More Insight

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Article 27



War can only be understood and put an end to if you and all those who are concerned very deeply with the survival of man, feel that you are utterly responsible for killing others. What will make you change?
- J. Krishnamurti

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Obama's Advisors





And what's with the recent onslaught of lapel pins and excessive American flags? How far will he go to court the Fox News vote?

aDICKted









"Deep water crude? That's shwag, Jon! Stems and seeds!"

"An addict will say anything he has to, in order to get his fix."


Friday, June 27, 2008

Not Anymore



SIGN UP!



Why are you voting?




This is your moment

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Ape Shit



Rounding up all the latest and greatest of our closest cousins (all humans are only about 0.2% genetically more closely related to each other than to great apes)




Sue Savage Rumbaugh is the leading researcher in ape language, and is featured extensively in Carl Sagan's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Savage-Rumbaugh has written extensively about her research, including her latest, Kanzi's Primal Language: The Cultural Initiation of Primates into Language.




I'm sure Kanzi and Washoe would be pleased to know that "Great apes should have the right to life and freedom, according to a resolution passed in the Spanish parliament, in what could become landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos."

Lie-berman Must Go



Sign the Petition

Dodd and FISA

Why aren't the other Senators still running for President defending the law? Unfortunately, the Democrat WILL NOT


We can have security and liberty. Benjamin Frankin, 200 years ago, said, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither security nor liberty."

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Hump Day Video Dumpay

All the greatest news as always


Hunger is a Political Condition



So... Eat More Chicken?


But don't eat Genetically Modified





One of many tributes to a smart, perceptive and funny man



Is it "backward looking" to address important issues that not only affect African Americans, but millions of Americans regardless of ethnicity?


Nothing but words, words mere words


Vote Fart Queefington '08!



The more cost effective cure is illegal...


Two Minute Warning



Gitmo' Justice While You Still Can



Torture Torture Torture!





(Sp)Oiled



Third World Myths

Friday, June 13, 2008

Attorney General?

For the people of the United States of America generally?

Or Attorney Specifically to insulate the executive branch from scrutiny?




From the AG's homepage:
Office of the Attorney General


The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the Office of the Attorney General which evolved over the years into the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters generally and gives advice and opinions to the President and to the heads of the executive departments of the Government when so requested. In matters of exceptional gravity or importance the Attorney General appears in person before the Supreme Court. Since the 1870 Act that established the Department of Justice as an executive department of the government of the United States, the Attorney General has guided the world's largest law office and the central agency for enforcement of federal laws.


From the Department of Justice General Records:
60.1 Administrative History
Established: Effective July 1, 1870, by an act of June 22, 1870 (16 Stat. 162).

Predecessor Agencies:

Office of the Attorney General (1789-1870)
Functions: Enforces federal laws and investigates violations. Provides legal advice to the President and to heads of Executive agencies. Represents the Federal Government in court. Conducts law enforcement, crime prevention, and offender rehabilitation programs. Administers immigration and naturalization laws, and registers aliens. Supervises U.S. attorneys and marshals.


Contempt, conschmempt.
Clearly the Attorney General's only role is to prevent the President's administration from looking bad, by advising the President's subordinates to violate congressional subpoenas and then refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of checks and balances.



(LETTER TO CHAIRMAN CONYERS)

January 16, 2008


John Conyers, Jr., Chairman

House Judiciary Committee

2138 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515



Dear Chairman Conyers:

You have been a tireless champion of providing oversight to an Administration that has run roughshod over our constitution, that operates with no limits on executive branch authority and one that has repeatedly flouted the investigations and oversight the 110th Congress has tried to provide over the past year. We have the greatest respect for the work you have done and believe that impeachment hearings pertaining to Vice President Cheney are the best way to move that work forward.

Impeachment hearings will allow for the exact kind of oversight that you and the Democratic leadership have provided regarding the actions of the Administration but without the opportunity for the Bush Administration to ignore lawful requests for information, refuse subpoenas and effectively limit its own oversight.

Impeachment hearings can provide the opportunity to cut through the executive privilege defenses and force this Administration to answer a Congress it has clearly chosen to ignore. We know you would agree that as Members of Congress, we can not allow legitimate oversight to be thwarted or such a dangerous precedent to stand.

The charges against the Vice President relate to the core actions of this Administration, its unlawful behavior and its abuse of power. We are concerned with alleged crimes that are central to his duties of Vice President, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. As you know, the charges against Vice President Cheney include providing Congress and the American people false intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

We trust that you will hold a sober investigation and let the facts determine the outcome as you have as Chairman this past year. We sincerely believe that impeachment hearings are the appropriate and necessary next step given what we have seen of this Administration. Chairman Conyers, we are respectfully asking you join us and concerned citizens around the country in supporting impeachment hearings.


Sincerely,



Robert Wexler

Support the Rule of Law and don't let the Attorney General violate his most basic job description

No man is above the law
"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security — Such has been the patient sufferance of these [States]; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. — The history of the present [President of the United States] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world"

McClinic







John McCain knows what's best for women

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Special Success in Iraq

Context:




"You have attested to a fairly easy success, an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time in which we would be welcomed as liberators, which you assured us would not require our troops stay for decades but merely for years from which we could bring them all home, since you noted many Iraqis resent American military presence, in which all those troops coming home will also be staying there, not being injured, for a hundred years, but most will be back by 2013 and that the timing of the return of them is not that important."

"Hell Yeah!"

[context]

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[context]

Journey to the Center of Your Mind

Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between cerebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples.


The Martian alphabet bit at the end is brilliant


Vilayanur S. Ramachandran MD, PhD

[via TED Talks]

"Democracy" At Work

An embarrassment of the institution

Wright and Wrong

(Yes, even MORE on the Obama pastor story)


Saturday, June 7, 2008

BM A NCMR 2008

What?

Bill Moyers addresses the National Conference for Media Reform today in Minneapolis



The Real Deal

Bill Moyers Journal



A speech like this is exactly why I have so much respect for this man

Video Dump













Monday, June 2, 2008

Stuffed and Starved


New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

In every country, the contradictions of obesity, hunger, poverty and wealth are becoming more acute... A perversity of the way our food comes to us is that it's now possible for people who can't afford enough to eat to be obese

Author Raj Patel addresses our bipolar food crisis in Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
'Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.'

'Guided by the profit motive, the corporations that sell our food shape and constrain how we eat, and how we think about food. The limitations are clearest at the fast food outlet, where the spectrum of choice runs from McMuffin to McNugget. But there are hidden and systemic constraints even when we feel we're beyond the purview of Ronald McDonald...

'Our choices are not entirely our own because, even in a supermarket, the menu is crafted not by our choices, nor by the seasons, nor where we find ourselves, nor by the full range of apples available, nor by the full spectrum of available nutrition and tastes, but by the power of food corporations.'

'Here's an example: many teenagers in Mexico, a developing country with an average income of US$6,000, are bloated as never before, even as the ranks of the Mexican poor swell. Individual wealth doesn't explain why the children of some families are more obese than others: the crucial factor turns out not to be income, but proximity to the US border. The closer a Mexican family lives to its northern neighbours and to their sugar- and fat-rich processed food habits, the more overweight the family's children are likely to be.

'That geography matters so much rather overturns the idea that personal choice is the key to preventing obesity or, by the same token, preventing hunger.'

'Across the planet, the poor can't afford to eat well. Again, this is true even in the world's richest country; and in the US, it's children who will pay the price. One research team recently suggested that if consumption patterns stay the way they are, today's US children will live five fewer years, because of the diet-related diseases to which they will be exposed in their lifetimes.'

The Guardian recently put together a short video series on the world food crisis: from Cairo, to the Philippines, to the U.K., to China






It's Against the Rules, But...

You gotta cover your ass somehow.



Covering our asses contributed to continually escalating estimates of Iraqi deaths since the invasion, now over 1.2 million dead.

Support Iraq Veterans Against the War by at least listening to their stories.


via American News Project