Ancien regime… 20 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in Culture of Death, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.61 comments
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger arrives with his wife, Nancy, for the state dinner [Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]
Or… they would be if they would dry up and blow away. Become ghosts, stop showing up.
But no, on and on they go.
New 19 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.71 comments
A southern pochard duck stands on the head of a hippo at Berlin zoo Picture: AP
Just catching a quick snip on a news update, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D-FL) bleating that any repeal of health care from the R (destined to die in the senate anyway!) will be “putting the insurance cos back in charge”.
Don’t make me laugh TOO hard, girlie.
It’s going to be a long few years, not just with ObRama, but with the likes of Wasserman-Shultz and Gillibrand marshalling the Democratic wimmens vote. And St Gabby of the Sunland Parking Lot, as soon as she can ambulate and speak, which, if one listens to the stub of a husband, should be this weekend.
But, of course, all the stupid, deluded voters in the country are Republicans…
Hardly.
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Flux 17 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.93 comments
A fire at a residence in Hammamet, said to be owned by a member of the president’s inner circle. There have been reprisals against anything owned by the the former president or his family [AFP/GETTY]
We seem to be in an era, or a gasp in time at least, when there is extra flux.
I see too, in the news, that ”Baby Doc” Duvalier has shown himself in Haiti.
Meanwhile, the adult daughters of the ousted leader of Tunisia are holed up at the Disneyland Hotel outside of Paris. Mother, so says the Daily Mail, is thought to be Dubai, where she likes to shop. Father is behind a wall of armed guards in Jeddah…
That, the Disneyland Hotel, seems weirdly appropriate.
****
Nearly… 15 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.54 comments
August 11, 1954, New York, NY
Photograph: Vivian Maier/Courtesy of Maloof Collection
Vivian Maier’s extraordinary photographs of Chicago and New York
Chicago nanny Vivian Maier died in 2009, leaving behind 100,000 negatives that no one but she had ever seen. Now, her work has been discovered by chance
Nearly an antique world…. I was wandering around at the Guardian and stumbled on this little gallery…
And I see from an article on the side column, Vivian Maier also photographed Chicago. Her negatives were almost accidentally bought at auction after her death, set aside as perhaps of no interest, then looked at again…
http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/
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Allegiance 13 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Total fucking lunatics.90 comments
The President also paid tribute to the people who on Saturday wrestled the gunman to the ground and prevented him from claiming more victims
Picture: EPA
They look nicely unified. So, can we declare class over? Lecture over? Finger shake over?
If only…
***
Coach Barry 12 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Total fucking lunatics.75 comments
Really.
Could the thing have been more turgid – or a cheaper display to buy the huzzahs, the whistles, the screams?
I’d be embarrassed to be in that hall. It’s embarrassing to be a citizen of this country.
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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.
***
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.
Buds 10 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.33 comments
Obama walks to the Oval Office alongside former US presidents Bill Clinton, right, and George W Bush, left, after speaking about relief efforts following the earthquake in Haiti, during a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House on 16 January [Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images]
Oh I am so not into all the reverential bullshit they want to force on us. Never have been …
Buds? How about spuds? I say let’s have Mr Potato Head kits for all the pretzels. It can hardly be more tragic – or more dangerous! – then the living reality that is forced on us.
Instead we are making, have made, “regime change” in foreign lands our god-given right. “Targeted kills”, extra-judicial killing by the State is our publicly stated policy.
What does the fool American public think “mopping up actions” are in war? It is killing what is left on the ground.
We are at the start of a week or more of utterly ridiculous drool over an assassination attempt and the death of several others.
I have yet to hear anything that was not phony.
The wanna-be pulpiteer that is the titular head of government is in the midst of the “moment of silence”, it’s Monday morning….
On a lighter note, here, from the same gallery at the Guardian (a year of Ob) is a photo op that would have been better missed.
Who plans this junk anyway?
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Some drivel from poor Ezra. Oh get over yourself Ezra and this drum beat that is calling retail politics some passionate cry for freedom and democracy. Most pols, both sides, want highly restricted access and would prefer to retreat to whatever cocoon can be labeled for their “safety” and sold to us as the ”public safety” as well….
via the Mike Allen email:
IF YOU READ ONLY ONE THING — EZRA KLEIN, “What the shooting shouldn’t change”:
“I’ve heard some talk on cable news of giving congressmen security details and using rope lines and so forth at events. I hope we don’t end up going there … I don’t want to minimize the awful tragedy in Tucson. But the reality is that violent attacks on legislators are very rare. … There’s going to be a desire to do something in the coming days, to respond somehow. And we need to take care to make sure our response pushes us in the right direction. A simple principle, I think, is that whatever we do should emphasize our commitment to the sort of everyday democracy that Rep. Giffords and her constituents were practicing. … I think one way to pay tribute to those who died or were harmed in the shooting is to do as they did and attend your congressperson’s next community meeting. Conversely, making community meetings more difficult and politicians more physically distant from their constituents would be giving something important away, and it’s not clear that we’d gain any real safety or security in return.” http://wapo.st/eg4Odc
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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Shoot 8 January 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Total fucking lunatics.84 comments
Matt Burrard-Lucas lies on the ground taking pictures of meerkats when one of the meerkats hops onto his head for a better view, in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana
[BURRARD-LUCAS/BARCROFT]
*****
Poor Giffords, not only shot point blank… one report called it “shot thru and thru”, but first alive, then dead, then alive.
I managed to remember what the news mess made me think of… the day Major Hassan popped off on the mil base. So many stories in just the first two, three, four hours. First one then two then three shooters… this happened, that happened.
I had Ratatouille from Netflix and was reading the reviews at N…. it’s the story of a rat that ends up in Paris cooking… but an early scene is of an elderly French farm woman literally shooting up her house tryng to “get the rats”.
A reviewer said, No Child Should Be Allowed To See That!!!
And I thought, do you have any clue what country you are living in?
Land of the shooters, hipsters and the shoot from the hip crowd.
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Just for a change of pace I have Dexter Season 4… oh my, Lithgow IS an horrific killer. Yum. Off to the races…
😉
Marisacat 