A New Leaf: Pages from "the Book of Faces"

Today, on this blog, I am turning over a new leaf, whereupon I plan to inscribe relevant observations, ideas and features I've been involved with on Facebook over the given time period, i.e., daily, or even less. Starting with:

Hauling Yer Weight: In reply to a post from karen in Phoenix, advancing the cause of recalling the particularly odious ass-wipe/fascist Puke President of the AZ Senate, named Russell Pearce (I wonder if he's kin to the GOPuke Steve Pearce, who's the US Rep for NM's southern District? They're cut from the same cloth.):

See, now HERE'S where we really need a sympathetic billionaire, to step in with a million here (AZ), a million there (WI), another million thither (FL), and yet another yon (OH), and here (NM), too. I'm sure you could get any Gub in the cunchry recalled for $10 Million, take or leave a few mil...

Well, $10 MIL in fly-over ville; what did it cost to recall Grey, in Cali? It took close to $100Million.

The Innocence of Lettuces:

"Nobody--except those who believe, on no evidence at all, that an immortal soul really is implanted in the embryo at the moment of conception, thus endowing it with complete humanity--can say at what point an embryo turns into a human being. The innocence of fetuses is not in doubt. But it is irrelevant: lettuces are innocent too."--Robert Hughes

DOTOF--Mike Feigen

Divided, we beg!:

"The Battle of Madison, in addition to being about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s desire to cripple his state’s public sector unions, is also at least ostensibly about budgetary matters. Walker wants to get those nasty teachers and other government workers to foot more of the bill for their retirements, right? Well … wrong actually. And one of the worst kinds of wrong, a factual error so broadly accepted by the journalists covering the story that it distorts everyone’s understanding of it." Robert Schlesinger

The First Eleven: A unionized employee, a Tea Party member & a corporate CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle is a plate with a dozen donuts on it. The CEO pulls a pistol, and gestures to a flock of toadies outside the door, who come in, reach out & take 11 of the donuts. The CorpoRat then turns to the Tea Party member and sez: 'Look out for that union fucker, he wants a piece of your cookie.'

Sloganeering:

‎"United, we bargain; divided, we beg."
Every movement needs a unifying slogan, and this one (it seems to me) coalesces and consolidates both the spirit and the aspirations of the demonstrators into one, brief, pithy sentiment! It's free, my small contribution to the struggle.

HUELGAMOS, TODOS: Woody cautions folks not to forget there is language in the PATRIOT ACT which defines "interference in interstate commerce" to be a species of "domestic terrorism," and I am morally certain that the language is in there if not to deter a General Strike, then to punish one.

Could a general strike happen here? Experts say maybe
host.madison.com
General strikes have been very rare in the United States, but students of labor point to a confluence of circumstances in Madison with dramatic potential.

Student Achievements: Vary by state. The single factor which figures most prominently in comparisons of students' scores on standardized 'achievement' tests--the variable which accounts for the greates variance, as they say in stats-- is the SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS of the students' families. ZIP Code is a better predictor of academic success at ALL levels than IQ Score. Students' family SES accounts for more than 2/3 of all variance.

The Griftress: FB Friend Ernest Spoon posted on Sarah Palin's apparently declining pouplarity among GOPukes in Iowa, asking (rhetorically, I know) why she gets ANY attention. I replied:

Murka LOVES Us some grifters, probably because, at base, Murka is a nation of grifters.

:grift: ~~ Money made dishonestly, as in a swindle. 2. A swindle or confidence game; :grifter: ~~ Swindler, confidence operator.

Grifters: It's who we are, deep down, at the bottom of our collective 'souls,' the national DNA: a nation of scammers, thieves, swindlers, and low-lifes bent on making/taking the beeg bux the easiste, quickest way. Remember Manhattan?But Spoon, I wouldn't say she's been "groomed." The washed mosta the shit outta her hair, but "groomed?" Nah... She'd NEVER qualify for Westminster...

"What Would You Do?" Immigration In Arizona!

Face to face with the persecution of the innocent?
Officials in Scottsdale refused permission to the reporters to stage their stunt in their town, fearing violence against the team.

Is The Opposite Of A "Granny" State A "Fagin" State?

Or, perhaps soon to be called the "Walker State?"

Here's the blueprint. Each pod is distinct, but it is also possible to think of them as overlapping spheres of a Venn diagram; that is, a set. The spark that ignites the whole array is contained in the aphorism "Every crisis is an opportunity," when "crisis" and Opportunity" are understood in the context of Naomi Klein's paradigm of the Shock Doctrine.


On Balloon Juice, there's a good discussion, which begins:

The assault on unions is currently the most obvious and contested part of this plan (despite the health of the public pension system in Wisconsin), but others – like the no-bid contracts and privatization scheme – are now coming to light. The last, and perhaps most significant, is the attack on public services and particularly healthcare for the poor.

Read more at the link, it's worth the time.

Agreeing, Yes. Okay, But To What

"I Challenge You!" announced a friend of mine on his Facebook wall, reiterating an all-too-common theme among liberal/progressive/leftish folks all over the Webz. The "challenge" is "...(I)nstead of you blaming me, and me blaming you, let's see if we can come up with something positive that offends the very fewest among us. Let's don't worry about abortions, or gun control or any other topic that takes us away from our focus of trying to correct the course of this Ship of State..."

I find such pleas as these--and they are as common as flies around carrion--to be confusing. We should "forget our differences and work together."

Work together for what? Here's a partial list of my principle(d) differences. Am I supposed to forget:

• adopting abortion on demand,
• strengthening gun control,
• passing/signing climate-change-prevention/amelioration legislation,
• providing Universal health CARE (not just fucking insurance),
• rolling back corporate personhood,
• breaking media monopolies,
• ending wars,
• re-instituting hand-counted paper ballots for elections,
• affirming alternative energy solutions,
• reducing/eliminting plastics consumption,
• rejecting GMO foods,
• healing the Gulf,
• getting out of NAFTA et seq,
• etc.

That's just off the top of my head.

Now, lemme get this straight: You want me to "temporarily" forget about these vital matters, matters whjich constitute the skeleton and sinew of my political involvement in the process at all, and set them aside to cooperate, presumably with folks to whom those positions are anathema. And this in order to return EXACTLY WHAT to our national dialogue? Civility? What?

It is precisely HOW those issues are driven and controlled by the Fucktards that pushed the "ship of state" so dangerously off course. It is impossible to "correct" that course WITHOUT attending to the outcome of those issue/debates.

This is where you detect the hand of B. HObama, or some absent eminence. HObama is one of those negotiators for whom the "process" is the ONLY thing that matters. What is agreed TO is ALWAYS of less significance than the act of agreeing.

Teresa Strasser Makes David Frum VERY Uncomfortable

And it couldn't happen to a nicer dickwad.

"But but he's shed blood with his conservotard pals advocating for civility."

Civility serves the powerful, curbs the powerless.



GO, Theresa.
Here's a link to her blog, the name of which is eponymous with the title of her book: Exploiting My Baby

Scott Horton, et al: The Case Against the Case for War with Iran

Who?
Scott Horton. Not the one from Harper's, but another Scott Horton, an equally adept researcher (though perhaps not so great a connoisseur as the Harper's guy). This is a very important discussion. It's about an hour in length, but the vid, per se, is irrelevant; you can run it just on audio; that's what I'd do... Safe for work...

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Finally, Some Real Science on the BP Gulf Oil Disaster

Probably, "gthey" will never actually do anything about this because in all practical reality, there is probably nothing that can be done except to wait and watch nature take its now radically disrupted course.


Then there's this, posted on the Toob las August by YodadogProductions:

Massive kills of fish and other aquatic life are being reported all over the place; NOW SCIENTISTS HAVE JUST CONFIRMED "toxic levels of oil & dispersant in 13 marine organisms" This report has JUST come in. 14 scientists from the U of S. Fla. just got back from 10 days in the gulf. They have tested the water, soil, plankton, etc....check OIL DROPLETS ALL ALL ALL ALL OVER THE GULF FLOOR, you will see it with the UV light, watch, learn and spread, DON'T EAT SEA FOOD, DON'T GET WET FROM THE RAIN(you never know)!!!!! Sorry, for quality, missed the first few moments of the broadcast, but this is EXTREMELY URGENT INFO!!! THIS IS A "FAIR USE" PRESENTATION.
The ratings on this have been disabled 2x's now. I never diable the ratings of my videos, yet immediately after uploading it suddenly was off. It had 1 like, then was off somehow, I discovered it, re-enabled them, then WHAM BAM this morning they are off again, after accumulating 3 more likes. I have video'd this and re-enabled them. Is this BP or Youtube censorship of some kind? It just happened again. It's 3 times now.!

UPDATE: Notice the push that has JUST begun telling people it's ok to eat the seafood. Just like it was ok for the responders after ground zero regarding air quality, just like it was ok for workers of the exxon valdez and now the bp workers and they don't need breathers or anything like that. Go ahead and eat the seafood it you trust the government's track record in this regard. NEVER FORGET, IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY STUPID!!! They rather have the money changing hands now to "keep the economy going" than to tell the truth, or maybe they just want you dead.

Or maybe it's all just alarmism, and everything's gonna be alright...

Take "Limited Local Action" Against The USCoC

I betcha didn't know: Lately the US Chamber of Commerce, the nations LARGEST, richest, most powerful INTERNATIONAL (despite the name) business lobbying association, has been engaging in political dirty tricks against opponents, tricks that would make Richard Nixon, Chuck Colson, and Karl Rove proud. Via ThinkProgress:

EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents
ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

Follow this link for the whole story. But unlike is so many OTHER situations when it seems there may be nothing an individual can do to express their disappointment with corpoRat behavior, a possible strategy for expressing disapproval has occurred to me.

To wit: Whenever you go shopping, look around by the cash register or the front door and see if you see the sticker of th local CoC. If you see it, ask to see the proprietor and ask her or him if they were aware that THEIR Chamber of Commerce was actively involved in moving USer jobs off-shore, lobbying for foreign interests in Congress to move USer businesses overseas,, and attacking american unions, and that, though you had planned to shop there, you will now try to find a merchant who DOESN'T support those DEEPLY UNAMERICAN practices...

A Philosophical Investigation: What IS 'Compromise?"

The following exchange occurred between a correspondent an me on his FakeBook "Wall" this morning; in fact it may be on-going even as I write this. I post it here because it contains a fairly concise and I hope cogent defense of my skepticism about "compromise" with one's mortal antagonists.

(Correspondent): Posted by Eric Smith~
"Just because I am willing to meet my opponent halfway doesn't mean that I am willing to go over to the side of my opponent's for therein lies the difference between compromise and surrender."
58 minutes ago · Like ·
Steve A....., (Correspondent) and 8 others like this.

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Just out of curiosity, where's "half-way" on:
The Wars?
Abortion?
Universal Health CARE?
Social Security/Medicare cuts?
Climate change?
Off-shore drilling?
Fracking?
Whaling?
Civil rights?
Separation of Church/State?
Jis' askin'...
52 minutes ago · Like · 1 person

(Correspondent) When you can give answers...solutions to real problems you go more than half-way...keep up the effort! You can rise above the opposition by staying true to your principles and setting the goal of ''agreement'' as a step to a solution to the problem at hand!

FACE FACTS!!! BE HONEST!! LOOK FOR AGREEMENT!!
37 minutes ago · Like

(Correspondent): MORAL REASONING inters into the equation also!
8 minutes ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Alls I asked was show me WITH WHAT I should agree, with folks whose views on those issues are mutually exclusive of my own.
Where to start? "Well, you'd agree that at least abortions should be rare?"
According to whom? What is "rare?' Who's counting?
"Well, we can't just pull out of those places where we're invaders. We're responsible, aren't we?"
Give 'em reparations in the amount of half the amount we'd spend to stay there and get the fuck out.
Etc.
You cannot 'negotiate' with someone who wishes you ill, dead, or silent.

Michael Moore On The REAL Reagan

On the theory that one can NEVER say enough ILL of dead fascists, fucktards and fuckwitz (all of which Ronnie Raygun was), here's a clip from Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" in which the very real contributions of his regime to the crises we are now enduring are made crystalline:

R E S P E C T ~~ What That Word Means To Me!

I am hopelessly smitten!

Greg Palast on "Coward, Cheat, and Con-man" Ronnie Reagan

Killer, Con-Man, Coward
Good Riddance Gipper

Sunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast

You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.

And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog -- then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.

I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government loot. It used to be called bribery.

And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about "family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.

The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected, "faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.

And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away, his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.

Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatollah. Reagan, with that film-fantasy tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.

Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah -- no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.

Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.

I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disperse" -- and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.

In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway?

Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.

In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.

Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.

Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.

"It's So Easy To Buy Guns In AZ That The Mexican Drug Cartels Shop in AZ For Their Weaponry"

John Fugelsang (The Man W/The "Funniest Twitter Stream In America") Deals The Public Option To The GOP