jeremyjarratt.com

Check out this angrily passionate editorial by the great Keith Olbermann re: the new, absolutely diabolical Military Commissions Act. (Read up on it and know that this is terrible and insane.)

[youtube]uqxmPjB0WSs[/youtube]

May I just take a moment of your time to point out that:

Every white (and non-American Indian) person living in the United States today is a descendant of debatably illegal immigrants? And that, while we’re on the topic, the non-white immigrants to this country were nearly exclusively brought here in chains by whites?

So just exactly what god damn right does anyone have to say that any human being is illegal or that they are trespassers?

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
-Emma Lazarus

Dove video, Evolution: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”

Cheers to that! Above link is a video of a beautiful but freckled model being made up beyond recognition, then photomanipulated to look like… well, to look like the image that we hold up as the standard for beauty for women. The bar is a little on the high side, don’t we think? I absolutely applaud this campaign. The industry in which I currently find myself laboring within could certainly use a little dose of reality. Ok, a whole hell of a lot.

Every day, I see the signs of a scarred self-image in the clients with whom I do business, and I am unnerved by it by much more than a little bit.

Women! Stop doing this to yourselves! You already ARE beautiful! It is necessary to eat healthy; it is unnecessary to starve and try to uphold yourself to a standard which is literally impossible to meet. Who do you fool but yourselves? Who will love you less, who deserves your love in return?

ProTV Video, a Romanian private TV station, has a video of soldiers of the People’s Republic of China actually killing unarmed, harmless Tibetan refugees trekking through the snow on a pilgrimmage to see the Dalai Lama.

Who will stand up to this brutality? Who will make the PRC pay for their numerous despicable crimes against humanity?

Joe Maguire lost his job at Reuters for writing a book about Ann Coulter. The book is called Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter.

Reuters confirmed that Mr. Maguire was granted conditional approval to write his book on Ms. Coulter… When asked what changed once the book was ready, a company statement pointed to Reuters’ principles of “integrity, independence and freedom from bias.”

So what is all this talk about Liberal media? And before you point out that Mr. Maguire’s book may or may not be left of the dial, a book is one thing, but news is another thing entirely. By firing a guy for pointing out that Ann Coulter is - duh! - a mindless raving lunatic (and doing so in a perfectly legitimate venue), they are effectively supporting biased journalism of a far worse kind than that which could have ever conceivably come from Mr. Maguire himself.

And anyway, if pointing out that the Emperor* is wearing no clothes** makes you a traitor, then does that make unbiased journalists insurgents?

* ¹ Coulter; or, ² mainstream media in general
** ¹ is a blathering idiot; or, ² has no business presenting a blathering idiot’s foolish, inane lies as the truth

We Are The Web - coolest video i’ve seen in a while, and it’s got a Net Neutrality message, too! Plus, it’s got Peter Pan guy, who’s site i first ran into way back around Y2K or so! Watch for those wacky Chinese Backstreet Boys lip-syncing guys, too! Awesome.

Homeland Security Secretary (and Skeletor imposter*) Michael Chertoff, presumably issuing a sweeping indictment of all thought-criminals everywhere:

“Clearly, at the end of the day, we’ve got to eliminate that pool of people who are susceptible to becoming killers.” (Spoken at around 7:20 on the stream’s timeline; emphasis mine.)

Possible translation?:

Are there any queers in the theater tonight? Get them up against the wall!
There’s one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me! Get him up against the wall!
That one looks Jewish! And that one’s a coon!
Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There’s one smoking a joint, and another with spots!
If I had my way, I’d have all of you shot!

(Roger Waters, “In the Flesh”)

Pre-Crime, anyone?

* doesn’t he remind you of Senator Palpatine, just before he becomes the evil Emperor? I tell you, Michael Chertoff will likewise reveal himself to be Skeletor one dark day….

Global warming is all in our minds. Also an apparent figment of our imagination: more than 100 people (so far) who have died as a direct cause of the current heat wave sweeping California.

While NASA has actually removed the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” from its mission statement, an obvious sign that the idiotic monkey-hear, monkey-repeat global-warming deniers in Washington have them under their ridiculously fat thumbs, they’ve also been cutting or delaying programs intended to figure this climate change thing out.

So, has the politicization of science gone from merely hurting children by denying the obvious reality of evolution to actually killing people by denying the obvious reality of the global warming catastrophe?

So who’s on the side of citizenry, if our government wants to roll over and play stupid while we roast in the ever-increasing temperatures that are currently making our little planet a little less inhabitable each day? (Certainly not Republicans, who defiantly show their disgust with the poor by continually voting not to increase the minimum wage, all the while voting to give themselves raises and give tax cuts to the poor rich people in this country.)

What’s the real deal here, then? Is the U.S. government trying to enslave its own people by creating an environment where we have no recourse or protection from calamity without paying? Has America finally been turned over to Big Business? Where has all this incredible ignorance come from, and why is it actively trying to take us back to the Dark Ages, when common people were literally at the mercy of all-powerful tyrants? And how is it that We, the People, are actually letting this happen to us?

Top 10 places to find royalty free, public domain, stock photos

Stephen Hawking in the news: “It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species… Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.” - He’s also working on a children’s book a la Harry Potter, sans magic. Dude!

Footage of meteoroid hitting the moon.

Court orders Bob Taft (Governor- OH) to disclose potentially scandalous records. Corrupt Bob must give up. What a loser.

Aussie lyrebird is like a freaking dictaphone of nature! I’ve heard wild stories about this bird, but hear it imitate - perfectly! - a buzzing chainsaw, and two different camera shutters!

After the Rodney King riots in South Central, the city gave residents a plot of land in good faith. How nice! They’ve since turned it into the largest urban farm in America! Unfortunately, it is at this very moment under corporate and police attack. It seems the land was dubiously sold out from under The People to developers. Shame, shame, shame! This is outrageous, and reeks of the kind of “indian-giving” that white people are most famous for.

Don’t even try to cancel AOL. They’ll just give you the runaround and, erm, ask for your father. WTF.

Sexy ro-bots having sexy sex.

An even weirder video: “dancing” Japanese girls teaching defensive English. I guess. Don’t make fun of them.

EFF’s The Corruptibles!

The Show with Zefrank is a freaking riot!

I can see it now: “But sir! Nobody told us we couldn’t torture & humiliate suspected enemy combatants!”

Pentagon to omit Geneva ban from new army manual: report - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - New policies on prisoners being drawn up by the Pentagon will reportedly omit a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment.”Citing unidentified but knowledgeable military officials, the Los Angeles Times said the step would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift by the US government away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.