Sep 23 2007
Over at big orange the denizens are collectively referred to as Kossacks, Kossians or Kossaks. The latter being a preference of buhdy and myself, et al. I like the almost palindromic look of “kossak”.
But now we are here at docudharma. So, are we docudharmics? Docudharmists? Maybe a Simpsonsesque “dod’hists”? Saying that we are “DD’s” (developmentally disabled) is too rife for derision, however apt it may be from time to time.
Sep 23 2007
He doesn’t know it yet; I’m going to show up with my hammock and my sunscreen.
No, really I mean Docudharma. Although…
I’m new as hell at this shit. The first site I went to was,
The Place Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned
(TPWNSNBM, I’m trying to start a thing, but this one may be too long).
Sep 23 2007
First off, I heartily concure with OPOL’s diary. What it comes down to, to my mind, is whether we have the gumption to vote for what we believe, or will we vote for what we are told to believe.
Sep 23 2007
I wish to inform and hopefully to move you. I have gathered information from various sources like UNICEF, the United Nations, WHO, medical journals and relief organizations among others. The figures are often based on estimates in part based on verifiable reports because hard figures are difficult to gather. I tried whenever possible to use multiple sources. You are invited below the fold where I hope we will find a sense of proportion and perspective.
Sep 23 2007
As I say, potentially useless but….
I want to offer it. Online debate is by nature choppy. For one main reason….no one has fully committed to debate. Even people who post a diary often just stop debating when the going gets rough.
The idea of REAL debates online has always intrigued me. So though it is by NO means compulsory, (even if someone challenges you (which, if they do I suggest you respond by laughing sneeringly at them and addressing them scornfully for being SO immature))I want it to be known that here at Docudharma we have a …..Thunderdome!!!
Sep 23 2007
Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 it has been the dream of Republicans to turn government over to private enterprise believing that it would somehow make government more efficient. What might the consequences be if such a shift were to take
place?
Sep 23 2007
So I’m thinking about all the scandals, moral scandals that have rocked America in the past several years. Bill Clinton’s blowjob. Vitter’s hookers. Gingrich’s, Guiliani’s extramarital affairs. And I’m wondering about all this.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t care about someone’s personal vices when it comes to being a leader. FDR was unfaithful to Eleanor. JFK was unfaithful to Jackie. Grant was a drunk. Churchill suffered from the black dog of depression.
I am rambling about this notion of leadership and moral vices, or morality in general. I am wondering if one of the problems we now have in government is because anyone who wants to run for office has to be so squeaky clean in their life that we may be excluding folks who would make damned good leaders.
Have we in America become even more Puritan than the Puritans? Is the measure of leadership capability the notion that one has never been wild in their youth, did drugs, fucked themselves senseless, been in jail?
I don’t know. I think there is a problem here.
Sep 23 2007
It appears that pollsters are searching for the next semi-imaginary demographic with characteristics so broad that somebody is bound to fit in. Soccer Moms. Security Moms. Nascar Dads. I personally hope the next big demographic is Pissed Off Americans, and pundits spend energy trying to decipher just who these mystery people are and what they are so pissed off about.
The teenage daughter of a work colleague who met me on an outing told her mother that I could be a “sporty Mom, except really weird.”
Sep 23 2007
Well, there you go … just when I was saying how most motorists in this area seem to be reasonably well behaved, at least by the low level that the bar that is set for motorists, I was shouted at.
But it was the exception that “proves” (that is, tests) the rule. On reflection, it was not really misbehavior as a motorist, but merely ignorance on the part of a fellow citizen. And in any case, it wasn’t really my town, so before I reflect on it, at least I could say, “boy, these here folk in this here town shor are ignoramuses”.
But did get me back to thinking about sidewalk cycling and other cycling behavior where we are expected to buy a ticket in the suicide lottery in order to stay out of the way of motorists.
Sep 23 2007
It’s simple really. Radical problems require radical solutions.
Radical
1. of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference.
2. thoroughgoing or extreme, esp. as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of a company.
3. favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms: radical ideas; radical and anarchistic ideologues.
The other night I was telling my 84-year-old father (21 years career Army) about the march in Washington. I told him that we are going to have to rise up against our government oppressors if we have any hope at all of taking our government back.
“As long as you do it with the ballot box,” he said. Of course he’s been taught this all his life…and so have I. Be patient. Work within the system.
Sep 23 2007
No time for a full essay, today, and Magnifico has the day off, so here are some top news stories…
Iraq war budget jumps for 2008
Bush plans to increase his request to nearly $200 billion. The troop buildup and new gear are the main reasons.
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 22, 2007WASHINGTON — — After smothering efforts by war critics in Congress to drastically cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq, President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure — totaling nearly $200 billion — to fund the war through next year, Pentagon officials said.
If Bush’s spending request is approved, 2008 will be the most expensive year of the Iraq war.
If I were writing one essay, today, it would be about that.
The new British empire? UK plans to annex south Atlantic
Owen Bowcott
Saturday September 22, 2007
The GuardianBritain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields, the Guardian has learned.
The UK claims, to be lodged at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, exploit a novel legal approach that is transforming the international politics of underwater prospecting.
Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN – which is fraught with diplomatic sensitivities, not least with Argentina – before an international deadline for registering interests.
Iran in show of military power
Ned Temk
Saturday September 22, 2007
Guardian UnlimitedThe Iranian president was talking on the eve of his departure from Tehran, amid a storm of opposition to his visit to New York and growing international alarm over his country’s nuclear ambitions. He is poised to deliver a defiant address to the UN General Assembly this week.
The Iranian military showed off a new long-range ballistic missile called the Ghadr – Farsi for ‘power’. In a speech marking the event, Ahmadinejad shrugged off US and regional concerns about Iran’s more assertive role, saying: ‘Iran is an influential power in the region and the world should know that this power has always served peace, stability, brotherhood and justice.’
Ahmadinejad does what he does: blabbity blabbity blab. Look for our media to use it as further evidence that we need to think about war. Idiots, on both sides, with the Iranian people’s lives hanging in the balance.
More…