Month: April 2010

Here in the Philly area, our PBS station is based in Wilmington, Delaware. Our media market overlaps with Delaware’s so we were very familiar with Joe Biden long before he became a nominee for vice-president. You’d see him at a Sixers game, or elsewhere around town. And he was often on the nightly news. It’s probably true that liberals from other parts of the country mainly knew Joe from his work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If not that, then they remembered him for his work on killing Robert Bork’s nomination or his failure to kill Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. I don’t know if it’s true, now that they’ve gotten to know him better, that liberals really love Joe Biden as much as Karen Connolly wants us to believe. Biden, after all, cast a bad vote on Bush’s biggest foreign policy blunder (the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq) and his cruelest domestic achievement (the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005). He also had a really inexcusable, hare-brained idea to split Iraq into three pieces that he started pushing during the height of the insurgency there. Joe Biden isn’t right about a lot of things. But there is something about him that Philly liberals will readily acknowledge. It’s kind of captured here:

“He looks just so delighted all the time,” [Annie] Lowrey says. “I’d argue that no one—from John Adams to Dick Cheney—has ever seemed so utterly delighted to be vice president. Such enthusiasm is hard not to like.”

Joe Biden loved being a senator every bit as much as he enjoys being vice-president, and he brought the same enthusiasm to the job. And, because of this, he’s a very hard person to dislike. He’s also unique. Most senators you can fit into some kind of box. You have progressives, blue doggish agricultural/energy types, New Dems, armed services guys, etc. Biden never joined any club or faction. He could be as liberal as fellow Catholics Teddy Kennedy and Pat Leahy, or he could vote with the credit card companies that dominate in his home-state. He could be ridiculously draconian on the War on Drugs and the point man for protecting a woman’s right to choose from Robert Bork. There was always an element of unpredictability about Biden, both in his votes and in what was going to come next out of his mouth. There’s something endearing about that, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it.

As Connolly points out, Biden’s shop has become a liberal oasis in an otherwise pragmatic White House. But I don’t think Biden has changed. He may be with us today on one issue and against us tomorrow on another. The main thing is that he’s loyal, he smart, and his heart’s in the right place. I liked him for vice-president over the other finalists (Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh) and not just for the entertainment value. He’s an asset as vice-president, but I’d be considerably less enthusiastic about him taking over the top job. The same things I find endearing about him as a number two would probably, for the most part, be liabilities for him as a number one.

I hope this kiss wasn’t as sloppy as the one Newsweek laid on him.

Wild Wild Left Radio is proud to announce that we will be interviewing Richard Gage, AIA on our BTR show tomorrow at 6pm EDT.

Richard Gage, AIA, is a San Francisco Bay Area architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founding member of AE911Truth.org. He has been a practicing architect for over 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction, including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings.

Mr. Gage became interested in researching the destruction of the WTC high-rises after hearing the startling conclusions of a reluctant 9/11 researcher, David Ray Griffin, on the radio in 2006, which launched his own unyielding quest for the truth about 9/11.

This will be your opportunity to hear from the leading expert on the subject of why from a scientific standpoint the “official” story is not only improbable, but IMPOSSIBLE. He has compiled the evidence from every leading architect and engineer in the field.

Please visit www.ae911truth.org, and acquaint yourself with their mission, and Sign the Petition for a new, thorough, unbiased investigation into what happened on 9/11. Available there is the enlightening Documentary “911: Blueprint for Truth~The Architecture of Destruction” which you can view wholly online, or purchase to share with everyone you know.

You can listen to our show by clicking this link tomorrow at 6, or by phone, calling 646-929-1264.

You may ask questions in chat, or by calling the number. Richard Gage, AIA, will be available from 6-7, so keep your questions brief, we will only be able to take a limited number of calls. We have added an additional hour for discussion after the interview, and will welcome other survivors or people with information to join in at that time.

Looking forward to seeing you there,

Diane Gee & Michael Gottlieb, Wild Wild Left Radio

Please feel free to cross post this message wherever you blog, to facebook, twitter or just tell your friends!

1857 – Herman Melville publishes The Confidence-Man.

1924 – Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his  “Beer Hall Putsch”. He spends nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.

COINCIDENCE? I think NOT!

“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. … No, I think I could.”
— Glenn Beck

”I am not a polarizing guy.”
— Glenn Beck  

 FROM THE CHURCH OF INEFFABLE STUPIDITY:

A recent scientific study, conducted by Doctor (Emeritus) Pei A. Tenshun, has some surprising implications for the treatment of brain injuries and mental illness. Dr. Pei, the Chair of the Girolamo Savonarola School of Psychology, East Chicago University, followed up on published studies which proved that with a proper application of a electro-magnetic field to the Right Parietal portion of the brain, a person’s internal “morality” mechanism could be turned off indefinitely.

Dr. Pei hypothosized that other locations of the brain could also be sensitized, turned on or off, depending on the stimuli provided to the subject.

Dr. Pei, and co-author Professor Gill T. Frei, gathered 1,000 volunteers who agreed to undergo this three week project. The volunteers were compensated for room and board while they underwent this experiment, and received a stipend of $25 per diem.  In order to receive the stipend, each volunteer agreed to undergo at least two psychological and IQ profiles, and agreed to do their best on each exam. The tests included the standard array of tests, including the MMPI, Stanford Binet IQ, the Pigham Personality Profile, and other tests to insure honest answers.

Pre-experiment testing found a standard distribution of IQ, ranging from 88 (the bank executive) and 139 (non-union janitor), with a median of 105. This result was well within the norms predicted by historical testing. Even after taking into account the subjects’ education, race, age, sex and financial backgrounds, the results remained accurate, as predicted. In laymen’s terms, these 1,000 participants were extremely representative of the American population at large.

The subjects were then placed in a controlled atmosphere for 5 straight days. Their choice of meals were based on their pre-experiment reports. Alcohol, marijuana, and other intoxicant consumption was permitted, again matching the subjects’ self-descriptions.  Every effort was made to allow the subjects to spend these five days in as normal and routine atmosphere as possible, except for their not attending work.

Beginning on Day 1, The subjects were then given access to a TV and radio. Those who chose TV were limited to watching Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and video of Rush Limbaugh. Programming was limited to only 4 hours in the morning, and 6 hours at night. Those who chose radio could only receive Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Again, the subjects were provided with a choice of viewing, but the programming was essentially the same for all.

After Day 5, Dr. Pei and Prof. Frei agreed to end the experiment early. Video surveillance of the subjects showed riskier behavior, and increased demands for alcohol and drugs.

On Day 6, the subjects were retested, using the same psychological and intelligence tests provided to the subjects before the experiment.

The results were stunning. In every case, the subject underwent a major decrease in psychological health, and a stunning decrease of IQ points. Propensity for violence, spouting inanities, or quoting Sarah Palin became acceptable behavior. The average IQ loss was 12 points, with the extremes ranging from a loss of 9 points, to a high of 34.  

Dr. Pei then began Stage II of the experiment. One third * of the original subjects were selected at random for further testing and experimentation. For these subjects, both the TV and radio were removed, and replaced by newspapers, books, and news and science magazines. After two days under these conditions, half of these subjects  were tested and released, and after one week, the remaining subjects were tested and released.

The studied confirmed the worst fears of Dr. Pei. Two days of reading books, newspapers, and magazines had no positive impact on either the subjects’ IQ or personality profile. Prof. Frei believed that the subjects were still suffering from a form of PTSD, after so much concentrated exposure to Beck and Limbaugh. This PTSD, he theorized, prevented the subjects’ brains from accepting real information for mental processing.

The last group, released after a week’s exposure to books and magazines, showed a slight amount of positive change. While they did not come close to returning to their pre-experiment levels of mental functioning, there were indications that immediate intervention, followed by intense psychotherapy and  the possible use of psychotropic medications, that the subjects could return to rational behavior within 3-4 months.

Positron scans of the brains confirmed that just like in the “Morality” electro-magnetic experiments, certain parts of the subjects’ brains appeared to be not functioning, or “turned off.” Most of the impact was seen on the frontal lobes. Dr. Pei believes that large doses of Glenn Beck, in particular,  act like a video lobotomy, causing serious, but hopefully temporary, brain damage to any viewer.

(*) The test subjects NOT randomly selected for the Stage II testing, were contacted by Dr. Pei’s staffers and were strongly suggested to seek mental health care in the immediate future. Approximately 82% of the subjects followed that advice, but unfortunately, 18% refused all treatment and joined their local Tea Bagger movement. Dr. Pei sincerely apologizes for this unforeseen development.