TW3 — giggles and homework

August 8th, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … an illustration of transparency — from Ted Stevens to Bruce Ivens, we’re finally learning how to read between the lines! Corruption, obfuscation and manipulation has infected everything from the tomato’s on your Whopper to the fate of your nation.

And my pffft! for the day goes to those who botched the bear; if we can drop little “out of control” disabled children with a stun gun “for their own good,” why can’t we control a frantic critter with a sedative dart? Pffft pffft PFFFT!

I have a gazillion articles you should read — but if your life is a busy as mine, you won’t take the time. So I’m posting only one weekend read today, by ever-entertaining Mark Morford … a couple of video links that will dazzle and amaze … and a crackerjack blogger response that amused me with its direct stream-of-consciousness honesty.

Here is your assignment, today — on 8/8/8 … which is an authentic 8 energy day, urging us to stand in our power and manifest rightly. The John McCain video is jaw-dropping and proves definitively, as I’ve long suspected, that he just ain’t right — send that around to everyone you know and don’t leave a single Republican out! Think of it as a mercy — save them from themselves!!

There are voting mistakes … and then there are tragic voting mistakes, as we well know. A John McCain presidency would not be a Bush third term … it would be a Reagan second term, and Cindy’s skills don’t shape up to take the reins like “Mommy” Nancy’s did. Consider this an incompetency alert and get that video out there!

Have a terrific weekend — and take time today, and every day in the next months, to cover the world with your prayers for a blanket of protective Christed light … focus particularly on Barack, on the Olympics, and on the Conventions.

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
August 5, 2008

Senator “Uncle” Ted Stevens, the longest-serving
Republican in the Senate and “Alaskan of the Century,” was
indicted for seven felonies related to unreported gifts
worth $250,000 from an oil-services company. The alleged
gifts included a Land Rover, a Viking gas grill, and
construction that doubled the size of his home. “There is
a lot of comity on our committee,” said an unnamed
Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “I
don’t think any of this is going to have an impact on his
earmarks.” A Department of Justice report found that
senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
broke federal law by screening candidates for career
positions using political and religious criteria, sexual
rumors, and database searches for terms like “abortion,”
“guns,” “homosexuality,” and “Florida recount.” American
intelligence officials claimed that Pakistani spies helped
plan the July 7 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul,
Afghanistan, and the United Nations agreed to oversee
India’s civilian nuclear facilities, a key step toward a
U.S.-India nuclear pact desired by the Bush
Administration. The House Judiciary Committee cited Karl
Rove for contempt, and members of the Ute Mountain Ute and
Southern Ute tribes performed a Native American blessing
near the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, site of the
upcoming Democratic Convention.

The U.S. unemployment rate continued to rise, as the total
number of jobs lost this year reached 463,000. Housing
prices seemed to plunge, but some critics of the leading
housing-price index said that it exaggerates the market’s
downside due to the high number of foreclosures. The White
House projected a $482 billion federal deficit, and thirty
states faced total deficits of $40 billion. “If they gave
out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility,” said
Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, “President Bush would
take the gold, silver, and bronze.” Conservative rabbis
proposed a new kosher certification favoring food
companies that provide health insurance and retirement
benefits to workers. Wal-Mart warned thousands of its
managers that a Democratic president would likely make it
easier for their subordinates to unionize. “I am not a
stupid person,” said a customer-service supervisor from
Missouri. “They were telling me how to vote.” Congress
voted to adjourn for summer vacation, blocking a vote on a
bill to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling. Several
dozen Republicans refused to leave, speaking to tourists
and a troop of visiting Boy Scouts even after the
microphones and lights were turned off. “This is the
people’s house,” cried Rep. Thaddeus McCotter. “This is
not Pelosi’s politburo.” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died, as
did Robert “Bob” Hamilton, the model for Norman Rockwell’s
1944 portrait of a Boy Scout.

A black bear with its head stuck in a jug was killed by
police in Frazee, Minnesota, after it wandered into the
town’s Turkey Day celebration. The starving bear felt
“high anxiety,” said Rob Naplin of the Department of
Natural Resources, “and frustration with its predicament.”
Nearly 150 people died in a stampede at a Himalayan temple
to the goddess Naina Devi, brought on by the rumor of a
landslide. Bruce E. Ivins, a top biodefense researcher at
the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, died in an apparent
suicide. Ivins was the prime suspect in an FBI
investigation into the fall 2001 anthrax attacks, which
killed five people and were widely linked at the time to
Saddam Hussein. “He was going to go out in a blaze of
glory,” said Jean Duley, a social worker who claimed that
Dr. Ivins shared his homicidal fantasies with her. “He was
going to take everybody out with him.” Ivins also wrote
letters to his local newspaper about his religious
views. “You can get on board or be left behind,” he wrote
shortly after the 2004 election, “because the Christian
Nation Express is pulling out of the station!” Some
scientists doubted that a vaccine researcher like Ivins
would have the skills needed to make inhalable anthrax,
and others questioned the FBI’s methods, which included
using bloodhounds to track the mail. “I think the pressure
got to him,” said Ivins’ brother Tom. “He’s not a man like
I am.”

– Sam Stark
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/WeeklyReview2008-08-05

weekend reads

Dazed and Confused

Paris Hilton Responds to John McCain Ad

I Dont Like McCain
JamesPB — bogging comments from Smiking Chimp

Personally I just dont like McCain, for several reasons:

I dont believe he is a war hero. He screwed up and got shot down in his plane. That means he missed his target and also failed to take effective evasive maneuvers and lost a $3 million plane. He bombed civilians with 500 pound bombs from 20,000 feet. That’s not quite like hand-to-hand combat. I suppose when he hit the ground with his parachute that he thought he was going to be greeted as a liberator. I just down buy the whole story.

He cant raise his arms properly cause the North Vietnamese broke his shoulders, or maybe he broke them in the crash. I dont know and dont care. I want a President that can raise his arms in exhaltation, not just stick them straight out like he’s giving you directions to the Mall or something. I dont like those arms.

His face his screwed up. Yes, I know he has had cancer. Him and millions of other Americans (most of which promptly die becasue they get raked over the coals by the insurance industry or they dont have insurance at all, me included). So, I dont like his swollen face. Actually it looks a little better lately. Maybe he’s had it drained. I dont have a clue what’s in his cheek. Besides, it shows poor judgement that he stayed out in the sun all his life and didnt use sunscreen SPF 75. Who wants a President and Commander-in-Chief of 20,000 nuclear warheads on high alert 24/7 who didnt have the common sense to use sunscreen SPF 75. Not me.

He’s short. I have nothing against short people. I was short once, before I got taller. He apparently stopped at some point and didnt get taller, hence, he is short. That tells you something about the man. He doesnt finish projects. He doesnt complete tasks. He abandons things before he finishes them. He stopped growing. He’s short. I’m not saying its his fault. We’ve had short Presidents before but they had big minds and great mental capacity. McCain doesnt.

He cant read a telepromter. How can you be a Senator for 26 years and be in public service most of your life and get paid for giving public speeches and not be able to be good at it. Elvis Presley could sing “Hound Dog” and “Dont Be Cruel” so well because he sang each song over 10,000 times. How can McCain NOT be an excellent speaker after 26 years, even when he has the god damned words scrolling down before him, in 24 point type, on three screens positioned directly in front of him. Christ, if he cant master that skill how can he even figure out how to sign his name on legislation.

He cant use a computer. I doubt Bush can either. I’ve never seen a single photo of him sitting in front of a computer. I’ve never even seen Bush carry a manila folder. Does he ever, ever, ever read anything. McCain too. He refers to Google as “the Google” and he admits he hasnt mastered emailing yet. Christ. I wonder if he has transitioned from using a rotary dial phone to the new, advanced touch tone button models. Someone should sneak into his home and see if he still has the old rotary dial wall mounted phones. I bet he is going to need one of those TV converter boxes in 2009 when the FCC does away with analog TV transmission.

I dont like his wife. I’d like to be married to her, but I dont like her. I like her money. Sometimes she shows some decent cleavage but she’s a bit skinny. I’m not sure she’d look all that good stepping out of the shower, naked. She packs on the make-up and being worth $120 million I imagine she has a cosmetologist and a hair dresser following her around all day. She’s looks a little to much like a cadaver. Plus, she’s never worked a day in her life and she rarely says a “peep”. I guess is she is an airhead, like her husband.

McCain also graduated from Anapolis, fifth from the bottom of his class out of 500 or so. How does one get fifth from the bottom. Go figure.

He’s been in Congress for 26 years. What has he accomplished. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. He’s not even a Maverick.

Plus, he said he’d run an exemplary campaign. Now he has let his campaign sink to the pits of hell. His TV ads are the bottom of the barrell kind of crap.

He’s basically clueless. He doesnt have the slightest clue as to what its like to be out of work, have no job prospects, have no health insurance, have no hopes of retirement, having to wait in lines at the airport, having to pick up your own clothes at the dry cleaners, go to the Post Office and wait in line to buy stamps, get into college on your own skills because you dont have a Daddy and Grandaddy who were Admiral or Brigadere Generals or whatever the hell they were.

Plus, he bailed out on his first wife after she had a bad car accident and became disabled. Talk about loyalty!

I just dont buy his whole story. To think that 45% of the nation would even consider voting for him is scary.

And he’ll problaby pick Mitt Romney as his VP. There’s another one, born with the silver spoon in his mouth (or some other orifice). Mitt’s father was CEO of American Motors and Governor of Michigan and ran for President himself, and Mitt has the nerve to portray himself as a “self made successfull businessman”. Plus, who wants a VP named after a baseball glove. Mitt? What kind of name is Mitt? ++

Vote for Bush? Pay up
Did you help put America’s worst prez into power? Time to make amends
Mark Morford, SF Gate
Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Sure, you could start with an open-palmed apology, a profoundly contrite on-your-knees sort of thing, maybe an open letter in your local paper or a heartfelt speech at your next dinner party whereby you stumble though some sort of “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking” or “I must’ve been blind” or “Wow, that mescaline sure was potent” type of defense for your unfortunate and reprehensible choices.

But the fact is, that’s not really gonna cut it.

Of course, you could do the obvious thing and cast your vote in November for Barack Obama, but even I know that’s probably asking too much — and besides, all signs indicate a potential landslide for Obama anyway, given the unprecedented worldwide rush of positive energy, the tremendous cosmic craving for intelligent and new and ingenuous, coupled with a deep undercurrent of karmic revulsion toward the wonky, bloodthirsty agenda of grandpa McCain.

So then, what can you do, all you increasingly humiliated, disillusioned, deeply mistaken Bush voters? How can you, having hopefully realized by now the violent error of your ways, take steps both small and large to try and make amends for shoving Dubya down the throat of the world, for your tiny but oh so poisonous contribution to the worst and most demeaning eight years in modern American politics?

First, let’s be clear: As tempting as it is, I do not suggest some grand humiliating gesture, some sweetly demeaning spectacle whereby you must dye your hair blue and run naked through the streets of rural Alabama waving a rainbow flag and carrying a bottle of fresh stem cells as you suddenly claim to care deeply about blue fin tuna and Brazilian rain forests and honest sex ed for teens. Unless you really want to.

Nor do I suggest, say, an immediate “Bush tax,” whereby everything you ever purchase from now until you die will cost 10 percent more than it does for liberals, and every cent of it will go to the arts, and schools, and women’s rights, and alternative fuels, and GLAAD, et al and so on. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a damn fine idea, just a bit unrealistic.

Let’s keep it simple. The next time, say, gay marriage comes up in conversation, perhaps you say, well, you know, I don’t really get the gay thing at all and certainly my anxiety about it is rooted somewhere too deep and sad to explore right now, but I’ve been doing a bit of actual homework (!), and it turns out that homosexuality is simply all over the animal kingdom, across all sorts of species, and animals seem to enjoy it for both survival and pleasure. Who knew?

In other words, nature seems to approve. And isn’t nature merely God in a nice grass suit?

As your baffled pals pick their jaws up off the floor, you can add: Hell, science is pretty much proving homosexuality is biological anyway, not a “lifestyle” choice at all. And gays in the military? Hell, if the badass Israeli army can handle it, the United States sure as hell can, am I right? Now, pass me a stogie and let’s go blast some canned pheasant with a shotgun.

See? It doesn’t have to all be liberal tofu gobbledygook. I know that waking up to the contemptible wrongheadedness that was your support of the BushCo neocon agenda must be painful. Baby steps, honey. Baby steps.

Speaking of the military, maybe it’s time you openly acknowledge that you actually can support our troops, enjoy your righteous sense of patriotism, think America is the world’s greatest kick-ass whateveryoulike, and yet not think it’s OK that a secretive and bloodthirsty cadre of inept leaders has wasted trillions of dollars and thousands of young American lives in a failed grab for power and petroleum and megalomania. You think?

Which brings up another point: It’s also perfectly OK to make whatever you do sound like something you thought up, all by yourself. Yes, progressives have been urging you to raise your awareness of things humane and open-minded for eons. No matter. You can take all the credit. We’re generous that way.

Let’s say you do something as simple as trade in your massive American gas hog for a Mini Cooper. And now you find you really love your little German-engineered wonder, its handling and efficiency and joyous kick. Perfectly fine to hide your newfound refinement and tell your macho friends that you did it because you hate giving all that oil dough to those greedy Saudi sheiks — and what’s more, now you can take corners at 50 mph without rolling over and bursting into flame. Cool, no?

While you’re at it, mention to your buds that the steaks they’re eating are actually locally raised and grass-fed, not because you give a good goddamn about humane animal treatment or toxic industrial feedlots (though you really should), but because the meat tastes better and costs less and you wanna save some dough to, you know, buy more guns and porn. Hey, whatever works.

But don’t stop there. Might as well tell your homies to throw their food scraps in your new compost bin, too, not because you care about garbage, but because you learned how to cultivate some great topsoil in which to grow your heirloom tomatoes for your famous spaghetti sauce for NASCAR night. Look at you! Actually caring about the health and the environment, but pretending not to! Hey, it’s a start.

How about secretly beginning to note the overarching brilliance of, say, Dan Savage as well as the nauseating rancidity of Ann Coulter? Or stick a Cabela’s catalog cover over an issue of Mother Jones or the Nation, and read it with an open mind and a bottle of premium chilled sake? Or realize, with increasing sense of shame, that across just about every social and environmental issue, the hippies were pretty much right about everything, no matter what you thought of the clothes and the music and the hair? Now you’re getting it.

Don’t forget the money. Feel free to make a series of large, anonymous donations to the Sierra Club, or a local battered women’s shelter, or even Planned Parenthood. Trust me when I say, the odds are shockingly good your own daughter/son/wife will be incredibly grateful for their wise and informed counsel someday soon, if she or he hasn’t been already.

You get the idea? Really, compared with the disgusting levels of damage wrought by your support of the dark armies of Bush, these suggestions are nothing. You actually owe quite a bit more. OK, a lot more. Incalculable, really.

But for now, let’s be reasonable. After all, the sooner you realize that the world is, in fact, not America’s bitch, that it’s actually a living, humming organism, interconnected and interdependent in ways and on levels no organized religion or fear-based neocon political agenda can possibly comprehend, much less bomb into submission, well, the sooner we can get our collective s— together and move the human experiment forward once again.

And after what you’ve put us all through, it’s the very least you could do. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Entry Filed under: Political Waves