Monday, June 30, 2008

The Jed Report is rockin' it!

You gotta check out the Jed Report. Americablog has been linking to them pretty consistently for a few months and the guy is completely rockin it. For example check out today's video -- A Google Earth tour of McCain's many homes. I particularly love the voice-over narration -- it reminds me a bit of Odd Todd:

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Cranky one liners, tell your friends

John McCain = George Bush + dementia (which is kinda redundant but you get the point).

Note to Barack Obama: Most people don't care what position you take on an issue, they care that the process you use in making the decision is principled.

It seems that everyone is writing their analysis of what happened with the Clinton campaign so I thought I'd add my own: Clinton hired Mark Penn. The end.

Enough already with Buddhists finding ways to love Dick Cheney! The latest ridiculous example is Deborah Solomon's interview with Columbia University Buddhist studies professor Robert Thurman:

"DS: What do you think about when you meditate?
RT: Usually, some form of trying to excavate any kind of negative thing cycling in the mind and turn it toward the positive. For example, when I am annoyed with Dick Cheney, I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.

DS: You mean you fantasize about being breast-fed by Dick Cheney?
RT: It’s a fantasy of releasing fear and developing affection. It’s a way of coming back to feeling grateful toward him and seeing his positive side, finding the mother in Dick Cheney."


Note to American Buddhists: Dick Cheney is a murderous thug. Over 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead in part because of him. Stop trying to hump his leg and start working with the rest of humanity to put him in jail. There's a reason why Tibet isn't free -- Buddhists are so busy suppressing their anger that they are largely impotent when it comes to the political struggle.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Lilla Watson

I heard this quote for the first time tonight and it totally blew me away:

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together."
Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist

I feel like that's it exactly.

The physical oppression of the coffee grower in Latin America it tied up with the mental colonization of the American mind that rushes to fuel up on $4 coffee without questioning where it came from nor why we have to be so amped up everyday.

The prisoner at Guantanamo is shackled by security forces but he is also tied to the shackles in our mind that fear to question and fear to throw our bodies against the machine that produces such horror.

So often we think of domination and oppression as out there, over there, other, without realizing, seeing, or feeling that its mirror image exists inside our own heads constraining what we think, feel, and do. I definitely DO NOT mean this in a postmodern, new age, The Secret, we-create our-own-reality-through-our-thoughts kind of way. What I'm saying is that in the first world, our bodies and minds are not as free as we think they are. We are often unable to see the chains that bind and limit us because we have internalized them and normalized them. But I think we feel the yearning for liberation pretty regularly.

Monday, June 09, 2008

14 people murdered in L.A. County over the weekend

The LA Times put the story on page B3.

I'll just repeat that -- 14 people murdered in Los Angeles County in one weekend and it doesn't even make the front page of the local section.

Nothing to see here people.

Sandra Day O'Connor wants more civics education

The NY Times today reports:

"Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court justice, feels that civics education in American public school has become less of a priority in the era of standardized testing. So, in conjunction with two universities, she is developing an interactive Web Site with a civics curriculum for students called Our Courts. "Knowledge about our government is not handed down through the gene pool," she said. "Every generation has to learn it, and we have some work to do."

Dear Sandra Day O'Connor:

Just heard about the new civics education website. Congratulations. I'm wondering if your civics curriculum will include any lessons on how the SUPREME COURT SHOULD NOT PICK THE PRESIDENT AND SHOULD ALLOW ALL THE VOTES TO BE COUNTED. Just a thought.

All the best,
RFK Action Front

Friday, June 06, 2008

Stunning Excerpt from "Machiavelli's Shadow"

Salon is out today with a stunning excerpt from Paul Alexander's new book about Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina. (Hat tip to Melissa McEwan at Shakesville for flagging the following bombshell paragraphs:)
Of all of the stories and subplots, there would be one that, in many ways, symbolized the whole of Katrina, what it revealed about the Bush administration, and how it would affect the lives of so many people. On Friday, Mary Landrieu had been with Bush and Blanco as they toured the 17th Street Canal, where, at last, major work had commenced to repair the damage that had been caused when the levee broke. "Then, on Saturday," Landrieu says, "George Stephanopoulos called and asked to do an interview with me, and I said, 'George, I'm tired of doing interviews. I have to work. And nothing you are airing is accurately showing what's going on down here.' He wanted to go to the Superdome, and I said, 'We still have people stranded on their roofs. If you want to tell the right story, I will help you tell the right story. You get a helicopter and I'll go up and I will show you what is actually happening. It's awful what's happening at the Superdome, but the reason the people can't understand the story is because the entire region is under 20 feet of water. People can't get into the Superdome to help. They can't get out. People are drowning in their homes.'

"So George and I went up in the helicopter and for three hours his jaw was dropping. Then I said, 'George, before we finish I have to show you one positive thing because I can't send you back to Washington to produce a story that shows nothing but devastation and disaster.' So I told the pilot to tack right so I can show George the 17th Street Canal and the work that was going on there. I swear as my name is Mary Landrieu I thought that what I saw with the president was still there -- people working, trucks, sandbags, everything. Then I looked down and saw one little crane. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed me through my heart. I lost it." There, in the cabin of the helicopter, as they flew above the breached canal below them, Landrieu sat devastated.

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life."

It's shows once again that this White House is only a marketing operation. There is no governing team, no policy team, just the political team spinning the gullible Washington press corp 24/7.

It seems to me that Bush's failed response to hurricane Katrina is an impeachable offense by any reasonable definition of the term.