Liberally Geeky

laughterkey:

jessicavalenti:

I’m sure that most folks know by now that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer charity and advocacy organization, announced that they were cutting funding to Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings. In the last five years, the money from Komen allowed PP to provide

wilwheaton:

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has looked at tomorrow’s “Internet blackout” in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and it sees only a “gimmick,” a “stunt,” “hyperbole,” “a dangerous and troubling development,” an “irresponsible response,” and an “abuse of power.”

“Wikipedia, reddit, and others are going dark to protest the legislation, while sites like Scribd and Google will also protest. In response, MPAA chief Chris Dodd wheeled out the big guns and started firing the rhetoric machine-gun style. 

“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.”

Can I interrupt for a moment? Thanks. When you complain that opponents didn’t “come to the table to find solutions”, do you mean that we didn’t give NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to congress like the MPAA? Or do you mean that we didn’t come to the one hearing that Lamar Smith held, where opponents of SOPA were refused an opportunity to comment? Help me out, here, Chris Dodd, because I’m really trying hard to understand you.

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”

Oh ha ha. Ho. Ho. The MPAA talking about “skewing the facts to incite” anyone is just too much. 

“A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.”

Except for the part where this is completely false, it’s a valid point.

“It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”

Riiiiiiight. Protesting to raise awareness of terrible legislation that will destroy the free and open Internet  is an abuse of power, but buying NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS worth of congressional votes is just fine.

I’m so disappointed in Chris Dodd. He was a pretty good senator, wrote some bills (like Dodd/Frank) that are genuinely helping people, and is going to be on the wrong side of every argument as head of the MPAA. What a wasted legacy.

…it’s not the action that matters, but the team that does the action. Political parties in our binary political system are as meaningless as a college football team, and the rivalries between groups are identical in their pointlessness.

soupsoup:

Rand Paul blocked part of it, but some nasty bits still passed. Glenn helps shed light on what’s in NDAA.

More here as well.

The broadcast media’s ignorance and unwillingness to cover the National Defense Authorization Act, a radical piece of legislation which outrageously redefines the US homeland as a “battlefield” and makes US citizens subject to military apprehension and detainment for life without access to a trial or attorney, is unacceptable.

Guys, this is far more important than Penn State’s Disgusting Creep of the Decade, or even Conrad Murray’s sentencing.

Call it what you will: a military junta, a secret invalidation of Americans’ civil rights, a Congress gone mad. Whatever it is, it needs to be covered by the press, and quickly.

(Source: wilwheaton)

wilwheaton:

The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?

“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation’s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about “income inequality” and “paying your fair share.”

This tells you almost everything you need to know about who the GOP works for, cares about, and answers to. PRO TIP: It isn’t the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Never once in his talking points does Luntz ever say, “the best way to deal with the issues raised by these people is to listen to them and honestly, directly address their concerns.” Instead, he says things like,

1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’

“I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public … still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”

You’ll note that he doesn’t say “If we are the defenders of Wall Street, we’ve got a problem.” He says “if we’re seen as defenders of Wall Street, we’ve got a problem.”

This one, though, is probably my favorite:

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: ‘I get it.’

“First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ … ‘I get that you’re angry. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

You know, like cutting taxes on the 1%, eliminating funding for libraries and schools, declaring pizza a vegetable, privatizing Social Security and gutting Medicare. Oh, and blame Obama, because the last 12 years of Bush/Cheney deregulation and crony capitalism that caused this never actually happened.

Look, I’m not saying that congressional Democrats are much better, but at least this makes it explicitly clear that the Republicans have no intention of doing a goddamn thing to address the suffering of millions and millions of Americans. They’ll keep doing everything they can to protect the interests of the ultra-rich, while they use carefully-crafted language to trick the Tea Party Rubes into believing they’re doing exactly the opposite.

It will be interesting to listen to Republicans in the coming months, and see how closely they adhere to these talking points. I’m guessing it will be right around 100%.

wilwheaton:

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

What the actual fuck. It’s time for a revolution.

The infuriating thing is trying to get people, especially Democrats, to give a flying fuck. Every time I bring this little detail up to an Obama loyalist (Obamaton if I’m feeling snarky) they say “Well I’m not going to feel bad because we killed a terrorist”. We killed a terror suspect. Without trial. We killed somebody we were told was a terror suspect. And anybody unfortunate enough to be nearby him. And he was an American citizen. And, in a separate drone assassination, his minor child who was also an American citizen. This should be deeply alarming to any American. The list of people in the enemies column for a country that still has a “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy is a long one and any of us can find ourselves on it. Now, with how spinny the moral compass for Republicans has been for the last decade, with how they can’t have a goddamn orgasm unless Texas executes a negro, I don’t expect much of them. But I hear the exact same things from Democrats, the exact same neoconservative bullshit I heard from Republicans throughout the Bush years, the exact same macho chest-thumping bullshit that has facilitated and encouraged the growth of our security theater police state. It’s deeply disappointing.

soupsoup:

Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency …