Super. . .

(from wikipedia.com)
"Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! ("Look! Up in the sky!" "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "It's Superman!")... Yes, it's Superman ... strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman ... who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way! And now, another exciting episode, in the Adventures of Superman!"


Unfortunately for we who live in 2013 American, 'truth, justice and the American way' is now an oxymoron.

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Fishy? . . .

Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of destroying evidence in the Deepwater Horizon case and in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice pay a fine of US$200,000 and a three-year probation period. In turn, the Department of Justice will not pursue further criminal prosecution of the company for any conduct relating to case.

Oh, and Halliburton made a voluntary contribution of $55 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The plea agreement is subject to court approval.

Does something smell fishy to YOU???!!!

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Can you find. . .

. . . the least sharpest. . .

 

I found one. 

I have a day-to-day calendar called "S is for Stupid" by Leland Gregory which displays one factual and truly stupid fact for each day of the year.  Very amusing.  Sometimes controversial.  ALWAYS stupid.

While driving home from an Oho rehearsal the other night, I spotted something that could very well qualify for the cover of the day-to-day calendar "S is for Stupid".  At least it appeared stupid to me in its imprecision as well as its chauvinism. I really don't know what the man was trying to tell me.  I also do not believe he is a member of the Green or the Justice political parties.

I don't recall the exact punctuation, but the message, appearing on the spare-tire cover mounted at the rear of an SUV stated:

      "Women, Guns, Freedom - America"

I believe I will be writing to Leland Gregory very soon.

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Shooting. . .

. . . ourselves. . . 

(from http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/18/opinion/brazile-democracy-in-danger/index.html?iid=article_sidebar) Donna Brazile says our democracy is endangered.  ". . . Not by the Russians, North Korea, the Iran regime, or even terrorists. To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us. . . "

Knee-jerk partisanship rules. Abraham Lincoln said, "From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never...No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide."

People must go back to talking to people. It's okay to disagree.  Just disagree civilly.  The IRS debacle, the Department of Justice's tapping of reporters' phones and the congressional investigation of Benghazi all illustrate the danger of NOT talking, really talking.

We all need to stay focused on facts, causes and solutions. The inspector general himself said that it was bureaucratic mismanagement and no evidence of any political motivation or influence from outside the IRS that brought about the first of the three.  The focus must shift to solutions.

Leaked White House e-mails allegedly showing a coverup of a terrorist attack in Benghazi were actually shown to be altered.

The Department of Justice secretly obtained phone records of reporters as the result of a serious security leak. In short, Obama is not in charge.

Both Democrats and Republicans have misused and abused their constitutional powers. In a nutshell, Donna Brazile says, in her quite convincing way, that we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

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Outlaws. . .

 (from IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS;  HOW THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM COLLIDED WITH THE NEW POLITICS OF EXTREMISM by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein)

". . . A new law that flatly outlaws the super PACs would be the best route.  But as  the DISCLOSE Act vote in the 111th Congress shows, passing any campaign reform law without sixty Democrats in the Senate and a Democratic majority in the House is next to impossible.  Also close to impossible would be reform of the FEC or a new set of commissioners, at least as long as Mitch McConnell remains Senate Republican Leader;  he has made it clear that protecting the FEC as it now exists, that is, as a lawless agency, is a top priority for him.  As Public Citizen's Craig Holman has noted, "[McConnell] is really the whole key to the FEC. . . . He realized several years ago that a very effective way to minimize the effect of federal laws is to undermine the regulator."  So absent a recess appointment strategy on the part of the president, the government has to look for other options to provide disclosure and prevent brazen and illegal coordination.  As a first option, the Justice Department could prosecute violations of the coordination bans in cases where the brazen behavior has been most evident.  Justice does not need to wait for the FEC. . . "

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Short, but potent . . .

. . . here’s a short list of what is really wrong with our economy:

*An economy that concentrates wealth with the top 1%, perpetuated by false claims that the system fosters production and creates jobs

*An all-out attack on unions to destabilize them and drive down workers’ income and benefits

*A refusal to provide healthcare to all Americans through a single-payer healthcare system

*A disinterest in educating our children and a shift of the cost of an education onto students—over $1 trillion in college loan debt

*A refusal to acknowledge overwhelming environmental scientific data and to take the steps necessary to move to a green economy and oil independence

With such blatant disregard for the people’s interests, outraged Americans are questioning the corporate-controlled two-party system and have begun to look for an alternative.

(from The Justice Party - https://fundly.com/justiceparty)

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Control . . .

. . . in the name of WHAT? . . .

 Susan Reimer, columnist of the Baltimore Sun wrote the other day about the Catholic church. She wrote about birth control pills being forbidden, opposition to any legal standing for gay people, even opposition to their own nuns' spending too much time on social justice issues and not enough time pounding home the message about birth control and abortion.

And now, the case of Amanda Dougherty.  Anna, a student at a Catholic high school outside Philadelphia, had the dress, the shoes, the ticket and the guy for her junior prom. Until the guy backed out. She was determined to pin a smile on her face and go anyway, to have fun with her friends. Healthy attitude right?  Wrong!  The school and the archdiocese told her that she couldn't go without a date. "For them to say that we're not good enough to go unless we have a guy standing next to us, it's just kind of sickening," Amanda told a CBS reporter. In a statement, Catholic school officials said there were plenty of high school events a student could attend without a date, "but we view the prom as a special social event where a date is required to attend."

And an Indiana teacher at a Catholic school found that her contract had not been renewed after she asked for some time off to pursue a second in vitro fertilization. When Emily Herx of Fort Wayne pointed out that her supervisor not only knew of her first attempt but was praying for its success, and that no embryos were destroyed or frozen, the monsignor in the parish told her she was a "grave, immoral sinner" anyway.

Why is the Catholic Church increasing their stress of doctrine in a world already full of religious extremists of all stripes? Why would it stifle it's own inner circle which serves the weak and defends their rights? Why would it wound the faithful at their most vulnerable moments? Why does it exclude, when it could embrace?

According to their own scripture, Jesus said,  "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly."  He also said: "By this shall men know that you are my disciples; not that you pass the test of traditional orthodoxy, but that you love; and in loving bear witness that you can give of the life that you have received."  Personally, I like that.

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Mile high club?. . .

. . . Boeing enters supply chain finance guarantee program. . .

(from Equipment, Logistics Management, Markets, North America, Regulatory, Regulatory/Trade, Risk Management, Services, Suppliers, Supply Chain)

"U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing will participate in the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s Supply-Chain Finance Guarantee program, which provides competitively priced working capital financing to suppliers of goods or services to U.S. exporters..."

In other words, the government is going help poor little Boeing to finance the making of millions, no wait, billions of dollars for some (to quote Dylan Ratigan) 'Greedy Bastards'.  But there's more.

(from workinglife.org bog by Jonathan Tasini)
"Corporate welfare and the scam on the American people is a daily scandal. And it gets obscured sometimes in the rah-rah competition in the marketplace that we get sucked into by the traditional media. So, here's something to think about: you, the taxpayer, are about to shell our billions of dollars to a corporation that PAYS NOT A DIME IN FEDERAL TAXES. The company is called Boeing.
You've probably read all about it:

In a surprise twist to a long-running saga, the Air Force said on Thursday that it would award a $35 billion contract for aerial fueling tankers to Boeing rather than to a European company that builds Airbus planes... The Air Force said the first phase of the contract would be worth $3.5 billion, and it would cover the construction of the first 18 tankers by 2017. Boeing would build 179 tankers in all for about $35 billion."

The issue is ". . . whether a very profitable corporation that does not pay a fair share in taxes should be even allowed to benefit from billions of dollars in taxpayer money. From the great folks at Citizens for Tax Justice:

Despite reporting nearly $10 billion in domestic pre-tax profits between 2008 and 2010, the Boeing Corporation, which was granted a contract worth as much as $35 billion to build airplanes for the federal government earlier this week, did not pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes during this three-year period. . . "

Once again the 99% are being 'done' by big business and their 'representatives'.
Gives all new meaning to the term "Mile high club".

 

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