Open Sesame 06/27/15
A new day I never seen before nor will I ever again. Be glad in it.
Good morning, earthlings. I send greetings.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ATVtP3BK64]
Today In History
When Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower of London, he occupied himself with writing a history of the world. He had finished the first volume and was at work on the second when there was a scuffle between some workmen beneath the window of his cell, and one of the men was killed. In spite of diligent enquiries, and in spite of the fact that he had actually seen the thing happen, Sir Walter was never able to discover what the quarrel was about: whereupon, so it is said—and if the story is not true it certainly ought to be—he burned what he had written and abandoned his project.
Today's Economists
We are now embarking on a new mission of forging a global order. That is why I am now visiting all our friends to tell them to move in step with the world. To everything its season, says the preacher. There was a time when slavery was good. It did its work, and when it finished creating capital, it withered and died a natural death. Colonialism was good. It spread industrial culture of shared resources and markets. But to revive colonialism would now be an error. There was a time when the cold war dictated our every calculation in domestic and international relations. It is over. We are in the post-cold war era, and our calculations are affected by the laws and needs of globalization. The history of capital can be summed up in one phrase: in search of freedom. Freedom to expand, and now it has a chance at the entire globe for its theater. It needs a democratic space to move as its own logic demands. So I have been sent to urge you to start thinking about turning your country into a democracy. Who knows? Maybe with your blessings, some of your ministers might even want to form opposition parties.
Let me make our position clear. We cannot build a global economy under the old politics of the cold war. What we are saying is this: many parties, one aim—a free and stable world where our money can move across borders without barriers erected by the misguided nationalism of the outmoded nation-state. The goal is to free up the resources and energies of the globe.
The Global Bank and the Global Ministry of Finance are clearly looking to privatize countries, nations, and states. They argue that the modern world was created by private capital. The subcontinent of India, for instance, was owned by the British East India Company, Indonesia by the Dutch East India Company, our neighbors by the British East Africa Company, and the Congo Free State by a one-man corporation. Corporate capital was aided by missionary societies. What private capital did then it can do again: own and reshape the Third World in the image of the West without the slightest blot, blemish, or blotch. NGOs will do what the missionary charities did in the past. The world will no longer be composed of the outmoded twentieth-century divisions of East, West, and a directionless Third. The world will become one corporate globe divided into the incorporating and the incorporated. We should volunteer Aburiria to be the first to be wholly managed by private capital, to become the first voluntary corporate colony, a corpolony, the first in the new global order. With the privatization of Aburiria, and with the NGOs relieving us of social services, the country becomes your real estate. You will be collecting land rent in addition to the commission fee for managing the corpolonial army and police force. The corpolonial powers will reward you as a modern visionary.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHjkMeuCFVA]
News From The Planet Of The Apes
A lunatic serial killer that the United States has placed in charge of most of its nuclear missiles has suffered a public seizure in which he foamed: "Some of the actions by Russia recently we haven’t seen since the 1930s, when whole countries were annexed and borders were changed by decree."
Meanwhile, a Russian lunatic, Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council, a general, the former head of the FSB ("our new nobility," he said of this successor-agency to the KGB), claims the United States is trying to transform Russia into the functional equivalent of ebola, that it has in mind a Final Solution for his nation, in that it "would like very much to see Russia cease to exist as a country."
Geez, people. Can you stop with the sleazy Godwinning already.
But despite all this hooting and screeching and bone-throwing around the waterhole, the would-be Hitlers themselves didn't have a problem talking to one another on the phone this week. Seems Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama spoke via phone for some while, of Syria and Ukraine and Iran, of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of beefcake photos, of puttin' on the Ritz.
And Adolf Hitler himself, when contacted about this Godwinning, did not, as can be seen in the videos below, seem to think much of either Putin, or Obama. This last despite the fact that, as the third video below Proves, Obama is in fact Hitler's natural-born son.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBj3hTm5fo8]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y8Fuy6KIe8]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XesDygYTmWo]
TPP Up The Bunghole
There in the U.S.S.A. this week, the two houses of Congress, Beavis and Butthead, voted to permit President Cornholio to keep a-goin with some sort of treaty that nobody really knows what is in it, negotiated by no one really knows who.
When whoever they are finish with whatever it is, President Cornholio will then present it to Beavis and Butthead, who will next have a limited amount of time to either accept it, in full, or reject it, in full.
This means, for example, that the treaty may provide that any American who wants it, can receive 100 pounds in gold. However, in exchange, said American must also agree that his or her every living relative shall be killed and chopped up and tossed into goat-penis soup, a traditional Indonesian dish that—the treaty further provides—shall be shipped in great vats aboard endless armadas of container ships that shall dock at US ports, from which shall stream trucks that will deliver said soup to every public and private school in the nation, to be served each day at lunch. It will be sort of like the banquet scene in Titus Andronicus. All day, every day. And into the night.
Beavis and Butthead, they must take it or leave it. All of it. All of it yea, or all of it nay. Heh-heh.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilVFpvzuBM]
Everything Old Is New Again
Though almost no one has yet laid eyes on the things, as they are so much more rare than diamonds, this week two self-driving cars—one from Google, and one from Delphi—nearly ran into each other, there in the streets of Palo Alto.
Like with most things on this planet, we have all been here before.
For back in 1895, there were but two human-driven cars in all the state of Ohio. And they collided with one another.
Similarly, Joyce Mitchell is not the first prison employee to develop such a romantic fondness for convicted and imprisoned murderers, that she endeavored to help them to escape.
In the winter of 1901, Kate Soffel, wife of the warden of Allegheny County Jail, in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, became besotted—and he with her—with Ed Biddle, who, with his brother Jack, had been arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang. Ms. Soffel, in the course of things, contrived to help the brothers escape. And, on January 29, 1902, they did.
Unlike Ms. Mitchell, Ms. Soffel went with her freed men. The three headed for Canada, but they didn't make it. When once they caught up with the trio, law-men took great joy, in pumping the three full of bullets. Jack and Ed died shortly thereafter; Ms. Soffel survived. She served two years in prison. She died of typhoid fever, in 1909.
Gillian Armstrong in 1984 transformed this tale into a five-star filmic romance, Mrs. Soffel, featuring Mel Gibson and Matthew Modine as the Biddles, and Diane Keaton as Mrs. Soffel. Among the film's many charms, is that it presents bible-reading as sweet, and sexy.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BceyVefgFz0]
And that the score, by Mark Isham, weeps with loss.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RR5jbyEsE0]
This week three members of the United States Supreme Court—Alley Oop, Uncle Thomas, and Benito Alito—extruded an extreme pout-lip because their six lesser-hare-brained colleagues, when considering the ACA, declined to find in favor of a typo.
The rich rat bastards of the Wall Street Journal immediately started screaming like stuck pigs that now the Prime Directive is that Someone needs to Save them from a modest ACA tax. While meanwhile smugly smirking about their rich rat bastard Latest Thing: homes with 15 bedrooms.
Absolutely insane people from the absolutely insane agency DARPA announced this week that they intend to terraform Mars.
These people are sad, and they are dangerous—to themselves, as well as to others. For we know from the true-life documentary fiilm Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, that if you try to terraform an orb that is not earth, not only will it not work out at all well, but you will be killed by Klingons.
In other space, there now be discovered some 854 "ultra dark glaxies," bursting with dark matter, in—I kid you not—the Coma cluster.
Dark matter, and dark energy, are at present a Great Befuddlement for the earthlings, because, though the earthling scientists estimate dark matter and energy, combined, constitute some 95.1% of the mass-energy content of the universe, they, the earthlings, don't know what dark matter, or dark energy, is, and never have they really seen, or otherwise really perceived it.
This is because they have never consulted with my colleague. Who can explain dark matter, dark energy, in one word.
Desire.
We already know that no one knows why there are two eyes staring out from the planet Ceres at the approaching Dawn spacecraft. And now, this week, we learned that they don't know why there is, either, on Ceres, a pyramid.
Actually, though admittedly I'm not caught up on the pyramid yet, I think I do know the meaning of the Ceres eyes. For the key to the mystery of these, I believe, was vouchsafed back in 1974, by the neuroastronomer Sir George Ivan Morrison. In his monograph "Where Flamingoes Fly."
well we’re here
and we’re waiting
lookin’ at you
lookin’ at we
lookin’ at you
anticipating
each and every each and every
lookin’ at you lookin’ at me lookin’ at you
lookin’ at me lookin’ at you lookin’ at me lookin’ at you
follow the road
that will take me
take me back home
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZRIlgjaIc]
Sometimes it's good, when somebody goes out of business.
In 1983, Evan Wolfson, Harvard law student, wrote a thesis arguing for same-sex marriage. In April of 2000—lawyer—he appeared before the United States Supreme Court, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, to argue that the scouts could not lawfully expel Dale, simply because he announced he was gay.
Wolfson: Dale: lost.
The next year, in 2001, Wolfson, established Freedom To Marry. The goal of that outfit to attain legal recognition of the right of same-sex couples to marry. Same as opposite-sex couples.
This was not a popular position. In 2004, for example, a Turd Blossom swept the board, in 11 states, successfully encouraging a-feared and a-freaked retroverts to vote at the ballot box against gay marriage, while meanwhile pulling the lever to re-up the Turd's chosen one, George II, for a second term of the presidency.
Yet, yesterday, Wolfson announced his outift, Freedom To Marry, is preparing to down tools. Because what it has always been about, is now Real. "We will close in a matter of months," he said.
Because we have been to the mountaintop. All of us. And all of us. We have crossed over.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnXur1Mlee8]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sy-HfUQqoQ]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzvlivbptXk]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DBl5gAs6WI]
This Week In Whiteness
Pat Boone is a scarifyingly white man. So blindingly white, that to gaze upon him, without heavy leaden orb protection, is to have the eyes burned right out of your head. Worse than Medusa, worse than the Gomorrah-fire that salted the wife of Lot, that fellow.
In his youth, Boone made more money than god. In sucking the soul out of songs recorded by black people. Rendering them sufficiently white, that white people could listen to them without going into the hospital. During this period, he regularly recorded and released songs so soul-numbingly Wrong that extraterrestrials expanded the existing no-go zone around this planet an additional 50 parsecs, in order to ensure that no evolved being would be exposed to some Boone thing that might melt their souls.
A typical Boone tune of the period is offered below; it is advised that no one among you give it a listen, unless you are first sufficiently controlled by Medicine.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iALGml0BQoI]
Boone has always been Wrong: in the 1950s he refused to appear in a film with Marilyn Monroe, because she exuded Sex. This is why, when, these days, Boone spurts some ludicrosity, we can not write it off as but the dementia of an 81-year-old doddler: he has always been this way. And so, when Boone writes this week in World Nut Daily, that Dylann Stormfront Roof, in annihilating nine black people in a church, because he was specifically aiming to annihilate black people, Roof's crime "had a racist element, to be sure," but "it was more than that," in that Roof "was carefully prepared and led by the Devil himself to kill as many Christians as he could," we know that these words are not attributable to Boone suddenly plunging into Alzheimer's disease. For Boone, he has been batshit crazy all along.
Crazy, just as much, are the white people who want to put another white-people telescope on Mauna Kea. That mountain is already bristling with white-people telescopes. White-people telescopes are fine and fun and all—I, personally, like what they see. But Hawaiians don't need telescopes. They don't need lenses peering into the sky. For they long ago developed their own cosmology. They know what is out there; there, in the great wide open. They don't need white-people poking to get pictures of it.
And Mauna Kea is the most sacred of all their mountains. It is where Pele lives. She who created all of the Hawaiian islands. She is the last person who needs a white-person telescope to tell her what is in the cosmos. For she is the cosmos.
Hawaii was stolen from the Hawaiians by white-people corporados in 1893; this in the era when corporations ofttimes stole and conquered lands directly, rather than through nations (see "Today's Economists," above; the British East India Company, Dutch East India Company, British East Africa Company, etc.). Today the United States is deluded that Hawaii belongs to it. Hawaii does not.
Hawaiians are increasingly not really happy about all this. And they're for sure not real happy about another white-people telescope crawling up Pele's thighs.
The Hawaiian I know best says "Mauna Kea can usually take care of itself, since it's home to the goddess Pele, who has a famously short and fiery temper." Meaning: when she decides she really doesn't want the white-people telescopes creeping across her flesh, Pele will just hurl some boulders at them, or run some lava their way.
The white people are meanwhile whining that the Hawaiians are putting large rocks in the road, to prevent the white people from getting to the white-people telescopes. But I don't think that's what happening.
My Hawaiian companera, when she was small, and so still all wonder, once brought home several hefty rocks from a heiau, a kind of native Hawaiian open-air church. Her Hawaiian father—so Hawaiian that, in 1941, while he wore the uniform of an officer in the United States Army, he was nonetheless prevented, in San Francisco, from marrying an Englishwoman, because he was classsifed a "wog"—wouldn't allow them in the house.
So she put them in the yard. Where from they were gone in the morning.
Because, in Hawaii, rocks tend to get around on their own.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpsFLhjFUZ4]
That's all, folks. Adios, till next Saturday.
Comments
rise and shine, people. breakfast time. let's have ice cream.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKZPO01iFzY]
Obama basically betrays the country and the people with his
support and advocacy for the TPP, then Obama sings a little diddy and a place named Vox says something and they all fall in place again.
It's really an amazing thing. But then again, very predictable. These are people who willingly accept their roles. Their will always be people who accept their roles.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/27/1397047/-Vox-Obama-is-Officiall...
I thought it was just me.
I can barely stand it. 8 people get shot in a church, and they go after a flag - not guns and not the hate groups behind the flag that are responsible for radicalizing the shooter. Obama evolves on gay marriage 20 years behind the times. Roberts nationalizes gay marriage, and Obama is bestowed with the rainbow colored mantle of gay rights. Last but not least, Roberts institutionalizes corporate health care with no cost controls, and Obama morphs from a rainbow warrior to Joan of Arc singing amazing grace. What a fucked up country this is. It reminds me of a Mike Malloy analogy where the world sees America as an out-of-control 5 year old carrying two suitcases full of nukes. Nobody knows where we're headed, what we will do when we get there, and adults are nowhere to be seen or elected any time soon.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Not just you
I felt sick reading the adulation. It reminded me of a macabre dance. Dancing on the grave of our lost regulations and protections due to TPP, the grave of innocents killed by US drones and other weapons, the grave of our environment, notably the plan to destroy Alaska with drilling rigs and US Navy war games. Read "What Went Wrong" in Harper's and you will find that the eloquence being praised is all scripted.
I believe there is a plan by media/corporations/politicians to keep us busy fighting for the smaller issues, issues that concern 10 - 15% of the population while screwing the 99% with war, weapons, environmental degradation, fossil fuel extraction, economic inequality, fill in the blanks...
To thine own self be true.
This comment over there
by one of the Hillary apologists really pissed me off. I think bbb is this week's designated hitter to shit on anything other than Hillary. These two comments stand out in a litany of what I considered to be very ugly commentary.
On another diary, this borderline racist comment.
To which Liepar Destin called him out.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
bbb and BJ both are close to a 'mental breakdown"
in the way they comment. The only question I still wonder about is, if both of their way of commenting is staged. It sure must makes kos "happy", if he cares at all for his site.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I firmly believe
that bbb, Armando, Trix, and Lawrence Lewis all have kos' blessing (if not marching orders) to shit all over Bernie diaries. Markos owes his soul to the DLC and the natives over at dkos are not cooperating in the coronation of she who is "inevitable." The minions who are not marching in lock step to her inevitableness must be reminded that it is "her time" and that she is "inevitable," so therefore there should be no diaries about Bernie, especially when so many are hitting the rec list. It does not make kos look very good to the power brokers in the Democratic party. And god knows kos wants that invite to a good seat at the coronation. What kos is trying to do is undemocratic, but then "democracy" is so yesterday.
BTW, bbb just put a very stupid hit piece of a diary today blaming Bernie Sanders for the state of Vermont not enacting its own single payer program. All this crapola of front pagers and operatives shitting in Bernie diaries reeks of a growing desperation of trying to put the genie back in the bottle after he has escaped and done his magic. In a way, it is entertaining to see even though it is tiresome.
Quite honestly, I see this stupid shit as an indication that the PTB in the Democratic party are getting worried. Even if Bernie does not win, he is exposing just how shallow she is by default, simply by him clearly and forcefully stating his positions while she basically has none.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
That's a fair analysis
So do you think HRC will be the new Obama on DKos? The bots will simply switch allegiance although I'm pretty sure that most of them will follow Obama's career to the death.
To thine own self be true.
IMHO,
There are two groups, of which some folks are avid members of both. First, the Obamabots are just that. They are separate and distinct in that they in love with the man and will continue to follow him to the death. The second group are the operatives and the die hard yellow dog Democrats. Some of the yellow dogs may also be Obamabots, but they are yellow dogs first. But I think most of the defecation that is being done on the Bernie diaries is by operatives along with some of the die hards. The problem as I see it for markos and dkos is that Daily kos has not kept rank and file in line with the DLC and too many Bernie diaries are hitting the rec list. It makes kos look bad.
But in trying to head off Bernie, the problem is that they are going about it all wrong by trying to attack him instead of promoting their own candidate, Ms. DLC herself, the inevitable one. A big part of that is due to the candidate herself, who in my opinion is running a poor campaign already. I am not a campaign junkie or operative, instead I am more policy oriented. But even to my untrained eyes and ears, Ms. Clinton is allowing all the other candidates to define her policies by default as she sits cloistered with her 200 advisers and selected individuals for her listening tour. Seriously, it does not take a listening tour to realize the major issues today in the US if the candidate is not already beholding to big banks and large corporate donors.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
For me, it's not just the banks, but their foundation too
It's crooked. Maybe as crooked as the Koch's but they keep the activities more private.
All the countries that got arms deals donated to the foundation. How that isn't a conflict of interest is beyond me.
Then Bill gets paid to speak to them on top of it.
I don't have the link to the article I read, but the 3 of them get paid quite handsomely.
And what is she saying to the banks that pay her $250 k?
Both of them are dirty but the bots won't even look into what she did as SOS.
She pushed for the TPP, more wars, more fracking, ect.
If she's elected it would be Bushs 8th term. Or Reagans 16th.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Why everybody ought to care about TPP.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Canada will be forced to accept dairy products
from US, New Zealand and Austrailia. Right now the Canadian diary industry has protections but they go out the window when Harper signs TPP.
Time to become a vegan. We really ought to care.
To thine own self be true.
The left is as dumb and gullible as the right.
If those people at dailykos are the left, who the hell are we? They all think they're progressives. They get sold as progressives, but then so does Obama.
Did you see where Trump is gaining the polls? OMG, he isn't even an offiicial candidate. He hasn't filed any financials.
What kind of a people runs and elects the dumbest and most corrupt to put their finger on the red button? Speaking of red buttons, have you seen the latest article on the "missileers"?
Totally insane...
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Those people you mention are not even political
Many of them are simply fans and they turn DKos into a fanzine. There's no analysis or debate, just unbridled adulation of a politician. We have a friend in LA who stops everyone as she holds up her cell phone and announces "shh, my president is talking." But she never discusses the issues. They don't matter. We don't respond as we wait patiently for the day when she will get over it. Maybe when his presidency ends, who knows.
To thine own self be true.
People at the GOS
have a lot of trouble distinguishing between a symbol and an actual thing. Between symbolic acts and acts of consequence.
It isn't just GOS. You see it everywhere in the MSM.
they fall for visual symbols - and some site's writers use them
extensively to manipulate and enhance "click- and comment-tivism". Most people are completely uncritical of "cool visuals and videos" and get sucked into them like bees to the fruit jam. Visual manipulation has gotten way more intense and imo dangerous than verbal, text based one.
https://www.euronews.com/live
New DK 5 is full of images everywhere. n/t
To thine own self be true.
LOL
The diary was written by the number one fan boy over there. Doesn't kos have a connection with Vox?
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
He owns it or part of it
It's part of Kos Media,LLC. and is an offshoot of his sports blog network. Last I heard the editor was Ezra Klein. Wiki lists Kos Jerome Amstrong and some AoL dude as Vox's founders. Take a look the venture cappies who invested. whew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Media
Yes, I looked it up too
Markos was co-founder of SB Nation which is part of Vox Media. SB Nation is regularly picked up by Yahoo Sports. I believe Ezra Klein is still the editor at Vox.
This is interesting when I looked up Jerome Armstrong. He was the founder of MyDD and the co-author of Crashing the Gates. He was considered a mentor for Markos in the early years.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
By jove, I think you're right.
I went over there to take a look. I couldn't find an "about" or one word about who or what VOX is. If the fan letter to Obama said, I wasn't about to read it to find out.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I clicked over...
to the Vox article and saw this photo:
That's a photo that I first saw years ago, even back then I didn't think it looked quite right so I fixed it for them with a little photoshop work:
There, that's more realistic.
That was just revolting
How delusional can you get? Obama apparently is responsible for every damn thing that happens here and everything that happens are all great accomplishments. Really amazing. I got into it on facebook with an old hippie college friend from Antioch, husbands alma mater. Turns out she's a idiotic Obot, and attributes all thing grands and beautiful to the greatest Democratic president ever. Shocked me as I thought all fanatical partisan Obot's were on dkos. When she pulled out the tried and true apologist talking points like better then Cruz and Obama is a victim of racist obstructionism, I lost it. Talk about low information or maybe just denial. She did say she wants to believe. I refused to do the tinker bell clap. Eric said when I signed up for fb that I wouldn't last long and would start unfriending my 'friends'. Surprised it took this long. Think I'll stick to family pics and funny photo's of cats and jokes.
There's now 3 diaries today stating how awesome Obama is
And the bootlicking supporters won't read anything bad about him.
Ned states that Obama has ended the war in Afghanistan, yet when anyone comes back with links, he ignores them.
Obama is the 4th term of pnac what with his droning in 8 countries, he coups in lybia, Hondorous, Ukraine and working with the same terrorists groups we fought against in Iraq to help take down Assad.
I keep reading that he ended the Iraq war, yet it was Bushs'SOFA that did that.
And now there are over 3,000 troops back in Iraq.
Mention the TPP, and they say to wait because it will show that it won't be as bad as people think it will.
And Hilary's supporters are just as rabid.
If she gets in, it's more wars, more money for the banks, more inequality for us.
I don't understand how people can be so delusional.
And anyone that disagrees with them are called haters.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
They appear to have an emotional connection
with him therefore they can't listen to reason. To me he is a politician who faked his concern for "the people" in order to get into the White House.
As the Harper's article points out, he can be brilliant, dazzling but look at his record on pardons for example, the worst in history.
To thine own self be true.
Jesus effing Christ on a stick....
This comment:
There are no words.
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon
those
sorts of rankings are always embarrassing. Even the "experts" end up looking like nimrods.
Thanks hecate...
great stuff. There was a minor shift in the overton window last week, I am happy that everyone can marry now. BUT, the big ones, the war on the planet, the war on the peoples of the planet, and economic inequality trudge on unabated. Same old same old, only a little different. None of SCOTUS' actions, as guilt driven as they seem to be, make up for the appointment of Bush II and Citizens United. The next bone thrown will probably be marijuana legalization, to further placate the restless masses. Am I a hopeless cynic? If the shoe fits...
Thanks again for the great OT.
Just a heads up....
Over at the GOS is a diary comparing Clinton's and Sanders's donor lists, revealing that all of FSC's top donors are corporations and Wall Street types, whereas Sanders's are unions.
Of course the usual apologists dropped in -- Armando et al. -- claiming she gets lots of money from unions (and more than Sanders) without, of course, providing any numbers.
But the one comment that took the prize is this:
Well, if you're going to sell out your principles, why not go all the way, right?
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon
well, I am not selling out, but have to say
that if I would donate to any cause and group that fights for the right stuff, I would have to take out a loan. And quite frankly it pisses me off, when I see hundreds of begging emails in my inbox and even worse, when I see snail mail telling me I should thank this person or that person etc. I am asked to give carrots to the good guys and the stick to the bad guys, and obviously they know who is who and can't help themselves to let me know.
I donate to finance the activities of activists sending me mail? What? My money for this? Why? When I open any site, first thing is to get thrown a petition demand in my face? Or getting told what I should do? I feel like in kindergarden when I am told to stand still in line and "do as I say".
I am fed up with it. It has gotten so bad that I don't want to donate anymore. It's so awful that I want to shut down my email address, but don't know how. I feel constantly harrassed in places I consider are "my private spaces" and people should ask for permission to enter and definitely should not overrun and ask me for money.
End of rant.
https://www.euronews.com/live
The many requests for money
I live downtown so walking the 1 block to the grocery store, I can get asked 3 or 4 times for money. When I first moved here, I did give but then fatigue set in as I could be asked by the same person on the way to the store and on the way back too. I made a rule that I only give to buskers because they are earning it and improving the area with their music AND I give to the food bank. We have 6 soup kitchens around here so no one can go hungry. I also give to Doctors without Borders. No one else. That's why I can cold-heartedly refuse any DK requests for money without feeling guilty about it.
To thine own self be true.
Oh, I do donate to certain organizations regularly
they are not the ones that flood me with emails or snail mail. (SPLC, NARF, ACLU, Doctors without Borders) As for donating to homeless, jobless, hopeless people on the streets or online, I used to pass around seven every day on my commute to work and we can meet them on the gos. Some of them I know since decades... it's hard to donate to them... but sometimes I still do.
Activism is mostly fund raising and that goes over the social network's ability to overrun you with email solicitations. It's on me to "unsubscribe" or "block" them, and I am mad at that as well. They should "ask for permissions". I shouldn't have to have opt out, but if I wanted to be allowed to opt-in. I didn't opt-in for most of the email solicitations I get. That imo has to stop. And the whole issue of opting in or out has been discussed since 1996 from the beginning of the www. Here, 20 years later, still a technological solution to all of it hasn't been found.
https://www.euronews.com/live
It's emails, snail mail, you name it...
And yes, I'm right with you on that.
Well, that's what the delete button and the trash can are for now.
And I've got your attitude plus one other: Zero effing remorse about it.
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon
WTF? Slavery was never good
colonialism was never good. From the above:
We are now embarking on a new mission of forging a global order. That is why I am now visiting all our friends to tell them to move in step with the world. To everything its season, says the preacher. There was a time when slavery was good. It did its work, and when it finished creating capital, it withered and died a natural death. Colonialism was good.
Taking away the human rights of another person is never good. I suppose the writer means "good for the economy" but the humanitarian price is too high.
To thine own self be true.
it's
what I guess these days is called "snark."
The author was born more than 70 years ago into the then-British colony of Kenya. As a young man, during the war for independence, he lived "a drama of contradictions," as the same British RAF on whose side Kenyans fought in WWII "dropp[ed] bombs on my own brother in the forests of Mount Kenya." That brother was killed by the RAF; another brother, deaf and mute, was killed "when the British soldiers told him to halt, [and] he didn’t hear." His mother was imprisoned and tortured, on the grounds that her son had joined the resistance.
After attending university in Uganda, he wrote his first novels, in English, at Leeds University. In the mid-1970s he began writing in his mother tongue, Gikuyu, to better speak to the people of his country. While organizing common folk in a production of a semi-improvised play in Gikuyu, later published in English as I Will Marry When I Want, he was arrested by the Kenyan government and imprisoned for a year in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. There he wrote his first novel in Gikuyu (later published in English as Devil on the Cross), inscribing it on toilet paper.
Spotlighted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, he was by the authorities grudgingly released, but was removed from his position as an instructor at Nairobi University, and subjected to regular harrassment. In 1982 he exiled himself and his family first to England, and eventually to the United States. In 2004 he returned to Kenya for the first time in more than 20 years; in Nairobi his apartment was besieged by thieves who beat and tortured him, and sexually brutalized his wife. Back in the States, in 2006 he was tossed from a posh San Francisco hotel by an employee convinced that such a man couldn't possibly be a registered guest there.
He's a Marxist, and his novel Wizard of the Crow, from which those words were lifted, is a delight.
Thank you, I jumped the gun on that
irony is hard to pick up in this medium.
To thine own self be true.
thank you, this makes the excerpt much better to understand,
you have unique sources.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Great morning OT
Sort of like "where's Waldo" only we're looking for Hitler instead.
And I would be remiss if I didn't bitch about Michigan's weather again. It is currently 59 and raining. 10 day forecast calls for two 80 degree days and both of them call for rain. Michigan never had a long summer, but it was hot and sunny while we had it. Global warming has made it shorter and colder. Juneau, Alaska is having the same weather we are.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
please
send your weather here. Yesterday, here, it was 103 degrees with 60% humidity. It was like New Orleans, except without the food, the music, or the voodoo. : /
Send some of that
cold and rain our way. Oregon's summer usually kicks off with a short sweet heat wave but this year it started early and according to Yahoo weather the temperatures will be in the 90's with several days of 105 until July 11. Eric just groaned and said his weather report has 107 for the high on July 4th.
I checked out the coast and Lincoln City mid coast has today's high at 70 degrees. Perhaps it's time to move out of this city and back to the coast. I like growing cool weather crops like spinach, lettuce and broccoli. Houses are not as expensive in many coastal towns. Since the 2008 crash many rich Californians have sold their vacation beach houses here.
They seem to be congregating in eastern Oregon Bend area. More conservative in that part of the state the coastal area's still have a hippie hangover if your out of the big resort cities and towns. Inland two miles would be ideal. Dreaming on here. Portland is just getting to be exactly what we moved here to get away from. Luckily our work is all electronic and we work from our home. Time to get back to where I once belonged.
My state's directly south of yours and
I feel your pain.
I'm building an ark in the backyard.
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon
Wow!
This was a long read, some of which may have flown over my bleached blonde head.
But what a delightful read!!!*clapping* I savored every morsel.
You have set a high bar for creative writing.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
is it just me...
or does anyone else see a similarity with what's happening with ISIS in the Mideast and the start of WWII?
The start of WWII
as I read about it, was Hitler's rise to power and mobilizing Germany then the Nazi's overrunning country after country with blitzkriegs.
ISIS is overrunning city after city with suicide bombers. One city was hit with a suicide bomber as an initial distraction and while that shock was being absorbed by the population, 4 trucks went off in the city. Each truck bomb had the power of one Murrah Building truck bomb and each truck bomb destroyed one city block. So you can imagine the population of a city after this blitzkrieg - the population would be in shock and fear and so demoralized that ISIS could virtually walk in. Actually, they rolled in driving US armoured trucks. So I think the tactics of ISIS are similar but on a smaller scale than Hitler's blitzkriegs.
To thine own self be true.
Here's a perspective du jour:
From Speedy Gonzales:
I see no error here.
I have read Pepe
on a number of occasions and find his writing very readable and often entertaining in a good way. It seems he has the best western insights into the political arena of the East that I have read. But I am no expert on the East so I will defer to those whose knowledge is far better than my own.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
He's the Hunter S Thompson of geopolitics
A Brazilian journalist, Pepe Escobar roams the globe from hot-spot to hot-spot and lives the events he reports on, writing and analyzing what he experiences. He is post-national and seems able to infiltrate any situation anywhere in the world. His recent article, Howling in Donetsk, is an example of his investigative approach.
One memorable essay was his early reporting on Edward Snowden at the Moscow Airport — which, looking back, pretty much explains the US insanity that popped up suddenly in Ukraine.
And, so forth...
Highly entertaining
post. Thanks hecate, you writing is as always good, funny and thought provoking. Be back later after the climbing heat sends me to my upstairs office where my cool box as I call my noisy window air conditioner will be on full blast. Lot's to read here for later.
This is naively interesting.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2015/6/2/a-pragmatic-progressives-res...
Funny no mention on why they're on the same side as
Boehner and the republicans on the TPP.
Oh maybe there is, it's Obama. It's all about Obama.
Late to the Party, but like others, "Wow, love your writing
style and content, hecate!" Definitely look forward to your Saturday essays. I wouldn't know where to begin if I were tasked with writing an OT like this one.
Wanted to post a piece about the OPM (Office Of Personnel Management) hacking incidents, but can't seem to find it right now, and it's getting late. So, will try to dig it up by early next week, and post it.
Shout out to Al--if you haven't heard, guess the mysterious security expert "Joe" that I heard a week ago on XM Radio was correct--the MSM is now reporting that the figure for "both" hacking incidents is closer to 18 million, than to 4 million.
Apparently, OPM was "spinning" when they first reported the 4 million personnel files figure, by deliberating not mentioning the second hacking incident.
Sigh . . .
Mollie
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"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."--Author Unknown
The "Grand Bargain" isn't dead--it's being implemented incrementally through piecemeal legislation. Please read "The Moment Of Truth."
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.