weekend… 26 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.54 comments
A sunbird looks for nectar among hanging plants on a balcony. Most sunbirds feed largely on nectar. Fruit and insects are also part of the diet of some species [Wong Maye-E/AP]
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NOEL 25 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Europe, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, San Francisco, Viva La Revolucion!.38 comments
London, UK: Deer graze on a frosty morning in Richmond park [Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters]
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Well, the Greater Bay Area (it extends north of the Bay, into Napa Sonoma) managed to declare a “Spare the Air Day” for Christmas Day… SF Gate…. thus banning any fireplace or wood stove burning – of any solid fuel, wood, duraflame logs or other. Now I am not at all fond of wood burning stoves. The weather has to be still as can be and very very cold or I am in trouble right away. HOWEVER, this is some people’s only form of heat.
Fortunately we are having a very mild Christmas week…
I do love the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate reflected in the first three comments at SF Gate:
organ_donor12/24/2009 1:08:49 PM
An inspector cannot enter your home without a warrant. If you are cited, you can later fight the citation. Claim that you were burning candles in your fireplace, make them prove otherwise.
Recommend: (61)(8)[Report Abuse] Permalink
and…..
Puffer12/24/2009 1:05:52 PM
F this, I will burn SOMETHING. And F the gov’t’s phony interest in our health. The gov’t is interested in making corporate honchos fat and happy, PERIOD. In fact, we are governed BY corporate hogs, and I am no longer an iota interested in succumbing to their dictates. Burn burn, burn at my house and the gazillions of whiny asthmatics can stay away and go inhale diesel fumes instead.
Recommend: (53)(8)[Report Abuse] Permalink
… and:
ForASong12/24/2009 1:04:59 PM
Important message from PG&E: Burn our ga$ for Christmas, not that free firewood. It’s the American way.
Recommend:
Gave me a chuckle anyway……..
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AND I see the woman who tackled Benny is the same one who tried last Christmas midnight mass. She had faith that if she kept trying God would help her. So obvious.
Solstice 24 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, 2010 Mid Terms, Border Issues, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.57 comments
Enjoying a snowy sunset at Oostende beach in Belgium. [Spiegel]
I realise I’m a couple of days off – 
– but no pleasing shot of the sun showed up on time.
Looking over Democracy NOW! I noticed this timely tidbit…
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!… Truly!
Report: ICE Runs Secret Immigrant Detention Sites in US
The Nation magazine is reporting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is holding undocumented immigrants in secret sites across the United States.
In addition to its publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices. Many of the offices are in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants.
In Los Angeles, ICE is holding immigrants in a barely converted storage space tucked away in a large downtown federal building.
During a conference last year, an ICE official, James Pendergraph, openly talked about ICE’s ability to disappear people. Pendergraph said, “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.”
Meanwhile, The Nation magazine is also reporting ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians and rely on other illegal tricks in order to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. ICE agents have posed as Occupational Safety and Health inspectors, insurance agents and even religious workers.
Joy to the World. I doubt any of that will be changing anytime soon.
So…………. is it better when it is the same but just not BUSH?
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UPDATE, 12:49 am on the Pacific Ocean
More joy to the world:
And what of the amendments supported by members of the Progressive Democratic Caucus, the supporters of single-payer (SP): John Conyers, Anthony Weiner, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders and Jan Schakowsky?
At every critical moment these politicians with vertebrae composed of Jello compromised, backed down and conceded. Their allegiance to the Democratic Party and to President Obama trumped everything. There was nothing they were not willing to compromise away, no constituency that couldn’t be thrown under the bus for the sake of passing a bill; most appallingly women and abortion rights. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa, they all voted for the house bill that contained the Stupak Amendment. At a small protest in front of Jan Schakowsky’s home after the vote, she came out and told protesters she voted in favor of the Stupak Amendment because she knew it would be taken out of the Senate bill. She promised us it would be. As Schak strolled back into her opulent residence she protested, “I didn’t throw women under the bus.”
The progressive Democrats sold out on single-payer early on when they backed the public option. This created enormous confusion: How could they advocate for both single-payer and the public option when the two are diametrically opposed? It didn’t take long before they all shilled almost exclusively for the public option. Schakowsky spoke at numerous HCAN meetings and rallies, never at single-payer events. Weiner was regularly interviewed by the press and focused the discussion on the public option, not single-payer.
John Conyers, the lead sponsor of the single-payer bill H.R. 676, immediately endorsed the principles of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), an organization opposed to single-payer. When confronted by single-payer supporters at a Health Care Now! national conference, Conyers couldn’t explain the contradiction. Joel Segal, one of his staffers, became enraged and attempted to shut down the discussion. Soon after, Mr. Conyers became irrelevant to the movement for single-payer and a colossal embarrassment to it. It’s tragic, really. Conyers completely abandoned his magnificent legislation, H.R. 676: the only legislation that could transform health care from a commodity to an entitlement for all and solve the crisis. Instead of fighting for that legislation, he was holding briefings with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee to discuss “Why the public option must be included to have true health reform.”
All of them in it together.
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UPDATE, 4:54 am – on the Pacific Ocean………
Just made it to the end of the The Nation article (all of two pages…) and this is the close:
[A]n attorney who had a client held in a subfield office said on background, “The president released in January a memorandum about transparency, but that’s not happening. He says one thing, but we have these clandestine operations, akin to extraordinary renditions within the United States. They’re misguided as to what their true mission is, and they are doing things contrary to the best interests of the country.”
His feet are utterly elusive of the fire.
Achtung! Public Order! 23 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems.18 comments
On Monday morning, German news agency, DPA, reported that police were happier with motorists: they said that German drivers had become used to the icy weather, were prepared and were driving more sensibly. Accidents were back to more average levels, the police noted. [Spiegel]
hmm something about the pic reminds me of our political situation. Fucking stuck. AND the “legend” makes me think of what the political class in Washington are saying about the populace: they’ve calmed down, they got used it. They may not smile, but they will take it.
There is a lot of rage out there… ”the people” are not happy, but I am clueless what if anything they will actually do….
Onward.
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HA! Instant update! Just spied this over at Counterpunch… My own opinion is that a weak pretzel is a useless pretzel. And, a weak one may indeed be a danger.
But hey, this is Nader talking, not me.
[G]iven all the burgeoning crises in the United States and the world, the only global military and economic superpower (albeit in serious deficit straits) needs a transforming leader, when, at best, it has a transactional leader in the White House.
I say “at best,” because President Obama displays an uncanny inability to deal. He is not even anywhere near Lyndon Baines Johnson in that regard. This lack is due more to his personality than to his character.
His is a concessionary demeanor, an aversion to conflict and to taking on entrenched power, a devotee of harmony ideology not because he doesn’t believe in necessary re-directions, but because he does not project the strength of his beliefs and willingness to draw the line-here and no further-as did Ronald Reagan or FDR.
In the shark tank known as the federal Washington, D.C. Obama’s personality projects weakness as someone who does not take a stand and fight, as someone inclined to rely on his rhetoric to explain his withdrawals, retreats and reversals. Some examples follow. snip snap!
I am sure many joys await us.
Penguins may be over done… 21 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.51 comments
Photographer David C Schultz named this shot he took in the Falkland Islands “Penguin Day Care” because the adult King penguin is supervising the chicks playing in the stream. The chicks will lose their brown down feathers after a year
[DAVID C SCHULTZ / SOLENT]
but I thought maybe this one could slip thru…
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The little chicks have my sympathies…. 20 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.40 comments
The Wild Action Zoo in Melbourne Australia takes in chicks that have fallen out of nests
… I think I sense the the flustered state behind their little visages.
It is from this gallery at the UK Telegraph…
Here goes… 19 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.54 comments
a new thread, at least….
I hope when I have some stamina and energy to call AOL – India. It seems to be a connectivity problem. By the time I get the 4th tab open in Firefox… AOL is hanging up on itself.
Well… what else would be new with AOL. Shoulda left years ago…
what a fucking nightmare… 18 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.92 comments
which I hope is over…. I am online, computer did come on the date promised, December 9… waited forever for aol software… download was horrible… a hour and half on the phone to AOL – India…. nice fellow…. but.
Here is hoping…
How is everyone????
geesh… not over but nearing end of cyber detention 5 December 2009
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.44 comments
SO SORRY!
a friend contacted me to say comments shut themselves down ages ago! .. all this time I thought there was a somwhat functioning open thread.
if you see this I managed to get a thread up.
eta for shipping the dell tower was dec 3… i am in mild freak as here at neighbor’s checking email i do not see a shipping confirm with tracking number… so must call them.
otherwise eta for the new tower is december 9. hopefully i will be up that night or next day,
what a fucking work out.
wish me luck!!
Sunday 8 November 2009
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements.90 comments
Chishang, Taiwan: Taiwanese pianist Chen Kuan-yu performs a concert in the middle of a rice paddy field
Photograph: Reuters
