Saturday, September 26, 2009

Gaddafi the Cool


THE ABSURD TIMES



In case you wonder how to spell his name, or transliterate it, above is the banner for his website.




And this is a full-sized photo of him with a bunch of things pinned on his shirt. Well, actually that photo got lost, so here is one of him making his speech.

Now, after a long time of just hearing crazy stuff from our right wing loonies, we actually are hearing alot of pertainant information from the leaders of the world as the United Nations begins. The first thing to do is to get to the website from the UN and download the speeches along with translation. You have to use Realplayer to do it -- I guess they supply the stream or format free for them. You can down Realplayer and, I think, the free version will let you download the speeches.

Next, catch Gaddafi on CNN at 12 CDT for an hour interview with Fareed Za(and whatever). He's a pretty good interviewer and certainly knowledgable. Ahmedinejad was on CNN with Larry King and drove him nuts. King tried to confront him on the holocause and he instead started asking King questions. We would have seen a live heart-attack ahd King not been able to run to a commercial every 2 minutes. Maybe it will be re-run.

After that, we can really talk about what has been happening. Morales said he wouldn't talk as long as Gaddafi as he "said it all" and then applauded. What bothers western media was 1) the speech lasted 90 minutes and 2) there were no breaks for commercials. Additionally, since he had never addressed the General Assembly, he went back to the UN establishment and discussed its history and shortcomings. He said it was time to just thank the US for all its trouble and move the entire thing to another continent. Additionally, most of what he said was factually accurate.

Normally, he looks as if he is on hash, but this time he didn't. However, there were additional interviews lately where he is is old self. Anyway, we'll catch up on all this, but I wanted to let you know first about the material.

The next post should contain some links. Nah, why not have them here?

UN: http://www.un.org/ga/

You can find CNN yourselves.

On the UN: Right above the "present Speaker" are the archives. Khaddafi was on day one (1) as was Ahmedinejad. Morales on the second day. You can check them out and then download the ones you want. There are plenty of conversion programs as "Freeware" what you can use if you prefer another format. The typescript of the speech should also be available, but it is in PDF. I hate PDF. Who likes it? Also, conversion to ascii programs available as freeware.

Later we can talk about the UN and the salient points made.








Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Ralph Nader is Back


THE ABSURD TIMES


Illustration: We never did congratulate Al. Now we have to get a replacement for Kennedy.



AMY GOODMAN: As the United States prepares to host the Group of Twenty nations summit in Pittsburgh later this week, President Obama vowed Saturday to prevent a repeat of last year’s Wall Street collapse. In his weekly radio and internet address, the President promised to work with G20 leaders to take on the, quote, “reckless risk-taking and irresponsibility” that led to the crisis.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The first meeting of the G-20 nations in April came at the height of the global financial crisis, a crisis that required unprecedented international cooperation to jumpstart the world’s economies and help break the downward spiral that enveloped all our nations. At next week’s summit, we’ll have, in effect, a five-month checkup to review the steps each nation has taken, separately and together, to break the back of this economic crisis. And the good news is that we’ve made real progress since the last time we met, here at home and around the world.

    Because of the steps taken by our nations and all nations, we can now say that we’ve stopped our economic freefall. But we also know that stopping the bleeding isn’t nearly enough. Our work is far from over.

    We can’t allow the thirst for reckless schemes that produce quick profits and fat executive bonuses to override the security of our entire financial system and leave taxpayers on the hook for cleaning up the mess. And as the world’s largest economy, we must lead, not just by word, but by example, understanding that in the twenty-first century financial crises know no borders.

    Not surprisingly, lobbyists for big Wall Street banks are hard at work trying to stop reforms that would hold them accountable, and they want to keep things just the way they are. But we can’t let politics as usual triumph, so business as usual can reign.


AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd is expected to propose a new plan to oversee banks that would merge the four banking agencies into a single regulator. His suggestion would combine the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into a single agency. The plan is expected to run into opposition from House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank, as well as President Obama.

Well, for more on the ongoing fallout of the economic crisis, a look at healthcare, as well as his new book, I’m joined now by a leading critic of the existing financial system. Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, corporate critic, attorney, author, activist, former presidential candidate a number of times over. For four decades he has helped us drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, work in safer environments.

He’s the author of several books, including In Pursuit of Justice and The Good Fight. This time, Ralph Nader is out with a work—well, it’s not exactly fiction or nonfiction. He calls it a practical utopia. It’s called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

We welcome you to Democracy Now!

RALPH NADER: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us, Ralph.

Well, let’s start on the economy, on this year anniversary of the collapse, and where you think we have come to in this year.

RALPH NADER: Well, President Obama is engaging in political progressive talk, but one year later, nothing has happened in Congress. There hasn’t even been a bill to financially regulate, bring under the rule of law and accountability Wall Street and the financial industry, hasn’t even gone to a committee yet. They’re just going to begin hearings in the Senate Banking Committee. There’s a massive attack on the consumer regulatory agency to protect people who have mortgages and credit cards and other financial instruments by the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbies. So you see the corporate lobbies swarming over Congress, political action committee money, but no legislative action whatsoever.

I don’t think this has a precedent in American history. There’s never been a criminal, speculative, massive collapse, such as occurred on Wall Street, affecting trillions of dollars of worker pension money, mutual funds, savings, jobs, affecting communities all over the country, and no action in Congress. That’s the test. It’s not the rhetoric. It’s whether these bills are moving through, by 535 men and women who put their shoes on every day like you and I do. And that’s not happening. And that’s the way you want to analyze it.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen? What is that legislation that needs to be passed?

RALPH NADER: Well, there’s a proposal crafted in part by Elizabeth Warren, who’s head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, to make sure that the Wall Street firms behave themselves. And she’s a professor of law at Harvard Law School. That’s a very well-drafted bill. There are some proposals to strengthen the organization of financial consumers, bank depositors, insurance policy holders, etc., that needs to be put in there. But the overall bill to repeal the Clinton-era repeal of Glass-Steagall, to repeal the Franklin Delano Roosevelt reforms—you have to repeal the repeal of those reforms, which set the stage in 1999 and 2000 for the rampant, wild speculation with other people’s money by investment banks and banks—Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and others, Goldman Sachs, of course.

AMY GOODMAN: The poverty rate, the number of people who are losing their homes, foreclosure, where do we stand?

RALPH NADER: Well, again, the administration cannot level with the American people, because whether it’s Obama or Bernanke or Secretary Treasurer Geithner, they cannot say anything negative, because they’re afraid of the markets. And so, all they say is mild positives. And so, they can’t level with the American people. So they use indicators that favor the corporate balance sheet, but not the worker balance sheet or the pensioneer balance sheet.

And so, poverty is going up, unemployment is shooting up, underemployment is massive. There’s probably 17 percent of the American people are unemployed or underemployed. Wages are stagnant or declining. And, of course, consumer debt is increasing. Home foreclosures are increasing. Those are the indicators you’ve got to put front and center. They’re the people indicators, not the corporate, business, economist indicators.

Hey, the banks are starting to make more profit. Yeah, but they’re being bailed out by Washington, and they can be technically insolvent and still make more profit, because they’re charging such high interest rates, fees and penalties.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, you talk about legislation saving us. A new report by the watchdog group Common Cause reveals the financial industry spent $42 million lobbying Congress during the first six months of the year and that nine of the top recipients of securities money so far this year are Democrats, like Senator Schumer of New York, topping the list, taking in something like $680,000 in campaign contributions.

RALPH NADER: It’s the same old rut. And that’s why I really wrote this work of fiction, because we are not imagining, Amy, what is necessary by way of money, organizers in the field, strategy, smarts, determination to break this massive corporate-state gridlock that’s put our country into a paralysis. Our country is stuck in traffic. It is being prevented from solving many problems or diminishing them—public transit, housing, consumer protection, living wage, universal health insurance, single payer, all these corporate crime crackdowns. All of these are problems that can be addressed and solved, but not when there’s too much power in too few hands, who make the decisions for the many to the many’s disadvantage.

So we have to—we have to ask ourselves the question: What will it take to break through? What will it take to put the people back into their sovereignty? What will it take to make sure that we enforce the Constitution and we don’t get in these foreign military adventures that are unconstitutional, violate statutes and violate international treaties, not just under Bush-Cheney, but there’s an unseemly continuity in this area under the Obama administration.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ve been talking about Congress. What about the G-20? I mean, you have world leaders gathering in Pittsburgh later this week. Also, many thousands of protesters are expected. But where does this story, whether we’re talking about the economy or healthcare, fit into the global picture and G-20? What can be accomplished there?

RALPH NADER: G-20 is a talk fest. It’s good for the Pittsburgh economy for about a week. The rallies are good, indicates that people are still trying to fight back. Nothing’s going to happen. We’ve seen this again and again with the G-20 and whatever G-number has had these meetings, whether in Canada or Europe or United States.

The issue again is, are we going to get the leadership from the enlightened super-rich to put the field organizers on the ground and to put the money into progressive campaigns and citizen action? For example, $1 billion will get us single payer in a year—that’s my sense—if we had field organizers and mobilization in every congressional district. I mean, if there was a private vote right now in Congress, about a third of them would support a single-payer system. But they are surrounded by these drug industry and health insurance lobbies and the money that’s dangled before them.

So we have to break through, and the only way we can break through is the majesty of our mind generating a higher level of imaginative “what if.” What if we have this kind of resource or these kinds of film organizers or these kinds of mass media attentions? Which is why I wrote this book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” And that’s in quotes. And it comes from a very interesting story at the beginning of the book that I can tell you, if you’re interested.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to hear that story after break. We’re talking to Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, ran for president of this country time and time again, raising issues like those he’s raising like right now. And he has a new book out. It’s not his typical book, not that any of them are, but this one is a—well, a kind of work of fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Ralph Nader. He has a new book out. It’s called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” The title may surprise you, and we’ll find out why that title in a minute.

But we want to talk about healthcare first. President Obama was on five networks on Sunday: on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Univision. He skipped Fox, because they skipped his healthcare joint address to Congress. I want to play a clip from his appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As I’ve said, about two-thirds of what we’ve proposed would be from money that’s already in the healthcare system but just being spent badly. And as I’ve said before, this is not me making wild assertions. You know, you always hear about waste and abuse in Washington, and usually it doesn’t mean much, because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is. This is money that has been directly identified, that the Congressional Budget Office, that Republican and Democratic experts agree is there, that is not improving the quality of our health. So the lion’s share of money to pay for this will come from money that’s already in the system.

    Now, we are going to have to find some additional sources of revenue for the other third or so of the healthcare plan. And what I—and I’ve provided a long list of approaches that would not have an impact on middle-class Americans. They’re not going to be forced to pay for this. Insurance companies, drug companies are going to have to be ponying up, partly because right now they’re receiving huge subsidies from folks.

    BOB SCHIEFFER: But aren’t they going to then pass that on to consumers? I mean, that’s what, you know, the Chamber of Commerce is saying. They’re starting a big ad campaign—

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Right.

    BOB SCHIEFFER: —right now. They say you’re going to put these taxes on these insurance companies, on people that make things like x-rays and lab tests and all of that, and they’re just going to turn right around and pass it right on to the consumer.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem. They’re passing on those costs to the consumer anyway. The only difference is—

    BOB SCHIEFFER: But this will be more.

    PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: No, the difference is, is that they’re making huge profits on it, Bob. Look, bringing about change in this town is always hard. When you’ve got special interests that are making billions of dollars, absolutely they’re going to want to keep as much of the profits that they’re making as possible. And by the way, those insurance companies, even during these down years, have been making terrific profits. We don’t mind them making profits; we just want them to be accountable to their customers.


AMY GOODMAN: President Obama on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. Ralph Nader, your response?

RALPH NADER: Well, it just shows is—he’s saying the right things, but the proposals he has are riddled with verbal indecision, like he won’t say if he doesn’t get a public choice or a Medicare alternative for people who are unable to afford private insurance, he won’t sign the bill. Now, in Congress, if you don’t draw the line the way LBJ used to, for example, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they eat you alive. They sense weakness. They sense excessive concessions. And that’s what he’s doing with all the media coverage he’s getting. He’s not putting forth a straightforward “this is what has to be done if we’re going to reduce the gouging and the waste and the fraud.”

The only approach that can do that is full Medicare for all, full government health insurance with private delivery, free choice of hospital and doctor. You’ve heard it a hundred times. That’s the only way, in western Europe and Canada, they’ve been able to control costs. So, in western Europe and Canada, they cover everybody for less than $4,000 per capita a year. In this country, it’ll be $7,500 per capita this year. And there won’t be—the tens of millions, 50 million people, won’t be covered, and tens of millions will be underinsured. I mean, to see all this data, it’s on this website, singlepayeraction.org.

But the point is that he keeps saying we’ve got to squeeze the waste and fraud, etc., and there’s enormous fraud. There’s $250 billion of billing fraud and abuse. And you can check the—Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard University has got the information on that. There are $400 billion out of $2.5 trillion, which is the health expenditure bill—$400 billion in administrative waste, all these people in Aetna and CIGNA and other companies denying people’s benefits and all the bureaucracy that these corporations generate, and not to mention their executive compensation.

So we really got—we have documented these problems. This country’s progressive movement has documented these abuses from A to Z—books, articles, documents, congressional reports. It’s time to ask the question: What is it going to take in terms of money, organizers, resources, creativity, to turn this country around in the reflection of what most people would like to see the United States of America become?

AMY GOODMAN: Your book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, it’s just out. Kind of fiction, not really nonfiction, you call it a practical utopia. Where did you get the title?

RALPH NADER: The title came from—Warren Buffett was watching post-Katrina in his living room in Omaha, and he saw these streams of poor people fleeing the floods and the winds, and no food, no water, no shelter, on the highways north of New Orleans. And no one was helping them. And so, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he got a whole convoy of supplies, and he took them down to the New Orleans area. He went down himself and distributed all the food and the tents and the medicine to these desperate families and came across an African American family, who was helping, and the grandmother grabbed his hands, looked up at him and said, “Only the super-rich can save us.”

And that haunted him all the way back to Omaha, where he developed a plan to get seventeen older super-rich enlightened Americans at a hotel on a mountaintop in Maui, Hawaii, and basically asked themselves, what is it going to take to turn this country around? It’s going to take mass media. One of the seventeen is Barry Diller. And it’s going to take a reversal of the insurance industry. It’s Peter Lewis. It’s going to take dealing with deficits and subsidies and organizing the veteran and veteran groups and the women’s clubs around the country. Ross Perot. It’s going to take a real coordination and putting in a lot of money. That’s what they all represented. Bill Cosby is one of them. Phil Donahue is one of them. Yoko Ono is one of them. William Gates, Sr., Leonard Riggio, Bernard Rapoport. These and others get together, and it all happens in one year, 2006.

When you read this book, you’ll not only get a lift in terms of the feasibility of change, if we only change the predicates and stop trying to go after trillion-dollar industries with a few million dollars of citizen group budgets, and you not only get a lift, but you can see, step by step, the strategy, the tactics—how they set up a People’s Chamber of Commerce with tens of thousands of progressive small businesses around the country; how they set up a sub-economy, where they bought all kinds of businesses and got inside the corporate beast, because they own these companies; how they developed mass media; how they got people’s attention through the use of, for example, this parrot, Patriotic Polly, which got on TV early in 2000 and got millions of emails when it kept saying, “Get up! Don’t let America down! Get up! Don’t let America down!”

You know, in the early part of the twentieth century, Amy, and the latter part of the nineteenth, there were practical utopias, or there were just plain utopias, like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, that really infused and raised the horizons of the progressive movement and people like Eugene Debs. In fact, that book sold a million copies, Looking Backward. We’ve stopped doing that in the last two generations. Our imaginations have been stifled by the grim reality of concentrated corporate power.

But when you see how these Meliorists, which is what these seventeen super-rich elderly progressive Americans called themselves, when you see how Sol Price, who started the Price Club, took on Wal-Mart to unionize Wal-Mart, you will see what happens when there’s smarts, determination and adequate money to take on a behemoth like Wal-Mart. You’ll also see how entrenched right-wing politicians, when they’re surrounded with mass movements back in their congressional district, and they’re basically confronted with ultimatum in this climactic scene in Congress at the end of the book, how they react.

And it’s important, I think, for all of us to stop just documenting and documenting and diagnosing and proposing these things, when there’s no power behind, there’s no juggernaut, there’s no pressure to organize the mass of the citizenry in the directions that really reflects their public sentiment, to use Abraham Lincoln’s phrase.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, why fiction?

RALPH NADER: Because nonfiction prevents you from imagining. You have to, in effect, document Blackwater. You have to document the atrocities in Iraq, the military-industrial complex. All of these books, wonderful books, are coming out, more than ever in American history. You’ve had many of the authors on your program. But they are bound by nonfiction. They’re bound by the realities of concentrated power, which they are exposing in terms of their abuses. So you have to have fiction to raise the imaginative capability, what is feasible to fulfill life’s possibilities for people in this country and abroad. And that’s why fiction is so important.

I didn’t take the novel approach, because that’s very restrictive. That’s why it’s called a practical utopia. A professor in California, Russell Jacoby, wrote a book in 1999 called The End of Utopia, and I picked it up. I said, “What’s this all about?” because, you know, utopia, in most people’s minds, is like off-the-chart science fiction. It turns out he documented how, even in the academic world, the capacity and ability to imagine has been frozen. It’s been stuck, just like the society is stuck in traffic. So that’s why the fictional approach was used.

And also, look, you have a mega-billionaire. His name is Jerome Kohlberg. He was a big acquisition, merger person on Wall Street. His passion is election reform, which is part of this book. And while he started it a little bit, and then nobody, you know, rallied to his cause, but the key is, was he willing to spend a half-a-billion dollars getting it underway? That’s the key here. This entire redirection of our country embodied in this fiction of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” was pulled off not just by smart strategies, legions of organizers, legions of grassroot lecturers, but the whole thing cost less than $15 billion.

And you know there are people—Bloomberg is worth more than that. Carl Icahn is worth more than that. One multibillionaire. We have to imagine, step by step. So there are no magic wands in this book. This is a very realistic, month-by-month strategy for a titanic power collision with the entrenched CEOs and their political allies.

Leslie Stahl read this on her vacation in August, and she wrote me a very nice letter. You know, she’s the correspondent for 60 Minutes. And she thought the book was engrossing, creative and funny. And I said, “I’ll take all three, Leslie.”

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, why do you call these people “Meliorists”?

RALPH NADER: Because they were trying to figure out what they were going to call themselves to avoid a Bush Bimbaugh-type smear. One of the characters in the book is Bush Bimbaugh, who we all know is a takeoff on Rush Limbaugh. And a wonderful scene there when he invited Ted Turner into his studio, because he was losing ratings because of the growth of the progressive movement. They were saying, “What do we call ourselves so we’re not smeared, you know, by the editorialists of the Wall Street Journal or others?” And they came up with this word Meliorist, which means betterment. These are retired, progressive, enlightened billionaires and mega-millionaires who want to better the country. That’s what they called themselves.

But they didn’t go public until the mid-year, as they—that they were a coordinated effort. And as a result, they were able to engage in a strategy of coordinated surprise when they took on the CEOs.

And the Darth Vader in the book, who’s called Lobo, retained by the CEO Goliaths, represents every conceivable effort to stop the Meliorists. This is a titanic power collision. It’s not philanthropy. It’s not soft charity. It’s shifting power from the few to the many, top down, bottom up. That is, top down from the mega-rich, enlightened older people who are the Meliorists, down to the low [inaudible].

There’s a very good section in the book on how they did it in southwest Oklahoma to take on a thirty-eight-year-old veteran, House Rules Committee veteran, Republican—remember, the scene takes place in 2006—how they mobilized it in very practical ways. It eliminates all the stereotypes that we’ve learned to swallow as progressives about red state, blue state. It gets down to the concrete lives and the concrete hopes and the concrete capacities of our country.

AMY GOODMAN: So, have you lost faith in grassroots movements making that difference, making that change?

RALPH NADER: No, they can’t make it without very significant resources. If you want to set up 2,000 people organized in each congressional district, as the Meliorists do, you’re going to need tens of millions of dollars to get the staff, the offices, to find those 2,000 people, to root them so they go beyond the first year and they institutionalize themselves.

And this book, I hope, will be read by mega-billionaires. I hope they’ll say, “You know, all this time we wanted to do something about the crazy war on drugs or the prison reform or tax reform”—it’s inside their heads, but they’re very discouraged. I’ve talked to a lot of these super-rich, enlightened people over the years. I’ve never seen them so demoralized about the state of their beloved country. And in their advanced years, they don’t want to just watch it decay. But they’re all very egocentric, in a way. I mean, they’re entrepreneurs. They’ve done it, you know, without great help. And they don’t collaborate. And that’s the key, that the seventeen Meliorists are far more powerful than the sum of their parts, in terms of what they bring to this gigantic battle with the corporate and political power structure.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you gotten reaction from any of them, since this is a fictional account, but you’re using real people, real descriptions, real super-rich in the book?

RALPH NADER: I think they’re starting to read it now. They’ve had it for a couple weeks. It’s going to—you know, it’s a pretty hefty book, and the whole reason is because it’s all in the details. And the details are not dull. The idea here is to make apathy boring and to make civic action exciting. There are parades and bands, and the activity is in the rhythm of people’s cultural habits as they’re eased out into the public arena from the desperation of their private lives, economically and otherwise.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, as we go back to the issue of healthcare and what needs to be done, one of your key issues over the decades, Max Baucus, after months of negotiation, comes out with a bill, which now has no Republican support. Many Democrats are saying they will not support it. What do you think of Baucus and his plan and where really this is going to go and what you think needs to happen? Would you support a plan without a public option, though you are a single-payer advocate?

RALPH NADER: No, the public option, or what they should have called it, “public choice,” if they knew language, it’s not going to work. It will always be strapped by all kinds of restrictions. Even if it passes, they’ll have it straightjacketed. Only a certain number of people can even buy insurance from this proposed public option.

Senator Baucus is a typical Democrat in Republican clothing. He’s a crypto-Republican. Now, would he get away with this if there were several million dollars in grassroot mobilization in his home state of Montana? I mean, Montana has sent some pretty progressive senators in the past. The people haven’t changed. They just are not being brought together by field organizers in the kind of effort that’s described in this book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” But there’s very little going on in Montana. There’s a few rallies. There are a few demonstrations. But there’s a critical mass that’s needed there.

It looks like Baucus’s version is going to prevail with some tweaks in the Senate. Then you’re going to have the Waxman version in the House in the various committees. And then what are they going to do when they come into conference with the swarms of drug and health insurance lobbies? The drug companies have 450 full-time lobbyists on Capitol Hill, almost one to every senator and representative, not to mention their nationwide support network.

Now, the single-payer people, I don’t even know if they have one full-time lobbyist. So we have to ask ourselves, are we serious here? And if you are a super mega-rich, enlightened elderly person, or not elderly person, are you going to get serious, in terms of where you, without anybody persuading you, where you already want this country to go? That’s what we have to confront here.

The single payer is a majoritarian issue. It’s supported by 59 percent of physicians in a poll last year. A larger number of nurses, a lot of health economists support it. Why isn’t it moving? Because the people are not in charge of the Congress, even though they’re the only ones that have the vote; corporations are in charge, even though they have no vote.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, last question, and we only have less than a minute, but the White House has announced that President Obama is going to be meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Palestinian President Abbas in New York on Tuesday. That’s tomorrow. This, after US special envoy George Mitchell left Israel with no deal on a resumption of peace talks in the region. What do you think needs to happen there?

RALPH NADER: For a minute, I thought you said President Obama was going to meet with progressives in the White House on healthcare, which he’s never done. He’s met with CEOs.

I don’t think President Obama has any cards with the Israeli military approach to the Palestinians. He’s not going to cut off economic aid, which Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996 in a joint address to Congress said he was going to phase out, because Israel is a modern economy, which has universal health insurance, by the way. He’s not going to cut off military aid. What are his cards? Poor George Mitchell is shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Ramallah. He has no cards either.

The only way to begin changing this is to bring the Israeli peace movement to the US Congress for widely publicized hearings. These are ex-generals, ex-security chiefs, former mayors, members of the Knesset, former ministers. They’ve been pummeled by the recent events of the militarists. But once they’re given a national exposure here in this country, they will connect with about 50 percent or more of the Israeli people who want a two-state solution.

You know, it’s just like anything else. The majority of the people were against the Iraq invasion, yet the neocons and people in the White House, a minority among public opinion, plunged us into this war. Similarly, in Israel. Once the Israeli peace movement, with all those credentialed and accomplished people, connect with the Palestinian peace movement, with whom they have worked out in intricate ways in the Geneva meetings years ago a two-state solution, then you’ll see Israeli society begin turning around. And that’s about the only political lever the Congress and Obama would have. Put them up before the Senate and the House. In sixty years, they have—Israeli peace movement leaders have never been invited for one hour of congressional testimony.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. Ralph Nader, thanks so much for being with us, longtime consumer advocate, presidential candidate, his latest book called “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”


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Monday, September 21, 2009

Robert Fisk and Some news

THE ABSURD TIMES




Now we finally get some news, this time about Afghanistan.

Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days

Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we're losing Afghanistan

Obama and Osama are at last participating in the same narrative. For the US president's critics - indeed, for many critics of the West's military occupation of Afghanistan - are beginning to speak in the same language as Obama's (and their) greatest enemy.

There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates - once more the Secretary of Defense - and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military "surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.

No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters would wear down the US-led coalition in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in Afghanistan - four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure south of the Amu Darya river.

Almost on cue this week came those in North America who agree with Osama - albeit they would never associate themselves with the Evil One, let alone dare question Israel's cheerleading for the Iraqi war. "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan," announces Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee. "I believe it will remain a tribal entity." And Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, does not believe "there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan".

Colin Kenny, chair of Canada's senate committee on national security and defense, said this week that "what we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has proved to be impossible. We are hurtling towards a Vietnam ending".

Close your eyes and pretend those last words came from the al-Qa'ida cave. Not difficult to believe, is it? Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message. Afghanistan remains for him the "war of necessity". Send yet more troops, his generals plead. And we are supposed to follow the logic of this nonsense. The Taliban lost in 2001. Then they started winning again. Then we had to preserve Afghan democracy. Then our soldiers had to protect - and die - for a second round of democratic elections. Then they protected - and died - for fraudulent elections. Afghanistan is not Vietnam, Obama assures us. And then the good old German army calls up an air strike - and zaps yet more Afghan civilians.

It is instructive to turn at this moment to the Canadian army, which has in Afghanistan fewer troops than the Brits but who have suffered just as ferociously; their 130th soldier was killed near Kandahar this week. Every three months, the Canadian authorities publish a scorecard on their military "progress" in Afghanistan - a document that is infinitely more honest and detailed than anything put out by the Pentagon or the Ministry of Defense - which proves beyond peradventure (as Enoch Powell would have said) that this is Mission Impossible or, as Toronto's National Post put it in an admirable headline three days' ago, "Operation Sleepwalk". The latest report, revealed this week, proves that Kandahar province is becoming more violent, less stable and less secure - and attacks across the country more frequent - than at any time since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. There was an "exceptionally high" frequency of attacks this spring compared with 2008.

There was a 108 per cent increase in roadside bombs. Afghans are reporting that they are less satisfied with education and employment levels, primarily because of poor or non-existent security. Canada is now concentrating only on the security of Kandahar city, abandoning any real attempt to control the province.

Canada's army will be leaving Afghanistan in 2011, but so far only five of the 50 schools in its school-building project have been completed. Just 28 more are "under construction". But of Kandahar province's existing 364 schools, 180 have been forced to close. Of progress in "democratic governance" in Kandahar, the Canadian report states that the capacity of the Afghan government is "chronically weak and undermined by widespread corruption". Of "reconciliation" - whatever that means these days - "the onset of the summer fighting season and the concentration of politicians and activists for the August elections discouraged expectations of noteworthy initiatives...".

Even the primary aim of polio eradication - Ottawa's most favored civilian project in Afghanistan - has defeated the Canadian International Development Agency, although this admission is cloaked in truly Blair-like (or Brown-like) mendacity. As the Toronto Star revealed in a serious bit of investigative journalism this week, the aim to "eradicate" polio with the help of UN and World Health Organization money has been quietly changed to the "prevention of transmission" of polio. Instead of measuring the number of children "immunized" against polio, the target was altered to refer only to the number of children "vaccinated". But of course, children have to be vaccinated several times before they are actually immune.

And what do America's Republican hawks - the subject of bin Laden's latest sermon - now say about the Afghan catastrophe? "More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.


From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22654



Saturday, September 19, 2009

Vast Nitwit Conspiracy

Nitwits!


Illustration: Teabaggers in Iran


The current insanity is becoming closer to a definition. There is a great deal going on in the world that our own imperialism will not allow to be challenged. Consequently, it become more important to focus on the most ridiculous items here so that the media is not clogged with realities around the world. The "Tea-baggers," for example, the racists, the southerners, are all helping in this endeavor.

People wonder about Joe Wilson. Who is he? Well, aside from being the one who shouldted out "YOU LIE!" during a joint session of congress, I heard him talk about the "Holy city of Charlotte," South Carolina. Unless my memory fails me, I was in that city for a couple of days. There was one sane person in it, a Physics Professor. Across from the hotel I stayed in, was an old, 18th or early 19th Century style building, in a bit of decay, with DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY engraved in it. The state flag looked very much like the Confederate Flag. The main topic of conversation was the flood of a few years back from a hurricane. (As I said, I might not have the right city, but it was a large coastal town in the south of South Carolina.)

Below is the true and original definition of "tea-bagging" which is great to remember when you hear the term again, thanks to the Urban dictionary. Current usage was added after the F* channel lunacy.

Anyway, below that are a three relevant items. The first is a copy of a letter one of you sent to the Prez. I sent one too. You can all make a variant of it and perhaps at least FEEL as if you are doing something.

The second is an article illustrating the sort of things with long-term consequences that we should be talking about.

The third is an article about Journalism in general.
**************************************


teabagging 9424 up, 1358 down

April 14, 2009 Urban Word of the Day
the insertion of one man's sack into another person's mouth. Used a practical joke or prank, when performed on someone who is asleep, or as a sexual act.
At the frat house last night, when Tim was wasted an down on the floor, he got teabagged by, like, ten guys!

Me and Jen were teabagging last night when her mom walked in. Awkward.
***********************************************

Dear President Obama,

I know that your chief concerns lie elsewhere right now, but Prime Minister Netanyahu's
decision to grant building permits for dozens of new homes for Israeli settlers in the West Bank
has many of us deeply concerned.

Especially since you specifically and firmly insisted that the road to peace and the establishment of two independent states, Palestine and Israel, depended on Israel's cessation of West Bank expansion and occupation.

Mr. President, I think many Americans like myself feel that Israel has no intention of following your suggestions at this time, and openly defy and ignore you.

May I respectfully ask why no sanctions are ever mentioned with respect to Israel? If Israel does not wish to pursue peace and a two state solution, what penalties do they face? If the answer is "none", then how can we expect them to comply with what the whole world sees as fair and just?

South Africa, to use a famous recent example, did not comply with the world's encouragement to end the hated apartheid regime they enforced, but sanctions from around the world changed their minds.

Israel has also been called an apartheid state by no less than three Nobel Peace Prize winners,
amongst many more. Former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former
South African President Nelson Mandela have all encouraged Israel to change without much success.

I hope you will consider some sort of sanctions against Israel if it continues to be unmotivated in any way to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and stands intractably in the way of the much longed for two state solution you so rightfully and courageously support.

We fund Israel with billions each year, and perhaps a withholding of part of that amount could also be a sanction, I cannot see why not.

Mr. President, you have much to do, and I don't wish to take up any more of your time. Thank you for your great efforts and you have my full support. Believe me, I know, any sanction you dare mention against Israel will cause a media explosion.

But without any, Israel will continue to ignore your suggestions. All the best to you Mr. President, this has to be a tough decision.

Sincerely yours,


****************************************

Israeli leaders hunted for war crimes

Work on several fronts to get convicted Israeli top officials for war crimes. But Israel is likely to blow at any convictions.

JERUSALEM: >From several pages is an attempt to prosecute Israeli politicians and military officials for war crimes, according to the UN probably responsible. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and chief of the Israeli military are likely targets, but Israel will probably blow any judgments, assess American professor.

A committee appointed by the United Nations with the South African judge Richard Goldstone headed concludes in a recently published report that there is strong evidence that Israel committed war crimes during the three-week war in Gaza in the early years. Including Israel has deliberately shot civilians and used Palestinians as human shield. The UN report, which follows a string of similar accusations from other organizations, has no direct legal significance, but recommends that the UN Security Council sends the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

"The Committee believes that the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law would contribute to the completion of such violations," says the Goldstone report.

Uncertain

The ICC has already started to consider an application from the Palestinian Authority, which wants the court to investigate crimes committed by Israel, but it is uncertain whether it is feasible, because Palestine is not recognized as an independent state.

Initiates ICC investigations will chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, probably go after some of the most senior people in Israel, estimates the American Professor of International Law Francis A. Boyle, who for many years has been involved in war crimes trial.

"If Moreno-Ocampo choose one indictment, I cannot see him go after low-level soldiers. He will go after the leaders; Ashkenazi (Commander of the Israeli army, ed.), Defense Minister Barak, Olmert - those who ordered war, "said Francis Boyle told Berlingske Tidende.

Boyle, in particular was instrumental in persuading the Serbian President Milosevic to justice, is himself the man behind a third attempt to get Israel studied, namely to establish a war crimes tribunal for Israel under the UN.

Political resistance

All three proposals are, however, against fierce political resistance, including from the U.S., and is hardly reality. And even if the ICC investigated and condemned the Israelis for war crimes, Israel will probably blow on it when you have not joined the ICC assesses Francis Boyle.

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, will not answer clearly whether Israel would accept the judgments of the ICC.

'Israel is not a member of the ICC, so it has no authority over Israel. If the UN Security Council referral, the ICC can also look at non-member countries, but it is a rare and most hypothetical situation, "said Palmor Berlingske Tidende.

Whether Israel did nothing, would an ICC ruling, however, have consequences for the Israeli tips, notes Francis Boyle.

"There would be issued arrest warrants, and wherever they moved away, the State would be obliged to apprehend them and hand them to the ICC.

They could not travel much, "he says.


From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22636


*****************************************************************************

Can journalism schools be relevant in a world on the brink?

Journalism schools have much in common with the mainstream news media they traditionally serve. As the business model for conventional corporate journalism collapses and digital technologies reshape the media landscape, journalism schools struggle with parallel problems around curricula and personnel.

As I begin my third decade of teaching journalism, I hear more and more students doubting the relevance of journalism schools -- for good reasons. The best of our students are worried not just about whether they can find a job after graduation but also whether those jobs will allow them to contribute to shaping a decent future for a world on the brink.

Can journalism and journalism education be relevant as it becomes increasing clear that the political, economic, and social systems that structure our world are failing us on all counts? Do these institutions have the capacity to see past the problems of falling ad revenues and outdated curricula, and struggle to understand the crises of our age? Can journalists and journalism educators find the courage to grapple with these challenges?

The question isn't whether journalism and education are important in a democratic society but whether the institutions in which those two endeavors traditionally have been carried out can adapt -- not only to the specific changes in that industry, but to that world in crisis.

My answer is a tentative "yes, but" -- only if both enterprises jettison the illusions of neutrality that have hampered their ability to monitor the centers of power for citizens and model real critical thinking for students.

Journalism's business problems provide an opportunity for journalism education to remake itself, which should start with a declaration of independence from the mainstream media and a renunciation of the corporate media's allegiances to the existing power structure. Our only hope is in getting radical, going to the root of the problems.

Toward that end, I proposed a new mission statement to my faculty colleagues in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. I argued that by stating bluntly the nature of the crises we face in today's world and breaking with our longstanding subordination to the industry, we could offer an exciting alternative to students who don't want to repeat the failures of our generation.

It quickly became clear that while some colleagues agreed with some aspects of the statement below, only a handful would endorse it as a mission statement. Some disagreed with my assessment of the crises we face, while others thought it politically ill-advised to criticize the industry and corporate power so directly. But nothing in that discussion dissuaded me from my conclusion that if journalism education is to be relevant in the coming decades, we must change course dramatically.

So, I offer this mission statement to a broader audience as one starting point for debate about the future of journalism schools, which must be connected to a discussion about the fundamental distribution of wealth and power in the larger world. Journalism alone can't turn around a dying culture, of course, but it can be part of the process by which a more just and sustainable alternative emerges.

Journalism for Justice/Storytelling for Sustainability: News Media Education for a New Future

Schools of journalism must recognize that our work goes forward in a society facing multiple crises -- political and cultural, economic and ecological. These crises are not the product of temporary downturns but evidence of a permanent decline if the existing systems and structures of power continue on their present trajectory.

These failing systems produce too little equality within the human family and too much devastation in the larger ecosystem. We face a world that is profoundly unjust in the distribution of wealth and power, and fundamentally unsustainable in our use of the ecological resources of the planet. The task of journalism is to deepen our understanding of these challenges and communicate that understanding to the public to foster the meaningful dialogue necessary for real democracy.

The best traditions of journalism are based in resistance to the illegitimate structures of authority at the heart of our problems. From Thomas Paine to Upton Sinclair, Ida B. Wells and Ida Tarbell, the most revered journalists have had the courage to take a stand for ordinary people and against arrogant concentrations of power. But today, commercial journalism is constrained by diversionary and deceptive claims to neutrality, leaving journalists trapped in a corporate-defined and -directed subservience to the status quo. Increasingly we live with a journalism that rarely speaks truth to power and routinely echoes the platitudes of the powerful. Even when journalists raise critical questions, too often it is within the parameters set by the wealthy and their political allies.

In a world in which an increasingly predatory global corporate economy leaves half the population living on less than $2.50 a day, can we ignore the call for justice? In a world in which all indicators of the health of the ecosystem that makes our lives possible are in dramatic decline, can we ignore the cry of the living world? Mass media have a moral responsibility to produce journalism for justice and storytelling for sustainability.

As the journalism industry faces a broken business model and struggles for solutions, there are great opportunities to reshape journalism to serve people and the planet, following the traditions of the spirited independent journalists of the past and present. The curriculum for this should not only offer training for a job but also inspire a collective search for the values and ideas that can animate a just and sustainable society. We invite you to join us in this exciting time for journalism. By remembering the inspirational lessons of our past and facing honestly the problems of the present, we help make possible a new future in which justice and sustainability define not just our dreams but our lives.

A note to critics: Some might argue that this mission statement threatens to "politicize the classroom." This kind of complaint is based on the naïve notion that a curriculum in the humanities and social sciences can be magically constructed outside of, and unaffected by, the distribution of wealth and power in the larger society. The choices that go into all teaching -- from the identification of relevant problems, to the selection of appropriate materials, to the analyses offered in lectures -- are based on claims about the nature of a good life and a good society. The important questions are whether instructors are open with students about how those choices are made and can justify those choices on intellectual grounds. In other words, there is a politics to all teaching, but good teaching is more than the assertion of one's politics.

When a department constructs a curriculum that supports the existing distribution of wealth and power, challenges rarely arise. Perhaps the most politicized departments on any college campus are in the business school, where the highly ideological assertions of corporate capitalism are rarely challenged and the curriculum is built on that ideology. In a healthy educational institution with real academic freedom, we should encourage a diversity of approaches to complex questions. This mission statement identifies problems and suggests we consider the systemic and structural roots of those problems without asserting simplistic solutions. Such an approach honors the best traditions in journalism and scholarship, offering a path for struggling with difficult questions rather than dictating simplistic answers.


----------------------


Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.


From: Z Space - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3984

Friday, September 18, 2009

Billionaires








Ok, I hope this attones for the wierd things that happened with the last attempt.

It is funny, though, especially the billionaires part.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Race, Fox, and the Morons









Illustration: Glenn Beck leads an all white crowd to protest Healthcare.

Some time ago, we said that there seemed to be something racist involved in the fat, white, middle-aged mobs that protested Obama, said he was born in Ghana, a socialist, a Hitler, and so one, but also that maybe it had something to do with Obama's being intelligent and knowledgable. After all, people hate things they fear and they fear things they do not understand.

Then Maureen Dowd mentioned it in a great column Sunday. She followed up today.

President Jimmie Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, said racism was definitely a part of this insanity, just yesterday.

Glenn Beck said they were fringe elements.

Well, Michael Steele said no racism was involved. Does "Uncle Tom" ring a bell? Does he sleep with Clarance Thomas?

Frankly, I've had enough of it.

Farewell.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Congratulations

THE ABSURD TIMES



CONGRATULATIONS

AL-ZAIDI


(COME TO THINK ABOUT IT, THAT IS WHAT WE SHOULD DO WITH JOE WILSON! ABYONE IS INVITED TO THROW SHOES AT HIM!)




Sunday, September 13, 2009

Correction

THE ABSURD TIMES



Sorry, that was Heller who wrote Catch-22, not Vonnegut.
Thanks Hugh.



P.S.: Literature died with Milton.

The Sanity Project


THE ABSURD TIMES


Well, as I mentioned to you earlier, I was going to try to figure out why the right wing has become so insane. I just saw a coverage of the so-called "Tea Party Project" demonstration -- I've never seen so many middle-aged, fat, and stupid people together at the same place. At the same time, Obama was lecturing in Minnesota and his crowd was diverse and well-mannered. About all I can say is that most crazy behavior comes from fear, that turns to hate and anger, and people are generally fearful of things that are different from them.

Well, Obama is intelligent, knowledgable, and black -- a bit of a wimp, perhaps, but very unlike that mob with the teabags and flags in their hair. One of you mentioned Milo Minderbinder of Catch-22, a brilliant novel by Kurt Vonnegut, as characteristic of this, but Milo is only the force behind the mob, not the participants.

As I began to analyze and compose thoughts on the subject, it became apparant to me that I would have a great deal of trouble writing up the analysis in English. Words such as "Weltanschaung" may be easy enough to insert without looking for an English substitute, but "Zeitgeist" is more difficult. Then, when what is needed for the analysis is "Wissengewissenschaft," a coinage by Nietzsche, it became clear that I was contemplating something for which I needed to be paid a great deal and no offers were forthcoming. In addition, in the words of a Political Science professor I once knew, "WHO CARES?"

However, before I decided to abandon the analysis, I did grab this analysis of the problem by someone who did not go to Grad School and hence can speak English on a journalistic level (although he sometimes does use a few long words):




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Friday, September 11, 2009

Fw: b8ovn



--- On Fri, 9/11/09, Charles <charlesstanford@comcast.net> wrote:

From: Charles <charlesstanford@comcast.net>
Subject: b8ovn
To: "charles" <stanford_charles@yahoo.com>, "2" <charlesstanford09@comcast.net>
Date: Friday, September 11, 2009, 4:06 PM

<a href="http://free.napster.com/player/album/12341575" target="_blank"><img src="http://free.napster.com/images/buttons/btn_play.gif" border="0" />Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1</a>

Thursday, September 10, 2009

In Search of sanity

THE ABSURD TIMES






Listen to Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. II by Glenn Gould : http://free.napster.com/player/album/12209367



I'm busy looking for some signs of sanity or a way to understand the rampant insanity. I'll be back when something becomes more clear.


b8ovn

Listen to Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. II by Glenn Gould : http://free.napster.com/player/album/12209367

Monday, September 07, 2009

Fw: Probably Bad News


I certainly thought this was worth subscribing to. It is hard to believe that these things happen with professionals, but here it is. I'm not making this up!!!!

PROBABLY BAD NEWS

Probably Bad News



No Need To Apologize

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 01:00 PM PDT

The Experts Have This Under Control

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 10:00 AM PDT

Funny-News-Headlines-TheExpertsHaveThisUnderControl
Via: Mike H

Moronic Monday: At Least We Aren't THESE People

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 06:00 AM PDT

Funny-News-Headlines-HMODidn'tCoverHim
Via: Margaret C

Funny-News-Headlines-ButIWasCommittingAnotherCrime!
Via: Brad P

Funny-News-Headlines-Pornflakes
Via: Sebastian C

Funny-News-Headlines-OneDollar
Via: Nicole R