Category: Meta

Apr 28 2010

Wife of Famous Politician To Be Banned From Large Blog For Promoting CT

Berkeley, CA

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

(DDT) The moderator of the world’s best known blog for policing impure political thoughts, [redacted], today finally banned the wife of the world’s most famous retired politician for promoting and distributing an unproven Conspiracy Theory.  

In a move sure to create controversy in [redacted] and other sites around the blogosphere, an anonymous, off the record spokesperson for [redacted] confirmed that



The FAQ says no conspiracy theories, no exceptions. Certainly this poster was aware of the rule, he or she chose to ignore it, and we decided to ban this person immediately. Any other remaining posters using this website, caught uprating other users who uprated the banned user, will be warned once and their posting ability suspended for the next 2,666 years until a bipartisan tribunal can be assembled to judge the purity of their thoughts and the intent of their actions.

Anyone caught discussing  this particular conspiracy theory in any diary, comment, or cat picture with caption, on this website, or any other website we had a FPer, administrator, or grandma click on deliberately or accidentally in the past 48 hours, or the next century, will also be warned once and then banned.  

Extraordinary claims, such as being made by this poster,  require extraordinary evidence.

We have reviewed the evidence, and have found no proof that anything untoward or unusual was consumed by the poster in question, or her husband.  

Further scrutiny reveals that the source of the rumors were obviously not Americans, and therefore never to be trusted.  You can’t trust those pesky Irish musicians. Never.  Everybody knows the Irish are a bunch of overimbibing, socialist Celtic Pagans, or maybe Druids, who knows, they all look alike, they who hate this country, and plot its downfall or at least plan to inflict their wretched European commie ginger haired marxist worker’s rights universal healthcare on us, which would destroy the delicate, negotiated detente we’ve negotiated with Kent Conrad and his very special donors.  Anyone caught posting youtubes of any music of the above, or posting recipes containing potato or cabbage ingredients, will also be banned.    

We here at [redacted] take election integrity very seriously.   We’ve banned thousands of people for far more, and we’ll ban as many people as possible for far less, for even having these impure thoughts.  

You have all been warned. Henceforth, by the Power Invested in Me, as Commander in Chief of the [redacted], this topic will not be discussed anymore on this website. Forever. Until the end of time.  

We have an election to win.  Look forwards, not back.

Example of Irish people being subversive and undermining the American pragmatic progressive agenda. Note upraised arms and dancing in audience, outside the white castle walls, clear indications of wanting a unicorn.

This is Amerika, Damnit !  We don’t DO unicorns!  We do Hope Nobody Notices!



The heart is a bloom

Shoots up through the stony ground

There’s no room

No space to rent in this town

You’re out of luck

And the reason that you had to care

The traffic is stuck

And you’re not moving anywhere

You thought you’d found a friend

To take you out of this place

Someone you could lend a hand

In return for grace

It’s a beautiful day

Sky falls, you feel like

It’s a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

You’re on the road

But you’ve got no destination

You’re in the mud

In the maze of her imagination

You love this town

Even if that doesn’t ring true

You’ve been all over

And it’s been all over you

It’s a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

It’s a beautiful day

Touch me

Take me to that other place

Teach me

I know I’m not a hopeless case



See the world in green and blue

See China right in front of you

See the canyons broken by cloud

See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night

See the oil fields at first light

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

Beautiful day

Touch me

Take me to that other place

Reach me

I know I’m not a hopeless case

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

What you don’t know you can feel it somehow

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

Don’t need it now

Was a beautiful day



http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyri…

B*stards.  Never could trust ’em in the first place.  They ought to be wiretapped or something.

 

Apr 19 2010

Open Thread: Midnight eruptions

Iceland Volcano Aurora Borealis

The Iceland Volcano and the Aurora Borealis

Apr 14 2010

is there a point to pointlessness?

There could be a point, a moment in which you look around your home. There are perhaps pictures or paintings hanging on walls. Pots and pans in the kitchen. A dozen pair of shoes and rows of hangers holding shirts and pants in a bedroom closet. Not to mention assorted potted plants. Lamps. Shades. Nicknacks. All that infrastructure. All those things . . .

Anyway. That point, that moment could happen: looking around your place and it all goes funny. It hits soft, at first, this simple thought: maybe… maybe it’s all a bit ridiculous. Slightly absurd. The idea that a thing could hold value. Have meaning. Or stir memory.

It goes further. I’m in a wheel upon which I run. The wheel keeps turning because I keep running on it. I can’t stop running. Actually, I don’t know how to stop. Or how to get off the wheel. I don’t think I’m trapped. In fact, I think I’m free. And yet, I can’t get off the wheel.

Photobucket

 

Apr 12 2010

Fuck The Meta

What it comes down to is this: I’m sick of Daily Kos meta. I’m an issues guy, and I know that most of you are issues people, but the meta bullshit is driving us away from what most interests us. It’s driving us away from what we do best.

Apr 11 2010

An Ant’s Rant

The Ant and the Grasshopper Fable

An Aesop’s Fable

In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”

“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.

Then the Grasshopper knew:

[The Moral of the Story: ]

It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

http://www.aesops-fables.org.u…

Them damn Socialist Ants! — always trying to feed their Fellow Ants!

They’re enough to ruin a lavish picnic …

Apr 11 2010

The (Un)authorized Pictorial History of Daily Kos Blogging

Crossposted at Daily Kos



Patrick Chappatte, International Herald Tribune, Buy this cartoon

:: ::

Warning: This pictorial version of Daily Kos’ history has not as yet been reviewed or approved by our Community Director Lord Protector, Meteor Blades.  Were he to look it over, I have no doubt he would heartily agree with its content.

It is, as we say in the blogging world, subject to revisionist interpretations.  Opinions are not in short supply on this blog.

Apr 08 2010

Through The Looking-Glass

The whole smoke and mirrors act that’s going on over there is an attempt at consolidation of the Democratic Party’s takeover of the Republican Party’s one time position at center-right and fully conservative on the political spectrum. This has in fact happened, and is being glaringly highlighted almost daily by the conservative positions the Obama administration has taken.

1. War Maintenance. Pull-down in Iraq is made up for by expansion in Afghanistan. This way the MIC and war profiteers can keep the money flowing.

2. Domestic Spying/Decimation of the Bill of Rights. Nothing has changed, Obama’s got DoJ defending illegal policies of the Bush admin.

3. Energy Non-Policy. Huge new subsidies to coal, nuclear and petroleum/natural gas industries, pittance for renewables or necessary infrastructure (grid replacement).

4. Women’s Rights. Under the bus right at the HIR starting gate.

5. GLBT Rights. No one’s allowed to talk about it – Don’t ask, Don’t tell.

6. Nuclear Slouch. Too sloppy to be called “policy,” Obama has authorized the production of new nuclear weapons and the new START is a joke. He’s still wasting trillions (when the accounting’s done) on a missile defense system that can’t be made to work and couldn’t prevent an attack if it did work.

Apr 08 2010

Late Night Open Thread: Don Quixote

Apr 08 2010

Ommmmmmmmmmm

I have now re-read this and most of the comments and some of the many, many comments at GOS and the counter-diary at GOS and some of the comments.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

It was 90 degrees in New York today.  The sun was out.  Daffodils are open here.  Tulips are coming.  It looks like the bees may be returning.  You can smell mother earth, pachamana, santa madre tierra.  You can smell her as she carries us on her belly. Inhale.  Exhale.  Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

When I turn off the computer, push the keyboard under the desk, and stand up, I can almost touch the ceiling in this old room.  The ceiling is low.  This room has been here since 1841.  It originally belonged to the Petersons and the Nileses, who were dairy and wool farmers.  Now it belongs to me.  It deserves to be taken care of.  I don’t think I do that enough. Inhale.  Exhale.  Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I am happy to have this electronic community.  I am happy to have this group blog.  I am happy that I don’t own or administer or have any obligations to stay or fix it or change it. I am happy to be here just because I want to be here.  If I write an essay, it’s because I want to tell you something.  If I leave, I will not write a GBCW essay.  Ommmmmmm.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I am filled with gratitude for a million small things.  Some are matter, others are not.  I could write them all down if I had time, but I prefer just to go from thanks to thanks, from thought to thought, like a bee crawling into a daffodil.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the world.  Sometimes I am overwhelmed by its cruelty and ugliness.  Sometimes I am concerned that we don’t see things that we should.  I write about these things and I post them here.  And at my blog.  And elsewhere.  I want you to read what I write. Inhale.  Exhale.  Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Thank you for being here.  Thank you for reading.  May you all be happy.  May you all be free from suffering.  May you all be safe.  May you all be well.  May you all realize your enlightenment.

Apr 03 2010

Friday: On Meta

300  Spring Equinoxes Ago

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-H…


An Assiniboin | Cree | Sioux Legend

The Legend of the White Horse Plain by Margaret Arnett MacLeod

Manitoba Pageant, January 1958, Volume 3, Number 2

This article was published originally in Manitoba Pageant by the Manitoba Historical Society on the above date. We make it available here as a free, public service in hopes it will continue to be useful. Gateway to the west is a name frequently used to designate the city of Winnipeg, since it stands on the eastern edge of the Canadian prairies.

__________________

The city looks west over a small area which was known as the White Horse plain. There, in the lee of a ridge to the west and north, the hamlet of Grantown was founded in 1824. This nucleus of settlement, 18 miles west of present day Winnipeg, was later renamed and is today the village of St. Francois Xavier.

The ridge was early called the Coteau de Festin, since from time immemorial it had been noted as a gathering place for the Indians – a place where they held dog feasts, sun dances and other celebrations.

This beginning of the western prairies is a storied place, the only area around Winnipeg which has left us a legend – the legend of White Horse plain. For more than two and a half centuries this region has been called the White Horse plain. It carried that name for more than 50 years before the first white man set foot in the west, for over a hundred years before Manitoba existed; for so long indeed that the actual occurrence which named it has been almost forgotten by its people, leaving only the legend it engendered.

The legend as given here is the version which was most widely corroborated for me by old residents of White Horse plain and others.

____________________

In an early period of the seventeenth century, when only Indians roamed the western plains, the most northerly nation, the Crees, were being pushed farther and farther towards Hudson Bay by their traditional enemies, their fierce neighbors to the south, the Sioux.

Finally the Sioux gained a foothold in the wealthy Cree country as far north as Lake Winnipeg and the point north of the tip of Lake Superior, now known as Sioux Lookout. It was a serious situation for the Cree. They were desperate. In this barren land they faced near starvation and possible extinction. Then came their salvation, the arrival of the white men at Hudson Bay with whom they soon began to trade. Before long they had the white man’s guns and were making effective war with them against the bows and arrows of the Sioux. So the invaders in turn were pushed farther and farther back into their own territory, and the Cree became the great warriors, more invincible than ever the Sioux had been.

As a consequence of this, the Crees’ nearest neighbors to the south, the Assiniboines, a branch of the Sioux who formerly had protected the Sioux from the incursions of the Crees, were glad not only to make peace but later to ally themselves with this powerful and irresistible nation which fought their enemies with fire.

Against this alliance the Sioux, though flaming inwardly, could do nothing. Nevertheless they kept a jealous eye on the movements of both.

Early one summer in the 1690s, a large band of Assiniboines was camped on the banks of the Assiniboine river about ten miles west of the centre of present day Winnipeg. The chief of these Assiniboines had a beautiful daughter, and to his lodge came two suitors for her hand – a Cree chief from Lake Winnipegosis and a Sioux chief from Devil’s Lake.

The Cree was the favored suitor for he had to offer in exchange for a bride that rarity, that coveted prize of the prairies, a horse as white as the winter snows, a Blanco Diablo which came from that famed breed in Mexico. Nimble of foot, swift as the wind, strong and sturdy, a “white devil” could out-run and out-last any other horse, and go three or four days longer than any other without food or water.

The prospect of such a gift was irresistible, and the father succumbed. But not all the Assiniboines in the camp favored the alliance with the Crees, notably a powerful medicine man. The memory of Cree war parties with Assiniboine scalps flying in the wind was ever before his eyes and he nursed in his heart the old bitterness.

“Is it not enough”, he thundered at his chief, “that you should make peace with the enemies of our forefathers? Now you will disgrace us by mingling our blood with that of our foes!” But his protests were in vain. So he sought by his magic and exhortations to strengthen in the camp the hatred against the Crees.

The marriage was planned for a time when the Sioux chief was to be on a war expedition, but they counted without the medicine man. Secretly he sent off word of his rival’s success to the young Sioux.

On the day appointed for the ceremonies, the Cree bridegroom, gorgeous in the trappings of his chief-dom, arrived from Lake Winnipegosis mounted on a fine grey steed, and leading the white horse loaded with additional presents for his prospective father-in-law.

The gifts were presented and the Cree claimed his bride. Then, with the feasting and merrymaking scarce begun, suddenly there was an alarm – a cloud of dust in the distance. The flouted and vengeful suitor with an escort of Sioux warriors was fast approaching over the prairie.

All was confusion in the camp. Cries of Sioux and Cree sympathizers alike filled the air. “Up, up! Away! It is your only chance!” cried the bride’s father to the Cree. “Take your horses and flee!”

The bridegroom ran with his bride to the tethered horses, helped her mount the white steed, jumped to the grey in a flash and they were off. Westward they flew, but not unobserved. The Sioux with his party was quickly in pursuit.

But even the time gained at the start and the swift pace of their fleeing ponies did not save the bridal couple. Though they doubled back on their tracks to mislead their pursuers and at times were hidden by patches of bush, once out on the open plain again the white horse was the mark that betrayed them.

On, they sped over the prairie. The frightened girl held back the pace of her horse to that of her husband’s grey, and the Sioux were gaining on them.

Finally at a point just east of the present day village of St. Francois Xavier,the avenging arrows of the Sioux sped to the hearts of the fleeing couple and killed them both.

The grey horse was wounded, but the white steed escaped into the deep woods. For years it roamed the plain, thus giving its name to the region, and the Indians, believing that the soul of the girl had passed into its body, feared to approach it. As time passed the belief grew that, in ghostly form the white horse continued its wild wanderings.

Today there are old residents in the district who recall the tragic story of the Cree chief and his Assiniboine bride, and relate the legend of the Blanco Diablo, which some believe still haunts the Plain.

Mar 31 2010

Meta: Left Blogs

I have deeper thoughts, but sometimes my shallower ones will do.

The question is-

  • Which blogs do you consider left?

I’d like your reasoning and encourage you to provide a link, but neither is mandatory.

Mar 26 2010

On Email Gay Bashing, Or, ENDA’s Already Getting Ugly

It wasn’t but a couple of days ago that we had a conversation about The Fear and the emails that are used to spread it, and I figured with that out of the way we had dealt with the topic, and that we’d move on to new things.

Well, we would be moving on, Gentle Reader, if it wasn’t for the fact that an email came in today that was so ugly, so disturbing, and so indicative of what we are about to see as the battle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) begins to heat up (ENDA being possibly the next “big contentious thing” that this Administration hopes to accomplish), that I had to interrupt my story schedule to bring it to your attention.

Load more