Diana Thorn: The People’s Movement, the People’s Moment

» piaf on 03.01.10 @ 10:50 PM

Noozhawk, or hawk news?

FYI: the Tea Party is an astroturf organization.
See who’s funding the Tea Party movement:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement_funding

also FYI: i’m from MA and i can tell you, despite the surface result, there was MUCH more to Brown’s ‘win.’ Much more. John Walsh makes his case: http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh01202010.html

And then there are those who will no longetr participate in ‘Novemeber follies’; the numbers are growing…

My advice to all is: dig deep; not much is as it seems.

And importantly, btw: “liberal news” is a mantra dreamed up by the right. Repeat it enough and people believe it, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Calling the media liberal is like calling Israel a democracy. Our ‘news’, as a matter of fact, is controlled by zionists.
Sadly ...

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» GeeWillikersWally on 03.02.10 @ 03:42 AM

Is Thorn talking about the Scott Brown who a week or so after being seated proceeded to side with the “socialist, marxist, terrorist Obama” on the jobs bill? The new coming of Jesus cross voted and the rightwingnuts were boiling the tar and collecting feathers , further proving their ship is in serious need of rudder repair .

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» AN50 on 03.02.10 @ 10:07 AM

Emptynewsroom = emptyhead. That tea bagger insult you just through at your mother. I hope she appreciates what a wonderful conceited, narcissist she raised. Every time you brilliant geniuses insult the tea party movement you increase its size exponentially. But hey, you go on believing you are that smart and everyone else is that stupid.
As for your whiny crybaby mantra of “all the other socialist countries do it why can’t we” regarding the “public option”, why don’t you try it there first, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Fact is it doesn’t work anywhere it’s tried unless you are rich.  As for the defense budget, when we cut your crybaby friends in Europe off and force them to defend themselves we’ll see how long the stay solvent being the mother of all nannies. Oh wait a minute, they don’t pay for their own defense and they are already insolvent. Yikes! I guess not having the slightest idea how to make wealth and grow it really does matter.

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» John Locke on 03.02.10 @ 12:59 PM

Diana, I usually agree with much of what you write in the News Press, but here I think you’re a bit off target.  The conflict we have in the U.S. is between the radical Left and the radical Right.  Supposedly 65 or so percent of the country are Centrists (even in the failed state of California).

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» Coastal Local on 03.02.10 @ 02:23 PM

emptynewsroom,
Are you serious?  Our poor are the richest poor in the world.
Infant mortality?!  We have the best neonatal care in the world.  Look at Cottage Hospital.  Have seen where the ladies in England have to give birth in hallways?  Poor public education?!  How much money do we need to throw at the schools to educate our kids?  We are second highest in the world for $/child.  Maybe if it wasn’t for the teachers unions, we could hire and fire to get the best!  Forclosures?!  What caused that?!  Surely not the reinvestment act?!!!?  Let’s regulate the banks and force them to give loans to people with no stated income!  Of course banks always did that, right?  Never needed 10 to 20 percent down and an income to prove you can make your payments.  Banks just loaned to anybody and everybody so they could stay in business?!?  They were forced by your Franks, Dodds and Waters of the world as they were espousing that everything is just fine!  Have you ever looked at European unemployment?  They always average 15% or more, even worse when they try to create “green jobs”!  Seems we were at 4.5% a few years ago before the mortgage industry finally failed, which was caused by those mentioned above!  And they still want to give more!  The Tea Party are people who want common sense to take over and hopefully the next elections will reflect that.

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» John Locke on 03.03.10 @ 09:01 AM

Sounds like a number of folks in The Peoples’ Republic of Santa Barbara are scared to death of the Tea Party (not to mention being so obsessed with hate-spewing name-calling that they are incapable of posting a rational argument). 

News Flash: Diana Thorn is about as far right as you are far left. In spite of the socialist tendencies of a few, this is a center-right country. THAT is why Obama’s health care bill failed - too much big government.  Get over it.

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» Daniel Petry on 03.03.10 @ 10:32 AM

emptyhead.  This is too easy.  It is amazing how clueless you children are.  Predictably ignorant and while highlighting how morally bankrupt and racist you wannabe uber-lefts are.  Now as for your lies, you really do need to do your own thinking:

Let’s take these one at a time.  I would not want you tax your comprehension level.  Pay attention now.

“The U.S. has poverty levels not seen in any other industrialized nation?” 

Most government reports indicate that poor Americans today are better housed, better fed, and own more personal property than average Americans throughout most of this century. Today, inflation-adjusted expenditures per person among the lowest-income one-fifth of households (you know…the one you live in) equal those of the average American household in the early 1970s.

The following are facts about persons defined as being in poverty by the Census Bureau. To help emptyhead understand - The Census Bureau is that government department that counts things.

In 1995, 41 percent of all poor households owned their own homes.

The average home owned by a person classified as being impoverished has three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Only 7.5 percent of poverty households are overcrowded. Nearly 60 percent have two or more rooms per person.

This following fact is just for you Lenin loving, Cloward and Plevin suck ups.  The average poor American has one-third more living space than the average Japanese does and four times as much living space as the average Russian. 

Seventy percent of impoverished households own a car; 27 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent have a color television. Nearly half own two or more televisions.

Nearly three-quarters have a VCR; more than one in five has two VCRs.

Two-thirds of impoverished households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Sixty-four percent of the poor own microwave ovens, half have a stereo system, and over a quarter have an automatic dishwasher.

As a group, the impoverished are far from being chronically hungry and malnourished. In fact, impoverished persons are more likely to be overweight than are middle-class persons. Nearly half of poor adult women are overweight.

Despite frequent charges of widespread hunger in the United States, 84 percent of the poor report their families have enough food to eat; 13 percent state they sometimes do not have enough to eat, and 3 percent say they often do not have enough to eat. 

The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children, and in most cases is well above recommended norms.

Children in poverty actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes that are 100 percent above recommended levels.

Most poor children today are in fact super-nourished, growing up to be, on average, one inch taller and ten pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

By the way my lady says she loves Tea Baggers…since they are the only one’s who seem to have any balls.  So if you want to call me a Tea Bagger, thanks.  Yep, I’m a Tea Bagger and proud of it.  Daniel Petry

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» Daniel Petry on 03.03.10 @ 12:14 PM

Diana, good article.  It’s humorous how the infants are so afraid of the Tea Party.

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» emptynewsroom on 03.03.10 @ 01:39 PM

Daniel Petrie: Methinks doth protest too much. Again, if everything is so darn-tooting wonderful in the last bastion of democracy (ha!), then why all the handwringing by the GOP, Fox News and the right wingers? The coffers have been pillaged by the Pentagon, the ruling elite and Wall Street with the result that the middle class is being shrunk more quickly than it grew just after WWII. As usual, fear and misinformation seem to be the last, best refuge of scoundrels who have already worn out the cloak of patriotism that have used to hide behind. I tend more each day to agree with Bill Kristol who said recently, “Americans don’t deserve health care.” To his comment I would add, “or informative news, fair elections, well paying jobs, corruption-free elected representatives, or a third party, which might be the only thing that can save them now.”

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» emptynewsroom on 03.03.10 @ 02:34 PM

Daniel Petry: I really wish I could determine what your point is in refuting the plain fact that America, with a lot of help from politicans from both parties, is living far beyond its means, is hamstrung with a broken system and is heading for disaster. $1 trillion a year on military expenditures? Graduates increasingly ill-equipped to go head to head with kids in India, China and elsewhere. Lobbyists and special interest groups corrupting our elected representatives. Fortune 100 companies that can’t compete because of health insurance costs and bankrupt pension funds. Openly rigged elections (voter caging) and third-rate journalism that speaks looks out for its coorporate owners’ interests more than the public’s. I know that as a staunch patriot hearing these facts is painful and you’d prefer they don’t exist. The odd thing is, you have written about all this in Noozwhawk as a columnist already. Its okay for you to state this reality, but no one else?

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» AN50 on 03.03.10 @ 03:37 PM

Emptyhead, you use research that calls itself unbiased but is full of the most absurd bias I have ever read (really, Media Matters, are you kidding me?). Get a clue will you? If I ask my kid if they want candy they will say “yes I do”. If I ask a voter if they want free government benefits I will get the same answer. Now if your marvelous unbiased commie professors at two well known left wing indoctrination camps asked people “do you want big government even if you can’t pay for it and even if it causes economic suffering later?” What do you think the answer would be? Of course your enemies those nasty ole conservatives have done such polling in response to this very kind of “targeted” research and guess what, genius? That’s right, if you ask the right questions you get the answer you want. Both sides do it. Just because you got an answer you targeted for does not make the country “progressive”.
But here is the question you should ask yourself. Forget Europe and all other socialist places, you don’t live there and most likely won’t. Instead think of your country as one big messy family. The manufacturing, extraction and agriculture sectors are the breadwinners, they bring home the bacon and they are the mom and dad. Government is your nanny. We conservatives are your older brother, still in school but working outside the house and trying to help dad with the income (entrepreneurs, small businesses, capitalists). You are the whiny little brother and sister who thinks by doing chores and earning an allowance that you are contributing to the household income (you may be helping with the labor but your allowance is a drain on the family income). You constantly complain that your older brother has more stuff and you should get more too. So mom and dad are attacked every day when they come home by you and the nanny, “we want more”. Meanwhile they tell dad his boots are dirty, his tools clutter the house and he needs to sleep outside because he snores. Mom isn’t fashionable enough or hip like your neighbors across the street. They are sick now and are not able to work as long and hard so the money is not coming in, even with older brother’s contribution. Nanny says no problem we have credit cards to make up the difference.
So what shape is our house in Emptyhead? Mom and dad are sick and dying, older brother is about to say screw you and go off on his own, leaving you and the nanny to fend for yourself with a load of debt you cannot pay back. Are you ready, spoiled, snot nosed, entitlement minded, whining crybaby jackass who complains but has no freaking clue how it works or how to work? When the money making end of our economy is taxed to death, the movers and shakers give up and go somewhere else you have nothing but a useless nanny and a crybaby left. Oh, what will you do?
No offense to you nannies out there or government. No offense to you whiny liberal/progressives either just want you to realize who butters the bread and on which side. And yes, I did not make government “head of the household”. Sorry to all you love government types but the head of the house is he who brings home the food and pays the rent and that ain’t yer nanny.
BTW – keep up the good work Diane and Dan!

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» emptynewsroom on 03.05.10 @ 12:50 PM

I’m not sure why folks of a conservative bent are so riled up these days but here’s a suggestion. Why not insist your government provide you with basic services that are largely taken for granted in most civilized nations (you know, national health care, exceptional public education, trustworthy elections, an intelligent national energy policy, consumer protection laws, anti trust legislation, safe food, water and air, world class airports, rail, mass transit and infrastructure) instead of watching like sheep as they blow all your money on defense, pork projects and other forms of corruption. The degree that the U.S. citizenry is uninformed and complacant is simply mind boggling. That is, until you consider how third rate and fake the news is that is spewed forth by the corporations that now run the country. As Jon Stewart once said to Tucker Carlson on CNN’s Crossfire: “You’re hurting the nation. Just stop.” Luckily for the ruling class, the feds and big business, there is almost no chance anyone is going to wake up any time soon. Now, go back to attacking “liberals” and anyone else actually trying to move the country into the 20th century. (This is where you post angry responses telling me I hate America and that I should leave the country.)

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» emptynewsroom on 03.05.10 @ 02:27 PM

The problem with the political debate today is that too many people are anti government when what they should be insisting on is good governance. Few presidents grew government and the nation’s debt more than Ronald Reagan ($1.3 trillion debt to over $3.5 trillion) and George Bush (while delivering almost nothing to the voter and taxpayer) and yet they’re held up as examples of “fiscally responsible small government” leaders. Couple that with asinie statements like the nation is on the “precipice of disaster…as a result of more than 100 years of progressive policies” (what, the GOP has had no power since 1900?) and you can see why the country is so polarized. A third or even fourth political party, the abolishment of campaign financing and an end to all lobbying and the transparancy of a parliamentary system are the only things that can get the country back on track. None of these things are likely to happen, of course.

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» AN50 on 03.10.10 @ 02:54 PM

Publius, no one is questioning the exorbitant spending habits of Bush and Co. The GOP suffered quite a backlash in 2006 as a result. All this argument shows is all politicians are tax and spend, liars, cheats and thieves, all of them. You and your liberal/progressives keep looking at the two teams and seeing they are the same and calling us conservatives hypocrites. No Publius we are not. We also punish our team when they stray from our principles even while they delude themselves into thinking that’s not what happened.
The Tea Party is made up of the same people who voted against or not at all for the GOP in 2006 and 2008. They are the same people who voted for Obama in 2008 and then realized that this guy was the Chicago mobster the right warned them about.  They realized this guy had an ideological agenda and anyone not a liberal progressive was an idiot and in the way. You and many liberal/progressives have made the stupid error in assuming that a grassroots movement not rooted in socialism or paid for by George Soros is phony. You insulted, besmirched and lorded over these Tea Party people and basically chased them into the dark clutches of the RNC. Had you embraced the common message Tea Partiers were saying then you might have had a small chance at swaying them your way. But let’s face it Publius, most of the rotten economy we have today is the result of 40 years of socialist creep in our government and economy and that creep as been ushered by BOTH parties.
BTW – you ought to listen to Rush some time. I don’t get the chance very often but when I do the man makes a lot of sense. Can’t understand why that bothers you liberals so much.

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» Daniel Petry on 03.10.10 @ 09:13 PM

I agree.  All conservatives, republicans, libertarians and anyone who does not hold the faith of progressives should be rounded up and herded into education camps.  My god can you imagine a world where everyone knows that the someone else pays for them?  Nirvana.  Simply nirvana.  Wait!  We are in nirvana…we are in California.

I’ve been meaning to ask…can I borrow the keys to your condo?  How about a dime?  Daniel Petry

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