October 22, 2007 archive

Docudharma Times Monday Oct.22

This is an Open Thread. Commence Talking



News Happening Now

2 U.S. Sailors Shot to Death in Bahrain

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 22, 2007


Filed at 5:30 a.m. ET


MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Two U.S. Navy sailors were killed and a third was critically wounded early Monday in a shooting incident on a U.S. military base in Bahrain, the U.S. Navy said.


The incident was not terror related and was under investigation, a Navy official said on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to discuss the case with the media. No other details were immediately available.


The shootings took place in the barracks on the U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain base around 5 a.m. local time, the Navy said in a statement. It wasn’t immediately clear what triggered the shootings.

Katie Couric: $15 Million Dollar Streetwalker Person

How did a nice girl from Arlington, Virginia become a notorious whore for war criminals?

Ask her.

But brace yourself for a pack of lies.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

Talking About the Wrong Genocide

“We’ve gathered here to mark the opening of this Holocaust Museum. We do so to help ensure that the Holocaust will remain ever a sharp thorn in every national memory, but especially in the memory of the United States, which has such unique responsibilities at this moment in history. We do so to redeem in some small measure the deaths of millions whom our nations did not, or would not, or could not save.”

~ President Bill Clinton, Remarks at the Dedication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 21, 1993

“All of the people in this room and people in this country have a vital role to play. Everyone ought to raise their voice. We ought to continue to demand that the genocide in Sudan be stopped.”

~President George W. Bush, Remarks at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 18, 2007

Iraq: All FUBAR and Refugees Have Nowhere to Go

Today brought the news that Syria Shuts Main Exit From War for Iraqis:

DAMASCUS, Syria, Oct. 20 – Long the only welcoming country in the region for Iraqi refugees, Syria has closed its borders to all but a small group of Iraqis and imposed new visa rules that will legally require the 1.5 million Iraqis currently in Syria to return to Iraq.

1.5 million refugees are going to have to go back. Go back to what exactly?

The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Three to Five is a stump speech you’re expected to give out at a public meeting.

You’re supposed to pump up enthusiasm for your current portfolio (whatever that is), lay out your agenda for the future, and recognize your performers.

All in three to five minutes because people want to get to the buffet and mingle and there are 10 other speakers.  Tight time budget.

I had a reputation as a time waster, but I really didn’t because I HAD an agenda.

Recognize your performers!  Surprise, surprise, surprise this also pumps up enthusiasm.  Two birds, one stone!

Blitz agenda-

I have promised myself that every single elected official who posts on dKos shall have to confront these three issues-

  • The Occupation of Iraq
  • The Erosion of Our Constitutional Liberties
  • Executive Submission to Congressional Subpoenas

All very simple.

American Beauty or Festivus Shopping

Thinking back it is the objects that reflect America that inspired a real sense of patriotism.  My brother’s Camillus knife, given to him when he joined the Cub Scouts, a wooden kazoo hand made in Woodstock, NY, the large painting I saw being made by a cool neighbor which hung on the stairway, all lend themselves to giving meaning to a place and in turn give you a sense of place, no matter how small.

So, instead of griping about WalMart this year, I will instead offer alternatives.  The main theme being, well made American Products, sadly Schrade, the makers of Camillus knives is no longer with us, they are with the Chinese now. But luckily there is a strong custom knife-making business in America.  I’ll show off a few and then present some other items that instill a sense of pride.

Turkish Prime Minister: We Will Attack in Iraq

From the Times of London, breaking news:

Turkish Prime Minister warns US: we will attack Kurdish rebels in Iraq

Recep Tayyip Erdogan tells The Times that he needs nobody’s permission to defend his country

[Oct. 22, 2007]

Martin Fletcher and Suna Erdem

Turkey will launch military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq despite frantic appeals for restraint from America and Nato, its Prime Minister has told The Times.

Speaking hours before the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, killed at least 17 more Turkish soldiers yesterday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey had urged the US and Iraqi governments repeatedly to expel the separatists but they had done nothing. Turkey’s patience was running out and the country had every right to defend itself, he said. “Whatever is necessary will be done,” he declared in an interview. “We don’t have to get permission from anybody.”

Mr Erdogan, who begins a two-day visit to Britain today, also offered a bleak assessment of relations between the US and Turkey, a country of huge strategic importance to Washington. He said that a “serious wave of antiAmericanism” was sweeping Turkey, called America’s war in Iraq a failure, and served warning that if the US Congress approved a Bill accusing the Ottoman Turks of genocide against Armenians during the First World War, the US “might lose a very important friend”.

— snip —

This is a potential distaster.

[Update: 10/21/07 11:27 PM by LithiumCola]:

More; the Times headline might be overhyped:

Military action could be avoided only if the Americans and Iraqis expelled the PKK, closed its camps and handed over its leaders, he said.

Mr Erdogan said that last week’s parliamentary vote authorising military action showed that Turkey’s patience was exhausted. He would not be drawn on the scale or timing of any operation, but Turkey is thought to have more than 60,000 soldiers massed along the Iraq border. Other Turkish officials said that the PKK had six training camps and 3,500 fighters in the mountains of northern Iraq.

[Update #2 11:40 PM 10/21/07 by Lithiumcola]: more below.

I Wish this Was an Open Thread. What’s a Pony, Anyway?




You know what’s funny about the story below? Here’s what:

Zimbabwe is the only country that prints more dollars that we do. Barely….

A million Zimbabwe dollars now buys $US1

October 22, 2007

ZIMBABWE’s currency has fallen to record levels, with one million Zimbabwean dollars buying a single US dollar ($1.12) and inflation reaching 8000 per cent.

The data was announced as people in the capital, Harare, struggled to cope without electricity for the third day. “We closed our business today (Saturday),” said a woman who helps to run a major petrol supplier. “We just can’t operate like this.”

The National Blood Transfusion Service said it had been unable to test blood since Tuesday.

At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar held parity with the US dollar but has suffered from the economic policies of President Robert Mugabe; at the beginning of this year it was $Z2800 to $US1 and 10 days ago $Z500,000.

Mugabe has struggled to curb inflation and in July ordered businesses to halve their prices to alleviate the country’s woes.

The order resulted in the arrest of about 10,000 business people as thousands of police officers raided companies, malls and markets to take goods marked above price control levels. “It shows the lunacy of their belief they can legislate against inflation and bring it down at the barrel of a gun,” said economist Rob Davies.




Burma: Panties for Peace

peace panties flag large t

Click on the image for your own fair-use copy.

When Kings Go Crazy

Hey, it happens.  History is replete with stories where the good guys don’t win in the end, where horrific acts go unavenged and unpunished, where leaders of nations descend into madness, dragging their countrymen down with them.  At many various times and in many various places, peoples have found themselves saddled with rule by psychopaths, paranoids, and delusional megalomaniacs of all stripes – and simply being alive now, in the “modern” age, is no guarantee that it can’t, won’t, or hasn’t happened again.

Far be it from me to try to psychoanalyze any contemporary political figures, but it recently occurred to your resident historiorantologist that, given the proverbial insanity of American policymaking over the past few years, a look at a couple of the less-balanced monarchs who have walked the tightrope of power in the past might be in order.  Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight the tortuous paths of logic will take us from Rome to a fairy-tale castle in the Bavarian Alps…with absolutely no implied connection to anything happening in Washington today.  😉

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

The Byrds


Turn, Turn, Turn

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