Updated: 2010-08-03 22:09:29
To the Editor,

I am writing this letter concerning the voting process in the state of Missouri. Therefore, I am writing to the people of Missouri and every state in the United States, if your state is like mine.

I went to vote today and when I got there I was told that I had to vote Republican if I wanted to vote for those running for state offices, Democrat if I wanted to vote for local races in Kennett, MO. They also had an Independent and Conservative ballot, all having Proposition C on them.

I was enraged. I was being told that I had to vote a certain way. People, it is our right as citizens of this country to vote for whom we want and not which party ballot we have to use. The state of Missouri legislators are the ones that set the rule that voting ballots are to be set up in this fashion. You have to believe their tactic in doing this is that they know many people will want to vote in the local election; therefore, they will be sure that the people they want in office will be elected to run in the general election or win the general election.

Well, needless to say, I DID NOT VOTE TODAY. This is the first election I have refused to vote in since I started voting and I am 57 years old. I will not be told which party or whom I can or cannot vote for, whether it is a primary or

general election. IT IS MY RIGHT AND YOURS TO VOTE FOR THE CANDIDATE WE FEEL IS BEST SUITED FOR THE JOB! I know I cannot complain if who I think is the wrong person for the job gets into office or gets to be on the ballot in the general election.

This law must be changed! In my opinion, all names should be on one ballot, whether Republican, Democrat, Independent, or conservative on one state ballot and one local ballot. Moreover, if the names are on a state ballot and on a local ballot, we as voters should be able to use both of them if we choose to.

I know that voting has been this way for some time, but I am sick and tired of it. Why have we let the state take our right to vote as we see fit away from us? The voters of Missouri and other states need to think about this. Remember it is our constitutional right to vote as we feel.

Thank you,
Amenda Alexander
Kennett, MO

The Century Of Self :

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

............ watch it on youtube...................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dA89CBBOC0

Ferris Bueller: She is using stereotypes... yep!

Jim Dandy: I think everyone who's gotten 'involved' in this stupid conflict needs to hire a small galaxy of PR firms.

Jim Dandy: I know. The IRA and Loyalists hated both being called terrorist organisations. N' thus being grouped together. The UK army hated it when they got caught out helping the loyalists even more.

Israel said yesterday it will take part in a UN investigation into a raid by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound flotilla in which nine Turkish activists were killed. The move allowed UN head Ban Ki-moon to announce the creation of a panel that would investigate the confrontation after activists tried to breach Israel's three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The decision marks a departure for Israel, which has frequently viewed the United Nations with suspicion and accused many U.N. bodies of being unfairly biased against the Jewish state.

"Israel has nothing to hide. The opposite is true. It is in Israel's national interest to ensure that the factual truth about the entire flotilla incident will be brought to light and the entire world, and that is precisely the principle we are promoting," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Israel refused to cooperate with an earlier investigation into last year's war in the Gaza Strip conducted by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which it accuses of disproportionately focusing on Israel. The inquiry concluded that Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers both committed war crimes.

Interesting that right wing American blogs note how Israeli civilians get nearly killed, yet do not report on the death of a Jordanian and the three that were wounded.

Nor do they report on the attacks on Gaza killing one person.

The tit for tat attacks need to stop. They did not solve anything in Northern Ireland, they just prolonged a war in which thousands died and were wounded and maimed.

Tuesday: Aye.. it was (when I learnt economics) part of the stock market code.. "My word is my bond"

Tuesday: The fraud (eg Madoff) and other practices that banks (thanks to the relaxation of bank rules globally) take part in could not take place back 200 years ago.

For one.. they didn't have the computers to hide the accounts or to do the long distance banking we now see... socially, it was a different time.

Jim Dandy: As mentioned in the video, our UK government is increasing VAT to 20% from 17.5% to help reduce our governments overspending during the Labour years.
People won't like paying extra, but the alternative is worse. Obama inherited years of increasing national debt from Bush and somehow that debt has to be paid off.

If that means everyone pays a little more, then so be it. It's an investment into the long term security of the USA's economic structure. Something that is needed and any rational government has to do.

We in the EU have seen in the news how certain governments of EU member states have nearly gone bankrupt through the current economic situation. I'd hate to see the USA being put in a similar situation. Riots could follow.

Artful Dodger: Even IF you are right.. 20 million down from 40 million means 20 million USA citizens will have health care who didn't before... Also that means 20 million people in the USA will be paying for care.

The founders of the USA (who Palin does not know the names of) were not of an age that would recognise the current banking system.

rod03801: People have been saying the world is going to end for thousands of years.

.. It's an industry.

Tuesday: I just hope that Bush's invasion of Iraq is the last 'cold war'-ish type crap we have to have our soldiers die in.

Tuesday: To think.. if advice was followed regarding regime change in Iraq.. Saddam would have been left to die of old age.

But the thirst for oil was tooo strong... gotta protect the flow.

Sounds a bit Dune-ish

The intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was not "very substantial", former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott has said.

He told the Iraq inquiry he was "nervous" about the intelligence being presented in 2002 - some of which he said was based on "tittle-tattle". However, he said he did not have the knowledge to challenge the assessments. Nevertheless, he defended the military action taken as "legal" and said he would take the same decision again.

Lord Prescott, deputy prime minister between 1997 and 2007, is the last senior former Labour minister to be giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the war. The inquiry is looking at the UK's role in the build-up to the war and the handling of its aftermath, and is expected to publish its report around the end of the year.

In an interview in December, Lord Prescott expressed some doubts about the war. However, he told the inquiry that MPs had backed the action and that "democratic accountability had been satisfied". While former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had a "difficult decision" to make before deciding the war was legal, he said he accepted the judgement that military action was justified on basis of existing UN disarmament resolutions.

While it was "fashionable" to criticise Tony Blair for taking the UK to war, he said the former prime minister had "agonised" over the death of every British soldier. In his opening statement, he expressed his "deepest sympathies" to the relatives of the 179 British service personnel killed in Iraq.

Lord Prescott, the final witness in the current round of public hearings, said he attended 23 out of 28 Cabinet meetings which discussed UK policy towards Iraq as well as holding a number of private meetings with Mr Blair.

Asked about the intelligence shown to ministers about Iraq in 2002, Mr Prescott said had "no evidence" it was wrong but admitted he was a "little bit nervous about the conclusions on what I seemed to think was pretty limited intelligence".

"I got the feeling that it was not very substantial”
"When I kept reading them, I kept thinking to myself, 'is this intelligence?", he said.

Describing it as "basically what you have heard somewhere and what somebody else has told somebody", he suggested the conclusions drawn on the back of it "were a little ahead" of the evidence.

"So I got the feeling it wasn't very substantial," he said.

With hindsight, he said recommendations made by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) "were frankly wrong and built too much on a little information".

Artful Dodger: Are the Republicans willing to take account for the increase in daily costs from kicking them all out?

The UK coalition government has decided to abandon EU rules on doctors working limits. From 100+ hours for a junior doctor it was cut to 48 to stop doctors falling asleep on the job. This, has been found to be to low. Other EU member states have decided to drop the 48 hour limit and now the UK gov plans to up the limit to 65 hours.

This is on advice from the Royal college of surgeons who say the hour limit interferes with patient care, from the feedback of the majority consultant surgeons and trainees.

There was a winner in the cold war??

Millions of dead from sponsored (not in my backyard) wars.. Radiation levels increased globally due to atmospheric testing that the world will never be the same again. Trillions spent on WMD's.. whole countries gone to pot thanks to interference from outside powers..
... one war still going on officially.. Korea.

Millions dead from having an opinion, millions in ruins and lives devastated as they might have been communists.

Not to mention certain lands now destroyed.. that's why the USA took to using barges to test nukes.

Palin stupid.. no.. she's worse... she's incompetent. I can understand why the Republican party picked a woman to get votes.... Surely there was a better choice??

Trident submarine renewal costs are no longer to be paid for by the Treasury. The Mod has been told it'll have to pay for the £20 billion out of it's budget, half it's budget for 2010-2011 new 'kit'.

Some say if the middle east goes all nuclear we could be in a new arms race...
... I heard that between the USA and Russia there are still enough nuclear weapons to 'kill' the world.

The SNP wants Trident scrapped and the money spent on the rest of the armed services.

Do we need nukes in the UK?? We got the Vulcan.. after that every thing else just doesn't live up to that beautiful plane.

..... Apart from Concorde

Northwest Airlines is to plead guilty and pay a $38m (£24m) fine for its role in fixing air-cargo prices, the US Department of Justice has said.

The department said as part of a plea deal Northwest would co-operate with an ongoing anti-trust investigation.

Northwest Airlines Cargo, which is no longer operating, conspired to fix air-cargo rates from July 2004 to February 2006, the department added.

Northwest was taken over by Delta Air Lines in a £1.7bn deal in October 2008.

Northwest has agreed to plead guilty to a single offence, said the DoJ.

So far a total of 16 airlines have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so in an ongoing investigation into price-fixing in air cargo, it added.

More than $1.6bn in criminal fines has been paid by airlines, and four executives have received prison sentences.

It seems the major concern about the switch over in the NHS system by a number of GP's is the possibility of management of the new system is outsourced by GP's to private companies. Why... because a private company might favour a sister company. Plus a tendency of private companies to boot services into a higher price band. Eg.. calling having stitches in at birth as a "complication".

GP's here know that with private care costs can be heightened. Independent healthcare providers have been noted going for easy fix treatments such as hip op's and turn down complicated healthcare such as mental illnesses. When shareholders come before care there is a major conflict in interests.

What's more.. this new service is not being brought into service by a socialist government. We have in the UK now a Conservative led coalition.

No matter what (from reading several articles) the doctor's here do not want privatisation.

Another point it seems the USA conservatives here do not mention.

... why is it that someone close to the Canadian border pays $250 for a check up in the USA yet only $50 over the border in Canada??

Is it transportation costs? Taxes??

Or just plain greed???

Isn't it interesting how the Conservatives in the USA distort and lie through inaccurate and basically ignorance.

The NHS is being simplified. The GP's are being given the ability to decide on how the money is spent.. after all they know their patients the best.

BP.... the major lawyers being involved in cases with the company in the USA let loose on how BP is responsible for 97% of recent on shore criminal and disasters based on their negligence and lack of care.

.... Something the USA conservatives do not mention.. you can't blame Obama for a companies continual lack of care.

... more so today... wikkileaks open up on Afghanistan. The main man of the organisation does tell on how under the Bush admin telling the truth was criminal, yet Obama has changed that.

The axis of evil??


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGbHsuELZY

Artful Dodger: No.. it doesn't say why she's not been interviewed (official line) just she is not and then the RIGHT WING blog just speculates..

Artful Dodger: Ah yes.. we've a small problem with the last government having over spent.. ya know like Bush did.. leaving the USA in trillions of dollars in debt.

So every public budget is being cut. These secret plans are probably just people talking about how we as a country can save billions of pounds this year. It's not like the American healthcare companies who refuse treatment for a profit. That is trully callous. How on earth did they get away with turning down 9/11 emergency service hero's is beyond me.

Cuba just said "yes"

Anita Moncrief ... fired for using a business expense card for personal items.

Sounds like a disgruntled thief rather than a pillar of democracy.

Tuesday~Ferris Bueller: We have free speech here.. as long as it is not used to lie, cause hatred and the like. Then it's either a libel case or court. You can say what you want.. but if you break the law (which is very liberal) expect to be held to account.

Ferris Bueller: I don't consider free speech free, if it is used to spread hate and fear. The ideology behind free speech was on people being Ladies and Gentlemen and of people having honour.

Andrew Breitbart from what I've seen is neither a gentleman or honourable. Those that are.. ought to have redress available without lengthy court proceedings.

Artful Dodger: I thought that was what you cons were doing. As well as using the race card. N' if you disagree... PROVE IT!!!

Ferris Bueller: Maybe you need some UK style regulation. Sometimes here a channel over steps the mark. If the complaint to the regulators is upheld then the channel has to broadcast an apology.

Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department Georgia Director of Rural Development, says she is a victim. A victim of poor reporting and, as she contends, clear bias and racist coverage from both Andrew Breitbart and Fox News.

“When you look at their reporting, this is just another way of seeing that they are (racist),” Sherrod told me about Fox in a lengthy interview Tuesday night. “But I have seen that before now. I saw their reporting as biased during the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration.”

How long before they go from “supporting” to attacking her again? Answer: not long.
Breitbart is back at it, again accusing Sherrod of being a racist, using snippets of the very same video, her March 27 speech before a Georgia NAACP chapter, to smear her again.

Sherrod also told Media Matters how her firing unfolded:
But after Breitbart posted the video clip, Sherrod said the lack of context and explanation sparked anger against her. She said she found out about the clip when someone e-mailed a link to her and asked about it.

“I couldn’t believe it. I found this out when someone sent me (a link to) the tape, people who follow him, who put it out there,” Sherrod said about Breitbart. “I got crank calls right away. Someone sent me an e-mail and link and said ‘shame on you’ and other stuff. I was sitting in a meeting and I was really upset.

“I texted back that they were so wrong and that they need to know the message and they got it wrong.” Sherrod said Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary, called her Monday and said she had to be on administrative leave.”

She adds: “People were calling and writing the Department of Agriculture in Athens, Ga., and Washington to tell them about it. That I needed to be fired. That a racist like me had no business working for the department. That is the way they intimidate people and it worked.”

By the end of the day Monday, she was forced to resign.
Sherrod, 62, said her first reaction was shock that, after a career working for civil rights and as the daughter of a father murdered by racists, she would be seen in such a terrible light.

“To have people say that I was such a racist was unbelievable,” she said of the fallout from the video and Fox coverage. “My whole life, if you look into what I have done, my father was murdered in 1965. If you look at all of us, we all hurt with that and we got involved into the movement and channeled our effort into good, instead of hating.

“I am getting hate calls and e-mails at this point. I got one call last night at my house at 12:30 a.m. that said ‘you lost your job, good for you’ and ‘bitch’ There are people out there who will believe that I am a racist person, even though the story is getting out there.”

And she said neither Breitbart (who she’d never heard of) nor anyone at Fox News ever contacted her to get her side of the story before running with Breitbarts smear. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t called at all…

“Not before they reported it,” she said of Fox’s negligence. “They have called me today and initially I had said yes (to an interview), but I thought about it and I did not think they intended to be fair in their reporting. They are going to say what they want to say regardless of what I say.”

She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.

Beck is absolutely right that the administration was hasty in forcing her resignation. They were unwilling to listen to Sherrod's side of the story, and as we've detailed throughout the day, it seems that the clips of Sherrod were ripped from context in order to paint her as a racist.

But Beck -- while claiming that "Context matters" -- somehow manages to erase Andrew Breitbart and Fox News from the creation of that image.

All Beck says about Breitbart is that he's "trying to get the full video." In fact, it was Breitbart, without having that full video (the "context" that "matters") who originally posted the clip, claiming that it was "video evidence of racism" by Sherrod, and illustrating his post with an actual "race" card. Breitbart called her a racist without knowing the context of her statements, and has subsequently said that the context doesn't matter, that what he saw in the clip is sufficient to support his claims. Beck doesn't mention that -- in fact, he actively suggests the opposite is true, that Breitbart is engaging in responsible journalism.

Beck does not mention Fox's own horrendous coverage, which certainly did not wait for "context" before declaring Sherrod a racist. FoxNews.com's first report on Sherrod -- the first mainstream report on her speech -- gave no indication that her comment might have been taken out of context. It reported that Fox was "seeking a response from both the NAACP and the USDA," but not that they had attempted to find the full version of the tape or contact Sherrod herself. In the network's first coverage of the comments, Bill O'Reilly said they were "simply unacceptable" and called on Sherrod to "resign immediately." Newt Gingrich said that her comments indicated a "viciously racist attitude," Sean Hannity called them "racially charged," and the Fox and Friends co-hosts agreed they were "Exhibit A" of "what racism looks like."

And yet, in his analysis, Beck slams the administration for judging Sherrod before all the facts were in while completely disappearing Breitbart and Fox.

Beck may have not of said anything.. but he is only an hour of a 24 hour so called news company .. something the cons seem to be forgetting to mention.

Ferris Bueller: Aye.. if the tapes were really a big deal then they would have 'come to light' in March. N' when it came to certain questions regarding the 'tapes' he did everything (including filibustering) to run from simple questions.

I hope she does sue him... seeing as he is 'protecting' his source!!

Ferris Bueller: He denies all responsibility. He knew of the 'tapes' since march (by the link I just posted.. CNN interview included).. he decided to go back to the person who sent them and use the videos to discredit the NAACP. To him it's all about the NAACP accusing the tea party being racist. That's all he cares about from the interview.

Artful Dodger: Breitbart (a tea party activist) was trying to divert attention from claims of and actual knowledge that the tea party contains a racist element.

Breitbart was playing as you say.. "the race card".

Artful Dodger:

But she criticized blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the video clip Monday. He argued that he posted the clip to show that racism exists at the NAACP, since members in the audience laughed as she told the story.

"He was willing to destroy me ... in order to try to destroy the NAACP," Sherrod said Thursday of Breitbart, saying she still hasn't heard an apology from him.

"He had to know what he was doing," she added. "I'm certain he didn't think the other side of the story would come out, but he knew he was misrepresenting the facts."

Jim Dandy: Because it's always military spending that goes up. Wars.. star wars projects, etc, etc.

But to spend on helping the people of the USA or it's infrastructure.. that's a sin for some reason. That under Bush the deficit sky rocketed and to bring that spending under control regardless of what is needed to stop the high probability of a total economic collapse.. is going to affect the books.

As to putting money into the economy is a waste... I saw a business just about to under on a prog. It needed just some new machinery. One gut saw the potential and invested... The business is great and the bloke is making a nice bit from the investment.

Jim Dandy: They have the advantage of being able to play on cold war propaganda... socialism, communism, liberalism, etc.. left is bad..

Guess the fear of a stupid WMD war being started by someone (left or right) left it's mark. So did the 331 nuclear weapons tests by the USA.. much of it just boys playing with their toys.

Artful Dodger: One minute you are quoting as you call it.. "left wing media" the next you are dissing someone of the "left wing media" for POINTING OUT that FOX LIED.

It's that Beck stirs up the extreme right wingers... the delusional ones that might start shooting. Some from Tea party events (practising their freedom of speech) have said.. "next time we will bring guns."

.. How does threatening violence count as democracy?

Jim Dandy: And if they deny it.. they get accused of a liberal/government cover up.

Jim Dandy: So.. the right wing orgs (fox and internet) lied.

And I thought (so some right wingers here have said) fox was a unbiased new org.

I was watching Oliver Stone on the morning news.. His new film "South of the border" has him talking about Hugo Chavez .. The film talks about how right wing media both north and south of the border have demonised left wing leaders, and how the US gov and corporations paid to try and remove Hugo Chavez from being president.

Why.. oil.

Chavez also states this is the reason why Iraq was invaded. Not WMD's.. not 'regime change'.. but oil.

The tea party get a seat... reminds me of the BNP getting a MEP.

All those right wing bloggers must be ideology over drive.. like Citizen Smith!!

Jim Dandy: True.. it can. Yet at the same time for those who openly commit acts it saves time in the courts.

Tuesday: The Racial Discrimination act came into force in 1976.

Jim Dandy: I'd imagine most if not all Commonwealth countries have the same regulations.

Tuesday: It is in the UK.. a criminal offence. The police would be charging him.. no need for civil action.