I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

alexandria58

Suz, two thumbs up for you and Jim.

Yorkie, I'm assuming you're already gone, but sending wishes for a wonderful trip.  I'd love to go to Istanbul.

Alyson, I'd love to meet you.  Next time, I hope.

Blue, gorgeous pics.

Bren-2007

Morning Gals,

Wanted to wish Yorkie a safe trip to Istanbul.  What a great adventure.  Traveling there is on my bucket list.

Blue .. the pictures of your home town are gorgeous.  I wanted to be on that beach soaking up some sun.

Enjoyful ... so wonderful that SO is taking some of the load off your shoulders.  He's a good guy.

We were watching Full Metal Jacket last night and I started asking Tim some questions about the training during the VietNam era and if it was like in the movie.  He said that his training was very similar, except in real life the drill sergeant is not allowed to hit you.  I couldn't believe it when Tim told me he had to run 5 miles every morning around Arlington National Cemetery.  I can barely get him to walk outside these days!  Anyway .. I've seen the movie many times and each time it has such a powerful effect on me.

Hope all enjoy their Tuesday ... going to walk the dogs ASAP before the temps hit 90 today.

hugs,

Bren

crazy4carrots

I wonder if Yorkie will be singing "Istanbul, not Constantinople la la" on the plane!  Have never been, but understand it's beautiful and, of course, jam-packed with ancient history.  There was a segment on a news show last night talking about constructing a tunnel under the Bosporus, the most heavily trafficked passage in the world.

Bren, it's going to hit 90 in your neck of the woods?  Too damn hot!!!  It's a very pleasant 73 here.  The Farmer's Almanac "suggests" that we're going to have a cooler than usual summer in these parts, and a warmer than usual winter.  Okay with me!

pupmom

Kam, alexandria, Bren and C4C thanks for the well wishes! We've still got 2 hours until departure for the airport.

kayfh

I just want to put it out there, climate change, global warming, or global weirdness, whatever you want to call it is real.  

Our PM and Tony Abbott, PM of Australia are meeting in Ottawa.  They basically said, we won't let fear of climate change get in the way of economic growth.  Two very dangerous, very stupid (but how can they be?  One has a MA in Economics from the University of Calgary, the other was a Rhodes Scholar) men.  They both have children and presumably some of their children will want have children.  Is it because they are evil, is it even more banal, that they are duped by ideology?

kayfh

oh yes, Yorkiemom, what a wonderful opportunity you have to immerse yourself in another culture.  And the food, especially the food.  I also wonder if towels in Turkey will be softer, loftier than the ones we get here, please be sure to pay attention to that minutiae for me?

Are you going to connect with Stagefree?  Her self description makes me want to hug her for being so funny and so generous and quirky!

pupmom

I'm looking forward to all the awesome food! I don't think stagefree's summer schedule will allow us to meet up. She does seem like a great person! Yeah, I'll keep track of the towels. I do love me a big ole soft towel!

lassie11

Kayfh - I nearly drove my car off the road listening to Harper say that no one, not anyone, would disagree with him that economic considerations trump any attempts to mitigate climate change.  It's a logical fallacy to start with some variation of "everyone agrees . . ."  We most certainly do not agree and his pompous pronouncements will not change that.

kayfh

I am blown away that he has so little regard for the security and happiness of his descendants.  We can't run a country like it is a corporation.  So many socially valuable things, like education, health, and security can't be run to make a profit.  And so many profitable activities do not contribute to the social good, tar sands, exporting weaponry.  

RetiredLibby

I am so sad to hear that the greed and mendacity of a certain unpleasant segment of our society seems to have spread.  Apparently it is contagious. 

Edited to say:  This appears to be a satire piece in the Arizona Star.  I can't find a second confirmation anywhere else.  It is a metaphor for what the rwnjs are doing however. 

Arizona Star

Fitz: 500,000  “Impeach Obama for leaving an American behind in Afghanistan" protest signs found in dumpster behind RNC

June 06, 2014 9:30 am  •  By David Fitzsimmons                                    

On Thursday half a million  “IMPEACH OBAMA FOR LEAVING AN AMERICAN BEHIND IN AFGHANISTAN” signs were found by sanitation workers next to a dumpster behind the Washington-based headquarters of the Republican National Committee.

G.O.P. chairman Reince Priebus said," We know nothing about the litter found in the alley behind our national office. We suspect this is part of an orchestrated mainstream media smear campaign. For the record, we are opposed to littering."

http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/fitz-blog/fitz-impeach-obama-for-leaving-an-american-behind-in-afghanistan/article_6aa17163-d75e-5f2d-89d5-f28482441c00.html?mobile_touch=true

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pupmom

Kay, is your PM the cretin that is still allowing the seal hunt? I thought that horror was banned decades ago.

River_Rat

RL, that's from a cartoonist's blog. I wouldn't assume it to be true without seeing it from another source.

kayfh

Was that published in the Onion? 

If it  IS real, OMG it is so amazing that some people can talk out both sides of their faces!

Anonymous

Yorkie, Have a SPLENDID time, sure you will, as the tradition of HOSPITALITY is strong in the place you're going.  Hope your sciatica stays here with us, and we'll definitely lose it b4 you return with your wonderful stories. HAPPY TRAVELS.

kayfh

I hate to say it, but this PM and every PM before him.  So that, I can't blame THAT on him.  Maybe just the complacency of a lot of us.  When I was in grade nine I had the coolest seal skin boots. 

But times change and so do sensibilities. 

pupmom

Thank you Sunny! This miserable condition comes and goes. I've brought a copy of my PT exercises with me, which might help. DH did arrange for wheelchair services in Chicago and London. Don't like it, but better than the alternative.

Anonymous

Kay, thanks, after MANY deep breaths, I've joined Alexandria, Jackie, RL in just blocking her.  As Jackie said, sad to see the blue line on this thread, but I have no way to deal with anyone who says "I'm not a racist, but...."and whatever follows from that mind set.

SO, back to gardens, which seem to be liking these rainy days much more than I am.  In anticipation of them, I did a LOT of planting, seeds, will let you know rr about the cilantro.  Using seedlings of course, and put in a patch of seeds of it and then dill.

Admiring the GORGEOUS purple flowers on the chives, previous years I've cut them to keep the plant growing, this year the Bees are humming many thanks.  Also the sparrows who seem to think the coir fiber of the hanging basket of nasturtiums is the perfect material for their nests, and in the don't fight what you can't change mode, I've just put the hanging pot on the ground in a bird bath, and all see to be happy..

thanks again Kay, great advice, and appreciate the deep breathing, and the wonderful wonderful posts helping me to get in touch with the deepest values I hold, and know I'm not alone in being willing to stand for them.

RetiredLibby

It was published in the Arizona Star, which is a legitimate paper.  I can't find a second confirmation, though, so I'll edit the post.  It is NOT in Snopes as satire, but RR is correct, it IS on an editorial cartoonist's blog. 

Thanks RR - I should have tried to find it in another place instead of relying on the AZ Star's good name.

 

River_Rat

RL, yeah you gotta watch out for the blogs on news sites, that has burned a lot of people. Also the comments there say that the pic comes from something else. It may go viral and then we won't know the truth until somebody digs around in the weeds i.e. Snopes or such.

RetiredLibby

Here is a good read from Greg Sargent's Washington Post column "The Plum Line."  All of the rwnjs who throw around their inflammatory rhetoric and who swallow what is poured out wholesale from Feeding Our Xenophobia would do well to read and understand their part in feeding the domestic terrorist movement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/09/how-much-does-right-wing-rhetoric-contribute-to-right-wing-terrorism/

Washington Post

Plum LineGreg Sargent's take from a liberal perspectiveHow much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?

By Paul Waldman 

June 9 at 12:18 pm

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions.

What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but we need to talk about it. It’s long past time for prominent conservatives and Republicans to do some introspection and ask whether they’re contributing to outbreaks of right-wing violence.

Before I go on, let me be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that Republican members of Congress bear direct responsibility for everything some disturbed person from the same side of the political spectrum as them might do. I’m not saying that they are explicitly encouraging violence. Nor am I saying that you can’t find examples of liberals using hyperbolic, irresponsible words.

But what I am saying is this: there are some particular features of conservative political rhetoric today that help create an atmosphere in which violence and terrorism can germinate.

The most obvious component is the fetishization of firearms and the constant warnings that government will soon be coming to take your guns. But that’s only part of it. Just as meaningful is the conspiracy theorizing that became utterly mainstream once Barack Obama took office. If you tuned into one of many national television and radio programs on the right, you heard over and over that Obama was imposing a totalitarian state upon us. You might hear that FEMA was building secret concentration camps (Glenn Beck, the propagator of that theory, later recanted it, though he has a long history of violent rhetoric), or that Obama is seeding the government with agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. You grandfather probably got an email offering proof that Obama is literally the antichrist.

Meanwhile, conservatives have become prone to taking the political disagreements of the moment and couching them in apocalyptic terms, encouraging people to think that if Democrats have their way on any given debate, that our country, or at the very least our liberty, might literally be destroyed.

To take just one of an innumerable number of examples, when GOP Senator Ron Johnson says that the Affordable Care Act is “the greatest assault on freedom in our lifetime,” and hopes that the Supreme Court will intervene to preserve our “last shred of freedom,” is it at all surprising that some people might be tempted to take up arms? After all, if he’s right, and the ACA really means that freedom is being destroyed, then violent revolution seems justified. Johnson might respond by saying, “Well, of course I didn’t mean that literally.” And I’m sure he didn’t — Johnson may be no rocket scientist, but he knows that despite the individual mandate going into effect, there are a few shreds of freedom remaining in America.

But the argument that no sane person could actually believe many of the things conservatives say shouldn’t absolve them of responsibility. When you broadcast every day that the government of the world’s oldest democracy is a totalitarian beast bent on turning America into a prison of oppression and fear, when you glorify lawbreakers like Cliven Bundy, when you say that your opponents would literally destroy the country if they could, you can’t profess surprise when some people decide that violence is the only means of forestalling the disaster you have warned them about.

To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.

In our recent history, every election of a Democratic president is followed by a rise in conspiracy-obsessed right-wing populism. In the 1960s it was the John Birch Society; in the 1990s it was the militia movement shouting about black UN helicopters, and during the Obama presidency it was the Tea Party. Some of those movements are ultimately harmless, but alongside and around them are people who take their rhetoric seriously and lash out in response. After these killings in Nevada, and the murders at a Jewish community center in Kansas, and the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and multiple murders by members of the “sovereign citizens” movement in the last few years, it’s worth remembering that since 9/11, right-wing terrorism has killed many more Americans than al Qaeda terrorism.

And I promise you, these murders in Nevada will not be the last. It may be going too far to say that conservative politicians and media figures whose rhetoric has fed the deranged fantasies of terrorists and killers have blood on their hands. But they shouldn’t have a clear conscience, either.

 

Bren-2007

Sunnyflowers ... just for you!  You can see on the left where I put the iris'.  Also my two little tomato plants.  And for all my efforts, I got a tick stuck on my arm!  Hate those damn things. 

Carrots ... gosh, 73 degrees sounds so wonderful.  Yep .. going to be hot here this week.

Kay ... would love to see your garden.

hugs,

Bren

kayfh

Bren: I have a confession.  I am so nauseated that I don't want to go outside.  That is why I am 'talking' so much'

Bren-2007

Kay .. I am so sorry to hear this.  Is the nausea from your treatment?  Nausea sucks ... it's so hard to get rid of it.  I hope you will be feeling better soon.

big hugs,

Bren

PS .. I picked up a headache out in the heat ... After I washed the car, I said enough is enough for today!

djd

 

The Fox Effect: Viewers Are More Uninformed About Immigration

Sahil Kapur – June 10, 2014, 12:07 PM EDT

Americans who most trust Fox News are more likely to be uninformed about the immigration system and less likely to support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants than those who trust other news sources, according to a sweeping new study released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution and Public Religion Research Institute.

Of the Americans who trust Fox News to give them the most accurate information about politics and current events, just 12 percent correctly believe that deportations have increased under the Obama administration, said the study, which measured cultural attitudes toward immigration in 2014. Overall, 25 percent of Americans correctly said deportations have risen.

Among Republicans, there were notable differences in attitudes toward immigrants between those who most trust Fox and those who prefer other news outlets.

Sixty percent of Republicans who most trust Fox say immigrants are a burden, while just 38 percent of Republicans whose most trusted news source is something else say immigrants are a burden.

Republicans who most trust Fox News are also less likely to support a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants (42 percent) than Republicans who trust other news sources (60 percent).

The study concluded that "trust in Fox News as an accurate news source is the most powerful independent predictor of opposition to a path to citizenship. Identifying as Republican and being a born-again Christian are also significant predictors of opposition to immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship."

By contrast, the most significant predictors of support for immigration reform were "[h]olding a four-year college degree, being female, identifying with the Democratic Party, and most trusting MSNBC as an accurate news source."

Link to TPM.COM:  http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/study-fox-news-viewers-uninformed-immigration

IllinoisLady

Great articles, RL and Donna.  Troubling aspects in both....especially the first as I often had that question in my head as to how often can you distort and then display views meant to "influence".  I mean, if you light a fuse....it will reach the bomb.

As to Faux Farce News.....they help all they can in the dissemination of half if not totally baked lies but go home with their employers money paving their road.  I'm guessing they do it for the money.  Why else appear on t.v. and look and sound like you are dumber than a rock and I think I'm being un-kind to rocks here. 

Pouring rain....but it came straight down....something to be said there.  Looks like we will have a week of it.  Sure glad global warming is a fallacy.  Elsewise I'd have to worry about something.

Jackie
edited for a miss-spelled word.

kayfh

Truth in Journalism: Behind Canada's Law Against Lying.

This is an article in Yes Magazine from 2011 that  actually explains to me what is going on in the US, with the folks at Feeding Our Xenophobia, and other scurrilous rags.   I am outraged at what those people say and do with impunity, and I really hoped that our Canadian media wouldn't be incorporating that shite.  I have American TV channels but only watch the CBC and BBC for news which I know basically shelters me and perhaps gives me a skewed world view. That may be good or bad.

But you know, when the elephant rolls over the mouse can get squashed. Unbeknownst to me, under the Broadcast Act it is illegal to present lies as journalism.  Thank some very perturbed fellow citizens for preventing our Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission from changing the rules to accommodate Fox News North at the request of who?  Probably the Prime Ministers Office (PMO).  Which PM?  Well, that would be our current PM Harper. 

I would have linked it but I am on an iPad, I am a Luddite, and the only other computer in my house is an Apple product, and I really don't understand the directions given at Help.  Well those are my excuses.  Did I say that I am a Luddite?

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/a-law-against-lying-on-the-news

Hey what happened?  I accidentally touched the iPad and the link miraculously appeared.  Don't think I can replicate it.  But if I do, I will try to use restraint.  

RL and Donna: your articles made me go look for something that explains why we Canadians, at least those of us who don't travel in your country much, don't understand why Fox et al get away with everything they do. Thanks for posting. 

SunflowersMA I am so glad you are staying.  You are so important to these discussions.

pip57

Kay, I hope you are feeling better soon. 

 I have just finished a book called "The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks".   At the end of the book, the author explains the medical research machine.  The way it is going, we will unlikely see a cure.  Why?   Big money of course.  Tests for the BRCA genes is just the tip of the iceberg.  

bluedahlia

We won't see cures for much, unfortunately.

crazy4carrots

Kay -- Thanks for finding and posting that article.

When I read about the rightwing in the US complaining about the President "taking away their freedoms" (yeah sure, go ahead and name one!), I think of the First and Second Amendments in particular.

So....the First Amendment gives citizens the "freedom" to be lied to with impunity.  And to be told that opinions are facts.

The Second Amendment gives citizens the "freedom" to be killed by people who have the "freedom" to purchase assault weapons with no background checks.

And in some states, women have the "freedom" to be required to bear children which have been sired through rape or incest, and of course a host of other "freedoms" regarding contraception.

And in those same states and in others, citizens have the "freedom" not to have good healthcare shoved down their throats (a favourite expression of the RWNJs -- why this fascination with people's throats, I wonder?).

And citizens have the "freedom" to drive on bad roads and bridges on the verge of collapse because one House of Government says NO to the President's attempt to improve infrastructure.

Oh yes, then there's the "freedom" to be educated by teachers forced to teach creationism as science, and to teach that climate change is just a bunch of hooey.

I know Libby and Donna and others can add a whole whack of "freedoms" to this list.  Please dear sisters, be my guest!

bluedahlia

Did you know that Cesar Millan was an illegal immigrant?  Wonder how many jobs he created!