January 6, 2008 archive

Jan 06 2008

George McGovern: Impeach: Fuckin’ A!

Today’s Washington Post carries an Op-Ed piece by former Senator George McGovern, titled, “Why I Believe Bush Must Go”

Just a few quotes:

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

—snip—

Jan 06 2008

Helter Skelter

“Helter Skelter.  She’s coming down fast.  Yes she is.  Yes she is.  Coming down fast.”  

The RePug establishment is desperate.  They’ve been destroying everything in sight with such reckless abandon that Americans are finally noticing that something’s not quite right with the Republican Party.  RePug candidates are pathetic, their voters are disillusioned, and the massive Democratic turnout in Iowa is an ominous indication that the hunted are energized, inspired, and about to become the hunters.  

RePugs are facing an electoral blowout of historic proportions at every level of government in November.  The big money thugs who control the GOP are desperate to smear Mike Huckabee out of contention and anoint their former smear target McCain as the latest GOP Messiah, but if they do the evangelicals will grab their torches and burn that heretic at the stake.   Another slight problem for the GOP and their Anointed One is the likelihood of a nationwide insurgent offensive across Iraq during this presidential election year.  That’s assuming of course that the insurgents for some reason might realize that massive coordinated attacks would have a decisive political impact this year, just like the Viet Cong/NVA Tet Offensive had on the 1968 election.

Who’s toast if when that happens?  John “Let’s Stay in Iraq 100 Years” McCain, that’s who.        

Jan 06 2008

Iglesia ……………………………………… Episode 22

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous Episode

When he awoke the next time, he was inside a huge piece of wood. Or maybe a tree. Or something. At least that was what it looked like from here, wherever that was.  He blinked a couple of times, but the view stayed the same. He couldn’t figure out how to change that view. After a minute though, he became more oriented. It seemed that he was lying on his back …and he was staring up at the inside of a tree. It was sort of like looking up the inside a chimney, but a chimney made of what looked like…..some sort of soft light yellow, blond cedar, with patches of slightly darker wood where the wood grains became closer and stacked more together and larger, lighter stretches where they became spaced further apart. The intricate grains of the wood formed designs and patterns of shape and color. It was beautiful and soft and warm and smooth and swirled and swooped in and around burls and knobs and condensed and expanded ….and it smelled damn good too!  

Jan 06 2008

Systems Science & Possible Applications

While searching for information and sites related to Science I stumbled across the International Society for The Systems Sciences.  In July they’ll be holding a conference on the following topic which I found very intriguing:

Systems that Make a Difference

Location: University of Wisconsin, Memorial Union, 800 Langdon Street, Madison, Wisconsin

The title for this conference borrows from Gregory Bateson’s definition of information as “a difference that makes a difference.” The question for systems researchers and practitioners is, “what difference are we making?”

What difference are we making and is our information and our information system a difference that makes a difference?

We need to start from a very basic perspective…you at a computer, connected occasionally to Docudharma.com, producing content which is presented to the group, the readers of the site and readers in other places via the news feeds, blog comments, directories and community sharing sites.

Jan 06 2008

Etheridge: “I think that this ABC debate is nothing but an infomercial now.”

Melissa gets it right.  We know that the big three and Richardson are all pretty much the same as far as substance goes.  The media, party and most of the blogosphere have what they want.

Jan 06 2008

Man’s Best Friend Victim of PA Teen Terror

First posted tonight over on ePluribus Media. If you have any information that could help locate Edna, or give police more information that would be helpful, please share it in the comments over on ePluribus Media in order to keep everything together.

A story by Kathy Matheson in today’s edition of the Boston Herald caught my attention today: Teen faces extort rap over mutt. (Available online here.)

Edna, a ten-year-old beagle mix belonging to Bill Whiting of Philadelphia, PA, vanished during a Halloween walk. Whiting received a late-night phone call from kids demanding $600 for the safe return of the dog. A dog collar was jangled over the line, and in the background a dog yelped. Whiting didn’t recognize the yelp, but the jangle of the collar sounded familiar.

Jan 06 2008

Best American Essays

If there were one thing I could get everyone to buy, it would be the annual Best American Essays anthology put out by Houghton Mifflin Company.  I’ve been getting them every year since 1992, and they have some of the best writing in the genre of the personal essay you will ever read.

Some of these clips are funny, some serious.  These are essays that, once read, I have never forgotten.

Jan 06 2008

heh

Meteor Blades brings it up with a blurb in the Open Thread…..

Linking to this excellent post on the Group News Blog….

Wherein the comments contain this link to The Dark Wraith…..

Where we find this graphic…

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Which I think is something that we need to express in as many different ways and as loudly as is possible.

Responsible blogging practices would probably demand that I condemn the inherent violence contained in the image.

Fuck that.

Glenn Greenwald points out that the dog whistles are already blowing. Passive and reasonable polite civility is not going to cut it as the RW goes down for the count….they WILL pull out all the stops on the Mighty Wurlitzer of Hate. It is after all, all they have left of their otherwise bankrupt philosophy and agenda. It will be interesting to see how Obama responds. Unity and hope just ain’t gonna fly with these folks

Jan 06 2008

Pony Party: Walk Pictures….

This house right next door to us has been abandoned for years and supposedly the will /deed was unclear and so the heirs are fighting over it. Nobody lives there but people show up to hunt…. I am not sure what style one would call it…. perhaps supreme redneck?

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A horse across the road. I don’t know him well but he is getting a barn built for him and he has two kids.

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A few neighbor dogs who look ferocious but aren’t… my border collie doesn’t like dogs and I was worried she would pick a fight with them. She won’t walk on a leash and escaped out the front gate when I wasn’t paying attention because she was pissed off I was taking Arno out. She has an old injury so normally I don’t take her on long walks.Typically Arno and I walk about three miles a few times a week and for shorter ones other days. Honestly he needs to walk three miles a day every day of the week, he is pretty high energy.

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