Hey - O & M - switch places!

By the time you’re reading this, the eternal struggle  between good and evil will probably have been decided, and either the Patriots or the Giants will have won the Super Bowl. How ironic that the real Giants – the 1%, masquerading as Patriots – are waging a real battle for control over our nation, and they’re winning. The Koch Brothers had their double super-secret meeting to discuss how they’ll spend over $100 MILLION on the candidates who’ll do their bidding in 2012 and beyond, Multimillionaire Mittens finally outed himself as not giving a flying, um, fig… for the poor, and said he’s not worried about them because they have a safety net. Is that the net you have routinely favored chopping huge holes in, Mitt? The one the Ryan Plan, which you support, would rip to smithereens? The only net that will remain in place if Romney wins in 2012 is the one that keeps the Chinese workers at Apple from leaping to their deaths as they try to commit suicide rather than continue to live and work in abject squalor so we can all have bright, shiny iPhones.

We covered that little story last week, and then we saw a few media outlets and blogs cover it this week, including the fact that the iPhones are made by hand, not because that’s the best way to build them, but because it’s the cheapest way. American corporations, turning people into slaves who drop over dead after 34-hour shifts, who’d rather dive to their deaths than live another day. That’s what American corporations do if nobody regulates them – and they’d love to do it here, were it not for those pesky unions and labor laws that unions made possible. Because Americans are too lazy to die on an assembly line for a few pennies a day, they have to take that work to places where life sucks so bad that a job that makes people want to kill themselves seems like the lesser of evils. Of course, other countries fine and tax corporations who outsource labor to other countries. Here, we reward it.

Speaking of rewarding, it’s been an interesting week in social media, and those of us who tout its value in dissent and grassroots discourse saw that it was not only where the only real coverage of the Komen scandal could be found – of course, how could the networks cover it when they’re all taking hundreds of thousands in ad revenue to promote the upcoming (and seemingly ongoing) Komen 3-Day?  – but it was also where the public’s outrage was successfully voiced, resulting in Komen’s board walking back their attempt to cease funding for Planned Parenthood. Seems their board realized that their having yanked the funding was pissing off the very people they rely on for donations. And, much to our delight, about $3 MILLION in donations to Planned Parenthood resulted. Maybe Komen should try to sabotage women’s healthcare every day! Apparently, there isn’t much money to be made in birth control, pre-natal care, and all the other valuable services Planned Parenthood provides – Komen only cares about the cash machine they’ve made out of breast cancer.

So… speaking of cash, we hope if you had any money on the Super Bowl, your team won. If not, we hope you enjoyed the ads or perhaps Madonna’s half-time show. She said earlier this week that she had to do a good job, because the Super Bowl is “the holiest of holies” in America. Sadly, she may be right. When it comes to an excuse to drink to excess, suck down greasy snack foods, and cheer for grossly-overpaid people committing sanctioned acts of violence, where else would Americans be worshipping this Sunday, other than in front of their large-screen TVs?

Onward, Christian Soldiers! Here are this week’s links:

New Rules for Radicals Austerians Attack

NFL Union

Socialist Super Bowl?

Know Nothing – and Proud Of It?

Chrysler’s Turnaround

What Could Go Wrong? Ari Fleischer and Susan Komen

5 Important Lessons from the Komen/PPFA Fiasco

6 Things you Need to Know About the Komen/PPFA Fiasco

The Whole Komen Story

Komen Foundation Gave Penn State (under investigation) $7.5 Million Grant

AZ GOP Lawmaker Wants a White People Holiday

Koch Brothers’ Super Secret Meeting

Ron Paul is Wrong about “Honest Rape”

Paul Krugman on Mitt Money

The Mormon’s Eternal Plan

Another Reason to Buy Lots of Girl Scout Cookies This Year

Much like the lie-laden GOP rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union address, fruity cereals are artificially flavored and colored, and not very good for you. Not that the True Believers who bought Mitch Daniels’ rebuttal hook, line, and sinker would know that. Surprisingly, it’s not just lack of information that leads to arch conservatism – it’s also due to plain old stupidity. According to a recent study, a low IQ tends to make people follow conservative ideologies, fear change, and support draconian (go ahead, go look that one up - we’ll wait…) laws, policies regarding behavior, and punishments for breaking the law. Who’d a thunk it?

This explains, of course, the fact that only 17% of Fox viewers went to college, and how successfully the GOP candidates can use outright lies to keep their base spun up. Of course, they need outright lies, because the truth undermines their candidates. The economy is getting better. The bail-out of the automotive industry did save hundreds of thousands of jobs and prevented financial ruin. Green energy and rebuilding our infrastructure would generate jobs and stimulate the economy, and the GOP is blocking any forward movement on a jobs bill. The 1% are continuing to ship jobs overseas rather than hire Americans, and oh that’s right – Osama bin Laden is still dead. The list goes on and on.

Of course, the SOTU did have a few holes in it, and we enumerate them in today’s show. It also included misguided support for fracking, a practice that’s already ruining the drinking water for thousands (soon to become millions) of people, livestock, and wildlife living within the Marcellus Shale. So over here on the left, where we may have some bizarre ideas (take care of the poor, support the middle class, stop bombing other countries, don’t deny people the right to vote, take care of the environment), we are completely capable of finding and pointing out fault in our leaders – even the ones we voted for.

Speaking of voting, we hope the residents of Massachusetts will give Elizabeth Warren their votes, and get rid of Scott “Centerfold” Brown. Her 30-second smack-down (see today’s links) of Mittens Romney is proof enough of her wisdom and willingness to call a spade a bloody shovel. Of course, it’s been a while since intelligence and directness were respected traits in this country. We now worship wealth and celebrity, elevating Kardashians, former Playboy Bunnies and reality show “stars,” toddlers in beauty pageants, and illiterate alcoholics from New Jersey to the pedestals we used to reserve for true geniuses and real heroes. We lionize a corporation that needs to install netting to catch the bodies of suicidal employees (we’re talkin’ ’bout YOU, Apple!) and racist wingnuts cheer when an ignorant hag waves her bony finger in the President’s face, in an unforgivable public show of disrepect for that office.

The left may have thought Bush was an actual moron, and we may have expressed real outrage for his policies and lies, but none of our Congresspeople ever yelled “You lie!” during a Presidential address. We, unlike the rabble on the right, know how to sit quietly and behave when tradition and decency require it. We also had enough ammo to oppose Bush based on the real things he did and said, and didn’t have to make things up (we’re talkin’ ’bout YOU, Mittens!)  to invent an opponent one could successfully oppose.

Progressives may also smoke more pot, but according to another study (as you’ll discover in the Lunatic Fringe segment), this is far less dangerous for everyone than drinking. Humans need an escape, they need to zone out – now more than ever. The pharmaceutical companies don’t want weed to be legal, because that’d cut into their sales of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. The government wants to keep it illegal so the for-profit prisons can keep their populations high (so to speak) and we can continue to incarcerate 10% of our population, most of which is poor. It’s also easier to demonize a plant that anyone can grow and profit from and to turn the growers into criminals than it is to get eliminate the reasons people are so damn stressed out in the first place.

So, with or without some herbal relaxation, go have a bowl of Fruit Loops and enjoy this week’s links:

Study Links Low IQ and Conservative Ideology

Unite Against Citizen’s United

9 Crucially Important Issues Obama Ignored in the SOTU

Mitch Daniels’ ReBUTTal to the SOTU

Mitch Daniels Blew It

Apple Driving Workers to Mass Suicide?

Swiss Mitt: Out of Touch

Mittens’ Blind Trust Not so Blind

Warren’s Romney Smack-Down

Could be a Bad Day for the Boehner

Paula Deen: Diabetes Machine

Tacos for Everyone in CT

Jan Brewer Caption Contest

5 Reasons to Get Stoned Instead of Drunk

SOPA is dead, but other dissent-silencing bills (masquerading as anti-piracy bills) are still out there, lurking. The XL Pipeline was rejected, but only for procedural reasons, and there’s still a chance that it will be reviewed and then OK’d after the election, no matter who wins the White House. So we’re safe for now, but we’ll be fighting these same demons again, and soon. The greed and power-mad motives behind these issues won’t just go away.

What we aren’t safe from  – not even for a little while – are the 8,346 GOP debates to go before their convention. The “show” will go on, spinning up their base, gathering donations from the rabid fringe who supports their views, and inventing “news” to throw on Obama. After all, as they’ve admitted, the GOP’s number 1 goal is to get him out of the White House. It’s not jobs, its not an economic recovery, it’s getting the Man with More Melanin out of the WHITE House. Apparently, it wasn’t named for its exterior paint color, but for the desired race of the primary occupant.

You know, maybe it’s true that a major factor in Obama’s election was his race. People wanted to see something long overdue happen. Good people wanted to see an important step happen for our nation. What’s not  a maybe is that the only reason there’s been such a violent reaction to his presidency from the right is his skin color. It’s not his policies or actions, because Obama hasn’t done anything dramatic. “Obamacare” may be considered socialism by some (people whose parents never bought the “S” volume of the encyclopaedia), but beyond that very anemic reform bill, what dramatic, objectionable things has he done? Closed Gitmo? Nope. Got rid of the Patriot Act? Nope. Ended the wars? Nope. He stuck to a timeline for exiting Iraq that was established before he took office, and his troop increases in Afghanistan were heralded on the right. So what’s he done? Reined in the banksters? Nope. Appointed “activist” wild-ass left-wing Supreme Court justices? Nope. Refused to sign a bill that lets the government detain US citizens for no reason? Nope. Signed it. He did give the OK to shoot Osama bin Laden in the face, but even the right-most of the right-wing won’t say that was a bad idea. He also saved the auto industry, which protected and restored hundreds of thousands of jobs – though that’s something the right likes to spin as yet another sign of his “socialist” agenda.  So anyway, where’s the radical move to the left? Never happened. That’s not to say we’d have been better off with The Angry Old Man and Wasilla Barbie. Nor would we be better off with Gingrich or Romney or Paul. Imagine the world they’d make. No middle class, just the very rich and the very poor. One religion. One race.  All to preserve a very cushy way of life for the One percent.

So what can we do? Keep yelling. Keep occupying. Keep informed. Don’t watch just one news channel or read one blog. Check out lots of news sources. You have time. Take the hour you’d have spent watching Paula Deen inject butter directly into her veins and poke around online. Read more than one newspaper. Follow a story for a whole week and see where it leads you. Listen to lots of voices. That, after all, is what a Democracy is all about. Why have free speech if we don’t listen to the people who make use of that freedom every day? We’re just one of the voices. And you have a voice, too, so use it. While you still can.

And here are this week’s links:

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

The REAL Keystone XL Pipeline Story

Obama’s Critics

Wisconsin Recall

Suing the President over NDAA

Wall Street Compensation

Newt”tens” Tax Plan

Mitt”ens” Tax Plan

Frothy’s Tax Plan

Ron Rand, er, Paul’s Plan

Government Investments

Bain (Romney) “Capitalism”

Ron Paul Linked to White Supremacist Island Invasion

Ron Paul Disowns Extremists, But Not Their Support

Kentucky’s “Ark Park”

Take Action! Tell USDA To Do Its Job And Reject 2,4-D (Agent Orange!) Resistant GE Corn

That’s how they’ve got us. From SOPA (the Stop Online Privacy…er, um… Piracy… Act) to the militarization of our local police all around the country, any attempt by the 99% to stand up for ourselves will be met with a set of tools designed to silence dissent and literally stomp on the dissenters. That’s if we can stand up, considering we’re all going to be clutching a chipped bowl and waiting in lines for gruel or ordering from the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s  – if we still have a car to take us to the drive-thru.

Is there a light on the horizon? Any hope at all? Can anyone steer us out of this mess? President Obama, who has been systematically thwarted any of the (too few) times he’s tried to do anything substantial, said that he wants all kids to have a chance to go to college. This is just “hubris,” however, according to Iowa’s almost-darling in a sweater vest, Rick Santorum. And the tension between the 1% and the 99% is just “envy” on the part of the have-nots, according to Mitt(ens) Romney. Oh, and Rick doesn’t want to help “Blaaah People,” and every single one of the GOP candidates is going to repeal health care reform and put an end to any assistance for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. You know, those lazy drains on society, who would work if only they weren’t being coddled by the Nanny State. They’ve got it all figured out.

Yes, folks, these are the people who hate our government, yet want to run it. They spout their divisive, twisted “logic” to the cheers of their base, a base that bizarrely enough includes people without a pot to piss in, who are out of work, eating soup and clipping coupons, but for some damn reason blame the single mom on welfare  or the family getting food stamps for that, rather than blaming the corrupt bedfellows in our Congress and our financial institutions, for the their plight. They’re our friends and neighbors, being duped by huge corporations who decide what we see and hear and think. Step right this way, folks. We’ll show you who to blame, which group to hate, which things to fear most. Step right this way. Oh, and don’t forget your ID, or we won’t let you vote. Take that, Granny. Just try to vote, Mr. Not White. We figure most of you will stay home on election day anyway, thanks to the Hope and Change that the elitist socialist Muslim in the White House failed to bring you. But just in case you want to cast your vote, we’ve made it as difficult as we can. Oh, don’t be silly. You’re welcome.  It was our pleasure.

So how did this country get its head so far up its collective @ss? When did it happen? Was it having an actual moron in the White House for 8 years? Was it the advent of Reality TV? Can silicone-stuffed “Housewives” and drunken nitwits from New Jersey literally take down a nation? Or was it the systematic purchasing of our media, our government, and by extension, our people by the 1%? The 1% who like being rich, who like how easy it was to get rich, how easy it is to stay rich, and who have no intention of letting anyone else onto the field, let alone leveling it so everyone can play?

Maybe it was all of those things. Maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe those of us screaming about it are just wasting our breath. But hey, if you’re reading this, we still have the right to scream and we might as well scream while we can still be heard.

And here, while we’re still allowed to share ‘em, are this week’s links:

Voting Guide

Stop Online Privacy

Police State

Evangelicals Love Santorum

Rick Santorum Doesn’t Want to Help Blaaa People

Bill O’Reilly Admits That Most of the People on Welfare are WHITE

Romney vs. the GOP

Teachers are Heroes

Popped Culture

Dolphins with Friggin’ Laser Beams

It occurs to me that at the end of the show, when we listed all the holidays to be celebrated at this time of year — so we wouldn’t leave anyone out — we forgot Festivus. Festivus, For The Rest of Us. It’s a great metaphor for the Occupy Movement – the identification and unification of 99% of us — the rest of us — who live paycheck to paycheck, who don’t have a yacht or a plane or a luxury vacation home. Who may not have had a vacation in years, who have a fixed amount to spend on food and gas, so that the roof and the heat and the lights stay on, who either forgo saving for retirement to pay for health insurance, or just pray that they don’t get sick. For whom a movie or dinner out is a big deal, something to be saved up for, if it’s not a complete impossibility. Most of us.

Part of the celebration of Festivus is the Airing of Grievances, and I think it’s about time more of us did that, in loud voices. That’s one of our goals here each week, to air what’s been kept quiet, to talk about what should have been news, and to point our fingers at the bad guys — the Guardians of Privilege, the religious whackos, the greedy,  and the cruel practitioners of Social Darwinism. The same people who have other countries giggling at us, as our GOP candidates trade moronic statements in their weekly debates. The countries who came through centuries of aristocracies and dictators and famines and plagues, whose streets ran with blood as wars literally took place on their soil — they’re the ones laughing at us because we’re such freakin’ babies. Our 1% are like toddlers who don’t want to share their toys, who’ll rip the head off the teddy bear rather than let someone else hold it in their arms for just a moment. And 99% of us have been — and many remain — mute, accepting the rules like the kid on the playground who just tries to be invisible, rather than standing up to the bully.

So… it’s time to stand up — and continuing our Festivus metaphor, that means it’s time for The Feats of Strength. That’s where one of the guests must wrestle the head of the household, and try to pin him or her. The holiday can’t end until the host is pinned. Of course, the difference between a Festivus wrestling match and our country is that for years, virtually every city and town in the US has been gearing up for the the day when the people would have had enough, and that’s where you get police who use pepper spray like air freshener, where Podunk towns have tanks and a police force with SWAT training. The 1% has no intention of being pinned, no intention of letting their holiday end.

Of course, if we don’t gather our collective strength — our voices, our pens, our keyboards, our dollars, our votes — and pin the bullies, we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame when President Gingrich is sworn into office in 2012 or King Bush III (Jeb) is coronated in 2016. Think of the world either of these multimillionaires would build for themselves and their pals — and how much it will suck to be a serf on their land. Their land filled with fracking holes, with water that catches fire, with a McDonald’s on every corner, so they can tell us there are still job opportunities and good food for anyone willing to work for them.

Happy Holidays, folks.

Here are this week’s links:

 Tax the Rich to Heal the Poor

Social Darwinism

The President’s Speech

Occupy Updates including the “Mockupation”

The Saving American Democracy Amendment

Who are the 1%’ers?

How Corporations Became People

Fracking is Bad!

The Drudge Retort: the Postal Service

Save the Debate!

You’re a Mean One Newt Gingrich

Who Watches the Worst Shows on TV?

Death by Orgasm?

Festivus

Several of this week’s stories got Don’s co-host rather spun up. Hopefully, even if you aren’t moved to start yelling and spewing invectives (go get the dictionary… we’ll wait…), you’ll at least be a little irritated by further attempts by the Guardians of Privilege (yes, that’s the GOP) to block taxes and fees on the excruciatingly rich in favor of further reaming of the middle class and poor, the insurance companies’ attempts to circumvent one of the more effective parts of “Obamacare” (you know, the part where the law now requires them to spend 80% of their revenue on providing medical services), and of course, ongoing attempts to marginalize the Occupy movement – literally, by evicting the demonstrators from various parks and public spaces, and figuratively, by critiquing their mic-check events for production value. Who cares if every one of their attempts to speak up and speak out doesn’t go perfectly? That’s the whole point. 99% of us don’t have our own TV and radio outlets. 99% of us don’t have billionaires funding our campaigns. Any noise we make, even if it’s not perfectly-executed, is important and essential to ending the strangle-hold the 1% has on the airwaves, print news, and even online “news” (yeah, we’re talkin’ about you, Newsmax!).

Of course, in addition to all the serious, rant-inspiring news, we’ve covered Donald Trump’s plans to moderate another GOP presidential debate, Herman Cain’s implosion (he’d better hire a food-taster at home, because no court in the land would convict his wife if she poisoned him), and the fact that Frank Luntz (GOP strategist/pundit extraordinaire) is “scared” of the Occupy movement and had some advice for GOP governors, who gathered recently in Florida. “Don’t mention ‘capitalism’,” he suggests, along with “Don’t say ‘bonus’ – say “pay-for-performance’.”  Uh, OK. Keep screwing 99% of the people who live in your state, just be more artful in your description of the rape. Got it.

Of course, we wrap up with the Lunatic Fringe, and this week’s edition includes everything from finally being able to use the bible to support the idea of economic equality to the most horrifying impact of climate change (hint: it could affect the beverage Ben Franklin said is proof that God loves us), and the pitfalls of prostitution. Can you say “Who’s your daddy?”

So on that provocative note, here are this week’s links:

The GOP Presidential Apprentice starring Donald Trump

Herman Cain: The Spin Hurts

Herman Cain Goes Down Swinging the Stupid Stick

Mayor Bloomberg Unplugged

Occupy Evictions

Refusing to Evict a 103 Year Old Woman

LA Mayor: It’s the Children

Roemer: Romney is the 1% and Gingrich is Their Lobbyist

Gingbamacare

GMAC Retaliates

The Payroll Tax

Boehner and Chickensh*t

The 7.77 Trillion Dollar Plan

Minimal Coverage of Defense Authorization Bill

Lunatic Fringe:

Luntz is “Scared”

Professor Bachmann and the US Embassy in Iran?

Oh, Siri

Global Warming Hates Beer

Fox LOVES Solar Power

The Prostitute’s Father

Zach Wahls explains : “The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.”

Not many of our listeners will see themselves in a list of traits that indicate that one might be a fascist – but you may recognize one or more of the relatives you’ll be dining with this Thanksgiving – so this week’s show is intended to give our progressive listeners some ammo to fire back across the mashed potatoes when Uncle Wingnut starts badmouthing the Occupiers or talking about how great President Cain or Gingrich would be for our country. If anyone speaks longingly about President Perry or Bachmann, you have our permission to dump the closest bowl of those tiny gherkin pickles nobody eats on that person’s head.

So what kind of sense were we able to make of this week’s news? Well, the reopening of the Natalie Wood case is surely a distraction, now that interest in the minute-by-minute goings-on at Penn State have died down. Can’t have the voters watching the news and seeing, um… news, now can we? And what’s more distracting than the thought of  a jowly, bloated Robert Wagner having to face the press to talk about how he’s quite sure he didn’t push his wife off the boat? Or better yet, the always-a-little-bit-crazy Christopher Walken trying to recount the minutes and hours of that fateful boat trip? That beats the heck out of insider trading in Congress or PA’s own (gag) Pat Toomey planning to strip the middle class of all their tax deductions. What a yawn that would be!

And how about the new role peppers play in our lives? Not only are they a common addition to pizza, which has now been classified a vegetable, their eye-scorching, breath-stealing oils are apparently the weapon of choice for cops trying to control the Occupy demonstrators. You must watch the video (see link below) if you haven’t seen it already. Hell, if you’ve seen it, watch it again. It’s great to see our sainted police protecting and serving the sh*t out of us. Are these jackbooted thugs just taking orders? Or does the instruction to “keep order” mean “crack skulls and burn faces” in modern parlance?

Speaking of pigs, we did find out how many of the 4-legged porcine variety were stolen in Minnesota last year, and how many bibles have been to the moon, and that way too many mommies are reading People magazine. The list of interesting facts, figures, and frightening pieces of information appears below – so check out the links. We even give you lots of quotes from our favorite Senator, Bernie Sanders – he tells it like it is, and you can, too.

Hey, you can’t say we didn’t provide plenty of information with which to arm yourselves at Thanksgiving dinner – enjoy your holiday!!!

This week’s links:

OCCUPIED Constitutional Amendment

The 99% Deficit Proposal

New Polling on OWS: It’s not what you think

Occupy Cleveland Saves Woman’s Home

 This is Far From Over

Militarizing the Police

Shocking Police Violence

Hey Kids, Want Some Pepper Spray?

The Pepper Spraying Incident Video

Obsessed With Bodily Fluids

Bernie Sanders Tells It Like It Is

Democrats – Stop Caving In

A Guide to the Right Wing Smear Machine

Newt and the 99%’ers

Newt and Freddie

The Great GOP Primary Crash and Burn

Pizza is a Vegetable

Michele Bachmann Sees Giants

Michele Bachmann Gets Mic Checked

The “Purpose” of Banking

The GOP Insiders

Before it was Fast and Furious, it was Wide Receiver

You Might be a Fascist if…

We’ve become a people who cheer when someone says that anyone who can’t get a job should starve, who cheer when someone endorses torture, and who riot when a football coach is fired – after he failed to do everything in his power to stop a retired member of his staff from raping children. The rape of children and the coverup didn’t create the outcry, firing a revered football coach did. How back-asswards is THAT?

The GOP’s candidates – the cheerleaders for cruelty and greed – are clueless, heartless, and truly have no interests other than protecting their wealthy benefactors, and themselves. And several of these contenders are or were elected to public office, by Americans. The only one we didn’t elect is Herman Cain, and he’s a fast food executive – with no knowledge of or interest in history, government, or 99% of Americans he hopes to lead.

The public seems to be waking up, but will we wake up in time to save the millions of Americans who live in abject poverty? The millions of homeless American children? The American kids going to bed hungry every night?  We think entitlements and safety net programs are expensive now – imagine the cost of losing an entire generation of people – who have no job skills, no idea what it’s like to work at a job that pays the bills or live in a decent home  – and trying to run a productive society and support a complex economy at the same time. You can’t let millions of Americans grow up with no chance of ever making a life for themselves and then whine when those same people can’t find work and have given up on themselves and on the system that they never got a chance to be part of, but that now expects them to work within it.

How does a kid who lives in a car or on a cot at a shelter do her homework? How does someone who’s scraping by on >$11K a year support their family and get job training so they can do better than a minimum-wage job? The answer? They can’t. How can the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth survive letting so many of its citizens live this way? The answer? It can’t. Make that WE can’t.

But what are we going to do about it? First, as an eloquent little girl said to the UN, back in 1992, if you can’t fix it, stop breaking it. We have to stop, right now, and decide which way we want to go. The direction we’ve been going doesn’t work, surely. Poverty is at an all-time high. Economic disparity makes some third-world countries look benevolent. The rich are getting richer, yet they’re not creating jobs, and their hand-picked legislators are blocking anything resembling a jobs bill or any kind of regulation of the thieves who put us where we are. We’re cheering death and blame and cruelty, and jeering – and worse – at peaceful protesters who may not have a marketing plan, but they sure know they want answers and they want a better life for everyone.

Are we a nation of greedy, cold-hearted serfs who live to support their billionaire masters? Or are we a nation of people who want everyone to live a decent life and who see the value of providing access to all the tools a person needs to build that for themselves? You can’t “teach a man to fish” if you won’t even show him where we keep the fishing poles and the lake is poisoned. What have we become?

Some of the answers – or at least clues to find them – appear in this week’s links:

Extreme Poverty in the US

Repealing the Tea Party Agenda

10 Ways the Occupy Movement Changes Everything

Pray Away the Occupy Movement

Financial Transaction Tax: 10 Ways the Occupy Movement Changes Everything

Audit the B@stards!

The Whole Story on Penn State

Jon Stewart on Penn State

What Do Joe Paterno and Herman Cain Have in Common?

OWS vs. PSU

Daily Beast Op-Ed: Good Riddance, Joe Paterno

Trading Places

Let’s Purge the Muslims

The Fastest Flip-Flop Ever

Earthquakes: God or Fracking

Gitmo: The Most Expensive Prison Ever

The Girl Who Silenced the World

Why are the Occupy protesters outraged? Could it be billions in corporate profits on which no taxes were paid? Or an 85% raise for yet another CEO, while regular Americans are losing their homes? Could it be that the “job creators”, despite having incredible stockpiles of cash, refuse to generate any jobs for Americans? Could it be yet another insensitive, lying mayor, trying to twist the truth about how banks have torpedoed our economy and our lives? Or how about more violence against peaceful protesters?

Why do working-class Americans tend to vote Republican, despite the GOP’s complete lack of interest in their needs? Could it be the success of the spin-meisters who’ve pitted us all against each other?

Who the hell is Herman Cain kidding with his pimp hat and claims of no recollection of multiple charges of sexual harassment?

How much money do the Kock Brothers need? A whole lot more, apparently.

Why did a man mistake a donkey for a “shapeshifting” prostitute? Who the hell knows. It’s just a fun question to ask.

These are just some of the questions we attempted to answer this week. With the help of our hopefully sensible discussion and the following links, perhaps we’ve cleared things up… a little:

Scott Walker gets the People’s Mic

Move Your Money

Senate Dems Introduce Constitutional Amendment

Boulder, CO occupies the Ballot Box

Occupy Movement Updates

Another Iraq Vet Injured

Debunking Rumors by Mayor Bloomberg

Our Politicians are Money Launderers

30 Major Corporations Paid NO Income Taxes

Outrageous Oil Company Profits

Greenhouse Gases

Let’s Defund the EPA

What Makes People Vote Republican?

The Kill Jobs GOP Congress

Romney’s (ahem) Economic Plan

Let’s Mine the Grand Canyon

Keystone XL Pipeline

The Manufactured GOP Non-Scandal

In God the GOP Trusts

Herman Cain’s Brothers

AZ Governor’s Political Tampering

Who Needs Street Lights?

Which is Deadlier: Legal Pain Killers or Marijuana?

The Coolest Solar Technology You Have Never Heard Of

Drunken Man Has Sex with a Shapeshifting Prostitute

The Occupy Movement – which started on Wall Street and has spread across the country and throughout the world – hasn’t weakened. It’s growing. Of course, so has the violent reaction to it by city governments, ordering police to arrest and generally abuse the protesters. How come we never saw tear gas grenades lobbed or rubber bullets fired at Tea Partiers? Even when they were hoisting signs depicting a rifle scope on our president’s forehead? Even when they showed up ARMED to their protests? This week in Oakland, California, unarmed Occupy protesters, running to the aid of a fellow protester who was lying, bleeding in the street, were bombed by police. Unarmed protesters. Helping a man on the ground. Bombed by the police. <click link to view the video

You still think we’re free here? Think again. We’re only as free as our corporate masters, who hand-pick our legislators and governors, allow us to be. Don’t delude yourself. If it wouldn’t make for bad press that even CNN couldn’t twist and/or ignore, they’d be mowing the protesters down with automatic weapons. The press posts opinion as news, chooses to only show the most pierced and tattooed Occupy protesters, and says the movement has no cohesive message. The protesters are described as unemployed hippies, yet the crowds consist of young people, old people, children, families, firemen, Marines, business people, housewives, construction workers, people of all ages, educational levels, and professions. The only people NOT represented in the crowds are the multimillionaires and billionaires who are thriving in this economy, standing on the throats of the very people who make it possible for them to be rich beyond imagining. The Occupiers are truly representative of 99% of America – and the only 99%-ers who aren’t identifying with and supporting them are the ones who’ve been duped by Faux News, who completely misunderstand the economy, the Constitution, what the word “society” means, and the movement they’re making fun of.

The real 99%ers – the diverse, largely employed, and “normal” protesters – that’s a story the press won’t tell, of course. Instead, they denigrate the movement however and whenever they can. Why? Because the protesters are threatening – non-violently – the very hand that feeds the corporations who feed the press. You can’t do unbiased reporting on the Occupy movement if you’re also running ads for any of the hundreds of companies owned by the Koch Brothers, the oil companies, big agribusiness, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance companies… the list goes on and on. Again, the 2011 version of capitalism gives all the power to the 1% of people who have all the money, and the rest of us can just go f*k ourselves.

Of course, this is only a taste of things to come. Every foreclosure, every new bank fee, every month that goes by with no new jobs, every safety net program that’s cut – drives more and more people to the point where even the hardiest Fox News fan will be unable to swallow the lies anymore. People will take to the streets, and there will be violence from both sides – not just from the jackboots who mace women and throw tear-gas bombs onto war veterans.

It doesn’t have to come to that, though. If the 2012 elections throw the Tea Party candidates out, if we see jobs created, if we see some regulations put in place to stop the predatory practices of Wall Street, if we hear the calls to cut Medicare and Social Security stop, the protests will stop, too. There is just one message from the Occupy movement, even if it comes in the form of signs about everything from taxes to health care to war – the message is that we need to stop supporting the malicious greed of a handful of rich white men  – men who literally support the suffering of Americans, the destruction of our environment, and the end of our freedoms. It’s really that simple.

This week’s show, while largely about the Occupy movement, covers several other stories - from the GOP debates and the current field of nitwits running for president (now including the Koran-burning wingnut preacher, Terry Jones) – and also a story about a small dog whose brush with death highlights so many of the problems we’re dealing with around the country and the world.

How’s that, you say? Well, consider the story. A small beagle mix was dumped at an Alabama “shelter”, and he was shoved into their gas chamber, along with many other dogs, for one of the most brutal methods of “euthanizing” an animal imaginable. The animals are terrified and die, gasping, growling, snarling, digging to get to the top of the pile of bodies, until all the oxygen is replaced by carbon monoxide and their lungs and hearts explode from the pressure of the gas.  On this fateful day, however, the worker opened the chamber and a dog emerged, alive, and wagging his tail. The miraculous nature of this event obviously prevented the worker putting the dog back in for another gassing, and the dog, now named Daniel (for surviving his own “Lion’s Den”) is up for adoption through a New Jersey rescue group.

So where’s the allegory? How is this little tail-wagging fellow symbolic? Well, consider the kind of a world that throws animals away. Animals who were taken in as pets, but who outlive their cuteness or become a source of stuffy noses or who chew one too many shoes. Consider a world where the way to deal with those unwanted animals is to gas them in a completely barbaric device, something akin to what the Nazis used to kill 6 million Jews. Think about legislators who’ll vote against a law banning the chambers, because a handful of agribusinesses don’t want anyone to pass any law that controls how animals are killed – because it could lead to laws that cost factory farmers more money and infringe on profits.

This is the same world where people can step over homeless people on the street – and where we elect leaders who enact policies that increase the number of homeless people. This is the same world that will let people die rather than provide affordable health care for them. This is the same world that will give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and propose offsetting those tax breaks by making senior citizens have to choose between their medications and food. This is the same world that will let millions of children go to bed hungry every night, when such suffering can be prevented.This is the same world that will remove all regulation from industries that literally holds people’s lives in their hands.

It’s also the same world that looks the other way when tear-gas bombs are thrown at unarmed protesters. It’s all part of the same brutality. Daniel will get a home, and someone will love him for the rest of his life, and he’ll have plenty of reasons to keep wagging his tail. But how about the millions of Americans out of work? In foreclosure? Working three jobs just keep the lights on and food on the table? Such dire straits can become the reality for any member of the 99%. Many of us are just one paycheck away from losing our homes. Our savings are gone, and we’re out of prospects. That “many” will become “most” and then “all” in no time at all, if the 1% get their way. So go Occupy something. Work for a world where nobody is thrown away, where brutality is an aberration, not the norm. It’s not a silly idea, it’s not communism or socialism. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s something we can do, and that we must do.

Here are this week’s links:

The Motivation for the Occupy Movement

Occupy Oakland

Oakland PD Violations

Michael Moore Talks about the Occupy Movement on CNN (as promised)

Pseudo-Patriots

Occupy Movement: Obama’s Primary?

The 1%  Knowledge Theft

FDR’s Occupation

OWS: Changing the Discourse

Is it Time to Bailout Main St.?

Epic Fail by Faux News

Robert Reich: The Flat Tax Fraud

Flat Tax for the Fat Cats

GOP Job Killers

Perry’s Tax Plan

The Koch’s Climate Change

Koch-Cain

Meet Mark Block, the Smoking Man

Texas Gun Instructor

Sheriff Arpaio’s “Secret Plan”

Terry Jones for President?!?

PA Gas Boom Brings Crime and Carousers

Dog Survives Gas Chamber