Hot air… 24 March 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
Jakarta, Indonesia: Visitors at a hot air balloon festival | Tatan Syuflana/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- Released from Prison, Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher on Civil Disobedience & Building Movements 17 May 2013We turn now to climate justice activist Tim DeChristopher, who was released last month after 21 months in federal custody. DeChristopher was convicted of interfering with a public auction in 2008 when he disrupted the Bush administration's last-minute move to auction off oil and gas exploitation rights in Utah by posing as a bidder. He is the subject of […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution 17 May 2013The Justice Department's disclosure that it had secretly subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press has prompted a wave of comparisons between President Obama and Richard Nixon. Four decades ago, the Nixon administration attempted to block The New York Times from publishing a secret history of the Vietnam War leaked to the newspaper by whistlebl […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- "Astoundingly Disturbing": Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe 17 May 2013A Pentagon official predicted Thursday the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates could last up to 20 more years. The comment came during a Senate hearing revisiting the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, enacted by Congress days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. At the hearing, Pentagon officials claimed the AUMF gives the president power […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Headlines for May 17, 2013 17 May 2013Guantánamo Hunger Strike Enters 100th Day; 30 Prisoners Being Force-Fed, Number of Syrian Refugees Tops 1.5 Million, Obama: U.S. Won't Take Unilateral Action Against Assad, Obama Defends Secret Subpoena of Associated Press Phone Records, DOJ Releases Completely Blacked-Out Memo on Surveillance of Text Messages, Obama Appoints New Acting IRS Commissioner […]mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
- Released from Prison, Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher on Civil Disobedience & Building Movements 17 May 2013
- Electronic Intifada / General Content
- Settlers attack West Bank farmer twice a week 17 May 2013Even if Israel considers settlement outposts to be illegal, it is still facilitating their construction.Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
- Palestinian refugees are not at your service 17 May 2013Translator Moe Ali Nayel was shocked by the arrogance of a recent group of Harvard students interviewing in Sabra refugee camp.Moe Ali Nayel
- Dutch probe sends warning to firms abetting Israel's crimes 16 May 2013A three-year probe may not have led to a criminal prosecution but it shows that cooperating with Israel carries that risk.Salma Karmi-Ayyoub
- Porto Alegre is Palestine's friend, so why has it embraced Israel's war industry? 16 May 2013One day after visiting Palestine, Brazilian politician Tarso Genro signed a deal with Israeli arms firm Elbit.Jamal Juma'
- Protests an "offensive" against settler attacks, West Bank villagers say 15 May 2013Residents of Deir Jarir and Silwad are holding regular protests against Israel’s theft of their land.Andrew Beale
- Life "no longer bearable" in Syria, says Palestinian refugee 14 May 2013Palestinians forced to flee Damascus are trying to survive on help from charities in Cairo.Rami Almeghari
- Settlers attack West Bank farmer twice a week 17 May 2013
- Press TV / Middle East News
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- Press TV
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- McClatchy Headlines
- Issa subpoenas Pickering over Benghazi probe, demands closed-door testimony 17 May 2013The congressman leading the Republican investigation into last year?s terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Friday ordered retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering to submit to questioning behind closed…Click to Continue »McClatchy Washington Bureau (Jonathan S. Landay)
- Syrian opposition considers sacking its U.S.-backed interim leader 17 May 2013The fractured Syrian opposition movement is considering ditching its prime minister at a meeting next week, action that would complicate the State Department?s push for peace talks and once again…Click to Continue »McClatchy Newspapers (Hannah Allam)
- Treasury says U.S. can pay its bills for months, delaying debt ceiling fight 17 May 2013Any confrontation over the nations debt ceiling is now unlikely until after Labor Day.Click to Continue »McClatchy Washington Bureau (David Lightman)
- Despite sequester, high-level federal executives slated to get bonuses 17 May 2013An elite group of federal employees is set to receive cash bonuses despite this years automatic budget cuts, according to a report that a Senate subcommittee issued Friday.Click to Continue »McClatchy Washington Bureau (Lindsay Wise)
- Issa subpoenas Pickering over Benghazi probe, demands closed-door testimony 17 May 2013
- The Real News
- Seizure of AP Phone Records Continues Obama Admin's Attack on Whistleblowers 17 May 2013Mark Seibel (McClatchy Newspapers): Seizure of a news organization's phone records should be illegal as it limits the ability of journalists to investigate and report - something guaranteed by the Constitutioninfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- 100th Day of Gitmo Hunger Strike 17 May 2013Group Calls for cleared detainees to be releasedinfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Taxing Corporate Profits will Force Investment 17 May 2013Heiner Flassbeck: Corporations are sitting on mountains of cash and are unwilling to invest in the real economy - only high taxes on profit will make them do soinfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Apres Moi, Le Deluge - Make Money Now To Hell With Tomorrow 16 May 2013Dr. Heiner Flassbeck: We're in worse shape now than in 2008 because at least then there was hope governments would face up to the situationinfo@therealnews.com(The Real News Network)
- Seizure of AP Phone Records Continues Obama Admin's Attack on Whistleblowers 17 May 2013
- Reuters / Politics
- Tech, labor brandish dueling studies in immigration fight 18 May 2013WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The technology industry and organized labor are locked in a fight that threatens to complicate the U.S. Senate's immigration bill.
- Obama seeks to cut Afghan war spending by 10 percent 18 May 2013WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday trimmed his funding request for the war in Afghanistan and other overseas operations by 10 percent, reflecting his plans to wind down the U.S. presence in that country.
- IRS chief declines to identify employees involved in scandal 18 May 2013WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The outgoing head of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service angered Republican lawmakers on Friday by resisting their demands that he identify who at the tax-collection agency had inappropriately targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
- IRS chief declines to identify employees involved in scandal 17 May 2013WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The outgoing head of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service angered Republican lawmakers on Friday by resisting their demands that he identify who at the tax-collection agency had inappropriately targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
- Tech, labor brandish dueling studies in immigration fight 18 May 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.
I don’t know if diane is around tonight, but Pat Thurston on KGO radio just mentioned that at 7:30 tonight she will have David Lindorff on to talk about this article that is in the weekend Cpunch:
I listened to that earlier, and is anyone surprised. I was kind of surprised that Pat said she hadn’t been aware of the fusion centers, especially with her secret service background.
She also clearly had not read the article. I stayed in for Russ Baker in the next hour then dropped out…
I kind of half way listened to the Russ Baker portion, which seemed somewhat of a repeat of when he was on her show about a month ago. He strikes me as a paid, DemRat steam venter (vigorously ‘covering’ already known issues, and discussing, then vaguely defending, current issues), perhaps even a vacuum cleaner, but then, I’m paranoid ™.
Well Baker as well as Palast and Pilger are all disappointing, even if one can glean bits. The only thing I got from the too hyped breathless telling of the Florida Saudi family that I had nto heard, ws the head count of 9/11 terrorists who had been to the house.
The fusion centers were so widely reported, mainly because of the stories that centers in the middle of nowhere were getting as much or more money than the ones in obvious target cities, like NYC, DC, Boston etc …
I know that there is a lot to keep track of, but still …
Yeah, it would seem pretty hard to miss if a person made it their business to track fascist citizen surveillance, Dana Priest and William Arkin’s WAPO project, which was covered on PBS/Frontline, comes to mind, for one large Fourth Estate Expose. ™.
the thing is tho, no one ever exposes too much. Not really.
yep, and then, only when the that nooz has already become known by a multitude of the voiceless in the victimized back streets and alleyways of the $UZ$.
well certainly not from WashPo Intelligence reporters, nor from PBS nor from Frontline.
The idea that Right wingers want to shut down PBS is a horselaugh. It’s a huge propaganda machine, one that works. Democrats are in a stupor, soporific stupor.
Evil Pulse 1, 2, 3. ….
1. One advantage of Uncle’s Imperial War Berzerkery is the fine medical attention we bring to the native organs, testing, testing, probing, screening, and the life support measures we bring along with it. Someone’s life support anyways.
2. So.
The Massacre last week in Afghanistan wasn’t exactly a match made in Heaven
3. Then again, neither was Cheney’s heart transplant thru a “hospital in Virgina”.
oh I agree… so many fiction writers in America. We’re drowning in fiction. Fictitious fiction even.
The ICU unit at Inova…. yeah riiiiiiight.
I notice now there seem to be official sources saying Bale returned to a second round of killing.
I’m sticking with the night patrol theory. It’s the only one that works.
It reminds me of Haditha, only this time they picked out a fall guy at the beginning of the publicity.
I don’t see this idea that he went out twice is going to fly. Interesting they try to float it.
I’ve also seen some try to float the villagers’ reports of helicopters as them being confused, that the helicopters were the troops sent to help later.
I think the night patrol went out to wage murder and mayhem… in retribution for the 7 killed in the aftermath of the Quran mess.
Nothing else makes sense…And now the dead are up to 17…
I find that his def atty gets on my nerves massively. Something about him absolutely pisses me off…
Oh but this is a solemn moment for Badheart.
Besides, who knows?
Given advances on all fronts, everyday, I mean, sorta, well, with, oh yes – kidneys, partial livers and bone marrow, maybe they’ll finally breakthrough and announce the pioneering use of a living donors, albeit reluctant ones, for heart transplants as well….
Personally along with 6 Billion other people, I breathlessly await return of Cheney’s results on JDMA co-factors.
You know, JUST DIE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY.
I am guessing th government still supplies Cheney with his extra special outsized ambulance … staffed, too I bet. Just like I am sure McCain is supplied with special Navy aides to bathe and groom him. Dress him too. (not leaving out the Democrats, just these two come to mind, fast)
Imagine what Clinton will get.
Fuckin heart shaped tub motherfucker.
Vegas-style, elevated, see-thru champagne glass bubble bath for 6?
Elvis impersonating day-job physicians manning the Confetti guns and balloon drops? Long since pastured Moulitsas Pwog bloggers arriving as well wishers hopeful to just to lick the pudding off Clinton’s shriveled nipples?
Helluva sight, helluva sight in the end. LOL
What I see of Bill now for years, he only fake functions… often he forgets to close his mouth, it just hangs open. That was my first clue years ago, in the run up to the 2004 GE. Then in 2005 I think it was I saw him on a panel in Europe… he mumbled and meandered… there was an alert French television, Antenne 2 news woman moderating the panel who caught it and would manoever the conversation to mask the mess he was.
I am guessing he goes long periods using too much pain meds… selectively overdosing…
The sooner he dies the better, frankly.
Scanning the literature (as so much of it IS)
, etc, FWIW a prime commentary on list criteria, ethical algorithms wrt acuiity and age, mortality, the construct of “normal life expentency”….
for mortality in >70+ years of age, “ethical” sort criteria
Someone needs to poke around the age of the donor. The idea
USA!USA! 
, you know, is to approach normal life expectancy for all in line.
(start white-coat hand-waving , lay out dice, spread deck of cards, set up dart board , pick a number any number, etc)
Older organs with older patients generally. provided,
pun oh-so-intended there on the last…
It’s hard out there for a pimp (I thought it was a GRRREAT song!, LOL)
Cpunch
I know people who are turned off because his campaign LED THEM TO BELIEVE HE WAS SOMETHING HE WASN’T. Which, I guess shame on them for falling on it, but people who’ve been conned HATE the conman when they realize what happened.
I love the way they kind of brush that off.
I think in some areas his people, both working out of Chicago and out in the hinterlands are going to panic at some point. He may win, but it will be merely as a default incumbent. Hard to see anaything else…. And I think everything is going to turn very sour very quickly after election.
No matter who goes in….
Hankies at the ready!!
I think that is very likely. He’s lucky (or it’s by design) that the opposing field is so very weak.
(link)
DA decides Wisconsin’s new ‘castle doctrine’ applies in fatal shooting
Happening all over. It’s interesting that some of the people who have the most chance of the cops helping them are the ones to have the least faith in them, the ones most willing to go Wyatt Earp on people who frighten them.
It’s a pity more Americans will not see that Bale is a long time con man…
Cockburn prints an email he got:
And this too from Cockburn
One way or the other, retaliation.
I wonder the process tho that got one man to take the fall… or be so drugged that in the aftermath he is putty.
Interesting. Given that he’ll be tried in a military court and most likely given the hardest whipping a wet noodle can give, it might not have been a conspiracy, but more like a casual conversation on the way back from Mokhoyan.
“Man, I’d like to shoot every f*cker in the town, but they’d send me to jail forever.”
“Well, what if someone just pretended to have PTSD or something?”
“Naw, they’d probably make an example of em anyway.”
“But it wouldn’t, like, be murder. It’d be manslaughter.”
“Yeah, I guess. And whoever it was would sure not get sent back here. That’s for sure. Like a jail sentence already.”
Two Minutes of Silence, a Milwaukee Vigil
I am afraid nothing much at all will happen to Zimmerman… partly because it IS an election year…
… and now with some supposed ”secret witness” who has come forward.
Maybe I am looking at this thru a too dark lens… but looking at the Google News page on the shooting… is not any sort of comfort…. I even think the usual Jesse Jackson slobber is a preamble to the parents down the road being let down (gently or otherwise) by the DOJ.
The night it happened no homicide detective was sent, Sanford PD sent a narcotics detective, they retained no evidence, certainl not his clothing…. and returned his gun to him… I don’t know if it has changed but a couple of days ago, his atty claimed to know where he was, but the local authorities claimed not to. One would hope tha investigators from Tallahassee to say nothing of DC would locate him and “be on it”, but who the hell knows.
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Ooops Google news page link
But before all the coverage ends and the parents are left to live in misery, it will be ensured that Obama, in his puppeteer role as The First Black President ™ will have milked as much as he can out of it, to get those racist citizens (the only ones who don’t like him!!!!!!! ™) off his back.
Things are so very Fucked UP.
the gun lobbies are coming out in support, too, and those assholes are good at PR, and have very deep pockets.
This is a culture built on violence, cultivates violence, profits from violence, and that’s not going to stop anytime soon.
One thing that I think has gone underplayed… it was a mixed race sub division… it looks to me to be a subdivision of the smallish two bed two bath “town home” on a two story plan that is all over the country… with the fakery of a “gated community” tacked on.
One thing I have not seen reported is how many blocks from his own home was Zimmerman. I’d be interested in knowing that…
Yeah I am not expecting much and it has clearly moved to a “Feel Good Moment” for the nation. Always deadly. And it comfortably takes a lot of focus – such as it was ever going to be anyway – away from Bale
and didn’t ya get such a kick out of yesterday’s Super Seal Bale Update with the double mission version, I heard it on the car radio, and thought here we go!
Meanwhile, the surviving Afghani victims are apparently being held in $UZ$ medical facilities, and barred from press interviews.
yes they floated that… it is just so much killing, plus the rapes, plus the burning of some of the bodies. But I doubt Americans are even picking up much on Bale’s past. Just a con… and still one.
yeah Bale’s past, and then, the past of his partners and ‘superiors’ in that Mass Slaughter. Maybe someone like Russ Baker will be doing a quaint EXPOSE!!!!! on that, some 20 years into the future …..sigh, is not at all the word for it…
(Sorry, for ‘digressing’ back to Russ! :0) ;0) …but he even looks like a supercilious, pedant, ….a deliberately disingenous, paid creep, to my knee jerk: http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/QQ截图20120312010442-150×150.png (disclosure: that’s a “png” image “file extension” on that piccy!!!!, perty speshul huh? … first “png” file extension I’ve ever seen on a piccy, I was expecting the normal “jpg file extension,” ahhhh well, Progress Hope and Change!!! ……. Obama 2012!!!!!!! …..™.))
We have moved into the election year, what little there is always shuts down…. then after election we get about a year to a year and a half of bits of news…. Then it all tightens up again.
FWIW, to me, the worst f the bunch is Ray McGovern… more and more revealing what a Jesus freak he is. That and a CIA mouthpiece / herder of the so called left.
Etc and so on.
I have such a hard time believing any of the Ops believe in anything but themselves, that I never connect them with any belief system which has even the slightest connection to an actually benevolent manner of living, other than the ‘Religion’ of Self Preservation ™.
hmm There some conflicting stuff floating around on Zimmerman’s family but this in the SMH is the first I have read this claim about his father:
There’s been all sorts of speculation around about the father….
The article does say he lived with his wife inside the same gated community…
What a mess it all is….
what a fracking tangled web …was Zimmerman’s mom, of the North American Indian, Seminole Tribe? and was the gated community a faux, gated Seminole Tribe Community, …and doesn’t that pardon the murder? ….. is his dad a friend of Rahm’s Daddy … and therefore a forever pardoned Holocaust (Why yes! there has only been one racial Holocaust! ™) Connection? …… or were both parents connected, and white as a the driven snow (and/or a combination of the above racial mixes?), with lawyers who eat folks for desert? …….. were they all three assholes ready to storm all over their own peers to survive? …. was just the son an deadly asshole? ……….
hmm his mother seems to be either from Peru or Peruvian parents… the story varies on his father. Some reports indicate he may, repeat may, have moved to the US fom Mexico. Quite a few reports refer t him as ex mil or retired mil… how being a magistrate judge as well fits in… well the courts are a mystery. And everything to do with thm is basically a mystery, frankly…
the whole thing does lead a mind to race all over the map. He physically looks like he could just as easily have been victimized in certain areas in Florida, Cali, Texas, (New!!!! ™ York, etc.), ….. perhaps not so much in Southern Florida, where Wealthy, MIC Connected, ExPat “Cubans,” and other Fascist, Latinos ™ may SubRule, ….. in certain areas. …Clearly he’s Connected ..in some way.
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