Have you heard about the value-added tax (VAT), a horrible new tariff Americans will soon have to shoulder?
The alarm is sounding on the conservative Web site Townhall.com, in the editorials of The Wall Street Journal, and on the opinion pages of The Washington Post (as well as in the pages of NEWSWEEK): consumers can expect to soon see the feared VAT sneaked into price tags nationwide.
How an unlikely tax became right-wing pundits' latest fascination
You know who I was looking for?
The Tea Partiers. Why shouldn’t I have looked for these patriots who believe that an overreaching government poses a serious threat to individual freedom? It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim -- and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state -- would send the Tea Partiers into a frenzy.
But there were no “Don’t Tread on Me” flags waving. There were no men and women wearing colonial clothing and passing out copies of the Constitution. I looked for the placards calling for the good old days – We Want Our Country Back! But there were none. Several weeks ago I wrote a column Tea Party Utopia: no taxes, no government that generated a lot of reader input on the T-S chat forum. The following observation enraged some people and they called me a racist.
So I ask again, why weren’t the Tea Partiers out there supporting the American Hispanics who would be adversely affected by this new immigration law? What about their rights? What about that talk of Big Brother waiting to take away the common Americans rights?
Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish? You tell me.
This news should be of great interest to millions of veterans who were given AstraZeneca.
Thanks to VAWatchdog.org :
AstraZeneca has to pay a half billion dollar fine for claiming Seroquel was as anti-PTSD drug. The medicine was used as part of the VA's deadly PTSD cocktail given to PTSD sufferers.
My pug Millie (shown here) is a great listener. She’s also a great therapy dog. I better watch out here – she isn’t a licensed therapy dog and I don’t want some therapy dog activists getting upset thinking I’ve don’t know the difference.
In one of my recent columns I talked about therapy dogs:
When the column came out most people enjoyed it, but there were some therapy dog trainers with organizations that felt I was misleading the public when I said my pug Millie is my therapy dog (in the column). I was being light-hearted about it, but some people just didn’t get it I guess.
Anyway…let’s segue into today’s article on pets and people:
Many married couples say they share their troubles with their pet, poll finds
Excerpt:
“A third of pet-owning married women said their pets are better listeners than their husbands, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll released Wednesday. Eighteen percent of pet-owning married men said their pets are better listeners than their wives”
Retirees display dirty mouths, sense of adventure on new reality program
“Sunset Daze,” which makes its debut tonight, pushes the button as it tries to hold its own in the boozy, oversexed reality TV genre. The first episode has commentary on vibrators and going “commando,” slang for not wearing underpants. WE positions the series as “The Golden Girls” meets “Jersey Shore,” the ribald MTV series that spawned Snooki.
Turnabouts fair play I’d say. How many times have we issued warnings to our citizens traveling in Mexico?
This is an issue that’s growing bigger by the day as November elections loom nearer. We’re already seeing plenty of grand-standing, but folks…we ain’t seen nuthin yet!
Critics decry new immigration law as discriminatory
“Mexico warned its citizens living in or traveling to Arizona that they could be "harassed" there after the state passed one of the toughest immigration laws in the United States last week.”
Go here to see more photos of Einstein.
A new study shows that the movement's supporters are more likely to be racially resentful.
Since the Tea partiers emerged there has been accusations that they are racist. There’s been no empirical evidence to support those claims…until now:
Excerpt:
“A new survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality offers fresh insight into the racial attitudes of Tea Party sympathizers. "The data suggests that people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability"—25 percent, to be exact—"of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters," says Christopher Parker, who directed the study. "The Tea Party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race."
What are they doing? Apparently, the girl on the left is choosing a modern-styled lamp, and the couple on the right is preparing to drill and paint things (and can barely contain the excitement).
If you like this kind of vintage advertising go here to see more.
The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) is a network of scholars elaborating the law, policy and ethics of freedom of thought. Their mission is to develop social policies that will preserve and enhance freedom of thought into the 21st century.
The CCLE is dedicated to protecting and advancing freedom of thought in the modern world of accelerating neurotechnologies. Their paramount concern is to foster the unlimited potential of the human mind and to protect freedom of thought.
The CCLE supports technological advances, and believes that the application and regulation of new drugs and neurotechnologies are best channeled by a renewed allegiance to the fundamental right to freedom of thought. Their guiding principles are privacy, autonomy and choice.
Growing up I watched every Sci-Fi movie that came out. The majority of the space aliens depicted during the fifties and early sixties were threats to mankind.
But things started to change in the late seventies and early eighties and space aliens got a makeover. Instead of being threats, aliens were friends with earthlings. Think E.T., and it’s popular spawn of good space aliens that followed on the big screen.
Shoot…Hawkins even suggested that if space aliens discover our world that they will probably want to colonize it.
I’m not sure how this genius (and I’m not being rude because he is a real genius) came to the conclusion he did, but the way I figure it there was always a 50-50 chance of extra terrestrial’s being good or bad. Call it universal odds. The fact is we can speculate all we want about visitors from space. Until contact is made the story won’t be told. If anyone’s still around to tell it that is!
I think calling in the military to fight the violence in Chicago would be a mistake. There’s enough people angry at the federal government right now, without giving them fuel like this.
The growing violence is a problem, but the local politicians need to address it at the state level and not incite people by bringing in the military. I can see no good coming from that arrangement.
Lawmakers: Military could quell Chicago violence
Excerpt:
“Two Illinois lawmakers say violence has become so rampant in Chicago that the National Guard must be called in to help.
Chicago Democratic Reps. John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford made a public plea to Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday to deploy troops.
The request comes amid a recent surge in violent crime, including a night last week that saw seven people killed and 18 wounded, mostly by gunfire.”
Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Posted: 04/25/2010 01:27:24 AM PDT
It's a comic villain's dream. The good guy is strapped down and bombarded by a powerful beam that can alter his sense of morality. It's also reality, according to a recently released report on magnets by the publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists from MIT, Harvard University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center got together and scrambled the moral center of some willing subjects, using magnets. No, really. It does sound kind of sinister, but these respected neuroscientists suggest just the opposite. They believe the research has useful applications that may, for example, benefit the courts.
The researchers reported they affected the “moral decision-making process” with magnetic fields. The study discovered the part of the brain that changes people's moral judgments. I don't think this new study will change our legal system soon. It's a big, clunky setup involving huge magnets. It sounds scary to me, and I hesitate to consider all the nefarious applications if it ends up in the wrong hands. That's assuming it hasn't already.
PHOTO: Florida wildlife managers have taped magnets to the heads of crocodiles to try and stop them from returning to residential areas. The temporary headgear is thought to disrupt their ‘homing’ ability because the reptiles are thought to rely on the Earth’s magnetic fields to navigate. Researchers at Mexico’s Crocodile Museum in Chiapas reported they had some success with the method, using it to permanently relocate 20 of the reptiles since 2004.” Photo source
This is another confirmation of how devious the Wall Street crowd is. No wonder people hate guys like Blankfein. They live in another world and consider the rest of us rubes!
PHOTO- Goldman Sachs "made more than we lost because of shorts," Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in a November 2007 e-mail.
The woman who started The Coffee Party, Annabel Park, has discovered that the idea of gathering people together to civilly present an exchange of ideas, is naive. Nevertheless, she means well and keeps trying to make the idea work.
Will she be usurped by her own newly created political party for not being “aggressive enough?” Read:
Tired of all the Tea Party talk, Annabel Park decided to throw a Coffee Party—and 200,000 people showed up.
“The question is whether Park or anyone else can hope to lead a successful movement based on civility instead of combat. There's a reason why pundits keep using the cliché that we're a deeply divided nation: there are intensely partisan minorities on the far right and the far left.”
Candidates for office have to raise so much campaign money that they become beholden to the big-spending interests that fund them rather than to the voters who elect them.
But there's an alternative:
Proposition 15’s idea to levy a fee on lobbyists to fund political campaigns is worth a try
Step aside Lassie! We have a new dog hero for the 21st Century.
Buddy appears at a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday, April 23, 2010. The German shepherd was hailed Friday as a hero for guiding Alaska State Troopers through winding back roads to a fire at his owner Ben Heinrichs' workshop on April 4. He received a commendation and a stainless steel dog dish from the troopers. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
Move about keeping world ‘current and inclusive,’ CEO says
Archie Comics issue "Veronica 202" will introduce a new classmate named Kevin Keller, the first gay character in the Archie Comics series. The comic will be available in September 2010.
Gov. faces Saturday deadline; law makes it crime to be in country illegally
Excerpt:
“President Obama on Thursday criticized a pending Arizona law that would make it a state crime to be in the United States legally and requiring anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant to produce identification.”
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