Has the Market Rejected the Religious Right's Hateful Social Agenda?

It's clear from advertising that the market does not favor the GOP's social agenda.

February 8, 2012

“Gen X” was popularized as an advertising term. Marketers used the label to describe the young people of the late ‘80s. The focus was on how to sell goods to the MTV generation.

Advertisements at that time, just as one example, started to feature unmarried couples to appeal to this group of consumers. This was a first and in the early ‘90s it was pushing the envelope. It apparently resonated. The advertisers gauged correctly: They successfully sold their products to Americans with the now documented lowest marriage rate in history.

The argument could be made (mainly by those who want to take us back to a mythical innocent time of the supposedly recent past) that it’s advertisers who’ve corrupted our culture and changed what’s socially acceptable through their manipulations. Or, if you have sold your proverbial soul to the gods of unfettered commerce – like the rightwing self-described Culture Warriors, or the (formerly) Moral (former) Majority – advertisements are the market speaking for the greater culture at large. And the greater culture, funny enough, largely disagrees with the right-wing.  READ MORE

Michelle Rhee Adds Anti-Immigration State Alabama To Her Portfolio

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 06:00 AM PST



Here are some basic facts about Alabama. They have the most draconian immigration laws in the country, forcing people to produce identification proving they have legal status before they can even get water service, much less an education for their children. Under Alabama's horrible law, teachers are required to check the immigration status of their students. These policies are inhuman in a state where there are already far too many poor people, citizen and immigrant alike. Also? Alabama does not currently have charter schools.

Alabama's education system is underfunded and in need of reforms, but not Rhee's flavor of reforms. To get a sense of who she really is, watch the video at the top where she admits she was a bad teacher while selling herself as a reformer.

And now she's sold herself to Alabama as The Great Education Savior, under what can only be described as very strange and odd circumstances.
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Let's have a look at the parallels between Michelle Rhee's priorities and ALEC's.
READ MORE

On Fox News, Karen Handel Plays the Victim, Accuses Planned Parenthood of 'Vicious Attacks and Coercion'

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 07:00 AM PST




Karen Handel, who according to reports was the party primarily responsible for Komen's decision to pull grants from Planned Parenthood, went sobbing into the open arms of Faux News on Tuesday afternoon, where she played an all-too familiar role: the right-wing martyr.
What's great about this segment was Handel still can't get her story straight. She claims that the Planned Parenthood decision was all about "the mission" -- whatever the hell that means -- then started rambling about Congressional investigations.

HANDEL: You know, I think the Congressional investigation along with the various state investigations, those were a factor in the decision. But make no mistake about it, you know, it was a bigger picture than that. There was a granting criteria as well as the controversies that were surrounding Planned Parenthood. And it's no secret Megyn, that Komen and other organizations that were funding Planned Parenthood had been under pressure for some years long before my time, um, that had been going on, the pressure around the controversy.

Pressure from whom, Karen? And what "controversies" would those be? READ MORE

US elections: no matter who you vote for, money always wins

Mitt Romney's personal wealth is double that of the
last eight US presidents combined.
Photograph: TJ Kirkpatrick/Corbis

Dollars play a decisive role in US politics. And more so since the supreme court allowed unlimited campaign contributions
 Gary Youngeguardian.co.uk,
Sunday 29 January 2012 15.30 EST


Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".

Given the general state of the Republican party, such comments now attract precious little attention. Truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.

So the oft-touted notion that these debates have been responsible for shifting the trajectory of this primary race would be worrying if it were true. It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."

The good news is, with the exception of Perry's demise, the debates have not been pivotal. The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.
READ MORE

550 sexual abuse claims filed against Milwaukee Archdiocese

Sex abuse claims too much

By CARRIE ANTLFINGER

updated 2/2/2012 9:53:48 AM ET

MILWAUKEE — About 550 people are asking for restitution for alleged sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee — more than in any of the other U.S. dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy protection, according to a lawyer involved in the Milwaukee case.


The archdiocese has paid more than $30 million in settlements and other court costs related to allegations of clergy abuse and more than a dozen suits against it have been halted because of the bankruptcy proceedings. One priest alone is accused of abusing some 200 boys at a suburban school for deaf students from 1950 to 1974.

James Stang, a bankruptcy lawyer who represents creditors in the Wisconsin case, estimated that about 550 claims had been filed by the Wednesday afternoon deadline set by the bankruptcy court.
Those who filed claims will end up splitting a settlement amount that will be determined by the creditors' committee, archdiocese and its insurance company. The archdiocese had only $4.6 million in assets to be applied to claims in 2010.

A victims' advocacy group called the number of filings "extraordinarily tragic," but said that represented only a small portion of people abused by clergy. READ MORE

States seek currencies made of silver and gold

February 3, 2012, CNN

A growing number of states are seeking shiny new currencies made of silver and gold. Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, lawmakers from 13 states, including Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia, are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option.

Just three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in place.  

Unlike individual communities, which are allowed to create their own currency -- as long as it is easily distinguishable from U.S. dollars -- the Constitution bans states from printing their own paper money or issuing their own currency. 

But it allows the states to make "gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." And since gold has grown exponentially more valuable, while the U.S. dollar continues to lose ground, the notion has become increasingly appealing to state lawmakers, he said.

The states' proposals have been gaining steam among Tea Partyers and Republicans, many of whom also endorse a nationwide return to the gold standard, which would require the U.S. dollar to be backed by gold reserves.READ MORE

Revealed: the men with stolen identities

September 23, 2001, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

Four Found Alive

Their names were flashed around the world as suicide hijackers who carried out the attacks on America. 

But yesterday four innocent men told how their identities had been stolen by Osama bin Laden's teams to cover their tracks. The men - all from Saudi Arabia - spoke of their shock at being mistakenly named by the FBI as suicide terrorists. 

None of the four was in the United States on September 11 and all are alive in their home country. The FBI released the list of 19 suicide terrorists three days after the attacks. The Saudi Airlines pilot, Saeed Al-Ghamdi, 25, and Abdulaziz Al-Omari, an engineer from Riyadh, are furious that the hijackers' "personal details" - including name, place, date of birth and occupation - matched their own.  

The other two men accused of being terrorists are Salem Al-Hamzi and Ahmed Al-Nami. Mr Al-Hamzi is 26 and had just returned to work at a petrochemical complex in the industrial eastern city of Yanbou ... when the hijackers struck. Mr Al-Nami, 33, from Riyadh, an administrative supervisor with Saudi Arabian Airlines, said that he was in Riyadh when the terrorists struck.  

The FBI admitted that there was some doubt about the identities of some of the suspects. A spokesman said: "The identification process has been complicated by the fact that many Arabic family names are similar. It is also possible that the hijackers used false identities." The spokesman declined to say whether the FBI would apologise but added: "If we have made mistakes then obviously that would be regrettable."

Note: The deceptions in the official story of 9/11 are nowhere more clearly shown than in this important story. The FBI never revised its list of alleged hijackers, and these four are all later listed in the official 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click here and scroll down a little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more on this, click here. For an abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here. For other revealing news articles on 9/11, click here.