Passage 5 November 2010
Posted by marisacat in Afghanistan War, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.trackback
Kabul, Afghanistan: Street photographer Syed Rahman takes a break as he waits for customers [Rodrigo Abd/AP]
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Marisacat
Opera Glasses and Popcorn
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About...
An Opera Glasses and Popcorn view of Politics and the Assembled Multitude...
Marisacat -
- Real independent observations on current events with a particular fondness for the follies of the Big Box Blahgers.
Deflates bloated egos like a champion fencer in a balloon warehouse.
- Alan Smithee
Marisacat -"...polish on a mud wallow"
- Meteor Blades [May 24 at Mcat]
Marisacat -"... doyenne of donkle deconstruction"
- Who is IOZ [January 2 2007]
Marisacat -"... hardened professionals and their primary strength lies in their being completely unconflicted."
"... the primary difference is that on the level of criticizing other blogs and bloggers, they can actually do some damage."
"... Not what I look for in a liberal blog product."- peeder - MLW, Daily Rant [3.24.07]
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Democracy NOW! / Amy Goodman- Sister Helen Prejean & Bill Pelke on Freeing the Death Row Prisoner Who Killed Pelke's Grandmother 19 June 2013In a remarkable story on the journey from grief to forgiveness, Bill Pelke joins us along with renowned activist and "Dead Man Walking" author Sister Helen Prejean to discuss the latest victory for the movement against the death penalty. On Monday, the state of Indiana freed Paula Cooper, the Indiana woman convicted for the 1985 murder of Pelke […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Mass Protests Sweep Brazil in Uproar over Public Services Cuts & High Costs of World Cup, Olympics 19 June 2013Brazil is witnessing some of its largest protests in decades, after some 240,000 people protested Monday. Tens of thousands continue to take the streets. The demonstrations were initially sparked by an increase in bus fares in São Paulo, but the uprising soon spiraled nationwide amid outrage over government corruption, inequality, failing public services and […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Defiant Turkish Demonstrators "Finding New Ways to Protest" in Face of Relentless State Crackdown 19 June 2013The Turkish government is threatening to send armed troops into cities to quell the ongoing anti-government protests that have continued despite an increasingly violent state crackdown. On Tuesday, Turkish police arrested 87 people in a series of raids targeting those suspected of participating in weeks of anti-government rallies. The latest demonstrations i […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Michael Hastings Dies at 33; Fearless Journalist Challenged Power & Exposed Myths of Afghan War 19 June 2013The investigative journalist Michael Hastings has died at the age of 33 in a Los Angeles car crash. Reporting extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan, Hastings' widely read stories showed the grim realities of war. His 2010 Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, sparked a political controversy after McChrys […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Sister Helen Prejean & Bill Pelke on Freeing the Death Row Prisoner Who Killed Pelke's Grandmother 19 June 2013
- Electronic Intifada / General Content
- Tycoon Rami Levy eyes shopping mall for Israeli settlers 18 June 2013A $27.5 million shopping center is being planned for the occupied West Bank.Rona Moran
- Hani Zurob: an abstract painter rooted in Palestine's reality 17 June 2013Biography highlights how prolific 37-year-old artist has been.Sarah Irving
- Teen novel depicts Israeli settlements as unnatural 14 June 2013William Sutcliffe’s The Wall features an extremist who shoots Palestinian olive trees.Sarah Irving
- The Palestinian struggle is a black struggle 11 June 2013Reciprocal solidarity means we should seek our natural allies among the “wretched of the earth,” says Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa.Susan Abulhawa
- Mass protest aims to focus attention on Jerusalem 11 June 2013Settlers and soldiers have invaded holy sites, sparking international outrage.Patrick Strickland
- Poet Kevin Coval: young Jews should stand with Palestine 10 June 2013Poet Kevin Coval denounces Israeli rap star for “making Zionism chic.”Alexander Billet
- Tycoon Rami Levy eyes shopping mall for Israeli settlers 18 June 2013
- Press TV / Middle East News
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- Press TV
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- McClatchy Headlines
- Secrets piling up faster than government can declassify some 19 June 2013In the darkened stacks of a nondescript building in the suburbs outside Washington, dozens of federal employees wearing protective gloves spend day after day sifting through millions of pages of…Click to Continue »McClatchy Washington Bureau (Anita Kumar)
- Idaho GOP seeks to halt cities' anti-discrimination ordinances 19 June 2013Maryanne Jordan said she's not worried - yet - that state lawmakers will undo city laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination. On the other hand, Boise's City Council president left…Click to Continue »Idaho Statesman (Sven Berg)
- Obama, Putin, at G8 summit, differ sharply over Syria 19 June 2013President Barack Obama differed sharply with Russia's leader over the Syrian civil war in an icy encounter Monday illustrating how difficult it may be to drive Syrian President Bashar Assad…Click to Continue »Tribune Washington Bureau (KATHLEEN HENNESSEY)
- Michael Hastings, journalist who helped bring down US general, dies at 33 19 June 2013Michael Hastings, an aggressive and iconoclastic journalist whose reporting exposed the vagaries of the war in Iraq and helped bring down the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, died early Tuesday…Click to Continue »Los Angeles Times (JAMES RAINEY)
- Secrets piling up faster than government can declassify some 19 June 2013
- The Real News
- Hundreds of Thousands of Brazilians Protest Countrys' Harsh Inequities 19 June 2013Protest against bus fare increase sparked nationwide protest movement demanding systemic changeinfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Obama Fails to Reappoint Serious Regulator to CFTC 19 June 2013Bob Pollin: If President Obama was serious about regulation and closing the income gap, he would have reappointed Gary Gensler.info@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Wall Street Getting Rich At Expense of Farmers and the Poor 19 June 2013More protections needed to safeguard the health of the global food and farming systeminfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Edward Snowden: War on Whistleblowers "Only Builds Better Whistleblowers" 18 June 2013Larry Wilkerson: Snowden's expertise allowed him to understand the threat of the NSA's surveillance programs on civil liberties - government power exercised in secret will be abusedinfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Hundreds of Thousands of Brazilians Protest Countrys' Harsh Inequities 19 June 2013
- Reuters / Politics
- Obama defends U.S. intelligence strategy in wary Berlin 19 June 2013BERLIN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama defended U.S. anti-terrorism tactics on a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, telling wary Germans Washington was not spying on the emails of ordinary citizens and promising to step up efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
- Obama wants to cut nuclear arms, seeks talks with Russia 19 June 2013BERLIN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama wants to reduce deployed nuclear weapons by up to a third and revive negotiations with Russia to "move beyond Cold War nuclear postures", he said in a speech on Wednesday in Berlin.
- Obama turns JFK's Berlin speech into new call for freedom 19 June 2013BERLIN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama offered a new twist on Wednesday to John F. Kennedy's historic 1963 call for liberty -- "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- by saying other oppressed people eager to join the free world were also "citizens of Berlin."
- FBI director says IRS tax exemption probe a top priority 19 June 2013WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a dozen FBI agents are assigned to the criminal investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's added scrutiny of conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status, FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Wednesday.
- Obama defends U.S. intelligence strategy in wary Berlin 19 June 2013
Flickr Photos
More PhotosOctober 7 1955
"a remarkable collection of angels
on one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure
Democrats…
Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.
Amazon PayPage
If you click on La Louche the picture or the words, it leads to the Amazon PayPage, a way to ... oh let's say help with the cat can deliveries.
Thanks to all who made the very kind suggestion.
The UK Independent, which once was a wonderful and marvellous paper, has a so dumb piece on San Francisco…
Reminds me of a similar piece I read in the NYT a couple of years ago, whatever writer they had cover the city dropped in on the “Folsom Street Fair” which is basically a once-a-year sex exhibition, leather bar fair on one of the gay drags… The NYT assumed all the flesh and positioning on display was from people whose politics is liberal.
Geesh. So dumb… I am positive the full gamut from left to hard right was parading that day.
I’ve never noticed that retrograde political beliefs vanished just because a person likes to wear unusual clothes.
It’s sort of like how the “Organic” clothing where I work is all flown in from China and shipped in tons of plastic. Not to mention how much of it is all or part synthetic fabric anyway. Putting it on doesn’t make you a tree-hugger. It just makes you someone who thinks the word “organic” is worth paying an extra fifty or sixty bucks for. :/
well… plus… no matter what… the laws enacted to determine what is ”organic” are terrible. it’s meaninglesss….
True. Very true.
The corporation that owns the warehouse owns at least a dozen, maybe two dozen other clothing manufacturers. If their execs wanted industrial hemp to be used for clothes instead of cotton or whatever, you know all they’d have to do is snap their fingers and our elected officials would hop to.
I wonder if they even have a clue how obvious their chicanery is to anyone with a functioning brain.
what they do realize is that it doesn’t matter that those with functioning brains see what they do/are … they know those with functioning brains are hopelessly outnumbered and despised.
I’m not so sure of that as I used to be, Madman. It’s more like those with functioning brains have too much on their plates as it is. There’s just no time and energy to fight anything but tiny, piecemeal battles at home. Never mind on the larger landscape.
Also, they get talked down to so much that they start to doubt what they’re actually seeing. I see it where I work all the time. Once you get above the first level of management the condescension is just so obvious. And treating people like they’re stupid does tend to make them feel/act stupider.
Did I tell you that they gave me email, even though I’m a temp? I now get periodic heart-warming pleas from the smarmy, weasel-faced CEO about how I should donate to charities to help his poor beleaguered employees in other states. LOL. Dude, I make about 7.20/hr after taxes. Kindly cram your memos where the sun doesn’t shine.
But remember. None of that matters because THE TEA PARTY IS SCAAAAARRRREEE!!! Ooga booga!!
our prop 19 … a version of which will eventually pass… perhaps after ObHo are out of the pretzel and sheriff offices (I mean who knows, tons of R out here support legalising MJ) would have legalised Hemp.
Which has to be done. Just has to …
my guess is it’ll pass in 2012.
yes inevitably it will… maybe a better bill too… this one sure flew odd…
LOL Via IOZ:
Our legal system is becoming a joke. – atrios.
One has to admire blahggers… them bein’ greased lightnin’ in a bottle… and all.
“becoming”?! Where the hell has he been?
Oh, and good morning!
he’s been busy, so very busy at greased lightning school.
BUT, he was one of 5 blahhhgers that Obster actually in Real Life sat down with, at the WH.
You are supposed to be impressed brinn.
pffft.
I am not easily impressed by humans over the age of 13….
Atrios is crying. That you are not greased lightning in a bottle. Like he is.
Really, the blahhgers are such tired shits.
Agreed. Tired shits with hugely inflated egos…
Nothing embodies the concept of “All Hat, No Cattle” better than Atrios’ blog. Even mr_xeno doesn’t go there anymore, and his standards are painfully low. :p
KO interview with the NYT
And this is pretty damn funny:
He obviously doesn’t have a good working definition of “ego” either.
oh thanks for this (off to read). IF he does not at least mention Donohue and his “dismissal” at the onset of Big Time War… then……..
Olberman’s “get angry” stuff was so boring imo.
Performing circus tricks.
IF he does not at least mention Donohue…
Exactly. He has a very short, selective memory – as does the person who interviewed him.
And really, how embarrassing to have been a mentor [snicker] of BIDEN.
That is a great quote.
Why Don’t You Two Get A Room?
Great cartoon…. all it lacked… was
“How was it for you Darling”
and the poor besotted donkey says… “Oh Daddy……………..” sigh sigh sigh…
I hate the stupid ”abused spouse” line that was started a few years ago, but the Dems are not, not, not the Default Party. It is the Republicans.
The default party is nobody. It still gets almost 50% of the vote each election.
I was in error, they got 58.5% of the vote this election:
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html
oh see I have long seen the R as the ultimate dominate party. And the Democrats as the handmaiden. They will ALWYS, with a few exceptions defer.
And the Democrats have no strongly held beliefs. They really do not. I am sick to death, utterly of their soft racism, their soft misogyny, their many hatreds they mask as “better” than th R.
And so on.
Yup. Like Caruso said, they have no “competing narrative.” And so long as Lefties hitch their wagons to those fucks, the Left as a whole will never have one, either.
But hey– Moore and Van Heuvel the rest have their cozy gigs as professional hang-wringers. KO will doubtless land on his feet once again. So it’s all good. [rolleyes]
I saw “abused spouse” metaphors as early as the late Eighties. Except it was the righteous feminists, claiming that the country was being “battered” by the evil GOP because they were “smoother talkers” than the Dems.
And I still believed that shit back then. I guess if I got over it, there’s still hope for everyone. :p
I’d still like to go back in time to that stupid pro-Dukkakis rally I attended in 1988 and give myself a stern talking-to, though. :/
I see the R had RUBIO do the R Saturday radio address.
As Ob lamely “announces” 10 billion of something or other, perhaps shorn coconuts, from India.
I think he is going down in 2012, if he runs. THE DEMOCRATS will take him down.
It’s too bad I was shooed off Corrente. The sturm and drang when Hillary rides down from the mountain on her silver steed to Save Teh Party from the Evil Non-Clintonian Usurper at primary time should be super duper spectacular. [snerk]
One of you will have to report back to me with the highlights. Or lowlights. Whatever.
well… there’s hugh, john halle… mike f and joe….. a few holdouts over there… but yes i see which way the wind is not blowing…
Unlikely that Hillary will do anything, as I said over there before I left. She’s doing fine where she is.
But it would be wonderful if she did jump into the fray come 2012. Her asshole of a husband already did so much to destroy the DP. Maybe it’s only proper that she be the one to deliver the death blow.
I’d laugh my fucking ass off, personally.
I don’t see her running. I think the clock ran… and won.
What a pity. I guess I’ll have to feed all this popcorn to the pigeons then.
I mean, the real pigeons. Not the ones over at you-know-where. :p
well … on the other hand, depending on how la Nan’s run for Minority Leader goes… Hillary may at least consider it. Right now, I don’t see it…………..
but what do I know.
1978 Letter from Douglas Fraser Resigning from the Labor-Management Group
Wasn’t that good?..
and thanks for posting … it reminds me to go back and catch the link in comments to a Welsh (think it was) trade unionist letter….
that was a great one too …
Bloomberg needs quickly to rejoin the Democrats.
I am so impressed he knows where China is. And he is so intent that all and sundry should know this.
That and dipshit bitching about sodas and Food Stamps….
WGAF. Who gives a fuck.
new…
LINK
………………… 8)