Chile miner rescues 24 and counting

Because the world can use some good news
update

They got quite the preview Thursday of what lies ahead. On their first full day of fresh air, the miners were probably the 33 most in-demand people on the planet.
A Greek mining company wants to bring them to the sunny Aegean islands, competing with rainy Chiloe in the country's southern archipelago, whose tourism bureau wants them to stay for a week.... Los treinta y tres

Pipelineistan's New Silk Road

Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan's New Silk Road
Posted by Pepe Escobar
at 9:40am, October 12, 2010.

"...Pepe Escobar, that edgy, peripatetic globe-trotting reporter for one of my favorite on-line publications, Asia Times, has been doing just that for TomDispatch readers as he explores the geography that undergirds our civilization, the pipelines that crisscross Eurasia through which flow energy -- and trouble. This, then, is his fourth "postcard" from what he likes to call Pipelineistan. The first in March 2009 began laying out a great, ongoing energy struggle across Eurasia and the Great Game of business, diplomacy, and proxy war between Russia and the U.S. that went with it.

In May of that year, he plunged eastward into tumultuous Central and South Asia and the expanding battleground that, in Washington, goes by the neologism Af-Pak (for the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations). Next, in October, he headed west toward Europe and another developing struggle, which he dubbed "Pipelineistan’s Ultimate Opera", over just how natural gas from the Caspian Sea would reach Europe. Now, in his first stop of 2010, he heads where, it seems, anyone interested in energy -- maybe anyone interested in anything at all -- more or less has to head these days: China and the new Silk Road of pipelines that offer the former Middle Kingdom a partial shot at future energy security and Washington future anxieties of all sorts. Tom... "

Making Campaign Ads More Honest

Ah, Ron, you're so sweet. Sort of. Until the money is taken out of political advertising, meaning ALL the money, yours too, we are hapless consumers of loads of BS in unfair fights. The Supreme Court bestowed even MORE BS on us by enabling massive amounts of money to flow unchecked into the game of politics.



Does anybody here believe that politics anywhere in the US remotely resembles democracy?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reading now

Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz (c) 2002

Another book that I will have to trudge through because consumption of this information is painful.

I watched the National Geographic 3 hr special with Jared Diamond called "Guns, Germs and Steel" and it is definitely worth watching, although the books are always better. Diamond's information always makes me feel better about being a Westerner because it reminds me that human nature is exactly the same all over the planet. Only the geography changes the way societies evolved and developed.

I find this funny

China lashes out at Nobel prize 'obscenity'
By London correspondent Rachael Brown
Posted 48 minutes ago

And when are we going to DO something about the Chinese screwing around keeping the yuan artificially low?

All I hear is blah blah blah

I love Grey's Anatomy

but I absolutely loathe the actress Caterina Scorsone. She sucks, but not in a way that you can just pass off and hope she will go away. She sucks and she just keeps popping up. Now she's on two of the three shows I WAS willing to suffer through the advertisements to watch on a regular basis. I think I just decided to give those shows up. I detest her THAT much. She's like the girl on the cheerleading squad that I wanted to slap the shit out of in order to shut off the inane, babbling, bitchy, annoying noise. You know, the kind of bitch who is either too dumb or too arrogant to know when to take it down a notch?

California voter's registration deadline

The voter registration deadline is October 18, less than two weeks away.If you haven't yet registered, please do so. If you have moved and haven't re-registered to vote, please do so. And if you're going to be out of town on Election Day, please request a vote-by-mail ballot.

Click here to register to vote, check your registration status, or request a vote-by-mail ballot! The deadlines are fast approaching, so please don't wait.

finished reading Dismantling the Empire

(buy) By Chalmers Johnson.

(blogger just dumped what I wrote and I'm not rewriting it, so here are a couple of quotes from the book)


p 74
"From its inception the CA has labored under two contradictory conceptions of what it was supposed to be doing, and no president has ever succeeded in correcting or resolving this situation. Espionage and intelligence analysis seek to know the world as it is; covert action seeks to change the world, whether it understands it or not. The best CIA exemplar of the intelligence -collecting function was Richard Helms director of central intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973 (who died in 2002). The great protagonist of cloak-and-dagger work was Frank Wisner, the CIA's director of operations from 1948 until the late 1950s, when he went insane and , in 1965, committed suicide. Wisner never had any patience for espionage and other forms of intelligence collecting.

Weiner quotes William Colby, a future DCI (1973-1976) on this subject. The separation of the scholars of the research and analysis division from the sips of the clandestine service reared two cultures within the intelligence profession, he said, "separate, unequal, and contemptuous of each other." That critique remained true throughout the CIA's first sixty years.

[As I read this I thought and noted to myself "Turf wars are endemic in situations where law enforcement and public safety organizations overlap. Endemic because it is inevitable. Inevitable because testosterone = turf wars."]

p 165
It is hard to imagine any sector of the American economy more driven by ideology, delusion and propaganda than the armed services. Many people believe that our military is the largest, best equipped, and most invincible among the world's armed forces. none of these things is true, but our military is, without a doubt the most expensive to maintain. Each year, we Americans account for nearly half of all global spending, an amount larger than the next forty-five nations together spend on their militaries annually.

And Johnson goes on to prove this statement. I was surprised at how many books Johnson noted that I have read.

Boo-gate?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2010 - Taliban Dan & Boo-Gate
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

How perfectly lovely, just in time for Halloween. So all you holloweenies want to git all dolled up like yer heroine Molly McMooseturd? Lovely in the flaming turd costume don't you think?


Dude. I'm so punny today.

News Corp Gives $1 Million to U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Source: Politico.com, September 30, 2010

News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, has donated $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group that was recently accused of tax fraud and money laundering by two national watchdog groups. News Corp's big-dollar donation is the second it has made to Republican interests in recent months. In June, 2010 News Corp gave another $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. The Chamber plans to spend $75 million to influence the 2010 election, making it the the top spender on congressional races of any interest group. The parent companies of other media outlets, like General Electric (which owns NBC) and Disney (which owns ABC), have also made political donations, but in lesser amounts more evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. News Corp's recent huge gifts to Republican interests raise questions about whether the company has crossed an ethical line.

Ballot research today

Blech, I hate this part. Some of it is easy peasy for me. Boxer, Brown and Bower are no brainers, I love them. Prop 19, another no brainer, big yes, for me in order to put a crimp in the profits and a damper on the murderous activities of the Mexican drugs cartels. Oh, and fuck the former DEA administrators. 20 I need to look at realistically. Read cynically only 38% of the people eligible to vote here actually voted last time, and a prop that might have made a difference in buying political power was soundly defeated.

San Diego County Primary Election Analysis
Editors Roundtable transcript | Friday, June 11, 2010


Ok, off to find out more.

Meg Whitman's campaign is toast

Want to know why there are never changes in the immigration laws? Because rich people want cheap, disposable labor, until it becomes a problem in a political campaign of course.

For 9 years the maid worked for her, and for 7 of them she knew the maid was illegal, and Whitman comes up with this bullshit?

"As soon as we found that she was an illegal immigrantwe did what we had to do as an employer, which was to let her go," Whitman said. "But all of the documentation that we had said that she was legal."

Republican hypocrisy on display. Again. Man, I haven't even looked at my ballot, and I just want this election over with. I'm vaguely amused and very cynical every time I see a political ad, and I knew this bitch was going to hang herself from the first time I saw her ads. When one of my friends told me that she liked her I asked her where she got her information from? When she stumbled on the answer I told her to turn off the TV, Google Whitman and wait a while.

Heh.

Music break

This song always reminds me of my ex. I'll never forget the time he told me that my 3-year old had said to him "Daddy, Daddy, hit the nitrous!"

Err, what?

Thankfully she was back with me within two years of that excited request. She's a senior in college now, and I couldn't be more proud.

"Take your fast car and keep on driving."

Hey Tea Partiers and Glibertarians

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
Tea Party Doesn't Need Votes to Win U.S. Elections
By ALBERT R. HUNT
Published: September 26, 2010 (NYTimes)

"...Some of the money behind the Tea Party movement or its offshoots has little in common with grass-roots populism. The New Yorker magazine recently detailed the movement’s ties with the brothers Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, oil and gas billionaires from Kansas who privately and aggressively pursue very conservative policies as well as provisions favoring their far-flung corporate empire..."

Activists rally after FBI conducts terrorism searches

Saturday, September 25, 2010


This doesn't surprise me in the least. Not after what I went through, and I have a very short, and very inglorious activism history unless you count 4 years of bitchy blogging and the occasional campaign contribution or donation to family planning organizations.

Polly want a cracker?

GOP Parrots repeat same talking points.

Holy shit, have any of these fuckers ever had an original thought? Or do they just yap on command?

If you use street drugs in this country

and you don't grow your own pot, or see where that medical marijuana is grown, chances are you need to look in the mirror as you contemplate this:

Mexican cartels gun down tenth mayor this year.
By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, September 24, 2010

Go ahead, get pissy with me, my conscience is clear in this regard. I knew 30 years ago that I didn't want drugs or druggies, or scumbag drug dealers in my life. The Mexican cartels ain't got nothing over me, fuck those pendejos.

Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, The Waning of America

Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, The Waning of America Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, The Waning of America
Posted by Dilip Hiro at 10:30am, September 23, 2010.

"...As China’s third biggest supplier of petroleum (after Saudi Arabia and Angola), Iran figures prominently on Beijing’s radar screen. So far, Chinese energy corporations, all state-owned, have invested $40 billion in the Islamic Republic's hydrocarbon sector. They are also poised to participate in the building of seven oil refineries in Iran. When, earlier this year, European Union (EU) companies stopped supplying gasoline to Iran, which imports 40% of its needs, Chinese oil corporations stepped in. That was how in 2009, with a $21.2 billion dollar two-way commerce, China surpassed the EU as Iran’s number one trading partner. It is estimated that China-Iran trade will rise by 50% in 2010...

...Given the growing economic strength of China, Brazil, and India, among other rising powers, U.S. influence will continue to wane. The American power outage is, by any measure, irreversible."

Dilip Hiro, a London-based writer and journalist, is the author of 32 books, the latest being After Empire: The Birth of a Multi-Polar World (Nation Books).
Copyright 2010 Dilip Hiro

Neato.

Right wing asshole Republicans who know me personally have wondered why I have a long history of suffering from depression. Gee I wonder? I have lived my whole life in this county, which happens to be one big fucking military base, with the military industrial complex having a large presence. My dad never made the kind of money that some of my middle class friends' dads made because he didn't work inside that group. You might or might not be surprised to learn how many families are dependent on it. Getting those numbers is especially tricky. Even the author of the book I'm trudging through doesn't know them, probably because they are in so many places.

How much Hollywood depends on the propagandistic bullshit is also glaring once you take a look at it. I watched a movie last night that had the myth of American power, prestige, and law enforcement's superiority woven right into it. Not surprisingly, it's been released all over the world . Frankly, I thought sick and twisted dude had a right to be pissed off, but parts of the movie were really stupid. I like thrillers occasionally, but I find the car/foot chases, the explosions/fires and fisht-fight/gunfight scenes as tedious as I'm sure some guys find shit they don't understand in "chick flicks" tedious.

Buh Bye Larry Summers

So Long, Summers
Posted on Sep 21, 2010
By Robert Scheer

" Finally! The announced departure of Lawrence Summers as the president’s top economic adviser is welcome news...."

Ok, so why does this song start playing in my head?

Neil Young - Needle and the Damage Done

Oh yeah, might be this:

"....." radical financial deregulation that Summers helped make law when he worked for Bill Clinton. He led the effort to destroy the career of Brooksley Born, the Clinton-appointed head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who had the prescience to sound the alarm in the face of a dangerously spiraling market in suspect mortgage packages..."

Bombing kills 10 women, a child at parade in Iran

"...But Iranian officials quickly pointed the finger at the United States, and the local Friday prayer leader blamed "Zionists."

"As the investigations indicate, the attack has foreign backing," provincial governor Vahid Jalalzadeh told state television. "Unfortunately, the Americans and their allies are in the region. From the first day of their presence and their slogan to establish security in the region, we can see that the unrest has increased."..."

Sure, of course if Miss Lindsay and his buddies ever shut the fuck up, and if the CIA didn't have such a miserable reputation for playing stupid games with Iran the power structure in Iran wouldn't be able to get away with blaming the US. People would see that the Kurds got screwed out of land and power when their territory was carved up and sectioned off into three different countries when the borders were drawn. Obviously not for their benefit. And then there is the fact that many Kurds are Sunni and the power structure in Iran is Shia. So go ahead and blame the US instead of addressing the Kurds' legitimate complaints.

Newt Gingrich is an asshole and an idiot

Gingrich Calls For Federal Ban On Shariah Law In US
Evan McMorris-Santoro | September 18, 2010, 12:05PM

(title link)

Please alert the mainstream media

Powell Criticizes Right-Wing’s Attacks Against Obama: ‘Let’s Attack Him On Policy, Not Nonsense’

September 19th, 2010 at 1:15 PM by Igor Volsky

The people who are paying attention already know that the msm is full of shit. And may I add that it veers to the RIGHT which benefits corporate interests, not the LEFT which has the potential to benefit the people.

Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin the movie on HBO in 2010. I laughed and I cried and I loved the movie. A real person, here is her website . A truly inspiring human being.

Liberal Icon Warren Tapped by Obama to Take on Wall Street

"Financial Industry Not Pleased

Not only has Warren's selection upset various Republicans on Capitol Hill but also infuriated the financial industry."


Wooooo Hooooooooo!

I want to thank my friend

For being there for me when I was in a funk because one of my best friends moved to another state and my kid went back to school. You know who you are, thank you.
I hope I didn't screw up your classwork.

And thanks to BadTux I laughed this morning. Thanks BadTux, for reading that crazy stuff so that I don't have to.

Iraq's govt corrupt?

Nah, say it aint so?

GAO: Iraq's Government, Requesting Billions, Has Billions in Surplus Aram Roston September 10, 2010

San Bruno picture

Why do we have billions to make neighborhoods in other countries look like this, but we can't replace gas main lines that do this type of damage in our own country?

PG&E will "investigate" it.

Oh fuck me, I bet you anything that they are already preparing a cadre of lawyers to defend the company.

Commenting over at HuffPo

It took me 4 years to get to 1,000 comments over at HuffPo, and I did that today. When I see that people have made 7,000 comments in 2 months and have all their badges, I wonder sometimes they do anything but snort meth in their parent's basement and make comments at HuffPo. I'm not interested in becoming a moderator (fucking control freaks don't let any discussion happen in the comments section ), or a networker (woo woo, it's a junior high popularity contest!), and what.the.fuck is a goddamned 'pundit' over there? I didn't ask to be "superuser" badged, I just didn't turn the badges off.

So. What a way to commemorate this particularly ugly anniversary, to tangle with some idiotic moderator. I lost. All of my comments on that particular thread disappeared. I don't go with the flow, but I generally don't let loose with the vitriol over there. Today the idiocy was just too much for me.

Why blogging has become irritating to me

Because I read today:

BLOOD DIAMONDS? TRY BLOOD COLTAN


and I bitched about it over four years ago. Probably sounds hypocritical since I've blown through 3 computers and two cell phones since then eh?

Tu Frontera

(translated by Google)

I know I have not the proper passport
visa or granted, nor the right side
is that maybe I am not very well presented
and you may think I'm a little weird

I know you can not believe what I say,
But that changed after I've met if, perhaps,
my past scares you or that I come from a wrong place

Only one day let me cross your border
Just let me love you to want me
Just let me cross the limit, at least once

I know some bad people have been
they have done to raise the surveillance zone
is that there are some ugly history
who has put the state of imminent danger
is that you have lost trust in people

But that will change, because I understand how you feel if ..
I still think is strange
but I swear I do not come to hurt you

Only one day let me cross your border
Just let me love you to want me
Just let me cross the limit, at least once

New ideas, new lights and new colors,
morning new new new new wings nights
new cultures, new worlds and dreams
new seas, new life, new dreams, new dances, new

New landscapes, new clothes, new journeys, new days
joy new, old tunes, new
new new words, new looks new
new ideas, new wind, new times, just ..

Only one day let me cross your border
Just let me love you to want me
Just let me cross the limit, at least once

At least .. once .. let me cross the limit .. at least once ..