Herman Cain's video-game "9-9-9" plan shall be referred to as the "Party of Nein!"
(h/t tigris)
Friday, October 14, 2011
Go Give A Crap
My long-time friend, fan of Simply Left Behind, and give-Carl-a-kick-in-the-pants-when-he's-being-a-dick, Alicia Morgan, isn't asking for money. She's venting about life.
Go give her a reason to smile. And buy her book! Sheesh!
Nobody Asked Me, But...
1) Break from tradition. I have something to say.
MEMO
TO: Occupy Wall StreetFROM: Actor212RE: Going ForwardYou looked Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Brookfield Properties straight in the eye. They blinked.Good on you. That's the first of many, many victories to come.My first political involvement was in 1968. It was in sixth grade, so I couldn't have been more than ten years old at the time. A couple of classmates, Kenny, and I think Hank, set up a table on the corner outside our school, and campaigned for Hubert Humphrey. We had a hand-drawn poster, and all the literature we could handle from the local campaign office.It was cute. I think we even got our photos taken for the Daily News.We did it because we hated Richard Nixon and all that he stood for. Looking back over the past 45 years or so, it's embarassing to think that Nixon turned out to be the most domestically liberal president in that interim (a case could be made for Carter, I suppose).And that's what I want to talk about: the past. And how your future as a movement can be shaped by it.Nixon was as liberal as he was, passing environmental legislation for example, or lowering the voting age to 18, because of the pressure the left put on him (yea, there were other circumstances that he tried to curry favor to prevent, but he went so far as to propose single-payer healthcare!)We blew it, we old farts. We achieved much in those protests, getting better acknowledgement of the equality of women, of gays and lesbians, and better integration of blacks and Hispanics-- I'm still waiting for Herman Cain to thank us. We ended a war.To our discredit, we allowed Nixon and Congress to dismantle much of the Great Society that LBJ had worked so hard to put into place, among other things.What we truly didn't do, and what we could have done, was forge a political movement that would have dragged any conservative who stood athwart the earth shouting "STOP!" to the ground and subdued him. We settled out. We got caught up in the glamour of forcing a sitting President to resign and figured our work was done. We were tired, we were infighting, and frankly, we were growing up and getting jobs and starting families.Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.What we were too young to notice was the seeds of destruction that the Goldwater campaign of 1964 planted, that were starting to sprout, beginning with Reagan's election to California's governorship. We laughed. He was shitty actor, a former President of SAG and a liberal, spouting all kinds of crazy nonsense about the welfare state.What we should have been doing, what if we could go back in time we would do, was crush him. We had the bodies still warm from the resistance.I look at you, and I see that same anger that motivated us.I see a difference, tho, a big difference. We grew up insulated from the world around us, some of us at any rate. You've had that sheathing stripped from around you, and you're scared and angry. I see the signs you hold, and they don't deviate much from the basic theme that the nation is unfairly benefitting the rich at the expense of the rest of us.Some would say, "Life is unfair." Some are idiots. Mouthing that bromide is the shortest way to prove you haven't thought through life. “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”
That was the great Robert F. Kennedy, who in life and especially in death sparked the anti-war movement to greater heights, and had he been President would no doubt have asked us to do our part for the nation to heal it, to move forward and to help.There is so much I would say to you, and so little time to say it, if I have your attention this far. You will face challenges. The movement will find critical moments in which it needs strength. There will be conflict. I would say this: there are many paths to take, and all of them, all of them, can lead you to the goal you seek. Some will have dead ends, but don't be discouraged as so many of us were: turn around and find a new way. You're still on the path, that's what counts.I look at pictures of myself down through the years, and see the promise of infinity within my eyes. I'm older now. Those eyes have dimmed but they still hold the faint glimmer of that promise as I look to you to carry the torch we let fall decades ago.Let that torch keep ther fire in your eyes burning. Do not give up under any circumstances. They may defeat a person but a truth can never be defeated.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
I Wonder....
Do you think that, if we hadn't killed education in this country over the past thirty years, from Ronald Reagan trying to dismantle the Secretary's Cabinet post to the election of fundamentalist assholes to local school boards nationwide to No Child Left Behind, we might have a better employment picture all around?
Just, you know, a thought.
Now, You May Find This Odd...
...but I don't.
Catholic League head and all-around douchebag William Donohue has called on Rick Perry to cut ties to the pastor who made the objectively reasonable comparison between Mormonism and other non-Christian religions.
And you might wonder why. After all, it is undeniable that Catholicism is Christianity. It is the Original Gangsta of the Christian church, right?
Yeah, well...
Cats Sleeping With Dogs!
This Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have even moderate Republicans thinking a little about the damage they've wrought over the past decades.
Better Sit Down For This
Heavy-hitting Republican fundraisers are helping progressive Republicans get re-elected after voting yes on gay marriage.
OK, it's New York State, but still...
YOU LIE!
CongrASScritter Joe Walsh (R-South Dementia) claims he had a verbal understanding that he could skip child support payments.
Wow. How far he has to go to lie...
Oblique, But A Co-Opting, To Be Sure
The Obama administration has used the "Occupy Wall Street" movement to get in a dig at Syria.
From Axis To Chain
Must be quite the come down for Iran.
My only caution to the administration is to tread carefully here. We're already seeing drumbeats for war from the warhawks on the right, and you'll be greatly pressured to take arms against this sea of troubles. Do not do it.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
We Liberals Don't Blame Bush Anymore
Except when he's truly at fault.
In essence, these critics say, justice has dismantled the administrative functions of the pardon office, which is supposed to investigate the petitions filed by prisoners. As a result, all those carefully prepared requests for clemency aren't getting the kind of review they deserve.
Instead, a lot of petitions get a cursory review and are shipped off to the White House in minimalist lumps known as "summary group reports," which don't provide enough information to allow the president to make an informed choice.
The major change since 2008, when the current pardon attorney, Ronald Rodgers, took over, this former official says, is that the few early releases, or "commutations," done in the past have disappeared entirely.
"Virtually all commutations are simply round-filed as soon as they hit the door," the former justice official says. "They are no longer assigned to staff lawyers, and in all but a tiny handful of cases, no report or recommendation is forwarded to the White House."
Fuck. Fuck me hard.
Once Again, With Salad Bar
David Brooks proves himself both incomprehensible and grossly out of touch
Whatever Happened To The "Nuclear Option"?
I kept hearing talk over the weekend from frightened Republicans about the Democrats employing the "nuclear option," but somehow, the jobs bill was defeated yesterday anyway.
Developing...
There are elements of this story that seem....farfetched:
That's exhibit A. Exhibit B?
Now, this does not exclude Arbabsiar from potentially initiating and carrying out an attack that apparently was developed within the hierarchy of the Iranian military, the Quds. After all, while several of the 9/11 hijackers had college degrees (Atta was even an architect, if memory serves), several were stooges who were hired as muscle, pure and simple. And you really don't need a college degree to pull a trigger, even if Arbabsiar attended Texas A&I.
I mean, just look at Alabama!
Plus, an ambassador from Saudi Arabia only merits a $1.5 million contract?
It sounds more like a Tom Clancy plot, complete with paper cut-out terrorists, a link to one of the Axis of Evil powers (next, they'll tell me the bomb was made in North Korea,) and involving unsecure borders and home-grown terrorists.
And yet, it's a lot less farfetched than a guy lighting his shoe on plane, or wearing an underwear bomb, both plots foiled just short of execution.
Still, I can't get out of my mind two disparate facts: 1) This involves Iran, a nation that America had long ago painted a bulls-eye on, and 2) the best way out of economic catastrophe is to declare a World War.
That scares me more than the possibility of a terror attack in a restaurant I might frequent.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Uh Oh
The Canary Islands may <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/11/canary-islands-volcano?newsfeed=true">explode any day now.</a>
If it's big enough, the tsunami will wipe out America.
Keep In Mind
When the right wing nannybots start dissing the Occupy Boston folks, they're dissing our troops.
Just When You Think You Have It All Figured Out...
Now, the imp in me is thinking Obama has masterfully set up a floor fight at the Republican National Convention that will see a nasty confrontation between Teabaggers and the establishment Republicans, resulting in a repudiation of either one or the other, followed by a deep crevice in the right wing vote.
But that's the imp in me talking and should in NO WAY be examined against recent events that seem orchestrated...Just sayin'.
Peter Vallone's Being A Bit Of A Dick Here
We're New Yorkers. We don't scare easily, councilman.
Yes, it was a stupid art project, but even police commissioner Ray Kelly thought it was in bounds.
Some Sobering Thoughts
Not that you needed depressing, but this depression we're in is only going to be more depressing a depression before the depression depresses.
Unless...
Y'know, He's Not Wrong, Per Se....
Mormonism has about as much relation to Christianity as Islam, in that both religions feature the Old and New Testaments as prefaces to their own teachings, but it's very dangerous territory in a conservative Christian gathering that includes Jews and libertarians to mention anything about Mormonist variations.
And forget about the underwear!
Good Ol' FOX News
Always sinking deeper in the muck, figuring there's a story somewhere and if not, they can pretend to find one with a scary headline.
Hippies Are Doing It For Themselves
I'm beginning to think there's a reason to believe the "Occupy Wall Street" movement has legs that can carry it into 2012, and smart politicians will start affiliating themselves with it.
As “Occupy Wall Street” spreads around the world – now in more than 185 locales, and counting – everyone from politicians to media pundits is scrambling to identify the protest movement’s leadership.
ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” put protester and blogger Jesse LaGreca in its roundtable spotlight Sunday even as he prefaced his answers with the words, “I’m only speaking for myself.”
On NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” former CBS anchor Dan Rather – now with HDnet – tagged Priscilla Grim – a woman who launched a Tumblr page online – as “the real moving force behind this,” only to have the website mediate.com tartly observe that “Dan Rather probably has no idea what Tumblr is.”
Indeed. This movement may be light years ahead of the media. It's certainly out ahead of the curve. And therein lies its strength, I think.
The Teabagger movement was pretty easily explainable, and this is why it was obvious that it was not a grassroots movement. It had two messages: lower taxes, smaller government.
But the rank and file conservatives have many more issues than those: gay marriage, abortion, undocumented workers, Islamophobia and religion in general, education...a whole raft of unresolved anger. And yet, those were rarely if ever addressed at any of the "rallies."
With OWS, well, this is what democracy looks like. It's messy. It's filled with points and counterpoints, sometimes in conflict with each other (altho that happens only rarely.)
Yes. There's a basic message that economic insecurity is occuring and only the richest will survive because only the richest are being taken care of by the American government and that's just wrong.
But look at any media coverage of the demonstrations. There are anti-war signs, pro-labor signs....hell, I'm betting there's a whole flotilla of "Sasquatch Isreal" signs!
How does this turn into a strength? Well, just take the DC protests this weekend. OK, it was not the OWS protest, it was the "October 2011" protest, which is independent of OWS but supportive. A right-wing provocateur, a blogger at American Spectator, boasted about how he led a melee inside the Smithsonian Institute that led to en masse pepper-spraying...mostly of him and his co-conspirators, but I digress.
Even American Spectator realized how stoopid this idiot was and washed his story, but you can read the original here, if you must.
They're scared. They're bloody scared. I mean, wasn't it just the same people who were terrified that left-wingers were infiltrating Teabagger protests? I don't recall anyone getting pepper-sprayed, so I guess either we did it the right way, or we weren't vicious enough.
By the way, police had such sympathy for the liberal protestors of October 2011 and contempt for the conservative asshats who attempted to foment a riot, that they extended a four month permit to use the park the group currently occupies.
How committed to independence are the OWS folks? A sister protest, Occupy Atlanta, actually dissed civil rights icon and sitting Congressman John Lewis, forbidding him to speak to them.
Conservatives mock this, of course, but I think it's very smart strategy on the part of the demonstrators. There's no point in aligning yourself with any politician. Let them align themselves with you through word and deed. Make them acknowledge your strength. And for heaven's sake, do not endorse anyone without their prior performance to your agenda.
That basically means Bernie Sanders. And perhaps Al Franken. And no one else at this point.
Paul Ryan: Douchenozzle
Rep. Ryan, your high school called. They'd like their diploma back:
“Sewing class envy and social unrest is not what we do in America"
Oh really? So that whole "Revolution" was just...what? Or the Civil War? The Anti-Rent War? The Battle of Athens? Does the name Nat Turner ring a bell, Congressman? Daniel Shays, perhaps?
What about Wounded Knee? That happened in your lifetime. For God's sake, who can forget the Whiskey Rebellion? What politician in his right mind who even toys with the idea of leading this nation could ignore such signal events in the history of the nation?
Who ignores Santayana at his own peril?
Apparently, this is not the first time Ryan has exposed his underappreciation of the breadth of American history...
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