Open Thread
April 9, 2010 archive
Apr 09 2010
Late Night Karaoke
Apr 09 2010
What is Your Fav Movie Scene of All Time?
Crossposted at Daily Kos
If you’ve ever watched the American Masters program on PBS, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, and the Blacklist: None Without Sin, you know well that the program deals with the relationship between the two Hollywood titans during and after the years of the Hollywood Blacklist, one of the most disgraceful periods in recent American political history.
Elia Kazan was the brilliant and controversial film director; Arthur Miller the superb playwright. It was a complex relationship
Arthur Miller (left) and Elia Kazan:: ::
One of Kazan’s defenders is Arthur Miller, much to the disappointment of many on the left. Miller is one of the heroes of the McCarthy Era. He defied the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1956, and refused, unlike Kazan, to name those whom he knew to be “fellow travelers.” For this he was held in contempt of Congress, fined, and sentenced to jail time.
Apr 09 2010
short and sweet: thank you
this may be inexcusably short, but i do want to take a moment to publicly thank buhdydharma for creating docudharma. and with him I thank otb, npk, ek, and others here who made it possible. and I thank those who continue to write here. gawd knows we sure are going to need this place because after what i read tonight it is hard to imagine that dk will be much more than a pile of embers burning itself out before long. so thanks, buhdy, for making docudharma happen. and thank you for what you and others are trying to do in orange. i appreciate all of your efforts.
Apr 09 2010
Chris Matthew’s Love Fest
If you missed it, and I’m glad I did as I don’t watch Chris Matthew’s, he totally went off the deep end about Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin teaming up.
From Crooks & Liars:
Matthews and Buchanan go on to describe the Palin and Bachmann rally and their featured speakers as…an amazing event
very fascinating political figures
very good on the stump
much more exciting than Mitch McConnell or John Boehner
the new “star power” of the Republican Party
dazzling
dynamite
extremely attractive women
rodeo queens
women of the west
Pat Buchanan, an old racist dinosaur (just read some of his comments), and Chris Matthew’s, who didn’t fawn over SOMEONE in a drooling mess, teaming up to gush over the two nuttiest women in Republican politics.
THIS is pure comedy gold!
Apr 09 2010
Using Reasoning, Facts, Cash, and ShowBiz, to Answer Questions like: Is Barack Obama a LIAR?
Using cold, hard cash and entertainment to smarten up otherwise dumbed down, American voters
The following diary is a quote from a long response of mine to a diary by Nathan Aschbacher at FireDogLake, “Define President Barack Obama in One Word”.
It stands on it’s own OK. For context, see Nathan’s FDL diary
Apr 09 2010
Doc’s Take on the Virginia Confederate Statement 20100408
Those of you who regularly read my posts know that I do not routinely write about politics, although I usually make a short joke about silly wingnuts in my closing statements on Pique the Geek, the science post every Sunday at 9:00 PM Sunday evenings.
However, the antics of the newly elected Republican (of course) governor of Virginia just got me going. Robert Francis McDonnell is the new governor of Virginia, just this year being sworn into the office. In my opinion, he is a racist and a bigot.
I offer insights not often given by folks at progressive sites, but I think that my experiences might help to make sense of McDonnell’s antics. Please read to the end before you hate me, or my ancestors.
Apr 09 2010
Letting the Cat Out of the Bag
In the comment section of my last essay, I let a cat out of the bag.
I’ve been writing op-ed pieces that have been published by Truthout.org. To date, they have published five of my op-ed pieces. You can read them, if you wish, on my facebook page.
While it is still uncertain, I was asked by the editor’s of Truthout if I would be interested in writing for them in a regular column. Of course, this is still something that is a maybe, and, might occur in a month or two. But, you can understand my surprise at even being asked.
More below…
Apr 09 2010
Stop being such a purity troll, Al Gore
Don’t have time to post too much now, might post a longer diary about this later, but for now:
Al Gore and his group, the Alliance for Climate Protection, think President Obama’s decision to pursue offshore oil drilling is a bad idea and they’re letting him know.
In a recent tweet, Gore appeared to endorse a statement released by the Alliance’s CEO Maggie L. Fox in which she criticized Obama’s drilling plan, saying that it “continues our reliance on dirty fossil fuels.”
“We cannot simply drill our way to energy security,” Fox wrote. “Americans are demanding a clean energy future that goes beyond drilling and incentivizes the technologies that are critical to building a 21st-century clean energy economy. What we need now is presidential leadership that drives comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that caps harmful carbon pollution, puts America back to work, ends our reliance on foreign oil and keeps us safe.”
Apr 09 2010
War Declared in North Carolina
Yeah, it’s my second post today… so sue me. Ha! Oh, yeah. This ain’t the Great Orange Satan, is it? That’s good, because I just got an email informing me that Greg Sargent says It’s War: SEIU Starting Third Party In North Carolina.
In a shot across the bow of Dems, the labor powerhouse SEIU is starting a new third party in North Carolina that hopes to field its own slate of candidates, part of an effort to make the Democratic Party more reliable on issues important to labor…
An outgrowth of SEIU’s vow to hold Democrats in the U.S. House accountable for voting against health insurance reform and labor positions in general, the new party has a bare bones website up now, as it begins collecting the 85,000 signatures it will need to gain a place on the November ballot. Unless all of those signatures are gathered in the next week, North Carolina First won’t be on anybody’s primary ballots.
SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina on this effort, and has more than a hundred people on the ground now getting signatures. While there are a number of good potential candidates who might be persuaded to run NCF against turncoats such as Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell, there are many more who would stand for state and county office on this ticket.
While it’s being played as a protest action against the Powers That Be, I believe this country is in desperate need of a real new political party to represent the half of American citizens who now have no representation since the Democrats took over Republican territory (and Republicans jumped like lemmings over the wacko cliff), I cannot think of anybody better to field one than labor.
So. It can’t be the “North Carolina First” party for very long, but it it takes off, we here in North Carolina will be happy to tell our great-grandchildren that it started here. I will be checking further into this story and hope to have some in-depth, on-the-scene info very soon through some contacts in Raleigh. Updates sure to come!
Apr 09 2010
The Most Precious Thing
I remember a while back, a liberal blogger made a big todo about a World Bank report on what poor people want. I’ll never forget. This was a popular diary at Daily Kos with hundreds of comments. The diary went on to explain the findings of the report and describe what the WB found out about what poor people want.
According to the report, what poor people want is respect, dignity, a sense of purpose and other such drivel. I did a quick search of the comments and there was NOT ONE expression of incredulity over this idiotic diary. It had not occurred to one fucking person that, uh, sorry but what poor people want is FUCKING MONEY.
This is the state of the liberal left in this country. So completely disconnected to the poor, that they can’t even see through a World Bank ruse.
This blind spot manifests itself in many other areas, especially public policy. Liberals have come up with a scheme, or program to address every societal ill but the very one that matters – not enough money to go around.
Every single one of the liberal intelligentsia’s pet issues would eventually, be solved outright, or greatly alleviated by a simple policy of never letting any household dip below the poverty line which now adjusted for inflation is about $40,000 p/y.
Teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, domestic violence, racial tension, etc, etc. would all drop significantly if we just had a healthy society.
What makes a healthy society? No. Not more counseling or intervention by liberal babysitters. What makes a healthy society is a family being able to be supported comfortably by only one working adult.
No, this will not solve everything. And yes many liberal programs have great value. But they cannot be a replacement for an economic system that seeks to turn a significant majority of society into serfs.
If you really wanted to reduce the political conflicts of the past 150 years to its most basic component it would be a war between monied business interests and labor. That’s what almost ALL of this fight has been about. Cheap labor.
Free trade, globalization, deregulation, “the war on the middle class”…, it’s all about cheap labor.
And almost all of societies ills, from drug abuse to gang violence, to even school shooting in some respects, are the direct result of the disintegration of the middle class.
THE MOST PRECIOUS THING
One of the greatest achievements of the massive propaganda campaign that has been waged in the last four decades is to change American values. We need to change them back.
The most valuable, important, indeed essential thing in our society is what a friend of mine calls the Human Ecosystem. What is that? It is everything that makes up the immediate world of the modern American. This includes everything from the local community, to band practice, neighborhood schools, a comfortable home, access to healthy food. It is the reality for millions of Americans. It is a dream for millions more.
This human ecosystem is all that goes into making a life for individuals and families. And it absolutely requires above all else, a good paying job.
There is nothing more important than a stable home life for our people. A place where families grow and grow old. Not this sociopathic scheme of “mobility”. People aren’t wired that way. We are wired to settle down and raise families in a stable community.
Somehow, we allowed corporate sociopaths to think that there is something more valuable than this human ecosystem. The ideology of the free market, or a dozen other bullshit excuses to let people, families and communities perish.
I don’t give a fuck how we do it. If we have to hire people to dig holes so that they can fill them back in again, or better yet, rebuild America to accommodate the end of cheap oil, whatever it is, we have to create jobs for every single able person alive that allows for the creation and maintenance of the human ecosystem.
NOTHING ELSE IS MORE IMPORTANT.
Apr 09 2010
“Civility” Has Nothing To Do With It
My recent diary (warning: gazillions of comments) about political debate has been widely referred to as a call for civility.
It is not a call for civility.
It is a call for higher standards of political debate.
Here on this political web site.
The diary was a group effort, with many contributors. Perhaps some of the basic meaning of the diary was lost in that process and in some of the more “controversial” passages.
THIS diary is my personal attempt to emphasize what TO ME are the key points.
Allow me to attempt to clarify, to get to the bones if you will.
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