December 26, 2010 archive

In Your Face: Spamerican Exceptionalism



A quote for discussion:

Most people can probably remember the moment when they first realised the seductive power and global pervasiveness of American culture.

I had bought a bootleg CD of The Beach Boys’ surfing songs in the remote north-eastern Russian republic of Sakha and had my photograph taken with a goat herder in Djibouti who was wearing a Six Million Dollar Man T-shirt.

It is an extraordinary form of soft power which will endure even if the looming powerhouses of China, India and Brazil come to overshadow America’s global economic dominance.

After all, even when you’re watching a Chinese flat-screen TV and driving an Indian car powered with Brazilian biofuels you almost certainly won’t be wearing Indian-style clothing or humming Chinese pop songs as you go. Or watching Brazilian movies either.

Next time you see television pictures of an anti-American demonstration anywhere on earth look closely at the crowd. Among the flag-burners you’ll almost certainly see someone wearing an LA Lakers shirt or a Yankees baseball cap.

Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation

Back on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 I posted this VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation on my first blog, still in my infancy of blog posting but I had gotten better, like embedding links etc.. This action took place only months after I returned from Vietnam, my last year of my four, and getting discharged back into civilian life. I wasn’t with these brothers but I had already started down the path of activism against Wars of Choice and those that create them for profit and power. That post is below slightly refined and updated, had to find a link and embedded a document pdf player.

Over the past couple of months I have also moved my **IN HONOR TO THE FALLEN in Iraq and Afghanistan** posts from that original site to a stand alone site, this is a page listing each post on that site.

Six In The Morning

The Congressional Garage Sale  



Those Sneaky Lobbyists Buying Your Government

Numerous times this year, members of Congress have held fundraisers and collected big checks while they are taking critical steps to write new laws, despite warnings that such actions could create ethics problems. The campaign donations often came from contributors with major stakes riding on the lawmakers’ actions.

For three weeks in June, for instance, the members of a joint House and Senate committee worked to draft final rules for regulating the financial industry in the wake of its 2008 meltdown.

about that holy war against health insurers

PhotobucketDoing some reading before bed last night and opened nyceve’s diary over at dKos titled In 2011, these people will launch holy war against the health insurance Industry.

I get here, where she writes:


As insurers continue to raise premiums and cut benefits, Health and Human Services is relegated to pleading, cajoling and threatening, but in the end, can do little to control them. This is an uncontrollable industry.

… and my head explodes: they can’t they be controlled???? Why is that?????? Isn’t that what we should focus on???

nyceve… she’s great, heroic even… out there fighting to make things better. But there’s this one little thing: we are engulfed in lawlessness and lack of accountability. Nobody… nobody… is enforcing the law or holding the powerful accountable.

What does this have to do with health insurance?

Just . . . everything.

cross-posted at writing in the rAw and at dKos

Late Night Karaoke

White Huns in Herat

Hephthalite Coin
5th Century AD Hephthalite coin of King Lakhana

The Hephthalites were a Central Asian nomadic confederation of the AD 5th-6th centuries whose precise origins and composition remain obscure. According to Chinese chronicles, they were originally a tribe living to the north of the Great Wall and were known as Hoa or Hoa-tun. Elsewhere they were called White Huns.

Don’t call it “The Big Orange Tumor”

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Whatever you do don’t call DK4 The Big Orange Tumor. Are we clear?

cause It’s not a tumor, it’s li’l kos’s customized money pit. Ads blaze everywhere, on every page, even on the “community” members’ individual diaries. (note use of quotes = sarcasm here P8).

Long time contributors and their diaries have been relegated to the back of the bus, that is, taken off the FP. Why? because according to the BOT’s, Big Orange Tumor’s , surveys most readers never open those diaries, they merely peruse the front page. You see, kos only caters to what’s bringing in the cash – loyalty to “community” members (aka suckers) is non existent.

The tumor place is set up for maximum clicking to maximize lord fauntelroy’s ad revenues.

So eye repeat, whatever you do, don’t think of Daily Kos 4 as The Big Orange Tumor

Thank You.