Checking in…

Clearing out the cobwebs, that stuff.  Not much to say.  Just that the great and mighty Fafblog has returned, and just in time too.  Even better, if you read through the comments, they managed to tweak a few of the pro Clinton crazies.  Beautiful.  You have to love it when some takes themselves seriosuly enough to argue wth Fafnir.  Cheers, dumbasses.

Been a while.

There’s been one thing after another, and this place has gathered a little dust. I guess I’ll start posting regularly again. Expect some angry political commentary later– not now though. I’m not in the proper head space for it, because I just lost an old friend.

This ain’t livejournal, so you’re not hearing about it. Suffice to say, no one is dead, but we are going our separate ways. It’s sad and it sucks, but I don’t see a way around it. Oh well.

To old friends, both in our history and in our present:

Cheers.

Also: I have a serious crush on Zadie Smith.

Anarchy in the USA

So some dude was caught in Vegas with a bunch of Ricin and a copy of what the hacks at CNN are calling an “anarchist-type textbook” –which the non-moron world would likely assume to be the COINTELPRO masterpiece the Anarchist Cookbook*.

Then, of course  the number one domestic terror threat burned down a couple of mansions.

Combine that with little tidbits like this, and you start to get a little paranoid. 

Perhaps it is time to revisit this Naomi Klein piece from 2003.

Bonus laffs, from the comments at Think Progress:

Dont worry

Obama will fix it.

Some people never learn, do they?

*No proof, I just know, as well as most adults, that the drug recipes –at best– don’t get you high, and the explosive recipes will take off your fingers.

Links and related lazy, nasty, comments.

Starting with the obvious:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

I don’t even know what to say any more. 

Speaking of being left speechless, we have this:

Shares of Diebold(DBD – Cramer’s Take – Stockpickr) were soaring Monday after United Technologies(UTX – Cramer’s Take – Stockpickr) made an unsolicited bid to acquire the company for $2.63 billion.

United Technologies, a Hartford, Conn.-based conglomerate whose businesses include Otis elevators, Carrier heating and air-conditioning systems and Pratt & Whitney airplane engines, said it wants to pay $40 a share in cash. That represents a 66% premium to Diebold’s closing stock price on Friday of $24.12.

But wait, I’m confused, because I think “The Street” left something out.  What does UTC do again?

United Technologies Corporation (UTC) (NYSE: UTX) is an American multinational conglomerate based in Hartford, Connecticut, and is the 20th largest U.S. manufacturer.^[1] It researches, develops, and manufactures products in numerous areas, including aircraft engines, helicopters, heating and cooling, fuel cells, elevators and escalators, fire and security, building systems, and industrial products, among others. UTC is also a large military contractor, producing missile systems and military helicopters, most notably the Black Hawk Helicopter.^[2] In 2005, it received over 5 billion dollars in military contracts. George David is the current CEO.

Ah, gotcha.  So: A military contractor is trying to buy Diebold. 

Shall I say that again?

A military contractor is trying to buy Diebold.

Yeah. 

What else, what else.  Oh yes, the House Democrats are hard at work trying to undo the one worthwhile thing they’ve done since being awarded their majority, there’s a guy in Utah that’s torturing his employees–sure that will be more common in the next few years– and–oh yeah, we also torture lots of children too.

So welcome to the new police state!  I have to get back to work. You all can start your revolution anytime though, you don’t need to wait until 5:30.  I won’t be offended.

Ive had it.

Hi,

Sorry for the radio silence. Things have been busy,and frankly, I put down the news papers for a little while. Every once in a while you need to; during election season, it seems like you may as well just not bother at all.

Which brings me to my point: I’m not talking about the elections here–or elsewhere– again. I’m done. There will be no endorsing, cheering, hand wringing– none of that. Because I realized that I no longer care.

Us Americans start our election process 2-3 years before the election. While it’s nice to distract CNN from Britney once in a while, the problem is that election coverage somehow manages to pass for hard news. Anybody with a pulse knows this ain’t the case, but what are you going to do? Most people are probably also aware that the election itself is being used to distract us from the news. But what has self knowledge ever gotten anyone?

I have my preferences as to who I’d like to see get the job, obviously, but you know what? They really aren’t that strong. I don’t like any of them. Obama is probably the least offensive, but even he is pretty bad. He clapped his hands like a trained seal when Israel invaded Lebanon. He surrounds himself with people like Zbigniew Brzezinski and a team of economists from the freaking Clinton White House. He’s not worth getting exited over.

There is a possibility that he can be bullied, though, and that’s something. But anybody can be bullied if you put enough pressure on them. Which is why, once again, I think its best to devote your time– not to the election– but to single issue advocacy groups. You can trust them not to screw you, sometimes. The same cannot be said of a politician.

Vote for whoever the hell you want. Just do the world a favor and stay involved after you make your mark. And all you lefties who are rallying around Obama, promise me you will turn on him like an abused pitbull the second his hand comes off that bible on inauguration day. Don’t let that asshole slide along on his cult of personality, because he will if you let him; he’s a politician– that’s what they do.

Peace.

Quote of the day

Many years ago Pablo Casals, the great Spanish cellist, was having his eightysomethingth
birthday in Madrid, and they held a press conference for him and the
dear old soul came out and was droning on the way elderly people like him and
now I do about what a mess the world was. And at some point he obviously heard
himself; he stopped, and then said two sentences, which I love, because though
they don’t at first sight seem to fit together I think you’ll eventually agree that they
do.
The first sentence reeks of fatalism, and the second has just a hint of audacity and
courage. And they’re universally applicable to whatever tasks we might face, and
most of us are in tasks beyond belief and almost certainly beyond human ability to
fix, and he said “The situation is hopeless. We must take the next step.”

–Phillip Adams 

 

 

Local stuff

Local Hero Randy Milholland would like to remind us all of a very important 1st year anniversary:

I would agree. The only people who really conducted themselves well were the artists, who managed to maintain their sense of humor during something that must have scared the hell out of them.

So Suharto’s dead

I wonder if I can find a mainstream media blowjob piece on him.

20 seconds of looking. Fucker killed a million people, and because we helped him, we’re gonna pretend he wasn’t that bad.  Good show guys.

I wonder

I wonder if I could sum up my problems with identity politics in a neat 400 hundred words or so.

Ah, here we go. 

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard.  Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act to name a few.  Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.   

And now the greatest betrayal!  We are repaid with his abandonment!  He’s picked the new guy over us.  He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one).  “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow).  “They” are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future. 

The ultimate betrayal.

 I would have been more than a little shocked if Teddy went for Hillary.  Teddy and the Clintons represent two separate spheres of influence in the Democratic party, with the Clintons occupying the moderate-right,and Teddy representing what passes for “progressive” .  If you’ve read this blog before, I’m sure you have gleaned that I have little sympathy for Democratic moderates.   It is their rule that gave us NAFTA, welfare “reform”, and –let’s be honest– every despicable capitulation we’ve had to bear over the past 7 years. 

Hillary Clinton is everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party.  If you want to vote for her simply because she happens to be the right gender, I’m not sure we have much to say.

  How uplifting has Condeleeza Rice’s career been?

Something I missed

Maybe you missed it too. From alternet.

Earlier in the week, a group representing a majority of lawmakers in Iraq’s parliament — a group made up of Sunni, Shiite and secular leaders — sent a letter to the Security Council, a rough translation of which reads: “We reject in the strongest possible terms the unconditional renewal of the mandate and ask for clear mechanisms to obligate all foreign troops to completely withdrawal from Iraq according to an announced timetable.”

Good to know.