September 8, 2009 archive

Cultural Semantics

At times I detect “interesting” feedback from my comments and essays using this limited venue and would like to point out my totally “abnormal” worldview.

The closest know personality I can use to describe me is David Icke.  Yes, that instantly puts me into the “hatter” crowd, welcome to semantics, and my explanation for those of you who don’t know I feel like Helen Keller trying to say things which get misread 99% of the time.

BREAKING! GOP Alternative to Obama School Speech Leaked

Crossposted at Daily Kos

The following video has been obtained by the MinistryOfTruth from an unconfirmed Republican party source that shall remain anonymous. In order to obtain this highly secret information, the MinistryOfTruth has been forced to do things no MinistryOfTruth should ever have to do.

Guard this information and use it well.

WARNING: Only those with Stupid RW MEME proof socialist issued protective goggles should view the following movies! VERY IMPORTANT!!!

To be played at American schools that refuse to air the socialist indoctrination speech of Hussein Obama

   

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!!!!!

    More amazing details below the fold!

Docudharma Times Tuesday September 8




Tuesday’s Headlines:

Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts

Obama’s back-to-school speech is made public

China must tackle human rights, Mandelson says

Clerics and hardliners vent their fury at Pervez release

Supporters of Venice’s planned new port put their faith in flood barrier

UK court convicts three in plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jets

Ahmadinejad says nuclear issue ‘over’

Mohamed ElBaradei left out evidence of Iran bomb, France claims

Laser gun to be used against Somali pirates

Sudanese journalist jailed after refusing to pay fine for wearing trousers

Colombia’s rebels step up a brutal tactic

Deeply Divided House Democrats Return to Work — and the Same Set of Problems



By Paul Kane, Ben Pershing and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 8, 2009


After a nearly 40-day recess that was anything but restful, House Democrats are returning to work Tuesday still unsettled over pending health-care legislation and sure only that the people have had their say.

They are in almost the exact position they were in when they left the Capitol in late July. Conservatives are still leery of supporting a government-funded, or public, insurance option. Freshman lawmakers from suburban districts remain fearful of increasing taxes for their wealthy constituents to pay for the new measure and await alternatives from moderate Senate Democrats. And progressives, who are demanding the most far-reaching reform since the Great Depression, are still threatening to bring down the legislation if it does not contain a robust version of the public option.

Dominic Lawson: Seventy years on, we are still appeasing dictators

In dealing with Libya the Foreign Office has been guilty of institutional cringe

Tuesday, 8 September 2009

In this, the week of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, British newspapers have published entire supplements, setting out once again how the policy of appeasing dictators showed a complete failure to understand the gangster psychology of totalitarian regimes.

Yet the unravelling tale of our current government’s negotiations with the regime of Col Gaddafi is a more enthrallingly contemporary illustration of the unchanging institutional cringe known as the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. We have learned – chiefly through the medium of government memos leaked to the Sunday Times – how the Foreign Office saw the release from Scottish custody of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, as a way of earning us good favour in the court of Megrahi’s patron and distant relative, Muammar Gaddafi.

The Pledge of Allegiance: The Real Indoctrination

The unhinged dregs of American society that are the Birthers, Birchers, Deathers, Jesus Juicers and assorted other rabid dogs of the far right have had their star spangled panties in a wad over the dreaded brown-skinned devil’s ‘indoctrination’ speech to the nation’s school children. Now it is lost on these increasingly strident and violent morons that there is absolutely nothing either Communist or Socialist in Obama’s bailing out of the Wall Street casinos with tax dollars, the escalation of an increasingly bloody and futile quagmire in Afghanistan and the coming selling down the river of the nation’s uninsured for the benefit of the insurance industry parasites so why even bother with the REAL indoctrination going on in classrooms. The Pledge of Allegiance.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry X

Art Link

Isolation

Loneliness and Isolation

The mind–yearning, seeking, questing, emerging–female.

The body–betraying the mind–male.

Can one express what it feels like to be transsexual?

Before I was man and was treated like man.

After I will be woman.

Now I am both/neither.

Neither generally wins, excluded from both.

Is it too difficult for others to comprehend

Or is it too difficult for me to explain?

Is there anyone who will accept me as I am

Or will I only be accepted/rejected

For who I was/will be?

Loneliness and isolation nip at the edges of my being.

Certainty becomes expectation.

Expectation becomes hope.

Hopes become dreams.

The dreams dissipate into nothingness.

Another friend is gone.

New friends are made.

Life changes but why must the bridge be so tenuous?

Loneliness and isolation blur my consciousness.

Why must others always bring up the past

Which has become so foreign to me?

The events are there but the feelings are gone.

How do I describe the deeper feelings that have replaced them?

Emotions long submerged boil to the surface

And erupt full-blown into the mind

But there is no one present with whom to share them.

Loneliness and isolation crowd around my soul.

How do I explain the feeling of hormones

Coursing through my body,

Changing it to fit the mind?

How do I deal with the sexuality, the sensuality

Exploding in every nerve ending?

When there is nobody with whom to explore these sensations,

Time slows considerably.

How does one measure the growth of a breast?

With a watch, a sundial, a calendar, or with a life?

Loneliness and isolation seek to smother my existence

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–November, 1992

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

Supreme Court: Citizen’s United vs FEC (updated)

The upcoming case, Citizen’s United vs FEC, will be Justice Sotomayor’s debut case on the Supreme Court.  The case, however, has taken a strange and dangerous turn:

Citizens United, a conservative group, brought suit arguing that it should be exempt from the restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law for a movie it made that was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton. The organization said it should not have to disclose who financed the film.

Instead of deciding the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable act of overreach. On June 29, it postponed a decision and called for new briefs and a highly unusual new hearing, which is Wednesday’s big event. The court chose to consider an issue only tangentially raised by the case. It threatens to overrule a 1990 decision that upheld the long-standing ban on corporate money in campaigns.

Why would the Supreme Court take a case that has a defined decision (whether or not the making of a political movie puts the makers under the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law restrictions) and suddenly wish to hear arguments about another issue?

That answer should be obvious: they want to give corporations, and their money, more say in our political process.  

Overnight Caption Contest

Republican Party owns the military; debunked

We’ve all heard it, “the military is pro-Republican Party.”  Not so fast.  This gallop poll done from Jan-May, 2009, shows a very different picture.  The Republican’s were 34%, Democrats were 29% and Independents were 33%.  

An Epistle To The Dharmanics

Greetings from Mexico, where I am holed up in my secret undisclosed location finishing the first draft of my second novel.  I have been here for two weeks.  The book is coming along very nicely, thank you.  I will try to sell it to you on some other occasion when it is more finished.

I’ve been taking breaks from writing by swimming, going for long walks, snorkeling, kayaking, chatting with the neighbors.  I take a break whenever my neck and shoulders start to get stiff from sitting in my chair and typing or whenever I need an idea to move the story forward.  I also have been taking breaks by furtively reading this blog and commenting occasionally.  Which brings me to what I wanted to say to you, my fellow Dharmaniacs.

Have you noticed how very sad, how very down, how very depressed we are these days?  Every day seems to bring another reason for sustained depression.  Yes, we’re still angry about some things, but forgive me if I say so, mostly we’re depressed and sad and beaten down.  We feel, if I may characterize it so, as if we were thrown under a bus. It’s easy to understand why.  Is there a public option? Will the uninsured ever be insured?  Is there a prosecution of torturers?  Is there an end to the hate spewed by various commentators?  Is there more and more war in Afghanistan, Iraq?  Is there peace anywhere?  Can the President tell kids to stay in school?  Can the Congresspeople throw off their reptilian bodies and speak the truth?  About anything?  Forgive me for not finishing the list.  It’s too extensive.  And far, far too depressing for a detailed enumeration.

If I were in the US, maybe our rhetoric would still seem normal to me.  Maybe it would be more of the same, what happens to progressives when, having elected the president, they are unable to get his ear.  And why can’t progressives get his ear?  Let’s not unwind that all over again.  From here, in Mexico, what I am reading seems to be our lingering despair.  And under that, perhaps some seething anger.  But mostly, what I’m reading imo is our collective sadness.

I have no idea what the remedy for this pervasive malaise might be.  As Gurdjieff once wrote (pardon ugly paraphrasing), “This first step to breaking out of prison is to recognize that you’re confined.” So I think the first step might be to acknowledge how very deeply disappointed we are.  Maybe that’s a first step.

I didn’t want to be the canary in this particular coal mine.  But I did want to tell you about the fumes.

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