big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
For pity while standing at the polls:
A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet.
He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds.
Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, victory was upheld on the ground that “any man of ordinary courage” could have made his way to the polls.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Sunday he is confident that Saudi Arabia will contribute to the International Monetary Fund’s bailout reserves after he promised business leaders in the Gulf that they would have a say in any future new world economic order.
On a cold, gray morning a week before Election Day, President Bush briefly emerged from the White House for an unannounced visit to the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Southeast Washington.
“Everybody kind of wanted to spend the last 100-plus days doing some legacy things, and the financial crisis has thrown a wrench into that.”
One wonders whether they can appreciate how the rest of us feel. After failing in every imaginable way, with the worst approval ratings since the dawn of modern polling, and with a party that wants the president to be neither seen nor heard, the Bush White House is apparently feeling a little sorry for itself.
“No need to wait to die to go to heaven. We could have heaven on earth. Like many true believers, we not only believed it but we sang about its wonders at every opportunity.”
On maverickisms, says at 91 years old:
In the Faust legend, Faust makes a deal with the devil for one supreme moment in a life that would go on forever. Of course the bargain doesn’t work out that way once the the Devil, Mephistopheles, takes control and Faust is doomed. For McCain, his supreme moment in life would be the Presidency. His bargain with the right wing nuts of the party will make him their prisoner. No matter how the election turns out, this could be his doom. Even if elected, I don’t believe he would be able to cancel the deal he made with the right wing and thus would remain their prisoner. Not a very assuring scenario considering the problems the next President will be confronting.
On 2008, says at 91 years old:
…the most historic election campaign that I have lived through.
As expected, the right wing nuts are going crazy just thinking about Obama winning, so all the stops are out. My hope is that all those young ‘warriors’ that have joined the Obama crusade will be able to pull it off.
God I wish I could have joined them.
The most memorable days of my life have been spent in crusades marching and singing and speeching. However this comes out, I just love those new recruits to the band of happy warriors who have made the world a better place and helped make it possible to have a candidate like Obama. That’s what people have done through the years to win the struggle for a better and more equal society.
Older men do things while the young think there is not enough time.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict told a gathering of scientists including the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Friday that there was no contradiction between believing in God and empirical science.
‘People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life — like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?’
The Six-year-old continued, ‘Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.’
The Safe Invisibility of Saints
Martin Vest
The lean white worms
of my face’s nerves twitch
in the wreckage beneath their scars—
the nerves of my mind,
squealing untied balloons
half-pinched, releasing their little wind
into a whirligig
of prescription slips and dander.
It’s hard to say when I started killing myself.
It was something about the American dream.
Something about fifty years of my father’s life
working him into bone—
Something about poverty of spirit
and the safe invisibility of saints.
I wanted to eat rocks. I wanted to say
that man does not live by bread at all.
I wanted to taste His blood in mine—
to buy a home in Oblivion with a money
that instinct invents along the way—
I wanted the world to forget my name.
It was something about saving my own life . . .
Pain is the “all-time number one cause for people to seek medical attention”, but don’t listen to your doctor.
Doctors know very little about pain. Medical schools offer only one hour of training in how to understand and treat pain.
“Considering the available research and medical technology we have today, it’s a travesty that in 2008 so many pain sufferers are untreated or under-treated because of lack of awareness, education and misconceptions about pain and pain treatment.”
Bank on this:
“Pain costs an estimated $100 billion a year in medical care and lost work.”
The failure to treat pain adequately is the combined fault of doctors, patients, the legal system and the health care system as a whole.
Pain rewires our nervous system, quickly, and is both a disease and a primary cause of disease.
Less than two percent of patients using medication for pain become addicted. Addiction is a different process.
“The collision between the war on drugs and the war on pain has created a perfect storm of controversy.”
Bailout needed?
Ignorance and superstition about pain is costing our nation a great deal.
One Republican FAIL bites the dust:
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record,” DOH Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said.
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.
“No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai‘i.”
Because McCain’s No Teddy Roosevelt
John McCain is real hellbent
To become the President,
Wraps himself in Teddy’s mantle,
But the Square Deal he’d dismantle!
by Larry Eisenberg
The headline:
Fist Jab Fourth Sign Of Apocalypse
Conservative fundamentalists are fearful that Obama’s presidency will turn the US into the Soviet Empire, trigger Iran’s nuclear invasion of Israel, and bring on The Last Days.
Commie Obama indoctrinates underage Aryan children with hypnotic terrorist fist-jabs of Socialism.
We are a DNA cocktail of eye color, hair color, baldness, freckles, skin color, but blue eyes are new and from one ancestor.
Think about this:
All blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor.
From the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Copenhagen:
“Originally, we all had brown eyes, but a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes.
“Variation in the color of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes.
Rush Limbaugh repeated the lie to 20 million listeners that Michelle Obama spent $450 on room service with caviar. He has not retracted. The NYTimes printed the story, but retracted it. Factcheck.org has the truth. [clip link]
Extreme Property Claims Department!
Hershey’s sued the furniture company
claiming it violated their trademark on unwrapping chocolate bars.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School and was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, is the author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
The radical Christian right has no religious legitimacy.
It is a mass political movement.
It is interchangeable, in many ways, with other traditional political movements ranging from fascism to communism to the ethnic nationalist parties in the former Yugoslavia. It shares with these movements an inability to cope with ambiguity, doubt and uncertainty. It also embraces a world of miracles and signs and makes war on rational, reality-based thought. It condemns self-criticism and debate as apostasy. It places a premium on action. It dismisses those who do not bow down before its god—and the leaders who claim to speak for God—as heretics and traitors. This movement shares with corporatists, who are busy cannibalizing our society for profit, the belief that there are a chosen few who know the truth and therefore have the right to impose it.
The citizen, the individual, no longer has any legitimacy in this new world.
…
Apocalyptic visions like this one have, throughout history, cowed populations and inspired genocidal killers.
I posted August 30 that Sarah Palin did not suddenly appear on the scene late in McCain’s campaign but has cultivated her career to reach the national scene. Perhaps part of her drive to infiltrate our government for her religion, Palin had put significant effort into catching the attention of Republican insiders.
And she’s been promoted for at least a year by the most influential Republican pundits helping to position her. Stephan Hayes, a writer among the caffeinated crew at Weekly Standard, reported in How Palin Got Picked. On the air last spring, Rush Limbaugh promoted Palin as Vice President, “Mother of four, she is a ‘babe’, you have to notice.”
The only mainstream media story I’ve noticed about the hidden positioning of Sarah Palin is published October 28 by Richard Cohen at the Washington Post. He reveals that top conservative editors and writers were invited to the Alaska governor’s mansion in 2007 – a coterie of ideologues.
Sarah Palin says on the stump in carefully crafted speeches that she is not an insider but in truth she is glued to the rafters in a very small, secretive and arrogant clubhouse.
It’s the New Yorker, which stands out this year for robust and fearless journalism, that offers detail.
Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington élite than her rhetoric has suggested.
Upon being elected governor, Palin began developing relationships with Washington insiders, who later championed the idea of putting her on the 2008 ticket.
She’s had D.C. in mind for years.
An interview with Jane Mayer by Amy Goldman is here:
The Real Story Behind How McCain Chose Sarah Palin
Oct 28 2008, George Monbiot at the Guardian sums up why we should put an end to Sarah Palin and rebuild our political media.
How was it allowed to happen?
How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance?
How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington – the degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics…
Mattel is now worth more than GM.
Newsweek says, “That’s right—Wall Street thinks the maker of toy cars is worth more than the largest real carmaker in America.” Mattel’s Hot Wheels does $1 billion a year in global sales and has sold 4 billion Hot Wheels since 1968.
A collector paid $70,000 for a 1969 VW bus with a surfboard sticking out the back.
I wonder where the factories are?
[AP] For 17 years the United Nations has voted to lift the 46 year trade embargo against Cuba. This year’s vote against our policy was a 185 to 3 landslide. Only Israel and Palau joined with the United States.
Cuba, of course, turned in vitriolic speeches and celebrations. The White House and John McCain, of course, demand free elections and release of prisoners. The EU believes that “the lifting of the US trade embargo would open Cuba’s economy to the benefit of the Cuban people.” India, Russia and China report that economic embargo hurt people, but did you know the U.S.A. is the Number One source of aid to Cuba – more than $200 million last year?
But look?
TIME reports Cuba’s Oil Find Could Change the US Embargo
Between 5 billion and 10 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the waters off Cuba’s northwest coast.
To learn about Cuba today, here’s a relaxing travelogue through Cuba by Dervla Murphy, a travel writer with the duty of accuracy. “By being strictly factual they can make a small contribution to future generations’ knowledge of how things were in countries A, B or C when they went that way.”
The Economist
America should take a chance and make Barack Obama the next leader of the free world
“In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee:
Republicans from the top of the ticket on down are making a remarkable appeal: Vote for me, because the rest of my party seems headed for defeat. [story at USAToday]
The Democratic senatorial committee says, “Looks to me like a circular firing squad.”
Organic Farm Prevails Against Pesticide Spraying
Landmark ruling sends a clear message to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation that pesticides that evaporate and move to non-target property with wind or fog need to be strictly regulated to prevent future property damage. Judge awards damages in the sum of $1 million.
Here’s a briefing on ‘spray drift’ & ‘genetic drift’ with sample letters if farms or landscapes are threatened.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors. – Robert Frost
E Pluribus Unum – Out of Many, One
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval’s 40-page ruling “paves the way for the first and only trial that will likely be held on how the Army Corps of Engineers drowned New Orleans.”
The trial will decide “questions of material fact” about what caused the flooding.
From the New Orlean’s News Ladder:
We just wanna swing this coconut for the people again… since we know everyone is busy getting they holidaze on’n’all… but this Trial by Jury will be happening right about time for Mardi Gras, in 113 DAYS!
It will be the trial of the century.
It will make or break the story of the Corps of Engineers’ Negligent Homicide in the Federal Flood of New Orleans. This trial by jury will also test our ability to have any hand in our own flood control for the future.
All the King’s horses and all the Queen’s men don’t matter one gnat’s ass If The Levees Break Again.
Nature Magazine endorses Barack Obama
America’s choice
The values of scientific enquiry, rather than any particular policy positions on science, suggest a preference for one US presidential candidate over the other.Some will find strengths in McCain that they value more highly than the commitment to reasoned assessments that appeals in Obama. But all the signs are that the former seeks a narrower range of advice. Equally worrying is that he fails to educate himself on crucial matters; the attitude he has taken to economic policy over many years is at issue here. Either as a result of poor advice, or of advice inadequately considered, he frequently makes decisions that seem capricious or erratic.
…
On a range of topics, science included, Obama has surrounded himself with a wider and more able cadre of advisers than McCain.
