Robot Heart: Sex, Religion, and Politics

"John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., apologized for his role in..."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:21:08 -0800

“John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., apologized for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big should be divided into separate parts.”

- Reed Says ‘I’m Sorry’ for Role in Creating Citigroup - Bloomberg.com (via tedr)

You heard the man, get going team Obama. We want it.

(via brooksjordan)

"It almost seems appropriate that since I’m a Palestinian-American Muslim from Northern Virginia who..."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:25:35 -0800

“It almost seems appropriate that since I’m a Palestinian-American Muslim from Northern Virginia who also happens to be from the same hometown in Palestine (El-Bireh) as Ft. Hood shooter suspect Nidal Hasan, I should issue a press release expressing my outrage and condemnation along with every other Arab-American and Muslim-American organization. But I won’t. I won’t because Nidal Hasan’s actions aren’t representative of me. They’re not representative of Palestinian-Americans, Arab-Americans or American Muslims. While I personally was shocked to hear about this incident, I wasn’t overcome with a sense of shame about it. And why should I? It had absolutely nothing to do with me or who I am. Hasan is an individual who, for reasons yet unknown, went postal and decided to kill his fellow soldiers.”

- Why Are Arab And Muslim Organizations So Quick To Condemn? | KABOBfest

co-sign 1000 x

(via clingtomymouth)

(via bowfolk)

Most students work, and many work long hours, during school |...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:03:53 -0800

Most students work, and many work long hours, during school | TalentEgg Career Incubator

"White privilege: Not having to release a statement condemning it every time some white guy shoots..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:11:54 -0800

“White privilege: Not having to release a statement condemning it every time some white guy shoots people.”

- via Ezra Klein (via savingpaper) (via ziatroyano) (via clingtomymouth) (via bowfolk)

Socialism in action

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:32:52 -0800

Socialism in action :

ohfortheloveofdog:azspot:

At Thursday’s tea party march protesting government-run health care, a participant suffered a heart attack about 20 minutes into the proceedings. As Dana Milbank reports, medical personnel from the Capitol physician’s office rushed over, attaching electrodes to the man’s chest and giving him oxygen and an IV.
The Capitol physician’s office, unlike the bills being considered in Congress, is actually socialized health care. Government employs the physicians, and taxpayers help pay their salaries. But despite the presence of so many committed free market activists who so deeply fear the consequences of government-provided health care, no one stopped the bureaucrats from treating the protester nor developed a market or volunteer-based solution.

"Joe, could you point to the verses in Quran which tell you to join the military after high school,..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:29:51 -0800

“Joe, could you point to the verses in Quran which tell you to join the military after high school, go through medical school and residency, treat soldiers for years, and then snap and kill a bunch of innocents. I consider myself relatively familiar with Muslim history and the Quran and the Hadiths, etc, but I just can’t remember those verses.’Course, as an atheist, I think all you kooks and your bunk religions are dangerous. How you people determine which sky spirit is good and which one is evil is beyond me, but it seems to have a lot to do with geography and less to do with Truth.”

- TIMB, commenter on Top GOP recruit says Ft. Hood shooting shows ‘enemy is infiltrating our military’ - The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:09:58 -0800

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.”

- Thomas Jefferson (via azspot)

Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson if he’d been on the internet?

"To make a point no one should have to make: earlier this year, a deranged Army sergeant named John..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:30:55 -0800

“To make a point no one should have to make: earlier this year, a deranged Army sergeant named John Russell opened fire near a combat stress clinic — sound familiar? — at Baghdad’s Camp Liberty and killed five of his fellow soldiers. No one speculated about any religious motivations. No one suggested he was part of an enemy “infiltration,” or suggested that U.S. troops have been “brainwashed.” Everyone understood that Russell was a deranged lunatic, not an advance scout for a conspiracy to subvert the military internally. It’s funny how double standards work. Actually, no. It’s disgusting.”

- Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent (via thesmarttart)

"With both the 1st Cavalry and the 4th Infantry Division based in Fort Hood but rotating through..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:57:48 -0800

“With both the 1st Cavalry and the 4th Infantry Division based in Fort Hood but rotating through Iraq, there are many walking wounded here: a student who stayed up at night because he was afraid his mother would try to kill herself while his father was gone; a school employee whose husband had a breakdown just before he was to leave for his second Iraq tour and threatened to throw her out of her own house. A new economics teacher just back from Iraq replaced the one just sent to Afghanistan, and an assistant librarian’s husband has just left. Many, many students are connected to a parent through laptops and cell phones, waiting every day for a call or an e-mail. Fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters: For all the ripple effects the war in Iraq has caused in this small community, the fighting could be as close as Waco.”

- Heartbreak High: Texas Monthly, March 2006 (via elizs) (via apsies)

2 dead, 8 wounded in Orlando Office Building Shooting

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:42:50 -0800

2 dead, 8 wounded in Orlando Office Building Shooting:

(via notthatkindagay)

Sometimes I think the world has gone completely crazy.

Something is wrong here: Goldman Sachs gets a bigger H1N1 vaccine allotment than a hospital.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:27:50 -0800

Something is wrong here: Goldman Sachs gets a bigger H1N1 vaccine allotment than a hospital.:

unburyingthelead:newleft:abcsoupdot:chrbutler

monkeytypist:tristn: lol’s Please tell me that’s a...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:09:53 -0800

monkeytypist:tristn:

lol’s

Please tell me that’s a fake.

there is genuine evil going on in texas

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:53:53 -0800

champagnecandy:abbyjean:

Was Willingham wrongly executed? The work of the state’s Forensic Commission was on the verge of debating a powerful report by noted fire investigator Craig Beyler annihilating the arson findings that sent Willingham to his grave. And then Perry stepped in to effectively halt the investigation.

Perry is plainly afraid that his own investigators will discover that the state likely put a blameless man to death. But what is he afraid of? Political fallout? What is mere politics when the credibility of a system that might have killed an innocent man – and might yet kill other innocents – is at issue? Our skittish governor has taken to calling Willingham a “monster.” Even if he was, we put men to death for their deeds, not their dispositions. He needed killin’ is no rationale for execution.

A real leader – a brave and honorable one – would want to know the truth, so that if evidence requires it, he and others responsible for Willingham’s death could make restitution and repent for shedding the blood of a blameless man railroaded to his execution. If hard-hearted Perry is so certain of Willingham’s guilt, why object to an investigation?

More importantly, if Willingham was wrongly put to death, all decent capital punishment supporters should want strict measures taken to ensure that this catastrophe never happens again. If we are going to have the death penalty, we have the solemn duty to use it responsibly. Right? Surely we Texans aren’t the kind of people so enamored of retribution that the actual guilt or innocence of those executed in our names is of no real concern.

This is not only a problem for Rick Perry. We live in a democracy. It’s on all of us. If Texas really did kill an innocent man, that’s a terrible tragedy. But if Texas and its governor lack the courage to face the truth and deal squarely with it, the tragic act will be magnified by deep and lasting disgrace, and we will all stand condemned by our collective moral cowardice. It’s much harder to live with painful truths than with comforting lies. But a people who would be on the side of right have no choice. (dallas news)

People familiar with Rick Perry’s leadership are probably not at all surprised by his reaction, though.

"If [Obama] gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:38:50 -0800

““If [Obama] gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And if he doesn’t give them the troops, he also loses politically.””

- The Herald-Sun - Hersh Military waging war with White House

That about sums the whole damn thing up.

"In addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military is also fighting a war..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:23:50 -0800

“In addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military is also fighting a war against the Obama administration at the White House, Seymour Hersh said in a little-noted speech at Duke University on October 13. The military is “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have Obama boxed in,” he said. Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, sees an undercurrent of racism in the Pentagon’s dealings with the White House. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.””

- The Huffington Post (via retropolitics) (via buffleheadcabin)

"So, to re-cap: The [Washington] Post today has two former Bush officials, one former Reagan..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:08:49 -0800

“So, to re-cap: The [Washington] Post today has two former Bush officials, one former Reagan official, two right-wing politicians, a Fox News neocon, the CEO of America’s largest oil and gas producer, a defender of the right-wing Honduran military coup leaders, and one liberal columnist. That overwhelming right-wing presence on the Post Op-Ed page is anything but unusual (the day after it fired Dan Froomkin, The Post published Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Hayden, Charles Krauthammer and an Iran-hawkish screed from David Ignatnius, preceded by Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Ramesh Ponnuru). And that’s to say nothing of the always-pro-war Editorial Page itself, which typically advocates for those same positions. The Post is obviously free to publish whatever it wants, but, wth some very rare exception, its Op-Ed page under Fred Hiatt now really is the leading outlet for neoconservatve and related right-wing advocacy. It is one of those outlets typically counted as part of the “Liberal Media” by right-wing self-victimizers and their media amplifiers, yet The Post’s claimed devotion to airing a “wide range of views” is scarcely more credible than Fox News’ “fair and balanced” slogan.”

- Glenn Greenwald (via azspot)

"The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 - and is likely to go..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:53:50 -0800

“The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 - and is likely to go higher. Nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended. The Labor Department says the economy shed a net total of 190,000 jobs in October, less than the downwardly revised 219,000 lost in September. But the loss of jobs exceeded economists’ estimates. It’s the 22nd straight month the U.S. economy has shed jobs, the longest on records dating back 70 years. Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or stopped looking for work, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994. The jobless rate rose from 9.8 percent in September.”

- CBS News (via retropolitics) (via buffleheadcabin)

More doom and gloom. Hurrah.

"Since then—beginning with the Reagan years—finance has triumphed over the New Deal industrial order...."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:37:55 -0800

“Since then—beginning with the Reagan years—finance has triumphed over the New Deal industrial order. Financialization, or what some have called financial mercantilism, triumphed by gutting the American industrial heartland. That is to say, the FIRE sector not only supplanted industry but grew at its expense and at the expense of the unions, the high wages, and the capital that used to flow into productive investment, not to mention at the cost of government social supports and government regulation that comprised the understructure of New Deal capitalism. Think back only to the days of junk bonds, leveraged buyouts and asset stripping in the 1980s. What was getting bought out and stripped so as to support the exorbitant interest rates commanded by those high-risk junk bonds was the material wherewithal of the American economy and the millions who depended on it for their lives and livelihoods. So today instead of unionized, high-wage industry, there is Wal-Mart. Our political economy is driven by “I banks,” hedge funds and the downward mobility and exploitation of casual labor, while industrial investment has been exported to the global south. This may account for the abject reliance of the Obama regime on the financial oligarchy and its intellectuals. It is a telling commentary on this great transformation of the past 75 years that Obama’s first 100 days did not feature at its core an industrial recovery act as FDR’s did. Instead, most attention is directed at restoring the well-being of the FIRE sector whose health is everybody else’s disease. ”

- Steve Fraser on the Crisis of Capitalism (via azspot)

So this is depressing…

Capitalism's Fundamental Flaw

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:21:51 -0800

Capitalism's Fundamental Flaw:

azspot:

But there is another less obvious bug in capitalism that I don’t believe regulation can quite handle. It is the fundamental flaw that our celebrated system rewards speculators much more than creators. A relatively junior hedge-fund manager or a bond trader on Wall Street makes a great deal more money in his career than Charles Kao, who invented the basic physics making optical communication a reality. Dr. Kao, now 73, won the Nobel Prize this year, but his net worth would not compare favorably with that of George Soros.

Yet, who added the real value? Soros or Kao?

In 2009, 30 million people sit unemployed in America. Yet, the speculators have managed to lift the stock market up, and the media pretends that we’re having a recovery.

We’re not having any recovery. We need the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the creators, the scientists, the technologists—those who build value, those who create jobs—to lead us out of this nightmare. Not a bunch of speculators who make money regardless of whether value gets created or destroyed. In fact, many of them are incentivized to destroy value by spreading fake rumors about companies and stocks, and they do so often. Some get caught, most don’t.

And our talented youth gets seduced by this profession of speculation known for its easy and abundantly flowing financial rewards, avoiding those that require much greater intellectual capacity. Most importantly, very early in their lives, our talented youth come to realize that fields that may earn them a Nobel Prize—cancer research or multi-core computing—may not make them rich. But moving money from here to there will.

And thus, we lose Berkeley Ph.Ds in nuclear physics to hedge funds and MIT computer scientists capable of delivering computing to 6 billion people to derivative manipulation on Wall Street.

metanoia: LOL @ everyone being really ignorant you don’t even know these people, so there’s no...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:38:53 -0800

metanoia:

LOL @ everyone being really ignorant

you don’t even know these people, so there’s no point in arguing about it and hating on people.

like holy fuck

Do you ever read something someone has written and you just stare at it and stare at it because you have no idea what it means? It’s just a bunch of nonsensical garbledygook that someone apparently thought was clever?