December 2009 archive

December 8, 1980… 29 years later

CBS

ABC

NBC

And Howard Cosell on “Monday Night Football.”

Home for Christmas before Afghanistan???

These soldiers are coming from pretty high unemployment number counties in South Carolina. Why they’re training in Wisconsin only the military can give that answer, what with all the bases in North Carolina and South Carolina you’d think they’s have had regional training spots closer to home. This is also probably hitting other units in other parts of the country as well.

Christmas homecoming in jeopardy for Fort Mill soldiers

More than $35,000 must be raised to get guardsmen home before leaving for Afghanistan

Docudharma Times Tuesday December 8




Tuesday’s Headlines:

Pakistan Told to Ratchet Up Fight Against the Taliban

EPA is preparing to regulate emissions in Congress’s stead

Senate healthcare talks pick up pace

Gordon Brown: EU cuts must go deeper to get Copenhagen climate deal

Hares, birds and orchids: the casualties of peace in Cyprus

Eight children killed in China school stampede

Balibo journalists ‘deliberately killed’ by Indonesian troops

Opposition proves it’s still alive and kicking with day of mass protest in Iran

‘Dodgy dossier’ included gossip supplied by Iraqi taxi driver

Doctors’ massacre highlights medical crisis in Somalia

Copenhagen climate summit: Africa can and must be part of the solution to climate change

Obama clinches Armando on Afghanistan

Armando “believes:”

This is the highlight of the speech. And it clinches my support for the President’s policy. Some believe that an effective strategy can be carried out without the military commitment. I do not share that view. Like the President, I belive the military component is critical. But it is important that the Obama Administration understand that it is not enough. And it is imperative that the PAKISTAN situation be addressed adequately. Indeed, the Afghanistan situation can never be successfully addressed without the adequate implementation of a Pakistan strategy that can work.

Nowhere does he address the basis for his beliefs about Pakistan.  Loose nukes?  One might guess, based on Armando’s innuendoes about the border region.  seriously, second-hand innuendoes are worse than first-hand innuendoes.

Your arguments pro-Obama-re-Afghanistan are so sloppy as to not elicit serious refutation.  Let me send your portrait to sadlyno.com, and maybe they could photoshop you into some appropriate period costume.

Your current argument is quite beneath you, I hope you realize.  Go Gators!

Oh, here’s his argument, such as it is:

http://www.talkleft.com/story/…

How to get “change from below”, but on STEROIDS – 435 primary challenges at a time

(This is a slightly edited copy of a comment I just made. It regards a very important proposal, so I thought it merited it’s own diary. I will try to get the author to cross-post here.)

If you want to be a part of the solution, I think a better way forward is to focus on an electoral revolution. There were two very important diaries on OpenLeft in the past 2-3 days, in particular the one by jeffroby  (which was front-paged for a while, then removed; read the comments and you’ll find out why).

The diaries are for a Full Court Press (by jeffroby) and How to start your own netroots organization (by Chris Bowers). I will ask jeffroby to join here, and cross post.

It’s my impression that blogs tend to be self-limiting for most of the participants. I.e., discussion and argumentation, while potentially important, for the most part don’t seem to lead to activism that reaches outside the blog’s community. At best, you tend to just get online activism of the blog community directed to elected officials – send an email to Senator X, sign a petition at this URL, maybe call your Congress critter.

So, we get “blogging to the choir”. (the blogosphere equivalent of “preaching to the choir”)

Thus, even joining battle with Obamabots will likely only reach a small proportion of them – and not lead to serious change in Washington, D.C. I suggest considering challenging them with supporting jeffroby’s plan to have progressive candidates challenge incumbents in all 435 districts who don’t measure up to a COMMON agenda, instead of basically putting up with the run-of-the-mill type Democrats who are there now.

A true Obamabot, after all, has to take as Gospel Obama’s words that “CHANGE COMES FROM THE BOTTOM UP”.

Well, that would be jeffroby’s full court press…. change from the bottom up, but ON STEROIDS.

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

More New Crazy Sturff

Srsly people, we have to get comfortable with craziness, if we are going to keep keep on keeping on as a blog that WILL sustain, WILL tolerate eccentricity, WILL comprise people who will just be happy to just hang out here and write shit like this,

and say; “Yes, We Love You! We Don’t Worry About It If You Seem Crazy!”

But you can talk, you can talk, you can talk.

Tom Tomorrow Afghan Escalation Cartoon!

Cross-posted at Dkos

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I don’t know if you’ve been waiting for this like I’ve been.

It’s here!!!

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Tom obama

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Not a very lengthy diary, but heck!  Tom says it s-o-o-o-o-o well!  ; – )

A Day Off For The Homeless, 1987

I posted this on naranja a year or so ago. I meant to repost it here this November…I got into a lot of sadness and forgot.

But here it is again. A Thanksgiving essay, a little late.

Or maybe not so much, as Molly Ivins might have said.

I found it and pasted it from DK. I thought about editing it, but decided, no.

This what and where I was then, last year around this time. It’s a little rough, I know. It could use trimming.

But I think I got the passion right, and I don’t want to risk trimming the passion.

love,

Differences of Opinion vs Attack

Buhdydharma has asked a question; should Docudharma become a warzone against the “Obamabots” of Daily Kos?

Sure, I could have simply made a comment, voted in the poll, and been done.  But, there is more to it than merely asking a question.  There is an answer, and, it is complex.

This is the Best Blog!

Why is this the best blog? Let me count the ways. In no particular order, and no there won’t be a poll about what order my points should be in.

However, please do add your own reasons why this is the BEST blog.

There may be a poll about that.

Also, music may be added! like I am doing while I’m writing this.

Athens Riots Continue on Anniversary of Youth’s Murder By Police

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)


Protesters smashed store windows and threw rocks and firebombs at riot police who responded with teargas today, the second day of violence during commemorations for a teenager shot dead by police a year ago.

The killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos led to two weeks of rioting in Greece last year, with gangs of youths smashing, looting and burning shops across the country in protest at heavy-handed police tactics.

Today’s clashes broke out during a demonstration by about 3,000 people, mostly secondary school pupils, through the centre of Athens. Several dozen youths towards the back of the march attacked riot police with rocks, firebombs and firecrackers, smashing some of the bus stops, telephone booths and shopfronts not damaged in yesterday’s demonstration.

Protesters injured a passerby who attempted to intervene, beating him unconscious. Police detained at least three youths. Demonstrators scrawled anti-police graffiti and stencilled a photograph of Grigoropoulos on shop windows and walls along the demonstration route.

Minor clashes broke out during a march of about 2,000 people in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, where police fired teargas to disperse youths pelting them with rocks.

Police said at least 16 officers and five demonstrators were injured yesterday, while 177 people were detained in Athens and another 103 in Thessaloniki. One policeman who lost control of his motorbike struck and injured a female pedestrian, who was tended to by demonstrators until an ambulance arrived.

At Athens University, masked protesters broke into the building, injuring the university’s dean and pulling down a Greek flag, replacing it with a black and red anarchist banner. The clashes continued late into the night, and police clashed with protesters in the southern city of Patras and the north-western city of Ioannina.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

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