December 14, 2008 archive

the mind-body connection is working

more specifically, the mind stomach connection for me right now. I am continuing to notice that I am stopping eating something halfway and putting it away, or not taking seconds when I would have before, or just not snacking at all sometimes at what used to be a time of day I would feel hungry. Now there are results,too, I lost an inch off my waistline at last! Aero, however ,looks as round as ever though I am reducing her portions and treats.

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Yet more “Pet Goat” theatrical pseudo-drama

So, tell me… you’re standing at a podium and someone throws something at you.

You’re not supposed to know this is coming and you aren’t supposed to have any idea of what it is.

Yet, here’s a picture of you one second after the first object is thrown at your head.

So what’s so funny? Is there some little joke about all this that the rest of us aren’t quite in on, Mr. “Pet Goat”?

And by the way, if the objective was to drive this article off the front page of the NY Times… it didn’t quite work.

For those who haven’t learned to recognize this situation as the Rovian propagandist tactic it is, I refer you to my previous diary on the subject here, another here, and another here.

Thanks for the FP, EKH.

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 White House: No immediate deal on auto loans

Associated Press

1 hr 28 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The White House said Sunday it does not expect to make an announcement by Monday on a possible plan to prevent the collapse of the troubled auto industry.

The Bush administration is considering ways to provide emergency aid to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, which have said they could run out of cash within weeks without government help.

White House officials said they did not expect an announcement on any funding for the companies on Sunday or Monday. President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday.

A Warning about Christian Ministry Giving

FlashPOINT is a new TV News Report program on WCNC 36 in Charlotte NC that airs on Sunday mornings carrying mostly local interest issues, but some having national implications, such as on the Banking and Investment corporations.

This morning they had a very good show about being careful who and what Christian Ministries you might give to.

Bush makes “farewell” visit to Iraq. Satan takes Victory Lap!

Well, now we finaly know where Dick Cheney has been hanging out in his undisclosed location all these years.  

IRAQ!

You see, after the events of 9/11, the Bush Administration decided that they needed a place for the President and / or Vice President to slink away to in times of national danger, or in case of a hang nail.  

IRAQ!

If you were an al Queda type, looking to kick some serious AZZ on the leadership of the US of A, where is the last place you would expect to find them?  C’mon…you know the truth.

IRAQ!

Sunday music retrospective: 1961, Part II – New Schools

Some people believe this to be the first music video:



Ricky Nelson:  Travelin’ Man

Moonlight Musings

Sometimes when it comes time to write, I’m in more of a contemplative mode, yearning to listen instead of speak. Today is one of those times. So I hope you can follow me on a bit of a journey through some of the poetry and music that’s speaking to me today.

I’m still thinking about darkness and light, as all kinds of seasons are shifting around us. James Baldwin seems to have been intimate with darkness and speaks to it profoundly.

One discovers the light in darkness. That is what darkness is for. But everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith…I know we often lose…and how often one feels that one cannot start again. And yet, on pain of death, one can never remain where one is. The light. The light. One will perish without the light…For nothing is fixed, forever, and forever, and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have…The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. And the moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Sunday music retrospective: 1961, Part I – Old School



Ben E. King:  Stand by Me

Leila Fadel: McClatchy Newspapers on Iraq

Paul Jay, of the Real News Network, speaks to Leila Fadel, Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers in a series of interviews covering a number of topics pertaining to Iraq. The interview, and her points, are very insightful, showing her understanding of the country and it’s people.

This interview, and a few others, are what the American people should be seeing. Not reporting? being done by so called News Anchors and expert? analyst, most having never been In-Country, or only quick visits to, and having few reports directly out of the Country and even fewer about and with the people of, same for the other Theater of Occupation Afghanistan.

Do The Math #3

#1 HERE

#2 HERE

Ok, today’s Math may need a little brain power.

As in “PULL YOUR REPTILIAN & LIMBIC BRAINS OUT OF YOUR ASS, AND USE YOUR CEREBRAL CORTEX.”

* There are actual numbers to back me up on this, but you know, in the interest of keeping it simple, and the fact that I, as a middle aged housewife with no education typing away with my first cup of coffee, have no interest in googling numbers AT ALL, am going to suggest if you don’t get the overall premise, Google may or may not be able to help you anyway. So have at it. I have run-on sentences to write.

Fear reflex is a good thing. It makes you duck when your kid hits a good hard fastball right back at your head when you pitch to him, and you only catch it peripherally too late because you are looking at your flowerbed over his shoulder thinking you should be weeding.

That’s what the lower function in your brains are for. They are NOT meant to be your primary data functioning unit.

So, using your cerebral cortex, the best reaction in such a case would be to realize you are becoming as ADD as the rest of America, choose to focus on your kid and the game, rationalize that your child is only young once, think, “FUCK THOSE WEEDS” and PLAY WITH HIM.

Were you to process this, keeping that REPTILIAN BRAIN to the forefront, you would instead think baseball evil, and your child under suspicion of trying to kill you. You would tell your husband for your own safety to ground him to his room forever, and watch his every word and move. Then you would start being suspicious of every one of those Motherfucking OUT TO GET you little bastards in America wearing baseball hats.

Lets Do The Math on THE WAR ON TERROR, shall we?

Docudharma Times Sunday December 14

Blaming Others For Your Failures   Making Sure You Take No Responsibility




Sunday’s Headlines:

Obama may bring change, but Congress will be the same

Africa’s hungry tribe

Missing activist was ‘collecting evidence’ on Mugabe crimes

Maliki takes revenge over new mandate

Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border

Greek concessions fail to stop the riots

Plea to save Monet’s vanishing riverbank

Mumbai attacks: How Indian-born Islamic militants are trained in Pakistan

Mumbai gunman’s confession sheds light on massacre

In Colombia, they call him Captain Nemo

Report Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders



By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

Published: December 13, 2008


BAGHDAD – An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag – particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army – the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

Views on Auto Aid Fall On North-South Divide

Tennessee’s Nonunion Workers Bristle At Bailout Talk for Detroit’s Big Three

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01


SMYRNA, Tenn., Dec. 13 — People in this small town surrounding one of Nissan’s busiest U.S. car plants have followed the news of the auto bailout with particular interest.

Namely, they wonder, what about us?

Nissan is a Japanese automaker, but the Altimas, Maximas and Pathfinders that roll out of the factory are built by locals who are “Americans too,” they like to point out. And just like the other automakers, Nissan is inflicting some of the economic pain on its employees, cutting shifts and pay.

 

USA

Stimulus Package To First Pay for Routine Repairs



By Alec MacGillis and Michael D. Shear

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01


President-elect  Barack Obama calls it “the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal — when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways — while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph.

Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build “cable barriers” to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.

A New Media Paradigm. Part I

What puts me on this track is the recent announcement by NBC that they’re going to cut back on their programming from 22 hours of prime time a week to a Faux/CW like 17 by having Jay Leno cover 10 pm Monday to Friday.

Now not all my predictions come true, but I think this a horrible move, doomed to failure, and not just because I find Leno’s product inferior.

Back in the day I critically watched the Jay vs. Dave wars and Dave has at least the virtue of being funny and Leno not so much.  More than that, the original reason that The Tonight Show moved to Los Angeles was so that they could more easily book guests from the West Coast branch of the Film and Television industry.  No offense meant California (well maybe a little) but 99.99% of those people turn out to be vapid airheads who unscripted can’t put a complete sentence together and won’t talk about anything except their latest project and who they’re fucking, and that badly and incoherently.

Maybe it’s the price you pay for all the sunshine.

Not that David’s guests are that much better.  Intellectual rigor is not something you can expect from the media elite as a cursory perusal of Huffington Post will convince you.  Actors tend to be shallow self centered morons with no sense of shame, including News Actors (not really many reporters around any more).

And now we’re getting to the crux of the problem which is that the format is boring.  At least Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart cook, but most talk shows talk too much.  Who cares?  Jay, there’s a reason people go to sleep after the monologue and it’s not just because they’re old or have to get up in the morning.

Then there’s the repetitive nature of all of it.  Remember what happened to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?  American Idol, Survivor, Deal or No Deal, CSI, Law and Order, they’re all the same all the time.  Nothing new ever happens.

They’ve just given up.

Even such a culture cannibalizing snooze fest as Happy Days seems like an innovative concept by comparison.  Instead of recycling nostalgia for 30 years ago we recycle it from last week.

My friends we are approaching peak TV.  Channel after channel is filled with stuff I’ve already seen or don’t want to watch in the first place.  And it’s a fundamental failure of the business model; they sell eyeballs and not only are they losing them by droves, but nobody is willing to pay for them anymore.

Their response is to downsize.  Cut the cost of production, worship efficiency, and stifle creativity.

This is a self reinforcing death spiral of deflation and depression.  If your product sucks make more of it cheaper, supply side entertainment.

That’s enough for now, but I expect I will revisit this subject.

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