Because YOU ASKED FOR IT.And the speech...
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"TO DESTROY THIS INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT,
TO DISSOLVE THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE
BETWEEN CORRUPT BUSINESS AND CORRUPT POLITICS
IS THE FIRST TASK OF THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE DAY."
-- Theodore Roosevelt--
Because YOU ASKED FOR IT.Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
And what does this guy do? Take some of their food, and when they ask him, "Do you know the way out?" he tells them, "Hey, go back the way you came. Look, that's the way out. You see?"Weeeee! I was a little bit harsh on the whole CorporoState comment, but not really alltogether off. For sure, he was never a Progressive. So I'm over that. AND, I have liked how there's been a wee bit of Repug smacking down. Just a wee bit though. This whole bi-post-partisan thing escapes me. Failed ideas are failed ideas and they belong strongly and completely attached to those folks who failed to actually think and promulgated thosae shitty policies.
And they turn on their heels and follow him.
Long story short, he's a hologram, a puppet run by the same CorporoState that Brought You Consumables!
At 7:46 - "How shall a new environment be programmed? It all happens so slowly that most men fail to realize that anything had happened at all..."
This is my long winded and weird to get to the flap between Glenn Greenwald and Keith Olberman. The thing is, is that Digby is right. Fuck this centrist bullshit. What they're not saying is that POLITICS SHOULD BE AS PARTISAN AS CONCIEVABLE OR POSSIBLE RIGHT NOW! Cheese and Rice, there is no time like NOW to repudiate the politics of the Republicans with 8 out of 10 people saying the country is going down the tubes.
Obama Ain't Gotta Play On FISA. It's as simple as that. So he should suck it up and LEAD THE FILIBUSTER!
Now Olbermann announced that he'll have a Special Comment on his Monday program about this little grange war. Fine. I hope he shoots the shit out of the target and makes Obama squirm. If Keith goes to the alleged "center " on this thing, well fuck, he turns into the next generation of the Very Wise And Serious Villagers, at which point I will vomit, as if anybody cares.
Anybody that keeps saying to me "march to the center, it's pragmatic" I feel like punching in the face. I'm no sheep. I may be a Democrat and I want to win as much as anybody eolse but I don't want to wake up in 4, 5, 10 more years and be even farther down the road to THX 1138.
What the hell would be my name? UNC - 4291?
I'll vote for this Obama person, but it's only because of the alternative. Like I said during the primaries "If the country is a car hurtling off the cliff, the Repugs are stepping on the gas, the Dems are thinking about putting on the breaks. It's up to us to stop the fucking car."
You've probably heard the saying that if life gives you nothing but lemons you should consider opening up a lemonade stand. Well, from CBC.ca we have this story, of an engineer who was laid off from Nortel, based in Ottawa - and responded by inventing a new sex toy. That's what I call stimulating the economy. Layoffs at Nortel have led to the launch of a new sex toy company in Ottawa. Standard Innovation Corp.'s first product, the We-Vibe vibrator, has sold 55,000 units worldwide since it was released last spring.Ahem...as it so often does on long car trips.
Bruce and Melody Murison, both former Nortel employees, launched their "research and design" company after Murison was laid off from the now-struggling telecommunications technology giant five years ago. Bruce Murison, who worked as a Nortel engineer for more than a decade, said the We-Vibe was designed from an engineer's perspective. The 60-gram silicone device is U-shaped and is the product of six years and $500,000 worth of research and development.
"This is, to me, not a sex toy. It's an electromechanical device," he said. "We truly look at it from a scientific point of view; in terms of plotting the x-y charts of power versus performance, versus the third dimension of the human dynamic: What frequencies do women like?" The couple said they came up with the idea while on a long car trip in 2001. The topic of sex toys came up.
..."And it was just an innocent idea — why isn't there a sex toy that fits between two people when they're making love?" Bruce said. He jotted down the idea, did some searches and found that nothing similar had been patented.Heh heh. FORCED to go downtown to cruise the peeler joints. I am shocked, I tell you, simply shocked.
In 2003, he was laid off from Nortel and had some time to pursue his new research. "We had to go downtown to cruise the peeler joints and talk them into trying our device," he recalled, adding that they wanted it tested by people who had tried five or more devices for comparison.
The couple kept the idea a secret for years as they worked on it, due to the stigma associated with sex toys. Melody Murison said it took her until May 2008 to tell her parents. "Dad was pretty quiet about it. Mom was — she absorbed what I was saying. I think she was glad to hear that we had income now."Nortel is a networking firm, so one could guess where Murison's idea could go from here. Bluetooth enabled sets of We-vibes that respond to the proximity and state of excitation of your partner, perhaps? How about a base unit with Theremin controls that would allow you to play your loved one like a violin? The possibilities are endless.
Her husband said their company now has a new project on the go. "I discovered some technology developed by NASA that has never been applied to the sex toy industry," he said. "So we've got a new technological platform we're going to be rolling out over the next two years."
Meanwhile, vendors taking part in Ottawa's annual sex show, Sexapalooza, this past weekend said the toy, which retails for $129.95, is flying off shelves. "It's phenomenal," said Shelley Taylor, owner of the Venus Envy store in Centretown. "We've never, ever seen a toy sell like this."
Bonnie Hamilton, owner of Bonnie's Bedroom in Hamilton, Ont., said the product has been a boon for her business also. "That's my livelihood, so I'm pleased."
The theremin is unique among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact. The musician (occasionally referred to as a thereminist) stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas. The distance from one antenna determines frequency (pitch), and the distance from the other controls amplitude (volume). Most frequently, the right hand controls the pitch and the left controls the volume, although some performers reverse this arrangement. Some low cost theremins use a conventional, knob operated volume control and have only the pitch antenna.Yep - a touchless instrument. How wild is that? Aside from the funky concept, actual art is produced from it. Observe Masami Takeuchi play Camille Saint Saens "Le Cygne" (The Swan) from "Carnival of the Animals."
Here's an interesting story from Ellen Hodgson Brown, writing at Global Research.caOn a recent visit to Tucson, Arizona, where I was invited to give a presentation on monetary reform, I was disturbed by a story of strange goings on in the desert. A little over a year ago, it seems, a new industrial facility sprang up on the edge of town. It was in a remote industrial zone and appeared to be a bus depot. The new enterprise was surrounded by an imposing security fence and bore no outward signs identifying its services. However, it soon became apparent that the compound was in the business of outfitting a fleet of prison buses. Thirty or so secondhand city buses were being reconfigured with prison bars in the windows and a coat of fresh paint bearing the “Wackenhut G4S” logo on the side.First off I should tell you that Ellen Brown does a fair bit of economics blogging, and has written a book Web of Debt on the "shocking truth about our money system" as it stands. Private interests like the Federal Reserve control the issuance of US currency, and don't think they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart. But I'm just saying that to give you a bit of background on the source of the story. Ellen also has a Web of Debt Blog, which I recommend. She is not an economist, which ironically gives her an edge when discussing how the economy really works. I first blogged about her last October, in a post that discussed The Working Group on Financial Markets, also known as the Plunge Protection Team. Set up by the Reagan administration in 1988 the PPT was established to stabilize the financial markets, but like all things Republican it a) operates without any real oversight and b) has a great potential for corruption.
The new Wackenhut operation is shrouded in mystery. It has been running its fleet of empty prison buses night and day, apparently logging miles on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract. Multiple buses can be seen driving all over town and even on remote desert back roads. Oddly, except for the driver and one escort guard seated in front, these buses are always empty.
Wackenhut Services was founded by George Wackenhut in 1954 to provide prison guard services to state and federal governments. Wackenhut Services is now owned by the Danish corporation G4S.
Observers originally thought that the purpose of the new Wackenhut operation was to outfit prison buses to be distributed in other parts of the country. But it soon became apparent that none of the buses was leaving the Tucson depot. Recently, a passerby observed what appeared to be a training operation there. In what seemed to be strange activity for 10:30 PM on a Saturday night, the depot yard was fully illuminated, the entire fleet of buses was up and running, and drivers and guards were scrambling around the yard. The question is, what were they training for?
Some time ago I pondered how taking over the government from Bush would be like taking the controls of the Hindenburg after it had burst into flames. I never considered that a mutinous crew would also be part of the disastrous equation. And you can rest assured that as long as it is in their power these same Republican hirees will be handing out as many no-bid contracts to as many cronies as they possibly can. And maybe these buses are just part of that.Fraud and waste aside, this mysterious activity has sinister implications. Why the obvious secrecy? Since the World Trade Center disaster in 2001, the Department of Homeland Security has grown to monster proportions, claiming a projected $50 billion of the federal budget in 2009. DHS includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which earned notoriety in 2005 for its gross mishandling of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Al Martin, a retired naval intelligence officer and former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, has linked the remilitarization of FEMA to the civil unrest anticipated along with economic collapse. He wrote in a November 2005 newsletter called “Behind the Scenes in the Beltway”:So, the obvious pertinent questions to ask here are,
“FEMA is being upgraded as a federal agency, and upon passage of PATRIOT Act III, which contains the amendment to overturn posse comitatus, FEMA will be re-militarized, which will give the agency military police powers. . . . Why is all of this being done? Why is the regime moving to a militarized police state and to a dictatorship? It is because of what Comptroller General David Walker said, that after 2009, the ability of the United States to continue to service its debt becomes questionable. Although the average citizen may not understand what that means, when the United States can no longer service its debt it collapses as an economic entity. We would be an economically collapsed state. The only way government can function and can maintain control in an economically collapsed state is through a military dictatorship.”
All of this is quite ominous. It is also a good argument for considering radical funding alternatives. There are other ways to deal with the federal debt besides relying on the waning appetites of the Chinese and the Japanese for U.S. securities. Some innovative alternatives for funding both the federal debt and President Obama’s new economic stimulus package will be the subject of followup articles. Stay tuned.
“We are here as public servants, and public service is a privilege,” Obama said, addressing his White House staff and Cabinet on his first full day in office. “It’s not about advancing yourself or your corporate clients.”an Executive Order to close Guantanamo, FOIA transparency, some most excellent appointments to the DOJ (that's Department of Justice; not Dave of the Jungle. Sorry Dave.) and poll numbers that support investigations into Bush and Cheney's illegal activities. (We also have the stoopid media, but that's for a post on another day.)
...Ms. Watkins is not well known nationally. She came to the attention of Mr. Obama at a meeting he held during the campaign last summer to introduce himself to a politically and theologically diverse group of ministers. At that closed-door meeting, some of the conservative ministers bluntly questioned Mr. Obama on certain issues. Ms. Watkins was asked to give the closing prayer.Of course, this is also the exact thing that sometimes leaves me exasperated. The NYTimes notes her oppostition to torture. Our General Assembly passed a resolution condemning torture at our Ft. Worth assembly in 2008. But when she speaks to the denomination about torture, it isn't her opposition, but rather her desire for unity in our diversity of opinions on torture. Blech!
“Sharon was able to conclude in a way that tied everyone together,” said the Rev. Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, who was at the meeting. “It left folks on a buoyant note, with a degree of hope and optimism that we could find some common ground.”

"This will not be easy and it will not be short," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on national television about two hours after ground troops moved in.Of course it won't. Because the current war hawks in the Israeli government don't want it to be easy or short.
This is the Bush Regime's "my way or the highway" diplomacy. Do what we say, or no deal."We have many, many targets," Israeli army spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich told CNN. "To my estimation, it will be a lengthy operation."
Israeli leaders said the operation, meant to quell militant rocket and mortar fire on southern Israel, would not end quickly, but that the objective was not to reoccupy Gaza or topple Hamas. The depth and intensity will also depend on parallel diplomatic efforts that so far have been unacceptable to Israel, the officials said. [emphasis added]
The whole thing is unbelievably awful. Don't get me wrong, any jerk firing a rocket at anybody is an assclown. But organized mass deaths as a response is morally unacceptable to me.Before the ground invasion, defense officials said about 10,000 Israeli soldiers had massed along the border in recent days.
Israel initially held off on a ground offensive, apparently in part because of concern about casualties among Israeli troops and because of fears of getting bogged down in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government decided to mount a land operation despite the risk it posed to thousands of soldiers.
An inner Cabinet of top ministers met with leading security officials for four hours Saturday before deciding to authorize the ground invasion.
Olmert told the meeting that Israel's objective was to bring quiet to southern Israel but "we don't want to topple Hamas," a government official quoted the prime minister as saying. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to share the information.
The immediate aim of the ground operations was to take control of sites militants use as rocket-launching pads, the military said. It said large numbers of troops were taking part but did not give specifics.
Israeli airstrikes intensified just as the ground operation was getting under way, and 28 Palestinians were killed. Palestinian health officials said civilians were among the dead, including a woman, her son and her father who died after a shell hit their house.
One raid hit a mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing 13 people and wounding 33, according to a Palestinian health official. One of the wounded worshippers, Salah Mustafa, told Al-Jazeera TV from a hospital that the mosque was packed.
"It was unbelievably awful," he said, struggling to catch his breath.
What's just making me insane is that there is a cure available; withdraw support from Israel. I mean that US policy should say "Israel, these mass killings and invasions aren't going to do you any good. So guess what? Our $6 Billion per year support is going bye-bye. There's nothing you can do to get it back. "Laura Doty over at Oxdown asks Are Cluster Bombs Falling on Gaza Today? and quotes Sameh Habeeb of Gaza Today. In reviewing the footage starting to come out (CNN's shows the same but is not yet online in embed format, this is from Italian tv, the same is seen in a Ha'retz tv video), we do see explosions in the air with multiple projectiles - you can see this in the video at right. I asked markfromireland, who is quite familiar with such weapons, if these are cluster bombs and he replied:
"Hard to tell exactly what shell they're using but yes thats what they look like. If you're asking is that what a cluster looks like then the answer is yes."
Each report we see and hear repeats, as I just did, the words “densely populated” and that repetition too easily jades us to the meaning behind those words. Gaza is packed with people – the majority under the age of 17.
It is hard to realize how very small the Gaza Strip is, "about 41 kilometers (25 mi) long, and between 6 and 12 kilometers (4–7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi)."
To get a better sense of that density, look at this map