January 18, 2009
Are you depressed about the last eight years? Of course! But now that it’s ALMOST over, we can start looking back on it.
This is Keith Olbermann’s retrospective from the other night.
I can’t find the transcript, but it will be here when it does come up! 😦
August 22, 2007
Why does Fox News want us to have a war with Iran? Why do Americans let Fox News decide what is happening in our foreign policy? Why don’t they have to report real facts?
August 17, 2007
Think Progress has a post up called
and in it they have a list of questions that they want the talk show hosts to ask Rove. Here’s the list:
In addition to those, I think they should also ask him about these things:
What else would you ask him?
July 28, 2007
July 18, 2007
Reasons Not to Impeach & Convict President Bush
(Thanks to Blue Dragon & his mom for sending it to me.)
July 4, 2007
Olbermann is right. They should resign. But they don’t have the decency even for that.
June 7, 2007
Have you seen this story anywhere? If the media in the United States don’t publish and insist on talking about stories like this, how will the rest of us even know that our freedom is under attack? Where are the defenders of the Constitution? I read a LOT of news and listen to political talk radio, and I never heard about this incident until I read it on someone else’s blog. Video here.
Reporter Arrested on Orders of Giuliani Press Secretary Charged with Criminal Trespass Despite Protest of CNN Staff and Official Event Press Credentials at GOP Debate in New Hampshire
Aaron Dykes & Alex Jones / Jones Report | June 5, 2007
Manchester, NH – Freelance reporter Matt Lepacek, reporting for Infowars.com, was arrested for asking a question to one of Giuliani’s staff members in a press conference. The press secretary identified the New York based reporter as having previously asked Giuliani about his prior knowledge of WTC building collapses and ordered New Hampshire state police to arrest him.
Jason Bermas, reporting for America: Freedom to Fascism, confirmed Lepacek had official CNN press credentials for the Republican debate. However, his camera was seized by staff members who shut off the camera, according to Luke Rudkowski, also a freelance Infowars reporter on the scene. He said police physically assaulted both reporters after Rudkowski objected that they were official members of the press and that nothing illegal had taken place. Police reportedly damaged the Infowars-owned camera in the process.
Reporters were questioning Giuliani staff members on a variety of issues, including his apparent ignorance of the 9/11 Commission Report, according to Bermas. The staff members accused the reporters of Ron Paul partisanship, which press denied. It was at this point that Lepacek, who was streaming a live report, asked a staff member about Giuliani’s statement to Peter Jennings that he was told beforehand that the WTC buildings would collapse.
Giuliani’s press secretary then called over New Hampshire state police, fingering Lepacek.
April 25, 2007
For the first time since I watched Sesame Street regularly, I watched a PBS show for an hour and a half tonight and it was really wonderful. The show is BUYING THE WAR: and you can click the link to watch it, read the transcript, or comment on it.
According to PBS,
“Buying the War” examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what’s changed? “More and morethe media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration,” says THE WASHINGTON POST’s Walter Pincus. “We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own.”
I watched this while blogging with a group of adults who were also watching, and we all agreed that it was a great explanation of how the press didn’t do its job in questioning the reasons for the Iraq war, the intelligence about the Iraq war, or even the existence of protests against the war.
Knut Wicksell, one of the people I was blogging with said this:
“Bill Moyers is doing a great service to this nation by pointing out (a) that the war was sold by Goebbels-like propaganda, and (b) that the majority of the public were against it until they were subjected to it, and (c) that a large number of us demonstrated against it, but the press refused to cover.
“This war is a moral as well as a strategic catastrophe. We are unable to undo the strategic catastrophe and will simply have to live with the fact, with all its implications, which are many. But the moral ones can be saved just a little by the fact that many of us resisted. And Moyers is testifying to that resistance.”
I agree completely. Please go check out this great TV program.
Like most of my posts, this is cross-posted at Political Teen Tidbits and at YouThinkLeft.
April 17, 2007
You know how you keep hearing that 31% or so Americans still support Bush? And then you shake your head and ask yourself, “But WHY? Don’t they know any better?” Turns out …. they don’t!
Now these may not be exactly the same 31%, but it turns out that 31% of American adults do not know the name of the vice-President. Also, according to a Pew survey,
Told that Shia was one group of Muslims struggling
in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name “Sunni” as the other
key group.
The best of the findings though is that
those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Colbert Report.
Oh good grief! The news has gotten so bad that fake news on a comedy channel is better than the regular news.
Scariest thing? All those uninformed adults have the right to vote, and only one or two of the YouThinkLeft writers are old enough for that right. But we can all name Dick Cheney and tell you that the other group of Muslims in Iraq is the Sunni.
Like most of my posts, this is cross-posted at Political Teen Tidbits and at YouThinkLeft.
April 9, 2007
Ever get the feeling that George Bush is just a really big little boy playing with toy soldiers in a real war? If so … check this out.
If you can’t see the video, click here.
March 16, 2007
I am really glad that Disney has decided to have a black princess, but will she be allowed to rescue someone else and be strong like Pocahontas, or will she be like the white princesses and wait for a prince to rescue her?
Also, why isn’t she called an African-American Princess? Why Black?
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana
(AP) — The Walt Disney Co. has started production on an animated musical fairy tale called “The Frog Princess,” which will be set in New Orleans and feature the Walt Disney Studio’s first black princess.
The company unveiled the plans at its annual shareholders’ meeting in New Orleans.
John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Disney and the Disney-owned unit Pixar Animation Studios, said the movie would return to the classic hand-drawn animation process, instead of using computer animation that has become the industry standard. He called the film “an American fairy tale.”
“The film’s New Orleans setting and strong princess character give the film lots of excitement and texture,” Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook said.
The movie will be scored by Randy Newman, who also wrote the music for Disney’s “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Cars.”
Newman performed a song from the score for the shareholders.
John Musker and Ron Clements, who co-directed “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and “Hercules” will co-direct the movie. The pair also wrote the story for the film.
Disney said its new animated princess — Maddy — will be added to its collection of animated princesses used at the company’s theme parks and on consumer products.
The film is set for release in 2009.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Randy Newman and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
perform a song from the upcoming movie
“The Frog Princess.”
 |
| Find this article at:http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/15/disney.newprincess.ap/index.html |
March 4, 2007
There should be more stories like this, and the public should be more involved in helping the troops and their families. 365 deaths from just one military base!!!! And for what??? Why are we still in Iraq? The mission is over.
—-Freckles
Fort Hood support center: http://www.goldstarfamilysupport.org/
Army families: http://www.armyfamiliesonline.org/skins/WBLO/home.aspx
————————-
By DAVID CRARY 
AP National Writer
FORT HOOD, Texas — One of the first sights greeting visitors to Fort Hood is a day-care center’s playground, brightly colored evidence of the Army’s commitment to be family friendly.
A few blocks away is a more poignant symbol: an office building recently converted into a first-of-its-kind support center for women and children whose husbands and fathers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. From Fort Hood alone, the toll has passed 365.
|
This photo, provided by war widow Melissa Storey, shows Melissa with her 4-year-old daughter, Adela, Dec. 16, 2006, on a hotel balcony in Anaheim. Calif., where they were attending a holiday gathering for families of fallen service members. Melissa, whose husband, Army Staff Sgt. Clint Storey, was killed in Iraq last August, is pregnant with a son conceived during her last days with her husband. (AP Photo/Courtesy Melissa Storey) |
“It’s our sanctuary,” said Ursula Pirtle, whose daughter frequents a playroom at the center. Three-year-old Katie never met her father, Heath. He was killed in Iraq in 2003.
Over the past 15 years, America’s armed forces have taken huge strides to retain married service members — improving schools, health programs and child care. But now, as never before in this family-embracing era, the military is struggling with the toughest home-front problem of all: Doing right by the often outspoken and ever-growing ranks of the bereaved.
Of the 3,350 Americans who died in Iraq and Afghanistan through early January, 1,586 of them — 47.3 percent — were married. Those fallen warriors left behind 1,954 children, according to the Pentagon’s Manpower Data Center. More recent deaths have pushed that figure past 2,000.
Compared to the heavily draftee combat troops of the Vietnam war, today’s volunteer fighting force is older, more reliant on National Guard and Reserve citizen-soldiers, and more likely to be married.
And more so than their Vietnam counterparts, the new generation of bereaved spouses has been vocal — on their bases, at congressional hearings — in pressing for more compassionate, effective support.
It’s a constituency that politicians and generals do not want to alienate. The result has been numerous policy changes, ranging from improved benefits to better training for the officers who break the grim news of war-zone deaths. Even the Fort Hood support center materialized due to pressure from widows and their allies.
But the learning process is ongoing and the results are mixed.
“The war on terror has presented us with new challenges we haven’t seen before, in terms of number of casualties,” said an Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Kevin Arata. “We know we’re not perfect — there are things families have said we can do better, and we’ve listened to that.”
Interviews with a dozen widows at Fort Hood and across the country reveal varied experiences, but also some common bonds.
Across the board, the widows are proud of their husbands — even if they disagree on the wisdom of the Iraq war. Each woman is still grieving, and those with children have extra worries — financial and psychological — that extend far into the future.
Some are deeply grateful for the support provided by the military after their husbands’ deaths; others are critical. Among the common complaints — that notification and assistance officers were sometimes ill-informed or aloof, and that they were bounced through different parts of the military bureaucracy when seeking help.
“We have to have someone who knows what they’re talking about,” Pirtle said. “The blind-leading-the-blind system isn’t working out.”
February 7, 2007
Tonight, the CW network will air an episode of Veronica Mars that is based on misleading right-wing claims about contraception. The show is about a young woman named Veronica Mars, who is both a college student and a part-time private investigator. This week, Veronica is hired by Bonnie, “a promiscuous classmate, to find out who secretly slipped her the morning after pill, causing her to have a miscarriage“:
The basis for tonight’s Veronica Mars episode is more than just an innocent factual error. It dangerously confuses the facts on women’s health and furthers incorrect right-wing claims.
The morning-after pill — also known as Plan B — is not an abortion drug. It is a form of emergency contraception that when “taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, the two-pill series can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent.” It cannot cause a miscarriage. Plan B works only when taken before a woman becomes pregnant.
While Plan B is now available over the counter to women ages 18 and older, it comes after three years of political stonewalling by the Bush administration. In 2003, a panel of independent advisers told the FDA that it “overwhelmingly backed nonprescription sales [of Plan B] for all ages.” But the Bush administration interfered and blocked Plan B sales in a pander to the right wing, which argues that the drug increases promiscuity. (See the real facts here.)
Veronica Mars is extremely popular among young women, the very women who need accurate health information. E-mail Paul Hewitt, CW’s Director of Publicity, and tell him that CW needs to correct its information on emergency contraception.
UPDATE: In tonight’s episode, Bonnie makes clear that a friend slipped her RU-486, the abortion pill. But as of the show’s airing, CW’s website still lists the morning after pill as the cause of the character’s miscarriage.
Here’s the clip, provided by my good friend Daniel at I remember when I lost my mind.
Episode Number: 56 Season Num: 3 First Aired: Tuesday February 6, 2007
—-Freckles
Political Teen Tidbits 
August 19, 2007
Watch this Ad for Equal Marriage Rights
Posted by Cassie Frequelz under Commentary, current events, health care, LGBT, Liberal, Political, Politics, Progressive, TV1 Comment
This is from NJ but I like it a lot. Why shouldn’t everyone have the same marriage rights?