Were the Mayans right?

Will this be the real armageddon?

Since when…

… do parents give a hoot about what their kids watch on TV? Who do they think is driving the Hollywood machine to pump out mindless violence riddled with commercials for junk food? Their own kids!

But when President Obama gives a televised address to students in schools on Tuesday, parents across the country are worried about their children hearing a message that they won’t have a chance to preview. Preview?! Do they preview all the TV shows and movies mentioned above? I’ve seen plenty of images of kids at political rallies with their parents, dressed in white hoods, toting play rifles, holding pro-life signs, cheering for the war in Iraq, wearing “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” T-shirts. And Obama wants to talk about the importance of education? Yeah, who’s really twisting our kids’ minds?

The Return of Right-Wing Rage

In the early 1950s, Republicans referred to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as “20 years of treason” and accused the men who led the fight against fascism of deliberately surrendering the free world to communism. Mainline Protestants published a new translation of the Bible in the 1950s that properly rendered the Greek as connoting a more ambiguous theological status for the Virgin Mary; right-wingers attributed that to, yes, the hand of Soviet agents. And Vice President Richard Nixon claimed that the new Republicans arriving in the White House “found in the files a blueprint for socializing America.”

Before the “black helicopters” of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a “civil rights movement” had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would “enslave” whites.

Read In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition.

Is the US on the Brink of Fascism?

“All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history’s worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who’d made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet? …If we’re not there right now, we’ve certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space.”

Read Is the US on the Brink of Fascism? and let the dialog begin!

Can you say “Swift Boat,” “WMD”?

“The masses indulge in petty falsehoods every day, but it would never come into their heads to fabricate.… The bigger the lie, therefore, the likelier it is to be believed.”
—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Terrorist or Patriot?

All the votes have been counted in the Minnesota Senate race between Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman: Al Franken won. Every time Norm Coleman has demanded new vote counts or challenged “suspected” ballots, the margin of victory for Al has increased. This Coleman character probably threw tantrums every time he lost a game of marbles in grade school.

You would think that losing would be enough for Norm to concede the race, but it isn’t. DC Republicans are encouraging him to drag this election out for as long as possible, and they’re willing to bankroll new court challenges to keep it going. Oh, Republicans in DC know Al Franken won. But for them, it’s worth it to keep shelling out money to block another Democratic vote in support of President Obama.

In other words, Republicans want the elected government to fail. They would rather block attempts to clean up the mess left by the previous administration. They are doing everything they can to sabotage O’s efforts. Sounds to me like something a terrorist would do.

Be very afraid…

Congressional Bill H.R. 875 is to “establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.” In fact, it is an attack on organic foods by none other than Monsanto, and was introduced by their whore, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto.

Beware of petrochemical carcinogen 1,4-Dioxane

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) released a new study that exposes levels of the petrochemical carcinogen 1,4-Dioxane in leading conventional as well as “natural” brands of personal care and household cleaning products. This cancer-causing contaminant is all too frequently found in products directly applied to the skin, but it is not listed on ingredient labels, making it difficult for consumers to avoid potentially dangerous products. To help protect the health of your family and the environment, the OCA’s study results have been put together in a user-friendly printable consumer pocket guide that fits neatly into any wallet.

Frankenfood revisited

A new study analyzing fields planted with Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) cotton indicates the crops are causing the soil to slowly die. The study found that over a three-year period soil micro-organisms, which are necessary for building healthy and nutrient rich soil, decreased dramatically in the Monsanto cotton fields. According to the Institute for Science in Society, “At this rate, in a decade of planting with GM cotton, or any GM crop with Bt genes in it, could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, leaving dead soil unable to produce food.” Learn more.

You can make a difference. Join the Organic Consumers Association and contact your Congress representatives today and urge them to:

1) Require mandatory labeling of all GE plants and animals
2) Place a moratorium on new genetically engineered plants or animals, and
3) Protect non-GE and organic farmers by assigning liability for injury caused by genetically engineered organisms.

$550 billion disappeared in electronic run on the banks

And on whose watch was this?!