Tag: The Stars Hollow Gazette

Uplifting.  That’s the ticket.  What do I think about when my heart is sore?

It was a better life.  I don’t mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things.

That don’t matter.

The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life.  You know, he showed you too.

That you don’t just give up, you don’t just let things happen.

You make a stand, you say no.

You’ve got the guts to do what’s right when everyone else just runs away.

Only 30% ever supported the Revolution.

You want to know what really bugs me?

The lies.

Beltway myth: "The left-wing base" vs. "the American people" on Iraq

Glen Greenwald, Salon.com

Monday July 7, 2008 07:58 EDT

How much clearer could that be? The truth is exactly the opposite of what Liasson said. Americans want to withdraw from Iraq in accordance with Obama’s timetable (if not faster) regardless of circumstances “on the ground” — not conditioned on those circumstances. But because that’s not the view Liasson and her establishment colleagues embrace, they just lie and claim that the majority view is the one held only by the “left-wing” fringe, while their own actually fringe view is the one embraced by “the American people” and thus defines the “Center.”

This is the standard propaganda tactic of establishment media stars like Liasson, and she’s hardly unique — in this way or in any other. This is how they manipulate public opinion and coerce political officials to disregard the views of most Americans in favor of the fringe, establishment view. The views of the establishment pundit class are automatically labeled “the Center” even when they’re rejected by majorities of “the American people.” By contrast, views that are actually held by majorities but which the pundit class dislikes are demonized as those of “the Left.” Thus, they argue, political candidates, in order to win elections, must embrace the views of the establishment and reject the view of most Americans. That’s how a candidate “moves to the Center.”

My emphasis.

So now it’s July, high summer.

I heard Ben Stein today on CBS’s Sunday Morning talking about air conditioning.  While I am much younger than Ben I certainly remember when air conditioning entered my life.

As a wee lad I mostly haunted the Library, but a short walk from my house where I quickly read through the Kids Section absorbing the collections of Hardy Boys, Tom Swifts, and Nancy Drews as well as Science Fiction, History, Biography and miscellaneous other categories until I exhausted the catalog and was booted upstairs to the Adults Section, most of the shelves of which I couldn’t reach, yet.

The Library was air conditioned, but when it was closed I’d go down to the basement (the coolest part of the house) and lie in front of a hurricane fan using a table knife to hold down the pages.  Some nights everyone had to sleep downstairs by parental edict.  I found the enforced togetherness as enervating as the heat.

I in fact spurned other than found air conditioning (pervasive, isn’t it, now that you think about it) until the early 90s when I started noticing persistent heat related failures in my computer equipment.

So let’s just say, I know what a Long.  Hot.  Summer.  Is.

No justice, no peace.

So what’s it going to be like when the rolling blackouts come campers?  When your air conditioning and your fans and your lights and your television and your internets operate but a few hours a day and never when you need them.  When your rationed energy is totally absorbed by scrounging enough to merely survive.

Will you read books by candlelight?

Hey ek!

Hey what?

Hey ek!

Hey WHAT!

Show us how you get down.

NO WAY!

Show us how you get down.

ok.

D-O-W-N and that’s the way you get down.

D-O-W-N and that’s the way you get down.

Volume doesn’t work for me, I have to turn it up.  Lyrics below.

So I’ve been driving ’round a bean field.  Staring at the sun.  Walking in the mud.  Talking to people I once knew.  Meeting and greeting.  Pretending not to pay attention, looking another way.

Hearing about births and deaths.  Hanging on.  Trafficking in triumph.  Who, after all, is better than me?  Skulking around after dark hiding from the dreaded vampire mosquitos in clouds of chemicals.  Maintaining my own crypt-like pallor with more of the same.

Eating slave food and drinking beer.  Top shelf whiskey, but no grilled vegetables.  I miss the vegetables, the asparagus would make the bathrooms stink, but I’m best buds with the comfort station guy and he always puts an extra cake in my urinal.

Now all is dust.  Actually more mud, but I like my metaphors mixed just like my cocktails- shaken, not stirred to piss off the bartenders.  Shrink wrapped in stacks it waits in trailers for a next time that may never come.  Winding down partings of missed meetings and tired indifference it drifts away as it came.

So for the last little bit on Rush Limbaugh I’ve been listening to Jonathan from Rockwell Tx. (outside Dallas) who picked up a broken compact florescent in a storeroom even though Rush told him the Mercury was toxic.  Rush praised him for his self sacrifice like he had fallen on a grenade.

He felt faint and headachy so his boss filled out an accident report and called the (offsite) RN who had him 911 the paramedics that sent him to the emergency room where after a few hours and some Tylenol the headache went away (but make sure you keep monitoring says Rush).

The Loading Dock I worked on was roofed by reinforced concrete decking on steel beams all coated with spray asbestos insulation to meet fire code.  I smoked Kools at the time and we ignored the “No Smoking” signs because hey- it’s the Loading Dock and we make our own rules. (Security guy was a smoker too, which didn’t hurt).

Is this bad?  Let me tell you what we did for amusement.

Our store occupied 2/3rds of a former retail space and they just left the basement filled with all kinds of fixtures (which we stole) and other exotic (not meaning “African Americans” Pat) leftovers which included boxes and boxes of standard florescents which it would have been unprofitable to pay us to check whether they still worked.

So instead we stood around on our smoking breaks and played Jedi light saber with them or pitched them into the Dumpster like spears.

So I’m going to disappear, except I’m not really, but I do have business that is going to take me away from my regular internet connections.

This has happened before though everyone has had the good grace not to notice it in part because I’ve acculturated you to expect nothing but negligence.

I assure the fans of my occasional and diffident nature my departure is merely intermittent and temporary.  During this time I shall be making random and haphazard appearances here and there.  This week is ramp up to Friday when the show goes into Out of Town tryouts. After that, Monday we go Off Broadway and Wednesday is the day the critics come for Opening Night at the Big Show.  We close Sunday and everyone goes on the road except the roadies (isn’t it ironic) and if history is any guide I’ll have the sets and lights packed up by Tuesday after, ready to send to the next stop on the tour.

I will lift heavy objects many times.  I will eat dust and walk in mud.

Occasionally in my lighthouse I will doze as the grand plan unfolds.  Gotta love it when that happens.

The more things change the more they stay the same.  See you around.

Robert Freeman: (to Huey) How many times have I told you, you better not even dream about tellin’ white folk the truth!  You understand me? (walks away)  Shoot!  Makin’ White people riot!  You better learn how to lie like me!  I’m gonna find me a white man and lie to him right now!  The Garden Party

The truth is everything this administration tells you is a lie.

Remember The Pentagon Shill Scandal?  A month ago.  The Scotty Show?  Two weeks.  Phase II?  Today.

Another important story that is getting ignored in favor of arguing about teeth are the lies regarding our status of forces arrangement with the Iraq.  Are we blackmailing Maliki? This is clearly a fundamentally bad deal for Iraq, we demand over 50 bases, control of the airspace under 29,000 feet, ability to arrest anyone and take any military action without consulting any Iraqi and with no consequences under Iraqi law.

It’s hardly a secret to the Iraqis, a majority of parliament has already sent "a letter to members of Congress that rejected the idea of a US-Iraq agreement unless the United States agrees to a specific timetable to get out of Iraq".  Former Iraqi President Rafsanjani says- US trying to "enslave" Iraq with security agreement.

What about Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential man in Iraq?  From Juan Cole–

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (the leading bloc in parliament and keystone of the government of Nuri al-Maliki) is saying he spoke to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani about the security agreement with Washington. He says that Sistani laid out four points to which any such agreement must adhere:

• National sovereignty
• Transparency
• National consensus
• Parliamentary approval of it

Al-Hakim met with Sistani Wednesday evening, along with some journalists. The journalists reported that the grand ayatollah stressed national Iraqi unity in the face of challenges, expressed his concern about the lack of services for citizens, including electicity and water, and said the water shortage was especially harming farmers. He also urged haste in the rebuilding of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra.

Al-Hakim said that his own party felt the current American draft detracts too much from Iraq’s sovereignty and fails to protect Iraqi wealth. He said that Sistani did not go into details but stressed general principles. He maintained that in general Sistani shared the concerns of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Frankly, if it’s unratified by the Senate it’s not an agreement the United States is obligated to honor.  I can only imagine what a patriotic Iraqi thinks of it.

You know, at one time I aspired to Journalism.  I think any politically active child of an age to have experienced Watergate did as soon as they gave up on being an Astronaut (which I did young because of my poor eyesight ó–ò).  Since l’affair Lewinski though I have become really radicalized about ‘The Press’ and now view 98% with a pure passionate contempt which while white hot is but a dwarf compared to the Rigelian levels they deserve.

The press is a gang of cruel faggots.  Journalism is not a profession or a trade.  It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits – a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

(I)t (is) a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures.  The business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.- Hunter Thompson

The transcript of last night’s Hardball is up and it does Gregory no more credit today than his video last night.

Finally the Vilage media is being forced to confront some of their sell out stenographic sycophancy.  McClellan’s book, What Happened, is definitely making some of them very uncomfortable.  David Gregory had a melt down of umbrage on Hardball tonight which I hope to write more about tomorrow after the transcript is posted, but here’s a YouTube of it-

Bullshit.

Texas seizure of polygamist-sect kids thrown out

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 33 minutes ago

SAN ANGELO, Texas – In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group’s compound last month.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

The California marriage decision and basic civics

Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Thursday May 22, 2008 09:16 EDT

That a law invalidated by a court is supported by a large majority is not an argument supporting the conclusion that the court’s decision was wrong. Central to our system of government is the premise that there are laws which even the largest majorities are prohibited from enacting because such laws violate the constitutional rights of minorities. Thus, the percentage of people who support the law in question, and how lengthy and painstaking the process was that led to the law’s enactment, is totally irrelevant in assessing the propriety of a court decision striking down that law on constitutional grounds.

Contrary to Wittes’ extremely confused argument, a court striking down a law supported by large majorities is not antithetical to our system of government. Such a judicial act is central to our system of government. That’s because, strictly speaking, the U.S. is not a “democracy” as much as it a “constitutional republic,” precisely because constitutional guarantees trump democratic majorities. This is all just seventh-grade civics, something that the Brookings scholar and those condemning the California court’s decision on similar grounds seem to have forgotten.

The duty — the central obligation — of judges faithfully applying the law and fulfilling their core duties is to strike down laws that violate the Constitution, without regard to what percentage of the population supports that law, and without regard to whether it would be “better” in some political sense if democratic majorities some day got around to changing their minds about it. It’s perfectly appropriate for, say, marriage equality advocates or political candidates to take into account whether it would be preferable, in some political or strategic sense, to achieve gay marriage incrementally or legislatively, only once there is majority support for it. But that is a completely inappropriate factor for a judge to consider, because the judge’s sole consideration is whether the law is consistent with Constitutional protections.

Constitutional protections are all about minority rights.  Super majorities, Electoral College?  All designed to protect the weak from the mob and the State.

It’s not the system, it’s the people in it.