Angry Rants with lots of Links

Will the Democrats take Congress? I doubt it very much. Electoral Vote shows the polls would give us an even Senate, but a Democrat House. CQ Politics is less certain about the House.

Bill "Falafel" O'Reilly wants to kill me with a hand grenade. And people wonder why bloggers think the guy is a moron and a propagandist? He also doesn't realize that most of the blogosphere isn't paid for what they write. I suppose he's so used to getting bribed by Republicans that he can't believe everybody isn't on the take.

Speaking of which, who pays? The Corporate Owned Media controls exactly what you see and hear and read, and the folks running the media are birds of a feather. Six companies control 90% of the media holdings in the United States. Six white male billionaires shape the media.

Another terrorist. But no Republican seems inclined to stop this guy or his ilk, and I've seen Republicans cheer him on and encourage his behavior.

The value of local businesses:

• 6 cents of every dollar spent with a big box retailer is retained or recirculated in a community. [Rocky Mountain Institute]
• 20 cents of every dollar spent with a chain store is retained or recirculated in a community. [Small Business Administration]
• 60 cents of every dollar spent with a sole proprietorship is retained or recirculated in a community. [Small Business Administration]

Buying local is 10 times more useful to your community than going down to buy the cheap and shoddy goods at your local Generic-Mart.

Arizona is stealing money from wire transfers, if either name is vaguely Hispanic. They've stole $17 million dollars from average citizens so far with a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude.

A Republican candidate for state superintendent of schools in Oklahoma has proposed using textbooks as shields against bullets in school shootings. To promote his idea, he got together a group of like-minded friends and they shot up a bunch of textbooks to show that the books might stop a pistol bullet (but not much else). That's the Republican way... shoot up books instead of reading them.

Medical help is rare in Iraq. Why are so many Iraqis dying needlessly? Maybe it's because they have no health care. At all.

Iraqi bloggers discuss the current situation in Iraq and whether or not the war was worth it.

And on the home front, WHY ARE FAMILIES OF AMERICAN SERVICEMEN HAVING TO BEG FOR FOOD?!???!???? We can spend billions of dollars on Halliburton giving our troops dirty water, but we can't pay our soldiers enough to support their families? This is compassionate conservatism? Support the troops by saying you support the troops, but if they need any real help, just let them starve?

Pat Tillman's Birthday.

He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice... until we get out.