April 30, 2008 archive

US troop deaths highest since September, 2007 in April

Remember what McCain, GW Bush, David Petraeus, Vlad Cheney, Bill Kristol, Rush Limpbaugh and a whole slough of Right Wing comedians keep telling us!

The Splurge Is Working!

It is working SO well, that so far in April, 47 more US Soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the most since September of 2007.

From AP:

The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

Pony Party, Beltane

Blessings to all on May Day*, known in traditional Celtic cultures as Beltane

*due to the leap year, and the tradition of evenly spacing the sabbats across the calendar, “May Day” falls in April this year.

God Damn Media Owes Reverend Wright an Apology





After his Friday interview with PBS journalist Bill Moyers and after the specially edited for the dual purposes of fearmongering and race baiting for political gain sound bytes were heard in their proper context the fake devil that is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright not only right but he is deserving of an apology by every lazy corporate media hack who have once again chosen that a regular paycheck earned by picking the low hanging fruit and not upsetting the plantation masters is far more desirable than such quaint antiquities as journalistic integrity. When looking at the ‘questionable’ sermons in their true context I must agree and also must say that I have heard similar sentiments espoused by some of those on the right although in slightly less bombastic terms (they dearly cling to their blood soaked rag and whimper stars and stripes forever), it’s called BLOWBACK (see Chalmers Johnson’s book of same title) and this country has a closet full of murderous skeletons when it comes to those of darker colored skins.

Why They Hate Us!

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Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his home after a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad’s Sadr City.  The 2-year-old died at a hospital.

The Morning News

The Morning News is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Concentration camp doctor heads list of top 10 wanted Nazis

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

53 minutes ago

BADEN-BADEN, Germany – Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man.

It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was he so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.

Then, instead of treating the prisoner’s foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim’s head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.

Muse in the Morning


Evaporation

Inattentive

I spent much of my life

speaking in paragraphs

to people who had difficulty

waiting

for the end of a sentence

before breaking in

to change the subject

to talk about them

their thoughts

not mine

which lay unfinished

by the side

of the conversation

with my ideas

drifting away

somewhere

probably forgotten

if not evaporating

into nothingness

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–February 6. 2008

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

The Weapon of Young Gods #21: Backwards Fear

I had just agreed to join my brother’s band for their first gig when Peter came back, looking sloppier than he should so early on a Friday. “Roy, what the fuck have you been doing all this time?” he shouted. “Tell your little brother that he’s holding you up from watching your friends demolish a perfectly good bottle of vodka, okay?” My roommate grabbed at the phone, yelling into it with glee. “R.J., you little bitch! The next time you’re up here, I’m gonna make you pay for this! You won’t know what hit you, and you’ll wake up in bed with a strange man!” He motioned for me to get moving, doubling over in drunk guffaws.

Previous Episode

My Spiritual Mentor, The Chink

I sneezed 13 times in rapid succession this morning. Not just your little golf sneezes into closed hands mind you, but body wracking man-sneezes that sprayed spit and sputum hither, thither and even yon. Tears not only ran down my face, tears broad-jumped from my spasmodic chin onto my chest and flowed south, eventually pooling in my navel. It was the triathlon of tears.

I contemplated this and concluded that this sneezing was indeed very mysterious, and since we are taught God works in mysterious ways, it must be divine.

Blinded by the tsunami of tears that now formed a salt-water sea in my bellybutton where millions of my DNA molecules frolicked ecstatically like Spring Breakers high on PNA (Peptide Nucleic Acid), I reached for my handy-dandy Bible.

With closed eyes, I opened the book to a random page and with my finger, blindly selected a passage for spiritual guidance. As I waited for my eyes to clear, I wondered if this is how God selects where a lightning bolt will strike during a thunderstorm, or if he intends that an occasional church steeple gets zapped along with a few unfortunate parishioners.

As my eyes cleared, I struggled to read these words…

a view from the cheap seats

Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He’s a liberation theologian. He was Barack Obama’s pastor in Chicago. And now, Rev. Wright has been placed in the spot light, where he’s made some outrageous statements. Like the government of the United States is responsible for terrorist attacks. Rev. Wright said our gov’t invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.

I sit here and wonder, why does anybody think these statements are outrageous. How, in the spectrum of bullshit that has been perpetrated in the years since Richard Nixon, can anyone seriously get worked up over what this man has said???

Our government has lied us into war, supported brutal regimes to protect global corporate interests and, along the way, has exposed its own citizens to radiation and used citizens as lab rats to track the course, over decades, of syphilis. It appears that our country has a history of experimenting on its citizens.

If we believe, as almost 100% of the leftosphere does, that our government lied to get us into Iraq, then how is it so far fetched to think they had a hand in the 9/11 attacks? Add it all up. Take a look at every outrageous thing that George Bush et al have done in this country and then come here, to my face, and tell me Rev. Wright is outrageous.

Barack Obama. You’re a coward man. This country and the world is being eaten alive by vampires. And you want to get up in front of me and tell me you’re distancing yourself from Rev. Wright?

Are you kidding me, Sen. Obama? Why haven’t you stood up and distanced yourself from George Bush, Gates, Pretraeus, Mukasey, Cheney, and all the the blood suckers feeding off of us?????

Why? That’s all I want to know. Why? At least Rev. Wright has reasons to be mad, to say crazy things. He’s seen blacks in this country marginalized and left to drug dealers, the prison industry, underfed, and growing up on mean streets.

But you, in my estimation, stand with George Bush. And all the parlor game crowd. Fall into line. Go ahead. Another step back for all of us, sir. All of us.

 

Iglesia………………………………………Episode 52

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

Pommel horse, vaulting horse, parallel bars, basketball hoops, climbing ropes, dumbbells, a rack of Indian clubs on the wall, a medicine ball, padded mats on a portion of the floor….but mostly…space, scads of empty space with a very high ceiling, with old fashioned hanging light fixtures.

Abe and Iglesia were following Rogers into the gym, Abe was trying to estimate the height of the ceiling when Rogers whipped around and kicked him very hard,  squarely in the testicles. Pinning them to Abe’s pelvic floor with the top of his foot and crushing them. Abe dropped to the floor and curled into a ball from the literally crushing blow. So hard that even Iglesia had flinched and clenched as she stood there in shock for a split second, before she launched into  a vicious full body sweep of Rogers’ legs….which of course passed right through the very foot that Rogers had just used to try to emasculate Abe.

Asking for help

This will be a quick one. We’re putting together a public action kit for Thursday. It will be something that anyone can use anywhere to start up a dialog with strangers, find out what their concerns are, share yours and hopefully send out some positive, activist ripples.

All the fixings can be had at Staples and no doubt Office Depot or any office supply store. The final bit of work is to fine tune the content of the presentation. We have some eye-catching art work on the way (fingers crossed on the file size).

First sheet is issues/survey. What are the bullet point issues that get you most worked up? Personally, I’d need an UZI to list all mine. The survey is the premise for the discussion. People in general love to have their opinions asked. Ever stay on the line for a robo-poll?

Second list is a contact sheet – legislators, etc (we’ll be covering MA)

Second/third sheet is LTE contact info and talking/venting/screaming points.

Third/fourth sheet is a list of links to progressive sites. It’ll probably be a three sheet effort. And that’s not to the wind.

Olympic Torch in San Francisco





Screen Cap from SFGate

Former mayor Willie Brown, football player Hershel Walker, and swimmer Natalie Coughlin, carry the torch on the final leg of the ‘surprise’ route.  Surrounded by a phalanx of Chinese security, police with batons,  and a motorcycle motorcade….with nary a protester in sight.   Yep – this is how San Francisco shows its Olympic spirit!

On April 9th the Olympic torch came to San Francisco – the only North American city on its route.  This was preceded by weeks of controversy over China’s human rights record, the situation in Tibet, and how this most liberal american city would  handle the event and the surrounding protests.   My parents (from Illinois) were in town that week so I took the opportunity to schedule a day off and go see the Olympic torch.  

Lots more pics below the fold.

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