May 30 2008
hey y’all!
i nearly forgot about the pony today 🙁
we’re busy sorting & packing too much stuff…. i wish the cleansweep people would show up at my door….i need help!!
i did find a bit of help for packing…
and a little for sorting….
i think if i had a group like this to help, i’d get finished in a timely manner….
any volunteers??
please don’t REC this pony…go visit the front page where all the worthy essays are. any of them is worth RECing, this isn’t
May 30 2008
hey y’all!
i nearly forgot about the pony today 🙁
we’re busy sorting & packing too much stuff…. i wish the cleansweep people would show up at my door….i need help!!
i did find a bit of help for packing…
and a little for sorting….
i think if i had a group like this to help, i’d get finished in a timely manner….
any volunteers??
please don’t REC this pony…go visit the front page where all the worthy essays are. any of them is worth RECing, this isn’t
May 29 2008
Writing about the recent House vote against more Iraq war funding, The Nation notes that growing numbers of Democrats in Congress are finding it safer to vote to stop funding the endless war and occupation. Susannah Vila writes:
Since March 2006, eighty Democrats have switched to voting no on war funding, due in part to persistent lobbying by local constituents and peace groups. After voting for funding as recently as December, veteran Democrats like John Dingell and Dale Kildee changed their votes in response to pressure from United for Peace and Justice’s Michigan Peace Action Chapter. “They are riding the wave,” says UFPJ’s Sue Udry of the additions to the nay camp. “Now it’s safe to vote against the war. There had been pressure on them from their districts, but it had been building slowly. The grassroots peace movement has been hounding Congress for years, and finally it pushed them over.” The lesson of the May 15 vote? “The strength of the peace movement is people’s willingness to keep hounding.”
The appropriations bill is coming back for a House vote soon, since $193-billion for the war was restored by the Senate. It will almost certainly pass the House this time; it failed last time not only because Dems voted no, but because many Repubs, mostly angry about procedural issues, voted “present” instead of aye. That’s unlikely to happen again.
May 29 2008
This will be a brief essay, to spread the word about how you can help spread the word about John McCain: I’ve had conversations with other Dharmists about how to communicate the truth to uninformed/ underinformed potential voters about McCain’s voting record and support of bush policies. Chris Bowers describes how we can help:
more below the fold:
May 29 2008
 Carbon Footprints |
The New York Times reports Urban areas on the West Coast produce the least emissions per capita. The Brookings Institution has concluded a study that has found metropolitan areas along the West Coast and Hawaii have lower carbon footprints than other parts of the United States. Honolulu was ranked first, or the metropolitan area with the smallest carbon footprint.
“The region’s mild climates, hydropower and aggressive energy-reduction policies give its residents smaller carbon footprints, on average, than those of their counterparts in the East and Midwest.”
The Associated Press adds “Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average”. But, the top 100 cities account for 56% of America’s carbon dioxide pollution.
The Oregonian reports Geothermal prospector hopes to tap central Oregon’s Newberry Crater.
For more than 30 years, geologists have boasted about the fiery depths of central Oregon’s Newberry Crater, a geothermal resource said to be one of the best in the world. And public and private prospectors have drilled, measured and poked the landscape.
Still, no one has ever built a power plant near the volcano, an area of high-desert forests, shrub and obsidian flows. Money demands and environmental concerns always have proved insurmountable. A large portion of the storied natural setting came under the protections of the federally designated Newberry National Volcanic Monument in 1990.
This go-round, it may be different. High energy prices and the West’s search for clean, renewable power have returned Newberry Crater to the spotlight, where it’s viewed as a potential mother lode of geothermal.
The modern-day miner is Davenport Power, a young renewable-energy company with offices in Connecticut and Bend, just 25 miles northwest of the crater. It began exploratory drilling on the volcano’s western flank in April, and by year’s end, executives should know whether there’s a sufficient brew of heat and water in deep underground fissures to justify full-on pursuit.
The Guardian reports General Electric believes Water shortages and drought are the next scourge. To meet the coming challenges brought by water shortages, General Electric claimed “it would cut its own use of water by 20% by 2012 and export water-saving and recycling technology to countries – often emerging economies – hit by shortages… The move by GE comes as scientists are warning that 50% of the world’s nations will be hit by water shortages by 2025 and 75% by 2050.”
The Associated Press brings news that For centuries Stonehenge was a burial site. “England’s enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates. Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday. And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.”
May 29 2008
This diary is an “out and out” plea to Daily Kos users to contribute to the NC House 09 campaign of Harry Taylor.
May 29 2008
In The Good Shepherd, a movie about the formation and early years of the CIA, there is a scene between Joe Pesci and Matt Damon that summed up a lot of what America HAS been about. Damon plays a Yalie, Skull and Bones initiate, Pesci an Italian mobster being recruited to help the CIA vs. Castro. In response to Damon’s intensity of purpose, Pesci asks…
Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something… we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the n*****s, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?
Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.
The rest of you.
America has been ruled by, has been owned by White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPS) since its inception. Not just the Government, but business as well. The partnership of business and government is what was reffered to by the young folks in the Sixties as the Establishment. The rest of us (though technically I am a Wasp!) have just been visiting their world. We have been tolerated, though unwelcome, guests in an Establishment house. After 230 years, that is about to start to change.
Let me be clear on the title, Obama is not who or what will change it, he is just a VERY noticeable symbol of the change. The change began in the Sixties when our first non-Protestant president was elected, (and then assassinated) when the Wasps kids rebelled against the Establishment and when “the rest of us,” the Others, started to infiltrate the halls of power. As Digby phrased it Real Americans Vs The Others.
The change is more about consciousness, than demographics. More about confidence than actual power. And fortunately for those who wish to see a more just, equitable, free and less violent world….more about “Real Americans” finally running out of steam, ideas and the ability to bullshit the world than anything specific “the rest of us” have done. Their Dynasty is dying…finally…in the face of a technologically induced consciousness shift.
And by the flagrant display of their own incompetence in every area from the economy to waging war, which used to be their strong points!
May 29 2008
Want to write a Guest op-ed for Juan Cole’s blog, Informed Comment?
I just received an email from him which he sent to the LBAN (Liberal Blog Ad Network) group list.
He makes a generous offer to help drive more traffic to LBAN blogs.
I’d like to help out other members of this group, and it occurred to me that one way to do it would be to print guest op-eds with link backs.
He’s looking for 750-word essays – particularly critiques of the McCain campaign.
I originally thought I might just link to some stories at other Lban blogs, but finding ones appropriate to what I usually talk about is not easy.
Since we’re in the presidential campaign season, though, and since I post on general politics in addition to foreign policy, actually the appropriateness issue is less salient right now. Most of us are probably commenting on the campaign in one way or another. I’m especially interested in a range of critiques of the McCain campaign.
-snip
Those of you who have books are welcome to suggest a short essay related to the book, and if I like it for my site we can put in the Amazon link.
May 29 2008
Congressman Wexler has a new post at Daily Kos on the implications of McClellans book on the push for justice and impeaching the WH War Criminals and participants in the Plame Treason.
Last night, significant news broke that directly impacts our push for Impeachment Hearings and a possible Inherent Contempt charge for Bush Administration officials such as Karl Rove:
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has revealed in his upcoming book that:
• Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Vice President Cheney lied about their role in revealing the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson – actions easily amounting to obstruction of Justice.
McClellan also admitted that:
• There was a coordinated effort within the Bush Administration to use propaganda to pump up the case for the Iraq war and hide the projected costs of the war from the public.
Scott McClellan must be called to testify under oath before the House Judiciary Committee to tell Congress and the American people everything he knows about this massive effort by the White House to deceive this nation into war.
Head on over and give him some love.
May 29 2008
I was surprised to learn on Tuesday about the dismissal of Barry Nolan by Comcast for his quiet, persistent protest against the selection of Bill O’Reilly for the Governor’s Award by the Boston/New England Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), Boston/New England Chapter.
As fortune would have it, I was able to touch base with Nolan as well as read up on the events surrounding his dismissal. The result is a piece appearing over on ePluribus Media today called Newsman Fights Clown As Thieves and Pimps Look On.
Feel free to check it out over there. If you’d like to comment here, or learn where the title is derived from without having to go read the piece, make the jump below the fold.
May 29 2008
…just let me say this one more thing… start having political cocktail parties and start getting people thinking about our situation and perhaps this will also enlarge their world view
pfiore8
Have we started a list yet of all of the things that have to
be undone beginning next January????
masslass
Refresher paragraphs:
From an essay three weeks ago entitled The Revolution Started Yesterday. Well YOU Started It! Political Cocktail Party, I asked all of you enlightened Dharmites to discuss in the comments of that essay the things you feel could and should be addressed beginning Right Now in order to begin the undoing of all of the twisted and underhanded things that have been visited upon our country and the world by our Current Criminal Administration?.
In a follow up essay from two weeks ago entitled “Revolution: First Strike – Political Cocktail Party,” I asked all of you involved Dharmites to answer a poll regarding categories and the related issue items belonging to each category that we have identified as Action Items.
Last week, in Revolution: Next Strike Political Cocktail Party we got down to the granular level and actually polled the issues the YOU all decided were the most important for us as a group to get involved with OUTSIDE THE BLOG and here are the top three results from what YOU told us.
May 29 2008
Just had to react to this.
Another book. Another inside look at the Bush administration. Another portrait of the organized crime ring running the White House and the country. This time the story, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, appears to have been written by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
I use the word appears in attributing authorship to McClellan because, in fact, McClellan may have been hijacked. By aliens. The left. Or, even worse, the fucking facts may have contaminated his version of the truth.
From George W. Bush via current White House Press Secretary Dana Perino…
“He [Bush] is puzzled, and he doesn’t recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years.”