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More “free” stuff from the Democrats… [updates] 30 June 2007Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Border Issues, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, Mexico, Panama, Peru - Bachelet, South America, UK, WAR!.
Agricultural field worker Mercedes Espinoza places Christmas tree ornaments on the windows of the bus which has brought her and others to work packing chard in a field near Calexico, California. [photo, Sign on San Diego: DAVID MAUNG 12/12/2005 ]
I caught a wonderful Moyers program tonight.
Lead segment ws Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, on the secret trade deal negotiated by leaders of the Democratic Party and its implications for labor unions, consumer groups and the environment. At the Moyers site they link to several of the articles that surfaced around April and early May [scroll down a bit] giving an early clue to what the electeds (damn them all) were up to…
Looking around after the show I landed on a post from today of David Sirota’s that indicates the vote may be stalled (Wallach indicated either mid summer, July, or early September).
However! The interview with Wallach had some stunning disclosures and, whenever they steamroll the vote, want to link to and excerpt her words.
BILL MOYERS: But this– this agreement– these agreements were negotiated in the house by Charles Rangel, who’s a Democrat, who’s the chairman of the– of the Ways and Means Committee -a very powerful committee. And he was quoted yesterday as saying that– up to 50 Democrats will vote with the Republican minority to pass it. I mean, that’s a quarter of the Democratic caucus, right?
LORI WALLACH: Well, and yes, sir, that’s kinda the heartbreak; ’cause if you think about what he’s saying in translated, what they’re talking about is reviving Bush’s NAFTA expansion agenda to facilitate passage of more Bush job-killing trade agreements by a majority of the Republican minority, and a small minority of the Democratic majority.
It’s really inconceivable why the Democrats would then bring that up to pass Bush’s trade agenda opposed by their entire base, by two-thirds of their members of Congress, by the public according to the last election. Instead of going to their own trade agenda, they’re reviving his. And reviving with a minority support of the Democrats.
BILL MOYERS: Well, help us understand this. Because last fall in the November election, the Democratic base in these communities across the country were on the warpath, right, about trade. The polls I saw coming out of a lot of cons– districts had next to the war– trade was most on the mind of voters in– in Midwestern– districts and places like that, that had been affected adversely by NAFTA. So, what is– what’s happening?
LORI WALLACH: Well, what’s amazing is, it wasn’t just Midwestern. That’s what we probably expect.
It was all over.
The Democrats are in the majority to no small measure because of the members of Congress all over the country. Democratic freshmen ran on this issue.
Being against the war was necessary. It wasn’t sufficient. The economic, really, populism issues of standing up for working Americans by pushing for a new trade agreement and holding accountable the Republican incumbents voted for NAFTA and CAFTA, that’s what won those majority-making seats.
BILL MOYERS: So, what’s happened? Maybe there are Democrats who believe in– in these agreements.
LORI WALLACH: Well, politically, it’s a catastrophe, ’cause they could lose their majority over this, just the way after NAFTA they blurred the lines in economics.
And in 1994, the Democrats lost their seats, a lot of research afterwards showed NAFTA was one of the main factors.
BILL MOYERS: I remember that.
LORI WALLACH: On policy though, it’s inconceivable also what they’re doing. Because even though it was terrific they added the labor and new environmental standards, not excising the outrageous NAFTA/CAFTA core means they set up agreements that totally contradict the core Democratic agenda. What are the Democrats pushing? Good jobs with good wages, access to affordable, quality services: health care, education, a clean environment, safe food, not privatizing social security.
Yet, in these agreements, which are only a little bit about trade, there are thousands of pages of rules that we have to conform all of our domestic laws to, are the antithesis of that domestic agenda.
the Border Arts Workshop helps prepare a Day of the Dead altar at the border wall in memory of undocumented immigrants who have died while crossing into the United States. [DAVID MAUNG 11/01/05]
LORI WALLACH: … The trade agreements that we’re talking about actually will limit the U.S. right to inspect.
For instance, on meat. We’re required to import meat that literally doesn’t meet our standards. If it’s considered equivalent by the importing country, i.e. the people trying to sell it to us. We’re supposed to accept it, put on the USDA label, bon appetit. It’s enough to make a person a vegan. We need basically a whole new set of strong rules. And instead, the trade agreement handcuffed Congress from doing what’s needed.
BILL MOYERS: This very weekend, Fast Track, the provision that gives the President, any President, the power to negotiate and conclude treaties without the approval of Congress, expires. Is–
LORI WALLACH: And hallelujah for that.
BILL MOYERS: Hallelujah? Why?
LORI WALLACH: Fast Track, which was hatched by Richard Nixon in the early ’70s is a uniquely undemocratic mechanism that’s used to negotiate U.S. trade agreements. It is what enabled bad-news trade agreements like NAFTA, like the World Trade Organization. What Fast Track does is, it takes the Constitutional exclusive authority of Congress that the founders set up intentionally as a check and balance so that one President just couldn’t take off with our trade future, and delegates the whole thing, lump sum, well, over to the President.
So, the President, under Fast Track, can pick what countries we’re negotiating with, set the substance, sign the agreement, all without Congress ever voting. So that by the time Congress sees it, they get nothing but a yes-or-no vote, no amendments allowed on trade agreements that will set our whole future, thousands of pages. And they have to vote 60 days after the bill’s in. It’s like a legislative luge run. It doesn’t matter what you put on there. Sheer force of gravity takes the worst trade agreement right to Congress and right through– your community, rolling right over your jobs and your food safety. And so, a new way of making trade agreements that doesn’t consolidate so much power in the President, and by the way, that system also designates 500 corporate advisors to be the official advisors.
BILL MOYERS: The old sys– the present system–
LORI WALLACH: Fast Track– Fast Track– so it’s no doubt we get these very retrograde agreements that don’t benefit us. So, we need a new way to make trade agreements. And the fact that Fast Track’s finally sun setting, I say hallelujah, we very festive wake. It’s about 20 years overdue. It should be boxed and buried, go to the Smithsonian. It’s outdated technology.
BILL MOYERS: When will these issues be resolved, these present trade agreements that are now being discussed, when will they be resolved?
LORI WALLACH: Well, let me say first, many of us still pray that the Democratic leadership will see the imminent cliff and decide to turn around the bus instead of going over. If they proceed towards trying to pass these Bush trade agreements with a minority of the majority, the votes could happen either in the month of July or in the first coupla weeks of September.
Elections have consequences… remarkable when they battle to slam the base, the entirety of the base and 2/3 of the Democratic caucus – to bond with the Republicans and the WH.
If only people could get it, that IS the national Democratic party. It really is…
Now, there is a late to the party press release just today from Nancy … I have a hard time seeing much other than a steamroll and a re-issue. A bit spooked from immigration, but they’ll be back.
Poor Democrats, poor leadership, only happy, only confident when pursuing Republican goals. Ones they agree with, think Moyers got that one right.
I’ll update this post thru the weekend… 8)
UPDATE, 10:03 am Saturday
More Free Trade
Agence France Presse photos of the Sadr City raids
Along with the bullet-holes were what appeared to be shell-holes in walls.
US statement said troops had met “significant” resistance during the raids from militant small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as from roadside explosive devices.
Troops travelling in armoured vehicles had “used proper escalation of force rules to engage four civilian vehicles”, the statement said, adding: “It is believed that the suspected terrorists have close ties to Iranian terror networks.”
US military spokesman Lt Col Christopher Garver insisted all of those killed had been “shooting at US troops at the time”.
“It was an intense firefight,” he said.
One resident told reporters that US helicopters had launched missiles at targets in the densely populated district, home to more than two million people.
Another described how “a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses – bombarding them”.
“What did we do? We didn’t even retaliate – there was no resistance,” Basheer Ahmed added
US-led forces say they killed only militants in pre-dawn raids but local people say civilians died.
The UK certainly appears to be under some form of seige. Not sure I’d care to characterise what kind, however. BBC is already up with travellers’ photos at Glasgow airport:
Thomas Conroy took this picture of the vehicle crashing into the Glasgow Airport’s Terminal One building at about 1515BST
…yes all sorts of Free Trade occuring.
UPDATE, 10:41 am
Madman just sent this, Lori Wallach at HuffPo on the demise of Fast Track:
OBITUARIES: Fast Track 1974-1995/ 2002-2007
After a brief, damaging existence, Fast Track was pronounced dead on June 30, 2007.
The demise of Fast Track allowed the U.S. Founding Fathers to stop rolling in their graves over Fast Track’s trampling of constitutional checks and balances. As well, victims of Fast Track-enabled trade agreements welcomed the news, given the anomalous procedure’s record of damage despite having been locked up and out of commission for blocks of time since its inception.
In April 1973, America first saw the faint glimmer in Father Nixon’s eye that was to become Fast Track when the Nixon administration – always eager to seize power from the legislative branch – dropped the initial Fast Track legislation. The young Fast Track – the product of a broken and abusive home – had an unusually long gestation period, taking over a year and a half to be unleashed by President Ford, who signed the first Fast Track bill into law. Fast Track teethed on federalism and checks and balances, shredding basic tenets of our democracy. [snip]
The UK’s terror threat has been raised to the highest level of “critical”, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announces.
For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news
UPDATE, 12:56 pm
Pepe Escobar is up at Asia Times – as we blast off into the bloody summer:
Hot fun in the summer
Summer in Baghdad means temperatures bordering 50 degrees Celsius – of course with non-existent air-con; there’s only one hour of electricity a day in the Red Zone. There’s also a widespread outburst of typhoid due to water pollution and the extreme heat.
At least 20, most of the time about 50 bodies a day, every day, victims of torture or summary execution, continue to show up. There’s no more fishing in the Tigris because of the inflation of cadavers. More than 250 Iraqi journalists have been killed – or executed – since “shock and awe”.
Muqtada al-Sadr is lying low and sewing up trans-sectarian support.
Meanwhile, the recent joint US/Badr Corps offensive against Salafi-jihadis in Baquba turned out to be another farce. Salafi-jihadis relocated and counterattacked … in Baghdad. Dozens of thousands of Baquba’s 300,000-plus population – a Sunni majority – became refugees for nothing.
The powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars denounced this mini-surge as “barbaric acts”. But these “barbaric acts” are just snapshots of what the Bush administration – helped by faithful Blair – managed to create:
the world’s second-biggest failed state, only behind Sudan, according to the 2007 Failed States Index compiled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace.
A wounded Palestinian is wheeled on a stretcher following an Israeli air strike in Gaza June 30, 2007. Israel launched two air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing six Palestinians, including three senior Islamic Jihad militants it long sought for firing rockets and orchestrating other attacks.
REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA
Planet Gaza is in the house
The relentless destruction of Iraq is mirrored by similar devastation in Gaza.
In Iraq, the real blowback will only manifest itself when the “sanctions generation” – who grew up seething in anger, sickness and deprivation – starts deploying its anger with the help of new technologies. The current stage, though gruesome, is just an apprenticeship.
Worse: it’s in fact irrelevant, as far as imperial strategy is concerned. Blowback is already factored. The Bush White House’s ends justify the means.
As much as Washington invented a civil war in Iraq, it has also invented a civil war in Gaza. With crucial interference, among others, of US Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, a notorious neo-con, Fatah militias were trained by the US, the so-called Fatah Badr Brigade was nurtured by Jordanian intelligence, and all these unsavory characters were dropped into Gaza to destroy the popularly elected Hamas government.
Anyway, Israel’s ends – no possibility of Palestinian union – have been achieved. And once again, using the same old divide-and-rule methods; let’s sit back and watch all those Arabs killing one another.
Gaza is a gulag. The West Bank is a series of unconnected ghettoes. Baghdad is now a gulag. Iraq has been reduced to a series of unconnectable ghettoes. Palestinian land is being stolen. Iraqi oil will be stolen. “Terrorist” Gaza has been already downgraded to Hamastan. The Red Zone – that is, real Baghdad – is actually Red Zoneistan.
TOUCHDOWN! — Mcat
… Planet Gaza is a technical model of repression developed by Israeli know-how, implemented by the Pentagon in Iraq, and then redeveloped for reapplication in Gaza. It may, and it will, be deployed in other parts of the world that do not “behave”.
Iraq was “lab for chaos” – as was Katrina / NO / Gulf Coast.
ABC ratchets it up.
I think GAZA and Sadr City, Fallujah, Tikrit, Ramadi, Tal Afar, Baqubah, Baghdad, Mosul, and a myriad of other towns, cities and villages in Afghanistan and Iraq can tell us about “imminent attack”.
Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:
U.K. RAISES SECURITY LEVEL TO ‘CRITICAL,’ ITS HIGHEST LEVEL, MEANING ‘ATTACK IS EXPECTED IMMINENTLY,’ FOLLOWING BURNING CAR CRASH AT GLASGOW AIRPORT TERMINAL
For more on this story, go to: LINK
Don’t accidentally drop the beach reading.
A last snip from Pepe Escobar:
As for the bulk of humanity, they’re just trying to dodge stray bullets or postpone their drowning in the flood of a liquid world, observed absentmindedly by a few hyper-capitalists at the top of their post-mod ziggurats.
While I was at Reuters looking for photos, I saw this blog entry [full text from Reuters version] at Alertnet.org, the Reuters division for emergent crises and NGO information:
With not even six months gone by, 2007 has already brought 100 deaths of journalists and media professionals covering the news, according to figures released by the International News Safety Institute. Of those, 72 were apparently murdered. Last year’s count of 168 was already record, and now it looks like 2007 will top that.
More than a third of all journalist deaths occurred in one country, Iraq, which the Institute calls, “the worst killing ground for the news media in modern times”. The 100th victim was also an Iraqi, Hamed Sarha, 57, who had worked as a journalist for decades and leaves behind a wife and five children. Altogether, since the invasion in March 2003, some 214 news media have died in Iraq.
For more on the grim statistics and a list of all their names and details, go to the the INSI website.
Free trade all over the globe…
UPDATE, 5:57 pm
Clap! Everybody clap! Or they are gonna … LEAVE!
Or, laugh and let ’em go! 8)
Personally, I think (2+ / 0-)
a “Smite this diary!” button would be far more useful. Especially these days.
[ Parent ]
I’m about ready to smite the whole goddamned (1+ / 0-)
- Recommended by:
place if it doesn’t change soon. If I wanted Democratic Underground I’d go there.
Stop by our Round-the-Clock fundraiser for Steve Marchand!! Let’s elect real progressives!
[ Parent ]
Never thought I’d say this (1+ / 0-)
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But I’m getting to the point where I’m wondering whether it’s worth continuing to be associated with this site. “Clap louder” seems to be the rule of the day, the trolls are multiplying faster than bacteria, and any time anybody dares to pull out a zero you get 200 comments telling you you were wrong to bagel the comment, you’re really just an uptight hall monitor-wannabe who gets some sadistic thrill out of pushing the “troll” button. Half of the really great diarists no longer write here, and most of what makes it to the rec list anymore is unadulterated crap.
Où sont les neiges d’antan?, indeed.
[ Parent ]
You aren’t the only one saying it. (1+ / 0-)
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I know a number of people who have left…and I’ve gotten emails from three people this week saying they think they’re just about ready to leave for good too.
Honestly, I emailed a number of FPers and told them about the emails I’d gotten…and told them they could add me to the list if they couldn’t get it under control. Between the Ron Paul bullshit and the “Democrats suck” crap every five minutes…I’m really starting to ask myself, “Why bother?”
I’m staying for now…but yeah.
Stop by our Round-the-Clock fundraiser for Steve Marchand!! Let’s elect real progressives!
[ Parent ]
It’s in a diary that uses the word “coward” in conjunction with “Nancy Pelosi” and a tidy judgement that she is “unfit to be Speaker”.
hmm Well I surely am not proud of her. But then, it is several cycles since I voted for her…
[thanks to Mcat emailer, m]
oh wait! This is a Tinkerbell shout out! Only she can save the musings and elises for The Great Koswhackian Movement! You know the Great Day is Coming and they will be needed to, what else? Save!! The! Nation!!!!
(more exclamation marks… do you think?)
Find Tinkerbell NOW!
And the nobodies who recced the diary (1+ / 0-)
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Not a name on there I’d be proud to have associated with any work of mine.
[ Parent ]
And you are… (3+ / 0-)
who again? Whoever you are, you must be pretty cool. Its an honor to meet you, guy I’ve never heard of.
“Well, yeah, the Constitution is worth it if you can succeed.” -Nancy Pelosi, 6/29/07.
[ Parent ]
A well-known and reasonably respected (1+ / 0-)
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member of this community for going on four years. Now tell me who the fuck you are again?
[ Parent ]
Who cares who I am? (4+ / 0-)
What a contribution your insults make to the site! Congrats to you, well respected member of the site for four years. I happily look forward to more condescending insults from you in the future!
“Well, yeah, the Constitution is worth it if you can succeed.” -Nancy Pelosi, 6/29/07.
[ Parent ]
For thine is the power and the glory. Amen… A a a men!
It’s a cult.
While I am on this turgid slobberation, James over at MoBettaMeta takes a look at the Great Koswhack CIA slitheration. It all derives from his speech [and god knows he is not important enough for anyone to confirm or deny, as if they would] to the Commonwealth Club here in SF some while ago…
Hear the refrain, don’t accidentally drop the beach read!
The Real Post for Today [various and sundry updates] 28 June 2007Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Afghanistan War, AFRICOM, Beirut, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iraq War, SCOTUS, The Battle for New Orleans, UK.
William F Buckley and Gore Vidal debate, ABC August 1968
Reminder, the Tavis Smiley Democratic debate is on this evening, PBS, 6 PT and 9 ET.
I think Michel [McQueen] Martin, Ruben Navarette and whomever else is the panel questioning. A panel of journalists of color.
Hold your nose, commentary to follow on the really tired EE and AC thang (it was tired as it rolled out). Stumbled on this at, whooops! YES a conservative site, Real Clear Politics (RCP). It’s a useful quick read for links to MSM, they catch things I would miss otherwise.
Anyway, clearly Edwards national numbers are down. Wandering around 5 – 8% in latest polls. Quickly coming to close of Q2 COH and fundraising numbers (they are raising “Coulter Cash”). Looking thin on the ground. And, as this transcript from Tweety’s Wednesday show indicates, Donny Deutch sums it up quite quickly: Edwards is not running against AC. And if he is, pretty pathetic.
In the same transcript, John Edwards is on Hardball, to make the manly point I would guess. He calls Ann – and her ilk – “crazy”.
Talk about missing the point. She’s not crazy, she is a front line operative.
Seems the John Edwards campaign IS running against AC. And losing, would be my take. Meanwhile I would also guess her book has shot up again in sales. Perhaps EE’s has as well.
The very last thing to add is that the “Wade Story” was indeed worked to death years ago. Edwards repeatedly credited the amalgam of his son’s life and death with the [sudden] dedication of his life to public service. Always good to put a gloss on the trough. Sorry to be rude, tell the story once and get on with it. They ran it and ran it and ran it. They still run it.
They are not to blame, oh no. Gore and his sister’s death and the Bushes (first set) and the death of the baby girl, all those many many years ago.
Nothing new in American heart throb suffering politics.
It fits in with the old Queen for a Day scheisse that America loves so much: She is Blind, in a Wheelchair (and still needs a cane!), she has 42,000 children all in wet nappies! Her husband is dead, but first he stepped out on her during every one of her 52,000 pregnancies (she lost some, funerals for all) and today, well today we gift her with
a Washing Machine. And a Freezer.
For being American Mother of the Year. And for her Great Suffering.
It is so fucking small town.
I wish we could get away from that, but as long as people who barely voted as adults and barely showed up for the Intelligence Com meetings in the Senate wax on and on about a dead son, we will have the ACs of the earth to shake a nasty bony blondined finger.
People are wheezing that, when cornered as to what Bible passage(s) she read in The Big House, Paris is a bit unclear.
Remember Bush? This very same thing has been made clear several times, he claims the Bible, but when cornered is unable to speak clearly and knowledgeably about it… the point was made, very notably, by Al Franken (and I am not a fan of his) in his carefully annotated (by the Harvard kids who worked with him) book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.
So, you know, like, [insert gum snap sound], who is the bigger problem? Paris or Bush?
No prize for the right answer.
Yes our discourse is ugly, but our governing is even uglier. All sides.
Stories about celebrities and their petty offenses are safe distractions for a people with diminishing hopes. In a world made cruel by their own selected leadership, Paris is just “what’s on.”
Bill Quigly has a piece up at Counterpunch, 33 hard punches look at how to destroy a great and amazing American city. New Orleans. The one that Obama forget to mention in his speech to the UCC congregation. And he forgot the Gulf Coast as well. And Katrina itself. Think all the sins of omission and commission in public speech lie with the ACs of the earth?
Here are a few to show that every punch is packed:
Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African-American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.
Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program for the homeowners up so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.
Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African-Americans, from coming home.
Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union–the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.
Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government to extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the “good” kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.
Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.
Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African-American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area.
Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all.
Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks.
Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law which makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives!
The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear–do not think about returning to the suburbs.
Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.
I will update as things other than the metal garbage can lid hit me on the head and look interesting.
Once again, still here. Sorry to dis-appoint….
UPDATE, 8:53 pm
Yowser Bowser… When Rahm launched this excursion a few days ago, wilfred dropped an email that he was watching C-Span and Rahm was working hard “to be butch”. But would fail.
What a hoot! Oh yeah they are SO GONNA IMPEACH.
House Narrowly Defeats Measure to Defund Vice President’s Office
The House of Representatives just narrowly defeated an amendment to deny funds to operate Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Cheney had insisted that his office is exempt from Executive Department oversight by arguing that he is not part of that department. Rep. Rahm Emanuel proposed the amendment as a counter to that incredible claim.
The measure was defeated 209-217, with most Republicans and 24 Democrats siding with Cheney. GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of North Carolina voted in favor of defunding Cheney’s office. [snip]
Here is the link AGAIN (it is in the body of the text) to the Roll Call. Do check who voted iwth the R.
Some new, some old. Something borrowed, something blue.
They always get enough to vote with the R, in this instance 24 of the Dems did.
The attempt to kill funds for Cheney’s vice presidential office and the government-owned mansion he lives in came on the same day Bush said he would not provide documents being subpoenaed by Democrats in Congress related to the firings of federal prosecutors.
[Thanks to Madman for the link and wilfred for the quote!]
UPDATE, 3:32 am Friday…
Wonder what other dicey little impasses these two will pair up for in the future…
WASHINGTON — Virginia’s senators helped deliver what is likely a death blow Thursday to a proposed overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.
Republican Sen. John W. Warner, who for weeks had declined to comment on the measure, joined most of his Senate colleagues in voting to block a bill that was sought by President Bush.
“However, the immigration issue remains one of the most significant matters of concern to our citizens, and I feel strongly that we have a duty to address it in the future.”
While most Democrats voted to advance the bill, freshman Democratic Sen. Jim Webb joined Warner in voting to block it.
Webb, who campaigned last fall on a platform of greater economic fairness for American workers, expressed concern that the bill would legalize too many immigrants who would compete for American jobs and drive down wages.
UPDATE, 7:40 am Friday
There was so much news yesterday, that for now will post reports and blogger articles on all the various rulings and issues.
Still on the Immigration bill, this from Xicano Power (Para Justicia Y Libertad) on the “Green Card Draft“:
While the DREAM Act may facilitate access to college for a small percentage of these undocumented students, in many cases other factors will militate against the college option. This is where the military comes in, tucked away in the current immigration bill is a provision that will help boost military recruiting.
A little-noticed provision in the proposed immigration bill would grant instant legal status and ultimately full citizenship to illegal immigrants if they enlist in the US military, an idea the Pentagon and military analysts say would boost the Pentagon’s flagging efforts to find and recruit qualified soldiers.
The reality is that military recruitment is down significantly and there are reports that the Pentagon is wanting to impose a “limited military draft” in order to maintain “its present force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan” according to The First Post.
And never forget with whom you are dealing…
With few prospects of gaining US citizenship through the usual channels, and with little hope of employment, decent housing and education, risking ones life for a glimmer of a chance for a better future clearly holds some attraction. But it does comes with a price. The sad reality, the promises made by the Government frequently fail to materialize. Just ask Yaderlin Jiminez, wife of missing servicemen Alex Jimenez, who is now facing deportation. One of the greatest challenges for many immigrants is the experience of immigration itself, but to the Bush War Machine, this is not a concern to them. For them, all they see is cannon fodder for their war effort [snip]
The post from XP is loaded with links and information…
Other than that, I am laughing at all the sad, so sad faces in congress. Republicans will craft a wedge between themselves and Mr 26% and Dems have immigracion to run on in ’08.
Promises promises… 8)
Win WIn. Well, for the white guys in the congress. Which is just about everybody.
UPDATE, 8:37 am
awww. Well, no shock, conservatives vote together…. And “fairness” as in Fairness Doctrine, such a decent notion.
House votes to ban FCC on ‘fairness’
By Alexander Bolton
June 29, 2007
The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from using taxpayer dollars to impose the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters who feature conservative radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
By a vote of 309-115, lawmakers amended the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill to bar the FCC from requiring broadcasters to balance conservative content with liberal programming such as Air America. ….
And listen again for the ringing tones and the cry for freedom that is used to clamp (or keep) a nasty lid on American life…
In 1985 the FCC discarded the policy after deciding that it restricted journalistic freedom and “actually inhibit[ed] the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and in degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists,” according to a Congressional Research Service report.
Yesterday, the House firmly rejected the prospect of requiring balanced views on talk radio.
Before the passage of the amendment, which he sponsored, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), a former full-time radio host, forecast a big majority and took a shot at the Senate, saying:
“This House will say what some in the other body are not saying, that we believe in freedom on the airwaves.
We reject the doctrines of the past that would have this federal government manage political speech on the public airwaves.”
Tell me again about the hard right drying up and blowing away? The DLC, partner to the right, drying up and blowing away?
Will the Edwardses craft a message to raise money? Or is it too damned tough to explain the Fairness Doctrine?
Keep bleating about those Two – simple, reduced to fiction – Americas [didja notice how they all loved Black People last night? What a bizarre ‘dipshits on parade’ show that was!].
Pabulum in, soft baby shit out.
Well I am off to the kitchen, for some coffee that will etch the spoon and some amaretti biscotti. No pabulum… 8)
UPDATE, 10:08 am
This starts out as a fairly reasonable meander (on Don’t Weep for BvBoEd)… but then Juan Williams hits the fork in the road:
In their rulings ending court mandates for school integration, the judges, too, spoke of the futility of using schoolchildren to address social ills caused by adults holding fast to patterns of residential segregation by both class and race.
The focus of efforts to improve elementary and secondary schools shifted to magnet schools, to allowing parents the choice to move their children out of failing schools and, most recently, to vouchers and charter schools. The federal No Child Left Behind plan has many critics, but there’s no denying that it is an effective tool for forcing teachers’ unions and school administrators to take responsibility for educating poor and minority students.
His lips are getting whiter, doing a sales job for the destruction / privatisation of public school k – 12 education… and then:
Dealing with racism and the bitter fruit of slavery and “separate but equal” legal segregation was at the heart of the court’s brave decision 53 years ago. With Brown officially relegated to the past, the challenge for brave leaders now is to deliver on the promise of a good education for every child.
Won’t be happening. Can anyone be said to believe in the dream of separate but equal? I really don’t see what else Juan is arguing for…
Won’t be happening…
UPDATE, 1:42 pm Friday
Across the world but within our reach…
Mirvat, my sister, sent me this: “I just received a phone call from Baddaoui [refugee camp]. It seems a half an hour ago (around 3.00 am Lebanon time), displaced population from Nahr El-Bared (and staying at Baddaoui) went on a demonstration heading from Baddaoui to El-Bared to protest their current conditions. The Lebanese Army shot them like birds at a distance of 10-15 km away from Al-Bared. First information said aoround 20 wounded and 7 dead.”
Oh but! Look over there at the big bad bomb car! And another!
And again from Angry Arab (check the link, I am just saying, they let us in on it all, one reason I listen to his wretched horrible speeches, there is always something)
“We believe the ultimate success of Afghans and Iraqis will inspire others who want to live in freedom, as well.”
Oh, yeah genius. All Arabs and Muslims are jealous of the car bombs, bombing of civilians from the air, looting, corruption, foreign occupation, religious fanaticism, sectarian warfare, shooting at civilians at checkpoints, 4 million refugees, and other aspects of “liberation” in those countries. (As-Safir used this headline: “Bush promises the Syrians and Iranians a fate similar to that of Iraqis and Afghans!”)
We are insane. War and death is freedom. Liberation is a refugee camp for decades, under the UN mandate. Segregation is freedom. A black mouth whose mother cleaned floors on the Hill will help you sell equal protection is segregation. Nuclear blast winger radio and wingers forever cable with no balance is freedom. Women dying, so the Dobsons and Ratz-zingers of the earth can glory in their power, is freedom. A wall that stretches, or is sold merely as illusion, one or the other, across the border with Mexico is “security” against The Age of Terror. But we wage the Age of Terror…
We think we can wall off a contiguous land mass?
Last night Hillary promised, with a gleam in her eye and a wrench of her facial muscles, to bomb the Sudanese pilots out of the air to show we mean business. She got applause but thank someone somewhere for something she also was boo’d [if I heard right, at all]
A partial list…
Hang it up America. If the “experiment” ever was one, the petri dish is utterly utterly corrupt.
UPDATE, 2:51 pm
NYT is up with the transcript from the PBS debate of last night at Howard University:
SEN. CLINTON: There are three things we have to do immediately. Move the peacekeepers that finally the United Nations and the African Union have agreed to into Sudan as soon as possible. In order for them to be effective, there has to be airlift and logistical support, and that can only come either unilaterally from the United States or from NATO. I prefer NATO. And finally, we should have a no-fly zone over Sudan because the Sudanese governments bomb the villages before and after the Janjawid come. And we should make it very clear to the government in Khartoum we’re putting up a no-fly zone; if they fly into it, we will shoot down their planes. Is the only way to get their attention. (Applause.)
The camera went to a section going wild for her martial arts line. But from the other side of the auditorium I heard boos.
Her big war/fp moment. If called I will serve, if there is a chance to bomb I shall. Why not just sell it as a ringtone? Seems to be the biggest thing in America The Good.
Skip the beach reading for the summer… it will be bombs forever. And ringtones.
Clue: Marisacat is here… 28 June 2007Posted by marisacat in Blonde Sense, Border Issues, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, SCOTUS.
Well there seem to be some too cute efforts around to send me on vacation or slam the garbage can lid on my head.
Still here. Sorry to disappoint.
Audition tape… “Marisacat on Vacation”
This defines jejune. I got as far as the first awkward clutch of the cigarette. My mother was an elegant smoker, for the ages. Why observe studied awkwardness, if not a required course. If, as wilfred says, YouTubes just look like audition tapes (and he is right – even the great ones) the camera angle is beyond unfortunate. One is forced to engage with the front teeth.
I moved on. Swiftly. YMMV.
UPDATE: oops! Incoming from wilfred, please quote him accurately, so, straight from the email:
hey quote me accurately 🙂
i said ‘podcasts’ are audition tapes (not ‘YouTubes’) which is not plural, kind of like Bush’s ‘internets’).
But it’s always regrettable when a unique voice leaves the arena.
Keep me laughing: Still here.
Will be up later with something on the rather too effective reversal of Brown v Board of Education (oh right Kennedy slightly left the school door open. His Catholic Dorothy Day trickle down charity. We are showered with goodness and light – for thine is the power and the glory) and the – stunning! I am so so stunned! – loss of the senate immigration bill.
Did you love it the other day when Bush, so helpfully, said it IS an amnesty bill… effectively garrotted it. Well, try try again.
Oh they are so tricky, the really big big boyz.
In case you thought this was a … post:
No, just explaining, Marisacat is here (for those with eyes) and that threads are still closed. Til further notice: I discovered a great and wonderful thing when I shut threads… I had so much more energy. I enjoyed the threads (another clue, I am a consumer, a true news junkie, the threads brought news and links) but it took endless time to monitor and maintain. Read and at least be aware of links in 175- 250 comments a day. Several times an hour sift thru not just moderation filter but also spam file for mis directed real comments.
St Germain Dog, when he spammed me for two weeks last summer, threatened to put a spam bot on me. I would get up to 800 spam a day. Who knows, perhaps he did. If you just dump spam, who cares, but i had to go thru it, day after day for comments. That gets wearing.
And – I got this wonderful one line email a couple days ago, from somewhere in the midwest:
You are on fire. You should turn off comments more often. Outstanding…
For those who also miss threads, I am looking into Haloscan. One thing is certain, it can never again be as time consuming as it was.
Thanks for all the great participation, threads were a very real part of Mcat. And hopefully will be again.
But as I say above, slam the trash can lid all you like.
STILL HERE. 8)
Putsch: Grab a Flag, Any Flag for War 27 June 2007Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Democrats, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, UK, WAR!.
Madman popped me this from left i on the news…
A few days ago, ever vigilant to show its obeisance to Israel, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to urge the United Nations to
charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with genocide because of his statement that Israel will be “eliminated from the pages of history,”
naturally claimed by Congress to have been a call “for the destruction of the State of Israel.” This despite Ahmadinejad’s very clear statement that the “wiping out” he was referring to is precisely the kind of “wiping out” that happened to the Soviet Union, and has nothing to do with “a fight between Judaism and other religions.”
A handful of others voted “present” or didn’t vote. All the rest voted for this absurd resolution.
Update: Looking more closely, I find that the expression of fealty to Israel wasn’t just implicit, it was explicit:
“Reaffirms the strategic U.S.-Israel partnership and reasserts the U.S. commitment to defend Israel’s right to exist as a free and democratic state.”
Asia Times, Ramzy Baroud of Palestine Chronicle:
[I]srael is committing itself to ensure that the friction among Palestinians will destroy their national project in the West Bank as well. Fatah will now be allowed to do what Israel has failed to do over six decades of occupation.
Despite the painful nature of this conflict, one can only hope that some valuable lessons can be gleaned from all of this, not just by Palestinians alone, but by others who endure along with them the meddling of superpowers and whose democracy is a constant target.
First, Gaza has exposed, like no other experience in modern history, the hypocrisy of the US government’s democracy charade; if it was true democracy that the United States was seeking, it would have acknowledged the Palestinian people’s collective will and fostered dialogue with their representatives, as opposed to
covert operations to topple the government.
Well, I ‘d say Palestine, clearly and unequivocally, since the election of the Hamas slate — AND our invasion and occupation of Iraq are running in tandem to prove that Democracy is utter bullshit to our leaders… Not Breaking News, of course.
Oh spare the NYT readers the bullshit Carl, FIVE years in (and a big big 60 days early), a weak call for “drawdown”.
“I am encouraged by what he [Lugar] said and it just adds to the momentum for change,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Hopefully, he’ll take some very specific steps to implement what his words mean. They are powerful words.”
Wowie Zowie: “momentum for change”. We are in a 5 mile an hour wind tunnel. Spit travelling at full speed. Easier to track tracer fire.. spit spit… there goes spit. Whose spit. Who knows.
Why are you all talking about a Republican, presently – sorta kinda – in the minority, taking some “very specific steps to implement what his words mean”?
‘Cuz he is tugging on the Dem nose ring?
How badly have you all NOT stepped up? So, Indiana and Ohio – following Oregon, Nebraska, Maine – steps up?
WaPo page A01 today, it is essentially a pro Republican story. Five years in, they see the light. Democrats, the script rolls out, sound relieved:
Reid yesterday hailed Lugar’s speech as a “potential turning point” in the debate, adding that he looks forward to Lugar putting “his words into action by delivering the responsible end to the war that the American people demand.”
Of course, I did hear Lugar say, deep in the winnowing, that hmmm hmmm something about fruitless deaths hmmm in the coming 60 days? Some strong language like that…
Hidden in here somewhere (NYT):
“In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved,” Mr. Lugar said on the Senate floor. “Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.”
The roll call on TNH was 20 yesterday and 16 today. But, he could have been talking about our deals with the Arab League. Deals with the Wahabbis… Deals with the March Hare. With whomever is critical to our “vital interests” – and, we are a careful and considered people, those interests “in the long term”:
I saw the scene of that summit in Sharm Ash-Shaykh. The Jordanian king referred to the clashes between Hamas and Fath as an “opportunity.” And there are still people in the (Saudi) Arab media who mock conspiracy theorists. Their mockery is part of the conspiracy, I claim. But I could not help but think that all the Arab leaders gathered belong at a different side of the table: they all should be sitting behind Olmert. That is their logical place. (Unfortunately, that could have been arranged if the Muslim and Arab masses have not been more distracted by Danish cartoons and knighthood of Salman Rushdie). As for Muhammad Dahlan, he does not belong behind Olmert. Dahlan knows his place.
I went to TNH to see if the text transcript of Lugar’s segment was up yet (it was not, will post when it is: Here It Is) and found this, an Iraqi blog hosted at The News Hour.
It was like walking into an abandoned city, the street was completely empty, there were no signs of life in that street, the street was messed up and destroyed, the shops were all closed and broken, there was no single human being in that street, smoke clouds were coming out from a bombed or destroyed buildings, birds were flying high and it was completely quiet.
After walking about 20 meters we heard gun shoots and bombing sounds and the check-point which we passed started to shoot back in our direction, they didn’t have any target to shoot at, they were just shooting in the street. so we walked beside the walls and waited until it was quiet again and then continued walking to home.
I was so sad to see that my neighbourhood which was one of the most famous neighbourhoods of baghdad of being so crowdy and never sleeps neighbourhood to end up like this.
Photo is from a series at IraqSlogger:
These random pictures were taken by residents of western Baghdad during April, May and June 2007. They provide a glimpse of life in the Iraqi capital four years after the the American invasion:
abandoned streets, burnt out buildings and vehicles, piles of uncollected garbage and rubble, unknown bodies decaying on the streets, makeshift roadblocks placed by residents to fend off militia attacks. Most of the pictures, which have been circulating on Iraqi Arabic-language message boards, are from the Jami’a district and surrounding areas in predominately Sunni western Baghdad. (Warning: some graphic content.)
Bones in the roadway… looks like the soul of that mythical America (oh, but for Bush and his 6 years) so many Blahgers moan over. Yes, Injun bones. Jap and Jerry bones.. Gook bones. Now Raghead bones. It’s a partial list. Just a few adventures, excursions…
I need a laugh.. hollow as it may be.
George Packer is up in The New Yorker (far too much a Clintonite borough of NYC, Wallace Shawn is twisting in his grave) and ‘me and my Japanese binoculars’ (fleas on dogs at a mile!, I said, Ring them UP!) are signed up for this, at least:
If a five-foot-seven divorced Jew with a nasal whine is taken seriously as a Presidential candidate, it would at the very least diminish the power of faux symbols in our political life; and a Clinton-Giuliani-Bloomberg race would so thoroughly explode the Sun Belt’s lock on the White House that an entirely new kind of politics might be possible, in which evolution is not at issue, no one has to pretend to like pork rinds, and the past tense of “drag” is “dragged.”
Do they mean “drug”, as the [colloquial] past tense of “drag”? (Don’t answer, I don’t really need to know this one.)
And then there is this, which made me laugh out loud, fully:
However well Bloomberg has run New York City or would run the United States, his money would be a profoundly undemocratic force in public life.
Oh.. why worry when it is too late? Must we endeavor to be futile?
The argument that it insulates him from the legal bribery of fund-raising glosses over the fact that billionaires have an impressive track record of venality.
If we don’t know that by now, slaughter us for meat. We know and don’t fucking care…
The White House should be available to human frailty in all tax brackets.
Honestly, let’s not broaden it. We can’t keep up with the ”frailty” as it is.
While I am in this neighborhood, Pat Buchanan had a few things to say too (I know, he is a horrible terrible man):
Another reason it is unlikely a Bloomberg candidacy will carry a single state is that he is neither charismatic like John F. Kennedy nor a conviction candidate like Barry Goldwater, and he is certainly not the combination of the two that Ronald Reagan was.
On and on it goes, the Bonny St Ronnie. Talk about mythologising.
In These Times (thanks to Madman):
[F]irst to go is the myth that Reagan was the most popular president since FDR. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting reminds us, “During the first two years of Reagan’s presidency, the public was giving President Reagan the lowest level of approval of all modern elected presidents. Reagan’s average first-year approval rating was 58 percent—lower than Dwight Eisenhower’s 69 percent, Jack Kennedy’s 75 percent, Richard Nixon’s 61 percent and Jimmy Carter’s 62 percent.” At the end of his second year, (remember the Reagan recession?) Reagan’s approval rating was 41 percent; after the Iran-Contra scandal was revealed, Reagan’s approval rating stood at 46 percent. His approval rating for his entire presidency was lower than Kennedy’s, Eisenhower’s and even Johnson’s, and at times he was one of the most unpopular presidents in recent history. [snip snap]
Of course, his numbers sound pretty good compared to Bush II. Or congress.
Try to remember, we are not newly insane — all of that “worst president ever” and “take back America”, it is, truly, just rote crap. I like my parrots feathered and on perches…
“Each man questioned the other’s sanity. Nixon told a top aide to keep a file on Mr Kissinger’s mental health. For his part, Mr Kissinger, obsequious in the presence of Nixon, in conversations with journalists would refer to Nixon as a “madman”, “maniac” or “meatball mind”. The insults went further. Nixon called Mr Kissinger his “Jew boy” behind his back and, occasionally, to his face. Mr Kissinger would remain silent or even support Nixon’s anti-Semitic outbursts….Among Mr Kissinger’s unguarded comments are his reference to the North Vietnamese as Russia’s “little yellow friends” and his advice to Hafez Assad, the brutal president of Syria, that their mutual goal should be to avoid a situation that helped “the Jewish newspapers in the United States”.”
Kissinger of, as the old joke goes, 1-800-Bomb-Cambodia.
We’ve always been bad.
UPDATE, 8:10 am
How could I forget?
Except of course, It’s Not All, Folks… He is about to be, it seems to me, the personal emissary between Condi Rice and Tzipi Livni. Sooo New World Order.
Still, ein pudle.. Perhaps they can stash him in a satchel wearing a little Union Jack outfit, the next time they go shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth. Pop him out to acclaim. Fondle those bat wing ears.
UPDATE, 2:25 pm
No matter what, not a good headline.
Gas stations set ablaze as Iran begins rationing
By Nazila Fathi
TEHRAN: Angry drivers set fire to some gasoline stations here after the government announced that fuel would be rationed beginning Wednesday.
The government first planned to start the rationing a year ago, but put the decision off repeatedly out of fear that it would lead to unrest. The plan was announced only a few hours before it took effect. State television reported Wednesday that “several gas stations and public places had been attacked by vandals.”
“The rationing can help reduce the consumption,” Adel said, according to Parliament’s Web site. “It can also make us more independent and become less vulnerable in the international community.”
UPDATE, 4:10 pm
I cannot help it, it is just plain funny that Brit Hume’s code name, when the CIA (Family Jewels Baby!) spied on Pulitzer Prize winning Jack Anderson for whom Brit once worked… his code name was Egg Nog.
No amount of alcohol, splashed into a creamy egg mix, could make Brit seem like a light and giddy holiday party.
I mean, look at his face:
Summerstage: a gentle amble… [updates] 26 June 2007Posted by marisacat in Border Issues, DC Politics, Democrats, Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose, Political Blogs, SCOTUS, Viva La Revolucion!.
a gentle amble thru a handful of blogs.. 😉
Oldtimers will tell you about the time they saw Springsteen here in 1974. Back then the concerts were held on the 72nd St. playfield. The sound was so loud that Eastsiders would routinely call the cops and complain.
Another generation will tell you triumphantly how their college buddy can be seen in the crowd on the cover of that awful Simon & Garfunkel album recorded here in the early 80s. Chances are that even if they don’t like the band, they bought the album as a vicarious souvenir. Willie Nile’s blazing 1981 set here was also recorded and released several years later on cd.
In the 90s, corporate creepiness settled in, with the Summerstage series’ pompous producers subjecting crowds to a litany of commercial announcements before every show. But it was still a destination that just about every New York music fan made it to at least a couple of times a year. ::…::
If this had been the 70s, the hippies would have bumrushed the stage. If it was the 80s the punks and hip-hop kids and West Indians would have done the same thing. Was it the Reagan era that changed things, that turned the crowd completely docile, oblivious to the fact that they were being treated like cattle? No. It was the crowd itself. As recently as a few years ago, people came here because it was free, quite possibly because they couldn’t afford to plunk down, say, $60 to see Monty Alexander at the Blue Note, or $35 for the Master Musicians of Jajouka at Town Hall, or if they liked David Poe but didn’t feel like shelling out for the $10 cover plus a two-drink minimum at stuffy, overcrowded old Fez.
Those people aren’t coming to New York anymore because they can’t afford to. It’s a new paradigm and a new crowd, suburbanites from across the nation who’ve never experienced the great times New Yorkers could have here til recently.
If you remember those days, hold onto those memories because you won’t be making any more of them.
Whether Delarue’s wistful memories or his often joyous and always superbly written reviews of music, jazz, and jamming in the boroughs, or lucid’s wonderful, lilting live music or CD reviews, I find I smile with happiness and remember so many days and nights in NY.
I float after I read lucid and Delarue….
lucid is hosting meaty, informative postings and threads for “VAGs” (never did know what that one meant!) and ”Vipers” (think that was some meanness from Dkos that was refashioned, an Mcat trademark, refashioning)…
anyway lucid has good threads to support the crowd… check. it. out. 8)
Madman in the Marketplace at LSF looks at caging, whether votes or dissent or just alternative views…
Most people don’t take to the streets. They have been raised to think that voting matters, that the system works, that the political pendulum always swings back. For most, the control takes other forms.
It’s gentler, often voluntary on the part of the citizenry. Join a group, give money, write a few letters. Best of all, be active in a church. Built in tendency to believe, to follow direction, to not rock the boat … what could a money-grubbing, power-chasing politician or party want more than people pre-disposed to act in a predictable way?
Some will say, “what about MLK or the abolitionists or the Berrigan Brothers, they acted for social justice within a religious context?”
History shows that yes, good people have pursued leftist goals with the encouragement of their faith, but it’s important to remember that they were NOT encouraged to do so by the hierarchy of their organizations. Martin made other ministers nervous. The Berrigan Brothers were certainly not encouraged by the powers-that-be in Rome … that church has been trying to kill social justice movements and liberation theology for decades now. [snip]
And a look at the movie rating for LSF . (Remember, Mcat clocked in at NC-17.)
Over at Stop Me Before I Vote Again they have the hard nosed (and imo, damned right) take on the Digby … what to call it… haven’t a clue… PR?
But enough of generality – let’s dive in. Here’s an example of darling Ms Digby’s fatuous preening (try to chew this, you melancholy curs):
We [prog-bloggers] are, in short, something of an enigma. I like to call this phenomenon–irrational fear of hippies which has, in my view, become–irrational fear of political passion.
Something of an enigma? To whom, good hearted crusader, are y’all any sort of “enigma”? For fucksake, Lassie could size you up. And exactly in whose evil heart have you sown “fear” of your “passion”?
How Blanche Dubois you are, my dear… passion passion passion! One sniffles in nervous embarrassment at this flowering into divahood. How predictable is it that a closet histrionic might suddenly explode into unbecoming self-display upon the receipt of a statuette.
I had tried twice to comment at SMBIVA, but I guess the “Hillary” pass code for comments does not like me (she senses the Red Thai Poodle photo over to the right? hmmm), so am leaving the “comment” here at my own blog:
Yummy! Agree… tho since she whipped out the following, I have to admit I get there a lot less (tho I do like both poputonium and tristero, have read both for a long time)…
Anyway, here is the Great Digby Liberality (which I made sure to quote and link at the time):
I hope some of the comments I’m reading around the blogosphere aren’t reflections of of a knee jerk cynicism on the part of Democrats who have fallen in love with their assessment that they are superior to their elected leaders. This is a very dangerous state of mind.
Right … we can’t have that. And if you follow the Digby link, note the comment about filibuster… the great Kerry play from Davos (he phoned it in)…
If the Dems had 60 in the senate they would not stage a filibuster. Much less 45 or 49/50/51. They agree with the effing Republicans. Too often.
Anyway, if you love bitchy dish that is smack on target, head over to SMBIVA. Some of their sharp little shivs at Digby are divine.
Not too surprisingly while I was at SMBIVA I found another good post… well, a top-notch excerpt posted, from LBO blog, below is part of the excerpt:
Neither the DP nor the RP has a base in that sense nor has either ever had one. The only base either party has is made up of local party organizations. Local elected officials (e.g., the Daley machine in Chicago). Local and State labor bureaucrats. Local NOW or NAACP chapters. A few small businessmen (even in areas controlled by the opposing party), etc. The political principles of these local organizations are for the most part whatever principles will maintain the organization in existence. In scattered cases that means principles which would appeal to leftists, but with almost no exceptions, these particular local organizations are practical leftists, that is they will go through all the motions of pushing their politics, but in the last instance will always join in the unanimous nomination of the winner at the Convention and campaign for him or her.
References to the DP’s base on this list confuse the base of the party with the large masses of “abstract — isolated — individuals” who can be shuffled to the polls by these organizations or can be corraled by TV ads. But these voters are no part at all of The Party — either its base or its leadership. And they cannot be reached by working “inside” the DP because that is not where they are, except for 5 minutes every 4 years (for some of them every 2 years).
It is just 4 robust grafs, but gets it said, succinct and to the point.
moiv has continued with her Death Pimps post: Death Pimps II (anyone whose knees are bruised from genuflection, move on by, I don’t want people oh-ffended!)
Here is a consummate assessment from about the middle of the posting:
The usual exceptions — rape, incest, and “life of the mother” — are tacked on to soothe the unease of “family values voters” gullible enough to believe that those words actually mean something.[emphasis is mine]
Rape and incest provisions in this year’s abortion bans submit a woman to interrogation and the intrusive collection of DNA by law enforcement within a narrow time frame — an even further violation of her person and her privacy.
That would sum it up. Despite a lot of soft blither around too many so called Liberal Blahgs. Oh well, skip wars if it suits and mis-read banning medical procedures.
What is a little coercive stupidity when power is in reach…
Who is IOZ has a smart and pointed post (sense the roll here at Mcat?) on the ever swirling (should they win the WH, it will be the Dems who will insert it into our lives, invoking Jack Kennedy) swirl on subscription, prescription, national conscription… national servitude…
Meanwhile, one of the great merits of Western prosperity over the last few centuries was to allow for the re-creation of a reasonable period of youth, something which the grimmer period between antiquity and modernity had largely obliterated. My own “narrow confines” involved exploration, friendship, a little trouble, a lot of fun. I read books, made goofy movies with my friends, played some sports, wandered in the woods of Western Pennsylvania, imagined conspiracies of local personalities, hung out in coffee shops, smoked some pot, learned to change a tire, mastered a few video games, rode some roller coasters, and worked just enough to make some extra spending money. Granted I grew up in neither a hopeless suburb nor a sanitized ghetto–or have I reversed those?–but I’m tempted to say that a little leisure while one awaits adulthood is salutary.
With the bang-up close:
Life’s purpose is not love of country, whatever anyone tells you, and to spend a few years in splendid dissipation would in a just world be one of the universal rights of man.
While I was there, I checked for one of the sublime Friday food columns at IOZ – and last Friday was … well here is a snippet:
This frittata combines the rich flavor of caremalized yellow onions, the bright flavors of fresh leeks and green onions, and the rustic, extra-salty taste of Pecorino Romano. I cook mine in slow-rendered fat from pig jowls (pig jowl bacon, rind and meat removed, fat cut into small chucks, and slowly heated over a low flame), but butter or olive oil work just as well. The pig fat, if you don’t mind the extra labor, adds a great smokey flavor, though.
Here is another snippet from one of IOZ’s Foodie Friday columns:
[T]he braising liquid is simply prepared. Finely dice an onion, a large shallot (or a couple small), and several cloves of garlic. Sweat them out slowly over a low-medium heat in your brasing dish. Remember, you are trying to preserve the brightness of flavor here, not produce a hearty, wintery meal, so you want to avoid browning and caremalizing. At the proper temperature, the onions and shallots should slowly turn translucent, and the liquid from them should be visible on the bottom of the pan.
Add a large can of whole tomatoes. (With the exception of seasonal tomatoes in August and early September, good canned tomatoes are almost always superior in quality and taste to the pale, watery things sold in the produce section. A good rule of thumb: as with any fruit, the best sense to test a tomato’s ripeness is your nose. Does it smell like a tomato? If it does, it’s got flavor. If it smells like nothing, it will taste like the garnish on your omelette plate at Denny’s.)
Add a bouquet garni of thyme, rosemary, and flat-leaf parsely. Add the juice of one lemon and one lime. Finally, I like to add a dry, fruity white wine–perhaps a French Riesling or even a Gruner Veltliner. Just a cup or so will do. Or, if you want something a little more unusual, acidic, and Mediterranean, find yourself some verjuice (less–3/4 cup will do).
Arthur Silber has several new ones up… but this is from a posting of a couple days ago:
[B]ut one critical point is this: although today’s authoritarian conservatives reveal the primary underlying belief in an especially crude form, that same belief is now shared in different variations by virtually everyone.
As I phrased it in “Writing from the Scaffold,” that conviction is: “the belief that man’s nature requires that he obediently submit to authority.” Conservatives believe that man must submit to “God’s will”; with their fervent embrace of “big government conservatism” (including an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, see Irving Kristol for the literally bloody details: “In Service of the New Fascism“), many conservatives also believe that man must submit to the State (which must endeavor to reflect “God’s will,” as the conservatives interpret it). Liberals typically leave God out of the equation (well, maybe not) — but they believe just as or even more strongly that man must submit to the State. Hence, the endless calls for greater government involvement in the economic sphere, the demands for national and global “planning,” proposals for incomprehensibly and indecipherably complex regulation of any and every area of human activity, and all the rest.
The theme is always the same: man must submit to authority. They are all the people described by Berlin, who are “too offended and discouraged by the shapelessness of spontaneity, by the lack of order among human beings who wish to live their own lives, not in obedience to any common pattern.” Many people will argue that the world is now “too complex” to rely on spontaneity in this manner, and they will contend that such spontaneity will lead only to chaos and destruction. It is not immediately apparent why this must be so. ::…::
Wow! Silber is a libre-penseur!
[I]n addition, those who insist that the State is necessary to prevent catastrophe run up against historical evidence that represents an insurmountable problem: in the modern era, it is precisely the existence of the State that has made catastrophe possible on a scale never before seen in all of history.
The twentieth century saw destruction and death on a monumental scale and of a kind that would not have been possible in the absence of States. Given the early years of this century, we may be looking at another hundred years of the same or even worse, assuming we even manage to survive it. With regard to this issue, the State is the problem, not the solution. Moreover, the advocates of obedience to the State seek to avoid a critical fact that I highlight regularly: that the State has and will always be captured by certain privileged groups and sectors of society. Yes, our rulers will tell us — as all rulers always tell their subjects — that they represent “the people” and “the people’s will.” ::…::
[I inserted some graf breaks, took a liberty!]
UPDATE, 2:25 am
“If we do nothing, people will ask legitimately, `Why couldn’t the Democrats deal with this overarching issue,”’ Kennedy says in an interview. “If we don’t enact comprehensive changes now, the climate isn’t going to get better; the emotions will just get more inflamed.”
The Massachusetts lawmaker says he thinks there will be a Democratic president in 2009 and “we can come back to the parts of the bill that don’t work. That will be a lot easier than trying to deal with it from scratch.”
A new Democratic president — or, for that matter, a Republican — would inherit a full plate of challenges: a health- care crisis; the need to deal with costly and popular entitlement programs such as Social Security; global warming; a North Korea with eight nuclear bombs; and an Iran on the verge of joining the nuclear club — not to mention the Iraq war.
Like the current president, and the country, he or she will be better off if Congress takes one of these challenges off the plate and enacts immigration reform.
(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News.)
Oh what a rocky road ahead.
Just cannot decide, should the Dems lose… and their full throated whining, with phrases heard for years continue – or! should they win? And the whines change, a little?
As I consider the republic to be academic, the question is nearly moot.
This arrived by email. Few snips from Counterpunch…
Two San Joaquin Valley Representatives, Dennis Cardoza of Merced and Jim Costa of Fresno, were among 42 Democrats that voted to keep the world’s foremost torture school, the School of the Americas, open during a House vote on June 21. The vote was 203 yes, 214 no, 1 voting “present” and 19 not voting.
Cardova, Costa and 40 other Democrats voted no on the McGovern/Lewis Amendment that would have finally cut off funding to the School of Americas (SOA), now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
Only 6 more votes were needed to pass it–but these Democrats shamefully chose to join Republican Representatives in voting for the school, whose graduates have been responsible for genocide, assassinations, torture and other human rights violations throughout Latin America for decades.
California representatives Loretta Sanchez and Grace Napolitano, along with Charles Rangel of New York, are listed among the Democrats who chose not to vote. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not found on any list, not even present.)
SOA Watch, a human rights advocacy group founded in 1990 by Maryknoll Priest Father Roy Bourgeois to close the “School of Death,” was disappointed by the vote. However, SOA Watch vowed to continue its efforts in Congress until the school, located in Fort Benning, Georgia, is shut down.
“The grassroots mobilizing effort was tremendous: Tens of thousands of emails, faxes and calls flooded the halls of Congress over the past three days,” said Joao Da Silva, SOA Watch spokesman, after the vote at 11:52 p.m. on Thursday. “Students, clergy, union members and veterans traveled to DC and visited with hundreds of Congressional offices to communicate clearly that there is no room for institutions like the SOA/WHINSEC in our future. [snip]
At the link is the list of 42. Who voted with the Republicans. Who was “present” and so on. Yes, no shock, several of the new ‘sold to the progressive BlahgSnots’ in the House, Patrick Murphy, Joe Sestak… Ciro Rodriquez… several of the old guard, Clyburn, Skelton, Tanner of TENN who is – iirc – head of the Bloooooooo Dogs, Gene Taylor. Also Stephanie Herseth.
As long as people buy the bullshit, they will put it in the lemonade and charge for it.
Prepare for war forever. And laugh out loud, elections have consequences.
UPDATE… 10:58 am Tuesday
oh you really have to laugh. The “line” on Newman used to be that he did not suffer fools. Must be something in the spaghetti sauce.
Catch the latest gimme gimme email from the DSCC –
More than the films, more than the awards – finding out that I was on Nixon’s Enemies List meant that I was doing something right.
Nixon didn’t like my campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. But then again, he didn’t much care for debate, dissent, or the Constitution either.
I was proud to stand with Democrats against an imperial president back then. And I am proud now to stand with a new generation of Democrats against a president who poses what I believe to be the biggest internal threat to American democracy in my lifetime.
That’s why, when I was asked to send this message on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), I quickly agreed. A Democratic Senate is the best defense against this administration. I am as frustrated as all of you that Congress hasn’t made more progress on issues we care about here in 2007. But I also know that Democrats only have a 51-49 majority in the Senate – and that Republicans, with threats of filibusters and vetoes, have tried to block just about everything.
The emphasis was in the text of the email, not mine. Chorus line.
We need more sell outs in Congress, please help!
I am as frustrated as all of you that Congress hasn’t made more progress on issues we care about here in 2007. But I also know that Democrats only have a 51-49 majority in the Senate – and that Republicans, with threats of filibusters and vetoes, have tried to block just about everything.
By now it’s just amusing, nothing more. hmm for maximum popcorn ! effect (and I want to use those Japanese binoculars I bought, they said I could see fleas on dogs at a mile!), I think Dems should retain both Houses, add at least 5 – 6 in the senate and def win the presidency.
I am on the record! Dem majorities! Retake the WH (suckas can suck their thumbs while the America they mythologise stays elusive and stays at war).
Mark it down!
In related news, Tuston wants to be on the record (he sent it at 9 AM Pacific Time). I sense the same sentiment…
but I got to go on the record about this “immigration bill” before the vote for cloture, they will vote to end debate and the ugly ( and I do mean UGLY) bastard bill will pass in the next week or so…Beyond big business wanting this “reform” they need to give Bush a victory of some sort or the crows will begin to pluck at the dead corpse inside the oval office ( i.e. “something” will have to be done).
I would add that it is the NCLB “coalition”, think, a fusion bomb, an IED, a snake in the grass! – at work again. Kennedy wants a win too. See the Bloomberg snip from Al Hunt above. And of course US Chamber of Commerce wants a win, Business Roundtable wants a win.
Let’s win one for Pete Petersen! That’ll rally the troops (it’ll rally Paul Newman!)! Yeah!
LAT is up on the revived! “comprehensive immigration bill”…
The procedural vote passed 64 to 35, just four votes over the 60 required. The move doesn’t guarantee that a law to change national policy on the millions of legal and illegal immigrants will follow, but the much anticipated action breathed new life into a legislative campaign deemed vital to President Bush and the Senate Democratic leadership, both of which worked hard to round up the votes to resuscitate the congressional immigration debate.
In related news Tuston sent this a few days ago, from his vantage point just north of the border down SW way:
I can’t wait until los chubascos (monsoons). Right now its gonna break 100 degrees today and the hillsides are dry and brown. A few weeks more and the rains will come (hopefully!) then the temperatures will drop 10-20 degrees and the countryside as verdant as Ireland.
Anyhoo, the Border Patrol presence has really started to intensify here. Not so much with the helos, but lots and lots of patrols in the tubac area, extra dog teams at the reten, and youngish looking off duty agents everywhere.
Giffords told the rich gringos here and Sonoita (another wealthy white enclave on the eastern edge of the county) that she would be doing something about “border secuirity” and talk to the BP to “increase its presence”. It looks like she has. She’s also flooding the airwaves with commercials about how she voted to “increase the minimum wage”. It almost seems like campaign season. I’d love to see her internal polling; I’m betting she’s tanking. My mom continues to fund the Dems and is called regularly by the local party apparatus, but she’s pissed at Giffords on Border issues and I know many of her friends and acquaintances are too. The local Tubac sentiment (whether Red, Blue, Purple of Green) is “We’re in the US, stop the migrants at the border, not north of here”
[Tuston gave his permission]
LOL “It almost seems like campaign season”. Well the SCOTUS just helped her sort out (see FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life,). Stephie on ABC says we will b INUNDATED as never before with campaign ads from the big big big pocket entities …
Paul can do an ad: Spaghetti sauce on your senator! It’s not McCarthyisms, it’s Free Speech.
From the First Amendment Center — I consider McCain Feingold to have been a bust, on the ground – 527s!, but certainly now the big pockets have a lot more leeway:
Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life
It was Justice David Souter’s turn to read a dissent from the bench in this case, the latest in a series of dissents delivered orally by liberals in major cases this term.
The majority opinion, Souter lamented, “leaves Congress powerless” to curb the use of corporate and union funds to influence campaigns directly — funds that have been the targets of federal regulation for more than a century. The Court, Souter said, had “effectively and unjustifiably” overturned its ruling in McConnell v. FEC, decided just four years earlier. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined in Souter’s dissent.
The majority, led by Roberts, found that part of the McCain-Feingold law, the 2002 law that represented the high-water mark of campaign regulation, was unconstitutional — at least as applied to the Wisconsin case before the Court. The law bans pre-election ads that mention candidates by name and are paid for directly by corporations and unions, and applies during the 30 days before a primary and the 60 days before a general election.
Please note that the anti abortion, anti women legal arm of the hard core RW movement is who fought the case, thru to the SC. My guess, the spaghetti sauce bedecked Schumer is up in WI recruiting from WI RtL. They (Rahm and Bill C) did it in the ’06 cycle in Ohio (Charlie WIlson, Ohio Right to Life).
Remember: elections have consequences. Specially when rigged.
Last, a snip from First Amendment Center on the FS case that lost (Morse v. Frederick,) :
Morse v. Frederick
When Joseph Frederick unfurled a banner across the street from his high school in Juneau, Alaska, he says that even he wasn’t sure what his message — “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” — really meant. But Principal Deborah Morse took it to signify support for illegal drug use, told him to take it down, and suspended Frederick when he did not. Frederick displayed the banner in 2002 as the Olympic Torch was passing by amid cameras and news coverage.…
[D]issenting Justice John Paul Stevens — who shook his head as Roberts read from the majority decision yesterday — saw greater danger in the decision. Stevens asserted that Frederick’s message was a “nonsense banner” that did not advocate illegal or harmful behavior. Students would not view it as a pro-drug message, Stevens said, adding that “Most students … do not shed their brains at the schoolhouse gate, and most students know dumb advocacy when they see it.”
Stevens also said, “The Court does serious violence to the First Amendment” by upholding a school’s decision to punish a student for expressing a view with which it disagrees. Even drug advocacy does not rise to the level of advocating imminent violence, which the Court has said can be punished, Stevens said. Justices Souter and Ginsburg joined Stevens’ dissent.
Justice Breyer said he would have handled the case by deciding only that Principal Morse should not be held liable for her actions, without getting to the First Amendment issue involved. On the question of liability, the Court agreed unanimously that Morse should not be penalized.
I heard Jan Greenberg interview Stevens a few months ago, one f his rare interviews. She announced him as a “moderate”, he corrected her. A conservative.
Watch the decades roll by, and remember JP Stevens is a conservative. Or was, in a different America. Not a reactionary, not a winger, not a Bircher – just a conservative.
Now, as Arthur SIlber points out above, most, including many who self describe as “liberal” or [such an awkward word, they can have it] “progrressive”, support an authoritarian hard – or harder – push.
Ain’t it a shame. Heap spaghetti sauce on your shame America.
Benediction [War Whupdates :: SIlber update] 23 June 2007Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Abortion Rights, AFRICOM, DC Politics, Democrats, Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Sex / Reproductive Health, Somalia, The Battle for New Orleans.
Don’t worry black massa, white massa is pleased…
Obama has given another one of those siren calls to the e-van-geli-cals. And to remind supposed moderate Republicans, that they, only they, matter:
Come on OVER! Let’s made a Deal! Open for Bidness!
Religion built the nation:
But my journey is part of a larger journey – one shared by all who’ve ever sought to apply the values of their faith to our society. It’s a journey that takes us back to our nation’s founding, when none other than a UCC church inspired the Boston Tea Party and helped bring an Empire to its knees. In the following century, men and women of faith waded into the battles over prison reform and temperance, public education and women’s rights – and above all, abolition. And when the Civil War was fought and our country dedicated itself to a new birth of freedom, they took on the problems of an industrializing nation – fighting the crimes against society and the sins against God that they felt were being committed in our factories and in our slums.
Oh and TD Jakes and Rick Warren: they matter. Jim Wallis too, all friends…. and, get this, SBC. Yes Southern Baptist Convention.
That’s why pastors, friends of mine like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes and organizations like World Vision and Catholic Charities are wielding their enormous influence to confront poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the genocide in Darfur. Religious leaders like my friends Rev. Jim Wallis and Rabbi David Saperstein and Nathan Diament are working for justice and fighting for change. And all across the country, communities of faith are sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, and in so many other ways, taking part in the project of American renewal.
Prattle prattle spit spit: moan for the poor. Funny how the poor get less and less… the poor are sacrificed. It is moral. It is religious. It’s politics.
I’m hearing from evangelicals who may not agree with progressives on every issue but agree that poverty has no place in a world of plenty; that hate has no place in the hearts of believers; and that we all have to be good stewards of God’s creations. From Willow Creek to the ‘emerging church,’ from the Southern Baptist Convention to the National Association of Evangelicals, folks are realizing that the four walls of the church are too small for a big God. God is still speaking.
I’m hearing from progressives who understand that if we want to communicate our hopes and values to Americans, we can’t abandon the field of religious discourse. That’s why organizations are rising up across the country to reclaim the language of faith to bring about change. God is still speaking.
More of that Jesus phoned me stuff.
A white rubber ONE campaign bracelet and a religious, deep kiss with holy saliva relationship with Bono and Clooney (endorsed him) and Pitt and Damon and and and and and and … just ain’t enough.
Our conscience can’t rest so long as 37 million Americans are poor and forgotten by their leaders in Washington and by the media elites. We need to heed the biblical call to care for “the least of these” and lift the poor out of despair. That’s why I’ve been fighting to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and the minimum wage. If you’re working forty hours a week, you shouldn’t be living in poverty. But we also know that government initiatives are not enough. Each of us in our own lives needs to do what we can to help the poor. And until we do, our conscience cannot rest
That is where he delivered the political hook: I am the light and the way. Did no one learn from Bush? And! the privatisation sneak.
Our conscience cannot rest so long as nearly 45 million Americans don’t have health insurance and the millions more who do are going bankrupt trying to pay for it.
I have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2500 a year. That’s not simply a matter of policy or ideology – it’s a moral commitment.
A hook hanging from the cross. But first vote for him. Or just slobber for him.
I checked to see how much was said about Iraq (this is a moral pound cake, remember) ONE LINE.
OH Pardon ME, a line and a HOOK! And a security hook.
But we also know our conscience cannot rest so long as the war goes on in Iraq. It’s a war I’m proud I opposed from the start – a war that should never have been authorized and never been waged. I have a plan that would have already begun redeploying our troops with the goal of bringing all our combat brigades home by March 31st of next year. The President vetoed a similar plan, but he doesn’t have the last word, and we’re going to keep at it, until we bring this war to an end. Because the Iraq war is not just a security problem, it’s a moral problem.
Darfur gets more. I recently read that Darfur is getting less media attention than at any time since 2004… Well, time in the sun passes, even if you won the Global Lottery, to be the elevated charity story…
And until we stop the genocide that’s being carried out in Darfur as I speak, our conscience cannot rest. This is a problem that’s brought together churches and synagogues and mosques and people of all faiths as part of a grassroots movement. Universities and states, including Illinois, are taking part in a divestment campaign to pressure the Sudanese government to stop the killings. It’s not enough, but it’s helping. And it’s a testament to what we can achieve when good people with strong convictions stand up for their beliefs.
The country that needs to be the object of a divestment program is the United States of America.
He met February 28th with BONO, hence the ONE campaign bracelet soon seen in NH. I am sure they prayed together (yeah right, the slobber is GOTV) and discussed the Prada il papa wears. And the custom Versace (not kidding, Donatella is a bud) Ratz-zinger’s constant companion wears. Oh, of course, he’s the secretary – an Opus Dei, Msgr. Ganswein. [we are so skrewed]
Oops right, all about the poor. Someone tell Ratz-zinger.
Oh my. But ”they” are dying all over. So if the media sun moves on from Darfur, there is dying elsewhere.
Ooops, but it’s not death and dying in the abattoir of Iraq. No rape, nor poverty, nor military that come in the night… No: al Qaeda is “on the run”, with 25 dead in 4 days and how many hundreds of Iraqis??
Not. to. worry!
Darfur is different. Sure it is, dying, desperate black people, caught in the cross fire, far away… they die so photogenically, wearing bright colors, against the red earth… they die for us so very beautifully. It’s a sacrifice. The cross of sacrifice is once again appeased… We are washed clean in their blood.
Can we get more fucked?
Wait! “God is still speaking”:
He’s still speaking to our Catholic friends – who are holding up a consistent ethic of life that goes beyond abortion – one that includes a respect for life and dignity whether it’s in Iraq, in poor neighborhoods, in African villages or even on death row. They’re telling me that their conversation about what it means to be Catholic continues. God is still speaking.
I would not vote for the Pharisees on Parade if it were the last election on earth. No matter which one floats to the top of the porcelain bowl. Or was that, blow.
Oh right! there was one graf, the big finger shake… but you see, he gathered in so many Lead Pharisees as his FRIENDS, first — what’s a little teensy-weensy scold between deep kiss friends…
But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us. At every opportunity, they’ve told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design. There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich. I don’t know what Bible they’re reading, but it doesn’t jibe with my version.
Yeah. Biiig finger shake. This … speech … is one of the most homogenised things I have ever read. No urgency, no spirit, no passion. Don’t even think of Jesus at the Temple… throwing out the money changers. Of course not, no politician will throw out the money changers. Get real.
Moral? No. Simple slop:
At every opportunity, they’ve told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.
Bene-DICK-tion. Squeezing up against religion makes him happy. Over and over he equates absence of religion with being alone. (He has written very differently of his mother’s scepticism than in this speech.) Fine. Keep it away from the those of us who want real results and not Holy Water trickle.
Did you notice what was missing * from his pabulum, massa’s white bread bullshit dressing on sliced bullshit? Read it again.
So doing the Lord’s work is a thread that’s run through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that the separation of church and state in America means faith should have no role in public life. Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural without its reference to “the judgments of the Lord.” Or King’s “I Have a Dream” speech without its reference to “all of God’s children.” Or President Kennedy’s Inaugural without the words, “here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.” At each of these junctures, by summoning a higher truth and embracing a universal faith, our leaders inspired ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.
We’ve been trickled on, it does nothing but get us wet and mad.
Here is a little reality. Sunglasses needed, against the bright light that has no jesus inside it – as contrast to slobberification (from the lastest Gallup poll):
The Church or Organized Religion
The 46% confidence rating for the church/organized religion is within one percentage point of being the lowest in Gallup’s history:
Ratings for the church fell significantly in the wake of revelations surrounding the priest abuse scandal in 2002, and before that had dropped in the wake of the television evangelism scandals of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Confidence in the church or organized religion is particularly low among Catholics compared to Protestants. Confidence in the church or organized religion among Catholics was at 53% in 2004, and has dropped to 39% today. Among Protestants, confidence went from 60% in 2004, to 63% in 2006, to 57% today.
I am so fucking tired of the religious sneezing on me. They remind me of an elephant at the SF Zoo when I was a child, right, you guessed it, Sneezy.
Finally, back in the good old days of Terri Schiavo, we get the answer:
If it is above our pay grade to opt to terminate life in the womb—and, for the record, I think it is—then it is also wrong to decide when inconveniently comatose spouses or brutal murderers should be “terminated.’’ Either life and death is up to us or it is not. [emphasis added]
“inconveniently comatose”? Spare me. BTW, it was reported that JPII refused a feeding tube. In the last days… Gosh, he coulda lived longer. How dare he decide. Did he think he was Gawwwd?
The dear lady is fully fully anti abortion. But full of the fucked (and self-aggrandising) holy grace of Gawwd. Another Sneezy. Sneeze in reverse please.
In other religious news (Bene-DICK-tion):
Blair might, just might, dance closer to the pope. My guess, it will come down to whose hymns he likes better. He always struck me as one of the showy members of the choir.
Finally who gives a shit. He has done his damage. If there were a god, s/he/it would kick Blair in the teeth. And kick him again, when he ws down. And again.
At least I am honest, if there be a god, I want one that is utterly vengeful, to suit me.
Madman sent me a fun, silly little diversion, you put in your blog url and it spits out a movie rating.
My NC-17 rating ws based on:
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
- abortion (10x)
- fucking (7x)
- sex (6x)
- shit (3x)
- ass (2x)
- dangerous (1x)
Think the last is the salient word.
Here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own… he quoted Jack Kennedy. Shot and shot again.
“all of God’s children.” He quoted Martin, a second, two man team was in Memphis that day. Shot and shot again.
“the judgments of the Lord.” He quoted Lincoln in the Second Inaugural Address… Right, shot.
In a graf that opened: So doing the Lord’s work is a thread that’s run through our politics since the very beginning.
And was followed with this subversive line:
And it puts the lie to the notion that the separation of church and state in America means faith should have no role in public life.
He left out New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Katrina. Entirely.
UPDATE, 1:39 am Sunday
Resign your commission, refuse to return:
I’ll be honest – I think it was kind of like brainwashing. You start wanting to believe that you’re going there to help. When I was a kid, I was one of those guys that threw rocks at the Israelis, and I was really good at it. I became so good at it I became famous for it. Seriously, the only thing that got me out of trouble was my American passport.
In the summer of 2004, we were in the city of Haditha in Iraq, in a convoy tippy-toeing around. We were so scared, it wasn’t funny. I was shaking. As we passed the Haditha Middle School, we got a shower of rocks. They were flying off my flak jacket and my helmet. I felt so tiny, and so fogged-up with emotion. Because that kid throwing rocks used to be me. A rock hit me at the heart. I kept it.” (thanks Hichame)
UPDATE, 9:45 am — Sunday morning on the Pacific Coast
Oh I feel sure this was AQ, don’t you? Or Iranians… or Syrian financed militias or or or…. whatever the fuck suits our need for a big bang Wargasm.
Four Spanish UN peacekeepers patrolling in southern Lebanon have been killed after their vehicle hit a mine or suspected booby trap.
For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news
Whatever the device, it was a trap.
Somali fighters: Somali Government Forces breat apart, clash in port city [McClatchy]
Surprise surprise. People want to live, they have seen our “feeding missions” (Somalia, Bush 1, Clinton 1):
North Africa Reluctant to Host U.S. Command
Algeria and Libya Reject Pentagon’s AFRICOM Proposal; Morocco Signals Its Lack of Enthusiasm
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 24, 2007; A16
RABAT, Morocco — A U.S. delegation seeking a home for a new military command in Africa got a chilly reception during a tour of the northern half of the continent this month, running into opposition even in countries that enjoy friendly relations with the Pentagon.
Algeria and Libya separately ruled out hosting the Defense Department‘s planned Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, and said they were firmly against any of their neighbors doing so either. U.S. diplomats said they were disappointed by the depth of opposition, given that the Bush administration has bolstered ties with both countries on security matters in recent years.
Morocco, which has been mentioned as a possible site for the new command and is one of the strongest U.S. allies in the region, didn’t roll out the welcome mat, either. After the U.S. delegation visited Rabat, the capital, on June 11, the Moroccan foreign ministry strongly denied a claim by an opposition political party that the kingdom had already offered to host AFRICOM. A ministry statement called the claim “baseless information.” [snip]
Yes, I do believe now that the mil wrote the opinion piece from Bill Nelson (D-FL) in Monday’s Orlando Sentinel.
[E]ven worse, we face the challenges of poverty and starvation in Ethiopia, where millions of children are chronically malnourished. In addition, the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan has left hundreds of thousands of refugees homeless, and the violence is spilling across the border into Chad.
Against this backdrop, terrorist groups seek to expand. As we combat al-Qaeda’s support and sanctuary in the Middle East, its members must find other places to operate.
We cannot allow terrorism to fester in parts of Africa because of poverty and anarchy. We have to prevent that continent from becoming a fertile ground for terrorists.
But, but b-b-b-but… there is this in the WaPo piece:
People on the street assume their governments have already had too many dealings with the U.S. in the war on terror at the expense of the rule of law,” said Tlemcani, who is also a scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The regimes realize the whole idea is very unpopular.”
As they search for a place to put a headquarters for the new command, U.S. officials have tried to allay concerns in Africa that the Pentagon has warlike designs in the region.
Ryan Henry, leader of the U.S. delegation and principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said the main mission for the command would be to stabilize weak or poor countries by training local security forces and doling out humanitarian aid.
“It’s mostly a headquarters and planning focus,” he said after meeting with Moroccan officials.
“AFRICOM doesn’t mean that there would be additional U.S. forces put on the continent.”
We have gone insane. We think no one has seen us, that no one sees us in action.
The North African counterterrorism partnership is headed by the State Department and also includes economic and humanitarian aid programs delivered by civil affairs units. But Tlemcani, the Algerian political scientist, said the U.S. government needed to do much more on those fronts before taking a more prominent military role in Africa.
“The best way to build a strategic relationship is with socioeconomic programs, which haven’t been funded very well,” he said by telephone from Beirut.
We care so much.
UPDATE, 11:25 am Sunday
Silber has a new one up:
The entire governing class, and virtually every national politician in both parties, believes in American world hegemony. Hegemony needs bases, baby!
So about the Democratic leadership of the House: either they don’t understand what this language means and what its effect will be, in which case they are too stupid to be on the city council of Flat Ass, Alabama — or they know exactly what it means, in which case they belong in jail.
I vote for jail. Of course they know.
UPDATE, 11:50 am
Does anyone say anything that means anything real, at all, in this country? Any more?
Is there no one coherent?
FORD: I think there’ is a concern, as well, that what we’re trying to do, which is win, we’re not achieving all that we want.
HANNITY: The war is lost?
FORD: No, no, no. That’s not the point. The point is I think we all want a stabilization of Iraq.
HANNITY: I’m not saying you said that, but Harry Reid said that.
FORD: Right. I mean, I don’t associate myself with…
HANNITY: I don’t blame you.
FORD: I think — I think the country has a right to be concerned. And almost equally repulsed when the president makes comments. And then you hear Democrats making comments.
As you know, I sat on your show after the South Carolina Democratic debate, asked the president to convene the leaders at Camp David, to pull them all away from the press and the spotlight and say…
FORD: … “Look, I want this as much as you do. I want these kids to come home as much as you do. Let’s develop a new policy. Let’s develop a 21st century containment policy.”
Oh I am sure that is a transcription error. You know, “clerical error”. He meant to say:
21st century entertainment policy.
Gibberish, we gibber our way thru our insanity.
That big bad world… and then Blahgs and blog issues… (UPDATES :: WHUPDATES :: Whiner Whipdate) 21 June 2007Posted by marisacat in 2006 Mid Terms, 2008 Election, Abortion Rights, AFRICOM, Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, la morte de St Germain Dog - the best the BLAHgers had, Political Blogs, SCOTUS, Sex / Reproductive Health.
Robert Sheer (via TO) has a piece up on Hamas:
The Palestinian movement was then led by puppets of Nasser and was secular in focus. It remained so, after being invigorated by the late Yasser Arafat, who gave the Palestinians their first serious and independent political identification. But as Arafat wasted his credibility in futile jockeying with Israel (mostly while in exile), corruption came to dominate his movement.
By contrast, the religious zealots who later formed the Hamas organization were more focused on spiritual probity and tended far more closely to the needs of their impoverished brethren in Gaza and the West Bank. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon – and that other Iranian-backed Islamist movement, the Shiites who now control Iraq – the religious movements, both Shiite- and Sunni-based, cornered the market on purity of purpose as opposed to rank opportunism. That is precisely why these fiercely anti-Western movements have been able to turn the favorite fig leaf of U.S. neocolonialism, the slogans of democracy and elections, against the United States by winning popular elections.
While the American mass media tend to join the Bush administration in ignoring this unpleasant contradiction, the fact is that the people we brand as the enemy can make a strong claim to having won the election that our President Bush champions.
What irony that the United States and the European Union, both of which cut off aid to the Palestinian government in 2006 when Hamas won the election, have now resumed aid to the PLO-dominated government that lost power through the vote.
Oh we always fund who suits us.
Here little puppet dictator torturer endless line of desert princes, wanna cookie? Swedish blonde on a triscuit? Hidden desert oasis stocked with blondes and a lifetime supply of rare, aged cognac?
Not so much irony as bidness as usual, I would say.
Now it is also too late for the remnants of the PLO to once again unilaterally assert a claim to lead the Palestinians. Sure, the United States, Israel and the EU can throw aid and tax dollars their way, but if the price is that the PLO assist in crushing Hamas, or even sit idly by while Israeli troops reoccupy Gaza, there will be chaos. The only hope is for the funders, including Israel (which has withheld the tax monies paid by the Palestinians from them), to recognize that the Palestinian people need to make their own history.
At this point, that must include Hamas, which it is hoped will be moved, as was the PLO, to accept Israel’s right to exist within borders that permit a viable Palestinian state.
That last line there from Sheer is belied by the series of maps at the top of this post. It ain’t viable right now.
To his credit, possibly the last actual liberal to inhabit the op/ed pages of a national paper, Anthony Lewis, discussed, tho without benefit of maps, the “Bantustan” aspect of the land the Palestinians have been shoved into, in his next to the last column for the NYT… that was years ago, when utter silencio was imposed on this issue…
Information is starting to trickle out these days, thanks in large part to Jimmy Carter.
Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”
Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas’ moderate Fatah movement.
Hamas fighters routed Fatah in their violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last week. The split prompted Abbas to dissolve the power-sharing government with his rivals in Hamas and set up a Fatah-led administration to govern the West Bank.
Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”
“All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there’s no effort from the outside to bring the two together,” he said.
Oh in my view the west and Israel see it in terms of arms deals. Death by bullet in armed conflict, a civil fratricide, arms dealers the world over stand up and cheer… many deaths by bullets. Gun running, a growing business. Better yet, supply both sides!, fuel it for a long time.
Back to left i on the news, who links to the publication in the NYT and Wapo of two important guest editorials:
This has to be unprecedented. The Washington Post and the New York Times have simultaneously published today op-eds by Ahmed Yousef, the political adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister (the legitimate one) Ismail Haniya, explaining Hamas’ position on recent events. Interestingly, the two are not identical. Read both.
Thru left i, I read this remarkable post at Lenin’s Tomb on our systematic destruction of cities in Iraq:
“When we identify positively an enemy target, we’re going to go ahead and take it out with every means we have available.
I like to remember what Viscount Slim said during the Burma campaign. He said, ‘Use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut.’
And that’s exactly what we will do. We will use force, overwhelming combat power when it’s necessary.” – US Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr.
“the Burma campaign”. Lovely. How are you feeling about being an American? Yesterday, today and tomorrow? Feel the oncoming rush of a bright and wonderful future?
I see dust stoms, blood storms and too likely the mushroom cloud, from our own hand. Who did it first? Who never has stopped talking about doing it again?
Again, from Lenin’s Tomb:
A new study by over thirty NGOs, including some excellent groups like the Transnational Institute, contains a lengthy section on attacks on cities by the occupiers. It outlines some rules of thumb for destroying a city:
5) massive bombardment: “The Washington Post reported that in Falluja, an “official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described 12 hours of overnight strikes by American helicopters, fighter-bombers, field artillery and tanks as ‘shaping operations.’
Military commanders use the term as shorthand for battlefield preparation, combat operations specifically intended to remove enemy strong points in advance of an assault.” In the second assault on Falluja, the air strikes began on October 15, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and continued for three weeks prior to the assault of November 7.
In Najaf, US Marines bombarded the cemetery near the famous Imam Ali Shrine as well as much of the city center, in a massive attack backed by aircraft and tanks. In Ramadi, US forces carried out intensive bombardment, targeting the city’s power stations, water treatment facilities, and water pipes, leaving many destroyed houses and no civilian services functioning”;
6) conduct a massive urban assault, using sniper fire, and put survivors through violent searches:
“The US military has increasingly relied on snipers to back-up infantry patrols. Commanders portray snipers as a precision method to avoid civilian casualties, but in fact sniper teams often fire at anyone moving in the streets, in gardens or even inside of buildings. Everyone is treated in the besieged cities as an enemy.
Using night goggles and special high-power scopes, snipers shoot at any moving object, which might be a civilian going out in desperate search for food or water, seeking medical care, escaping a collapsing building, or trying to leave the city. During the siege of Falluja in April 2004, the Guardian reported that US snipers shot an ambulance, an elderly woman carrying a white flag, and an aid worker delivering medical supplies on foot. The UN reported that, in August 2006, snipers in Ramadi shot thirteen civilians who had breached the curfew, killing six and injuring seven in just one district of the city.” ::snip::
I hang my head in shame at my country. And the friends and associates of my country.
The close at Lenin’s Tomb:
We are, if the repeated signals via the news media are serious, about to see what new forms of depravity Israel can inflict on the cities of the tiny Gaza strip. Baquba is already being perforated and burned and razed. Next month it will be a new set of cities transformed into moonscapes. Israel may find itself back in downtown Beirut. Iranian cities may soon cop it from missiles – with nuclear heads, no less (and neither Republican nor Democrat will take such an option ‘off the table’).
Over thirty years of imperialist terror has left Afghanistan in ruins. To the Planet of Slums is being added dozens of mass graves and hollowed out bomb sites. Only the surreally calm Green Zones of the world are safe: but for how long?
Just a few weeks into the Iraq War i saw a small snippet in the NYT, that we had “greatly expanded our foot print in the Horn of Africa”. My eye is always drawn to the phrase, “Horn of Africa”, as when I was too little to know what it meant, the wood and caned seat, straight back chair at my mother’s desk was always called the ”chair that come ’round the Horn”.
On Monday, this was in the Orlando Sentinal… an opinion piece under the name of Senator Bill Nelson of FL. I s u p p o s e he is capable of composing sentences, so possibly he did write it. My other thought is that the mil wrote it for him.
Blood and remnants of already masticated human flesh (they say newborn babe is quite tender and sweet) is apparent ’round the greedy mouths of the Democrats:
[W]e cannot allow terrorism to fester in parts of Africa because of poverty and anarchy. We have to prevent that continent from becoming a fertile ground for terrorists.
Let us lead the effort to bring peace, security and prosperity to Africa. Earlier this year the administration took a step in the right direction when it announced plans for a new military command solely focused on Africa. The plan is to safeguard our strategic and national-security interests on a continent of increasing economic significance.
Congress must help determine the size and scope of this pioneering effort.
Based on my trip to West Africa and my discussions with Gen. Bantz Craddock, head of our European forces, I believe we need to create an unconventional command for Africa — one not only to combat terrorism, but also to coordinate successful aid efforts; and, to protect humanitarian workers while promoting diplomacy with local leaders. [snip]
Humanitarian aid workers officially advised us, years ago, they did not wish to be seen in the presence of American mil in Afghanistan (oh too right, our clean war, the one the fucking pope sanctioned) for their own safety.. so the above is mouth wash for the general population. Who persist in remaining functional idiots.
Medecins sans Frontieres, one of the few NGOs that I will link to or quote, is adamant, if they find themselves referred to or seemingly written about as though they align with any government or military force, they immediately and officially ask that the reference be removed.
So this is bullshit from Bill. All the Bills. Any care org that accepts this too cosy arrangement is already compromised or soon will be…
But look whom the US public trusts (sorry no link, ooops something substantive that is not linkable, guess what? Lump it):
Confidence in most institutions drops
by Frank Newport
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ — The percentage of Americans with a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress is at 14%, the lowest in Gallup’s history of this measure — and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year’s Confidence in Institutions survey. It is also one of the lowest confidence ratings for any institution tested over the last three decades.
Gallup’s annual update on Americans’ confidence in institutions shows that confidence ratings are generally down across the board compared with last year. The public’s confidence ratings in several institutions, including Congress, are now at all-time low points in Gallup’s history of this measure. These low ratings reflect the generally sour mood of the public at this time.
Of the 16 societal institutions tested in Gallup’s 2007 update, Americans express the most confidence in the military. They have the least confidence in HMOs and Congress. Americans have much more confidence in “small” business than in “big” business.
Let’s isolate that last there:
Of the 16 societal institutions tested in Gallup’s 2007 update, Americans express
the most confidence in the military.
Feel good about America? Bright, brilliant future dawning?
On the domestic front and because it should be linked to and linked to and linked to…
In early May, Ferguson figured largely in a controversy involving Pastor Wiley Drake, Second Vice-President of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported what some of us had known for years — that since 2003, along with that of his friend Ferguson, Wiley Drake’s signature had been published on the AOG-hosted Declaration of Support for Dr. Slepian’s killer, James Kopp.
This document bears signatures and comments from a number of activists who openly condone or even advocate violence — some of whom, such as Brockhoeft, have acted on and served time for that belief. For a brief time, national attention focused on Drake’s documented association with Ferguson and Bruce Murch, among others.
Bear in mind as you read it, these are the people with direct access to congress. Think I am being an extremist? Think again.
Pastor Wiley Drake isn’t the only publicly respectable figure who has some questionable connections.
Fr. Frank Pavone — Director of Priests for Life, number 31 among Daily Catholic’s Top 100 Catholics of the 20th Century (ranking above popes, cardinals and at least one saint), and honoree of the Catholic Leadership Institute — was commissioned by the Vatican to found Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, the first religious order solely dedicated to ending abortion and the ability of families to make their own end-of-life decisions.
In addition to campaigning and fundraising for his good friend Randall Terry, the Vatican’s “vicar for life“ also lends his considerable influence to Flip Benham, with whom he has worked closely for years. In 2005, Pavone accompanied OSA to Colorado, where they made a target of Dr. Warren Hern.
Think of the SCOTUS and the recent language from Kennedy, a Catholic – one of 5 on the court, in the ruling on Gonzales v Carhart.
mink swaddling clothes, a layette of gold… other peoples’ sexual plumbing… etc.
From time to time, a lot gets said about me. I intend, however, to expand on a couple of comments made last Sunday.
No one online has met me. No one in my private life knows I have a political blog, but for a friend of my family in Tennessee, a woman I know and trust implicitely. One person has spoken to me on the phone, wilfred of LSF.
No one can say to know much about me. They can speculate but what they say is not, from them, supportable fact. They draw from my own commentary… and then they become fabulists. Fabulists are floating free, unmoored.
Before I forget, wealth.
Lest lunatics contact me for cash donation to their BlogPACs, no.
I was born in what might be termed, frequently fortunate circumstances. Nothing more. My mother worked from about when I was 4. I’d say in what world, but there is the extremely slight possibility I could be identified thru that. Sorry, not interested in being like Digby (wasn’t. that. exciting!).
That substantive issue that so required proof, a blog persona and her polyamory: check the update to “Well … what did we expect…”
And once again I recommend the full exchange between Shanikka, Dr William Harrison, Choice Joyce, and a commenter “megeara”… One benefit of Sunday, an extremely high number of readers have clicked thru to read that sub thread.
And I got some hilarious emails regarding Shanikka’s rolling riot of misinformation and accusatory – in fact, imo, racist – comments.
My favorite ws this one:
Lawd God A’mighty!
Please suggest that I close the windows and turn on the gas … before reading shanikka again. Please. 🙂
Comments on Sunday were made related to two earlier threads (link, exchange at issue starts at comment # 11, link, relevant exchange starts at comment # 103) in which Cindy Sheehan’s Memorial weekend diary at Dkos – or carry-over issues – were raised.
Read it yourself.
- Marisacat-How many drugs do you go thru in a given day?
Oh poor Martin *… I really think his less than fortunate forays here (this one was described to me as, live cat dead mouse..several times I suggested he call his atty, poor Martin was in the deep end of the kiddie pool… and remember Martin is not a smart man) are on days he needs to prove (inconclusively) that he has a third leg. hmmm. Or he gets a “too helpful” email from one of the Blahger buds. Martin and his like are so suggestible. That, suggestion, has been, imo, one of the operational tactics from the Blahger Boyz, both A for Asshole –listers and B for Bullshit –listers.
I would not be accusing anyone, of anything, if I had recently been picked up by the police in the vicinity of a PA middle school for removing an article of clothing from the body of a child (omigod! right! the clothing was STOLEN!).
A child not my own and one whom I do not know. What a fool. And then, in usual fudging fashion he exposed it at his blog (mostly to acclaim). I found the whole thing boring… But someone with much more interest in the incident, sent me these links to PA statutes on trespass and disorderly conduct. It was sent to me shortly after his comment here, linked to above, on Sunday.
Go for it Martin. Sorry, I don’t do drugs. Can you sink lower? Yeah probably.
* Booman of BMT has posted at his blog that he finds it odd I refer to him as Martin. Lord luv a dumb man, someone must. His name is out there, not my doing. Google “Martin Longman” and see for yourself. I have said that “Booman” sounds like the nickname for a child, a 3 year old still in diapers and dragging around in a soiled pair.
Last, why did I close the blog and close threads? I sense heavy panting out there.
Here is the reason: I keep a public blog with threads. Once I shut it, fully, I was no longer public property, available for certain people to piss on me.
Exactly that. And, knock yourselves out if anyone is still in a fog, links above.
When will I re-open threads? To be determined.
And, not related to Sunday… but this link belongs down in this area… do quickly hie over to one of the “pre-eminent anti-kos blogs in the blogosphere”.
And start laughing:
In point of fact, if anyone had been paying attention, they would have noticed that when I stood on the precipice of the possibility of real fame or notoriety, back when the Washington Post article about me came out and I did the guest spot on Fox News television and appeared regularly on Fox News radio — and, unbeknownst to many, being approached by various other entities, including a few campaigns — I withdrew from that precipice.
Oh hon. Take it easy. Poor girl.
On related matters, for anyone who did not know, TownHouse google group is up and running. They streamed in here Sunday and Monday.
So cute. They too should take it easy. 8)
UPDATE, 10:20 pm
When I hear the words non-profit or foundation, and then the poor or poverty or hunger (oh that would Bono in the papal mitre with the 500 dollar sunglasses, who is he kidding?!), I open the windows and get out a heavy duty cleanser.
‘Cuz there is fall out coming and it will be dirty. Absconded monies, hidden accounts, fat paychecks, all around subterfuge and lying… and the poor just go on.
Stuff hs swirled around for weeks about Edwards foundation for poverty issues. It fucking stank from minute one. He never cared before, why now? (If you bought that simple syrup sludge called Two Americas, slap yourself awake, now.)
While Mr. Edwards said the organization’s purpose was
“making the eradication of poverty the cause of this generation,”
its federal filings say it financed
“retreats and seminars”
with foreign policy experts on Iraq and national security issues. Unlike the scholarship charity, donations to it were not tax deductible, and, significantly, it did not have to disclose its donors — as political action committees and other political fund-raising vehicles do — and there were no limits on the size of individual donations.
Nattering on about haircuts is the taunt while they compile this sort of thing…
But it was his use of a tax-exempt organization to finance his travel and employ people connected to his past and current campaigns that went beyond what most other prospective candidates have done before pursuing national office. And according to experts on nonprofit foundations, Mr. Edwards pushed at the boundaries of how far such organizations can venture into the political realm. Such entities, which are regulated under Section 501C-4 of the tax code, can engage in advocacy but cannot make partisan political activities their primary purpose without risking loss of their tax-exempt status.
Remember, worth 37 million. They let the DC house sit on the market for almost two years, refusing to lower the price, iirc it sold for over 5 million.
Because the organization is not required to disclose its donors — and the campaign declined to do so — it is not clear whether those who gave money to it did so understanding that they were supporting Mr. Edwards’s political viability as much or more than they were giving money to combat poverty.
The money paid Mr. Edwards’s expenses while he walked picket lines and met with Wall Street executives. He gave speeches, hired consultants, attacked the Bush administration and developed an online following. He led minimum-wage initiatives in five states, went frequently to Iowa, and appeared on television programs. He traveled to China, India, Brussels, Uganda and Russia, and met with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and his likely successor, Gordon Brown, at 10 Downing Street.
Busy bee boy. So important to meet with Blair and be paid to go thither and yon…
In other news, those simple boyz and girlz on the TH list… can’t they hold on to their emails?… seems they are, or someone is, a tad tetched that MSOC called them, with “a tremor of genuine horror” in her voice (sugar plum fairies and gold statuettes swam in her head),
Marie told that to DHinMI in summer of ’04. I still remember the monikers that chased after her, from thread to thread, taking the part of the thugs.
Of course they are fucking asshole conservatives and reactionaries. Who did you see win in 06?
LIBERALS? REAL ONES? The few that did were never discussed on the Blahgs. Oh McNerney, that was ass cover.
Rahm and BillPillHIll and Chuck are building a conservative coalition of Bloooooooo Dogs and New Dems to align with Republicans.
We will never get a breath of air, again.
It was a line up of Bloooooo Dogs (such shock about Patrick Murphy joining the BD coalition). That mix of schlubs on TH coordinating messaging are not liberals nor progressives.
They are operatives and aides.
What do you read on the A Asshole Lists and B Bullshit Lists? Strong liberal / left rhetoric?
Such old news. How many times is writing about TH interesting? Oh, did you think Mother Jones was an independent organisation? Party organ.
Well silly you.
I will say it again, they are caging dissent. Look! See, over there, waaay over there: the looney bin [Emsock] dissents.
The vanguard for Reid, who pulls his pink Everlasts to his sagging man tits (grace a Madman):
Back in 2005, Armstrong set out his own ethics rule of thumb: “What the campus blogethicists don’t understand is that we are at war out here every day on the front lines as partisan Democratic activist bloggers against a Republican machine that uses whatever means it takes to win. So, if it’s not against the law, I don’t want to hear about it, because in the political arena, the first thing that matters in elections and campaigns is winning, with the only accountability being the electioneering laws of Congress.
Only after winning do we have a chance at enacting a progressive agenda.”
Oh right. How could we forget??? It only gets said everyday. Please note, to the right of the fake lemonade stand with the fake mannequin children, is Rahm, Reid, Chuck, Bill C, etc.
Moulitsas chimed in on Daily Kos:
“Anyone that tries to tell me how to act will get a big middle finger shoved up their face.”
Shoved up their face?
They so wanna be Donald Segretti.
But Donald was smart enough to pass the bar. And manage to not lose it (suspended for two years), somehow, after Watergate..
The only thing of any interest is — if you can get past the skin ripper yearning for an Oscar (don’t think so hon) — on the 3rd page, to the right. Down near the bottom. Check the name of the the J Armstrong consulting company. Digital Field Group.
Not even a web page frontispiece available without password.
WHUPDATE, 12:11 pm
Just got an email from a reader… that MB is lying on the FP of the lemonade stand…
yeah mannequin “60s guy” is there too.
Thu Jun 21, 2007 at 05:15:32 PM PDT
Here are the results of six congressional job approval polls taken so far in June:
Newsweek (6/18-19): 25% approve; 63% disapprove
Gallup (6/11-14): 24% approve; 71% disapprove
NBC/WSJ (6/08-11): 23% approve; 64% disapprove
Quinnipiac (6/05-11): 23% approve; 66% disapprove
LA Times/Bloomberg (6/07-10): 27% approve; 65% disapprove
FOX News (6/05-6): 29% approve; 55% disapprove
ABC/Washington Post (5/29-6/1): 39% approve; 53% disapprove
Hey guy! Where is Gallup? Here at Mcat it is 6 inches UP.
And one inch down… Link to the full Gallup report
by Frank Newport
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ — The percentage of Americans with a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress
is at 14%,
the lowest in Gallup’s history of this measure — and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year’s Confidence in Institutions survey. It is also one of the lowest confidence ratings for any institution tested over the last three decades.
They’ll put bullshit in the lemonade and charge you for it:
AS LONG AS YOU LET THEM.
Oh look! over there, see the skin ripper on the corner, muttering. She is Left dissent.
Whiner Whipdate, 7:56 am, Friday morning in San Francisco
Truly, it must be something I wrote. Do you think?
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:39:50 +0000
You do nothing but insult people you don’t know all day long, but the minute one of your followers criticizes you, you close your comments on your blog.
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My guess, and I can’t give this more than a minute or two… what set him off is a mix of pointing the finger at their caging of dissent… and that I bothered with a slapwa at Booman.
Who of course has no original thoughts, ever. Always suggestible. And poor skin ripper would do anything to dream of sugar plum fairies and gold statuettes.
Don’t like me? I could hardly be less interested. Don’t like the blog? Why do they read it?
Hate me? — rather a strong emotion, but it happens in life. I don’t “hate” them. They are just an old entity in the US, Dem party thugs. I observe them.
Remember tho, if you wish to hate me, get in line. Behind a load of Dkos rotted flesh. A-Asshole-Lister rotted flesh. B-Bullshit-Lister rotted flesh.
And you are downwind of their rotted farts.
UPDATE, 10:56 am – basking in the southern exposure in San Francisco
Poor Mr Melrath: He has written again. It will remain unopened and should he try again, will find the AOL account has been [already] blocked to him.
I don’t want to have opened the “edit” page for nothing [see above] and this is tangentially related to the issues Mr Melrath and his ilk represent:
the ever narrowing of the national party as it becomes absolutely nothing other than a coalition of moderate R, conservative D and conservative R, but not movement Republicans…
Do drop in and kick the Henneberger op / ed contribution in the NYT (not behind a wall).
Propaganda, sending a message is what it really is. Reminding the party, they have conceded to the US Catholic Bishops (and any fucked fundie on a street corner with a flyer) and they damned well better not forget. She just delivered a job. Don’t miss the length either… when is the last time you read a two pager on the guest Op/Ed page at the so tired NYT…
Who is her father confessor I wonder – and why so little progeny in her home? (she lectures, her life gets discussed), as it is all for the Glory of God and Fodder for a Century of War?
Henneberger is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and earned a graduate degree in European Studies from the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Henneberger is married to Bill Turque, an editor at The Washington Post. They live in Maryland with their 8-year-old twins.
In case you, as a liberal supporter of ever expanding rights, thought the party, ANYONE IN IT, gave a flying fuck about you. All they want is to absorb (they think) Main St Republicans.
We are just seeing the full final colonisation of the D party by Republicans.
Today, in a similarly oblivious way, the leading Democratic presidential contenders are condemning the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold a ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion. An overwhelming majority of Americans, polls show, support a ban. Legal scholars have underscored the narrowness of the ruling in the partial-birth case, Gonzales v. Carhart, which does not even outlaw all late-term abortions. Yet the leading Democratic candidates, all of whom are lawyers, choose to overstate its impact.
Hillary Clinton called the decision “a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that … recognized the importance of women’s health.” Barack Obama echoed that it “dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.” Though John Edwards was one of only two United States senators who did not cast a vote on the bill in 2003, he, too, found the decision to uphold that law “ill-considered and sweeping,” and “a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election.”
Actually, it is a stark reminder of how fully capable they all are of losing it. A Democratic senator I spoke with recently did not see the disconnect between public opinion and the party’s position on Carhart as any reason to worry: “Make no mistake; this is a pro-choice country, period.”
The candidate commentary is GOTV propaganda. And she knows it. The party has capitulated. What little was left, what little there ever was.
THEN she pitches this greasy spit ball as well:
Most people differentiate between a fetus in the early weeks of development and at nearly full term, and draw the line at a procedure that Democratic Senator Pat Moynihan regarded as
hmm. So tired of not only closeted creeps interfering to suit their pathology, but old dead still closeted bitches still interfering, thru the mouthpiece of a Henneberger..
Truly: Did Moynihan ever ever ever go home — to his wife?
Earlier in his career in the Senate, Moynihan had expressed his annoyance with the adamantly pro-choice interest groups petitioning him and others on the issue. He complained to them saying,
“you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence on abortion.”
This woman is gone from the party, for just that sentiment above. And for Obey, “you liberals”. And for Kerry allowing Dukakis his first night of real sleep since ’88. Kerry out did that run, in a flash. For the war vote.
For lying and pointing fingers at women.
Hey, BOO Them All! Not just at some quite stupid little in-house parade called Take Back America.
Off the Blog till later in the week… 18 June 2007Posted by marisacat in Blonde Sense, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.
probably Thursday, there abouts.. Too much hanging fire at home that needs care.
If you emailed, I have replied to you. Some very kind words and thoughts, thanks. One person made me laugh. Quite a lot.
Several have asked that when I enable comments to please email them: that I will do. If threads re-open it will likely be weeks, not days…
If you’d like to be emailed when comments are enabled, let me know: Marisacat at AOL com
VAGreen left a comment [which sits in moderation, threads are closed], FYI, I used the email you registered with to reply to you.
One person I have asked to cease emailing. Seems that is a hard request: back off. I just made it as plain as can be…
I will say what I have said all along: politics interests me, it always has and I won’t stop writing about it. The B-B-Blogs are, sad to say, a fucked part of politics, a choke point. I won’t – LOL – stop writing about them. And the “made men”, as someone put it in an email tonight… 8)
The cover of the UK Independent, July 21, 2006:
And the old line, who profits. It was just reported that Israel has overtaken the UK as a global arms dealer, in part due to the increase in business with the US, an increase of more than 4 fold in 7 years.
*** UPDATED, 1:46 am Monday ***
This was just emailed to me, by someone who returned to the Choice Joyce Dkos diary and read the recent comments in the Dr Harrison / Shanikka / Choice Joyce / megeara exchange:
OH Yeah (0 / 0)
I’m a sex hater. That’s rich. I’ll be sure to let my lovers know, as soon as I get done telling my husband.
(I’m poly, something you’d have known had you bothered to check me out in advance.)
This conversation is really a joke. The least you could do is bother to actually research my commenting history here and elsewhere before commenting.
But NOOOO. You have had so little exposure in life to women not in your demographic that you can’t do anything but come up with trite labels.
God speed to you. You prove the very points I was trying to make to start – you don’t listen or respect women’s legitimate differing views, based on arrogance and no more. Which is fine, but your view is primarily responsible for the backwards movement on abortion dialogue in this country since Roe. So I do hope you enjoy the ultimate outcome of what it will mean to not accept that not every woman is not white, not every woman is not upper middle class, and therefore not every woman believes that it’s all about me. We weren’t all raised this way, and our cultures don’t all feel this way. Most black women in this country, myself included, at the top of the list. Despite disproportaitonately accessing the right to abortion, we are honest. We don’t make excuses. And yes, the bulk of us really don’t like abortion and sure wish we could focus on something else actually securing women’s reproductive freedom – like birth control access, and assistance to women who want to give birth. And yes, since most of us were raised right, we also have a sense of right and wrong and don’t make excuses if we run around fucking and get pregnant. Nor do we claim that having a baby is something that’s going to destroy our lives, such that we’ll fall apart if we can’t get an abortion whenever we want it. It’s a necessary-evil perspective with personal responsibility perspective, one that the majority of women in America share.
But it’s all because we hate sex. That’s definitely it.
My separate place for mental meanderings: Political Sapphire
[ Parent |
In case that screech of screed [charming, wasn’t it?] was too dense to penetrate (and I really recommend the full exchange between Shanikka, Dr William Harrison, Choice Joyce, and a commenter “megeara”) this is the salient line:
I’m a sex hater. That’s rich. I’ll be sure to let my lovers know, as soon as I get done telling my husband.
(I’m poly, something you’d have known had you bothered to check me out in advance.)
This conversation is really a joke. The least you could do is bother to actually research my commenting history here and elsewhere before commenting.
…here it is on a triscuit for those who needed so desperately to be reassured:
I don’t lie. I don’t make things up and I have a better than average memory. I am not likely to forget such a detail, uninvited, of a person’s sex life. Especially repeated over and over ad nauseum.
And no, I don’t care where she puts her plumbing, but I do note things when she
bitches so fucking much about abortion. And bitches so fucking much about white women.
Now, to those who needed to know:
trot off and suck eggs.
No shit: 16 June 2007Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Culture of Death, WAR!.
NYT, Gates of Iraq Speaks from the US Raj:
In Iraq, Gates Says Progress Toward Peace Is Lagging
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, June 15 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived here late on Friday bluntly expressing disappointment with the pace of political reconciliation under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, even as the final units of the American troop increase were moving into position and bombings threatened to inspire more sectarian violence.
Mr. Gates, making his fourth trip to Iraq in six months as defense secretary, said his message to the Iraqi leadership would be that “our troops are buying them time to pursue reconciliation and that, frankly, we are disappointed in the progress thus far.”
In what appears to be a coordinated campaign by the Bush administration, the defense secretary will be reinforcing a message delivered to the Maliki government in person over recent days by Adm. William J. Fallon, the American commander in the Middle East, and John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state.
Although Mr. Gates described his goal as encouraging efforts by the Maliki government in Baghdad, he also expressed a desire to increase cooperation with provincial political leaders and local tribal sheiks.
He said that “perhaps we have gotten too focused on the central government, and not enough on the provinces, and on the tribes and what is happening in those areas.” He said he hoped to spark greater attention to this “ground-up effort.” ::snip::
We know it is all about the oil. And I must say, “ground up” brings to mind some last act in the abattoir, grinding up the bones. Yes that sounds like us.
And this, from Asia Times:
The wars that oil the Pentagon’s engine
By Michael T Klare
Sixteen US gallons – more than 60 liters – of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis – either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes.
Multiply this figure by 162,000 American soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard US warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at about 13.25 million liters of oil: the daily petroleum tab for US combat operations in the Middle East war zone.
Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 4.9 billion liters: the estimated annual oil expenditure for US combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million – and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime consumption.
Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed “in theater”, there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone – soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an “expeditionary” army located halfway around the world, the US Defense Department must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon’s war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.
As the article mentions farther on, plenty of black accounts to find the money it needs… And I suspect the Democrats would welcome another Supplemental. All is oil — or pork.
Shoot us, not to put us out of our misery, tho truly we are miserable, shoot us that the rest of the world might live.
Such cuteness we have been treated to for weeks, couple of well groomed dogs spinning round each other, nose to ass… can you imagine the real conversations Bush and Putin are having?

domain: politics