Why Romney is really scary, even though he seems like the sane one.

Mormons make good neighbors, I hear. They have wonderful family values. But they are completely divorced from any kind of reality. This is a good explanation of how Mormons are brainwashed and why we don't want them in charge of the country.

Why are we listening to these clowns?

Republicans caucus tonight in Iowa. They're all clowns and it would be incredibly amusing to watch them, if there didn't exist the possibility that one of them may be our next President. There are plenty of examples in history where the crazy one, or stupid one (GWB) got in power. The results are never felicitous.

Republicans make your brain happy.... and stupid

What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite.
It's a really interesting book by David DiSalvo. One of the most interesting tidbits deals with studies showing how we are unconsciously influenced by  short messages that are  repeated often. But the interesting thing is that these messages must not be  placed before us in a way that encourages close examination. These messages become part of the ambience so to speak. Fox "News" is the perfect example of how this propaganda technique is applied. The messages are crafted to be simple, short, and repeated in many different ways on each of their shows. It's the opposite of journalism, but disguised as serious media. How many times does Fox mistake Republican miscreants for Democrat? How many right-wing slurs and innuendos are spread by those plastic - groomed talking heads? It's exactly the same a massively funded advertising campaign. And it works, too.

No, the OTHER repressive nuclear armed theocracy.

The ultra-orthodox in Israel are bullying little girls and oppressing women, in their quest to enforce a fundamentalist regime. This is a nation that has had 50  years to create a space for itself and has managed to alienate almost all its neighbors. It violates human rights in Gaza and is steadily becoming more and more repressive, yet to criticize Israel is to become a pariah, be shunned, and immediately dismissed or fired if one is in any position of public service or prominence. Why? Ron Paul has no chance to become the Republican candidate for president, for this reason alone, if nothing else. 
  Have we forgotten George Washington's once famous advice that "So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."?  I wish someone could explain this passionate attachment of ours, to me. 

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen

I just finished reading an incredibly depressing novel about western North Carolina in the post apocalypse world. In this world an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) released from a high altitude nuclear detonation destroys all our computer controlled machinery and infrastructure. To summarize: society breaks down, people turn into beasts (except the protagonist) and most everyone dies. The really depressing thing is that the danger of an EMP is not just hypothetical. Evidently it's a real possibility. We really do need to invest in a modern, safer, energy grid. We need a system in which every household can generate a minimal amount of electricity to keep functional in case of strikes against our grid. We need a system that is diversified, and efficient, and localized as well as centralized. It's creepy to realize how dependent we are on modern technology, and how vulnerable our technology really is.

All hail Grover Norquist - the Plutocrat

Grover Norquist was on the Sunday morning talk show this a.m. He evidently makes his living as an "issues management strategist" http://www.atr.org/about-grover
That must be one of those jobs where you draw enormous amounts of money for doing nothing useful or productive except feathering your own nest.
 He was born the son of a rich man (VP at Polaroid) he went to the finest schools and evidently has more money than God, and by God he intends to keep every penny of it.
Somehow this person, never elected to any public office, not accountable to the electorate in any way, controls our government. Almost every single Republican in office has signed his pledge to never increase taxes in any circumstances. As justification for this stance he said something to the effect that taxes are a way of taking money from the people and giving it to the king. Well, true enough if you go back in time 200 years or so. But the constitution was written to ensure we would have no kings, and that government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, for the people."  Our progressive tax code takes more money from the rich and redistributes it into infrastructure that  benefits EVERY body. Or it is supposed to. See, the founders knew that concentration of wealth  (http://www.constitution.org/jm/17920123_parties.txt) was a real threat to our republic and various schemes to equalize wealth were proposed, including the genesis of the estate tax described in Agrarian Justice (Thomas Paine).
I guess we can kiss our glory days goodbye, the plutocracy is winning.

The last good Republican

"Every dollar spent by the government must be paid for either by taxes or by more borrowing with greater debt. 
The only way to make more tax cuts now is to have bigger and bigger deficits and to borrow more and more money. Either we or our children will have to bear the burden of this debt. 
This is one kind of chicken that always comes home to roost. An unwise tax cutter, my fellow citizens, is no real friend of the taxpayer."
- Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower” 1952 in his refusal to lower the top tax rate on the rich from 91%.