EasyJet Causes Controversy With Holocaust Memorial Fashion Shoot

These camps, while a stark reminder of our capability for inhumanity, are not religious or sacred shrines to the whole of mankind.

If in the United States we can sculpt and erect larger than life carvings of the busts of US Presidents on the same sacred lands where millions of native American Indians were slaughtered and suburban housing and strip malls can be constructed, where are the proprieties of those who insist that taking photos in soveriegn countries other than their own can somehow be prohibited and repressed indefinitely?

Is it acceptable to explore , record and depict in photos the ruins of the people who were eradicated by the Spainish Conquestadors? Is it a social affront to use as a back drop for a photo shoot, the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

Then please let's stop this nonsense that these long ago evacuated camps in Europe should be held up as religious holy lands worthy of only global worship. We're closing in on nearly a century after this event. How and when will those who survived the halocaust, ever truly heal from it, if they can't (like so many other people of other brutalized civilizations ) put it to rest and move on beyond it??

Frankly, I'm very tired of having my nose rubbed in this chapter of history every month or so, to appease and console people that regardless of what the world has done for positively choose to remain inconsolable and appear to be victims.
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Philip Morris Ordered To Pay $300 Million To Former Smoker

As a smoker of 45 years (minus the attempts to shelve it) I think this is judgement is absolutely out of proportion text book case of legitimized insanity.

If anyone that smokes tobacco, dosen't know that stuffing a paper tube with dried vegetation between your lips, lighting it and inhaling the smoke, 20, 30 or 40 times each day, year after year just might eventually lead to respiratory complications these people should have kept a date with the Grim Reaper long before they could have been rewarded for their stupidity.

Do these same people stand around a bonfire or a burning pile of autmn leaves and breathe deeply? No. They recoil and gasp for oxygen like anyone does. Instinctively they are painfully aware of the toxicity of breathing in fuming leaves. They know it too, regarding tobacco.

A $300 million dollar reward for feigning ignorance and holding someone else for your own negligence to yourself...and barring "feigning" ignorance and truly being unable to recognise or accept the possible consequences of your own actions...perhaps this is the best argument I've heard yet for leagalized euthanasia.

It's a sad day when awards are given to this sum for sheer ignorance, stupidity and lack of personal accountability, in any circumstance.
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The 15 Biggest Congressional Recipients Of Wall Street Campaign Cash

It's nice to see that the Republicans and Democrats can work together on something.

Too bad it's on bipartisan greed and selling out the American voter for greed and profit.

But many of us knew this already.

It's time to see it and call it as it is. The American people no longer have the power of representation in government.

It's also time for more self representation through developing a national means to increase the opportunty for voter participation in the policy of America.

Can we afford it? Yes. If we stop nation building elsewhere and apply that capital here.

More self representation. Less republic.

More true democracy. Less hypocrisy.

If it doesn't change, America will never be a nation for, of and by the people.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Fed Chairman Blames Banks For Continued High Unemployment

Before the banks, came industry that demanded maximum output for minimum input. Look at the salaries of degreed people in social service, teaching, nursing, health services, janitorial maintenance, food services. Consider the under qualified, over educated people in even low and middle management positions in corporate America who perform as little more than liasons and messengers between upper management and production personnel.

The banks (through design and the Federal Reserve system) are responsible for what's going on currently. But before they became the black (economic) hole in America, our system and culture had already surrendered to the greed of industry in general. And education in particualr after becoming a national growth industry of equal status. We have been led to believe that they are necessary and inseperable regardless of their focus on developing a national dependance upon them, while the quality of their product diminishes year after year for sake of complicit profits.

Now, for some of the most mudane, repetitive employment opportunities people must meet or exceed the degree of education that earlier physicians and attorneys needed only to be awarded wages that deny the validity of their qualifications, whether good or badly taught.

There is no one thing that has brought our economy to the brink.

We are reaping what we and our predecessors have sown in the culture we created.

A gluttonus creature that remains insatiable until it devors even the people who feed it.
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Anwar al-Awlaki, Radical Imam, Becomes New Focus In Fort Hood Killings Investigation

Is he really sending out messages?

You really buy into that?

How do you know? Because the people that want to continue this insanity tell you he is??

Not good enough for me.

You're being sold one.
About Yemen
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Federal Reserve: Weak Recovery Means High Unemployment For Several Years

It's not as if the formula for a rapid and effective recovery has never been used before in America. Why must this gov't be so egocentric as to think it need reinvent the wheel each time something need be done for this nation and its people?

We need to first stop spending trillions on nuilding other nations which requires our military and those additional costs. Then we need to fund industries (small and medium) to begin developing and producing energy alternative to fossil fuels. We can also deploy Roosevelt and Eisenhower's means to creat employment and open up opportunities for people to be employed for repairing our infrastructure nationally­...without someone needing to be someone alreadyon the road crews relative. There are also plenty of social programs that could be funded to increase staffing and programs that could be implemented to get people (some are families with children) from having to sleep inthe streets of America...10,000 people are homeless in LA alone and live like refugees in a third world country!

There are things to do to expedite America's recovery. We just don't have the representation to get these things done, without politicians reinventing the wheel and cautiously taking care not to lose the benefits, perks and money from the lobbyists and industrialists that our representation is primarily concerned with.

Less republic.

More democracy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Top Bailout Recipients Spent $71 Million On Lobbying In Year Since Bailout

Quite the inflammatory main.

What did anyone expect?

Credit card interest rates are being increased so that the taxpayer can help pay back the money that was loaned to the banks and credit industry by the same people that gave them the bailout.

And the banks took all that they could get and still appear squimish to lend any back...again to the very source of where the bailout came from...the US taxpayer.

The health insurance industry and the pharms have spent a ton on lobbyists to defeat a public option that would provide the American taxpayer some decent coverage and affordable meds and are raising their rates and prices as we speak so that again the consumers can pick up that bill.

And all the while, the politicains on bith sides of the aisle are dragging their feet, because they are highly motivated to not kill this csh cow none to soon.

$71 million on lobbyists isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

And I'm supposed to get all politically militant over a small slice of "business as usual" on Capitol Hill?

Not hardly.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The anniversary of hope. What was and will never be.

It should be becoming apparent to even the stanchest believers that the office of the President no longer wields the sort of power that it may have at one time in America.
The system is far too convoluted and fractionalized with those powers being distributed between industry, banking interests and the flow of capital from these entities and into the halls of our representation in Washington to the point where America itself has become a corporation, silently controlled by the will of huge financial investors equivelant to stock holders and proxied interests.
Our Presidents, (and specifically this President) have been reduced to just one more voice in the crowd (albeit a louder one) with no more control over the processes than steering the predesignated course of this country's real but unseen navigators and occasionaly standing on the bow of this ship alerting us when either shoals or rocks or land is visible from his vantage point.
The presidency (and again this President in particualr) is not lacking, faulty or broken. The system is.
The hull of this ship called America has been breached for 100 years and it is all we as it's crew or any given president can do but to bail and pump so that we don't swamp completely. And the water rises with each decision, each bill and each term served by elected officials.

Until we as a nation recognize and accept this for the reality that it is, we can never hope to make the necessary repairations to stay afloat and perhaps once again set sail on our properly intended course because we have handed the helm over to privateers and mutineers who have as much to gain or more through our sinking as they do with our returning to a safe passage.

Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing

The audacity of my hope was that Obama would enter office with pen a-blazing and he would repair the damage that the past POTUS and CO had inflicted on this country, our gov't and the office.

While the reality of his term is turning out to do otherwise, that hope has diminished to a large degree, to the point where much to my disappointment and unfortunately, less to my surprise, he appears to be just a more palatable version of the same type of champion of the status quo that any person who rises to this level of office turns out to be. I can remain as patient as most of us who voted for him, but I have better things to do than continuously listen with my ear to the ground for the earth to shake and give way to the new dawn for America that many of us thought putting Barak Obama in the White House would bring.

I still wish him well. I just no longer expect very much from him.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Clinton Makes Personal Bid To Resume Mideast Talks

Some people feel we are holding Israel hostage with the funding we provide them with on a regular, ongoing, annual schedule.
Funny (and not in a "ha-ha"way) the term "hostage" is used.
Because that is exactly the image that comes to mind when I consider the plight of the people in Israel who are not Israeli and confined to Gaza.
I'm not talking about the radical fringe, extremists who keep lobbing primitive fireworks on other people.
I'm talking about the everyday Palestinian that would just like to go to work each day, enjoy basic amenities we all take for granted like fresh water, sanitation, hospitals, schools and electricity... and would simply like to earn a living and provide for their children and families....like we all do.
These people can no better stop the Hamas from doing the harm they do to Israel than we in America can do can stop our gov't from the damage it has been responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan for 8 years now. Quite certainly, they can do even less.

Perhaps, rather than having our Secretary of State beg to allow us to orchestrate their peace talks in Israel, we should accept the reluctance of that country for our services and withdraw our efforts and our contributions in the billions each year to their treasury as well.
What is the point of funding a people who refuse our efforts to help create peace when they insist that this accomplishment is beyond their own resources and obviously (as time has shown) they cannot accomplish this on their own?
It's one thing for us to come-a-courting with gifts and services, but do we need to do so as a spurned lover?
I don't think so. Not so much. It's too much.
About Hillary Clinton
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Seven Members Of House Defense Subcommittee Scrutinized By Ethics Investigators

Term limits, investigations, caving into industry pressures and approving multi-industrial bailouts to the point where it interfers and alters providing legislation in accordance with the will of the people on issues such as the use of our military, job creation, healthcare, the economy, credit and housing regulations (the list goes on) and the corruption of individual representative stemming from lobbyists as in this story creates a list of self serving pirates that gets longer every year. Over time, America as it was intended has experienced a silent yet totally effective coup.

Does anybody still believe there's any possible way this system will ever be fixed and made right again in any short order to save a sinking ship?

Electing a President (or a string of them) that promises change for the better, (even those with the best intentions) or sending any handfull of new Congress people to the Hill every cycle is not going to provide the needed cure for this patient called America.

Even holding the hope for a better America is becoming a scarce commodity in the face of the shape this government is in. And it has transformed (deteriorated) to such a degree, that it may never again be within the power of the American people to ever have the capital or influence to make it right again.

"Give me control over a nation's currency and I don't care who makes the laws.” ~ Mayer Rothschild~
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Inside The Tripper's Brain: Scientists Create 3D Maps Of Brains On Drugs (VIDEO)

I find it interesting that this video was every bit (or more) as much a piece of anti-hallucinogenic propaganda as it was (as announced) an information piece on the research being done in mapping the brain using hallucinogenics. It was not balanced in that only the negatives of the drug were highlighted to any real depth while the positives such as resultant individual consciousness expansion, the many positive uses it can and has been used for in the treatment of various psychiatric ailments and as a tool to help people release themselves from self destructive dependencies on substances such as alcohol. I am but a layman but I am an advocate of regulated use of certain types of pharmaceutical grade hallucinogenics being made available to the public for personal use in controlled environments and assisted by trained medical personnel in specially designed spa based clinics for the purpose of the occasional internal vacation which could vastly expand a person's view of the physical paradigm to the point where the average, everyday person's irrational fears, tensions and seemingly overwhelming daily obstacles could be reduced and exposed for the illusions they truly are.

Really, when you dig right down to the core of it, our society, culture, media, nationalism, politics, policies toward the world around us are all thier own form of hallucinogenics and illusion as things are, and having a cleansing alternative on occassion (under controlled conditions) would be an eye opening experience for anyone who has never experienced it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Feingold: No Public Option A "Strong Reason" Not To Support Reform

WHy the buzz?

Obama is either for it or against it but it's not in his hands at the moment.

If any bill for reform gets passed by the House and the Senate, Obama (if he's truly against it) can simply veto. If he signs it, it's law.

Either way, either the people get reform or Obama will face the consequences of killing the bill, a very hard thing for him to recover from after all these years of foot dragging from both sides of the aisle.

Then too, if Obama is even voicing opposition to reform at all, perhaps it's no maore than a face saving gesture so he can face his contibutors and honestly state that he did the best he could to oppose it on the Hill, whether he went through the motions for political purposes or not.

Bottom line?

Keep the pressure on the Senate and House for reform. And no matter what sort of buzz the media generates, remember, they as well as we only get half of any story until it's finalized.

So what happens prior to hitting the President's desk is all speculative. Until Obama signs or vetoes the reform bill, let's not count him out over the buzz created for "click counts", Neilsen ratings or paper circulation.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House's Fox News Boycott Attempt Prompts Network Revolt

In America the media can eliminate presidential candidates from scheduled nationwide televised debates based on whether or not the media considers any given candiate to be a credible contender or whether the media feels any candidate is or isn't electable, months before so much as a primary has been held.

No Problem.

But heaven forbid the White House elminate a "news source" from an interview that they consider less than credible and news worthy because of their obsession with blatant pontificating and base level, anti government, rabble rousing since January.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think they should have any sort of press block out against Fox or anyone else, but the perogative should be theirs under the circumstances and the nature of Fox News.

Just as Huff on occasion needs to rely on posting stories from the N.Y and Washington Times, People magazine and others, the news itself would have been available to FOx as well as everyone else that wasn't invited.

But the White House is spot on in their assessment of the caliber of genuine "news" that Fox brings to the public. And as such, if they wish to be included to events with the other news carriers, perhaps they should get in line and at least appear to be as legitimate in their delivery of the news of the day as the other journalists invited to the table.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Public Option? What is the Public Option?

I'm tellin' ya! This is scarey.
The people are so tired of hearing about HCR that they appear willing to just take whatever the Congress can sell us on as being "good enough" rather than us insisting that the best option is what they need make law and nothing less.

By the time this "Public Option" hits the table in it's final draft, it isn't going to look anything like what a lot of people think it's going to. It has purposly been made much more complicated than it need be, (or the Single Payer plan is) for just that sort of wiggle room so the politicans in Congress can equally appease the insurance industry while appearing to be serving "the people".

I am no expert on what the particulars are that were originally presented by "Public Option" or what they will ultimately turn into. But I can tell you what Single Payer is, by comparison. And it's not the game show that's taking place over and around the constant revisions of the Public Option as we told it might be.

Here's a link to the National Organization of Women web site where you can see at a glance the difference between Public Option and Single Payer.
You decide which offers the best and clearest plan to consider allowing Congress to settle upon on our behalf.

http://www.canow.org/.a/6a00e54ee7ad648834011570345bef970c-popup

Caught on Tape: Obama Adviser Explains How to Control Media

There is nothing here that compares to the last 8 years of press blackout that America has experienced or the draconian restrictions that the press were eager enough to give way to during that time.

Information blackouts on character and professional histories related to the President and Vice President, permissibl­e/allowabl­e questions provided for reporters before speeches and interviews, restricted coverage exclusively for favored imbedded reporters in Iraq, bans on photographs of so much as a flag draped coffin returning to the states, and networks cancelling "regular"programs and shows found to be questioning policy or leadership (Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect", for one).

It is necessary for any administration to develop a policy for themselves on how to interact with the press, especially with the wings of the press that regardless of leadership would care to paint a negative image of that administration. But developing a policy towards interacting with the press is far different than what preceded the Obama administration. It hasn't been until recently that journalism in America has even begun to once again address that their purpose is to inform and report to the people with out restraint.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Congressional Committees Quietly Kill Portion Of Derivatives Bill; No One Watching For Systemic Risk

This is starting to resemble the ol' razzle-dazle.

While the health care reform package is capturing everyone's attention, there's bill upon bill being whittled and stripped and made worthless regarding the banks and the necessary regulation of the money industries. Yesterday, a bill that makes 98% of the banks exempt from oversight, today it's more lieniency for derivitives and again exemptions of oversite in general.

There are a lot of consessions being made by our elected representatives in committee, on issues that demand no compromise.

The bailouts we were asked to afford these industries, appear to have gone to help several House and Senate members shore up their treasuries for future elections or God knows what. But not to aid the economy as yet and it's certainly doesn't appear that anyone in that crowd wants to stand behind enforcing the regulations that repairations to our economy demand.

So, while the health care reform continues to take center stage to Balloon Boy on one side and Beck crying on the other, keep your eyes on what's going on behind the Big Top.
That's where the real show stoppers are.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy

The beauty of this whole teabaggers movement is this, the tea party of historic fame was carried out by the Tories, or the "liberal" independence favoring colonists while the "conservative' or Whig party, which favored the monarchy of England over self rule we're opposed to demonstrations that opposed King George and often went out of their way to help the Brits bring the true people with the spirit to create this country in front of a British firing squad.

The humor is how the righties have absconded the whole tea party thing and the "we're the true patriots" cry, when to this very day, it's the Whig party that again opposes almost any progressive or forward moving idea that willl move this country into the future.
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Senate Health Care Bill Will Get Every Democrat's Vote, Says Baucus

Having this health care bill, as it is, meet with bipartisan approval isn't going to make it for for the needs of the people or the consumer protection required for an industry gone wild with gouging an already injured consumer base.

This needs to be a tripartite bill with the third party in approval being the American people. Over 65% of the people in multiple polls have favored a bill that includes a public option with no hard lines drawn, but a strong preference being shown for a single payer platform similar to other existing systems elsewhere.

President Obama must show resolve in which ever bill he either vetoes or signs into law based on our future as a nation capable of the intelligence and compassion to tend to its own as even many lesser nations do.

The passage of a compromise bill into law which will require an overhaul within a decade or so is not likely ever get the attention a second time that it has now and will remain broken and falling almost immediately.

It is our duty to remember which Representative or Senator that does not ultimately vote according to the will of the people and the best possible health care option available and make certain that their political careers come to an abrupt close in the very next election cycle. Unfortunately, this would include our President himself if he can not show the leadership to provide for the needs of the people on this issue.
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NY Times On McChrystal's Long War

Just a thought. Aside from the cost to our economy at this particualr time, Americans mind and efforts might best be put to entertaining how we can get the domestic terrorism off the streets of Chicago, L.A.. New York, Philadelphia, Miami...and almost every other major metropolis in this country rather thanin Afghanistan.

If you do a little research you'll find that the death rate from homicides and injury rates from assaults are staggeringly exponentially larger than those being experienced in Afhanistan and/or Pakistan. And while the Taliban, is perhaps, maybe, potentially threatening. The terror right here at home is ongoing and prevelent already.

Afghani people may require protection from their domestic terrors, but so do Americans, and to a much larger degree. Our primary alligence is supposed to be to our own nation not Afghanistan.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost