Matthews/DeLay Muck; new Google feature request; McCain KoolAid; & Etc
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Polemics & Poetics of the week
by pogblog, hither & yon,
out & about in BlogLand
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to Nemesis of Evil about elections, local & otherwise:
Not only must one stick velcroically to Talking Points, but the Points can't be longer than what fits in a fortune cookie. And more than two Points is stretching the ability of your audience to recall at all. Sigh.
“A Bumper Sticker trumps an Essay every time.” (from some weaselly but correct political operative)
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to chancelucky on his piece on immigration as the child of illegal immigrants:
Chancelucky, you “… believe strongly in a minimum wage and working conditions standards for all countries …” We clearly have to fight the union fights for a [global] middle class all over again.
Some of the 104 million dollars per minute we're spending on the Military Budget would go a long toward schooling & health caring & clean airing & dwelling your grandchildren.
Is Reagan declaring from the grave, “Mr. Bush, tear down this wall”?
Is the wall going to be electrified? What have we come to?
If we spent all this massive Wall 'n War Money building up social systems in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Mexico, in Iraq, in Africa, & our own country too, we could have a widely prosperous world.
(I just saw that 40% of house purchases are going for “2nd homes.” How in any world can we give tax breaks on a 2nd house before everyone has one house? And how come homeowners can take their dwelling expenses off their taxes and renters can not? It would certainly help renters to build up a down payment for house #1 if they could take a good portion of their rent off their taxes.)
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to Chris Matthews (hardball@msnbc.com) re Matthews' loathsome sycophanting with Slime Prince, Mr. DeLay:
Dear Chris,
I've had my share of political disappointments & horrors (JFK was shot on my 19th birthday for starters), but this obsequious chat you had with Tom DeLay off camera broke my heart. I could not imagine you brownnosing to any politician like that least of all a megalomaniac like Mr.DeLay.
You're supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable in your morality, aren't you? It isn't a partisan thing, but a power thing.
“I owe you one, no, I owe you two,” you fawningly say to Mr. DeLay after being snide about Hillary. I felt sick.
I would have been appalled but I was suddenly too exhausted to be appalled. Exhausted with all you expensive suits who have forgot their roots and want to be 'inside' so bad that you lose your bearings. Judith Miller was bad enough — et tu Chris Matthews?
I've watched you every day for years. I feel such dismay — and betrayal really. I thought you were a journalist not a toady.
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4-6-06 2:10:57 am
On Salon to Farhad Manjoo re McCain's loss of integrity:
Perhaps you missed Jon's [Stewart’s] interview on the very same show with the real authentic person, Studs Terkel. Studs said a democracy is about being able to say “Bugger off” to the sycophants, to the totalitarians of patriotism or of theism — that if he met George Bush he could (& would) say, “Bugger off!”
Well, John McCain should say “Bugger off!” to Mr. Falwell, a vicious weasel who has no credibility with any half-decent person. How can you cut McCain slack for this?
Bush is the guy who approved disgusting racist push-poll phoning against McCain in South Carolina, yet McCain was running around the recent Republican gathering in Memphis (Where is St. Patrick when we need him?) saying that Republicans had to support Bush now that he's low in the polls, vote for him in the straw poll instead of for me. This is lower than a lizard's belly on the Integrity-o-Meter.
McCain is a KoolAid salesman with a conservative voting record in Congress. 'Hugging' Bush? There are things you cannot do and still be called a person of integrity. Note the 'grit' in integrity. It isn't easy — that's why the word is so hallowed. For Mr. McCain, it's become hollowed.
'Hugging' McCain when he's winking at the truly loathsome Falwell is embarrassing for Stewart and for you. Mr. Falwell is cut from Ku Klux Klan cloth of putrid hatefulness.
How many lizard-belly-slitheringly-low expediencies does Mr. Forked-Tongue-Talk McCain have to perpetrate for you fellas to remember your spines and say, however wistfully, “Bugger off, John!”
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4-4-06 3:41:17 pm/
to MMOB Mainstreet Moms Opposed to Bush:
Dear Sarah,
If phones aren’t your bailiwick, could you forward this to whomever bleeds online phone banks? Thanks!!
CLEAN UP PHONE LISTS EARLY
I did a huge amount of phoning for MMOB both early & for GOTV in 2004. I am desperate to talk to someone at MMOB about getting the Lists cleaned up early!!!! I was phoning in Florida & Ohio for GOTV and the Lists were still FILTHY with moved & dead people & disconnected numbers.
This cleaning up of deadwood must be done early to maximize our effect for GOTV. (I have done a lot of professional political phone bank work for the Democrats & for non-partisan issues.) We should explain to our phoners how essential this seemingly tedious cleaning up of Lists is AND how essential IDing your voters is and letting them know how much their single vote counts.
It isn't about persuasion, it's about IDing & motivating. Most amateurs don't know this.
I believe phoning in the key states is the most important single activity we can do. I'd give an arm to be able to talk to your phone bank people. I was shocked at how dirty the lists were on the last weekend and the last few days.
(I was THRILLED to be able to have lists on the computer to call out of state. Procuring and managing the key-state phone lists is the name of the game in 2006.)
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4-4-06 3:04:13 pm
A Request to Google for a New Feature:
Dear GMail & Google .. I desperately and many times every day long for ANOTHER AutoFill on my Google toolbar if that's the correct phrase for that thin strip with AutoFill and Options etc.
The AutoFill that's there would be what it is. (I use mine for popping in my gmail sign-in name.) The SECOND MAGIC AUTOFILL (AutoFill2) would have a little dropdown menu and one could set it up for extra email names & other names or words or phrases that one is having to pop in here and there on the web (Like my website url, for example!!!) that are a gigantic pain in the large hinder parts to type & type & type tediously and annoyingly. As I go the rounds of commenting on various websites, I'm always having to type in my darn url & if I just had an AutoFill macro do this for me, it would end all kinds of aggro and I would have left the Isle of Shadows for the Isle of Apples & DeLight. (Five more phrases would be five million times better than now. If we could go for zetta-bliss, 8-10 phrases would end the present triage: “Which phrase or name or url do I actually waste my time typing the MOST?.)
PLease, please, please. Everyone would LOVE it.
[I can be even more specific about what I think would work wonderfully if you wish. It's very clear in my mind how to make it sleek.]
Thanks,
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4-4-06 2:43:45 am/ on chancelucky on Gross Domestic Product:
Until someone dares to speak of the 563 billion lb gorilla in the room, the true 3rd rail of USA politics, the Military Budget, your children will be impoverished to stuff the maw of greed and fear.
Religion and the Military Budget tragically delay the enlightenment of common sense and common wealth around the world.
Gosh, the RFK quote takes me back. When I think of the dreams he came to have, the alchemy from his life of privilege, compared to these Present Menaces, I weep again.
The sun does return tho. We gotta keep our hearts bright.(And our satiric knives sharp! It's satire or despair, so hip hip for pithy.)
…
RFK quote: “What the Gross National Product means and more importantly what it does not mean”
“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
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4-2-06 4:35:19 pm .. Mr. Bush et Ilk & Power
Power is the crack cocaine of emotions. No one on this green Earth has ever smoked power as pure as Darth Dick & insecure GW. It makes George feel so strong and so right. Dare he look in the mirror & see all the ghosts of the dead behind him and their weeping families? Or the folks without pensions or living wages or the slower terror of no-health care?
He is blinded by all the hailing to the chiefs and the carefully sycophantish audiences.
He forgets that the president in the United States is supposed to be a citizen servant.
I ask myself if when he isn't president, do you see him tirelessly going around the world trying to get clean water for poor people or conquer the horrible guinea worm like Carter and Clinton who mean this serving thing? Nah, I don't see it.
The Constitution isn't about service to Mr. Bush (except lip service), it's about power. He's an addict. You can see the buzz, the twitching around him. He isn't comfortable in his own skin in spite of what they say about him.
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4-2-06 3:58:52 pm
to gsmso, GoldStar Mom Speaks Out
I reckon we're in the Last Stage of the Throes of Final Desperation.
I am haunted & haunted by Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh's saying, “We will fight you for 300 years. We live here.”
As (self-seen benevolent) imperialists, we do not comprehend the ill-clothed cheaply-armed single-minded patriots (from their own point of view) tho we were that ourselves against the hugely better-armed and better- trained English back at our beginnings.
And these folks, gee, you can't even win their hearts & minds with dreams of USA teeshirts & ipods & scantily-clad starlets. All our hard & soft weapons are essentially useless or offensive.
I wish I could trust the darn 60% to hold fast, gsmso. I fear that at the slightest subway blast, they'll all leap back on the xenophobic, uberpatriot bandwagon. Then GigaDick & Ilk will mutter darkly, “I told you so” even tho they probably planted the bombs themselves. I don't trust the 60% yet.
I remember being in the lonely 10% back in the winter of 2002-2003 and being cursed & reviled by these very people. This new additional 50% have got to hold out against the best propaganda machine in the hisherstory of the universe.
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4-2-06 3:39:57 pm Why we are baffled by the Present Menaces
The Cheney Rose! Now that's funny. The difficulty is in our imaginations. We cannot imagine people this loathsome. And if we could, we certainly can't imagine them as our leaders. They really are protected by our credulity, by our naive inattention and simple beliefs.
There may be cracks in the Masks of Myth (cue Star-Spangled Banner, cut to backlit waving flags) at last.
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4-1-06 9:49:51 pm To a friend about changing my walk-about sign from Teach Peace to Dream Peace:
One of my handful of cause celebres for my Golden Years(of hard labor, no pension, no health care, but at least I can write about it!!!!) is the Integration of Lucid Waking & Lucid Dreaming. By changing the sign, I get to bring up my fortune cookie on peace ('Did you know we're spending $820,000 per minute on the Military Budget. Imagine if we spent some of that on education instead') and broach the notion of dreaming as a resource. (Like for Einstein & Edison & Mozart. Mozart got his symphonies “whole” from “lively dreams.”)
Dreaming is the one resource the sonsabitching corporations can't control and exploit. We each can learn to dream lucidly and actively just like we learn to ride bikes or read black squiggles on white paper. It is really just holographic reading. I imagine every parent and friend asking “How was your night at school?” in the morning.
A recent piece on pogblog speaks to this lucid waking/lucid dreaming project. Fort Mason Gate — Dreams & Worlds Unfurl.
Anyhow, having learned to “market” awareness of peace with a sign on a stick, I thought I'd get both my causes on one sign. I still need to design & tweak the fortune cookie for the dreaming pitch, but I've found the way to do it is crossing the street at a green light with someone who has asked about the sign. Gets you to have the elevator pitch really trimmed down.
The new sign is actually an increase in optimism because I know lucid/active dreaming is the next technology for the planet. And this one money can't control — which makes me giddy with In Your Left Ear Filthy Capitalist Pigs Joy.
I was so happy when I grokked getting both Rabid Joys on one sign that I did a little softshoe. Almost as droll as the old hag, the greybeard loon, wandering like the Ancient Mariner with a sign on a stick buttonholing hapless Wedding Guests & holding them with glittering eye — “Dream!” — “Peace!”
Grok on ..
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4-1-06 7:43:22 pm .. an answer re Pamela P. Willesford’s Diary
As soon as this inflammatory Diary material gets wider distribution and KRaven KRove sees it, the diabolical wheels will begin turning to wipe Switzerland off the map as a diversion from GiganDick's infernal liaisons and to test the 700 bunker bustin' bombs on real citizens — I mean collateral damages.
I mean who's gonna get riled up if Switzerland is scorched? We have no plans for after the armageddonizing. Do you really imagine serious sectarian violence in Switzerland? The Zwingliists smiting the Calvinists? KRaven KRove doesn't want us to bother planning for the post Mission Accomplished phase. It's all a video game to him anyhow.
That pesky Pamela is the first chink in the Cheney armor tho. Once the Pamela P. Willesford’s Diary gets syndicated, the cheneyempire will begin its slow-mo implosion fall.
I'm proud to have contributed the shove to the first domino. Tho clearly I won't live long after they find out who first published the document. It's worth dying, tho, for the freedom of my fellow citizens from corporate & religious totalitarianisms.
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4-1-06 6:53:07 pm on chancelucky’s piece about American Idol:
Twin Towers of Babel in current Iraq, apparently — or is it Triplet Towers of ships passing in the night firing on one another? ( Shia, Sunni, Kurds.)
Iran-Contra seems so Little League compared with these Present Villains. I mean Poindexter — dusted by Karl Rove. Well, who isn't? (Ollie North isn't even a KRaven KRove wannabe. And the Present ZettaVillains have a real odd dearth of Fawn Hall types — except now at last for the matahariesque Pamela P. Willeford)
As for Yeats, his Second Coming has always been the definitive modern poem: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” To keep us up to date, for Bethlehem read Babylon & instead of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, we watch American Idol?
(That may sound a little arch & I don't mean it to — I obsess over Stewart, Colbert, & Rose & that eats into my protesting time & writing satire time just as much.)
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on chancelucky re American Idol #9
How truly peculiar. I have never seen AmId.(AI to me is a swell movie by Steven.)
Reading your usual articulate description of something I know nothing whatever about is a disorienting experience.
First, you have a *27″* TV?? I guess that explains why I'm in the stone age. Watching a show must look as if you're watching a tennis match with that much screen space to keep track of.
This experience makes me realize what it must be like for The Young to hear us talk about Kennedy or Carter or Yeats or Iran-Contra etc. Like, Who in the heck are they talking about & what does it mean and why does it matter?
It's sobering & revealing to be so out of the loop with no visual or type or relative-meaning references. It's hard to gauge when you're being sly or being sly but not really etc.
I have no idea who you're inventing or insulting or if you're insulting. It's an interesting experience.
It's like a Tower of [Articulate] Babel.
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3-29-06 3:56:34 pm pog on pog dlareme
Inner emeralds can be abundant.
And, actually, if you think of the constellations of jewels shining under your feet wherever you walk, there are an abun-dance of emeralds. Use your third, fourth, & fifth eyes. Quel frisson!
Then again, one emerald would be enough to suffice for eternity.
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to a friend re privacy on the internet
3-26-06 4:23:06 pm/ The first thing that occurs to me fundamentally about identity is “facetted.” And that's probably truest metaphysically anyhow? Certainly there needs to be a core privacy and anonymity that is protected, but it is freeing to be able to splash around without all the baggage of a lifetime of calcification of an identity one may not be identical with. An identity as work of art begun not by one's parent but by oneself is interesting and an unexpected adventure. Perhaps this should be stated overtly? — but I think most people realize that the blog world is this art facet of self. faceted
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3-26-06 3:05:04 am/ goldstar mom speaks out re Mr. Bush at Press Conferences
I'm glad you brought up the bizarrely inappropriate laughing and the squirming [of Mr. Bush at Press Conferences]. There's also the rude pointing and the lurching forward onto an elbow on the podium with the chin jutting out. All of this incongruent behavior is the guilty and barely suppressed unconscious writhing to get out and finally tell a truth. It's like he's trying to hang on to an inner eel.
He does a good job of caricaturing himself. If I had a boss who acted that disconcertingly and dangerously disconnected, I'd quit.
I can't quit my country though.
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12 Monkey . Chuen . Raccoon . West . tzol 50 04.08.06 sat
ffwofw1288§26d2h33m11s33.84g3.25g;
..
the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..
.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead
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