Them. Again. 26 September 2007
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. answers a question during a debate at Dartmouth College Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007 in Hanover, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
yup yup… that is her. tonight, in NH….
and the headline already?
Dems can’t make guarantee on Iraq troops
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer 21 minutes ago
HANOVER, N.H. – The three leading Democratic presidential hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they could not guarantee that all U.S. combat troops would be gone from Iraq by 2013, the end of the next president’s first term in office.
“I think it’s hard to project four years from now,” said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation’s first primary state.
“It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,” added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
“I cannot make that commitment,” said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson provided the assurances the others would not.
“I’ll get the job done,” said Dodd, while Richardson said he would make sure the troops were home by the end of his first year in office.
The opening question of the two-hour debate plunged the eight contenders into the issue that has dominated all others in the race for the White House.
With the primary season approaching, all eight have vied with increasing intensity for the support of anti-war voters likely to provide money and organizing muscle as the campaign progresses.
Edwards said his position on Iraq was different from Obama and Clinton, adding he would “immediately drawn down 40,000 to 50,000 troops.” That’s roughly half the 100,000 that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has indicated could be stationed there when President Bush‘s term ends in January 2009.
Edwards sought to draw a distinction between his position and that of Clinton, saying she had said recently she wants to continue combat missions in Iraq.
“I do not want to continue combat missions in Iraq,” he said.
Clinton responded quickly, saying Edwards had misstated her position. She favors the continued deployment of counterterrorism troops, not forces to engage in the type of combat now under way.
*************************************************
no pennies, no votes … nothing but ill wishes coming from me toward those hacks.
Boy, is the media pushing Hillary as a fait accompli … the fucking election is MORE THAN A YEAR AWAY.
Hucklebee or Romney is gonna kick her ass.
Lay down with dogs …
‘Bout sums it up, though seeing as in how Al loves to cozy up w/ fucked up winger hatchet men, no one should be surprised.
That really is one ugly suit. Send money now to buy Hillary a new suit!
Concentration Camp Slated for Virginia
no kidding catnip … we had some curtains that looked like that back in the ’70s.
yes a harsh suit… a deep red for end of summer. Hard to look at.
There was one debate where she had stunning make up. It must have been done by someone who works with television lights, studio make up all the time. The make up grabbed the light.
She needs that person back.
Kucinich: “Or you can have a president who’s tall“? Is that what he said? lol
School discipline tougher on African Americans
The way Hillary laughed at Mike Gravel made me think she had been practicing that laugh for awhile. It was very “staged”.
Richardson’s against the occupation now. Good for him. But he has no more chance of being president than Kucinich does and Kucinich has been anti-war and anti-occupation for 5 years now.
Obama and Edwards are just weak.
But Hillary is so bad I’m almost happy Obama didn’t show up for the Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran amendment (both my “liberal” Senators voted yes while Luger voted “no”) vote. I might have been tempted to grasp at some, any straw.
But he made it easy. The corruption is complete. Obama’s just a junior partner who wants a piece of it.
Fucking LAWYERS. It’s all word games.
O’Reilly’s a racist goon but I also noticed that Tucker Carlson was taking the “contrarian” position on Jena (that those 6 kids should do hard time after all). He’s worse than O’Reilly in some ways since he’s not insane, just a dick.
Oh how I wish someone had had the balls to say “well Tucker when you and your friend went into that bathroom and bashed that gay guy’s head who made a pass at you into the sink do you think you should have done life in prison”?
O’Reilly’s little racist spew also makes it easier for liberals to ignore the Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran amendment and all the Democrats who voted for it.
Newsflash: John Edwards’ father worked in a mill.
And now, the sports…
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see O’Reilly with plenty of downtime at home to entertain Mike Stark when he visits.
Favourite Bible verse, Timmeh? GMAFB.
Why the U.S. government hates Cuba: Pérez Roque slams Bush
Left I highlights this:
There is an embedded vid of the whole speech at the link above.
Now this is the kind of thing that pisses me off:
Big Yahoo headline: US Video shows hacker hit on power grid
Read further:
So – it’s all agitprop.
Bunch of lying shits.
Why doesn’t he ask them about a more important document, like maybe “What’s your favorite section of the US Constitution?”
The Baltimore Chronicle has the Dave Lindorff article on the Lieberman-Kyl amendment.
at least…
Dodd, Liebermen’s buddy?
Bait and switch?
Only hillary could make the golden rule sound like an evil threat to get back at everyone
here is a link to Marie’s piece on the L/K mess… at TLC
Speaking of photos, Beyerstein seems to have hit the motherload of caged celebrities and has managed to bring out Al Gore at his puffiest.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/al-gore-at-the-.html
That weight after 2000 never came off.
You know those old photos showing how badly Lincoln aged during the presidency?
Gore got all the stress and aging but none of the power.
I feel old looking at him.
im gonna go to the left-o-sphere now and see how great hillary did
found a link to this blog by Mclatchy’s bureau chief in baghdad.
This is TO GO OR NOT TO GO
good piece Marie.
I just read the Pérez-Roque speech, and I think I might be a communist.
Don’t tell Rick Perry.
Hillary’s suit is fine; it’s just a bad color for her. Earlier today Huff-Po had a picture of Hill, John and Barack up and she looked twenty years younger and radiant.
Understand that her laugh tonight is giving some people shivers.
Everybody says that DK can’t be POTUS because he’s short. Is he shorter than Hill?
MitM – #16 probably the one that makes the president CIC.
I wanted to be a Communist for awhile but all they do is try to sell you newspapers and hit you up for money so they can fund their newspapers.
This is disturbing:
This is a new twist – it’s OK to shoot someone if they feel suicidal.
What about Dr. Kevorkian, putting dying people out of their misery by their own request? Painlessly, without shooting them in the mouth?
He went to jail.
Everybody says that DK can’t be POTUS because he’s short. Is he shorter than Hill
Bush was half a foot shorter than Kerry and guess who won that one.
#22, Hair – actually that’s a very good pic of Gore. The harsh lighting and the angle make him look more chiseled than usual.
Hey moiv, you’re closer to the expanding Bolivarian Revolution down south of the border … maybe you’ll get lucky and it will sweep right across the border someday.
I know I have my fingers crossed. Seeing President Evo Morales the last day or two has really given me some hope that this idea could spread.
Catching up on Tweety’s rundown on the “debate” … Clinton pushing the Syrians/Iranians ARE SCARY talking points.
#22, Hair – actually that’s a very good pic of Gore. The harsh lighting and the angle make him look more chiseled than usual.
Which is why it’s disturbing in a way. At his best, Gore looks 30 years older than he did 10 years ago.
Robert Zoellik has some weird evil eyebrows.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/presidents-of-w.html
He looks 19th Century.
Oh, and Timmeh is pushing the idea that Social Security and Medicare are “not sustainable” on MSNBC. Gotta turn this shit off.
Anyway, this is better, found this link thru Mike the Mad Biologist:
Family Impact Summit: A Lesbian Shows Peter Sprigg How To Debate
He continues:
Oh, BRAVO!
Hair: He looks 19th Century.
Yeah, they are both Robber Barons. And not the fun ones, either.
oops, missed bolding one paragraph of her speaking, the “And so I am a lesbian, I live in the Riverview area …” one.
Sorry. Hope it still makes sense.
I gave up on them, even though I considered myself less cynical than MCat and MitM (by a fraction):
http://www.politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=510
Yeah, they are both Robber Barons. And not the fun ones, either.
Karzai actually looks sort of cool.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/karzai-with-afg.html
She messed up the white balance on Brad Pitt.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/brad-pitt-1.html
He’s looking a little green.
That suit Pitt’s wearing probably cost as much as my car.
The people we’ll soon be dropping bombs on.
http://www.pbase.com/srogouski/image/85336649
the eye chart in Miss D’s diary at Peeder’s sums it up, perfectly.
Can they even see an eye chart, in their hopeless and crippled condition.
I prefer “realist” to “cynic” Miss D, but welcome to the dark side.
Of course, watching Tweety and Timmeh has moved me even more over the edge. When I finally turned it off, they were excitedly discussing Timmeh’s Bible question, and Tweety was waxing lyrical over the nuns when he was a kid.
This country is fucking screwed.
When I finally turned it off, they were excitedly discussing Timmeh’s Bible question
The problem with Iran is that their government is too religious.
The problem with our secular Democratic Party is that it’s not religious enough so you throw out some Bible question hoping to trip them up the way you tripped up Dean in 2004.
“Hey moiv, you’re closer to the expanding Bolivarian Revolution down south of the border … maybe you’ll get lucky and it will sweep right across the border someday.”
Right now it’s sweeping back the other way. The Mexican Consulate has advised all Mexican nationals to stay out of Irving, Texas. The Irving PD not only is turning over all undocumented arrestees to ICE for deportation, but is actively conducting sweeps of apartment complexes, parks and shopping malls.
and Timmeh glories in his father being “blue collar” ( nothing wrong with it, but it is a schtick- and is mum on mum, pretty much, just the drudge of the catholic household I guess) but in his book he pretends, thru omission, that his father was a pilot in WWDue.
“his plane went down”… he was traveling as a passenger to R & R…
then proceeds to take Real Life adult political advice from Dad. Stuff that when recounted is basically, listen to the priest. Cut the president slack, he is in charge of us and God will guide him and us.
Not exagerating.
We are fuckedly fucked.
Obama’s speaking in Washington Square Park tomorrow for anyone in NYC.
I wonder how many people are going to show. It’s right in the middle of NYU and it’s at 5 so about 20,000 students will be walking around so I’m assuming he’ll draw a crowd.
Maybe some clever provocateurs will get an “I Abstain” banner up behind him but, then again, considering that he probably gets a lot of threats, security’s probably going to be tight.
I’m guessing they’re sweeping the homeless and the pot dealers out of the park as we speak.
Hair: Karzai used to have a good hat.
Yeah, that has to be one of the all-time worst photos of Brad Pitt.
Maybe she can win a Koufax Award for that.
Shameless google bombing
why is it that so much of the actual rational stuff I read these days is written by Libertarians like Paul Craig Roberts (not the fake “libertarian” Donklephants at Little Orange Footballs):
A Pandemic of Police Brutality
Yeah, that has to be one of the all-time worst photos of Brad Pitt.
I saw her at the Clarkson/Michelle Goldberg thing. She took like 90,000 photos of Clarkson to make sure he had the right expression on his face.
But it’s only Frederick Clarskson.
http://www.pbase.com/srogouski/image/80154850
Not exactly the kind of guy who has to get by on his looks. He’s a pretty nice guy in person. I was a bit shocked when he joined the “Lynch Cindy Sheehan” gang at the Daily Kos.
The less said about Michelle Goldberg the better. I wonder if she’s going to write an update of her classic 2002 “anti-war protesters are all kooks who worship North Korea” articles in the runup to war with Iran.
just found moiv in spam (sorry!) she is slightly upthread replying to Madman…
Madman @ 34
Peter Sprigg doesn’t confine his malign influence to the lives of American children unfortunate enough not to have been born to Ozzie and Harriet. He’s screwing with the lives of Russian kids, too.
MCat:
Well if he were Glenn Miller or Leslie Howard, doing some other duty, I’d cut him some slack.
But he wasn’t.
When James Dobson finishes translating youth materials into Russian, he and the rest of God’s favorite children devote some time to making sure that their “pro-family” gospel is dispersed round the world via their participation in the World Congress of Families.
After we finish killing a few tens of thousands of Iranians to liberate The Ghey in Iran, can we attack Colorado Springs?
Moiv … that’s horrible news Irving. What a disgusting nation this is.
#50, Hair: Frederick Clarkson may be a nice guy in person but he is PART OF THE PROBLEM. Make no mistake about that.
I like Clarkson’s work on the theofascists, but he likes to lecture leftists about being “civil” and such …
no kidding catnip … we had some curtains that looked like that back in the ’70s.
Maybe she’s trying to channel Scarlett.
I like Clarkson’s work on the theofascists, but he likes to lecture leftists about being “civil” and such
I went to that lecture with a friend who write about the religious right (a bit futher to the left than Clarkson is) and at one point Clarkson looks right at her and points his finger in her direction and says:
“And any of you who go on about Christofacists and use that kind of language are part of the problem because you’re going to alienate our friends”.
Very passive agressive. But talk to him face to face and he’s interesting enough. The stuff on the “Institute for Religion and Democracy” that he goes into is useful enough to live through the civility lectures.
This is just Horowitz for Christians.
http://www.ird-renew.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=278604
Note all the Frontpage.com links.
We’ve seen this movie before.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_us/patriot_act_lawsuit
Courts overrule some authoritarian Bushite acts. Bush just proposes a new law. Democrats cave.
What will be the odds it *won’t* happen this time?
.00000000000000000001%
.000001%
We’ve seen this movie before.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_us/patriot_act_lawsuit
Courts overrule some authoritarian Bushite acts. Bush just proposes a new law. Democrats cave.
What will be the odds it *won’t* happen this time?
.00000000000000000001%
.000001%
well, being civil has a built in assumption that there is a rational debate happening, and I remember back during the Raygun Revolution days when they were really starting to take over, getting elected to school boards and city councils, and guys like him were pushing back then that calm reason would win the day …
… and look where that got us.
He’s wrong, and the so-called moderates aren’t my friends if they’re the kind of people who would rather defend zealots because they’re “religous” than actually defend what we REALLY need, which is a public sphere without superstition being injected into it.
He’s flat out wrong. The institutional “left” *** cough *** has been following his prescription for decades, and it hasn’t worked.
Looks like I picked up a virus:
http://www.politicalfleshfeast.com/userDiary/comments.do?personId=387
Speaking of atheists, I went to one meeting of the NY Atheist Society and found that they were mostly Ayn Rand fans.
Bleh. Choke. Cough.
If I have to chose between an Ayn Rand lover and a religious Catholic who’s willing to fight for some kind of social justice, hand me my rosery beads and pass the body and blood of Christ.
One of my favorite quotes from Alexander Cockburn.
Between Hitchens and Mother Teresa, I’d chose Mother Teresa. If you were dying in the gutter, who’d be more likely to give you a bowl of soup.
Hitchens & Teresa were are/were each running the flipside of the same con.
NYC is sadly full of Rand worshippers.
mattes
wonder who T Middle is… all I had noticed is that it has a sense of ill will about it.
AHMADEINEJAD: What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people?
All of them?
Isn’t that exactly what God commanded Moses to do? Kill the Cananites and take their land.
Hitchens & Teresa were are/were each running the flipside of the same con.
I wasn’t brought up in a religious family. I don’t go to church. I’ve never been a believer of any sort.
But I don’t have any hostilty against religion itself. It’s the mixing of politics and religion that bothers me.
The stuff about Dean in 2004 was amazing. At one point it all became about how Dean wasn’t religious enough. Ridiculous.
Dean’s kind of a waste now, but who’d argue with “capturing Saddam hasn’t made us any safer” now?
They knew he was right so they changed the subject.
Translation of Atrios.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_09_23_archive.html#5501483439661481822
“The Democrats were awful and I don’t have the balls to talk about it.”
religion is politics.
I have no problem w/ spirituality and personal faith. Introduce dogma and structure into it, and you’ve got engines of political control, with built-in safeguards to prevent people from getting out of line.
It’s a big, scary, hard-to-understand universe, and I get that people need something to take the frightening edges off of it, but religions are bad for puppies, small children and people in general.
religion is politics
Unfortunately true. It’s also unfortunately true that a lot of people in the world are religious and there’s nothing *I* can do about it.
I’d like to offer myself up as a Shaman for rationalism who’s going to liberate them from Jesus/Allah/Moses but what am I going to offer some poor slob in the third world who’s going to die when he’s 35 and who’s going to watch his children die at 4 or 5 of diarrehea (if the USA doesn’t bomb them first of course).
Isn’t it rational in these circumstances to be religious?
Who am I to take Allah away from some dying Iraqi who’s family’s been poisoned by depleted uranium or Jesus away from some poor Mexican immigrant?
It’s arrogance of the worst possible sort that someone like Hitchens promotes.
Marisacat….he gives me the creeps…like Dahmer.
Stalker, the reason thing. He might not be new, but his true nature is coming out under the cover of anonymity.
Isn’t it rational in these circumstances to be religious?
TOTALLY disinterested in taking religion, spirituality, succor, away as a comfort for the lost, the dying and the abandoned.
It is the hierarchy and the imposition of evil thru religion.
I used to be rather live and let live. No more.
It’s just one more power grid, as greedy as all the others.
While we might disagree on various points, I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for Fred Clarkson. Unlike the owners of some sites, he has never once used his position to exert editorial influence, let alone to censor any words or images that I saw fit to put up on his front page. And from time to time, I have posted some controversial stuff.
Over the course of almost two years, in the face of strongly negative reactions to some of what I have written — and even, in one memorable instance, at some risk to his own best interest — he has never been less than supportive and encouraging.
How ironic that one of the most uncompromisingly pro-choice salons on the Web — among so many stuffed to the rafters with self-proclaimed “progressives” — should be a room full of preachers. But so I have found it to be.
Ops….”real thing”.
HC – did you miss the days of candle light vigils attended by thousands each night at Union Square calling for peace – for no military response? These began as soon as lower Manhattan was opened up again. And they continued until & after the invasion of Afghanistan.
You were closer than I. I was on Broadway and Houston for the collapse. But the overwhelming sense I got in the days after was non-violence – from everyone. Maybe we run in different circles. But even when the Iron Workers union guys doing cleanup stumbled into LES bars on their way up in the days afterwards – guys, who despite blue collar economic unionism are ,generally speaking, pro-militarism – they didn’t want military retaliation. Nor did most of the Fireman – the Cops are another story. They just wanted to sort out the mess, mourn the dead and move on.
It was the rest of the country, in my estimation, that was hot for blood – lead by the shrill charge of those like Hillary Clinton.
In September 2001, I made the decision that I would never vote for either Hillary or Chuck again due to their war mongering. And I haven’t. And I won’t.
mattes said
yes, i noticed that one too, a real piece of work. on a quick read he appears to have singled you out almost exlusively.
not qualified to advise, but i’d just note that the fact he’s harrassing you means someone, somewhere, sees your truths as threatening in some manner enough to go to the trouble of following you around.
so feel good about that. and then call him an asshole and don’t waste any more of your time trying to reason with him, he’s an agenda, nothing more.
there’s another one over there too who i find offensive, the psuedo_whomever. don’t you think both of them have the cutest little adjective collection?
one of these days “clever” will trip them up on a site search. they’ll not be able to resist recycling a “brillant” , yet unique phrase. and it’ll be the same one they used at some another site.
TOTALLY disinterested in taking religion, spirituality, succor, away as a comfort for the lost, the dying and the abandoned.
At some point the question comes up:
How much is that religion that comforts the poor responsible for their poverty in the first place?
btw – contemplating the Hillary picture, can anyone explain to me why people wear different colors during different times of the year? I’ve never understood ‘fashion’. I wear what’s comfortable. I think a lot of American’s do that. I never understood why my Mom had to have different clothes for different seasons. At any given time, I own about 6 pairs of jeans, 14 pairs of underwear, as many socks as my cats haven’t shreaded, whatever short sleaved shirts I’ve collected [or needed to buy depeneding on whether or not I'm out of black shirts] and maybe 10 button down shirts of different varieties. I have a couple of suits in moth balls and some non-jean pants haing around for when I need them, but generally speaking, I spend less than $200 on clothes every year.
What’s the big fucking deal.
HC – did you miss the days of candle light vigils attended by thousands each night at Union Square calling for peace – for no military response?
I was oblvious and apolitical. I just wanted to know that someone was in charge and someone was going to stop New York from getting nuked. I was part of the problem.
Maybe we run in different circles. But even when the Iron Workers union guys doing cleanup stumbled into LES bars on their way up in the days afterwards – guys, who despite blue collar economic unionism are ,generally speaking, pro-militarism – they didn’t want military retaliation. Nor did most of the Fireman – the Cops are another story. They just wanted to sort out the mess, mourn the dead and move on.
The NYC tabloids seem even worse now than they did in 2001/2002.
The anti-Iran hate fest has been genuinely chilling. I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the country or how much people are following what’s going on here but NYC’s basically been under a full out attack of pro-war propaganda.
If in 2002 I felt that I was manipulated. Now I just feel flat out assaulted.
bayprairie
What a gem:
It was the rest of the country, in my estimation, that was hot for blood – lead by the shrill charge of those like Hillary Clinton
It was also the press. I remember being right on Broad Street a block away from the Bowling Green subway and I was assaulted (OK Approached) by a member of the local TV press.
This was the week after 9/11.
So she sticks a micophone in my face and says “NOW THAT WE ARE AT WAR DO YOU THINK MILITARY RETALIATION IS INEVITABLE” and I just looked at the ground and mumbled and tried not to say anything.
Now I would have said “Fuck off” but back then I just wanted to be left alone. I think most people in New York were like that.
But I also remember people in the Bronx, black and latin working class people walking around with American flags, parading up and down the street shouting “USA USA USA”.
So it wasn’t all sweetness and light in New York.
If there is a dem president then we dont have to elect more dems because they wont need a veto proof majority anymore.
Excellent point.
78 HC
oh religion is very responsible for the poverty. People at a distance don’t necessarily realise it, but SF is a big Catholic town… and they own a lot of property as well… 30 or more years ago, they built a nice big Dorothy Day Center on some of the property, in the Tenderloin district… an area with immigrants, minority, homeless, drug use and dealing, some very hard core porn blocks… and vice cops of course…
but as I laugh and say, they only help the poor thismuch. Just enough to keep them alive.
Most religion aligns with government, no news there… and that just leaves the few lay religious, monks, priests, nuns, etc., who truly work the streets.
Maybe you should try a UU church – more atheists there than on Wall Street, that’s for damned sure.
I am a proud atheist. I also grew up in a very conservative Christian home. What that meant for me was social and economic justice. It wasn’t until early grad school that I had the philosophical frame to encompass that – it turned out to be a blend of Kantian rationalism, Marxist dialecticism & Pre-Socratic interpretations of ancient religious texts. [With a strong lean to Nietzsche's idea of aesthetic personhood].
‘The Objectivists’ fancy themselves some sort of rationalist cult, but are neither rational, nor a cult. They are selfish individuals tyring to hide their selfishness within an economic order that betrays the fundemental principle of rationalism – ‘every rational being should be treated as an end in and of themselves’.
I am a staunch universalist on this point. It is the moral ground of the idea of equality as it has been ushered from the early Greeks, through the Enlightenment, through Marxism, Feminism, Communist Egalitarianism… through every movement that has made a difference in the fucking world.
The last time I spoke to my father about religion, I was 22. I was driving the family down I-74 to visit my mother’s mother, and I said to him, humanity can never be free until it is rid of the idea of God. He understood me, and accepted that, but he has only become more religious since.
lucid – dress codes/rules didn’t start to melt away until the late sixties. “No white shoes after Labor Day” was one. The less formal ones that are still operative say that dark colors are for fall and winter and light colors are spring and summer. Not sure how you manage to wear the same thing twelve months a year because most of us prefer heavier, warmer for cool weather.
lucid…I was pretty grounded. Atheist. Then I started leaving my body. And the precognition started. There’s a mystery out there. And we are not alone.
I fell for the ayn rand shit, but thank god I out grew it. Studed comparative religions after my mother died. Turned to buddhism for meditation, peace of mind. etc etc.
Now, I am just trying to figure out what is next….
I dreamed nuke dreams every night for a couple of months. Did you live downtown out of curiousity – or just work? Again, no judgements, but living dontown, I fell to sleep each night with ‘that smell’, and woke up, and walked to my downtown job with ‘that smell’. I vaguely remember a bunch of insane phone calls to my buddy in LA, repeating over and over agan what it was like to live with ‘that smell’, and touching on my nuclear dreams. I was 10 when ‘The Day After’ came out – I know that is nothing compared to growing up in the 60′s, dealing with the Cuban missile crisis, but the paranoia instilled in me then was outstripped 100 fold in the months after. I’ve never been haunted so much.
And then I realized – it’s more likely that I’ll be killed by a poorly installed air conditioner falling out of window.
But the jumpers & the collapse & the aftermath – and my witnessing it in real time – still make me shudder to my core.
But all the same, I just wanted someone in charge who was competent – Giuliani, no. Chritie Todd [ who I watched from the media pit on Duane street], no.
The Downtown and the LES should have been evacuated. As should have South Brooklyn. And no worker should have been allowed near that pile without the equivalent of a Hasmat mask.
Layering is your friend…
Actually, I would love to wear short skirts in the summer… alas that might cause a stir. Nothing better on a humid, oppresive day to have one’s undercarriage open to any breeze that might come by.
I dreamed nuke dreams every night for a couple of months. Did you live downtown out of curiousity – or just work?
Worked near the NY Stock Exchange. Lived in the North Bronx.
I was back at work that Friday. And yes, it was a mess and I was happy to get back home every night.
The anthrax really flipped a switch in my brain. The attacks on the WTC seemed like a one time thing, just a repeat of 1993. But when the anthrax started, it opened up your imagination to a whole new realm of possibilities.
What also freaked me out was navigating National Guard to get to work. The thought that next time they’ll be Blackwater isn’t comforting.
For me too. That also doesn’t mean that there is a god. I’m a total magical realist – I believe people haunt the spaces in which they exist. I believe that consciousness has energy that it impacts the physical world in some way. I have no idea whether or not that energy is remotely confined as our consciousness when we die, but ultimately that is an unimportant question. We live in what we do.
I think the anthrax was fully internal. To shut dissent at the top level and in media. If you looked at who got it, every single network for one. ONLY Hill Democrats. That FL tabloid… and iirc they supposedly had photos of something, I forget what by now, killed the reporter.
And they sent it thru a massive, federal service, the US Mail. A warning there too: see how far we will go.
Try navigating the National Guard to get home… I lived below Houston… and like a silly, still tried to live a normal life in the days after – how else to deal… And if the blackwater guards had been manning the posts, I’d be in some undisclosed facility now.
The anthrax fucked me for a while too, as pretty much all work mail came to me – and there was a lot of it, and who nows if it had come through a post office affected by it… but I also knew that I never get bacterial infections. My body just doesn’t accept them. So despite any initial concern, I calmed back down.
Marisacat, my thoughts too. Without a doubt.
Can we post photos in comments?
A cat followed me home, well, maybe not followed. Skinny as skeleton. De-fleaed her, fed her, and after 3 weeks still scratches and haves scabs on her body. Anyone familiar with mites?
Revolution does it?
mcat – the story was that the paper had files on bush. i have heard it suggested that the intent was not to kill the snapper but to shut down the offices for the hazmat crews so evidence could be removed. one story was that they had proof of his and that mayors affair
Try navigating the National Guard to get home… I lived below Houston… and like a silly, still tried to live a normal life in the days after – how else to deal
There were blocks were I had to show my ID three times in under 100 yards.
The anthrax fucked me for a while too, as pretty much all work mail came to me
It wasn’t just the anthrax. It was the fact that it opened up your imagination to the full spectrum of possible attacks AND attacks which were, in hindsight, not possible.
By December I was getting back to normal. When they let Bin Laden go, the lightbulb went off.
But even on the morning of 9/11 some things bothered me. I remember Tom Brockaw saying WE ARE AT WAR over and over again. And I remember saying “it’s a terrorist attack. How are we at war. We weren’t at war in 1993. We weren’t at war after Oklahoma City. Calm down asshole”.
I’ve hated Tom Brockaw passionately ever since, genuinely, sincerely loathed him.
By contrast, Peter Jennings seemed relatively sane. But Brockaw, Fuck, his mind was going back to Pearl Harbor already.
mattes – you should try some benedryl or something else in that family. it works with dogs if you dont have perscription for predisone. dont know the doage for cat… maybe a hydrocortisone spray of some kind
Knock, knock AIPAC calling.
And now, a little flashback to 2004:
after 3 weeks still scratches and haves scabs on her body.
Could just be leftover battle scars. Happens to my boy cat sometimes. Just try combing gently and if there’s any redness, you can use polysporin. Might try a flea collar too.
sory mattes, the thread does not take photos, other than a link…
when Baby walked in she had scabs and patches of fur gone… I flea bathed her, she was infested, the water and my old shirt ran red wiht the blood from them….. fed her etc.. then took her to the vet…
They said she had an extreme allergy to fleas, that a single flew could set it off. Tho she lived next door, the pets mostly lived outdoors and THEY had rescued her from a feed lot in Napa.
At that tme it was so bad that they agreed to an allergy shot for her.
and the plan then was to keep fleas off her.
Revisionist, I have all three meds, as I have lupus. But I am afraid it might be mites. I sure hope she does not give it to my other companions if it is…!
D. Throat…too funny.
{with a nod to mcat}
Funny you guys talking religion.
I was a-preachin in the middle of a flesh-feast
http://www.politicalfleshfeast.com/showComment.do?commentId=19194
Docudhrama has become more right wing than Kos… if that was possible…. all under the guise of the “Left wing” radicals. Yet, there are TWO AIPAC front pagers, a radical “leftist” Republican” ,sociopathic woman hating loon and an assortment of cave trolls.
So far they have:
* Blasted Move On
* Refused to mention Impeachment (which was their claim to fame)
* Insulted to common sense of Democratic voters that the Senate did not just authorize war on Iran
Docudhrama reminds me of that episode in “Weeds” where the PTA got rid of the bully Cecilia only to be replaced by the sweet smiling Nazi whose first order of business was to create a lynch mob against the gay teacher.
Why Kos needs to shore up his “left flank” is not yet clear…. but it does portend that DK has lost a hell of a lot of credibility and is actively looking for alternative avenues to get out their right wing propoganda.
Buhdy makes the most excellent “lefty” puppet.
Knock, knock AIPAC calling
Knock, knock AIPAC calling
I put Frontline on her. But then I heard Revolution takes care of mites. I am itching all over just thinking about them!!
The bumps are a little red and scaby. I am going to have to break down and take her in…..I can feel it. More vets bills!
I put aloe vera jell on them, and did not do a thing.
Why do I get stuck paying vet bills for all the neighborhood cats…eh….eh???
Thank-god there are some non-profits than helped me trap and get a bunch of them fixed. I am so tried of people dumping their animals, or not caring for them. Old story!
mattes,
I have lupus too. We should talk sometime.
Ya, the Lieberman-Kyl bill…no big deal…isn’t that what they said about the Iraq AUMF too? I mean, it’s not like Bush uses every possible scrap of power to do outlandish things like shocking and awing other countries, is it?
Sounds good. I remember you saying that.
…I hate it. Been diagnosed since 1993.
“but you don’t LOOK sick”
“but you don’t LOOK sick”
grrr…plus you write stuff online so you CAN’T be sick!
Anytime you like, drop me a line at llamg88 at hotmail.com and we can compare war stories.
liberalcatnip…was there a bill prior to the bill that allowed Bush to take us to Iraq?
A bill expounding on Saddum fueling terror, etc. can’t remember. I feel like they are taking us soooo slowly to war again, therefore, we just won’t notice.
there ws a bill right after 9/11. He can wage war anywhere against terror.
Makes most things moot, frankly.
Please tell me where the AUMF declared war on Iraq??? But now all the Dems who voted for it swear they were NOT giving authorization to attack…. just wanted to stick up their middle finger to Saddam. They purposely write it this way so that they can feign ignorance and non responsibility later.
64. Hair Club for Men – 26 September 2007
Speaking of atheists, I went to one meeting of the NY Atheist Society and found that they were mostly Ayn Rand fans.
Bleh. Choke. Cough.
If I have to chose between an Ayn Rand lover and a religious Catholic who’s willing to fight for some kind of social justice, hand me my rosery beads and pass the body and blood of Christ.
One of my favorite quotes from Alexander Cockburn.
Between Hitchens and Mother Teresa, I’d chose Mother Teresa. If you were dying in the gutter, who’d be more likely to give you a bowl of soup.
Hitchens would be right there in the gutter with you, dead drunk.
marisacat….remember that. Didn’t hilary lead the charge?
Ssssso Iranian guard terrorists…and we can now go into Iran after them.
“No news here ladies and gents, no reason to worry”.
Somethings don’t change.
And on that note….I have to get some sleep. Cheers.
mattes, one of my cats used to have the same chronic problem. Changing her food to Royal Canin kibble cleared it right up. That might not solve the problem, but it couldn’t hurt to try it.
105 BHHM
I have to say that one has a wide wide nasty streak, so Good For You… A couple of people at PFF are really just getting their rocks off slashing at people.
Obviously, No one could have predicted that the levies would break…
DhocuDhrama is way the hell on the right side of DK…. don’t let the fake “lefty” bravado fool you.
LC & Mattes… I don’t mean to pry, but what is your diet?
e-mail me – noxes at verizon dot net.
Given the things that have happened to me in my life, I might have some advice.
Why do I get stuck paying vet bills for all the neighborhood cats…
That would be a damned large vet bill if you lived in Greece.
That also doesn’t mean that there is a god. I’m a total magical realist – I believe people haunt the spaces in which they exist. I believe that consciousness has energy that it impacts the physical world in some way. I have no idea whether or not that energy is remotely confined as our consciousness when we die, but ultimately that is an unimportant question. We live in what we do.
very nicely said, lucid.
notice right after that bill, and all of the other chest-thumping, we get this story being pushed by CNN (and I’m sure others).
Oh my god, how SCARY? Thank goodness they warned us about this test, a test which they did …
Oh, SEVEN MONTHS AGO. The danger must be URGENT. The video comes from HLS, the scenario comes from them, and the timing? It’s a warning which serves only to scare … there is nothing we can do about it, and it’s painfully clear the the gov’t and industry have done NOTHING since the big NE blackout in 2003, and that was just wear, tear and demand.
So fucking sick of the manipulation.
heading out the door … a new one from Orcinus:
Heh.
Ken Burns on Morning Joe.
Yes the “Band of Brothers” won the war. The Russians had nothing to do with it.
To be fair to Ken, I guess if he mentions Stalingrad or Kursk he’d never work again in this town.
“A lot of people did not look three years out.”–The Honourable George Conard, Mayor of Riverside, New Jersey.
That should be carved onto the base of the Statue of Liberty, Mr. Conard, and adopted as the official slogan of the United States of America.
Well, in defence of the American people, I’ll bet quite a lot of them were thinking the same as I did: Within three years, the killer asteroid is sure to descend and wipe out civilisation.
So really, it’s not our their fault.
Re: Docudhrama turning out to be right-wing, even though started by “leftists”.
Well, duh. John F. Kerry, a genuine war hero with a Silver Star and a fistful of Purple Hearts, was tarred as a coward and traitor by Dick “Five Vietnam War Deferments” Cheney, Karl “Did Not Serve But Supported the War” Rove, and George “I Would Have Reported for Duty in the Air National Guard If the Bartender Had Known the Location of the Base” Bush.
And last year, let us not forget that Dick Cheney shot a man in the face and the victim, an elderly man who nearly died, apologised to Cheney for all the suffering the shooting victim had caused to CHENEY.
If you can twist reality so that war heroes are painted as cowards and so that shooting victims have to apologise to the people who shot them, then all things are possible, including making a site co-founded by two alleged lefties into a right-wing site.
The United States won the war in the Pacific. The Russians won the land war against the Germans. Historical fact.
Burns is a propagandist and apologist for the Establishment. To listen to him is to have revealed to you the workings of a thoroughly conventional and mediocre mind.
Burns is a propagandist and apologist for the Establishment. To listen to him is to have revealed to you the workings of a thoroughly conventional and mediocre mind.
Listening to him and Joe Scarborough at the same time is dangerous. It can make your head explode.
I liked “The Civil War” but this WWII shit is getting silly.
Read Paul Fussell instead.
http://www.amazon.com/Wartime-Understanding-Behavior-Second-World/dp/0195065778/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-0316935-1211333?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190899955&sr=8-2
Madman, no. 126,
Something like that happened in the Bronx, where significant numbers of illegal Irish immigrants had been living for many years, turning rotted out acres of real estate into the sort of reasonably prosperous working class neighborhoods they’d been in the 1950s. Once the Patriot Act started getting aggressively enforced, these people (who mostly worked under the radar in the contruction business and mom/pop nabe hair/nail salons, bars, coffee shops, etc.) started finding it was no longer possible to fly back to Ireland and return to what had become home without getting caught. So they closed out their bank accounts, sold their homes and businesses, and moved back to an Ireland so radically different that the government had to start advising them on how to reorient themselves to the new realities of Irish life. The number of people who’ve left the Bronx probably numbers something like 3-5,000, and the same thing must have happened in places like Boston and Chicago as well. A lot of them had been living there for a quarter of a century or more.
If I interviewed Ken Burns, I’d just start singing the lyrics to “War” by Edwin Starr:
War!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Say it again!
You know, that’s probably reason #114 why I’m not employed as a media talking head. That, and my damnable inclination to think for myself.
I think Tom Brokaw ought to interview Ken Burns, and they can giggle like schoolgirls over the Greatest Generation (of White People).
Don’t let the critics get you down, Burnsie! It’s not over until YOU say it’s over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? HELL NO!
I think Tom Brokaw ought to interview Ken Burns, and they can giggle like schoolgirls over the Greatest Generation (of White People).
American propaganda right now is very simple. It goes like this.
When you are about to start a war keep one thing in mind:
1.) If the American people think of Vietnam, that’s bad.
2.) If the American people think of WWII that’s good.
So Iran is Nazi Germany and we can pump ourselves up by watching Ken Burns.
Remember, Iran is absolutely not Cambodia and Laos. But if it is, then you shift to the new rationale.
1.) We would have won in Vietnam had not them god derned librahls stopped us from finishing the job.
2.) When we pulled out it caused the genocide in Cambodia (not the American bombing).
It’s kind of sad when Fred Phelps puts out better anti-O’Reilly stuff than Media Matters.
This is a fascinating story, both for what it says about the willingness of the American public to accept as truth transparently false stories, and about a society that produces the sort of deeply disturbed people who would perform such a charade:
That last anecdote is especially creepy, IMHO. What a ghastly, sick individual.
Now if only the Times would devote similar energies to exposing the mendacious falsehoods behind Giuliani’s alleged heroic conduct before, during, and after 9/11.
Long comment stuck in spam, I think.
To all you ailurophiles (cat-lovers):
Sometimes those little bumps on the skin are an allergy, to either food or mites. They may pass with time, but if not, a cortisone injection + a change of food ingredients sometimes works. Talk to a good vet.
Callie the Calico’s food costs more than a week at the beach, but she is doing much better since we got it for her.
=^..^=
P.S.– Mcat, no problem vis-a-vis mentioning WP’s hiccups. I have always assumed that if people didn’t respond to me, it just meant they were busy and that it’s impractical to reply to everyone who posts. It never occurred to me that I could read my comments but that others couldn’t.
Love that dkosser is whining at PFF that he didn’t know about Madman’s ethnic makeup before he made his stoopid cheap shots. Uh, dude. It would have worked just as well to start out with the assumption that an opponent’s ethnic makeup is not clear from a couple of posts and to THUS START OUT NOT BEING A BIGOTED DICK. See, because then you don’t have to apologize later. Start out NOT BEING A COMPLETE SHITHEEL. It works much better than trying to backpedal later when it’s too late and everyone already knows that you are a shitheel, and an irredeemable one at that.
When I read that story I linked to above, I couldn’t help but think of Soj, the transparent phony who is still an honored personage at various BBBs. Just out of curiosity, I checked to see what he/she has been up to over at Little Orange Footballs, and discovered this recent diary. Right off the bat, I noticed several whopping mistakes that virtually scream out to be discovered, i.e., at the time the alleged person whose funeral Soj attended was born, the Romanian nation did indeed exist; the heir to the Hapsburg throne (Franz Ferdinand) assassinated in Sarajevo was not killed 3 years after said person’s alleged birth (which if he died at 94 would mean he was born in 1913) but one year after; and the heir was not the son of the Austrian Emperor, but his nephew. Also, Romania was a sovereign nation with a king long before Soj would have it, and the monarchy remained in place until 1947; he implies it was abolished some 20 years before it was.
That’s just for starters. Soj claims the subject of his diary, whom he gives the pseudonymous name of Mr. Lazarescu (which I assume is meant to invoke Lazarus) fought on the German side in the Battle of Stalingrad, and not only managed to survive, but avoided being captured by the Soviets, walking all the way home to Romania in the midst of the Russian winter. Or should I say to Hungary, since this person lived in the part of Transylvania ceded to Hungary in 1940? That’s some hike, roughly 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers, much of it through territory experiencing raging blizzards and temperatures that probably often dropped below -15 degrees F on a nightly basis.
As I mentioned before, throughout the story, Mr. Lazarescu’s date of birth keeps switching from 1911 to 1913. Soj has him dying this year at the age of 94, but keeps referencing historical events by stating the age of the diary’s subject, and thereby having him born at the earlier time, i.e., he was 3 when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, 56 when Nicolae Ceausescu took power in Romania (he misspells the dictator’s last name, incidentally, and gets the year of his accession wrong, it happened in 1965). Also note that very unlikely tale about this guy’s wife hiding a cow from the Nazis by digging a hole and putting the amazingly compliant cow in it. Aside from the cow having to behave in very unbovine fashion for this to have occurred, the Nazis didn’t occupy Hungary until 1944. Prior to that, there was no need to, the Hungarians were very willing allies and German troops would have been needed elsewhere. And yet again, Soj is confused about what nation his hero’s home town was a part of at a particular time.
For anyone actually a dim enough bulb to believe this completely unconvincing bit of fantasy, here is the dead giveaway the very cynical Soj always provides his marks with:
I would think that the moment I finally arrived back home and collapsed into the arms of my wife after hiking over 1,000 miles through war ravaged countryside would be a brighter moment in my life than meeting Soj, but maybe he/she’s just one really cool dude(tte).
Anyway, it’s nice that Soj has so much free time to spend in obscure parts of Romania, spending multiple hours chatting with an elderly person whose mind remains so sharp in spite of very advanced age, and who is able to converse intelligibly with someone who is almost certainly a native English speaker in spite of having almost no teeth and speaking what one would think is a rather low, peasant version of Romanian heavy on regional pronunciation and colloquial expressions that would probably be obscure even to a well-educated, cosmopolitan native-Romanian speaker such as the person Soj pretends to be.
lucid,
Thanks for the offer for diet tips. My financial situation is so lousy that I can’t eat what I want or what would actually be good for me half the time anyway. But I’ll drop you a line to see what help you may be able to offer.
JJB – thanks for debunking the Soj diary. I read it when it was posted and thought it seemed off but didn’t think about it beyond that. As nothing in Soj’s diaries ever seemed dangerous, just slightly curious, it never seemed to be important enough to challenge or question them.
If FLH is so important, why does he spend so much time on PFF?
re: 9/11 and fear. Those close to the attacks seem to have responded appropriately. It was the rest of the country that exhibited craziness. Even the response to the anthrax letters was out of proportion to the risk. Those infected might not have died if they’d known to seek medical treatment early and the doctors were quickly able to identify the infection.
The response among the general public to the Cuban Missile Crisis was very different. And that one was potentially far more destructive than anything al Qaeda or the anthrax terrorist could have done. Once the crisis passed (and the public wasn’t fully aware of the serioiusness of it), it was as if the nation issued a collective sigh of relief and we just got on with life. As we did after the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Jr. and RFK. We didn’t know that we were supposed to live in a constant state of fear (although there was a low level sense of dread about nuclear war for the first couple of decades of the Cold War). Even Nixon’s and Goldwater’s fear pimping during those years was was nothing like what we’ve seen from GWB, at least after McCarthy was taken down. Back then white Americans were more fearful of black Americans than the commie boogieman, of course those two fears were not independent of each other.
Via the BBC: Eyewitness: Rangoon protests
If FLH is so important, why does he spend so much time on PFF?
Hey, c’mon now! I’m “important” and I spend time there too. (lol)
Marie,
Everything Soj writes about should be considered highly suspect. Assume it’s all lies unless proven otherwise.
new thread:
LINK
109: Mattes, do you have more than one cat? I find Frontline always works to kill off their fleas, provided you use it monthly. However, if you have more than one cat, you have to watch them carefully, as they will lick the Frontline off one another as a favor.