June 10, 2011 archive

This Week In The Dream Antilles

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There is nothing quite like a summer scandal (Note: your Bloguero hesitates to call it “a sex scandal”).  The temperature and humidity are both in the mid-90’s in New York.  The air is fetid.  Movies that are heavily air conditioned are expensive.  The subway is a complete Schwitz.  And as if all of that weren’t miserable enough, there’s the quease-inducing idea of a 46-year old Congressman sexting with mid-20 year old women (are there more than six?) whom he has never met in person and who either like or do not like receiving such digital “stimulation.” (Note: your Bloguero cannot resist such puns.  The heat made him do it.)  In the midst of all this folly, that pinnacle of human garbage, Andrew Breitbart, got a public apology from the Weiner.  And MSNBC is now writing about how Democratic women aren’t screaming for Weiner’s resignation, let alone consulting with Lorena Bobbitt about appropriate sanctions. My father-in-law often said of that old the promotion, “New York is a Summer Festival,” “Yeah, New York is a summer vegetable.”  How very true and prescient.

On Tuesday, your Bloguero was incensed by the kidnapping of Syrian blogger Amina Abdallah, and he wrote Free Amina.  Amina had to be crazy, your Bloguero figured, writing from Damascus, being an out lesbian in a country where that is illegal, and criticizing the current despot, who appears to believe in armed violence against all protesters.  But crazy or not, your Bloguero was outraged that Amina was targeted and whisked off the streets by armed goons and disappeared.  What is this, your Bloguero shouted, do they think Syria is Videla’s Argentina or Pinochet’s Chile?  Your Bloguero promptly withdrew the remark: evidently Syria is cut from exactly the same fabric.

And then, cold water was immediately thrown on your Bloguero’s outrage.  It turns out that the entire story might be a hoax or fabrication or disinformation of some kind.  How Many “L’s” Are There In “Gullible” detailed the many problems.  Your Bloguero notes that as of Friday afternoon, there are no new entries at A Gay Girl In Damascus, which your Bloguero reads as confirmation of a hoax of some kind.

Weiner: Make Me One With Everything was a rant about Weiner’s public apology to Andrew Breitbart.  Your Bloguero is not holding his breath until Andrew Breitbart apologizes to anyone, much less Shirley Sharrod, for being a piece of barnyard excrement and for the mischief he has made.

On June 6, 2011, your Bloguero noted the anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

Your Bloguero is a football (as in futbol, as in soccer) fanatic.  This may be because other ball sports give unfair premiums to big or tall persons, and your Bloguero is neither.  It may be because your Bloguero loves to play the game.  So your Bloguero’s hall of fame is filled with people like him, of small stature who are the wizards of futbol skills. Two of these: Lionel Messi, who is your Bloguero’s size, and Diego Maradona, who ever so slightly smallter at 5’5″.  Both are from Argentina.  Diego Maradona Pwns FIFA noted that Maradona had spoken the truth about the governing powers of futbol, FIFA, calling them out as corrupt and saying that they should step down so that former players could run and preserve the game.  Your Bloguero agrees 100%.

Meanwhile, in Chile, Puyehue volcano erupted, dropping ash in Chile and Argentina and forcing evacuations.

And in a dramatic highwire act without a net, Visualizing That Tightrope, Part 2 your Bloguero celebrated the feat of Nik and Delilah Wallenda, his mother, in safely completely the very stunt that killed Karl Wallenda.  Your Bloguero is in awe of this kind of daring.

Your Bloguero notes that this Digest is a weekly feature. Your Bloguero, though needs encouragement.  From you.  It’s easy to give him that.  If you read this Digest, please click the “encouragement jar” in the comments.  That’s the only way your Bloguero will know that you visited.  Hasta pronto.

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2nd Syrian Child Brutally Tortured

Holy shit, the bloodlust of Syria’s security forces is seemingly unquenchable. These sadists have barbarically tortured a second child, a friend of Hamza al Khateeb, the first boy who suffered unspeakable horror at the hands of Assad’s men.

The video, broadcast by Al Jazeera, shows the body of 15-year-old Thamer al-Sahri in gruesome condition.

Alabama’s Brain Drain

The state of Alabama on Thursday passed the strictest illegal immigration legislation imaginable.  In November, Republicans took formal control of both the state House and Senate for the first time since Reconstruction.  However, this by itself was not necessarily the determining factor to ensure passage.  Until this session, a majority of very conservative Democrats by in large peopled both chambers.  But, back then, there were enough voices present who held other ideological views to push back against reactionary bills like this one.  Even with the prior legislative balance of power, sentiments like these often found political favor.  In an economically poor state desperate to find a scapegoat to explain recent financial woes, it was only a matter of time before migrant Latino workers were targeted.  When all else fails, find someone different than you to blame.          

Profiles in Failure

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Continuing economic policies  the have failed is flat out stupid. Proposing to not only continue with those policies but to reinforce them by making them worse is economic and political suicide. It is the path that the Obama administration and Congress have taken us down by renewing the Bush Tax Cuts until December 2012. Some of the GOP candidates would like to cut taxes even further, so much so that it would cripple the government and widen the socio-economic gap of the haves and have-nots.

June 7th was the tenth anniversary of the Bush tax cuts that were enacted on the promise as a  necessary economic stimulus that would boost job creation and a stalled economy by the Bush regime who said the “deficits didn’t matter”. Bush promised that result would be that the Federal debt would be paid in 10 years that was in 2001. At the end of 2008, the national to over $10 trillion dollars, 69% of the GDP and the highest it had been since 1955.

Think Progress compiled a concise video with graphics and music that demonstrates how the Bush tax cuts drove up the deficit and will continue to make matters worse over the next 18 months.

Yet, we still have the right wing pundits and GOP candidates for president repeating the with most of the talking heads nodding in acquiescence. Lawrence O’Donnell was the exception last night comparing the ignorance of Sarah Palin to the out right lies about tax cuts by GOP presidential hopeful, ex-Gov Tim Pawlenty. If elected, Pawlenty would propose cutting the business tax rate and wipe out the capital gains tax, interest income tax, dividend tax and the estate tax.

It’s estimated that Pawlenty’s proposals would triple the size of the Bush tax cut costing another $7.8 trillion over the $2.5 trillion the current extension is costing. Meanwhile, the other GOP contender, ex-Gov. Mitt Romney, follows the Bush/Cheney economic theory that deficits don’t matter with his endorsing a “federal spending at 20 percent or less of the GDP and finally, finally balance the budget” without mentioning the other side of the equation, revenue.

With Obama caving on just about everything, his word that he will not extend the Bush tax cuts again doesn’t hold much water. His economic policies and thus his re-election is in the inept hands of a Wall St. shill, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his Chief of Staff, former Morgan Stanley bank executive, Bill Daley. If Ben Bernanke expressed less than a rosy economic outlook, it understandable that the markets worldwide are taking a tumble.

Six In The Morning

‘This revolution was a curse’: Economic woes test Egypt

‘People in the neighborhood are talking about going back to the streets for another revolution – a hunger revolution’

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and DINA SALAH AMER

 Egypt’s economy, whose inequities and lack of opportunities helped topple a government, has now ground to a virtual halt, further wounded by the revolution itself.

The 18-day revolt stopped new foreign investment and decimated the pivotal tourist industry. The annual growth slowed to less than 2 percent from a projected 5 percent, and Egypt’s hard currency reserves plunged 25 percent.




Friday’s Headlines:

Bahrain Grand Prix cancelled after team protests

Gaddafi regime staked £12bn on secret deal in bid to open peace talks

Syrian army ‘moves on Jisr al-Shughour

Iraq: A frat house with guns

Rana acquitted in Mumbai attacks, jailed for helping LeT

Gingrich Goes Galt

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Well, actually his campaign staff, but if this guy is any indication they are the most arrogant, ignorant, self serving, narcissistic group of Beltway suck up asskissing Versailles Villagers to expose themselves like the raincoat wearing perverts they are in a while.

On TV yesterday and last night I guessed that while Newt and his wife were in Greece, the staff was fuming over their refusal to allow the people who do campaigns for a living help get this campaign on the right path.



To raise money from large donors requires start-up money: Halls have to be rented, stages have to be built, food has to be ordered, invitations have to be printed, addressed and mailed.



Information from the former staffers started coming out by early evening. No surprises. The staff was made up of campaign professionals who wanted to run a professional campaign.

May I just say for the vast majority that actually have to work for a living instead of “doing things like talking into a TV camera (or writing Internet-based columns)” that you, Rich Galen, have no talent or skill except for self gratification.

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage. Stockton

I’d call you my wanker of the day but you have some stiff competition-

Follow my lead or Labour is finished, Blair tells Miliband

Labour will not win elections, Mr Blair says, by going back to the political equivalent of ‘warm beer and old maids bicycling’

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor, The Independent

Friday, 10 June 2011

In his book, Mr Blair argues that traditional left-right boundaries are breaking down and that to be successful, today’s politicians need to “rise above partisan politics”. This reflects fears among Blairites that David Cameron, an admirer of Mr Blair’s strategy, is more likely to appear above the traditional left-right fray than Ed Miliband, who is seen by voters as to the left of his party.

Mr Blair argues that New Labour, Bill Clinton’s “new Democrats” and Barack Obama all reached out beyond their traditional support base and suggests the Coalition Government is trying to do the same. “Where political leaders deliberately go outside their own political base, they almost always win public approval,” he says. “Face people with a choice between traditional left and traditional right and there is a traditional outcome: the left loses.”

You know Tony, you’re not just a war criminal, you’re also a loser.  History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man, likewise that given a choice between Republicans and Republicans Lite, Republicans win every time.

Denying that he had become a “pariah” in his home country, Mr Blair said: “I think it’s a little harsh to say that. One of the things you learn in politics is the fact that you get a hundred people or a thousand people, or even 10,000 people out on the street doesn’t mean to say the whole of the population thinks that way. You know, I did win three elections in Britain.”

Pobrecito.  Que lastima.

Cartnoon

Devil May Hare

Muse in the Morning

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Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

I was the walrus, but now I am John…and so my friends, you’ll just have to carry on. The dream is over.

–John Lennon



Fireworks 2

Mo’ Meta, Mo’ Betta

Crossposted from  The Stars Hollow Gazette

Between the Belmont, Le Mans, and Circuit Gilles Villeneuve it’s shaping up a busy weekend.  You may well ask, “ek, why do you talk about sports so much?

It’s a metaphor.

Consider today’s offering from The Gulf Daily News

OVERTAKEN BY LIES..?

By ANWAR ABDULRAHMAN, The Gulf Daily News

Posted on Friday, June 10, 2011

Bahrain always assumed that the Western world was too wise and mature to mix politics with sport. But the way it is behaving towards our Grand Prix fixture begs many questions now about its judgement.



No country in the world can guarantee itself totally free of some form of domestic disturbances – and we fully understand that when lives and security are endangered, such events can be postponed, as happened here.

But to now use human rights allegations as an excuse to deprive Bahrain of such an important sporting occasion, contradicts every ethic and value, as well as the spirit of global competition in its broadest sense.

Because you know, after all, Jesse Owens humbled Hitler in Berlin (not actually the story you think it is, the real one is Marty Glickman).

But our hole is not yet to China, let’s dig a little deeper.

Unfortunately, hidden hands are at work to discredit Bahrain government’s positive measures which have restored law and order to the country. It seems as if there is a willingness for members of this sporting body to be swayed by opposition claims of ongoing and brutal repression.



The facts of the matter are simple. The government of Bahrain has advised that the country is a safe and secure destination to host the Bahrain Grand Prix in October this year. The FIA, F1 management and the teams should not allow political machinations of a disaffected and small opposition group to affect the decisions taken by the FIA which quite rightly are based entirely on logistics and security considerations.

For members of the F1 fraternity to single out Bahrain over questions of human rights issues is unacceptable victimisation. A number of other countries which host F1 are considered to be far more repressive. The same stance should apply to Bahrain as to these other nations.

Certainly Bahrain should share part of the blame for innocently allowing both international media and human rights organisations to twist the truth. For years they have been fed a dubious diet of information. However, we have relied on individuals like Lord Gilford and public relations organisations such as Bell-Pottinger (whose staff deserted the kingdom en masse as soon as trouble started). They have milked the country’s financial resources for a long time, yet failed to deliver any positive result.

From now on we hope such tasks will be undertaken by organisations with true local links, knowledge and understanding, as well as a genuine love for Bahrain.

The defamation of Bahrain was started by so-called native opposition elements, therefore only local, loyal media and public relations companies with a vested interest in the future of this country can be relied upon.

There are many highly capable, mature, experienced Bahrainis and expatriates who have been in this field all of their professional working lives.

They are the ones fully aware of internal politics, and only experts of such calibre can explain and influence Western thought and decision-making.

In fairness and to his credit Mr. Abdulrahman calls out Max Mosley as the fascist he is but to decry as he does “mixing sport with politics”…

My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.

Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed.

Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?

This could never happen here.  We’re “exceptional”.

Late Night Karaoke

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As I note in Bad weather I’m experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment.  I’m sure you’ll do fine.

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