DONATE TO HAITI RELIEF c/o Dr w/o Borders

Our friend TheMomCat is flying into Haiti, probably even as I type this. I wish I was with her. I wish I could have used this fat useless brain I was given to go to Medical School and be, like her, A Doctor Without Borders. I want to help. I could do things anyway, I know I could, even if it is clearing rubble.

Lady Libertine, aka Sally Panic has worked with refugees and given me a great source for overview on the lands from which they hail. You can tab through different sections at the top, and the page turner is in the upper right hand corner.

http://www.cal.org/co/haiti/hh…

Haiti is the asshole of the Western Hemisphere, and basically we just don’t care here. Instead we travel to the Dominican Republic and try not to notice the armed militias on the walls dividing the two, not think about the slums just beyond the Vacation Condos.

Haiti / Dominican Republic:

Haiti / Dominican Republic:

And when Haitians come to our shores for relief?

WE TURN THEM BACK.

Little relief is sent there after hurricanes, and now their meager homes were totally demolished by a major Earthquake. At least that got some attention from the World.

I’m having a hard time finding my muse this week. I guess I’m like everyone else in blogland, you get overloaded and underenergied. More than that and less I suppose. I’m not having the personal crisis of faith that so many seem to feel lately. I keep reading about people trying to define “Who we are, what we want, what are we doing, and what does the very word ‘left’ mean.” I keep seeing people buying into the outside-driven meme that the Left is powerless, or is defined by the Elites in Washington, who are all Right, IMO.

In part, my thoughts this morning are also driven by Ed_Encho’s chat with me over the weekend and his ensuing essay, on why he is leaving the Left. He is still going to post here, by the way, he just internally changed the angle he is coming from.

To each his own, man, and I’m not dissing where he’s coming from. I’m just not buying any of it. I’m not buying that we are ineffective as an ideology, a movement or as people. Its in fact, amazing that we have stemmed the tide for as long as we have as much as we have when we are up against people with the Power and the Money to defend their Power and Money jealously.

Nothing they can do, nothing anyone can say, can change what and who I am. I always know, have always known which way to go. There is only one way to make the World a better place for all human beings. Its This Way.

LEFT.

(no offense to Lady Libertine or any other sane reader/writer who has the poor luck to live in the State that brought us the Bush regime… and this shit.)

Hat tip to Elian Maricon, the busiest man in America, for sending me this outfuckingrageous link. Don’t worry, E, I got your back my brother, keep your nose in that book so you and your Masters degree can support me in my old age someday, in the poverty-stricken manner to which I am accustomed.

Check this clusterfuck out:

The UFW needs your help to stop the Texas state Board of Education from erasing Cesar Chavez and all Hispanic historical figures from public school text books. Since Texas is such a major textbook purchaser, such a move could have a nationwide impact.

This Wednesday, Jan. 13, the state board will take a preliminary vote to adopt new standards for social studies texts. These new standards would eliminate all Hispanics since the conquest of Mexico in the early 16th Century.Cesar Chavez, arguably the most important Hispanic civil rights leader of the 20th Century, is among the historical figures to be eliminated. One of Lowe’s so called “experts” said that Chavez “lacks the stature…and contributions” and should not be “held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation.”

To read the entire story and then take action  go to: http://action.ufw.org/page/spe…

History can only be written about those “WORTHY OF EMULATION?”

WORTHY OF EMULATION?

Ok, you inbred assholes, with your 10 gallon douchebag hats, lets play, shall we?

TONIGHT at 6PM Eastern Time, WWL Radio relaunches for 2010!

The Holiday Break/Vacation is over!

I am pleased and excited to rejoin Gottlieb on air in this New Year. It is always an honor to run with the brightest and the best, and Gottlieb is certainly all that and more as a cohost!

We will be interviewing Atty Kurt Haskell and his wife Atty Lori Haskell of Haskell Law Offices in Warren, Michigan. They were both on Flight 253, and had to endure both the fear and uncertainty of the actual event of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted deployment of a device in his underwear, and the unusual circumstances leading to and occurring after the event. There was a concerted effort to repress their accounts. You can read their exclusive reports on “Lori’s Liberal Realm” at haskellfamily.blogspot.com

As they ramp up the “War on Terror a Tactic” rather than a Land, it is good to remember there are flesh and blood people effected, like the Haskells.

Our post-interview analysis will include geo-political implications of why these events occur, as well as why we cannot or DO NOT seem to prevent them, while whittling away our own Civil Rights at an alarming speed.

Join us tomorrow night!

See you there! As always, respectful questions and commentary are welcomed. Call in, or use our attached live chat function!

Join Gottlieb and Diane tonight at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for an interesting hour of Political Reporting and Commentary.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

The call in number is 646-929-1264

The live chat link will go live around 5:15.

CHAT LINK:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/F…

I had a long conversation with Sally Panic (Lady Libertine) yesterday. The woman is smart, knowledgeable as hell and interesting. I love a conversation that fills me with more questions, that sends me to links and google trying to understand more about any given subject. I love when my thirst for knowledge is kindled anew.

So today I am thinking more about the histories of other Nations, Nations we have fucked over in extreme ways in the past, or have abused their own equally; histories not told in America. I won’t expound until she writes what she’s going to write.

We watched 1984 with Jake last night. We had great discussions with him throughout, and thereafter.

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

He caught a lot of the parallels between this movie and “V” all by himself, including the irony of the star of the former being the villain of the latter. He caught the commonality of Valerie’s words with Winston’s. He’s almost done with the LOTR trilogy, and wants to read this book next.

So, I woke up and the name Upton Sinclair floated through my brain. The resistance always starts with the muckrakers. Pamphleteers. Truth tellers. Prophets.

Sally Panic and I spoke of other cultures. Again, I reiterate the absolute brilliance of “The Shock Doctrine.” In almost every case, as I taught myself more about their histories, I could see again and again that those methods were being used (perhaps have always been) to overwhelm people into compliance and apathy. They still are. Here and Now.

Teddy Partridge at FDL, and Ek Hornbeck of DD wrote of Good Germans last night. It does feel like there are far to few people in America speaking out.

Like I told Jake, what I do here, why I spend a portion of every day tied to this keyboard is that with every word I type, I help to control the present. I refuse to let them shock and rewire my brain to accept their version of reality. There may be too many stories, too many atrocities to cover on any given day. But I have to fight the lies I can fight. He gets it, my men don’t resent my time here.

I may have a job, but this is my calling, second only to teaching that 10 year old the value of why we fight.

It was a good day.

Nowhere does the Biblical Jesus piss me off more than when he tells Martha, “Tough shit, your sister has chosen the better lot, deal with it.” Spoiled Mary enabling prick.

Really, had I been his speechwriter, I would have had him equitably tell Martha to leave the drudgery behind and come sit and listen too. Or asked everyone to pitch in and not given the speech until all the work was done. Or waved my hand and made the house clean and the food prepared. But I’m way left of Jesus’s authors. Probably left of Jesus himself. Make me a deity, and see who gets smitten, see who is told to passively accept their suckage lot in life. Service to one another only works when everyone plays the game. I have no stomach for a deity who tells one to suck it up and lets the other have all the good shit. Jesus sounds Republican in this one.

Fuck that noise. I like the scripture of Ernesto the Queen-goddess much better. He spoke from a barstool throne with a wine glass scepter in the Holy Land of Haight in the days of yore called the late 70’s.

Ernesto said, “I do not understand why you Americans bother fighting with your Politicians. In my country, if they do not do what they say they are going to do when we elect them, we just kill them and start over.” He paused, smiled angelically, and added, “It makes the next Politicians so very much more careful.”

Now that’s a man and a scripture I could start a Religious Movement around. Ain’t a man alive who could get that bitch on a cross.

That is the revolutionary thinking they have taught us to fear even speaking aloud in our land. We fear even TRYING the obviously guilty, we fear investigation, recalls and due process, cannot imagine real revolution.

Why?

Because that is exactly what they did to us in November, 1963. It made the People, as well as the Politicians “so very much more careful.”  And thus far? We have accepted our lot, a nation of Marthas with downcast eyes.  

I’ve met 47 new years. Yeah I’m 46, but born in February I saw one before my first birthday. I’ve met them a lot of different ways too. Some with the wide-eyed hope of a child, some with the wantonness of youth, some with regret, some with a sense of a recent loss, a few even with resolutions.

These past two or three years, it has been increasingly important to me to be better. Not that I ever thought I sucked inside. I have survived far better than any of my siblings, and have lifelong been criticized for being too nice, too generous, too naive, too giving, too, too, too. That’s a huge part, people say, of why I have nothing now. I have worked hard and long to kill my demons, but its more than that. I need to be a better person every day, be more thoughtful in my words and deed, touch the World more gently. I see people who live in ways I have never experienced, and want to rise to that level. I guess I want to be a saint, like when I was little and believed in all that shit.

And yet, here I sit, after making dinner for my men, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette and staring off into space between keystrokes like some feminine demented version of Hunter S Thompson and we all know where that got him. This year, not a resolution, but fact. I quit smoking or it will kill me in the end.

But that’s not where my concerns really lie.

This is the only year I’ve met with fear.

Crosspostedy Goodness from my blog,The Wild Wild Left

I have been pointedly not following the Jane Hamsher flamefest. I guess she cosigned a call for recalling Rahm with Norquist.

Why, then do I mention it at all? It seems in this busy week spent on everything BUT politics, a semi-vacation from my obsession, it fits nicely with the essay that had brewing in my brain in the background all week. Yes, on sub-levels the internal writers dialogue never ceases no matter what I’m doing.

Then on Christmas day, I read Cassiodorus’ essay on Docudharma, “On the possibility of a class coalition,” and the subsequent commentary. It was a provoking and well-cited work, that I would ask my gentle readers to use as an introduction to this work. I would ask my wild and hard-assed readers to, too. Heh.

This sentence seems to echo around the Liberalsphere this week: “Your political-class elites suck; my political-class elites rock!” Then the flames abound.

I shake my head in wonder. How can we survive as a coalition when we cannot even sustain ties within the community of our own echo-chambers? Are even we, the best among the Political-junkie, citizen-journalist, self-educating left so infantilized by our society and education that we cannot empathize with others perceptions, cannot as adults accept disagreement without cutting ties and creating enmity? (I was tempted to use the intentional misspelling and go for enema-ity, for we tend to flush out as ‘waste’ those who we see as flawed)

We are all the sum results of our life’s experiences, for better or ill. That is what we bring, no more, no less, to the table in this fight. Our personal realities create the being, create the actions and thoughts and create the blind spots we have with one another.

So Hamsher “failed” her idolizers, and now they are hurt and angry. I get it. I’ve regrettably done the same with some of my own allies. In just a heartbeat, you can turn the most dedicated and driven activist into someone who just gives up entirely on the process. Even the most focused of flames can go out.

And unfocused flames like those at the GOS? Their scorched Earth policy leaves activism a barren wasteland.

Its a Class War. How do we learn to Focus the Flame?

Good morning, my dear ones.

I was sitting on the couch to type something, you know, remotely profound, when the wolf decided to come and have his morning “greet-greet” ritual. He’s a very old man now, but has a spring in his step this morning. So his head rested on my knee, until I performed my alpha duty: “Rub this ear mom, wait, wait, now that ear mom, ok this side of my face itches, and the shoulder too. Ok, now get the eye boogers out of my eyes!” Then he has to smell my hand and make sure all of the scent glands on his neck has marked me as his, and off he goes, tail up and prancing, all perfect in his world. He loves the cold, but it is getting really hard on his hips. Sometimes he engages the young stupid dogs in play and forgets he can’t really wrestle. I sometimes forget how stunningly beautiful he is. He is a McKenzie Valley Grey Wolf, with a 2nd generation strain of Arctic. After raising 3 hybrids previously, I ended up having to take him on for my breeder, who had to move when her husband died. He was to be breeding stock. He is no hybrid. Unlike the cubs I got at 6 weeks, I got him at 6 months old. He was extremely shy for a long time, though in his old age and running with the pure-dogs as pack these last years of his life has mellowed him. He has always been a sucker for women. Little girls? Jeeez. They can maul him. Little boys (other than Jake) he would just as soon hide from. Too rowdy for his taste.

Crossposted from WWL

Brittany Murphy. Another victim of America’s obsession with the Barbie syndrome?

I get it, you know. I’m an American woman. Lets face it, having a man sexually attracted to you feels good. Being invisible, undesired, or the object of repulsion hurts. We tell ourselves and each other that looks don’t matter, the person inside does. But we hear the opposite all around us. “My girlfriend, wife, that chick, that actress, etc etc etc is so HOT!” And what aspect are they referring to? Their minds? Naw. We know without even glancing up. Blue eyes they could stare into forever. Thin muscular frames. Big tits. Round apple asses. High cheekbones. Blond smooth hair. (although an occasional brunette makes the cut, as long as there are lighter highlights in it, and the rest fits the cookie cutter mold)

We learn to hate ourselves young. God how I loathed my brown eyes when I was a teen. I wanted blue contacts though my vision was perfect. The slightly too hooded lids, telltale signs of my slavic descent. My nose, always too big, with a droop at the end that is just shy of a hook. My nondescript mouth, no sensual curves to that upper lip, that no lipstick can create. No little girl breathy voice, no soprano. Alto, tenor when needed in choir. And the hair. Always the hair. The frizz, the curl, the messy nest of it. White-Blond in the summer, and light brown in the winter; and my Mom would NEVER consider letting me color it so it didn’t LOOK like I colored it and quit. In winter, I had to endure the two-tone of being out of the sun. Hear, “What is up with her hair?” from the perfect little cheerleaders whose Mothers did take them to salons for their unnatural colors.

The worst? My body. I could not get skinny no matter what I did.

My body, which was eternally open season for ridicule by my siblings. My body, which my permanently stick thin, chocolate stuffing sister could laugh at while I lived on dry toast, lettuce and worked out a gym daily.

A long time ago, far away, in another galaxy, I read an essay of the almost same name and was egotistical enough to think it about me. Or perhaps, the author was just one of those people who wrote so well every reader thought it about them. That one moment of reading hooked me to blogging more than anything else I had ever read. Whether written abstract, or written about another poster mattered not to me. It became the start of a lasting connection, a friendship as real as those created with a neighbor you see daily. It was just an essay. An essay about truth and connection, about images and mystery.

Still, it lingers for me.

It is about connecting after all, even should our visions of each other be mythical concepts. Our connections become true if we trust them. You see, that is the only thing they truly fear: Our Unity. I see more and more evidence that despite the Kleptocracy functioning entirely outside our reality, outside our input and will, that people are becoming more and more aware to what we have long been saying. Minds are changing. “We” are doing that. Let those in Washington fuck everything up worse… it will only bring more whispers. Whispers of discontent become grumbles, grumbles become oratory, oratory becomes yells, and yells beget revolution.

The fear the you-and-me. They fear the “we”.