viable solution to the potential collapse of the bees in time.
BeeGuardian.org is a larger outreach to our existing http://www.backyardhive.com/ where we have demonstrated over the past three years that with a simpler and more natural hive design and with good instructive material that almost anyone can successfully care for bees.
A Bee Guardian is one who is committed to serve and shelter the bees as a species on the planet in a time when this most valuable species is endangered. A Bee Guardian is not a commercial beekeeper in the traditional sense of artificially maintained bee strains, chemical treatments and forced methods of productivity for capital gain.
A Bee Guardian is interested, in aiding bees as a species in order to recapture their genetic vitality and diversity. Bee Guardians utilize beekeeping methods that respect the honeybee and oversee the local environment, ensuring it to be safe for the bees.
The Bee Guardian is committed to the nature of the bee, allowing the bees to maintain a strong immune system through organic practices and methods that do not overly stress the colonies. In this way our local strains will begin a process of natural selection, building up immunity against diseases and adapting to changes in local climate. The bees will have a consistent home and environment enabling them to reestablish genetic diversity by reallocating fitness resources toward adaptive evolution rather then hanging on the thread of pure survival in a extremely demanding mechanized beekeeping industry.
If you are interested in sponsoring a Bee Guardian please make a gift donation at www.beeguardian.org/Support.html

Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Health Insurance Racket

http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/?p=71903

what to you think????

If we were an educated public....this kind of chaos could not happen..
Lets get educated !!!!!
Listen



Nomi Prins is a former investment banker turned journalist. She worked at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. She is the author of several books; her latest, just out, is called It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. She spoke on the themes of the book at the Strand Bookstore in New York on September 29th.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

IF THIS WASN'T SO ILLOGICALLY IGNORANT, I WOULD BE LAUGHING MY ASS OFF...IT IS SO STUPID.
Take the most powerful force in the world...and just say NO.
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/senate-finance-committee-shells-out-for-abstinence-only-education/
"Obama cut spending for abstinence-only education in May, and this new measure shows just how deeply some lawmakers misunderstand the origins of the healthcare crisis. How can we bemoan the costs of a public health care plan that would give insurance to 44 million Americans, while throwing money at a program that will actually tax the system further? To put it more plainly: abstinence-only sex education costs us money. In Texas, of all places, schools are moving away from abstinence-only education because of their skyrocketing teen pregnancy rates (incidentally, it also leads the nation in terms of money spent on abstinence-only programs). Instead, they are funding something called "abstinence-plus" education, which emphasizes abstinence as a healthy choice, but encourages teens to use protection if they do engage in sexual activity. The negative effects of abstinence-only education are far-reaching, and there are few who will defend it outside a small and vocal minority. Dr. Margaret Blythe of the American Academy of Pediatrics told a House committee in 2008 that "Those adolescents who choose to abstain from sexual intercourse should obviously be encouraged and supported in their decisions by their families, peers and communities. But abstinence should not be the only strategy that is discussed." Needless to say, what's happening in Congress right now is very depressing. Obama is essentially hanging pro-choice Democrats out to dry by telling them to "work out" issues over reproductive health care coverage with anti-choice Democrats (apparently using federal subsidies so that lower-income women can access abortion violates the country's moral foundation, and people don't want their tax dollars going to abortion coverage. This is very arrogant, considering that I personally oppose the death penalty, but my tax dollars still pay for lethal injections). The public option is pretty much out the window, and now this? Baucus did manage to pass another measure, one that "would make money available for education on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, among other things, in addition to abstinence." Let's only hope that sanity returns to the Senate when they are forced to reconcile the two measures"