Jul 04 2010
“This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-more’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.”
“It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”
“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.”
lest we forget …
Jun 23 2010
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Yoda: I am wondering, why are you here?
Luke: I’m looking for someone.
Yoda: Looking? Found someone, you have, I would say, hmmm?
Luke: Right…
Yoda: Help you I can. Yes, mmmm.
Luke: I don’t think so. I’m looking for a great warrior.
Yoda: Ohhh. Great warrior. [Yoda laughs and shakes his head]
Yoda: Wars — NOT — make one great.
Not even wars, for control and mining of strategically important geo-politcal Natural Resources — that may or may not, determine the course of the world’s future …
Jun 12 2010
Let’s see, Maybe the NYTimes will help …
Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.
“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,'” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator.
[…]
Capt. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman, said that about a week into the cleanup response, the Coast Guard started enforcing a policy that prohibits news media from accompanying candidates for public office on visits to government facilities, “to help manage the large number of requests for media embeds and visits by elected officials.”
Reason 10) Elected officials and Media on the same ‘federal asset,’ are not allowed.
Reason 9) Easier to manage requests for ‘media embeds’ and visits by elected officials.
Jun 01 2010
About America of the past:
It could be cruel and unjust if you were poor, gay, a woman, or an immigrant, but there was hope it could be better. It was a country I loved and honored. It paid its workers wages envied around the world. It made sure these workers, thanks to labor unions and champions of the working class in the Democratic Party and the press, had health benefits and pensions….It honored basic democratic values and held in regard the rule of law, including international law, and respect for human rights.
—Chris Hedges
And today?
The country I live in today uses the same civic, patriotic, and historical language to describe itself, the same symbols and iconography, the same national myths, but only the shell remains. The America we celebrate is an illusion. America, the country of my birth, the country that formed and shaped me, the country of my father, my father’s father, and his father’s father, stretching back to the generations of my family that were here for the country’s founding, is so diminished as to be unrecognizable.
—Chris Hedges
I use this poignant observation because it has a deep emotional resonance. Unlike me, Hedges has deep roots in this country. His life is far more deeply shaped by America than mine could ever be. I can tell when I see him on videos and hear him interviewed how much he is in pain. His last book is angry and bitter as he looks around him without flinching. When you’ve seen a lot of death–you don’t flinch so much. Once you decide to see things squarely, you can’t stop just because the thought of seeing your country being flushed down the toilet by fucking criminals haunts you. Worse, for Hedges (and me) is to see people who call themselves Americans degrade into a cowardly group of junkies living in fantasies.
May 26 2010
This diary has been written in response to a diary on the reclist at Daily Kos which insinuates that all anger associated with BP Oilpocalypse and Obama’s handling of it is unwarranted.
You see, all criticism of Obama and his policies/appointees is stupid, and only really helps the Republicans. Holding “Feet to the fire” is stupid too. Instead of Yelling Louder, you should be CLAPPING LOUDER, or Tinkerbell will die and Obama’s approval ratings will drop.
CLAP LOUDER today, so Obama and the Democratic party can finally implement the GOP platform of 1994! and isn’t that so much better than what would happen if the post 1994 GOP were to come back into power? So who cares about demanding MORE and BETTER from Obama? Whose side are you on anyway?
More snark below the fold
May 23 2010
History is full of “flashbulb moments” — when FLASH!
the course of History, changes instantly, on a dime,
as the result of some collective common experience.
This is not one of those tales.
Rather it’s another kind of story entirely,
when we all collectively sense something’s wrong,
but no one can really pin it down, to …
Exactly what the problem is.
Déjà vu [Deja vu] is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.
[…]
The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness,” “strangeness,” “weirdness,” or what Sigmund Freud and other psychologists call “the uncanny.” The “previous” experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.
May 13 2010
(Written in response to meta at Daily Kos, and published here for your enjoyment ~ Cheers)
That’s right! Your belly button, whoever you are or think you may be
With all respect due to the many, many, many diarists who have already touched upon this subject, I felt the need to masturbate, and since my girlfriend is looking right at me (Sorry, Shiz), a meta diary is as close as I can get.
So here is what is wrong with Elena Kagan in a nutshell, your belly button.
More navel gazing below the fold.
May 02 2010
March 24, 2009
RIKI OTT: […] Exxon promised to make us whole. You know, “You’re lucky you have Exxon.” We hadn’t even gone to court by 1993. We had fish run collapses, bankruptcies, divorces, suicides, you know, domestic violence spikes, substance abuse spikes. The town was just unraveling. And we were waiting for somebody to help us: the State of Alaska, the federal government, the court system, Exxon. Nobody. And–
AMY GOODMAN: There were 33,000 plaintiffs.
RIKI OTT: There are 32,000 claims, 22,000 plaintiffs.
[…]
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said that is not just an environmental disaster, but a crisis in democracy.RIKI OTT: It is a democracy crisis. The question we started asking as our lawsuit went on and on and on, and we didn’t get paid, was how did corporations get this big, where they can manipulate the legal system, the political system? What happened here?
[…]AMY GOODMAN: How many animals died?
Riki Ott, author, community activist, marine toxicologist and former fisherma’am. She is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.