August 12, 2009 archive

Four at Four

  1. McClatchy reports Hey, wha’d’ ya know? Karl Rove played key role in firing U.S. attorneys, after all. “Karl Rove and other top officials in the George W. Bush White House were deeply involved in pushing for the ouster of several U.S. attorneys… according to testimony and e-mails that the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released Tuesday.”

    “Sworn testimony from former White House Counsel Harriet Miers revealed that Rove considered former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico a ‘serious problem’ and ‘wanted something done about it'”.

    “Miers’ testimony and e-mails between White House officials contradict Rove’s assertion that he was merely a passive ‘conduit'”.

    The NY Times, of course, won’t say that he lied (he did), but do report Rove played a key role. The released records “offer a detailed portrait of a nearly two-year effort, from early 2005 to 2007, by senior White House officials, including Mr. Rove, to dismiss some prosecutors for what appear to be political reasons.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, Iraqi immigrants struggling to make a life in America, and America’s torture architects.

I Am the Fireman

I am the fireman, fixer of electrical and mechanical stuff and default trail guide.  Steve is the cook and holder of “the gun” and Dave is the muscle guy of our group.  We just returned from the Enchanted Forest upon finding the Lost Lake of Narnia.  I was hoping the real family fun going on here might counter events in play on the west coast.

DD Writers Jam Fest: Poetry edition

    I hope you enjoy this edition of the Docudharma Writers Jam fest, and please, feel free to contribute.

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For more detail on different styles of poetry, please go to poetryonline.com

   As my first contribution to this series, I thought it would be beneficial to all to start with a review of different styles of poetry with an example of each. This is a useful tool to show which styles there are and how you can use different styles to convey different emotions.

   I have written poetry since I was 16. I am now 29.

   My first writings were free style rap. I was influenced by Krs One and Rakim, as well as other early 90’s rappers like Jay-Z, Tupac and the Notorious Big. I was what you might call a wigger.

    Krs One, George Carlin and other influences were a strong in my early political and literary life.

    When my father died I dropped out of school and entered the workforce. To excersize my mind I would go to the public (socialist) library and devour books on all subjects, politics, economics, history, and the classics of prose and verse.

    After a year of experiencing the wage slavery of class war head on, I went back to high school. My first class of the day was Poetry. I feel in love and graduated as an honors student 2 years later.

    The problem with hip hop is that it is so highly structured, so fast and so short in phonetic flexibility that it is difficult to say much without being overly repetitive.

    Also, the english language simply lacks the rhymes. French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are romance languages that are full of rhymes, most words end in O or A, and the depth of communication is certainly more rich than the large and overtly technical English language we use in American discourse.

    As George Orwell wrote of poetry

“Did you know there are only 10 words in modern Newspeak that rhyme with Rod?”

   Therefore, Engliish clearly has it’s poetic limits. The point here, and what makes the works of Shakespear so brilliant, is how we can strcth those limits and expand the boundaries in order to make our language so much more vivid and Descriptive.

   We can create a world of words that goes beyond the limitations of the world around us.

Direct Nonviolent Action Works. Beck Loses More Advertisers.

Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive, S.C. Johnson, GEICO, Men’s Wearhouse and, just this morning, Sargento have now cancelled their ad buys on the Glenn Beck show due to direct nonviolent economic action. The boycott campaign advanced at ColorofChange.org is working.

Link…

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/…

Is CNBC a co-conspirator in inciting violence?

TPM has a story that needs to get out:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi…

Tea Baggers are hoping for a literal “riot” at an upcoming town hall event, in order to create a spectacle for CNBC’s cameras. And the event will be hosted by a Democratic congressman who this week had a swastika painted on a sign outside his district office.

Yesterday, Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin sent an email, obtained by TPMmuckraker, to a Tea Party google group. Martin told the group: “We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC.”

snip

Later that day, a Tea Bagger named Pat Wayman responded with a suggestion, also obtained by TPMmuckraker: “This one should be a riot! literally….” he wrote.

Wayman then posted information for an upcoming town hall meeting hosted by Rep. David Scott (D-GA).

So, if this is true, CNBC is asking Teabaggers to create a riot or near riot so they will have good footage and their right wing TV personalities can play Glenn Beck.  If it is true.

There are at least two things that CNBC/GE Legal really should look at: (1) Potential criminal liability as a co-conspirator if any laws are broken; (2) Potential civil liability for any personal injury or property damage under joint and several liability principles.  

WTF is all I can say.  GE needs to rein in CNBC before someone is hurt.

DD Writer’s Jam Fest: Round Robin 12_01

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Fiction is the truth inside the lie. ~ Stephen King

Okay here we go!

Round Robin… Pretty simple. Spontaneous. We’ll figure it out as we go. I think I’ll go ahead with One A Day, they will be ongoing, open ended. No end time imposed.  But, if you missed it or came in too late, there’s a new one on the way the next day. I’ll give them a theme or kick-off sentence or even a pic maybe of some kind.

PLEASE drop me an email if you have an opening line or kick off to suggest!  ladylibertine22 AT yahoo DOT com

Just pick up where the previous person left off. You can certainly write MORE than one sentence, but don’t get too carried away. It work best if you set the next person up for… something. No pressure. heh.

We’ll just see where it goes.

rrdd

The Waves of Crazy Breaking on the Walls of Reality

In a desperate last ditch effort to stave off the irrelevance and natural death of their Dying Paradigm and keep it from being put out on an ice floe by a Black President and his darkskinned screaming band of marauding gay, gun-grabbing, granny killers…

The decision makers and message manufacturers have decide that the best song for their Mighty Wurlitzer of Pied Piper Politics to play, at that unique frequency that apparently only ‘they’ can hear, yes, at the same frequency as they play their dog whistles, is…..Patsy Kline’s “Crazy.”

Bereft of facts, ideas, policy, and principle….the true leaders of the Republican Party (shhh, The Ruling Class, shhh!) have decided that all they have left to throw against the emerging and alarming trend of an informed and fed up electorate…are waves of fantasy based angst, rage, and outright crazy.

No longer able to Fool Most of The People Most of the Time into thinking that Universal Health Care is a bad thing, that Wars of Imperial agression work, that Torture keeps them safe, that what is Good For GM The Ruling Class is Good For America, That hordes of crazed Muslins are swimming across the ocean to invade america, that insurance companies are their friend, that those cuddly guys on Wall St are as honest as the day is long, That hordes of diseased brown people are attacking the border walls to steal their jobs, that The System somehow treickles down benefits for the Middle and Lower Classes, and that we can destroy the environment forever…and for profit…with no consequences…

They have adopted a policy of throwing Human Waves of deranged and deceived Wingnuts against the Walls of Sanity.

Health Care Reform: Is There Another Way?

As the health care reform issue continues it’s way through the legislative process, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that there will be a moment in time where many progressives will face the difficult choice of whether or not to support a health care reform bill that looks nothing like what we wanted.

At the end of the day, however, the question will inevitably be: given that people are desperate and dying unnecessarily right now, and given the political realities impeding a better solution, how can we not support whatever incremental improvements survive this legislative process, while still pushing for better things down the road?

I’d like to argue that there is a better way, a politically-realistic way of providing health care for all, without getting into bed with the insurance companies and big Pharma . . .

Beck’s new CT: Eugenics, Population control, sterilize water. Even Neo-Cons shocked by teh stupid

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   We need to expand the boycott to all of FOX, not just Beck

BillO to Beck “I’m not a fear mongerer like you”

   First O’Reilly asks Beck about Rep Inglis’s (R-SC) statement on Glenn Beck at a town hall where he said “The suggestion was Glenn beck. Here’s what I suggest. Turn off the TV. If you trade on fear, what you’re doing is, your not leading, your just following fearful people.”

   And then the nonsense really begins.

Fox News – Faux Noise Style.

DD Writers Jam Fest: Kick Off Open Thread

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Phew! Finally!!

Welcome to a few days of silliness and, hey, maybe I’ll learn something. Heh.

UPDATE (noon-ish CDT) ALERT! The very first Round Robin is now up!

DD Writers Jam Fest… a five days Docudharma exclusive (!) Writer’s… uhm … focus group? no… er, Workshop? well, sorta, maybe. Free For All? hmmm, yah.

Okay the main thing we’ve agreed to do is a Round Robin.  We’ll see if some of the other stuff comes together…. it’s up to us, you. Shake it up in the comments.

DATES: Wednesday through Sunday, August 12 – 16th, 2009

WHERE: Here, mostly, but also in your Brain, CPU or Journal

WHO: You. Everybody. Dharmanoids. Whoever wants in, jump in (as long as you play nice). You don’t have to be a “Writer”, no ID card or credentials art the door required. No Registration Fees either

HOSTED BY: moi but it’s a community thing

REWARDS? PRIZES? MEGA BONUSES? Er, no. Free ponies though!

So what’s this Round Robin thing? Fun. Da Rulz TBA. Well. I forgot where I was for a minute. “Rules” are just the standard issue Rules of Docudharma: “be excellent to each other”.

Here’s the links to the previous brainstorming, which might give you a little of background of how this Jam Fest came about: Part One and Part Two.

I’d like to add that Docudharma has some ongoing Series for writers (and readers) here … in particular, Robyn posts Muse in the Morning every morning. Robyn celebrates the Muses and encourages everyone to contribute their talent there anytime.  

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If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. ~Isaac Asimov

Free Hal Turner



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First they came for the racist, right-wing nutjobs, but I wasn’t a nutjob so I didn’t speak up…

Domestic Terrorist & Coward!!

William Kostric wears a 9mm pistol as he stands outside a town hall meeting on healthcare held by President Obama, in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday. Who was that gun-toting anti-Obama protester?

One of Tuesday’s big mysteries was the motivation behind anti-Obama protester William Kostric, the man who brought a loaded gun to the town hall meeting and carried a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s famous credo, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

Snip

But at least one of those statements doesn’t seem to be true. A right-wing activist named “William Kostric,” who’s left a lot of footprints around the Web, is listed as a “team member” of the Arizona chapter of We the People, the far-right group best known for joining a lawsuit challenging Obama’s right to be president based on his not being a U.S. citizen. Kostric told MSNBC he recently moved from Arizona to New Hampshire. (Kostric did not reply to Salon’s e-mail request for an interview.)…………………

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