Rabid Liberal Rants

Here comes the corn industry again:

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents firms that make the syrup, has been trying to improve the image of the much maligned sweetener with ad campaigns promoting it as a natural ingredient made from corn. Now, the group has petitioned the United States Food and Drug Administration to start calling the ingredient “corn sugar,” arguing that a name change is the only way to clear up consumer confusion about the product.

Read more –> A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup – NYTimes.com.

While thinking about the situation, about the building of an Islamic cultural center and mosque NEAR Ground Zero (not exactly IN Ground Zero), I wanted to write about how the United States, particularly New York City and it’s inhabitants are about openness. How we are, and always should be, welcoming to ALL religions. How it would be wrong for us to not allow a religious group to build a place of PEACEFUL worship and a place that would create a bridge between the United States and the Islamic world, mainly because of the actions of radicals within the religious group.

I mean, if it were a Christian church or a Jewish synagogue being built, would anyone question it? The obvious answer is ‘No’. Regardless of what is being built, is it OK to question the source of funding for the construction of a building? Of course. However, everyone that opposes building a community center and place of worship NEAR Ground Zero (It’s not in Ground Zero), simply because it’s Islamic, is basically condemning an entire religion, and being a bigot. That is simply unacceptable in our wonderful and open country, and especially not acceptable in New York City.

Let’s face it, there are radicals  in ALL religions. There are Christian radicals, Jewish radicals, Hindu radicals, as well Islamic radicals. There have been all sorts of violence, committed in the name of religion, throughout human history. At this point in our human history, we are battling Islamic fundamentalists. But not all Muslims are Islamic fundamentalists.

That’s what I wanted to write about. But then I read a piece on the Alex Jones website regarding the Imam behind this mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:

The Imam of the now infamous “ground zero mosque” is a member of the ultra elitist Council On Foreign Relations and receives financial backing from powerful globalist sources including the Rockefellers, the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation.

Feisal Abdul Rauf also heads up the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) which enjoys a partnership with the Cordoba Initiative and provided $100 million to secure the site close to ground zero for the mosque to be built.

That $100 million came directly from the back pockets of ASMA’s financial backers.

According to ASMA’s website they include the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers, Rockefeller Philanthropy, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund – essentially the tip of the pyramid of the international globalist elite.

Normally, you take the posts on the Alex Jones website with a grain of salt. Sometimes there’s truth, some excellent points that get you thinking. And sometimes they seem to verge closer to out of this world conspiracy theories that belong on the X-Files.

But on this subject, on this post, things are clear. This is simply manufactured controversy to keep us from focusing on the real issues.

The country’s elite, through the media, is creating this controversy. Why? Who really knows. To keep us from focusing on the phonies in government (both on the  Left and Right)?  To keep the money flowing into their pockets? To keep the wars raging on? To keep us from focusing on social security, health care, jobs, the economy? To keep us from focusing on the corruption in government? Anybody talking about the oil spill anymore?

Seriously, is having a mosque in that location truly going to affect the entire nation? People fail to mention that there already is a mosque in the area, two blocks north, and has been there since the ’70s.

Manufactured controversy by the country’s elite and everyone is falling for it.

Positive news for a change…

via Student Starts First Tuition-free School in Africa’s Largest Slum | Fast Company.

Looks like Tiger Woods has joined a nice long list of guys with $$ who can’t keep it in there pants!

Others we know of recently:

David Letterman

Mark Sanford

John Ensign

John Edwards

and of course Bill Clinton!

Any body else I missed?

Just read an article in The Week which describes the universal healthcare program in Massachusetts which sounds strongly similar to the program the Feds want to pass now. One of the main points of the article is that Massachusetts, when originally drafting and passing the plan, never took into account the rising costs of healthcare. Thus, when the recession hit, more people were out of work, more people applied for the state subsidies for insurance, and tapped out the insurance fund. The rising healthcare costs fueled a $9 Billion gap, which took away money from education, public safety, and other services.

Similarly, the government plan fails to address the rising costs of healthcare. No way are they going to discuss putting caps or limits on payouts if they want the healthcare industry on board with the plan.

And I thought “Change” was coming. Sounds like it’s the same ‘ol situation. Obama and pals are “outraged” at the bonuses AIG execs received while at the same time they’ve taken the company to the crapper. However, Senator Dodd, as well as Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner knew about the bonus payouts, new they were going out, and even approved of it.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, who originally proposed the executive compensation provision, said he did not include the exemption clause, which said new rules “shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009.” In an interview with CNN, Dodd denied inserting that exemption at the 11th hour, and insisted he doesn’t know how it got there. “When I wrote the language there was no such language like that,” Dodd told CNN Tuesday. Multiple Senate Democratic leadership sources also deny knowing how the exemption got into the bill. The mystery isn’t just how what was effectively a protection for AIG was put into the stimulus bill — it’s also how a provision intended to prevent AIG from giving executive bonuses, was taken out. The Senate passed a bipartisan amendment proposed by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R- Maine, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, that would have taxed bonuses on any company getting federal bailout dollars, if the company didn’t pay back the bonus money to the government. But the idea was stripped from the stimulus bill during hurried, closed-door negotiations with the White House and House of Representatives.

And yet now they’re “Outraged”. Senator Grassley even suggested that the AIG execs to commit suicide.

Look, AIG shouldn’t have given out bonuses after claiming that they needed a bailout. But at the same time, we have a bunch of charlatans in Washington who are feigning outrage just because the American people who elected these jokers are outraged. They are reactive instead of being proactive.

An 2004 article by Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard, after the Republican victories in the House, Senate, and with Bush being reelected, exclaiming how the Republican majority was “expected to last for years, maybe decades”.

Listen to Walter Dean Burnham, professor emeritus at University of Texas at Austin, who is the nation’s leading theorist of realignment, the shift of political power from one party to another. The 2004 election, he says, “consolidates it all”–that is, it solidifies the trend that has favored Republicans over the past decade. To Burnham, it means there’s “a stable pattern” of Republican rule. “If Republicans keep playing the religious card along with the terrorism card, this could last a long time,” he says.

Democrats will have enormous difficulty overcoming “the huge weight of Republican strength,” he says.

Rove, leery of claiming too much for Republicans, said on Meet the Press on November 7 that “there are no permanent majorities in American politics.”

For Republicans to slip into minority status again, [Burnham] says, it would take a monumental party split like that in 1912 or “a colossal increase in the pain level” of Americans as happened with the Great Depression. Neither is likely.

The point of the article, IMHO, is that nothing is permanent and anything can change in an instant. Even for Democrats. So unless Obama can truely usher in an era of bipartisanship, we’re doomed to repeat history.

Economy guru and professor at NYU, Nouriel Roubini gave a presentation in London, and basically said the worst is yet to come. Roubini, back in 2006, accurately predicted that the US will fall into a recession. Back in February, he predicted the financial market meltdown. Some quotes from the conference:

We’ve reached a situation of sheer panic

hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust

We’re seeing the beginning of a run on a big chunk of the hedge funds

don’t be surprised if policy makers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days

This is the worst financial crisis in the U.S., Europe and now emerging markets that we’ve seen in a long time

Things will get much worse before they get better. I fear the worst is ahead of us.

Read more from the RGE Monitor.

It’s a known fact: As mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin thought it was prudent to have rape victims pay for their own rape kits and exams. From the NYTimes OpEd Page:

When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the small town began billing sexual-assault victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams.

The insult to rape victims is obvious. So is the sexism inherent in singling them out to foot the bill for investigating their own case. And the main result of billing rape victims is to protect their attackers by discouraging women from reporting sexual assaults.

This on top of some startling stats from staralaska.org:

• Alaska is the # 1 state in the country for Rape and has been for 23 out of the last 30 years (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)
• Alaska’s reported rate of rape per capita is 2.6 times the national average (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)
• Anchorage has the ninth highest sexual assault rate of any city in the United States, and Fairbanks is ranked first (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)
• Fairbanks’ rape rate is 4.7 times the national average (FBI’s Uniform Crime Report)

We really need to understand her reasoning behind this and call her on it. She’s kept quiet about it far too long.

Hey, I’m all for the humane treatment of animals but I think PETA got a case of Mad Cow Disease. According to the AP, PETA wanted to run this ad that compared the senseless, brutal, and horrific murder of an innocent passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada to animal slaughter in factory farms. It sounds like to me, PETA has lost it’s sensibility and would rather run a tasteless ad to further it’s agenda than concern itself with being considerate and sensitive to the victim, his family and friends, and to human life in general. Luckily, the editor [ Tara Seel ] at the paper PETA wanted to run the ad in had some ethical and empathetic fortitude not to run it. What, did they run out of nude models to pose for their ads? The only people looking at those ads are guys who will most likely continue to eat their chicken and burgers anyway.

Sorry PETA, you lost a fan with this ad. Idiots.