Friday, November 02, 2012

Jeremy Nixon and Alexander Higgins on #Sandy and #Romney

TWO REPORTS FROM SURVIVORS OF SANDY:

Christine M Nava writes:

"My nephew, Marc Mendoza, shared Jeremy Nixon's post with me on Google +1. Jeremy (in pic) is living in the disastrous Jersey Shore. Here's his message re Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney. This is a wake up call, people! I'm talking to those who have no intentions of voting and to those who intend on voting for Romney.
Jeremy Nixon
"I live at the Jersey Shore. Did you see Brian Williams of NBC reporting from the hardest-hit area? That's where I live. The area has been devastated. Entire towns were destroyed. There are mile-long lines for gasoline at the few stations that have any. I'm hearing a lot of people in other parts of the country complaining that people shouldn't “politicize” this natural disaster, and I have one thing to say to them:

Shut up. 
Just shut the hell up. There's an election next week, and this is politics. Now is exactly the right time to point out that we have one candidate who wants to eliminate or cut FEMA (it depends on which day you ask him), who thinks the states should handle this stuff themselves, who thinks disaster relief should be a for-profit enterprise. One candidate who said that it is “immoral” to borrow money to help disaster victims. One candidate whose idea of “small government” is to leave people to fend for themselves.

Mitt Romney staged a photo op pretending to collect canned goods to send to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. His staff spent a few grand at Walmart and handed out cans for people to be photographed handing back, and he got his picture taken picking up boxes of stuff. What a jackass.

Remember when Paul Ryan got his picture taken pretending to volunteer at a homeless shelter? At least the thing he was pretending to do would be good if other people actually did it. The Red Cross neither needs nor wants your canned goods. All that does is create a logistical problem to transport the items. They don't accept that kind of donation because it doesn't help.

More to the point, we don't need your canned goods. Canned goods? Really? Do you think we don't have grocery stores out here? We have more canned goods than we could ever possibly need. How clueless can you be and still be seen as a viable candidate for president?

What we need is power. We need the lines and transformers and substations fixed. We need a more resilient infrastructure. And we need gasoline, very badly – but fixing the power will take care of that, too.

Mitt Romney thinks the states should take care of all of this themselves. He thinks New York City should be pumping out its own subway tunnels. He thinks the president shouldn't have brought FEMA to New Jersey with him, or sent those Navy ships to land the helicopters on. He thinks the power companies whose services go out every time it rains need less regulation. He thinks the market should be left to deal with the cleanup. He compared it with his experience cleaning up a school football field after a celebration. And he thinks what we really need is some canned soup.

Heckuvajob Brownie – remember him, from Katrina? – said the president responded to Hurricane Sandy too quickly. That's the Republican philosophy in action. Need to rebuild your home? Borrow money from your parents!

Meanwhile, Romney ignores questions from reporters about his intentions for FEMA. His party insists that disaster relief funding requires offsets. And now they're attacking our Republican governor, Chris Christie, for doing his job and working with the president to help the people of his state, rather than adhering to the Republican religion. We're all very grateful that Gov. Christie doesn't adhere to that religion.

But Mitt Romney does, and Paul Ryan does, and the party in general does. No state has the resources to deal with this kind of thing, and privatizing it would be despicable. We live in a society; let's act like it. Let's elect people who act like it. Not people who stage photo ops pretending to do things that won't help anyway.

Meanwhile, if you want to help, we don't need your old clothes or your dusty cans of cream of mushroom soup. Text “redcross” to 90999 to make a $10 donation."
Both Marc and Jeremy are on FB and Google +1 if you'd like to friend them."
====

Another guy put it even more bluntly:

The Bullshit Detector Generation

DEVELOPING THOUGHT: why is is that elderly people, presumably gifted with a lifetime of experience, are as a group so bad at seeing through bullshit?

We may be seeing a generational shift in where people get information and how actively they seek it out. Older people rely on having information handed to them, on TV, maybe in newspapers. If they're really active, they buy a magazine. All these are top-down information sources, and very corporatist; they don't encourage questioning. The Romney campaign knows if they just repeat lies, passive people will accept them. In contrast, younger people are used to factchecking, possibly because technology makes it possible. They are ... within the limitations of their experience ... just better at detecting bullsh1t!

Thursday, November 01, 2012

A Fact Checking Revolution?

Happy Thought:
Fact-Checking is the new normal.
In the past, politicians could say anything at all, and it was hard to compare their claims to the truth.
Today, it's easy and, more to the point, it is popular.
I have no idea how this particular election will turn out, but the normalization of fact-checking, instead of settling for authoritative pronouncements by centralized media, has got to be positive.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

#Romney Method Of Disaster Relief

PROJECT GOAL:
Help disaster survivors on the East Coast.
PROCEDURE
(None of this is made up; this is the actual plan as executed!)
1. Go to Dayton, hundreds of miles away
2. Buy $5,000 of stuff that they don't need
3. Truck the stuff to a political rally
4. Unload the trucks
5. Announce that people can donate the stuff by "giving" it to you (you know, the stuff that is already yours because you bought it!)
6. Take lots of pictures of yourself loading the trucks you just unloaded
7. Maybe drive that stuff to the East Coast from Dayton, passing hundreds of warehouses in Ohio and Pennsylvania already loaded with stuff; or maybe not. Who knows?
8. MOST IMPORTANT: Do NOT Talk To Reporters!!!
9.  Expect people to think this shows you're a good leader.
DID I MISS ANYTHING?
----
Another way of putting it:

Monday, October 29, 2012

4freeCLE: Your Free CLE Newsletter! October 28, 2012

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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Pondering The Biblical Definition Of Marriage


I am worried to discover that traditional, biblical marriage includes polygamy; the dangers of multiple mothers-in-law cannot be overstated. Also marriage between people of differing nationalities is forbidden (Ezra 9:12) so my father and mother were never married biblically! Worst of all: women have the marital DUTY of hauling the water, so why have I been watering the garden?

Should I file a state referendum or constitutional amendment to BLOCK those who want to REDEFINE marriage into a monogamous, cross-cultural, male-garden-watering ABOMINATION???

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http://www.rebjeff.com/1/post/2012/5/what-does-the-bible-say-about-marriage-what-should-we-say.html?