Gah 1 August 2011
Posted by marisacat in Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, San Francisco, Total fucking lunatics.47 comments
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San Francisco – Filbert Street – North Beach in the 50s
Oh it is to laugh!! I just caught John Burton, the younger brother of Phil Burton, whose seat Nancy was, pretty much, moved into on a deathbed proclamation from his widow Sala…. it is the [Edmund G “Pat”] Brown [Phil] Burton Democratic machine we live under in much of this state, certainly in the Bay Area….
Anyway, John Burton says that Obama’s base is NOT turned off by this… Oh no! They are ENERGISED by it… because they got a taste of seeing how the R operate. (it was news?)
Here is the kicker, I did not really get the drift he buys that.
NTIM!!
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Sweet 25 June 2011
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast.29 comments
..
LIFE IN THE 1970s: Skateboarding And Hanging Out In Sunny California – Collision on the Ramp, Redondo Beach Pier (1975) [Image: Hugh Holland / mbart.com]
There is a photo gallery kicking around at BI for a bit now, a sun tinged remembrance, it seems, of California in the 70s… mostly children, loose and free, in beach and coastal communities, most of them having a ball with skateboards…
It does have a sweetness to it, an Endless Summer nostalgia. I never knew why the disdain, even hatred, for “skateboarders”… what it was all about… but people sure indulged in it.
What is wrong about children filling their time, having fun?
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Beach 17 June 2011
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Divertissements.56 comments
Carbon Beach Malibu
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Popcorn days… 7 June 2011
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, San Francisco, Total fucking lunatics.41 comments
A curious owl turns its head upside down when confronted with a camera lens in a bid to figure out what it could be. Rob Palmer photographed the inquisitive bird in Colorado, America. [Rob Palmer/solent]
We had local amusements today as well. If possible, this year’s Apple display of themselves was even drippier than in the past. In terms of the yearning mob waiting in line to touch the hem of the holy robes.
This year, perhaps because Jobs seems about to ascend to celestial sainthood, the patron saint of Cali IT… or some other scam, the verbiage was penitential.
They all but came crawling on their knees, like Lourdes… dragging their canes behind them.
They yearned to be “in his presence” to “absorb” what he had to say. Much talk of his “imparting” his IT knowledge… One even said it was the equivalent of ”going to hear Thomas Edison”.
[cough] It was a developers’ conference.
Alert Benny, another Santo Soubito is revving up. Prepare the devotional cards depicting Jobs, in his black cotton mock turtle neck and blue jeans.
Commence building the memorial temples to accept the prayerful.
California, land of the fruits and the nuts.
Pre-diction 18 March 2011
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, San Francisco.56 comments
A cat balances on a row of high fence posts. Owner Loree McComb photographed her cat Johnny balancing on the fence in her back garden in New Mexico, United States. [Loree McComb/solent]
hmm I think our weather here could be called restive, at the moment.
Intense wind, “tornado”, or at least a strong mico-pressure of air in No Cali – it bent steel gates, tore out a large green house anchored in concrete and big beams, snow, rain… and so on.
Now a gathering of dark clouds over the ocean out at Ocean Beach in SF, complete with water spout, that nicely, kindly opened the chute of water into the ocean, rather than a few blocks inland on a house.
And high tides for hours, 14 to 17 feet they say…
AND a geologist by name of Berklund has popped up to predict earthquakes. We shall see…..
a 4-5 here in the SF Bay Area, within 8 days… in the same time frame, a 5-6 in So Cali, a 6-7 in the NW and a 7 on the other side of the Ring Of Fire.
He says he predicted Loma Prieta, 1989… and brandished news articles about it.
Maybe Mother Nature is tired of hearing us talk about her, she’s spoiling for a fight.
We’re probably, secretly (with appropriate leaks of course!), planning a bombing raid on her.
Toasting 18 February 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, California / Pacific Coast, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems.76 comments
via BI Flicker/WH photo
Here’s an iconic photo of Barack Obama sitting down for dinner with the elite of Silicon Valley.
In the photo, we see Eric Schmidt of Google, someone we can’t make out, John Chambers of Cisco, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Reed Hastings of Netflix, another one we’re not sure about (John Hennessy, president of Stanford?), Carol Bartz of Yahoo, Dick Costolo of Twitter, another person we can’t make out, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, President Obama of the United States, Steve Jobs of Apple, Steve Westly of the Westly Group (we think), and a woman we can’t recognize.
via BI Flicker/WH photo
I heard he named Ottolini of Intel to his Jobs Council.
What can you do but laugh. They are.
Pragmatism 11 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, San Francisco, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.102 comments
A commander watches as recruits of paramilitary police run in a circle during a training at a military base in Hami, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region [Reuters]
I am so damned relieved I don’t care anymore… haven’t for years.
via the Mike Allen email….
GUN CONTROL HOLSTERED — Molly Ball and Shira Toeplitz:
“That the gun issue has been so secondary, and the approach to the gun component of the incident so tentative, indicates the extent to which the issue has subsided in the past decade. A bipartisan truce is in effect on gun control issues in Washington – a truce on the National Rifle Association’s terms. … It hasn’t bothered to mount a major lobbying push to make sure lawmakers have their guns-don’t-kill-people talking points. Congressional office staffers say there’s been no contact from the group on the topic. …
The signal piece of gun legislation to come out of the Arizona shooting looks to be a bill that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) plans to bring up as soon as this week. It would ban the manufacture and sale of high-capacity magazines such as the one Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ would-be assassin … attached to his Glock 19, allowing him to fire off 33 bullets without reloading, rather than the 10 or so in a typical clip. … Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) … plans to introduce McCarthy’s legislation in the Senate … But McCarthy and Lautenberg are up against a political consensus that has only hardened in recent years as Democrats made inroads into Republican territory largely on their ability to neutralize the gun issue. Some of their red-state victories were with pro-gun candidates such as Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb.” http://bit.ly/ie9R95
I carefully followed a couple of major mass killings using guns, the Washington DC snipers and the VTech massacre.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we deceive. There are no “controls”, there is no funding for real background checks, even if they mattered… The gun shows, alone, make a laughing stock of any supposed “system”…
Some radio host out here is in a froth, that Loughner was “allowed” to buy a gun. WHY? He was never held nor arrested for mental health issues (whatever his vague “record”, it never resulted in an arrest), nor committed for a 3 day mental health evaluation, so there was no black mark on his background, whatever kind of check was made to get the FBI clearance for his gun purchase…
The radio host thinks that because he was rejected by the Army he should have been denied a gun purchase. WHY? There are alternative reports, one that he “failed a drug test” another that he was rejected for disclosing he had used pot over many years…
It’s not enough.
Get real. The Democrats haven’t been really serious about “gun control” in years… and one of the most fervent activists on this issue, DiFi, is a zealot. An authoritarian freak, imo. She herself has had a conceal-carry permit for years. And they are IMPOSSIBLE to obtain in San Francisco. You have to go thru the Sheriff’s Office and the applications are simply lost.
I love all the push to “move to the center”, to worry about the “far left and the far right”, to exhort for “centrism”.
When utter freaks, from Obama to Bush to Hillary to DiFi (oh right, I am supposed to lie awake worrying about Sarah Palin…), are running our lives.
Not to leave out Wayne La Pierre, of the RNA. Another freak.
Who has unequivocally WON.
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The national news tonight, ABC, is reporting that of over 121,000 AZ citizens who would be barred from buying a gun, based on their criminal or mental health records, less than 5,000 have been entered into the pertinent data base.
Escapism 9 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Culture of Death, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.35 comments
The Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. Sitting on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood, the observatory – a popular tourist attraction in its own right – gives an amazing view of the Los Angeles basin, from downtown LA in the east to the Pacific ocean in the west. It featured in two major sequences of the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause; a bust of Dean was subsequently placed in the grounds of the observatory.
[Vitto Sciosia/photolibrary.com]
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oh, I drifted thru a little gallery at the Guardian, photos of sites in Cali that have figured heavily in movies…
An unusual shot of Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park – – with Los Angeles, that strange dark dream land, appearing to be in the distance…
I always loved the old quote which, iirc, is attributed to Cecil B de Mille:
A tree’s a tree, a rock’s a rock, we shoot in Griffith Park – or we don’t shoot at all.
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Hard… 26 December 2010
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.56 comments
A butterfly in a flower in Los Angeles, California [Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images]
.. to let go of red, it is such a beautiful color. The legend posted along wth the photo in the wildlife gallery at the Guardian does not say so, but it is a hibiscus… which are all over Southern California.
I used to visit in a house on Mulholland Drive, surrounded by bushes of pink and red hibiscus blossoms…. Which I constantly plucked to put in water – – no matter how many times I saw the fast fade and wilt they go thru, it was impossible to believe.
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Musical chairs… 2 November 2010
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, San Francisco.41 comments
A mandrill seems to flash a rude gesture towards photographer Mark Rogers at the San Francisco zoo. However, the animal suffers from arthritis and is unable to lower his middle finger [MARK ROGERS / CATERS]
Musical chairs… pretty much what today is…
I had no idea there was a formal think tank called The Third Way… at least as of the last 5 years. “The Third Way” just seemed to be one more Quisling, Vichy, collaborationist, pro-Republican strain of the Democratic party (which is not to say there is anything else!)… but apparently it, or dregs of it, have formally formed, I guess in the wake of the DLC frittering.
Or whatever it is the DLC does, did… etc. ”Fritter” is as good a word as any other…
“The party is about to come to a major fork in the road,” said Jonathan Cowan, Third Way’s president. “A left turn at this juncture is a turn toward permanent minority status.”
Kinda borrring. Just take that fork and stick it IN the party.
Familiar…
Third Way is helped by a few key relationships. Kessler [Jim Kessler, a TW co-founder] was a longtime senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who could become majority leader if Harry Reid loses in Nevada. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who could become minority leader if Republicans take over the House, is one of many strong sympathizers. The senators they helped in 2006 and 2008 will still be around.
“We’re going to have to look at what we did wrong and figure out where we lost our way with independents and swing voters,” said an aide to a senior congressional Democrat. “Third Way — that is their wheelhouse.”
All so surprising. I am so surprised. Aren’t you?
While it’s not what it once was, the DLC hasn’t disappeared. They won’t disclose their budget, except to say they employ 15 people (including part-time fellows). Bruce Reed, who succeeded From as leader of the DLC before taking a leave of absence to become executive director of the president’s fiscal commission, will return in December.
“They have talented people, there’s no doubt about that, but I don’t think there’s a replacement really for original policy work,” DLC President Ed Gresser said of Third Way. “I think they do some, but what I see of their work is sort of political memos, ‘Here’s how you should talk about such and such an issue.’ Those are valuable, but they’re not setting an agenda.”
Brookings’ William Galston and Harvard’s Elaine Kamarck wrote the seminal studies that helped launch the DLC. Third Way is now paying the duo to complete a study about what moderates believe and what they want from Democrats. Both praise Third Way for filling a niche that’s otherwise unfilled.
I think they should just hollow out the Democratic party, vacate, vamoose and and join the strong father party. Not some mincing minuet like now, but officially. Come out of the closet. Get it over with. Salute in public.
Frankly, that is what happened in San Francisco, in a convoluted way…. When I was a child, it was a Republican city. Racist, reactionary mayor, of Greek descent. As the City careened toward the 70s, the Republicans just became Democrats. And the City became a Democratic machine town.
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Marisacat 