The Chocolate Dog

Never Had To Dumb it Down

2009-07-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

For some, I never had to "Dumb It Down".
You were always a fan of Bastille day.
From: Christopher stone To: joy stone yahoo Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 12:00:41 PMSubject:
Just in case you need it for whatever wildly unlikely cause, my # is xxx-xxx-xxxx ( latter part is the date of the start of the xxxxxx Revolution...Yeah, Kevin laughed at me too)

Human Wreckage

2009-05-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

I am not perfect nor even close. I have a great number of issues that I am working very hard to remedy here in my own private Walden. I am depressed, I am angry, I am lost in so very many ways and I am trying to find my way to the break waters.(I should note...most of the day I am pretty happy in my garden or in the feilds with the critters or whatever....life no matter what is never aone huge black cloud) I have screamed and broken things (Including myself) but I have never raised my hand in violence to another. I am and always have been a pacifist. I do not hit people.
I remember the night my brother started a fight with the neighbor and I walked down and stood between them with my hands in my pockets while I was struck time and time again, yet I never raised my fist. I suppose this makes me weak in some way but it is who I am. I bark loudly but the only person I have ever hurt physically has been myself.
Knowing what I know now I think MAYBE I should have shown someone one what it is like to hit some one who can and WILL hit them back. I suppose only time and death will ever tell what there is to say about that.
I HATE BULLIES

I am frightened. I am frightened in a way I never have been before. I have ranted and raved over issues that made me angry before but I can’t really ever say I have been scared before ….not really. All other issues were just trite babblings on my part relating ultimately to myself. But theses days of Mars rising I am scared not for me but for my daughter. I am near powerless to do anything but watch the state had my little girl back over to a women who has shown nothing but a lust for violence in the past back over to her rather than to me and my Father. I suppose they think a few weeks of anger management courses will undo a lifetime of human wreckage.

2009-05-22T08:18:00.001-07:00

If it weren’t so fucking irritating, I’d laugh over the video called "Our Created Solar System" presented at a website called Creation Astronomy. As you might expect, it’s purporting to have evidence that the Universe isn’t 13.7 billion years old, but is instead some integrally-multiple number of begats old. (Ie 6,000 years or so)
Now with 100% fewer facts!!!
I watched the Jupiter video I was able to obtain from the local Library until all I could hear was a loud buzzing sound punctuated by the word "evolution". Last thing I recall before I passed out in a fit of stupid was; evolution was the change in allele frequency over time… Jupiter allele? Jupiter has chromosomes? Are creationists that confused?
Well, certainly many are, but why ascribe to ignorance what can be ascribed to misdirection? The creator of the video obviously uses the word evolution over and over again because it’s a buzzword likely to sway people predisposed against science to agree with the bizarre version of reality he espouses, even though he must know that evolution has nothing to do with astronomy.
Hmmm. Bear false witness much?
The nonsense pouring forth from those videos would carve the Grand Canyon in just days if it were water.
It would be interesting to debunk the garbage presented point by point– in the sense that it would be interesting to slowly push a red-hot knitting needle into my ear — but there’s no need. Debunking that video is like trying to cure chicken pox one scab at a time. It’s all "god of the gaps" nonsense, "science can’t explain this or that", with them always and forever forgetting the one word that changes everything:
"Yet".
Which leads me to my next seriously skewed issue….

Anger

2009-05-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

It's probably about time for me to end this blog and grow up....long time coming.

SOME THOUGHTS

2009-05-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

With all of this Shannon abusing the kids thoughts going on round my head I have been hard pressed to write anything that is not either angry or below Me however....
A few random thoughts from my Journal for your review:

“I hate it when a day has two Four O’Clocks”
“And Because I could…I didn’t.”
“What I am feeling is ‘premature Enlightenment’.”
“On Perversion (IE: life with you know who);
It’s like horse radish or hot sauce. It’s good on a beef sandwich, you have a bit. But then on day a drop isn’t enough, it just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. So you have three or four and that does you for a while. However not even a whole spoonful really does the trick so you add more and so it continues until one day you realize all you have is sauce and all the beef fell out only you never realized…and you don’t have anything worth eating anymore. Poor dumb slob.”
“Those who speak of their credentials seldom actually have them.”
“It’s too early in the morning to be this early in the morning”
“You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.”
“We got along like a bag of cats”
“She was smelly in a nice sort of way unfortunately she was also a furious cup of cat. “

Mars Is Rising

2009-04-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

I just found out that my ex Shannon was arrested for choking one of her children and endangering my daughter Daisy.

Well, I am awake now.

A few notes

2008-12-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

From: Deshi Wilde
Subject: RE: Arletta would like to share something on RedBubble with you
To: "Christopher Robin Augustus Stone"
Date: Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 8:43 PM

What's being published, where, when, how, by whom? I mean, I know it's you, but, but .. I'm very happy for you whatever the case. I really am. Though a bit jealous, I have to admit. Uhm, not of your success, but of your being away and other people spending time with you and .. things of that nature. I want to write with you, I want to hear from you, and I want to kick your butt for being out of touch for so long. Like that!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:35:56 -0800
From: augy_stone@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Arletta would like to share something on RedBubble with you
To: letthewildrumpusstart@hotmail.com

I have a world of things to send you ...Including my first acceptence letter..IAM GOING TO BE PUBLISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! S&S details to follow or call me tonight at 601-301-1789. Not my number but rather my house mates Erin's...Oh my gobers!

It's all just madness

2008-12-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

Back in early September, a microcosm of the looming health care debate played out on the stage of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, not that I pay attention to such things . Karen Ignagni, CEO of the insurers' largest industry association, was leading a roundtable discussion as part of a national "listening tour" organized by her organization, America's Health Insurance Plans. Waiting for Ignagni in the auditorium were activists from the local chapter of ACORN, who had come to share their thoughts on the CEO's market-based reform ideas. It didn't take long before the line of questioning became a little too heated for the Chamber of Commerce moderator. "What do you expect?" he exploded in front of a stunned audience. "The insurance industry has to make a profit -- that's what they do!". In the words of a thousand NAZI officers ; It was the order of business necessary to accomplish the goal f economic security” not the famous “I was just following orders” the lies were much more elaborate than that…check your history…those words were only said on two occasions under desperate circumstance. I know.
Following the Albuquerque confrontation, the insurers' group quickly lowered the profile of subsequent roundtables.
Ignagni may or may not have known at the time that those targeting her with ACORN-shaped rhetorical darts represented the activist wing of Health Care for America Now, an umbrella organization launched in July to win a "guarantee of quality, affordable health care for all" by the end of 2009. ACORN is one of 16 groups on the HCAN steering committee, which is a veritable Who's Who of progressive grassroots, netroots, and labor groups, including USAction, MoveOn, SEIU, and the AFL-CIO. Four months after launching with a press conference in the National Press Building, HCAN now consists of more than 500 organizations and boasts the backing of the President-elect, his incoming chief of staff, and 151 Democratic members of Congress, among them leading progressives and "pro-business" Blue Dogs alike.
Think about it…I mean really , please do…you are more guilty than we. You know this at heart. You know this Shit ain’t right, you know Jesus would not approve. It’s all about money, right? Don’t deny it. I have seen you in your undies…no wow there.
As Karen Ignagni and her colleagues in the pharmaceutical and insurance industries are by now well aware, HCAN constitutes a double-threat to those standing in the way of solving America's health care crisis. As it was built to do, the well-funded coalition wields influence inside Washington and out, where it controls a millions-strong activist army, with constituent group organizations complimented by 80 full-time HCAN field staff in 42 states. "We represent the deepest single-issue coalition in modern American history," says HCAN co-chair and USAction director, Jeff Blum.
The campaign was hatched during a conversation between Blum and Richard Kirsch, one of his board members and current director of HCAN. They were imagining what it would take to push through universal health care, once and for all, sooner rather than later. The wishlist that resulted from their musings -- legions of activists, more resources, better research -- led to the idea of a broad coalition that combined Beltway influence and grassroots muscle. Blum and Kirsch first brought together SEIU and AFSCME, two unions with large memberships in the health care sector. The directors of those two groups plus USAction became the founding three co-chairs. By the time HCAN launched the following July, the steering board included community organizations like ACORN, and health care provider organizations like the American Nurses Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Center for American Progress provides the coalition with think-tank heft, as well as further links to the incoming administration and Congress.
HNAC's constituent groups sometimes overlap, yet each brings a unique set of experiences and expertise to the table. "The coalition has a very smart design to it," says Lisa Codispoti of the National Women's Legal Center, which sits on HCAN's steering board. "There is a synergy between all of the groups, each of which adds to the narrative." As an example, Codispoti points to a recent National Women's Law Center report detailing how women pay higher premiums in the private health insurance market. Other HCAN group -- from the Children's Defense Fund to the National Council of La Raza -- have produced similar studies focused on other segments of the population. The result is a tapestry of expertise that forms a comprehensive condemnation of America's private employer-based system. This expertise is useful to both challenge industry propaganda and guide lawmakers as they debate and craft a final bill.
"We're part of a lot of coalitions, but HCAN is edgy in a unique way," says Linda Tran, an SEIU spokesperson. "It has a 'street heat' that we're known for as well. The combination of grassroots and new media and online organizing gives it a special force and energy."
Defeating the Republican and Big Business message machines while uniting Democrats of different stripes behind bold reform will demand nothing less. Although hardly cash-poor, HCAN and reform advocates continue to play David to industry's Goliath in terms of finances. The $10 million seed grant that HCAN received from Atlantic Charities is roughly equal to the cost of the insurers-sponsored "Harry and Louise" ad campaign of 1993, which helped torpedo the last reform drive.
HCAN is determined to avoid a repeat of that failure. The campaign continues to bolster its coffers, and plans to buy $20 million in ads promoting its vision of a public health care alternative coupled with stricter government regulation of the private health care market. Another key difference between the 1990s and now is an opposition in disarray. The Republicans understand that simply screaming "socialism" is no longer sufficient to derail reform, but lag far behind Democratic efforts to craft policy and build the coalitions needed to push it through. Even if Republicans do manage to unite behind a market-based reform plan, the health care debate has shifted so much over the last 15 years that they will likely find it difficult to defeat a Democratic plan that guarantees affordable coverage to all Americans. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) recently summed up the dilemma in an interview with Politico, saying, "The big thing for Republicans is to communicate that it is not acceptable for 40 million people in America not to have health insurance. But it's also unacceptable to turn our whole health care system over to the same people who ran Katrina and ran the Iraq war and [are] running the bailout."
Those "same people" are, of course, Republicans. Such are the obstacles the GOP faces in the looming health care battle.
Which isn't to say that anybody is predicting a cakewalk. Uniting progressive and fiscally conservative Democrats will require applying sustained heat and effort. And, as they did 16 years ago, the billion-dollar industries can be expected to defend their bottom lines with ferocity and guile. Indeed, the message war is already begun. The Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in mid-November unleashed the first ad in a multi-staged campaign designed to frighten Americans away from the idea that the government should negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare, as President-elect Obama has pledged to do.
"There's no question that next year will be a challenging year," Ken Johnson, senior vice president of PhRMA, recently told the Washington Times. "We've been moving the pieces on the chessboard around for some time now and we've got a great game plan in place. We've earned a right at the table, and we're optimistic that the majority of members of Congress will recognize the importance of the pharmaceutical industry to health care." Among those "pieces on the chessboard" are the millions the pharmaceutical and biotech industries gave to Democrats over the last two cycles.
The insurance industry has likewise begun positioning itself in anticipation of the coming showdown. Two weeks ago, American Health Insurance Plans unveiled its own reform proposal in an attempt to shape the debate before it is shaped by it. At the heart of the AHIP proposal is a deal whereby insurers would accept all comers regardless of prior conditions, but only if there is a federal mandate for universal coverage. Crucially, the plan does not mention "community pricing" (standard rates), meaning millions of sick or high-risk Americans would still be priced out of coverage. Along with helping to influence the shape of a final bill through its legislative outreach team, which has been working on the Hill since summer, HCAN plans to expose and kill such sham industry reform proposals in the crib.
In its first post-election ad buy, HCAN recently launched a spot in the D.C.-area aimed at Congress. The 30-second ad features footage from an October 4 speech Barack Obama gave in Newport News, VA, in which the then-candidate described health care as central to the broader project of rescuing the economy and rebuilding the middle class. "We are reminding Congress and the incoming administration of the commitment to health care that won the White House and increased majorities," says HNAC director Richard Kirsch.
HCAN intends to turn up the pressure on Congress after inauguration and focus resources on stiffening the spines of centrist Democrats as the debate intensifies, which a mounting number of signals indicate will happen earlier in 2009 than many expected. Along with the funds for strategic media buys, HCAN's not-so-secret weapon is an intimidating, indeed historic, activist base. "The vision from the beginning was to bring together the largest membership groups in the country to form a coalition that combines impact in Washington with a massive field presence across the country," says Kirsch.
Once the health care battle is won, could the HCAN coalition stay together to fight for other planks on a progressive agenda? Kirsch says the coalition does not anticipate outlasting the current mission, but believes the new relationships developed among its members "should provide new openings for progressive organizing in the future." But first things first. "HCAN was formed to win health care for all," says Kirsch. "Right now we are very focused on doing just that."

Betty Page

2008-11-13T02:35:00.000-08:00

Betty Page died last week. A sad day for many of us a day of reflection for those of us who knew her in the side wise vauge way she allowed. Rest in Peace.

Creationism is FUNNY

2008-11-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

I'm Going To Miss Sarah Palin

2008-11-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

And so we bid farewell to Sarah Palin. How I'll miss her daily presence in my life! The mooseburgers, the wolf hunts, the kids named after bays and sports and trees and airplanes and who did not seem to go to school at all, the winks and blinks, the cute Alaska accent, the witch-hunting pastor and those great little flared jackets, especially the gray stripey one. People say she was a dingbat, but that is just sexist: the woman read everything, she said so herself; her knowledge of geography was unreal -- she knew just where to find the pro-America part of the country; and don't forget her keen interest in ancient history! Thanks largely to her, Bill Ayers is now the most famous sixtysomething professor in the country -- eat your heart out, Ward Churchill! You can snipe all you want, but she was truly God's gift: to Barack Obama, Katie Couric -- notice no one's making fun of America's sweetheart now -- Tina Fey, bloggers and columnists all over America.

She was also a gift to feminism. Seriously. I don't mean she was a feminist -- she told Couric she considered herself one (Yeah and I’m a squid), but in a later interview, perhaps after looking up the meaning of the word, coyly wondered why she needed to "label" herself. And I don't mean she had a claim on the votes of feminists or women -- why should women who care about equality vote for a woman who wants to take their rights away? Elaine Lafferty, a former editor of Ms., made a splash by revealing in The Daily Beast (Tina Brown's new website, for those of you still following the news on paper) that she has been working as a consultant to Palin. In a short but painful piece of public relations called "Sarah Palin's a Brainiac," Lafferty claimed to find in Palin "a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernible pattern of associative thinking and insight," with a "photographic memory," as smart as legendary Senator Sam Ervin (I had to look him up too), "a woman who knows exactly who she is." According to Lafferty, all that stuff about library censorship and rape kits was just "nonsense" -- and feminists who held Palin's wish to criminalize abortion against her were Beltway feminist-establishment elitists who shop at Whole Foods when they should be voting against Barack Obama to make the Democrats stop taking women for granted.

So the first way Palin was good for feminism is that she helped us clarify what it isn't: feminism doesn't mean voting for "the woman" just because she's female, and it doesn't mean confusing self-injury with empowerment, like the Ellen Jamesians in The World According to Garp (I'll vote for the forced-childbirth candidate, that'll show Howard Dean!). It isn't just feel-good "you go, girl" appreciation of female moxie, which I cheerfully acknowledge Palin has by the gallon. As I wrote when she was selected, if she were my neighbor I would probably like her -- at least until she organized with her fellow Christians to ban abortion at the local hospital, as Palin did in the 1990s. Yes, feminism is about women getting their fair share of power, and that includes the top jobs -- but that can't take a back seat to policies that benefit all women: equality on the job and the legal framework that undergirds it, antiviolence, reproductive self-determination, healthcare, education, childcare and so on. Fortunately, women who care about equality get this -- dead-enders like the comically clueless Lynn Forester de Rothschild got lots of press, but in the end Obama won the support of the vast majority of women who had supported Hillary Clinton.

Second, Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists -- Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly -- insisted that a mother of five, including a "special-needs" newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived. All these things have officially morphed from sins to "challenges," just part of normal family life. I’d love to see that attitude applied by some of my nay-sayersto my own life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah women can do just about anything they want as long as we don't have an abortion.

Third, while Palin did not win the Hillary vote, the love she got from Republican women, including very conservative, traditional women, shows that what I like to call the feminism of everyday life is taking hold across the spectrum. That old frilly-doormat model of femininity is gone: even women who stay home and attend churches that bar women from the clergy thrill to the idea of women being all that they can be and taking their rightful place in the public realm. Like everyone else, they want respect and power, and now, finally, thanks to the women's movement they despise, they may actually get some.

Finally, Palin completed the task Hillary Clinton began: running in different parties across a single political season, they have normalized the idea of a woman in the White House. It is hard even to remember now how iconoclastic Hillary was -- how hard it was for her to negotiate femininity and ambition, to be warm but not weak, smart but not cold, attractive but not sexy, dynamic but not threatening. Only a year ago, it was a real question whether men would vote for a woman or, for that matter, whether women would. Palin may have been unfit for high office, but just by running she showed there was more than one mode for a female politician. After almost two years of the whole country watching two very different women in the White House race, it finally seems normal.

So thanks, Sarah. And now, please -- back to your iceberg.

The Death of the GOP?

2008-11-09T04:42:00.000-08:00

I'd like to think so but it isn't. They have been sending out a massive cry for help of late though; "GOP to Public: 'We're Utterly Lost, Do You Have Suggestions?'".

It's an unusual concession, isn't it?

Given this week's results, it stands to reason that those in positions of power in the Republican Party are in a tough spot. Worse, they have to figure out a way forward without any real ideas or policy solutions that Americans might like.

So, in an exercise that seems rather sad, the RNC is turning to the rank and file, hoping they might have some ideas on how the party can pull itself out of its ditch. (via the "Rachel Maddow Show" from last night)

Republicans are trying to figure out what went wrong, so they've decided to listen up by inviting supporters to weigh in with their views on the election outcome and where the party should go from here.

Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. (Mike) Duncan said today the party will be creating a Web site to gather feedback from GOP voters.

"In the coming weeks the RNC will launch a new online initiative called 'Republicans for a Reason," Duncan said at a National Press Club gathering. "It will provide voters a forum to speak their mind; to tell us why they are Republicans; to tell us how we may have let them down this year; and what we can do to restore their confidence in our party."

It's an unusual concession, isn't it? Republicans are effectively telling voters, "We're lost and hope someone might give us some direction."

In fact, the Guardian reported that voters can also offer the RNC advice on what to do next through a "hotline," appealing for suggestions from the public on how to rebuild. (I've looked around the phone number, but I haven't tracked it down. If anyone knows how to call into the hotline, let me know.)

The point, of course, isn't that Republicans are trying some new gimmicks, but rather, that the party has fallen so far, it doesn't even know what to do next.

The debate over which is the "party of ideas" appears to be over -- as is Karl Rove's idea of "permanent" Republican majority.

So Who's The Real Americans Now

2008-11-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

So who's a real American now?

We all are.

With his decisive triumph over Senator John McCain, Senate Barack Obama made obvious history: he is the first black (or biracial) man to win the presidency. But the meaning of his victory -- in which Obama splashed blue across previously red states -- extends far beyond its racial significance. Obama, a former community organizer and law professor, won the White House as one of the most progressive (or liberal) nominees in the Democratic Party's recent history. Mounting one of the best run presidential bids in decades, Obama tied his support for progressive positions (taxing the wealthy to pay for tax cuts for working Americans, addressing global warming, expanding affordable health insurance, withdrawing troops from Iraq) to calls for cleaning up Washington and for crafting a new type of politics. Charismatic, steady, and confident, he melded substance and style into a winning mix that could be summed up in simple and basic terms: hope and change.

After nearly eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, Obama was the non-Bush: intelligent, curious, thoughtful, deliberate, and competent. His personal narrative -- he was the product of an unconventional family and worked his way into the Nation’s governing class -- fueled his campaign narrative. His story was the American Dream v2.0. He was change, at least at skin level. But he also championed the end of Bushism. He had opposed the Iraq war. He had opposed Bush's tax cuts for the rich. He was no advocate of let-'er-rip, free market capitalism or American unilateralism. In policy terms, Obama represents a serious course correction.

And more. In the general election campaign, McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, turned the fight for the presidency into a culture clash. They accused Obama of being a socialist. They assailed him for having associated with William Ayers, a former, bomb-throwing Weather Underground radical,who has since become an education expert. Palin indirectly referred to Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who once preached fiery sermons denouncing the United States government for certain policies. On the campaign trail, Palin suggested there were "real" parts of America and fake parts. At campaign events, she promoted a combative, black-helicopter version of conservatism: if you're for government expansion, you're against freedom. During her one debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, she hinted that if her opponents won the White House there might come a day when kids would ask their grandparents what it had been like to live in a free country. At McCain-Palin rallies, supporters shouted out, "Communist!" and "terrorist!" and "Muslim!" when the Republican candidates referred to Obama. And McCain and Palin hurled the standard charges at Obama: he will raise your taxes and he is weak on national security.

Put it all together and the message was clear: there are two types of Americans. Those who are true Americans -- who love their nation and cherish freedom -- and those who are not. The other Americans do not put their country first; they blame it first. The other Americans do not believe in opportunity; they want to take what you have and give it to someone else. The other Americans do not care about Joe the Plumber; they are out-of-touch elitists who look down on (and laugh at) hard-working, church-going folks. The other Americans do not get the idea of America. They are not patriots. And it just so happens that the other America is full of blacks, Latinos, gays, lesbians, and non-Christians.

McCain, Palin and their compatriots did what they could to depict Obama as the rebel chief of this other un-American America. (Hillary Clinton helped set up their effort during the primaries by beating the Ayers drum.) Remember the stories of Obama's supposed refusal to wear a flag pin or place his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance? The emails about Obama being a secret Muslim? The goal was to delegitimize Obama, as well as the Americans who were moved by his biography, his rhetoric, and his ideas. It was back to the 1960s -- drawing a harsh line between the squares (the real Americans) and the freaks (those redistribution-loving, terrorist-coddling faux Americans).

It didn't work.

With the nation mired in two wars and beset by a financial crisis, Obama mobilized a diverse coalition that included committed Democratic liberals turned on by his policy stands (unabashed redistributionists, no doubt) and less ideologically-minded voters jazzed by his temperament, meta-themes, and come-together message. He showed that the old Republican attack tactics do not always draw blood. A candidate could advocate raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations and withstand being called a socialist. A candidate could advocate talking to the nation's enemies and withstand being tagged weak and dangerous. A candidate could be non-white, have an odd name, boast a less-than-usual ancestry, be an unrepentant Ivy Leaguer, profess a quiet and thoughtful patriotism (that encompasses both love and criticism of country), and still be a real American. And become president.

How He Did It -- The Primaries

From the start of the campaign, Obama and his advisers -- notably campaign manager David Plouffe and chief strategist David Axelrod -- shared a vision of how a freshman senator with relatively little national experience could reach the White House. Obama presented himself as an agent of change leading a movement for change. Given that a large majority of the voters believed the nation was heading in the wrong direction after two terms of George W. Bush, this was not the most brilliant of strategic strokes. But Obama had the chops to pull it off. He spoke well, he conveyed intelligence and energy, and he advocated policies that seemed like an antidote to the Bush years. And he effectively matched his own personal story (a best-selling book!) to this message of renewal.

Throughout the primaries, Obama addressed the sense of disenfranchisement Democrats and independents (and even some Republicans) had experienced during the W years. As these citizens watched Bush and Dick Cheney dole out tax cuts to the wealthy, do nothing about global warming, launch an optional war in Iraq, and expand secrecy and executive power, many felt locked out. It didn't help that Bush and his crowd appeared dismissive of those who disagreed with them, decrying elitism and playing to conservative know-nothingism. Obama came along and invited primary voters to join a crusade for change -- which meant a crusade against them. It was a chance to strike back against the empire. Obama understood the need of many to reclaim their country. The right has often exploited such a sentiment. Think of the rise of the Moral Majority. But Obama was not playing the resentment card.

Crucial to his success was Obama's decision to keep anger (at least his own) out of the equation. For him and his supporters, there was cause to be damn mad. From their perspective, the country had been hijacked by Bush, Cheney and a small band of neocons. (A view they could hold with much justification.) But Obama appeared to have made a calculation: an angry black man could not win over a majority of the voters. He offered voters not fury, but hope. And considering his "improbable" -- as he put it -- rise, he was a natural pitchman for hope. Fixating on hope allowed him to talk about the problems of the United States (past and present) while remaining an optimist. Americans tend not to elect purveyors of doom and gloom to the presidency. Usually the candidate with the sunnier disposition wins. It's not hard to fathom why. When Americans select a president, many are voting for the person who they believe best reflects their own idea of America. Voting for president has a strong psychological component. It's how Americans define their nation. So personal attributes -- character, strength, biography, personality -- are important.

Obama described his presidential bid not as a campaign of outrage but as a cause of hope -- a continuation of the grand and successful progressive movements of the past. For Democratic voters, he had the appropriate liberal policy stances. He had a record as a reformer in the Illinois state senate and the US Senate. But he provided more than resumé; he served up inspiration. Obama could advocate these policies -- policies that often stir sharp partisan fights in Washington and beyond -- and at the same time convincingly call for a new politics of productivity (not partisanship) in Washington. This took some talent. Mark Schmitt credits what he calls Obama's "communitarian populism" -- a quiet, inclusive populism. Leave your pitchforks at the door. This message and his manner of delivering it led many Democratic voters to conclude that he was the right man for the post-Bush cleanup.

Obama had one big obstacle in the primaries: Hillary Clinton. She had a brand name that attracted and repulsed voters. She ran a conventional campaign. She uttered no talk of any movement. She relied on her resumé, and said she was ready to roll up her sleeves and work for you. Will you hire me as your advocate-in-chief? she asked. Obama was offering music; she was offering math. It was virtually a toss-up for the Democratic electorate. What made the difference was that Obama, the heady candidate, managed his campaign more effectively than Clinton, the down-to-earth candidate, managed hers. Clinton and her crew, after losing in Iowa and then fighting back in New Hampshire, botched the middle stretch and allowed Obama to rack up a series of wins that did give him -- oh, that dreadful word -- momentum. More important, her campaign seemed to bounce from one strategy to the next, as infighting roiled Clintonland. Not until the end of the primaries did Clinton get her groove back, winning over blue-collar voters in once-industrial states as the scrappy working-class hero. But it was too late. The delegate math became undeniable.

In beating Clinton, Obama showed that he had assembled a disciplined and skilled campaign staff. Not once was his campaign rocked by internal dissension. It never went through a staff shakeup. There were no media stories, relying on unnamed sources, revealing major disputes or fundamental disagreements at Obama HQ. ("We had our disagreements," says one top Obama aide. "But they were always within the confines of getting to the best decision. I was stunned by how well it all worked.") Consensus, smooth operations, no signs of turf fights or ego battles -- this is virtually unheard of in a major modern presidential campaigns. Obama even handled his flip-flops -- voting for the telecom immunity bill after vowing not to and opting out of public financing system after indicating he would remain within it -- relatively well. The operation of his campaign sent a signal: Obama was a serious person who could ably handle pressure. Obama preached hope and at the same time he was the CEO of a well-managed enterprise that would raise and spend (in record amounts) hundreds of millions of dollars.

How He Did It -- The General Election

Once it became clear that Obama and McCain would each be the presidential nominee of their respective parties, they faced two big tests -- selecting a running mate and addressing the financial meltdown. Obama passed both; McCain failed both.

Obama's choice of Biden was not inspiring. It was, in a way, a conventional pick, a safe bet (relatively safe, given Biden's penchant for verbal slip-ups). Obama's campaign was predicated on the promise he would shake up Washington. Biden, a three-decade veteran of the Senate, was not known as a rebel. But he had deep foreign policy experience and had spent years courting the working-class voters of Delaware. He could reassure voters worried that Obama had not spent enough years toiling on national security matters. And Biden certainly would not compete with Obama for headlines and screen time. Obama was the inspiration on the ticket. Biden was the insurance policy.

By going with Biden, Obama dared to be boring and indicated he was willing to play it straight when necessary. He abided by the first rule of veep selection: do no harm. McCain took another route. He gambled. He picked a governor little-known on the national stage -- a woman whom even McCain barely knew. It gave his campaign a shot of excitement and surprise. Her performance at the Republican convention was dazzling. But this high did not last, as Palin did miserably in media interviews. Several conservative columnists had to admit she was not ready for prime time. Within weeks, McCain's act of daring was widely perceived as an act of recklessness. Her approval ratings plummeted. Polls indicated she was a drag on a ticket and a prominent reason why some voters were not favoring McCain.

Palin was strike one. Strike two was McCain's erratic response to the financial crisis -- saying different things, deciding to suspend his campaign but then suspending the suspension. His actions reinforced the impression created by the Palin misstep: he likes to shoot from the hip. But with the economy and Wall Street in a free fall, many voters were probably not eager for another cowboy president. Meanwhile, Obama, who met with establishment advisers and calmly backed the $700 billion bailout (which McCain also endorsed), looked like the adult in the room that crucial week, which culminated in the first debate. That face-off, according to the insta-polls, was a win for Obama, as were the next two confrontations.

Weeks into the general election, Obama had made a pivot -- but so smoothly that most of the politerati did not even see it. He had gone from the inspiring movement leader calling for wholesale change in Washington to a reassuring figure who demonstrated that he could play well with the establishment. The younger and less experienced of the two nominees seemed better suited to handle a crisis. Iraq and national security were no longer the issues; the economy was. And Obama showed he possessed the steadier hand. At the final debate, as McCain jabbed with punches that packed not much punch, Obama came across as confident if not so dynamic. But when the world is cracking up, who wants pizzazz?

Losing on the economy front -- and in the temperament contest -- McCain, with Palin acting like his gun moll, stepped up his use of the standard GOP attack lines. He went back to basics. Obama, he contended, yearned to raise taxes not just on the rich but on everybody. Even though independent experts had concluded that middle-class voters would receive a bigger tax cut under Obama's proposal than McCain's, the McCain camp kept issuing charges about Obama's tax aims that were not true. They found a mascot in Joe the Plumber (who was not really named Joe and not really a plumber). And they whipped up the old tax-and-spend fear about Democrats.

"Now is no the time to experiment with socialism," Palin exclaimed at rallies, ignoring the fact that she presides over the socialistic state of Alaska (which redistributes tax revenues collected from oil companies to the state's citizens). She dubbed Obama "Barack the Wealth Spreader." At a McCain rally near St. Louis, Representative Todd Akin (R-MO) said, "This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing. It's a referendum on socialism.” Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) weighed in on Obama: "With all due respect, the man is a socialist.” McCain repeatedly referred to Obama as the "redistributionist-in-chief," often stumbling over the phrase. He must have forgotten that during a 2000 campaign event, he was asked, "Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism," and McCain replied, "Here's what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more."

It was an anti-intellectual attack -- taxes equals socialism -- ignoring basic facts and the personal history of McCain (who was roundly accused by conservatives of engaging in "class warfare" in 2000 when he opposed George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich). The point was to strike fear into the hearts of voters who make far less money than Obama's proposed threshold for tax hikes. McCain was not appealing to the better nature of voters.

Putting up a fierce fight, Obama did not make it personal. He paid tribute to McCain's military service. But he slammed McCain for standing with Bush on economic issues. "If you want to know where Senator McCain will drive this economy, just look in the rearview mirror," Obama told campaign audiences. And he challenged the Big Idea of the Republican Party:

The last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven't worked, and it's time for change.

Obama wasn't just taking on Bushism. He was taking on Reaganism.

McCain, Palin, and their supporters did make it personal. They claimed that Obama was misleading the voters, that he was not what he seemed. They argued that he was not up to the job. The McCain-Palin campaign ran a series of ads -- one falsely asserted that Obama had supported teaching kindergartners "comprehensive sex education" -- that various MSM outlets pronounced untruthful and unfair. The Straight Talk Express was derided as a cavalcade of misrepresentation. The McCain-Palin campaign revived the Bill Ayers attack. It tried to brand Obama an associate of anti-Semites, pointing to his relationship with a Palestinian scholar -- without producing evidence that this Palestinian was anti-Semitic. (The International Republican Institute, a group chaired by McCain, had given over $400,000 to a group co-founded by this scholar.)

It was an ugly assault. Speaking in support of McCain and Palin, Representative Robin Hayes (R-NC) declared, "Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God." McCain supporters referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama." At a Palin rally, Representative Steve King (R-IA) said that an Obama victory would cause the United States to turn into a “totalitarian dictatorship.” Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) declared that Obama was "anti-American." While she was at it, she urged the media to investigate and root out anti-Americanism within the US Congress.

This mud did not stick. Perhaps worse for McCain, his camp never presented a coherent strategic argument for its candidate. Obama had change and hope. McCain had no real case for McCain -- other than he was a POW who put his country first. What did he want to do as president? Serve his country again. He essentially asked to be rewarded for his past service and sacrifice. He didn't feel the voters' pain; he wanted them to feel his. And his campaign ended up being defined mostly by its retro attack on Obama: he's an untested and untrustworthy liberal.

Most of the voters disagreed.

With his victory, Obama has ended the Bush II era with an exclamation point. (The Democratic gains in Congress seconded the point.) Now Obama faces a restoration project of unprecedented proportions. It may take years for him and the rest of Washington to remedy the ills neglected, exacerbated or caused by the Bush presidency. And he will have a tough time matching progress to promise. At his victory celebration in Chicago before tens of thousands, he lowered expectations: "the road ahead will be long. The climb ahead will be steep." And he noted that his electoral victory merely provided "only the chance for us to make that change."

But his barrier-breaking victory was indeed change in itself. Consider this: Obama ended his campaign at a rally on Monday night in Manassas, Virginia, the site of Battle of Bull Run, the opening land battle of the Civil War, in which Union troops were routed and forced to retreat back to Washington, DC There before a crowd of 90,000 -- young, old, black, white, affluent, working-class -- Obama summed up his case:

“Tomorrow, you can turn the page on policies that have put greed and irresponsibility before hard work and sacrifice. Tomorrow, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class and create new jobs, grow this economy so everybody has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO but the secretary and the janitor, not just the factory owner but the men and women who work the factory floors. And tomorrow, you can end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that pits region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat, that asks us to fear at a time when we need to hope.”

A black man on the verge of being elected president said that.

But race is just one part of the tale. Obama has done more than become a first. He has redrawn the electoral map (take that, Karl Rove) and reshaped the political culture of the United States. He has transformed the image of the United States -- abroad and at home. (He vowed in Chicago that "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.") Above all, after eight troubling years and after decades of ideological civil war, Obama has redefined what is real America. "Who knew that we were the Silent Majority?" his press secretary Linda Douglass said moments after Obama left the stage in Grant Park.

The voters who see President-elect Obama as the embodiment of their America can trade the Yes We Can motto for a new one: Yes We Are.

Sources:
The Washington Post
NPR
The LA Times
UNTE
CBS
ABC
MSNBC
Air America
BBC News
CBC News
The Charleston Political Review
The Seattle Times
The Stranger
The Flagpole

Alien Comfort

2008-11-06T06:04:00.000-08:00

Not everyone is happy that Obama won.

From The Weekly World News: Alien cries for McCain

"PHOENIX, AZ - The Alien is in remorse over his first ever incorrect presidential endorsement.

The Alien, well known for correctly endorsing every presidential winner since 1980, is in shock over his first losing endorsement.

The Alien was not available for comment, but issued a statement that sent his condolences to both the American public and Senator John McCain for getting it wrong. His mortification is only intensified by McCain’s proud acceptance of his endorsement just the day before.

Insiders believe the Alien will beam himself this evening to McCain’s home to offer the Senator a shoulder to cry on."

I am almost positive this picture is fake. After all, the aliens must have known about Tom Tancredo.

Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to Fark.

Hate Mongers And A Few 11th Hour Post

2008-11-03T03:23:00.000-08:00

Wow, there is a lot of hate mongering twits out there and they are not afraid to be documented on it even if their own documentation practices are a little questionable. Check this out;

In recent months, conservatives have been caught red-faced spreading smears about Barack Obama via emails and blogs and Web sites, their sources eventually unmasked as tainted or non-existent people. Now here's another example, but this one is a little different--the source is a Washington Post reporter named Dale Lindsborg.

Of course, there is no Dale Lindsborg at the Post (or seemingly anywhere) but when did that get in the way of a good smear?

Even a giveaway line in his alleged account where Obama endorses an old Coke commercial song as our new national anthem did not deter some from believing it and making it "viral."

For many weeks the "Lindsborg" account of an Obama appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sept. 7 has been rocketing around the world and back again via email and the Internet, sometimes showing up at reputable sites -- such as the Post itself -- in their Comments sections. Someone even brought it up on Wednesday in an online chat with Washington Post reporter Ann Kornblut at the paper's site. She said she knew of no Lindsborg but would check on it (hey, put Bob Woodward on the case).

The charge is the old familiar tale of Obama not believing in honoring the flag, and hating America, with the new twist that he said this on "Meet the Press" a month ago (somehow the world missed this) and that it has been confirmed by the aforementioned Dale Lindsborg.

It was debunked on the snopes.com site, which traced it back to a satiric entry at an obscure site that was taken seriously and spread widely.

The giveaway should have been Obama saying he wanted to junk our "bellicose" national anthem, the "Star-Spangled Banner," and replace it with the more peaceful "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" -- adding that if that was our anthem "then I might salute it."

He supposedly then added, "It's my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren." And: "My wife disrespects the Flag for many personal reasons. Together she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past, many years ago."

Reporter "Lindsborg" then winds up his account: "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it right. This could possibly be our next President. I, for one, am speechless."

Taylor Batten, editorial page editor at the Charlotte Observer, commented yesterday at one of his paper's blogs, "Come on, people. You're e-mailing this to all your friends, in a panic, in disbelief that this man is leading in the polls.

"Here's an idea: think for yourself! Spend, oh, 10 seconds on Google and see if there really is a"Dale Lindsborg" at the Washington Post. Spend 30 seconds seeing if Obama was even ON the Sept. 7 'Meet the Press.' Are you so predisposed to one candidate or the other that you can't think critically?"

It was Jesus Christ, if Matthew is to be believed, who said, "Love thine enemy." It is in that spirit that I write this belated valentine to Sarah Palin.

Sarah, I love you for having revealed unto the media the snarling heart of the beast that is the base (and the soul) of the Republican Party. Yes, you have the lipstick and the heels, not to mention the calves and bosoms, that send Republican men into swoons, but you have more; the pit-bull snarl that rouses your supporters to cry out, "Traitor!" against Obama, and "Kill him!"

George Bush kept those folks in their kennels, ran as a "compassionate conservative," and always masked his most heinous plans in double speak. Bush the Elder, Ronald Reagan, and even Richard Nixon never explicitly ran on hate and fear of "the other." They used words that were coded enough that it was possible to pretend that they were true.

But now the beast is loose.

The Republican Party likes to remember Abraham Lincoln. And so they should. It's a nice memory and brings credit to them. As does the accidental ascension of Teddy Roosevelt, environmentalist and basher of corporations. Back in the 1950s and '60s, their party included such figures as Dwight Eisenhower -- whose reputation grows ever better in retrospect -- Nelson Rockefeller, who built New York's state university system, and New York City mayor John Lindsey.

But there is another strand that runs through their history.

Back in the 1840s, there was a group called the Know Nothings. They were against immigrants and for real Americans. ("Real American" did not then, as it does not now, refer to Indians; it refers to descendants of English immigrants.) The movement was based on fear. Irish and German Catholics were going to take over. They would take orders from the Pope-in-Rome (one word). Their values were not "our values." They drank. Their nunneries were virtual brothels and when the nuns had babies they practiced infanticide.

The Know Nothings started with secret societies like the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, associated with William Poole, better known as Bill the Butcher, depicted by Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York. Their public political face was the American Republican Party, which became the Native American Party, and finally the American Party.

Their platform was:

Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
Restricting political office to "native-born" Americans.
Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
Restricting public school teaching to Protestants.
Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools (from the Protestant version of the Bible).
Restricting the sale of liquor.

For a brief time, the American Party was wildly popular. In 1854 party membership swelled from 50,000 to over a million in a matter of months. It elected mayors in Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Chicago, and won the state legislature and governorship of Massachusetts.

But there were other things going on: the Mexican War, slavery, secession, and the Civil War. The movement didn't last long and was soon absorbed by the Republican Party.

Fair is fair. Things morph and change. The Republican Party freed the slaves and tried to create an interracial democratic South during Reconstruction. The Democratic Party became the party of segregation in the South and the second home of the Klu Klux Klan. To be Republican is not to be necessarily narrow-minded and in dread fear of foreigners. To be Democratic is not necessarily to be liberal, progressive and open-minded.

But enough of being fair.

The Great Depression demonstrated that the principles of the Republican Party were bankrupt. Like most of the country. The Democrats became the progressive party, representing social justice and programs that would protect capitalism from its own worst tendencies, moving toward a vision of a perfectable world. The Republicans became -- in a very literal sense -- a reactionary party, reacting against whatever the Democrats were doing, engaged in a 60-year-long war against the New Deal.

Lyndon Johnson is the pivotal figure, both heroic and deeply tragic. The Democratic Party's dirty public secret was that its political hegemony rested on the Solid South, still refusing to vote Republican out of hatred of Lincoln. Johnson knew that if he pushed through the Civil Rights Act his party would lose the South for a generation. Or more. His heroism is that he did anyway. No, he did not end the race issue, but he broke the back of segregation.

The Republicans saw their opportunity. They pursued the Southern Strategy, wooing resentful whites with great success.

But two things happened.

Racism became less and less tenable. The generation that cherished it has grown old. That pillar of the Republican Party is crumbling.

And then along came Bush-Cheney. Like Herbert Hoover, in the process of leading the country to bankruptcy they demonstrated that the Republican Party's ideas were also bankrupt. They made government bigger, not smaller -- and more intrusive, too. They didn't oppose special interests, they were the special interests. They didn't oppose lobbyists, they forced lobbyists to join their party at fiscal gunpoint. They were militaristic on parade, but could not run a war. They could not protect the country nor punish the people who actually attacked us. Their policies demonstrated that free markets are a fiction, and real markets need more supervision than a grade-school playground.

Along came John McCain. He looked out, from sea to shining sea, from the mountains, to the prairies, in search of voters who would vote for him. All he could find were the new Know Nothings. People who, frightened of the way things are changing, want to change back to that white, Protestant place it was, oh, sometime back before 1840. America Firsters. Anti-immigrant. Anti-foreigner. Anti-elite. Anti-intelligence.

Not quite capable of running as a true Know Nothing himself, he chose someone who could: Sarah Palin. She does it well, and in so doing, shows us, clearly and simply, who they really are.

Jack-O-Lanterns

2008-10-30T05:14:00.000-07:00

FOX News, The Idiots News Source

2008-10-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

Check out this story I read this morning. I am all but sure people who believe that FOX news is fair and balanced must have the IQ's of rock snails.

FOX News is in the desperate throes of backing a losing party. Despite what Megyn "Obama's Baby Mama" Kelly would have you believe, FOX has been the GOP's mouthpiece throughout this election, viciously maligning Barack Obama while pushing the party's conservative agenda. (For proof of just how much slander they have spewed, check out FOX Attacks Obama, FOX Attacks Obama 2, or FOX Attacks Obama Just Like Kerry.) In fact, I hold them as responsible as McCain's most bigoted supporters for stoking the racial prejudice and xenophobic hatred that we're now seeing in campaign events across the country. Amazingly though, the Obama campaign has begun calling out FOX for their loathsome media bias.

First, Obama criticized FOX on national television during the third presidential debate. Then, in an interview for The New York Times Sunday magazine, Obama told Matt Bai, "I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls." And now we have Obama staffers confronting FOX on their own network. Just watch as Bill Burton remains unflappable during this heated exchange with Kelly, who completely loses her cool.

In response to McCain's ludicrous attack on Obama for being "the Redistributor" of wealth -- an attack FOX has of course perpetuated and exacerbated with their Joe the Plumber socialist nonsense -- Burton calmly tells Kelly: "This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of FOX News, the Drudge Report and John McCain, who apparently decided to close out his campaign with the same false, desperate attacks that have failed for months."

It is, as Burton says, a fake news controversy. Even conservatives like George Will have said that 95 percent of the government's job is to redistribute wealth. But in a hopeless attempt to paint Obama as a Socialist, the Republicans and FOX News alike are on the verge of losing a crucial ideological battle on free market fundamentalism, which is probably why Burton's composure causes Kelly to become choleric.

FOX isn't merely rearranging the deck chairs on the GOP's Titanic anymore. They're violently throwing those chairs at everyone trying to make their way to a lifeboat.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Voter Fraud ? Really Now, Seriously...

2008-10-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

The way that the GOP spin-doctors are ranting on about voter fraud and ACORN one would think that they have some kind of selective amnesia concerning the 2000 election. Yes allegations of voter fraud and abuse should be thoroughly investigated but I personally think that The Republicans are worried about something like the 1992 election happening again. An unforeseen voter base rising out of apathy and obscurity to turn an election. The end of 8 plus years of Republican doctrine being replaced from the left by a progressive new face. The parallels are not exact but they are interesting.

This from The La Times:

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported on the Republican voter registration outfit who had allegedly been illegally changing thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican.

Last night the head of that GOP backed group, Mark Anthony Jacoby of Young Political Majors (YPM), was arrested by the California State Election Fraud Taskforce and the Oxnard Police.

According to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's press release, Jacoby himself had committed voter registration fraud and perjury by lying on his own voter registration form. (That's similar to what Ann Coulter did, though she not only committed felony voter registration fraud, she also committed actual voter fraud, as well, even though such fraud is exceedingly rare.)

It was a pleasure to break this story today on Fox "News" of all places! Thanks to VotersUnite! editor John Gideon for getting it posted as I was on the roll towards the studio. I'll have the video up of my appearance on Fox, and the "Fox News Alert" I was able to do, later tonight.

Please note, this isn't the first time there have been serious problems with GOP-gathered voter registrations in CA, as outlined recently at Alternet. Looks like the GOP's voter registration record for errors far outpaced ACORN! Whaddaya know?

A Wave Of New Energy

2008-10-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

The resource is clean, renewable and vast. In fact, it covers 70 percent of the planet. That would be the ocean, with endless waves and ceaseless tides that can be harnessed to create electricity with zero carbon or particulate emissions. If logistical, environmental and efficiency challenges can be overcome -- a big "if" -- this could be a major clean energy source for the half of the world's population who live within 50 miles of coasts.

So far wave and tidal power have not been tapped on a commercial scale, but a number of pilot projects are underway worldwide and so far the prospects seem relatively promising.

This summer the world's first commercial offshore wave power project was launched off the coast of Portugal. The Agucadora Wave Park consists of three 142-meter-long hinged steel tubes called Pelamis machines. As waves move along the tubes, they move up and down and hydraulic devices at the joints generate electricity. The project plans call for 25 Pelamis machines generating up to 21 megawatts of power, which would save 60,000 tons of carbon emissions per year compared to a fossil fuel plant making the same amount of energy.

Meanwhile a commercial shore-based wave energy project was also launched in Islay, Scotland. The LIMPET, or Land Installed Marine Powered Energy Transformer, is attached to the shore and uses the waves' momentum to funnel air into turbines to produce electricity. Plans are also in the works for a 40-turbine, four megawatt wave project in Scotland's Siadar Bay which could provide electricity for a fifth of Scotland's population.

Australia, England and Israel are among other countries where the government and private companies are actively pursuing wave power.

As with other renewable energy methods the US is lagging behind Europe, but there are a number of wave power projects in the works off the west coast. In September Oregon State University's Hatfield Center and the University of Washington secured a $6.25 million, five-year grant from the Department of Energy for wave energy development including an experimental project involving large energy-generating buoys about 12 miles off Newport, Ore.

"It's very much an emerging technology," said Roger Bedard, head of ocean power for the Electric Power Research Institute, the research and development arm of the utility industry. "I am not ready to say whether the US or the world should add wave power to the portfolio of energy options. What are the effects on sedimentation, fish, marine mammals, whales migrating from Alaska to Baja? First we need to do pilot testing and get hardware in the water to answer these questions."

Bedard said there are currently about 40 device developers in various stages of development. About six are doing full scale prototype testing, he said, and about 25 more have done subscale testing in the ocean. Others are still testing devices in wave tanks.

In December 2007 the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) issued its first permit for a hydrokinetic wave energy project in the U.S., the Makah Bay Offshore Wave Pilot Project which calls for four floating buoys and an underwater transmission cable two miles off the coast of Washington state. It is being developed by the company Finavera Renewables Ocean Energy and expected to power 150 homes. But Bedard said it still needs permits from multiple government agencies, a lengthy and costly process, to proceed.

"Unfortunately in this country the regulators want to know what the environmental effects are before we put it in the water, but we need to do pilot tests in the water to know," he said. "It's a catch 22." In 2008, FERC permit applications for wave energy projects were filed by Pacific Gas & Electric in Mendocino and Humboldt County, Calif.; and by other private companies in California and Oregon. "PG&E has all the coast of California with good strong waves as their territory," said Bedard. "They're the one utility that can really capitalize in a big way in the future in wave energy."

The company Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is developing a wave project off Reedsport, Ore. involving 10 buoys similar to the ones being tested by Oregon State, which could generate enough power for 1,500 homes. They are still seeking permits but hope to launch a pilot buoy next summer. These buoys need waves at least four feet high and can work in waves up to 22 feet high, according to the company. The motion of the waves essentially moves a piston up and down inside the buoy, which generates electricity magnetically. OPT, founded by an Australian surfer, is a publicly traded company that launched its first test buoy in New Jersey in 1997. An OPT buoy that produces 40 kilowatts is about 52 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, with about 13 feet rising above the ocean surface.

An Irish company called Wavebob with headquarters in Annapolis is also hoping to develop wave projects on the US west coast. The Pacific has much stronger waves than the Atlantic, since winds blow west to east across the globe and hence gain power all across the Pacific before hitting the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. Wave power is also about 10 times stronger in winter than summer.

George Boehlert, director of the Hatfield Center and a professor of fisheries and wildlife at Oregon State, noted that the Pacific Northwest is conducive to wave power because it not only has steady, powerful waves but also electricity transmission infrastructure near the coast.

"There are an awful lot of places where you have very good wave energy, but you don't necessarily have a mechanism to transport it where the power is needed." he said.

"In Oregon we had a lot of industries related to timber and mills at the coast. So we have a lot of substations essentially right near the beach."

The Oregon governor's office has instituted a program to fast track wave power projects, and state officials hope wave power could help them meet a goal of getting 20 percent of the state's power from renewable sources by 2025. A government grant helped form the Oregon Wave Energy Trust, a public-private partnership to study the development of "responsible wave energy."

Wave power has been explored more than tidal power, partly because tidal power is more limited geographically. The power of the tides can generally only be harnessed in a narrow passageway between large bodies of water, for example between a bay or estuary and the open ocean. A major tidal power plant is operating in the Bay of Fundy between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, known for having the world's largest low tide-high tide gap at up to 50 feet. But this project and other proposed tide power schemes involving dams or turbines in the Bay of Fundy have raised serious environmental concerns, including shoreline erosion, contamination and whales stuck behind the generating apparatus.

In the U.S., many tidal areas only vary by about three feet between high and low tide, meaning much less potential energy. But Bedard said places like under the Golden Gate Bridge could still be attractive for tidal power, since they are close to populations which need electricity. "San Francisco is right there, you just plug it into the city," he said. "In Puget Sound, the Admiralty Inlet is just 20 miles from downtown Seattle. Whereas in Alaska, you have a huge tidal resource, but no people and no transmission wires."

There are a number of wave power technologies being tested worldwide, including the Pelamis tubes and the buoys being used off the Pacific Northwest. Boehlert said Oregon State also has experimented with a different prototype he describes as "basically an electromagnetic system like shakeup flashlights."

"Where wave energy is today is similar to where wind was 15 or 20 years ago," said Justin Klure, former director of the Oregon Wave Energy Trust and a consultant with the company Pacific Energy Ventures. "You had four blades, five blades, vertical, horizontal, towers of all heights. Now a 100-meter tower with three blades is the technology of choice. It will be a while before we can make a determination on what technology is most efficient in extracting the linear motion of waves into electricity. It might not be one single device like wind -- there might be multiple devices that make sense."

Researchers at the University of Southampton are developing huge rubber "snakes" known as Anacondas which they hope can generate power more cheaply than most wave technologies, to the tune of six cents per kilowatt hour. The 200-meter-long, seven-meter-diameter Anacondas are rubber tubes sealed, filled with water and placed in the sea facing oncoming waves. The motion of rolling waves passing over them moves the water inside in a "bulge" toward a turbine at one end of the tube to generate electricity.

A technology is being tested off Australia which involves a piston pump attached to the sea floor moved by a float rising and falling on the waves above. Another device developed by the company Energen Wave Power involves floating pontoons and multiple "pivot arms" that capture wave energy. One of Bedard's favorites is an "artificial muscle" being developed at Stanford University which he says, "is very much like a rubber band. You stretch it, and it makes energy." He noted simple devices like this are key, since the off shore location makes maintenance difficult and costly.

"Since the ocean concentrates energy from wind into waves, it's a much higher density resource than wind or solar," he said. "That means the machine to extract it can be smaller, which means less capital. But the kicker is the deployment and maintenance cost. The ocean is a remote and hostile place. Unless developers make something highly highly reliable (that doesn't need much maintenance) it won't be economically successful."

Energy from wave projects is transmitted to the grid through undersea electrical cables, which are commonly used for various purposes including offshore wind farms that are prevalent off several European countries and in development in the U.S.

While land-based and offshore wind farms -most notably the proposed Cape Wind project in the Nantucket Sound -- have provoked significant opposition because of their effects on views, wave energy buoys would be virtually unnoticeable to people onshore.

However wave energy does raise serious environmental concerns, especially in places like the federal Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, where the Makah project would be located. Oregon State is beginning to investigate whether their buoys could alter gray whale migration routes, ocean currents or sand dispersal patterns. Environmentalists also worry about the electromagnetism from undersea transmission cables. And some worry wave power operations could impede the commercial fishing and crabbing industries which are economically crucial to the Pacific Northwest.

"If there are egregious environmental effects, we should not add wave power to our portfolio," said Bedard. "If there are negative effects but they are outweighed greatly by the negative effects of other supplies like coal, maybe we should consider it. (Wave power) should be adaptively managed as part of the national energy supply portfolio."

"It's clear there's a lot of energy in the ocean yet to be tapped," added Klure. "There's no free lunch, there are risks. It's a risk worth taking but we need to do it in a very logical, sequential manner to explore what the real long-term potential is."

Joe "The Plummer" Wurzelbacher

2008-10-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

I read this article this morning in The Washington Post. Not world changing but interesting none the less. I find my self saying Joe Wulzelbizellebizzlebacher constantly. I have heard and read the correct pronunciation but since I break into hysterical laughter ever time I say his name my way I have not bothered to correct my self overly much.

By the way John McCain isn't the only one who can't seem to get the guys name right.

"The real winner" of Wednesday night's debate, John McCain said yesterday at a campaign stop in Downingtown, Pa., "was Joe the Plumber."

That might depend on the definition of "winner."

Joe the Plumber, a.k.a. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, is suddenly (sort of) a household name, featured in a McCain ad and sought after by networks news anchors and newspaper reporters. McCain would like to meet him in person this weekend, but Wurzelbacher's got a date on Mike Huckabee's Fox News show and might not have the time.

But the emergence of Joe has allowed the state of Ohio to locate the man it says owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes. His motives for confronting Sen. Barack Obama at a campaign stop in his neighborhood earlier this week are the subject of intense Internet speculation. The city of Toledo is preparing a letter to his employer seeking to determine whether he is violating city codes, and the plumbers union is on his tail.

"Joe the Plumber really isn't a plumber," said Thomas Joseph, business manager of Local 50 of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics, whose national membership has endorsed Obama.

Wurzelbacher, 34, had already taken tentative steps onto the national stage after talking to Obama on Sunday as the Democrat toured his suburban neighborhood outside Toledo. Wurzelbacher told Obama that he wants to buy the plumbing company he works for, and that his potential income of more than $250,000 would make him eligible for increased taxes under Obama's proposals.
ad_icon

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" Wurzelbacher asked.

Obama's answer to that and a question about the flat tax -- that Obama thought it better to "spread the wealth around" -- captured the attention of conservative media and the McCain campaign.

"Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day," McCain told Obama at the start of Wednesday night's debate. "And he wanted to buy the business, but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes," deferring what McCain called "the American dream."

Joe the Plumber quickly became a metaphor for the middle class, and between them, McCain and Obama mentioned him more than two dozen times.

The result was an avalanche of attention: "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric on the phone, "Good Morning America" awaiting an interview, reporters in the driveway of his modest home.

"I'm completely flabbergasted with this whole thing," he told reporters. He did not return a phone call from The Washington Post.

The morning also showed that the spotlight can be unwelcome. Reporters wondering who Wurzelbacher is quickly found that he owes the state of Ohio $1,182 in back taxes, leading sharp-tongued liberal commentators to say he was not so much concerned about rising taxes as paying taxes at all. (A spokeswoman for the state said it is possible Wurzelbacher did not know about the lien.)
This Story

Wurzelbacher also acknowledged to reporters that he did not have a plumber's license but said he did not need one to do residential work with the two-man Newell Heating and Plumbing Co., which does have a license.

David Golis, a manager in Toledo's office of building inspections, said that is incorrect. "We were just discussing that we will send a letter to the owner of Newell reminding him" of the city's requirement that all who do plumbing work be licensed or in apprentice or journeyman programs, Golis said.

Union manager Joseph said that Wurzelbacher applied for an apprentice program in 2003 but never completed the work.

And Wurzelbacher told reporters that the goal of buying the business was more aspirational than firm. He said his income is "not even close" to the levels at which Obama's proposed tax increases would kick in.

Even if Wurzelbacher's hypothetical were true, tax experts said it is unclear whether he would pay higher taxes under Obama's plan.
ad_icon

Wurzelbacher told Couric that it is Obama's approach to tax increases that are worrisome. "When's he going to decide that $100,000 is too much, you know?" the divorced father of a 13-year-old son said. "I mean, you're on a slippery slope here. You vote on somebody who decides that $250,000 and you're rich? And $100,000 and you're rich? I mean, where does it end?"

McCain senior adviser Matt McDonald said Thursday that the Republican nominee had mentioned Wurzelbacher's encounter with Obama in a previous speech, but the campaign had not said he would be the centerpiece of McCain's debate performance.

That Wurzelbacher is not a licensed plumber or that his situation is not relevant to Obama's tax proposal did not give him pause, McDonald said. "He's a guy who asked a question that needed to be asked," McDonald said. "He's not a campaign staffer; he's not a surrogate. He's not someone who was vetted, and this wasn't something orchestrated by the campaign."

Appearing on CBS's "Late Show With David Letterman" on Thursday night, McCain mentioned the attention Joe the Plumber was getting and said, "Joe, if you're watching, I'm sorry."

Earlier in the day in New Hampshire, Obama said McCain advocates tax plans that favor the rich.

"He's trying to suggest that a plumber is the guy he's fighting for," Obama said. "How many plumbers do you know that are making a quarter-million dollars a year?"

Wurzelbacher has made that he is conservative and no fan of Obama -- he told Couric that Obama's answer to his question was a "tap dance" that was "almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr." -- but declined to say who he will be voting for Nov. 4.

That is between him and the lever in the voting booth, he said.

Watch out for the "First Dude"

2008-10-16T08:45:00.000-07:00

The husband of Sarah Palin, Todd Palin seated behind a White House desk and shaping national policy could be one of the most dangerous aspects of a potential Sarah Palin presidency.

An overlooked part of the Alaska state trooper investigation is its finding on the influence of Gov. Palin's husband, Todd -- the "First Dude" or, as he is known around the Alaska statehouse, the "First Gentleman", or as I like to call him “First #%$&”.

This is crucial in view of the age of the Republican nominee, John McCain, 72, and the fact that he has suffered from melanoma skin cancer. His doctors have pronounced him in excellent health, but his age and the serious nature of this type of cancer should focus attention on his running mate and her operating methods.

A fascinating picture of Todd Palin's influence in Alaska's capital is provided in the report of a legislative investigation that concluded that Gov. Palin unlawfully abused her power in seeking the firing of a state trooper once married to her sister. The report, released Friday, also criticized Palin for allowing Todd Palin to push hard for the dismissal of Trooper Mike Wooten.

Wooten had been married to the governor's sister. Their divorce was messy (Pretty much all divorces are). Wooten's career as a trooper was apparently messy as well. He had been accused of illegally shooting a moose, drinking beer in a patrol car and using a Taser gun on his stepson. Here in The South those types of activities are more likely to win you an accommodation rather than instigate disciplinary action. Wooten was disciplined before Palin became governor and was allowed to remain a trooper. Issue settled right?

Nope.

When Palin took over, the Wooten case was high on the family agenda, with Todd Palin leading the effort to get rid of the trooper. I am familuar with this sort of clannish persecution personally so maybe it hits a nerve with me.

According to Associated Press writer Mike Apuzzo, Todd Palin had "extraordinary access to the governor's office" and he "used that access to try to get [Wooten] fired."

His target was Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he lost his job because he refused to fire Wooten.

The report on the matter, by investigator Stephen Branchflower, a retired state prosecutor, shows how Todd Palin operates.

Monegan's secretary, Cassandra Byrne, said that on Jan. 4, 2007, she received a phone call from the governor's office. An aide told her "the First Gentleman would like to have a meeting with Commissioner Walt Monegan. At the time, I was not familiar with the term 'First Gentleman.' So I kept asking 'Who?' and she eventually said 'Todd Palin.' I said, 'Oh, Okay,' so we set the time and the place which was the governor's office in Anchorage. "

Investigator Branchflower said that when Monegan arrived there he was directed into the governor's office. Todd Palin, wearing a business suit, was alone, waiting for him. "Mr. Palin was seated at a large conference table and invited Mr. Monegan to sit," the report said. Hasn’t James Bond been in this type of situation a few times?

Monegan said, "What I recalled was Todd sitting there. He had three stacks of paper in an array in front of him" dealing with the Wooten case. One was from the Department of Public Safety, under which Alaska state troopers serve. The other two stacks were back issues of “Moose Blasting Monthly” and “Glacial Go-Go Girls” respectively (Okay, I’m kiding about the last two but it could happen).

Monegan told Branchflower that he got "the impression that Todd was not happy with the investigation [that the department had made before disciplining Wooten].

"He told me that he [Wooten] just got a few days off [suspension] and didn't think that was enough. And this guy shouldn't be a trooper."

Describing Todd Palin, Monegan said, "I saw someone who was somewhat animated. Not certainly out of control but he was passionate about how he was addressing the issue. Hell, I’d be passionate too if I had to answer to the Ice Queen back at the old home stead.

"And my impression was that he was venting. I mean there was a complaint, the troopers investigated it and that they had come up with a conclusion and that he was not happy with the conclusion."

The telling vignette shows Todd Palin's position in the governor's office. Dressed in a business suit, seated behind a big conference table with state documents in front of him, he tried to tell the state's top cop how to do his job.

This is a man who was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a radical group advocating Alaskan secession from the United States. Gail Fenumiai, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, told TPM Muckraker that Palin registered as an AIP member in October 1995 and continued in that status until 2000, when he registered as undeclared for a few months. He registered as an AIP member again and remained with the party until 2002, when he registered as undeclared.

What other radical ideas are percolating in the mind of a man who is now portrayed in the media as sort of a lovable guys' guy?

If Sarah Palin ever becomes president, it is safe to assume that the First Gentleman of Alaska will slip into the role of First Gentleman of the United States with as much access to the Oval Office as he has to the governor's office in Anchorage.

That is a truly scary thought.

The After Life

2008-10-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to a ringing telephone. It was God calling, urging me to get over the afterlife thing as quickly as possible.

Horoscope for October 6 - October 12

2008-10-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

Horoscope for October 6 to October 12
By Wiccan Chicken & Pagan Penguin

Aries . No, you can't ease your financial woes by selling your half-eaten sandwich on E-bay.

Taurus . You will watch Watermelon Nights about 35 times before you start weeping because you aren't a cute, happy, singing watermelon...you're just shaped like one.

Today's Birthday : You share the same birthday as Drew Carey. Good, now there is at least one thing interesting about you.

Gemini . You will step in poo this week and kinda like it. It will become a new livelong fixation that will get you a prime spot on a Jerry Springer ripoff show.

Cancer . Nice gas guzzling vehicle you drive there, Al Gore. You know what they say about large carbon footprints...small carbon-based manhoods.

Leo . Your unusual sexual desires are not normal and you should seek help.

Virgo. Your pack rat tendencies are becoming a nuisance to your friends and family. What the heck are you going to do with 75 Chinese food containers with no lids and four metric tons of twist ties?

Libra . That burger you ate last week was made out of people. If it's any consolation, they weren't really nice people. Well, except for one of them. She was really sweet and always recycled.

Scorpio. Every time you Google yourself, a baby kitten dies.

Sagittarius . Your body isn't full of "love bumps". Those are just rolls of hideous fat. And possibly tumors.

Capricorn . Money matters might have you under stress this month. You can always just sell a kidney, or maybe one of your children. Or some of your childrens' kidneys!

Aquarius . Since fall is in the air, now is a good time to refresh your wardrobe, and that even includes your undergarments. At the moment, your underwear has more tracks than your local railroad.

Pisces . It's time for a career change! Before you send out your generic resume to a zillion companies, try to make sure you take down that photo of you pretending to felicitate the Ronald McDonald statue that comes up on Google image searches.

Buddhist Monkey Proverb of the Day: War does not determine who is right; it determines who is left.

Horoscope for Septenber 30- October 5

2008-10-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

HorrorScopes September 30 -October 5
By Wiccan Chicken & Pagan Penguin

Aries . Warming something frozen up in the microwave does not make you a chef. Besides, roadkill should really be grilled or at least deep fried in lard.

Taurus . Your ass has exceeded the weight limit of your pants. Next time, invest in a forklift as an accessory.

Gemini. Your neighbors can smell your laundry hamper from their living room. You should probably pull grandma out of there before they call the cops.

Today's Birthday : As you try to take a bite out of your birthday cake, someone will come up next to you and punch you in the face.

Cancer. Do the world a favor and skip that onion bagel in the morning. Oh, you didn't have an onion bagel? Then what the heck are you brushing your teeth with - armpits?

Leo. You will get your snout stuck in a jar trying to get "Hunny". You will panic and slowly asphyxiate.

Virgo. You are depleting the world's water supply with your horribly dry sense of humor.

Libra. You better watch your step. This level has lava pits. And no magic mushrooms.

Scorpio. Try to shake things up a little bit. But not babies. You should really stop shaking babies, it's rude.

Sagittarius. You will invent colon-lingus. You might wanna try flossing afterwards.

Capricorn. You might think you are dark and mysterious, but really you're more awkward and creepy. I mean, what kind of person gets aroused driving past cemeteries?

Aquarius. Your childhood scars are not an excuse to be a douchebag all the time. But your face is. Oh!

Pisces. Life has been rough for you lately, so you should let loose and do something wild. Like maybe get a new haircut or kick a puppy.

Buddhist Monkey Proverb of the Day: If the shoe fits, wear it. Unless you're a woman. Then you have to buy a smaller size of it, in every color, and only wear it once and complain about it the whole time.

Bob Barr

2008-10-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

Now I am not a libertarian by any measure but...
This off NPR.org: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95394235

Brendan Hoffman

Libertarian presidential hopeful Bob Barr says he is opposed to what he calls the "bailout from hell." Getty Images

Weekend Edition Saturday, October 4, 2008 · Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate for president, first came to national attention as one of the House managers in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. The former Republican congressman from Georgia tells Scott Simon he is opposed to what he calls the "bailout from hell."

Instead, Barr says, the government should be prosecuting fraud and looking for private entities to buy up troubled institutions.

He believes the U.S. has no business being in Iraq and would bring the troops home upon assuming office. In Afghanistan, Barr proposes to use the military "much more wisely" and isn't convinced that a massive presence of troops is required.

Everyone should be able to get health care — if they want it, Barr says. Government should be spending its time "reducing and removing the onerous regulations that actually prevent people from being able to afford health care."

Barr doesn't see anything wrong with government agencies exchanging information or engaging in surveillance, as long as they stay within the Fourth Amendment and federal laws. What should never be condoned, Barr says, is a president who wields absolute authority to gather intelligence.

Tutor Needed

2008-10-05T04:20:00.000-07:00

A friend forwarded me this as a possible job opportunity:

Reply to:
Date: 2008-10-04, 6:59AM

"I need english tutor for my son as soon as pissible in Charleston

* Compensation: $450
* This is a part-time job.
* OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests."

Please note "pissible".

Well, I don't think her son is the only one who needs a tutor...

Seriously, you can not write stuff this good.

Bigots for McCain

2008-10-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFSSvtaaF-c

Internet Follies

2008-10-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

Apologies if you have already received via e-mail these two items, which have made their way around the Internet, reaching no doubt millions of people. They represent a digital version of an underground communique system that's too risque (or just plain brutally on target, and always opinionated) to be posted or printed in the above-ground version of the media . But the Masher believes in Sunlight.

Enjoy, and thanks to the people -- you know who you are -- spreading around these brilliant commentaries like prairie fire.

***

To: S.T.

Subject: Not Spam -- Important Business Offer!!!

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars U.S. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,

Minister of Treasury Paulson

***

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.!!

Sarah Palin and Katie Couric

2008-10-04T05:47:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin was apparently unhappy with the way she presented herself during a recent interview on CBS conducted by Katie Couric. It would seem evidenced in a later interview that what she was unhappy about was not a lack of being properly prepared for the interview, her conduct appearance, or anything else she had direct control over or responsibility for. Typical. Palin blames Couric for the way the the interview was conducted and more specifically the questions the CBS anchor asked.

This can happen. Journalist many times are influenced by their own agendas and personal beliefs. That in and of itself is not always an improper thing so long as it is known that the bias exist and is open. It becomes an ethics issue when it is portrayed as unbiased. Most of the major news reporting agencies try to avoid this sort of agenda pushing deceptive journalism (The big obvious exception is of course FOX news). Other news organizations (Or specific “Journalist) drop all pretense as to their political position but are quit open about it. I listen to Air America and read a varity of left leaning periodicals. I don’t expect them to play very favorably to GOP candidates any more than I would expect Rush Limbaugh to be nice to Ralph Nader (Or to stop popping prescription meds while preaching about the villainy of drug users). I my self write with my beliefs and attitudes very openly displayed. I do my research check my facts as best I can and present them as I see them through my eyes. I am biased. I am also not a professional journalist. I am just an amateur hack essay writer. I am not in the business of presenting unbiased news.

So the question remains (still, after my long-winded rant) Did Couric cross some line of journalist ethics during her interview with Palin? Palin sure things so. I however do not.

Appearing on a friendlier news outlet the Fox news network (Now there is some “Fair and Balanced” reporting. Gov. Sarah Palin said she was "annoyed" with the way Katie Couric handled their interview and complained that the CBS Evening News host failed to give her the opportunity to take a proverbial axe to Barack Obama.

I thought this was an interview not an ad campaign spot where that sort of “axe grinding” is generally regulated to or a debate were things are ...well debated. This was a question and answer session. If you don’t like how you think the public will precieve your answers to questions then either you are worried about the public being aware of your stance on certain issues (In which case you are perpetuating a deception by trying to conceal parts of your agenda) or you are not sure of the answers in the first place. Either way it’s a P.R. problem and your own responsibility .

In a portion of her sit-down with Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron, Palin claimed that Couric's questions -- which produced a series of staggeringly embarrassing responses -- put her in a lose-lose position.

"The Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed," she said. "It's like, man, no matter what you say, you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that too."

For the record, Couric asked her, among other things, what type of news sources she turns to for information, which Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with, why Alaska's proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience, her opinion of the bailout package for Wall Street, and where she thought Vice President Dick Cheney erred. Which one of those questions was designed to trip her up (as opposed to, say, give viewers a better sense of her character and views) is tough to ascertain.

Later in her interview with Cameron, Palin offered a sense of what she thinks would have been a fairer set of questions. Unsurprisingly, they all would have provided her the opportunity to rail against Obama.

"In those Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a VP candidate stands for, what the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which would lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars. Some of his comments that he's made about the war, that I think may, in my world, disqualify someone from consideration as the next commander in chief. Some of the comments that he has made about Afghanistan -- what we are doing there, supposedly just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That's reckless. I want to talk about things like that. So I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed, but that's also an indication of being outside the Washington elite, outside of the media elite also. I just wanted to talk to Americans without the filter and let them know what we stand for."

Well she should be happy now. Fox has provided her with a platform to make a campaign speech rather than grant an interview. Yes, there is a fine line between the two and a very fine line between a presentation of ones agenda and the presentation of an disguised attack on ones opponents .I my OPINION Sarah Palin crossed that line not Katie Couric. Rather than answer questions about herself she chose to raise questions about Obama. I will assume she is happy now to have had another opportunity to get what she wanted originally from CBS.

As far as what she wanted? Well...

Mrs. Palin, wanted to conduct a campaign speech not participate in an interview.

Click Here to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ear3W1usG1c

God and Monsters

2008-10-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

Music is the only proof of God or Monster that I have ever found or is it proof that, as I have always said, that the only beauty that exist is in the hearts of men and how we see the natural world in all it's unrecognized glory.

Another

2008-09-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

http://topher-shanzi.blogspot.com/2008/09/back-ground-of-bargin-binswink-oh-sandy.html

Political Satire and the Core of Truth...Sort of...

2008-09-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

As corporate media coverage of the presidential race becomes even more notably stingy with intrepid journalism, the mainstream press enthusiasm for "The Daily Show" seems more cloying than ever. I personally LOVE it.

The pattern is now a routine feature of the media landscape: "The Daily Show" gets laudatory attention from major news organizations, where countless journalists watch like shackled prisoners in awe of Superman.

Look -- up in the media sky -- it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Jon Stewart!

While news accounts note how many viewers hold faux "news anchor" Stewart in higher esteem as a journalist than the "real" ones at the top of the media pack, there's a sheepish quality to much of the coverage about "The Daily Show."

After all, many big-name journalists have earned their keep by describing and analyzing the embroideries of the emperor's new clothes. It blows their conformist minds to see a network program that regularly exposes right-wing rulers without a stitch. This is something both the Doonesbury and Bloom County comic strip ( among many others) have been doing (or did) for some time.

Last month, a Sunday edition of the New York Times devoted more than two full broadsheet pages to "The Daily Show," starting with a color photo of Stewart that filled nearly half the cover page of the newspaper's "Arts & Leisure" section. The program "has earned a devoted following that regards the broadcast as both the smartest, funniest show on television and a provocative and substantive source of news," eminent Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote.

Consider the subtexts of this passage in the story: "Mr. Stewart ... and his writers have energetically tackled the big issues of the day -- 'the stuff we find most interesting,' as he said in an interview at the show's Midtown Manhattan offices, the stuff that gives them the most 'agita,' the sometimes somber stories he refers to as his 'morning cup of sadness.' And they've done so in ways that straight news programs cannot: speaking truth to power in blunt, sometimes profane language, while using satire and playful looniness to ensure that their political analysis never becomes solemn or pretentious."

Well, OK. That says a lot about "The Daily Show." But what does it say about the "real" news media -- and especially about the most important and self-important huge media outlets that dispense news with enormous ripple effects across the media terrain?

If -- as the New York Times soberly reported in the article -- "straight news programs cannot" tackle the "big issues of the day" while "speaking truth to power," we should ask a key question: Why not?

But this is not a question that media outlets like the Times seem interested in pursuing to any depth.

Contrasts with the overwhelming bulk of corporate media are primarily drawn to underscore the uniqueness and extraordinary qualities of "The Daily Show." It's exceptional as an exception. Comedy Central's most famous program is in the spotlight, and the vast expanses of the corporate media are the arrays of darkness that make it so conspicuous. What sheds light is punched up by what blocks it.

Absent from the fawning media coverage of "The Daily Show" is evident self-awareness that the elaborate praise is a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing -- in professional terms anyway -- among the likes of, say, Times journalists. Their own media institution is so circumscribed and so lumbering in its daily incarnation that they're apt to be amazed and envious at the incisively documented presentations on "The Daily Show."

That's the way it goes in medialand. What isn't conspicuous is apt to be insidious. The tick-tock of U.S. media hypnosis may be passably good at looking back -- reexamining some aspects of propaganda for the Iraq invasion, for instance, years after it occurs -- while now helping to mesmerize the country into escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But let's not quibble. Everybody has a job to do.

Palin and Creationism VS. Evolution

2008-09-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Despite the media feeding frenzy, we still may be asking ourselves, "Just who exactly is Sarah Palin?" Mixed in with the Davy-Crockett-meets-SuperMom vignettes -- all those moose hunting, ice fishing, snowmobiling, baby-juggling, and hockey-momming (The twin sister of the socce-mom) moments -- we've also learned that she doesn't care much for her former brother-in-law and wasn't afraid to use her office to go after his job as a state trooper; that she was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it; that she's against earmarks unless they benefit her constituents; that she can deliver a snappy wisecracking speech, thinks banning books in libraries is okay( a very personal grieviance to myself personally), considers herself a pit bull with lipstick, and above all else, wants to drill the ever-lovin' daylights out of every corner of her home state (which John McCain's handlers have somehow translated into being against Big Oil, since she insisted on a marginally bigger cut of the profits for Alaskans). One last peeve I have against her and this is just a personal one is that my other wise fairly reasonable friend Mike thinks she is hot. I have no idea why that bothers me.

Never mind.

Oh, and -- not that this is very important to Americans or the planet -- she now thinks that global warming might possibly be human-made sort of though she didn't before, despite the fact that the state she governs is on the frontline of climate change. And, of course, she's a classic right-wing, fundamentalist Christian: against abortion (Even in cases of rape and incest) -- check; against same-sex marriage -- check; against stem-cell research -- check; against fuzzy bunnies--check; favors teaching Creationism in public schools.

It's that last item, her willingness to put Creationism up against the teaching of evolutionary science in the classroom on a he-says-she-says basis, that's far more revealing of just who our new Republican vice presidential candidate is than we generally assume. It deserves the long, hard look that it hasn't yet gotten. Most Democrats and progressives tend to think of the teaching of Creationism as a mere sidebar item on their agenda of political don't-likes, but it's not. Sarah Palin's bias towards Creationism is a window into her political soul and a measure of John McCain's hypocrisy. Not to mention a testament to ignorance and stupidity. If we run with the philosophy that creationism (It is not a science by any interpretation of the term) we might as well introduce a course of study concerning the sociology of fairies and gnomes. It would be equally based in reality.

It's possible that the public has been fooled into thinking of McCain as a "maverick" when it comes to his party's abysmal record on the environment, but his selection of Palin as his running mate sends quite a different message. In fact, he's potentially put future generations on a "bridge to nowhere" (or perhaps to the fourteenth century). Whether we know it or not, we should now be duly warned: The Palin nomination is the equivalent of launching a "surge strategy" in the Republican war on the environment.
The Republican Holy War on Nature

For the past eight years, the Bush administration's assault on environmental quality has been so deliberate, destructive, and hostile that the usual explanations -- while not wrong -- are hardly adequate. Yes, Republican animosity to government regulation is long-standing. Yes, they believe in the power of an unrestricted marketplace to shape our collective behaviors. And yes, they emphasize property rights over notions of the commons (Despite their support of emanate domain) and have often been comfortable sacrificing wildlife, air, and water quality in the pursuit of profits. In addition, despite recent claims, they are indeed the party of Big Oil. But none of this quite explains the Bush administration's shameful record on the environment. In the final analysis, the only explanation that fits the nightmare of the last eight years is this: It has been on a holy war against nature -- and the nomination of Sarah Palin is essentially an insurance policy taken out on its continuation.

The idea that the environment matters is ingrained in Americans, even those who don't think of themselves as environmentally inclined. Democrats and Republicans alike have learned the hard way that the decisions we make about what we allow into our air, water, and soil gets translated into our skin, blood, and bones. We now sense that we all live downwind and downstream from one another, and that it is prudent to practice restraint and take precautions when making environmental decisions.

This unspoken consensus is one of the great accomplishments of the modern environmental movement. The policies of the Bush regime have been shocking and shameful exactly because they fly in the face of these shared values and beliefs. Only when we grasp that the narrow Republican base both Bush and McCain pander to no longer shares these basic values and beliefs, does their war on the natural world make sense.

If you believe that a look-alike God made the world for you to dominate and use, that you are among God's chosen few, and that He will provide for you no matter what you do to your surroundings, then you are likely to see yourself as above the natural order. If you believe that the world will be ending soon anyway, that you will be "raptured" while non-believers are "left behind" (as fundamentalist Tim LeHay so vividly describes the process in his bestselling novels), then precaution and restraint are moot. Remember, more than 60% of the nation's 60 million evangelicals believe that the Bible is literally true, every last word of it, and more than a third believe the end of the world will occur in their lifetime. A belief that has dominated Christian thought for a little over 1,000 years.

That's why a pro-Creationist stand is no sideline issue, but the litmus test that reveals whether a politician shares the religious right's ideology -- a literal interpretation of the Bible, a disparaging attitude towards science, belief in mankind's unfettered dominion over the natural world, and a willingness to impose its religious doctrines on others.

Both of Sarah Palin's churches -- the Wasilla Assembly of God where her faith was shaped as a child and the Wasilla Bible Church that she attends today -- believe in just such a literal interpretation of the Bible. From Biblical study, Creationists have calculated that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. That this is contradicted by the fossil record matters not to these folks (Maybe fossils are gods way of messing with us by placing false evidence? Wouldn’t that make him more of a Loki figure than one of divine benevolence?). They also think Revelations is a reasonable guide to foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Asked during her run for governor if Creationism should be taught in the public schools, Palin responded that the theory of evolution and Creationism should be taught side by side, and then "the students could debate" which is true. Well if we are going to that why not teach astrology and astronomy side by side or math and numerology? Bull shit and fact side by side?

Why Evolution Matters
When many Americans think "evolution," they probably recall that illustration of an ape, then a Neanderthal, then a hairy caveman, and finally, a modern homo sapiens walking in a line and growing ever more upright as they proceed. That illustration crudely highlights the aspect of evolutionary theory that pinches the nerves of Christian zealots who prefer a creation scenario like the one painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel -- God tagging Man with life, finger to finger. (Though any one with an art education or an eye for the subtle will relive that god in the painting sits within a stylized “brain” delivering the message that intellect is the seed and gift of “creation”. Look at it for yourself). Anyway, the human common ancestry with primates is just a fraction of what evolutionary theory is all about. Neither Darwin nor any other credible scientist ever made the claim we evolved from apes rather that men and apes have a common ancestor.

Evolution is largely about connection and interaction -- the linear connection of one species evolving into another (speciation), but also how species fill niches created by one another, how they interact, exchanging energy and information, how they compete as well as cooperate, and how all of them -- from microbial soils to migrating birds -- form dynamic communities that, in turn, are also woven together, web within web within web. Pull one thread of that living tapestry and you tug at so many others, which is why precaution is so wise.

Evolutionary theory does not preclude God. It uncovers the how of life, but leaves the why of it quite open. Many devout Jews and Christians, even evangelicals, believe in evolution, just not Biblical literalists. I have my own personal beliefs on the topic but they are irrelevant for the purpose of this essay.

Evolutionary theory shapes and informs the ecological sciences that are the very basis for our environmental laws and policies. The emerging, European-led global movement -- so far lacking U.S. participation -- that aims to deal with global climate chaos and restore the earth's vital operating systems is premised on understandings gained through the evolutionary sciences. Cast doubt on those sciences and you undermine the basis for changes that are urgently needed.

The Creationist campaign means to dumb-down and confuse our kids by pushing the evolutionary sciences off the educational stage. America's Taliban want to make room for Creationism's dull sister, Intelligent Design, in order to undermine the emerging environmental consensus that is our best hope for a sustainable future. According to that consensus, we humans are embedded in natural systems that are in crisis; our well-being, even our survival, depends on the vitality of those systems.

Kiss the Polar Bear Goodbye
So how does all this translate into actual behavior? As governor, Sarah Palin recently sued the Interior Department to keep the polar bear -- the iconic symbol of her state -- from being listed as a threatened species under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Additional protections, she argued, might inhibit oil and gas drilling and pipeline construction in the region.

The Endangered Species Act is a favorite target of the religious right since they are convinced it elevates lowly creatures to, or above, the status of human beings. They see "charismatic carnivores" and other protected species as the means used by conservationists to pursue broader protections for whole ecosystems. And that's true enough, in that "keystone species" like the polar bear regulate a wide network of relationships within a whole ecosystem. Those bears, for example, keep a lid on seal populations that could otherwise devastate fish populations and skew the arctic food web. Numerous animal and bird species depend on scavenging bear kills for food. But without reference to ecological science, the role of a keystone species and the value of biodiversity itself are hard to appreciate.

Palin, of course, also wants to drill for oil in the ecologically fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and has expressed her hope that she can convince McCain to abandon his opposition to it. She is an active promoter of Alaska's aerial hunting program where wolves and bears (again, keystone species) are shot from the air or chased until exhausted, after which the pilot lands the plane and a gunner can shoot them point blank. She tried to raise the bounty on wolves to encourage more killing (I though that bullshit died with the old west) and strongly opposed a ballot initiative to end the aerial hunting program. In the Lower 48, we learned the hard way that eliminating top predators upsets a chain of relationships in their ecosystems. No wolves in Yellowstone meant big, lazy herds of elk trashing streams, driving away beavers, and thus eliminating the wetlands that beavers create -- a cascade of unintended, harmful consequences. That's why naturalists are reintroducing wolves in parts of the West, and health is returning to the land with them. Under Palin, Alaska is going to relive our old mistakes at a time when Alaskans -- and humanity -- can ill afford it.

The Carbon Queen
Even in Alaska, known oil reserves are dropping. You know it does not matter how you look at it, we have a limited supply of oil on this planet and IT WILL RUN OUT the time to find solutions is NOW. Nonetheless, Palin is determined above all else to keep the current flow of energy moving, explore and develop new oil fields, and ramp up natural gas and coal production. She gave special permission to Chevron to triple the toxic waste it can pour into the waters of the Cook Inlet, despite scientific research concluding that the Beluga whale population there is endangered not to mention what it does to the salmon population (Which Alaska and most of the North West depend on heavily) . She has refused to pressure Exxon to pay-up for damages caused by the infamous Exxon-Valdez oil spill. She has supported virtually every mining proposal that has landed on her desk, including one for a vast gold mine in the Bristol Bay watershed that would risk the world's largest run of sockeye salmon. She favors open-cast mining for coal in the pristine Brooks Range. She has refused to enhance safety measures for trans-Pacific shipping along the Alaskan coast. All that and she's been governor for barely two years!

Her deplorable environmental record was such common knowledge that John McCain couldn't have missed it, even if he napped through his vetting committee's report.

So if the McCain/Palin ticket is elected, you should know what to expect. Although John McCain may once have openly refused to subscribe to the beliefs of the Republican Party's religious right (Believe it or not I at one time supported him and rather thought well of him though that was a long time ago), famously describing them as "agents of intolerance," his selection of Sarah Palin is a message (and not just to the Party's fundamentalist right): If you thought that he understands the need to kick our fossil-fuel addiction and address global warming, if you believed his promises to build a green economy, forget about it. A McCain/Palin administration, just like the one before it, will continue -- and this is the best-case scenario – to pull a “Nero” and fiddle while the planet burns.

Driving Into the Future Without a Map
Ed Kalnins is Sarah Palin's former pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church which she attended for 26 years. He sees powerful signs that the end of the world is drawing nigh and assured a London Times reporter that Biblical scripture specifically mentions shortages of oil and wars for its control as well as an open rebellion of mad reindeer somewhere near Norway. When the end comes, he expects to be "raptured" with other righteous Christians and spared the suffering of those of us who will be left behind. He believes the apocalyptic destruction of our planet will happen in his own lifetime; in fact, that is exactly the future he hopes for. He has urged his congregation to make ready a "refuge" for good Christians fleeing northward in "the Last Days." Though why this would be necessary I don’t understand…wouldn’t they all be safely “raptured away from harm already? Although Kalnin's orientation may seem -- to be polite -- extreme, it is typical enough of those who push a Creationist agenda. And it's a perspective Sarah Palin knows well, having spent a lifetime in Kalnin's Pentecostal church, and even now, she is in no hurry to disown it.

We need environmental science in our schools more than ever. An ecologically illiterate generation of students will be ill-prepared to meet our real, less than rapturous future. They won't have a clue about what's happening around them or how to deal with the damage we've done. They won't be able to create new technologies that mimic nature's models for recycling waste and energy. They will drive blindly into the future, burning fossil fuels, without a map they can read. They may even let the Ed Kalnins of our world take the wheel.

The Evolution vs. Creationism debate appears to be an argument over the distant past. But it's actually about the future. It's about, in fact, who will define the cultural mindset that will generate that future. Let us “pray” it is not defined by a pit bull with lipstick who thinks she is "tasked by God" to drill for oil.

McCains Insane Plan

2008-09-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

America is running on empty but flip flop G.O.P. Gran-Pop has a plan.

In the midst of our ever-deepening economic crisis, John "the fundamentals of our economy our strong" McCain unveiled his most ridiculous economic plan yet: sell more gas guzzlers.

McCain unveiled a new ad yesterday called "Michigan Jobs." The ad is so full of lies, deceptions, and failed approaches to our most pressing problems, it's hard to know where to even begin. His simple-minded pandering is an insult to the intelligence of Michiganders (and all Americans). I'll get to the gas guzzlers bit in a minute, but let's run through the ad's other distortions.

First, McCain trumpets his support for loans to help the auto industry. What he doesn't tell you is that he was opposed to helping the automakers until just last month when he looked at his standing in the polls start to slide.

The Sierra Club knows times are tough in Michigan and supports helping the automakers, so long as they are serious about using the loans to retool in order to make real improvements in fleet-wide fuel economy.)

McCain also trumpets his $5,000 tax credit for hybrid cars. Too bad Obama's is $7,000.

Barack Obama's plan: $150 billion investment in clean energy technologies, including giving automakers the help they need to double fuel economy and build the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles right here in the U.S.

McCain's plan: run the economy like a game show, offering gimmicks like a $300 million prize for car batteries and a gas tax holiday ridiculed by over 230 leading economists.

Which brings us to his latest gambit: more gas guzzlers. The ad says "more offshore drilling to lower gas prices to spur truck sales." Too bad his plan won't do a thing to lower gas prices or solve Detroit's long-term problems.

This is the second McCain ad just this week to repeat the completely discredited claim that offshore drilling will lower gas prices. Even McCain himself has admitted that his drilling plan would merely offer "psychological relief."

He really needs to get his head checked if he thinks selling more gas guzzlers is the way forward. Autoworkers and auto execs alike understand that relying too heavily on gas guzzling trucks and SUVs is what got the auto industry into this mess in the first place. That's why they want help building the next generation of vehicles, not the vehicles of the 1990s.

The only thing more gas guzzlers would guarantee is higher gas bills for consumers and more oil dependence for America. This is just another sorry example of how John McCain just doesn't get it. All he has to offer is last year's solutions to today's problems.

This is not all I have to say on this topic. If you wish to read more and or check my sources please continue on to the http://www.squidovelords.org/ .

Bush Ad

2008-09-15T07:57:00.001-07:00

I was sent this by Andrea this morning...interesting Hmmm?

Nostradamus And His Quatrain About His Self

2008-09-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

This morning while watching Deutschevela there was some speaker going on about what I assume to be some relation to world events, American war policy and the quatrains of the famus goof...I mean sear, Nostradomaus. Well here is my answer to the validity of that bit of fluff...

The rather amusing pic aside there are a number of good places one can go to get a better understanding of this sort of nonsense is both a waste of time and in many cases dangerous. “Ignorance is dangerous, innocence is bliss”(Stupidity isn’t safe either).

In addition to this new found gem I mention below I have a number of other skeptics sites in my links section and a link to some of the most ludicrous (Not to mention hilarious) information sources on the web (Listed as “Check out these Nuts!)...read laugh but most of all be ware!

The Skeptics Circle — a carnival of skeptic blogging — is up at Bob Carroll’s Skeptic Dictionary site. Bob has decided to shame all other carnival hosts by fitting all the entries into a Nostradamus theme. But then, this was predicted by Nostradamus himself in the fourth quatrain of the sixth volume:

On the lucky anniversary of the fall of the kings,
A doubter will make the false fit true,
Claims against nature exposed to light,
Nostradamus is full of crap.

Hey, it’s as legit as anything else he ever wrote.

Having said that I have a trip to get ready for and tea waiting on me that is not getting any hotter.

Fragen

2008-09-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

Ein Leben hat in angelaufenem Glas reflektiert. Das ist mich? Ich sehe den hellen und hohlen Himmel. Jedes Ding wurde Sie und mich ergeben aber wo sind Sie jetzt? Nehmen Sie es, ergreifen Sie es und Lauf wie Hölle. Wir haben gesehen, dass die Stadt, die in der Nacht schläft, und gelebt hat, bis unser Puls kein mehr nehmen könnte. Angst und Feuer haben keinen Horror für uns gehalten. Wir sind gelaufen und wir sind nie fragend gefahren, wo die Wellen uns genommen haben. Noch wo hat es unsere Leben gelandet? Ich würde nie einen einzelnen Moment handeln aber ich suche meine endgültige Belohnung. Oder ist es meine endgültige Strafe? Das Geschlecht und betäubt, die Abenteuer, die Wellen, die Stunden die die Stunden von der Leidenschaft der Wut. Irgendein macht von jenem, das irgendein macht, von den sie zu jetzt und was summieren, überhaupt aus? Ich war hübsch und Sie waren hübsch und still Sie bleiben.

First "Pics"

2008-09-09T03:09:00.001-07:00

I am finaly getting the hang of this...well sort of ..please stand by...

Bonn from the Rhine ferry
Heads symbolize the fallen heroes...or something ?

Post Office
John F Kennedy Bridge
Market Square
J.F.K. Bridge

Sarah Palin and the Third Wave Movment

2008-09-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

On June 8, 2008 Palin was publicly blessed, with the "laying on of hands" before six thousand Wasilla area church members, by Head Wasilla Assembly of God Pastor Ed Kalnins and on the same day both Kalnins and Palin described, at a "Masters Commission" ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God church, how she had been blessed prior to winning the Alaska governorship by an African cleric known for driving the "spirit of witchcraft" out of a town in Kenya, after which town supposedly crime rates dropped "almost to zero."

Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world.

Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."

At the latter event, Palin and Alaska LT Governor Scott Parnell were publicly blessed, onstage before an estimated crowd of 6,000, through the "laying on of hands" by Wasilla Assembly of God's Head Pastor Ed Kalnins whose sermons espouse such theological concepts as the possession of geographic territories by demonic spirits and the inter-generational transmission of family "curses". Palin has also been blessed, or "anointed", by an African cleric, prominent in the Third Wave movement, who has repeatedly visited the Wasilla Assembly of God and claims to have effected positive, dramatic social change in a Kenyan town by driving out a "spirit of witchcraft."

The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology. Their Master's Commission program is part of an three year post-high school international training program with studies in prophecy, intercessory prayer, Biblical exegesis, authority and leadership.

Watch Bruce Wilson's video documentary detailing the extreme Religious Right connections to the Wasilla Assembly of God church, "Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave":

The pastor, Ed Kalnins, and Masters Commission students have traveled to South Carolina to participate in a "prophetic conference" at Morningstar Ministries, one of the major ministries of the Third Wave movement. Becky Fischer was a pastor at Morningstar prior to being featured in the movie "Jesus Camp." The head of prophecy at Morningstar, Steve Thompson, is currently scheduled to do a prophecy seminar at the Wasilla Assembly of God. Other major leaders in the movement have also traveled to Wasilla to visit and speak at the church.

The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.

While segments of this belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

The beliefs and manifestations of the movement include the use of 'strategic level spiritual warfare' to expel territorial demons from American and world cities. Worship includes excessive charismatic manifestations such as hundreds of people falling, 'slain in the spirit,' and congregations laughing, jerking, and shrieking uncontrollably.

In early 2008 an outbreak of those phenomena commenced at the palatial former ministry estate of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, recently bought up and restored by prominent Third Wave author and leader Rick Joyner's Morningstar Ministries. The (spiritual) "breakout" lasted for many weeks and was publicized in an extensive collection of video footage available on YouTube. Where I first got the sniff on this and deciced to investigate somewhat more reliable sources. Healing services in the Third Wave movement claim to heal the sick and injured through methods that in some cases can appear bizarre - including, as in recent cases involving Todd Bentley, the patient being head butted or kicked by the anointed healer. Recipients of such "spiritual" or miraculous healing make a wide range of astonishing claims - to have been cured of life-threatening illnesses, had joints repaired or replaced, been given gold teeth or gold fillings, regrown stunted limbs and even had deformed skeletal structures straightened and reshaped. Worldwide mission efforts of the movement are built around the idea of combating witches, warlocks, and generational curses, which prevent churches from being able to take root.

Mike Rose, senior pastor of Juneau Christian Center has a long relationship with Rodney Howard-Browne, credited with being the instigator of the outbreak of 'Holy Laughter' around the world, including the Toronto Airport Revival. Thomas Muthee visited Wasilla Assembly of God and gave 10 consecutive sermons at the church, from October 11-16 2005. As both Palin and Wasilla AoG Head Pastor Ed Kalnins have attested, Thomas Muthee 'prayed over' Sarah Palin and entreated God to "make a way" prior to Palin's successful bid for the Alaska governorship. Muthee made a return visit to the Wasilla Assembly of God in late 2008. Thomas Muthee's Word of Faith Church is featured in the "Transformations" video which details an account on how Muthee drove "the spirit of witchcraft" out of Kiambu, Kenya, liberating the town from its territorial demonic possession and enabling a miraculous societal transformation. The "Transformations" video set is used as an argument for social improvement through spiritual instead of human means, and as the best method for fighting corruption, crime, drugs and even environmental degradation.

In the video, producer George Otis declares that after Thomas Muthee and his followers banished the "spirit of witchcraft" from the town, the crime rate in Kiambu dropped almost to zero, along with the rate of alcoholism, and according to Otis most of the residents of the town joined churches. The "Transformations" video has helped spark a network of 'Transformation' ministries and mission organizations and 'transformation' has become a buzz word for change based on supernatural instead of human efforts.

The Third Wave, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, is a network of Apostles, many of them grouped around C. Peter Wagner, founder of the World Prayer Center. This center, which was built in coordination with Ted Haggard (Remember that loop-dee-loop) and his New Life Church in Colorado Springs, was featured in an article by Jeff Sharlet in Harpers, May 2005, "Soldiers of Christ." Sharlet was one of the first to write in the secular press about the World Prayer Center which is often referred to by those familiar with the Third Wave as the 'Pentagon for Spiritual Warfare.' It features computer systems that store the data of communities around the world, mapping out unsaved peoples' groups and spiritual mapping information for spiritual warfare. Wagner has his own group of about 500 Apostles in his council and each of these Apostles has ministries under their authority, sometimes hundreds or thousands. Recently various networks of Apostles came together to form the Revival Alliance. Leaders of the Revival Alliance including Rick Joyner of Morningstar anointed Todd Bentley whose Lakeland Healing Revival has recently been a controversial topic in the Evangelical world.

Wagner's top leaders often conduct spiritual warfare campaigns against the demons that block the acceptance of their brand of Christian belief, such as 'Operation Ice Castle' in the Himalayas in 1997. Several of their top prophets and generals of intercession spent weeks in intensive prayer to "confront the Queen of Heaven." This queen is considered by them to be one of the most powerful demons over the earth and is the Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon in Revelation. (The "Great Harlot [or 'whore'] of Mystery Babylon" theme also figures prominently in the sermons of Texas megachurch pastor and Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee, former endorser of John McCain's 2008 presidential bid.) Wagner and his group also claim that the Queen of Heaven is Diana, the pagan god of the biblical book Ephesians and the god of Mary veneration in the Roman Catholic Church. Neat how they wrapped up Both Catholic and Pagan bias in one easy to sell antisemitic package. Following the 'Operation Ice Castle' prayer excursion which included planting a flag for Jesus on Mt. Everest(It’s mine, all MINE declaireth the son of god), one of the lead prayer intercessors from the excursion, Ana Mendez, reported that there had been dramatic results including, "millions have come to faith in Asia... and other things happened which I believe are also connected...an earthquake had destroyed the basilica of Assisi, where the Pope had called a meeting of all world religions; a hurricane destroyed the infamous temple 'Baal-Christ' in Acapulco, Mexico; the Princes Diana died (Huh?)... and Mother Theresa died (Double Huh?) in India, one of the most famous advocates of Mary as Co-Redeemer." Uh, umm, err...saty what about all those tornados that devastate the bible belt every year....are the part of this power mad jealous and vengeful god thing too?*(See Below)

Church of the Rock, led by Senior Pastor David Pepper(No relation to Sargent or the Doctor), has taken their youth to participate in 'The Call, Nashville.'(Watch out for those twisters) This event is held at various locations around the country under the leadership of Lou Engle, also featured in the movie "Jesus Camp." At these events youth are worked into a frenzy of anger and consternation at supposed national moral corruption. Engle, who shuffles while he preaches in imitation of Jewish prayer, is featured toward the end of the "Jesus Camp" video documentary.

The Third Wave movement is cross-denomination and is not synonymous with any specific denomination, nor is it synonymous with Evangelical or Fundamentalist. Although the movement emerged from Pentecostalism, it draws its support from a variety of denominations and religious streams. They believe they are forming a post-denominational church to take the world for the end times(Have not heard that one before). To date, all of the writing and objections to this movement have emerged from other Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who believe the movement to be unbiblical. Also, it is other conservative churches that refuse to embrace the 'outpouring of the Spirit' that are targets of much of the anger of the movement.

You can find more information on the Third Wave movement and additional links to the activities of Palin's churches on www.Talk2action.org in the following articles:

Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave, Part One

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/0244/84583

Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave, Part Two with embedded video:

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/03830/11602

The video is also posted at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_1Eit0pxM

*I am unsure on the whole god issue however if I did believe it would be in a benevolent and loving one....you know kind of like the one that Jesus guy used to talk about.

What the Fuck...Oh it's Sarah Palin

2008-09-09T01:19:00.000-07:00

Let's forget for a moment that Sarah Palin likes to kill moose, has lots of children and was once voted the second-prettiest lady in Alaska (Now there’s an accomplishment!); that's all part of the gusher of the sensationalist, but not particularly substantive, news that has dominated coverage of the Alaska governor's addition to the Republican ticket.

Before the next news cycle brings the shocking information that Palin was actually impregnated by Bigfoot, we need to shift the discussion to what really matters about her in the context of the White House: her dangerous views.

What Sarah Palin really believes

1. Despite problems at home, Sarah Palin does not believe in giving teenagers information about sex.

The McCain campaign is spinning Bristol Palin's pregnancy as a neat, shiny example of the unbreakable bonds of family. But while Bristol's actions and choices should not be attacked, teen pregnancy is no cause for celebration, either. To state the very obvious, it is not a good thing when teenagers have unprotected sex. I repeat; IT IS NOT A GOOD THING WHEN TEENAGERS HAVE UNPROTECTED SEX. Teenagers who who have unprotected sex grow up to be adults who have unprotected sex. U.S. teens appear to have unprotected sex a lot: The United States has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world.

Like John McCain, Palin's approach to the problems of teen pregnancy and STD transmission is abstinence-only education. In a 2006 questionnaire by the conservative group Eagle Forum, Palin stated: "Explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." Presumably the programs that do find Palin's support are ones that focus on abstinence and only mention contraceptives to talk about their supposed shortcomings.

But someone already tried that. For eight years the Bush administration has thrown its heft behind Title V, a federal program that provides states with funding for abstinence-based sex education. In 2007 an expansive study proved abstinence-until-marriage education does not delay teen sexual activity.

No shit.

If Palin is elected, she will continue to throw money at a policy that does little besides ensure that a larger number of sexually active teens lack information about how to avoid pregnancy and STDs.

2. Sarah Palin believes the U.S. Army is on a mission from God.

In June, Palin gave a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God, her former church, in which she exhorted ministry students to pray for American soldiers in Iraq. "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she told them. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan." Does that make George Bush god and Cheney Jesus?

Palin talked about her son, Track, an infantryman in the U.S. Army:

When he turned 18 right before he enlisted, he had to get his first tattoo. And I'm like -- I don't think that's real cool, son. Until he showed me what it was and I thought, oh he did something right, 'cause on his calf, he has a big ol' Jesus fish!

Holy war, holy warriors. Holy fuck me running.

3. Sarah Palin believes in punishing rape victims.

Palin thinks that rape victims should be forced to bear the child of their rapist. She believes this so strongly that she would oppose abortion even if her own daughter were raped.

The Huffington Post reports: "Granting exceptions only if the mother's life was in danger, Palin said that when it came to her daughter, 'I would choose life.'

At the time, her daughter was 14 years old. Moreover, Alaska's rape rate was an abysmal 2.2 times above the national average, and 25 percent of all rapes resulted in unwanted pregnancies.

If Palin's own daughter was only 14 when she made that statement, does she think any girl of reproductive age is old enough to have a child? Girls are hitting puberty earlier and earlier. What if the rape victim were only 10? 9? 8?

Palin also opposes abortion in cases of incest and would grant an exception only if childbirth would result in the mother's death. She has not made any statements yet about whether she believes a 10-year-old who was raped by her father would be able to actually raise the child once it was born. Perhaps Palin doesn't care.

4. Who's really not in favor of clean water? Sarah Palin.

As The Hill reports, "Governor Palin has ... opposed a crucial clean water initiative."

Alaska's KTUU explains: "It is against the law for the governor to officially advocate for or against a ballot measure; however, Palin took what she calls 'personal privilege' to discuss one of this year's most contentious initiatives."

Palin said, "Let me take my governor's hat off just for a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 -- I vote no on that." And what is that? A state initiative that would have banned metal mines from discharging pollution into salmon streams.

She also approved legislation that let oil and gas companies nearly triple the amount of toxic waste they can dump into Cook Inlet, an important fishery. It looks like being an avid outdoorsperson doesn't mean Palin really has the health of watersheds, natural resources or our environment at heart.

5. Sarah Palin calls herself a reformer, but on earmarks and the "Bridge to Nowhere," she is a hypocrite.

Palin says she's a "conservative Republican" who is "a firm believer in free market capitalism." She's running as an anti-tax crusader, and she did make deep cuts to Alaska's budget.

So, one would assume she is no borrow-and-spend conservative like George W., right?

Well, there was the time when she served as the mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla, Alaska. According to the Associated Press, "Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million." You'd think that $27 mil in taxpayers' funds would be enough scratch for a town with a population of 8,000, but you'd be wrong. According to Politico, Palin then "racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla -- that amounts to $3,000 per resident."

Then there's her current stint as Alaska governor, during which her appetite for federal pork spending has been on clear display. The Associated Press reported, "In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation." While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "Bridge to Nowhere."

6. Sarah Palin believes creationism should be taught in schools.

Until somebody digs up the remnants of a T. rex with an ill-fated caveman dangling from its jaws, the scientific community, along with most of the American public, will be at peace with the theory of evolution. But this isn't true of everyone. More than 80 years after the Scopes "Monkey" trial, there are people -- and politicians -- who do not believe in evolution and lobby for creationism to be taught in schools.

Palin is one of those politicians. When Palin ran for governor, part of her platform called for teaching schoolchildren creationism alongside evolution. Although she did not push hard for this position after she was elected governor, Palin has let her views on evolution be known on many occasions. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Palin stated, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information(I guess it doesn’t matter if the information is true or hogtillies). Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Palin further argued, "It's OK to let kids know that there are theories out there. They gain information just by being in a discussion."

Not when those "theories" are being presented as valid alternatives to a set of principles that most scientists have ascribed to for more than a century. They can’t even be ascribed as “theories” any way as “theories” tend to require some particle of truth.

7. Sarah Palin supports offshore drilling everywhere, even if it doesn't solve our energy problems.

If McCain was hoping to salvage any part of his credibility with environmentalists, he threw that chance out the window by adding Palin to his ticket. Palin is in favor of offshore drilling and drilling in the ecologically sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Miami Herald reported:

The Alaska governor has said that she has tried to persuade McCain to agree with her on drilling in the wildlife refuge. She also has said that she was happy that he changed his position over the summer and now supports offshore oil drilling.

As if that weren't bad enough, in her speech this week at the Republican National Convention, she said, "Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already." Huh. I guess drilling even when it won't help is better than working on renewable energy sources, as Palin also vetoed money for a wind energy project.

8. Sarah Palin loves oil and nuclear power.

Aside from her "drill here, drill there, drill everywhere" approach to our energy crisis, the only other things we know about Palin's energy policy, especially given her Bush-like love of avoiding the press, comes from her acceptance speech:

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources.

Nuclear power plants. Interesting. As folks look for alternative fuel sources (and again, Palin loves oil first and foremost so her commitment to any alternative energy source is suspect at best), nuclear power is enjoying a return to vogue. But here's the problem: Even the U.S. government's own nuclear agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, thinks an atomic renaissance is a bad idea:

Delivered by one of America's most notoriously docile agencies, the NRC's warning essentially says: that all cost estimates for new nuclear reactors -- and all licensing and construction schedules -- are completely up for grabs and have no reliable basis in fact. Thus any comparisons between future atomic reactors and renewable technologies are moot at best.

Not to mention all the other problems with nuclear energy, such as how to dispose of nuclear waste and the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown, to name a couple. Palin has no background with nuclear energy and shows no evidence of having looked into the science behind it or the dangers that come with it.

Also, it's time for Palin to drop another Bush-like tendency: Governor, the word is pronounced "new-clear."

9. Sarah Palin doesn't think much of community activism; she'd much rather play insider political games.

In her Republican convention speech, Palin slammed Barack Obama's early political work, saying, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities." Palin's put-down of grassroots workers, often unpaid or low-paid, demeaned an American tradition of neighbors helping neighbors, according to Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change. But more revealing is Palin's apparent lack of experience in community change and local volunteer efforts, during her years in Alaska before becoming governor.

Scores of press accounts of her early years as mayor of Wasilla omit any mention of such work. Instead, they note as mayor, and in the intervening years before running for governor, Palin gravitated to those with power, money or influence. She worked to enlarge Wasilla's Wal-Mart and build a sports center (that went over budget in an eminent domain dispute), and she hired a Washington lobbyist, directed a political fundraising committee for the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Ted Stevens, now under indictment for corruption, and steered $22 million in federal aid to her town. While some of her early community work was undoubtedly centered on her church, perhaps this comment by a blog reader best sums up Palin's political opportunism:

So community organizers (aren't) responsible? Or caring? Or doing anything important. What a terrible insult to the greatest community organizer of all time, Jesus Christ.

Dlyan Thomas

2008-09-06T03:52:00.000-07:00

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Boring!

2008-09-06T03:18:00.000-07:00

So, I pretty much hated John McCain's speech.

It was boring as all fuck, not just because McCain is a miserable orator who never manages to hit any kind of compelling rhythm, but because it was the same damn speech I've heard at every GOP convention for my entire life injected with a shot of POW, the potency of which had been thoroughly undermined by every other convention speaker having taken possession of McCain's history during their speeches. Even the video package introducing McCain talked about his being a POW. There's a not-particularly-fine line between marketing relevant and evocative personal experience and Tragedy Branding. This convention sailed over that line into farce.

It gives me no joy to say that. And it doesn't change one iota the fact that McCain's service was intrinsically brave and honorable. I'm just really mystified by the decision to use something as intimate and distressing as the details of imprisonment and torture as the primary selling point of a candidate. Which is not to suggest McCain shouldn't have talked about it himself—but doling it out to everyone else to discuss onstage on his behalf had the twofold effect of diluting its effectiveness and disconnecting McCain from his own highly personal experience.

It certainly wasn't a good design for people tuned in to lots of the convention, at minimum.

I won't pick apart much of the actual content, because, quite frankly, it's too dry and dull to require it. There are two passages I wanted to mention, though.

ONE:

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.

Immediately after the speech, Spudsy and I were on the phone talking about it, and he said he thought that was a nasty jab at Obama. Reading other reactions to the speech around the blogosphere, I see that other people had a similar reaction.

When I heard it, I thought it was a jab at Bush.

Possibly this is because I've never heard Obama say anything close to what could legitimately be described as a belief he is blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed him to save our country in its hour of need.

Possibly it's because I've heard Bush and his myriad devotees say that shit about a bazillion times.

(Although, it tends to be less about history anointing him than God anointing him. Or sending him war plans, as the case may be.)

"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."—George W. Bush

"He is one of those men God and fate somehow lead to the fore in times of challenge. I thank God that on September 11th, we had a president who didn't wring his hands and wonder what America had done wrong to deserve this attack. I thank God we had a president who understood that America was attacked, not for what we had done wrong, but for what we did right."—Former NY Gov. George Pataki

"I think President Bush is God's man at this hour, and I say this with a great sense of humility."—Former Deputy Director of the Office of Public Liaison Tim Goeglein

"If I'd won that election in 1992, my oldest son would not be president of the United States of America. I think the Lord works in mysterious ways."—George H.W. Bush

Et cetera.

Given the perception that McCain essentially used this speech to throw his own party under the bus, along with the Republican National Convention treating "Republican" like a dirty word and Bush like a pariah, I'm not convinced that he wasn't pointing that particular weapon in Bush's general direction.

Possibly, the line was designed as a double-edged blade—which would make it quite certainly the best line in the whole speech.

Especially because Johnny Boy evidently needs to put some real distance between himself and the Dauphin of Dipshittery.

Tom Brokaw: But the fact is, Governor, that you've had eight years of a Bush administration and a lot of Republicans in Congress for the last eight years, so why wouldn't the American people say, "Look, they had their shot; we're gonna change"?

Tom Ridge: Uh, because, uh, John Bush—because, uh, John McCain is very much his own man.

You sure about that, Tom?

TWO:

My friends, I've been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I've been her servant first, last, and always. And I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn't thank God for the privilege. … I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice, and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again; I wasn't my own man anymore; I was my country's.

Ezra notes, quite rightly, what's wrong with the passages like this one in McCain's speech: "Such public declarations of patriotism are not about why John McCain loves this country. They are about why this country should love John McCain."

That's right. We should love him because he is humble (despite what you may have heard about his being a belligerent fuckwit), and because he is decent (despite what you may have heard about his calling his wife a cunt), and because he has hard-won and tightly-held principles (despite what you may have heard about his caving on our country's torture policy and lots of other stuff), and because he is his country's eternal, unwavering servant (despite what you may have heard about his ties to lobbyists hired by corporations whose patriotism is only as strong as the dollar).

And we should vote for him because he is humble and decent and principled and devoted, too.

He's earned it, goddammit.

As I watched him tick off all the things he's done to deserve to be president, sneering: "My friends, I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not," I realized that McCain was trying to manipulate his way into the Oval Office using the same strategies as a Nice Guy^TM uses to try to manipulate his way into a woman's knickers.

Don't you know what a good person I am? What—are you one of those people who likes Mr. Popular the Arugula-Chomper? Fine, whatever. You voters always complain that there are no good candidates, but here's one right in front of you, and you're still going to choose celebrity over substance. No—wait, wait. I didn't mean it. Did you know that I was a POW? It was really horrible. Please vote for me. PLEASE. No? Well, screw you then!

I'm not sure if McCain wants a vote or a pity fuck.

The biggest applause line in the whole speech was when he introduced (again) his veep pick Sarah Palin, and—considered within the context of his 1) running against his own party and 2) desperate stumbling toward a finish line just out of his reach—it was a pitiful moment for McCain, as he seemed to be simultaneously passing the torch within and resigning from a Republican Party that doesn't really want him, even on the night he's been anointed its ostensible leader.

Awwwwwkwarrrrd!

But not even awkward enough to make it interesting. Dire speech. Dreadful convention. I can think of nothing more perfect for Candidate McCain.

Late Night Snack

2008-09-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

Snack

When everyone in the house is asleep and you are watching the T.V. with the sound level set at a very low "5" don't choose Doritos as a compliment snack or you may miss why the Yoga master is doing all those funny things you are watching him do on The Science Channel as you chew the LOUDEST F#%KING food on Earth.

Oil and Gas Prices

2008-09-04T07:18:00.001-07:00

Oil

I'm tired of talking to myself here. Worried about shredding my vocal cords shouting into a vacuum. Apparently some of you have been nodding off. And don't give me that "who, me?" crap. You know who you are. Yes you. The ones who are waiting for the President to do something about this gas price thing. The ones who mistook that lame BS oozing out of his "gosh, gas prices are getting high, aren't they?" press conference as sincere. When are you going to get it through your tiny little heads? He's not here to help.
Let me go through this one more time. Stay with me. It's not that complicated. The President is a Texas oilman. His father is a Texas oilman. His vice president is an oilman who shoots Texas lawyers. All the rich people he knows, his father knows and Dick Cheney knows have 30 weight running through their veins. All the people who gave him money that put him in the White House are oilmen.
Does this clear anything up? Maybe a little? His major priority is to pay them back in spades, then they tell him what a good job he's doing and give him more money.
So if you're waiting for him to grow a spine or learn to read or ever ever ever go so far as erecting a single solitary obstacle in the way of folks making obscene profits on fossil fuels… you'd best be advised not to hold your breath unless you enjoy that certain bluish look most often associated with people no longer eligible for social security benefits due to the fact that they've become altogether much too skinny and dead. Get it? Got it. Good.
The President says "there's no magic wands." No kidding. Neither are there talking fish or fairy wings or giant toadstools upon which Donald Rumsfeld can perch naked eating flies with his bifurcated tongue. What's your point?
Bush plans to investigate possible
collusion or price fixing and the good news is, the report is already finished and it turns out everything is okey dokey folks. Nope, everything's on the up and up and George knows because his buddies assured him it is.
He also plans to relax environmental rules which you could see coming like an 18 wheeler full of concrete blocks rolling off a 45 degree ramp straight up the driveway towards your front door. He wants to boost domestic supply, which is code for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, baby and he's delaying deposits into our strategic petroleum reserve, which might save a thimble's worth. Measures destined to be about as effective as cleats on a duck.
I've come up a few other things the President could do that would be as effective to cut gas prices:
? Run around in circles until he gets dizzy and falls down.
? Bang a walking stick on the ground real hard like Nanny McPhee.
? Get the entire House of Representatives to sing "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" in the key of off.
? Lay a wreath of 80 dollar gas receipts at the tomb of the unknown SUV driver.
? Shoot a 78 year old Texas lawyer in the face with a gun.
? Propose a bill that gives more tax incentives to oil companies.
? And the last thing the President can do that will be as effective as what he's doing now in cutting gas prices… mandate the oil companies change their accounting practices to base 12 so those profits don't sound so big.

I bring this up AGAIN as the McCain/Bitch ticket will just carry on with kind of idiot policy.

Time Travel

2008-09-04T05:47:00.001-07:00

TIME TRAVEL

It's a menace.
You know it, I know it. Your neighbors surely agree. We don't talk about it, but the issue is always there... lurking over us.
Why is time travel a bad thing you ask Saint Tuesday? I'll tell you why. Because just about every recorded instance of time travel we know of either
directly results in catastrophic damage to the time-line, requiring immense effort and jumping-through-the-hoops antics to even halfway-repair the damage, OR time-travel
is ITSELF a direct result of some sort of catastrophic accident so gigantic that it can only be corrected by ALTERING HISTORY ITSELF.

Let's take a typical example.

One fine day in 2027, your hypothetical son, little Max X, stole Doctor Quantum's prototype Time Vespa to see what his ridiculously doyen parents were really like when they were young. He travels back to 2007 and meets you! Keeping his real identity a secret, he set you up with the unrealistically stunningly attractive babe or hunk you had always mopped over but never had the nerve to ask out, and like a flash, you two were inexplicably married and having a kid.
Max returns to the future, his mission accomplished. Only problem is, time has been subtly altered by young Max's interference! You were going to get together anyway, but because of Max, you and your spouse met at the bar instead of the disco, you got married on July 23rd instead of the 22nd, and nine months later your firstborn kid turned out to be a girl.
Since she was conceived on a different day, she was conceived with different sperm. She got a different set of DNA so of course she turned out to be a different person.
20 years later, kooky Doc quantum invented his Time Vespa, but young Jennie X had jazz band practice that evening. She never stole the Time Vespa and never went back in time.
But nevertheless, time hoping Max X arrived from the past, returning to the exact moment he left.
At which point he realized that, in 2007, history had been fundamentally altered by a guy who as a result of his efforts was never born.
And the universe realized this too, belched an unhappy error message, went to the blue screen of death and ceased to exist.
Since the universe never came into existence it follows to reason that Time travel would have never been invented. So Max could never steal a machine that like the Universe never came into being. Now follow closely, since the time travel never existed Max could never have stole it to alter time and there fore the universe could never have been destroyed ...and only gets worse from there....

YET. By definition, time travel will have to be invented at every single point in history simultaneously. So if, at some point in the future, time travel will be invented, then the time travelers could - in fact, MUST - be here RIGHT NOW, observing, recording, taking part in, meddling with and generally screwing up history as we think we know it.
This is a real risk. This could happen at any second. It has ALWAYS been a risk and will be in perpetuity.

Unless we act "now".

Our mission:
To preserve the integrity of the space-time continuum, I hereby petition the governments of the world to immediately enact laws banning the research and practice of time travel.

Status of this mission:

Immediate success!

We first observe that the universe as we know it still exists.
Next, we see that there are no time travelers here in the present day.
From this, we surmise that nobody has traveled back to 2007 because nobody has ever invented time travel.

Finally, we conclude that nobody invented time travel due to the success of this campaign.

Thanks to everybody for your participation!

Wow! I drink Entirely too much coffee.

Palin Fails by Her Own Standards

2008-09-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nomination Wednesday night in a confident and insistent address that attacked members of the media and Washington "elites" who questioned her experience to be vice president and mocked Barack Obama for his qualifications, stances on issues and even his inspiring words. Not to mention she released the long held government secret that Santa Claus does not exist but that the Easter Bunny was real (Real man!) But assured her constitutes that the C.I.A would soon take care of that Pagan imposter.

After several days of silence, Palin introduced herself to America as the newest GOP attack dog. She alternately wrapped herself in what she described as all-American small-town values...you know like bigotry, xenophobia and general close mindedness. She also engaged in nasty smear tactics -- belittling Democrats, mischaracterizing Obama and insulting Americans, who she and her campaign speechwriters must think will not have enough sense to see past such a thin veil.

Palin established the confrontation tone early in her speech by deriding "pollsters and pundits" who "wrote off" Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican nominee, early in his presidential campaign for supporting a troop surge in Iraq. She then introduced her family, praised her rural upbringing and experience in local and state government, flashed the convention floor a “beaver” shot and concluded -- in a departure from reality -- that her brief political resume qualified her to serve as vice president, or service the vice president.

"And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves," Palin said, comparing herself to Obama's community work after law school. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Then, as was typical of her speech, she broadened her political attack.

"I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," Palin said. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco." She went on to promise she would campaign to burn all towns to the ground with a population over 15,000 and thus rid America all those faggoty-ethnic-artsy fartsies-pinko communist-vegetarian-devil worshiping-lesbo-baby eating-left wing-pro terrorist-liberal fucks that live in them.

Palin was referring to comments Obama made at a fundraiser that were controversial during the Democratic primaries when he was asked about why rural voters often vote for Republicans when the GOP did not advocate for their economic interests. She then drew a picture of life in small town America that was at least as divisive as Obama's remark was controversial, by suggesting rural America is where the country's truest patriots, hardest workers, and members of the military come from.

All nasty jokes aside (As I write this I am getting to mad to be funny);
CHRIST! Is this women serious? Could she possibly put her tounge any further down small town Americas trousers? You know the same local yokels who want their women bare foot and preggies?

"I grew up with those people," she said. "They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town."

Really now!?! Really? Yeah nobody in Urban America has ever worked hard, fought, in a war, loved their country or been proud of their nation. Oh yeah, one more thing. The factories. Where the flying fuck does she think most factories are? Maybe she thinks evil shang haiers (sorry if I misspelled that...I am a little to lazy to check it right now) are rounding up rural residents and putting to work in industrial centers around the country.

Vice-presidential candidates are often used by presidential campaigns to criticize the opposing ticket -- so the presidential nominee does not have to descend to the muddier side of politics. However, as Palin wrapped herself in a mythic version of small-town America to emphasize Republican values, she also presented a distorted picture of political realities in the country. Most notable in this regard was her criticism of the media and Washington "elites," even though her party has held the White House for seven-plus years and majorities in Congress until 2006.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin said. WHAT? She then stated "And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country.(Well, at least those that live in small towns. Screw everyone else.) Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."

Palin portrayed herself as a reformer in Alaskan politics, although independent press accounts in recent days strongly suggest otherwise. Despite an ongoing investigation by Alaska's Legislature into Palin improperly using her office to pressure the state police to fire an officer who divorced her sister, and Palin heading a fundraising committee that accepted unlimited donations for Sen. Ted Stevens, now under federal indictment for corruption, Palin said that she fought and beat "special interests."

"We are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and a servant's heart," she said. "I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau; when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil (WHAT!?!~She is campaigning to allow “Big Oil” to drill off shore and in the Alaska’s protected preserves) and the good-old-boys network." Is that the same “good-old boy network made ever so famous by small town America?

Palin's account of herself as an anti-corruption and anti-spending crusader also included her oft-repeated claim that she opposed building a bridge costing several hundred million dollars to a remote town of 14,000. Press accounts from Alaska note that she supported "the bridge to nowhere" for years, before finally canceling the project as governor. Her rural supporters must have loved that.

Palin touted her efforts closing a deal to build a new major natural gas pipeline, saying efforts to drill for oil, natural gas and to build more nuclear power plants would be the cornerstone of the country's energy independence. Energy was the only domestic issue Palin discussed at length in her speech, which notably did not mention the economy, health care, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, immigration, family planning, appointing Supreme Court judges or the relation of church and state -- she is an evangelical. She dismissed Democratic priorities such as global warming and civil liberties.

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already," Palin said. "But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all." Is she asking to get drilled?

Palin's harshest attack concerned the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama's qualifications to lead the military.

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word victory except when he's talking about his own campaign," she said, speaking of Obama. "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight; he wants to forfeit(It’s in sight? Where?). Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Notably, the only foreign policy issues raised by Palin concerned using U.S. troops to ensure the country had an ample supply of oil from the world's trouble spots. If anything, these remarks suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would continue the current White House policy of deploying troops overseas to ensure oil imports.

"Families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil," she said. Guess it’s okay for them to throw away the lives of their children though. She continued "With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

"To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries, we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas," she continued. "And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both." Guess she isn’t a fan of electric cars or the like.

Palin also attacked Obama for saying he planned to raise taxes on the top 5 percent of American income earners, which the Democratic nominee has said was necessitated by a federal deficit that has ballooned since the Bush administration needlessly invaded Iraq.

Palin's attacks undoubtedly previewed those the McCain campaign will use in the final two months of the campaign, as Republicans try to convince Americans that a candidate who did not wear a military or law enforcement uniform as a younger person is unfit to be president.

"Though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, 'fighting for you,' let us face the matter squarely," Palin said. "There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, in places where winning means survival and defeat means death, and that man is John McCain."

Of course, Palin did not hold herself to those same standards, which many newspaper editorial writers have said is the most important consideration for the running mate of a candidate who would be the oldest American ever to enter office as president. Instead, she joked that the only different between a "hockey mom" -- her role prior to government service -- and "a pit bull" was lipstick. Indeed, her introduction to America and national politics was as the GOP's newest attack dog.

Self Mutilation Is Not The only

2008-09-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

Self-Mutilation Is Not The Only facet My Complex Personality

Note: This is HUMOR folks! Grant you sort of bad taste, dark, and twisted humor but humor none the less. Get over it. Note my groovy crayon-crap dream art...or don't. Anyway...here we go!(See below)

When I encounter people on the street the market place or in the workplace, the first thing they notice, I'm convinced, are the self-inflicted burns and scars on my forearms. Sure, I can see how it might seem at first glance, like I devote all my time to burning and branding my flesh. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For starters, I love to read. Be it fiction, non-fiction, health pamphlets warning against the dangers of self mutilation-I'll read just about anything I can get my hands on. I guess I just have an over the top, addictive personality! Because once I pick up a book or anything hot, you practically have to sedate me with thorazine to put it down! It's hard to explain, but the pleasure I get from books goes much deeper than just words on a page. I love the way a book feels in my hand. The familiar smell of the paper and ink. Also the I enjoy the way a single page feels when held firmly between the index finger and thumb while being pulled sharply against the flesh and can create a deeply satisfying cut.

I also adore cooking and make my living as a sous chef. After a long day there is nothing I look forward to more than rolling up my sleeves, grabbing a sharp chefs knife and slicing…slicing…slicing some …vegetables…yes vegetables for a stir fry. Maybe it's the fragrant aroma of fresh herbs and spices sizzling in the pan that calms the spirit and soothes the pains of the day away. There is nothing so calming as the sound and smell of raw meat hitting a blazingly hot sauté pan.

That reminds me of another favorite pastime; gardening! For me gardening is just like therapy except that with gardening I am usually alone so no one is there to ask me why I have branded "Help Me" into my arm.

Another thing you might never guess about me is that I am learning to sew! Sure it was frustrating at first and yes there were a few times when I got frustrated with my lack of progress and responded by jabbing the needle repeatedly into my thigh, but after a while I started to get the hang of it. Man it was worth it too. Now I don't have to go to the tailor every time I need one of my shirt/coat buttons replaced, or to the hospital every time I need stitches!

Naked Chicks!

2008-08-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

Okay now that your here....Hurrah, it's a parade!
Joe Liden is Obama's running mate. A better choice could not be made.

Atheist

2008-08-22T02:59:00.000-07:00

Atheist

I don't know why this has been on my mind of late, but it has.
An ATHEIST is some one who rejects the idea of ANY god not just the Christian one. This includes pagan gods and the like. You can not call yourself an atheist and follow any religious belief, it is the rejection of all of the absurd. Be it Christian, Muslim, Hindu or pagan.
If one wishes to claim such a position (IE Atheist) you must reject it ALL.
I have found most wiccans to fall into a flake category that sits somewhere in between. More concerned with being cool than any actual conviction, pot heads are more dedicated than this. with a few notable exceptions (Yes you K ).
A made up religion with a Madonna complex.
If that pisses you off then put a curse on me (Ha)!

Hump Back Whale

2008-08-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

I love these creatures. My favorite among many favorites.

Coexist

2008-08-10T03:53:00.001-07:00

Down at the Tracks

2008-08-10T03:33:00.000-07:00

I've got another day
This bed it is breaking
God, it is so damned cold
Damn it is so damed hot
Today is the day?
There is blood on the streets
There is blood on my hands
Let it be done
The clock has struck Midnight
It's time to go home
I am undone
Down at the tracks where the cross roads lay
The Devil awaits me

Spock Rock

2008-08-10T03:25:00.001-07:00

Van

2008-08-10T03:16:00.001-07:00

Doesn't go any "Farther"

Orca

2008-08-10T03:13:00.001-07:00

I love these beasties!

Hemp Shemp

2008-08-09T03:01:00.000-07:00

The last refuge of the pot head...Any excuse to smoke. Hemp Hemp Hemp. Baloney. Just come right out with it and say "I smoke pot." "I am a pot head" "I like pot" ...don't justify it with second rate rope.

Misty

2008-08-09T02:16:00.000-07:00

http://topher-shanzi.blogspot.com/2008/08/misty.html

Sandy not Sandy, Myrtle Beach

2008-08-09T02:02:00.001-07:00

Not what you thought eh?

Just Cause I like It

2008-08-09T02:00:00.001-07:00

Westport Bound

2008-08-07T11:09:00.001-07:00

Wave After Wave...Even the Eastern coast has Water

2008-08-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

Coop Rules!

2008-08-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Chinese Suck

2008-08-07T02:15:00.000-07:00

When you buy food with a "USDA organic" label, do you know what you're getting? Now is a good time to ask such a question, as the USDA just announced Monday it was putting 15 out of 30 federally accredited organic certifiers they audited on probation, allowing them 12 months to make corrections or lose their accreditation. At the heart of the audit for several certifiers were imported foods and ingredients from other countries, including China.

Chinese imports have had a bad year in the news, making headlines for contaminated pet food, toxic toys, and recently, certified organic ginger contaminated with levels of a pesticide called aldicarb that can cause nausea, headaches and blurred vision even at low levels. The ginger, sold under the 365 label at Whole Foods Market, contained a level of aldicarb not even permissible for conventional ginger, let alone organics. Whole Foods immediately pulled the product from its shelves.

Ronnie Cummins, the national director of the Organic Consumers Association, emphasizes that most organic farmers "play by the rules." They believe in organic principles and thereby comply with organic standards. Unfortunately, Congress' pitifully inadequate funding for enforcement, including for organic imports from countries like China, "guarantees it'll be easy for unscrupulous players to cheat, and that's obviously what's going on here."

Farms that produce USDA-certified organic food are not personally inspected by anyone from the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). As a small and underfunded agency within the USDA (it has fewer than a dozen employees), NOP relies on what it calls Accredited Certifying Agencies -- ACAs -- to do the legwork. The ACAs take responsibility for ensuring that any farm or processor bearing the organic label meets the strict requirements for certification.

Since the Chinese government does not allow foreigners to inspect Chinese farms, an extra step is involved for oversight of organics from China: Chinese companies, which are allowed to inspect Chinese farms, subcontract with foreign ACAs. Cummins believes "the safest course of action is ... to say we won't certify imports from China because their law won't allow inspections."

For Americans who shop at the growing number of farmers markets springing up around the country, the status of organics from China -- or even organics from faraway U.S. states -- may be irrelevant. Just as the hippies who founded the movement intended, ethical eating extends beyond pesticide-free food for these shoppers, some of whom call themselves locavores, meaning "one who eats food produced locally." They wish to support small farmers and to ensure their food was produced in an environmentally friendly manner by workers who were treated well and paid fairly.

And not matter how strict a law may be, there will always be those who game the system. Even if a Chinese inspector notices illegal pesticide use, he or she might feel pressured to stay silent, says Dr. Robert E. Hegel, professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. "Everybody there is so proud of increased production that few people ask much about the farmer's production methods," says Hegel. "And there's no 'organic' food tradition in China." According to Hegel, in China "everything was just 'food' and it was, until the 1950s, mostly 'organic' by our contemporary definitions -- fertilized with human and animal waste, compost ... and ashes."

But for an American looking for high-quality organics, the number one way to ensure that's what you're getting is to buy directly from the farmer. Farmers markets or CSAs (community supported agriculture -- arrangements in which consumers buy a share in a farm and receive weekly boxes of produce) are excellent ways to go as you can often meet the farmer or visit the farm yourself. Even if you can't make the trip to the farm personally, typically a farmers market sets rules around what is and is not permitted at the market (for example, only allowing produce grown within the state), and a market manager visits each farm to guarantee adherence to the policy.

The problem with fraudulent Chinese organics merely drives home the larger problem that sustainable and ethical eating is about forming relationships, and trying to fit it into the global, industrialized mold of the rest of our food system does not work. For example, the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based watchdog agency, reports on American dairies Horizon and Aurora, which operate organic factory farms milking thousands of cows each. Over the past year, the USDA finally penalized Aurora, supplier of private label milk to Wal-Mart, Safeway and Costco, for violating organic standards.

While the National Organic Program is poorly funded, perhaps it would be more effective if the USDA staffed it with people who felt strongly about organics. Cummins mentioned a North Carolina organic activist and farmer who suggested eating at Nora's, a well-known Washington, D.C., organic restaurant, to NOP staff. He was shocked when they responded enthusiastically that they would love to try it because they had hardly ever eaten organic food before.

Because organics (and ethical eating in general) is ultimately about values and personal relationships, Cummins believes the most important next step is establishing a peer review panel, as called for by law, "so that respected members of the organic community can monitor and police violations of organic standards on the part of producers, importers and certifiers." The USDA acknowledges the requirement of a peer review panel by law but has yet to implement it.

Because knowledgeable members of the organic community who share the consumers' values will be able to look out for their interests, consumers can feel more confident in the organics they buy from the store with a peer review panel in place. Store-bought organics might not be equal to buying directly from a farmer, but in today's hectic world, when you can't make it out to a farm or a farmers market, we need to make sure they are a close second.

I Still love Knees

2008-08-07T02:12:00.001-07:00

Just for the record...

Agnostic

2008-08-07T00:55:00.001-07:00

"Agnosticism is not a third position. It is the evasion of a position"
- Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Self-Esteem

People often say that atheism[1] is a belief in the same way that theism is a belief. According to this view, insofar as we cannot demonstrate the nonexistence of God, the claim that he does not exist represents some kind of negative "leap of faith," an undemonstrable proposition akin to religious belief. Hence, agnosticism[2] is the only true rational position with regard to the existence of "God." Therefore, as it stands outside the scope of our possibilities of knowing, it would be rationally illegitimate to choose clearly between theism and atheism. As Husserl[3] would say, we have to put God in Epochè. This view is quite popular amongst intellectuals, even some of those who adopt a naturalistic worldview.

The purpose of this essay is to show that, insofar as we share a naturalistic (scientific) worldview, this agnosticism is unfounded. It implicitly assumes that the monotheistic idea of God has a special and unique status which preserves it from normal, rational inquiry. I therefore ask a very simple question: why, exactly? I want to show that as long as no good reason is given, we are rationally justified in choosing atheism. In my view, agnostics have to prove that this special status given to the idea of God (and no other) is rationally founded, and is not simply the expression of historical and cultural bias.

Asking this question in a complete and systematic way is the focus of this essay. I have invented no stunning argument, but I believe that if it is correctly construed, this question actually becomes a problem that agnostics must resolve. Here is how I proceed.

First, I define rational attitude. This definition, of course, will be purely operational: I am addressing myself to those who already recognize a similar definition. To demonstrate its validity, some kind of universally accepted superconception of knowledge would be needed, from which it could be derived logically. I think this cannot be done, but I also think that people who reject this definition fail to understand the way in which valid knowledge is actually produced.
Second, I suggest that this conception of rationality leads not to agnosticism but to atheism. The most prudent way of putting this would probably be to say that rationality opens to religion a space of justification that is too limited to be satisfying because it could also be used to justify almost any belief. To my knowledge the only truly valid argument in favor of agnosticism is that we cannot demonstrate the nonexistence of God. Insofar as we cannot demonstrate the nonexistence of Russell’s Great Teapot either, I believe this argument is simply too weak to justify agnosticism by itself. Hence my question: Is there anything else that speaks in favor of agnosticism?

My question goes like this:

1) Recognizing the validity of a scientific conception of rationality that is derived from the basic consensus between pertinent epistemologists (logical empiricism, Popper, Kunh, Laudan, etc.), which conception implies that:
a) We adopt, on the question of the justification of our beliefs, a skeptical attitude which views even scientific knowledge as a rational construction which does not satisfy the traditional conception of truth as the perfect correspondence between thought and things (this conception being inapplicable to human knowledge);
b) Scientific theories are selected (that is, are allowed to enter the body of science and become common knowledge) not on the basis of their truth but because they are the strongest, that is, the most plausible and justified for the time being (some of their implications can be verified at least in principle; they explain phenomena which, up to that point, were enigmas; they resolve more problems than their competitors; they simplify and define the frame of further research in a given field; they allow predictions; etc.);
c) Scientific rationality is the unique source of valid knowledge of the exterior world;
d) Other fields of thought (as philosophy) must therefore be at least congruent with scientific rationality in the sense that they cannot contradict the results, the method and the spirit of scientific research, the superior validity of which is evident, if not demonstrable per se, in view of its numerous applications;
e) We can deduce a definition of a rational attitude as the fact of accepting the validity of a given hypothesis (scientific or other) only if is strongly justified by facts or arguments, in other words if it as a satisfying weight in the balance (we have good reasons to believe it might be correct and no good reason for rejecting it);
f) We are justified to reject weak hypotheses insofar as the weeding of ideas is an important condition of the progress of human knowledge;
2) Distinguishing between the possibility of some form or other of transcendence, which we can say nothing about but cannot discard as an absurd idea, AND the hypothesis of a monotheistic God which is a particular explanation of man and the universe, the formulation of which can be traced to the Bronze Age[2];
3) Recognizing that this particular hypothesis has no satisfying rational justification because:
a)Iit brutally contradicts the basic method of science by explaining natural phenomena with something other than natural phenomena;
b) It is useless because it adds no supplementary layer of explanation to existing scientific models which already account for natural phenomena (for example, astrophysical phenomena gain no superior intelligibility by the supposition that God initiated the Big Bang);
c) The arguments in its favor are systematically counterbalanced by stronger arguments produced by scientific rationality (I give two examples: the need for hope is better explained by psychology than by the idea of a religious intuition; the improbability of complex natural orders and systems is better explained by evolutionary theory than by the postulation of a supernatural creator);
d) It is highly suspect of being a cultural invention because of what we know about psychology (for example, the projection of the father figure, or the need for an ultimate foundation of our moral beliefs) and history (the voting of various dogmas and attributes of God by assemblies of bishops);
4) Why, then, should a rational attitude be condemned to agnosticism and not be allowed to choose atheism, considering that the space of justification for monotheistic religion is extremely limited and unsatisfying (we cannot prove the nonexistence of God),
a) considering we cannot prove either the nonexistence of most human fantasies (fairies, dragons, planet-gods and the like);
b) but that we nevertheless, with good reason, have for long eliminated them from the reservoir of knowledge?

In short, I think that the weight of demonstration is not on the atheist’s shoulders but on those of the agnostic. Atheism is not a belief, rather it is the absence of a belief, and it is beliefs which need to be justified. This is, in fact, basic common sense. We proceed this way in our everyday life.

If, for example, my girlfriend is twenty minutes late for a rendezvous and my friend suggests she has been kidnapped, I will not base my future actions on my friend's suggestion--even if it is a possibility which cannot at present be eliminated. I will not be agnostic towards the possibility, rather I will reject it and laugh about it because I have, for the moment, no good reason to believe that this unlikely possibility has a significant weight in the balance. What would be the sense of my friend noting that I have a belief that my girlfriend has not been kidnapped and then asking me to prove that I am right?

In my view, the idea of God places us in a similar situation. If this is not the case, agnostics need to demonstrate why.

Arming The World

2008-08-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

"I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.

"Pick it up."

"I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me."

"Pick up the gun."

"Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, Mister."

"Pick up the gun."

(He picks it up. Three shots ring out.)

"You all saw him - he had a gun."

Suicide Girls

2008-08-07T00:39:00.001-07:00

Saw them love them. I am not trying to be vulgar here I just thought I would like to put down for the record something I find atrractive. I hate the playboy centerfold type without flaw and rather find myself pulled to the unusual.
I am CERTAIN this will be used against me.

What I can and can not Say

2008-08-06T02:25:00.000-07:00

I can't say a lot. Only what I know or don't.Do i love my past or do I hate it? Both. My past with Shannon, I am still trying to work out, my past with Joy I understand now better than I did but I am still working on that tool. My Future? God or gods or no gods I am very much still working on

The Third World is Just around the corner

2008-08-05T02:33:00.000-07:00

It may have been camelot for jack and jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That the third world is just around the corner

In the soviet union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That dr robert oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the cheese pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the great leap forwards

Jumble sales are organized and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the great leap forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From top of the pops to drawing the dole

If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room

So join the struggle while you may
The revolution is just a t-shirt away
Waiting for the great leap forwards

Fuck Bush, Fuck the government, they have whipped their asses on the constitution and deserve nothing but rebellion from me FUCK THEM they have lied and tore the American people apart.

Kissy Lips on DS3

2008-08-05T02:06:00.000-07:00

Daisy Sarah SOFIA Stone...or...DS3

Let X= X

2008-08-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

I hate being right ALL THE TIME...LET X = X. All the godtime.GODFUCK! love and kisses xxxxxx

The Ugly Truth

2008-08-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

You don't want to die
But the living gets you down
We want you to act like northing's wrong
Even though you heard a sound
And then you're ripped right out of the ground
Like a fucking root
Ah, you simply cannot hide
From the ugly truth
You feel you must be wise
Cause you could find yourself
Among a sea of smiling faces
It's a way I've never felt
Yeah, it kinda flies right into my face
And out the other side
The ugly truth leaves nothing to decide

The ugly truth makes every one of us a liar
Ugly

If you can dig a big enough hole
To bury all your youth
No you still won't be prepared for the ugly truth
No you'll never be prepared for the ugly truth
You simply cannot hide from the ugly truth
Ugly

No New Tale To Tell

2008-08-05T00:32:00.000-07:00

As told by Love and Rockets
You cannot go against nature
Because when you do
Go against nature
It's part of nature too
Our little lives get complicated
It's a simple thing
Simple as a flower
And that's a complicated thing
No new tale to tell
No new tale to tell
No new tale to tell
AHHHH
My world is your world

People like to hear their names
I'm no exception
Please call my name
Call my name
No new tale to tell
No new tale to tell
No new tale to tell
AHHHH
When you're down
It's a long way up
When you're up
It's a long way down
It's all the same thing
No new tale to tell
No new tale to tell

Bonn

2008-08-05T00:28:00.001-07:00

Shannon here is Bonn...welcome to the rest of the world. Would you like me to point out London Too?

Poem for You

2008-08-05T00:17:00.000-07:00

You always wanted me to write about you, well now I am. Does that please you? You never knew how much I wrote about you. How I felt about you. How I cared how I wept. I am past all that now and stronger if sadder. I have perfect vision when I don't use my eye's.
I know you don't give a fuck, but I do. This is all to surreal. Every one I meet every one I sleep with, everyone I speak with, everyone I talk too. It's raining here and I will be gone soon but DAMN...all I have to say is DAMN.

A moment sits suspended in time what I a time I had with you
Living in your fantasy world, well there ain't much of a view
I rarely stepped outside of myself, always caught up in between
Some place I thought was good for my health and the place I've always been
So let me tell you now

Oh, you better stop your crying
'Cause you're feeling so damn happy
You try to make me feel like dying
Oh, you better stop your crying
'Cause the tears that are running down your face
They don't make me feel like dying

I guess I never wanted to crash in the wave of your emotion
I walked away from all of the trash looking for a perfect ocean
But lately I've been finding myself fighting upward int he stream
And who could tell that I'm living in hell? Lord, I must be dreaming

Oh, you better stop your crying
'Cause I don't listen to you anymore even when you know you're lying
Oh, I see the story on your face
Stop your crying, 'cause you can't make me feel like dying

So now the party's come to and end and to end a perfect time
I send you love and all of the best, and all the rest is mine
And I'd rather sit and talk to myself after all is said and done
What happens next, hey no one can tell, and I ain't tellin' no one

Oh, you better stop your crying
'Cause the tears that are running down your face
They don't make me feel like dying
Oh, you better stop your crying
You ain't even trying, you better stop your crying

Phi

2008-08-04T12:58:00.001-07:00

The Golden Ratio 1.618

Picture Pages

2008-08-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

Overthrow the Goverment

2008-08-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, not really. I just want to get that idiot Bush out of office and not have him replaced with McCain (Who I suspect despite being Republican is probably a decent fellow...I just don't want him for Prez.). This was just to see how many hits and from where I would get from such a (Real Fucking mild) statement in these days of surveillance and paranoia.

A Question of Claus

2008-08-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

If Santa Claus lives at the North Pole does that mean that the "Anti Claus" lives At the South Pole?

Defiling The American Flag

2008-08-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

If this guy leaves pit stains in this shirt wouldn't that count as defiling the flag?

The End ?

2008-08-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

It’s over, a done deal. Finally? Yes, finally. Not a trick? No trick. Over? Yes. Over. Its been over a month now and I think we can finally crawl out of the bomb shelter.It is once again safe for the faint of heart to come out from under the covers. The battle mele is done and the shrapnel has been kept to a minimum.

At long last, the bedraggled Democrats have come to the blessed end of their perpetual primary pursuit. Not the beginning of the end. Nor the almost near middle of the end, but the very end. The butt end. The last millimeter of moldy hair on the bulbous pimple on the butt end of the end end. An end officially signaled by the reluctant arrival of Hillary Clinton at the sequestered gate of Acceptance. Though I suspect she is almost as displeased as she must have been about the whole Monica thing. I know I am late in accepting this my self but I know the Clintons. I was waiting for the O’Henry twist at the end but it never came…whew!

Acceptance. The final state of grief which has been attained only after an unseemly amount of time spent lounging with her old man on the porch swing at the House of Denial. And a couple of not so brief forays to the double-wide Recreational Vehicle of Anger and Depression. Then some boilermakers and cigars back at Denial House. And don't forget that quickie in the Vice Presidential Suite of the Bargaining Motel. But now the cloak of Acquiescence has been thrown over her shoulders by members of her own staff, while the Democratic Tactless Squad wraps Bill in the Shut- the Hell- Up Sheet while beating him across the head and shoulders with rolled up copies of the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

Only a gracious appearance on Oprah remains to be had.

Say what you will about Hillary, the woman does not give up easily. She possesses the stick-to-itiveness of an emaciated tick. She's like one of those Japanese soldiers who emerges from an island cave thirty years after the war is over. Not knowing that she lost and having learned nothing except how to subsist on a diet of bark and moss. But she saved her finest hour for the curtain call. Brilliant exit strategy. Gave the best speech of your life in the process of bowing out. Terrific timing. Next time, she might want to write the good speech for the opening or during the campaign instead of the close.

I say this because at the beginning I supported her even though I switched to Obama for reasons of my own. I initially pulled for Hilary because I am a big fan of national Health care. COME ON ! We are the only western nation without it. There is no excuse for a country as prosperous as The United States of America not to take care of its own (Unless of course it’s because all the money that could be vented into health care and education is instead fueling a war economy, and an illegal war to boot.)

Maybe the war is a way to reduce the number of people that need health care to begin with, after all you can’t cure DEAD.

Sorry about the rant there.

It’s time to move on. Since he's clinched the nomination, Barack Obama has also assumed the responsibility of unifying the Democratic Party, a task to which we all wish him luck. Unifying Democrats is like trying to herd a clew of worms over a chicken wire walkway onto an electric waffle iron. Like nailing lime Jell- O with carrot shreds to a tree. Reconstituting the original ingredients of a bouillabaisse. Unburning a bridge. It has long been said that if the democrats formed a firing squad it would be a circle.

Yet I have faith in Obama. Well as much is allowed in any politician. This year I’m not voting green. I’m voting black. Well, okay, half black…sort of…Hell I don’t know or care. He could be an off shade of mauve as long as I care. At the very least he’s not stupid.

The good news is the Democrats have gotten their ducks all in a row. The bad news it's closing in on duck season and Dick Cheney is reaching for his blaze orange hat and shot gun.

The Democrats are fond of calling themselves the party of the big tent, which is all well and good, but you know what else they hold in big tents? Oriental rug sales. Used car clearances. And circuses. And as the newly installed ringleader, Mr. Obama is going to need to find himself a really big chair and an awfully long whip to control the political menagerie that will be encircling him. And something bright and shiny to keep the paying customers focused on the center ring and not the eternally attendant freak show. And cotton candy is always nice. I would say he should forget the clowns but I suppose that we have to have at least a few Republicans around.

U.F.O.s and the Terrorist

2008-08-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Would you believe the NY Times published an op-ed today ...calling for closer monitoring of UFOs? I think it's intended seriously. It begins by suggesting that it -- our neglect of will-o'-the-wisps and reflections of Venus -- is a security loophole that terrorists might exploit, and then it gives several anecdotal accounts of unlikely events, such as this one:

"On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land.
An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base -- a clear security breach."

I kid You not.

Apparently, we should be concerned that Al-Qaeda is piloting nuclear-powered flying saucers to fly through our defenses and peek into hangars. Maybe they are pissed about that whole Roswell thing or maybe they just didn’t like how they were portrayed in the X Files. I personally blame Chris Carter.

The Last Night

2008-07-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight's the last night that I'm waiting up for you
It doesn't seem to matter if I do
'Cause you've got friends and places where you feel much more at ease
I've come to realize that's nothing new
I've learned one thing for certain
With you near me all this time
That what was yours is yours, what's mine is mine
But of all of these possessions I have let go of the greatest one of all
Tonight's the last night that I'm going to feel this way
This emptiness is so hard to explain
I've changed my number and the locks on all the doors
And I hope I never go through this againTonight's the last night that I'll ever spend with you
And please don't ask me why 'cause I don't know
It's just a funny feeling that's been building up inside
Tonight I have decided I must go
I must go

Seven Sisters

2008-07-18T08:26:00.001-07:00

http://topher-shanzi.blogspot.com/2008/07/seven-sisters.html

The Drake Formula

2008-07-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

Clue Too

2008-07-14T05:36:00.001-07:00

What Comes Next? Or Who?

2008-07-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

Don't cry it's over
forevermore
You never saw it
You never did it
but here you are
and there I am
You see the one side
but refuse to face it,
You know the one side
but cannot live It.
You can't believe it
I can't live it
but here you are
There I am
You never dreamed it
I could never believed it
but here you are
and there you are
You see the one side
but refuse to face it,
You know the one side
but cannot live it
Now . . .

Insainity is Nuts Part 2

2008-07-12T05:51:00.000-07:00

I can't avoid the insane...be it in me or in the people I meet walking down the street. This all makes as much sense as the things I hear from the homeless guy who lives behind the library who talks about the gremlins that live in is pants...GOD FUCK I am just so weary of this constant struggle to find a peace between normalcy and identity....

Between Something and Nothing

2008-07-12T05:17:00.000-07:00

Words that form a sentence
Words that form a phrase
In a poem or a letter
Could not convey the meaning
Of what this man has done
In a painting
On canvas
As the colors fading
They dictate my mood
Can you see me
Are you near me
I find myself on canvas
I find myself on stage
Can you see me
Are you near me
And I long to know you're real
And I long for you to be part of me
I long to know you're real
And I long for you to be a part of me
In the fading twilight
I sit and stare at her
In all her beauty
Her beauty
You know I have to wonder
Why all great men must die
And leave their treasure
They leave their treasure

Ballerina out of Control

2008-07-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

Her world came crashing down
And all that it contained
A million pieces of dreams
Coming apart at the seams
But she twists and she whirls
Dismissing it aa away,
Wasn't quite the same as it was
Yesterday
Her night begins the day
Why think when we can play
"I find it so hard to find,
A certain dress of that kind"
As she twists and she whirls
And she dances it all away,
The problems persist, they won't
Go away
She twists and she whirls
Dancing it all away,
Would rather see the night
Than the reason of the day
I find it so hard to find
Any reason to this kind

The Most Beautiful Little Girl EVER

2008-07-10T06:23:00.000-07:00

I have been ... Crucified...Fate has wounded me deeply yet again and all I have to add is an emotional "ouch". Why do I get these blessings put before me only to have them snatched away where I can never be anything for or too them....I am not cruel...stupid, at times, yes, but I am not cruel...I miss my beautiful children and want so much just for their company....I don't deserve this and I am sorry if I greive and weep for their absence...I just want to see speak and kiss them....I am sorry if their mothers have felt the need to leave and push me away....I love them and they can't be held up for anything on their feelings...I am lost on some of these issues...that or rather those are issues between they and I. I was never cruel, I never raised a hand, I was just too sad to be around.

Daisy Sarah Sophia Stone

My New Favorite Shape

2008-07-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

2008-07-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything it seems I like a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

If I should buy jellybeans
Have to eat them all in just one sitting
Everything it seems I likes a little bit sweeter
A little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me

And then theres those other things
Which for several reasons we wont mention
Everything about em is a little bit stranger, a little bit harder
A little bit deadly

Its not very smart
Tends to make one part
So brokenhearted

Sitting here remembering me
Always been a shoe made for the city
Go ahead accuse me of just singing about places (Or in my case Talking about them)
With scrappy boys faces have general run of the town

Playing with prodigal sons
Take a lot of sentimental valiums
Cant expect the world to be your raggedy andy
While running on empty you little old doll with a frown

You got to keep in the game
Retaining mystique while facing forward
I suggest a reading of lesson in tightropes
Or surfing your high hopes or adios kansas

Its not very smart
Tends to make one part
So brokenhearted

Still theres not a show on my back
Holes or a friendly intervention
Im just a little bit heiress, a little bit irish
A little bit tower of pisa
Whenever I see ya
So please be kind if Im a mess

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
Cigarettes and chocolate milk

Man people get so snoty

A New England

2008-07-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

New England Lyrics
Artist(Band):Billy Bragg

Review The Song (1)

Print the Lyrics

I just wanted to post this for the record of things, It's just a Billy Bragg song that I have a certain affection for that I kind of think applies very closely to shall we say certain events and motives that I have both now and previously lived through. Call it an anthem of life if you will...hell call it xandoutrgerty if that serves your taste...I don't care...it's personal...And I leave it open to interpretation to those who think they may be up to the challenge. Go for it

"I was twenty one years when I wrote this song
I'm twenty two now, but I won't be for long
People ask when will you grow up to be a man
But all the girls I loved at school
are already pushing prams

I loved you then as I love you still
Tho I put you on a pedestal,
They put you on the pill
I don't feel bad about letting you go
I just feel sad about letting you know

I don't want to change the world
I'm not looking for a new England
I'm just looking for another girl
I don't want to change the world
I'm not looking for a new England
I'm just looking for another girl

I loved the words you wrote to me
But that was bloody yesterday
I can't survive on what you send
Every time you need a friend

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care

I don't want to change the world
I'm not looking for a new England
I'm just looking for another girl
(Looking for another girl)
(Looking for another girl)
(Looking for another gi-rl)"

Room mates are nuts

2008-07-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

Only time and Death will ever tell, why do these psycho room mate fools keep finding me ? Fuck you Johnathan, you weird ill- lucid moron...

Another Clue For Yue ...

2008-06-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Oh, I crack me up!

Just a few Recent Photo Pics

2008-06-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

Nothing real heavy today folks. No political ramblings or diatribes, no woeful poems of discontent, no sideways attacks at those I felt I have been wounded or insulted by. No, just a few rather random pics of a few friends I rather like (Both the friends and the photos). This first one is from Kimber from her time at "Pirate Daze" up in Westport (One my favorite places I have lived and the only small town I could ever tolerate much less like). This next one is a promo picture of Avery and his band (Mates). These are the guys my brother plays with (Or at least DID) .

This is my new and dear friend Erin in front of the Back Porch Ramp endevour.
Avery and a very good catch.
Er damn...the bandagain. Opps.
Nice Promo shot of Avery.

Sometimes Now

2008-06-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

No sliver of moon
The dark hurts my eyes
Dream-chimed awake, solemnized
Counting the breaths
That threaten the calm
Cos you're not here and it's too late to call
l see Cruel scenes of how bad I've been
Pulled low, oh how could I know?
Fogs, voices, tears

Sometimes I lie shaken awake
Blistered with crazy thoughts of you
And a hundred ways to lose
Sometimes sense is too remote
Dark stars threaten to conspire
They scare like your eyes

One of those sometimes is now

Waiting for safety
In the solace of the sun
When the fevers of love are driven home
Help me forget
The last touch of you
I can't believe I didn't say I love you
Sometimes I feel such shame
Lost words, hide my eyes
I'm not myself with you
Sometimes I feel such blame
How could I ever explain?
When one of those sometimes is now.

A New Addition and a Happy Birthday

2008-06-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

Okay I just wrote the last blog and then read an e-mail where Shannon (My former Shanzi) basically offered me an olive branch and I feel like diarrhea in a wicker basket. I think her offer was genuine and well I lay down my arms of battle and accept. I want peace more than revenge or reprecucity.
Just as I love Joy in my sideways sort of way I to love Shannon though my understanding is lesser and my wounds not yet healed to the point where I don’t walk with anger.
So for the record I will let the words I have composed and in the future will compose stand as testament to the moments and the times. To the thoughts and the tears, the rage and sorrow. The compassions and the gentle hope of redemption and peace.

I said it at the end of my last6 entry and I meant it but I will say it here again and say;

I hope you did have a good birthday. I love and miss Daisy, Hailee and you...and Ariel and Seirra as well. IT is a strange life we all lead.

Grant Me A Little Anger, I Deserve It

2008-06-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

There are those who think they can address me in words.

They are up against forces they can not fathom.

This probably explains why they had rather “kick my ass” than debate me. It is a sign of passive-aggressive behavior, and well…stupidity.
Ha.

That is all I have to say to that.
Play “Lord Slayer Death Dragon Master” (Or what-ever, give me a break) a little longer or what ever f@#Ked up bullshit that might pass the time for them between masturbating, worshiping Baal, and sticking it to what ever will let them while they fantasize about Paris Hilton (Or whomever is convenientand isn't convenience what it's all about? I have heard evidence into the mind of Poniccie on this topic here, by the way.
Well in my great triumph of the vernacular I may also take consolation in the fact that I have been sidewise assaulted by the flaked out “Make it up as you go along” crowd. With absolutely nothing to substantiate their presumed titles. What a frigging joke! I suppose no more out ragious than my title of "Saint Tuesday" but at least I know that that is a laitgth-ian joke.

“Some times I feel like just getting a shotgun and pulling a Hemingway”

This a quote that got me into trouble. Taken out of context and misused.

Seriously, are you kidding me?

It was thrown up in my face that Hemingway may not have not died honorably. The same could be said of so many of my hero’s, and probably a lot of everybodies. Grant you a lot did commit suicide, so the FUCK what?

They did not all commit suicide it's not really about that anyway. If you are so depressed you just can't work or function so that the goverment must send you a check then gode nobbies for you, fine, but certainly don't critisize those who actually did something profound with their depression instead of getting a free ticket to ride. Like writting brilliant works of litature or creating astronomical art.

I feel as if; we are beings free by our own will we have the RIGHT to decide the time and method of our passing when the declared time comes.

Hell, Vonnegut, Adams, and well most of the others died comparatively young but of natural causes. I am not even sure how this was meant to insult me other than to make me aware that I was being monitored (As if I gave one goddamn).

Am I angry over this? No, not really, I just had a few more thoughts to add to the record I desire to create and cross reference (It’s actually quite amusing in a petty little way [I am not afraid of my thoughts, by pulling them out and slamming them down in this filthy sort of way I conquer the more base members of my mental collective].)

I would tell you the biggest mistake people make about me but that would be counter productive!

Just a joke there.

I guess my biggest mistake is my inability to keep my opinion (Even if just for the moment) to my self.

I don’t hate anybody and by that I specificaly am refering to my ex, Shannon. She is inferred here and is minorly hinted at in this diatribe. I love her but I think she makes the silliest and most desperate choices, hell even I could be considered on of those.

She always has made choices below her and I suspect she always will. I'll bet even her dreaded mother would agree on this fact.

As the sailors say “any port in a storm” and her whole life has been a storm and for that I weep, and wish her well.

I just don’t trust the characters in her life. Except her mother Sandy…a competent, caring and yet a complete cunt of a tyrant (I used to call her the wicked witch of the west) Then there is Tom, her step father, an extremely intelligent and trust worthy fellow.

As for her real father “Bruce”…I will only say two things…1. He believes that Star Wars was based in a real event from our past.

2. He believes absolutely everything he hears except the truth…he isn’t stupid but he is out there…as rational people we have it as our duty to correct the crazies so that the free thinkers and eccentrics don’t take the blame.

That’s enough for now. I hope to get an update on my Daughter Daisy some time(?). Not that I nor my father will hold our collective breath, or I will just have to find another way, hopefully a gentle one.

Shannon’s Birthday was here a day or so ago, she is now the same age as I was when she met me. I hope it was a good one. Er, uh, I just hope it was a good one. The rest can be told else wise by others.