Alan Grayson’s simple questions to the warmongers

Check out Alan Grayson's simple questions to Chuck Hagel and John Kerry at the 12:50 min mark on Democracy Now. Pathetic evasive answers by our "leaders." All while America rots at home from neglect. All while the big banks and the military industrial complex demonstrate that they own Congress. This is all so sad. I hope grade school teachers are telling the kids the truth about how their government operates. I completely support Representative Alan Grayson. The U.S. should stay out of Syria. I suspect that 50% of what we are hearing from the Obama Administration regarding Syria is untrue or unsubstantiated. Consider signing this Petition. Also, I'm not impressed with the Republican "peaceniks." If President Romney were leading the effort to attack Syria, 90% of them would be cheering him on. What we are witnessing is not rational. It is tribal.

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Taking God out of the pledge

I know that I'm in a minority in this country, but I don't see how making children say a pledge that affirms the existence of a supreme non-material being doesn't violate the separation clause.    The way I see it, if we starting making public school children starting affirming the existence of "god" today, the court's would immediately put a stop to it.  But since the phrase has been in place for more than 50 years, it's somehow OK. Here's the story that provokes my comment:

David Niose, former president of the American Humanist Association, and the plaintiffs' representative, opened his arguments Wednesday saying the pledge’s use of “under God” violates the Equal Rights Amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution and is an issue of discrimination.

Niose said the pledge’s repetitiveness in the public school system is indoctrinating and alienating to atheists.

“It validates believers as good patriots and it invalidates atheists as non-believers at best and unpatriotic at worst,” he said.

I agree entirely.

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U.S. President actually considers consulting Congress before going to war

Glenn Greenwald:

It's a potent sign of how low the American political bar is set that gratitude is expressed because a US president says he will ask Congress to vote before he starts bombing another country that is not attacking or threatening the US. That the US will not become involved in foreign wars of choice without the consent of the American people through their representatives Congress is a central mandate of the US Constitution, not some enlightened, progressive innovation of the 21st century.

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Bank of America hammers whistle blower

Check out what Bank of America did to this whistle blower. This type of "justice" will make people think twice about stepping up to be whistle blowers. this outcome disturbs me for two reasons. 1. I publicly blew the whistle on a Missouri Attorney General more than 20 years ago, resulting in widespread public exposure of his corruption, so this issue is personal to me, and 2. Whistle blowers are often the only source of unfiltered information for the public, information that can serve the public good. We need to get over the idea that whistle-blowing is improper simply because whistle-blowers disobey their employers' wishes or disobey laws even as they are achieving a greater good with no personal gain.

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Upper class jerks

Are rich people jerks?  We need to be careful before generalizing, but some recent studies suggest that being monied tends correlate with insensitivity to the needs of others.   There are many exceptions to the rules, of course.  Many wealthy people dedicate their lives to helping the poor or the politically oppressed.   The tendency is the opposite, however.   Another caveat is the direction of causation:  Is it that the money corrupts or is it that the type of people who obsess about their own material cravings tend to accumulate more money.   Here's an excerpt from an article by Joshua Holland at Moyers & Company (A Plutocracy Ruled by Self-Centered Jerks?"):

In one telling experiment, the researchers observed a busy intersection, and found that drivers of luxury cars were more likely to cut off other drivers and less likely to stop for pedestrians crossing the street than those behind the wheels of more modest vehicles.  “In our crosswalk study, none of the cars in the beater-car category drove through the crosswalk,” Piff told The New York Times. “But you see this huge boost in a driver’s likelihood to commit infractions in more expensive cars.” He added: “BMW drivers are the worst.”

Summing up previous research on the topic, Piff notes that upper-class individuals also “showed reduced sensitivity to others’ suffering” as compared with working- and middle-class people.

Lower-class individuals are more likely to spend time taking care of others, and they are more embedded in social networks that depend on mutual aid. By contrast, upper-class individuals prioritize independence from others: They are less motivated than lower-class individuals to build social relationships and instead seek to differentiate themselves from others.

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