Best known for his classic, A People's History of the United States, Zinn changed the way many think about America. The book, written from an unapologetic liberal stance, decided not to glorigy America and its founders, but noted the struggles of real Americans in making change. Zinn himself would admit that the book has a biased slant — and it did. But it was also accurate, and celebrated the capabilities of everyday people to make tremendous change. A must read.
That's the fastest growth since 2003, and has caused the AP to declare that it is "the strongest evidence to date that the worst recession since the 1930s ended last year."
Of course, that's just one economic figure. Unemployment remains high. But it is a good sign in an economic world starkly devoid of good news.
Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has condemned the US and other industrial economies, holding them responsible for the phenomenon of climate change.
In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera, bin Laden criticised George Bush, the former US president, for rejecting the Kyoto pact and condemned global corporations.
"This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions – whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take," bin Laden said.
"Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact."
The reaction will be predictable: Bin Laden is bad. He believes in, and condemns, climate change. Lefties believe in, and condemn, climate change. Therefore, lefties and Bin Laden are birds of a feather. Cue stupid conservative reaction…. 3…. 2…… 1……. ding ding ding… we have a winner!
Yikes, this one isn't kidding.
As you can see in the graphic, plowable snow will also be found in Paducah and Jackson, KY, Roanoke and Norfolk, VA and Winston-Salem and Raleigh, NC.
There is no question this is a very sizeable snowstorm for these cities.
I would like to see Obama move away from bi-partisanship. He has left so much to Congress (especially health care) and it has given him a big fat zero. I don't think he needs to slam Republicans, but he needs to show resolve in getting the things he promised us done.
Contrary to rumors that Apple was going to announce the iPhone being available for Verizon, they instead just announced their new coolest thingee…. the iPad.
Think of an iPhone that's half the size of a laptop. .5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds, 9.7 inch IPS touchscreen display. 10 hours of battery life, runs all iphone apps, has 16, 32 or 64 GB storage … see more here.
Good, presumably, for movies, e-books….
Fox News chose to not broadcast the Hope for Haiti Now benefit concert (both CNN and MSNBC did). Instead, Bill O’Reilly aired a segment about Sarah and Bristol Palin’s “body language” during their Oprah interview and Sean Hannity conducted an interview with Karl Rove on the Obama administration’s approval ratings and health care reform.
Remember that conservative filmmaker who posed as a pimp, went into ACORN offices, and secretly recorded what happened?
Quite a coup for the guy, whose name is James O'Keefe. He got to be on Fox, he pretty much dessimated ACORN (which, despite a few bad eggs, was a very worthwhile community organization), and just a few months ago, 31 far-right House Republicans introduced a congressional resolution to praise O'Keefe's work, claiming he was "setting an example for concerned citizens across America."
So what is Mr. O'Keefe doing now? Getting snagged by the FBI:
The conservative young filmmaker whose undercover sting damaged a liberal activist group last year faces federal criminal charges in an alleged plot to bug the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
James O'Keefe was among four men who created a ruse to enter the lawmaker's downtown office, saying they needed to repair her telephones, according to court records unsealed Tuesday. O'Keefe used his cellphone to take pictures of two men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who are accused in an FBI agent's sworn affidavit of impersonating telephone company workers. Stanley Dai is accused of aiding the Jan. 25 plot.
All four were taken to a suburban New Orleans jail and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. If convicted, each man faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Bugging a senator…..Well done, conservative model citizen!
UPDATE: The Salt Lake City GOP has uninvited Mr. O'Keefe to this event:
…and even Glenn Beck weighs in against O'Keefe:
BECK: If they were doing that — that’s Watergate. Insanely stupid and illegal. … I haven’t heard his side, but you don’t do anything illegal, that’s Watergate territory. You just don’t do that. And besides that I don’t think you go dressed up — I mean it’s a senator. For the love of Pete, it’s a senator.
CO-HOST: First of all, it’s different than an ACORN office. Because you’re talking about a U.S. senator here! […]
BECK: It’s exactly the same thing I said for the state dinner. You must not allow — the Secret Service must come down on these peoples in the White House like a box of rocks. You don’t do anything to hurt security for the president or for a senator or anybody else. You don’t mess around with it. Ever, ever, ever, ever. … We have enough [evidence] to, I believe, condemn.
UPDATE: Looks like one of the four break-in boys, Stan Dai, is the same Stan Dai who once wrote an anti-feminist piece called "The Penis Monologues".
Thank you to The Seventh Sense's senior beauty pageant correspondent, Heather, for gracing the website with pictures of hot girls. I fear they will overtake the rest of this site in terms of popularity.
But so what?
The Tea Party "movement", which was supposed to be a movement of common average people, is starting to fall apart at amazing speeds, as it tries to transform itself from a grassroots movement into an actual politican party:
A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”
The convention’s difficulties highlight the fractiousness of the Tea Party groups, and the considerable suspicions among their members of anything that suggests the establishment.
The convention, to be held in Nashville in early February, made a splash by attracting big-name politicians. (Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech.) But some groups have criticized the cost — $549 per ticket and a $9.95 fee, plus hotel and airfare — as out of reach for the average tea partier. And they have balked at Ms. Palin’s speaking fee, which news reports have put at $100,000, a figure that organizers will not confirm or deny.
Tea Party events exploded last winter, as increasingly large gatherings protested the federal stimulus bill, government bailouts and proposed health care legislation. While they vary by name, specific tenets and relative embrace of anarchy, such groups tend to unite around fiscal conservatism and a belief that the federal government — whether led by Republicans or Democrats — has overstepped its constitutional powers.
***
Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate. His group seeks to take over the Republican Party from the bottom by filling the ranks of local and state parties with grass-roots conservatives, and Mr. Glass had been scheduled to lead workshops on its strategy.
“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement. “We were under the impression that T.P.N. was a nonprofit organization like N.P.A., interested only in uniting and educating Tea Party activists on how to make a real difference in the political arena.”
Mr. Glass said he was also concerned about the role in the convention of groups like Tea Party Express, which has held rallies across the country through two bus tours, and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party umbrella. He called them “Republican National Committee-related groups,” and added, “At best, it creates the appearance of an R.N.C. hijacking; at worst, it is one.”
Erick Erickson, the editor of the influential conservative blog RedState.com, wrote this month that something seemed “scammy” about the convention. And the American Liberty Alliance withdrew as a sponsor after its members expressed concerns about the convention’s finances being channeled through private bank accounts and its organizer being “for profit.”
I find none of this very surprising. The whole Tea Party movement was destined for confusion and destruction because it was founded on nothing but discontent. Even after all these months, it still hasn't defined itself.
For example, what does it want? Does it want to work within the GOP infrastructure, or create change from outside the current two-party system? Is it conservative or libertarian? Is it limited to economic, small-government issues (i.e., low taxes), or is there a plank that involves social issues as well (i.e., gay rmarriages)?
And most of all, who is in charge?
Oh, a show. Work. Life. Burnout. All that.
Plus, not a lot to say that is particularly insightful.
Haiti was bad, but I guess everyone knew that.
Scott Brown being elected to the U.S. Senate was bad, but not as bad as everyone made it out to be. He's a liberal Republican from Massachusetts, which is on a par with a moderate Democrat from any other state. He's probably to the left of many Senate Democrats, so I wouldn't sweat it out.
Really, the ONLY thing that really struck me as comment-worthy was last week’s ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where the court declared that corporations and unions may spend money on political advertising that urges the election or defeat of a candidate for public office. Obama called it one of the worst decisions in the area of public interest; conservatives praised it as a reaffirmation of the First Amendment.
Obama was, of course, right, and conservatives were wrong. The First Amendment protections of free speech apply to individuals (as do ALL the Bill of Rights). Remember, we recognize rights as things "endowed by our Creator" to us. God did not contemplate that the oil lobby would have free speech rights.
I fear that decision will impact our political landscape profoundly and negatively, but there are sound arguments that disagree with me.
Anyway, I'm more-or-less back. And maybe I'll even have a "guest" contributor soon, too. So, stay tuned.
Glenn Beck today, speaking of Obama:
BECK: I also believe this is dividing the nation…to where the nation sees him react so rapidly on Haiti and yet he couldn’t react rapidly on Afghanistan. He couldn’t react rapidly on Ft. Hood. He couldn’t react rapidly on our own airplanes with an underwear bomber…it doesn’t make sense. […] Three different events and Haiti is the only one. I think personally that it deepens he divide to see him react this rapidly to Haiti.
Uhhhhh…..
See, with Ft Hood, the underwear bomber, and Afghanistan (presumably, the bombing which killed several CIA agents), what was Obama to do? The events had already happened. All of the un-exploded passengers in the UndieBombie’s airplane would have remained un-exploded after the failed attack. All of the victims at Ft. Hood who survived received immediate medical care; it’s not as if President Obama could have ordered them to heal faster or anything.
By contrast, with events like Haiti, you have generally 72 hours to recover victims. Right NOW, there must still be people trapped under the destroyed buildings in Haiti, and thousands of survivors without access to food or medical supplies. It's STILL an emergency situation.
Surely even Glenn Beck's pea-sized brain can figure out the difference.
Beck's premise is faulty. Polling shows that majorities of Americans approved of Obama’s handling of the Christmas Day plot and that it didn’t divide the country.
In any event, Beck only wishes the nation was divided about this one:
Even conservatives Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham took issue with the Limbaugh-Beck attack. “It’s good that he reacts quickly to Haiti,” O’Reilly said last night on Fox News, later asking Ingraham, “You have no problem with his quick response to Haiti?” “Yeah, no,” she replied.
