October 2007 archive

Oct 01 2007

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

Oct 01 2007

Rahm Emanuel Rejects Defunding with a Red Herring

From Real Time with Bill Maher 9/28 (full transcript here)

here is the video.  Sorry, the embed is a little screwy. You’ll just have to search a little bit for the beginning.

 

Oct 01 2007

Pelosi’s Pathetic Doubletalk On Iraq

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer this morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi demonstrated she has no intention of doing anything to end the war in Iraq:

BLITZER: Let's talk about the war in Iraq. When you became speaker, you said, “Bringing the war to an end is my highest priority as speaker.”

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER: It is.

. . . BLITZER: The war, if anything, is not only continuing, but it's expanding. There's more troops now in Iraq than there were when you became the speaker. What are you going to do about that?

PELOSI: Well, we did, when we took office, we took the majority here. We changed the debate on the war. We put a bill on the president's desk that said that we wanted the redeployment of troops out of Iraq to begin in a timely fashion and to end within a year. The president vetoed that bill.

He got quite a response to that veto, and the Republicans in the Senate then decided he was never going to get a bill on his desk again. So we have a barrier and it's important for the American people to know that while I can bring a bill to the floor in the House, it cannot be brought up in the Senate unless there's a 60 vote, now 60 votes.

He got quite a response? What the heck is Pelosi talking about? He got, FROM HER, a bill with no timetables! Who does Speaker Pelosi think she is fooling? Blitzer is not fooled:

Oct 01 2007

Second Korean Summit

Kim Dae-jong met Kim Jon-il in June of 2000 in what became the first and only meeting between the leaders of that divided country. Whilst Kim Jong-il  promised a reciprocal visit to the South that meeting never took place. Kim’s successor Roh Moo-hyun is on the threshold of a second summit a little more than 5 months before he will leave office in February of 2008 by walking across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea. Becoming the first President of South Korea to do so.

Oct 01 2007

Progressive Epilogue

It was a third party that captured 22 electoral votes and 4 states in a presidential race, elected governors in 7 states, sent dozens of legislators to Congress, and controlled all or part of numerous state Houses and Senates – yet it was only prominent on the national scene for a decade or so.  The People’s (a/k/a Populist) Party was born of anger and frustration at the failure of either major party to look after the concerns of a large segment of their ostensible constituency, and in the course of their stampede across the American political landscape, they shifted Overtons, crashed gates, and exerted their forceful, righteous will upon the craven Democrats and sold-out Republicans of their day.

It’s a good thing we’re safely removed from that sort of (way) pre-9/11 thinking – it allows us to historiorant in peace about a time when conflicts of class, pretense, and presumptuousness rent asunder the House of Donkey, and ushered onto the stage a cast of characters straight out of The Wizard of Oz.

Oct 01 2007

…

Oct 01 2007

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Carole King


It’s Too Late

Oct 01 2007

Iraq: an interview with Dr. Stephen Zunes

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. He has written extensively on a range of foreign policy issues, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, non-violent struggle and nuclear proliferation. He is the author of 2003’s acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, is a regular contributor to Tikkun magazine and the Common Dreams website, among other places. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus think-tank and as an associate editor of Peace Review. His articles can be viewed here, and information about his books is available here.

I asked Dr. Zunes a few questions about the current ‘Iran crisis’, the situation in Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The second part of the interview, dealing with Iraq, is published below. The third and final part will be published shortly.

Oct 01 2007

Life is better on the margins

Almost a year ago, I published an essay at dkos entitled, “Late night optimism“.  This is a partial repost with some additional commentary about what’s changed since then, and what’s remained – wonderfully – the same.

Here was the original text, and I’ll add my new reflections at the bottom:

I stumbled back home a few hours ago from a Saturday night on the town, and I wanted to share a few observations with you all before bed.  This isn’t a hardcore political diary, but I had politics on the mind tonight – in the more abstract form of social interaction. 

Maybe a bar isn’t always the best place to be thinking about the Democratic party on the mind, not to mention dailykos.  I’ve been participating less and less here, partially because of an increased level of responsibility at my job, and partially because – and this happens to anyone who takes breaks from here – I’d felt the community was shifting away from what I’d come to know.

Which is fine.  Communities change over time; some people enter and some people leave, and it’s not always easy to find your bearings – even when you’ve been around for a while.  But I’m going to back up a bit and tell you about my night, and the kinds of thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head:

Oct 01 2007

If Nothing Else: A Semi-Manifesto

“So why did you do it at all?” he asks.

I never expected it to work in the first place, is what I’ve just got done saying to him.  That’s why he asked me the question.  And now I don’t know what to say.

I didn’t have any hope for it.  I think the last time I had hope, back then and before back then, even growing up, hope about anything at all, was . . . no.  I’m not sure I ever had any.  I don’t remember it if I did.  But I don’t say that out loud.

It’s thirty years on, now.  2037.  I’m sixty-six years old — not an old man but hardly a young one.  You’d think I’d have an answer to this question my friend has just asked me.

Why did I join the blogosphere?

Oct 01 2007

What Is The Unitary Executive Theory?

I think there is some confusion about the unitary executive theory and what it has become under the Bush Adminstration. Initially, it meant something less ambitious than what the Bush Administration turned it into. The older theory was describe by now Justice Alito, as follows:

In a speech to the Federalist Society in 2001, Alito said:

When I was in OLC [] . . ., we were strong proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, that all federal executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President. And I thought then, and I still think, that this theory best captures the meaning of the Constitution’s text and structure . . . .” “[T]he case for a unitary executive seems, if anything, stronger today than it was in the 18th Century.

Frankly, this is not a remarkable nor important view of the theory. The problem is what is has become under the Bush Administration:

Here’s what it means for Bush:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

The Bybee Memo put it this way:

Any effort by the Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution’s sole vesting of the Commander in Chief authority in the President. . . . Congress can no more interfere with the President’s conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield.

This is the pernicious Unitary Executive theory as we know it today. It is utterly unsupported by the Constitution and the jurisprudence. I’ll explain on the flip.

Oct 01 2007

Fence? Bullshit Nancy

http://www.usatoday….

Clear evidence is emerging that the secret government is clashing with the “sheeple” government and they can’t get their stories straight.  While Pelosi is dissing “the fence” the reality of a long term pet project of the Bilderburg/New World Order/CFR crowd is pushing for an EU style merger called the North American Union.
Yes, elite shitheads whose sole existence consists of being parasites want to grab even more power for themselves.
www.spp.gov,  ya, that is dot gov
http://www.nascocorr…
Note that these pricks have changed their site, updating it to make it out like it’s a benevolent service.
http://www.augustrev…
And as timely as government is the factories are already flying out of Mexico in favor of far cheaper China labor rates. 
I can testify to the efficiency and “stellar” quality coming out of the factories in Mexico.  The company I work for did it.  Massive goat fuck that was.  Incidentally the flight to Mexico actually started before NAFTA.  I do remember one of my projects in the late 80’s was to recycle American made parts because the ones from Juarez were useless.  So will that make it twice in my lifetime I get laid off because some asshole wants his 1.78 billion golden parachute bonus.

Hmm…If I wrote my memoirs would they just rub me out?
http://www.bilateral…
http://www.teamliber…

Just as I said three days after those Nov 7 elections I knew Pelosi was with the Illumninati and this one shows it once again.  Note here I should not use the term Illuminati, but rather global interests who own the US government.

So on top of nuking Iran, thug cops tazering and breaking the arms of high school kids, the bird flu, bio-safety-level4 labs,depleted uranium tanks in Kansas, Habeus Corpus and that funny echo effect you hear on your cell phone, what’s up in your life.  Ain’t “freedom” wonderful?

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