Ladywriter

if it don't I wont watch

ahh now you understand why I'm a rabid environmentalist and into politics. Its not for myself, its for what my kids will have to deal with

eww

Here are some statistics for the Year 1908 ************ ********* ********* ****** The average life expectancy was 47 years. Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles Of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower! The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour. The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year . A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME . Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which Were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard. ' Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from Entering into their country for any reason. Five leading causes of death were: 1. Pneumonia and influenza 2. Tuberculosis 3. Diarrhea 4. Heart disease 5. Stroke The American flag had 45 stars. The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30!!!! Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea Hadn't been invented yet. There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day. Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.' Eighteen percent of households had at least One full-time servant or domestic help. There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !

fuckin a ridiculous

FOX NEWS ALLOWS 'MAGIC NEGRO' NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE TO BE BROADCAST By Ryan Powers, Think Progress Fox News allowed at least one racist message directed toward President-elect Obama to be broadcast on New Year's eve. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/116887/

The following is an excerpt from The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition movement. It has been adapted for the web. 1. Length of time to come on stream Commissioning and building new plants is a time-consuming business (at least twenty years), so they would have little or no impact on cutting emissions over the next twenty years, nor build any resilience in the face of peak oil. 2. Insurance The insurance industry refuses to underwrite nuclear power, a gap it looks like the government will have to fill, resulting in a huge invisible subsidy for nuclear power. 3. Waste Nuclear waste is a huge problem. The UK alone has 10,000 tons of nuclear waste, a pile which will increase 25-fold when the existing plants are decommissioned, with no solution in sight other than deep burial. The disposal of nuclear waste requires a great deal of embodied energy, including that in the materials used to maintain the disposal facilities (i.e. concrete and steel). It is often said that nuclear waste has a half-life of 100,000 years…it is worth remembering that Stonehenge was built only 4,000 years ago. A society in energy descent, dependent on local, lower embodied energy building materials, will struggle to maintain nuclear waste sites with cob blocks and straw bales. 4. Cost A new programme of nuclear power would be staggeringly expensive. Amory Lovins has calculated that 10 cents invested in nuclear energy could generate 1kwh of nuclear energy, 1.2- 1.7kwh wind-power, 2.2-6.5kwh small co-generation, or 10kwh of energy efficiency. Also, having sufficient money to invest so unwisely assumes an economy which is still growing, an increasingly unlikely prospect. 5. Peak Uranium At the moment, there are about 60 years’ worth of uranium left. However, if electricity generation from nuclear grows steadily, this figure will fall, to the point where if all the world’s electricity were generated with nuclear, we’d have around 3 years supply left. 6. Carbon Emissions Nuclear is often said to be a carbon-free way of generating electricity. While that may be true for the actual generation, it is not when the entire process is looked at. The mining, processing, enrichment, treatment and disposal all have significant impacts, equivalent to around one-third those of a conventional- sized gas-fired generating plant.

THE IRAQ WAR IS NOW ILLEGAL By Bruce Ackerman, Oona Hathaway, The Daily Beast Ongoing combat in Iraq is illegal under US law. As of January 1, Congress' authorization of the war expired. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/116898/ The Bush administration's infatuation with presidential power has finally pushed the country over a constitutional precipice. As of New Year's Day, ongoing combat in Iraq is illegal under US law. In authorizing an invasion in 2002, Congress did not give President Bush a blank check. It explicitly limited the use of force to two purposes: to “defend the national security of the US from the threat posed by Iraq” and “enforce all relevant UN Security Council resolutions.” Five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the government of Iraq no longer poses a threat. Our continuing intervention has been based on the second clause of Congress' grant of war-making power. Coalition troops have been acting under a series of Security Council resolutions authorizing the continuing occupation of Iraq. But this year, Bush allowed the UN mandate to expire on December 31 without requesting a renewal. At precisely one second after midnight, Congress' authorization of the war expired along with this mandate. Bush is trying to fill the legal vacuum with the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) he signed with the Iraqis. But the president's agreement is unconstitutional, since it lacks the approval of Congress. Bush even refused to allow Congress access to the terms of the deal. By contrast, Prime Minister al-Maliki followed his constitution and submitted the agreement for parliamentary approval. While the Iraqi parliament debated its terms, leading members of Congress were obliged to obtain unofficial English translations of texts published by the Arab press. Bush defends his extraordinary conduct by claiming that it is traditional for commanders in chief to negotiate status of forces agreements without congressional consent. But the Iraqi agreement goes far beyond anything in the traditional SOFAs concluded with close to 100 countries since World War II. Indeed, it goes far beyond any sensible interpretation of the president's power as commander in chief. For example, the SOFA creates a joint US-Iraq committee and gives it, not the president, broad control over the use of American combat troops. It thereby asserts the authority to restrict President Obama's powers as commander in chief throughout most of his first term in office. But under the Constitution, no president can unilaterally limit his successor's authority over the military. This defective agreement cannot serve as a valid substitute for the congressional authorization that Bush so casually allowed to expire on December 31. It is up to Congress to authorize continuing military action. Gaining the consent of a foreign power simply isn't enough. The question is how Obama should respond to the legal catastrophe that Bush has left as his Iraqi legacy. It's easy to eliminate one option. Whatever the original infirmities of Bush's agreement, Obama should not repudiate it. Now that Maliki has won approval from his parliament, the agreement has become the basis for the next phase of Iraqi politics. It also contains withdrawal timetables that are compatible with Obama's goals: all combat troops out of Iraq's cities by July; all troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. As a consequence, Obama may be tempted to accept the agreement that Bush has left behind, and proceed without correcting its obvious constitutional deficiencies. But this would be a tragic mistake. We are living in an age of small wars—some are blunders, but some will be necessary. The challenge is to sustain their democratic legitimacy by keeping them under congressional control. If Obama goes along with the Bush agreement, he will make this impossible. Future presidents will cite the Iraqi accord as a precedent whenever they choose to convert Congress' authorization of a limited war into an open-ended conflict. There is a better way ahead. President Obama should submit the Bush-Maliki agreement to Congress on January 20 and urge its speedy approval. This request is likely to win broad bipartisan support. Rapid congressional ratification will not only fill the legal vacuum threatening the constitutional integrity of our military operations in Iraq. Together with the closing of Guantanamo, it will show that Obama is serious about reining in the worst presidentialist abuses of the Bush years. Members of the incoming administration have already taken steps in the right direction. Both Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden took the lead as senators in protesting Bush's unilateralism in the conduct of the Iraqi negotiations. And Obama has made clear that he appreciates the role of checks and balances in our constitutional scheme. Now is the time to reverse the precipitous slide toward the imperial presidency.

By Aaron Glantz, New America Media America's promise to "Support the Troops" ends the moment they take off the uniform and try to make the transition to civilian life. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/116721/ SAN FRANCISCO - Roy Lee Brantley shivers in the cold December morning as he waits in line for food outside the Ark of Refuge mission, which sits amid warehouses and artists lofts a stone's throw from the skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco. Brantley's beard is long, white and unkempt. The African-American man's skin wrinkled beyond his 62 years. He lives in squalor in a dingy residential hotel room with the bathroom down the hall. In some ways, his current situation marks an improvement. "I've slept in parks," he says, "and on the sidewalk. Now at least I have a room." Like the hundreds of others in line for food, Brantley has worn the military uniform. Most, like Brantley, carry their service IDs and red, white and blue cards from the Department of Veterans Affairs in their wallets or around their necks. In 1967, he deployed to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army. By the time he left the military five years later, Brantley had attained the rank of sergeant and been decorated for his valor and for the wounds he sustained in combat. "I risked my life for this democracy and got a Bronze Star," he says. "I shed blood for this country and got the Purple Heart after a mortar blast sent shrapnel into my face and leg. But when I came back home from Vietnam I was having problems. I tried to hurt my wife because she was Filipino. Every time I looked at her I thought I was in Vietnam again. So we broke up." In 1973, Brantley filed a disability claim with the federal government for mental wounds sustained in combat overseas. Over the years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has denied his claim five separate times. "You go over there and risk your life for America and your mind's all messed up, America should take care of you, right," he says, knowing that for him and the other veterans in line for free food that promise has not been kept. On any given night 200,000 U.S. veterans sleep homeless on the streets of America. One out of every four people -- and one out of every three men -- sleeping in a car, in front of a shop door, or under a freeway overpass has worn a military uniform. Some like Brantley have been on the streets for years. Others are young and women returning home wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, quickly slipping through the cracks. For each of these homeless veterans, America's promise to "Support the Troops" ended the moment he or she took off the uniform and tried to make the difficult transition to civilian life. There, they encountered a hostile and cumbersome bureaucracy set up by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In a best-case scenario, a wounded veteran must wait six months to hear back from the VA. Those who appeal a denial have to wait an average of four and a half years for their answer. In the six months leading up to March 31st of this year, nearly 1,500 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claims would be approved by the government. There are patriotic Americans trying to solve this problem. Last month, two veterans' organizations, Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans of Modern Warfare, filed suit in federal court demanding the government decide disability claims brought by wounded soldiers within three months. Predictably, however, the VA is trying to block the effort. On December 17, their lawyers convinced Reggie Walton, a judge appointed by President Bush, who ruled that imposing a quicker deadline for payment of benefits was a task for Congress and the president-not the courts. President-elect Barack Obama has the power to end this national disgrace. He has the power to ensure to streamline the VA bureaucracy so it helps rather than fights those who have been wounded in the line of duty. He can ensure that this latest generation of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan does not receive the bum rap the Vietnam generation got. Let 2008 be the last year thousands of homeless veterans stand in line for free food during the holiday season. Let it be the last year hundreds of thousands sleep homeless on the street.

yep...off the rock if we want the species to survive and flourish never happen as long as all the big bucks go to the elite and the military

AMERICA'S HIDDEN ROLE IN HAMAS'S RISE TO POWER By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet No one in the mainstream media or government is willing to acknowledge America's sordid role interfering in Palestinian politics. http://www.alternet.org/audits/116855/

Mercury pollution is a dangerous neurotoxin. It poses serious health risks, especially to children and women of childbearing age; it has been known to impair the ability of children to read, write, walk, talk and learn. And mercury pollution has contaminated hundreds of lakes, streams, rivers, creeks and ponds, and poisoned certain fish populations to the point where they are no longer safe to eat. Take action>> http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/ADZLT/yrVT/ANR12 The cement industry is a major industrial contributor to mercury and other toxic air pollution. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has essentially given the cement industry a free pass to spew mercury pollution into our air and water, putting both us and our land in danger. The EPA has the responsibility and duty under the Clean Air Act to regulate mercury and other toxic air pollution from major industrial polluters. For nearly a decade, however, they have ignored the law, the courts and the will of the people to clean up mercury pollution. We must tell EPA it is time to do its job! They must adopt strong protections against mercury pollution for all U.S. cement kilns, require cement kilns to test their actual mercury emissions and make this information readily available to the public. Tell the EPA to stop the cement industry from spewing mercury pollution >> http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/ADZLT/yrVT/ANR12 Thank you, LiAnna Care2 and ThePetitionSite Team

.gif' alt='::'> at least there was something accurate, the govts would not ~and are not prepping the general population for a mega disaster. Fuck FEMA can't handle a hurricane or winter storm. The Himalayas are the highest peaks on earth. Sorry but I can't conceive of a wave 30 thousand feet high reaching that far inland. Looks like another one of those day after movies eloquently designed to keep people stupid and afraid ...but I'll watch it to laugh at it

re: Media control the author of the following dun hold back so... Essentially everything we know—or think we know—about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, or our television. Dx makes an excellent point about the 6 day war. We are expected to perceive the Jews as 'poor wandering souls who just wanted a home'. Its a load of horse shit. They use the tactics of manipulation and control as religions have done for centuries. I don't get down with religion for reasons like this shit. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Wars of attrition are fucking retarded but deeply ingrained in the human psyche because of religion. I'm all for the belief in a higher power but there is no such thing as a being of love that wants you to kill other humans or put you in a state of torment for all eternity; be fuckin real.

By Steve Connor, Independent UK In a recent survey, the majority of scientists said artificially lowering global temperatures could be a "Plan B" for saving the planet. http://www.alternet.org/environment/116743/ An emergency "Plan B" using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary. The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach -- including schemes such as fertilizing the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms -- would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions. What has worried many of the experts, who include recognized authorities from the world's leading universities and research institutes, as well as a Nobel Laureate, is the failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions through international agreements, namely the Kyoto Treaty, and recent studies indicating that the Earth's natural carbon "sinks" are becoming less efficient at absorbing man-made CO2 from the atmosphere. Levels of CO2 have continued to increase during the past decade since the treaty was agreed and they are now rising faster than even the worst-case scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body. In the meantime the natural absorption of CO2 by the world's forests and oceans has decreased significantly. Most of the scientists we polled agreed that the failure to curb emissions of CO2, which are increasing at a rate of 1 per cent a year, has created the need for an emergency "plan B" involving research, development and possible implementation of a worldwide geoengineering strategy. Just over half -- 54 per cent -- of the 80 international specialists in climate science who took part in our survey agreed that the situation is now so dire that we need a backup plan that involves the artificial manipulation of the global climate to counter the effects of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. About 35 per cent of respondents disagreed with the need for a "plan B", arguing that it would distract from the main objective of cutting CO2 emissions, with the remaining 11 per cent saying that they did not know whether a geoengineering strategy is needed or not. Almost everyone who thought that geoengineering should be studied as a possible plan B said that it must not be seen as an alternative to international agreements on cutting carbon emissions but something that runs in parallel to binding treaties in case climate change runs out of control and there an urgent need to cool the planet quickly. Geoengineering was dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but it has recently become a serious topic of research. Next summer, for example, the Royal Society, in London, is due to publish a report on the subject, led by Professor John Shepherd of the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton University. Professor Shepherd was one of the scientists who said that a plan B was needed because he was now less optimistic about the prospects of curbing CO2 levels since Kyoto was agreed, and less optimistic about the ability of the Earth's climate system to cope with the expected CO2 increases. "Geoengineering options... must not be allowed to detract from efforts to reduce CO2 emissions directly," said Professor Shepherd, who studies the interaction between the climate and oceans. In answer to the question of whether scientists were more optimistic or less optimistic about the ability of the climate system to cope with increases in man-made CO2 without dangerous climate change, just one out of the 80 respondents to our survey was more optimistic, 72 per cent were less optimistic, and 23 per cent felt about the same. Professor James Lovelock, a geo-scientist and author of the Gaia hypothesis, in which the Earth is a quasi-living organism, is one of those who is less optimistic. He believes that a plan B is urgently needed. "I never thought that the Kyoto agreement would lead to any useful cut back in greenhouse gas emissions so I am neither more nor less optimistic now about prospect of curbing CO2 compared to 10 years ago. I am, however, less optimistic now about the ability of the Earth's climate system to cope with expected increases in atmospheric carbon levels compared with 10 years ago," he told The Independent. "I strongly agree that we now need a 'plan B' where a geoengineering strategy is drawn up in parallel with other measures to curb CO2 emissions." 1 2 Next page » View as a single page

By Sarah van Gelder, YES! Magazine. Posted January 2, 2009. We're entering a new year at a time unlike any other in recent memory. Here are 10 reasons I'm filled with hope as I look ahead at 2009 -- and three reasons I'm terrified. Young people are stepping up. They know that they formed the backbone of Barack Obama's presidential campaign and that their work infused the country with the "Yes, we can" spirit. Now that these young people know what success feels like, many will be in it for the long haul. Election protection is working. Grassroots vigilance, successful lawsuits, and media exposure are making voter suppression efforts less successful. More remains to be done, but the trends are in the right direction. (One terrifying note, though, is the death in a December 19 plane crash of GOP IT expert Michael Connell, who many believe was poised to reveal secrets related to vote stealing.) There is now overwhelming support for universal health care. This grassroots commitment coupled with Obama's leadership could make this the year when we finally overcome the roadblocks big insurance and drug corporations have placed in the way of progress. A majority of Americans favor a tax-supported single-payer system like Canada's. The Obama plan, while it's not single-payer, is nonetheless a good plan--as long as it retains the option for all Americans to join a public health insurance plan. Corporate power is on the wane. Barack Obama ran for office without relying on corporate donations in a campaign that saw candidates competing to establish their tough-on-corporate-power bonafides. Even before the Wall Street meltdown, a majority of Americans thought corporations had too much power. The economic collapse is further eroding goodwill towards corporations and big finance, showing instead how both were instrumental in concentrating wealth, creating unsustainable bubbles, and putting our way of life at risk. After the trillions of taxpayer money paid out in corporate bailouts, the American people are looking for more fair and sustainable alternatives. The failing economy is giving us lots of reasons to be terrified (see below) but also reasons to be hopeful. That rip-roaring economy we're all supposed to be trying to bring back was tearing through the world's rainforests, mountaintops, aquifers, fisheries, soils, and other resources, driving thousands of species toward extinction, changing the climate, and leaving billions behind in the rush for "economic growth." So, painful as it might be, this downturn represents a chance to build a different sort of economy - one that offers dignity, livelihoods, and a future for our children. We're finally getting real about the urgency and scope of the climate challenge. The incoming Obama administration takes science seriously, which means taking climate change seriously, too. The nay-sayers have quit denying the existence of global warming, and have resorted to random delay tactics. Many now see the conversion to a climate-friendly economy as a major opportunity, with new jobs and investment needed to weatherize buildings, re-tool factories, develop renewal sources of energy, and rebuild transportation infrastructure (see below for the terrifying flip side). Social movements are building people power. Nonviolent civil disobedience is back. Climate organizers conduct "die-ins" and climate camps to shut down coal plants. Workers at Republic Windows & Doors occupied their factory when they were abruptly dismissed without severance and vacation pay. President-Elect Obama backed the Republic workers, implicitly inviting others to stand up for their rights. He also continues to organize people at the grassroots - right now through health care discussion groups. Thousands of these meetings being held across the country could build a health care reform movement with enough clout to overcome entrenched interests and move forward. (We may wind up calling Obama, Organizer-in-Chief.) DIY (do it yourself) communities are piloting the shift to a people-centered society. These folks understand that real security during tough times is found in the "social capital" of community. At the same time, they are creating experiments in green and just ways of life. They aren't waiting for policy changes or bailouts, instead, they are helping each other now and getting on with the most extraordinary project of our time: building a better world. International cooperation is now possible, and it's none too soon. The day of the lone wolf is over. Likewise, the day of the sole superpower that could bend the rest of the world to its will. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, failed states, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the collapse of ocean fisheries, outbreaks of genocide, environmental and human rights refugee crises, HIV/AIDS and other pandemics--all require international cooperation. That means everyone has a seat at the table, no one gets bullied, and the solutions have to be real ones. Obama! It's true, he hasn't lived up to all our hopes with his cabinet picks. On the left-right scale, he's been pretty centrist, and especially his choices for foreign policy and agriculture posts suggest he may repeat the mistakes of the Clinton and Bush appointees he is surrounding himself with. But on the people-versus-big-money scale, he leans towards people and the common good, as the examples above illustrate. And he has elevated the national dialogue, setting a new standard for intelligent, inclusive, nuanced leadership. Not bad to be coming into the new year with 10 reasons to be hopeful. That's as good as it's been for awhile. But there are also some good reasons to be terrified: Runaway climate change. The biggest question of the 21st century may be whether policies can catch up to the dangerous realities of a rapidly changing climate in time to avoid disaster. Will we come together to stabilize the climate? Or are we be the last generation to live on a planet that can support complex civilization? Loose nukes. We are all in danger from loose nukes, the spread of nuclear materials around the world, and nuclear warfare between India and Pakistan or other nuclear-armed adversaries. Ridding the world of nuclear weapons may be the only way of avoiding a nuclear catastrophe; figures across the political spectrum support such proposals, including former Secretary of State George Shultz. Will we have the political will to rid ourselves of this danger? Mad Max world. Disruption of life-as-usual could come from economic collapse, runaway climate change, war, peak oil, pandemics, or some unforeseen combination of these and other factors. What makes these prospects especially terrifying are potential human responses to them. We could see either societal breakdown -- in which each person turns on others in a battle for dominance or survival -- or fascism, in which people allow all-powerful leaders to run things out of fear of chaos. So which will it be? Are you hopeful or terrified by the coming year and by what we face in the coming decades?What I keep coming back to is this: we humans have the free will to make choices that assure our collective survival, or to do otherwise. We do have the creativity, compassion, and intelligence to build on the best possibilities while averting the worst. This historic moment will test everything we have built and everything our ancestors have passed down to us. The answers are readily available, embedded in all the world's spiritual traditions, in all the mothers and fathers who have sacrificed to make a good life for their children, and in all the peacemakers who have worked to build a better world for everyone. Will we make the choices for a just and sustainable world? We know, as Obama says, that, indeed, Yes! we can. But will we?

lol happy new year

By Brad Reed, AlterNet A shorter version of our long national nightmare. http://www.alternet.org/election08/89686/ 10: Bush Gets Re-elected 9: Alberto Gonzales' Congressional Testimony 8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test 7: Colin Powell's Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N. 6: The Terri Schiavo Affair 5: Bush and Condi's Excellent Gaza Adventure 4: "Brownie, You're Doing a Heckuva Job" 3: Abu Ghraib 2: 9/11 1: "Mission Accomplished"

Would-be RNC Chair Chip Saltsman's decision to send out a Christmas CD to GOP committee-members featuring a song calling our President-elect "Barack the Magic Negro" is the just latest sign of Republicans' tone deafness when it comes to race. It's a problem that has led directly to the pathetic lack of diversity on its political bench and underscores the party's long-term challenge of regaining relevance in the Age of Obama. Saltsman presumably did not intend to offend by mailing out the parody CD by Paul Shanklin with songs that first aired during the campaign on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. A look at the lyrics shows that the song's real target is the Al Sharpton-sound-alike singer who feels that Obama has usurped his rightful place as the protest leader of African-American politics. But now that Obama has been elected the president of all Americans, and Saltsman is attempting to run for leader of the opposition party, the song — whose title comes from a Los Angeles Times column — could not help but become a lightning rod. The failure to anticipate the outrage points to the blinders that exist in racially homogenous Republican backrooms. Conservatives who take good ol' boy pride in being politically incorrect are either unaware or don't care that they come off as being somewhere between indifferent and hostile to the full diversity of American life. But ultimately, this is not a problem of political perception—it is rooted in the Republican Party's electoral strategy over the past four decades. Republicans rightly take pride in calling themselves "the Party of Lincoln." It's sometimes easy to forget that Lincoln was the first Republican president, and that his promise to preserve the Union, even by ending slavery, caused the South to secede after his election in 1860. People who lose wars have long memories and the (white) South voted straight Democrat for 100 years. But when Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act over southern conservative objections—whispering to his press secretary Bill Moyers, "I just gave the South to the Republicans for your lifetime and mine"—some Republicans smelled electoral opportunity. Conservative icons Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional infringement on state's rights and freedom of association. These men were not racists, but they gave some racists the cover of political legitimacy in a new party. Mississippi returned the favor by casting 87 percent of its votes in 1964 for Goldwater—the first time the state had voted Republican in its history. Soon, the entire red/blue map was reversed. This southern strategy may have sold the Party of Lincoln's soul, but it contributed to four-decades of political gain. Between 1968 and 2004, Republicans won seven of 10 presidential elections. Before 1968, the opposite was true—Democrats won seven of 10. Now the bill for this Faustian bargain has come due. Demographics are destiny and America is becoming less white and rural, and more diverse and urban. Barack Obama's historic victory changed old political dividing lines, winning states that hadn't voted for a Democrat since 1964, like Virginia and Indiana. While Obama played offense, making inroads into virtually every major demographic group—and winning swing voters decisively—the McCain-Palin ticket increased its vote totals only in a narrow band of districts stretching from Appalachia to Oklahoma, and demographically winning decisively only voters over age 60 and towns with populations under 50,000. The costs of preaching to a shrinking base of what Palin characterized as "real Americans" will only become more apparent in the future. 1 2 Next page » *sigh*

By Wallace Shawn, The Nation. Posted December 31, 2008. Jews, historically, have been irrationally feared, hated and killed. Given that background, it's not surprising that the irrationality which surrounded them for so long, the fire of irrationality in which they were almost extinguished, has jumped across and taken hold of the soul of many Jews and indeed dominates the thinking of today's Israeli leaders and their American supporters. Recent history shows that the Jews, as a people, have found few friends who are honest and true. During World War II, when Hitler's anti-Semitism was responsible for the murdering of the millions of Jews, the world and the United States expressed their own anti-Semitism by refusing to house and welcome the tortured race, preferring instead to let it be exterminated if need be. After the war, the world felt it owed the Jews something -- but then showed its lack of true regard for the tormented group by "giving" them a piece of land populated and surrounded by another people -- an act of European imperialism carried out exactly at the moment when non-European peoples all over the world were finally concluding that European imperialism was completely unacceptable and had to be resisted. And now we have the spectacle of American politicians encouraging and financing Israeli policies which will ultimately lead to more disaster and destruction for Jews. It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation or by slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation. There is no evidence that that could possibly happen and mountains of evidence to the contrary. Many right-wing Israelis and American Jews clearly believe that Jews have always had enemies and always will have enemies -- and who can be shocked that certain Jews might think that? To these individuals, a Palestinian throwing stones at an Israeli soldier, even if his life has perhaps been destroyed by the Israeli occupation, is simply part of an eternal mob of anti-Semites, a mob made up principally of people to whom the Jews have done no harm at all, as they did no harm to Hitler. The logical consequence of this view of the world is that in the face of such massive and eternal opposition, Jews are morally justified in taking any measures they can think of to protect themselves. They are involved in one long eternal war, and a few hundred Palestinians killed today must be measured against many millions of Jews who were killed in the past. The agony the Israelis might inflict on a Palestinian family today must be seen in the perspective of Jewish families in agony all over the world in the past. It is irrational for the Israeli leaders to imagine that the Palestinians will understand this particular point of view -- will understand why Jews might find it appropriate, let us say, to retaliate for the death of one Jew by killing a hundred Palestinians. If a Palestinian killed a hundred Jews to retaliate for the killing of one Palestinian -- for that matter, if a Thai killed a hundred Cambodians to retaliate for the killing of one Thai -- which, from the point of view of the Israeli leaders, would of course be unjust, that would be racist, as if one Palestinian or one Thai were worth a hundred Israelis or a hundred Cambodians. But if a Jew does it, it's not unjust and it's not racist, because it's part of an eternal struggle in which the Jews have lost and lost and lost -- they've already lost more people than there are Palestinians. Well, it's not surprising that certain Jews would feel this way, but no Palestinian will ever share that feeling or be willing to accept it. What the Palestinians see is an implacable and heartless enemy, one that considers itself un-bound by any rules or principles, an enemy that can't be reasoned with but can only be feared, hated and, if possible, killed. As poor and oppressed people around the world are very well aware of the events in the occupied territories, and as they strongly identify with the Palestinian struggle and point of view, the future of the Jews looks increasingly dim. Consequently it is disgraceful and vile and no favor to the Jews for American politicians -- for narrow, short-term political advantage, for narrow, short-term global-strategic reasons and, yes, also in expiation of the residual guilt they feel over what happened to the Jews in the past -- to pander to the irrationality of the most irrational Jews. Actions based on irrational premises inevitably fail in their purposes -- they fail, and if the premises don't change, then the actions are inevitably repeated, in forms which are more and more grotesque. It is unbearable to think that the new American administration would begin with more American dollars being poured into what is unjustifiable. It is also unbearable to think that among the first words we would hear from our new, clearly rational president would be preposterous sentences trying to persuade us that Israeli policies which seem to be appalling are actually quite normal and acceptable. Certainly nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world -- and greater value to the Jews -- than to abruptly end the sickeningly patronizing habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will end in more tragedy. ISRAEL'S ONSLAUGHT: ONE OF ITS BLOODIEST ATTACKS ON PALESTINIANS IN 60 YEARS By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Reports indicate that 350 people have been killed and 1,400 injured in the aerial strikes across the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning. http://www.alternet.org/audits/116115/ GAZA: LEADERS LIE, CIVILIANS DIE AND THE LESSONS OF HISTORY ARE IGNORED By Robert Fisk, Independent UK Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? http://www.alternet.org/audits/115952/