February 12, 2011 archive

from firefly-dreaming 12.2.11

Regular Daily Features:

Essays Featured Friday, February 11th:

  • Friday Open Thoughts, Digitus Impudicus~ where slksfca says Pluck Yew
  • Firefly Memories 1.0 is where Alma takes a look back at some of the Brilliant essays of our first years posts, highlighting those which exemplify our firefly-dreaming spirit and mission.  Today:Need vs. Want  

Essays Featured Saturday, February 12th:

  • Alma hosts Saturday Open Thoughts with a photo essay showing happy people.
  • Brand New Saturday Art! from mishima!!
  • Photography: Contrast from new member stevej
  • Firefly Memories 1.0 is where Alma takes a look back at some of the Brilliant essays of our first years posts, highlighting those which exemplify our firefly-dreaming spirit and mission.  Today:out of whack  

**NOTE**

firefly-dreaming is hosting WYFP tonight at 8PM as dkos is down.

please come by whether WYFP is one of your regular stops

or you always wanted to stop by…

NOW is a good chance to join in!

come firefly-dreaming with me….

Confessions of Damned Elitist

First off, let me assure you that does not mean I am one of Society’s “Elites.”

ELITE: In sociology as in general usage, the elite is a group of relatively small size, that is dominant within a large society, having a privileged status perceived as being envied by others of a lower line of order.

No, no privileged status here. Quite the contrary, actually.  No money, no status, no “powah”… yet I embrace the title anyway. I’m a different kind of Elitist; that being a member of a minute segment of this society who has become Truly LEFT.

I am however Elitist enough to infuriate the common dregs who adore Palin’s absolute slaughter of the language she employs in describing her absolute ignorance of any subject on which she speaks. In fact I am Elitist enough to irritate the piss out of well-intended Liberalish people, too.

I finally understand the words spoken to me so very long ago, “Sweetheart, we are about a tenth of one percent in the Country. Face it, we are pretty much out here alone on the far edges of the Left.”

Whether it be Progressives demanding loyalty to Democrats, or an accusation of being Racist for not supporting Obama… The centrist mentality pervades people who consider themselves “Left” and use “far-left” as an insult. Right after Far-left usually comes the cry of “Elitist” and god forbid you cite actual evidence that teeters their ideology or to rebut their Obamabot screeches. From the so-called “Left” it makes me doubly crazy. They HELP demonize the very IDEAS that would create a real Democracy for the People: Socialism.

Let me cite my favorite author on my “Elitism.”

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

And this article-

Along with TheMomCat’s weekly feature Health and Fitness News and mishima’s weekly feature Random Japan.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Unlike Stupid Bowl 2010, an occasion on which your bloguero’s use of various intoxicating liquids led to an uncharacteristically  spectacular flame out and a gigantic, public crash, in which the biggest injury was self-inflicted embarrassment that would persist unabated for a full calendar year, Stupid Bowl 2011 was mild.  It ended in relative quiet and probity, and was quickly eclipsed by the excitement of AOL’s buying Hufflepuffle and, much more important, Egypt’s Televised Revolution.

As usual, your bloguero had no idea what the week would bring.  Self absorbed, he was thrilled that he would not spend the year until Stupid Bowl 2012 in penance and vain attempts to apologize for his unfathomable folly and excuse his bad behavior.  No.  He would be able to move on.  What a relief.  But he admits it: his having committed to writing this Digest did cause him some slight concern.  What, he asked, would happen if he couldn’t bring himself to write anything this week?  What if the writing muse were on vacation and the story warehouse were padlocked? Maybe he could avoid this potential problem be being abducted to someplace in the Caribbean  with coco palms and warm beaches and, best of all, lacking all Internet and/or electricity.  Alas and alack.  No such luck.  No space ships.  No armed kidnappers.  Not even an invitation to escape. Nada.

If you look at the last week in The Dream Antilles you will find:

A Haiku about snow.  Because of ice and sleet, my dog friend was finally able to walk on top of our deep snow cover.  A brief reflection on the canine world.

Huffpo Bought By AOL. The news that the beleaguered, dinosaur of dial up, AOL, bought Huffington Post and made the doyenne of coy self promotion, Ariana, even richer.  A $315,000,000 deal built at least in part on the backs of those who blogged and wrote for free, who were, of course, screwed in the deal.

Sorry, Ariana and Markos, No More Free Content For You.  I didn’t write anything at Hufflepuffle, but I was sure that when dailyKos was eventually sold to a group of investment bankers and venture capitalists-I think this is now likely– I wouldn’t be paid for all of the writing I posted there, that Markos would argue that I got the “exposure” I deserved and that nothing further not even a propina piquena was required.  So, though I think the GBCW genre has fallen on bad times since ErrinF penned her immortal screed, I waved my middle digit in the rear view mirror and rode away on a cloud indignation.  This was surprisingly easy.

Skewering Spiderman.  How often can you find a review that says this?  “Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.”  Ouch.

Brian Jacques, RIP.  A children’s author I really loved to read to my kids passed on.  In his stories good always triumphed.  He will be sorely missed, though I’m sure that for generations to come parents will enjoy reading his works to their kids.

Mubarak To The World: I Fart In Your General Direction.  No Nixonian adieu for the perennial tyrant.  No.  Instead, defiance and indignation even as he was secretly packing his bags and moving his money around getting ready to do the Mobutu.  

A Haiku about a subzero night sky.

A Haiku about Haiku.

And Now Algeria? wonders whether the demonstrations we saw on Saturday in Algiers and elsewhere are the starting bell for events like Tunisia and Egypt.

A Piece Of Internet History marks the end of dKos as we know it, and the transformation into what I think amouts to “Left Coast FacebookTM.”  

This essay about what is on The Dream Antilles. It’s supposed to be a  weekly Sunday morning very early digest for the Writers Port Alliance. As you can see, today is Saturday.  I’m putting this up now, because I won’t be able to on Sunday. See you next week, if the creek don’t rise.  On Sunday early.

   

Under The Radar: Open Thread

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Or the stuff you won’t hear from the MSM. The blogosphere is a big place and there is a lot going on that gets lost in all those pixels. The subtle background, the nuances to the top political news that don’t get aired in prime time. Lots of stories get buried or just ignored in news dumps. The White House does it all the time releasing stories late on Friday nights in hopes that in the rush to start the weekend and the media misses, or decides its not important enough.

* Not really under the radar but with all the news breaking about Egypt it is in a “holding pattern”. From Politico:

Sen. Jon Kyl announces his retirement from Senate

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl announced Thursday that he would retire after his current term, creating the fifth open seat Senate race of the 2012 cycle.

Speaking at a press conference in Phoenix, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate said, “There’s more to life than being a United States senator. I never anticipated I would be in public service for 26 years.”

* A list of the “insane” witnesses that testified before Ron Paul’s House Energy and Commerce committee. Be prepared, the next two years are going to be quite amusing.

The Parade of the Republican “Kooks” and Shills

Testifying on the GOP’s behalf today: A man who calls Lincoln a “horrific tyrant” and an all-star cast of polluters

The Koch brothers have bought the government on e congress critter at a time. The Koch Committee’s Big Oil Witnesses For Upton-Inhofe Pollution Act

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), who has received $9,000 from Koch Industries since 2008, will chair the subcommittee hearing on the Upton-Inhofe “Energy Tax Prevention Act,” hatched at a secret meeting between the bill’s sponsors and polluter lobbyists. The Republican witness list is a cavalcade of the nation’s worst polluters and oil-funded ideologues.

* The subjucation and legalized murder of women sponsored by the American Taliban.

‘Forcible Rape’ Language Remains In Bill To Restrict Abortion Funding

by Amanda Terkel

WASHINGTON — After significant public blowback, House Republicans last week promised to drop a controversial provision in their high-priority No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape. But almost a week later, that language is still in the bill.

Last week, a spokesman for the bill’s principal sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), said, “The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment.” The Hyde Amendment bans taxpayer dollars from being used for abortions, except in cases of incest and rape — not just “forcible rape,” as the Smith bill, H.R. 3, would have it.

But as The New York Times first noted on Wednesday, the “forcible rape” language remains. Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top-ranking Democrat on the House judiciary subcommittee focusing on constitutional issues, told The Huffington Post that while Nadler hopes the bill will soon be changed, they have been treating it as it’s written.

An Interview with Adlai Stevenson III, Part One: Government Transparency



Editor’s Note:

Earlier this week I had the great honor to be able to interview former Illinois Senator Adlai E. Stevenson III. He is promoting a new book entitled The Black Book, in which he summarizes a career spent in public service as well as sharing his thoughts about the current day.  We covered a lot of ground in our hour-long talk, so I intend to write a series of posts as a result.  This, then, is Part One.

Thanks,

Cabaretic

 

Six In The Morning

Stupid, Defiant and Bitter Till The Very End



In Mubarak’s final hours, defiance surprises U.S. and threatens to unleash chaos

After a week of crossed signals and strained conversations, the Obama administration finally had good news: Late Wednesday, CIA and Pentagon officials learned of the Egyptian military’s plan to relieve President Hosni Mubarak of his primary powers immediately and end the unrest that had convulsed the country for more than two weeks.  

The scheme would unfold Thursday, with the only uncertainty being Mubarak’s fate. “There were two scenarios: He would either leave office, or he would transfer power,” said a U.S. government official who was briefed on the plan. “These were not speculative scenarios. There was solid information” and a carefully crafted script.

U.S. World and Regional Credibility

This aired yesterday, 11 February 2011, morning prior to the results later in the day, night there, of the total collapse of the Mubarak reign of rule, but is pretty much spot on about us and especially that whole region of the planet and it’s free people under autocratic rule supported by us.

Born in Coon Rapids, Died in Helmand Province

Shawn Muhr2
Shawn Muhr’s father Dave Muhr and his sister, Erika Muhr-Burris

COON RAPIDS, Iowa – Dave Muhr took over the squat, yellow-brick auto repair shop on the eastern edge of this Carroll County village in 1982.

His youngest son, Shawn, was born two years later. Once the boy could walk, it seemed he’d set out to take over his dad’s business by fixing whatever he could – whether it was broken or not.

Spc. Shawn Muhr was killed by an IED in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on January 29, 2011. He was married to Winifred Olchawa, and had a stepchild, Diven.

Late Night Karaoke

Random Japan

KIDS THESE DAYS

A 22-year-old Kanazawa University student who called the cops and claimed he’d been stabbed later admitted he had knifed himself in a failed suicide attempt because he didn’t have enough credits to graduate.

A couple of 10-year-old girls-Miu Hirano and Mima Ito-broke table-tennis prodigy Ai Fukuhara’s record as the youngest players to win a singles match at the national championships. Ai-chan was 11 when she won two matches at the 1999 ping-pong nationals.

At the other end of the age spectrum, 40-year-old tennis player Kimiko Date-Krumm was reduced to tears after blowing a 4-1 lead in the third set of her match against 21-year-old Pole Agnieszka Radwanska at the Australian Open.

A nasty monkey named Lucky, who bit more than 100 folks in Shizuoka last fall, escaped house arrest at a park in Mishima, causing officials to warn local residents to stay inside and keep their doors locked. The rampaging primate was caught a day after ditching his cage.

In an awesomely named place called Bungo-Ono in Oita Prefecture, the local government is planning to let wolves loose in an effort “to control wild animals that destroy agricultural crops.” Can’t wait for the reaction when a wolf chows down on a local farmer instead.

Five middle-aged men in Tohoku filed a fraud suit against three international marriage brokers in a Sendai court, claiming they got unexpected home visits from South Korean women accompanied by the brokers, who convinced the lonely dudes to let the women “homestay” with them for a week or so.

While you were sleeping

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Troll_nicht_fuettern_urversionI know the Egyptian Revolution has been big news, but also over the last few days a story has been developing about how Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been hiring law firms and private security companies to attack progressive institutions and individuals.

In summary the story goes like this-

Security Firms Pitching Bank of America on WikiLeaks Response Proposed Targeting Glenn Greenwald

By: emptywheel, Wednesday February 9, 2011 8:49 am

On Saturday, private security firm HBGary Federal bragged to the FT that it had discovered who key members of the hacking group Anonymous are. In response, Anonymous hacked HB Gary Federal and got 44,000 of their emails and made them publicly available.



As TechHerald reports, among those documents was a presentation, “The Wikileaks Threat,” put together by three data intelligence firms for Bank of America in December. As part of it, they put together what they claimed was a list of important contributors to WikiLeaks. They suggested that Glenn Greenwald’s support was key to WikiLeaks’ ongoing survival.

Now at the time the big joke was these security firms had the sadly mistaken impression that Glenn Greenwald is the kind of person who would respond to blackmail threats by putting “professional preservation” before “cause” and principle.  But the rabbit hole is deeper than that Alice.

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