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tylersamko: This was the response from voters in a post debate CNN poll! I think that speaks volumes to Romney’s performance in the debate. Thoughts? HAha. NO. CNN did something absolutely monstrous in covering the public reaction to the Oct. 3 Presidential debate: it polled a majority of white college-educated Southerners over age 49 who self-identified as either “moderate” or “conservative” – NOTE: CNN’s Candy Crowley will be the moderator in the next debate.
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tylersamko:

This was the response from voters in a post debate CNN poll! I think that speaks volumes to Romney’s performance in the debate. Thoughts?

HAha. NO.

CNN did something absolutely monstrous in covering the public reaction to the Oct. 3 Presidential debate: it polled a majority of white college-educated Southerners over age 49 who self-identified as either “moderate” or “conservative” – NOTE: CNN’s Candy Crowley will be the moderator in the next debate.

Americans must stop being consumers and start being citizens. We’ve spent too much, borrowed too much, helped send our own jobs overseas and give ourselves Wal-Mart work lives and living standards. This is the profligacy and debt about which we should worry. We need a national renewal, citizenship instead of stuff, a “we” society instead of a “me” society, a civilization not a market. We need to value the janitor and the artist more than the financial hustler. And we need to read and learn our history and everything we can about the world. Put away the video games and turn off the television.

Rogue Columnist: ‘Hard truths’ (via azspot)

Great article with 9 more “hard truths”, I recommend clicking through.

(via divineirony)

cognitivedissonance: Because America totally gets a ctrl+alt+delete on Inauguration Day. Either that, or she’s a firm believer in the Etch-a-Sketch theory. Remember that one time right before Barack Obama took office and gas prices immediately dropped, the bailouts under George W. Bush were erased, the national debt reset, foreclosures immediately stopped, every single person had a job, and eagles flew out of Joe Biden’s ass, singing “God Bless America” as he danced with sparklers? And then Obama went and undid all that stuff, instituted the dreaded “Sharia Law,” made being a Christian illegal, and replaced the American anthem with “O Fortuna,” and Joe Biden cried as Obama dunked his sparklers in the tears of good patriots? Remember that? Yeah, neither do I.
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cognitivedissonance:

Because America totally gets a ctrl+alt+delete on Inauguration Day.

Either that, or she’s a firm believer in the Etch-a-Sketch theory.

Remember that one time right before Barack Obama took office and gas prices immediately dropped, the bailouts under George W. Bush were erased, the national debt reset, foreclosures immediately stopped, every single person had a job, and eagles flew out of Joe Biden’s ass, singing “God Bless America” as he danced with sparklers? And then Obama went and undid all that stuff, instituted the dreaded “Sharia Law,” made being a Christian illegal, and replaced the American anthem with “O Fortuna,” and Joe Biden cried as Obama dunked his sparklers in the tears of good patriots? Remember that?

Yeah, neither do I.

‘Murkin exceptionalism: Gay marriage is legal in 6 states. Having sex with a horse, legal in 23 states. questionall: atheistoverdose: Wtf americafollow for the best atheist posts on tumblr Okay, the horse thing is just sick and seems to me that would be considered animal abuse.
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‘Murkin exceptionalism: Gay marriage is legal in 6 states. Having sex with a horse, legal in 23 states.

questionall:

atheistoverdose:

Wtf america

Okay, the horse thing is just sick and seems to me that would be considered animal abuse.

… MITT ROMNEY’S SPEECH INCLUDED THE WORD “America” a numbing 33 times. But there’s something else I want to note from Romney’s speech, something that both Republicans and Democrats do, and it drives me crazy: ”I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company. Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.”  You see, Mitt Romney may not have pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, but he has a pair of bootstraps that he inherited from his father, which he keeps in a small mahogany box and takes out and gazes upon every now and again to remind himself of how great it is for someone to have bootstraps, and pull himself up by them, if that’s what he needs to do. All he’s saying is, he knows from bootstraps. – Enough With “Only In America”
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MITT ROMNEY’S SPEECH INCLUDED THE WORD “America” a numbing 33 times.

But there’s something else I want to note from Romney’s speech, something that both Republicans and Democrats do, and it drives me crazy: ”I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company. Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.”  You see, Mitt Romney may not have pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, but he has a pair of bootstraps that he inherited from his father, which he keeps in a small mahogany box and takes out and gazes upon every now and again to remind himself of how great it is for someone to have bootstraps, and pull himself up by them, if that’s what he needs to do. All he’s saying is, he knows from bootstraps. – Enough With “Only In America”

image: from Think Progress: 17 Years After Oklahoma City Bombing, Right-Wing Extremism Is Significant Domestic Terror Threat … Political correctness is deadly: right-wing extremism is our biggest domestic terror threat As long as the media and average people pretend  that ‘both sides do it’ and decide that it’s okay for self-described ‘patriots’ to rabidly hate President Obama, Democrats, and the federal government — and as long as everyone continues to look the other way when right-wing attitudes manifest themselves publicly, in the form of open racism and / or violent rhetoric, we’ll be under threat as a society and a functioning country. Ask yourself if the fictional right-wing, Fox “News” created, tea party celebrated ‘creeping Sharia law’ is more of a threat to our country than the very real and ongoing use of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy. Recall Sarah Palin’s creative ‘sniper rifle symbols’ on Democratic U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the aftermath. Think of Breitbart-protégé James O’Keefe and his ‘pimp costume’ and ACORN and the fictional Democratic voter fraud issue (as we’ve learned, Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP presidential candidate, actually committed voter fraud). Or look at the most recent example of our politically correct, both sides do it, national discourse: The ‘outrage’ for the right was something said by a CNN commentator about a candidate’s wife and was, in fact, entirely true. The ‘outrage’ for the left, which should be an outrage for the entire country, was a thinly-veiled threat against the life of our sitting president, for purposes of demonstrating the speaker’s Southern Strategy bona fides in front of an NRA crowd. With our history of political assassinations and attempted assassinations, should we ever take such rhetoric lightly? While you think about which outrage received the most national attention and why, you might also ask yourself how your silence on such matters not only contributes to the escalation of ignorance in our national discourse, but encourages some Beck- or Palin-inspired Manchurian candidate to prove his ‘Super Patriotism’ in the form of action. Sort of like this guy, who has been happily expressing his right-wing ideals in court all last week: [Anders Behring Breivik] identified as his enemy the “cultural Marxists” who he said had destroyed Norway by using it as “a dumping ground for the surplus births of the third world”. Claiming Norwegians would be a minority in their own capital “within five years”, he blamed liberal politicians for bringing about Norway’s demise with “feminism, quotas … transforming the church, schools”. The 69 people, many of them teenagers, who died on the island of Utøya when he opened fire on the youth camp of the ruling Labour party were “not innocent”, he claimed. “They were not innocent, non-political children; these were young people who worked to actively uphold multicultural values. Many people had leading positions in the leading Labour party youth wing,” he said, going on to compare the Labour party’s youth wing (AUF) with the Hitler Youth.
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image: from Think Progress: 17 Years After Oklahoma City Bombing, Right-Wing Extremism Is Significant Domestic Terror Threat

…

Political correctness is deadly: right-wing extremism is our biggest domestic terror threat

As long as the media and average people pretend  that ‘both sides do it’ and decide that it’s okay for self-described ‘patriots’ to rabidly hate President Obama, Democrats, and the federal government — and as long as everyone continues to look the other way when right-wing attitudes manifest themselves publicly, in the form of open racism and / or violent rhetoric, we’ll be under threat as a society and a functioning country.

Ask yourself if the fictional right-wing, Fox “News” created, tea party celebrated ‘creeping Sharia law’ is more of a threat to our country than the very real and ongoing use of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy. Recall Sarah Palin’s creative ‘sniper rifle symbols’ on Democratic U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the aftermath. Think of Breitbart-protégé James O’Keefe and his ‘pimp costume’ and ACORN and the fictional Democratic voter fraud issue (as we’ve learned, Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP presidential candidate, actually committed voter fraud).

Or look at the most recent example of our politically correct, both sides do it, national discourse:

The ‘outrage’ for the right was something said by a CNN commentator about a candidate’s wife and was, in fact, entirely true. The ‘outrage’ for the left, which should be an outrage for the entire country, was a thinly-veiled threat against the life of our sitting president, for purposes of demonstrating the speaker’s Southern Strategy bona fides in front of an NRA crowd. With our history of political assassinations and attempted assassinations, should we ever take such rhetoric lightly?

While you think about which outrage received the most national attention and why, you might also ask yourself how your silence on such matters not only contributes to the escalation of ignorance in our national discourse, but encourages some Beck- or Palin-inspired Manchurian candidate to prove his ‘Super Patriotism’ in the form of action. Sort of like this guy, who has been happily expressing his right-wing ideals in court all last week:

[Anders Behring Breivik] identified as his enemy the “cultural Marxists” who he said had destroyed Norway by using it as “a dumping ground for the surplus births of the third world”. Claiming Norwegians would be a minority in their own capital “within five years”, he blamed liberal politicians for bringing about Norway’s demise with “feminism, quotas … transforming the church, schools”.

The 69 people, many of them teenagers, who died on the island of Utøya when he opened fire on the youth camp of the ruling Labour party were “not innocent”, he claimed.

“They were not innocent, non-political children; these were young people who worked to actively uphold multicultural values. Many people had leading positions in the leading Labour party youth wing,” he said, going on to compare the Labour party’s youth wing (AUF) with the Hitler Youth.

Lunch break video: Chris Hedges — unfettered Capitalism and how the U.S. will cannibalize itself

The ethic of Capitalism: everything is a commodity to be exploited, including human beings and the natural world.

Partial transcript of the beginning:

CH: Unfettered or unregulated capitalism is about societies that cannibalize themselves. When capitalism is the dominant ideology, and as Marx understood it’s a revolutionary ideology, it turns everything into a commodity, including human beings. And of course natural reasouces. And it exploits these commodities until they are exhausted and they are destroyed. And that’s precisely what has happened. We have allowed all of the restraints, which were never heavy enough, on the capitalist system to be lifted. And built into capitalism is a self-destructive quality, a form of self annihlation. And that’s what we are undergoing at this moment. It’s a form of collective suicide, in a way, because the ramifications of this economic collapse are going to be played out far beyond the economic sphere. It’s going to deeply disrupt the social, cultural, as well as the economic life of ordinary Americans.

MM: And yet they’re trying to fix the problem with capitalism.

CH: Yes, well of course that is what’s so tragic: they’re trying to sustain an unsustainable system.

Watch all 9 minutes — it’s very good.

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