April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

america

The Koch Brothers Billionaires Club

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Isn’t it great when a few friends can gather together for a couple of beers, shoot the shit, bitch about class warfare and control an entire country?

the two-day event is not just “fun in the sun”. This will be a meeting of “doers”, men and women willing to fight the Obama administration and its perceived attack on US free enterprise and unfettered wealth.

As the invitation says: “Our goal must be to beat back the unrelenting attacks and hold elected leaders accountable.”

The reference to the accountability of America’s elected leaders is ironic, bearing in mind that the gathering has been convened by two brothers who have never been elected to public office and are among the most unaccountable and secretive political players in the country.

David and Charles Koch enjoy a combined fortune of $35bn (£22bn), run the second largest private company in the US, Koch Industries, and are increasingly using their fabulous riches to push their special interests within America’s political process. Nobody knows precisely how much they spend on influencing elections and lobbying Congress, but it is thought to be scores of millions of dollars.

By similar vein, the guestlist for their gathering on Sunday is unknown. Past attendees at the twice-yearly event include supreme court judges, rightwing media celebrities such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, prominent governors of southern states such as Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) and Haley Barbour (Mississippi), as well as leading figures from Wall Street and energy companies, and titans of industry.

But you can be sure there won’t be any of them there elites in attendance! Just us regular folk nothing to see here..

A Musical Memorial for the Arizona Shooting Victims

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Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik speaking about the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and those who had come to see her who were wounded or killed;

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government,’

‘The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.

‘And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.’

‘That may be free speech. But it’s not without consequence.’

Defendant Duct Taped in Court

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In a stunning display of violation of rights a judge ordered that not only could the defendant not change counsel he was to have his mouth duct taped shut and his public defender was ordered to sit in the audience.

At the start of the hearing, Brown told Belden that he

wasn’t happy with his public defender, who he claimed hadn’t done enough work on the case.

Belden said he wasn’t going to appoint a different attorney. If Brown didn’t want the public defender, he could represent himself, although he would be a fool to do so, the judge said.

Brown and Belden went back and forth for about four minutes, at times talking over each other, until Belden told his bailiff, Jeffrey Smith, to get the duct tape.

Full Story

Of course many in the comments section are cheering the judge, however, this is denying the same rights to change counsel that a more wealthy person would have [big surprise I know] and also goes against the supposed system of innocent until proved guilty.

Browser for the Better

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Ok so this has more to do with America than Canada but feeding the hungry is never a bad thing!

IE in some recognition of the horrors of IE6 especially for todays needs and the real horror of hunger, are teaming up to help feed those in need.

Microsoft Corp. and Feeding America are joining forces to fight hunger in the United States through the “Browser for the Better” campaign. For every completed download of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s Browser for the Better campaign (running today through Aug. 8, 2009*) will donate the financial equivalent of eight meals to Feeding America’s network of 206 local food banks, which supplies food to more than 25 million Americans each year.

Browser for the Better

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

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The Vatican has launched an inquisition enquiry into American nuns. These uppity women are getting out of control and actually helping people.

Sister Kathy Stein, of the Sisters of St Joseph of Carondelet, is executive director of Thomas House, a shelter for homeless families in Garden Grove in Orange County, California.

Thomas House, with its 16 apartments in a secure compound, its language and parenting classes, its food bank and its activities for children, is a secular organisation with no formal link to the Church.

Sister Kathy has never worn a habit, and moved out of the convent long ago to live among the people she serves.

But she says the Church need have no worry about the way she meets her religious calling.

“I would see it as a reason for hope that our message of love and respect and concern for people is expanding beyond the walls of a Catholic institution… that we are able to bring God’s word to people by who we are and how we minister to them,” she said.

Sister Mary says the Vatican hierarchy inhabits a very different world, and could not expect to impose its own idea of religious life on the culture inhabited by American nuns.

“The culture encourages everyone to be very tolerant and open-minded,” she said.

“To imagine that a dictum sent by somebody we don’t know who lives very far away would take hold in this culture, to imagine that, is really a stretch.”

Could this be the same distance that allows a man who will never worry about his life being endangered or altered through pregnancy to decide that a women never has any right to an abortion even to save her life?

Read the whole article at the BBC

Prison Changes You!

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Conrad Black in a letter to the Sunday Times rails against private prisons, the war on drugs and high incarceration rate in the U.S.

“U.S. justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences.”

Fruitless attempts to wipe out the illegal drug trade are to blame for the situation, says Black, taking up a battle cry long espoused by people he’s never traditionally associated with – those on the left of the political spectrum, including groups like the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The entire ‘war on drugs,’ by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and (one million) small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.”

Having seen the system Black has suddenly developed a desire to reform it.

[..]penal reform is a cause he hopes to champion when he’s released from prison.

“I wish to advise Lord Hurd that when I return to the UK, I would like to take up more energetically than I did initially his request for assistance in his custodial system reform activities,” Black wrote, referring to Douglas Hurd, a patron of Britain’s Tory Reform Group.

Perhaps next he could do an enforced stint on welfare, work for a living at minimum wage, need a daycare space……..

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