Sunday 30 April 2011
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
A butterfly sits on a flower in a garden in Dhulikhel near Kathmandu, Nepal [Narendra Shrestha/EPA]
******
Marisacat
Opera Glasses and Popcorn
trackback
-
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]
-
Admin Controls
So.
Democracy NOW! / Amy Goodman- "Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism": Police "Body-Slam" Jewish Dartmouth Prof. at Campus Gaza Protest
- Report from Rafah: Israel Seizes Border Crossing, Blocking Humanitarian Aid, as Ceasefire Talks Continue
- Fmr. Israeli Peace Negotiator Daniel Levy: U.S. Pressure on Israel Is Key to Lasting Gaza Ceasefire
- Headlines for May 7, 2024
- Revolt on Campus: Protests over Gaza Disrupt Graduation Ceremonies as Police Crack Down on Encampments
- "They Are Starving," Says Doctor Back from Gaza; World Food Programme Warns North in "Full-Blown Famine"
- "Criminal Act": Israel Bans Al Jazeera, Largest Int'l News Org. in Gaza, Ahead of Rafah Invasion
- Headlines for May 6, 2024
- "Dead on Arrival": Doctors Back from Gaza Describe Horrific Hospital Scenes, Decimated Health System
- "This Militaristic Approach Has Been a Failure": Meet Hala Rharrit, First U.S. Diplomat to Quit over Gaza
- Electronic Intifada / General Content
- Warning of "Srebrenica" in Gaza as Israel seizes Rafah crossing
- Biden must end his hopeless devotion to Israel
- Fear, fury and fatigue in Rafah
- Hamas agrees to Gaza truce as Israel vows to move into Rafah
- I want this nightmare to end
- Utter nonsense from CNN's Jake Tapper
- Genocide robs children of parents
- My brother saves lives
- Civil rights don't apply to Palestinians living in Europe
- Renowned Gaza surgeon killed in Israeli detention
- Press TV / Middle East News
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Press TV
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- McClatchy Headlines
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- The Real News
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Reuters / Politics
- Gold bars are selling like hot cakes in Korea's convenience stores and vending machines
- Olam Ups Takeover Bid for Namoi Cotton
- US Masters Fund Continues Stock Buy-Back
- Westpac Releases US-Specific Interim Results
- News Corporation Launches $1B Stock Buy-Back
- Botanix Gears Up for Sofdra Launch Webinar
- News Corporation Launches $1 Billion Buy-Back
- Nova Cannabis Inc. Showcases Growth and Expansion
- Regenx Tech Corp. Unveils Investor Webinar
- Osisko Development Shareholders Back Board and Plans
Flickr Photos
October 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.
Marisacat 
Libyan government spokesman says air strike kills Saif al-Arab Gaddafi and three of the Libyan leader’s grandsons.
People forget that good, bad, indifferent and / or hideous, all of the non-aligned countries take not only a different view of us, but often have loads of information on hte US.
I notice Fidel has a piece up this weekend in Counterpunch.
Too bad he doesn’t govern as well as he delivers a punch line.
Good writers, who call themselves liberals just wanna help him out. You know, like the joke about drones. Very likely written in the joke shop of Jon Stewart.
I read pleasant commentary around about his efforts at the dinner.
But then, I did not always dislike Bush, either, when he was performing.
It’s endless.
do you mean that nasty one Obama made as regards having the power to drone at whim, using his daughters as bait?
reminded me of gwb bragging about his power to execute that womman as she begged for life,…despite pardoning Lucas, who murdered his Mom?, not to mention how many others?
Well, Bush on the execution was his own devising. Off the cuff. People don’t seem to mind much.
And mindless white liberals and stupid blacks seem fine with war jokes, killing jokes, as long as it is Obama making the jokes… Ob studiously ignoring race – – other then using his own for elections.. or erecting a defense for himself, using race.
All just wallpaper.
Performing is their job.
yeah I agree. And occasionally both were good at it.
Shit eater tho one is, and a shit kicker the other.
The whole thing is deep in the gutter. Or, down the drain, really, I guess.
gad.. I have been so wrapped up in Treme that I lost, or gained, a day. I find I keep thinking it is Sunday night, not Sat night.
that show is hypnotic that way.
I think unconsciously, it is why I got busy to reintroduce myself to coffee again (it was rough but I kept at it, by now I can have a cup without any extreme reaction)…. I could nto have stood to watch something set in NO and be unable to have a cup of cofee.
I also via Netfix am watching the Bourdain series, just saw season 1 ep 1… Paris and NJ. I’d have suffered thru the Paris segment (and, it was better than I had expected it to be) if I was stil unable to drink coffee…
😆
Last week Bourdain was in Northern Japan, recorded just a few weeks before the earthquakes and tsuanami. The fresh ramen looked so yummy.
I am working my way thru them… and started picking out of order for the next two or three. The next one coming has a segment (1 of 5) in New Orleans…
The other so poignant thing about Treme, is that it was filmed before BP. I mean, when Desautel’s was struggling, at least it could offer, when she could pay COD, but it could offer Gulf shellfish and oysters.
A local channel here, while that damned fucking thing was still gushing, went to the Gulf coast of Mexico, to check on decades later aftermath of the horrible PEMEX gulf oil spill in the 70s, think it was 79. The oysters are still there, but no one bothers to harvest them. They taste of oil.
Heartbreaking.
such a horrible crime, and they won’t ever pay for it.
yup. Ob and Feinberg and all the BPers will just keep moving on the big screen of life…. Alive and well. I took particular note Ob said in AL he had just never seen nothin’ like that.
So easy to forget he was in NO several times in the wake of Katrina, at least once he flew down with Bush on AF 1 (and later scrubbed his site of his remarks on Katrina, that race had nothing to do with it). But history and historic is just so fleeting.
😆 It’s hard out there for a pimp.
One of the commentaries I listened to on the Treme discs said in the year following Katrina, the city alone (to say nothing of the whole of the affected Gufl coast) had a suicide rate 4 x the national average.
Who knows after BP.
Earth to Libertarians: Private Parties Have Coercive Power Too
Everybody should see Coppola’s The Conversation. All those private parties, including now, again, paramilitaries, may work at times for governments, but they are ”for hire”. To anybody.
Libertarian beliefs are fine, but Big L libertarians are, in my book, a joke. They exist to make R look mainstream. One reason R like to have a L in local races and debates… Most of the ones I have come across had a big slice of Thug in the make up.
That is such a great movie …
It is still stunning.
ooh, I want to see that one.
If you have not seen it – it is pretty amazing…
I am sure it is less on Oahu, where there is more than one gas station per district, but still….
Holy shit!
$6.03….guess it’s a good thing that they’re on an island and don’t have too far to drive!!
… even in Hawai’i where every thing has to get colportaged in… it is still a bit of an eyepopper.
ugh, don’t even want to know how much their food is costing now.
I haven’t watched the video at this link: Workers Leaving the Googleplex, but Andrew Norman Wilson‘s post, below his video, is a much needed, unveiling of the google, do no evil culture:
(Hat tip to correntewire.)
I am surprised they don’t run that operation off site. Or farm it out, rahter than have contract workers on site..
Obviously they work 10 hour shifts… wonder fi that is 4 days, or includes daily overtime or if that is waived adn they sign on for 5 days, 10 hours, all straight pay. I bet they do.
thanks for that, off to read…
I’m surprised it’s been kept so quiet, then again, further on in the piece, he discusses the tight security. I tend to disagree with him about how many of the workers didn’t know…. Probably well known in the black and hispanic communities,… almost certainly known by Eshoo, Boxer, DIFI, Pukesom, the Brown[s], et al, ..likely known by the entirety of the 2008 pretzel candidates who ALL slobbered at the googleplex.
I think the young man is very brave for putting this out there.
well he doesn’t really say the workers are US born he leaves that sort of thing rather blank.
I cannot rememeber the name of the local US rep in that district. It is a woman… Eshoo I think only has part of it. Not the only one.
Zoe Lofgren, that is the other one.
Nancy took H1b visas away, from a black woman rep in Texas, and gve it to Zoe. 😆 not hard to see why.
I thought it was only Eshoo, for Mountain View House Rep (and much/all? of Palo Alto), will go look.
He does leave the nationality somewhat blank. There is a large population of black and hispanic Temp workers from East Palo alto and East Menlo, neighboring the googleplex …..I’m sure ManPower, et al, absolutely luvv them.
here is a quick thumbnail:
Jackie Speier; 13th District, Rep. Pete Stark; 14th District, Rep. Anna Eshoo; 15th District, Rep. Mike Honda; 16th District, Rep. Zoe Lofgren; 17th District,
… and of course La Nan
the 14th/Eshoo includes all of: Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Mountain view. Hadn’t known it included so much of Santa Cruz County.
well…. speier, the old Lantos seat, reaches into part of san fran…
i think you have to buy tham all off…
yup ..all “bipartison,” bought and paid for.
oh I agree hon, there’s nothing which particularly stands out as being “illegal,” just hideously inhumane, ….particularly for a State, and Industry, which has a totally undeserved National Reputation as being liberal, race conscious, gender conscious (curious as to the proportion of females, as the wimmins have been historically ‘treasured’ for those nimble, dexterous fingers, and calmer natures when faced with hideous mind numbing jobs) etc., …sigh
sigh… all that gibber about Cali is just that, gibberish.
Zoe has the 16th, most, or all, of San Jose, and more.
(and yeah hon, I’m sure Zoe knows about the yellow badges. Also,…either way, if she doesn’t know about them, she doesn’t deserve her postition, and if she does know, she doesn’t deserve her position)
I could see them not knowing the details, any of the details…. But what they do know is that there are fewer and fewer good jobs. More and more is out sourced or cheap labor brought in, or various types of contract workers are brought in, etc. Period.
Yellow badges sounds like internal security to me, frankly. On site tracking.
All I can think about with the yellow badges, are yellow, ghetto stars, they’re not stupid, and the Jew Wash is so prevalent, I can’t imagine them not connecting those dots, with the yellow badge decision…
Yeah, the reps probably don’t know the details …and yeah, … certainly did everything they could,..to keep from directly knowing them, …most especially in their written and teleconned communications.
But the thing diane, there is nothing illegal, that I can see. One reason I say it is internal security.
Sure it looks awful, but … terms of contract are terms of contract AND Cali has been a ‘right to work’ state for a long time. A lot went away in that change over. Poof!, gone.
I tuned in for a news update, after taking hours off news this weekend… and whammo:
CBS is reporting the speech will be about Usama b laden. (caught him? killed him? Lost him again?)
NYT running a headline that ObL is d e a d.
Would it change the wars?
No…. it won’t.
probably had him for a while, timed it when they thought it would help with something or another.
who cares?
I don’t think many will care. Inside the Beltway, inside the inside of the b….
Ob needed two good days in a row or something.
LOL
they’re pointing out on NBC that this is the anniversary of the “mission accomplished” speech by Dubya in fighter jocky drag.
Wobbly does the same stuff, but differently. Con Law scholarly ways…
Etc.
Drones a Go Go.
My local teevee channel cut in for that brrreaking news. That doesn’t happen very often!
catnip! How are you?
Alive! 🙂
Good News!!
😉
are you guys getting rid of the conservatives this week?
Commies baby!
just in time for heating up the 2012 rerun of Shepicus, ugh, now I’ll really have to be wary of what station I tune into. Yeah, no it won’t change the Forever Wars.
The story is now starting to smell.
First it was drones. Now they say it was Special Ops on the ground… and they planned a “burial at sea”.
But earlier they said, they confrimed DNA, becuase they had earlier gotten the brain of his sister who died of cancer (they went to court to get it!) and so they had a DNA source to test against.
I dunno. Smell-a-vision.
Script re write needed in all aisles! Send in a platoon of script doctors!
.. gah. And Slobby is running 45 mins late from first time given for Speech-O-Rama.
I see they dragged Wolfie out of bed.
CBS keeps checking in with the empty podium.
Over an hour late. And this has been the consuming issue behind closed doors for “days”?
Mad script re writing!
Oh Jeebus – save us from the poetic slobberation.
He probably just died of old age.
oh no! You are slanderous. We shot him. We did. We did!
in Crawford Texas.
this could get very ‘amusing,’ the AP reported that an anonymous party stated that the US has his body.
Aren’t there Islamic rules about handling/burying the body?
“They took care to avoid civilian casualties” – doesn’t mean there weren’t any.
doesn’t mean they took care either, we need the code ring.
well yes but, we are not held to that…
NO wonder it took him so bloody long to come out. Jeebus.
Meanwhile, things are going to Helena, Handbasket in Libya: UN leaves Tripoli amid mob attacks
well bombing a city of a million people will get messy!
Stiff upper UN lip fellas.
oh ffs. NOW David Martin on CBS is saying it “happened today“.
Get one story straight fellas
The crowd outside the WH looks like yokels and rubes and yahoos.
Proves they are everywehre.
Adn Wobbly gave a speech that Bush could have given.
A crowd is forming outside the White House reportedly chanting “USA, USA!” Pictures of meat heads bumping chests and pumping their fists in the air.
Maybe they can parade his head around on a pike.
Civilization advances my ass.
looks frat party to me!
blech, I’m going to bed.
Great, now whichever canucks are still awake have to wait for PM Harper (may this be his last day as that – election tomorrow with commie takeover) to speak.
I’m watching Desperate Housewives…
I just read Ignatieff support “fading”.
😆
That’s been fading ever since he was anointed. Big blow to his ego.
Big fuckin deal.
Elvis is STILL missing WHILE Syria and Iran refuse to comment on his whereabouts.
{Looking suspiciously around room}
We drive on!
Well, Roman Polanski is laughing his ass off.
New
LINK
…….. 😯