I have to apologize. To You, Gentle Reader. To my Blogmates, past and present. To America, lost and wounded. I am so sorry. as a sop, I’ll offer some pics of the gardens very soon, honest to Chuy I’ve been in them 12-15hrs/day for the last month and just too fucking tired to blog.

I love you. I really do. Love is easy for me; it’s why I have such a hard time in life, people who love to love are often those who do poorly in “business” or with money or things that “matter” in our society. But I’m not sorry; if I were religious, I’d consider it a ’gift from gawd.’ The ability to feel love for people is one that I wish more people could nuture; indeed I believe they can, and so I write this now.

Bottom line: the candidates, all of them, have little more than contempt, derision, and mockery for you, Little Person. If you’re not writing a 000000$ check, believe me, they aren’t thinking about you, let alone worrying about what you say, for whom you pull a lever, etc. This isn’t a “democracy” anymore, you’ve noticed that I’m sure. “Superdelagates” will decide who is to be our Next Leader; Iraq will slog on; none of us will enjoy universal health care or cheap gas any time soon/ever. No Bush Administration crony will go to jail for a long, deserved time, and the rich are going to get richer, at least until the Revolution comes. I hope you all know how I have used that term ironically and with black humor. Life for the Progressive is always hard, and we always fail to acheive our objectives…until the day we don’t.

But that day won’t come by fighting each other. Go ahead, mock me for being Missy Kumbaya. I can hack it. I will still love you, fellow progressive. And I will still love you one year from now, when these arguments are forgotten and President Gore/Obama/Hillary/McCentury is in charge, and our economy is still tanking, and the environment is still dying, and global warming is even more pressing…do you understand my point?

I am weeping, true and bitter tears, to learn and understand that the people I love and respect most in this world still succumb to the media game that is designed to keep us all down. Fight for your candidate! Yes! Be Nasty, be dirty, say untrue things, even…this is the age of the Bush Republican. I believe in “The Chicago Way;” if your enemy kicks you in the balls, you knife him in the back, send his to the morgue, etc. But not within the family. Goddess no. No, it’s just not worth it. Kerry/Dean/Clarke, anyone? Doesn’t anyone remember what that was like, or how little that all matters now? Please, try.

Like it or not, progressives like us, and I mean *you,* we’re all Family. If you were all Black or Brown people from poor circumstance, you’d know exactly what I’m trying to say here. Sticks and Stones… Blood is Thicker…A Rolling Stone… Or let me end on a brutal note:

While we all tear each other apart, millions are dying, millions more are going to die, for no good reason. As an American, like it or not, you have an incredible responsibility to do what you can to make sure your power isn’t used for evil, oppressive reasons. Turn off the TV, goddammit. Stop reading the Wanker of the Day’s latest bullshit. Reach out your hand to those who are on the side of Good. Learn to say, “I’m sorry. Let’s get down to business.”

Or, not. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you do the work of the Evil for them, you have no one but yourself to blame.  Read more 

Alice Palmer and Obama’s first campaign, when he knocked out the politician who recruited and introduced him to fundraisers and others who could help him (like Ayers, etc) —

“… “She went out and recruited Barack.”

So everything seemed set. Palmer would move to Congress and Obama would take her place in the Illinois Senate.

But then Palmer lost the special congressional election. Suddenly, this well-liked community leader faced being out of office after four years in the state Legislature.

…

Palmer finally asked Obama to halt his legislative campaign so she could run for re-election.

He refused. …”  Read more 

Obama at a PA diner—the National Pool Report — “… He batted away a Hamas question from a reporter, saying, “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” …”

How dare reporters actually ask questions at a photo-op? ; >

I know a lot of Hillary supporters refer to her speech at the UN Women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. So, today, I decided to take a closer look at the whole speech, especially in the context of Senator Obama’s remark on abortion and the need to respect the anti-choice position (just like we should respect and understand anti-LGBT positions). Again, remember, this speech was delivered 13 years ago, on one of these trips that Hillary took where she just shook hands with officials and watched little girls dance (snark). The audio is embedded below, otherwise, I selected a few excerpts (the full text is here, with video as well).

 Read more 

Samantha Power’s book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World, would have received much more, and well-deserved, publicity if she had not made a stupid comment to a journalist regarding Senator Hillary Clinton. As a result, she resigned from Barack Obama’s campaign and this has probably affected her promotion of the book. It is a shame because it is indeed a fascinating book regarding the complex and frustrating internal workings of the United Nations through the prism of another fascinating figure: Sergio Vieira de Mello.  Read more 

So says the Independent, adding that the movie will also depict him as a dried-out drunk with a baseball obsession and a difficult relationship with his father… and I thought it was going to be a work of fiction and not a documentary!

And check out the cast so far:

• Josh Brolin George W Bush
• Elizabeth Banks Laura Bush
• James Cromwell George H Bush
• Thandie Newton Condoleezza Rice
• Ioan Gruffudd Tony Blair
• Ellen Burstyn Barbara Bush (!!!)

I’ll have to see this just for Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush!

Here’s a question for all of you out there: when the movie will be about this primary, who should play HRC, BO, Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Mark Penn, David Axelrod, Chris Matthews, KO, etc?  Read more 

From August J. Pollack:

Wright Opinions

Except she renames it “Take Your Boobs and Go Home” Watch… which works for me as well. I particularly like this quote which summarizes well what lots of us women feel about these repeated calls to withdraw:  Read more 

This is the first in a (hopefully) collaborative series: WHSBP (title and series idea courtesy of Lambert) to counterbalance the Other Series (WWTSBQ). This series outlines issues on which Hillary Clinton was ahead of the curve, starting with microcredit. I have posted consistently on microcredit (here, here and here) but it is one obvious issue where HRC got it before everyone else.  Read more 

When she was first lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton did not just organize tea parties (contrary to what passes now for “common knowledge”). She had heard of a Bangladeshi economist who had introduced a great idea to help people out of poverty in Bangladesh and she thought his ideas might help the poor in Arkansas. The economist was Muhammad Yunus and the idea was microcredit. She was instrumental in introducing Yunus to Bill Clinton and they developed a program of microcredit in Arkansas. Yunus mentions her in every one of his books (with photos).  Read more 

i heard folks say an election was coming
and the candidates were the cream of the crop
a descendant of slaves and a cold war babe
it’s enough to make your heart stop

he said: i will make you feel good
she will make you afraid
i will let in the glorious light
i will climb up the tower and be your king in the fall
smile, clap your hands tonight

she said: they have kicked the woman
they have made her beg
i will stand for us all
but first i got to scare you or you won’t listen
oh lord, we’re heading for a fall

you know, the white men are crazy
mixing god with guns
the brown ones, they priming the pump
man versus woman, versus nature and light
everybody just gonna have to jump
jump, jump again
jump, and fall in love
jump, we need someone who can win
for after, when the jumping is done  Read more 

++++

EJ has a new book out, about religion and politics in America. I was just skimming some info about it, and I came across something so wrong, so wholly illustrative of “the problem” it struck me mute and paralyzed for a moment. I’m hesistant to try to write a response. But it is also so simple! Sometimes I really am impressed with the mastery of Kabuki our Village players demonstrate:

E. J. Dionne is this country’s single most knowledgeable writer on religion and politics. Approaching this subject so central to the American experiment as a person of faith as well as a seasoned political reporter, Dionne brings an understanding and knowledge to the topic unique in the current debate.

Can ya guess who came up with that gem?  Read more 

RECENTLY I posted on YouTube’s yanking of a vlogger’s account due to the torture practices he was exposing that are perpetrated by Egyptian police. I was definitely disappointed in YouTube, although I sort of expect any large corporate entity to ultimately suppress free speech, because inevitably, free speech involves telling the truth, and at the end of that road can be found many ideas that might not support the agenda and behavior of corporate entities. As the RAND Corporation, “a California based think-tank with close ties to the military-industrial-intelligence complex” sees it:

RAND maintains “homegrown terrorism” will not be the result of jihadist sleeper cells. Rather, it will result from anti-globalists and radical environmentalists who ’challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism, charging that in the insatiable quest for growth and profit, the philosophy is serving to destroy the world’s ecology, indigenous cultures, and individual welfare.’ …

Further, RAND claims anti-globalists and radical environmentalists ’exist in much the same operational environment as al Qaida’ and pose ’a clear threat to private-sector corporate interests, especially large multinational business.’

—Truthout.org, The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act: A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak

So through these types of statements, we begin to see it all come together. The War of the future, already taking place now. Those who refuse to consider any ill effects upon the world and the animals and the poor and simply the common gente, a breed who refuses to let go of a philosophy of greed, despite the mounting consequences of such a failed paradigm vs. those of us concerned first and foremost with the weakest of us, the meekest of us, the poorest of us, and Mother Earth herself.  Read more 

and I’d be flattered, except I’m not the only one he sends it to.
Still, some of it’s worth repeating!

Quote:  Read more 

CNN is repeating the comment, attributed to “Lebanese government officials,” that the massive fighting that has broken out in Tripoli is the fault of “Al Qaeda”*. By eerie coincidence our friend Juan Cole has some very profound observations just today, about this “organization” we call Al Qaeda:

Another important impetus to al-Qaeda’s survival is that it has taken the place of the Communist Party as radical response to the status quo. Al-Qaeda’s top leadership is rich, not poor, and it is a movement of the Right, not the Left. But it is a radical, populist Right that can attract the dispossessed.

This cannot be too often repeated, because it is one of those say-whaaa?? sort of things that takes many repetitions and a good deal of thought to soak in. But look at the longer version of Cole’s post on the subject and it’s really been there in front of us all along:  Read more 

I get all misty eyed when I read Royko. I mean really. There is just something about politics in Chicago. The city, its culture, its history are all cut form the same cloth -burlap. FYI – Obama is from Hawaii. This hard scrabble sensibility that understands urban Americana - twisted. Daley reminds me of Robert Hansen, sociopathic ideologues who yearn for order. Sounds like someone we all know.  Read more 

We Americans are so fat. So soft, so lazy, so pathetic. This isn’t meant to be a “we suck” post, but here in DC, as I run my ass up and down three flights of stairs six or sixteen times a day moving in, I can’t help but think of this woman. I have power, electricity, potable water, flushing toilets, an internet connection (dial up for a while), DVDs to entertain me as I load up the closets and put away my shoes, decor, food and drink in the fridge…the list of luxuries goes on and on.  Read more 

Okay, perhaps that title is unfair; gasbags are members of the human race, and I know that. And they are authentically gasbags. We all know that.  Read more