Auto Tune the News

After first hearing these guys on Rachel Maddow a couple months ago, I've become obsessed. These are the Gregory Brothers applying Auto Tune to regular news clips to much hilarity.

Why I will never watch Fox News again and ask everyone else to follow suit

With the assassination of George Tiller - which, mind you occurred within the sanctuary of his own church - culpability has been denied by all who spouted hateful and violence-inducing hateful speech. 'Pro-life' movements who can do anything but denounce this killing (note - even Sarah Palin denounced the act) are truly disgusting.

Olbermann, last night, chronicled the hateful language that O'Reilly, Ingraham and other talking heads on Fox News had used to demonize 'Tiller the Baby Killer.' These attacks were not only bombastic but also lies. The only instances that Tiller did in fact perform late term abortions was when at least two doctors found - in their professional opinion - that the health and/or life of the mother was severely compromised by having the child. In times such as this, no one is pleased when actions of this need be done... but it's important to note that these were in fact legal and these procedures were necessary.

Finally, here's the clip of Olbermann and this is my plea to you. No source of 'news' should spout this hatred. And if it does it loses the ability for it to be called news. People like this will continue to act in this way unless their bottom line is affected. Watch this and follow whatever course you see fit - thank you.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And one more from Rachel Maddow, where she interviewed Frank Schaeffer, a former vehement member of the far right Anti-Abortion movement - where he took some culpability for the violence perpetrated and how all others who shared his view also share the blame.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

South Park as metaphor for the economic crisis?

I saw this episode of South Park last week and I found it surprisingly profound for three reasons

1)It showed the crisis (and religion for that matter) in all of their absurity.
2)The Margaritaville for Mortgage metaphor was brilliant in making it understandable but just as maddening.
3) The fact that Kyle just might be the economy's only son...

Here it is in four parts!

Part One -



Part Two -



Part Three -



Part Four -

The failure of Abstinence Only

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson have broken off their engagement.

Their story is a story in which the legitimacy of Abstinence-only sex education has been removed. In an interview after the election, Bristol admitted that she believed that 'abstinence was unrealistic.' This is a view that many have, and those that choose to take that path have little information given to them in many public schools that have resorted to teaching abstinence only. I can understand the rationale of parents not wanting their children to have sex and their means of succeeding in this is not giving teenagers information and permission to have sex.

I see this as shortsighted and ineffective. Trying to avoid the elephant in the room is impossible. With the sexual culture that exists in the media and in everyday conversation between teenagers, simply ignoring the topic will not prevent individuals from partaking in it. In this culture and these conditions, mainly the high number of teenage numbers and surging number of sexually transmitted infections, safe sex must be taught in public schools. Referring back to Bristol Palin, in the same interview where she called abstinence 'unrealistic,' she was unable to explain why she and Levi did not practice safe sex. Surely some of the blame must lie with the schools, a problem that was not alleviated by the fact that Governor Palin unabashedly supports abstinence only education.

Teenage sexuality is a fact that cannot be swept under the rug. With STIs such as HIV out in the population, this is absolutely a life or death matter. Finally, safe sex education is the surest way to reduce abortions among teenagers. Whether you are pro life or pro choice, no one wants there to be more abortions than are absolutely necessary. By teaching teenagers ways to prevent pregnancy, the number will shrink and the use of abortion as a form of birth control will be shown to all as the wrong path.

Finally, I read online political news far too often. With Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer having a bit of a spat, the Daily Beast posted a few 'on air' feuds. This one I found particularly scathing and entertaining. Stewart, on Crossfire, holds his own with Tucker Carlson through humor and rational discourse... enjoy! (p.s. the link to the page is http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-11/7-best-cable-tv-feuds/)

Fox News?!

Well, I was flipping around channels tonight and found myself watching Hannity... Wow, I actually missed Colmes. Anyway, there was this 'shocking piece' in which a 'New BRIDGE TO NOWHERE'

Anyway... this piece was shocking in three ways:
1)It gives credit to 'environmental concerns'
2)It feigns interest in the 'survival of the Everglades'
3)They actually interviewed Native Americans
4)It chides excess development as what hurt the Everglades

*RANT BREAK*

Wait, What?! Under the Bush Administration, just a few months ago, it was commonplace for the members of the Department of the Interior (Many of whom are now in jail for partaking in bribery in the form of drugs and hookers from the industries they were regulating) routinely auctioned off valuable protected land to the highest bidder. Not the least of which was contracts to strip mine for Uranium in the land near the Grand Canyon where possible spills into the Colorado River would endanger the main water supply of Las Vegas and Los Angeles?!? To me, these practices don't seem like the best way to maintain precious 'beautiful landscapes.'

*END RANT BREAK*

Ok, I've ranted enough... here is the clip for you to watch to see if you're as angered as me. And it's not just the reporting itself, it's just how disingenuous and hypocritical it is...

Well, here's a link to the video, http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3778357&referralPlaylistId=949437d0db05ed5f5b9954dc049d70b0c12f2749


Finally, this is shown to be a 'pork' addition to the bill that is CLEARLY one of many in this Spending Bill. I wanted to see who was the horrible congressman whose district this flaunting of money would go in. His name was Adam Putnam and he's a Republican. On his website, http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/fl12_putnam/20090220_everglades_funding.shtml, he praises the large amount of Everglades funding in the bill. Nailed ya Fox News!

Oh, and on another note... Glenn Beck is insane. A fearmonger among fearmongers, Beck has something he calls the 'War Room' in which he envisions the many horrible ways that the country will inevitably fall (All thanks to Barack Obama, of course). Colbert just killed him with this bit, and I think that for levity's sake I'll include it was well.

Here's Colbert describing Beck's 'War Room'

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Glenn Beck's War Room

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
Joke of the Day

And, here's Colbert's response to Beck - His 'Doom Bunker'

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Doom Bunker - Jack Jacobs and Stephen Moore

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
Joke of the Day

Looking backwards to move forwards

This is a speech Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island spoke on the Senate floor on January 21st, 2009 - the first full day of the Obama administration. This encapsulates the need that I feel also to look back at the mistakes that have been made in the previous eight years... Without such self-evaluation, the road has been left for others to abuse this great nation's institutions once more.

Whitehouse: As We Look Forward We Must Also Look Back

January 21, 2009

I rise as we celebrate a new President, a new administration, a new mode of governing, and a new future for America.

Even in the gloom of our present predicaments, Americans' hearts are strong and confident because we see a brighter future ahead.

President Obama looks to that future. Given the depth and severity of those predicaments, we need all his energy to look forward to lead us to that brighter day; forward to what Winston Churchill in Britain's dark days called those "broad and sunlit uplands."

But, as we steer toward this broad and sunlit future, what about the past? As the President looks forward and charts a new course, must someone not also look back, to take an accounting of where we are, what was done, and what must now be repaired.

Our new President has said, "America needs to look forward." I agree.

Our new Attorney-General designate has said, we should not criminalize policy differences. I agree.

And I hope we can all agree that summoning young sacrificial lambs to prosecute, as we did after the Abu Ghraib disaster, would be reprehensible.

But consider the pervasive, deliberate, and systematic damage the Bush Administration did to America, to her finest traditions and institutions, to her reputation and integrity.

I evaluate that damage in history's light. Although I'm no historian, here is what I believe:

The story of humankind on this Earth has been a long and halting march from the darkness of barbarism and the principle that to the victor go the spoils, to the light of organized civilization and freedom. During that long and halting march, this light of progress has burned, sometimes brightly and sometimes softly, in different places at different times around the world.

The light shone in Athens, when that first Senate made democracy a living experiment; and again in the softer but broader glow of the Roman Empire and Senate.

That light burned brightly, incandescently, in Jerusalem, when Jesus of Nazareth cast his lot with the weak and the powerless.

The light burned in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba, when the Arab world kept science, mathematics, art, and logic alive, as Europe descended into Dark Ages of plague and violence.

The light flashed from the fields of Runnymede when English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, and glowed steadily from that island kingdom as England developed Parliament and the common law, and was the first to stand against slavery.

It rekindled in Europe at the time of the Reformation, with a bright flash in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his edicts to the Wittenberg cathedral doors, and faced with excommunication, stated "Here I stand. I can do no other."

Over the years across the globe, that light, and the darkness of tyranny and cruelty, have ebbed and flowed.

But for the duration of our Republic, even though our Republic is admittedly imperfect, that light has shone more brightly and more steadily here in this Republic than in any place on earth: as we adopted the Constitution, the greatest achievement yet in human freedom; as boys and men bled out of shattered bodies into sodden fields at Antietam and Chicamagua, Shiloh and Gettysburg to expiate the sin of slavery; as we rebuilt shattered enemies, now friends, overseas and came home after winning world wars; and as we threw off bit by bit ancient shackles of race and gender to make this a more perfect union for all of us.

What made this bright and steady glow possible? What made it possible is not that we are better people, I believe, but that our system of government is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Why else does our President take his oath to defend a Constitution of the United States of America? Our unique form of self-government is a blessing, and we hold it in trust; not just for us, but for our children and grandchildren down through history; not just for us, but as an example out through the world.

That is why our Statue of Liberty raises a lamp to other nations still engloomed in tyranny.

That is why we stand as a beacon in this world, beckoning to all who seek a kinder, freer, brighter future.

We hold this unique gift in trust for the future and the world. Each generation assumes responsibility for this Republic and its government, and each generation takes on a special obligation when they do. Our new President closed his Inaugural Address by setting forth the challenge against which future generations will test us: whether "with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generation." There are no guarantees that we will - this is a continuing experiment we are embarked upon - and a lot is at stake; indeed, the most precious thing of man's creation on the face of the Earth is at stake. That is what I believe.

So from that perspective, what about the past? No one can deny that in the last eight years America's bright light has dimmed and flickered, darkening our country and darkening the world.

The price of that is incalculable. There are nearly 7 billion human souls on this world. Every morning, the sun rises anew over their villages and hamlets and barrios, and every day they can choose where to invest their hopes, their confidence, and their dreams.

I submit that when America's light shines brightly, when honesty, freedom, justice and compassion glow from our institutions, it attracts those hopes, those dreams; and the force of those 7 billion hopes and dreams, the confidence of those 7 billion souls in our lively experiment, is, I believe, the strongest power in our national arsenal - stronger than atom bombs. We risk it at our peril.

And of course when our own faith is diminished at home, this vital light only dims further, again at incalculable cost.

So when an administration rigs the intelligence process and produces false evidence to send our country to war;

When an administration descends to interrogation techniques of the Inquisition, of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - descends to techniques that we have prosecuted as crimes in military tribunals and federal courts;

When institutions as noble as the Department of Justice and as vital as the Environmental Protection Agency are systematically and deliberately twisted from their missions by odious means of institutional sabotage;

When the integrity of our markets and the fiscal security of our budget are opened wide to the frenzied greed of corporations, speculators and contractors;

When the integrity of public officials; the warnings of science; the honesty of government procedures; and the careful historic balance of our separated powers of government, are all seen as obstacles to be overcome and not attributes to be celebrated;

When taxpayers are cheated, and the forces of government ride to the rescue of the cheaters and punish the whistleblowers;

When a government turns the guns of official secrecy against its own people to mislead, confuse and propagandize them;

When government ceases to even try to understand the complex topography of the difficult problems it is our very purpose and duty to solve, and instead cares only for these points where it intersects with the party ideology, so that the purpose of government becomes no longer to solve problems, but only to work them for political advantage;

In short, when you have pervasive infiltration into all the halls of government - judicial, legislative, and executive - of the most ignoble forms of influence; when you see systematic dismantling of historic processes and traditions of government that are the safeguards of our democracy; and when you have a bodyguard of lies, jargon, and propaganda emitted to fool and beguile the American people...

Well, something very serious in the history of our republic has gone wrong, something that dims the light of progress for all humanity.

As we look forward, as we begin the task of rebuilding this nation, we have an abiding duty to determine how great the damage is. I say this in no spirit of vindictiveness or revenge. I say it because the thing that was sullied is so, so precious; and I say it because the past bears upon the future. If people have been planted in government in violation of our civil service laws to serve their party and their ideology instead of serving the public, the past will bear upon the future. If procedures and institutions of government have been corrupted and are not put right, that past will assuredly bear on the future. In an ongoing enterprise like government, the door cannot be so conveniently closed on the closets of the past. The past always bears on the future.

Moreover, a democracy is not just a static institution, it is a living education - an ongoing education in freedom of a people. As Harry Truman said addressing a joint session of Congress back in 1947, "One of the chief virtues of a democracy is that its defects are always visible, and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected."

Entirely apart from tentacles of the past that may reach into the future, are the lessons we as a people have to learn from this past carnival of folly, greed, lies, and sabotage, so that it can, under democratic processes, be pointed out and corrected.

If we blind ourselves to this history, if we pull an invisibility cloak over it, we will deny ourselves its lessons. Those lessons came at too painful a cost to ignore. Those lessons merit discovery, disclosure and discussion. Indeed, disclosure and discussion is the difference between a valuable lesson for the bright upward forces of our democracy, and a blueprint for darker forces to return and do it all over again.

A little bright, healthy sunshine and fresh air, so that an educated population knows what was done and how, can show where the tunnels were bored, when the truth was subordinated; what institutions were subverted; how our democracy was compromised; so this grim history is not condemned to repeat itself; so a knowing public in the clarity of day can say, "Never, never, never, again;" so we can keep that light - that light that is at once America's greatest gift and greatest strength - brightly shining. To do this, I submit, we must look back.

I yield the floor.