Obama’s Hope Bong

The reTHUGlicans drink Koolaid, Democrats hit Obama bongs. Did you take your toke?

Can You Watch This Without Shining Eyes

Benjamin Zander lights up the Ted Presentation with Shining Eyes… proving everyone loves classical music (yeah, even you rednecks… give it a listen). Notice how you can feel Chopin’s intent and how Benjamin portrays that.

http://www.ted.com

Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.

Does Big Oil Control Bush? You Decide

B’Man: From Open Left by David Sirota:

Bush Cites Enviro Concerns to Curb Solar Development…While Accelerating Oil Drilling

LAFAYETTE, IN – A few weeks back, I wrote a New York Times magazine article about the populist uprising against unbridled oil and gas drilling in the Mountain West. The article highlighted a major theme in my new book, THE UPRISING. In the article, I discussed how the Bush Bureau of Land Management has thrown the principle of environmental caution overboard by opening up a huge amount of federal land to drilling. So it is with more than a little bit absurd to read this New York Times story today:

“Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states.”

Look – I agree that we need to do a better job of measuring environmental impacts of all proposed energy development – whether that development is solar, oil or gas. But what’s so incredible about this story is that the BLM is working to curtail solar development in Western states by citing environmental concerns while at the same actively accelerating oil and gas drilling in Western states – drilling that is way, way worse for the environment than solar energy, from both an emissions perspective and a land-use perspective.

This kind of government fealty to the rapacious fossil fuel industry is precisely what the energy-related populist uprising in West is revolting against.

B’Man: The Oil Companies must be shitting their pants that they might lose some record profits, so Presnit Idiotass slows alternative energy development for them to reap even more. If you rednecks ever thought that Big Oil and Big Money doesn’t own W’s ass, surely this proves it to you. They don’t care about you.

Monday Morning Mind Stuff…

Good morning everyone! Welcome to Monday June 30th, 2008, day 182.

Have a great week out there and be safe in whatever you do.

History on this day June 30

1841: The Erie Railroad rolled out its first passenger train.

1859: Frenchman Charles Blondin (aka), Jean Francois Gravelet crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. It took him five minutes.

1921: The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed.

1936: Margaret Mitchell’s only novel, Gone with the Wind, is published on this day in 1936. The book will become one of the best-selling novels of all time, selling some 25 million copies. The book sold 1 million copies within six months, with as many as 50,000 copies being bought on a single day.

1953: The first Chevrolet Corvette, a white convertible roadster with a red interior rolled off the Chevrolet assembly line in Flint, MI. It sold for $3,250.

1958: The U.S. Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union.

1969: The last of 4,204,925 Ramblers was produced, ringing in the final hour for the storied car line.

1985: Thirty-nine American hostages were freed from a hijacked TWA jetliner in Beirut after being held for 17 days.

June 30, 1957
Feds pull plug on RFC

On June 30, 1957, the Federal Government pulled the plug on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). With that, the United States effectively buried one of the remaining vestiges of the Great Depression. Indeed, the RFC was formed at the behest in 1931, as the nation was sinking deeper into the depths of poverty and despair. The brainchild of President Hoover, who felt that a revived private sector could best lead America back to prosperity, the RFC was charged with propping up the nation’s struggling banks and businesses.

Birthdays:

1917: Susan Hayward (Edythe Marrender) – Academy Award-winning actress: I Want to Live I’ll Cry Tomorrow

1917: Lena Horne – singer: Stormy Weather

1943: Florence Ballard – singer: group: The Supremes

1944: Glenn Shorrock – singer: The Little River Band

1953: Hal Lindes – musician – group: Dire Straits

1959: Vincent D’Onofrio – actor: Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Mystic Pizza

1966: Mike Tyson – boxer: youngest heavyweight champion [20 years + 144 days]

Today is Meteor Watch Day

Chart Toppers:

1957: Love Letters in the Sand – Pat Boone
Teddy Bear – Elvis Presley
It’s Not for Me to Say – Johnny Mathis
Four Walls – Jim Reeves

1965: Mr. Tambourine Man – The Byrds
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones
Wonderful World – Herman’s Hermits
Before You Go – Buck Owens

Word of the day: Claque \KLACK\, noun:. A group of fawning admirers.

Ponderable of the day: Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them.

Quote of the day: “Can anything be more stupid than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?”

- Blaise Pascal, quoted by Tolstoy

Stuff……….you should know.

Interesting facts from 1905:

- The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
- The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower
- The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.
- The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
- More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.
- Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”
- Sugar cost four cents a pound.
- Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
- Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
- Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
- Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
- Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
>Pneumonia and influenza
>Tuberculosis
>Diarrhea
>Heart disease
>Stroke
- The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30
- Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
-Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacist said, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”
- Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
- There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

“…Live Simply, Love Generously, Care Deeply, Speak Kindly and Leave the Rest to God. …”

Do You Know How Hard It Is To Be A Liberal?

Roy does…

To Be A Liberal from his latest album “Thanks For The Support“