Open Thread - Sunday

Moseyon sent me an interesting e-mail:

Recently, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym.

It said, "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious

humans). They have an active sex life, they get pregnant and have adorable

baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves

with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like

Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia . Whales are

wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible

creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are

loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside

the offices of Argentinian psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or

human? They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to

them not to mention how could they have sex? Therefore they do not have

kids either. Not to mention who wants to get close to a girl who smells

like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only

skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my

kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver and a coffee with my

friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much

information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it

distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren't heavy, we are

enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at

my butt in the mirror I will think, Good gosh, look how smart I am.

Thank you, Moseyon.

One of Murdoch's puppets is in trouble: The Damning of Tony Blair

An article by Sarah Ellison, which appeared in the October 2010 edition of Vanity Fair, had already addressed many of the points that re-emerged in the recent scandal involving Rupert Murdoch. It's a very long article, but this passage caught my attention:

In the U.S., Murdoch’s influence in politics has come mainly through Fox News. In Britain, his presence looms over every election, large and small. The famous headline IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT—after the 1992 British election for prime minister went to the Conservatives—has been a reference point in U.K. elections ever since. Tony Blair courted Murdoch assiduously in his successful 1997 bid for prime minister, once traveling halfway around the world to attend a News Corp. conference—a supreme moment of ring kissing. The relationship between Blair and Murdoch was close. In his diaries, Blair’s top spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, described a Downing Street dinner for Mr. Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, in 2002: “Murdoch pointed out that his were the only papers that gave us support when the going got tough. ‘I’ve noticed,’ said TB.” Lance Price, who worked for Campbell, later wrote, “I have never met Mr. Murdoch, but at times when I worked at Downing Street he seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard … but his presence was always felt.” Murdoch’s power, says Price, is rooted in fear of what he might do as much as in fear of what he has actually done. It comes not only from what his papers print, but also from what they might know but do not print. He holds sway by implicit threat.

As I said in previous posts, the hacking of private communications by News International goes beyond the hunger for explosive headlines. It provides ample material to be used in order to control people in positions of power.

Blair's ascension to power appears to have been manufactured and subsequently controlled by Murdoch. I shudder to think that we had at least ten years of Murdoch's agenda being implemented in 10 Downing Street, including an illegal, criminal war. It's well known how Fox News promoted the invasion in the US.

A public inquiry into the war in Iraq will have the report published later in the year, but some of their findings have been leaked:

Tony Blair is to face scathing criticism from the official inquiry into the Iraq War for the role he played in leading Britain into one of its biggest foreign policy fiascos in modern history.

The Mail on Sunday has been told that the former Prime Minister will be held to account on four main failings:

* Bogus claims that were made about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
* Not telling the British public about his secret pledge with George Bush to go to war.
* Keeping the Cabinet in the dark by his ‘sofa government’ style.
* Failing to plan to avoid the post-war chaos in Iraq.

Mr Blair may face harsh criticism for his handling of the invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, the report doesn't look into the relationship between Murdoch, Blair and Bush. It gives Blair too much credit for being his own man and making his own decisions.

Blair was dubbed Bush's poodle, when if fact he was Murdoch's lap dog.

How many more obedient pets does Murdoch has around the world?

Rupert Murdoch provides the propaganda arm for a group of people with a very dangerous agenda, together with the covert harvesting of compromising information about selected targets. His motivation is not world domination, but he's very comfortable playing his part in helping those who call the shots behind the scenes. Murdoch is an opportunist, motivated by money.

His greed has caused too much harm and is infectious, with a very corrupting effect on his minions. People like Sarah Palin, for example, through her own greed and a large dose of fear, has been well employed as the poster girl for Murdoch's partners in crime.

Tony Blair, damned by his vanity and dreams of grandeur, will have to face his doom alone, an abandoned puppet. Murdoch and his gang make them, then leave them when no longer useful.

We have to pin our hopes on the FBI investigations into hacking in the US and Murdoch being held responsible.

The damning of Rupert Murdoch would at least help silence the propaganda machine...

Open Thread - Saturday

Wayofpeace forwarded a funny e-mail to me and I'm glad to share it with you.

Thank you, Wayofpeace, it's very good to have a laugh...

Where is the love, Sarah Palin?

LOVE

PROP

[Please visit hang on little tomato and catch up with our little friend Max.]

Open Thread - Friday

I thought I was having a bad day, but this woman has real problems (and makes Tumbleweed's kerbing sound like a picnic...).

From the Daily Mail:

When in Monte Carlo, everything is done in style. And that includes crashing your car.
This was the moment when a woman driver caused a £700,000 five-car pile-up as her Bentley collided with a Mercedes, Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin.

OUCH!

After a couple of beers in the sun, watching the people at the weekly market, life seems so much better. And the worst anybody can damage over here are a couple of Citroëns...

Ugly, toxic Sarah Palin

I'm having a serious bout of Palin fatigue. I feel uninspired, with a knot in my stomach at the mere mention of her name.

It's a sad state of affairs when a person who can't string a couple of sentences together, misuses and invents words, gets her facts wrong, makes a ridiculous reality show and prostitutes her family for fame and money becomes a loud and influential voice in American politics.

How could this woman, who gave us the classic Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric episodes be taken seriously? How could a woman so easily pranked by a couple of comedians (who compared her to Britney Spears) have her every burp and fart reported by the media as if they had any relevance?

Sarah Palin herself is a myth. Somebody banked on her sex appeal to get their warped message out. She's being paid handsomely by her puppet masters to poison American politics and she's doing a very good job.

The media can't have enough of her, even though she avoids them like the plague. This elaborate cat-and-mouse game led the media to follow her One Nation bus tour like dogs chasing a bitch in heat.

Sarah Palin derailed the healthcare debate with her death panels, brought out the ugly with her crosshairs and now she has posted veiled threats to the teabaggers in Congress, urging them to sabotage any attempt to solve the debt ceiling crisis.

Her poisonous voice is given a lot of undeserved weight by the media she so despises.

Perhaps we're all to blame for keeping this toxic flame alive. I wish I could stop writing about Sarah Palin. The bloggers find themselves in a kind of catch-22: Article upon article appear in the media without any fact checking, so it falls to the bloggers to set the record straight. We have to keep writing about her. It's a vicious circle.

And the political landscape in America continues to get uglier by the minute...

Open thread - Thursday

This is funny!



Cheeky Charlie...

Here he is, a bit older, but not wiser...

Sarah Palin's OPM

Sarah Palin's new cute expression is OPM: Other people's money. We know that Sarah relied on it for her family's bizarre vacation aboard the One Nation bus, but OPM is ok when the money goes to her lovely self.

Another source of OPM was the now defunct Alaska Fund Trust. A new defense fund was created, which promised to refund donors to the old legal fund when it was found to be illegal (oh, the irony!).

The website "The Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund" doesn't appear to be updated very often, if at all. They're very economical on information. The trustee has total control of how the money is used, but the trustee is not named. The terms of the trust are nowhere to be seen.

Awww, they appeared as a lovely couple on both websites...

As we all know, Sarah Palin is totally open and transparent, and I'm sure she will instruct whoever runs that website to publish details of all the refunds and of how well the fund is doing. The total amount of Sarah Palin's legal debts is not very clear. Some people exaggerated a little and put it at a couple of million dollars, but it seems that half a million is the most popular figure.

Have they reached the right amount? What happens to any surplus? Do they give it to charity?

Please, Sarah, do let us know how this source of OPM is going. We can't sleep peacefully if we don't know whether you managed to pay your debts.

Perhaps Sarah doesn't need to ask for these donations anymore and forgot to tell us. After all, the original fund was created when she earned a paltry $125,000 a year, plus a little bit on the side from Todd. Now she's a multi-millionaire and can afford to pay a mere half million, no?

Is it a frivolous question?

Open Thread - Wednesday

These photos came in an e-mail as part of one of those slide shows and I think they're lovely!

Sarah Palin is on a roll

Judge Judy said it before: "Beauty Fades, Dumb Is Forever."



There's another dose of stupid from another show...



A British minister had a nice expression to describe the likes of Sarah Palin:

Vince Cable, the business secretary for the UK government, says "Rightwing Nutters" in the US pose a a bigger threat to the global economy than the eurozone crisis.


We have known for a long time that Sarah Palin is a dumb rightwing nutter...

Open Thread - Tuesday

Both Amy and Mrsgunka sent me e-mails with the following photos. Some of them make me dizzy. I recognized one of them as having been taken in France and added a caption.

France....

Thank you for the thrills, Amy and Mrsgunka.

Good for Palin, bad for Obama?

How come Sarah Palin proudly took on the largest corporations in the state of Alaska, taxing them in a way she thought was fair, raising billions of dollars in revenue for her state, but President Obama can't do the same for the country?

The Alaska Legislature adopted a plan proposed by Palin in 2007 (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share) that raised the tax that oil companies have to pay on their profits from a base rate of 22.5 percent to 25 percent. Oil companies, including ExxonMobil, opposed the tax hike, claiming it would affect their project investments. The revenue generated from the tax increase, which significantly added to the state’s budget surplus, allowed Palin’s administration to issue a one time "resource rebate" of $1,200 to eligible state residents in 2008 to help with increasing energy prices. The rebate came in addition to the annual dividend check ($2,069 in 2008) that residents receive as their part of the state’s oil wealth.

The state of Alaska wasn't going through a major financial crisis, and yet she counts ACES as one of her achievements as governor.

Now she's writing Facebook notes encouraging the GOP in Congress to thwart Obama's plans for solving the debt crisis through his proposal of a tax hike for the corporations, something similar to what she implemented in Alaska, but not to butter up the electorate, all he wants is to save the economy and prevent defaulting on the debt.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama is not planning to send every American a $1,200 check, he just wants to balance the books and preserve vital services for the needy. Sarah Palin wishes to protect the profits of the least needy.

What was clear and equitable for Alaskans is not clear and equitable for her precious real Americans?

Open Thread - Monday

Let's have a bit of saucy humour. We're all adults here....


A dog lover, whose dog was a female and "in heat', agreed to look after her neighbors male dog while the neighbors were on vacation. She had a large house and believed that she could keep the two dogs apart.

However, as she was drifting off to sleep she heard awful howling and moaning sounds, rushed downstairs and found the dogs locked together, in obvious pain and unable to disengage, as so frequently happens when dogs mate.

Unable to separate them, and perplexed as to what to do next, although it was late, she called the vet, who answered in a very grumpy voice.

Having explained the problem to him, the vet said,

"Hang up the phone and place it down alongside the dogs. I will then call you back and the noise of the ringing will make the male lose his erection and he will be able to withdraw."

"Do you think that will work?" she asked.

"It just worked for me," he replied.

Murdoch's tentacles

There another surprise regarding the Murdoch scandal in the UK:

The judge leading the inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal was last night urged to 'come clean' about his links to the Murdoch family.

Lord Justice Leveson was facing questions over his impartiality after it emerged he attended two parties in the past year at the London home of Rupert Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, and her husband, PR supremo Matthew Freud.

In his role as chairman of the independent Sentencing Council, he is also reported to have had dinner last year with Mr Freud to discuss an offer from Freud Communications to give free PR advice on improving public confidence in the criminal justice system.

Labour MP Chris Bryant last night said the revelations raised 'serious questions' about whether Lord Justice Leveson would be able to command public confidence in his role as head of the inquiry, which is likely to take evidence from Mr Murdoch and his son James.

Lord Justice Leveson is believed to have informed David Cameron of his social links to Mr Freud before he was appointed to lead the inquiry.

But Mr Bryant said the judge was ‘compromised’ by the revelations.

He added: ‘I’m afraid this does raise serious questions and he does now need to come clean about exactly who he met and what they discussed.

‘He may well be very independent but the way this has come out makes it look as if he has got something to cover up.’

A spokesman for Lord Leveson confirmed he attended ‘large evening events’ at Mr Freud’s home in July last year and January this year. But he declined to say who the judge had met, and added that there was ‘no continuing relationship’.

Of all the judges in the UK, Mr Cameron had to choose one with links to the Murdochs?

Everywhere you look, there's a Murdoch fingerprint: in the Police, in the government and now the judge in charge of the public inquiry into the Murdoch scandal has links to the family!

I said there was another surprise about the scandal, but I'm not surprised at all...

Dominionism: We should be worried

Reader fromthediagonal suggested highlighting Leah Burton's two excellent posts about Dominionism, written in the light of the events in Norway.

Norwegian Dominionist Slaughters Innocents
Dominionist Ties to Norway Terrorist Clear and Convincing

In the second article, Leah goes to great lengths to explain the use of the term "Dominionism" and how it encompasses many Christian denominations.

Here's a video relating to Sarah Palin, where the goals of the Dominionists are clearly explained:



Pastor Muthee says that they need to infiltrate and influence seven areas of society, but goes on to list only six:

Spiritual, economics, politics, education, the media and the government. Muthee left out the military, but somebody had that covered: US rifle scopes in Iraq and Afghanistan featured bible verse citations.

The plan is clear, but pastor Muthee is only one of the proponents of the takeover of all aspects of society by religious fanatics. There are many others. Donald Rumsfeld exploited George W Bush's evangelical beliefs to further the pro-war agenda, a number of GOP politicians place their religious beliefs at the centre of their policies and one political celebrity wears them as fashion accessories.

These are the public aspects of the infiltration pastor Muthee mentioned in the video. What worries me is the pernicious infiltration that must go on behind the scenes, how several groups trade influence and make deals that have a far reaching effect on ordinary people's lives. Leah Burton's website explores this topic in detail.

[Please read the articles about Sarah Palin and religion on the talk2action website.]

Open Thread - Sunday

I needed to feel some of the beauty Norway has given us.

Hans Dahl

Thomas Fearnley

Bjorn Loeden

Halfdan Egedius

Christian Skredswig

Otto Sinding

Kare Jonsborg

Oda Krohg

Harriet Backer