New York (FNS)-In an effort to help dispel concerns of racism, Terri Stocke, President of the Second Amendment March, agreed to coordinate with members of the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition in an effort to encourage more members of the Black community to bear arms and to carry them publicly.
In return, members of the Black community have agreed to flood the 2nd Amendment March, scheduled for April 19, 2010, in Washington, DC, with hundreds of thousands of heavily armed residents of Chicago’s South Side and New York City’s Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods.
“We hope that the Black community understands that 2nd Amendment rights apply to all Americans” Ms. Stocke told the crowd outside Mr. Sharpton’s offices.
Verona, Italy (FNS)–Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict XVI, was arrested and released early this morning by Italian police near Pescara, Italy, following allegations the Pontiff attempted to engage an undercover police officer in sexual activity in an Autogrill restroom in the City.
The Carabinieri (the Italian National Police), had been staking out a restroom at the Martina Gas Srl, located near the Abruzzo Airport, following complaints over a period of several months.
“Signore Ratzinger was arrested at 0245 hours Thursday morning”, reports Ministry of the Interior spokesman Harry Paratestes, “and he was released on his own recognizance pending an appearance before the corte d’assise on a date yet to be determined.”
Sarah Palin’s been responsible for so much poetry being written in the past two years that it would make romantic poets like William Wordsworth take notice. The awe-inspiring poems written about her have captured the very essence of what makes her tick and appeal to so many Birthers, Wingers, Deathers, and Tea Partiers, however mad they might be in their political orientation.
After her breath-taking performance last weekend at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, don’t be surprised that what we get next is a series of country music hits about Palin from Music City.
President Barack Obama is a superb orator. If anyone can make an rousing speech, he can. He has proven it time and again. For him, words matter. He is calm, rational, never gets too emotional, and always tends towards the logical. Display of emotions is for losers, many an analyst has observed about his speaking style.
Tonight, he had the crowd’s attention all the way. Talk about a “captive audience.” Oh sure, the Republicans booed him and refused to stand up and cheer. That’s what they always do.
Imagine the president’s surprise when he thanked the GOP for its invaluable contributions to our national discourse and, instead of screaming “You lie,” members of the loyal opposition stood up and cheered him when he uttered the following words of wisdom…
It’s almost funny. Here comes a bus. Soon my fellow progressives and I will be thrown unceremoniously under it. The last ten days it’s almost as if the purpose of going to a bus stop is to be run over by oncoming omnibuses: climate change, health care, Afghanistan. You name it. Name a progressive cause and it’s been squished in the past two weeks. And if it hasn’t, if you can think of one that is not now looking like a beer can reconfigured by an oncoming locomotive, just wait tell next week.
I could react with anger to these developments. Certainly not with surprise. For example, I almost reacted in anger just a few moments ago when I read this in the New York Times:
Independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman says he expects to support the Democrats’ health care legislation as long as any government-run insurance plan stays out of the bill.
Lieberman has been a question mark on the health care legislation for months. To win him over, Senate leaders said late Monday they were backing away from a Medicare expansion Lieberman opposed. They already had dropped a full-blown government insurance program.
Lieberman told reporters Tuesday that if the Medicare expansion and government insurance plan are gone, ”I’m going to be in a position where I can say what I’ve wanted to say all along: that I’m ready to vote for health care reform.”
Senate leaders need Lieberman’s support to secure 60 votes necessary to advance the legislation in the 100-member Senate.
Isn’t that great? We somehow went from single payer universal health care (that could never pass, they said) to a robust public option (that could never pass, they said) to a weak tea public option for the select few all of whom live down the block (that could never pass, they said) to a medicare buy-in (that could never pass, they said), to nothing (which evidently Uncle Joe approves and which can easily pass because, well, because it’s nothing and nothing is what we have now so it’s easy to pass).
Remind me if you can why I voted in 2006 and 2008 for Democrats? Remind me, if you’re really creative, why 70% of the population wants health care and they’re just not gonna get it. Maybe I’m forgetful. As I said, I almost got angry about this.
I also almost got angry last night when I heard two Democratic Senators on Maddow and Keith explain how much progressives had helped with the HCR bill and how even if it didn’t have a public option or a medicare buy in or anything else of any value to people who actually need health care and insurance, it was still an enormous victory because, get this, it will provide a foundation for the future. And in the future we can build upon the foundation (if you like this metaphor). And soon on this foundation there will be a 1700′ tall, glistening sky scraper, a beacon to the nation if not the world, called Universal Health Care and you, my dear friends, can even go in an visit the lobby of this edifice. Soon, of course, is a term of art. It means a time between now and the next, distant ice age. You can visit the magnificent structure for which you have provided the foundation if you can live to be 200 years old without adequate health insurance. I personally am not taking this as a bet. Are you kidding me? This is truly a case in which legislative nothing is claimed to be governmental something. So I was almost getting angry. And thinking of things I could do to get even (I’m like that. I don’t apologize for being like that). I’m a Buddhist, but revenge did cross my mind and perch on my eyebrows like a carrion vulture.
Then I recalled some recent pacifying remarks by Pinche Tejano. His remarks were to the effect that it was all just a computer game and should be treated as such (his analysis was far more eloquent and intelligible than this very basic boil down of his very subtle and correct idea). So I began to think about all of this electoral politics as just a game. I couldn’t get mad about a game that was obviously rigged so that I couldn’t get to the next level, so that I would have an EPIC FAIL. What’s to get mad about that? It happens all the time. Especially to people like me with no game skillz. No game cred. In a word, losers. Suckers. I’m used to being pwned by games. I don’t like losing, but I don’t get mad about it. It beat the hell out of being almost angry about politics. Yeah. All of a sudden all of this electoral politics and senate politics and astroturf movements and Joe Lieberman made sense. It was all just like son of Pac Man. It was finally sensible. Even to me.
How did I know that Strongbad was so prescient? How did I know that Home Star Runner was really equipping me for the future of politics? My head asploded.
SEATTLE (FNS)–Longtime activist Geov Parrish unexpectedly revealed to the crowd gathered to celebrate his 50th birthday Friday evening his impending plans to end his decades-long career as a public issues advocate in exchange for new opportunities in the field of corporate communications management and image development.
The announcement appeared to be even more shocking to the glitterati gathered for Parrish’s 50th birthday extravaganza at Seattle’s tony Rainier Club than the fact that the event was sponsored by longtime Parrish nemesis Frank Blethen, publisher of the “Seattle Times” and a frequent target of Parrish’s acerbic criticism regarding the state of corporatocracy and its negative impact upon the state of the Nation.
A new commercial venture and three new business relationships were unveiled: a corporate communications consultancy, tentatively to be named “I Am The State!”, is to be opened in the next few weeks, after suitable office space is located, with the United States Chamber of Commerce and The Seattle Times Company as the first two business associates; additionally, Parrish will be joining the Board of Directors of the Strangelove Foundation, an organization devoted to maintaining the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids.
It’s become more or less common knowledge that US forces have been using music as an operational tool for some time now, and I’ve begun seeing lists of the songs that are being used either to inflict pain, to demoralize, or to just generally disorient various people in various sorts of situations.
There are others, wiser than I, who will opine as to the questions of efficacy and the moral issues surrounding these kinds of operations; I will opine, instead, as to the quality of the songs used.
Frankly, had anyone asked, I could have put the torturers onto much better musical choices, just by selecting from my own “My Music” folder–which left me thinking: “hey, it’s the weekend…why not do exactly that?”
Got any psychological warfare mission planned for the weekend? Expecting to have to direct amplified sound at an angry mob in a defensive maneuver Saturday night? Planning a Halloween haunted house that goes a bit…fuurther?
Come along with me then, soldier, and I’ll provide you a playlist that should do the trick in almost any foreseeable emergency.
Robert Reich being interviewed by Australian Broadcasting Corporation, snuck in a pretty good one-liner, I thought might be worth sharing:
ROBERT REICH, PUBLIC POLICY, UNI, OF CALIFORNIA: I wish I could say, Ali, that there were a lot of lessons learned on Wall Street. There don’t seem to be. […]
And yet the public is now out almost $600 billion, having cushioned the blow of the last round of risky ventures that Wall Street entered into. So, I wish I could be more optimistic and upbeat about where Wall Street has come to, but I don’t think they’ve learned a thing.
ALI MOORE: Why is it? Why haven’t the lessons been learned? Why is it that nothing has changed?
ROBERT REICH: A word with five letters: it’s greed.
[Here’s the one-liner]
If you take the greed out of Wall Street, all you’re really left with — is Pavement!
… is a book about Limbaugh’s unsuccessful bid to become a co-owner of the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League. It will hit book stores all over the country tomorrow, filled with hot air and inane explanations of why this good man was sabotaged from becoming an active participant in America’s favorite pastime, professional football.
Vic Harville, Stephens Media Group (Little Rock, AR)
:: ::
Caller #1: Mega-dittos, Rush. Now that your brief foray into professional football has been sabotaged by liberals, what are you gonna do next?
El Rushbo: I’m going to Disney World! In Obama’s America, an honest white man does not get equality of opportunity. I’m just going to go back and lead the Republican Party to victory in 2010, 2012, and beyond. The pinko, socialist, communist, racist owners and their toadies in the NFL will have hell to pay!
After all the controversy about the kids in grade school (purported as preschool, but those kids look a bit older to me) singing the praises about President Obama, I thought that I would tell of my experience. You have to know that I was raised in that bastion of left thinking, liberal political area of west central Arkansas (yes, that was with a chuckle).
The last Democrat that carried the county until after Rockefeller (yes, Arkansas elected a Rockefeller to office) was elected to the office of governor was Orval Faubus, mainly because he stood up to “the niggers” and the federal government during the desegregation conflict at Central High School in Little Rock during the year of my birth, 1957 CE.
Here is a bit of what I grew up with in public school, so that the record may be set straight. I was indoctrinated.
Those among us who are familiar with the Bible will recall that Jesus Christ himself was an active member of the health care community as he travelled about the Holy Land.
It is reported that he practiced within multiple medical specialties, and his works as both an ophthalmologist and a neurologist are recounted within the verses of the Gospels.
But what if Jesus had been practicing medicine in the therapeutic environment we’re familiar with today?
In today’s conversation we’ll be tagging along with Jesus as he takes a few calls at his HMO’s Customer Care Center-and by the time we get done you should be able to bring a whole new take to those discussions you’ve been having about why reform matters.
