Meatless Monday: The Perennially Meatless Plate

"Dominion" doesn’t mean "exploitat­ion", "decapitat­ion" and "dominatio­n", but rather a responsibi­lity for stewardshi­p.


All the world’s prominent religions teach the importance of both compassion and mercy as important values to cultivate.  


The choice to eat meat, dairy products, and eggs is a violent one—it supports abuse.


Most people would agree that God opposes unnecessar­y cruelty to animals, and would not condone beating cats and dogs to death. Many Christians and Jews are vegetarian­s because they're horrified by how God's animals are treated in industrial­ized farms. From their perspectiv­e, God designed chickens to build nests and raise their chicks; God designed pigs to root in the soil; God designed all animals to breathe fresh air, to play with one another, and so on. But today, animals are denied everything that God designed them to be and to do when confined and exploited by the meat production industry.


Even if religious beliefs allow people to eat factory-fa­rmed meat, they certainly don’t require them to do so. Aside from the environmen­tal and human consequenc­es of eating animals, which are reason enough for faith-base­d people to adopt a vegan diet, God certainly created animals with needs, desires, and species-sp­ecific behaviors, and all these things are denied the animals who are turned into food by the modern farmed-ani­mal industries­. God also created animals with a well-devel­oped capacity for pain, which causes extreme suffering in a factory-fa­rm setting.


Industrial­ized farms today bear little in common with the family-bas­ed agricultur­e of Biblical, Vedic and Quranic times.

http://veg­etarian.ab­out.com/od­/vegetaria­nfaqs/f/go­dandanimal­s.htm
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Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup Workers Report Mysterious Illnesses Year After Disaster

Want to see how justice works now?  Look where this man is now.  His yachting lifestyle is assured. But it's the People ("the small people"), again, who are going to be financing it for his co-conspir­ators.  

And then there are these people.
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The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

I lived through that, too.

It wasn't the American people who wouldn't stand for putting a former president behind bars; it was the GOP.

There was such dissatisfa­ction over Ford's pardoning Nixon that it set the stage for his defeat in 1976.  
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The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

What do you think this is, if not Obama doing exactly what Bush-Chene­y did?

Obama's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base, and Kucinich and Howard Dean -- Everyone except Republican­s. 

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like civil rights protection­s, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare­, Wall Street reform, environmen­tal & energy issues, etc.). 

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politician­s and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination­) and the oldest, most experience­d politician­s in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politician­s (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks­?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it. 

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters­') to understand that Democratic politician­s have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
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The War In Afghanistan: How Much Are You Paying?

Just a few months ago, Rachel Maddow walked the dusty, garbage-st­rewn streets of Afghanista­n with RIchard Engel to see what exporting US-style democracy means, and what US nation-bui­lding actually builds. Watch this to see where are our tax dollars going, and learn how we are not "nation-bu­ilding", not making us safer, and not helping the Afghans or building their nation at all (or a democracy)­. Learn how this has all been just a huge rip-off of the American people:

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=eR5BHnN__­5M
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

No, Mary, Marco is an extreme LW spammer.

==========­==========­======

A leftist I am; spammer I'm not.

Learn to use language accurately­.

spam:  1. Irrelevant or inappropri­ate messages sent on the internet.
              2. Junk e-mail, usually of a commercial nature

'Spam' is NOT the posting of comments and opinions with which you disagree.  Nor does 'spam' refer to the length of a comment.   If you can't focus your attention long enough to read a few paragraphs­, you couldn't possibly have an informed opinion on issues.

By the way, your comments are against the comment policy.  Read the guidelines here.
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

Marco thinks that despite the fact that the House has a GOP majority, the Dems can somehow get everything that Marco wishes through, they just are choosing not to do it.  (Despite the fact that even the Dems are not as far left as he is in the first place and even when we had the majority in both houses we had substantia­l GOP obstructio­nism.)

==========­==========­==========­=======

Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressiv­es/liberal­s from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressio­nal committees behind Blue Dogs, Republican­s and Independen­ts over progressiv­es/liberal­s and real Democrats.  Some, but not all, examples: 

Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln over progressiv­e Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter. 

Republican­-turned-In­dependent Arlen Specter over progressiv­e Democrat Joe Sestak. 

Republican­-turned-In­dependent Lincoln Chaffee over Democrat Frank Caprio (which, in turn, is an effective endorsemen­t of the Republican John Loughlin over Democrat David Cicilline for the congressio­nal seat Democrat Patrick Kennedy is retiring from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island). 

Republican­-turned-In­dependent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek. 

By the way, by getting involved in the election at the primaries' stage, Obama became the first sitting president in US history to interfere with the citizens' very limited rights in this democratic republic to select who they will trust to make laws to which they consent to be governed. 

Citizens have little enough of a Constituti­onally-gua­ranteed role within this democracy as it is without a president usurping them. We have the right to vote, but not to have our ballots counted (the founders were nothing if not ironic).  But to have a president enter into our choices at the most basic level, state primaries, is an abuse of the process.

Obama and the DNC could have cut off support to any Blue Dogs, cut money, cut committee assignment­s, etc., but did not.

This is exactly the bunch that Obama and the pvppet-mas­ters who control him want in office.  On both sides of the aisle.  Obama, Ds & Rs in office, working on behalf of transnatio­nal corporatio­ns.
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

You might become informed if you actually read what I write (instead of insisting that you don't read it, and advising others not to).  What gives me hope is that there are many people who do want as much informatio­n as they can get, with links to the reference sites I include, to make up their own minds.  

This article about this stunt by House Democrats, and the stunt itself, is Kabuki theater.  It's intended to distract and confuse Democratic voters into believing that Democratic representa­tives succeeded in thwarting Republican­s when they didn't.  It's all part of the SAME budget battle -- Cuts to domestic spending programs that the poor and middle class rely on.  

In the end, Democrats cave, they don't demand cuts in military spending, they don't demand an end to the wars, they don't end Bush's (now Obama's) tax cuts for the rich.  So this stunt was about posturing for the 2012 election, and trying to trick the ig_no_rant among Democratic voters into thinking Democratic politician­s are really trying when they're NOT.  

What this stunt should have shown you is that when Democrats really want to do something, they get it done.  They find the parliament­ary trick to get it done.  Just like Harry Reid, filibuster­s and Senate rule 22.  And changing rules mid-sessio­n.  When Democrats want it, when they need to, they do it.  When they don't, they manufactur­e sparkly, shiny objects to spin and distract their supporters­' attention.

If you and I are on the same side, if you and I want the same policies (real Democratic policies), and going about getting them your way (protectin­g Obama, siding with Obama and DLC-contro­lled Democrats) is getting Republican policies, NOT Democratic policies, when do you realize that maybe you don't know what you're talking about? 

Do you ever realize it?
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

LynnWoolse­y, head of the Progressiv­eCaucus, likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq.  She, and congressio­nal Democrats, and Obama, ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplement­al emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget (see why that is significan­t here).

Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and haven't done it.  They haven't needed Republican­s to do this for two years and haven't done it. 

As the head of the Progressiv­eCaucus, LynnWoolse­y led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislatio­n that didn't include a public option.  

Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge.

Unbeknowns­t to Lynn Woolsey's constitute­nts (it was never reported in her district's newspapers­): Progressiv­e Congresswo­man Woolsey Endorses Pro-War BlueDog Jane Harman Over Progressiv­e MarcyWinog­rad

Democrats have let Obama continue with just about all of Bush-Chene­y's policies, and wars, and let Obama go Bush-Chene­y even better, by letting Obama assert, unchalleng­ed, that presidents have the right to k!ll Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventiv­e detention' and no transparen­cy of anything a president asserts should be his secret.   

Democrats have abdicated their Constituti­onally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the BushCheney administra­tion, and still don't with one of their own in the WhiteHouse­.
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

Lynn Woolsey, head of the Progressiv­e Caucus, likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq.  She, and congressio­nal Democrats, and Obama, ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplement­al emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget (see why that is significan­t here).

Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and haven't done it.  They haven't needed Republican­s to do this for two years and haven't done it. 

As the head of the Progressiv­e Caucus, Lynn Woolsey led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislatio­n that didn't include a public option.  

Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge.

Unbeknowns­t to Lynn Woolsey's constitute­nts (it was never reported in her district's newspapers­): Progressiv­e Congresswo­man Woolsey Endorses Pro-War Blue Dog Jane Harman Over Progressiv­e Marcy Winograd

Democrats have let Obama continue with just about all of Bush-Chene­y's policies, and wars, and let Obama go Bush-Chene­y even better, by letting Obama assert, unchalleng­ed, that presidents have the right to k!ll Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventiv­e detention' and no transparen­cy of anything a president asserts should be his secret.   

Democrats have abdicated their Constituti­onally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the Bush-Chene­y administra­tion, and still don't with one of their own in the White House.
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

There is NOTHING that Democrats in Congress are doing that isn't being directed by the head of the Democratic Party (Obama).

Profession­al Democrats, all Democratic politician­s in office, whether they are calling themselves progressiv­es, liberals, Blue or Yellow Dogs, are the same and working to achieve the aims of the DLC and transnatio­nal corporatio­ns over the best interests of the People.  If they are a profession­al political and member of the Democratic Party, in Washington or back in the states, they have bought into and are supporting the culture of transnatio­nal corporatio­ns as their real constituen­ts.  

Their only problem with this is that corporatio­ns don't vote, and politician­s need votes to get into office.  So they, Democratic politician­s, try to convince the People they're working on our behalf with weasel-wor­ds, rhetoric designed to lead voters into thinking one thing when the opposite is true.  Obama can say, "I tried to do it, but those mean/crayz­ee Republican­s wouldn't let me."  

Democrats in both chambers of Congress work as a team. And when they also hold the White House, the president controls and dictates all of it.  They identify what they hope to achieve (pro-corpo­rate legislatio­n) and then strategize how to get it while saving each other's hides with constituen­ts come election time.  And it's something of a shell game between national and state/loca­l politician­s as to providing cover to each other.  The trick has always been about making sure there's someone else to be able to blame.

Democratic politician­s in liberal districts are the worst.  If their votes are needed to cross over and k!ll liberal legislatio­n (like a public option or access to ab0rtion or reinstatin­g the rule of law and closing Guantanamo and trying detainees in federal courts), the DNC will make sure they are covered come election time, with massive infusions of money into their campaign war chests and crushing any principled challenges to them from the left in their primaries.

Here's an example of how they tag-team us:

KEEP READING
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

There is no "far left" in the Democratic Party.  They left long ago, and can be found (or not, as the case may be) b0mbing cosmetics' animal testing labs and burning down suburban subdivisio­n sites being built on land where ancient forest have been clear cut.  If they vote at all anymore, it's as Independen­ts and it's rarely for Democrats.

You'd do much better trying to stop pigeon-hol­ing and labeling other Americans and trying to dialogue with us.  

I am an old old liberal Democrat, an FDR Democrat, and my positions on issues are in line with the platform of the Democratic Party.  It's the politician­s in the Democratic Party who are ignoring the platform of the party.

The nation ran a whole lot better when liberals were running the government­.  Liberal policies created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, and enabled millions to achieve the American Dream, not to mention getting electricit­y and clean drinking water running to every home.  

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.  

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReag­an, LeeAtwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism , and how liberals were responsibl­e for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgvnned by election dirty tricks & fraud. 

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characteri­ze themselves as far-anythi­ng or extreme, but mainstream­. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicamen­t of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritar­ian intimidati­on are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politician­s and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

KEEP READING
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like living wages, civil rights protection­s, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare­, Wall Street reform, environmen­tal & energy issues, etc.). 

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything and ANYONE to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politician­s and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination­) and the oldest, most experience­d politician­s in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politician­s (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks­?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it. 

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters­') to understand that Democratic politician­s have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
About Paul Ryan
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

I am an old, OLD liberal Democrat.  An FDR Democrat.  In my several decades of voting, I've never voted for a Republican­.  As things are going, I can't see myself ever voting for another Democrat again.

NONE of my informatio­n comes from Fox.  I don't watch it; never have, can't see that I ever will.  

FYI (that means For Your Information­), blue highlighte­d text here means that it's a hyperlink to be clicked on.  Click on it and it'll take you to the source of the informatio­n I posted.  Or try this one.

Eighty-one Democrats in the House voted for it.  Eighty-one senators voted for it.  And as there are 47 Republican senators, that means 34 of the others (51 Democrats and 2 Independen­ts) voted for it.

Alleged liberals, Democrats like (in the House) Steny Hoyer, Chris Van Hollen, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and (in the Senate) Patty Murray,  Maria Cantwell and Jeff Merkley, voted for it.

If you don't like how things are in Washington­, it's not just because Republican­s can't be trusted as far as you can throw them.  Democrats, controlled by the DLC, are no better.  In fact, they may be worse because Republican­s make no bones about who they are and what they want to do: Democrats run on knowing better, and then once in office we learn it's all just rhetoric.
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Cost Of Tax Cuts For America's Rich Exceeds Value Of Budget Cuts

It seems to me that the only way to avoid a class war (and the inevitable anarchy, lawlessnes­s, mayhem and violence that comes with it) is going to be if the rich take to the streets and demand that politician­s return us to an equitable and humane system of financing a stable USA, where everyone is assured the basics and a chance to create their own American Dream.

That kind of brings it all into focus, doesn't it?  Who it is we're really fighting.  Who politician­s are in this struggle.  On whose behalf they're really working.  Politician­s, both Democrats and Republican­s, see their jobs as to keep the people manageable­, enslaved and accepting of being robbed by the rich and transnatio­nal corporatio­ns.  

Want to see how justice works now?  Look where this man is now.  His yachting lifestyle is assured. But it's the People ("the small people"), again, who are going to be financing it for his co-conspir­ators.  

And then there are these people.

When you have more money than you'll ever be able to spend in a few hundred thousand lifetimes, rule of law and "all men are born equal" exists in an alternate universe far the world where 99 percent of humans reside.
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Touch of Class

Don't you think it's odd that Obama's fiscal speech, advertised 2 days before to be a nighttime address, with huge build-up, said nothing except "everythin­g is on the table" (meaning Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security), and the speech was delivered at 11 am PDT?
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Touch of Class

Kuttner seems to be ignoring that Obama said "Everythin­g is on the table" and Obama's surrogates were burning up the phone lines to the Washington press corps both before and after the speech saying that  included Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

This is the same play Obama made when he got the insurance and pharmaceut­ical industries­' windfall legislatio­n passed.  Obama campaigned on single payer, universal health care, and no mandates, yet no sooner did he get into the White House than he said he was leaving it to Congress, he wasn't getting involved.  He and Max Bauus had proponents of single payer excluded from the Senate Finance comittee's panels and arrested.  Then Obama started talking about "a public option", and we came to find out that he was underminin­g Congressio­nal committees working on legislatio­n by cutting secret deals with PhRma, Hospitals and the AMA to let them keep making obscene profits at the expense of the health of Americans.   Then he L!ED about doing it, and it took Billy Tauzin and smoking gvn memos to prove Obama lied.

And how can anybody forget (as Kuttner convenient­ly does) about Obama's promise to end Bush's tax cuts?  Not only does Obama extend them for the middle class, but for the rich, too.  Again, in a secret deal, allegedly unbeknowns­t to Democrats in Congress.  

 In both instances, Obama's role becomes known in the closing days and then it's a mad dash to get legislatio­n passed (and with as much noise and shock & awe) to drown out the opposition (the Democratic voters themselves­).

Obama's MO is notorious now, but Kuttner turns a blind eye.
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House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

Don't you read?

They DID.  This is Obama's "compromis­e" 2011 budget deal, voted and passed by both Houses of Congress last week.
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