Headline of the day

Here you go:

8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media

And here's one of them:

3. Falsely claiming that Assange has committed a crime regarding WikiLeaks. The State Department is working really hard to pin a crime on Julian Assange. The problem is that so far he doesn't appear to have broken any laws. Assange is not a U.S. citizen, he does not work for the U.S. government, and the documents WikiLeaks posted were procured by someone else. As Greenwald has repeatedly pointed out, it's not against the law to publish classified U.S. government information. If it were, hundreds of journalists would be in prison right now.

While the government tries to conjure up a legal justification for prosecuting Assange, the media is helping out by fanning the narrative that he's some criminal mastermind. Major outlets continue to host guests who accuse Assange of criminal behavior without quite specifying what his crime is. In a much derided CNN debate between Bush Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend and Glenn Greenwald hosted by Jessica Yellin, Greenwald had to repeatedly bat away the assertion that Assange has "profited" from "criminal" acts.

Go on over there and read the rest of them. The article is certainly an eye-opener.
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Look what I just found

Normally, I wouldn't have the occasion to quote this particular person but check out the following:

We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief. Nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. At the same time as our constitution prohibits state religion, establishment of it protects the free exercise of all religions. And walking this fine line requires government to be strictly neutral.

-- Ronald Reagan

The conservatives these days have practically sainted Ronald Reagan but they also claim that separation of church and state is not in the constitution. (Can you believe it?)
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A quotation about Michael Vick

Okay, folks. I'm against the death penalty but I almost want to agree with this:

Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should've been executed for that.

-- Tucker Carlson, on the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback's felony conviction for running a dogfighting ring

Also, I don't think I've ever before found myself agreeing (or somewhat agreeing) with Tucker Carlson, of all people. I guess there's a first time for everything.

(Found at Time Magazine right here.)
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One aspect of our education crisis

This is very, very distressing. Unfortunately, not all that suprising:

I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes — wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?

-- Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College, who reviewed a textbook used in some Virginia schools at the state's request

(The above was found here at the Time Magazine site.)
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Empathy

Wow. Ya gotta watch this, really:

It is part of a lecture by economist Jeremy Rifkin.
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Hmmm. While we're at it, let's listen to Barbara Ehrenreich lecturing about the dark side of positive thinking:

Time for the headline of the day

Okay. Enough with the merrymaking, folks. It's time to look at serious stuff again. This article really did the trick for me this morning:

America in Decline: Why Germans Think We're Insane

Well, of course, I am tempted to say that they think we're insane because we are insane.

Here's something from the article:

The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.

The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.
...
Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? (In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)
...
As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust.

The question of the hour is, of course, why don't we Americans recoil in disbelief and disgust?

One is tempted to reply, "Because we're selfish."

Fair enough. But what on earth made us so selfish as a culture?
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UPDATE: Oh, my. Do click through on the headline above and read the comments to this article. Some of them almost stopped my heart.
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Sunday art blogging

Artist: Rudolf Wacker

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Some musical fun!

Ya think we can take a break from politics for this one more day? :-)

All right. First of all you need to know that Stella Splendens (Brilliant Star) - a song in praise of the Virgin - is from the earliest medieval manuscript containing music that we still have. So let's hear a version of it performed by the stunningly excellent Waverly Consort:



NOW!

Listen to THIS version:



Okay. Are you up for one more? You really have to brace yourself for this one but I love it!



Those hautboys/shawms/whatever are something else, aren't they?
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Christmas Day cat blogging!

Typical! Typical!
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A headline I wish the right-wingers would see

This one:

The shameless assault on Christianity by intolerance and greed

The article is very short. And here's the part that really captured my attention:

...Jesus taught again and again about the obligation of Christians to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, treat the ill and help the hurting.

Jesus taught we should sell our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, not that Wall Street bonuses should be huge while we pass tax cuts for the rich while we neglect hunger and homelessness in the land.

And that's what it's all about, folks.
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Yup, he would be:

Quote of the day

This one is really, really big:

This day has come! 'Don't ask, don't tell' is over, and you no longer have to sacrifice your integrity.

-- Mike Almy, an Air Force major discharged four years ago when his sexual orientation became known, on President Obama signing the historic repeal into law Wednesday

Let us all pray that there is no backlash of any significance.
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A headline we need to notice

Here it is:

How Comcast and Huge Telecom Players' Latest Gambit Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It

I'm very, very concerned about this - as we all need to be, I would assert. Here's an excerpt:

As the telecom wars heat up, the American Internet user is the proverbial pig on the spit. A series of recent developments have drawn public attention to major challenges that are redefining the Internet. And it doesn’t look good for those championing Internet freedom, meaningful competition, improved quality of service or an end to conglomerate integration. Sadly, the fix is in.

Some of this is explained in the article linked to above. And, there's more to come. It's hard for me to understand all the ends and outs of the various issues. What I'm clear on is this: big business is trying to rake in the profits at the expense of seeing the internet as the commons that it is now and needs to remain. And that's not good at all.
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Some seasonal silliness

Our "Christian" nation

Oh, wow. Just look at this:

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

~ Stephen Colbert

UPDATE: Sometime after I posted the above, I happened to find this:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog March to Keep Fear Alive

Oh, my. He is SO good!
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