Tag Archives: citizen

The Trouble with Career Politicians

Politics was once an honored profession of high calling by men of strong principles and courage whose interest in being elected to these positions of public trust was to serve the country and make sure their generation left a better world to the next one. They were, for the most part, men of faith, men of integrity, commitment, practicality and common sense who viewed high political office as a term of service, not a lifetime vocation. They fought and won wars against far superior odds, battled economic downturns, abolished slavery and left us a rich endowment of federal papers documenting their vision of what the United States of America is and was meant to remain. It is a heartbreaking fact that nowadays politics has become not a calling but a game. Gaining public office is achieved by the most photogenic, the silver-tongued, the most attractive who look good on television and can raise the most money. We tend to pay more attention to the messenger than to the message, the one who can lie with the straightest face. Many times policy is achieved by backroom deals and downright sellouts. The leadership promising perks to make it look like Congressmen and Senators are bringing home the bacon to the folks back home to enhance their next election chances. They never stop to think about just whose bacon they’re sending and “by the people, for the people, of the people” has turned into, buy the people, fool the people and rob the people. And before any of you cherry pickers accuse me of taking sides, let me assure you that I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans. After all it was the Republicans who started this national debt spiral, the Democrats have just taken it to new and insane highs. Our founders did not design this system for career politicians, but rather citizen politicians who would serve a couple of terms and let someone fresh off the street serve, someone who is acquainted with what’s happening now, not twenty years ago when this bunch of hacks took office. Our political bodies were intended to be made up of common folk, doctors, druggists, farmers, carpenters, and some but not all lawyers. The corruption that plagues our political system is not just confined to the federal branch but rots our local and state governments as well. The one-sided attitude of the media I think dissuades a lot of honorable people from going into politics. If you’re not a member of the party the media supports they come after you with both barrels blazing, examining your whole life with a microscope trying to unearth some juicy little tidbit that will turn the public against you and undermine your campaign, and who wants to put their family through that. We need look no farther than the last presidential election to find proof of what I’m talking about. Look at the raging war that was waged against Sarah Palin. A media that actually turns a totally blind eye to childbirth out of wedlock acted as if Bristol Palin had committed a crime of immense and proportions. While Barack Obama, the all-time media darling, who sat under the preaching of a revolutionary racist for twenty years claimed he had never heard any of the inflammatory, anti-American rhetoric that regularly spewed from Jeremiah Wright’s mouth. He kept company with a sixties era terrorist who to this day wants to destroy the American way of life, and was never held accountable. Those who have sworn to serve you pass bills that they haven’t even read and the last thing they want is for we the people to find out what’s actually in them. There’s a dirty little club in Washington and the state capitols around this country, a club whose membership fees are to toe the line and be willing to sell out your own nation for a place at the big hog trough. And ladies and gentlemen, with the exception of a handful of good men and women who actually keep the faith in this pack of wolves, that’s what they are, pigs with and insatiable appetite for power.

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The Trouble with Career Politicians

Former NYT Editorialist Cohen Insists First Amendment Free Speech Protection Is ‘Vague’

In his June 9 “case study” feature for Time.com, Adam Cohen, formerly of the New York Times editorial board and Time magazine, tackled the question “Are Liberal Judges Really ‘Judicial Activists’?” Cohen’s short answer: yes, but so are conservative judges, and it’s the conservatives on the Supreme Court that have been on an activist kick lately. To bolster his argument, Cohen complained that judges must of necessity make judgment calls about vague elements of U.S. law and the Constitution. You know, vague stuff like, wait for it, the First Amendment (emphases mine): Roberts and the rest of the court’s five-member conservative majority have overturned congressional laws and second-guessed local elected officials as aggressively as any liberal judges. And they have been just as quick to rely on vague constitutional clauses. Earlier this year, in the Citizens United campaign-finance case, the court’s conservatives struck down a federal law that prohibited corporations from spending on federal elections. Once again, they relied on a vaguely worded constitutional guarantee. That “vaguely worded constitutional guarantee” reads as follows: Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. What part of that is vague? Congress has no business abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. The amendment says nothing about whose freedom of speech, and congressional attempts to fence in that freedom of speech to individuals alone, and not corporate entities, is a pretty clear violation of the text of the amendment’s prohibition against speech abridgement. Indeed, as the majority in Citizen’s United made clear: Speech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content….The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each. Cohen also considers “vague” the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause: In a 2007 case, the conservative majority overturned voluntary racial integration programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. Good idea or bad, the programs were adopted by local officials who had to answer to voters. But the conservative Justices had no problem invoking the vague words of the Equal Protection Clause to strike them down. In that controversy, the two school systems involved were purposefully engineering the racial demography of schools within their districts to correct what was perceived as racial imbalance. In other words, some schools were too white, others too black, in the eyes of policymakers. Whereas Brown v. Board ruled that de jure segregation was a violation of the 14th Amendment protections because segregation by law was inherently unequal, liberal proponents of the Seattle and Louisville plans defended the respective school districts’ obsession with the skin color of its school populations.  Here’s how Washington Post reporter Robert Barnes recorded the logic of Chief Justice Roberts in the Court’s opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al. : “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a plurality that included Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again — even for very different reasons.” He added: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  Those crazy conservative justices and their radical activism, upholding the implications of Brown v. Board of Education!

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Former NYT Editorialist Cohen Insists First Amendment Free Speech Protection Is ‘Vague’

The Worst Best Picture Choice Ever

1941 saw some amazing films, including Citizen Kane and the Maltese Falcon. But which film did the Best Picture statue go to? The answer might surprise you. Just another in the long history of the Worst of the Best, as diligently cataloged by the intrepid Rotten Tomatoes crew. The Rotten Tomatoes Show is a movie review show that airs on Thursday nights at 10:30 e/p on Current TV. From reviews of the newest releases to commentary on cult favorites and movie trends, each episode of The Rotten Tomatoes Show is a fast-paced, comedic journey through the week in cinema. For more from the Rotten Tomatoes Show: http://rottentomatoesshow.com For more about movies from Current: http://current.com/movie added by: Brett_Erlich

White Stripes Complaint Leads Air Force To Pull Super Bowl Ad

Force says the ad soundtrack’s similarity to ‘Fell in Love With a Girl’ was unintentional. By Joel Hanek White Stripes’ Jack White Photo: MTV News The U.S. Air Force has pulled the ad in which the White Stripes claim a re-recording of their song was used without permission. The Detroit rock duo band alleged that the 30-second recruitment commercial that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl used music from “Fell in Love With a Girl” without their consent. The ad has been taken down from the Air Force Web site, but a statement on the site says the association with the Stripes was unintentional. “The Air Force Reserve commissioned an original piece of music for its one-time, 30-second Super Bowl regional advertisement,” said Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt, Air Force Reserve Command director of public affairs. “As soon as we realized there was a question about our ad, we immediately pulled it and have no plan to re-use it. Our goal was only to attract the best and brightest Americans to become Citizen Airmen.” The statement also claims that a contractor, Fast Forward Music, was hired by their advertising agency to compose an original score of music. “We had no intention to use existing music from the White Stripes or any other performer,” Pratt said. “Any similarity to them or other artists was certainly not intentional.” Shortly after the ad aired, the Stripes took to their site to object to their implied backing of military recruitment. “We believe our song was re-recorded and used without permission of the White Stripes, our publishers, label or management,” the statement read. “The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve’s presenting this advertisement with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support.” Related Artists The White Stripes

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White Stripes Complaint Leads Air Force To Pull Super Bowl Ad

The Room: ‘the Citizen Kane of bad films’ now a cult classic

When The Room was released six years ago, it was labelled “the worst movie ever made”, “the epitome of wretchedness” and even “the Citizen Kane of bad films.” Now it has become a cult classic.

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The Room: ‘the Citizen Kane of bad films’ now a cult classic

Eva Longoria Shows Some Nipple in Some Magazine of the Day

Here is gutter slut Eva Longoria in some possibly sexy photoshoot depending on who you ask in a magazine called Citizen K, which looks like it could be Russian, but I’m not really that solid on identifying foreign languages so it really could be English for all I fucking know, since I never learned how to read. What I do know is that Eva Longoria’s got a massive vagina, not because she is Mexican and every Mexican I know is designed to birth babies without realizing it, with pussies you can wear as a Nacho Libre mask, but because she’s married to a abnormally tall black man who probably makes the sex tape with her 5 foot frame comical, like a fucking circus performance.

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Eva Longoria Shows Some Nipple in Some Magazine of the Day