June 10, 2008 archive

Jun 10 2008

Docudharma Times Tuesday June 10



What We All Want




Tuesday’s Headlines:

After a Deadly Weekend, New Storms Cause Flooding in Three States

Oil prices: Europe threatened with summer of discontent over rising cost of fuel

The Mysterious Mr. No

A country where every passer-by is a potential threat

US beef row: South Korean Cabinet quits; ‘million-man’ march in Seoul

Zimbabwe’s campaign of violence escalates

Somali factions sign ‘peace deal’

In Iraq, muscle is a growth industry

Gaza: Mahmoud Abbas seeks deal with Hamas

Chávez Goes Over the Line, and Realizes It



The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber

As three soldiers are blown up, teenager caught on a lethal mission reveals how he was groomed to kill British troops

By Kim Sengupta in Kabul

Tuesday, 10 June 2008  

The surroundings were grim and forbidding, a notorious jail run by Afghanistan’s feared security service for those taken prisoner in the bloody war with the Taliban.

Among the inmates: Shakirullah Yasin Ali; a small, frail boy, just 14 years old, arrested as he prepared to carry out a suicide bombing against British and American targets. “If I had succeeded, I would be dead now, I realise that,” he said in a soft, nervous voice.

USA

How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed The Crisis

Subprime Loans Labeled ‘Affordable’

By Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 10, 2008; Page A01

In 2004, as regulators warned that subprime lenders were saddling borrowers with mortgages they could not afford, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fuel more of that risky lending.

Eager to put more low-income and minority families into their own homes, the agency required that two government-chartered mortgage finance firms purchase far more “affordable” loans made to these borrowers. HUD stuck with an outdated policy that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to count billions of dollars they invested in subprime loans as a public good that would foster affordable housing.

Jun 10 2008

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

State of the Onion IV

Art Link
Coming Out

Layers of Being

Like the layers

of an onion

I peel away

the layers

of who I am

boy student

athlete man

draft-dodging

longhaired hippie freak

Like the layers

of an onion

each new layer

of myself

reveals nuance

taoist husband

father soldier

socialist  teacher

commie pinko pacifist

Like the layers

of an onion

peeling further

uncovers

a richer me

woe-man poet

tranny activist

lesbian artist

gay homo dyke queer

Like the layers

of an onion

is the truth of

the being

of the human

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–November 4, 2005

Please join us on the inside to celebrate, venerate, regenerate and/or motivate our muses.  Currently mine is a little constipated when I would prefer it be syncopated.

Jun 10 2008

good grief

I just wandered back in, after being flat out of dharmatude for a few weeks (unavoidable, unwonted and unconscionable workativity) and what do I find at the home of reciprocal excellence, but a pissing match, and a pissing match between a couple of my favorite folks over, as far as I can tell, not a great lot beyond personal styles.  What’s up with that?  Did I miss something truly substantive?  Have I van Winkled myself into a state of buhdicious obsolescence?

My mother always said, if you can’t say anything nice, shut yer fuckin’ piehole (truly she did).  She also used to say, “I don’t DISLIKE her, but I wouldn’t invite her to my birthday party”.  Most of the world wasn’t invited to her birthday party, but she remained rather popular because she was capable of absorbing whatever tripe her interlocutors might emit, with nary an eye-roll nor yet a riposte, and with only the slightest of sighs as she watched their retreating backs.  Honesty is sometimes confused with aggressive assertion of what one perceives to be true, unmitigated by self-conscious awareness of one’s own fallibility and quickly devolving into a “sez YOU” exchange that only serves to perpetuate and inflame the original animus.  It’s sad, and more than a little bit absurd, to watch.

Please tell me, please, that we will extiffulate, dehissify, and, if you will, inacerbate (as opposed to exacerbate) this breach of excellence.  An occasional spate of micturation in one another’s rice bowls is unavoidable, even among the best of brethren, sistern, auntern and unclern, but portativity of grudgulation needs be averse.

a

Jun 10 2008

Fourth Circuit Alibis Torture Confession in Abu Ali Case

Last Friday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, long considered one of the most conservative courts in the the nation, rejected the appeal of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was sentenced in 2005 for conspiracy to assassinate President Bush and make other terror attacks upon U.S. targets on behalf of Al Qaeda. Abu Ali, who is a U.S. citizen and the son of naturalized Jordanian parents, was arrested in June 2003 in Saudi Arabia and held there until the U.S. requested his extradition almost two years later. He was 23 years old and attending a Saudi university at the time of his arrest.

During his incarceration, the Saudis refused his repeated requests to see an attorney. At no time has Abu Ali ever been linked to an actual terrorist event or action. In 2003, the government secretly broke into his parents’ home, utilizing provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act that allows warrantless search and seizure to go fishing for evidence of Abu Ali’s “dangerousness.”

Jun 10 2008

Obama Kicks off General Election Campaign in North Carolina

Crossposted from BlueNC

Barack Obama kicked off his general election campaign in Raleigh, NC on Monday, an indication that  North Carolina will be a targeted state in the fall.  Obama delivered a major speech on the economy at the NC Fairgrounds,  marking  the beginning of a two-week tour through the state, focusing on Economic Policy.

During his speech, Obama went into full general election mode, launching a direct hit on McCain’s Economic policy, calling it a “full throated endorsement of Bush’s Policies.”

Obama Slams McCain’s Economic Policy

“But when it comes to the economy, John McCain and I have a fundamentally different vision of where to take the country. Because for all his talk of independence, the centerpiece of his economic plan amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush’s policies. He says we’ve made “great progress” in our economy these past eight years. He calls himself a fiscal conservative and on the campaign trail he’s passionate critic of government spending, and yet he has no problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for big corporations and a permanent occupation of Iraq — policies that have left our children with a mountain of debt.”

Jun 10 2008

These Things Almost Make Me Smile

Please hit play as backround music to the brief essay below.

Jun 10 2008

The cowering authoritarians vs the idealistic f***ing hippies

And so on.

Jun 10 2008

BREAKING ON C-SPAN: Kucinich introducing IMPEACHMENT!

UPDATE:  C-SPAN Live Stream

UPDATE 2: It’s over and the House adjourned for the night – tune in at 9 AM (ET) tomorrow for a one hour impeach debate.  

(On The Bus)

Doing it NOW!

Check it out…

Go Dennis!

elishastephens diary at dkos

Jun 10 2008

Medal Of Honor Recipient’s Father:

FATHERS!

They seem to be the ones coming out and showing the civilian and military leadership, as well as this apathedic country, how the Military Troops should be treated!

Jun 10 2008

Pony Party: Absentee Pickle

Hi all – busy business travel schedule – sorry for my absence from Partying. This time, I’m off to Europe. Hopefully, I’ll get to see the famed Pickle Building in Barcelona.

I trust you’ll party on in my absence! I miss y’all!

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