Clipmarks | Socratoad's Pops

McCain Fails to Understand, Sneeringly Misrepresents Sky Theater As "Overhead Projector"

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:10:26 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Andrey Kravtsov continues: "I find it appalling that Sen. McCain would call a science education tool for public (largely children) for
a historic planetarium with millions of visitors a year a wasteful earmark. The planetarium's focus, as stated on their website (http://adlerplanetarium.org) is "on inspiring young people, particularly women and minorities, to pursue careers in science." Is an investment in such public facility at the time when US
competitiveness in math and sciences is a constant source of alarm a waste?"

No, it is not a waste. Senator McCain's failure to understand and/or appreciate the importance of science education is indeed appalling, as is his sneering, sniveling misrepresentation of this equipment as an unnecessary, overpriced "overhead projector".

Clip Source: community.nytimes.com

I am an Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Chicago (the University that today has added yet another Nobel Prize winner in the sciences for the US). I would like to comment on Sen. McCain's statement during the today's debate that Sen. Obama has earmarked "$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Ill. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?"

The way Sen. McCain has phrased it suggests that Sen. Obama approved spending $3 million on an old-fashioned piece of office equipment (overhead projector).

The 3 million is actually for an upgrade of the SkyTheater - a full dome projection system, which is probably the main attraction of the Adler Planetarium and is quite sophisticated and impressive piece of equipment.

I find it appalling that Sen. McCain would call a science education tool for public (largely children) for
a historic planetarium with millions of visitors a year a wasteful earmark.

Tags: 2008 election, science, mccain fails to understand, misrepresents

Republican Rallies Now Sound like the KKK

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:20:44 GMT

clipped by: citizenbfk
clipper's remarks: The clip from the New York Times reports someone at a Palin rally urging killing Barrack Obama, others calling Obama a 'traitor," -- Palin associating him with domestic terrorist...and an Afro-American TV reporter being hassled by the crowd.

If we let these Republicans win again these are the types of people we'd be continuing to let rule and mislead our country.

I urge their defeat not just in the elections next month, but the elections after that and the election after that until their party is driven into extinction.

This will not only help our country but "send the message," that you shouldn't mislead and lie a nation into war, you can't commit war crimes, you can't shred the Constitution, you can't destroy our economy and give away money to the banks while people life savings are stolen.

KKK America in power again?

Not on my watch. Not while I still have breath.

And I hope, sincerely hope, you feel the same.

Vote Obama. Defeat Republicans.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Politics of Attack

It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.

They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.

Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult.

Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.

Desperate, McCain plans fierce smear campaign

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:28:33 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Desperate to turn discussion away from the economy, McCain will try to blackball Obama over BS issues

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

McCain plans fiercer strategy against Obama

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

Tags: mccain, lies

Fight the Right-Wing Smears

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:49:56 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Sad to say, I know and receive email from people (including relatives) who have no problem forwarding right-wing lies and racist propaganda about Obama. I went to this site to have a good source of information to refute the hate emails and replied to all who received, and sent, the smear emails I have received. I encourage you to do the same if you have the misfortune to be sent trashy lies about Barack Obama. To say nothing is to condone the sending and receiving of such emails.

Clip Source: fightthesmears.com

Barack Obama doesn’t take advice from Fannie Mae executives, despite claims made by shadowy emails and John McCain’s attack ads.

Get the Facts and Take Action Now

Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell falsely claimed Barack was an organizer for ACORN.

Radical anti-abortion ideologues are running ads that make wild 'Born Alive' accusations against Barack Obama

Barack Obama was honored to visit our troops overseas. But that didn’t stop email smears from claiming otherwise.

The American flag on the Obama campaign plane is easy to see.

Distorted and fabricated quotes from Barack’s books on race and religion are being used to manipulate the public.

Sign up for the Obama Action Wire

Tags: email smears, obama, ethics

Europe's Far-Right Revival

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:39:24 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Two far-right parties, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Movement for Austria's Future, managed to win 29% of the vote in Sunday's general elections in Austria. This is double what they got in the elections of 2006.

Both parties share the same attitudes toward immigrants, especially Muslims, and the European Union: a mixture of fear and loathing.

In Denmark, the hard-right Danish People's Party is the third-largest party in the country, with 25 parliamentary seats. Dutch populists such as Rita Verdonk, or Geert Wilders, who is driven by a paranoid fear of "Islamization," are putting the traditional political elites -- a combination of liberals, social democrats and Christian democrats -- under severe pressure.

All this is linked to resentment about immigrants.

The phrase most often heard in Austria among those who support the right-wing parties is "fresh air."

Ehrenreich: The Communist Manifesto Hits 160

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:39:37 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Marx's solution was wrong, but his diagnosis sounds like recent news. Excellent writing!

Clip Source: ehrenreich.blogs.com

This year marks the 160th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto and capitalism, aka “free enterprise,” seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead. On Monday night, some pundits were warning that the ATMs might run dry and hinting that the only safe investment left is canned beans

The Manifesto makes for quaint reading today. All that talk about “production,” for example:

Did the proletariat really slave away in factories instead of call centers? But on one point Marx and Engels proved right: Within capitalist societies, or at least the kind of wildly unregulated capitalism America has had, the rich got richer, the workers got poorer, and the erstwhile middle class has been sliding toward ruin

American workers have sweetly acquiesced to declining wages, rising prices, speed-ups at work, disappearing pensions, and increasingly threadbare health insurance. While CEO pay escalated to the 8-figure range

ordinary Americans took on second jobs

Tags: economy

Mission Accomplished

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:38:34 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: Four More Years!

Clip Source: ken.macclune.googlepages.com

Tags: bush, bush administration

Sad but true - alas Sarah Palin.

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:03:05 GMT

clipped by: patden
clipper's remarks: Saddest of all - it probably doesn't matter.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Mad Dog Palin

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted September 27, 2008.

The scariest thing about John McCain's running mate isn't how unqualified she is -- it's what her candidacy says about America.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party's fortunes around faster.

Tags: politics

Fiscal Conservative

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:05:48 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: This speaks for itself.

Clip Source: blogs.venturacountystar.com

Tags: politics, economics

Be honest about who's calling for violence, and who's listening

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:09:39 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks: Even if "well, they do it too!" or "they did it first" were a valid excuse -- which it isn't -- it's simply not true.

You think you have facts that disprove that? Join the discussion at Brad's LJ and put your assertions and evidence up for evaluation.

Clip Source: bradhicks.livejournal.com

Liberals don't kill fundamentalists. Fundamentalists kill liberals. Once in a very, very rare while disgruntled ex-fundamentalists, especially victims of fundamentalist-protected or promoted financial fraud or sexual abuse, once in a very rare while kill fundamentalists. So unless you can show me a whole heck of a lot of actual burned down fundamentalist churches to match all the black churches that have been victims of arson? Unless you can show me an awful lot of murdered anti-abortion activists to match the long list of murdered abortion providers? Unless you can show me even one liberal terrorist who did what David Adkisson just did? Then seriously, shut the fuck up about how fucking scared you are that us dangerous liberals are going to come and kill you all some day. I don't care what you think the world is like in your sick little fantasy world, not when the facts are exactly 100% the opposite of what you say you believe.

Tags: violence, terrorism, politics

Things fall apart

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:11:51 GMT

clipped by: paularpa

Clip Source: xkcd.com

A Night with Leonard Cohen

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:50:09 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.spiked-online.com

His jog on to stage prompts rapturous applause, wolf whistles and howls. His one-fingered piano solo triggers an ecstatic round of clapping. A simple twirl delights the 20,000-strong crowd. He can hardly get a word in between songs

This is not the response to the latest teen sensation but to the husky-voiced, at times growling, never less than elegant septuagenarian, Leonard Cohen. And little wonder: the Canadian poet and novelist turned folk singer turned Zen Buddhist monk is back on stage for the first time in 14 years. ‘I was 60 then’, he says, ‘just a kid with a crazy dream’.

He lists the many anti-depressants he has taken over the past decade-and-a-half, and says that during that time he has also studied religion and philosophy – ‘but cheerfulness kept breaking through’.

Well, ‘the ladies’ man’ ain’t dead yet. When Cohen sings ‘If you want a doctor I’ll examine every inch of you’, the women respond ‘woooooooo!’

Tags: leonard cohen

MIT's Guru of Low-Tech Engineering Fixes the World on $2 a Day

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:36:31 GMT

clipped by: Lexica

Clip Source: www.popularmechanics.com

From impoverished Peruvian villages to MIT's D-Lab, professor Amy Smith and her spirited team of engineers are on a mission: Fight global poverty and improve living standards for developing countries—one low-cost, accessible invention at a time.

A well-liked instructor at MIT and member of the Popular Mechanics editorial advisory board, Smith is a rising star in a field known as appropriate technology, which focuses on practical, usually small-scale designs to solve problems in the developing world.

Clip Source: www.popularmechanics.com

"A small improvement like that can make a huge difference in people's lives,

they can plant three extra rows of corn because they have more time, or maybe their kids don't work as much, and instead they go to school."

It's so simple. But sometimes simplicity is harder than complexity."

"There's this belief that in order to stop poverty, we have to find ways to get people to stop being farmers," she says. "What we need to do is find ways to stop them from being poor farmers."

Tags: inspiration, activism, engineering, community

golden girls reunion from dlisted.com

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:17:02 GMT

clipped by: jamestreed
clipper's remarks: thought you'd like this article if you hadn't already seen it.

Clip Source: www.dlisted.com

Fuck yes! Dorothy, Blanche and Rose reunited at the TV Land Awards in Los Angeles last night. They received an award for being the hottest bitches on TV or something like that. These tramps are the original Sex and the City. They did it better. Sofia couldn't make it. She was too hungover. Naw, Estelle Getty has retired from showbusiness. She's currently battling Dementia. :(

These broads should reunite more often.

Wenn, Wireimage

by banksy

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:03:00 GMT

clipped by: alissita

Clip Source: www.time.com

Art Attack
During his trip to Palestine, Banksy created nine images on Israel's West Bank barrier.