WASHINGTON (AP) – About 40 current and former corporate executives have a message for Congress: Quit hitting us up for campaign cash. NYT
January 2010 archive
Jan 23 2010
Quit hitting us up for money!
Jan 23 2010
place on the hill
I’m really sorry if I forgot to post this here before.
I could use some text with this.
I had this dream a thousand times before. But this time I got with my old friend, up into a place on the hill.
It was amazing; we found all these amazing kind people and they had this media library. And meanwhile we hung out with them and swapped bread, up in gardens up in high hills of Los Angeles (not real).
Update: late post. Just something I want to post here, with all its raggedy pieces, after all this hell I got into with some of you.
and thanks for not fucking banning me.
Jan 23 2010
On being tough
Larry McMurty wrote this great read, Lonesome Dove. I read it in 1986 and fell in love with the characters, the writing, the story, the ideas. I loved that even kids could hunt a rabbit and fix it for a meal. Or that guys could trek hundreds of hard miles on horseback, sleep under the stars and survive storms and winters that way. They crossed rivers, fought with skill, drove cattle and horses… these lucky few were really free. Not in lack of hardship, but they had options. They had options.
As we have created our lives, seeking freedom from the mundane tasks of living, we have become prisoners. Of those who feed us and clothe us and house us. We are domesticated like farm animals. We have the mentality of our pets… forgetting how to fend for themselves, staying as kittens and puppies, forever young and helpless.
We have robbed ourselves of options. The poor in cities can’t grow anything on the concrete. Those in the suburbs wouldn’t know how to plant, much less maintain, a vegetable garden. How many of us could start a fire without a match? Or catch even a mouse (if we could force ourselves to eat it).
Do we have the option to survive outside of the very society that is strangling us? Can we even imagine it?
Jan 23 2010
There are times when all you can say is ahhhh!
This is so wonderful and amazing — all I can say is AHHHH!
The Orangutan and the Hound
Would that WE . . . . . . . ! L O V E!
Jan 23 2010
Random Japan
MEDIA HITS
A 5-year-old Japanese boy has become a YouTube sensation playing his version of the hit song “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz on the ukulele.
Attention-craving wide receiver Chad Ochocinco (né Chad Johnson) of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, who wears jersey No. 85, is considering changing his name again next season, this time going with the Japanese version: Chad Hachi Go.
When frumpy British songstress Susan Boyle hit town to take part in NHK’s annual New Year singing competition, media reports said two Japanese men shouted out marriage proposals at Narita Airport. Get your eyes fixed, fellas.
A Canadian researcher at the Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science discovered unedited color film footage of Nagasaki taken by the crew of a US hospital ship about a month after the atomic bombing in August 1945. The film was found at the US National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC.
Passwords for about 450 celebrity blogs hosted by the popular Ameba Blog service, including those of singer Miki Fujimoto and pro wrestler Jaguar Yokota, were leaked in a security breach.
Jan 23 2010
DISTRACTIONS
I decided to refrain from posting these distractions last week to leave space & time for our brothers & sisters in Haiti, to benefit from more important diaries.
I also think that after the fiascoes there & of lesser importance (to me personally), here, some may need something to clear their minds with.
I`ll open with a Garden Nymph for The MomCat
GARDEN NYMPH
Jan 23 2010
Action: NASCAR UNIFORMS FOR CONGRESSCRITTERS!!!!!
(Crossposted at GOS)
With the recent SCOTUS ruling, our system of representative government is as we know it is over. This is not hyperbole.
The court, in effect, decided that corporations will be able to determine policy in all matters of government without any meaningful restriction. And before you jump right in and tell me that unions and the Sierra Club will have expanded rights, money talks, and big money talks loudest. It’s the return of feudalism, engineered by the SC appointment of Roberts and Alito during GW Bush’s term.
The SCOTUS, after installing a president via judicial coup, have now installed a corporatocracy, also via judicial coup. So much for judicial restraint from the Federalist Society.
See you after the jump for an idea whose time has come.
Jan 23 2010
SCOTUS: The mere appearance of corruption? Pshaw!
The truth is that the most important line in the decision was not the one overruling Austin. It was this one: “ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption.” For many years, the Court had gradually expanded the corruption rationale to extend beyond quid pro quo corruption (donor dollars for legislative votes). It had licensed Congress to regulate even when the threat was simply that large donors had better access to politicians or that politicians had become “too compliant with the[ir] wishes.” Indeed, at times the Court went so far as to say that even the mere appearance of “undue influence” or the public’s “cynical assumption that large donors call the tune” was enough to justify regulation. “Ingratiation and access,” in other words, were corruption as far as the Court was concerned. Justice Kennedy didn’t say that the Court was overruling these cases. But that’s just what it did.