Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and broadminded, the other intolerant and narrow-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND BROADMINDED USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, et al reside in the other America!
I have always hated when Daylight Savings Time ended, marking the beginning of cold weather and worse the beginning of the 5:00 shadow of gloom. Like a lot of people I need sun to maintain some level of sanity pure and simple. But year after year we must endure the end of October, beginning of November melancholy because we have no say in it.
I stumbled across this article which appears to be in agreement with me but on a scientific level. Maybe the time has come to end turning back the clocks come the season of Halloween (Isn't it ironic that earlier darkness befalls around Halloween?), allowing us one more full hour of precious light. thinkingblue
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For 2010, the ‘Daylight Saving Time’ (DST) for
Americans and Canadians is set to end on November 7. DST is the practice of going fast forward in time. Do not get flummoxed, clocks in US and Canada are advanced temporarily so that afternoons get a larger share of daylight and the mornings get way less. DST is an energy conservation exercise where usually, clocks are advanced by about an hour at the onset of spring and are then adjusted backward when fall approaches.
Please sign this very important petition "demand question time" (of our political leaders) HERE.. We really need more dialog from those at the top... The Republicans have got to be made to realize they can't hide behind "NO" any longer! thinkingblue
The Way We Forget Sunday 17 October 2010 by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
This country of ours has a monstrous capacity to forget. We are able to forget - if we ever knew - what happened two hundred years ago, one hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years ago. Worse, we are able to forget what happened one year ago, last month, last week, and even yesterday. We forget, we ignore, we refuse to know, and in our deliberate ignorance are found the seeds of further destruction, widely sown and also to be forgotten.
It has been made far too clear that our national amnesia certainly extends over the last two years. After an era of Republican rule that saw vast economic collapse, the abrogation of basic rights, the trashing of Constitutional law, two decade-long wars that still have no end in sight, a catastrophic terrorist attack that could have been prevented, the virtual annihilation of a major American city that could have been prevented, and the theft and waste of trillions of dollars, every available poll appears to indicate that the American people have already forgotten all about it, and are perfectly ready to let the wolves back inside the fence. MORE HERE
It’s not just that Americans can so easily forget, they also have priority defaults. TOO MANY, have a one tract way of thinking that determines their reality. TOO MANY, have been indoctrinated into believing that one particular political party is good for the nation even though this party has almost destroyed our Nation. What an easy job for the leaders of that party, they throw out the red-meat of fear and hate to their followers and capture their lack of reality based knowledge, hook, line and sinker, which, without a doubt, makes these followers vote against their own best interests.
If you don't believe this just read some of the "Republican Pillars Of Society" rhetoric ...
Sen. Tom Coburn's macabre warning to seniors that if health care reform gets implemented they were going to "die sooner"...
Georgia Congressman Paul Broun's comments that the health bill would make insurance cards as "worthless as the Confederate dollar." (Just for good measure Broun characterized the push for reform as a "War of Yankee Aggression.")
Rush Limbaugh - “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
Glenn Beck, on President Obama - ''This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture....I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.''
Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama's health care - "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil...
- Pat Robertson - "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
There is so much hate and fear spewing from the lips of Republicans that it's impossible to cover it all. So IMAO it's not just that Americans can so easily forget (especially those who call themselves right-wing) they can't seem to throw off the shackles of indoctrination soooo therefore their party can do no wrong even when the wrong they’ve done has been devastating! thinkingblue
Chilean Miners Were Rescued But The Truth Remains Entombed
I watched Chris Matthews’ of Hardball Fame while he reported on the beginning Rescue Operations of the Chilean Miners, until it had gotten so laden with gobbledygook that I couldn’t take it any longer and turned the channel. When Matthews (trying so hard to fill time) started in with a spiel about how the miners came from generational mining families and even went so far as to say something like… These miners come from families with a long tradition of mine work. It’s in their blood, handed down from father to son (paraphrasing)… Actual quote below:
MATTHEWS: “Let‘s talk
about the culture of the miner. You know, I grew up with it only in the movies, basically, “How Green Was My Valley” and the guys, the old Welsh coal miners going underground in terrible conditions. And today, of course, still in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, you‘ve got that tradition of guys going down there, coming up with their faces covered with soot and having to take a shower, and obviously, that bonding that goes on. But the guts it takes just to go down there every morning with your lunch bucket and your light on your helmet—what is that about? Is it a certain kind of person? Is it inherited from father and son, the guts that it takes to be a working guy a mile or so beneath the surface of the earth 40 hours week?”
All I could manage to mumble, before I turned to something more interesting like an “All in the Family” rerun was… Holy baloney, where is this man coming from? These miners are down deep in the Earth digging for metals to help make the rich, richer… BECAUSE... It’s a damn job and they do it to put food on their family table. They risk their lives because the Chilean government is in cahoots with the corporate world and allow (with little or no regulation) the corporatehoodlums to get away with unsafe practices so they can accumulate more wealth and more power. (sound familiar?)
The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a facade.
The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and is the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile's gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile's privatized mines. The San Jose mine, where the trapped men work, became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed - but not for long. On 30 July last, a labor department report warned again of "serious safety deficiencies," but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed.
What a world we live in where truth is chewed up, spit out and swept under the proverbial carpet so that those at the top of the heap can stay up there and paint reality any which way they wish; while those who live at the bottom, in a real world of victimhood, are subjugated by those who hold all the keys.
If you would rather read some bitter truth instead of being spoon-feed sugarcoated BS by the media, read the rest of this startling article HERE. thinkingblue
PS: I am thrilled that the miners were rescued, one of my favorite fables is THE ONE LITTLE STARFISH story, which goes something like this:
One morning an elderly man was walking on a nearly deserted beach. He came upon a boy surrounded by thousands and thousands of starfish. As eagerly as he could, the youngster was picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean.
Puzzled, the older man looked at the young boy and asked, "Little boy, what are you doing?"
The youth responded without looking up, "I'm trying to save these starfish, sir."
The old man chuckled aloud, and queried, "Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?"
Holding a starfish in his hand, the boy turned to the man and, gently tossing the starfish into the water, said, "It will make a difference to that one!"
Until our species can escape the Greed that grips it, inhumanity towards one another will sadly continue.
Please sign this very important petition "demand question time" (of our political leaders) HERE.. We really need more dialog from those at the top... The Republicans have got to be made to realize they can't hide behind "NO" any longer! thinkingblue
For sure the USA is being possessed by devils... and these devils are all inside a little cabal called THE TEA PARTY... It would not be so bad if they would just stay to themselves but NOOOOOOOOOOO, they have to try and make us all adhere to their insane schemes. I thought when George Dubya Bush was no longer at the helm; it would mean a return to sanity... SANITY? I don't even know the meaning of that word anymore. Firefighters watching someone's house burn down because he didn't pay the city $75???
What's next, COPS STANDING AROUND, NOT LIFTING A FINGER WHILE WATCHING SOMEONE BEING MURDERED... I can hear their voices now... "Hey, what can I do, the victim didn't pay his $75 protection fee to the city?" Sounds like a return to yesteryear’s EXTORTION PLOTS.
– 1920's - 1940's Street gangs would threaten to burn down a shopkeeper's store if he didn't pay them a certain number of dollars every week. Store owners would usually come up with the cash because mob gangs were fat, hulking, unbelievably ugly men who had divots the size of peach pits in their face. Each gang owned a particular "turf," a section of the city that contained all the abandoned warehouses along the coastline. Coastline property was highly prized back then, as it allowed easy access to dump dead bodies … From this site: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/history-street-gangs.php
Ahhh, a return to the good old days! thinkingblue
PS: Most of the time, THE GOOD OLE DAYS, were usually not so good and quite scary. But today I don't know what's worse THE EVIL DAYS OF YESTERYEAR or TODAY'S CLOUDS OF TWISTED TEABAG ABSURDITY...?
Posted on October 4, 2010, Printed on October 7, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148407/
Thanks to 30 years of right-wing demagoguery about the evils of “collectivism” and the perfidy of “big government” -- and a bruising recession that’s devastated state and local budgets -- we’re getting a peek at a dystopian nightmare that may be in our not-too-distant future. It’s a picture of a society in which “rugged individualism” run amok means every man for himself.
Call it Ayn Rand’s stark, anti-governmental dream come true, a vision that last week turned into a nightmare for Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground. According to the local NBC TV affiliate, Cranick “said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.”
The fire chief could have made an exception on the spot, but refused to do so. Pressed by the local NBC news team for an explanation, Mayor David Crocker said, “if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.” MORE HERE
With all that you hear today from the Tea Party, about Pulling Up Your Own Bootstraps and Government should not be involved with citizen Safety Nets, etc., etc., etc., it kind of makes you feel like we’ve all been kidnapped and taken to a faraway place called The Land Of LA LA, doesn’t it? I wonder what will happen to all those who clamor “if you're not tough enough or smart enough to make it by yourself... YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN BUDDY...” (From This Site) when someday they will need to retire because they are too old or too sick to work? Will they regret their LUNACY? You bet your Pea-Picken Life, they will!
Here's a video of the Keith Olbermann interview with Gene Cranick victim of a horrible rural policy within the South Fulton Fire Department, that orders firefighters to watch a home burn to the ground if the homeowner didn’t pay a $75 city fee ... I guess the new Tea Party chant will become "BURN BABY BURN!" Hmmm, where have I heard that before? thinkingblue
"The mission of the South Fulton Fire Department is to protect the lives and property of its citizens..."
AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? A saying from the Bible's story of Cain and Abel. After Cain had murdered his brother Abel, God asked him where his brother was. Cain answered, “I know not; am I my brother's keeper?”
Cain's words have come to symbolize people's unwillingness to accept responsibility for the welfare of their fellows — their “brothers” in the extended sense of the term. The tradition of Judaism and Christianity is that people do have this responsibility. (See Good Samaritan, Love thy neighbor as thyself)
Please sign this very important petition "demand question time" (of our political leaders) HERE..We really need more dialog from those at the top... The Republicans have got to be made to realize they can't hide behind "NO" any longer! thinkingblue
Please watch this video and witness what a real genuine rally looks like. A rally round the working man. Not a rally for Bigotry, for War and for Corporate Interests. The first thing you will notice is, that the crowds consists of all people not just those of European descent. Another difference from the Tea Party rally is the tone, it is one of common sense and sanity. I feel proud when I see courageous souls cheering for the common, hard working everyday folk and I feel proud to belong to a mindset of reason.
The Tea Party makes no sense at all when they applaud Corporate Interests and clamor, down with the safety nets for those of us (including most who call themselves Tea Partiers) living on the edge.
Take a moment or two and view the determination of a people who care, not only for themselves, but for all human beings. A far cry from the Glenn Beck assemblage, FOR SURE! thinkingblue
Please sign this very important petition "demand question time" (of our political leaders) HERE.. We really need more dialog from those at the top... The Republicans have got to be made to realize they can't hide behind "NO" any longer! thinkingblue
Here's a challenge for you on a Sunday Morning... How will you fair? I consider myself A-theist and did manage to score a 23... So I fall into the category of Atheists, Agnostics, Jews and Mormons who seem to get the highest scores in the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. thinkingblue
PS: To all those out there who consider themselves "religious" and claim the USA was founded on "Christianity" yet scored less than 16; you might want to get yourself a little education on the religions of the world, it may help you understand your own and our country just a little better.
--- Are you smarter than an atheist? A religious quiz
Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups in a 32-question survey of religious knowledge by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. On average, Americans got 16 of the 32 questions correct. Atheists and agnostics got an average of 20.9 correct answers. Jews (20.5)and Mormons (20.3). Protestants got 16 correct answers on average, while Catholics got 14.7 questions right.How will you do on the quiz? Write down your answers as you go.
* Some might disagree with Pew's characterization of atheism and agnosticism. Strictly speaking, atheism is the belief that God does not exist. Agnosticism, a term coined in 1869 by English biologist T.H. Huxley, is the belief that the existence of God is unknowable.
26) C - Someone who is unsure whether God exists
25) A - Bethlehem
24) C - Sometime after 1800
23) A - The Americas
22) A - The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ
21) A - Only Protestants
20) B - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
19) A - Job
18) C - Moses
17) E - Abraham
16) B -Catholic
15) C -Buddhist
14) D - Mormon
13) B - Jewish
12) B - The government shall neither establish a religion nor interfere with the practice of religion
Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and
free-thinking, the other intolerant and close-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND FREE-THINKING USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh et al reside in the intolerant America!
