November 25, 2010 archive

Thank You Father, Thank You Mother

Another “greatest hits” entry, from last Thanksgiving

Without our father and mother we would not exist, I give thanks to them today.

Our father and mother, the father and mother of all and every human being that has ever lived or ever will live are here with us today and everyday, and we thank them. Our father lives 93 million miles away, thankfully! His energy and light bathes our planet, every plant that grows grows because of him. Every microscopic creature, insect, and animal that eats a plant is eating the energy of our father, energy that we call…light.

Light converted into life, with the help of our beautiful and receptive and fertile mother, is converted by a miraculous process into plants. Animals eat those plants and we (their fellow animals) eat them. And thus do we live. And thus are we all made, ultimately, from the same thing, light.

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Tom DeLay: Dancing with the Bars!


He faces two to 20 years in prison on a conspiracy charge and five to 99 years or life on a money laundering charge. He is free on bail, with sentencing tentatively set for Dec. 20.

Sashay around with that soap on a rope, baby, and bow to your partner Bubba!  Tommy dear will soon be dancing to the jail house rock.

One can only hope that while he high steps and pirouettes on the way to the mess hall, it can be yet another prime time reality show. Perhaps a warning to the crooks and liars manipulating corporate whores to the top political positions, a warning that we are watching.

Soft money, soft shoe shuffle, hard money, hard time tap dance.

Maybe he can create a redistrict reggae number to regale us with while in there!

I doubt it though. I am fully convinced, after all, that he is much too young to dance well… that is an art that died with my Father’s generation. Although I imagine a light lead hand and a strong and versatile reverse hand won’t matter where he’s going.  

I know, it will likely be a country-club prison that may in fact contain a ball room, if all the appeals don’t clear him yet. But one can imagine for a brief smiling moment that he is doing hard time on Sheriff Joe’s chain gang… and that whole team gets extra punishment for Tom’s poor work. And, as the lights out comes, they have been “encouraged” to teach Tommy the value of a hard days labor. And he will be doing another kind of dance with a long handled broom, in a move Fred Astaire never dreamt of.

Requiem – A Musical Essay

Open Haring

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Short Attention Span Theater and the decline of Journalism

Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government

Freedom of the Press

“I am… for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.”

— Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799

So Freedom of the Press, protects even the stuff, we disagree with.

You don’t have to like it, what someone says, writes, or legislates … or tactlessly expresses.

But they have a Right to do so none the less, according to our historic icon Thomas Jefferson.  

The pen, should trump, the sword.

Funny how “Money” got all lumped in with Free Speech, though?

Must of been all those Gieco “googley eyes” commercials

Economy Music – Holiday Edition

Holiday Tunes to get everyone in the mood for shopping tomorrow

Also on Calculated Risk

Important Things

I often rail against the narcissistic side of our culture. We find it hard in this country to honor and enhance public space. We develop, economically, with little or no regard to our environment and little or no interest in anything resembling aesthetics. At one time, this was charming because Americans were, in much of the twentieth century, admired for pragmatism and simple virtues. In WWII American troops were much admired for the civilized way they acted–from what I heard in personal remembrances of Europeans when I lived there was that Americans were much nicer than, say, the Brits.

My father just died and his generation who fought WWII and then created a Pax Americana meant to create an order where the United States represented rule-of-law and pragmatism in international affairs. And, despite the emergence of a corrupt intel community, for much of the post-WWII period, his generation (he was a Foreign Service Officer) did a decent job at establishing what they set out to do. I’m not discounting the imperialists and martinets that were forcing America to the right and everywhere supported right-wing regimes throughout the world but there were plenty of decent men and women in the State Dept, CIA and the military that truly worked for positive change. The same could be said for Wall Street and other institutions–I have, for example, talked to old retired crusty Wall Street big-wheels who are truly dismayed at what has happened to the Street even by their piratical values this generation is beyond belief. These execs grew up with codes of honor, mind you, these codes did not include egalitarianism at all but there were things that one didn’t do. That’s all over now.

The last conversation with my father (he was involved in all kinds of progressive causes and made his views known more emphatically than I ever have) found him deeply discouraged and wondering what had he worked for all his life to see the United States come to this. And by this I mean this situation. He was always optimistic about this country and loved it passionately–his parents were immigrants and he was given the opportunity to do things they would hardly have imagined when they came to this country. Here we are, he said, and it’s hard to find hope anywhere. I’ve always been far more pessimistic than him and predicted, as he knew, a gradual descent into neo-feudalism which I thought 20 years ago was inevitable given the fact of the seeming death of public virtue and shared values that has occurred, really, since the 70’s.  

Thanksgiving Delayed

Jury finds Tom DeLay guilty on all counts

AP via RawStory, November 24th, 2010

The heavy-handed style that made Tom DeLay one of the nation’s most powerful and feared members of Congress also proved to be his downfall Wednesday when a jury determined he went too far in trying to influence elections, convicting the former House majority leader on two felonies that could send him to prison for decades.

Jurors deliberated for 19 hours before returning guilty verdicts on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering in a scheme to illegally funnel corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002. He faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge, although prosecutors haven’t yet recommended a sentence.

[snip]

DeLay’s lead attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said they planned to appeal the verdict.

[snip]

“This was about holding public officials accountable, that no one is above the law and all persons have to abide by the law, no matter how powerful or lofty the position he or she might hold,” [Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg] said.

Craig McDonald, the director of Texans for Public Justice, a liberal watchdog group whose complaints with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office helped lead to the investigation of DeLay’s PAC, said he was pleased by the verdict.

“We can’t undo the 2002 election, but a jury wisely acted to hold DeLay accountable for conspiring to steal it.”

more gravy…

Docudharma Times Thursday November 25




Thursday’s Headlines:

Decoded turkey genome could make better birds

USA

Mistakes Still Prevalent in Hospital Care, Study Finds

‘Hate group’ designation angers same-sex marriage opponents

Europe

Desperate fight to save the euro

Dubliners Angry at Government Rather than IMF

Middle East

The man who dares to take on Egypt’s brutal regime

Egypt cracks down on Muslim Brotherhood ahead of elections

Asia

Adult supervision from Beijing needed as Kims flex weapons

Aasia Bibi, Pakistani Christian, will get clemency or pardon: presidential aide

Africa

Ethiopia PM warns of Nile war

Man spends two months in Zim jail with untreated wounds

Latin America

Rio de Janeiro gun battles leave at least 14 people dead

Rage in the Time of Cholera

N. Korea warns of retaliation; Seoul orders security beefed up

S. Korea government in emergency meeting; joint exercises with U.S. move ahead

msnbc.com news services

INCHEON, South Korea – South Korea’s president vowed Thursday to boost security around islands near the site of this week’s artillery attack by North Korea.

His order to beef up security came as North Korea warned of more “retaliation” if Seoul carries out “reckless military provocations.”

“We should not let our guard down in preparation for another possible North Korean provocation,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said at an emergency government meeting Thursday.

A Girl from Tora Bora

Tora Bora
A girl from Tora Bora

Who is this green-eyed child from Nangarhar Province? Why is she wearing so much make-up? Why are her face and hands so dirty?

In December 2001 American invaders almost captured Usama bin Laden in Tora Bora, a system of caves in the Pachir Wa Agam District of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, and all sorts of silly explanations supposedly explain how bin Laden got away, but after nine long years of total failure in every district of every province from Nimruz to Nuristan, the real explanation is obvious enough.

We Americans don’t understand fuck-all about Afghanistan, or any of the people in it.  

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

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

One who walks in another’s tracks leaves no footprints. 

–Proverb



Ornamental 3

Late Night Karaoke

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