Its bad enough that British Petroleum’s CEO said his massive, endless gushing spill was only a tiny blip in a huge ocean…

Its bad enough that British Petroleum has not mourned the ELEVEN DEAD WORKERS who died in the blast on the oil rig that is responsible for the gushing toxic spill…

One of the youngest workers on the rig, Shane Roshto, 22, is survived by his son and his wife, Natalie, who has filed a lawsuit against BP, Transocean and Halliburton. An inspiration to his friends, he wrote two dates — his wedding day and his son’s birthday — inside of his hard hat, referring to these dates when he was having a bad day.

Its bad enough that the oil rig company has already received $270 million in insurance money as a claim for the lost oil rig, none of which will go to cleanup or to compensate the families of the dead…

Its bad enough that British Petroleum sent its lawyers in within hours of the beginning of the spill to get the widows and residents of coastal Alabama  to sign off any future lawsuit against BP, for a measly $5,000 per life…

But now, on American soil, British Petroleum is in charge of law enforcement, puppet-mastering the local sheriffs’ offices and the Coast Guard, keeping reporters from the beaches.  Americans are being kept from the beaches by a foreign corporation.

So much for the ‘new’ logo, the earth-friendly ‘Beyond Petroleum’ public relations campaign of a few years ago, BP’s attempt to win over environmentally aware consumers, designed to show the company’s commitment to, get this, the environment and solar power…

British Petroleum is firmly an oil company.  It is dodging responsibility for its epic, monumental, continuing spill and  its degradation of the US coastline, AND its running our own sovereign law enforcement agencies.  How can Americans know the extent of damage, if reporters are turned away from American soil by a British conglomerate?

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But Zuckerberg is WRONG.  There IS a place for privacy on the web, and most of his users completely believe that Facebook WILL protect their privacy.  A few days ago, supposedly, Facebook bigwigs sat down for a quickly pulled together meeting, because of the global backlash against Facebook’s ‘we own you’ draconian privacy intrusions.

You know Facebook will deny they’re up against a wall, but they are up against a proverbial wall.

The kid who allegedly texted while at Harvard saying that people who gave him personal information on the internet are dumb f**ks, is now in charge of the largest-ever cache of human information in history.  Is he acting with maturity, with foresight and with hindsight?

No.

Because he’s too young to understand the implications of his actions.  He’s literally selling the individual proprietary stories of millions of human lives, in the interest of money making.  He’s enacting a social experiment that he doesn’t understand, and he’s destroying any trust that Facebook users have in him.

What he doesn’t see is that he’s already created the most successful (yet) global brain.  People from all over the planet connect on his platform.  He’s gone from ‘fringe’ to ‘mainstream’, in less than a decade.  He has a caretaking, leadership responsibility to all his users, and he fails them when he makes them take 20 steps to protect their privacy.  I went on to my account and my daughter’s account and shut the spy hole on us, but I was able to do it because I’m tech savvy.  Regular social users of Facebook are being sold upriver.

So let’s hope there’s a bit of ‘Dude, you don’t know enough to have made this decision’ conversation today.  Let’s hope that Facebook has some wise, more life-experienced people at the meeting, who can tell the Emperor that he’s accidentally stripped all the people instead of himself.

At this point in the growth of the social web, it DOES matter that each individual assumes that they are protected by apps and websites and platforms that they use.

Zuckerberg, and sadly Facebook, have not shown maturity and consideration and due diligence in caring for their community.  This just-turned 26 year old clearly doesn’t understand what he’s done and hopefully SOMEone at Facebook can get him to do what’s right, not sell his users.

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This guy helped found the Ella Baker Center, a modern day civil rights organization in Oakland, California, providing the launching pad for  needed activist groups such as Books Not Bars and Color of Change AND he provided shelter and advocacy for families who lost their homes to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.  He wrote the definitive book on rescuing both our jobless and our environment, “The Green-Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems“.

His sin?  Once signing something that wondered whether or not 9/11 was an inside job.  And believing in a society of equality.

Westboro Baptist Church?  What have they done for a city, the oppressed, the overlooked, the homeless?  Nothing.  They show up at funerals and picket the dead, with whom they have NO connection.  They carry signs that say ‘God Hates Fags’.  They showed up at a memorial for a bus accident…  They showed up at a memorial for the Sago Mine Disaster.

They show up at the funerals of U.S. soldiers who die in the line of duty.  They showed up and one brave father sued them for disrupting his own right to privacy, to grieve his son who died in battle.

What is Westboro’s sin?  For which no one has yet caught or stopped them?  For which Conservative Pundits DO NOT attack???  They honestly believe that their hate-filled God is killing AMERICAN innocents around the world as a SIGN that we are doomed because the United States is becoming more tolerant of homosexuality.  (Forget that their Jesus said ‘do not judge’…)  The Dixie Chicks suffered more for saying ONE THING in 2003 (in the run-up to invading Iraq): “we don’t want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”, than Westboro has EVER suffered for their far, far worse inflammatory calls to civil war.

They believe 9/11 was an inside job.  They believe that the pregnant woman who jumped from the burning, collapsing Tower ‘deserved’ to die, along with her 3700 fellow Americans murdered that day.  They don’t care if you are gay or straight, their God wants to kill you.

Where are the Conservative pundits now?  Why did they attack (like ravenous wolves) a man who stood up for the poor and the incarcerated?

Why are the Conservative pundits now silent, when a soldier’s father is forced to pay the legal bills of a pseudo-religious group that wants to incite riots?  WHY ARE THEY SILENT?

Could it be that the activist is black?  And the preacher is white?  Their base is white and Christian…

We are sitting on a powder keg.  These protests are not lawful.  They are meant to incite real violence.  Letting them scream their vitriol is like allowing the shouting of ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater.  Until now, there have been no riots, because individuals or groups like the Patriot Guards show up and buffer the crazy protesters from the grief stricken families.

We give tax exemption to anyone who claims they are a religion.  Let’s outlaw that.  Why should one portion of society not pay the costs of the society they operate within, especially when they cost us LOTS OF MONEY for increased police protection when they host these HATE events?  The Roman Catholic Church’s Legion of Christ is worth $20 billion. Scientology is a rich religion.  Why allow tax benefits to nut jobs like Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church?  Let them be taxed at the same rate as regular Americans.

And where are the same Conservative pundits who ripped Van Jones to shreds, when Westboro says exactly the same thing, only crazier?

Sitting on their hands, silent.  As usual.

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This could be seen as hypocritical, because here are four ‘old white men’ holding up funding to a program that serves a predominately minority constituency of CHILDREN, while these same four ‘old white men’ are NOT PUSHING FOR REFORM on the hundred million dollar bonuses of their ‘old white men’ Wall Street buddies.

Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, Jon Kyl R-AZ and John Cornyn, R-TX have joined together to block further federal funding of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

The allegations against Boys and Girls Clubs of America are:

Roxanne Spillett, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, received a total compensation of $988,591 in 2008, according to the charity’s tax filings. She got a base salary of $360,774, a bonus of $150,000 and other compensation of $83,152, for a total of $593,926. She also received $385,500 in deferred compensation, most of which went to a retirement plan, and $9,165 in nontaxable benefits.

They are concerned that:

the chief executive of a charity that has been closing local clubs for lack of funding was compensated nearly $1 million in 2008. They also questioned why in the same year officials spent $4.3 million on travel, $1.6 million on conferences, conventions and meetings, and $544,000 in lobbying fees.

Hmmm, excessive travel and conference expenses, conventions and meetings and LOBBYING FEES?  Sounds like the typical life of a POLITICIAN.  What these men do not tell you is how many officials were included in that $4.3 million travel spending, whether the $1.6 million spent on conferences were to put on one conference or fifty, and why in all fairness a childrens’ organization NEEDS to spend $544,000 to LOBBY for funding…

Here’s what Boys and Girls Clubs of America accomplish:

• More than 4 million boys and girls served
• More than 4,000 Club locations
• Locations in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and on U.S. military bases around the world
• More than 50,000 trained professional staff

Boys and Girls Clubs of America have helped millions of kids across America, including R&B singer, Usher.

From academic failure and gang violence to poverty, drugs and obesity, America’s youth face a daunting array of problems – with serious consequences and fewer safety nets at home and in the community. According to a 2007 BGCA alumni survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 57 percent of alumni reported, “The Club saved my life,” while another 28 percent credited Boys & Girls Clubs with keeping them in school.

“Growing up in the Club, I had the chance to experience a lot of positive things; it helped reinforce the values I learned at home including good character, leadership and giving back to my community, my country and my world,” said Usher. “It’s where I developed my love of singing and performing, received help with my homework, and it’s where I found a safe place to go after school.”

So how do we begin to have constructive change, when the complainers do exactly what they’re trying to stop?

And why do our kids need lobbyists to fight for money that is channeled to Big Banks whose CEOs’ crazy annual incomes are NEVER LIMITED?

Where is the integrity?

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I was struck by something Tom Hanks said in his recent interview in TIME Magazine:

How can Americans ask our young men and women to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to their ordered Coca-Cola lives Stateside?  “It’s even worse for our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hanks says. “At least the Pacific-war soldiers coming back from World War II decompressed on ships for weeks. And then once the troops arrived portside, it was often a long train ride home to Peoria. Today these guys in Afghanistan fight in bloody hell and are flown back in 18 hours. How can they cope with that? How can they suddenly go from Tora Bora to Peyton Place?” Even the legendary Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II, suffered posttraumatic stress disorder after his return from the European theater. During one meltdown, a deranged Murphy held his wife hostage at gunpoint.

Recently, an angry Ft. Stewart soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, wrote a rap song about his rage at having been ’stop lossed’, forced again and again to re-enlist into dangerous war zones even though his contracted time in service had expired.  In the song, he describes revenge and vengeful acts on his Commanding Officers for betraying him and forcing him back into combat.

How is the Army handling it?  They want to ship him from the United States of America, where he is currently in military jail in Georgia, to KUWAIT!!! For a military trial.  He wouldn’t be able to put together a strong defense, because most of his civilian attorneys and civilian witnesses couldn’t fly to Kuwait to testify.  Its like he’s being toyed with, after he was toyed with for years of stop loss.

There is no mercy in the military.

So we need to find it in the civilian world.

It turns out that writing about your rage, or your sorrow, or fear, or brokenness actually helps you PROCESS the unthinkable things you might have seen or done in wartime. Author Maxine Hong Kingston has a writers group for US soldiers that has been helpful in their re-entry into their home environments. An anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace was published with these writings.

There is a courtroom in Pennsylvania that takes into account the extenuating circumstances of a soldier’s service, offering a Veteran’s Affairs mentor and programs to help.

Drugs and addiction account for a significant percentage of veterans’ crimes: nearly half of vets in federal prison, for example, are locked up on drug charges. Fully 61% of veteran prisoners are dependent on or abuse alcohol or drugs. Meanwhile, cases of post-traumatic stress disorder — many left untreated — only compound the problem.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization’s tagline is ‘For America’s Newest Generation of Veterans and the People Who Support Them’. They offer a hand to help veterans re-acclimate to their families and their jobs and their lives.

We need to UN-BOOT CAMP our brave men and women in the Military, especially if the Military will not do so.

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Cover of new Newsweek in a waiting room.

Just one question: didn’t the GOP just have 8 years?

Newsweek’s title is: IF THE REPUBLICANS WERE IN CHARGE…  Well they got voted out of the majority, and the Presidency.  So countering Obama’s agenda might seem like its their job as the opposition party, but its not.  When GWB was President, Dems were told to be patriotic and follow their President, which many did.  They followed him into a trillion dollar war, trillion dollar deficit and a housing implosion and lobbyist/insurer/banking explosion.

So why, one year in to a Democratic Presidency, are we wondering what the Republicans would do if they were in charge?

We see it every day, the detritus, the lost jobs, the massively increased credit card charges, the $500 million bonuses to bankers who destroyed the world (yes, Goldman Sachs, people still blame you).

Newsweek shows its death knell: NEWS and WEEK are supposed to be going together, not guesstimating what the 8 year veterans have up their sleeve.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the obstructionism, the lack of reform in the financial arena and the refusal to provide Americans with reasonable health care reform.

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White Girls

If you’re part of the white privilege world, you might not notice something strange about this photo, the cover of Vanity Fair extolling HOLLYWOOD! 2010.

They’re all white!  And SUPER SKINNY.  Utterly lacking in diversity.  They do not represent Hollywood’s future.  But Vanity Fair thinks they do!

Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz calls out the young cover stars by their best attributes: “downy-soft cheeks,” “button nose,” “patrician looks and celebrated pedigree,” “dewy, wide-eyed loveliness,” “Ivory-soap-girl” features.

Hmmm, patrician looks? That’s code for ‘white’.  ‘Button nose’? That’s what most plastic surgeries are trying to create, also code for ‘white’.  ‘Ivory-soap’?  Its a white bar of soap.

Totally lacking creativity, Vanity Fair has missed out on these lovely young women:

Zoe Saldana, from both blockbusters AVATAR and STAR TREK,

and they forgot Gabourey Sidibe from PRECIOUS,

and they forgot Freida Pinto from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

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Now he’s on FOX News saying ‘This was all a HUGE misunderstanding’.  He says its investigative journalism.  Yeah right, just like David Letterman’s extortionist is saying he was simply asking for a ’silence payment’ similar to that paid to Tiger Wood’s ho’s…  We live in a world of murky interpretation of ethics and these ‘Jedi mind wipes’ provided by FOX News, ‘this wasn’t a felony trespassing, this was conservative activism’ are now considered a legal defense.

Do the crime?

Do the time, buddy.

But let’s watch what justice prevails for him, the white boy ‘conservative filmmaker’ who dressed like THIS

thinking he was a Pimp. Pimp?  He looks like a drunken FRAT BOY thinking he’s all that.  He’s so lucky he found ‘easy to dupe’ employees at ACORN, where he said he was bringing in underage prostitutes and wanted business advice.

He’s arrogant, has an unhealthy sense of entitlement and his own righteousness.  That’s not criminal, but it is annoying.  It is, however, criminal to trespass onto a Federal Building, a Senator’s office space, have listening devices and tamper with phones.

Let’s see if he does any hard time.  Then let’s compare that to non-white, lesser known, low-income sentencing for similar crimes committed by less media-savvy perps, minus the felony wiretapping charges that he thinks he’ll squiggle out of.  He’s the poster boy of ‘anti-corruption’ for the right wing pundits now.  I bet this boy gets off, and his real brethren, other criminals, do hard time.

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Meanwhile, you live within your means, juggle your credit debt, try to keep your home and go to work today so these a**holes can languish in the sun somewhere.

and finally, the piece de resistance,

and this is NOT dated December 2009 or January 2010 but February 1st, 2010…

Yep, they’re gonna pay out $100 Million to the guy who bet AGAINST YOUR FINANCIAL SAFETY.

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The U.S. Supreme Court just lifted restrictions on election donations from CORPORATIONS, labor unions, etc.  Corporations? They already own the House and the Senate.  When was the last time you saw something positive for the American Taxpayer actually pass out of those halls?

We still have high Unemployment? Check

There are still massive Foreclosures nationwide? Check

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Profits hit $4.8 BILLION,

their PAY is up 47% over 2008?? Check

This ain’t One Citizen, One Vote.

It’s not ‘America’ anymore, folks.

Its ‘The Suits run everything.’

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