Ah, Sunday, and another round of talking heads on the teevee.
Hey, what’s this? Something potentially worth watching on Press the Meat? Timmuh has Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, and Ranking Member Jane Harman, all of whom received briefings from the Bushies on the NSA illegal spying program before the story became public (as you may recall, they were all sworn to secrecy). Gee, even with Mister Potatohead running the show, this might actually be worth watching. Daschle’s out – will he have the guts to tell it like it is? Or at least was? We shall see.
Bobby “Bush Buddy” Schieffer has our helmet headed Secretary of State, plus Howard Dean and Elizabeth Bumiller from the New York Times. Well, Howard’s been pretty interesting lately. He really gets the freepers frothing, and that’s worth it right there.
Ah, here’s more what we’re used to. Over at ABC, George Snufalufagus has Helmethead Rice, Meathead Joe Biden, Lynn “Uncle Tom” Swann, and Sigourney Weaver talking about heart health (here’s a tip, try not to let aliens hatch in your chest). A bit of a changeup on the regular Roundtable weenies, though. We still have George :jerk: Will, but this week he’s joined by David Gergen and the woman who did such a bang-up job running the Kerry campaign, Donna “just ignore those swift boat guys” Brazile.
Fux News Sunday with Weenie Wallace will talk about what a wonderful job the Führ – oops, I mean President did on saving Los Angeles from the packs of flying shoe bombers. Then they’ll have LA Mayor Villaraigosa on, so they can taunt him. They’ll also have VA Republican Redneck Senator George Allen, and Jack Reed (the other Senator MBNA), and – ooh, this could be interesting, Rev. Joseph “Standing Ovation” Lowery and Ron “You think Lynn Swann is an Uncle Tom, you should see me” Christie.
On 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft tries to find out where our $50 billion (so far) for reconstruction work in Iraq was spent and why $8.8 billion of it is unaccounted for, Lesley Stahl looks at why the “culture of life” and dubya figure it’s better to destroy 400,000 unused human embryos every day in fertility clinics, rather than allow them to be used in Stem Cell research, and Mike “God my son’s an asshole” Wallace talks to some of the kids who’ve come back from Iraq after being severely wounded in combat.
Oh, and CNN has guests from CNN on to talk about how important CNN is.
Happy Birthday, Abe!
oh hey new days up im gonna repost my last post because some people probably wont read to the end of yesterdays so uh here
scared and hating in las vegas is a friggin great book. i must see the movie. if it is even close to what i have in my head it will be so brilliantly spectacular that i will never have need to see another movie again. alas it could never match the scenes the good doctors writing have placed inside my mind. i am positive of that. even johnny depp can not match the insanity that goes on with raoul and his lawyer in this book. i will buy the movie today and see for myself
:paranoid:friggin rednecks:paranoid:
Morning evening all! :yinyang:
oh my post at the beginning of yesterdays blog where i asked what the cccp is i was being sarcastic and pretending that i didnt know because i uh have a habit of making myself seem stupid because i figure that if i dont know as much as i do and look to be “normal” it will make life easier just something i do out of habit to “blend in” with the uninformed masses it doesnt work too well because of my vocabulary i always end up using words that people dont understand anyway i just dont want anybody in here thinking im so stupid and lost that i was confused by cccp ok well im off to huntsville to fend off the evil alabamans gee i hope there isnt anybody from alabama in here that is taking offense to this ok well im off and uh if you are from alabama and reading this blog odds are i am not talking about you later pj nicki melina krista isi travis(where are you man?) jason fred farmer hope mr is ok and uh tom and kong and uh everybody i’m not remembering right now must get back to my audiobook of fear and loathing
:paranoid:i think i might be neurotic:nod:
uh hello?:paranoid:
ok im leaving:fire: i need breakfast:nod: hey pj make a semi truck icon for me yeah that would be cool
:fu:ha ha take that you evil penguin kidnapper
Fear and loathing :bong:
Happy Lantern Festival! (It’s the full moon after Chinese New Year.) :yinyang:
just back from scenes from a japanese mall. was thinking of the blog as i rummaged through the CD cut-out bin: a steve earle CD and the soundtrack to the film “air america”. (never saw it, probably never will). then, a little later on, i accidentally knocked a DVD off the shelf. when i picked it up to put it back – wouldn’t you know it – “danny the dog”. i swear this actually happened.
sean, i can’t believe your timing in mentioning fear and loathing. i had the DVD in my hands today and only put it back ’cause they wanted the equivalent of 50 bucks for it. enjoy the audiobook.
Tom-
Have you seen “Where the Buffalo Roam”?
Bill Murray as HST.
Where the Baffalo Roam
haven’t seen it, kong. there’s so much stuff that i’d like to see but can’t get a hold of (unless i’m willing to pay through the nose for it). does it take forever for american films/videos to be released in taiwan too?
DVDs released in america (region 1) won’t play on japanese DVD players (region 2). i guess it’s the same for you too. i set the upstairs mac to region 1 but the idea of sitting in front of a computer to watch a film doesn’t really thrill me.
Local DVD players are, ahem, less discriminatory than most. They’re not disabled. They’ll play anything put into them.
Most movies open here the same weekend they open in the States. A few are later and DVDs (Real ones) are available at the the same time as over seas. Questionable copies are available sooner.
By myth or lore HST and Bill Murray spent a weekend in a Hotel and filled the ‘original’ Where the Buffalo Roam movie. It was over ten hours and the studio regected it. The 1980 movie of the same title was hen made. Bill M captures HST truer than life, just the way he was ment to be seen.
Damn! It is early.:omg:
1980! I didn’t kbow Bill Murray went back that far.
Most movies open here the same weekend they open in the States.
that’s what i thought you were going to say, kong. i’ve heard that it takes so long here because the films have to be subtitled and/or dubbed into japanese. but why would it take longer to translate a film into japanese than chinese, for example? something is up with that, but i’m not sure what it is.
Enemies of the State:
Free Speech and Japan’s Courts
by David McNeill; February 10, 2006
Japanese democracy took a large step backwards with the arrest and conviction of three people for posting antiwar fliers.
Is Obora Toshiyuki a threat to society? The Japanese state certainly seems to think so. The police arrested the bespectacled, 47-year-old elementary school worker, interrogated him in grueling five-hour stretches and held him in detention for 75 days. “I thought it would never end,” says Obora, who claims the arrest came “out of the blue.” …
After confiscating his computer and rifling through his personal belongings, the police called his workplace from where he was forced to take 10 months leave and a 60 percent pay cut. Prosecutors demanded a six-month prison term. When a district court threw the charge out, the state spent thousands of hours and millions of yen challenging the decision and fighting it in the Tokyo High Court.
Few would feel much sympathy for a teacher embezzling funds or, heaven forbid, molesting children in his care, but Obora was guilty of distributing scraps of printed paper to grown adults suggesting they ‘think deeply’ about Japan’s decision to support a costly and illegal war. The flier, to members of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and their families, asked rhetorically: “Would George Bush or Koizumi Junichiro go to fight a war in Iraq?”
It is perhaps the oldest form of modern political activity — dating back to 17th century pamphleteering, but the High Court decided last December that the danger it posed to SDF members required a conviction for trespassing and a fine of 100,000 yen. Obora and his two co-defendants Onishi Nobuhiro and Takada Sachimi were stunned. “This is like delivering the final blow to Japan’s democracy,” said Takada.
An overreaction perhaps? “This case is crucial,” says Professor Lawrence Repeta, a faculty member of Omiya Law School. “Here we have ordinary citizens being arrested for handing out fliers. This is the most traditional means of free expression. The government must carry a very heavy burden to justify a restriction on people expressing their opinions on an important matter of public policy in this fashion. And in my view they have shown nothing at all to justify their actions.”…
http://www.zmag.org
Cartoons are dubbed (and released in both Chinese and English versions) and films are subtitled. But they must get early copies, or some such things.
Are they greatly delayed there?
Nikki ‘Caddyshack” was 1980. Bill Murray was in movies in the 70s.
The Day Seattle Stood Still
by Dick Meister; February 11, 2006
It was 87 years ago this month. It was in Seattle: “Street car gongs ceased their clamor. Newsboys cast their unsold papers into the streets. From the doors of mill and factory, store and workshop, streamed 65,000 working men. School children with fear in their hearts hurried homeward. The lifestream of a great city stopped.”
Many people throughout the country believed that the scene described by Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson marked the beginning of a Bolshevik revolution like that which had overthrown the Russian government two years earlier.
Some of the men who left their jobs on that sixth day of February, 1919, did indeed intend it to be just that – particularly a band of about 3,500 members of the Industrial Workers of the World, whose own bolshevism engendered great public fear far out of proportion to their numbers and effectiveness.
But most of the men, as most of their supporters, were intent on nothing more than strengthening the U.S. labor movement, guaranteeing their right to collective bargaining and improving their pay and working conditions in the face of increasingly fierce hostility from employers and government alike.
It was, in any case, the beginning of one of the very few general strikes in American history.
It was one of the most dramatic and disruptive of some 3,600 strikes that broke out in that post-World War I year of extraordinary labor militancy. Steelworkers, coal miners, workers of all kinds – even policemen – walked off the job in response to drastic reductions in the wages that the heavy demand for labor during the war had brought them, the miserable working conditions now imposed on them, the widespread attempts to destroy their unions. . .
http://www.znet.org
It just shows my ignorance about Bill Murray.
I saw “Where the Buffalo Roam” in Buffalo, of all places, back when it first came out. Loved the part where he pissed on Nixon’s feet.
ZNet | Japan
Mitsubishi, Historical Revisionism and Japanese Corporate Resistance to Chinese Forced Labor Redress
by William Underwood; February 11, 2006
Just as Nazi Germany did in Europe during World War II, Imperial Japan made extensive use of forced labor across the vast area of the Asia Pacific it once occupied. Today, however, Japan’s government and corporations are dealing with the legacy of wartime forced labor very differently than their German counterparts.
This article examines the corporate counter-offensive to reparations claims for Chinese forced labor in Japan, as presented by defense lawyers for Mitsubishi Materials Corp. in a compensation lawsuit to be decided by the Fukuoka District Court on March 29. In startling closing arguments last September, Mitsubishi issued a blanket denial of historical facts routinely recognized by other Japanese courts, while heaping criticism on the Tokyo Trials and openly questioning whether Japan ever “invaded” China at all. Mitsubishi has ominously warned that a redress award for the elderly Chinese plaintiffs, or even a court finding that forced labor occurred, would saddle Japan with a “mistaken burden of the soul” for hundreds of years.
First, a look at the German approach. The “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future” Foundation was established in 2000, with $6 billion from the federal government and more than 6,500 industrial enterprises. As redress payments drew to a close last fall, about 1.6 million forced labor victims or their heirs, residing in more than 100 countries, had received individual apologies and symbolic compensation of up to $10,000 each. Altogether, 12 million people are believed to have worked for the Nazi regime involuntarily.[1]
Commemorations and truth telling through history education are related aspects of the reparations process in which Germans have manifested a strong commitment to reconciliation. The Berlin state government has purchased an eight-acre former forced labor camp and is turning it into a memorial museum set to open in summer 2006. These latest steps in a longstanding, if sometimes fitful, pattern of atonement underscore the discontinuity between wartime and postwar Germany. Mostly non-Jews from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, forced laborers were the last major class of uncompensated victims of German war crimes. Smaller numbers of persecuted ethnic, religious and sexuality minorities were also included in the German redress fund.
“In a political and in a moral sense, this chapter will never be closed,” the redress foundation’s chairman observed last October. “What is at stake here — and this is the responsibility of our generation and future generations — is to keep these very tragic events, these human rights violations firmly in the national memory.”[2]…
http://www.znet.org
kong – i suddenly realized that this “DVDs in japan and taiwan” thing might be of absolutely no interest to anyone else reading this blog.
of course, i run that risk everytime i post anything.
US prepares military blitz against Iran’s nuclear sites
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 12/02/2006)
Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites as a “last resort” to block Teheran’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb.
Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic’s nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.
“This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” said a senior Pentagon adviser. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”
more…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/20…
———————-
I wonder what the ICBM missile detection systems in Russia will think of incoming Warheads. Russia is only 600 miles away.
Hey Franken (and Biden). Don’t you think it was a good thing that Turkey did not allow the 4ID to invade from the north? Fucking loyalists!
Bloggers around the world (and there are many who loved MS) all deal with this problem. Americans can’t be hurt by hearing this set of troubles.
good point, kong.
Biden a senator since 1973! Shit. He’s probably been around since before Byrd.
:omg:
Oh, not true Tom. All sorts of mundane things are of interest to me. For instance, I stayed up late last night to watch a NOVA show (that I’d already seen) about building trebuchets.
What you need is a region free DVD player (which is probably ungodly expensive to buy anywhere outside the US, so you need to have somebody pack one in a box of cookies and ship it over to you). There are some that are actually hackable, too. I think the Samsung 511 is, for instance.
Hah, now there’s a post nobody will be interested in. 😉
Don’t worry about posting things that may not be of interest to the majority. This is largely a free for all that sometimes creates threads of conversation.
No Nicki Byrd has been around since Roosevelt
That WAS a good show, even the second time. It was good to see some of the Americans stay to help the Frebch guy get his earthen-works one to work.
Mark Luther! I thought Franken gave up on that blockheaded mugwump.
:doh::omg::rofl2:
I was waiting for them to try flinging a cow.
BTW, here’s a place to look for DVD player hacks (try at your own risk, of course).
Roosevelt! Goddamn, what was he, a high school student senator?:omg:
The DVD players here just don’t have the disabeling chip that makes them region specific.
I’d never heard of trebuchets before the show and had thought of the throwing things as catapults.
Good morning…I actually foucnd the DVD thing pretty interesting. Is it a deal where the government in China wants to go over it closely to see if it warrants …um…special editing?
Robert Carlyle Byrd (born November 20, 1917) is a West Virginia Democrat serving in the United States Senate. As of 2006, he is the longest-serving current member of the U.S. Congress, having served in the United States House of Representatives from January 3, 1953, until he entered the Senate on January 3, 1959.
OOPS Truman… sorry…
it snowing like freakin hell here…cant even shovel it. Its looking like 20+ inches here…
Very funny morning with my dogs and trying to get them to go outside. They are small so I had to shovel…some of them love it and go crazy running around and some (tiny chihuahuas) run out and in real quick…
I love this!
Hows that for something that no one is interested in!!
Im gonna slog out soon and take some pictures for the blog. Its all white now and very fluffy/deep…
i did spot a region free player at costco (can you believe we have costco here?) a few months ago. i don’t know why i didn’t get it, but i didn’t. when i went back for it, they had a similar model that was region 2 only.
i think i heard somewhere that the powers that be are cracking down on region free players. i don’t know why. although DVDs from the states are a lot cheaper, most japanese would have no use for a DVD without subtitles.
Melina- China may do some editing. Taiwan is a free and democratic place (now) and that sort of thing doesn’t happen.
It’s pretty heavy here, too, Melina.
The younger cat (Elwood Riley) is having a ball watching the snow come down our front window. It’s a big window and his neck is craned straight up. Very cute. Last winter I brought in some snow for him and ended up throwing snowballs against the back door. He had a good time trying to grab them, and was very perplexed when they “disappeared.”
How’s THAT for something no one’s interested in?!?:tongue:
BTW, which issue of NY Mag had the Craig interview? I just recently resubscribed but have been so busy they’re just piling up unread . . .
My Taiwan COSTCO card wasn’t even questioned in the US on my latested visit.
Same with me; I though they were catapults. I thought a trebuchet was the thing they use to puncture your internal organs when they’re getting ready to embalm you (which is of course called a trocar).
I like the term “siege engine,” too. Sounds very sinister, which I reckon they were, if you were inside the castle.
They guy that was crawling around the the thing when it was primed and loaded with 13,000 pounds of weight is a braver (more brave?) man than I am.
Looks like we’re completely missing out on the storm, which is OK by me.
Thanks pj for keeping this a very open blog. I feel spoiled (but not rotten).
Tebuchet! Why you warmongers. When I first read the post, I thought perhaps they were high-tech barbeque pit. Or perhaps a solar powered cooking unit. The cow reference brought me there.
:rofl2: Flinging a cow!
So they just are slower to import…PJ thanks for the hacks page…I sent info to my good friends in Sweden…they are not very tech savy…I am still trying to get them to put the instant messenger in…but I hope they will try because my god daughter is 2 and I want to send her my Sesame Street favorites….I also want to send the Wal mart movie and other fun stuff that I have piling up here…they love that stuff.
warmongers!? I’d rather think myself as a lover of the history early modern Europe.
Looks like Fox News Sunday is going to continue the drumbeat on the King Funeral. They are having Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery on.
War worshippers, then!
Is there a difference between a trebuchet and a catapult?
yes
Fucks News! Those racist neo-Klansmen can all spontaneously combust. Then I’d be happy.:rofl2:
blog thoughts:
Hey, I saw that one, too, and enjoyed it!!!
Good morning, afternoon, evening gentle people!
Tom, you have Costco??? Wow!
I can’t seem to listen to books on tape. I fall asleep every doggon time. Not a good thing when you’re driving.
Can you fling a cow with a trebuchet?
Nicki, I’ll jump in here. I’m not as well read as you on the subject, I think, so I add that as a disclaimer.From what I’ve seen and read, the reality of what is happening on the ground and what is happening on paper and in negotiations are not at all representative of each other. That to me seems to be one of the big problems with reaching a peaceful settlement. Even though we saw Sharon pull out of Gaza, for example, his policies encouraged and promoted building in other settlements. His goal was to isolate and push the Palestinians out with the hopes Jordan (the only country who has truly helped the Palestinians) would take the “problem.” The Israelis pay Russian and S.American jews to move to Israel and occupy Palestinian land (where, I might add, they are not treated as equals among the Israeli jews, but that’s another topic). Yet, the Israelis talk about peaceful settlement as they are bulldozing orchards, houses and churches (I’m thinking of a Greek Orthodox church I saw that they leveled in Jerusalem).
Anyway, I think the Palestinians react to what is actually happening on the ground while, in the background, the mucky mucks on both sides talk policy like they don’t understand WHY in heavens name the Palestinians get militant. Craziness.
I tried to read Palast’s “The Best Democracy Money can Buy.” Fell dead asleep. Woke up with my cat sitting on my chest, and smacking my face with her paw. That is how she gets my attention: “The bowl is empty.”:
::peace:
You know, being around cows now, I have to say, they are very smart animals. I was quite surprised. So I don’t thnk they’d like to fly through the air very much. 😯 😀
kong – please don’t think that i thought what you were saying about DVDs in taiwan was uninteresting. “it’s all about me”
morning farmerkat.
Farmerkat. How does UN242 relate? What is the international consensus for peace in the Middle East?
Sure, but you’d need a pretty big honkin’ trebuchet. They did fling a piano (I told my wife, this it SO much a guy thing).
You can fling a piano, but you can’t fling a fish.
My bad. I totally objectified the cow. No different than a rock. Anyway, in my mind’s eye, the cow was little more than a carcass. The solar barbeque unit reference, you know.
Well, I would use a specially trained stunt cow, of course, with the appropriate safety equipment.
oh god…helmet head (thanks for the line-up PJ…I had to send it along to my mom, it was so great!) is talking about…wah, wah, wah…why is it that when I hear her snotty, condescending tone I go into Peanut’s character mode where the grown ups all sound like this: wha, wha, wha….
is it worth it to listen to people who lie or no comment everything?
Now Laura is speaking out about HIllary….
helmet head says: wah, wha, wah….
How would you guarantee a soft, safe landing?
Pj, how about one of those largest pumpkins in the world? Letterman would love that!
and, I think a stuffed, weighted cow is so much funnier because of the splay of the legs when its airborne (see, not just a guy thing!)….
mr farmerkat says when Costco gets to Baghdad, he’ll be happy.
btw, mr has to watch the olympics on slovenian tv – ha!
Laura? Dr. Torah Laura Schlessinger?
Anybody streaming AAR? Joe Conason is so good on the radio.
Considering the two sides can’t even seem to agree on implications of the provisions in 242, it almost seems irrelevant any more.
peace. well, the PLO took 2 decades to transform from a liberation or terrorist organization in to a political one. Now, they’ve pushed the reset button. Hamas is almost back where the PLO was. will it take 2 decades to transform again? I don’t know.
I’m told this is a big story everywhere else in the world:
Ah, yes. A big cow “plushie,” soaked in kerosene and then set on fire and flung. With enough trebuchets, it could be the new 4th of July tradition. Can’t call ’em trebuchets, though; that wouldn’t fly in middle America. Maybe, “freedom flingers.”
:rofl2:
are you kidding? Middle america would LOVE it!!
Not true, Farmerkat. The PLO has accepted the framework of UN242 since the early 1970s, as long as it accepted the Palestinians right to national self-determination. (The original resolution did not mention the Palestinians.) Check the January 26th NYT, frontpage. There is the resolution put forward by the Arab states (Israel “accused ” the PLO of writing the resolution.) That resolution is pretty much the international consensus for peace in the Middle East. The resolution passed overwhelmingly in the General Assembly; the US vetoed it in the Security Council. The US (and Israel) prefers a “stalemate” over a peace settlement.
Perhaps they could make sauasage out of the 20 inches of large intestine that they removed from Sharon, and then both sides could sit down and have a meal together.
OK, maybe that’s a little gross. That’s what I get for looking for pictures of trocars, first thing in the morning.
Plushie! You know, I never heard of plushies until Marc Maron brought up the concept on the show. A segment about strange sexual practices. We are really cooking (barbeque! Solar-powered) this morning.
NY Times has an interesting op-ed on the Muslim riots. Its a guest contributer.
I put it on ripcoco…cant seem to upload pictures right now…hmmm….
PJ…yes…flaming cows! Ever since we put GI JOe on his battery powered tank and sent him off down the alley in lighter fluid flames(this is what Brooklyn kids did for fun a mllion years ago,) Ive been partial to adding flames to anything for zip and fun!
Of course, Barbie stood by, all pierced and with a mohawk and laughed …she had been cheating on Ken with Joe, but after the way he treated her when she got pregnant he deserved what he got! Yes, Mom should have turned off the soap operas that she tended to leave on all day. Ha!!
Didnt you see the CSI plushie episode?…they dress up as mascot sort of animals and have sex somehow through the suits….all fun and games until someone DIES!!!!
Kosher sausage?
I used to do all sorts of horrible things to my army men. And the only reason I used to build models was so I could douse them in gasoline and blow them up with firecrackers.
I filled up a soda can with gasoline one summer to recreate the Olympic flame. Turns out that wasn’t a great idea. The can gets really hot, really quick. Then when you drop it on the driveway, the burning gasoline runs all over. Then when you blast it with the garden hose, it spreads the flames out even more.
Sure, it was pretty cool, but my mom didn’t seem to think it was such a good thing.
Right, CSI episides on weird sexual stuff. Goddamn! I have a lot of things to view to get caught up here:
1)Nova on trebuchets.
2) Murray as HST.
3)CSI on plushies (and the other sexy episodes).
Yes, the plushie CSI. Kinda gross when they shined that magic light on the suit.
The baby fetish CSI was pretty creepy, too. Here I live such a sheltered life, I thought they were making that up, but – thanks to the wonders of the Internet – I was able to find out more than I ever wanted to know about people who like to dress up as infants and be, um, taken care of.
The Mariner Moose a plushie! (Or is that merely an example of someone wearing a “fursuit”?) I am getting corrupted here.:rofl2:
Was Captain Kangaroo a plushie? He was Clarabell the cow, you know. (Or was that Mr. Greenjeans?):rofl2:
…and to think they might slow that all down…or take it all away….
Oh, today is Charles Darwin’s birthday, too. Happy Birthday, Chuck.
Take “all what away”?
All the internets.
Well, think about it Nicki, who would actually WANT to be in that hot suit in any circumstances…unless, that is, they WANT to be in that suit…I suppose you’d have to hit them with the sperm light to know for sure…but, you know what I mean?
Ill never look at mascots the same again, thanks to Gil and Katherine;-)
The baby one was really spooky too…never again will I think of those rich folk’s security rooms the same…hidden panels, bomb shelters…great spots for your nursery!
Of course, there hadnt been an article in NY Magazine about the baby thing….the NY Magazine article on the plushie movement was great!
Thieving bastards! What are the prospects of those creeps “taking it all away”?
Taxpayers paid for the R&D of computers, you know. It is ours.
Oh, well, they won’t take it away from us. They’ll just make the website operators pay a fee to “guarantee” that traffic to/from their sites gets delivery priority.
I remember reading in Malcolm X’s Autobiography where some of his partners would be hired by rich Bostonians to “baby” them. Powder and diaper. Hey! Whatever turns your crank!:rofl2:
Tyger Thom’s national show just came on. I will give him a listen.
You know, Hartmann was brought on in Portland and Morning Sedition was pushed back to the wee early hours. That is what started my snarky attitude towards him. He is not that bad.:omg:
2 users online! Who are we?:sammy::sheep:
Oh God…PJ do you still have that link? I cant find it here will have to look at yesterday. It bears repeating.
Maybe ths is it…or this is from the Rushkoff group…that is media people and they dont seem to view it as all so bad because it will come out as a fee just like everything else and probably be packaged with the service of the different competing companies. Its not the cost but its the precedent and laws being set down as part of the big neocon move towards privitization and deregulation…and who is protecting the poor or other countries who should have open source and free computers available for free information. There is a group asn, I think MIT, who have made a crank laptop that will cost $100 and they plan to distribute them in 3rd world countries for free….what then, if their content is controlled by the american dollar.
Here is the linkIs maybe the same as PJ’s for yesterday.
Im afraid to post over there because I havent read the whole thread and they are media professionals and not all that political.
Nickie-Im not sure if that count is always so correct because I click on and off as I search and read on different windows. Sometimes it says 1 user, and suddenly a bunch of people pop back in and comment on what was said an hour ago. Its a nice dynamic because we all come and go…
Im not sure about cross posting rules but here is a snippet from a mail from someone on the other side of this:
I’m not sure if they
have a really valid claim here other than greed.
I think this is true, but I also think that the neocons think in very long terms and they will look to getting something on the books that can come to fruition the next time they’re in power…and meantime there will be another little charge in there as an email charge…
I dont want to pay the cable company any more than I already do…Its sickening already…and they would really have to offer something in return that wouldnt hurt anyone else.
Our bacle company has a new higher speed network and then a super high speed one that you get along with web space and 15 extra mailboxes…so, with the speed comes a space bigger than I have for $24.95 on another company, but its $14.95 and their customer service for the computer has been really excellent.
Sounds like a scheme that those capitalist scoundrels would create and foist on “the consumer.”
The American capitalist racket is based on the Pentagon (with taxpayers’ money) developing technology for weapons, some of which may have commercial applications. The computer racket is but one. (I know that I am only spouting the obvious.)
I don’t get to listen to Thom all that much, but I like him. Not as a morning show, though. In the morning, you need something entertaining, informative, funny…like, um, what was the name of that show that used to be like that again? Jerry Sprin – no, no, that wasn’t it.
You know, one crazy leftwing comedian, and one “mature” (heh, just kidding Mark) knowledgable radio pro (to calm the crazy guy down a little bit), plus a cast of goofy characters and great guests?
The Odd Couple, that’s it:!:
“Can two liberal men share a radio show without driving each other crazy?”
Thom is ranting about the Constitution.
Ha! I could so see Marc as Felix with the nose honk!
I guess that this internet thing comes off as a greed and money thing, but its really about controlling information and laying the groundwork to slip that in later on…
Damn…
What is a Plushie?
A plushie is simply what most people call a stuffed animal or a plush animal. Plushies can be almost any size from a few inches to six feet tall, or larger. Plushies are usually made in the form of some type of animal, with bears and bunnies probably being the most common. Plushies are usually covered in soft plush material, however this is not always the case. Some plushies are made out of smooth nylon, felt or some other fabric. They are generally stuffed with soft polyester fiber. Beanie babies are also considered to be plushies, as are many handpuppets. Sometimes the word plushie is used as a short term to refer to a person who is a plushophile.
:omg:
I don’t think the long-term implications are that it will cost the end user more for Internet access. In fact, they could even sell it to JQ Public as lowering the cost of access, because it’s the folks like Google and Amazon that will be paying more to guarantee delivery (they could try and charge the ISP’s, who would, in turn, pass it along to you, but I think the goal it to charge the web operators).
Of course, you ultimately pay more for whatever you’re buying, but the more chilling effect would be to squeeze out all the independent voices out there, and leave just a commercial wasteland of infomercials (oh, and probably porn, too).
All packets must be treated equally, damnit!
The people, sir, are a great beast.
– Alexander Hamilton
Prior to his resignation, Richard Nixon had been warned by his legal counsel John Dean, that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. During the recent celebration of our Constitution’s bicentennial, again the term cancer has again been used to characterize the health of our political institutions. Both Daniel Sheehan, chief counsel for the Christic Institute, and I.F. Stone have said, in reference to the Iran-Contra Affair (see Chapter 5), that a cancer lies deep within the bowels of our constitutional government. Sheehan argues that that cancer needs to be removed so that we can return to the principles set out in the Constitution and so that we can restore the health of the body-politic.1
My argument is fundamentally different: private property and production for profit, which is protected by the Constitution, is the source of the cancer. The problems which so trouble Sheehan and others emerge in part out of a Constitution which enables relatively few people to control of our worklives and our resources, which tends to insulate private power from public pressure, which compels us to act in narrowly self-interested ways, and which strips away the bonds of community and sets in its place the impersonal relations of the market. The Constitution, in this period of decline, invites the private control of public policy and given the corporate domination of public policy it should hardly surprise anyone that the largest corporate owners apply the most efficient and impersonal methods in their effort to protect their privilege and power. (Jerry Fresia: “Toward an American Revolution”, ch.7)
Nicki, my point is the parties still disagree about its provisions and its interpreation which has over time required subsequent resolutions. Just look at the refugee problem. I think 242 is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant today. we’re starting over.
What! So you approve of Israel’s illegal landgrab? The provision is CLEAR. Return to pre-June 1967 borders; no more than minor adjustments. (Those settlements ARE ILLEGAL!) Peace treaty where all countries live in peace and security. That is basically the international consensus. Israel chooses to ignore the consensus. The US has its back.
Hello, I feel like a loser but oh well I will get over it lol. I am staying with my sister for her wedding, she lives close to you, We are gonna party afterwards and was wondering if maybe you would like to hang out. I know its a stretch but I liked your profile and thought you were cute. I am new to this myspace thing but thought I would just take a chance and see what happens lol. I have had a few drinks so my courage is up hehe. If you are online we should talk, add me as a friend, or actually I’ve got my webcam on we can chat through there, thats probably the best way and plus you can see me lol. You can get to it from my profile. Well hope you are having a great one and hope to hear from you
Skyler
:omg:
Yes, the link from yesterday re: Internet neutrality was at Technology Review, which is done by MIT (great magazine; I got it free for a while, and I miss it).
They have some very interesting stuff, and you don’t need to be a trebuchet-hugging, latte-drinking (by the way, note to wingnuts, I hate that shit; coffee, black, no sugar – if I want a cup of milk and sugar, I’ll buy a cup of milk and sugar), Hyundai-driving (hey, I can’t afford a Volvo) liberal computer geek to read it.
howdy, i just saw your profile and thought you were my type, what is my type?? who knows lol, forgive me i have been partying pretty hard lol. Anyways, i am staying at my friend kristi’s house and she lives like 10 miles from you I guess, I will be here for a few weeks and thought maybe we can chill, have you ever met anyone on here before? Have a girlfriend? Do you like girls younger than you? Add me as a friend or actually I got my webcam on we can chat through there, you can get to it from my profile. Hopefully you are still online, well I am probably ear banging you so yah lets chat 🙂
~justine~
God, am I popular!:rofl2:
You know, people are all up in arms over Google agreeing to filter search results in China, but Google refuses (so far) to turn over search results to the feds, which is a lot better then the fascist sympathizers at Yahoo.
Forget Iran, Americans Should be Hysterical About This
Nuking the Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.
Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities–primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.
US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.”
http://www.counterpunch.com
AFL-CIO’s Sweeney is on Hartmann. I wonder if he will bring up the SEIU break-off. (Oregon’s SEIU has rejoined the big confederation, at least on the state level.)
Good Morning Seditionistas. I saw the Trebuchet episode too. I love NOVA.:love: I think the flinging cow idea came from The Holy Grail.
I went out with a guy a long time ago who used to say that he wished girls were covered in bunny fur. A closet plushie?? I think maybe he doesn’t even know he’s a plushie! I thought this was a pretty funny angle.
http://www.ouchytheclown.com/
watch out Nickie…those are all Russian ho’s looking for a toehold in the USA…next thing you know you’ll be married with a huge credit card bill!
OK, liberal confession for the day:
I love Starbucks coffee…but I usually buy it and make it at home, so dark that its a food group. Today I found some coffeemate that Mom left here that was vanilla something and I used it because I only had organic skim milk and I cant do the grey coffee thing….
Anyway, after my research revealed that Starbucks was charging nearly $2.00 per bottle for their charity water project, and only giving .05 cents per bottle to the “water for everyone” thing (out of which probably comes the office fees too)…and then the big article in NY Magazine (again my favorite,) about Starbucks not letting its employees unionize….but it appears so socially conscious…
AND I do have an obnoxious offer that goes something like this: triple, half-caf, grande, skim, latte….This is only for when I havent eaten and need a cup of milk for protein so I dont faint!
OK, OK…I bought a shirt for my son at WalMart the other day….It was an emergency and I needed a white shirt that fit him for Saturday! I spent the whole day imagining the horrible life of the Chinese child that made that shirt…
God, I cant keep anything to myself!!
Mmmmm. Bunny fur. :hubba:
Mmmmm. Russian ho’s.
Oooooh. Toe hold.
Russian ho’s covered in bunny fur, holding my toes. :hubba:
I like StarBucks store-bought coffee, too. The coffeestand stuff they dispense is inconsistent. Swill, too often. Peets is the best, among the chains. StarBucks can be unionized.:rofl2:
I saw a thing about Starbucks a while back. The founder seemed to be very much into a quality work environment, employee empowerment and such.
I hate their coffee, though. :barf:
Bunny fur would be great in a cold place. Here in the desert though, I would prefer a tail. A nice long prehensil one. I need another useful limb.:nod::tongue:
Starbucks coffee is way too strong. It takes too much milk to make it white and by then it’s cold and STILL too strong. Give me 12 o’clock coffee anyday. Mmmmm, fresh out of the can!
Wasn’t there something about My Space handing over records or something evil and neocon like?
well, the water thing really got me…and if you read the fine print on the bottle it says that they want to raise 1 million dollars to give water to the dry children of the world …one nickel at a time, I suppose…only 1 million??
This is a huge corporation and they are charging an additional 75 cent mark up over the usual mark up…and they can only give a nickle?
I guess its a nicke more than nothing but really, I think that if the yuppies want to feel like they are charitable they might realize that the fashionable water they are carrying is really helping Starbucks get richer…not so much the water problem….
Anyway, the kind I like is Gold Coast blend which is super dark but not espresso, or decaf Sumatra for when the caffeine starts to make me psychotic.
I will get coffee by the cup there if I like the blend…the stuff in the machine is all espresso blend and is OK, but they really milk it down too much….
I think that the unionization problem was in manhattan and involvedone strange guy who ended up standing outside protesting….I cant remember because it was over a year ago…but it was a very good article.
They do offer health benefits but one cant live on the wage in these parts, so its really for students or people who are doing it as a second job…or who just want to get out and meet fashionable southern CT folks….
Who is the repug jerk with the memory pills on Bo-bo Russert’s show? He is such a liar and such a creep!
Also I missed Dean because Condi sent me into peanuts mode and next thing I knew it was 11AM!!
A tail would be really cool. If we had dog tails, we’d all get along much better. If we had prehensile tails, that would be great, especially for climbing trees and drinking coffee while you’re driving.
A trunk would be nice. I was watching an elephant the other day, and those things are pretty impressive. They have, like 40,000 muscles in their trunks.
Oooh! I never thought of having a trunk but that might be cool except for it being on the front of your face. I might like it better on the top of my head.
Uh oh, we’re talking about human animal hybrids. That’s bound to set off the NSA’s alarms.:paranoid::billcat:
Ha! Krista…and here all the women are having their extra fur lasered off!
There is a new career for me! Fur management for Plushies…how do you clean those suits? Im sure you cant just dry clean ’em…even if you can do the body, the head would be impossible….
A tail would be great. I have 2 snakes here and they are, like, all tail….very cool…But then I always wanted one of those cat in the hat clean up cars too…
OK…time to try to shovel a bit.
Friends are already calling to say that they have done their first pass. I have so much more path than anyone I know that its a huge job….and luckily I have Ring of Fire and Jeaneane/Sam/Michael Stipe to keep me company while I break my back and freeze my butt off….
Still snowing heavily tho, and the heavy part is just coming over us….what a great storm!
But we’re only talking about limbs here. The main part would still be human. And skin grafting scales or fur is just the cover to the book. Still human inside.
It’s a slippery slope to human/animal hybrids.
Hey…I like the human animal hybrid thing!
I think a trunk would take some getting used to…I couldnt imagine sneezing through one….drinking water through one. I suppose that is possible through a human nose as is shown by the obvious example of milk coming out of the nose while laughing really hard…but human noses have a disgusting lack of muscles…like, we’re impressed by Bewitched!
Snakes are all tail! :rofl2: I still like my arms and legs. I really like the part about having arms free because of our bipededness. I look at my dog sometimes with all four out of five limbs having to support the body and think, what a drag!
snakes are so cool…all muscle….and they can do anything they want…the stuff they cant do, they didnt want to do it anyway!
Oh my god! I have always been impressed with Samantha Steven’s twitching nose! I’ve always wanted to be able to do that!:rofl2::rofl2:
Yeah, but I watch how cool and happy and fast my dog runs, and I think that would be nice, too.
So, put me down for four legs, two arms, a trunk, and a tail. And maybe one or two other things, as a gift for my wife. 😮
Now IM starting to think that Sam was maybe part elephant genetically and that all of this H/A hybrid stuff has been going on in hangars in the desert since at least the 50’s…
The original Derwood had elephantine ears, too.
Okay, I’ll draw a picture of your future self PJ. Although I think Quiet Girl would do a better one.:grin::rofl2: Maybe a long long snake tongue for your wife.:omg:
Frog tongue, so I can catch flies when my wife’s done with me.
was he the gay one?…I think they both had pretty big ears…which just supports my elephant gene theory…
Why would you want to catch flies?:yuck:
snake toungues are a smelling/feeling aparatus…
frog tongues…well, I used to keep huge tree frogs and lets say that they arent pretty…but they are cool and you never have t get up for the remote, much less a snack!
Was that a prehensil tail you wanted PJ? Or a powerful alligator tail or maybe an expressive cat tail.
Oh yeah, I guess you could catch more than flies with a sticky frog tongue. And be lickety split about it too!
Not that I would ever attempt to write comedy, but I think that would be a great pitch to Marc for his new show….human/animal hybrid…they can visit with one each week…or they can recall one from history! Marc, if youre out there…you can have it buddy! From us to you!!
Sounds like it would be a Bruce Cherry thing to me. Bruce Cherry! Put your comedic genious to work on that one.
Good heavens, no:!:
Hmmm. A doggie tail would be nice. But I think a prehensile tail would be more useful. With that, and the trunk, I could read a book while I’m cooking dinner (and then get something out of the cupboard with my tongue).
Okay, PJ, with your list of options you will look like a cross between a centaur and Ganesha. I’m thinking the trunk and frog tongue might not be practical together. You might want to reconsider changing one of those.
Trunk + Frog tongue = tangle!
Wasn’t there a movie and TV show called Manimal? A crime-fighting dude who could change himself into any kind of animal. Now that would cool.
Well, the tongue would only be a problem if you couldn’t keep your trunk up, which isn’t a problem for a real manimal.
There is a set of kids books about that and its pretty horrifying!…I wonder if the moral majority is letting their children read those….Animorphs! Yes, thats it!
I have it!! Clumsy H/A Hybrids! A different one every week! The clumsiness adds a feeling of danger that listeners want….
Oh MAN! PJ I vaguely recall something like that. 70’s? or 80’s?
Ah, here it is (thank you Internet). It was a TV show in 1983 – lasted 8 episodes.
I remember the promos for the show but I don’t think I ever watched it.
I don’t think I ever saw it either. If it only lasted for 8 shows, I guess not many people did.
starbucks burns their beans during the roasting; can’t taste the bean, it just tastes “strong.” :barf:
so i wanna know if you need a heart valve replacement and they use a porcine or bovine valve, are you illegal under Bushevik’s regime? And can a vegetarian rightfully get one of these?
I guess a Vegan would probably have to get soy valves.
tom just paid 35 for the dvd ok well bad connection not sure if this will post so uh later people
:frustrate: :nixon:
Soy valves!:rofl2: I had a room mate once who drank this horrid soy coffee. It smelled horrible! You know, soy can’t replace EVERYTHING!
i had starbucks today almost threw up when i thought about the pus that was probably in my milk i had with my brownie damn barnes and nobles got a new audiobook that i wont mention since it is by a conservative author and a copy of the nation i wonder if i will stab myself in the ear over the conservative audio-book i will if i must anyway later blog people must go back to the arena afternoon show today oh and if anybody has a copy of william shatner doing common people email it to seaniesean5@aol.com i must have it and best buy was sold out got fear and loathing on dvd wait i said that last post ok well im off to the arena later peoples
well, I suppose it depends on what you did with the rest of the animal….hybrid transplants are a good way to use every part a la Native American tradition….who were also, by the way, big on the whole human/animal thing…..
We use soy milk here. Well, I don’t actually use milk for anything, so I don’t use it, though I have tried it on cereal. Not the worst thing I’ve ever had, but it was OK.
We had tofu weenies, too. Not even the dog would eat them.
They still are, even.
Manimal….oh yeah! They really had great shows back then, didnt they? Simon McCorkindale…whatever happened to that guy?
You know whats really great is Almond Milk…the vanlla flavored one. I was off dairy for a while and I did fine with the nut milks…but IM not much of a milk person except yogurt. But coffee must have some sort of creamer in it.
My friend just sent me an email with a whole mess of animal clones gone wrong, photoshopped together. Too bad we dont have a pictures file….or do we?
There are too many to post on my blog and I cant get into my page right now…just too complicated.
The timing is so strange….Chris if youre lurking out there, show yourself!!!!
Still are, yup…hey, when I went to Montana State University (it was my 3rd or 4th college in a patchy career,) I took alot of their Native American Studies courses (and horseback riding!…I think they called it Western Equitation.)
What attributes would a good sex pet have? :hubba:
I want a big red baboon butt!:rofl2: NOT!
Great! Why is it that it’s these types of comments that hang out on the recent comments list for half the day. Sheesh!:roll:
I don’t know if anyone has seen this yet (haven’t had time to read the blog and won’t until tonight…), but it was just emailed to me. now we’ll probably get a case going to the supremes and have the exciting chance to see our brand spanking (:spank::spank:) new justices in action! :growl::mad::omg::evil::evil:
South Dakota House passes ban on abortion, challenging court’s Roe v. Wade decision
Feb 10, 2006
By Michael Foust
Baptist Press
PIERRE, S.D. (BP)–In a direct challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the South Dakota House of Representatives easily passed a bill Feb. 9 that would ban nearly all abortions in the state.
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=22627
Krista- I want a big red baboon butt-pea
nothing to say about that but I just wanted to see it in the recent comments section again….
Back to shovelling!….
SNAP! 😉
(I dont know how to use smileys, but this is where I would put one if I could)
Thunder-snow…and this because the ocean is warm??…but no one says global warming??
My friend downtown has 20 inches….I always get more because Im at a higher altitude…
soy valve! Ha!
I saw Marc at the Punchline yesterday. He confirmed that the new show will not begin tomorrow. He couldn’t tell me when the the show will commence. He will send an email as soon as the date is set. He mentioned that there is some scheduling details that are to be determined including whether or not the show will be live. The length of the show should be two hours and it will probably be broadcast at 10:00 p.m. PDT.
The show was enjoyable. He had some new material and he did a very long set. He ran out of CDs.
:fire:
Thanks, Hatebuzz. Bad news, but good to get the straight dope.
Who out there is in the mood for some fun Plushie activities?
:nixon::omg::rofl2::nixon:
Anyone out there in Philadelphia? How much snow? (Is it Plushie weather?)
Mom just called to say that according to Fox news Cheney just shot someone while hunting today….Oh my god…
she thinks that since he goes hunting with Scalia it might be him…but does not want it to be him because they will then be able to put a younger conservative judge in his place
Cheney SHOT Someone!!!!
And HuffPo already has a pic up of him with the headline about GOP and Dem’s wanting a full investigation of Him…so I was saying that they just have to add another line to the effect of: …and he shot someone!!!
It wasnt scalia though…soem guy named Harry Wittington…a likely name…old money…
At least Scalia can stay alive till we’ve got a democratic president!
Story here.
Cheney shot somebody? Self-inflicted? :bow:
Well, I guess if you’re gonna get shot by somebody, it might as well be Cheney, since he probably travels with a full cardio team, and a MASH unit.
Dershowitz Debates Chomsky
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Well, I think there is a win-win possible situation. Israel has been giving up much. It gave up the Gaza. It, by the way, offered to give up the Gaza to Egypt way back in the early 1980s. Egypt wouldn’t take it back. There was no international outcry over the occupation of the Gaza by Egypt for 20 years, nor was there any international — and I’m sure there must be a long record. Check Chomsky’s writing. He must have in print large opposition to the occupation of Gaza by Egypt and strong opposition to the occupation of the West Bank by Jordan. Funny, I never came across it in my research, but I’m sure it must be there, if you check at least the Czechoslovakian version of one of his writings, and — so, I do think there’s a win-win solution.
The win-win solution is the one I proposed, starting in 1967, and that is, Israel make territorial adjustments necessary to secure its boundary and securities, consistent with Palestinian rights, no occupation of Palestinian cities, a two-state solution. That is a win-win situation.
And let me tell you why I consider myself pro-Palestinian. I am pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, because I favor a viable, healthy, economically strong, politically democratic Palestinian state. That will be good for Palestine. It will be good for Israel. It will be good for the world.
Israel has a major stake in the success of Palestine, whereas the Palestinians have never had a major stake in the success of Israel. And so, I see a successful Palestinian state, a viable, largely contiguous Palestinian state as a win-win situation, not only for Israel and the Palestinians, but for the United States and the rest of the world. I only hope that Professor Chomsky can join me in agreeing that we’re not going to get a perfect solution. And let’s just advocate a solution that’s acceptable.
The question that was asked before was to me the key question. If the Palestinians accept the solution that Professor Chomsky finds unacceptable, will he use his enormous resources as the most influential intellectual in the world today to turn the Palestinians against this peace proposal, or will he lend his great prestige to urging the Palestinians and his academic supporters all over the world to accept a pragmatic compromise solution. Professor Chomsky, a lot turns on you. You are a very important and influential person. And therefore, you would understand your power and use it in the interests of peace.
BRIAN MANDELL: Okay. Just before I ask one of the most influential intellectuals today to respond to Lori’s question, just to tell you where we’re headed, Professor Chomsky will respond. Then, in accordance with our rule of the procedure and decorum for this evening, I will ask Professor Chomsky to offer a two-minute summary for the evening, to be followed by Professor Dershowitz. Professor Chomsky.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yes. Well, with regard to my opposition to the Jordanian-Egyptian occupation, there is ample material in print, and there has been for 35 years, ever since I publicly and openly and very prominently supported the two-state settlement, which Mr. Dershowitz says he now supports. I’m glad to hear that. I don’t have the background evidence. Let’s return — and that means, of course, opposing Jordanian-Egyptian occupation.
Let’s turn to the question we were asked to address: Where do we go from here? Well, we actually have two fundamental choices. One choice is to support Washington’s continued dedication to the road to catastrophe that’s outlined by Israel’s four former security chiefs, namely watching in silence as Washington funds the cantonization of the West Bank, the breaking of its organic links to Jerusalem, and the disintegration of the remnants of Palestinian society. That choice adopts the advice of Moshe Dayan to his cabinet colleagues in the early 1970s. Dayan was in charge of the occupation. He advised them that we must tell the Palestinians, that we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes, may leave. That’s the solution that is now being implemented. Don’t take my word for it. Go check the sources I cited, very easy, all English.
There’s an alternative. The alternative is to return to the spirit of the one break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. That is, the week in Taba in January 2001, before Israel called it off, and to take seriously the follow-up proposals from high-level negotiators on both sides, of which the Geneva Accords are the most detailed. There is overwhelming international support for taking them as the basis for a political settlement. It does come close to the long-standing international consensus that the United States and Israel have barred, and that I have personally been supporting for the last over 30 years. That’s the road away from catastrophe, towards an end to violence and towards eventual reconciliation. Either choice is within our reach. From that point on, it’s up to us.
http://www.zmag.org
I think one of the big things in hunter safety is not to shoot at shit if you don’t have a clear, open shot. Blasting you buddy in the face with a shotgun is generally frowned upon.
Mash Unit!!! yes!!
That was so funny…my mother is hilarious.
….he sprayed him with buckshot!! This is just priceless. I can already see the cover of the NY papers tomorrow….its just too good! I really want to get the National Enquirer on the case with this….a drunken Cheney (Drunk with power, no doubt,) felt chest pains and clutched his chest in pain, spun around, thereby discharging his shotgun into his gay boyfriend, Whittington….
Clarence? But only if the senate will filibuster the replacement’s nomination until the Republicans no longer hold the presidency.
seriously, on Fox they are saying that he saw a bird, spun, and sprayed the poor old coot with buckshot!
Nicki- apparently Cheney often hunts with Scalia…which should indicate a conflict in alot of areas like voting them into office etc…but not in this administration.
Clarence
Benito
CAPA
Fuck-Face
:bow:Oh, please! Go hunting with pig-valve.
I know. That was a farce! Hope the Super 5 (4!) get some legal heat for that illegal coup. Did you read Win McCormick’s article on the Florida election debacle, and the machiavellian tactics employed by the Republicans to ensure Bush carried Florida? There had been a movement to impeach Clarence, Scailia, and Rehnfuck for conflict of interest in that matter.
Why did the dems capitulate to that coup? Then dem activists wonder why people don’t give a damn about elections.
Does Limbaugh ever go hunting with pig-valve?:omg::rofl2:
I think there should be a prize for top contributers to the republican party: for $10,000 you get a hunting trip with Cheney…
You know, I must have dozed through the news on AAR; heard nothing about Cheney’s hit on Witherton.
Ha! HuffPo did just what I thought…they just added a headline above the same picture and made the old headline into “…in other news…”
All Cheney, all the time!…He must be squirming!
It really just broke…but the AP broke it…HuffPo has it up…Im sure the crack researchers at AAR are putting something together now!…not!
Deconstructing the Election
by WIN MCCORMACK
[from the March 26, 2001 issue]
The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning.
–Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge
Michel Foucault would have been fascinated by late-twentieth-century presidential campaigns.
–Lynne Cheney, Telling the Truth
Since the late 1980s, when they discovered with horror certain French-derived theories of social science and literary analysis that long before then had taken root among left-leaning academics in the United States–essentially replacing Marxist dialectics as weapons of intellectual struggle, in reaction against the failure of radical politics in the 1960s–American conservative intellectuals have held these particular theories under siege. In such books as Tenured Radicals (1990) by New Criterion managing editor Roger Kimball, Illiberal Education (1991) by ex-Reagan White House domestic policy adviser (and former Dartmouth Review editor) Dinesh D’Souza and Telling the Truth (1995) by ex-National Endowment for the Humanities chairwoman and future Vice Presidential spouse Lynne Cheney, and in innumerable interviews, stump speeches and talk-radio tirades, representatives of the American conservative movement have denounced the exponents of these theories for attempting to lure students away from traditional cherished academic ideals like objectivity and truth toward a cynical, despairing view of history, politics, literature and law.
So we can assume that participants in this decade-long conservative jeremiad did not foresee that at the end of that decade their colleagues in the Republican Party would wage a campaign to win a close presidential election in ways that would seem to confirm, in virtually every respect, the validity of the theories they had been railing against–and moreover, that as part of that campaign, their allies would espouse and promote to the public the very essence of these same reviled theories. However, if we look closely at the theories in question and at the facts of Republican behavior in Florida, we will see that this is exactly what happened.
The theories in question are those derived from the works of French philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Their conservative critics tend to conflate the ideas of the two men, and then to muddle things further by presenting both as synonymous with postmodernism; in fact, though they worked in distinct fields and did not even like each other (Foucault once called Derrida “the kind of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name”), their theories do have analogous aspects that make it not difficult to confuse them.
Foucault was a philosopher of history who posited, basically, the impossibility of achieving an objective and neutral interpretation of a historical event or phenomenon. Derrida is a philosopher of literature, founder of the notorious school of deconstruction, who suggested the impossibility of achieving a stable and coherent interpretation of a literary text, or any text. In both cases, the (putative) fact of the indeterminacy of the interpretive act leads to the conclusion (or has the assumption) that whatever interpretation comes to be accepted–the official interpretation–must have been imposed by the exercise of political power (though in deconstructionism this latter point has been elaborated and emphasized much more by Derrida’s American disciple Stanley Fish than by Derrida himself). It is this shared assumption that any official interpretation, whether of human behavior or the written word, has been arrived at through a process of power competition and not through the application of objective, neutral and independent analysis (because there is no such thing) that has so agitated conservative intellectuals.
In her book Telling the Truth, the wife of the man who was to become Vice President of the United States following Republican Party political and legal maneuvers in Florida uses a book that Foucault edited called I, Pierre Rivière as the starting point for a critical examination of the philosopher’s ideas. Pierre Rivière was a Norman peasant boy who in 1835 brutally murdered his mother, a sister and one of his brothers with a pruning hook. Foucault and a group of his students at the Collège de France compiled a collection of documents relating to the case. What the documents revealed to Foucault was not an overarching thesis that illuminated the cause and meaning of Rivière’s shocking act–not, in other words, the unifying concept or constellation of concepts that academic analysts typically grope for in their research and thinking–but, on the contrary, a welter of conflicting and irreconcilable interpretations put forth by competing, equally self-interested parties, including doctors, lawyers, judges, Rivière’s remaining family members and fellow villagers, and Rivière (who wrote a memoir) himself.
In other words, as Cheney puts it, the documents were important to Foucault “not for what they tell of the murders, but for what they show about the struggle to control the interpretation of the event.” Or, as she quotes Foucault as saying, the documents form “a strange contest, a confrontation, a power relation, a battle among discourses and through discourses.” The reason he decided to publish the documents, Foucault said, was “to rediscover the interaction of those discourses as weapons of attack and defense in the relations of power and knowledge.”
“Thus,” Cheney concludes, “I, Pierre Rivière is a case study showing how different groups construct different realities, different ‘regimes of truth,’ in order to legitimize and protect their interests.”
The Foucauldian mode of analysis does not meet with any approbation or sympathy from the Vice President’s wife. In fact, she goes on to say that Foucault’s ideas “were nothing less than an assault on Western Civilization. In rejecting an independent reality, an externally verifiable truth, and even reason itself, he was rejecting the foundational principles of the West.” Therefore it seems a pretty good joke on her that it turns out to be the perfect mode for analyzing how Republican Party strategy in Florida was developed and implemented.
In fact, I might suggest that if Michel Foucault had not confected them already, his concepts of “discourses” and “a battle among discourses” ultimately to be decided by power would have to be invented before this signal event of American political history could be properly understood.
When former Secretary of State James Baker arrived in Florida on November 10, 2000, three days after the election, dispatched there by Lynne Cheney’s husband to take charge of the Bush campaign’s effort to secure the state’s Electoral College slate and thereby the Oval Office, George W. Bush’s initial lead of 1,784 had already been reduced by an automatic machine recount to 327, and the Gore campaign had requested manual recounts in four Democratic-leaning counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia. It appeared self-evident, from the tales both of the Palm Beach butterfly ballot and of the difficulties encountered by minority voters in getting to the polls and attempting to cast their ballots, that by the intention of Florida voters who had gone to the polls, if not by the actual counted results, Gore had won the state (which, of course, is why the media had awarded it to him early on election night in the first place), and it seemed a lot more likely than not that manual recounts in counties favoring Gore, or even a full statewide manual recount, would alter the actual results in Gore’s favor, despite the fact that the absentee ballots, which usually favor Republican candidates, were yet to be counted. On top of all that, Gore was leading in the national popular vote, and it came as news to many Americans that a presidential candidate could win the popular vote and lose the election. (Prior to Election Day, Bush campaign strategists, believing it likely that George Bush would win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College, had developed a strategy to try to discredit the Electoral College, and thus perhaps gain support from Democratic electors.)
Clearly, what Secretary Baker had to do in order to insure Bush’s election to the presidency was to stop the requested manual recounts, or any manual recounts, from taking place. Since Florida election law explicitly permits manual recounts, and there is a long history of them being conducted in the state for elections to offices at various levels (though not previously the presidency), including one race of Republican Senator Connie Mack, and given the situation just described above, what Baker encountered first of all in Florida was a severe public relations problem. In advance of Republican lawyers making a legal case in various courts against the manual recount process, Baker had to make a case to the American public as to why a perfectly legitimate process that had been employed many times before in Florida and elsewhere across the United States to decide close electoral contests, should not be used to resolve the closest Electoral College contest in 114 years. He needed to participate in what in Foucault’s word is a discourse, by presenting an alternative to and challenging the Gore campaign and Democratic Party stance that the Florida vote was so close and so rife with proven and potential irregularities that only careful manual recounting could decide it fairly, as well as what we might call the underlying and perhaps more threatening Democratic contention that Gore had actually won the election and required only the additional step of targeted manual recounting to prove it. . .
http://www.thenation.com
“In rejecting an independent reality, an externally verifiable truth, and even reason itself, he was rejecting the foundational principles of the West.Therefore it seems a pretty good joke on her that it turns out to be the perfect mode for analyzing how Republican Party strategy in Florida was developed and implemented.”
truth doesn’t mean much to the rethugs, except when they want to pontificate against the evil of academia, where the dangerous campus radicals are trying to deconstruct history. 👿 :evil::evil:
but it’s not just the rethugs; it’s also the press. they don’t care about the falsity of swift-boat tactics. they’re just there to record the :crap:thrown around by the respective parties. :growl:
nicki, is this a new or old nation article?
Kevin M-sorry about not replying to you on Friday! I have a nasty habit of posting and leaving….it never occurred to me that people might TALK to me!
Comment by Gaijinda — February 12, 2006 @ 2:51 am
Don’t feel bad. That was the last entry I posted before beginning my shift at work, so even if you had posted a reply, I wouldn’t have responded to it for at least 8 1/2 hours. You’re talking to the KING of posting and leaving. 😀
back to the extraordinarily boring Japanese Olympic coverage….oh that’s right, THERE ISN’T ANY! Unless there’s a Japanese athlete its not on!
Comment by Gaijinda — February 12, 2006 @ 2:51 am
Sounds like NBC. If there isn’t an American involved, they usually don’t bother with the event. I watched some of the women’s moguls on Saturday and was stunned to see that the competition featured skiers from Norway and Canada winning gold and silver. Not that I was stunned to see them win, rather that I was stunned to see NBC covering it.
Concerning Cheney’s attempted manslaughter, at least the guy had the good sense to get shot while he was with Dick Cheney. You know there were at least a dozen doctors around in case Cheney’s heart decided to go for number five.
So what’s up with the discussion on plushies? Is that what Bush meant when he mentioned the human-animal hybrids? Seriously, Springer covered this on his TV show like five years ago.
Krista, I will see about obtaining some rabbit fur for you. They don’t seem to be difficult to shave, but catching them will be the hard part. :rofl2:
Old “Nation” article. Easily accessible, though. Go to the internal search engine at http://www.nation.com and type in ‘McCormack’ and the key word of your choice: Foucault, Florida, etc. And it will be there for you.
“When the unelected seize the presidential palaces, democrats must seize the streets.”
Greg Palast :rant1::omg:
wonder if the campanion was a democrat.
did cheney have a valve job (ie pig valve mentioned above)? I thought by-pass and pacemaker.
they throw around that word “accidentally” so freely…how do we know it was “accidental”….?
After five years of treachery and horror, the last act of this tragedy begins with surrealism – Cheney shooting some greedhead crony.
A plug: Get hold of the new Reeves book on Reagan. Same as it ever was.
I’m sorry I read this blog this morning and was inspired to plow through the beginning of Russert’s Potato Head Hour, which was more insufferable than usual. Dig: We know that the problem with spying without a warrant is that its a crime against the constitution and an infringement of our rights as Americans. Its not a crime against Democratic Senators! Since you can’t find a reputable scholar to argue in favor of the Bush crypto-fascist position, you change the question, with the help of people like Fat Boy. The new question is, did the feckless Democrats tell Bush not to do this when they found out about it? In other words, when the Mayberry Mussolinis are jailing everybody without a trial or probable cause, and worthless, feckless hacks like Harmon and Daschal aren’t protesting, its okay. Thanks Tim. Hope your Dad gets picked up for child molestation.
And what the hell is this abortion of a news show doing on my local AAR affiliate?
And no Marc tomorrow. What a banner day. Thanks for the update tho.
I love that word, feckless. The Democrats have no fecks, that’s for sure.
Thanks for updating us Hatebuzz. I think we all knew in our bones it wasn’t going to happen tomorrow. I want a live show! I want a live show~! I want a live show.:mad:
I really love how the headline looks, Cheney Shoots Hunter. 😉
thanks hatebuzz for the update.
bummer not to have maron on monday.
Why did it take so long for the hunting incident to hit the news? me wonders.
and what the hell was Mrs. Armstrong doing watching from her car… I mean, they don’t even walk out in to the dove field where they plant crops to lure unsuspectig hunters, I mean doves, to shoot? chickenhawk weenie boys
I think they force slave wage chinese walmart children to tie birds to their heads and run ahead of them and hide in the brush… while they are on an easy stroll with the wives watching from the cul de sac. They then shoot wildly at them laughing big hardeeharhar’s all the way…that one lil’ nipper circled round back and made Cheney spin….but it was really an “accident”…
Im wearing my “because we couldnt make this stuff up” shirt….
Dean: If Cheney told Libby to out Plame, shooter Cheney should be out of office.
Ed Schultz Talked about some amazing blog numbers on Friday. I tried to see if I could find a quick reference on his sight but I think I will have to download the podcaste and listen again and I don’t feel like it. But there is a phenominal number of blogs being created every day and it’s growing exponentially. Every citizen in the world needs to become a blogger and take over the internet before they take it from us who can’t pay to play.
Okay, so what is the advantage of having Itunes on you phone? I can’t imagine it sounding very good and it would use you battery too quickly.
Krista youre absolutely right…and I am a techy gadget person…I have a card in my phone and could have music in it but I cant see the point. My phone powers down like an iPod while playing so it doesnt use much power, but it seems crazy to me…mainly because of the headphone thing. I cant even find ones that make me able to hear the phone very well, much less music or podcasts.
I think that there are good headphones out there that do shut down when the phone rings and turn into phone headphones…but I have grave doubts.
Im waiting for them to make chips available to implant directly in the brain for all of these things…meantime Im hauling a bunch of accesories…
No School tomorrow…too much snow here!
Strangest blog in a while guys……barbecued flaming cows in trebuchets, the Israeli-Palestinian issues, debates on regional and non-regional DVD players and Cheney shooting people. From the outside observer you guys look absolutely INSANE! :tongue: But very amusing….:rofl2:
Send some of the snow this way guys! We could use a day off from work! 🙂
You forgot the human/animal hybrid discussion Gaijinda! Do you want a tail or fur?
I once saw a study, probably NOVA but I’m not sure, where people were instructed to meet for an appointment at a certain time and as they waited in the waiting room, smoke started seeping out from under a door and they were observed as to how they would react to this in light of no one else reacting. The other people in the waiting room were part of the exeperiment and were instructed to remain seated. Most people just sat and did nothing as smoke, at first, seeped under a door and soon began to get thicker. A few people, in this situation, got up and left but most, I recall, stayed seated because no one else was doing anything. It was very telling as to how many people only follow the lead of others, even when their lives are in danger. I think the same thing is happening now because the media is so partisan and unregulated and they are not acting outraged that laws are being broken and people are testifying without taking an oath!
This quote is part of a much larger post(s) from Josh Marshall at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
“So, from the information available, Cheney screwed up — a relatively common hunting accident, based (as most accidents are) by not following basic safety guidelines and being careless. Trying to blame it on the guy who got shot just doesn’t wash.”
:oops:I’m sorry I flipped-out on you guys. Sometimes that just happens:doh:Anyway, I’m back and I’ll be hangin’ around(If that’s OK?)My train derailed and I didn’t quite get to where I was planning, but whatever.
What’s up with the Maron Show?:rant1:
:40:Guess we just have to wait.
I hope all you New Englanders are having fun in the snow.:santacool:
I’ve very worried that there’s NO word on Marc’s show….I don’t want to be an independent speculative investigator….but I can’t help but wonder if something’s up!
:omg:
:omg::fu: