November 8, 2010 archive

Open Cole

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Why Don’t You Two Get A Room?

I’ve been watching these two flirting while pretending not to flirt since about 2002. The elephant would watch the donkey all the time, and the donkey would watch back, while they pretended to hate each others’ guts. The donkey would pretend not to give a shit — not speaking to him, not returning his calls, but the whole time she’d look for excuses to be around while the elephant was in the room. It got to be pretty annoying after a while — the donkey would be flirting her ass off, and the whole time saying it was nothing, just a little bipartisanship, all in a spirit of compromise.

It only got worse after 2004 — the donkey practically throwing herself at the elephant, while acting all coy, like she didn’t even care, the elephant behaving like a cold bastard toward her, while anybody with half a brain in their head knew he really wanted to fuck her brains out.

The goddamn’ donkey got even worse around 2008 or so — smarmy coy looks, suggestive touching, soppy goo-goo eyes, all the time insisting there was nothing to it. Finally, about the time of the health care vote, she was all but falling all over the elephant, and it became insufferable. It was all I could do to keep from yelling “for crissakes, why don’t you two just get a room, already?”

Hat tip to political cartoonist Mike Flugennock for posting this at Corrente as well as at his own site.

Sticks and Stones and Words (That Always Hurt Us)

In recent days, I have recognized yet again that some people crave surety and certainty. They believe in, and seem to need a definite answer phrased in absolute terms. Beyond the biological and even theological implications of this system is the reality. Rational sense alone has frequently been disregarded for stubborn need. Thought it may not be our role to pass judgment, lest we be judged in kind, we eagerly take it in any case. When we are not the best stewards of our own perspective, the nastiness of our ideological allegiance reinforces our separation.

Docudharma Times Monday November 9




Monday’s Headlines:

Nuclear bomb material found for sale on Georgia black market

USA

Now in Power, G.O.P. Vows Cuts in State Budgets

For many businesses, 2010 midterm election campaign was a winner

Europe

Russian outrage over new attack on journalist

Pope denounces gay marriage and abortion in Spain

Middle East

Police demolition of mosque incites riot as Israeli Arabs vow to rebuild

Iraqi leaders expected to form government

Asia

Burma poll marked by threats and low turnout

China builds a ‘new Silk Road’ to pave over its troubles

Africa

A lesson for Africa?

Latin America

20 killed over weekend in Mexican border city

A fresh slate at the Pentagon for Obama

President’s choices could have lasting consequences for national security agenda

By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON – With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.

It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whetherhe wins or loses.

Last Tree Falling.

Between the hours of back breaking but super cool accomplishing tree-work yesterday, I popped in an out of my three usual haunts. It always amazes me how each site and its users have their own personalities, and as such, interpret my words differently. WITR thought my very personal “Shades” stupendous, while it failed at DD.

DD thought my Clueless Class worthy, but that I went too far in my UMC rant. In fact one guy decided that I was a tea bagger! Heh. My sister IS a Prius-owning, illegal alien housekeeper employing Tea Bagger. I know what they smell like, and yeah, I’m not one of them.

Of course the guy who tagged me with it also despises my writing because I don’t “quote” the right people. I don’t do short quotes or a video with a few lines describing them, or rants about dKos-fail. I am no raw reporter quoting others. But my style includes fiction, allegory, rants and very personal tales. I am a propagandist for the far left, of the commie-pinko, all hail Che, viva la revolucion type.  I guess being post-partisan enough makes me outside the mental safe-zone of people who want to not see anything bad about the Libs or the D’s and solely to castigate R’s and Neo’s. I don’t want reform, I want to re-form the system.

Perhaps I did go too far. I don’t know, a decent piece of writing is not meant to make people complacent and feel good all the time…. it is supposed to jar people enough that they may at least look at their own actions through a different lens. I’m a writer who reads many, and draws my own conclusions. I also have allegory tourette’s – you know Obama as the string-tying puppet binding himself into oblivion – things like that just pop out unplanned.



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Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.  The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary.

–Albert Einstein



Filigre 2

Late Night Karaoke

Multiple Hurrahs for LegitGov.org

Among all the progressive and liberal blogs with which I am familiar, and that’s a lot of bloggers, IMHO the bloggers at Citizens for Legitimate Government have incomparably the best instinct for significant news breaking under the radar of most of the rest of us.

Those guys surprise me all the time, and not with trivia!

I decided to blog about them today instead of privately appreciating their constantly outside-the-box newsletter as usual because of a strangely familiar headline in the New York Times.

“D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning”

Where had I heard that before?

And then it came back to me, from the CLG newsletter almost three weeks ago, on October 16.

“Feds Confirm Mumbai Plotter Trained With Terrorists While Working for DEA”

With all due credit to Sebastian Rotella at ProPublica.org, who originally broke the story, I never would have seen it three weeks in advance of the Times if the bloodhounds at CLG hadn’t sniffed it out for me.

CLG would be an outstanding blog if they didn’t do anything else except keep me three jumps ahead of the M$M, but their most useful contribution to politics on the internet is headlining stories that never get covered, or only as the after-thoughts of editors who don’t understand their significance.

Bill would let US government block ‘infringing’ websites worldwide.

Yowza! Shut down anything on the internet, whenever they want to? Is that an important story for you and me and the rest of the blogosphere?

And again all due credit to Dan Goodin at TheRegister.co.uk, who broke the story, but why the heck wasn’t it all over the blogosphere? How did the rest of us miss it?

So I’m chasing that story, and if any other bloggers want to take a break from ranting about the same old shit and chase it, too, you can peruse this malignant threat to freedom on the internet under its innocuous title as S.3804: Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act.

“It’s just a harmless little bill to shut down mp3 pirates, and we would never ever use that incredible power to stifle dissent…”

“…unless we could dream up a really good excuse!”

So thanks again to Michael Rectenwald and Lori Price and the rest of their team at Citizens for Legitimate Government for maybe waking us up before our “benevolent” masters shut us down.

 

Does “Waiting for Superman” Avoid Some Inconvenient Truths?

Perhaps you, already impressed with “An Inconvenient Truth”, eagerly awaited the release of “Waiting for Superman” this fall.  Despite the merits of “An Inconvenient Truth”, this writer was of the firm opinion that it glossed over some critical information and was designed to spare their audiences some rather unpleasant truths. But upon seeing “Waiting for Superman”, the sense of being subjected to a slick overextended infomercial was inescapable.  

Just before entering the theater, at a membership-supported arthouse venue, someone was conveniently stationed outside the entrance handing out promotional literature, offering the chance to win $1,000, which could be applied to the cost of an education. Having been my very first ever encounter with such an approach, troubling questions arose before the previews even began.

My Views This Week

Cross-posted at Progressive Blue, Star Hallow and even the Big O.

What a tough week this has been, the Yankees were out of it and the Jets had a buy week. To make matters even worse the right wing corporate home team got the great shellacking by the visitors from beyond the right field wall. But I was walking around with the old camera and taking photos. Plenty of photos, plenty of back lighting.

I spent the week with a familiar song locked in my head, the lyric “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” After the past two years I could never again come up with a reason to support a Dem but without the tradition of photography I would be a shaky as a fiddler on a roof. So during that fabulous Jets win, I slapped together a few photos from the week.