June 26, 2010 archive

Confronting the inner teabagger

Read the article at HuffPo yesterday, got pissed and wrote something angry, then went to work. While at work I read some comments, though, admittedly, not all of them, and realized why so many people have a beef with HuffPo. I’m not trying to throw HuffPo under the bus, writing in anger leads to this, and I wrote in anger and put too much trust into a single source. Just because you are using a BIG NAME for a source doesn’t mean that source is right, they are just as likely to misinterpret something as you are. That is human. But there is a difference between misinterpreting and deliberately misconstruing, and since our political guard is always up about deception, and since many of us are partisans, we often frame things within our own pre-made narrative. All of these things I have been guilty of, but who among us can plead innocent among such charges?

More below the fold

G-20 Protest in Toronto

While world leaders descended upon Toronto to discuss financial reform and the global economy at the G-20 summit, protesters clashed with riot police.

Open Future

Photobucket

“Well, I didn’t mean CLOSE Guantanamo!”



They bought it, Rahm!

“I mean, I meant it when I said it. You know?”

“But… heh. That was a campaigning thing, you know? And it worked, too! Right? Right.”

“You don’t really expect me to go all bipartisany on you and do what Lindsay Graham wants me to do, do you? DO YOU? He’s a republican! WTF do you want from me?”

“Heh. Shut the fcuk up, Helen.”

“Next question?”

…………………………

NYT friday:

WASHINGTON – Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that  President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

When the White House acknowledged last year that it would miss Mr. Obama’s initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison, it also declared that the detainees would eventually be moved to one in Illinois. But impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress, and the administration is doing little to overcome them.

“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan. He added that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration.

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who also supports shutting it, said the effort is “on life support and it’s unlikely to close any time soon.” He attributed the collapse to some fellow Republicans’ “demagoguery” and the administration’s poor planning and decision-making “paralysis.”

[snip]

 

Rapidly Expanding Veterans Care Needs, Finally!

And many more related, long needed but ignored, other area’s as to Veterans Issues!

VA secretary visits project

Docudharma Times Saturday June 26




Saturday’s Headlines:

Is it time to consider barring BP from federal oil leases?

How ‘Rolling Stone’ was able to bring down a general

USA

Closing Guantánamo Fades as a Priority

Lawmakers guide Dodd-Frank bill for Wall Street reform into homestretch

Europe

France’s National Front: Will Marine Le Pen take the reins?

Middle East

ElBaradei leads anti-torture rally

Dark days for Iraq as power crisis bites

Asia

India seeks a symbol for the rupee to underline its economic power

China rewrites history of Korean War

Africa

Playing for Africa, Ghana faces US at World Cup

For African soccer, days of juju men have mostly passed

Latin America

Mexico nabs alleged Sinaloa cartel leader

Late Night Karaoke

OPEN THREAD

Pirates & Freak Flags

The captain of a pirate ship had one of the rarest luxuries in the world. He flew not the flag of a nation-state, but his own. His banner against the world. Very few people in the course of history get to do this, fewer yet get it recorded by history.

Much less turned into legend.

We also live in such a time. Each citizen of this republic, at any moment, can raise their own jolly roger and speak out for their rugged individual sovereignty and set sail for the pursuit of happiness.

And that my friend is our freak flag.

Funny thing about a freak flag is you need arms to wave it high; I’d like to see a corporation do that. Them corporations do like it freaky, though.

They cannot wave a flag because corporations only exist in our collective imaginations, paper tigers crafted by the plutonomy playing Monopoly. But with no arms, or legs, or even a jaw to clinch it with, the corporations could never raise a freak flag.

That is why they have stolen Old Glory, because they have no flag of their own.

One thing we can all agree on, to be an American, you need to at least be breathing. Even mouthbreathers count. And figments of law have captured our flag, all Americans’ flag.

And We, The People, need to get our freak flags flying and  take back the Stars and Stripes off the corporation’s pirate ship before they sail off with it.

Pony Expressed from Pinche Tejano

England Out of Afghanistan in 2015 (or 2365)

What a beautiful headline in the Guardian!

Afghanistan withdrawal before 2015, says David Cameron

David Cameron yesterday gave the first clear indication of the timing for a full withdrawal of British soldiers from Afghanistan, saying that he wanted troops home within five years.

During the election campaign, he said he wanted to see UK troops start to come home by 2015. But this was the first time as prime minister that he has indicated a timetable for withdrawal.

Obama has committed himself to a review of the US counter-insurgency strategy next year.

Okay, there’s some good news for you! The Prime Minister of England “wants” his troops out of Afghanistan before 2015…

…only 14 years after they invaded that God-forsaken wasteland.

And for any of you beyond-the-fringe leftist radicals who doubt that Barack Obama is capable of making a real commitment to anything…

How about that commitment to… review our counter-insurgency strategy next year?

Pound that into your pointy little negativism, you pin-heads!

And meanwhile, in Afghanistan…

Only nine out of Afghanistan’s 364 districts are considered safe, with the rest under some degree of security threat, Mohammad Munir Mangal, the Acting Interior Minister said on Wednesday.

Nine safe districts after almost nine years of military occupation!

At that rate it would take another 355 years to pacify the other 355 districts of Afghanistan, and David Cameron’s goal of withdrawing by 2015 would have to be pushed back to 2365!

Random Japan

BAH HUMBUG!

A forward-thinking Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force major-general had his pay cut after trying to dig up a 4m-tall fir tree on a Shizuoka base to use as a Christmas tree.

A weekly magazine claimed the Imperial Household Agency asked administrators at Princess Aiko’s elementary school to add ADD medication to school meals to calm down “unruly” boys who were scaring the little princess. The agency denied the story, and demanded an apology and a correction.

Police in Beppu were on the lookout for a sicko who placed a plate of dog food spiked with nails in a local park. An unlucky dachshund had to have a dozen nails surgically removed from its stomach after eating the food.

The president of a cutlery company in Hyogo was busted for producing “double-edged ninja-style knives,” which are illegal in Japan.

Tadashi Nakauchi, the former owner of the Daiei Hawks ballclub and son of the founder of the Daiei group, was arrested in Saitama for dodging about ¥200 million in gift taxes. Seems he forgot to declare some ¥500 million his old man gave him before his death.

First Tropical Storm Threatens Gulf

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center say there is an 80 percent chance that an area of disturbed weather between Honduras and Grand Cayman that developed into a tropical depression today will become the first named storm of the season. Then if it forms, it could wobble into the Gulf.

“That could be a real problem if a hurricane goes to the west of where most of the oil is,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said. “All of the siphoning operation that is going on now … would have to stop for five days before the hurricane and five days after the hurricane.

“At 60,000 barrels a day, that’s a whole lot of additional oil in the Gulf.”

Nelson said he is worried about the effects any tropical system could have on oil already blackening some Panhandle beaches.

“If a hurricane takes it across the beach and into the wetlands and inlands, that’s going to be adding all the more insult to injury that we have already,” the senator said.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/20…

And here we go.   From now to October.

Hopefully this first one will lose strength at the Yucatan Peninsula.

FRIDAY NIGHT DISTRACTIONS

As I previously stated, I would only post images of underwater life from the oceans of our planet, which I`ve stolen a little of to put in my reef tanks, till the oil gusher is stopped.

That`s the least I can do.

I feel so much for the people on the gulf coast.

I want as many people as possible to see what is being devastated below the surface, even if it aggravates their sorrow at what is being devastated above it. The only way for the gulf coasters to be “made whole” is if all the damages are brought to the light of day.

I`m sorry for all you are going through.

I hope my little bit helps.

I live on the California coast, so I know how your paradise feels to you.

I`ll start off with a shot of my coast, which I will defend as much as I`ll try & defend yours.

BEACH NEIGHBOR

 BEACH NEIGHBOR DSCN2389

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