I readily admit to stealing this from craigslist ny, it looked fine as is and I completely agree, so here it is:
If you're in or near NYC, sign up to get to wear a YES MEN Survivaball and promote the opening night of the film, The Yes Men Fix the World.
What is a Survivaball, you say? From their website:
"Wait a second. What's a Survivaball?
The Survivaball is a self-contained survival suit that allows the richest people in the world to make it through the worst climate catastrophe. It is a high-concept, high-tech, fabulously expensive 'gated community for one.'™
"What's a Survivaball really?
"The Survivaball is an inflatable costume. It looks stupid. Really stupid. It is designed to get attention - stupid amounts of attention. We (the Yes Men) first used a Survivaball to impersonate Halliburton at a Catastrophic Loss conference in Florida. We gave a speech about Halliburton's plan to save the rich and screw everyone else, and unveiled this new technology. It worked so well to get media attention for the issue, that we decided to take the show on the road, and to breed these balls like rabbits."
You, too, can have a great time looking ridiculous, irritating people and improving awareness of catastrophic climate change while earning free movie tickets!
The Senate Finance Committee voted down a public option amendment to the Baucus bill today.
Max Baucus (D-MT) authored the finance committee bill, which contains no public option but requires all Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies and offers some financial assistance to some people to enable them to do so. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) offered an amendment to create a public plan option, to give us the choice to buy public insurance from a government plan if we wanted to buy it.
Every Republican on the committee voted against the public option: Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Orrin Hatch(R-UT), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Jim Bunning (R-KY), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Ensign (R-NV), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and John Cornyn (R-TX).
The following Democrats also voted against giving us the choice of a public option for our healthcare and for requiring us to give money to private insurance companies: Max Baucus (D-MT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Bill Nelson (D-FL). Democrats voting against the public option did this to protect the interests of private insurance companies who they fear will lose money if we have the choice to pick a public option over a for-profit insurance company.
Fear of loss of profits is fear of competition. The Baucus bill is protectionism of a powerful, bloated industry that preys on the American people and buys Senators to protect its profits. If their product is so good, and we've been hearing non-stop squealing from conservative Republicans that our "system" is the best in the world and nothing else can compare to it, then the health industry has nothing to fear, Americans will buy their product. If it isn't so good, don't we have the right to choose whether or not to buy it? What is less "American", less free - the right to make a choice for ourselves in the market or being forced to buy by law? I would personally prefer to have a Federal employee "between" me and my doctor than a health insurance company which pays its CEO $3million plus, sends its people to party in the Carribbean, defrauds medicare, refuses care to cancer patients and pays its stockholders before paying for my care between me and my doctor.
Members of the Finance Committee together received more than $13,000.00 in donations from the health care industry. Baucus himself has received more than $3Million and ranks as the fourth highest recipient of Big Pharma contributions. (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/baucusled-coalition-receives-h.html)
"It is not just the chairman of the committee who has received massive donations. The full Finance Committee is a gluttonous embarrassment of campaign pay-offs. In 2008 the committee members received a total of $13,263,986 from industries affected by health care reform. Can we trust this committee to put the interests of the people before their donors?". (Kevin Zeese, Baltimore Chronicle, 31 May 2009, http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2009/053109Zeese.shtml)
In addition to receiving piles of health industry money, Baucus runs an office stuffed with former health lobbyists and many of his former staff have gone on to lucrative careers in the health industry.
Baucus is NOT about saving the US any money. Without a public option, this bill is budgeted by him to cost about $900Billion, that's $900Billion of our tax money promised by Baucus to private, for-profit health insurance companies. In addition, Baucus created a provision that proposes FINES for individuals and families who don't buy their insurance, despite the President explicitly stating that no reform plan could include either fines or a requirement that people must buy insurance. Baucus' plan was leaked to the press Tuesday before it was seen at the White House. (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, AP, Sep 29, 2009, http://www.kcby.com/home/related/57816717.html)Baucus was also responsible for legislation the prevents the federal government from dickering for drug prices with Big Pharma - that's right, Baucus made sure that we all have to pay MORE for federal drug costs to protect pharmaceutical profits, that we have to pay whatever they tell us it costs.
During the committee hearings, Baucus blatantly refused to allow single-payer advocates to appear before the committee or permit any testimony on the possibility of a single-payer system, despite the fact that many Americans want and request a single-payer system.
Of course, we'd all have liked to have had a look at the bill before the finance committee served it up, unfortunately Baucus refused to make it available online, he said it would take too long.
The Baucus bill is such a complete disaster, I'd call it an act of treason. Baucus has betrayed and embarrassed his own party and the President, betrayed his constituents and the American people. He promised to sell the health and future of the American people to the private health industry, mainly insurance companies and drug companies. The Baucus requires us all to make them rich at our expense and the expense of our children. It is not a health bill, it is not a reform in any way, it is TREASON.
Today Randi Rhodes made a statement attributed to Rush Limbaugh which I found so outrageous that I couldn't believe it was true and went to the web to track down the actual quote. I never rely on the media to report accurately or on the truth of any provocative statement anyone makes to me without researching it myself until I'm satisfied as to the facts of whatever it is. I thought the best place to check this statement would be Limbaugh's transcripts, on his own site. Amazingly, unfortunately, as usual, Ms. Rhodes wasn't exaggerating and she didn't get it wrong.
Rush Limbaugh compared the US healthcare crisis to choices for care for dogs.
"Animals are, by definition, pets, essentially helpless. They become domesticated they become dependent on human beings. They attach themselves, some might say they fall in love with their human beings, it's a debatable thing but they still do get attached and so they're cared for. I go through this list of options that a dog owner has for its health, for its well-being and they're all in the private sector, and there's no federal dog health care plan out there and it's working just fine. And it's based on the dog owner's ability to pay. There's no insurance involved. Some of them don't even take credit cards. But it works."
Besides the obvious fact that this is just absolute CRAP, "it" doesn't work. If I can't afford to take care of a dog, and many people can't, I don't have one. I don't have that option for my health - if I can't afford health, I don't have it?
Many people never take their pets to the vet because they can't afford it. Craigslist is full of people who can't afford to feed or get vet care for a pet asking for help before they have to kill their pet. We've all known people throughout our lives who've "put down" a pet that needed surgery or was severely injured. It's been my experience that it's pretty standard for the vet to offer to kill your animal painlessly as an alternative to surgery or in case of a severe injury. I NEVER want to see a day when the doctor offers to put down one of my children because they're severely injured and I can't afford surgery.
Legend has Marie Antoinette, queen of France, responding to being told that the peasants were starving because they had no bread, "No bread? Then let them eat cake." This quote was probably falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette to make her look like a better candidate for execution following the French Revolution. Unlike Marie Antoinette, Limbaugh really DID say this.
This statement is either so unbelievable, so clueless, so absolutely out of touch with real people's lives OR he's a completely treasonous media whore who will say or do anything for the Republican cause, regardless of the damage that it does to the rest of us.
Either way, this is a man who doesn't give a tinker's damn about any other American citizen or, indeed, any other human being and who is completely unfit for public life of any kind.
Cheney's little PR tour is just the most surreal political moment of my life. It's like he's just begging to be prosecuted! Please, can't we put this man out of our misery and grant his unsubtle request?
Michael Alan WEINER, who has been tewwing people his name was "Mike Savage," complained that those nasty Bwits wewe vewwy mean to him and he's going to SUE! if they don't teww him they'we sowwy!
We don't know who he thinks he's going to SUE! or where he thinks he's going to SUE! them or what he thinks he's going to SUE! them for exactly but he's going to SUE!
Britain's Home Office, "the lead government department for immigration and passports, drugs policy, counter-terrorism and police," according to their website (and JAMES BOND, as we all know!), included WEINER on a list of persons excluded from entering the UK for "seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence."
This came to me one day and I felt compelled to say it. After all, how pathetic can you get. What, war, poverty and justice were too hard? All the real causes were already taken?
I'm a huge fan of Jake's Marionberry Chipotle sauce and it's the best on salmon. I do it in a bamboo steamer: place your salmon filet on a piece of tinfoil in the steamer basket, make sure your tinfoil is just under the fish but don't cover the entire bottom of the basket and block the steam. Salt lightly and loosely cover with one layer of VERY thinly sliced lemon, lime or grapefuit. Generously pour on the sauce, nothing else is needed, place over BOILING water and steam covered for about ten minutes. Flesh should flake off a fork, if not, cover for another couple minutes and try again.
Steam some fresh green beans on top of that for a few minutes, just until they turn bright green and no longer, then toss those with garlic butter. Mmmm!
"Sea Kittens" is the new name chosen for fish in a PETA campaign. I can't decide if it's a ham-handed attempt at guilt-inducing sarcasm or if it really is that brain dead a humorless attempt at "re-branding" fish as a species you don't want to be mean to?
I'm for a lot of things PETA is for: I think wearing fur for fashion is grossly barbaric, I'm against factory farming and UNNECESSARY animal testing and research, I'm for humane and comfortable conditions for research animals BUT, sorry, I'm still going to eat them once in a while, not every day, and I'm still in favor of animal research before human. I want them to die as quickly, painlessly, free of terror as possible but I'm still going to eat some of them sometimes and the "Sea Kitten" campaign just makes all you earnest, well-intentioned people at PETA look like absolutely clueless IDIOTS, completely out of touch with reality.
I'm not saying that's what the people at PETA are, it doesn't matter if that's what you are or not, that's what it makes you look like. You can go so far beyond the acceptable reality of the people you're trying to reach that your position becomes something they cannot agree with, and you've lost them. They will not only no longer agree with you, they will no longer hear you. Find a position on your issue that people can agree with, don't try to stuff opinions down their throats that are completely beyond what they can understand - after all, it's not about what YOU think or your behaviour, is it? It's about changing other peoples' and to do that, you need to find common ground. There's just no common ground on "Sea Kittens," only a big bunch of well-deserved ridicule.
Mew-glub! And now, in all fairness, here's my Sea Kitten, FuMan-Cue, a salmon (of course) in all the available accessories from the PETA site I could stuff on there (no marionberry chipotle sauce as a choice, so he gets a mohawk):
Someone randomly sent me something really beautiful. I'd never heard of this before but this man's work is absolutely amazing. He carves "lovespoons," which are wooden sculpted spoons which men give (or gave) to women as presents in Wales. http://davidwestern.blogspot.com
Here's a picture of a lovespoon on wikipedia but it's NOTHING to what this man's work looks like so go have a look.
"The MOTHERS Act - Trolling for Mental Patients in a Maternity Ward Near You - January 28, 2009
"WASHINGTON, DC (MetroCatholic) - Certain Congressmen who normally spend time pushing legislation are on a mission to “save” birthing mothers of America from “mental illness.” The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act exploits a mother who was “treated” with almost everything the mental health industry can offer, from drug cocktails to electroshock. These “treatments” worked so well for Melanie that she jumped from a 12th story Chicago hotel room window."
Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey have re-introduced the euphamistically titled, "Mother's Act," in the House of Represenatives and the Senate. U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 20 introduced Jan 6th 2009) and the U.S. Senate (S. 324 introduced Jan 26 2009).
The "Mother's Act," is a piece of legislation mandating and providing for mental health "care" for pregnant women, with the laudable goal of preventing "post-partum depression."
Unfortunately, the "care" that is provided for this is very dangerous drugs which cause birth defects, thought of suicide and suicide.
The horrible irony of this grotesque legislation is that it is introduced in honor of Melanie Blocker Stokes: a new mother whose family felt she had emotional problems after giving birth and put her under the "care" of a psychiatrist. Melanie was institutionalized, and given "a cocktail of intensely controversial psychiatric drugs including anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant drugs" and shock treatment, after which she jumped out a twelfth-story window.
This isn't the first time the mental health lobby has tried to push this through. Every other time, thankfully, they've failed. For all our sakes and our future, they can't succeed now. The real purpose of this bill is to create a new market for pyschopharmaceuticals, no matter what the cost is to the rest of us. Please watch the video below and tell your Senators and your Representative in Washington that you DON'T want this. Please share it with other people and get the word out:
