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PATH: BS
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8 Reasons why Bernie Sanders is the best candidate in the race
Posted by Pile
(10588 views)      [E-Mail link]
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[Beating Dead Horses]
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*BSA Exclusive Editorial*
I dig Bernie Sanders. I've always loved him and his perspective. I agree with 99% of what he promotes in terms of long-term policy. But I still find myself uneasy with his candidacy. I will vote for whoever gets the Democratic nomination, but I'm not convinced people understand the dynamics and what's really in play right now?
As many of those on the left and the "disenfranchised" are "feeling the Bern" and hopping on the Bernie Sanders bandwagon, theres a schism developing among those who pine for social change.
It seemed hard to fathom that a candidate that has been so succinctly enumerating many of the problems people on the left, center and right have been harping about has now become so contentious?
I gotta be honest.. to me it feels like another Deja Vu moment. How I felt when I heard all my friends get so excited about Ralph Nader in 2000, and how his fresh rhetoric was going to change the political landcape...
It doesn't seem to make sense. Even among the editors at BSAlert, there's contention on the value of a Sanders presidency. Allow us to provide you with what we think are some troubling issues with Sanders and why we feel, as much as we love what he says, In my opinion (though not the opinion of everybody here) Sanders is a pied piper more than he is a path to change...
If all you want is Bernie elected; if all you care about is "sending the message" ok, I can't argue with that. But if you care about actually seeing his policy ideas executed, and moving in a more progressive direction during the next 4-8 years, you have to at least be open to these arguments... |
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Actually Significant Charity Challenge Ideas
Posted by Pile
(12672 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Beating Dead Horses]
[Viral Marketing] |
 Right now it's all the craze to, amidst one of the hottest-record Summer seasons, dump a bucket of ice water on your head as an alternative to donating towards ALS research. The list of public and private people who have jumped on this goofy bandwagon is too numerous to mention.
Has anybody figured out what a bucket of icewater actually has to do with a degenerative nerve disease? Does Lou Gherig's disease make you suddenly feel wet & cold for about five minutes on a hot Summer day?
Sorry, but count me in the tiny little camp of people scratching our heads wondering what difference this really makes? Has anyone managed to prove that more money = more curing? Jerry Lewis over 50 years, raised tons of money for Muscular Dystrophy research and there's still absolutely no cure. Perhaps using money to as a gauge of "success" in medical research is not the right approach?
But we here at BSA digress... it's not really about making the world a better place. It's about making YOU feel like you're doing something, even if you're not, so you can go to bed thinking you're "making a difference" because you dumped a bucket of icewater on your head. Congratulations!
However, if you are wondering, are there better, more appropriate "Charity Challenge" events you could promote, we at BSAlert have come up with a few. Check them out.... |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2014-09-23 10:16:02 | Comment on this Article |
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Celebrities Misled By 'Restore The Gulf' Campaign
Posted by Pile
(11901 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Environment]
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 Not long ago, many celebrities got together to make a PSA for the "Be The One" campaign, urging people to sign a petition to save the Gulf of Mexico on the website RestoreTheGulf.com (very similar to the government's website at RestoreTheGulf.gov, which might have caused confusion). This all seems good, until you look at the fine print and dig below the surface... Which is what DeSmogBlog did. It turns out that the campaign's sponsors are "America's WETLAND Foundation", a front group for oil companies (Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc), and "Women of the Storm", a Louisiana group with strong ties to America's WETLAND (the founder of the former is married to the chairman of the latter).
The end result seems to be a carefully-orchestrated snowjob by the oil and gas industry to try and get taxpayers to fund the cleanup of their own messes... |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2014-02-15 23:49:48 | Comment on this Article |
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Moyers: The GOP Is Leading A Seccession
Posted by Pile
(13915 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Activists]
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 This week’s government shutdown has consequences for all of us, costing an estimated $300 million each day that the government is closed for business. Many Americans have voiced their frustrations with the fallout from the shutdown on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hash tag #DearCongress. Here, Bill Moyers shares his own frustrations, admonishing the Republican Party for holding the country hostage via an irrational “ransom list” of demands — while sabotaging democracy in the process. “When the President refused to buckle to this extortion, they threw their tantrum,” Bill says. ”Like the die-hards of the racist South a century and a half ago, who would destroy the union before giving up their slaves, so would these people burn down the place, sink the ship.” He goes on to tell us where the “reckless ambition” of the Republicans could lead us. |
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A Soldier's Last Words
Posted by Pile
(15669 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Activists] |
 Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it. |
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There's no other way to put it. The shit has hit the fan on this one...
There's a huge mutiny in progress over at Reddit.com. This is an Internet-first as far as I know and it'll probably be big news soon. The company fired an employee that was responsible for helping a bunch of moderators of different subs, and left them in chaos. They decided to make their part of Reddit private, and then in solidarity hundreds of other moderators joined and have been turning off parts of Reddit one-by-one since yesterday.
These days everybody is using Facebook. But did you know if you pay to promote something, you might actually hurt your business and waste your money? A diligent Internet truth-seeker shows you in this video that all is not what it seems when it comes to advertising on Facebook, and even Facebook itself is at least indirectly involved in phony and fraudulent activity.
With all this "controversy" we feel it's important to give at least eight solid reasons why your "heritage not hate" campaign is complete bullshit, so hold onto your pitchforks and check out this exclusive BSAlert.com list...
It's no secret I like Reddit. I myself run a few popular subreddits. But like many, it's impossible to have a love-love relationship with this site. For every cool section, there's another one that makes your skin crawl. For every person you can relate to, there's eighteen dozen who appear to be Tourettes-infected-6-year-olds. 
Here's my take on the rebel flag controversy... I think people on both sides of the issue have some valid points, BUT the points are not equal in terms of pros/cons.
Have you been hearing about ALEC, the force behind laws to privatize public education and break unions, but are not sure what it's all about? Here's a simplistic, but oh so fun explanation.
Everybody from NPR to USA Today is reporting on fast food chain Chipotle finally making their entire menu GMO-free. 
Two news stories have been circulating this week on the Internet that mask more dubious intentions that are worth mentioning. 
Russell Brand has a very insightful commentary on the meaning behind the popularity of new "adult coloring books"...
If you've been wondering where we've been to these last few months, not cranking out as many stories as we usually do, it's because we've been working on a super secret project that is now time to be revealed. 
This week I had the pleasure of visiting the DMV to get my license renewed, and while waiting I decided to make a list of the differences between the DMV and Hell. Granted, I haven't been to hell yet, so I'm being presumptuous, but here is my list for your enjoyment. Special thanks to Wizegurl for editing/suggestions.
A warning to herbal supplement users: Those store-brand ginkgo biloba tablets you bought may contain mustard, wheat, radish and other substances decidedly non-herbal in nature, but they’re not likely to contain any actual ginkgo biloba.
A huge Internet outrage has erupted in the wake of GoDaddy's latest commercial leak online of what was apparently going to be their Superbowl commercial. Which has now been pulled.
Phillip Perea, a former employee of a Fox station in Texas shot and killed himself outside the front doors of the News Corporation building shortly before 9 a.m. Monday. In the wake of the suicide, he left a huge series of well-produced video sequences outlining his grievances with Fox News. In the epic series, one has to wonder WTF?
Australian vloggers, Juice Media have been putting out very high quality, almost-too-intense news-based rap videos for quite awhile now and I'm a big fan of their work. But their latest video, with nods to Russel Brand and Die Antwoord is revolutionarily mind-blowing in my opinion.. see for yourself..
Atheists have written their own version of the ten commandments. These commandments were chosen from submissions to Atheist Mind Humanist Heart’s (AMHH) Re-Think Prize, a crowdsourcing project.
HuffPo columnist and comedian, Kelly MacLean has written a hilarious article on Whole Foods..
With the rampant rages in the social media circles over everything from living wages to police brutality, there's a growing air of discontent brewing in American culture. 
The Discovery Channel's obsessive quest for ratings has caused one of its most popular series of programming: shows about sharks, to veer deep into bullshit territory. Now the channel routinely just makes stuff up and doesn't apologize for it. Check out this expose of the Discovery Channel's foray into deception..
Russell Brand takes a look at a typical Fox News report, or "debate" with pundits over the day's issues. In this case, guests talking about Israel's invasion of Palestine. He asks, "Who is really acting like a terrorist?
If you have not been annoyed by this operation, consider yourself lucky, but many people know what it's like to get the "Rachel from Cardmember Services" (Bridget or another phony name) robo-call repeatedly to their telephones. The group behind this operation uses social engineering to con random callers out of their credit card numbers, SSN and other personal information under the guise of helping them get a lower interest rate on their credit card debt.
The Supreme Court says corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.
I can't help but think... why do gun nuts always choose to "exercise their 2A rights" in cozy, whitebread, surburban establishments like Starbucks, Home Depot and Chipotle?
Youtube user "potholer54" is gaining quite a reputation for his instructive and well-referenced videos debunking myths and showing the truth behind various social, cultural and scientific issues. In his latest post, he tackles pragmatic issues regarding global climate change, and looks deep into the skeptics and the resources they use to see who's really telling the truth...
An ex-Wal-Mart employee explains why there's never anybody around, and when there is, they don't know anything or are in a bad mood. A very interesting and illuminating explanation for how, in their obsessive quest for increased profits, Wal-Mart has created a business model that thrives on attrition and crappy, burned out employees, who are systematically run-off before they can become competent.
This past Sunday evening former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down for an interview with German television network ARD. The interview has been intentionally blocked from the US public, with virtually no major broadcast news outlets covering this story. In addition, the video has been taken down almost immediately every time it’s posted on YouTube.
There are a number of new agey articles floating around the facebooks and internets promoting a very old concept called, "biocentrism", that existence is all subjective and the product of our own minds. 
As the American people ask if the Republican party has lost their freakin minds in the wake of protesting a law that's been legal for several years yet set to take effect this week. Their bluff of shutting down the government this week reveals that perhaps, they've already shut the government down and nobody noticed? Here's an incredibly insightful piece on just what's been going on in Washington over the last 4+ years...
Under the guise of combating a rise in "pseudoscience" the producers of the TED series of lectures have laid down bold new rules that inhibit any discussion on a number of controversial subjects that are anything but pseudoscience. They have even gone so far as to suggest "food as medicine" is quackery. 
Nonprofit ocean protection group Oceana took 1,215 samples of fish from across the United States in restaurants, grocery stores and sushi bars and the results were astonishing. There's more than a good chance the fish you think is "tuna" or "snapper" is not what it claims...
Ed Asner does voiceover for a clever animated video that talks about how American society has changed over the years and how taxation and corporations have sucked dry, the economy. In the style of the old "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoons...
In Robert Greenwald's new film, The Koch Brothers Exposed, he examines the pervasive influence of David and Charles Koch on the American fabric of life. It covers areas as diverse as their impact on community school boards, colleges, the environment, voting rights, and think tanks. Greenwald began the film before the Occupy Wall Street movement exploded. He was eight months into conducting his own research and filming when he saw how the 1 percent was using their financial resources to promulgate their specific ideologies and economic interests.
While government agencies like the FDA keep stalling on demanding rigorous scientific testing of numerous questionable ingredients, GMO foods, and the correct labeling of such foods, PepsiCo has recently agreed to settle out of court for $9 million over a class action lawsuit that claimed ‘natural’ and ‘non-GMO’ on their bottles was misleading since they are made with GMO ingredients, as well as synthetic and ‘unnatural’ items.
Many of us have wondered, in today's corporatized world of packaged entertainment, could truly unique and thought-provoking artists have a chance? Let's set the "What If" machine and see...
Every day, millions of Americans enjoy food products that other countries have deemed unsafe for consumption. Let's take a look at some examples..
In the last few years, a number of social constructs seem to have become so engorged and dramatic, I desperately want to assume they've peaked and thus, offer up my hopeful plea that perhaps these things should decline if not begin to disappear from our social radar in the coming year. Read on as I'm sure not everyone will agree with me...
EBay sells insurance that excludes from coverage the exact items it ships, rendering the policy useless, a class action claims in Federal Court.