Petula Clark
Downtown
October 2007 archive
Oct 15 2007
Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective
Oct 15 2007
My Left Wing Talk Radio
At Maryscott’s request, I am cross posting this. I hope you will support her, and the idea of the Left working together to make Internet Radio a viable force for change!
Ready or not, here it comes: (And a pre-emptive apology: Forgive me, please… For purposes of this being an Announcement and all, I may slip into referring to myself in third person… at least it ain’t the Royal We, ‘kay?)
Next Monday, October 22, at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern, Maryscott O’Connor / MSOC (EmSock to friends and enemies alike) intends to make her maiden foray into that area between “alternative media” and “traditional media” — that being the Internet-based “Blog Talk Radio”.
The designated sobriquet for said radio talk show is, of course, the only possible identification one could choose: My Left Wing Talk Radio.
Oct 15 2007
The Clueless Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told George Stepanapoulos today:
I am one of the most vociferous opponents of the [Iraq] War . . .
Excuse me Madame Speaker, but are you fucking kidding me? Nearly 90 House members have signed this letter:
The Honorable George W. Bush
President
United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500Dear Mr. President:
Seventy House Members wrote in July to inform you that they will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.
Now you are requesting an additional $45 billion to sustain your escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion you requested for military operations during FY08 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, even more of us are writing anew to underscore our opposition to appropriating any additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq other than a time-bound, safe redeployment as stipulated above.
More than 3,742 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 27,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.
We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.
Sincerely,
Co-signers: Murphy (CT), Jackson, Brown (FL), Thompson (MS), Watt, Meeks, Loebsack, Weiner, Kucinich, DeFazio, Farr, Waxman, Thompson (CA), Lee, Woolsey, Waters, Watson, Frank, Conyers, Filner, Rush, Towns, Clay, Wynn, Delahunt, Holmes-Norton, Butterfield, Solis, Maloney, Nadler, Honda, Cohen, Hare, Napolitano, Hastings, McGovern, Kaptur, Schakowsky, Carson, Linda Sanchez, Grijalva, Olver, Jackson-Lee, McDermott, Markey, Fattah, Pallone, Hinojosa, Stark, Scott (VA), Moran, McCollum, Oberstar, DeGette, Tauscher, Holt, Hinchey, Pastor, Davis (IL), Hall, Velazquez, Rangel, Hodes, Blumenauer, Lynch, Artur Davis, Johnson (GA), Payne, Cleaver, Lewis, Clarke, Abercrombie, Moore(WI), Ellison, Baldwin, Christensen, Scott (GA), Paul, Gutierrez, Welch, Capps, Rothman, Cummings, Tierney, Doggett, Eshoo, and Tubbs-Jones.
The name Pelosi is not among the signatories. When Pelosi signs that letter; when she promises that she will not put forward any bills to fund Iraq without a date certain to end the Iraq Debacle, then she can claim to be “one of the most vocieferous opponents of the Iraq War.” She is not one of the most vociferous opponents of the Iraq war. She needs to do everything she can to end it and then she can truthfully claim to be such. Until then, Pelosi is simply not telling the truth.
Oct 15 2007
The New Stupid
Glenn Greenwald points to some remarks Bill O’Reilly made on Thursday. After announcing that “Partisan politics bore me,” O’Reilly said the following:
So just talking about your personal security, would you support President John Edwards? Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone surveillance without a specific warrant.
I read this, and I wonder what television is going to be like, over the next, say, twenty years. I read this, and I see the coming of The New Stupid.
I see it in various places and in various forms: the attempt to drive the American population into a dreamspace of total ignorance of the world around them. A forced march from the observable into a land of faery.
Oct 15 2007
Why The Left Blogs Suck
Dr. Jeffrey Feldman is a smart, insightful and good man. But what the fuck is this?
I am sorry, but if Dr. Jeff thinks that is the biggest problem with Daily Kos and the Left blogs at the present time, I think he is actually illustrating what the biggest problem is – the inability to think for a fucking second about the issues RIGHT NOW!
Iraq. FISA capitulation. A Democratic Congress that sucks utterly. Is it fucking impossible to focus on issues now?
The Netroots are so fucking bad now. Completely useless. I am disgusted.
I am going back into my cave now. I do not have the stomach right now to say what needs to be said about all this bullshit.
Oct 15 2007
Yuyanapaq: To Remember
When my mother was in the hospital giving birth to me, my father was in the jungles of Peru, in the province of Huanuco, setting up a post from which to clear the rain forest, build roads, establish cattle ranches and evangelize the natives. When I was just a couple of months old, my mother, eighteen month old sister, and I joined him. I lived there the first few years of my life and then we moved to Lima, where we stayed until I was 7.
Like most people, I have very few actual memories of the first few years of my life. And its hard to distinguish what I do remember from the 8mm home movies that were made of us to send back to my grandparents in the US. I think it was pretty rough going for my mother and an attempt by my father to prove himself worthy to his boss, my grandfather.
As an adult, I’ve been so ashamed of this family history, that I’ve never wanted to talk to my father about what he was doing. I just wanted to put it in the past and move on. This last week I’ve decided to take my own journey and do some exploring on the internet to see what I can learn about the area and the people who live there.
Oct 14 2007
Eye On The Sky
*all photos courtesy of NASA
Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming downfrom Jackson Browne’s For A Dancer
Of the many strange episodes that have played themselves out in the course of my life, one of the more interesting was the two and a half years I spent working on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) project.
Oct 14 2007
Four at Four
OPEN THREAD, this is. Hmmmmmm… Four stories, there are. Yes. Get you started, they will. Hmmmmm…?
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Elizabeth Bumiller reports for The New York Times that At an Army school for officers, there is blunt talk about Iraq.
As the war grinds through its fifth year, Fort Leavenworth has become a front line in the military’s tension and soul-searching over Iraq. Here at the base on the bluffs above the Missouri River, once a frontier outpost that was a starting point for the Oregon Trail, rising young officers are on a different journey — an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq…
Officers were split over whether Mr. Rumsfeld, the military leaders or both deserved blame for what they said were the major errors in the war: sending in a small invasion force and failing to plan properly for the occupation.
But the consensus was that not even after Vietnam was the Army’s internal criticism as harsh or the second-guessing so painful, and that airing the arguments on the record, as sanctioned by Leavenworth’s senior commanders, was part of a concerted effort to force change…
Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, “A Failure in Generalship,” written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran and deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results,” Colonel Yingling wrote…
One question that silenced many of the officers was a simple one: Should the war have been fought?
No.
Below the fold is the rest of today’s Four at Four: terrorist training in Pakistan, “Guns of Greed”, and a story about flying in a Zeppelin.
Oct 14 2007
Halloween Suggestions
For all of you who revel in the opportunity to celebrate All Hallows Eve by donning a scary costume and frightening the living shit out of your more reactionary friends, I offer the following costume suggestion.
Fly My Pretties!
Hurry though, this costume only has two more uses before it becomes obsolete.
Oct 14 2007
America the Ugly
America the Beautiful O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
–Katharine Lee Bates
–1913
It’s a great song. But times have changed…
Oct 14 2007
Al Gore Won’t Run: Anatomy of a Meme
Crossposted at dailykos and Truth and Progress
The conventional wisdom that Gore “won’t run” spread almost immedately, starting on the night BEFORE the Nobel Prize announcement. Interestingly enough, that opening salvo came not from the usual suspects on the Right, but from the Hillary camp, via an emissary by the name of Dan Gerstein, on Thursday’s night’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Hardball). But could the facts be more inconvenient, hence more threatening, to all those now pushing the status quo?