October 29, 2010 archive

Report of My Death. Et tu, Brute



Meek speaks: reports are ‘inaccurate at best’

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Drama fills the airwaves.  The tragic comedy comes to life, or is theatre of the absurd.  The curtain rises.  The cast murmurs.  They say, it was first heard, or read in May 1897.  At the time, Mark Twain and his demise were the topic.  Today, The New York Times splashed the story on the front page of the paper.  Bill Clinton Tried to Get Meek to Drop Out. The former President and friend of the Meek family, “last week tried to convince Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida, to drop out of the race.”

Maggots Digest MGM, Overlook Box-Office Bonanza

Jay Goffman

A gang of Wall Street maggots is currently digesting the bankrupt remnants of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but all MGM really needed to stay alive was one big hit, and there it is, right under their noses, in the board-room!

Take a look at the smug, porcine features of Jay Goffman, Skadden Arp’s restructuring specialist.

Now imagine the monster from Aliens ripping his face off!

Boffo!

But wait! It’s gets even better, because Jay is only one of three evil triplets, and in the second reel Kay Goffman is infected with an extra-terrestrial Super-Plague, and…

Pus explodes out his eye-sockets!

Then ten homeless grandmas capture Ell Goffman and skin him alive! Then they set him on fire and push him into a meat-grinder!

Kowabonga!

That’s what I call entertainment!  

My Democratic Blowout Party 20101028

I went to the Democratic Hoedown this evening (Thursday) in Richmond, KY.  Most all of the candidates were there, and the sheriff even gave me a chicken wing.  Folks have asked me to comment on it, so we shall start with that.

I guess that it is just rural Kentucky, but it was horrible.  No people speaking, no one identifying herself or himself as a candidate.  I did see Conway and our county executive, but they did not talk, at least as long as I stayed.

“The Debate Is Over”: Human Driven Climate Change

Global warming ‘unquestionably’ due to humans: France

AFP, Thursday, October 28th, 2010

PARIS (AFP) – Global warming exists and is unquestionably due to human activity, the French Academy of Science said in a report published Thursday and written by 120 scientists from France and abroad.

“Several independent indicators show an increase in global warming from 1975 to 2003. This increase is mainly due to the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide,” the academy said in conclusion to the report.

“The increase in carbon dioxide, and to a lesser degree other greenhouse gases, is unquestionably due to human activity,” said the report, adopted unanimously by academy members.

The report contradicts France’s former education minister Claude Allegre, a geochemist, who published a book called “The Climatic Deception” which claimed that carbon dioxide was not linked to climate change.

The report was commissioned in April by Minister for Research Valerie Pecresse in response to hundreds of environmental scientists who complained that Allegre in particular was disparaging their work.

Allegre is a member of the Academy of Sciences and also signed off on the report.

“He has the right to evolve,” the academy’s president Jean Salencon said. Pecresse said: “The debate is over.”

more here…

I Want My Father Back You Sonovabitch

Emotional day today in Guantanomo tweetland. I’ve spent much of yesterday and today following along with the live tweet squad tweeting from the media pool on the Sentencing Hearing of Omar Khadr, the Toronto-born Guantanmo prisoner, now 24. The somewhat well known (in certain circles) “Child Soldier” who was shot and captured on July 27, 2002 in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces at the age of 15.

For a better take on the final plea deal a few days ago,  I’ll point you this article by Dan Gardner who concludes:

So what does the plea bargain really mean? Khadr has already spent one-third of his life in prison. He is being tried by a stacked military commission. He faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in a locked box. And so, on Monday, after eight years maintaining his innocence, Khadr confessed. Sure. He’s a terrorist. Whatever.

A coerced confession is no confession. And if Omar Khadr’s confession cannot be described as coerced, the word should be stricken from the dictionary.

.

But today. Today was hard.

Prison Camps & The Trail Of Tears (Part 2)

(this is a repost)


Mark Anthony Rolo: Recalling the Trail of Tears

“The Trail of Tears began 170 years ago this week. We should recall it not as an aberration but as a logical outgrowth of an inhumane policy. And we should insist, in its memory, that Indian treaties and Indian sovereignty be honored.

When President Andrew Jackson ordered the Cherokee Nation off its Georgia homelands, the U.S. government signed a treaty with the Cherokees, promising them a $5 million payment upon successful removal west of the Mississippi.

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