Hey, I’m a Person Too!

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Arizona, class action lawsuits, climate change, Fox News Channel, Fox Noise, Humor, immigration, John McCain, JonStewart, Keith Olbermann, Media, MSNBC, philosophy, science, SCOTUS, Simone Weil, WalMart, Women's issues

Fresh from the invigoration of being granted personhood for purposes of financially buying its own congressmen and women, corporate persons have moved on to even greater heights today.

The SCOTUS, judicial biggie of the land, has effectively made them lawsuit-proof, by knocking down the million-plus-plaintiff discrimination suit filed against Wal-Mart.

You know that they meant business when they let Scalia write for the 5-4 majority. It seems that the women, did not have one single common claim among them, since DISCRIMINATION BASED ON SEX was deemed not to qualify.

 It appears that all a corporation must do is have a “stated” policy of non-discrimination at the head office pinned to the wall. It’s actual store managers are left to promote and pay as they deem fit *wink wink nod nod*. Yep, pretty darn slick wouldn’t you say?

But one more reason to make every effort to avoid spending your precious dollars at Wal-Mart.

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Time to change your diapers again Johnny McCain, you dirtied yourself once again. I should have known some such crap was a coming when I saw his Tweet that he and Kyl were going to “tour” his beloved fire-devoured Arizona. They did, and then held the proverbial press conference to show their civic concerns.

McCain, older than Eve herself, and who cannot possibly think of running again, sucked up to the racist element in his state by blaming the fires of “illegals who were out there starting fires to signal each other.”

He could, of course, point to no specifics. Later, his minions explained that they had got their information from the state’s forestry department. Funny thing. The Forest Service has no freakin’ idea about what Johnny was talking about. “You know, sometimes he forgets his meds,” they chortled. (Oh, I made that last thing up, but not the rest!)

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Some scientists in Australia have gotten piqued at the continuing “debate” over climate change. They claim that there is really no debate at all. It’s a done deal. The climate is changing, and we are responsible. They run a really excellent site called The Conversation and there is a section with numerous articles on climate change. Take a look. It seems filled with the arguments and with explanations of the games the pseudo-science right light to play to obscure the true facts. Oh and they have plenty of other subjects. The website is an EDU domain. (h/t to Think Progress.)

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Some times I think there is a failure in my generation of really great women. I’m talking about women who were out side the norm in every way, who walked alone, unafraid of being defined as “odd” or not being subject to being slotted into some category. Simone Weil comes to mind, who lived in the same place and time as Simone de Beauvoir. There is a lovely bio of her at Lapham’s Quarterly. Go read it. It’s worth it.

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Don’t know if you got a chance to see it or not, but Jon Stewart was on Fox Sunday with Chris Wallace. Wallace did his best to start things off belligerently, implying that Stewart had dodged the interview (presumably out of fear). But as you might expect, Stewart walked all over Wallace who never had a clue.

What went unanswered was Wallace’s claim that their “audience” was very happy with them as being fair and balanced presumably. Stewart went unchallenged when he remarked that every poll and study also suggested that Fox news watchers were the most misinformed people of all news watchers. You can see excerpts and links to actual polling at above link.

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In case you didn’t hear, Keith Olbermann is back on the airwaves again starting today. His new show is on channel 358 (Current TV) on most cable networks. We have sure missed him on MSNBC. Shultz has been a belligerent disappointment and so frankly has O’Donnell, both of whom come from the “if I don’t like what you say, I’ll yell over you” school of interviewing, made so popular at Foxy Noise. His list of sidekicks looks like fun too. Be sure to watch.

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What’s on the stove? chicken stir fry with homemade spring rolls and crab Rangoon.

Related articles

• Jon Stewart LIVE On Fox News, Tells Host ‘You’re Insane’ (VIDEO) (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Jon Stewart Uses Big Words on Fox News [Video] (gawker.com)
• Daily Show’s Jon Stewart Chats With “Insane” Fox News Host (eonline.com)
• Fair, Balanced and Wrong (gocomics.typepad.com)
• Wal-Mart’s negative impact on the world’s economy (To be marked) (macnomics.wordpress.com)
• Arcelia Hurtado: The Women of Wal-Mart (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Clock’s Ticking for Wal-Mart Women – Be Among the First To Know …Fatima Goss Graves, National Women’s Law Center (ynative77.wordpress.com)
• John McCain’s Illegal Immigrants Started Arizona Wildfires Disputed by U.S. Forest Service (politicore.wordpress.com)

Where is the January Thaw?

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Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

Hellllooo? It’s January twenty-frackin’-two. Where the hell is it?

Okay, it’s not -18° today. It’s a balmy (yeah right) +15° as of 10 am. But surely, this is relative. Relative to freakin’ Hawaii where it’s probably 78° right now.

And don’t bore me with places like International Falls up there in MN or ND or where ever, with its -42°. It’s supposed to be that there. It is two miles or so from the Arctic Circle for god-awfuls sake. What do you expect?

And what is with Billings, MT? Huh? Whose butt did they kiss with a high today of 41°? They are like 2 whole inches on the map NORTH of me. Where do they get off with rational temperatures? I tell ya, there is a conspiracy afoot. I don’t know who, but I sure can tell a conspiracy when I see one. Somebody’s gonna pay for this as soon as I find out.

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Boy, we were dumbfounded last night watching Keith Olbermann when he announced that this was his last show. No explanation. And none so far on the Internet. Some speculate, as we worried a few weeks ago that with Comcast acquiring NBC from GE that things might change. The head of Comcast is decidedly more “conservative”.

Okay, Keith could be over the top from time to time and he was a bit of an egoist, but surely that’s not unknown in the circles he travels. And he did have heart. Ed Shultz is too bombastic and sounds more like Fox than Fox at times. Not sure if Lawrence O’Donnell has the “presence” to take over as Big Daddy.

Anyway, we will miss him.

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Well, I’ve perused some nearly 200 blogs about everything under the sun, and can’t come up with much to link you to. It’s a slow day, perhaps because the WORLD has shut down in anticipation of tomorrow’s football game. You know the one I mean: Packers vs. da Bears.

I break with my President today, because I gotta sleep next to the Contrarian. There is no other team on earth but the Packers. The other game? Who cares.

(I’ll be soooo glad when this football chit is over with!)

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What’s on the stove: pork chops, gravy, mashed taters, peas.

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And the Winner IS. . .

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DADT, economy, GOP, Keith Olbermann, Michael Bloomberg, MSNBC, Muslims, Oklahoma, Sarah Palin, Sharia law, teabaggers

Yep, I have chosen Oklahoma as the state which had the most idiotic voter choice of the entire nation! I am stumped as to what the trophy should be. . .nothing too erudite, since the locals wouldn’t understand. After all, they are D U M B.

Didn’t hear? Okay. Well the fine folk of the Sooner state decided to do its bit to fight terrorism. It placed on the ballot a bill that would prevent a judge in Okie from using Sharia law as the basis for deciding a case.

Yeah. I know, Al Qaeda is shaking in its boots and we are all certainly a good deal safer for them having the backbone to stand up tall and face the possible fatwa that might follow. ‘

It seems that they went a tad far, also barring any judge from using any “international law” as well. Newt, their trusted guide in this matter apparently approved. The amendment to the Okie Constitution passed with a lovely 70?% of the electorate, numbering nearly 700,000 folks. I bet you had no idea there were that many morons in Oklahoma huh?

Since the Ten Commandments come from another nation, legal experts now wonder whether the so-called Judeo-Christian principles are now unconstitutional in Oklahoma. Also, the majority of American jurisprudence, which is admittedly based on English Common Law.

Apparently there are no lawyers in the state of Oklahoma, who could step forward and explain these simple facts to the flatlanders of the plains. Stay tuned for further updates and Okies require homing devices to find their way home from work.

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It has become apparent to me from this mid-term election, that some woefully nutzo stuff is going on in Merika. So it has fallen to me to begin a new series called, “What IS Going on in (state).” With people moving all over the place, I figure you need to know what you may be getting into. So I’m gonna give you the low-down skinny on our fifty fine family abodes. I hope by the end, to have offended everyone, so stay tuned!

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I didn’t expect the fun to start so soon. Referring to the Teabuggers and their new “heft” in Congress. It seems they are feeling their oats as they say, and making them demands upon the party regulars. They are demanding things, and not acting at all like the neophytes they truly are. Even the Turtle has been forced to say “whoa there Nellie” to the uppity youngsters representing the oh-so-stupid old white men’s anger club.

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We’re happy to report that Keith Olbermann is returning on Tuesday night according to the Salon. There are lots of rumors about why Keith was treated differently than Joe Scarborough who did the same thing. There are issues about the Comcast takeover, the new CEO and net neutrality wafting around the Internet tubes. Not sure how it all plays out. Ezra Klein gives his opinion here.

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I guess I’ve vacillated between appreciating and admiring Obama’s “civilized” behavior with the opposition. But frankly, I’m inclined to “call a spade a spade”. I suppose that is no shock is it? I am continually tired of so many of our leaders being “politically correct” and side-stepping the truth. So I was might glad to hear Michael Bloomberg say this:

“If you look at the U.S., you look at who we are electing to Congress, to the Senate, they can’t read,” he told the newspaper while in Hong Kong attending a summit.

“I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here — only because nobody knows where China is.”

You can appreciate how angry the far right it. They put it all down to elitism of course, but Bloomberg has said the truth. These folks are simplistic and have little or no understanding of political realities. They will be giving the GOP fits, that we can be sure of.

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Funniest tweet I saw yesterday, was Sarah (there are corpses more intelligent than her) Palin promising to give her opinion on Bernanke’s decision to buy up 600 billion in long-term treasury securities. She inferred that it was printing money out of thin air. Yes folks, and tomorrow I’ll give you a run down on the intricacies of high-particle physics  at the Hadron facility as regards the Boson particle. If you don’t believe me, here’s the tweet:

Will discuss Fed's quantitative easing plan(print $ out of thin air)tmrrw@ tools trade assn speech;then edit addl "Sarah Palin's AK"episodes

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) November 7, 2010

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Two things I’m getting really upset about. One is that there is a strong likelihood that Obama is gonna cave on letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the rich. Every poll I’ve seen suggests that the voters are in favor of this, so I have no clue why he is doing it. But I’m thinking he is gonna do it.

Second, there is increasing rumor that DADT is going to be cut from the appropriations bill. We understand that Levin and John (No Honor Here) McCain are working to do just that. Utterly disgusting if it happens. It’s insane because even polled Republicans come out in favor of killing DADT.

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Oh, a post at Walking in the Shadows is available for your perusal. And we will be bringing you a first installment in our new series: “What IS going on in (state). Stay tuned.

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What’s Up? 07/22/10

Tags

Archaeology, Billo O'Reilly, Fox Noise, Keith Olbermann, Moon, Moorehead Circle, Muslims, neuroscience, Newt Gingrich, science, Shirley Sherrod

Well the firestorm on the Sherrod case continues. We hear that Fox is beside itself, being all put upon by the entire WORLD. I mean, they didn’t do a darn thing wrong, and it’s the filthy liberal media that is making up stories against them.

How sad.

Not having done a thing of course means that O’Reilly, trying to be “big about it” has offered an apology to Ms. Sherrod for not doing anything wrong. He then manages to slam her again, and of course defend Fox. So I guess we are to conclude that he was technically wrong, but morally right? Billo the Clown at his best.

Shephard Smith, also from Fox, was not so kind to his own network, blasting Fox for running the story without investigating the video, and claiming that his segment refused to engage in the story because of they “do not trust the source,” namely Breitbart and his scummy site.

But if you read nothing more on this story, don’t miss Keith Olbermann’s scathing utterly devastating commentary on the whole affair. Returning abruptly from his vacation just to speak on this issue, he puts all of us to shame. He condemns all, without exception, and points to the fact that today, the right is busily making the racists the victims and the victims the true racists. Quite a turn of events.

What seems to be a cry in unison, is the demand by the left en mass to stop kowtowing and  running scared from the right wing lie machine. Stand up! Stop trying to ignore and placate the right. They are not interested in any concept of fairness or truth. They want to rule and they are about almost any means to do so. They have declared that any election they don’t win is illegitimate. They are no longer into democracy or representative government. They are about tyranny of the One Party Rule. And they have the nerve to call the left fascist!

The right is so schizophrenic that one part never knows what the other is doing. On the one hand they are always criticizing Obama for “destroying religion (meaning of course Christianity) in Merika, while on the other Newt Slippery Gingrich is saying no to mosque’s at Ground Zero because Saudi Arabia doesn’t have churches there. Love the lack of logic. Or is Newt saying that we no longer care about being a “bastion” of religious freedom? Dopes like him seldom think beyond the last word out of their mouths.

“Lunar Apatite with Terrestrial Volatile Abundances.” Yeah, bet you know what that means? Sure ya do. Okay, it means that (hold onto your socks if ya gotta ’em) the moon is full of H2O. Yessiree Bob. It’s called Lunar “dew” (imagine Louis Black saying that–DOOOOO). The fine article alluded to will be in Nature’s July 22 issue, should you be so inclined to read all the specifics. This was all discovered last fall, and I’m at a loss how we have survived not knowing about this until NOW. Anyway, they have found even more that is different that the dew variety. That seems important to me. I figure it’s important because they finish by saying: “we must now re-evaluate the volatile inventories of the moon, relative to the Earth.”  See? That sounds quite important. Inventories? Cheeky moon scientists!

I can usually find something even weirder if I try. So, I have.

There is a world called possibilian. Okay. Digest that. And a neuro-scientist writer who writes about life in the space between what is and what if. Got that? Possibilianism celebrates the breath of our ignorance. Kinda like there is way more chit we don’t know than do, so let’s play. Or like the universe is so vast that anything that could happen has happened somewhere. (My personal favorite, since somewhere me and Johnny Depp are having wild sex in whipped cream!) Anyway, this Eagleman dude sounds like a real hoot to have at a party. The site is called “Killing the Buddha” and bears more watching I think.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always felt like the poor relative when it comes to archaeology. Seems all the good stuff is somewhere else. The Pyramids, early human bones, caveman paintings, you know what I mean. But we can toot our Merikan horns a bit, since things are hoppin’ in Cincinnati, Ohio of all places. (See, doesn’t that help make you feel better after LeBron left Ohioans?). Seems we have a 2,000 year old “wooden” Stonehenge. Ours is called Moorehead Circle. 😛 So there you British with your royalty and castles and and  stuff. We got somethin’ too!

So, that’s all ya need to know today. You can return to your normal life.