Opera Glasses and Popcorn
Reputed to be 6,000 years old, the world’s largest baobab tree stands proudly at Sunland Nurseries in Limpopo, South Africa [Jonathan Brady/EPA]
Whew. Sometimes it seems there is too much news, too much tumult… but NOW it really is too much at once. And, nothing looks like it ends soon.
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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 
Gee.
Reading around the news reports, the after event bullshit, we are, it eems, supposed to stand on the dock, wving white lace hankies, to bid adieu to McC… and shower tickertape and whatever else upon our new non-conquering, no wins on the books, killer-hero.
Are we fucked or what?
Snicker… you know the future is bright when the latest marquee at CNN is Eliot Spitzer and (don’t laugh TOO hard!) Kathleen Parker.
AND, as more than one observer posited, McC soon to have a career like the one Oliver North has established for himself.
Sans jail, unlike ON, however.
I wonder if The Onion can do anything to top Al Gore’s police report.
Address “unknown”… but “Former Vice President of the United States”.
I hadn’t heard about that. lol
The Smoking Gun: Al Gore A “Crazed Sex Poodle?” – Masseuse’s claims read like R-rated vice presidential fan fiction
Whole lot of that going around about Obamalama too – and Rahm (the guy too many kossacks want to sleep with because he’d be such an “animal” in bed.)
Forced to drink Grand Marnier? Really? People drink Grand Marnier by itself? What are they, 15 year olds raiding their parents liquor cabinets?
Worse – Al made her listen to his singing.
“Justice” for the rich: U.S. high court finds fault with Conrad Black fraud conviction
Lord Black gets his case reviewed in record time by the US supremes. The small people? Not so much.
and…High court sides with ex-Enron CEO Skilling
It finally ends… Isner 70-68 in the fifth set. 11 hours and 5 minutes over 3 days – every tennis record broken by this one. Too bad Mahut lost, I really started rooting for the guy.
‘Big Heads’ await G8 leaders
My cat just delivered lunch for me: a 4″ mouse.
You have energetic cats…
And so thoughtful.
THEY CARE! For the small mice.
Camper or terrorist?
And this must be an important detail:
A WMD, no doubt.
Belgian Catholic offices raided in sex abuse probe
Even G*d can’t protect you now.
Well.. but….
I figure no matter what there is a lot that is not coming out. More to come about Maciel, I would bet. And he is just one. Already horrific tales, here nad there in isolated villages of S America.. etc.
I STILL say there have to be murdered children, if anyone were to really look. Esp at far away orphanages, indigenous schools and parishes… and so on.
They’re still looking for bodies of children from residential schools who’ve been missing for decades here.
Referring to some previous thread about some Wakos fantasizing about Rahm Emmanuel, these guys must be animals in bed too.
Maybe they’re just plain animals, No, that gives animals a bad name.
How about a oil spills?
Bravo, Belgium!
oh good line!! I say call up an ………… INQUISITION!!
Subject the pope to torture. And all the rest too!
Pet turtle causes taxiing plane to return to gate
hmm threads at The Oil Drum are just packed with information. This is the one I am reading now… and admittedly in a roughly 370+ comment thread, I skim for words… I am still in the top quarter of the thread… and they are damning on the sloppy case it seems DoI Salazar made to Feldman. hmm. Good luck exerting pressure. We shall see.
They also say, for the first time that I have caught and maybe the suicide of Captain Kause intensified this, but they are saying people will begin to leave the Gulf. En masse. And the sooner BP and the government are honest with the people (not that they will be) the sooner people will migrate away. Too few jobs, destroyed Gulf, ruined industries, dead habitat for wildlife, livelihoods and so on.
Report from the Miami Herald on worsening conditions on the beaches, Pensacola Beach hit hard… what several weeks ago was oil slick is now the thick muck oil… Crist took a flyover with a veteran of the Alaska battles and he had the current edition of Cousteau with him, a grand son I guess.
Scamming people in order to keep a population in place, when the authorities KNOW other/different/better information, is like telling people to hold onto stock that is clearly in freefall. The default position of the cable and CNBC financial “advisors”.
From the same thread at TOD:
Press Release from Global Warming/House dot gov
Again from The Oil Drum thread:
CNN Finally Discovers Elusive ‘Good Side’ of Oil Spill
oh that was awful. I have sensed in some, just some, reporting that some media is relaxing. Relief wells, they tell themselves, are just a few weeks away (sure to be an instant success, like everything so far, right?)… and then they can occasionally just toss out a “cleaning up the Gulf” report.
I don’t think it will be working out that way however.
Business Insider has discovered the “burning the turtles alive” stories… and the thread, just 3 comments so far, is AWFUL.
It’s hard to sell SUVs and boner pills if you’re only covering downers all the time … after a while I’m sure there is tons of pressure to lighten up.
On the other hand, I threw on G4TV’s “Attack of the Show” after work today, which is usually a nerd pop show with movie reviews and cute girls and tech reviews, and they did a pretty grim story on the gulf and trying to save the wildlife, on how BP won’t let their workers talk to the press, and even brought up reported financial ties between BP and the maker of Corexit, the dispersant they were using.
I was surprised to see the segment.
I think aspects of Mainstream media as well as “doesn’t know much about America’ Obby and others have seriously, from minute one, underestimated how Americans will react to this.
Many many Mid-west and Eastern Seabord residents ahve vacationed on the Gulf, have family members who retired to the Gulf. The Mississippi bisects the nation… Westerners travel to the Gulf for all sorts of reasons… easy enough to head south, hang a big left, as I used to say, and drive to the Gulf…
This is not some unknown hill top that blew in Upper Western Montana.
what remains to be seen is if that general disgust matters. I hope it will, but I’ve watched people get used to so many horrors that I can’t get my hopes up.
well I have a tentative faith in that this is bigger, much bigger than anything recently. In my memory anyway. Plus it is right here, inside the US… and the scale is simply huge. Everything from simple beach access to land value to shipping to ………………
it’s endless.
Obby has little cover in that he is not liked. Other than the 91% support he gets from blacks (think htat was in the latest WSJ CBS poll)… and whatever water soaked, wet noodle white libs are still standing, he is not truly
L I K E D. A very big problem for a pretzel with a much bigger problem.
GOOD LUCK!
Here’s that G4 report … BP Oil Spill Effect on Wildlife
the market for this show is the kind of harsh males that comment at BI … it’s that weird harsh “libertarian’ short that loves tech and makes fun of “hippies” …
Not what I would expect to see on that channel.
that thread is pretty depressing.
What made me angry with the thread is that NO ONE is asking for an end to the burns… but there is a legitimate issue of allowing access for wildlife rescuers to do what they can.
Even as what to save and how to save and other issues DO exist.
this is an unending nightmare.
there is all-too-often this weird default to a sort of heartless utilitarianism. It’s a serious illness.
LOL. Daahmnn.
Talk about totally no frills now.
Cut and paste emailed talking point, cite Digby saying we got another FDR I tells ya!. Click – And that’s it!
No peanuts, no beverage cart, no fuckin fuselage even.
Just a seat, a flotation device and bird crapping on your shoulder before pecking out Ta~Ta! Have a Nice Flight!
😯 ~ I mean WTF? ~ 😆
And THAT’S McJoan’s ….J-O-B.
Welp, In this case at least, I’d say,
Score another one for the heartless utilitarians! And outfit McJoan with a Bar Code Scanner and a bright nylon vest. I know, a damn shame.
But the Retail Public deserves her services even tho she’s , ya know,
a political professional and all now.
The real question is why in the fucking hell are the Democrats so weak. All perky in their handmaiden uniform.
Etc.
And you know when La Digs weighs in we are getting close, closer……. we are right on top of The Truth.
Yeah.
AND when we all wake up, we are in the middle of an oil burn box.
Poor Mcjoan. We need to remember to whom she went down on her Lewis and Clark knees with, for, whatever the dangling ah… er… participle is………….
The real question is why in the fucking hell are the Democrats so weak. …
AND the answer, too. LOL.
Why are they so weak? Well they’re weak, see! Don’t have the votes!
Need More and Better Dems, see…and…the Majority isn’t a real majority and if you knew Senate rules and….
The Democrats and weakness..they are The Singularity.
They sure as hell are in my adult lifetime anyways.
It is laughable, McJoan’s invocation of FDR , another talking point today, (yesterday Ob was Truman, see…) while the unemployed are getting the razors edge treatment spun as Happy Days Are Here Again.
Here is this puppet Obama just fisted with Corporate, Pentagon, and Israeli interests right in his ass. Oh it IS something to see him flop around as they finger fight each other. While he with “his” “Historic” Democratic Congress – don’t laugh or cry too hard – scramble to secure a share of the bloody, oily, and life sustenance-as-hostage corporate riches while the collapsing “gettin’s good”.
The “weakness” works because as humans we all have weaknesses, but elected officials, Party officials and political retainers are not weak at all in translatable terms to ordinary people. To the contrary, the political parasites are Most secure in their livelihoods and future prospects , primo retirements and Healthcare, right down to the choice of multiple catered affairs on a daily basis and paid travel. They indeed have few worries of the “little guy”, other than being seen for the rip off artists and thug covers they are.
This “weak” narrative is better for them politically, because once people see them for the craven bloodsuckers they truly are..forget the Party: this whole ruse of American “representative” ‘Democracy” is through.
Probably all moot the way the God of Unprecedented Oil Drilling JuJu looks.
** And for simplicity’s sake in adopting the American Exceptionalist view, sea floor rupture is what IS. GOING. ON. NOW. What are we talking about in those “ordinary” American terms? A Gulf Coast Tsunami? A methane cloud spurring acid rain driven inland wiping out Southern crops? A dead zone encompassing the entire State of Florida?, How far North? Democratic gigolo Joe Trippi’s house on the Eastern Shore? My finally realized as beloved New Jersey?
And it really isn’t irony that it could happen on “Obma’s” or the “Democrat’s watch” After all the “fight fight fight” slobber for all those years?
well right.. “weak” is a story.
Just like the Judge stopped the [fake] moratorium.
And so on
But they triiiiiied, they triiiiiied!
they triiied and triiied ’til they just couldn’t anymore.
ugh.. I caught Chrlie Rose tonight… 30 mins of long winded lying from Kerry. THEN 30 mins of really tedious boring lying to shore up how great McChrystal is from [ret.] Gen Keane, one of the main architects of Iraq “surge”.
We are so fucking sunk.
BTW, McC drinks…………. Bud light LIME flavor.
Caught a segment tonight, on a beach in Florida. Just all cleaned up… but if you dig a bit, down 6 inches is a solid sheet of oil, stretching for however long. Which will be torn up, should a hurricane hit.
Who knows… someone posted a link to this at Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt_volcano
Just heard there’s a tropical storm brewing in the gulf…
yeah I have been reading about it, as a tropical depression at least, for a couple of days… if it picks up power they will name it Alex.
Vatican ‘astonished’ at Belgian police raid
astonished! outraged even!
You reap what you sow and nobody would put it past those cretins to hide documents in a grave.
The police did th right thing…
From the Department of Awwww(e)….
Amputee cat gets bionic legs
Family: Oil disaster devastated captain who committed suicide
I see Biden’s heading down there for a photo op.
I had been waiting for the first of the sucides, but I thought it would take a few more months. Without knowing his personal history, but seeing his wife and 2 small sons, all I can think is what he saw, hiring out to BP, being out in the Gulf in the so called clean up, skimming and whatever else… he may have thought it will be getting worse. Far worse…
Devastating death…
You may have caught the woman, looks like a local, was a volunteer (think that was her status) for beach cleaning in FL… and has now declined. Says it is all for show. She has talked to both CBS and ABC so I assume she is on cable as well…
The dophin and sharks, bth, have headed into the inland waterways, trying to escape… one marine biologist says there must be scores dead, on the sea floor… and that will all get raked up and brought inward, if there is a big storm, depression, hurricane. The piled up oil, under the top sand on the beaches will get churned up and blwon inland.
This can all get much worse…
We had 36 hours, strangely, of southrn coastal weather here in SF, warm balmy rain, soft warm rain… so I thought about those wonderful days down on the Gulf coast…certain types of mornings in the warm rain…
The story said he made $5,000-$6,000 a day. Imagine getting a cheque for that amount for one month and trying to figure out how you’re going to survive.
I haven’t see her yet.
This is going to be one long, endless nightmare.
Yes I think a lot of people don’t realise how much money there can be, repeat CAN be, in commercial fishing. Of course costs are high and it can be unpredictable… but the money is there.
PLUS I have read that over the past three years, fishing was steadily improving. I think some people on the Gulf really did feel they were at a significant turning point from Katrina, across the board.
So the Obama administration is the apotheosis of the “appearance of change”. The NY Times has the banner headline of “SWEEPING FINANCIAL REFORM !!!”, and literally Joe Biden below the header is the article:
Banks should be able to avoid most reforms, analysts say
I myself just can’t wait for more of this unchanging change.
Gibbs says we lead the whirld in reform. But of course consider the source, gah. There is an article at FORBES, ffs, that says Treasury, Obby, Dobbs and Franks have all sold out to Wall St.
Somebody or other at Policito was comparing Barry to LBJ for domestic reform. It is all very old dead fish.
Is he serious? Did Canada have to bail out its banks? No.
More American exceptionalism.
Gibbs is a Dem operative, pretty much gutter level…. Wrong person to have in that job. But suitable, I would say for this admin.
dkos wreck list diary = yay they passed a bill.
Forget about what’s actually in it. Just cheer because they passed something. (Of course, I needled some of them by asking if they blindly cheered every time the Repubs passed a bill to – since passing a bill is now something to have a parade about.)
noooooooooo
LINK