No Heavy Lifting

There will be no overriding theme to this post, amigos, except that Here Are Some Things I Like.

The Beast bills itself as The World’s Only Website. This is what logicians refer to as “self-evident truth.” Since 2002 (but skipping 2003) the Beast has published its list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans. The 2009 List includes one jerk in particular who seems to make every year’s Loathsome List:

26. You
Charges: Based solely on Fox News and cartoon depictions of evil scientists, you think “Climategate” is a real controversy that somehow affects the truth of global warming. You think science is just another religion. You think Dan Brown writes nonfiction. You want the government to get its hands out of your Medicare….

Though the Beast mauls a few people I approve of, even then I can see the Beast’s point. Plus, this year’s list includes the most accurate picture of Joe Lieberman on the entire Internet.

Thom Hartmann is the most informative person on American radio today. He’s on 880 The Revolution weekdays 3 to 6 and you’ll learn something every time you tune him in. Yesterday he noted that AIG got $180 billion from the federal government and the combined budget shortfall of the 50 states was $178 billion. If the states got that money instead of AIG there would be no crisis. He then proceeded to mention his new op-ed, Globalization Is Killing The Globe: Return to Local Economies in which he notes that

So long as globalism continues apace, the transnational corporations and their CEOs will continue to become fabulously wealthy. But, more importantly, they also acquire the political power that comes with that control of economies.

So they tell us that instead of putting back into place tariffs, domestic content laws, and other “protectionist” policies that built America from the time they were first proposed by Alexander Hamilton in 1791 (and largely adopted by Congress in 1793) until they were dismantled by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush, we should instead simply “accept the reality” that we’re “living beyond our means” and we have to “cut back our wages and social programs.”

In other words, they get richer, our nations become poorer, and national sovereignty is reduced.

Really, if you won’t listen to Thom, I don’t know what to do with you.

And like Bartcop. He’s a Okie with an IQ of 64 (he says that, not me) and he’s smarter than the Democratic leadership. Bartcop recently joked that he’d made a deal with the Devil to be the smartest man in the state, and the Devil put him in Oklahoma. He often asks the rhetorical question, “Would evil men commit murder in order to steal billions?” And old Bart supplies the answer.

Pharyngula is also very cool. PZ Myers is a real scientist: a biologist, to be exact. His blog contains “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal” and he is a favorite enemy of creationists and related fools.

I love Alan Grayson!

Last but not least, my favorite diarist at Daily Kos is someone called Devilstower. Devilstower is a great writer who is constantly thinking about something important. A recent entry I recommend: It’s Only Appalachia.

Suppose someone wanted to build a waste dump in New England that would blanket an area twice the size of Rhode Island, ruining it for the next 10,000 years. Would you approve?

How about allowing a factory that would destroy the Mississippi River from above St. Louis all the way to New Orleans. Would you sign off on that permit?

Well, maybe we could take up the monument next to the the USS Arizona and sell off the wreck for scrap. Would that get your okay?

The answer to any of these proposals shouldn’t just be no, it should be outrage. But we do allow it, have been allowing it for years, and continue to allow it despite promises to the contrary — so long as it’s in the Appalachians.

I urge you to read the rest.