Hey, Kos, you're screwing up America!

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Tuesday June 21, 2005 · 11:31 AM PDT

2005/06/21 · 11:31

I mean, that's what the Right Wing News is telling me, and they wouldn't lie to me, would they?

http://www.rightwingnews.com/archives/week_2005_06_19.PHP#004006

You're more dangerous than Al Sharpton, Al Gore, and the Supreme Court, man. What's wrong with you?

47 blogs I've never heard of can't be wrong! Markos, you are one of the 20 people who screws with America the most, and I'd just like to say, "Knock off all that evil!"

-Jim

Republican Senator Tries to Kill Promising Clean Energy Project

herooftheday

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Monday June 20, 2005 · 11:59 AM PDT

2005/06/20 · 11:59

This story is actually some what near and dear to my heart, not for my passion for the subject, but because of one of the people involved. Senate Republicans, namely Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), are denying $141 million in funding to the National Ignition Facility, a project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California's Bay Area that has already had $2.8 billion invested in it over the years.

Essentially, the NIF is 152 big lasers that meet at one point to create one giant laser beam. The point of this project is to study the release of massive amounts of energy and to create fusion reactions without radioactive fallout. The project is near completion, and a lack of funds will push the project back by years. Read More

Petty tyrant

herooftheday

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Saturday June 18, 2005 · 7:42 PM PDT

2005/06/18 · 19:42

As an officer of government, Florida Governor Jeb Bush (Jeb. Who the hell names a child "Jeb?" That's child abuse that is.) is a complete waste of a sentient human. He's like a tiny bull terrier with a small lizard in its mouth. He shakes that hapless lizard and, when its tail pops off and the lizard flees, he proudly proclaims victory. His latest yappings come in the wake of the Terri Schiavo autopsy, a family tragedy he tastelessly inserted himself into and, when the courts smacked him on the nose with a roll of legal papers, he went yipping to his bigger brother for help. Read More

How will you shuffle off this mortal coil?

herooftheday

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Friday June 17, 2005 · 9:13 PM PDT

2005/06/17 · 21:13

When it's your time to go, what will have killed you?

Thanks to my good friend Buckminster, we now know what the CDC says:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/mortfinal2001_work250F.pdf

In President George W. Bush's America, you're more likely to die of hunger than terrorism.

I guess that means we won the war on terror. Can we all go home now?

-Jim

Cross-posted at Los Punditos.

Cover your ears...

herooftheday

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Wednesday June 15, 2005 · 9:52 AM PDT

2005/06/15 · 09:52

...this is going to get loud. Today's news wires are just brimming with stories that the Right Wing media will launch into orbit by sheer force of the ire and volume of the words they'll pack into them.

First off, we have the Terri Schiavo autopsy. The report confirms that, if you should ever need a diagnosis, don't send a videotape to Bill Frist, because he'll be wrong. Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state. According to the autopsy, all the anti-dignity crowd claims were wrong.

Schiavo died of dehydration, not a heart attack, and could not have ingested food or water fed to her by mouth. She was given no death-hastening agents, as alleged. Her brain was one-half the size it should have been. Among the degenerated areas was her visual cortex, which means there was no way she could have demonstrated visual tracking. Most important is the medical examiner's statement that, "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons." Read More

Voodoo economics endangers United States

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Monday June 06, 2005 · 1:58 PM PDT

2005/06/06 · 13:58

Deficit spending makes this country less secure. With it, we are more vulnerable to economic attack from other countries. The deficit spending and Bush tax cuts are creating an untenable economic position for the United States.

Deficit spending occurs when governmental expenditures exceed revenues. The tax cuts enacted in 2001 (the ones the Republicans would like to make permanent before they expire in 2010) meant that the government had less money to work with than under the last eight presidents before G.W. Bush. From Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan, tax revenue remained fairly consistent.

Under Bill Clinton's administration, revenue rose to a 20.8% share of GDP. This allowed Congress to enact "pay as you go" rules to government expenditures and to begin paying down the debt. Not only that, there were projected surpluses of $5.6 trillion over ten years by 2000. In that time, the U.S. could have paid off $2 trillion of its $3.6 trillion accumulated debt (treasury bills that would mature during this time). Read More

Fear is the mind killer.

herooftheday

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Friday June 03, 2005 · 3:16 PM PDT

2005/06/03 · 15:16

A reader, Dan, emailed me the other day in response to my diary "Today's youth". He asked me, essentially, why society had reached a point where children could behave so violently and with so little regard for others and what could be done about it.

I wish I had some easy answers and some quick fixes, but I don't. I don't think anyone does. But I do have some thoughts on where to begin.

The problem of youth violence and youth's hopelessness doesn't arise from a simple, easy to diagnose social indicator such as poverty, lack of a two-parent home, or being born out of wedlock. Violence and hopelessness can be seen across ethnic and socioeconomic strata. Nor is the problem solely lack of parental supervision or a "shiftlessness" in today's youth. All of these can be contributing factors, but I do not feel that they are the principal culprits. Read More

Sometimes I think I think too much...

herooftheday

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Thursday June 02, 2005 · 6:57 PM PDT

2005/06/02 · 18:57

I believe that every citizen should sit down and read the writings of our Founding Fathers. Not just the important documents, like the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, but their correspondence, journals, and other works. I have been indulging in this pasttime myself, off and on, for the last few years. It allows us to grasp more firmly the thoughts and intentions of the men whose decision-making forms the very basis for our system of government and social contract. One thing that becomes amazingly clear is how prescient they were. Read More

A tide of violence: Today's youth

herooftheday

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Wednesday June 01, 2005 · 12:23 PM PDT

2005/06/01 · 12:23

In the course of my practicum for the graduate program in social work at San Jose State University, I have been providing social work services to Silver Creek High, one of the high schools in San Jose, California's East Side Union High School District. I grew up in a school system only twenty minutes from the East Side, but worlds apart. Nothing I read in books or saw on television prepared me for working here. What I have seen and heard, just in the course of one school year, has completely reordered my world and opened my eyes to truths that no one can understand unless they see it or live it for themselves.

One of the services I provide Silver Creek is running an anger management class. In exchange for hopefully providing them with skills they will use, these students have taught me about the world they live in. It isn't a world I recognize. It is a world filled with violence and uncertainty. More, these teens have shown me just how much is wrong with the society they grow up in. Read More

No Embryo Left Behind

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Tuesday May 31, 2005 · 7:11 PM PDT

2005/05/31 · 19:11

Much hoopla and ballyhooing was made over the recent visit of 20 children to the White House. What made these children so worthy of our president's valuable time away from bike riding and clearing brush at his ranch was that each of these kiddies are the result of "rescuing" embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics.

The "rescued" embryos then go through an in-vitro fertilization process that they were passed over for in the first place. While the idea of selecting embryos that would otherwise be destroyed or remain in deep freeze when one's own efforts have failed is not objectionable in and of itself, the ends to which President Bush and his politicall allies would use these children are. You see, these kids were paraded in front of the public as a way of saying "See, all embryos can be life! You can't use them for stem cell research!" It was Bush's very public bitch-slap to Congress over their impending loosening of federal stem cell research funding rules that Bush himself tightened. Read More

Frothing Mad

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Tuesday May 31, 2005 · 6:43 PM PDT

2005/05/31 · 18:43

Oh, my Allah! Spread the word to the rest of the Conspiracy on your Lefty-phones! Someone be sure to call Osama! David Horowitz has found out about our unholy alliance to destroy America! Run for your caves, so that we may hate America from the confines of our refuge rather than a jail cell!