Skip to main content

Home/ Politically Minded/ Group items tagged Start

Rss Feed Group items tagged

thinkahol *

The Moment When the Police Lost the Occupy Portland Narrative | Blogtown, PDX - 0 views

  •  
    Well, it turned. The police bureau is starting to crack after six weeks of Occupy Portland. And one picture, right here, crystallizes the precise moment when it happened. During a choreographed effort to pull a few dozen protesters out of the Chase bank branch outside Pioneer Square, part of today's hundreds-strong N17 day of action, Portland police officers resorted to a decidedly more muscular show of force in a clash watched by TV cameras and rush-hour commuters earlier this evening. Suddenly all the fun-the dance parties, the union songs, the peaceful arrests earlier on the Steel Bridge and at Wells Fargo-was for naught. Tromping in with mounted officers, they pushed marchers who had gathered on the sidewalks along SW Yamhill into the street-forcing them to block MAX trains, something no one was doing until the heavily armored riot squad showed up-and then poked and, for the first time, pepper-sprayed the marchers. Significantly, some of the spraying came after protesters had clearly retreated to the opposite sidewalk. (In another odd shift, there also was no federal-court-required verbal PA warning that chemical munitions would be deployed-a hallmark of every other mass police action to date.) Meanwhile, at almost the very same moment, Police Chief Mike Reese was on TV blaming Occupy Portland for his officers' inability to respond to a rape victim for three hours today. Consider that tantamount to a declaration of war. Reese's point? Officers are tired and have been too distracted to do their main jobs: responding to actual crimes. It was an attempt to spin sentiment against the movement, which seems to be attracting adherents. Even the O today said the movement is "building momentum" and said the average age of some 34 arrestees earlier today was 50-not a bunch of young, anarchists/punks/hoodlums/hippies/road warriors etc. But that might come back to haunt him, judging by a wave of outrage on Twitter and elsewhere among those who noted that it
Joe La Fleur

Obama told authorities not to crack down on lawless #OWS 'Occupy' protesters, documents... - 0 views

  •  
    OBAMA AND GEORGE SOROS CREATED THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT WITH THE AID OF SOCIALIST KALLE LASN "ADBUSTERS.ORG" TO ANSWER THE TEA PARTY WHICH WAS A TRULY GRASS ROOTS MOVEMENT THAT STARTED BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE TOWN HALL DEBATES.
Muslim Academy

Stop Killing the Burmese Muslims! - 0 views

  •  
    The total population of Burma is 75 million where Muslims are small minority,they are just 0.7 million. Muslims in Burmese have been suffering since 1962 when army took charge of the government.Army has been doing brutal activities against Burmese Muslims since 1962. However the latest incidents have broken all records which for the first time also got the attention of the whole world.Courtesy to Burmese Buddhist photographer who took the painful images and uploaded them in the Internet. It all started on 3rd June 2012 when 11 Muslims were killed by Burmese army and Buddhist.Burmese Army stopped bus and killed Muslims after getting them out of the bus. Muslims carried out a peaceful protest in the Muslim majority province Arkan but Army and Mob again attacked Muslims and killed many protesters.
yosefong

What are Online Notary Services? - 2 views

With the advent of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, trying to find a notary public online has never been easier. And with that, many notaries public have now taken their local notary se...

notary public

started by yosefong on 11 Jun 12 no follow-up yet
Fay Paxton

Dear Piss and Moan Party |The Political Pragmatic - 0 views

  •  
    I hate to say it, but to borrow a phrase from Charlie Skinner, you Democrats are just a bunch of pussy ass, coward ass pussified pussies. Duck, cover, run, hide...that's all you do. As soon as you give me a little hope that you're figuring out how to do hand-to-hand combat; as soon as I start to believe you know a little bit about how to win something other than an election, you hit me right between the eyes with the lamest, most pathetic display of cowardice I can imagine. It's disgusting!
thinkahol *

9 Years In, U.S. Finally Tries to Get a Grip on Warzone Contractors | Danger Room | Wir... - 0 views

  •  
    "More good news from Afghanistan: the U.S. military has no idea where the billions it's spending on warzone contractors is actually ending up. And nine years into the war, the Pentagon has barely started the long, laborious process of figuring it out."
Michael Haltman

Southern Exposure, illegal immigration, Mexican border war, and Arizona immigration law... - 3 views

  •  
    Wouldn't it be a good idea to keep terrorists from moving across our border with Mexico. The Arizona immigration law is a good start!
thinkahol *

A cycle of stupidity - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    RNC Chairman Michael Steele today lashed out at President Obama by saying: "if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?" Of course it's absurd for Steele to voice that criticism without mentioning that it is his own Party which started that war and waged it for 8 years -- as well as the fact that virtually every Congressional member of his Party continues to support the war -- but Steele was right in the substance of what he said. In response, look at this truly repellent and classically Rovian statement issued by the DNC condemning Steele:
thinkahol *

Think Progress » Greenspan Calls For Full Expiration Of The Bush Tax Cuts Tha... - 0 views

  •  
    With the legislative calendar starting to dwindle, lawmakers are paying more and more attention to the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the year. Republicans across the board are advocating for the extension of all the cuts, and have explicitly said that extending the cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans (which would cost $678 billion) does not have to be paid for.
thinkahol *

Inside the mind of a man involved in a CHP shooting on Interstate 580 | abc7news.com - 0 views

  •  
    There is new information about a man charged for a shoot-out with the highway patrol on 580 in Oakland in July. The man says he hoped to start a revolution by killing liberal activists
thinkahol *

How Corporations Buy Congress | BuzzFlash.org - 0 views

  •  
    With the November elections quickly approaching, the majority of  Americans will be thinking one thing: "Who cares?" This apathy isn't due  to ignorance, as some accuse. Rather, working people's disinterest in  the two party system implies intelligence: millions of people understand  that both the Democrats and Republicans will not represent their  interests in Congress.  This begs the question: Whom does the two party system work for? The  answer was recently given by the mainstream The New York Times, who  gave the nation an insiders peek on how corporations "lobby" (buy)  congressmen. The article explains how giant corporations - from  Wall-mart to weapons manufacturers - are planning on shifting their  hiring practices for lobbyists, from Democratic to Republican  ex-congressmen in preparation for the Republicans gaining seats in the  upcoming November elections: "Lobbyists, political consultants and recruiters all say that the  going rate for Republicans - particularly current and former House staff  members - has risen significantly in just the last few weeks, with  salaries beginning at $300,000 and going as high as $1million for  private sector [corporate lobbyist] positions." (September 9, 2010) Congressmen who have recently retired make the perfect lobbyists:  they still have good friends in Congress, with many of these friends  owing them political favors; they have connections to foreign Presidents  and Kings; and they also have celebrity status that gives good PR to  the corporations. Often, these congressmen have done favors for the corporation that  is now hiring them, meaning, that the corporations are rewarding the  congressmen for services rendered while in office, offering them million  dollar lobbyist jobs (or seats on the corporate board of directors)  that requires little to no work.  The same New York Times article revealed that the pay for 13,000  lobbyists currently bribing Congress is a combined $3.5 bil
thinkahol *

t r u t h o u t | Five Ways the Democrats Can Avoid a Catastrophe and Pull Off the Moth... - 0 views

  •  
    The election is one month from tomorrow and, yes, it looks hopeless. November 2nd -- the day the Dems are expected to crash and burn. Sadly, it's a situation the Democrats have brought upon themselves -- even though the majority of them didn't create the mess we're in. But they've had over a year and a half to start getting the job done to fix it. Instead, they've run scared ever since they took power. To many, the shellacking they're about to receive is one they deserve.
anonymous

LabourStart: - 0 views

  •  
    Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
Skeptical Debunker

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview : NPR - 0 views

  • "People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.
  • "Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Then there's the "messenger" effect. In an experiment dealing with the dangers versus benefits of a vaccine, the scientific information came from several people. They ranged from a rumpled and bearded expert to a crisply business-like one. The participants tended to believe the message that came from the person they considered to be more like them. In relation to the climate change debate, this suggests that some people may not listen to those whom they view as hard-core environmentalists. "If you have people who are skeptical of the data on climate change," Braman says, "you can bet that Al Gore is not going to convince them at this point." So, should climate scientists hire, say, Newt Gingrich as their spokesman? Kahan says no. "The goal can't be to create a kind of psychological house of mirrors so that people end up seeing exactly what you want," he argues. "The goal has to be to create an environment that allows them to be open-minded."And Kahan says you can't do that just by publishing more scientific data.
  •  
    "It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy
Skeptical Debunker

Obama, Republicans clash at heated health summit - Yahoo! News - 0 views

  •  
    "We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem." With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats' Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props "that prevent us from having a conversation." And so it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House - a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public. The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation's health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favor much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next. Obama and his Democratic allies argued at Thursday's meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care as "one of the biggest drags on our economy," tying his top domestic priority to an issue that's even more pressing to many Americans.
  •  
    Of course the "we" in "We can't afford this" is the big health care monopolies (pharma, insurance, etc.). Supposedly, the country and people can afford the continued gouging by those special interests (up to 40% in some places this year alone!). Too, if the government were to find a way to "afford it" (disregarding that Medicare and Medicaid savings might pay for it altogether!), that would probably be on the "back" of the richest 5% and by reducing corporate and business subsidies (like those to oil companies, the military industrial complex, "big finance" bailouts and sweetheart Federal funds rates and "liquidity" pumping, non-risk underwriting for things like coastal flood insurance, etc., etc., etc.). Since that is the "invisible hand" that feeds most "conservatives" and Republican politicians, that would never do.
Yee Sian Ng

The End of History - 0 views

  •  
    "And yet, all of these people sense dimly that there is some larger process at work, a process that gives coherence and order to the daily headlines. the twentieth century saw the developed world descend into a paroxysm of ideological violence, as liberalism contended first with the remnants of absolutism, then bolshevism and fascism, and finally an updated Marxism that threatened  to lead to  the ultimate apocalypse of nuclear war.  But the century that began full of self-confidence in the ultimate triumph of Western  liberal democracy seems at its close to be returning full circle to where it started: not to an "end of ideology" or a convergence between capitalism and socialism, as earlier predicted, but to an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism."
rich hilts

First Oversight Hearings - Who Is Testifying About What? - 1 views

shared by rich hilts on 19 Jan 11 - No Cached
  •  
    Darrell Issa is getting ready to start scrutinizing - and his first oversight meeting was just announced today - who is he going after first? This is what we were asking for in November - check it out!
Aleena Smith

Fire Burning in Lahore, Pakistan: - 0 views

  •  
    (Newsi7)___ a fire burning was started at 8 am in city so Pakistan, Lahore at the place "Mochi Gate" which has been not yet stopped
thinkahol *

A Call to Action | US Uncut - 0 views

  •  
    The "progressive tea party" has been born. Inspired by the UK Uncut movement, the popular revolutions sweeping through North Africa, and articles in the Nation and Washington Post, activists in Mississippi, Chicago, New York, California, Maine, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Washington DC and elsewhere have started US Uncut to mobilize against corporate tax cheats who are costing America billions of dollars each year and forcing the government to propose deep cuts to vital services and pay freezes for hardworking families.
thinkahol *

How to Build a Progressive Tea Party | The Nation - 0 views

  •  
    Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week-to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 82 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page