WilliamPitt

WilliamPitt's Journal

March 11, 2015

Whoever made these deserves the Nobel Prize For Just So Awesome

Gangsta rap/hip-hop, so prepare for some hard language.

But damn.

...and:

These were very nearly the end of me.

March 10, 2015

I am no fan of Hillary Clinton by any means, but...

I am no fan of Hillary Clinton by any means, but I am even less a fan of the "mainstream" news media...and with this email thing, you just have to love how these laggards have managed to go from "Clinton Scandal!" to "Remember The Other Clinton Scandals!" to, now, "Look, The Media Is Back In Clinton-Scandal Mode!"

In essence, they've downshifted so they can report on themselves. Easiest gig in America, and now they get to do it until a year from November. "Wow, look how we do what we do!"

Maybe a cat asleep in a ray of sunlight is lazier than these frauds, but I doubt it.

Clintons and controversy: The circus is back in town
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-circus-is-back-in-town/2015/03/10/d941ea78-c74c-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html?hpid=z2

Gad zooks, get a job.

March 10, 2015

Whatever you're doing, STOP. Watch this. Right now.

That is how you do that.

Holy wow.

For reference, the original:

I like the first one better.

March 10, 2015

Screenshot of letter sent to Iran by GOP Senators

March 8, 2015

How to Die of Dumb

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), right, listens to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) speak at
a news conference in Washington about their opposition to the climate change bill on Wednesday,
June 4, 2008. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / The New York Times)

How to Die of Dumb
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Sunday 08 March 2015

Sen. James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma since 1994, took to the floor of the Senate the other day with a snowball in a bag. Because it was cold in Washington DC, he said, because there was snow on the ground, that proves climate change is a hoax. "In case we had forgotten," he said, pulling the snowball from the sack, "because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, do you know what this is? It's a snowball, just from outside here. It's very, very cold out." He went on to denounce what he called the "hysteria on global warming," and then threw the snowball at the presiding officer.

James Inhofe - who believes snow in DC disproves climate change - is the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, because of course he is. He won with 57 percent of the vote in his last re-election campaign, because of course he did.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky since 1984, has been urging state officials all across the US to refuse to comply with the new EPA rule on carbon emissions that was championed by the Obama administration. The rule requires existing power plants to cut their carbon emissions by 30 percent, based on the 2005 requirements, by the year 2030. Senator McConnell is having none of it. "Think twice," he said, "before submitting a state plan, which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits, when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won't be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism."

Mitch McConnell, as Senate Majority Leader, has the power to keep any bills he dislikes from coming to a vote. Until January of 2017 at least, that means any legislation seeking to address the issue of climate change will never see the light of day, because McConnell thinks giving attention to the threat of carbon emissions - what is eventually going to kill us all - amounts to "political extremism." Because of course he does.

(snip)

I don't have an easy answer for how to deal with this. How to explain people like Inhofe and McConnell, how to explain people who have voluntarily returned them to Congress for a combined total of 52 years, would require a political, economic and sociological treatise that I have neither the space nor the time to compile at this juncture. The short version, however, is that our cannibalistic economic model, indifferent news media, sagging voter turnout, general cynicism, religious derangement and fundamental addiction to a cognitive dissonance that motivates so very many to slap aside stone-carved facts staring them in the face, is going to put this whole human experiment into a shallow, unmarked grave.

People talk about "Destroying the planet," which is a hoot. The planet isn't going anywhere. Even the environment may recover in one form or another. The equation we are busily erasing from the blackboard - for profit while encased in a suffocating bag of ignorance - is ourselves.

This is how you die of Dumb.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/29508-how-to-die-of-dumb

March 3, 2015

So let me get this entirely straight (re: the Clinton email story)

The Daily Beast has apparently published a report that substantially undermines the NYT story on Hillary Clinton's email habits while at State. Fair enough, we'll let that play out.

Fact:

Because she didn't abuse the email rules doesn't mean she didn't vote for the Patriot Act (like a Republican);

Didn't vote for the Iraq War (like a Republican);

Didn't push the Keystone XL pipeline (like a Republican);

And isn't in bed with Goldman Sachs and their criminal friends.

Like a Republican.

This is what passes for a Democrat these days.

I'm glad she didn't screw up the email thing. It'll be one of the first things she's gotten right in years.

March 3, 2015

I'm very sorry Hillary Clinton has a sad today.

She voted for the PATRIOT Act.

She voted for the Iraq War Resolution.

She is snuggled up good and tight with organized crime crews like Goldman Sachs that stole our future.

She got the Keystone XL pipeline ball rolling at the State Department.

Personal liberty...unjust war...Wall Street crime...climate change.

Gosh, seems to me those are the signal issues of our time...and every chance she's had to cast a vote or exert influence, she's gone in absolutely the wrong direction.

Now, it seems, she's disinterested in following the law when it comes to governmental data collection. A poster here who claims to have worked at State says it's because she's a Luddite working within a calcified bureaucratic technology, and she's just more comfortable with her Yahoo account, or whatever it is.

If the Bush administration had unspooled that line, this place would have erupted. And rightly so.

So maybe the trick isn't to try to elect the most "electable" Democrat. As Democrats, maybe the trick is to wrestle this party back from the abyss and rediscover a few DNA-level values.

Like protecting personal liberty...and avoiding unjust war...and holding Wall Street to account...and thwarting climate change.

I'm sorry she has a sad today, but my unavoidable conclusion is that Secretary Clinton - based on her black-letter record - does not strike me as the avatar for that change.

Oh, and P.S.: I'm not being divisive. This is the cold, hard truth. Deploy your coping mechanisms as you will. The facts are on the wall. Read them or don't; you're still free, for now.

Let the million flowers bloom.