Standing Up To Bullies

As we grow up we learn that the only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them, damn the consequences, because nothing else works. Every other path leads to more fear and more bullying. Keith Olbermann advocates for the President to do just that:

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Shirley Sherrod

I Wanted to make sure anyone who dropped by had the details on the controversy manufactured by a right-wing creep with the help of the right-wing media that led to the firing of Shirley Sherrod. Rachel has the details below:

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Now if you listened to the report you know the perpetrator of the defamation of Shirley Sherrod's character is Andrew Breitbart, a smear merchant whose credibility should be non-existent. That would be true in a world without Glenn beck Rush Limbaugh and Fox News - sadly those things all exist and he has a platform for his lies and fabrications. He was the man behind the lies about ACORN which, even though they proved to be false, helped to bring about that organization's demise.

Part of the reason for his success in taking on ACORN, aside from endless trumpeting of the so called scandal by the right-wing Wurlitzer, was that it took many weeks to completely debunk the story. By that time people had lost interest and moved on. One of the reasons we have hope that this will stick to Breitbart like s*** to a jackal's hide is that it all happened with a 24 hour news-cycle: The lie, the fake outrage, the realization that the video had been clipped and was out of all context, the firing, the apology, the media embarrassment, the walk-back and her vindication.

So people can witness and understand what happened in its entirety. David Frum spoke out against Breitbart and his ilk and tactics but he now represents a small minority in the conservative movement. Shirley herself laid the blame at the feet of Fox and Breitbart - but many will try to blame Obama and the administration who are not without blame but maybe could be excused for being overly sensitive to issues of race.

How Dummies Report the Gulf Oil Crisis

From the people at theRealnews.com an incisive look at how the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has been covered by the MSM these past two months. Enjoy!  

The Most Despicable Person In The World

We are big fans of Keith Olbermann here at NM&P, particularly his daily "Worst Person In The World!" feature. He's generally got a good point to make and oft times it's a damned funny segment. Last night he included Glenn Beck in his segment and as always he's having sport - my only qualms are that I no longer think Glenn Beck is worthy of sport or needling or anything else that isn't dead serious about getting him off the airwaves. He's not only the worst person in the world he's the most despicable.

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The following words taken from Beck's radio program are not merely some sort of twisted entertainment - they are a call to his listeners for violence against a President whom Beck is calling a traitor to the US in so many words and he does it daily. Every day that there is no action, Beck seems to ramp up the demagoguery and the hate. This, as they say, is not going to end well.

BECK: Using his own words to describe his grandmother, that when you see a 'typical person' like the president of BP, he has a reaction -- um, you know -- to those people that has been bred into him. Ok. Alright. Now that actually kind of works, if you understand who his parents were. And who his grandparents were. Because they're not really the 'typical white people.' His mother - his mother wasn't. His mother was a revolutionary. His father wasn't. A revolutionary. His grandparents, they went to the communist Little Red Church just outside of Seattle. They had communist friends. So it's almost like Marxism has been bred into him.

BECK: And I think that's who she is. I don't know her at all, other than her own words. And her own words are not in sync with America. Americans are proud of their country. They may not like what's going on in their country under Bush, under Obama, under Reagan, under Clinton, it doesn't matter, we are not happy with the way that our country is run from time to time, usually most times. But we have an underlying belief in our country and love of our country. I don't think she does. Maybe she does, but her words say differently.

What We're Up Against

Hello to whomever shows up here!

We've only been doing this a short while and we're trying to establish ourselves as reliable and on top of the news. Between the three of us we haven't as yet developed the facility to take the stories on one at a time so mostly it's daily news wraps. Occasionally there's been the perfect video or article to bring to the attention of whatever reader happens by and we've run a couple of those - but mostly wraps.

We've been way ahead of the curve on our first real effort to bring a story that the MSM wasn't telling the truth about: the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf on a daily basis. Go back to our posting of May the 1st and you'll find, using the information available to us and all, we were informing people who were dropping by that a million gallons (25,000 barrels) or more were pouring into the Gulf. We took umbrage along the way as the numbers were continuously low-balled by BP and the government.

I'm not sure more accurate reporting would have changed things as they now stand but there's a chance that with numbers so large and frightening there might have been a greater sense of urgency - not from BP or government officials - but from the public at large. We still have the power to move these idiots you know. We are not under any obligation to be in their thrall, in fact quite the opposite. Governments get to set policy on our behalf as long as we are satisfied with their behaviour and corporations get to reap from the fat of the land provided they put back, employ, be good citizens and pay their damned taxes!

When they fail to do these things on our behalf we have the power and the duty to act appropriately. Not sit on our asses and take it. "Can I have another sir?" are not the words the people who fought and died to establish western civilization would think suitable for the current state of affairs. We have to act or become extinct before this century concludes.



To celebrate our 100th post, here's a National Geographic video that illustrates why it's important to keep fighting for a cleaner environment and smarter public policy.