I really will have to stop watching Bill Maher if he continues to insist on booking women for his panel with voices that can only be described as resembling a recently castrated parrot choking on a walnut.
I have no idea who Carrie Sheffield is, but she’s yet another clone of last week’s, and the previous week’s – except this one is brunette and indoctrinated, rather than the usual blonde (dyed) and, of course, imbued with right-wing ideology.
Apparently, Ms Sheffield (there’s a fabulous northern town in Britain which would rapidly disown her) was educated(?) – at Brigham Young University. Do Mormons actually educate their offspring? Does she really believe Joseph Smith was a prophet? If so, is anything she says worth – anything?
She then acquired a Master’s degree in “public policy”(?) from Harvard. Obviously, Daddy was very rich.
I would suggest Ms Sheffield might bear a passing facial resemblance to Morticia Adams of “Adams Family” fame, except I could not be so cruel to the wonderful, and sadly now departed, Carolyn Jones, who played the part so adroightly for many years.
To partner Ms Sheffield on the ‘right’ of his panel, Maher chose a geriatric republican ex-politician whose name escapes me. They made a perfect match.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that while Maher’s quick-fire jokes on the sad decline of the American middle class may be well meaning, the sad fact is that those about whom they were directed are no longer in a position to pay the exorbitant fees demanded by HBO to receive their programming, thus rendering his wit worthless and redundant.
It must be noted that those who laughed the loudest were sitting on the panel. It’s likely every one of them was a millionaire, or, at least well on the way.
It was last Monday – March 31st – that the BBC ran a report quoting the US Secretary of State John Kerry:
“Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice.
“There are those who say we can’t afford to act. But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic.”[1]
Kerry was responding to the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Cimate Change) report, and while CNN and other cable channels ran generally negative responses, it had to be noted that, while recent reaction by Fox News to the IPCC report has been very negative, back in February FoxNews.Com published surprisingly neutral coverage of Kerry’s speech to students and government officials, during his tour of Indonesia.[2]
CNN, continuing its downwards trend towards becoming the favorite entertainment of morons, only managed two minutes coverage of the latest climate report, slightly less than Fox, substantially less than MSNBC and Al Jazeera.
Evening news media was equally apathetic. NBC was the only one to devote any time at all to the subject. CBS and ABC ignored it in favor of mundane matters. CBS Evening News closed on March 31st with a cute little story about migrating cranes from Nebraska’s Platte River, even roping in Jane Goodall for authenticity. It seemed designed to make us feel all was right with the world.
While acts of omission – so common with US media – are bad enough, the true termite gnawing away at the foundations of climate science must be the irresponsible and loathsome Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich demanded Kerry’s resignation for daring to suggest that climate change represented “…the biggest challenge “of our generation.”
According to CNN:
“I think it’s very troubling that our secretary of state … believes that climate change is a greater danger than a nuclear war,” Gingrich said Tuesday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.”[3]
Kerry was absolutely correct. What he actually said was (thanks to FoxNews.com):
“In a sense, climate change can now be considered the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
If Gingrich truly believes nuclear war is more of a threat than climate change he’s not only suffering delusions, but his power and position make him exceedingly dangerous to the world at large. Remember, he ran for US President in the last election.
Nuclear weapons are, at least to some degree, under the control of human beings. We, the species, decide on their use. The climate is totally out of control and we lack the power to tame it. Any attempt to do so, other than by drastically altering our lifestyles, would undoubtedly prove catastrophic.
Chucking tons of iron filings in the sea; rocketing giant mirrors into space, and other equally crazy notions put forward by quack pseudo-scientists, would likely throw the climate so far out of balance as to annihilate every living creature on the planet.
Much has been made since 9/11 of the ‘enemies of the US’ and, indeed, the world. There’s no shortage of media minutes devoted to any story of potential terrorism, however vague and tenuous.
It could be argued that Gingrich and his “Flat Earth Society” friends are substantially more of a threat to the world than any terrorist. A religious fanatic may kill some of us, but if Gingrich and Co are let loose in the powerhouse, they could be the death of us all.
To again quote the US Secretary of State John Kerry (FoxNews.com):
“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.
“Nor should we allow any room for those who think that the costs associated with doing the right thing outweigh the benefits.
“The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.”
The vast majority of Americans rely solely on US news channels for their information. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Americans are “…still unconcerned about global warming.”
The latest opinion poll (March 2014) shows that the percentage (35%) of US citizens worried about climate change hasn’t changed since 1990. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans say they worry “only a little” or “not at all” about global warming, while more than half the Democrats say they worry about it “a great deal.”[4]
Isn’t it time the US media began delivering news, rather than propaganda? Why is it left to outside news agencies like the BBC and Al Jazeera, organizations the average American never bothers to consult?
The rest of the world is informed about climate change. Foreign news agencies consider it more important than migrating cranes. For a nation that likes to consider itself in charge of the world, the US, with its media network of public misinformation, is leading us all into catastrophe.
Given the lethargy and ignorance of most Americans towards climate change, Gingrich could possibly regain his political career in the next election, leaving Democrats like John Kerry out in the cold.
If that were to happen, nothing could save us from potential oblivion.
If there’s one time I’d rather not be out in my yard (and I mean anywhere on our forty acres) it’s on a Sunday afternoon – particularly in the summertime. I live in a rural, forested, area with a scant population with even scantier employment prospects.
There’s a Christian church just half a mile down the road. It’s the sort of place where – to quote Philippians 4:7, “…the peace of God… passeth all understanding.”
Or, at least, it should. But not on a Sunday afternoon.
There aren’t too many parishioners. The local pastor and his flock are somewhat geographically diverse. Nonetheless, the little car park is full to overflowing most Sunday mornings as the faithful gather for worship.
Not being a believer myself, I’ve no idea with which sermonical subjects the pastor chooses to bewitch his flock each seventh day. However, despite my non-attendance, I’m quite certain he does not exhort his parishioners to “…go forth this Sabbath afternoon and slaughter every four legged creature sufficiently unfortunate to stumble into thy gunsights.”
Yet, this is exactly what they do. Church, home, Sunday dinner, gun, forest, commence blasting, though, not necessarily in that order. All one can be sure of is that “Church” comes first.
Welcome to Christianity, American style.
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On Sunday afternoons I prefer not to wander outside in case I catch a stray bullet.
According to Victor Tan Chen, a fellow of sociology at UC Berkeley, unemployed Americans blame themselves for their predicament and see themselves as failures.
According to a BBC report:
Experts tell the BBC that job seekers in the US are now, more than ever, blaming themselves for being out of work, due in part to misconceptions about what it takes to succeed in America…the American Dream thrived in the 1950s, a period of booming manufacturing and a burgeoning American middle class.
But new rules started to take shape in the 1970s with the rise of globalisation and automation, Chen says.
Companies faced greater competition and unions began to lose power. Manufacturing jobs were replaced by service sector opportunities with lower wages. And nearly overnight, factory towns – where employers lived among the men and women they employed – were replaced by global enterprises.
The isolation of elite managers grew, and their sense of public engagement diminished, Chen explains.
“Now it’s more by yourself, being on your own, sink or swim,” he adds.
It really doesn’t take a degree in sociology to work that one out. American life revolves around competition. Winning is all important. But for every winner there has to be x number of losers, otherwise the ‘winner’ simply couldn’t win.
The American Dream has never been more than a myth. Capitalism was sold to the world as the ‘Great Opportunity’. The sky was the limit. You could be anything you wanted to be, if you just worked hard enough, and there was no better place to achieve success than in America.
The truth was that America was no different than anywhere else. Entrepreneurs have arisen from every corner of the globe. Americans were educated to believe their country was the greatest, way better than any other, much as the British were during the days of Empire.
Capitalism must always be ultimately self-defeating. At its core is the doctrine of wealth by purloining money from the less well off. Take, for example, the Walton family of Walmart fame; they became one of the wealthiest in the world by coining their immense income from the wage packets of the lowest paid in society.
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To succeed as a capitalist you have to rise to a position where you can procure money from the masses. In essence, capitalism can’t thrive without vast numbers of ordinary working people. When it stops thriving, those poor people end up out of work, have no money to spend in Walmart, and the whole system spirals into recession.
Sadly, in that situation, the concept of the “American Dream” backfires, showering shame and a sense of failure on those who, in reality, are merely the victims of a capitalist society where greed is the sole motivation.
There is, however, one aspect of capitalism that appears a one hundred percent success. However poverty-threatened they may be, good Christian folks can still find the cash to buy the bullets to slaughter any creature sufficiently unfortunate to stray near my backyard on a Sunday afternoon.
