Just a thread… ;) 22 January 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, 2010 Mid Terms, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
Troublemaker –
This young adult Sulawesi black-crested macaque, nicknamed Troublemaker, was more interested in the photographer than foraging for food, so getting a close-up wasn’t difficult. Troublemaker’s expression captures, Stefano says, “the spirit of these wonderful monkeys”, and the setting makes it an unforgettable portrait
[Photograph: Stefano Unterthiner, Italy/Wildlife Photographer, Animal Portraits, of the Year 2008]
I don’t know about you … but I am pooped. Ushering in a new pretzel is just so damned hard………
While I was fishing around for a photo… I landed on this short little series between a Ridgeback and a pelican… the photo series is called Pelican Wars. Pretty funny… and I think the Ridgeback will be sticking to his own food bowl from now on, for thine is the power and the glory amen… speaking of the pelican there, I am.
Marisacat 
hmm He might roll back the Global Gag Rule tomorrow. He specifically did nto do it today, to signal some shit or other. Are we to catch on he is King? Or something? Because I think we got that peevish message. I did.
Obama has signaled that he’s interested in making something of a centrist shift in the abortion debate – with more focus on the importance of reducing the number of abortions. The statement he released Thursday on Roe signals as much.
Signal you are weak on (and dismissive of) abortion rights and bingo, you, your image and your family’s story gets used in an anti abortion ad. By Catholic Vote dot com.
One directed at Af Americans via BET. I have to say I thnk it is fair (the article in the On Faith section of the wapo, does not)… and who knows, may be quietly approved.
A repost of a Dkos diary from years ago… somehow seems relevent…
Another funny… I’d forgotten I’d written that one… Look at the date stamp… prescient of me, no? Would anyone there now acknowledge I was right? [though granted I was off by 6 months…]
I’m just rereading the thread on that one too… Jan 2008… What would all those fuckers be saying in January 2009… If I had the energy, I’d do a rebuttal diary, quoting all of them in light of what has transpired.
oh! So shocking! not...
Points 3, 4, 5 and 6 on page 2 would seem to be the dirty guts of government-by-showy-headline. Which seems to me to be the hallmark of The Era of Obama.
LAT page 2
“Too combative”.
Past presidents have instituted or revoked the ban on January 22, the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, but President Obama held off on that move, thinking it too combative.
Am rather enjoying the kerfluffle over Gillibrand. OMG! Barbarians at the gate apparently. (I do hope she “reforms” her views on immigration though, although sadly those will play even better on Long Island than they would Upstate.)
If New York City is Rome, then she is Boadicea. Not significant in and of herself, but an uncomfortable reminder how it ain’t safe out there for the toga clad, even in The Cradle of Progressive Civilization.
Just reading that Schumer has thrown his public support behind Boadicea….
10. But of course. If Schumer hadn’t wanted her, she wouldn’t have been picked.
Sometimes I wonder if Schumer is the only thing holding the damn state together at this point.
Yo, lucid ! (Last thread.)
Yeah, I know about the technical details of Unemployment. I just don’t want to listen to the lecture. When I contrast how much of my life the bosses got with how much they had to pay in order to get it, I’m just not all that interested in hearing about how I should get on my knees and pray to them in gratitude. Particularly since nobody anywhere could live on what the state’s paying out for this extraordinary privilege– unless his or her “condo” was made of cardboard and its walls were doubling as lunch. Yeesh.
Sometimes I wonder if Schumer is the only thing holding the damn state together at this point.
Well that must be fun. he and his wife are really gag making. IMO.
Roubini in WSJ on global recession.
What a gaggle of NYS pols on MSNBC right now, waiting for Paterson to show up at the presser. “Troublemaker” above has more gravitas, by far!
yeah I thought the portrait of Troublemaker was pretty stellar.
I thought it was a painting or movie still, at first. . . the seascape background is sorta Winslow Homeresque. Absolutely gorgeous.
Loved the pelican series too! Second to last looked like a dental exam, and the final was a riot!
That pelican meant business. no orifice above the neck left unchecked.
Green Romanelli still on the hook in PA.
Not coming soon to any Democratic blogs near you. Ho hum.
chuckles. Ben Smith
Fox News Sunday: McCain, Sen. Schumer
Face the Nation: Biden
Meet the Press: House Minority Leader Boehner. Roundtable with Thomas Friedman, Michele Norris and Stephen Hayes.
This Week: Pelosi
State of the Union: Mayor Bloomberg, Rep. Pence
NO idea why D’Amato was there. What a schmuck. Doesn’t he have some poker players to protect somewhere?
At least Gillibrand is from upstate and reportedly works hard. Not sure how blue-doggy she is really likely to be, apart from the fiscal discipline thing. Reckon we’ll see!
Mind you, things could continue to get interesting very quickly . . . former NYS GOP Senate leader Joe Bruno just got indicted for public corruption – mere minutes ago. Gillibrand’s dad was involved in some real estate partnership with Bruno – not sure yet whether any of that figures in the charges.
22. Yeah, I saw that too – interesting timing on the Bruno thing, that – but I doubt it will have much of an impact on Gillibrand’s fortunes.
Ugh.. if true… and not that surprising. US is nto going to fund real transportation infrastructure beyond some structural repair, stuff related to expansion (such as it is)… and so on. Plus Oberstar is a real shit. Not anyhting new. And Obster is a liar. Not a rare occurance.
FSZ diary from yesterday… Krugman and TPM
Forbes has a slideshow of The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The U.S. Media that includes Friedman, Sully and Hitchens. lol
From the article:
Who wrote that? A 12 year old?
Oh yay. Blago’s holding a presser today. I’ve missed him.
Just saw this at TPM:
Madoff’s Collateral Damage: The ACLU
The ACLU has had to lay off 10 percent of its national staff, in part because two foundations that were big backers of the group were “wiped out” by Bernie Madoff.
–David Kurtz
***
Word is out here, aside from Madoff issues, charitable foundations are pulling way back, not only due to investment losses, but some are wondering if their 20, 50, 100 year plans are even executable.
And the starving shall starve MORE.
lol…watching Blago…someone on Twitter (on CNN) wrote that Blago’s playing the “cowboy card”.
Cowboys and mobsters and Rahm, oh my!
He does have a point though if he isn’t able to even defend himself against the impeachment due to the rules involved.
Suspected US missile strike kills 18 in Pakistan.
I was hoping he’d quote some cowboy poetry. Alas, it was not to be…
Itzhak and Yo-Yo Vanilli. (Wondered how the hell they could stay tuned in that weather.)
I simply can’t get over the squealing as it finally dawns on people that Dems and Republicans in NY are very hard to actually distinguish from one another. As a rule.
I love the endlessly repeated fantasy mantras that NY is a very blue state. Yeah, that explains why we’ve been through Pataki, D’Amato, Giuliani, Bloomberg, Schumer, Clinton, Spitzer… really? that was just a handful of deer-hunting Tioga County farmers and Buffalo suburbanites who did that?
These are not great days for the progressive financial infrastructure (referring to ACLU/Madoff story). Or for their grasp on the real world. If they would just dump the fantasies, take stock of where they really are, then they could start fighting properly for stuff.
33 – LOL. I still crack up at Jon Stewart’s remark, as the Blago story was first unfolding: Clearly, the man has nothing to hide! Except for whatever he’s got written on his forehead, that is.
Shallow of me, I know.
well they do the same to CA… you should have heard the shock when Los Angeles COUNTY went against Prop 8. By a shave, but they did.
The only hold outs on the Recall (and vote for Arnold) were the 9 Bay Area Counties and LA Co squeezed in by 1%. I clearly sat in a sea of Red. not that it was news to me. San Francisco went against Arnold by almost 80%.
34
No matter what I heard some flat notes early on.
35 – Yeah, the outrage from Kennedy-worshippers (holy shit, who knew how vast their masses truly are!!), City-pol-connected bloghacks (no surprise there), and deluded out-of-staters (ditto) is something else.
38 – Maybe from one of the podium mikes, before they adjusted the level?
Maybe the Kennedy Kidfanz would cheer up if someone told ’em about Gillibrand’s forebears’ (coughbetweenthesheetscough) ties to the four-decade Mayor of Albany, Erastus Corning II.
I remember watching “Eraspus” SUBTITLED on the evening news, so ancient and incomprehensibly decrepit was he!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17862.html
Oh yeah. The Age of Bush is definitely over. Definitely.
written for the inauguration by John Williams,
wellllllllll he may have re arranged it… but the core of that piece has been around.
“I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
when he says shit like that i REALLY worry that the toddlers are in charge of the preemie nursery. And I don’t mean this in an age-ist way, tho it sounds that way. He is such a fucking bullshitter it scares me.
Like the Lara Logan interview…
Any doubts…. ? None
Ever? Never.
And it was out there in SF at the famous clinging bitter fundraiser that he allowed as how he is smarter than any expert in any thing, smarter than any speech writer.
I mean holy fuck. Get over yourself. A pol and a handy tool for the Chicagoans.. and now for national versions of that.
Can’t say how disgusted I am.
39
that would be my guesss… I wondered how on earth they would pull of string and wind (asn’t there a horn of some sort? Flute? I forget) in such bitter cold, but then they nattered on about the special cello etc.
That song sung would have been lovely.. but they already had Aretha, which certainly fit in with obster spring board.
Yes, the theme is a pretty Shaker dance tune.
Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
Special to lucid – Really liked your “songs in the heater” diary. Always a big part of a move, too, innit? Learning the songs of the new house. Did you catch the NPR piece some months back about someone who went around his house and measured all the electronic tones? I’ll see if I can find a link.
My current fridge is a one-machine percussion ensemble (modifiable by a literal swift kick in the side, I discovered), which makes for quite a baseline in tandem with steam heat. (And the old computer hums and buzzes like a wetland marsh, in its own right.)
As for #4 and #5, whoooeeee! But I had to quit the comments, once the random, slanderous splatter kicked in.
Shakers and Fosse in the mod pod, I think?
Obama signs order reversing abortion-funds policy.
that’s it.. the words are lovely.
IB do you see your comment now? I think it just was lost in a WP hiccup for a minute or so… nothing in Mod and nothing in Spam…
Yes, thanks. That was it at 45.
Angry Arab has had a few posts from someone he knows in Saudi… this is just the latest… I always love loosely held collections of people bound by fractious family who run on gossip… better than the media.
yeah very quietly… although there was constant reminding in news updates that it would employ tax payer monies to foreign aid for abortions. gah. it’s so much more than just funding abortions in various parts of the world… Plus it fulfills the original mandate of Good Old USAID to keep down global births of black and brown. It’s just an accidental side benefit that women get more chances in life with BC and medical care and so on. Smaller families.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday quietly ended the Bush administration’s ban on giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.
I became jaded so this kind of stupidity would stop making me cry all the time.
Personally, I don’t mind if he does things quietly, as long as he fucking does them.
I actually thought it was smart to sidestep the big fat anniversary (why give the marching baaaaaaabysavers more public airtime and consolidate their martyrdays?), and toss the media the Guantanamo set to chew over, on that day, instead.
Just fucking do it. And if it’s Friday and 5 o’clock, so much the better. Spare us some of the rending of garments . . . and the OTT gushery – like ms_xeno is pointing at – too.
ms x
that thread is so dumb.
53
well he made it a GAME imo, as tho he might not do it. Sort of as useful as “I won”. Just like with so much. Exhale a headline, float a truncated restyling (over seas is good) of something, then float another headline, then run a big headline that when one whacks at the weeds is meaningless. ObRama Closes Guantanamo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When R and D toss USAID monies for Family Planning back and forth as a vote bait. All it is. And misery around the world.
Not that it matters. It really does not.
Amy had Chomsky on, on Gaza.
When R and D toss USAID monies for Family Planning back and forth as a vote bait. All it is. And misery around the world.
Well, that’s part of why I’m glad he uncoupled it from Roe Day and the usual shit-eating domestic fanfare. Maybe he played coy with the will-he-or-won’t-he of it all, and/or maybe the Party had ideas about where it belonged in the post-inaugural striptease (pssst – don’t worry sissters, he’s getting around to you!), but for its impact on women’s rights and health elsewhere, I’m just glad it’s fucking done, and without too much further ado.
same undertone as june… don’t ask daddy for an abortion – if you’re just blue and don’t know your pea brained mind.
if you’re just blue and don’t know your pea brained mind
Gawd. His soaring oratory sure failed him on that one.
I just don’t give a shit about any of these people’s personal distaste for this or that, anymore. Wish I could say I hadn’t heard plenty worse from other so-called “supporters” of choice in real life. (Sons of single mothers, especially. Grow a uterus and get back to us all, babe.)
hmmm… Lenin linked to this in the FT.. think someone there referred to ti as the Road Map to the Shock Doctrine. Pretty much, yeah.
[L]arge-scale change initiatives typically require eight to 10 years to complete and often run out of steam along the way. Downturns provide an ideal opportunity to re-invigorate an ongoing transformation. Managers can harness a downturn to renew a sense of urgency, justify unpopular decisions and overcome complacency or resistance to change. …
I just don’t give a shit about any of these people’s personal distaste for this or that, anymore
Well Henry Hyde had a personal distaste for poor women and an innate knowledge that slashing monies for them would start the ball rolling. And it did. Roll forward from ’76 to 2006, now we have a medical procedure banned by Federal mandate. Things moved right along ignoring peoples’ likes and dislikes esp with 5 Catholics on the SC… and a virulent, nasty USCCB
Now we have the supposed rights orgs clearly stating over the past few months that they have no intention of seeking an overturn of the Hyde Amendment. Nor would Obama, tho he dangled it out in the primaries and GE depending on whom he spoke to, support the Free Choice Act. And as moiv says of the GGR, “wish he’d do the same thing for the domestic reality” (see Hyde Amendment).
Reid is beloved by the Democrats for Life, voted yes on every pro life bill (5 iirc) in 2005, a stellar year for them. He did what he wanted, for himself and against women and against NON BELIEVERS. One banned abortions in overseas US military hosptials. God knows what happens if you are pregnant from “command rape” in Iraq. I assume over the years it has happened. Find a friendly army doc who will perform it off base? Find an abortion in Iraq?
I would not care what any of them THOUGHT much less preferred for themselves, their families and their similarly aligned God Loving idiots, if they had a clue or a caring or an empathetic bone for humanity. Not even a bone, just the odd bit of useless spleen would be OK. I’d take a friendly bile duct by now.
I love the argument that abortion is some single issue item. It’s not, it is utterly tied to autonomy and it is tied to an increasingly militaristic nation, one that wants fodder.
One abortion doc (Press) in thsi country defied Israeli law over 30 years ago, when they banned abortion. Planning as they were for endless war. He performed them there, then came here and has worked as an abortion doc.
It is tied to everything. If it were largely considered non political as it is in some countries (UK) or if one could enter a hospital, rather than a special and isolated (all too often) clinic, and have it done under universal health care (France and many other countries) it would nto be the huge issue it is here. No, women, esp the poor and the young and the badly placed regionally, are segregated into a preyed upon group in every way possible over abortion, BC and related access to health care.
So, I do pay attention to the likes, dislikes, dismissals and disdain of the powerful legislative class. I surely do.
Oh, yes, don’t get me wrong. Paying attention is crucial.
If it were largely considered non political as it is in some countries (UK)
Maybe I’m wildly deluded, or falsely heartened by the seemingly encouraging noises about the Conscience Rule freeze, but I guess I’m just saying that I’m hoping the non-anniversary, late-Friday announce was a step in that direction, for once.
Obama’s attitude about the overturn smacks to me of the same attitude he had inviting Warren to the big shindig: You are crucial to me at election time, and the rest of the year sit down and shut up.
Don’t worry your pretty little heads about things, Lefties. Daddy knows best. (To swipe a little of Margaret Kimberly’s column.)
Obama values the Doug Kmeics and the Kirbyjon Caldwells. White Catholic legal scholar right wing, asshole. Black former bond trader collection plate minister, curer of gays and all the rest, previously supporter and personal friend to Bush currently a Bama prayer circle phone tree conf prayer etc..
That is who he values.
He has expounded more than a few times about how boys value their fathers and the small town busy stuff, going hunting and so forth and the little girls, why they went to church with mommy.
It is hopelessly prosaic and dumbed down. And I don’t think it is just itinerant drool from him either.
Mysterious Rumble Vexes Sequoyah County
My theory is that all of the racist stupid has reached critical mass and the Earth is preparing to open us and swallow them up.
If Schumer hadn’t wanted her, she wouldn’t have been picked.
Schumer LUVS him some Blooooo dawg.
Stem Cell.. and of course he is so busy. Being Atlas. Last I saw there is a whole government, a really really big huge one…. But then, stem cell is perforce part of the moral issue of abortion and what we euphemistically call “life”.
Yes, the theme is a pretty Shaker dance tune.
Due to the wonder that is US copyright law, you can (re)”write” an old piece of folk music as long as nobody else “owns” that particular piece of “intellectual property” and you rearrange a note or chord or two and call it your own.
Part of Willie Nelson’s stage patter for years has been musings about where he “stole” a particular song from. He and Johnny Cash had a good time joking about it when they did MTV Unplugged, IIRC.
This whole idea that you can wholly own a piece of culture, that has things that have come before woven all through it, consciously or not, is beyond silly, and is killing creativity.
Simple Gifts – GMCLA.ORG
Don’t worry your pretty little heads about things, Lefties. Daddy knows best.
And I don’t think it is just itinerant drool from him either.
Suspect you’re both right about that. Just saying I’d rather have the signatures than the ceremonies, especially if the drool is so poor.
My theory is that all of the racist stupid has reached critical mass and the Earth is preparing to open us and swallow them up.
Everybody get Rupture-ready!
Madman, you switched your avatar! What’s the iconic source?
I am not the least bit interested in bureaucratic ceremony. But he dragged it out, “may” was constantly, before and after inauguration, used, rather than ”shall” or ”will” — and the media reported all the wondering. The thing was not low key, in my view.
Again, not that it matters. Vote bait.
Madman, you switched your avatar! What’s the iconic source?
I found it at a new site w/ public domain illustrations and comics: grandmasgraphics dot com.
Here is the original image it is cropped from, an illustration from “Vignettes from Tales of Mystery and Imagination”
by Edgar Allan Poe Illustrated by Harry Clarke.
I can’t remember where I found the link to grandma’s graphics … probably Boing Boing or Laughing Squid or something.
Here’s the hompage.
Didn’t want to put too many links in one comment.
71 – Nice. That’s an Aaron Copland arrangement of the Shaker tune (from Appalachian Spring). I think he was the first to snag it for popular consumption, but I might be wrong.
(Quite a bit of Shaker history, round here.)
Can resist adding Patti Page’s version of Steam Heat, above.
(Can’t resist, obviously.)
Re the Poe – thought it looked nineteenth century, and a tad laudanum-intense!
Grandma’s graphics site very groovy! Sometimes, only pen-and-ink will do.
77 – I love that they have sections with just page BORDERS and other weirdness.
I really like this King Lear panel.
And this one feels straight out of MIchael Moorcock.
RFLMAO … NOW Conyers says he wants to do something:
Conyers should donate his brain to science. Get it over with. Jsut a babbler… and for how long one wonders.
79 – LOL. He chose rather to encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad, than stay under the same roof with these ungrateful daughters.
How come they never mentioned it was a Cheshire bobcat
California unemployment is 9.3.. up a whole percent in a month.. and the biggest rise since 76. (local NBC news)
?
Monty Python’s free web video increased DVD sales by 23,000 percent
Well, at least he’s not the Cat, formerly known as Cheshire … actually known within Jurisfiction as the ‘Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat’.
Marisacat, I’m really getting attached to Troublemaker. Now he’s starting to remind me of a (tall, white, bespectacled, blues-playing, Montreal) bandleader and bass player I know.
I Want Some Tarp!
What? Never heard of no unitary authority among cats!
Saudi dynasty piece was intriguing . . . thanks!
Owens Valley: The Sequel
Gaza’s Tunnels Re-Open, With Hamas in Charge
Israel Launches Phosphorus Weapons Probe Amid Cries of ‘War Crimes’
I can’t even pick out one post, one excerpt, out of the last couple of days. If you haven’t already, go read Perrin.
The Media’s Role In The Financial Crisis
In short, the precondition for peace is… surrender.
just love that pic Marisa…..Wonder what Troublemaker’s teefsies looks like….quite the overbite goin on there…good thing that pelican didn’t have any fangsies….
those shots were hilariuos, thanks for the smiles
new post
LINK
……………. 😆 ……………..
99
you’re welcome diane. Yeah I loved the Ridgeback and the pelican too.. and Troublemaker.
;0)