What’s different between Obama and the McCain-Palin ticket? This video explains it and will make you laugh too.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/1/12647/0809/711/616610
Opt-out of junk mail and phone solicitations
We need to balance respect for the environment, and individual privacy, against company’s needs to promote their products and services. Allowing the expensive waste of natural resources (trees and oil) used to produce and deliver useless mail which gets tossed in the trash without anyone ever looking at it, also encourages large-scale pollution of our environment. Moving unwanted junk mail makes a huge impact on erosion of the ozone layer and the quality of the air we breathe.
Opt-out of catalogue mail
There are several services you can now use to opt-out of junk catalogue mail.
US Attorneys firing tied to surveillance debate?
A colleague alerts me that illegal wiretapping began before 911, and I located a well-written article on this very subject at Truthout. Truthout is a great resource for well-documented articles on matter which doesn’t get looked at in depth in the major news media outlets.
The NSA’s vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.
Sold out for $8359.00. Are we worth more?
Congress last week reversed its March decision to not allow immunity to telecomunications providers who have allowed phone wiretapping without court orders and voted to approve S2248, the FISA Amendment Act 2008. The senate vote is expected as soon as today. Yesterday a test vote showed strong support in the senate to approve the FISA bill with the amendment granting immunity to telecom providers for 6 years of wiretapping without the knowledge or approval of a secret court which was set up expressly for the purpose of reviewing and approving applications for surveillance.
Unlawful restraint still outlawed in America
In the majority ruling on the right of Guantamo prisoners to have their day in court to challenge the legality of their arrest, Kennedy writes:
The Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom.
I love that statement. To be free, a person cannot be subject to unrightful restraint.
Glen Greenwald expands on the supreme court decision at Salon.
I keep telling people, Aspartame is death
I came across this informed article on the dangers of aspartame. Stop imbibing this poison!
BRAIN CELL DAMAGE FROM
AMINO ACID ISOLATES:
A PRIMARY CONCERN FROM ASPARTAME-BASED
PRODUCTS AND ARTIFICIAL SWEETENING AGENTS
NutraSweet ~ Equal ~ “Sugar Free” ~ Neotame
By James Bowen, M.D.
And
Arthur M. Evangelista, former FDA Investigator
(c) 06 May 2002
FORWARD
This article is an accumulation of long-standing intensive research into the brain chemistry-altering effects of a toxic, artificial sweetener consumed daily by hundreds of millions of unsuspecting individuals.
Hillary, not the assassination card! That’s low, even for you.
Dave Winer writes
Her political career is over”
Strike 4. Suggesting she should stay in the race because Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in 1968.Too much benefit of the doubt. Bringing assassination into political discourse as an “issue” is too much . . . Screwing around with life and death is over the top.
So true, Dave. I found a video clip of Hillary’s comment here. I think she realized as soon as she said it, that she’d gone where no candidate ought to go, but it was done.
The world is singing to us [a real song]
. . . scientists now say the planet itself is generating a constant, deep thrum of noise. No mere cacophony, but actually a kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can’t really fathom it, so low it can’t be heard by human ears, chthonic roars churning from the very water and wind and rock themselves, countless notes of varying vibration creating all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops, “like dozens of lazy hurricanes,” as one writer put it.
eBay Overwhelm! Coming next to your home?
The link Raymmmondo posted this morning on a local give-away list [like freecycle, but not] brings me to his websitepackratmom.com where he starts off telling his mother’s eBay saga with the phrase, “My mother is insane.” Raymmmondo proves that statement with pictures showing every room in the house where he lives with his mom overflowing – just filled to bursting point – with boxes, paperweights, dead plants, empty bird cages and a few years of saved junk mail. Everything, bought from eBay.
Obama told the truth. Thanks, Hillary, for pointing that out to us.
On Twitter Dave Winer mentioned that Obama was calling Pennsylvanians’ – and the nation’s – attention to the fact that it’s true that rural American people are angry and bitter as a result of patiently waiting 25 years for politicians they elect to stop selling them out and help them get their lives and their jobs back. I guess Obama became one of my heroes twice this weekend, because he told a really uncomfortable truth about American politics and refused to back off it. Then he admitted he was wrong for having made a poor choice of words when he originally made the statement.
Hillary lashes out and covers up, way too often.
Carl Bernstein wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, and this week he published an article about her presidential campaign. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the article. It’s well worth reading.
It happens that Mark Penn, the campaign manager Hillary recently fired, is the brother of a guy who was my physician for a long time. Deane Penn retired from practice maybe two years ago, but for many years I knew him as a thoroughly decent person, a committed activist in the Jewish community and an excellent doctor. Dr. Penn always referred to his brother’s work as one of the nation’s major pollsters, with great pride.
Seton Hall Law files immigrant abuse suit against Feds
Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice and Lowenstein Sandler, PC, filed suit today in federal court, alleging that federal law enforcement officials violated the ten victims’ constitutional privacy and due process rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by entering their homes without consent or a judicial warrant during pre-dawn “raids”.
. . . immigration agents forced their way into each plaintiff’s home in the early hours of the morning without a judicial warrant or the occupants’ consent. Most of the plaintiffs were awakened by loud pounding on their doors and answered the door, fearing an emergency. ICE agents subsequently either lied about their identity or purpose to gain entry, or simply shoved their way into the home. During each raid the agents swept through the house and, displaying guns, rounded up all the residents for questioning. In some cases they ordered children out of their beds, shouted obscenities, shoved guns into residents’ chests, and forbade detained individuals from calling their lawyers. In at least half the raids, the officers purported to be searching for a person who did not even live at the address raided.
Singulair linked to suicide, depression
Since last October, Singulair allergy and asthma medication labels have warned that the drug is linked to, “suicidal thinking and behaviour.” The Wall Street Journal reports:
Singulair, made by Merck & Co., is approved to treat asthma and allergy symptoms such as sneezing and stuffy noses, as well as to prevent exercise-induced asthma. The FDA said in a so-called early communication that it is reviewing postmarketing reports of behavior and mood changes, suicidal thoughts and actions, and actual suicides by patients who took Singulair. The regulator also asked Merck to look at its own database for signs of trouble.
Dolphin rescues stranded whales
Moko the dolphin came to the rescue on Wednesday of a whale and her calf in New Zealand who were in danger of death. The pygmy sperm whales beached themselves several times while rescue personnel tried to find a way to guide them safely back out to sea.
“They kept getting disorientated and stranding again,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers. “They obviously couldn’t find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea.”
Then along came Moko, who approached the whales and appeared to lead them as they swam 200 yards along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.
New stove design fights global warming
Bob Crosby is putting years of experience in mechanical engineering and appropriate technologies to good use. He’s going to build a wood-burning stove that helps fight global warming …
Crosby said his stove will produce heat while providing fuel for cars, fertilizer for gardens and electricity for its own bellows.
A key fact scientific fact makes this possible.
Wood itself doesn’t burn. When exposed to extreme heat, wood gives off biogas, which subsequently burns. While these two occurrences typically happen in conjunction, this doesn’t need to be the case.