March 11, 2010 archive

Nobel Peace Prize Money Goes To…….

Great Choices and to orgs that won’t misuse!

Obama Donates Nobel Prize Money to 10 Charities

The White House has announced that President Obama has donated the $1.4 million given to him in conjunction with the Nobel Peace Prize to ten charities, including the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund and the United Negro College Fund.

While President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October for his work toward global peace, most of the money has gone toward charities focused not on peace but on educational opportunity.

The most money — $250,000 — went to Fisher House, which provides housing for families of patients being cared for at major military and VA medical centers. >>>>>

Screw rent! Ask Stupak if we should KILL our gays now or wait till later

    Crossposted at Daily Kos

Brought to you by PeanutButterPAC

I wonder if Fox News will pick up this diary?

   While I am very interested in the question of “Who paid Bart Stupak’s rent? ” I would also like to know who was paying the rent of his roommates. Some of those roommates were . . .

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC)

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Senator John Ensign (R-NV)

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Rep Zach Wamp (R-TN)

Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA)

    Who wants to bet Fox asks Doyle about this but not DeMint, who is the front man for their Tea Party astroturfed Corporatist movement.

    But that is not the BIG QUESTION I want to ask Stupak and his Christian Mafia cult members. No, my question to them is . . .

    “Should we kill our gays now, or wait until later?”

More below the fold . . .  

Yes, Sen Byrd Stopped Reconciliation For Clinton’s Health Care Reform

Cross-posted from Sum of Change

So, there is a video that is getting a lot of attention amongst the right wing nuts:

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 41 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Violence flares at Greek anti-austerity protest

by John Hadoulis, AFP

15 mins ago

ATHENS (AFP) – Greek police clashed with hooded youths on Thursday as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures aiming to end a crippling debt crisis and the country was gripped by a new general strike.

Violence broke out around a union demonstration in the capital with riot police firing tear gas at hooded youths who hurled firebombs and vandalised stores near parliament and other areas of the city centre.

Police said they had detained 16 people, of whom nine were later arrested, and that 13 officers were hurt after being hit by objects thrown by protesters.

Wings



Wings 1

Every once in a while I get into a rhythm wherein my graphics all stem from the same emotional and artistic source.  I make one graphic and keep on modifying it until the emotional impulse seems to have run its course.

This was apparently one of those “once in a whiles”, but instead of ending up with the usual 2 to 4 pieces, I ended up with at least 10 (ten as of the beginning of this piece, though more may be created and added by the time I hit the end.

The original piece had the feel of a wing, which of course lead insistently into the theme of flying.

Open Wallet

Photobucket

Building the Movement, One Brick at a Time

Michael Walzer’s piece entitled “Missing the Movement” is so relevant and smartly written that I felt inclined to read it through four times before beginning to thinking about formulating an adequate response that would do it justice.  I am overjoyed to find someone who has managed to put forth a strong, sound hypothesis as to why recent reform efforts tied to a resurgent liberalism have been so limited while setting out cogently what we ourselves ought to do to fix the problem.  Having identified what went wrong, let us now proceed to take on the hard work and soul searching necessary to get past it.  For as it is written, “Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.”

Walzer writes,

Liberalism is the American version of social democracy, but it lacks a strong working-class base, party discipline, and ideological self-consciousness. None of these are in the offing, but we need to be aware of what we are missing, and we need to begin at least the intellectual work of making up for it. European social democrats are on the defensive right now, but they have a lot to defend. Liberals here are in catch-up mode, and not doing all that well. We know more or less what we have to do, but we haven’t managed to give the American people a brightly colored picture of the country we would like to create. There is a lot of wonkishness on the liberal left, among American social democrats, but not much inspiration. We haven’t found the words and images that set people marching. As an old leftist, I can talk (endlessly) about citizenship, equality, solidarity, and our responsibility to future generations, but someone much younger than I am has to put all this in a language that resonates with young Americans-and describe a “city upon a hill” that may or may not be the same hill that I have been climbing all these years.

It is this section in particular which resonates most strongly with me.  I notice this kind of stultifying dullness among those who have, for reasons unknown, exchanged wonkery for truly impassioned discourse and inspirational rhetoric.  The result produced is robotic and bloodless, for one.  For another, it’s downright Pharisaical.  In this circumstance, Dictionary.com defines Pharisaical as “practicing or advocating strict observance of external forms and ceremonies of religion or conduct without regard to the spirit.”  I have noted, sometimes with anger, sometimes with frustration, never with satisfaction, that this is true not just in gatherings of religious liberals, but also quite evident in multiple settings and causes comprised of vocally secular liberals.  Going through the motions without understanding the passion will never serve anyone’s cause well and indeed, it is partially why we find ourselves in the mess in which we are now.  Layering laws upon laws, formalities upon formalities, and procedures upon procedures might seem to be helpful upon first glance, but they end up separating ourselves from each other, not pulling us together.    

Markos’s fatwa on Kucinich

Flying assassin robot, Marc Thiessen Markos Moulitsas, enters the final stage of development.

I’m not sure if Moulitsas’ gambit is tantamount to:

The privileged stupidity of Maureen Dowd:

Maureen Dowd thinks she can walk into Mecca and demand to know what all this gol’ darned Islamic fundamentalism is all about.

Or the arrogant de-tumescence of Tom Friedman.

You can read this and other fine recent Daniel Larison for an explanation of just how shameful this sort of post-hoc rationalizing of murder and destruction really is, but what actually strikes me as the most inhuman, the most anti-human idea of all the inhuman ideas lodged in the reptilian, blood-drinking brains of Thomas Friedman and his crocodilian cohort, is the horrific notion that the highest lifetime achievement is voting in an election. Seriously. The pinnacle of the human experience at the ballot box. It is quite seriously insane. It elevates a procedural aspect of one particular form of government to a categorical moral virtue. It proposes that participation in electoral politicking occupies the same plane of significance and value as orgasm or childbirth, as making a home, as cooking a meal for one’s family, as meeting a new lover, as seeing a beautiful work of art or hearing an ingenious piece of music, as singing, as dancing, as getting a good night’s sleep, as spending a day on the water, as bartering and bargaining at the marketplace, as religious ecstasy, if you’re into that sort of thing . . . I mean, there is a whole panoply of centrally human experiences, and while a weak argument can be made that these are more readily available under some forms of governance than others, acts of civic engagement just aren’t that fucking important. A life without elections or a life without lovemaking? If you had to choose. And that is what’s so goddamned monstrous about Friedman. We destroyed these people’s lives, and we propose to buy off their suffering with congressional campaigns? Jesus wept.

I personally think it’s somewhere in between.

It bodes not well, fellow detainees.

The Media’s Propaganda and Military Contracting

In recent years, we have seen the media collusion to push government propaganda to the public.

One of the more egregious examples was the use of certain, Pentagon approved sources, who would be presented as “independent experts” on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, to talk about government policies regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, detainee detention, etc.

After watching the History Channel the other night, I couldn’t believe the pure level of propaganda promotion.  

They did a show on Area 51…

Docudharma Times Thursday March 11




Thursday’s Headlines:

Decoded genome gives hope in fighting disease

Kim Jong-il’s personal shopper reveals how the North Korean leader lives in luxury

USA

Investors can soon make bets on movie box office

Governors, state school superintendents propose common academic standards

Europe

Merkel’s ‘dream team’ begins to unravel

Chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth says Devil is in the Vatican

Middle East

‘I saw Israeli bulldozer kill Rachel Corrie’

Lebanon resumes defense talks on Hezbollah’s military wing

Asia

Great Himalayan Trail: trekking’s holy grail

Hundreds rounded up in Tibet crackdown

Africa

Why do Egyptians love Avatar?

Ex-rebels accused of extortion in DR Congo mines

Latin America

Chile’s new leader Sebastian Pinera to be sworn in

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

Fox and Rachel Maddow just covered my article! WOW!

From Daily Kos, courtesy of Kossack AnotherMassachussetsLiberal HOLY CRAP! Ministry of Truth’s diary made Fox News and TRMS!

    Yell Louder just got NATIONAL COVERAGE!

WIN!

Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com

   I would like to raise a toast to the Docudharma. Let’s hope for MORE and BETTER stuff like this in the future!

Cheers

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