Fascinating as it is to listen to an over-weight and uneducated man bloviate for three hours a day about the virtues of self-reliance and the evil that is government (except for when government is protecting us from our enemies by building enough destructive weaponry a year to destroy the species in a moment), I have to come out and say that the underlying message behind Rush’s recent antics are alarming to an atypical extent.

At the CPAC convention back in February, El Rushbo infamously declared that he wanted the new administration to fail. He went so far as to claim that this was secretly the opinion of all republicans, but that he, big, brave man that he is, was the only one with the guts to say so.

Limbaugh likened his desire to see the Obama administration fail to his desire to, since he is a fan of the Steelers, see the Cardinals fail in their performance at the Super Bowl. This analogy is both illustrative and instructive. I could not think of a more succinct and clear way to illustrate Rush’s feelings toward our democracy.

You see, to Rush and most other commentators in the mainstream media, political elections and the Super Bowl are very much alike – the ultimate end is victory for their preferred team, and the fruits of victory are non-tangible, amounting only to a personal sense of satisfaction – because, after all, Rush is and will be a multi-millionaire regardless of which team wins – in both the election and the Super Bowl.

His message, also keeping in mind his antics during the democratic primary which he dubbed Operation Chaos, is that victory for the Republicans is the ultimate end, thus rooting for the Democrats to fail is laudable, because victory for one’s team of choice is all that matters – elections have no real world implications

Perhaps most shocking is that millions of Americans are on board with Rush, most of them non-millionaires. Whenever you allow a person like Rush to convince you that his economic interests are your economic interests, you are basically grabbing his dick and shoving it up your own ass; the fact of the matter is, his economic interests are irreconcilably opposed to the interests of working-class people.

What doesn’t seem to be perceived is that politics isn’t a game. Hundreds of thousands have died needlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the families of the fallen, this “game” that Rush loves to play is not very fun. The economy has been wrecked through wreck-less deregulation, causing many honest people to lose out hard. Rush and his compatriots in the elite right-wing media seem to be far more concerned with winning the game the next time around than they are at attempting to bring new ideas to the table in cooperation with the other party. When elections between elitist parties amount to nothing more than a spirited competition in which both sides wish to see the other fail miserably, the common people will lose out, each and every time.

A quick digression explains target audience in more detail. The Superbowl brings together the entire country of sports fans. But an important demographic, and the hardest to reach, are males, 18-34. This is why football, basketball, baseball, and all the other sports, yes, hockey, are important for broadcast and other networks. They must find a way to reach this audience with ads. This is why you must carry sports as a large network. The smartest providers, in my opinion, will carry some form of mixed martial arts, like the UFC, because these generally gain a hard to find demographic, for a long period of time. The Superbowl ads, as everyone knows, cost a ton of money, and this is a large part of that reason, along with the widespread viewership among other demographics.

Of course, Neilsen has a way to make it look as if there is a problem with the digital transition, and based on the past, it’s not that hard to persuade people that there is a problem. Neilsen numbers are the Bible of TV ratings and information, I would go so far as to say, everything in TV lives and dies by these publications, which exist solely as a marketing tool for advertisers. I would bloat the number of people that are not prepared as well, if I thought even a fraction (5%) of homes in the U.S. had no way to see the advertisements, that I get paid (a ton of money) to present. But it is clear that no attention is paid to the audiences’ well-being.

The largest amount of people without any way to get a converter box happen to be in minorities, low income areas, and the elderly. This is a large population of people that I care about, but I don’t think we should be protecting advertisers’ rights to sell you things between your favorite basic channels. Yes, there are a limited amount of channels you will not be able to get on broadcast TV, including ABC, NBC, and CBS. But the only way you will lose these channels, is if you use terrestrial broadcast antenna only, on an analog TV. If you have a newer digital TV, not necessarily High Definition, and any service that you pay for, like cable, satellite or anything else, your TV is fine.

I think the manner in which the coupons for set-top converters were distributed was poorly organized. Coupons were probably given to people that were misinformed as to what exactly this transition was designed to accomplish. The website for distributing coupons has a form based on availability and accessibility. But coupons were allowed to be distributed up to two per household.

Converter Box

Analog stations, after the transition, will be allotted for emergency broadcast purposes. This is important. Not only is this important, but our most important broadcasters will lose money because of any legislation which delays the transition. The PBS Chief Executive stated that public broadcasters would lose $22 million due to the delay. Will the government cover these costs? Of course not. They don’t care about your right to public broadcasting, one of your most important rights in broadcast media. With all of the give and take within corporate lobbying, there is no way that public broadcasting will have enough pull to dissuade the FCC to keep the transition for the economy’s sake. Most broadcasters will have to double their energy costs to operate analog and digital transmitters combined.

I don’t generally like John McCain in campaign mode, but this is a quote with which I agree. This excerpt from the Washington Post explains my sentiment:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said in a letter yesterday [January 15] that upholding the Feb. 17 date was necessary to ensure that public safety agencies, who were promised a portion of the airwaves to be vacated by broadcasters, could use them to build interoperable communications networks.

“While our first-responders have been told year after year that this spectrum to be available, its availability has continued to be delayed largely to, in my view, to a well-funded lobby of special interests.”

When I worked in Home Theater at Best Buy in 2005-2007, I would tell people about the digital transition, which was scheduled in 2006! Then, we pushed it back to 2009. Each analog TV I sold at Best Buy was required to carry a sticker informing consumers that a transition would occur, and this TV would not be able to receive antenna broadcasts in February 2009, but the overwhelming sentiment was, “It’s fine, I’m not worried about it”, “I will take care of it with a converter box”, or “I pay for a cable/satellite”. Consumers can buy converter boxes for approx. $50 in stores, or buy a cheap digital TV, or buy a service. Options are available. And now, we may push the transition back again. The answer, folks, is that if we keep pushing this thing back, our economy is only going to get worse. With public broadcasters losing all of this money, and no one to cover the expenses, more jobs will be lost. The Senate wanted to delay the transition, the House voted the opposite way.  Politics as usual.

-Post by Jeff Webb

Apart from the dead, 5,300 Palestinians were wounded during the Israeli campaign. Many of the 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip have seen their homes and other property blown to pieces.

“We want a solution that would guarantee Israeli tanks will not return to kill us,” said Yehya Aziz, 28. “They said a ceasefire for a week. I don’t feel good, I doubt it is over.”

Israeli soldiers have been withdrawing from Gaza, leaving scenes of devastation and what Palestinians see as desecration.

Graffiti scrawled inside a mosque in the battered Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City read “Hamas whores” in Hebrew and “Hamas is dead” in English. Discarded military rations littered the floor. A shell hole gaped in one wall. (Source)

Suppose Israel were a small coastal strip approximately 4-5 miles long. Suppose a radical Arab nationalist state called Palestine whose area was approximately 21,000 square kilometers bordered it on three sides. Suppose this fictitious Palestine tightly controlled the border of Israel. Suppose they decided that the population of Israel had voted for the incorrect party in a demonstrably free, fair, and open election; suppose that because of this Palestine decided to disallow humanitarian aid to Israel. Suppose Palestine refused to allow Israeli’s to leave their tiny strip of land.

Suppose the Israeli’s felt this situation was inadequate, and foolishly decided to use what meager capabilities they had to fire explosives at their oppressive radical nationalist foes. Suppose Palestine viewed this disobedience as intolerable and decided that such actions were grounds for the use of mass violence.

Suppose Palestine used massive air bombardment to destroy thousands of Israeli buildings, in the process killing around 300 Israeli children. Suppose Palestine justified the violence against the innocent on grounds that Israeli militants were hiding amongst the children. Suppose the Palestine Air Force (PAF) completely obliterated around 20 synagogues, again, recycling the cowardly justification that Jewish militants were hiding in them or attempting to store weapons in them (suppose the Jews often used rocks as weapons, due to the fact that Palestine totally controlled their borders and refused to allow weapons into Israel).

Suppose the Palestine Defense Forces (PDF) invaded the tiny but densely populated Jewish enclave after most of the Jews’ defense capabilities had been destroyed by the PAF, who flew over the undefended Jewish air-space and dropped load after load of bombs onto whatever random buildings and human beings happened to be underneath. Suppose that PDF ground troops had written Arabic graffiti on the inside of half-decimated synagogues that read, Jewish whores and Zionism is dead in English.

Suppose this were the sequence of events over the past three weeks. Would the international response be different? Suppose the United States were merely a small regional power and that Iran were the dominant economic and military power of the world, and that Iran uncompromisingly gave the actions of this fictitious Palestine not only their verbal blessing, but suppose they provided them with massive quantities of bombs, war-planes, and diplomatic support.

Suppose the events were the way I just described.

Now realize that they were exactly as such, with a few proper nouns simply replacing eachother to change the meaning of the violence.

Shame on Israel. Shame on the United States government for supporting this.

Where is the change we can believe in?

Barack Obama is too busy fancifully riding around in trains, talking about how to get the most privileged people on the planet, Wall Street, back on their footing again. He hasn’t said but a word about the slaughter of the innocent in Gaza.

Will he continue to allow Israel to do whatever it wants and kill as many children as it sees fit in the name of security? If so, I think a lot of people are going to want their votes back.

It is as though the United States elects a new Queen once every four years. The Queen’s duties include political pageantry such as staged speeches, train rides, and other photo opportunities that contribute to favorable, however empty, imagery. The Queen is to read the government policies and programs that the public relations specialists have decided on aloud in front of the cameras of the mass media, which are owned by those Wall Street folk I mentioned earlier. Ronald Reagan was ideal for this role, given his background as an actor.

Now we have Obama, the man of a thousand public-relations-approved speeches, the man who makes people feel good about themselves because of the color of his skin, and also the man who was elected to bring about change but will likely pursue the exact same policies that have been pursued by U.S. planners since the second World War; hegemony, full-spectrum dominance, ethnocentric conceptions regarding resource control, and of course peculiar attention to the needs of Wall Street, who, make no mistake about it, are the chief decision-makers on all things both domestic and international.

If this is what democracy looks like, tell me, who needs democracy promotion?

‘If the Germans Had Won the War’
01/14/2009 by Gabriel Voiles
Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery provides (Progressive, 1/11/09) the following “description that would now appear in the history books–if the Germans had won the war”:

Nearly 70 years ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

If you find this “absurd,” Avnery argues it is no more so than “daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam,” of the official Israel contention that “Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as ‘hostages’ and exploit the women and children as ‘human shields,’” and therefore “leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.”

Israeli forces shelled areas deep inside Gaza City on Thursday, hitting the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and injuring at least three people among the hundreds taking shelter in the compound, according to United Nations officials and witnesses.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel expressed regret for the strike but said that Israeli forces were fired on by Hamas militants from just outside the United Nations compound and then ran inside to take cover, according to Mr. Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev. “It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place,” Mr. Olmert said in broadcast remarks, according to Reuters. (Source)

So if Gazans, inside Gaza, attack Israelis who are illegally invading their country and slaughtering civilians by the thousands, the Israeli’s claim the right to destroy any and all buildings from which the resistance is launched, even if it’s a U.N. compound where innocent Gazans are taking refuge and where international aid workers are attempting to help the thousands of victims.

In the attack on Thursday, Mr. Gunness said, the Israelis used phosphorous shells, according to Bloomberg. “The Israelis have shot three phosphorus shells against the compound, where hundreds of civilians are being sheltered,” he was quoted as saying. (Same source as above)

Israel is now using chemical weapons against the population of Gaza, a crime so severe that it appears the New York Times is forced to evade pointing out the grave and despicable implications that accompany the use of such toxic, deadly, and illegal weaponry in any armed conflict. Where is the outrage at U.S.-Israel and their savage and disgusting behavior?

The BBC said it received claims that Israeli troops have fired on Gaza residents trying to escape the conflict area.
It also said that its journalists “in Gaza and Israel” have compiled detailed accounts of the claims.

One testimony, BBC said, describes Israeli forces shooting a woman in the head after she stepped out of her house carrying a piece of white cloth, in response to an Israeli loudhailer announcement. Munir Shafik al-Najar, of Khouza village in the south-east of the Gaza Strip, told BBC that some 75 members of his extended family had ended up huddled in a house, surrounded by Israeli forces, after troops shelled the area and destroyed his brother’s home on Sunday night.
On Monday morning, “the Israeli army was saying: ‘This is the Israeli Defence Forces, we are asking all the people to leave their homes and go to the school. Ladies first, then men.’ We decided to send the women first, two by two,” he said. First to step outside was the wife of his cousin, Rawhiya al-Najar, 48. They shot her in the head,” he said. (Source)

This is already by far the largest and most severe campaign of international state-sponsored terrorism of the new millenium, save for the U.S. attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan which are in a category of their own.

Who can hold the criminal states accountable? Only the U.S. and Israeli populations, for the military might of the two rogue states effectively cancels any chance of a coalition of peace-loving states, maybe something like what the U.N. was designed to be, from taking any effective action and holding the criminal leadership of the U.S. and Israel accountable for their crimes.

I wish I could more aptly articulate my disgust, but my vocabulary constricts me to simple and empty condemnations as I helplessly await tomorrow morning’s stories about civilian slaughter and white phosphorus burnings of a defenseless people.

The head of the United Nations children’s agency says 300 children have been killed during Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip.

UNICEF director, Ann Venemen, says more than 1,500 other children have been wounded, casualties she calls “tragic” and “unacceptable.”

Separately, Palestinian medics say more than 1,000 people have been killed during the 19-day offensive. (Source)

Commentators around the world and in the U.S. would rightly be describing the horrific atrocities as a second coming of The Holocaust. But when violent crimes are committed by Israel with U.S. backing, funding, equipping, etc., the violence is described as neccessary and liberative, only undertaken in self-defense against an impossibly implacable and extraordinarily powerful enemy.

One might think that the many pictures that have been emerging of Gazans throwing rocks at Israeli’s would dispel with contempt any of the non-sense about Hamas and Gaza being a threat to anyone’s security.

But alas, we live in the United States, where massive campaigns of violence against civilians in the name of “counter-terrorism” are the norm, so long as it’s being done by us.

U.S.-Israeli terror exceeds that of any other state in the world by far. These are the only two states opposed to a two-state solution for the Palestine-Israel problem, contrary to the popular illusions about Bush’s position on the issue, which basically is the same as every other president before him, and will likely be the same policy of the incoming president, who is far more worried about getting Americans to spend money and consume things again than he is about preventing more Gazan children from starving to death and/or being murdered via shrapnel lodged in the skull; the shrapnel is produced here in the United States.

Make no mistake about it, this latest state-terrorism committed by Israel, and the U.S.’s criminal and terroristic invasion of Iraq will have consequences, which is all the more reason why these acts should be, to the rational human being, categorically intolerable, just as it would be if Iran or Russia or North Korea invaded a sovereign territory and killed hundreds, or in the case of Iraq hundreds of thousands of innocent people and claimed they were doing it both in self-defense and in the name of liberty.

A cornerstone of Israel’s strategy in Gaza is to crush Hamas’s will to fight, especially its determination to fire rockets into southern Israel. But in interviews here with wounded supporters of the Islamist militia, Israel’s assaults appear to be breeding more recruits and more popular support for Hamas.

“I supported neither Hamas nor Fatah,” said Anwar el-Sahabani, 35, a carpenter with a casts on his right leg and left arm, the result of an airstrike. He was referring to Hamas’s rival party. “Today, after all that has happened, I have to support Hamas.”

The wounded are among 260 Palestinians, including women and children, who are being treated in Egyptian hospitals. Many expressed guilt for receiving treatment and being safe while their families are trapped in the conflict’s epicenter.

By Tuesday, the Palestinian death toll had reached 960, with more than 3,000 wounded, health officials in Gaza said. According to Israel’s military, 13 Israelis — three civilians and 10 soldiers — have been killed since Israel began its offensive Dec. 27

“I did not support Hamas before,” he added. “Now, I do. The whole world is conspiring against Hamas. And the number one conspirer is the United States.”

Hanni Mohammed, 38, spoke up from the next bed. “Why don’t you blame the Americans?” he demanded. “Why is America not stopping the war?”

He had fought in the previous Palestinian intifidas, or uprisings, but had stayed on the sidelines in the current conflict, Mohammed said. No longer.

Mohammed’s wife and six children are locked in their house. “My family is over there being killed, slaughtered,” he said, clutching a transistor radio that blared the news. “There’s no water, no electricity. There’s nothing I can do. All I can tell them is not to leave the house.”

When he goes back, he said, he plans to fire rockets at Israel.

“After everything I have seen, I will carry a weapon again,” Mohammed said. “I went to fight before, and now I will fight harder.”

(Source)

It still seems as though the U.S. and Israel believe that they can achieve peace through terror and domination. Anyone who believes that this is the answer is complicit in making the world a more dangerous place and increasing the likelihood that the U.S. and/or Israel be attacked in a horrific manner.

But with our government having the ability to make the rules regarding international conduct, and with them having made the choice that massive slaughter of civilians is permissible and indeed laudable if it contributes to hegemony and fear, it will not be acceptbale for us to ask again, as we have for over 50 years now, “why do they hate us?”

The answer is simple. Take a look at our crimes, realize that they are real and devastating, and you should not have to look any further.

Will Obama help usher in a new era of international conduct, one which is actually civilized, not simply in name? I see no evidence that would lead one to believe that he will.

13 Israelis, a few thousand Palestinians. 0 Israeli children, 300 Palestinian children. Tell me again, who are the terrorists?

The only thing worth commenting on is the overwhelming sense of hope deep inside me that maybe, just maybe, a Qassam rocket will impale him and then blow him into little Joe the pieces of human flesh.

Pajamatv.com must be run by Satan himself. They are sending someone who’s fame is completely engineered by the robot-pundits of the propaganda machine into a region where millions are starving and thousands are being slaughtered so that they can make a buck off of their advertising revenue. Fuck off and die you scumbags.

Take a look at what kind of country we have here: We throw away literal tons of perfectly edible food each and every day; we have the strongest economy and the strongest military and consequently the strongest presence on the world stage diplomatically which puts us in a position to stop the atrocious violence in Gaza any way we like. Instead of helping in any way at all, our government leaders have given this genocide their blessing. And to top it all off, we are now sending them some bald retard to pretend like he is a reporter so that some “conservative” website can make money.

I wish this were a bad joke.

“American Jesus” – Bad Religion

i don’t need to be a global citizen
because i’m blessed by nationality
i’m member of a growing populace
we enforce our popularity
there are things that
seem to pull us under
and there are things
that drag us down
but there’s a power
and a vital presence
thats lurking all around
we’ve got the american Jesus
see him on the interstate
we’ve got the american Jesus
he helped build the
president’s estate
i feel sorry
for the earth’s population
‘cuz so few
live in the U.S.A.
at least the foreigners
can copy our morality
they can visit but they cannot stay
only precious few
can garner the prosperity
it makes us walk
with renewed confidence
we’ve got a place to go when we die
and the architect resides right here
we’ve got the american Jesus
overwhelming millions every day
(exercising his authority)
he’s the farmers barren fields
the force the army wields
the expession in the faces
of the starving children
the power of the man
he’s the fuel that drives the clan
he’s the motive and conscience
of the murderer
he’s the preacher on t.v.
the false sincerity
the form letter that’s written
by the big computers
he’s the nuclear bombs
and the kids with no moms
and i’m fearful that
he’s inside me

Length: 5:38

visit Freepress.org to see more of Dr. Bob Fitrakis, or read one of his books, including Spooks, Nukes & Nazis.

This book is a collection of essays that were originally published in Columbus Alive or in Free Press.   A lawyer, a professor, a true muckraker. It never ceases to amaze me that he promotes such integrity in his writing, with researched, reasoned arguments. The stories are compelling, including how the US military reused a chemical waste/training area for the school grounds in Marion, Ohio. Which consequently has a high rate of esophageal cancer, and brain cancer in graduates of this area, interesting and sad.

The most informative, thought provoking 25 minutes of your day. Thank you Dr. Fitrakis.

For those of you that just can’t believe it until it’s on TV.  I don’t much care for Lou Dobbs but this is nice.

Length: 5:38

Michael Connell’s mysterious plane crash.
Length: 4:29

Length: 9:59

This video is part 2 in a  two-part series. This video overlaps the first video, until the timecode: 4:41.

Length: 4:41 – 10:17

post by Jeff Webb