Let Him Off the Hook?

Brilliant!!

Solidarity With All ProDemocracy Protesters

Please take a moment today and say a prayer for the Pro-Democrcay protesters in Egypt who have had their internet access cut by a government who wishes to hide what it is doing from the world.

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/faog1/update_on_egypt_revolution/

Graph showing internet traffic to and from Egypt with abrupt drop.

All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance

People. Like. Freedom.
Way to go, Egyptian protesters. Solidarity forever.



http://i.imgur.com/rcPGl.jpg

Tunisia-Like Riots Are Breaking Out In Egypt - Business Insider 25 January 2011

QUOTE Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets across Egypt, facing down a massive police presence to demand:
Jobs;
Cheaper food; and
Ouster of President Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years since Sadat's assassination in 1981.
Three Dead
As of the time of release of this briefing, three people are dead. Two protestors died in the port city of Suez and a security officer died in central Cairo. Protests also took place in Alexandria and industrial Nile Delta towns.
Hundred Injured
At least 100 protestors were injured in Cairo, where police used tear gas, rubber bullets, batons and dogs to try to disperse the crowds, and Twitter has been blocked. UNQUOTE Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-revolt-post-tunisia-is-a-dam-breaking-what-happens-next-2011-1#ixzz1C9zc8ZQ8

Incredible Video Of Protesters Chasing Egyptian Riot Police http://www.businessinsider.com/video-egypt-protester-vehicle-2011-1#ixzz1C9yRcLgn

Johnny Cash & The Four Horsemen

I've posted on this before and was pleased to run across the Unrepentant Cowboy's take on Mr. Cash and the 4 Horsemen.

Be sure and watch both videos. Even if you are already a Christian ~ especially if you are one.

QUOTE Jesus came first as a lamb. The Jews, expecting a savior, couldn't or wouldn't recognize him. He will return as a lion. And Christians can't or won't recognize him when he does. I tire of a bunch of whiney ass wimps and cowards using my savior's name. I tire of worthless praise songs emanating from lying lips. For some, he will come like a thief in the night. UNQUOTE

Here's one for you, Unrepentant Cowboy, enjoy:

The Tin-Eared Entitled: Let The Eat Cake: We Profit!

From The Daily Economic Update (Robert Denner) comes a cry of outrage over the mindless and heartless natterings of in infobabe on a popular TV network.

QUOTE This is the part of CHANGE that must be embraced. The current system is broken if it must see fit to starve fellow humans at the sake of turning a freaking profit for your retirement. This is a case where YOU can make all the difference. Stop feeding the monster and at least consider how your money is being used to destroy millions of lives. At the very least make sure that the funds you are investing in are DEVOID OF FOOD SPECULATION. And make sure you voice your outrage at Wall Street’s seeming INDIFFERNCE at the suffering of hundreds of millions of people.
You want to understand the anger that the 3rd world feels against the United States? This is one HUGE reason.
The absolute AMORAL delivery of that woman on CNBC still rings in my ears, even after 10 hours. How to profit from human misery, should have been the teaser they used as they went to a commercial break. UNQUOTE
~~~

MLK Day 2011

Rules Vs. Results

Our friend from financial services days-gone-by (and sometimes mentor) David L. Smith has a good post up over at his blog, Cassandra Chronicles, in which he spins off a Paul Krugman train of thought to pinpoint the difference between the liberal and conservative (American) views.

QUOTE Conservatives are wedded to the rules — an ideological Master Narrative propounding (at least in theory) unfettered capitalism; free markets; low taxes; minimum government; strong military; willingness to use military force, if perceived to be necessary; and representative democracy — and approve of whatever outcome the rules produce. In the conservative mind, the rules are morally justified, paramount and, therefore, unchangeable and unassailable. Accordingly, with simple, if flawed logic, conservatives claim the results their moral rules produce must necessarily be moral.......Liberals, on the other hand, focus on the results produced by the rules, and if the results are morally or practically objectionable, liberals believe in changing the rules to produce a more morally and practically desirable result (the political equivalent of ‘managing by results’). Therefore, liberals tend to be unmoved by conservative arguments based primarily on the morality of the rules.Unlike the conservatives, united by a common, unchanging creed, liberals tend to squabble a lot about just how the rules ought to be changed, simply because of the myriad combinations and permutations of possible results and developing socio-economic conditions their rule changes must address. UNQUOTE

It is as though the conservatives are the Old Testament and the liberals the New. Not a bad conceptualizing of the two.
~~~
Happy Martin Luther King Day!
~~~

The Caring Community and the Dialectic of Violence

The United States has had so many catastrophes in so very short a time that we have begun to think constantly in catastrophic terms. Most recent disaster is the shooting of an unarmed US Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords (D. AZ) a Federal Judge, and a little girl and other bystanders at a public appearance in Tucson AZ yesterday.

Ms. Giffords’s father Spencer, 75, wept when asked by the New York Post if his daughter had any enemies. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The whole Tea Party’ – the Right wing of the Republican Party."

Palin put rifle cross hairs over Gifford's district together with words encouraging supporters to "reload" and "take aim" at Democrats. That's incendiary language that should be condemned. McCain has used very similar incendiary language but did not reference it to specific Democrats (to my knowledge) as did Palin. Come out and condemn her for it and do it loudly. She deserves that and more. - Reddit user jray7

The local sheriff had some words of potent wisdom that the wise would do well to heed in no uncertain terms:

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, speaking about Arizona:"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry. It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that's the sad thing of what's going on in America. Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office." He later added: "Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech. But it's not without consequences."

Yes, we have the right to free speech. But the right to free speech has never included the right to shout fire in a crowded theater, and yet many of these so-called constitutionalists claim it has.

Here's a tweet from filmmaker Michael Moore from yesterday that asks a succinct question:

If a Detroit Muslim put a map on the web w/crosshairs on 20 pols, then 1 of them got shot, where would he b sitting right now? Just asking.

What does a caring community do when a psychotic responds to the verbally violent urgings of a powerful leader? Does it do anything beyond the obvious isolation and imprisonment of the violent psychotic? Or does it seek to remake and retool the larger community into a place where

public meetings can take place unmolested, where vigorous debate never means malice of harm intended and where verbal threats of violence are taken seriously and those who speak them reined in? Or does the community cease to care and let itself be overwhelmed by those whose dark intent is to suggest mayhem until an unhinged and unstable follower commits it?

What are Some Examples of Actionable Abusive or Insulting Language?

1. Verbal threats; 2. Humiliating statements; 3. Racial or sexual slurs; and 4. Scandalous statements. We have seen all of these in public political life in the recent past.

It is high time our politicians cooled the rhetoric to a civil and polite level.

Deborah J. Yost

9 January 2011

Lincoln, NE

Grope-N-Ogle-R-Us

The purpose is not security, but to humiliate and constantly remind who is "in charge". Year-to-date statistics for 2010 on airport screening at Dulles and Reagan Airports from the Department of Homeland Security:

Terrorist Plots Discovered 0

Transvestites 1,333

Hernias 3,485

Hemorrhoid Cases 3,172

Enlarged Prostates 8,249

Breast Implants 59,350

Link to The New American article and hat tip to slow_dazzle at Hubbert's Arms.

South Park Bank Bailout Episode

Summing it up nicely. "It's gone!"

Let's Let the Empire Dry Up and Blow Away

The first rule of holes is to stop digging. With 700 military installations around the globe, and more armament than sense, how can we not see that hauling our men and women and equipment home, one by one, and putting them to work at a new green energy job, or a new local/organic agriculture job, would increase our quality of life and our respect around the world a thousand-fold? When will people stop believing the lies that are told by those in power ~ when it is obvious that those in power only care about enriching themselves at the expense of other's labor, blood and sorrow? From Nature Bats Last, please click on over and read it all.

QUOTE In a Tucson coffee shop last week I saw a woman, apparently in her early twenties, dressed in a short skirt, an apron, and high heels. Had she been behind the counter, she would have been the perfect symbol of the 1950s, a refugee from two generations gone by. We’ve moved from the unquestioning automatons of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to the firebrands of a radical counter-cultural worldview and back again. A generational sea change swept us from post-war “liberators” drunk on early 1950s propaganda to revolutionaries willing to take risks in defense of late 1960s ideals. The revolution gained steam through the 1970s, but lost its way when the U.S. industrial economy hit the speed bump of domestic peak oil. The Carter Doctrine — the world’s oil belongs to us — coupled with Ronald Reagan’s soothing pack of lies, was the perfect match to our middle-aged comfort, so we abandoned the noble ideals of earlier days for another dose of palliative propaganda. Three decades later, we’ve swallowed so much Soma we wouldn’t couldn’t find a hint of revolution in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. UNQUOTE