Opera Glasses and Popcorn
A winning photo from the 2009 Big Garden Birdwatch – Greenfinches by John Mullin. For more on the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch click here. [Johnmullin via the Guardian]
…in rough times.
One little ditty I could have done without in recent days… ABC and the NYT, both, served up a photo of the panty bomber’s… panties. No no no…. truly not needed.
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]
Democracy NOW! / Amy Goodman Electronic Intifada / General Content Press TV / Middle East News Press TV McClatchy Headlines The Real News Reuters / Politics
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
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.
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.
Marisacat 
hmm from Wapo’s “44”. Well he and his do seem clueless.
Love that last line…. and the comments are … more of the same as the NYT earlier today.
GOOD LUCK!
nothin like Hawaii, surfing, and golf to bond
with the vast majority of the electorate. at war. broke. in winter storms blanketing the country. with trrrrr around every corner.
What a memorable First Family’s First Christmas in the White House.
Just sayin. LOL.
They might as well formally appoint
a WH SHITHEAD “Special” Counselor to the President for
Political Affairs. For all its hype, Their optics management is terrible.
Todays little terrier presser? It’s almost like Emmanuel and Axelrod, had Obbie deliberately trotted out in Tiger Woods Golf Casual in front of the cameras just for the shits and giggles.
Of course , the WHOLE casual aloof detached thing is meant to obscure escalation of war. Was from jump I think, a very deliberate tool this “No Drama/ We Bomba”
He’s really bored… and I think resentful that he is “on call” in any way as Pretzel Peace Prize. If Bush had been less of an aging slacker Ob’s peevishness would be more amusing. But it is just more of the same … as I see it.
LOL.
<a href="http://www.smithbowen.net/linfame/"?Mr. Smith at SMBIVA:
LOL.
Just read the SMBIVA “Modest Proposal”… good post… and in keeping iwth his projections… we had an elderly woman who insisted on using the restroom during the last hour, on some incoming SFO flight. TWO people accompanied her, stood outside and searched the john when she exited.
I so wish panty bomber had used a private jet at some point… as they sashay around with little interference OR notice. In one of the very early reports I read that Lagos was recertified just last month as having acceptable security oversight. LOL… and another early report had said he paid cash (almost 3K) and offered no identifying information when he bought the ticket, no address or contact tel. number.
If true, hilarious!
Oops –
Correct link for : Mr Smith at SMBIVA
Not to worry! Congress plans 3, count ’em!, oversight/find the facts or die! committees to look into the Panty Bomber.
LOL
I slept most of the morning… but I see Foundling surfaced. What a comedy.
Yes, in audio – no video. Maybe he phoned it in from the golf course. 😉
Not to overplay the reality of the situation (massive fubar of blowback for decades).. but maybe someone could tell Pretzel the nation is the child of one of his major backers/string pullers and we bumped our chin on a surfing board.
What a laggard.
The thing I hate most about th political class, both sides of the sodden bed, is what bitchers they are. And what low and incompetent people they all are.
Well I’m sure those 3 committees will fix all of this – pronto!
Not to mention all of the screamers and bedwetters (I’m looking at you, Tweety) on the cable news shows.
Don’t you love the word “systemic”?
“Systemic failure of the financial system”
“Systemic failure of the security apparatus”
The System has Failed. Repeat: The System has Failed.
😆 Someone unplug Hal 9000
Hal 9000 might be more reassuring than Obster 1.
Hal seemed less bored, frankly.
Ben Stein v Ron Paul on Larry King’s show last nite:
Video of the train wreck
Oh Ben Stein. Can’t a truck make a full frontal assault?
It only LOOKS like it did.
(my line ,
serviceable retort for practically everything these days, thank you )
Stein has had that taken aback , throaty, almost like-a-truck-hit-him
affect since those ..those..those…Bastards™
{Jeeziz! -a truh – …..Splat! } …..went after Richard Nixon.
Chris…
{ Tweety, wearing Opus Dei vestments}
{ no doubt handed down in the family since the FIRST Crusades…}
…Matthews on HardbalLL! Kill The Muslims Edition tonite.
How surreal.. Two Softball segments. the first one with Irshad Manjii, the other with Matthews averting dead air at Holiday time , I notice they do this from time to time where HE is interviewed by………his wife in a certain “Gee, Honey, What do ya think tonight is great about Killing Muslims” ~~ Format.
But the first seg, Jeebus. That NeoCon house shill, Irshad Manji, serviced Ancient Roman Matthews in a bizarre role tonite : albeit as his designated Muslim Sabine. Utterly bizarre the whole thing.
I’ve said before, time to say it again, –
Manjii is Mossad paid agit -prop-
her oh-so-bogus bio notwithstanding.
Much of her revenue stream is through an Israeli front in..
how convenient for such occassions …..the Netherlands…
Just pay her on the books, fellahs, as designated Mulim/Muslim Basher from Tel Aviv. LOL. Sorry. I mean Uganda– the story is her parents were expelled by Amin prior to Entebbe .
One group of exceptional Ugandans, yes.
Whatever the latest iteration of bullshit, She’s another in the GLBT bumper crop of NeoCon operatives primarily intended to thwart further credible cohesive resistance among GLBT , an already proven-as-mobilized set of people, who, if not led to the veal pen, could prove seriously damaging to the Status Quo.
Such shills have added utility as they are readily welcomed into
(and neutralize Muslim bashing misgivings among )
the would-be Het / Some of My Best Friends are Gay / “Offensive” ..
Wow I realize via rerun on MSNBC That Matthews Had Manjii on the 2nd seg and the wifey was on for the last …
The FIRST seg was truly nauseating as well.
Teeing up Israeli security measures here.
Foreshadowing getting “hit again”, too.
Full Terra Mode is on.
The Ob Hypnosis fading, they will need to move quick.
There is a piece running around, might be at Politico… that the Dems think if they just ignore how the R swamp the airwaves with criticism of Ob (as he over and over stands back, to the side or is busy chiding us on some shit that is irrelevant) that it will go away.
Poor Dems. Born in harness to the Republicans and wingers.. Alwys the way.
****
In other news I saw a short piece in the UK press that the two top rabbis in Israel say all the abortions is slowing the arrival of the Messiah. 50K altogether, 20K of which are illegal.
Why don’t they jst fry and eat a baby? (invite the pope!) Get it over with.
Here it is … it was at The Plum Line:
Cover for the reality that no Dems WANT to defend Ob. I saw Jane Harmon actually did stick pinkie toe in the radioactive water…
Maybe the Messiah doesn’t want to be associated with a bunch of ethnic-cleansing fuckwits who starve women and children to death after they’ve stolen all of their land and burned to the ground the meager shacks they herded them into.
Yeah.. why would he bother wtih the Holy Land — AGAIN?
this was supposed to tack onto a cmment of Madman’s bout the rabbis bitching over abortion and lack of opportunities for the next or, hell, FIRST, coming of the ME Messiah (to dfferentiate from our own Foundling Messiah)
hoping this lands at the end of the thread…
NEW:
🙄
That NeoCon house shill, Irshad Manji, serviced Ancient Roman Matthews in a bizarre role tonite
I turned my teevee off and went for a nap. Her scream level was just too much. Tweety clearly wants his fear fed.
hahahahahahahahaha
You’ve got to be nuts to make Paul seem sane.
Bob Herbert: A Less Than Honest Policy
Ooo..ouch. Wasn’t Herbert one of Obamalama’s big supporters?
Why yes. Yes, he was. Right up there with all of the other drivel-peddlers during the campaign.
Bob Bob where is the luv?
hmmm?
He’s obviously racist!
Ezra Klein tries really really hard to rebut Herbert – and fails.
Except for the huge burdens that were always on target to be built in this ass hole of a bill… and the pain and suffering… I’d laugh. Poor Herbert, just a Dem party mouthpiece. I think he has been on the payola so long he still affects turtlenecks. And blazers. A paid sycophant. Or maybe that is suckophant.
no one can afford that. When they first floated the game the scam of fleecing people they used a profile of a crtain type of coverage… Top guys.. (and it is mostly guys, some women get let in… for whatever reason) like at G Saxe and so on have coverage that costs 40K a year. OK… tax the highest percentile of employer paid coverage. Now the hook is that when you are an equity partner, in most plans you are paying yourself for your coverage.
Thanks for posting that as I can hardly bear to read ANY of the columnists anymore… Black white or in between.
Suckophant! Systemic suckophants!
Oh well. Rosa to the scaliwag file.
DeLauro to sell the Senate Abortion rules to the House.
Oh break it to us gently!
Our Rosa?!?? ..Rosa of Conetiquette?!??!!
HA! Say it ain’t so!
That She’s in congressional Insurance sales of a sort:
And Has been all along workin the wimmens niche.
yeah I read earlier to day she thinks the senate language is the legal status quo, no change.
Another Catholic… what to say.
True.
Signaling the market sharing details have been worked out.
oh.. and.
Axelrod likes to toss out that Boxer was “in the room” when the language was crfted. And she is on board.
The women are USELESS. I have been quilty of saying most of them got to the senate as some man cashed in a chit. IN fact I say ruder things than that.
Trying. to. hang on.
Fearing 20-something backlash if I clip the cable prior to semester break being over. LOL.
Okay, I need to take some responsibility for myself.
Afterall, I have indulged in the light movies and a few ball games.
And I AM watching MSNBC’s alternative “News” cartoons prior to…
.
. their regular evening run of Prison Porn.
As near as I can figure, Olberman show seems to be trying to outweirdo~ the weirdos on Fox.
Although y’all might have thought it impossible,
I am actually dumber than I was prior to reconnection…
No small feat, I know. LOL.
LOL. Now switching to news of the weird online…
This…
….Ends with the odd emerging from his little pile of poo spectacle of the storied chipmunk dung beetle trying to corral the chipmunk.
😯
Lost for words here.
oh that made me laugh…. pass the holy host! everybody take a bite!!
lol…Delete your fucking account, kos!
On CNN I noticed this
The humor is getting more and more anal. Whose trou-du-cul are they going to bomb?
Deep thoughts:
His logic – it burns.
Bizarre interview with John Yoo.
I think sometimes Yoo treats things as jokes. At least to him…
U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged
Big surprise there.
Raimondo has a piece up on the panty bomber… with a fuller telling, if it is true, about the boarding iwth no passport. From another passenger… and in his telling it happened in Amsterdam. Not in lagos
Something doesn’t make sense in that report: I thought pantyman had a valid visa? It’s possible that he had the visa but did not want to show his passport for some reason. Something is very weird in any case.
Clearly, preventing us from going to the bathroom for an hour is going to solve this problem.
I agree.. the story is garbled. I don’t know what any of it means.
laura Rozen picks up on a CBS news report and has some background and speculation on panty bomber.
Watch lists is farmed out………. to a company started by Brennan. Among many other messy holes in this mess of a deal:
Good article. And I hope all the many desks and personalities and entities of the intelligence services and contract players fang each other to death.
Oh the games being played via the latest WaPo lede:
The more precise translation:
Slew of Internal AIG / GS correspondence leaked to WaPo to cloud cases against both.
A few selections from WaPo’s lengthy apologia and you get the idea…beginning with the title inviting pity:
And here, where Goldman Sachs ass covering is trotted out to be accepted at face value…
Uh huh, sure. Shocked, Shocked, they.
EVERYBODY was/ still is a “burn bank” to Goldman:
Fuck all if the check kiting was ever meant to arrive at their door for settlement.
So it’s Onward with the Obama Donklephant show of “Financial Reform”…Which of course will redeem the Republicans’ “credibility” , getting the free pass in the peanut gallery –
known as the well in the Senate –
Oh it’s terrible! Socialist! ( Now let’s split the Money! )
while the Donks do their duty securing gains for all partners in crime, simultaneously fleecing the Donk base. At least with the R base, they intuitively grasp the fact they’re getting screwed. Too bad neither set of knuckleheads view it in its gross morphology as a class war. Consequently, they’re hardly in a position to assail the otherwise readily identifiable components of it.
it all returns to the R… nto that it matters. Really the only issue is which year. 2012 or 4 years later.
i think the Obs have figured out, bored as they are, they can ditch this ”hard” – and i would add in their eyes UNDERPAID – work in a couple of years and skate on how “misunderstood” and opposed he was. The tragedy of it all… and it bolsters the sick long running drama the Dems like to craft, they are so good but so opposed and misunderstood. Etc.
They, the Obs, husband and wif, wanna move on to the really big bucks.
Jesus from Hawai’i, Indonesia and Chicago that he was.
Featured News Years Day Game:
Looks like its the Jews vs. the Vikings now..
Vanunu’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, clarified that the arrest had to do with his client’s relationship with a Norwegian girlfriend and nothing to do with revealing state secrets.
so… what is Vanunu up against? Racial purity laws?
LOL.
A clear case of that age old scourge, Anti Norwegeeanism, obviously…
I dunno, so touchy, Tel Aviv.
Lighten Up, for God’s sake on the guy and his girlfriend.
A nice dinner, some wine, discussion of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. Some crème brûlée. What’s the big deal?
Sounds like a perfectly nice evening, if ya ask me. LOL.
Can we talk? Evidently , NO.
you know he should seek official refugee status from the EU.. or one of the Scandinavian countries. Really. For what now, almost 25 years, his own country has pursued him.
The TimesOnline has an unsparing account.
[ They originally published Vanunu’s revelations in 1986.]
Israel is so fucked up.
No wonder we have a ‘special relationship” with them.
FWIW… from Politico “44”… I caught an early am news report that referred to this…
full text from “44”
Bigger report on the Mogadishu snare via MSNBC… it was African Union security that caught the guy with powder liquid and syring.
****
I see suspicious van outside NASDAQ bldg in Times Sq…. it is never ending.
Speaking of the Messiah, I was just chortling this morning while reading Hitchens’ introduction to his anthology “The Portable Atheist”. An excerpt:
You have to hand it to Hitchens – he’s good on this subject.
This is one of the issues on which I used to quiz my Sunday School teachers: if God is all-powerful, why did “He” only focus on communicating with a few people in one small corner of the world? Why have people in other countries and cultures had to (presumably) suffer in their benighted state until Christian missionaries found their way to them? Wouldn’t “He” be capable of communicating with everyone on earth at the same time? None of the story makes any sense. “Elaborately mad” is right.
Hitch is really good on religion, Kissinger… and Mother Theresa… which is quite a lot.
Other than that…………….. boy has he gone downhill over 25 years.
Our damn Con PM has shut down parliament for 2 months.
safety measure? Just an old joke here that with less congress in session they would do less damage…
😆
No kidding. If the PM and the MPs are so inconsequential that they can just disappear for 2 months while the country runs itself, what does that say about their jobs?
Protests in Afghanistan after the latest civilian deaths. And they’re burning effigies of Obama.
there is a headline, as yet with no story, at MSNBC that 8 Americans are dead in Eastern Afghanistan.
Joys await us!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34632936/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/