Jesse Ventura steps into America’s most controversial conspiracy by challenging the 9/11 Commission Report and searching for evidence that the September 11th attacks may have been an inside job. At the urging of victims families, he finds witnesses who claim the towers were brought down by explosives, the missing black box flight recorders were actually recovered and ground control knew the hijackers were in the cockpits before the jets took off.
There are some things I need to talk out. I don’t know what will come of what I will type here. Hell I don’t know what I will say as I type this. But I know I may be about to lose every friend I ever had with this. Doesn’t matter. My life as I know it is over anyway. So I might as well say a few things. Maybe you can help. Maybe not. Maybe you will un-friend me. As I said it doesn’t matter any way.
I will be 55 this April. A long time for what has amounted to a lot of nothing. In 55 years, I have accomplished pretty much nothing of what anyone calls significance. Oh, yes, every dream I have had HAS come true except two. But it is those two things that has branded me a failure (please don’t harp on the grammar, that is the least of my worries right now).
One is a relationship. That Someone that everyone says you are supposed to have in your life. That woman who will love you unconditionally, be on your arm, chide you when you do wrong, and make mad passionate love to you because you are you. That person is nowhere in sight. Oh there are friends. I am a great FRIEND. But there is no one who thinks of me as That Person. None at all.
Complicating matters is that I am honest about who I am. I am bisexual, but I seek a female mate. I am poly-amorous, but I seek that one partner who feels about sex, love, and other things the way I do. I am also fat, ugly, too smart enough for the room. I am not what the market demands.
My views on sex, politics, life are too far out of the “mainstream” for the average person. I am not a love-the-outdoors/walks-on-the-beach person.
The other? I don’t know what a success is, but I am not that. The economy was really bad to me last year. My income was in the four figure area. The LOW for figure area.
People say that I am intelligent, witty, professional. I have never drank or done drugs. Yet, I made much less money as people one would consider lushes.
You can imagine what that means for things like, say shelter.
Dreams and goals right now are empty words. They say that in America anyone can have a dream come true. What they do not say is that it takes two people to do that. And I am totally incompatible with the planet. Plus, with “relatability” comes all the lies people tell themselves, their spouses, their “friends.” yeah, if you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth….but the real “truth” does come out. And I can’t lie that well.
So if you are reading this….maybe you are a friend or someone connected to me, or you just wandered in….I need help. Not money. Advice. Real advice. Not the keep-your-chin-up-stay-positive typ of advice. Please remember, the last time someone was siging something about looking on the bright side of life, he was tied to a couple of boards (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ).
I’m looking for an idea, something that I can do that can turn this life around. SOmething concrete, where I don’t have to offer my soul or anything, but where I can finally put in the final pieces to this puzzle No jokes, no sacrcasm. Something real.
The Camel News Caravan was a 15 minute American television news program aired by NBC News from February 14, 1949 to October 26, 1956.
Sponsored by the Camel cigarette brand and anchored by John Cameron Swayze, it the first NBC news program to use NBC filmed news stories rather than movie newsreels.
On February 16, 1954, the Camel News Caravan became the first news program broadcast in color, making use of 16mm color film. In early 1955, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, maker of Camel cigarettes, cut back its sponsorship to three days a week.
Chrysler’s Plymouth division sponsored the other days, and on those days, the program was labelled the Plymouth News Caravan. The program featured a young Washington correspondent named David Brinkley. It competed against Douglas Edwards with the News on rival CBS. With greater resources, the News Caravan attracted a larger audience that its CBS competition until 1955.
Network news had a humble beginning. Launched on February 16, 1948 by NBC, Camel Newsreel Theatre was a 10-minute program that featured Fox Movietone News newsreels. John Cameron Swayze provided voice-over for the series. The Camel News Caravan was an expanded version of the “Camel Newsreel Theatre”.
The Camel News Caravan was replaced by the Huntley-Brinkley Report on October 29, 1956. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had word passed to NBC’s White House correspondent that the president was displeased by the switch. In late 1961 and early 1962, Swayze served as one of three anchors of ABC News’s evening news program but was better known for his appearances in commercials for Timex watches.
This is what the news looked like in 1955.
Notice that it was almost hard to tell the news story from the commercial.
In other words, if you think things are bad NOW…….
The Cube’ (ITV, Saturday) – Phillip Schofield hosts this new game show which tests contestants’ skill, nerve and determination to win.
‘The Cube’ will challenge members of the public to attempt apparently simple tasks under the spotlight in a large perspex cube – intensifying the pressure. With each task worth a cash prize, the challenger will have to keep their nerve in this high-pressure game of skill and strategy to move higher up the board and closer to the top prize of £250,000.
The challenges range from tasks of agility to seemingly straightforward trials such as bouncing a ball into a bin, or stopping a clock at precisely 10 seconds. ‘The Cube’ features state-of-the-art filming techniques to illustrate the intense pressure felt by the contestants.
Each player starts with nine lives and has to complete up to seven tasks to win the jackpot, but if they accept the challenge and lose all their lives, they leave with nothing.
Interviewed by Reginald Bosanquet on the memorial library to President Kennedy, how the President would have liked to be remembered and on his own career and family and how Jacqueline, Caroline and John jr. are getting along.
Interesting Archival Footage of Senator Kennedy on the campaign trail,speaking about Health Care…..thinking about a run for President in ‘76. From a collection we call ‘Lost Interviews’. Film that has been recently discovered, and preserved. Part of our collective history, when the News was a half hour, on three networks…and so much of this footage, has never been
seen before…’outtakes’ and ‘Trims’, worth taking a look at, and certainly worth archiving for the future.
Ted Kennedy on the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Senator Ted Kennedy delivered a powerful speech in favor of the Hate Crimes law on the Senate floor.
About six years ago, I was introduced to a man by the name of Donald Wildmon, a goofy-looking man in horn-rimmed glasses and, what appeared to me in his publicity shots as, no-neck. A preacher in Tupelo, MS who ran something called the American Family Association. And he and the AFA has a little problem with a TV show called Book of Daniel.
Book of Danielwas a show NBC ran a few years ago about a pastor of one of those TV-friendly non-denominational churches who talked to Jesus. Literally. JC would talk to this preacher in the car, while he was shaving, stuff like that. (I guess, at the time, if God could get a gig on CBS and Joan of Arcadia, why can’t the Kid?). Anyway Dr. Wildmon thought all of this was blasphemy. That at the drinking, sex, gay characters, etc. And he wanted the show off the air.
But instead of letting nature take it’s course….the show WAS on NBCafter all..Wilmon decided to bully NBC into removing the show. The started a boycott of the series and his reportedly one million AFA members started writing letters to BOD sponsors (actually they were form letters that you could send via their site….most of these people probably could not create an unique thought if you paid them). The show was eventually cancelled and they took that as a victory. From there they became dangerous.
From this, Wildmon and the AFA used the boycott to bully corporations like Ford and McDonald’s anytime those companies deemed to support the “Gay Agenda” (read: treat non-heteros like normal people). Thier current target is Pepsi….but that’s another story.
This was the beginning of what I call de facto censorship. It’s not OVERT censorship, but its a nudge.
Say you hear Joe Blow say something. It offends you. Joe has a big audience that hangs on his every word. You say Joe is spreading lies and bigotry. He probably is. So you write a letter to his sponsor, Willie’s Widgets, that you will no longer buy his product until Joe is off the air, or at least starts agreeing with you. And you get everyone you know to do the same, and you get them to do the same. (and you said you couldn’t do Herbalife. HA!)
Suddenly Joe is off the air, large following not withstanding. You score a victory. But it wasn’t censorship.You were just excersing your free speech rights…to deny Joe his.
Sorry, you’re a censor.
And this has been going on for decades. It was the way conservatives tried to shut up Edward R. Murrow when he went after Joe McCarthy. And it wasn’t censorship that had the flag-wavers go after Tom and Dick Smothers. All they had to do was go back to “you-mom-liked-you-best” routines and all would be fine. Liberals went after “All In The Family” in the beginning the same way, not realizing that it’s creator, Norman Lear, and the guy saying all that racist stuff, Carroll O’Connor were actually on their side.
Though no one said that they were censoring, it was exactly what they were trying to do.
Which leads us to Mr. Glenn Lee Beck.
Beck is an odious little creature. The kind of villain who, after he falls down the bottomless well, Batman says, “…if only he used his genius for good, instead of eeeeeeeeee-vil.” He is a most dangerous kind of conservo-religious fanatic: one who actually believes all he is saying.
What got the blood of liberals boiling was this:
During the Henry Louis Gates controversy, Beck argued that reparation for blacks was driving President Barack Obama’s agenda, and that the president has repeatedly exposed himself as having “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” and saying “”I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people. I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.” (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck)
This statement was pure bullshit, if only for the fact that there is nothing in his history, statements, or policies that would indicate that.
Anyway, for those on my side of the coin, time for action. Now I would not even be writing this is the stated goal was to get Beck to apologise (which, by the way, he has stated he would not do). But most want to get Beck and his ilk off the air. And do do that, they are leaning on advertisers to walk away from him.
33 already have, including CVS, Clorox, Wal-Mart(!), etc. The hope is that the show would be devoid of advertisers so that Fox can quietly can Mr. Beck. But what many are forgetting is that last week, at the height of all this, Beck had his biggest audience: 2.4 million, possibly besting even Bill O’Reilly.
And this effort to shut Beck up misses the REAL point: One can stand in the public square and try to get people to listen all day. If no one comes, there is no interest. But there is interest in Beck. The people who flock to Beck already are thinking these things….they were here before Beck was. And eliminating Beck would create a media martyr, at least to the backwards bunch that follows his every word.
Besides, if you call it fair play…to censor someone who censors you…that does not make it right. We are, supposedly, better that they are. And the best thing to do is expose them, rather that make them scurry.
And even if all you want to do is blue-pencil what they say, it is still censorship. I would rather deal with an ogre who is honestly an orge, than with person who seems like a saint because he doesn’t want you mad at him, but he’s an ogre anyway.
I’m sorry, I just have this thing about the Amandment One and free speech. It is easy to defend, until you disagree with it.
Besides, in terms of Beck, we have to remember who the real enemy is. Again: last week Beck got 2.5 million people following him. Walmart and CVS may leave, but the Beckies won’t.
These are the truthers and the deathers. The ones who think that Obama is a Kenyan Anti-Christ, a black Hitler (let that roll in your head a few..). They are the ones who are yelling and screaming that they want their country back.
And if Fox or United Health or whomever did not organize them, they would have found someone to do so.
And truly when you really think about it, the energies of we who want health care for all, a clean environment, and an America that trtuly is a shining city on the hill should not be focused on destroying the health companies, or Fox, or even O’Reilly, Hannity, or Beck.
Focus on thier followers. They are the real bad guys.
Bill Maher interviews Jeff Sharlet who lived with ‘The Family’, a secretive cult whose members include many conservative members of Congress. These people consider themselves the new ‘chosen ones’ and above the law, truly frightening.
HBO – Real Time with Bill Maher – 2009.07.31
Please note the part where the audience falls silent.
“Jesus didn’t come to take sides, he came to take over…”
I have said this before when I have seen things go on that 140 characters can’t possibly say. I can link and I can Digg, but sometimes, you have to take a minute to air how you feel.
And what I feel is grief.
I grieve for a country that has lost it courage, lost its nerve, and in many cases lost its way.
It starts with health care and moves from that.
I have seen the signs and posters. Posters such as this….and this….and less inflamatory signs, such as…
Then there are people like Mark Levin…
Then there is Glenn Beck…
….which is almost funny, considering where he was several months ago…
So today we learn that the “public option” on President Obama’s version of health care reform may be eliminated. Forget what happned to Glenn Beck. The private health insurance companies for many have been the genesis of many a nightmare…such as this man:
The government has not been better. This from 2007:
So shall we all admit the the health system in this country, supposedly the greatest in the world, is tonight, highly fucked up? Shall we also admit that other countries do not have the same problems as we. These are countries that have Universal Health Insurance. Everyone is covered, no pre-existing condition barriers, little or no out-of-pocket costs, it’s paid for by taxes, everybody pays through their taxes.
Simple, right?
Not in a country that seems to everything humanly possible to avoid paying them. From tax shelters in the Bahamas to that yearly trip to H&R Block, the name of the game is not to pay as little in taxes as possible, while claiming poverty all the while.
Just think: you are paying about $40-$100 a month for that cable or satellite service that allows you to drink in Mr. Beck’s wisdom every night, plus another $40 for the internet service that allows you to see this ramble. Then you say you can’t afford taxes for anything, let alone healthcare.
Hmmmm……
Then there are those who believe that Obama is planning death panels for the elderly. Anyone who has bothered to read any of the proposals on the table (all 4 of you) can see that this is not true.
Although after what happned in Florida in 2000, one would not blame them for thinking about it……but I digress.
Then you have people who seem sooooooooo happy with their health plans (most never having to use them, thank God). And they wonder why other countries like, say, Australia (hi Helena! xoxo) don’t do what we do.
Well, CNN went to Australia to find out:
Note those last numbers.
So I had to deal with all that. But then this was posted on Twitter: a link to as story in a Con blog that wonders why African-Americans (like me) are not in all of these health care/tea party protests:
There is no community in America that has been so badly hurt by the socialist policies of liberals then the black community. This isn’t the time or place to go into that but maybe soon I’ll post on it. The point is that after over 40 or so years of the destruction that liberal policies have wrecked on them, the black community should say enough is enough throw out the bums and make a fresh start on their own feet with their own talents. The black community should be leading the darn tea parties!!
Those of us who refuse to suffer the same fate have absolutely no obligation to apologize to those who refuse to stand with us in defense of our Country and our constitution and quite frankly themselves!
Reality is that every black and Hispanic person in America received the same gold plated hand delivered invitation to come to the Tea Parties as all of us, they just didn’t bother to RSVP. The next time you happen to run into Heraldo Rivera or Juan Williams or whatever media nee-nee ask them : Hey why aren’t there more blacks and Hispanics coming to stand with the whites? http://www.conunderground.com/why-no-blacks-or-latinos-at-tea-parties/
Well maybe we had better things to do. Like work for a living. Or trying to find work because of the fiscal mess the last President left us in.
Or maybe we were here…..at least last week:
This is America in 2009.
And here is the problem, that with ANY of the proposals that are out there there will still be as many as 3%….10,000,000 Americans….who would be left with no health assurance.
So, in essence, WE are the death board.
And what we need to do, we do not do, because of fear and ignorance, both embraced by America almost since its inception. The racism and phobias on BOTH sides are literally killing people, and we do not give a damn. In fact, what we will get will not be reform, but a warned over P.O.S. that the President will be happy to sign just to shut the morons up.
This is on top of the protesters who have populated some of the town halls have……well, here’s a medley of their greatest hits of the week. No pun intended:
The health care companies and Fox News did not create these people. They have been there, walking among us, for the last 50 or 60 years. These are the people who have slowly seen their well-crafted world disappear through integration and the sexual revolution and protests of the war and questioning faith and people of the same gender marrying. Then a black man becomes President and appoints a Latina as a SCOTUS justice…neither one willing to say yesser or nosser. And they see the slippery slope that they are riding on.
These are desparate people. And desparate people take desparate steps.
A man I work with was saying, with almost a hint of glee in his voice, that the riot that is coming will make the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles look like a Girl Scout bonfire.
What we saw this week may have been the opening salvos in the second Civil War. And I am scared shitless.
So that is why I posted this, this afternoon. Not that I want to actually end it all myself, but I am finding even more than I have been that I no longer apply in this world. That I am not dumb enough, or ignorant enough, or phobic enough to qualify. If there were “death panels” as HockeyMom Sarah Palin fears, I would probably be at the front of the line, and my fate would be rubberstamped. And my luck, Ann Coulter would fire the shot and Keith Olbermann would load the gun.
My faith in this country to be the country I loved has faded. But for some strange reason, I want to believe in it again. I want to believe that we can look past the fears and the snarkiness and actually come together to solve things. To make this country, not what it was, but what it really could be. To know the changes and challenges that are coming and to embrace them, not run from them.
I think we have one shot left. I just hope we still have time.
Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory: 9/11
Tags: 9/11, conspiracy, truTV