September 14, 2008 archive

McCain’s Health Records (VIDEO)

The question becomes: Why are they refusing to release his health records?  Is the Sarah Palin pick a stealth replacement for a candidate they do not expect to fulfill his term in office?

McCain needs to release his medical records without precondition.

Until he does, it can be speculated that a vote for McCain is a vote for Palin as president.

Please sign the doctors’ request for release of records letter here:

http://therealmccain.com/doctors/

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Lehman talks resume, Barclays pulls out

By Dan Wilchins and Glenn Somerville, Reuters

20 minutes ago

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Regulators and bankers resumed a third day of talks on Sunday in a desperate attempt to reach a deal to sell Lehman Brothers (LEH.N) and prevent the struggling investment bank from flooding jittery financial markets with toxic assets at fire sale prices.

Britain’s Barclays Plc (BARC.L), which had appeared to be the frontrunner to take over Lehman — excluding its bad mortgage-related assets — pulled out of the bidding early in the afternoon, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Among those spotted arriving in black limousines at the fortress-like headquarters of the New York Federal Reserve in downtown Manhattan early Sunday were Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit (C.N) and Steve Black, who is co-CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (JPM.N) investment bank.

¡Orale! Low and slow.

(this is dedicated to Mary.)


Okay. There’s a couple reasons my mind is in this posture right now.

One is that we need to get out the Latino vote for Barack. Nownownow.

If you can help, go here.

Another is that I’m shortlisted for a job doing this sort of music back in California, but….I’m going to take a pass on it, I think.

I have too much going in New England right now, and these people down there don’t seem to want to pay me what I’m worth.

Plus, they’re scraps anyway…

Chàle.

But…..set to pass on Cali for VT or not, let it not be said I forgot who I am.

¡Pinche chingadèra! ¡Lo escribiré, y lo haremos vivo!

tengo mas, homies……

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

The Doors



Break on Through

Café Discovery: colors

From San Diego we returned to the desert for a few days before heading for LA to visit with Debbie’s brother and his wife…though we didn’t see much of her because of “family concerns.”  We arrived on the evening of the opening of the Olympic Games.  It was a colorful production.

On Saturday we walked a couple of blocks to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), which shares a park with the LA Brea Tar Pits (coming up later).  We saw The Age of Imagination, which closes today.  Here is some of it for you.

The colors were mostly so subtle, while at the same time being so exquisitely laid down.  It am astounded that these paintings were all painted in only one layer.

On Sunday we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Ooooooh!  Ahhhhhh!  The colors.

The “Lipstick Pit-Bull” Goes To War

Pepe Escobar dissects the cluelessness of McCain and Palin…

September 13, 2008 – 8 min 27 sec

Sarah Palin wouldn’t “blink” against Russia, Iran, Pakistan, “the terrorists”…

In her long-awaited first prime-time interview – to ABC News’ Charles Gibson – since appointed as running mate to Senator John McCain in the Republican presidential ticket, Alaska governor Sarah Palin was able to display her foreign policy knowledge – which does not include understanding the meaning of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. Adding to the chorus of Americans who suspect Palin is not prepared to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency in case McCain wins the election, the neoconservatives who gave her a crash course in international relations before she sat for the interview did not fail to commit a series of blunders.

The Bush/McCain/(Palin) War

It’s war for sure, and it’s being waged upon us, the People of the United States.

It’s being waged for reasons we’ll never fully understand.

It’s being waged for reasons not openly explained.

It’s being waged for guesswork-reasons that make little sense.

War waged as a shot in the dark making little sense to any free-thinking person.

The next layer

One of the things I value most in life is onoing growth and learning. I don’t know if its genetic or learned, but there’s nothing that I dislike more than stasis. This leads me to an almost knee-jerk reaction to conventional wisdom. There are certainly times that convention proves to be wise, but I almost always need to ask questions and learn why.

Over the course of my life, that has led to a kind of slow burn rebellion rather than the burst that I’ve seen so often when young people reject the status quo and/or authority. Perhaps I never had the courage to just outright rebel, but I think its also linked to not wanting to let go without really understanding where I’m heading as an alternative.

Questions that are easily solved or answered don’t interest me that much. But when understanding or learning is more like peeling back the layers of an onion a little bit at a time…that’s when I tend to get truly engaged.

A few years ago a friend of mine went to Russia. She brought back a set of nesting dolls as a gift. Little did she know that toys like this were my absolute favorite as a child…opening one to find a smaller one in side over and over again.

Whitehouse Drills Drilling

The Senate held a Bipartisan Energy Summit today with some of the nation’s top experts (from MIT, Google, CSIS, CERI, and Shell’s CEO). (Although, regrettably, the nation’s top energy expert, Sarah Palin, was unable to attend and bring her deep knowledge and wisdom to the table for conversation.)  And, this hearing was reasonably (even very) well attended.  Senators Dorgan, Bay, Landrieu, Domenici, Bingaman, Pryor, , Conrad, Dewine, Salazar, …. It is a very rare Hill hearing that has so many of the principals at the table.  The room was, in addition, standing room only with literally hundreds of people in the room and several tables full of journalists (and bloggers). And, to be honest, people actually seemed to be paying attention to questions, to speakers, with Blackberries dominating the attention of just a few of members and not that many in the audience.  An indication of the political (and, hopefully, substantive) interest and importance of the issues at hand.

One specific exchange, after the fold, merits attention.

Docudharma Times Sunday September 14



Why Is IT So Difficult

To Hold People Accountable For Their Actions?




Sunday’s Headlines:

Metrolink officials say trains crashed after their engineer drove through red light

Shadow of Guantanamo follows freed inmates back to their homes

My brilliant Korea: Kim Jong Il’s weird world

 Mafia’s car-boot bread is ‘poisoning’ Naples

Scores die in Russian plane crash  

Iraq: Violence is down – but not because of America’s ‘surge’

‘Iron Lady’ Tzipi Livni set to be Israel’s new leader

Security is first test of Zimbabwe deal

Move to tackle Bolivian turmoil

Hurricane Damage Is Extensive in Texas  



 By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JAMES C. MCKINLEY Jr.

Published: September 13, 2008  


HOUSTON – Hurricane Ike barreled across a wide swath of Texas on Saturday, deluging the city of Galveston with a wall of water, flooding coastal towns and leaving extensive damage across metropolitan Houston. With wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour, the 600-mile-wide Category 2 hurricane peeled sheets of steel off skyscrapers here, smashed bus shelters and blew out windows, sending shattered glass and debris across the nation’s fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million.

The storm came ashore on Galveston Island, which in 1900 suffered one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States.

‘It’s voter registration, stupid’ – the fight moves South

Small-town Virginia, once a backwater, has become a vital battleground. By Rupert Cornwell

  Sunday, 14 September 2008  

Last week was one Barack Obama will want to forget: more Sarah Palin, more depressing polls, and a deepening fear in the pit of Democrat stomachs that somehow they’re going to blow yet another presidential election. But as the campaign enters its final stretch, everything is still to play for across the handful of swing states that will decide the outcome – not least here in deepest Virginia.

Since the Republican convention and the triumphant unveiling of the lady from Alaska, everything has gone John McCain’s way. To be sure, Palin is a divisive figure. “To be honest, I can’t stand her,” one Obama supporter here said last week. But not only has she electrified the Republican base, in her persona as a no-nonsense all-American housewife, she has given her party a new lease of life among women voters. And as the fact-twisting Republican juggernaut rolls on, the Obama campaign, seemingly wanting to play by a nobler set of rules, appears incapable of hitting back.

USA

Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink

This is the first of two stories adapted from “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. Original source notes are denoted in [brackets] throughout.

 By Barton Gellman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page A01


A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president’s attorney was shouting.

“The president doesn’t want this! [1] You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!”

Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself.

Don’t Contribute To The Dark Side

In the microcosm that is my world people have come to my aide.  Why, because they love me.  In two days massive progress has been made on cleaning up my second floor apartment.  My grandson delighted at the view from the second floor porch window.

When I am/was, not busy at work building stuff to support world known scientists I can also sweat copper pipes, run 14/3 romex, service my oil burner nozzle and skim coat over holes in plaster walls.  I have come to view the cheapening of building trade practices and materials and codes as another sub program in the Illuminati Plan to Destroy America.  No better example than Boston’s own Big Dig.

They talked about extending my “retirement” to give me time to train my replacement.  That might be appealing at first glance as it would/might put the lump sum severance package into the new IRS tax year.  Then I thought about it.  

I would be giving energy to the dark side of the force.

http://persistentillusion.file…

We sat, him and I and marveled from an elevated perch.  Grampy’s truck, Daddy’s truck, Grampy pool and Grampy’s camper could all be see from a different perspective.  Childhood innocence can be so wonderful until it’s used against the child.  I am getting to old to be doing the work of twenty something tradesmen but honest labor has made me feel really good.

http://www.scl.cc/home.php

Does it, can we generate our own positive space in the world?

My flowers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/t…

were alive with bees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02…

Don’t give “it” energy.  By “it” I mean any one of the manufactured “issues” currently being used to end America.  

The global war on “terror”.

The global tax on energy use

The building of the surveillance structures that will be used against my grandson.

Docudharma Times Sunday September 14



Why Is IT So Difficult

To Hold People Accountable For Their Actions?




Sunday’s Headlines:

Metrolink officials say trains crashed after their engineer drove through red light

Shadow of Guantanamo follows freed inmates back to their homes

My brilliant Korea: Kim Jong Il’s weird world

 Mafia’s car-boot bread is ‘poisoning’ Naples

Scores die in Russian plane crash  

Iraq: Violence is down – but not because of America’s ‘surge’

‘Iron Lady’ Tzipi Livni set to be Israel’s new leader

Security is first test of Zimbabwe deal

Move to tackle Bolivian turmoil

Hurricane Damage Is Extensive in Texas  



 By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JAMES C. MCKINLEY Jr.

Published: September 13, 2008  


HOUSTON – Hurricane Ike barreled across a wide swath of Texas on Saturday, deluging the city of Galveston with a wall of water, flooding coastal towns and leaving extensive damage across metropolitan Houston. With wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour, the 600-mile-wide Category 2 hurricane peeled sheets of steel off skyscrapers here, smashed bus shelters and blew out windows, sending shattered glass and debris across the nation’s fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million.

The storm came ashore on Galveston Island, which in 1900 suffered one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States.

‘It’s voter registration, stupid’ – the fight moves South

Small-town Virginia, once a backwater, has become a vital battleground. By Rupert Cornwell

  Sunday, 14 September 2008  

Last week was one Barack Obama will want to forget: more Sarah Palin, more depressing polls, and a deepening fear in the pit of Democrat stomachs that somehow they’re going to blow yet another presidential election. But as the campaign enters its final stretch, everything is still to play for across the handful of swing states that will decide the outcome – not least here in deepest Virginia.

Since the Republican convention and the triumphant unveiling of the lady from Alaska, everything has gone John McCain’s way. To be sure, Palin is a divisive figure. “To be honest, I can’t stand her,” one Obama supporter here said last week. But not only has she electrified the Republican base, in her persona as a no-nonsense all-American housewife, she has given her party a new lease of life among women voters. And as the fact-twisting Republican juggernaut rolls on, the Obama campaign, seemingly wanting to play by a nobler set of rules, appears incapable of hitting back.

USA

Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink

This is the first of two stories adapted from “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. Original source notes are denoted in [brackets] throughout.

 By Barton Gellman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page A01


A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president’s attorney was shouting.

“The president doesn’t want this! [1] You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!”

Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself.

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