Greenwald on Extremism Normalized

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…continuing to boil the frog…

From the comments section, a few posters are arguing about the uninformed public making poor choices because…they’re uninformed.  SiouxRose makes the point that a single mother with 2 kids doesn’t have the time to do what we do–looking for the news on the internet…because she sure the hell isn’t getting the information she needs to make an informed decision on the network news.

Then another poster comments that people need to take responsibility.

The problem with that is  with media consolidation into the rightwing mania, the information access is extremely limited.  It’s difficult to get accurate, mostly unbiased (there’s no such thing as un-biased) news reported by intelligent individuals with a grasp of the subject at hand.  Like I reported earlier, the only station that reports news like it used to be reported, prior to Reagan’s assault on the Press and Marketplace of Ideas, is a rightwing station.  They report every half hour.  The other stations?  You’re lucky if you get the news in the morning, and then you’re SOL for the rest of the day.  Nothing. Nada.  And when the storm hit my area, there was nothing the next day–Saturday–to tell folks what was happening and where they could go for a cooling center.  But you can be sure that there will be half-hour segments when/if a ter__ist event is happening.

So…to blame the public for not getting access to information is blaming the wrong folks–they already have very little power.    And if you’re like me, you only get access to news through the internet.  As has been said before–you control information, you control people.

I just wish there were as much outrage over the consolidation of media and the end of the Fairness Doctrine as there is against war.

Following the trail…

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I picked up an old copy of The Nation over the weekend, the date:  10-1-2001.  It was the first issue after 9/11, and prominently featured the twin towers on the cover.  In it was a story that I don’t recall reading, and given the upheaval of that moment in time, I probably didn’t read it.

However, the story was worthy of the cover had it not been for the tragedy of the weeks before–

The report by Amy Bach, an attorney, was on the Federalist Society and its infiltration into law schools all over the country.

In it, she showed the web of connections that this “society” was constructing–conservative law students (Antonin Scalia was one) who didn’t like their liberal law professors’ point of view, and wanted to do something about it.  That something was the Federalist Society to encourage conservative students to organize, and then make connections to the power players in the White House and the Supreme Court.

Bach names names and one of them is Jeff Sutton.  He argued the cases Alexander v. Sandoval and University of Alabama et al v. Garrett. (link here: http://www.civilrights.org/monitor/vol11_no4/art1p1.html)

I did a search to see where Sutton was now–here:  http://www.onu.edu/node/34771

and here:  http://abovethelaw.com/tag/jeffrey-sutton/

Well, of course he was nominated to a judge position by Bush.

From the article:

“…it [Federalist policy] benefits big business, it’s anti-egalitarian, it shuts plaintiffs like the poor and disabled out of courts, and it rolls back the New Deal notion that the courts have a role to play in helping the downtrodden.”

However, Bach noted organizations of progressive and centrists, one of which is the American Constitution Society.  The problem with getting organized is that progressives are not as narrow-minded, but independent in thought.  It’s soooo much easier to organize when your targets are the poor, disabled, women, minorities, etc.–you know, people who have less power to fight back.

Drought Map

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common dreams has a drought map up.  As I posted before, the Ag secretary was saying that there was a bumper planting of corn this year, so the corn crop isn’t going to be that affected…which means there is speculation and falsely jacking up food prices.

They reported this morning that a meteorologist from Purdue was saying that a drought this bad is a “once-in-a-lifetime” happening and that folks who are living now will “never” see something like this again….um, yeah…

…and there’s this thing called the 1988 drought that I remember quite well because I was pregnant and worried about the food shortages they were predicting.  I’ve also been watching the rivers ever since then, and my memory may be faulty, but I don’t recall them reaching their former levels with the exception of a couple of years.  This has concerned me ever since.

This is the only article I could find that notes the extended drought –it puts it between 1988 and 1992.

 

Dow sponsoring Olympics

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Helen Clark at commondreams has this up on Dow being a sponsor of the Olympics.   I think the time is long past of the Olympics being held in high regard…

Here’s a pretty good page on Agent Orange’s effects.

…and yet the lessons still haven’t been learned…

…and the unsuspecting folks who were unaware they were being poisoned…  Be sure to click on the link at the top of the page.  Unfortunately, I don’t have time to click on all the links on the page.  The one at the top is absolutely stunning.

Along these lines–

I looked up a couple of pages on the chlorinated hydrocarbons–insecticides– here and here. 

Michigan’s state website has this:  http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-27249–,00.html

It’s just mindboggling that so much is known about the dangers of these chemicals, but still they are used.

Rain

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…falls mainly on the Hoosier plain…:)

I was in that haze between sleep and awake states at 6:30 this morning when I thought I heard a rumble…

Could it be?

Is that rain I hear hitting the window?

Nah…I’m still asleep…

And then…CRACK!  BOOM!  Nature blessed us with much, much needed rain.  It didn’t last long, probably ten-fifteen minutes, so I thought it was over…and then another storm came in and rained for an hour!  Woot!  I would go out dancing in it if I wouldn’t be taken away in a straight jacket (we don’t do that stuff here.  Spontaneous displays of joy and wonderment are not allowed. /just slightly snarky).

So, yeah, I’m letting out a big Ahhhh…thank you thank you thank you.