Great Anti-Dobbs video from Latinos

Hate speech on the public airwaves is one of the things I most disapprove of. Thinking people DO NOT respond to this type of garbage-spewing. The volume, tone and pitch of the voices of many of the ones on TV is a dead give away that what they are saying is not rational. Listeners/viewers forget that their purpose is entertainment, not information. Opposing a viewpoint rationally and factually is a totally different thing than fomenting hatred by way of distortion and lies. Our Constitution protects the former; the latter in my opinion does not qualify as free speech.

Anyway, here is a great video/ad about one of the all-time worst, Lou Dobbs:

Phillies Going ALL THE WAY

G-20 Armed Police on University of Pittsburgh Campus

While on some college campuses kids are watching football games and getting drunk, they are having a different experience at the University of Pittsburgh. A la Martin Niemoller's "They came for me, but there was nobody left to speak up," YubeTube videos are showing what you won't see on the news - City of Pittsburgh armored police attacking students on the University of Pittsburgh campus - "no matter what your purpose is you must disperse." Most of us have just sat back and watched while our rights have eroded. There is no more horror to what happened at Tien An Men when the same thing is happening right on our Main Streets. Thank you, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and John Boehner.

Kris Allen's single LIVE LIKE WE'RE DYING

86,400 seconds in a day - WOW - this is a great song. Not at all what I was expecting from Kris. He gets the message out without being sappy - fresh and contemporary. I like it!

BONES Season Premiere TONIGHT!!!

Check this out, gotta love it!

Religion can be used to justify good or evil

From the ON FAITH blog in the Washington Post, Susan Jacoby writes about "Faith, Race, and Reason":

During the civil rights movement, most white Protestant churches in the South--those that now make up the Southern Baptist Convention--stood solidly against desegregation. Some of the children of those good churchgoers are as unwilling to accept the legitimacy of a black president as their parents were to accept riding on a bus next to blacks.

It is impossible to have a rational discussion about policy differences with people who run around screaming about killing Granny and calling the president a communist, a socialist, and a Nazi. The new practitioners of the paranoid style are impervious to reason and facts. I thought Obama was extremely eloquent in the conclusion to his speech, when he spoke about two sides of the American character--the side that almost instinctively distrusts government and the side that cares about other, less fortunate citizens. I'm sure that the Obama-haters weren't listening to a word he said. What we are seeing now is a third and worse facet of the American character--the bullying, ignorant facet in which certain people view anyone else's gain as their loss.

Auto-tuning the news

Twitter has its uses! @AndySkib tweeted: "you know about auto-tuning the news? " Very cool - here is the first one in a series of at least eight, subjects are March Madness, economic woes, & Pentagon budget cuts:

Take the PROFIT factor out of insurance - great video

Here is a great video that explains why we need government run public health care:

David Cook with Kris Allen and Adam Lambert in Central Park

Good Morning America Summer Concert Series. David Cook is about to do his 100th show on Friday. I think it's time he takes a break to work on a new album - I am ready for something new.

It is a hoot to read the comment sections of articles about this performance. Someone was complaining that Cook & Allen should not be wearing plaid shirts in NYC. Someone else responded that plaid is a mid-western comfort thing. I have to say I am in the minority - I really enjoyed Cook and Kris, but I find Adam's looks a little creepy and his performances are always just slightly over the top. I guess I prefer the kind of rock, like this cover of Little Lies, that David and Kris do.

NYT op-ed on the work of anthropologist Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro

Michael Dove, a Yale anthropologist, has a terrific op-ed in today's NYT called "Dreams from his Mother." According to Dove, Dr. Soetoro was one of the earliest proponents of microcredit, and also one of the few who was not afraid to point out its shortcomings to the Suharto regime.