March 29, 2009 archive

Depose A Dharmanian! Blue Eyes

Docudharma is a small community of very smart, stunningly attractive people. We may not have all the answers, but we certainly are witty and crafty enough to reply in an amusing fashion! So if you have a question, whether snarky, simple, political or philosophical, be it meta, meaty, maddening or impossible to answer,….what the hell? Post it here and see what happens! You have nothing to lose but your underwear! Heck, there is a chance it might even get answered, possibly even correctly!

Any questions?

A Trip Down the Memory Hole – Part Two

It’s Sunday – the proverbial day of rest. Do you really want to work today? – to trouble your mind with all the up-to-the-minute national and world events and developments? Or would you rather take it easy, slow down a little bit, and contemplate a few other issues in your life?

Let it go.

I know I kinda left readers hanging at the end of yesterday’s short diary A Trip Down the Memory Hole which ended with this:

At this point, I have to stop writing. It’s late, I’m tired, and I want to watch the end of the movie and go to sleep. I can continue this tomorrow.

Let it go.

I had intended to continue that thought in today’s diary, but a whole new set of “compulsive” writing has arisen, as you will see below.

Let it go.

Rather than working today, wouldn’t it be much more pleasant to take a waltz with me down Memory Lane?

(As you read this diary, please try to remember that this is all about memory.)

New Blood for a Little Girl

This is cross-posted from Big Orange, with no changes.  Apologies to the dharmaniacs who hate GOS…

Okay, those of you who know me, know that I am more of a commenter than a diarist.  But a story I read today, from yesterday’s NYT, touched me & since Kossacks are so giving (& since this is the biggest forum I go to), I thought it was perfect for a shout-out.

A quick search revealed nothing: if this has been diaried before, I will delete it.

Anyway, there’s a six-year-old girl in New York who needs a bone marrow trasnplant.  Details beneath the jump.

Update: Thanks for the promote, buhdy!

An HSR Station Grows at Transbay (SF) (pt 2)

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

This is “part 2” of A Train Station Grows at Transbay … Hopefully not a Bonsai (pt. 1)

In Part 1, an effort was made to try to fit 8 High Speed Rail (HSR) trains per hour (tph), plus up to 8 Caltrain tph, into the proposed “train box” design for the Transbay terminal, which has 3 island platforms with a total of 6 platform tracks.

And the result is an ugly kludge that quite possibly cannot physically fit, and certainly would put a cramp on the operations of Caltrain. Since the 1999 San Francisco Proposition H made it a local ordnance for the Transbay Terminal to serve both High Speed Rail and Caltrain services, a design which is incapable of genuinely serving both certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of San Francisco law.

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 US-backed Iraqi troops quell Baghdad uprising

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

57 mins ago

BAGHDAD – U.S.-backed Iraqi forces swept through a central Baghdad slum Sunday, disarming Sunnis from a government-allied paramilitary group to quell a two-day uprising launched to protest the arrest of their leader.

At least four people were killed and 21 wounded in the two days of fighting between government troops and the Awakening Council in Fadhil, a ramshackle warren of narrow, fetid streets on the east side of the Tigris River where al-Qaida once held sway.

Members of the Fadhil council said Sunday they decided to give up the fight and hand over their weapons to spare the neighborhood, whose bullet-pocked buildings bore witness to intense combat there two years ago.

Splitting the Sky Tried Arresting “The Decider”

 The United States of America gave its president the power to decide if anyone, including US citizens, were enemies of the state or “enemy combatants” during the Bush Administration.  Henceforth, the CIA kidnapped people from their homes or off streets. Against International Law, human beings were: forced into vans, taken to CIA prisons, tortured and detained indefinitely without trial and without a lawyer, ripped away from family, ripped away from friends, ripped away from work, and ripped away from everything that they had ever worked for in their entire lives.

ertijjcs Pictures, Images and Photos

Max Baucus Is A Corporatist Class Warrior

Max Baucus


The topic below was originally posted yesterday evening at the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

A personal friend and avid reader of my blog recently complained that,

“You’re too tough on Democrats and Barack Obama. Since the election you’ve fired more rhetorical bullets at Democrats than Republicans.”

Can we reform our prison system?

Some really ugly statistics:

1. The US has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population.

2. The US prison population has increased 500% in the last 30 years.

3. 4 times as many mentally ill people are in prisons as are in mental health hospitals.

4. On average, 2 out of every 3 released prisoners will be re-arrested and 1 in 2 will return to prison within 3 years of release.

5. Over the past 20 years, inflation-adjusted state spending on corrections rose 127% while higher education expenditures rose just 21%.

6. Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.

7. 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses.

8. Nearly 60% of the people in state prisons serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence or of any significant selling activity.

9. Black males have a 32% chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives.

10. African Americans make up –

– 12 % of the population

– 14% of monthly drug users

– 37% of those arrested on drug charges

– 59% of those convicted on drug charges

– 74% of drug offenders sentenced to prison

Sunday music retrospective: two women

Two Women

<

You don’t have to say you love me



Girl Don’t Come

Docudharma Times Sunday March 29

 The Courts Are

Coming For You

Alberto

   




Sunday’s Headlines:

Jewish writer raises a storm in America with his report from a ‘tolerant’ Iran

Keys to the kingdom: Inside Saudi Arabia’s royal family

 US and Iran open Afghanistan peace talks

It started in Hawaii but it took an Irishman to get the world surfing

A life in the day of: Jose Manuel Durao, EC president

Al-Qaeda’s spreading tentacles in West Africa opposed by traditional leaders

In Zimbabwe, law has a long road ahead

Indonesia crews resume dam rescue

Supersonic BrahMos missile test fired successfully

Mexico’s drug gangs drive film crew out of town

Obama Will Face a Defiant World on Foreign Visit



By HELENE COOPER

Published: March 28, 2009


WASHINGTON – President Obama is facing challenges to American power on multiple fronts as he prepares for his first trip overseas since taking office, with the nation’s economic woes emboldening allies and adversaries alike.

Despite his immense popularity around the world, Mr. Obama will confront resentment over American-style capitalism and resistance to his economic prescriptions when he lands in London on Tuesday for the Group of 20 summit meeting of industrial and emerging market nations plus the European Union.

The president will not even try to overcome NATO’s unwillingness to provide more troops in Afghanistan when he goes on later in the week to meet with the military alliance.

Spanish judge accuses six top Bush officials of torture

 Legal moves may force Obama’s government into starting a new inquiry into abuses at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib

?Julian Borger and Dale Fuchs in Madrid

The Observer, Sunday 29 March 2009


Criminal proceedings have begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Baltasar Garzón, the counter-terrorism judge whose prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet led to his arrest in Britain in 1998, has referred the case to the chief prosecutor before deciding whether to proceed.

The case is bound to threaten Spain’s relations with the new administration in Washington, but Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.

“The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people,” Boyé told the Observer.

USA

Confederate holiday provokes a war between the Souths

Confederate defenders seek to honor their history. Many who cherish the modern New South decry the campaign as reminder of slavery’s legacy. ‘This is a new day,’ a Georgia legislator says.

By Dahleen Glanton

6:18 PM PDT, March 28, 2009


Reporting from Atlanta — In a cultural war that has pitted Old South against New, defenders of the Confederate legacy have opened a fresh front in their campaign to polish an image tarnished, they say, by people who do not respect Southern values.

With the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War coming up in 2011, efforts are underway in statehouses, small towns and counties across the South to push for proclamations or legislation promoting Confederate history.

Alabama, Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and Florida observe Confederate History Month in April. Georgia has recognized it by proclamation since 1995, and the state Senate recently passed a bill that would make it official — assuming the measure passes muster in the state House, which could be problematic.

Most Southern states recognize Confederate Memorial Day as a legal holiday. Some celebrate it on the June birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but Texas and Arkansas observe it on Jan. 19, the federal holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Bill Moyers Journal: Economy, March 27

Bill Moyers-James Thindwa

James Thindwa, whose campaign for economic fairness for working people in Chicago has brought him up against the city’s powerful political establishment and corporate giant Wal-Mart.

“”Your average person is getting up every day to go to work, and to care for a family, doesn’t have a lobbyist in Washington. They don’t have a lobbyist in the city council. They don’t have a lobbyist at the state legislature. The community organization gathers facts for them. They call meetings. They invite people to come. They invite elected officials to come, attend those meetings, so that they can listen to the community’s grievance. It makes for participation.””>>>>Read Transcript & Watch

Late Night Karaoke

Things Just Are

Load more