June 9, 2012

Reminds me of some "cousins" who grew up a few miles from me when I was a kid.

My parents and I lived on a cul-de-sac in which all the homes were owned and occupied by quiet retired couples who kind of kept to themselves. Only occasionally did some grandchild or grandniece show up, and I'd invariably go play with them. But it was rare. And it wasn't conducive to much play outside since the street level was blow the houses. Each driveway went up a hill to the house at the top, from the pavement of the circle below. I remember my parents always gritting their teeth about driving up and down the driveway during the winter. Lots of rock salt all over the pavement. So it wasn't like you could ride bikes around there - it just wasn't kid-friendly.

So whenever we went over to Aunt Anne's and Uncle Moon's, they had six kids and at least one was my age. And their whole street was lined with houses where there were other kids around the same age. There were kids all over the place. Up the street, down the street, across the street, up the hill to the next street over, and in the next blocks beyond that. There was noise and squealing to be heard for blocks from people's back yards. Boisterous activity all over the place. Packs of bicycles with eight-year-olds and ten-year-olds coming down the street. Kids running across everyone's back yard. Nobody had fences. And always the noise, the din of lots of outdoor activity and balls bouncing and the little ringing bell on somebody's tricycle handle and hollering and squealing and stuff.

I LOVED it. But I barely knew what to do with myself. It was like going from a desert island to Honeydukes.

June 8, 2012

"...they can't BELIEVE what they're finding."

Asshole spews shit like this and doesn't back it up, and the minds of all those who hear him then put 2 and 2 together and get 5,974.

June 8, 2012

Because that's what they're constantly force-fed by many more CON-servative-leaning stations and

networks than there are on our side, pushing a different message.

Hell, we don't even HAVE a different message, let alone one that could be pushed.

And the really discouraging thing is - even if we did have a different message, where would you be able to find it on the airwaves. Pox Noise maybe? (Yeah... SUUUUUUUUUUUURE...) Yeah, limbaugh and friends sure would take THAT ball and carry it all the way to the goal post.

June 8, 2012

I'd rather watch that than the constant drumbeat against Obama on virtually every channel.

I was so grateful for all the Queen's-Diamond-Jubilee coverage. Even if they overdid it. Even if the coverage was maudlin, even if Piers Morgan anchored it and probably had quivers going up his leg in true Chris Matthews fashion. Even then. It was a HUGE relief. God Bless the Brits, and God Save the Queen. And give me more Wills and Kate. ANYTHING but the slow dissection of Barack Obama's presidency. It's like a Chinese water torture. I've watched very little news all week, since Tuesday night. Just can't stomach it. Even Rachel Maddow.

June 8, 2012

I'm not so confident. We don't have a lot of people on our side who think deviously.

Therefore they're utterly unequipped to meet the challenge of those who do. Naivete abounds on our side.

June 8, 2012

First they came...

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

From Wikipedia:

"First they came…" is a famous statement attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%E2%80%A6

Dang - I'm doing an awful lot of wikipedia-ing today...

June 8, 2012

Btw - I've been reading some awfully depressing analysis of Wisconsin

and how it appears the Dems snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because they squandered the Wisconsin uprising and misfired on the populism that had bloomed - and then was allowed to fade.

http://www.nationofchange.org/wisconsin-and-left-1339040522

http://www.nationofchange.org/was-walker-recall-effort-wrong-fight-1339050295

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9661-the-silver-lining-in-walkers-victory

It all indicates we're in for some rough times if the bad guys keep harnessing "populist anger" and we don't, and frame us as the elites who don't give a damn, and we don't reframe them aggressively.

And I saw a few mentions of (paraphrasing) WHERE was the civil disobedience? WHERE was the general strike - that was actually talked about back during the cold weather months last year when people occupied the capitol building? Why did that message somehow get diluted and its strength sapped away? I'm growing more fearful - not less. I'm not sure the best kind of thinking is in play on our side.

(snip)
“There is also the Chris Hedges’ “Death of the Liberal Class” argument, which says what he conceptualizes as the “liberal class” is dead and has lost its legitimacy among the United States’ citizenry. Another way to refer to the “liberal class” is to call it the “liberal elite.” This argument is far more compelling and complex than the Frank argument. Hedges posits that long ago, liberal elites abandoned the rank-and-file of the working class, though they have continued to, in a hollow manner, speak on behalf of it. Because an untold number of people feel abandoned by liberal elites, its void has been filled by an organized and outraged right-wing populist front, argues Hedges. Hedges argues that Wall Street Democrats like President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama serve as Exhibit A of the liberal class. I would take that a step further and say so too did Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett.

Then there’s the Noam Chomsky argument, which in most ways mirrors the Hedges argument, but directly addresses the question of the Tea Party. In a speech he gave in Madison, WI in April 2010, he stated, “Ridiculing Tea Party shenanigans is a serious error, I think. It would be far more appropriate to understand what lies behind them and to ask ourselves why justly angry people are being mobilized by the extreme right and not by forces like those that did so in my childhood, in the days of formation of the CIO and other constructive activism.”

What Happened to the Left?

Emma Goldman had it right when she stated, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” Labor and the left in Wisconsin committed suicide when it demobilized a legitimate grassroots movement and turned it into an electoral campaign. It has been a long, slow death. Grassroots activists with righteous indignation gave up their agency to do that which was deemed “acceptable” to the powers that be, namely the “Union Bosses” and the Democratic Party apparatchiks. Why was a general strike never considered? Why not creative tactics to “kill the bill,” Act 10, the reason for the “Uprising” and recall to begin with? How’d this all morph into what it’s morphed into?

In the main, the left has failed to understand that what populist right-wing activists hate more than anything else is the Democratic Party and unions, two pillars of what Hedges defines as the “Liberal Class.” Their hatred is justified, given that, as Hedges points out, these institutions abandoned working class people long ago. Thus, the left confused real grassroots power with the Liberal Class and are now paying the consequences.

(snip)

These snips are from the article "The Silver Lining in Walker's Victory" - which, upon reading the whole thing, tells me there really isn't much of a silver lining. Not for our side. I'm really getting worried. I don't think our side gets it. And I'm growing fearful about November.

June 8, 2012

Yep, his name was there on that list.

Signatories to Statement of Principles

Elliott Abrams[5]
Gary Bauer[5]
William J. Bennett[5]
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush[5]
Richard B. Cheney[5]
Eliot A. Cohen[5]
Midge Decter[5]
Paula Dobriansky[5]
Steve Forbes[5]
Aaron Friedberg[5]
Francis Fukuyama[5]
Frank Gaffney[5]
Fred C. Ikle[5]



Donald Kagan[5]
Zalmay Khalilzad[5]
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby[5]
Norman Podhoretz[5]
J. Danforth Quayle[5]
Peter W. Rodman[5]
Stephen P. Rosen[5]
Henry S. Rowen[5]
Donald Rumsfeld[5]
Vin Weber[5]
George Weigel[5]
Paul Wolfowitz[5]


Up at the very top:
Project directors

[as listed on the PNAC website:]

William Kristol, Co-founder and Chairman[1]
Robert Kagan, Co-founder[1]
Bruce P. Jackson[1]



Mark Gerson[1]
Randy Scheunemann[1]

randy scheunemann - keep an eye on him. EVIL. He was brought in as john mccain's foreign policy/national security advisor, and he's the one who tried, in vain, to coach sarah palin for her debate with Joe Biden. He even admitted he went away from there just shaking his head. And bill kristol, the publisher of the "Weekly Standard," needs to be watched as well. It's important to see where these people go, who they line up with, who they're brought in to advise - like how many of these ruthless assholes will be on romney's staff.

rummy and john bolton, michael o'hanlon, dan quayle, and a whole host of other rogues and demons are signatories here:

Signatories or contributors to other significant letters or reports[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

June 7, 2012

Yeah, I do too. That's exactly what it looks like.

Hey, guys, it's just fact-based reality: BE SUSPICIOUS. ESPECIALLY if it's a republi-CON. They don't change their stripes. This guy is another bush family reptile. Covered with nice-guy clothes. But still a reptile.

I wouldn't trust a bush, particularly ol' jebbie, farther than I can throw my house.

Don't forget - he was a principle signatory of the PNAC, Project for the New American Century. That's the very same one that called for America "to fight and decisively win (HAH! Yeah, SURE, decisively) multiple wars on multiple fronts" in order to protect our position at the top of the economic international ziggurat. It envisioned us enforcing empire at all costs. And it speculated about the exact best way to get the public behind it, against their own best interests: (paraphrasing) "what we need is a new Pearl Harbor" - some sort of national catastrophe that befalls us from external forces, that fires up the kind of blind blood lust for revenge that, funny enough, we actually witnessed within a couple-three years or so of its limited publication - on September 11th 2001. Frankly I think that's what fueled most of the MIHOP (Make It Happen On Purpose) suspicions of the then-new bush2 administration. Especially recalling that he said and did nothing when presented with that alarming Presidential Daily Brief on August 6th, I think it was, 2001, warning that al Qaeda was planning to strike within the US. I believe what he said when a CIA guy tried to warn him - "well, you've covered yer ass now."

jebbie SIGNED OFF ON THAT. He SIGNED IT, along with cheney and paul wolfowitz and bill kristol and a number of platinum-level CONservative operatives and chickenhawks and powers-behind-the-throne, and other various architects and cheerleaders of what became our abysmal adventure in Iraq.

One other thing, btw, just as long as I'm remembering, even if it is off-subject (sorry): I personally was shocked when I read down that list and spotted michael o'hanlon's name on there. He was (and I think still is) high up in the Brookings Institution, which through the early years of the bush2 administration was one of the rare few "liberal" figures allowed on the airwaves to counter the armies of GOP and CON slobberers over the war. They'd invariably throw on michael o'hanlon on camera purportedly to offer the "other side." Which he never really did. Because he was actually one of them. BASTARD. I notice that he's not sticking his head out too far above the foxhole anymore. Wonder if a few too many people found out about his "credibility."

June 7, 2012

Yep. If that's the way the game is played, and it IS, then yes.

Whenever somebody says - "oh but but but we can't do that... it makes us just like them!!!!" I simply say - "got news for you: I WANT to be just like them. Because they WIN."

You cannot govern unless you win.

You cannot set the agenda unless you win.

You cannot use the bully pulpit unless you win.

You cannot lead the way unless you WIN.

Sucks, but that's the way it is.

I've been saying for a long time now - where are OUR kkkarl roves? Where are OUR thinkers who devise these strategies that starve the opponents, corner them, prevent them from being able to compete, keep them from getting their message out (because YOU own all the broadcast and cable and radio network outlets that count) and brainwash the public.

In war, you cut the enemy's lines of communication. Then you cut their supply lines. Then you sit back and watch them shrivel into nothing while you run the table unopposed.

Some of us were saying this 30 years ago when ralph reed and his fucking "Christian Coalition" was urging operatives and partisans to get in at the local level. Take over the school board. Run for alderman. Run for county council. And then start building once you're in, and you can start working your way up with a gradually increasing power base. And by the time you've been able to reach into your state Senate or maybe Congress or the US Senate or lieutenant governorship - OR better yet, your state's Secretary of State (which supervises all the voting), it's too late to stop you, and your opponents won't even start noticing til you've taken over the governorship and majorities in both houses in the state legislature. Or you're the major of the city. Or some other figure with clout.

And meanwhile, our naifs were all saying - "but, but, but ... the people will SEE! The people will KNOW! They'll SEE what the other side is trying to do to them and they'll get active and vote! The people will SEE!"

Sadly, NO THEY WON'T!!!!! Not when they've been brainwashed by a deliberate long-term strategy of taking over the media, starting with the deregulation of ownership and broadcast license requirements and obligation to the public trust in the community supposedly being served.

The people WILL NOT see. To believe otherwise is just to be fucking NAIVE. And not in touch with anything remotely resembling reality. The people will NOT see.

NOT as long as rush limbaugh isn't stopped.

NOT as long as Pox Noise is allowed to flourish.

NOT as long as outfits like the Daily Caller and Newsmax and the Drudge Report and breitbart.com and all the rest of those hacks and viper pits are allowed to continue, virtually unopposed.

It really pisses me off. WHERE were OUR wealthy people when all those radio stations were being gobbled up by the Mays family (ClearChannel) and rupert murdoch and so forth? Where was OUR ClearChannel or Premiere Radio Networks, instead of that embarrassing, anemic, nearly stillborn Air America? How many stations did we wind up with there? Sixty? Wow. Pretty humiliating considering limbaugh and that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-VANITY have 400 - 600.

Just infuriating.

So how will our country look when a few Goliaths wind up owning everything and there are no Davids as far as the eye can see?