Scary Stuff

CNN reports:

Paul Nawrocki says he’s beyond the point where he cares about humiliation.

That’s why he weekly takes a 90-minute train ride to New York, where he walks the streets wearing a sandwich board that advertises his plight: The former toy-industry executive needs a job.

“Almost homeless,” reads the sign. “Looking for employment. Very experienced operations and administration manager.”

Wearing a suit and tie under the sign, Nawrocki — who was in the toy industry 36 years before being laid off in February — stands on Manhattan corners for hours, hoping to pass resumes to interested passers-by.

“When you’re out of work and you face having nothing — I mean, having no income — pride doesn’t mean anything,” Nawrocki said. “You need to find work. I have to take care of my family.”

The rest of the story…

Yesterday, I posted about the worsening crisis in Congo. This afternoon comes this news.

Government officials said two mass graves were discovered in eastern Congo containing as many as 2,000 bodies.

Here’s the video I posted yesterday from Doctor’s Without Borders new campaign, Condition:Critical.

Last week, I posted about the controversy concerning Barack Obama’s citizenship status, which generated some interesting discussion. After that post, I said I wouldn’t comment any further about it until there some sort of resolution. However, I was pointed by a reader to a lengthy post this morning by Joan Swirsky writing for Tulsa Today. I didn’t think it was possible, but I was truly shocked at what she wrote.

She first opines about the “deafening silence” by the media about the controversy, including the right-wing outlets.

It is no mystery that the leftist media have refused to mention this potentially looming Constitutional crisis in virtually all of their print and electronic coverage. Having shilled for Obama for the past two years – dismissing his longtime radical associations, obfuscating his radical voting record, and taking a pass at their jobs of vetting a presidential candidate –  their failure to cover the most explosive story of the 2008 campaign speaks volumes about collusion of the highest order.

Then there are the late-night comics, as well as snarky “humorists” like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, who take pride in being irreverent and “outing” both people and subjects that others avoid. Not a word.

But what about the failure of the powerful conservative media – how to explain their total blackout of this story?

Could it be because the story is even too far fetched for even the most hardcore right-wingers? Joan singles out some specific examples Continued

Peter Schiff, who CNBC dubbed as “the man who called the collapse” (after mocking his predictions prior to the collapse), offers his forecast of the economy in the near term and it’s not very encouraging at all:

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Even though Schiff was proven right following two years of warning of the impending crisis, other Wall Street prognosticators just don’t want to listen even now. You think they would have learned their lesson after mocking him the first time around.

You read that right: $3.8 trillion. That’s how much money our federal government has already thrown at the financial crisis, according to a CNBC report, which is “more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation.”

If you are dumbfounded by the amount of money the federal government is pouring into the private sector to ease the nation’s financial crisis, it’s worth a look at how much Uncle Sam has spent on other major projects and historic events in the past, such as wars, bailouts and engineering marvels.

Thus far, only one item surpasses the $700 billion allocated to the government’s main rescue fund, what’s known as the Treasury Dept.’s TARP program. Other expenses and/or commitments, from Federal Reserve lending and guarantees to FDIC insurance fund losses to complex financial market mechanism, put the total cost at some $3.8 trillion (as of Oct. 23).

CNBC has put together a slide show of milestones in government spending.

After eight years of rule under the “fiscally conservative” party, the national debt clock has become outdated — and not in a good way…

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Think Progress points out…

Recall in September 2000, during President Clinton’s last year in office, the National Debt Clock had the reverse problem. It was shut down because “it started ticking in the opposite direction, shaving off roughly $30 a second.”

This week, the national debt passed $10 trillion. Your individual share of that is more than $33,000 and growing. When George W. Bush took office, the debt was at $5.7 trillion. It has mushroomed by more than $4.3 trillion just during his presidency alone. What’s even more interesting is that since World War II, the national debt, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, has ballooned under the “small government” and “fiscally conservative” administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

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Can we really afford another four years of a Republican administration promising “fiscal restraint”?

Beginning tomorrow evening, HBO will be showing the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. “a compelling and illuminating expose of the US-sponsored policy of torture which emerged after 9/11,” as described by the advocacy group Reject Torture. Here’s the program description from the HBO website:

Not long ago, the United States was viewed around much of the world as the good guys. But the appallingly inhumane tactics used by military prison guards changed all that. This is the story of how America lost its dignity in its zeal to win the War on Terror. This 2007 Oscar®-winning documentary takes a disturbing, in-depth look at the highly questionable interrogation practices used by the U.S. military on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in the years following 9/11. Beginning with the story of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who was killed while being held in a Bagram prison in 2002, the film tells the grim, cautionary saga of how the U.S. government–desperate to draw information from a top Al Qaeda leader–approved the use of cruel and unusual interrogation techniques that were later imported to U.S. prisons abroad.

Here’s the trailer.

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I encourage every American citizen to watch this documentary to better understand what our government does in our name. The first airing on HBO is Monday at 8pm our time. Here’s the complete schedule of its airing.

This is insanity… and kind of cool! Those crazy, crazy Brits!

Fundamentalist Windsor Baptist Church’s planned giveaway of an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle at a youth conference is putting Oklahoma back in the spotlight, nationally and internationally (making us all so very “proud”). The Register in the U.K. was the latest to pick up the story, although there article is a bit more snarky the most.

An Oklahoma baptist church has insisted it will proceed with its controversial plan to give away an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle* during a youth conference - a move described as “a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event”, according to local [KOCO] 5 news.

Windsor Hills Baptist apparently has a history of worshipping God through firepower, and last year ran a shooting competition as part of its annual shindig. This year, it reportedly shelled out $800 for said trophy semi, but the church’s youth pastor, Bob Ross, claimed the main thrust of the conference wasn’t about guns but rather “teens finding faith”.

He stressed that the event featured 21 hours of preaching between bursts of gunfire, and defended: “I don’t want people thinking ‘My goodness, we’re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn’t respect it who are then going to go out and kill. That’s not at all what we’re trying to do.”

The article had a similarly snarky “bootnote”…

*AR-15? Pah. Authentic Children of Christ know that the AK-47 is the infidel-busting weapon of choice.

Even though the church announced previously that it cancelled the AR-15 giveaway after the “false statements” of local television station KOCO’s report, they have since decided to proceed with the shooting competition with the prize of a firearm, only now it will be a shotgun that’s been donated.

If Congress, back when our country was fighting for its independence could give engraved muskets to the fifteen or so eleven year old boys that their teacher, Mr. Akins, led into battle against the British, then we can give away a firearm still today, especially since our Supreme Court just re-emphasized our Second Amendment rights.

Yeah! So there! And to quote the late Jerry Falwell, “blow them all away in the name of the Lord.”

Thanks, Windsor Baptist Church, for making Oklahoma “shine” in the eyes of the world.