Feb 20 2010
Original article, by Kumaran Ira, via World Socialist Web Site:
Since February 17, workers at Total’s six oil refineries in France have gone on an indefinite nationwide strike to support their colleagues at Flanders refinery, near Dunkirk in northern France. The site faces permanent closure, threatening some 800 jobs. The strike may cause fuel shortages in France in coming days, as crude-processing operations shut down.
Feb 20 2010
I’d like to think I am a tolerant man. I like Docudharma partly because of this toleration. There are few rules, and what rules there are are largely sensible. It’s not a single mission blog, like some others, and so there’s a great deal of freedom to explore what some people might consider the “wacky and crazy”.
One of the reasons I spend more time here as of now as opposed to anywhere else in terms of participating on the internet is that I find most or many ideas that aren’t palatable, at least tolerable, and that this benign toleration is preferable to constraining conversation and trying to create a community where topics that are “off-mission” are grounds for being banned from a site.
And, being a hermit, online community is important to me. One of the things that strikes me is if you think about it, most of us have people in our own lives who are dear friends and family members who hold views that we might consider crazed.
I once had an eminently accomplished and deeply analytical friend who thought that the Earth was 6,000 years old and that dinosaur fossils were placed in the earth to lure people to Satan.
I have a family member who is a conservative Christian, committed adultery, married the woman he committed adultery with and divorced his wife, and once told me that my being gay was an abomination because it was “selfish” and that I was denying all my manifest charms to a woman. Apparently there have never been any limits on a person with such a history judging others while refusing to look at the “plank in his own eye” to employ a Biblical phrase.
I had a friend who came over unannounced at all hours, and called me up all the time for help, and finally what precipitated the end of our friendship was his trying to introduce me to the joys of crystal meth.
And, as I have said more than once, I have one sibling, a dear brother, who remains dear to me, who thinks among other things that the problem with Democrats is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are too darn liberal and thinks that gay people shouldn’t have certain civil rights because it would “cost the taxpayers money”.
So, yeah, I’d like to think I am a tolerant man. The reason for me pointing out the above examples is to posit that sometimes we will tolerate a lot more in terms of bug-eyed battiness from family and the people we care about and adore in person than some people do on blogs. And that is the reason, I believe, that Docudharma cultivates viewpoint toleration as a social good. I know, there are some who believe that Docudharma is a “nutty fringe” website. This, I believe is worth the price, because when you start shutting down discussion you start losing good conversation and good ideas and anything that might result from that.
What I feel most of us realize on Docudharma is that people are more than the sum of their words on a blog. It is the totality of their existence that matters, and further too many other blogs forget that, to the detriment of forming the communities that are going to be the backbone of the liberal movement.
There are on this site people who appear to believe that the Illuminati are real and that the biggest problem we have today is a shadow government that is about to take over the world. There are others who seem to believe that global warming is a hoax and that vaccines cause autism and that 9/11 was a conspiracy.
Honestly, I don’t care.
Feb 20 2010
IT’S ABOUT TIME
It was reported that the National Police Agency is considering measures aimed at regulating the sales of DVDs, books and magazines that feature “junior idols”-underage models who strike sexually suggestive poses.An NPO called the DoggyBag Committee found that 90 percent of Japanese approve of taking home leftovers from restaurants. Doggy bags are illegal in Japan due to fears over hygiene.
Nippon Professional Baseball, the sport’s governing body, said that Japan would follow the “universal count” when it comes to balls and strikes. In other words, no more “2 and 3” counts.
A consortium of 24 Japanese architectural firms has developed a new type of earthquake-proof shelter known as the j.Pod, which is “strong enough to withstand the collapse of a 10-ton second-floor room.”
7-Eleven became the first conbini chain in Japan to offer official city services like issuing residence and personal seal certification.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it plans to establish safety guidelines for robots, including “crash tests, emergency brake tests and experiments to assess the effects that heat and humidity can have on a robot’s performance.”
Feb 20 2010
Cross-posted at Daily Kos.
Welcome to a new but old series that is all about photography. Do you have any photos or information about photography to share?
Yesterday’s diary was about snow pictures on a perfect blue sky day in Van Cortlandt Park. Tonight’s represents something a bit more challenging, trying to capture the snow as it is falling.
It’s not so easy and I really should have worn a hat and some gloves.
So if your in the mood for another snowy park, than take a walk below the fold for a park in a blizzard.
Feb 20 2010
Here we are on Friday again.
I know many people here & elsewhere are “Seeing Red”, as the expression goes.
People are angry, disappointed, worried, & I can`t blame them.
Tonight I`m going to show you another side of seeing red.
I`ll open with this:
RED RIBBONS
Feb 20 2010
A (sometimes too) calm of voice of sanity has been silenced before his time. Martin Bosworth has passed away, a victim in the nation’s health care wars, the perfect patient for the health care system: he worked mightedly to keep himself healthy and away from doctors’ offices, a strategy that worked well when he was covered by insurance that failed when he took a risk with a new job in going without insurance. From Martin Bosworth’s Facebook Memorium page:
Veronica Martin always demonstrated this never ending positivity. I think this is what I liked best about him. He was always upbeat- and oftentimes it seemed that nothing could bring him down.
David Martin reminded me of Guthrie, Springsteen, and Dylan. A man who could tell you his story in such a way that you could not deny how it applied to you. It didn’t matter if he was telling you about a cause he felt strongly about or what he had for breakfast, if he saw your face every day or you just read his words on a… page, if you even agreed with him or not – There was no denying that his story WAS your story. I feel honored to have been able to have been part of his story, as well as have had him as part of mine.
And, so on …
What struck me about Martin, repeatedly, was his ability to take such a wide range of issues and communicate them with a clarity and structure that laid the issues out bluntly for any with a mind open enough to listen. While he did so on a plethora of issues, at times his clarity of thought and writing related to energy and climate issues simply stood out. There is a reason that I reached out to cross-post one of his pieces at GESN. In Change in the Weather, Martin tackled ClimateGate with the perspective of a non-expert judging what logic and sensible thinking leads to. And, he concluded:
Even if global warming isn’t our fault, it is our responsibility. The United States alone produces 220 to 230 million tons of garbage a year – 4.6 pounds per person. Most of this is not recycled, but simply dumped or buried in landfills, where it contaminates groundwater and produces health hazards for anyone living nearby. This is unquestionably our responsibility. We made this mess, and we must clean it up. And when it comes to global warming, the question must be asked, “Who is going to handle it?” Who else can address the issue of sea levels rising as the polar ice caps melt? Who else can come up with solutions to entire cultures being destroyed due to rapid climate change? The answer is the same. It’s up to us. We try to deny the existence of human-caused global warming so as to deny our part in destroying the planet – a concept so vast it renders people utterly helpless. But now’s not the time to be helpless, or to be swayed by naysayers who refuse to accept the truth right in front of their eyes. It’s a time to be bold, brave, and visionary, and step forward to accept our responsibility to clean up the planet and not let Nature suffer for our mistakes. If that’s not being personally responsible, what is?
As Lou Grinzo commented
Extremely well said, Martin.
I agree completely (which is something I normally make a point not to do with anyone, just on principle), and I also want to thank you not only for writing the piece that I was planning for tomorrow morning, but doing such an excellent job.
Feb 20 2010
(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)
February 16th:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Worried about a tax audit? Maybe you should be. More Americans than ever may be subject to unwanted attention from the Internal Revenue Service this season as the government pumps billions of dollars into tax collection.
More than 1.4 million Americans were audited last year, the most in a decade. Even more audits are expected as the Obama administration plans to spend $8.2 billion in tax enforcement initiatives in 2011, a nearly 10% increase over last year.
Hmm, why they doing that?
February 18th:
Republicans have complained that Mr. Obama is trying to make it appear in an election year that he is doing something about high annual deficits, which have become a big issue for independent voters especially. Yet whether or not the commission succeeds in sending proposals to Congress after Dec. 1, its deliberations will force both parties to address whether to raise more revenues and make long-range reductions in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – the tough steps many economists say are essential to controlling a debt growing larger than the economy.
Translation?: Obama wants both parties to take the blame for having to fuck us out of money for revenue with tax hikes because, well, what do you want them to do? Tax the rich?!
ROTFLMFAO!!!!
That same day….
Feb 20 2010
I’m pretty sure David Brooks spends the majority of his time unplugged and lifeless in a mop closet at the NYT. A couple times a week a custodian shoves some D cells up his ass, which boots Brooks into a quasi life-like artificial intelligence to mechanically crank out a column as the totally fucking inept protocol droid for the Washington elite he is. I mean, there are mindless blatherers, and there are mindless blatherers. David Brooks is the latter. I once read a Brooks column to a potted plant, and it jumped out the window. Reading his “thoughts” is like being flashed by a middle-aged man who looks a lot like David Brooks.
Writing from the context of complete closeted oblivion, Brooks examines the ontological question of why harmful robots like him exist in a meritocracy, and his lack of self-awareness explodes in a bifurcation of chaos. This bionic op-ed appliance has so many design flaws you can hear the components popping and snapping and sizzling before he attempts to rub the first two wires together.
One of the great achievements of modern times is that we have made society more fair.
Snap, pop, sizzle. The dude shorts out. Reflections on being, BZZZT. I believe the rest of the column resulted from his wrecked parts thrashing and slumping on to the keyboard.
At least his editor ran it through the spell-check before publishing it.
Feb 20 2010
Mr Luntz is at it again, doing what he does best: Making Stuff Up for purely Politcal Gain!
Wall St Consultant Frank Luntz Pens Memo On
How To Channel Economic Anxiety Into Protecting Wall St Abuses
Lee Fang, ThinkProgress – 02/01/2010
[…] Luntz, who gained national recognition for his role in shaping the buzzword-heavy Contract for America with Newt Gingrich in 1994, has built a sizable business selling his messaging advice to both corporations and Republican campaigns.
The new memo instructs opponents of financial reform to simply lie about reform legislation, and to twist economic anxiety resulting from the recession into fear of any government effort to fix the underlying cause of the financial crisis. The most dishonest argument is that financial reform would “punish” taxpayers while rewarding “big banks and credit card companies.” In reality, top financial industry lobbyists are not only fighting proposed oversight regulations, but have said recently that they are opposed to “any regulation” at all.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/…
How DOES this Man sleep at night?
Feb 20 2010
Yesterday, I wrote about why it is a mistake for the Democrats to cling to the Senate Finance Committee’s funding mechanism for their health insurance “reform” bill, which is a punitive, regressive excise tax on the working class’s health insurance benefits themselves, which the White House persists in calling the “Cadillac tax.”
https://www.docudharma.com/diar…
Since Friday afternoon is always good for a newsdump, according to Chris Bowers at Open Left, Jillian Rayfield at TPMDC, and Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, we have the usual Democratic anonymous WH sources/leadership aides
telling us that the President intends to offer the excise tax and no Public Option to the “Bipartisan” health care bill summit next Thursday Feb 25 th.
Sargent:
Okay, I’ve got some more info for you on what the health care compromise proposal that Obama will bring to the summit next week is going to look like.Bottom line: It’s all but certain to have the Cadillac tax in it, even though House Dems oppose it, and no public option, aides say.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov….
Oh, goody.
Now, last night at Open Left, we had the breathless BREAKING! applied to this little nugget:
Obama will support the public option if Reid will.
http://www.openleft.com/diary/…
Based on HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius answering an interview question put to her by Rachel Maddow.
Check out this Research 2000 polling done in Nevada, this month 2/9 – 2/10/10 : http://act.boldprogressives.or…
88% of Nevada Democrats and 61% of Independents favor a govt. admin health insurance plan “like Medicare” for younger people to be able to obtain as a choice to compete with private plans
89% of Nevada Democrats and 56% of Independents would prefer passing health insurance reform that includes a public option, and that would make them more likely to vote for Democrats in the 2010 elections, even if this meant the bill didn’t get Republican votes.
88% of Democrats and 58% of Independents think Harry Reid should include a Public Option in Reconciliation.
Today, Friday, President Obama did a joint appearance with Senate Majority Leader Reid at a town hall in a high school gym in Henderson, Nevada. They hugged, they praised each other, they made boxing allegories.
“Health care has been knocking me around pretty good,” Obama said. “It’s been knocking Harry around pretty good.”
The goal was to shift the emphasis from the unpopularity of some of Reid’s votes to, in Obama’s view, the courage it took to take expensive steps to save the economy. “Sometimes he takes his licks,” Obama said of Reid. “But he gets back up. Harry Reid has never stopped fighting.”
Yup. Harry’s never stopped fighting. Fighting for what, we’re not sure, and in what decade, we don’t know, but he’s still in there, swingin’ away. Harry’s sagging in the polls in his Nevada re election race. Nevada, with the highest percentage of veterans and retirees in the nation (think living on fixed incomes), and an economy that depends on tourism and entertainment, has been battered brutally in this recession, as it also has a 13% unemployment rate, and the 2nd highest foreclosure rates in the nation. Harry needs a Big Las Vegas Finale to pull this one off.
Feb 20 2010
That would be a Country that doesn’t follow Law nor the Human Rights of Others!!
Government Lawyers Get Hand Slapped
