Oct 14 2007
He did it. He absolutely went there. On the op-ed page.
Frank Rich just ran through the unspoken barrier that got Dick Durbin in
such hot water two years ago. He’s made the historical comparison that no one has been allowed to make, for fear of diminishing the scope and scale of an evil that reigned a half-century ago. A comparison that someone in the MSM has needed to make, because we are surely walking down that same road.
Oct 14 2007
Quoting most of this article probably breaks all the rules, but I just don’t feel like embellishing it. It’s an interesting dilemma.
Lured by cheaper costs, more Americans head south of the border
to live out their leisure years
AJIJIC, MEXICO – Drawn by the eternal spring weather and laid-back lifestyle, American retirees have been migrating to this lakeside village deep inside Mexico for decades.
Now, facing the sobering prospect that their money will run out before their last breath does, some are considering Ajijic and other expatriate communities across Mexico as a cheaper place to get needed care through the end of their lives.
Though few come with dying on their minds, tens of thousands of retirees long have been heading to this community on the shore of Mexico’s largest lake – and dozens of other towns and cities nationwide – looking to spend their leisure years in paradise.
The Margaritaville moments might last decades. But the life cycle spins on no matter where they may live, and the aging Americans face much the same tough choices on health care here that they would at home.
Increasingly, they have decided that Mexico is as good or better a place as any to face the inevitable.
“I would never go back home,” said Harold “Skip” Waggoner, 67, a former deputy sheriff from Central Florida who retired 12 years ago to Ajijic. “My mother spent five years in a nursing home. That’s scary.
Oct 14 2007
When I first started with the blogs (about 6 weeks ago) I thought I’d be around a bunch of kids.
You know…like…sort of, kind of…like…you know…kids.
But since I came over to the good side (about a month ago) I’ve found that you are all my people whatever your age. I’ve also seen that there are a lot of my generation out here (I’m 51).
So, I’m curious, just exactly, “How old Are you?”
That’s a quote from my niece a long time ago when she was about 7. I told her, “I’m older’n dirt.”
She scrunched up her cute little face and thought real hard for a couple of minutes before saying,
“You can’t be older than Dirt, Uncle Jim.”
Oct 14 2007
It’s only been three years since the New York Times publicly apologized for promoting Bush Administration fairy tales about Iraqi WMD, and still the Grey Lady continues to carry heavy water for the Bush Administration, this time regurgitating Neocon lies claims that the target of the Israeli bombing strike in Syria was a nuclear facility.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 – Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.
…
Many details remain unclear, most notably how much progress the Syrians had made in construction before the Israelis struck, the role of any assistance provided by North Korea, and whether the Syrians could make a plausible case that the reactor was intended to produce electricity. In Washington and Israel, information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy and restricted to just a handful of officials, while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack.
See how easy it is to make a news story seem credible? Just quote some unnamed Administration officials with access to reports they can’t otherwise talk about, and Voila!
Instant nukes, ready for framing!
Of course, you might expect professional (or at least competent) journalists to make some attempt to corroborate these bombastic reports, especially considering the Times’ embarrassing track record when it comes to the topic of WMD in Middle Eastern countries. Right?
Heh.
Oct 14 2007
Waiting is almost always cold. Or at least it seems that way. She can, of course remember times when she has waited in the sunlight or on hot steamy days. But when she thinks of waiting….she shivers. Just some trick of her mind. There is something about waiting to her that always seems cold …..or is it just lonely? Sitting somewhere by yourself. A small girl, waiting with her arms wrapped around her, cold, alone and unhappy. The abject existential aloneness that we all try to avoid at all costs, that feeling of abandonment and separation and resentment we all feel when we are at our lowest points in life. A spiralized descent into a place frost and ice….After a break up or the death of someone close to us, that cold, that chill, that sense of being totally alone in an isolated black bleakness of despair and solitude…a chill of and to the very soul, cold cold cold, and afraid, in the frozen void of the ultimate and final unfightable and undeniable aloneness, deep inside of ourselves. A deep black cold.
Oct 14 2007
Is the American psyche terminally fucked up? Prolly. I’m sick of it. Here’s an old poem, mostly an Italian sonnet by construction, on something about cognitive development, not that that was the original intent; there was zero intention, except to describe someone. The rest happened like a bad car accident. I found the extreme collision with the pun unavoidable at the time. Whoever said I could drive? Not me. If you want Wallace Stevens, go read Stevens, or Snoop Dogg. I did like the idea of putting words into the container of a specific meter and rhyme, because otherwise, “it’s like playing tennis without a net.” Once upon a time, deigning to write in metered verse was pretentious, if not tendentious. Piffle, poffle. If you can’t have a dreary slide into nostalgia now and again, what’s the point?
Oct 14 2007
Much to my surprise Blackwater proudly exhibits itself online, and who can blame them what with the constant need for more itchy trigger fingers. So, I got to thinking, if we can googlebomb corrupt politicians, we can googlebomb fascist businesses like Blackwater.
I need your help on this. We need to find the most damning but true articles, blog entries, stories regarding Blackwater. Everyone should take the time to visit the entries and tell the group which ones are the most effective. I will then create the coding for the links and post them. Anytime we mention Blackwater we include one of the coded links.
Oct 14 2007
Mychal Bell is a bad boy, didja know that? He was violent. He was a bad boy. And because of that, no one should protest on his behalf, because if they do, they’re misguided, yes, they are misguided because it was far worse, his beating up that white boy, than it was to put some nooses on a tree. No one was sent to the emergency room as a result of nooses on a tree. But Mychal Bell sent a white boy to the emergency room, and he is bad.
Yep. He was violent. And further more, I’m no racist! Oh no, I would be the first to say those white boys who put a noose on a tree should have been expelled! Yes, expelled! And those school board folks and the DA, well they should be held to account, yes they should! But that Mychal Bell, he’s a bad boy, and you are misguided to protest on his behalf. After all, he was violent. What would Martin Luther King say? He would never have marched in Jena.
And I have to say, that Mychal Bell is a lucky fellow, he’s going to have so many opportunities because of all that media attention, all that money coming his way, he’s a lucky boy and I hope he takes advantage of all these opportunities. I wish him no ill, I just hope he realizes how lucky he is!
*****
All the sentiments above are from comments I have read both at Daily Kos and elsewhere over the Jena 6. My response is below.
Oct 14 2007
Like a near death experience my life changed last Friday when I witnessed my Russian boss experience a mental melt down as a consequence of having lived his life in two totalitarian states. I now know I’m right as I say “we” (America) won’t last through the winter.
Oct 14 2007
Amidst all the excitement about Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the questions and dreams about a possible presidential campaign, and the inevitable criticism from right wing cynics (demonstrating, once again, that they neither understand nor even like the concept of peace), let’s not lose focus on what really matters. It is not about the man, it is about his cause; and he is the man he is because he puts the cause above any personal considerations, and whether or not he runs will undoubtedly be determined by his best assessment of whether it will be the best way to serve the cause! We need also keep that priority straight! The coming weeks are critical, and we can help!
Largely because of Al Gore and the IPCC, global warming and climate change have now come to be frontline political issues. Bush no longer ignores it, and now tries to spin it (the best he will ever do on any political issue), and Congress is finally crafting legislation to address it. For now, this is where we need focus.
Mark Hertsgaard, the environmental correspondent for The Nation, puts it directly:
Now that Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, will the US Congress take the IPCC’s scientific advice on how to fight global warming? The IPCC holds that the world must reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 80 percent by the year 2050. Few in Congress seem prepared to go that far, however. And judging from the discussion at a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill last week, even lawmakers who personally embrace the “gold standard” of 80 percent reductions are prepared to endorse a weaker measure in the name of getting some form of climate legislation moving in Congress.
If we take Al Gore seriously, and we take seriously his Nobel Prize, we need to immediately begin lobbying Congress to do the same. This is no time for the compromises that define the usual failures of our political system. With the issue in the headlines, we need let our Congressional representatives know that we are watching, and that we are expecting more than lip service.
The question is, what bill will reformers get behind? How ambitious will they be? Will they demand what the scientific community says is the minimum necessary to enable our civilization to (perhaps) avoid the worst future scenarios of global warming: deep cuts in emissions by 2020 on the way to 80-90 percent cuts by 2050? Or, in the name of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, will they favor a more modest and gradual approach?
The weak, ineffectual compromise approach is being championed by those champions of political weakness and ineffectual compromise, Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Joseph Lieberman (?-CT). Their bill would mandate emission reductions of 10 percent by 2020, and 70 percent by 2050. That they would, for some reason, decide on an approach that falls 10 percent short on such a critical goal says everything. It won’t solve the problem, but it will make nice window dressing. It’s not just embarrassing and absurd, it’s dangerous!
Not only do these provisions fall short of the scientific standard; there is even less here than meets the eye. The bill, as described in briefings and press accounts, contains a number of loopholes, including provisions that (1) will give rather than sell greenhouse-gas-emissions permits to polluters, thus violating the “polluter pays” principle of environmental accounting, and (2) count so-called carbon offsets–that is, paying someone else to reduce emissions while continuing to emit oneself–as genuine reductions.
An alternative has been proposed by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bernard Sanders (I-VT), with a similar bill in the House being sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). Their bills mandate the 80 percent reductions, on real terms, rather than with carbon offsets, and they make the polluters pay. Hertsgaard links to the World Resource Institute’s comparison of these, and other, proposals.
Of course, only one of the bills is getting traction, on Congress.
According to sources speaking on background because of the confidential nature of the discussions, most Senate Democrats and many environmental and other public interest groups are preparing to support the Lieberman-Warner bill, despite misgivings about its shortcomings.
.
While some in Congress apparently believe it is important to pass something, anything, environmental writer Bill McKibben disagrees. Since Bush is likely to veto even Warner-Lieberman, McKibben believes that even passing it will only serve to lower the bar, for the next Congress and the next president. It will make Warner-Lieberman appear to be the proper standard. Clearly, that would be unacceptable.
As McKibben explained to Hertsgaard, in a previous interview:
Since Bush is going to veto it anyway, there is no reason to make [a climate bill] less ambitious than what science requires. Climate change isn’t like other issues. It doesn’t do any good to split the difference to reach a deal everyone can live with. Climate change is about the laws of physics and chemistry, and they don’t give.
We’re all thrilled that Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s time for us to help them leverage that prestige, by pressuring Congress to do what is right. Call your senators and congresspeople. Tell them that Warner-Lieberman is unacceptable, and that the only valid options are Boxer-Sanders and Waxman. We now have the political momentum. Let’s not waste it!
Oct 14 2007
“IMMUNITY” IS NOT the word that should be being used to highlight and headline stories regarding the case of the telecoms and the FISA bill. “Retroactive immunity” is not even right. These terms put the focus of this story on the telecoms. It belongs on the White House. If the word is going to be used at all, it should be along the lines of “Bush seeking protection for possible White House crimes with immunity request.”?