So I return in cyberspace, but I'm still far away across the sea. Hope all is going well with the c99 community. This is a poor excuse for the weekly watch, but it's just...
Where is the best news? Here's my favorite youtube sites:
Seattle Children Hospital will open a clinic providing care to transgender youth on October 4.
The clinic, which will serve patients up to 21 years of age, will offer puberty blockers, hormone therapy, mental health support, and group discussions.
As many of you are well aware, Keith Scott, a father of seven was shot and killed by Charlotte police on September 20, 2016.
On the 20th of every month, the FEC releases campaign finance reports for federal candidates. If you have ever gotten an email from a candidate talking about "FEC deadlines", this is what they are talking about. There is no real "deadline", though, just a reporting boundary. It's importance to the campaigns is more that if you can get enough people and money through the door just before the cutoff, you look better and can use it for the next round of fundraising and media tomfoolery.
(originally published in Feb 2015 as A Very Long Way from Galt's Gulch. I'm republishing this in response to a conversation happening in ek hornbeck's diary Why Corbyn Will Win)
Behold the new Redemlican party: bushs' 50%+1 run amok.
Take one part reagan southern dem and add one part; climate change whatever/liberal hawk/environment after profit meh and whalah, more for their friends; the Haves and the Have more's.
Please watch the embedded video from Storm Clouds Gathering.
I spent Thursday and Friday night watching live feed of the protest in Charlotte and the supporting protests in Atlanta, also following twitter, and FB feeds of supporters of the protests and the general flow of "commentary" on twitter, you-tube and so on. I would like to share my observations:
Is the government of the United States "theirs" or "ours" ?
That's it. Pretty simple really. If the government is to truly be "of" the people, "for" the people, and "by" the people, i.e OUR government, run on our behalf and with our consent, then some safeguards have to be put in place to ensure that outcome. Principle among those safeguards are two major guidelines - Transparency and Accountability.
To best understand what is currently occurring in the presidential campaign of The Mad Bomber, it helps to be conversant with the life and times of the medieval Spanish serial killer Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar—most commonly known as El Cid—and also the "Spock's Brain" episode of the true-life documentary series Star Trek.
Rodrigo, he wandered to and fro, there on the Iberian Peninsula, in the latter half of the 11th Century, killing people. Sometimes he killed Moors, sometimes he killed for Moors (those would be Mooslems, in the American language), and sometimes he killed, or killed for, various Spanish Sanchos and Alfonsos. In his final years, he mostly concentrated on killing Berbers. For himself.
Nobody hears much about Berbers these days. This is because when the white people, they drew all the borders, all over the globe, they decided there didn't need to be any Berberland. Just as peoples like, say, the Karen, and the 
Kurds, the white people, they decided they didn't need any nations, either.
Anyway. Rodrigo eventually decreed that he needed to be the king of Valencia. Since there were Berbers in Valencia at the time, Rodrigo rounded up some Moor and some Christian serial killers, to help him kill the Berbers, so he could, of Valencia, be The Ruler. This happened. And so, of Valencia, Rodrigo, he was The Ruler. For some five years. Until the Berbers returned, and laid siege to the city.
Rodrigo died in the city, during the siege, probably of some sort of dread siege-type disease. It was after he became dead, that he transformed into the legendary El Cid. Because, though dead, he was armored up, strapped aboard his horse Babieca, and then he "led," a thundering charge, from out of the city. Which freaked the living shit, from out of the Berbers. Who scattered.
Meanwhile, out there in the final frontier, the Enterprise people, they were one day peaceably going where no man had gone before, when some rude woman, she suddenly winked in, there on the bridge, and stole Spock's brain, right out of his head.
Then, she disappeared.
McCoy, he managed to magic a special control box, that could cause the brainless Spock to walk and talk and whatnot, until his brain could be retrieved, and re-inserted, back in his head. Which, eventually, it was.
What does any of this have to do with The Mad Bomber?
