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Health Care Around the World: Why American Health Care for Uninsured is Like that Of 3rd World Nations

11-07-09 7:39 P GMT-08
Interview with TR Reid on the 4 methods of health care in the world and the types of insurance and other bundled medical programs in the developed world found in the nations of the world.

Neda's Mother: She Was Like an Angel

11-07-09 7:16 P GMT-08
Her mom, talks about Neda's life. New: Neda found it impossible to get work because she was divorced.

Why negative thinking makes the world a better place

11-07-09 5:32 P GMT-08
Writer's brush with positive thinking program illustrates how focusing on a positive outlook can hurt in the long run. 'come to think of it, positive thinking started out as a busineess ploy, didn't it? A ploy by already powerful and rich white men to ingnore the harm their business practices have on the world. Maybe they should go back to the EST scam. Oh yeah.that was for underlings. h/t @R_A_W at Twitter.com

Jake Tapper Interviews Roland Hedley Jr. On Twitter

11-07-09 7:03 A GMT-08
Over his new book based on his Twitter posts. (Has to be a first.) The Insufferably sufferable journalist opens up to the ABc's Political Punch columnist, or not. Now I know what I want for Christmas.

Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer's Beliefs Are an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre

11-06-09 9:19 P GMT-08
Fort Hood and it's vicinity have have a lot of problems with killings and low morale. The fact that Hasan did not act until the day before he was to be deployed shows his actions were more about being denied his right to avoid war than because of his religious beliefs. Hat tip @ontd_political at Twitter.com for link

New book tells how Right Wing and business push mainstream news media into a right wing bias.

11-05-09 4:18 A GMT-08
Calls liberal bias of news media "and urban legend" and shows how the right forces news media to back up their own propaganda. Hat tip Twitter colleagues, probably either @maafa or @mparent77772

Meg Whitman's radio whoppers

11-02-09 5:04 P GMT-08
Right Now Ms. Whitman is a California concern, but such things go on in your state as well, and it's good to see some reporting on them which we do this far from the election. Beside should she win the governor's seat she's likely to be running for president by 2016 at the latest.

ROFLMAO Slate Imagines Barack Obama's Facebook Wall

11-02-09 4:26 A GMT-08
Must read. No registration required.

Users of Roan Plateau in CO Want Oil and Gas Drillers to Back Off

11-02-09 3:54 A GMT-08
My question is how many of those same people were at the GOP convention or at least in solidarity with the chant "drill baby drill". Just a bit ironic, don't you think?

Scott Roeder As John Brown? I can't begin to say all the things wrong with that

10-30-09 3:12 P GMT-08
While John Brown was helping fight off pro-slavery murderers in Kansas, the predecessors of Scott Roeder were probably there too, on the other side. And the David and Goliath fight was an arranged battle, not a cowardly assassination against an unarmed man attending church.

A Liberal's Hit List: Limbuagh's Crew Misses Hoax and Treats Obama Thesis Satire as Truth

10-25-09 7:11 A GMT-08
Yeah, so Limbaugh got scammed. Well it is important,because though his listeners call him a comedian, they treat him like a news reporter (a similar lack of skepticism is found in Glenn Beck fans. Therefore with Limbaugh and Beck, who make lots of money and can afford quality help it's almost criminal that they don't avail themselves of them. Apparently though TV advertisers are more sensitive to the standards of a show host. After Limbaugh spread racism a few years ago, a concerted effort was made by a large number of liberals to get his advertisers to give him the heeve ho, without much of the success that one group has had getting advertisers to drop Glenn Beck due to his racist remarks. Hat tip @crewislife at Twitter.com

Can You Get a Six Figure Job from the Unemployment Line?

10-25-09 12:27 A GMT-08
I think it would take many years of training and experience. Who's going to hire someone to totally screw Americans unless they know that person is without scuples or compassion. Still Pett's cartoon makes a good point.

"Swine" Flu Declared a National Emergency

10-24-09 9:22 P GMT-08
Order will allow hospitals to place separate H1N1 emergency rooms further from main hospitals. Too bad our government (including Congress) can't fight the oligarchy created by campaign donations from the wealthy as quickly and effectively.

New Book Coming Out in November on Sarah Palin "Going Rouge"

10-22-09 7:17 A GMT-08
No, actually I spelled that correctly. A book about Sarah Palin will be out the same day as her book. The only thing that scares me about the former governor is that we laughed so hard at Ronald Reagan until one day we woke up and he was the president-elect. Hat tip shadowfax_rulz at twittercom

Sci American Podcast: Racist Jokes Are Only Funny to People Who Think They're True

10-20-09 5:31 P GMT-08
Scroll down on Sci Am 60 Second Psych page to which I've linked to It's Funny Because It's True" link. If I link straight to the podcast itself it is likely to bring up ITunes or other player. So Rush Limbaugh is only a comedian. Only? Not exactly.

Support Creative Commons with donation or by purchasing Shepard Fairey T Shirt

10-20-09 3:52 P GMT-08
With all his problems Mr. Fairey seems to have given time to design an emblem for a T Shirt for Creative Commons. Click on notice on Creative Commons page. (Linkblog wouldn't accept link to purchase page.)

BadTux: US Isn't Innovating and Has Done Little Real R&D for 30 Years

10-18-09 5:28 P GMT-08
The only good news is that competing nations aren't inovating either, just developing 30 year old ideas and tweaking current products. (And, of course this isn't really good news.) Read the original. I'm not a tech person myself and probably can't explain even the sunrise as well as BadTux can.

Radio host Tom Joyner's Great Uncles' Murder Convictions Overturned

10-17-09 6:00 A GMT-08
With the help of Henry Gates Jr. (yes, the Harvard professor) radioman Joyner learned that his great uncles were executed for the death of a Civil War Soldier. South Carolina overturned their convictions today, after reexamining the case. Details at link

Why Don't Reporters Ask the GOP When They Are Going to Stop Being Obstructionists?

10-16-09 7:51 P GMT-08
They should ask Republicans when they are going to cooperate so we can get beyond the health care issue (which would help people in New Orleans too) and back to helping this nation recover from the triplet disasters of war, Katrina non recovery, and economic melt down that they and the Bush administration left behind. Liberal Media, My A..

Fox News: Limbaugh Urged to Sue For Defamation Over Losing Place in Team Bidding

10-16-09 6:18 A GMT-08
I guess CNN and MSNBC can then sue him for ten times the defamation jabs Limbaugh often throws their way. But shouldn't the suit be at the man who published the claim in a book? And wasn't the time to claim back when the book was published? Is Limbaugh an idiot who didn't know this was printed in a book?

Democratic Hero, Rep. Alan Grayson Attracts Carpetbagging Republican Opponent

10-16-09 4:59 A GMT-08
I guess the GOP believes there are a lot of Central Floridiians that want to die quickly if they get sick. Nasty bugger Armando Guttierez Jr. is moving from South Florida, says all the property he owns around Lakeland gives him local creds. Isn't that the Republican't way. You are what you own.

AP: Limbaugh dropped from group seeking to buy Rams

10-15-09 1:20 A GMT-08
Ha Ha! Now "The Ego" really has landed!!

"Bash America" becoming the brand of the GOP?

10-13-09 6:28 P GMT-08
Lady ends asking if this is the same thing Democrats did to Bush. Not really because Obama hasn't started any illegal wars lately. There is a difference.

Dylan Ratigan: The Cost of Corporate Communism

10-11-09 4:33 P GMT-08
My synopsis: In the end we have a relatively small group of Americans controlling the government which in turn favors them right back. Industries grow old and inefficient, but are retained because of the largess of the government they control. But in this case, the power emanates from corporations who then use the government as their own piggy bank. Pls read for yourself and see if I'm right.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Overrated Optimism: The Peril of Positive Thinking

10-11-09 4:14 P GMT-08
It turns out that positive thinking is a type of arrogance and foolishness which requires ignorance of reality.

Rush Limbaugh Agrees with Taliban, Iran

10-11-09 6:53 A GMT-08
Also, we heard recently that Limbaugh had lost 90 lbs. Looks like he's found it.

France floats law requiring Photoshopped images carry a warning

10-10-09 9:45 P GMT-08
Good. If they don't ban it, they should carry a warning. The Ralph Lauren ad that got attention recently should have had one that warned about making one want to burn one's eyes out.

Apple, others Drop Out of Chamer of Commerce

10-10-09 9:41 P GMT-08
Finally the CoC steps even on the toes of big comapnies that were for it protecting their rights to profits, and efforts to block unions before they realized what a nut house it was over cliimate change. CoC response illustrates their r/w nuttiness.

Why Have Mainstream Media Neglected the Recession's Human Costs?

10-10-09 9:25 P GMT-08
One word Ms. Vanden Heuvel: Oligarchy You do show how the media tends to promote the needs and problems of the wealthy and business. Kudos

The Real Model Photoshopped by the Ralph Lauren Folk

10-09-09 4:41 P GMT-08
Word in comments at Boing Boing says the Ralph Lauren people stretched her body when she gained a few pounds leading manipulators to stretch her body to lose them. But they must have gone much further. I've seen women who look like the photoshop, but they are often very ill. The real model is beautiful even in a pound adding photo. See at link.

The Above Linkblogs Might Contain "Borrowed" links.

Linkblogs do not substantially contribute traffic to my blog that I can discover. They all go offsite, and are often accessed from my blog. It's possible to access them from the RSS according to my settings. Still, even if I were to get ads clicking on a linkblog from the RSS won't drive more people to my blog than otherwise because they leave my resources. (Note to self, do more posts, less LBs with sources I find). I explain because I sometimes borrow links from people at Twitter, and often forget who put them up. (To fellow Twitterers: If you have a link to your blog, I will point it there, but Twitter, being impermanent, cannot hold your link for people to discover from there. I only 'borrow' them to get news out to as many people as I can who might not have seen the reports and videos found by the smart people I follow at Twitter or find in search rooms.

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Hollywood Finds Room for Outrage Over Burma. Is it a bit too easy? And thoughts on Juno.

posted 05-10-08

If anyone still thinks that Hollywood is basically 'liberal' should pay attention here.

Besides the conservative pro-war and torture themes they often use, the low probability that just any Hollywood professional (except for a select few) will come out and oppose unpopular causes shows it's an opportunistic town, not a liberal one.

I'd call Hollywood more libertarian than liberal, and many big names and hidden money people are basically conservative except in the realms that conservatism threatens their ability to make a lot of money. 

Excerpt Dennis Perrin's Huffington Post report (linked here at it's copy on AlterNet) "".

"'Hitler is alive in Burma' read the words scrawled on a cardboard sign, held aloft by a sweet-faced Ellen Page, the Juno star, in a 90-second human-rights public awareness message that began showing on video-sharing Web sites last week."

So began a recent New York Times piece about yet another Hollywood celeb concern, this time, human rights in Burma. The Burmese Hitler is played by Gen. Than Shwe, the latest but not last Hitler that we'll see, depending on geopolitical or pressure group need. That Juno's lovable homeskillet Page probably had no idea who Than Shwe was before the PSA was shot is not important. She's a hot item, and as Jack Healy of the Human Rights Action Center put it, "you have to 'brand' it up. It's the nature of the business now."

Human rights as Cocoa Puffs, Burger King, and Sunny D., to keep it on the same Page. What better emblem for a dying, erratic empire. Even its humanitarians are scrambling for market share and prominent product placement.

Read rest at source.  I don't know if I'd describe Hollywood as dying myself.

 And I don't see many of the rest of us letting our careers go up in smoke to either help Palestine or stop the war in Iraq (where we are playing the role of Israel to their Palestine with oil).  So why do we expect any Hollywood people to throw themselves on the barby?

But, I thought the article was clever since I just watched Juno last week and from the first, when the Sunny D was pushed into my face, to the last, I saw mostly product placement and pandering.  I don't see why it was nominated for best picture, though.

One product placement in the film I've never heard mentioned, was the message from the right to life groups.  The abortion clinic was a creepy, weird, and an almost abusive place full of scuzzy people, unlike the professional offices most young women visit.  Meanwhile the one pro-life demonstrator was a sweet high school student, not a group of loud chanting control freaks that many have encountered in real life.  I'm so glad they cleared that up for us.  

There's a reason that the Supreme Court lets states demand that the demonstrators stand back from the patients outside clinics.

Another message of the movie was that if you carry a fetus to term, everything is going to work out alright.  You will be able to toss  a child off to someone else living the middle class lifestyle with an easy conscience.

Unfortunately, if a young woman isn't cute, white, middle class, and seemingly normal, or if she doesn't have a perfect pregnancy outcome, the likelihood that the baby can be passed off to a family that wants and can afford to give it a good life diminishes rapidly.

But hey, kids raised under poverty, poor parental supervision, and other stresses make good fodder for the war machine.  Especially now that military recruiters are

And, as long as they have new soldiers the war hawks can continue with their invasions, which, after Afghanistan, turned a corner from necessary to apparently more about getting our hands on oil for Exxon and Chevron.

So if you think a bunch of poorly raised young people should end up paying the price for us to have cheap resources, I suppose you wonder  "What's the down side?".  Well, for one, if you're selfish, you might want to look at the price of oil these days.

And, in the future, the debt may destroy the hope of a good life in the US faster than we can imagine.  In fact, even with just the one unnecessary war, they might be at an end because of the trillions of dollars we'll spend on the disaster.

If it's not all about you, then you'll already be thinking of the people being killed.

And yes, the ruling junta Myanmar are bad folks (See LA Times " " though you have to ask yourselves whether any American company wouldn't do basically the same thing, honor previous contracts before feeding hungry people in their immediate locality, and basically much the same thing was done in New Orleans). Also we and our allies have done some pretty terrible things just in the last few years.  Things that rival the actions of our last "Hitler",  Saddam Hussein. 

What is scary is that Myanmar does have oil, too.  One can only hope that they don't have enough to make an invasion too tempting.  If we're lucky the posturing from the Bush administration is just that.  Last year in office..."Throw money at my 'Freedom Foundation'!" from our boy, Bushie.  After all, an ex president's got to live in style somehow.   

By all means,lets send food. Pressure the government to treat their people better.  But Americans are wiser these days, I hope, and when the hype mounts we see the danger that lies behind it, and we keep our eyes on the damage we do when we think our government can charge into a country, effect regime change and slip out that back quickly carrying promises of cheap natural resources for major campaign contributors. 

After WW2 some Axis leaders were hanged for thinking they could get away with war for natural resources (dressed up as preemptive invasions to control dangerous elements in other's nations that were actually neighbors to the offending countries (Germany and Japan).   What is new with our actions in Iraq is the distance. Our leaders tried to claim we could be attacked by terrorists from a nation 5000 miles away, controlled by leader that didn't like our terrorist enemies and who ruled what air strikes from us allowed of his nation with an iron grip.

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