Pollination: The Non-Aligned Blogs.. ;) 7 April 2007
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Political Blogs, Viva La Revolucion!.trackback
In honeybees, Apis mellifera, Chittka and Geiger (1995) trained workers to feed at a station along a 300 meter route from their hive. Small tents, which the bees could use as landmarks to guide their flight, were set up along the route. Bees which learned the route using a fixed number of tent landmarks changed their foraging distance–the location where they searched for the feeding station–if the investigators changed the number of landmarks. Inserting landmarks between the hive and the feeding station caused bees to fly a shorter distance before searching for food, while removing landmarks caused them to fly farther. This suggests that flying bees could count the number of landmarks, and that they extended their flight in search of additional landmarks when they did not find the expected number.
Hey, hey! Why not be alive and aware… able to count… And fly farther…
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I posted all thru the 35 days of the bombing war against Lebanon, often using Nur-al-Cubicle and As’ad at Angry Arab, among others, as resources…
Nur, known from earlier incarnations at Dkos, is a meticulous researcher and frquently posts translations from the European press, notably Le Monde (Paris), Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), La Repubblica (Rome), L’Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) and occasionally from El Mundo (Madrid).…
snip from a recent Le Monde (linked above):
LE MONDE | 27.03.07 | 14h32
In 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began preparations in neighboring countries to meet the needs of a wave of Iraq refugees, which never happened.
Its fears materialized only two years later, a result of the unleashing of violence between US occupation forces and Iraqi insurgents beginning in 2004, then between Sunni and Shi’ite militias after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a sacred Shi’ite site, in February 2006.
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As’ad at Angry Arab… what to say… He kicks everyone! You have to love it… frequently posts snips or summaries from non-English language ME press…
Al-Akhbar newspaper is reporting that former members of the South Lebanon Army (the notorious torturing militia created, financed, trained, and controlled by the Israeli military during the long years of Israeli occupation of South Lebanon before 2000) are now active as mercenaries and security personnel in occupied Iraq.
Later he posted further on the issue of the SLA thugs operating inside Iraq:
Regarding my post below about the presence of SLA thugs in Iraq, an American correspondent in Iraq wrote me this:
“i’ve met quite a few who were out of the lebanese forces. some private security companies like hiring lebanese as middle level guys in the business, because they can speak english and are more ‘western,’ and hence better employees, but also speak arabic and deal with the iraqis. so they get paid more than iraqis and less than white people.”
Who better to run a racist empire, with all the nuances of skin color and earlier colonial loyalties, than the tag end of the British Empire, the USA! USA! world of slavery, Jim Crow laws and apartheid.
If you go out at all, the coded language says, drive thru it in an Abrams tank.
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Eteraz fits right in here… a group blog with several posters to the front page… a recent snip from Ali Eteraz on an anti madrassa, anti Talibat demonstration in Pakistan:
[S]o, what is the solution to these Muslim Ninjas?
Islamic parties have never garnered more than 13 percent in any free parliamentary elections in Pakistan.
Pakistan produces the most internet searches for the world’s pornography. You really think all those guys would let a bunch of ninjas impose Islamic Law? Problem with the porno Pakistanis is that they don’t come out and protest.
That is left for the human rights activists, who have to protest not just against the fundo ninjas, but also against the tyrant.
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moiv… a force on her own, a Gulf Coast Texas hurricane of a different sort, an abortion provider / clinic administrator and patient advocate at a Greater Dallas Area provider of abortion care… posting at Frederick Clarkson’s Talk To Action as well as at Texas Kaos, I have her T2A diaries linked on the blogroll…
Snip from a recent post at TX Kaos:
[E]ven if a woman lives hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor who will provide her with abortion care – and since 93% of Texas counties have no such doctor, many women do – she would be forced either to make two round trips to a clinic or spend at least one night in the city where the clinic is located. In either case, she would lose an additional day’s work, and have to arrange for an additional day of child care. For many women – those who already risk losing their jobs because of pregnancy-related absences, who cannot afford extra expenses for hotels and child care, or who have no transportation and must rely on friends who cannot afford additional time away from their own jobs – such a change in our already stringent law would mean that they couldn’t manage access to abortion care at all. Which is, of course, the only reason the Catholic Pro-Life Committee thinks it’s a good idea. [snip]
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Pink Dome! IRREPRESSIBLE!… tho I get that they are happy to be pressed. I had a hard time picking a post to cut and paste… but here goes:
Just say you’re sorry. Big deal.
News reports say Britain is taking a concillatory tone with Iran over the whole ‘You got your peanut butter in my chocolate’ thing going on over there. I say big deal. Say your sorry, moan and wring your hands with guilt that you went into their sacred waters. The whole time we know you’re rolling your eyes and mouthing to us that these fuckers are crazy and you’re just saying this to get your people out of danger. No one is judging you as weak because you do that. Everybody knows Iran takes hostages when their bipolar disorder kicks in, we get it. Let’s move on. (CNN)
PinkDome at 8:05 AM
Hint… I don’t think (but might be surprised) Pink Dome will be supporting any of the horses clamoring to get into the BIG D post spots… When one of them (PD, bluebonnet, Rawhide or SuperWow) stops by to hear a visiting candidate and reports back via PD, I really enjoy the take. NO reverence. None.
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Left I on the News is a spectacular blog, one that Madman regularly sends me snips and links from… A snip from a post on Benedict, words from on high, thoughts on plunder and sacking:
Pope Benedict went on to say that the poor of the developing world were not the only people who could be regarded as victims in need of help from a Good Samaritan. He said narcotics, people-trafficking and sex tourism had “stripped and tormented” many, leaving them “empty even in [a world of] material abundance”.
This is the usual “morality” nonsense one expects from the church. It might come as news to the Pope, but poverty in the developed world is a lot bigger problem than narcotics and sex tourism.
It’s fine that the Pope is reading and quoting Marx; I’d suggest he also read some Fidel to understand the problems the third-world faces today, and what the solution to those problems might be. “Plundering and sacking” has become a lot more sophisticated in the 21st century, but eternal cycles of debt, privatization of water, and the destruction of indigenous self-supporting agriculture are just as deadly as plain old “plundering and sacking” ever were. Not that there isn’t plenty of that “sacking” still going on in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Hat tip to Politics in the Zeros)
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Kactus at Super BabyMama was one of the strongest voices to emerge at a Post Pie blog, Our Word… A post of hers, iirc titled, Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office, was the most read and was found translated around the WWW into several languages. (Yes that was its title, found it.)
Her site just lays the words down (and her blogroll is an excellent reference for women’s blogs, women of all types, sorts, colors and affilations)… Don’t miss this one that slams an old, tired theme (and knee jerk response, cue the tired chorus) on the BlahgSnotteries:
[W]hoo boy! That brought out the middle class defensiveness in some people!
And Amanda said this:
I’m sorry, but your comment aggravated me, seeing as how you are privileged enough to use a computer to make it. Until everyone has that opportunity, I don’t see why you should get on the computer and just comment. It’s very insensitive.
Oh bullshit, Amanda. Just…bullshit. And I suspect you know that was some bull, so maybe you were being post-modernly ironic or something. But then again–well, fuck that.
This “you can’t be too broke or you wouldn’t have a computer/tv/fat belly/car,” business is such tired nonsense. You know as well as I do that not everybody who comments on a blog is doing so from their super-fast deluxe home internets system; lots of people get internet at their jobs. Lots of people use computers at the library. Lots of people had a bit of extra money, one time in their lives, and bought themselves a computer, and just hope that the damn thing keeps working cuz they’ll probably not be able to afford another one any time soon. Lots of people maybe got a computer as a gift. Or their internet access is underwritten by some government program.
The point is that those of us with limited resources, or those of us with no resources, deserve to have those little luxuries that make us happy just as much as the rest of the world. And if we decide to do without this, in order to have that, because having that makes us happy, then fuck you for questioning our right to that little bit of what the middle class has. Perhaps you’d like to see us all pay less rent on our little apartments and team up together, real old-school, five families to a flat and a toilet down the hall.
hmmm hmmm.
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Scruggs at UFO Breakfast Recipients!! Yes! Unique… check in, or czech in a la Miss Devore!, and see for yourself.
I tried to pick a different post than this one, but I still love the undercover policewomen, the “old guy john” and his escalating offers in an effort to solicit the ‘working women posing as working women’. And the dead squirrels.
But, I wanted to add a second post. No one should trust me on tech “things” but I think I might trust Scruggs.
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Cheerleading stop on the shoulder, off the roadway! For hrh/SV and Miss Devore…
Planet of the Feminist SuperVixens… and a link to the diary, migrated to PofSVs,…. Yes, the story of the Little Sister in the Frat House.. it cut so close to home that iirc, Kos personally banned hrh (well the autobanners took care of it eventually, for him), over and over!:
I’m worried that feminists are yet again – as many of them were in the ’60s – allowing themselves to be the watercarriers, the coffee-makers, the toilet-scrubbers, the “support staff”, the cheerleaders, the strippers and sex toys to the Big Boys who are really the movers and shakers and the ones getting their ideas across. Time and again I hear responses to the effect of:
“Yes, yes, we’re going to pay attention to your ideas and your issues when we get in power, but right now we have to focus on getting our people elected.” Can you get me another coffee, and by the way – nice tits!
Yesssss… don’t demand a political response: be sure to play the game the boys and the wanna-be politicos set out for you to play.
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Je Blague, Miss Devore in amazing loops with phrases and words, being out in a glider, floating in the cool, clear Northern California morning…
[A]nd the fault line is the equivocation on god, gays and gwot. Oh, and I won’t leave it out for its messing the alliterative note: American foreign policy with respect to Israel. (”Goy guilt’ had the g’s, but that would be branding this country with a false frame of having resoundingly cared about it’s own Jewish citizens, here or abroad)
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Fortunately for those of us who got tangled up in the vagaries of lexicon and analogy, there was some settled sediment that hung on and we looked and saw ourselves as moral hypocrites. Or we realized that the 9 year old classmate was who he or she was, different than the majority, but not someone who was plotting to undermine morality. And we noted our own cruelty, I suppose. Because different from squabbles with our determined “peers”, we sensed there was no make-up moments for the truly ostracized.
Other elements invaded: we grew up and discovered our best friends or favorite people in the world were gay, bisexual or transgendered. Some people had to discover that with their own parents or siblings. And the reactions could range from disowning to embracing. The least explored phenomena is of those people who struggled to bridge the gap. [snip]
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The Well Timed Period, a blog by a woman OB-GYN. Remarkable blog, no other word for it. Flat out wonderful… I read here about birth control research going on out side the US, amazing stuff. We are SO OFF THE BUS and in the fucking church choir.
On the other hand, catch what propelled her up the Google rankings:
Google Notices My Blog
I score a Google rank hit–#4 out of 1,830,000 hits–with my post on…wait for it…public nudity.
Not skip your period. Not emergency contraception. Nooo, it’s my really important work that gets noticed by Google. Good to know.
Going east towards the foothills, Bayne of Blog recently blogged about Sacramento Congressman Dan Lungren moving towards calling for to be drained and restored. Usually a cause of environmentalist groups going back to ur-naturalist John Muir himself, the conservative Republican congressman seems to honestly be interested in the possibility of restoring the scenic valley in his district. While San Francisco officials oppose the move, UCD science blog Egghead reports that a recent Masters Thesis by UCD Geology grad student Sarah Null argues that the same water flow could be maintained without the dam. [snip]
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Alan Smithee. I could have picked anything… at all, from the site. But I picked a wonderful little read-between-the-lines.
All about politics, Dem party politics, feathering the nest-payola at the top (near the top, they don’t have the WH yet-again) and resting on your undeserved laurels… And! you know, it pushes all that fun fun fiction about women and “making it”. From the ktichen to the congress, or whatever Nancy shoveled.
Just an itty bitty snip:
By-the-by, waddya say we do away with anachronisms like name tags and just tattoo the name (or logo) of the corporate buyer on their foreheads? It would make keeping track of who owns who in DC so much easier.
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ms_xeno, from her Remainder Bin, taken whole. Not to be cut up and parceled out…
2007.01.18 12.31
The Derby RamThe Crank gets a certain Mother Goose rhyme in her head every time Iraq comes up in the conversation. It was very easy to find online, once she recalled that the town in the title is Derby, not Dublin. [smacks forehead] An interesting history, plus several not-so-cheery lyrics that get left out of many versions, available here.
…The Butcher that killed this Ram, Sir,
Was drownded in the blood,
And the boy that held the pail, Sir,
Was carried away in the flood…The hapless child washed away in a river of blood is a nice touch. The Crank doesn’t remember seeing that before, though the version her parents bought (on vinyl) had this memorable variation:
…The butcher that killed this Ram, Sir,
Was in danger of his life,
He was up to his knees in blood,
Crying out for a longer knife…
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Incomplete! Incomplete, I say, without Who is IOZ and a snip from the latest…
[T]hat, of course, is the priciple tactic of the gender traditionalist, who feels that with thousands of years of the ol’ patriarchy on his side, women bearing the brood and men tilling the field, women baking the bread and men hunting the boar, women weeping and men warring, why, how otherwise could it be? These are people who embrace an essentially static model of human knowledge and understanding. That virtually every other thing our species believed about itself and the universe around it throughout almost the whole of our history on this planet has proven to be not merely wrong, but spectacularly wrong, fundamentally wrong, wrong to the point that wrongness loses its categorical meaning and slips off toward infinity, is irrelevant where boys and girls are concerned. Boys like trucks; girls like dolls. That’s the way it’s always been, and by my four humors and all the ether between here and canal-crossed Mars, by the wheel of Apollo’s chariot and the angry spirits of the harvest, I swears to ya that’s the way it shall always be, amen. [snip]
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… and again, Incomplete! without Stop Me Before I Vote Again…for, what else? a contrarian view…
Keep the bubble bubblin’
If you broke it, you own it; and if you made it go crazy, it’s your duty to contain the bloodshed and misery.
No, I don’t mean Iraq, I mean the home lot bubble.
Right now besides a lot of geefs that took a fraudulent flyer on a home too high, there is a vertible armada of mini-landlords sitting on spec property that can’t earn its nut in the rental market. We’d be fools to clobber this credit sector and drown these folks in their own debt. Sure the Mr Potters of the nation would like that, but we shouldn’t.
My point: watch the rube get tossed out with the dead leaves from the great American lending tree. Reading the blog sites, one finds dozens of Samsons straining to pull the temple down on themselves, just to punish the petty greed and noodle heads out there.
I say bail fast as you can — pump in emergency soft loans — save our lot price structure. [snip]
In case it sweeps past you, Scruggs is on hand in the comments:
A crash would be a killer for the rural folks, and pretty good for the vulture capitalists who stand to clean up on foreclosures.
Like all good things, the right-wing forces conspired to slow him down as much as possible. Of course just to show how some things are a constant the Democrats enabled the right to do this starting with the Carter era and it only got worse (didn’t everything) under the Reagan era and beyond. [snip]
There are several I read that are not here, Constellations, Liberal Catnip, Mo Betta Meta, Afro Netizen, Lucid Culture, Para Justicia Y Libertad, The Ugly Truth Teller, Unapologetic Mexican, Joe Bageant, Schneier on Security, Brad Blog… among others… some very new blogs, others that will be included when I do this again in a couple or three weeks… I cannot promise a schedule, but only to do it again.
Any little blogs you read, non-aligned blogs you think would be of interest, please let me know in the thread… 
Comments
Sorry comments are closed for this entry
hey thanks queenbee…..causing quite a buzz yerself, honey. people comb the nets for pollen like this. and you wing it. and it stings.
Wonderful sampling of all of the great voices out there … makes me wonder why I wasted so much time in fake communities.
Haven’t heard catnip speak up in daze. And I czeched mo betta, too.
MissD…
I think she has a house move coming up, from what I read… Finding a place that takes TWO cats.. for one thing.
Calgary if anyone knows anyone…
quelle surprise: (times UK)
“America’s high-security prisons in Iraq have become “terrorist academies” for the most dangerous militant groups, according to former inmates and Iraqi government officials.
Inmates are left largely to run their blocks, which are segregated on sectarian lines. The policy has created a closed world run by Iraq’s worst terrorists and militias, into which detainees with no links to insurgent groups are often thrown.
Inmates from Camp Cropper, the US prison at Baghdad airport, described to The Times seeing al-Qaeda terrorists club to death a man suspected of being an informer. Others dished out retribution with razor wire stolen from the fences.”
Catnip is moving to Calvary? Why that’s so yesterday….whoops, oh nevermind.
Gethsemene Gardens… Mt Golgotha Heights.
Marisa
Thanks for the hat-tip
Now I’ll have to start posting again
All the people you quoted run great blogs! Everybody read read read! Maybe if I learn how to link to things people will take me seriously (my brain is stressed from taking culinary classes. but if you need someone who can cook/bake…)
enough of my insecurities, love y’all!
kevin
What a flagrantly fragrant wildflower trail.
kevin… if you google “HTML tutorial” you will find a selection of easy tutorials.
I taught myself the little bit I know. which is just linking, bolding, etc.
Also ‘Rich Text’ in WP makes it easy.
Anecdote: A co-worker of mine had decided to move to Seattle and go to culinary school. Another co-worker kept referring to it as “Cutlery School”, as it was apparent she was unfamiliar with the term “culinary.”
I said to the former “What does she think they would actually teach in ‘Cutlery School?”
Intermittent Bystander–who are you, really? Or who were you at dk?
Miss Devore – Must I say? And who cares, really?
Marisacat, what a marvelously generous round up. Thanks for all those introductions and reminders to visit.
IB-I’m just curious. no agression intended.
unleavened?
but jesus rose from the grave!
yeastus christ.
I’ve always been intermittent (small i) as a commenter, so please go ahead and rule out any really egregious possibilities.
Just felt like stopping round for a bit, without lugging an orange valise.
As for Cutlery School – it’s gotta be for butlers.
there are several hilarious things on the chicago tribune website at present but this one caught my eye:
“Archdiocese officials say Cardinal Francis George was blessing Easter baskets at a Northwest Side church when he slipped on holy water that was on the marble floor.”
he broke his hip. the hazards of holy water on marble….
today’s special. jesus is available at sunday brunch (dine in only, no take out) in white and/or whole wheat ONLY.
don’t even ask for miracle whip.
17–that sounded so much like BarbinMD.
Ok, I’ll stop it. I really will.
19–I so like my jesus on wry.
IB…
I remember when last you were around…
you are fine… stay and enjoy yourself…
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Scruggs…
goodness you are welcome.
And while i was cooking i remembered 6 more blogs. I have to learn to make lists and not work off a weakened brain.
While I was cooking (I am sure I am behind on this) I heard, admittedly the damned Beltway Boyz on FOX… but they were saying that the vote count in the senate is short as well to override a veto on Stem Cell.
Oh I am sure that asshole from PA is a NO. Like Shuler, brave effing Xtian Mt Man from Asheville.
As if the Dems cared at all but to run on it. They can sell it over and over to the Alzheimer chanllenged, Parkinsons challenged homes, struggling to care for a parent at home.
And so on.
May god take a Fleet Enema on the Democrats. Such fuckers.
Oh I could not stand Cardinal George. What a vacuous front man for the HOly Roman Church.
May God take a Fleet Enema on him too.
19 – Ova Benedictus included?
20 – (a) Yoicks!
(b) Thanks. Mebbe I’ll change my mind and revert eventually.
chez Nazareth promised to show. what’s up with that? did he fall in love with his own voice echoing in the tomb?
are you running behind, jesus?
MC – Merci pour la bienvenue.
Marisa, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been slowly but surely finding the great women bloggers who were initially on Our Word, including you, moiv, and scribe. Good to know that we are still putting our words out there.
ahem
kactus… very welcome. Madman is also in Milwaukee and he often pops me links to your blog…
I remember when you went on hiatus.. really glad you came back…
This is so weird… hopefully by the end of the day I’ll let you in on what I’ve been cooking up…
Dem/Rep Kossacks floating more trial balloons
Hi kactus, I’ve missed you, too. And bay, I’m still going back and looking up stuff out of RRWIR.
I’ve been up all night trying to do my bit for Blog Against Theocracy before the weekend was over. As we say down here in Gawd’s country, Ah finely got ‘er done.
Warren Chisum and Women Who “Try Things on Their Own
Marisacat, you have placed me among some exalted company, and now I’ll have to work twice as hard to stay even. So I think I’ll go to bed and get some rest.
Wow, MCat, thanks for all the links/quotes – there are some blogs that I had not seen before. You are very kind to put mine among such distinguished selections.
Yes, the Little Sister diary drove them into apoplectic, and mostly incoherent, rage. SusanG told me I had set women writers back 30 years (because I asked why women weren’t writing about feminist issues??) and mcjoan went bonkers, yammering about how at Yearly Kos her brother-in-law had just died of cancer and she’d been occupied taking care of her disabled sister so that’s why she couldn’t write about the “feminist forum”, etc. Yeah, right. Cue the sad violins.
Amusing, too, that Kos himself felt the need to jump in and argue (lamely).
That NYT book review that IOZ linked to is a hoot. This book Manliness appears to be a real piece of work:
It almost makes me want to read the book. Can it really be that bad? Have we indeed regressed to 1970s territory with Norman Mailer boasting that women can’t write because they don’t have penises?
I wonder if Elise, Miz L. et al will review it once they’re done with their discussions of Pickup Lines Heard From Drunks.
#31, D Throat: yeah, check out this line from that diary:
This kind of thing makes me hear Robbie the Robot: “Danger! Danger! Warning! Warning!”
Of course, let us all do whatever we can to accommodate the fundies – the feminists and pro-choicers can take a flying leap.
#32, moiv: that is a very powerful diary. Everyone who is wishy-washy about abortion (e.g., all those people who want us to vote for anti-abortion candidates simply because they’re Democrats) should read it.
Thank you.
…the feminists and pro-choicers can take a flying leap.
I thought they made it quite clear… they are not interested in us, at all.
And all the knee bends to Fundies, if one is to believe the Pew poll I have quoted a couple times, got them from 24% of fundies previously to a new, glorious, neon-lit high of 27%.
3 pts.
For that they threw a lot in the water and pushed some already in the cold dark water farther under. Poor, minorities and those with the most tenuous hold on the middle class (a lot of people).
I STILL say had the Dems cared to keep company with the expanded rights legislation of the post war era, fought for minorities to be included, fought for womens’ rights, broadly based childrens’ rights, education (free education, expanded support, NO SUPPORT for NCLB, which they STILL support) really fought for voting rights…
if they had done all of that, they would be stronger today. All they have now is left overs. And they like that. They hope for 4 – 8 years of power from R losses. Kinda short term, if anyone were to ask me. But they seem fine with it… media is happy to build up the Dems right now, in certain ways… Obama has a rigged game on money (lobbyists and Big Biz inside the campaign with an official “symbolic” public rejection) as does Hillary. Edwards happy to be White Southern Christian Welfare oFfice Manager bringing up the rear.
It all seems so cut and dried. Have we broken out at all from the era of “shove HHH in, sidestep the war” in ‘68? I don’t think so.
well, I have risen. everyone else still coiled in their den? behind tomb doors?
I am very disappointed in this over-priced Peet’s coffee–”Anniversary Blend” It is a coffee that tries to make an argument that it is coffee, much as someone might, for instance, attempt to point out the ultimate logic in pairing with them.
yes sadly Peet’s is not so much. They are near by and I will drink their dark roasts, Italian and French but it is a disappointment.
They ALL can make better cofee. They just don’t bother. The famous Coffee Wars reduced coffee quality in sf to some form of bilge. What a shame.
via the nytimes:
“BAGHDAD (AP) — The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on American troops rather than Iraqis, according to a statement issued Sunday.
The statement, stamped with al-Sadr’s official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday — a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.”
(I’m thinking that this Anniversary Blend of Peet’s is commemorating the fall of Baghdad. A Baghdad that has fallen and cannot get up)
NYT via TO
Happy Xtian Easter said the Big Bad Flying Bunny to the little brown people on the ground.
“round-the-clock curfew.” How are these people suppose to live?”
And what about all the Republicans who are disgusted by the fundies and their anti-abortion, anti-feminist bullshit – and yes, there are a lot of them out there. My mother-in-law is one. But no, there’s no interest in wooing them over to the so-called “Libertarian Democrat” side.
As I’ve often said: Kos and his crew aren’t only Republicans in disguise – they’re the wrong kind of Republicans.
Re: coffee: it is really embarrassing that Americans continue to make such lousy coffee, even the stuff that costs $6.00 a cup and is supposedly “gourmet”. Even the Nordic countries are better at coffee. I’ve had excellent coffee in Sweden and Finland.
Another thing we don’t have – at least, to any great degree – is coffeehouses where people hang out all day and socialize. We think of coffee as we think of our food: it’s fuel that you grab on the way to go do something else.
I remember a McDonalds in Budapest that was designed more as a cafe, where patrons sat around at outdoor tables and lingered over their food, chatting and people-watching.
What I find depressing are these “internet cafes” where everyone is sitting alone, each absorbed in his or her laptop. I used to think Cliff Stoll was something of a crank with his dire predictions of the internet having a deleterious effect on society, but I’m coming to agree with him more and more.
Noah Feldman has a NYT Mag article up – on R/D politics and Iraq.
It almost makes me want to read the book. Can it really be that bad?
I think that it probably can. I watched this son of a bitch be interviewed on c-span when this book first came out and he is evey bit as arrogant, pedantic and far more sexist than the writer of this review suggests. The fact that people, that women paid good money to be educated by this prick is absurd. If you do read it, check it out of the library.
Have we indeed regressed to 1970s territory with Norman Mailer boasting that women can’t write because they don’t have penises?
I’m pretty sure we’ve never left that territory.
And what about all the Republicans who are disgusted by the fundies and their anti-abortion, anti-feminist bullshit – and yes, there are a lot of them out there. My mother-in-law is one. But no, there’s no interest in wooing them over to the so-called “Libertarian Democrat” side
Kellyann Conway (gop pollster, pretentious idiot) says that only 1/3 of republican women are ‘pro-life’.
The continual DK, scoop blog push to see abortion (as that asshole adamb put it) “taken off the table” is, I believe, ideological . No matter what evidence we provide that criminalizing abortion is a deeply unpopular position and as destructive to individual lives as NAFTA or wefare ‘reform’ or the continuing occupation of Iraq the ‘centrist’ fuckwits
will never stop trying to shove it down our collective throats and will never stop lying about their reasons for doing so.
I read the nyt article about the history of eggs benedict and now I want to go out to breakfast. something I rarely do. maybe I’ll bribe bro & SIL by picking up the tab.
“weaker than men, women have to be indirect in getting what they want; they cannot simply insist.”
I still can’t believe that people believe that crap. Yes, men on average are stronger when it comes to relatively brief explosions of power, of physical strength.
Women are so much stronger at sustained strength, willful strength. Perseverance and flexibility and sustained effort.
There is the strength of the steel beam, of the rock falling downhill, and then there is the strength of the willow in a strong wind, of the river carving slowly away at the mountain. Neither is “better” or “stronger” than the other overall. They merely are what they are.
well done as always, moiv … I wish more people were listening. It still galls me that the huge march for women’s health was so roundly ignored by the media at the time (most reports I saw focused on the counter-protesters).
Keep up the good fight … you are a hero to me.
TA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
D. Throat-thanks–I will be a flake to the best of my ability.
In other news, I decided against going out for breakfast, but I went to Safeway to search out possible breakfast foods. And though I know ’tis the day to celebrate stuff on a stick, I was truly horrified to see sausages wrapped in pancakes. On a stick. I pictured the nuclear family all settled down around the table with their breakfasts on sticks. “Can I have another stick, mom?”
Another little known blog I like-seesdifferent’s “Over the line, Smokey”, a Big Lebowski-centric site:
http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/
via The Opinion Mill, I found this eulogy for Oriana Fallaci by Christopher Hitchens, of all people.
I so much prefer interviewers from outlets like the BBC (or even CNN’s international branch) because of this very issue. No follow up, too much deference.
I loved Fallaci’s work as seen in “Interview with History”, but she really became quite the rabid Muslim immigrant xenophobe in the end.
Madman… your RSS feed isn’t working.
…neither is Alan Smithee’s
and sadly, I”m completely technically inept and don’t know how to fix it. It broke sometime back, theoria tried to fix it without luck. Is it an easy thing to fix?
No clue… but it is like being a little bumble bee with no wings
D Throat..
what an invention!! I have to play around with it.
I am jsut relieved my feeds are working.
The Non-Aligned Page Flakes.
You have to LOVE it…
*****************
MissD
agree on Oriana… I loved her for years.. and I loved her comments on the Berlusconi/Prodi run…. but yeah she got intensely anti Muslim, in a most reactionary way… and iirc met with the Pope privately (never a good sign).
I can easily see Hitchens doing a big wet kiss to her.
ugh.. what a shame.
bumblebee sans wings=stumblebee
Many thanks for inclusion in the roundup, MCat. I see there’s some new must-visit cattle in the herd, too. You rock, cowgirl!
MM perhaps it is time to move to something like WordPress at least if something goes wrong there is a team of technicians to deal with it.
As per my new flakiness… this is just the start I have more “pages” in the wings.
Also, if anyone is interested in helping me keep this updated … ahem I am more than willing to share the “priveldges”.
I am trying to put a message board on each page to note if there is anything of particular interest from one of the feeds listed.
WE DON NEED NO STINKIN DKOS BUMBLE BEES ! ! !
AlanSmithee your RSS feed is not working
All loaded with pollen and no where to go….
Apparently my RSS feed does work, tho, frankly, I do not know what the hell it is (I know, read the FAQS); but I’ll be content with it if it does’nt require replacement feedbags.
hey-john kerry has a #1 diary on dk about supporting pelosi, and SusanG has an FP post on the kerry-heinz’s book on environmentalism.
Kerry hired Jerome Armstrong hmmm a few months ago, iirc for his internet “presence” or whatever they call that sort of consulting.
Jerome disclosed it and I think Danny Glover at Beltway Blogroll wrote about it.
yup, she did turn rabidly muslim-phobic at the end. I think the same trap that Sam Harris, who I like a great deal, falls into. Extremism is the problem, not one particular brand of it. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all equally dangerous to me … I don’t single one out, and think the muslim variety might be the most overtly scary due to the sheer desperation of so many people from places where that faith is practiced, after generations of exploitation and death and war. It’s no different than the flowering of hatred on the theofascist right here, in the poor towns of the south, in the neo-dustbowl out west, in the abandoned working class towns of the industrial north. I see little difference btwn the motivation of Timothy McVeigh from those of the 19 men on those passenger jets … aspiring lower-middle-class men who feel their promised futures had been stolen, with nuts and extremists whispering in their ears and aiming them at the rest of us. The one thing that might make the muslim terrorists more dangerous is that they seem better educated and a hell of a lot smarter.
Think of it as your own personal hive of honey bees… going forth and pollenating the masses with your intellect and wit…. all for free. Imagine the masses as an apple orchard enticing your bees to come along and sprinkle a bit of Miss D. pollen on their delicate blossoms…..
ok. just as long as they are not exploiting the apple pickers.
speaking of pollinating—my dog is in love-tis the season and there are some new females in the neighborhood. but he is whining and pining a bit much.
I picked this up at Angry Arab:
mcat
sorry i missed your generous plug …till now
i’d been rolling this fucking rock away from my cave all morning
then there was hiding from those two chicks or was it a shepard ….
no one gets this real details shit right
when they got bigger missions
anyway
i’m back….for now
death be not proud
death be ashamed
if i can lick ya
who the fuck can’t
which 2 chicks, paine? I want answers.
md
et tu ??
doubting thomasina ????
i carry my spear wounds in my wallet
not pictures of chicks
who ?
how do i know
father smiff’s groupies
are all over 70 and dressed in rosery beeds
so they weren’t his followers
maybe …my mother
i did hear one complaining
“he never calls ..never ….thank God
at least for that .. ..the corny puns … yikes ….
you’d think after all these years .. but no
still he’s got to curl my ear
with the word play “
md, thanks for the update on your dog’s romantic life, fascinating stuff.
Reminds me of Steve Martin’s piece Serious Dogs
From a few threads ago re Star Trek, in the episode Plato’s Stepchildren, Kirk, Spock (the Vulcan) and Uhuru the smokin’ black babe communications officer (whose name means ‘freedom’ in swahili), Dr, McCoy and the hot blond Nurse Chapel (who was in unrequited love with Spock) were held captive by a crew of aliens who lived on a planet with a naturally occuring chemical in the food supply which gave them telekinetic powers. They want to kidnap McCoy permanently to be their doctor and when refused, become enraged, and using their mental powers, force Spock and McCoy to prance around and sing like medieval court jesters, later they hold a banquet where for entertainment they make Spock play the harp and sing a touching old english ballad and as a finale they make Kirk and Uhuru share the notorious kiss, although the actors claim their was no actual touching of lips, let alone tongue action. Quite hilarious. The obvious point being that it was involuntary; Kirk, notorious intergalctic male slut, boinged blue, green and every color of the rainbow alien females all over the galaxy but to voluntarily kiss a negress (as Honest Abe himself referred to her when he made a 23rd century cameo) would be no doubt unforgiveable, the ultimate taboo or some shiznit.
Mcat, wow. I feel really honored to be in such great company. Perhaps some future honeybee rest stops could include:
The Melancholy Revolutionary
Lots of meaty Socialist-Green musings there from “Foolish Owl,” a brother Alas-escapee.
Democratic Left Infoasis
Bumped into him on Brickburner and SMBIVA a few times and should have checked out his place sooner. Really terrific library of troublemakers on the right-hand side.
Oh, and there’s stuff like brownfemipower’s Woman of Color blog and Red State Son and… and.. I could go on all day, but you all get the point.
Frankly I think we have fantabulous coffee in PDX. There is also a forty-block stretch of prime retail space on the inner SE side: Belmont-Morrison St., just over the Morrison St. bridge. You can drive up there from downtown and count indy coffee shops galore– no Starbucks. Rumor has it that either one guy or one consortium of owners has control over most of that retail space, and that the owner(s) detest Starbucks and won’t let them in no matter how much $$$ they wave around.
who is this father smiff of which you speak?
any relation to pastordamning who will no doubt cyberbaptize the new kos child tonight:
“I baptize, thee, elisandra Alexa-ratings in the name of the kos, the mother talkers and the street profits Ah!-men!”
shall we expect massive volts of lightning? The Child has been spoken of. About. Not kindly. Little respect for the Pa.
LOL.
another good blog that I just picked off the WP faves-”Hysterical Raisins”
http://mikk2.wordpress.com/
LOL Speaking of “fathers”… Nicholas v Hoffman in the NYO… takes a look at the usefulness of the much invoked 2nd Amend.:
77–um, it’s a blog of 2 kosovarians.
MC-volts or bolts? or volts of bolts? It could only raise us from the dead.
marx your calenders–buy yearly dk-on-a-stick
“Here is another sneak peak of what will be offered in our April Auction!
* Possessed Pootie Necklace Set Iris Edition
* Kentucky Derby Party Kit (Complete with Mint Julep Recipe)
* Signed “Anatomy of Deceit” tradeback by Marcy Wheeler, signed on the day of the Libby trial verdict!
* Sam Seder Majority Report Mug and signed Majority Report mousepad
* Major Danby’s beautiful orchid prints
* Democratic Presidential Pin Collection”
people here are too damn clever
mcat
what progressitory amerika
needs is
a serious deep dish blog site
full of
statistical magic tricks
and dumbfounding
moral puzzlers
stuff like that
not gaity … sassy sacrilege…. pastel colors and such
MD
PUNDEMENTALISM IS ITS OWN REWARD
62. D. Throat – AlanSmithee your RSS feed is not working
Thanks DT. I’ve let 50megs know. (The blogs are still in Beta there.)
and who
is clever
of the first
order
than paineful verse.
I see your point
and raise you
a line
I ask you all: What could possibly be more seasonal than this ?
ms_xeno–I did read booman’s post on the peeps/smoking and alcohol, and was about to toss out a compliment on the post, but considered I am persona au gratin there, tho’ still a “TU”
slouching towards the laundromat….
landed on this honeybee page at the UI/Urbana Champaign site, over at COunterpunch:
WHAT I WRITE IS NOT VERSE IT’S ADVERSE
AND YOU JUST SHATTERED MY EAR HORN, PAINE.
close, but no cigar:
“The Detroit News
Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.
Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford’s hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.
“I just thought, ‘Oh my goodness!’ So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front,” Mulally said. “I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen This is all off the record, right?”
well, self-immolation is his strength, in a way.
Okay here is the Queen Bee aggregator of non aligned blogs:
http://www.pageflakes.com/v.blognet.ashx
V.Blognet
the V can mean anything for viper to vagina to victory or V-list as oppose to A-List.
I welcome any and all comments!!!!
v.blognet at gee mail dot com
.
ugh. The intervention that was not needed.
92–and cheney was right beside him.
talk about impeachment. When I first heard of it I missed that Cheney was there too.
I tell you, Gawd loves Bush.
This is why Pelosi went to Syria… to pretend that the Democrats are going to do something about ending the war…. Kabuki on a grand scale.
Clean nappies for the Democrats! All they do is soil themselves.
yes, keep deferring to this disaster of a president. bow to all the boogeymen. while al-sadr encourages his militias to kill Americans. because we’d hate to stop funding the deaths of our troops.
I fell asleep during This Week.. but Madman popped me an email that Kyl ate Levin for breakast. Just hammered the whole smear of pork in the bill.
oops sorry!
D Throat # 92 went to spam (rescued!) and Miss Devore # 98 went to moderation…
Not sure why it is sending people to moderation who have not tripped any words and the spam file still catches people.
Sorry!
wow, I was practicing taking pics of myself with iPhoto. It’s slightly better than the dressing room mirror.
DT
dropped you an email at the v.blognet
miss devore, I report with great indignance that I did not consult Booman on the Peeps issue. I googled it all by my lonesome.
Because of course Booman threw some kind of flimsy “I-feel-your-pain,-Indy/Green” post my way last month when he ducked in here to make some excuse for his peabrain friend Bowers. Which I believed about as much as I believe in Hillary’s latent peacenik yearnings that are just waiting to be released the day after we all sweep her into office next year.
Feh. Screw Booman. I’ll find my own damn Peep-fests.
I do believe that is when he accused me of stalking his atty. same thread iirc
Why are the Boyz and Box Car Boyz so tense?
Mcat, it comes from holding up a hand mirror all day while chanting “They can’t live without me… They can’t live without me…” over and over again. I’m sure it starts out as an innocent confidence-building exercise but eventually takes root as a full-fledged delusion. And the inevitable flip-side of that mantra is “They’re all out to get me… They’re all out to get me…” Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
The far-less exciting truth is that I think of Booman about as often as he thinks of me. Which is to say about once every millenium, or less. :p
Oh I thought all of that silliness, a sort of fake “feel your pain” sludge was to recoup a really bizarre drop-in. that failed.. Where he was forced to state I can do as I wish.
Makes a lousy heavy.
Apparently, he missed that passage of Dickinson that declared anonymity, or at least obscurity, to be better than being “…public like a frog…”
I keep waiting for the Peeps company to put out an ad campaign: “Getting Down With My Peeps”.
#47, madman: There is the strength of the steel beam, of the rock falling downhill, and then there is the strength of the willow in a strong wind
Yeah, but women have the steel-beam/rock-falling-downhill strength too. They are capable of giving birth and carrying babies/toddlers around, working in the fields, carrying heavy loads, etc. All this “women are have a gentler kind of strength” stuff is bullshit. Sorry.
Studies indicate that women have a higher tolerance for pain and greater physical endurance than men. As one might expect from the gender that gives birth.
#73, jamfuse: yes, Uhura was indeed hot. But I’ve never seen that episode. Thanks for the recap. What a silly show. My favorite episodes were Spock in Vulcan Rut and the one with the hideous salt monster.
#80, Miss D:
This is a joke, right? Who on earth would desire any of that shit?
svix-I kid you not.
#45, colleen: Kellyann Conway (gop pollster, pretentious idiot) says that only 1/3 of republican women are ‘pro-life’.
That wouldn’t surprise me. And from what I’ve seen, a lot of Republican women are happy to call themselves feminists, and are far more feminist than the fake DK “feminists”. They are not the religious-fanatic anti-choice Republicans.
There is a good book about this subject: Tania Melich’s The Republican War Against Women. She details how Reagan got in bed with the religious wackos and started pushing the anti-abortion thing, against the wishes of the women who were high mucky-mucks in the party, and who were then thrown out of the power structure.
The continual DK, scoop blog push to see abortion (as that asshole adamb put it) “taken off the table” is, I believe, ideological . No matter what evidence we provide that criminalizing abortion is a deeply unpopular position and as destructive to individual lives as NAFTA or wefare ‘reform’ or the continuing occupation of Iraq the ‘centrist’ fuckwits
will never stop trying to shove it down our collective throats and will never stop lying about their reasons for doing so.
Yes – those people come from cultures that don’t like women, particularly uppity women. It’s an unholy combo of the Fratboy mentality and the religious mentality. They can all go fuck themselves.
svix-I love your white-gloved approach to everything. “throwing you an accordion”
#109, Miss D: svix-I kid you not.
I suggest we donate some valuable keepsakes to their cause. I could run off several prints of my ass on my copier.
I find it interesting that a marcy wheeler’s (who I like) autograph would have some mystical value if dated on the verdict day of the libby trial.
it will be fun to see how the reliquary fills. Luscious Vagina’s deleted diary bemoaning his outing. with assprint.
I am laughing. “search terms people used to find your blog”:
lub dup 1
zorba greek immoral 1
wahabbi 1
peabodyism 1
sex maniac
hey yall — wary off posting mcat usually starts a fresh thread at about 100 comments…
trying to probe your literary minds since none of my friends could help…. seems i was a geek and reading in jr hi instead of smoking pot and listening to KISS.
I am trying to remember the name or author of a book series in childrens lit. it was about a mansion and the family that lived there. it would take place various times in history. i want to say there was tree that bridged the span of time along with the house. its about the 5th to 6th grade level and kind of a wrinkle in time type thing
revisionist–don’t have a clue-but I googled your clues and found:
The Children of Green Knowe
Oh yes, Miss D, a Hidden History of Daily Kos – including deleted diaries – would be a compelling read. Not compelling enough for me to pay any amount of money for it, however.
Speaking of deleted diaries, colleen, I meant to say a while back that I’m sure that Maryscott posted a questionable pic of herself – I thought about trying to hunt it up for you, but then the very idea bored me so much that I quickly decided not to. She probably deleted the diary anyway.
lol…..
i believe thats it! i couldnt think of decent search terms. i loved those books as a kid. they were more male oriented even tho they are written by an old lady . lol. yall were probably too busy reading that horse series and judy blum to catch the green knowe books. i guess i got into it because the last book was published in 76 so that puts me in 5th grade
I haven’t heard of that series, but as a kid I liked the E. Nesbit and Edward Eager time-travel/magic books.
Never read Judy Blume. I wasn’t much into the YA genre.
Miss D: just for you! Have an accordion! Interview with Onni from Eläkeläiset:
New Thread
And the beat goes on…
just poked my nose in after a weekend offline, and noticed the link. thanks marisa, although the bee image sort of has me down, what with the colony collapse business. hope they turn out OK, i found one floating in my birdbath, and wondered for a minute or two whether i should scoop it up and call the entomology dept., like we did with the dead crows a couple of years ago when west nile was the apocalyptic eco-crisis du jour.
and white it sucks for the american troops in iraq, from an avoiding-a-greater-iraqi-internecine-bloodbath perspective, al-sadr turning his guns outward towards us might be better for iraq in the long run. from what juan cole has said about al-sadr and his family, they’re more nationalists than shiia sectarians, and could end up finding common ground with sunni nationalists, theoretically at least.
thanks wu ming…
I agree on the nationalist stance among the Sadr followers. It has not helpd that we bomb from the air. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands… of sorties, and the DU.
We need to leave..