Saint vs, psycho a checklist

What's the difference between a saint and a psychopath? It sounds like the start of a joke, but it's no joke. There are too many psychos and too few saints.
Here is a nice checklist so we can all judge for ourselves.

smell the flowers and listen to the music

A friend of mine just shared this with me and I'd like to share it as well.

Click HERE to get the full story of a grand and subtle experiment.

Here's a good link for some interesting viewing....have you been to BlantantWorld ?

conservative fools

According to the the U.S. census US capital investment in foreign countries has gone from $1.3 trillion in 2000 to $3.2 trillion in 2008 while at the same time the Bush tax cuts which overwhelmingly went to the wealthy cost 1.3 trillion per politifact. So the wealthy essentially took their tax cuts, intended per the Republicans to spur U.S. jobs, and invested them and more in foreign countries, not the U.S..

Okay, I just stole that one from here.

It drives me crazy to hear people talk about taxes as if they really knew what they were talking about. Go to Tax.com and consider supporting the Tax Literacy Project

Ya'll know what happened in the 2010 elections, big gains for the conservatives who insist on tax cuts for the richest people while threatening to limit unemployment benefits. They are relentless promoters of the trickle-down myth, a Trojan horse which is a lie promoted by the rich. One of the richest guys admitted that.

The latest figures from the TARP bailout reveal that the total cost is only $25 billion and the other $625 billion has been recovered.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report that ranks the effectiveness of actions that will reduce the unemployment rate. At the top of the list is extending unemployment benefits. The least effective action is tax cuts, but that is about the only thing conservatives promote.
You can read the summary here or listen to the rich guy that thinks he should pay more taxes.

dirt people

I just finished a damn good book titled The Dirt People by Ray Bawarchi. He has a blog as well.

You should check it out/

Notes

I don't know if you've heard about the giant trash piles, as big as Texas, floating in the oceans but it was covered by ABC Good Morning America and there is a new site dedicated to the subject,
5 Gyres. Check it out, it led me to Vimeo.

Reminder to investigate more about the end of the free market. Harpers did a fine job covering it.

Saw an interesting movie, My Sister's Keeper. I'm a big fan of ethics and morals and the movie is a new twist.

Crazy like a

Crazy like a brainwashed FOX viewer. Yeah, I think people who watch FOX news, especially those who watch and listen to Glen Beck are crazy in a brainwashed way. I suspect that it is a disease caused by indoctrination. It's an ideological degenerative disorder. Conservative is socially regressive, the opposite of progressive.

Anyhow, just watch the following to see how crazy Glen Beck and shameless FOX News is.

Or you might want to check this out and see who is more right and who isn't...

Average of Three Misperception Rates among Viewers and
Listeners: WMD Found, Evidence of al Qaeda Link,
and World Majority Support for War
(percentages)
News Source Average Rate per Misperception
Fox 45
CBS 36
CNN 31
ABC 30
NBC 30
Print Media 25
NPR/PBS 11
Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks

You can click here to see where that chart came from.

The prevailing view in this country is that mainstream media has a liberal bias. I remember when PBS was funded by the government and donations from viewers. I remember when major corporations became sponsors. That worried me and it seems that a liberal bias is a thing of the past if it were ever true. New and old studies along with some investigative research indicate that the opposite is true, mainstream media has a conservative bias.

Heck, the LA Times even published an article criticizing FOX. You can read about that in more detail here. There are lots of good links including Outfoxed, an NGO and the title of a documentary film by Robert Greenwald.

Here's an article from the Dartmouth that cites a couple of studies...

It's amazing, the Obama administration gave us the biggest middle class tax breaks in history and lots of people think that their taxes increased. Epistemic closure is why the more conservatives know the more they get wrong.
Michael Shermer gives his two cents, which is about what its worth..

This is the guy I like though

The scary thing about all this is that "backfire" is a natural defense mechanism to prevent cognitive dissonance. You can read about that here.

I was searching for groups that oppose Fox news, they weren't plentiful or easy to find, but here are a couple; turnoffyourtv.com
media matters
but then again, maybe Fox should fund NPR

YES, here is what I was looking for; TurnOffFox

You might want to watch and listen to what Rachel Maddow

and there's more....Fox Attacks

Some people go so far as to say the Fox news makes people stupid.

Thank goodness we still have the internet...for a while...