“Democracy” is usually my code category for stuff the Bush administration does that pisses me off, usually becuase of the way they make a mockery of whatever the concept “Democarcy” has going for it
I’ve been hearing about this ever since Jon Stewart interviewed and author of a book, Jeremy Scahill (the book is titled Blackwater), the coalition of the “billing”. A private “troop surge” not exactly being “braodcast”, particularly on Fox News (that last comment is just my “assumption”– of course, this is not being heavily covered by ANYBODY). Steve Fainaru highlights today (in the Continue Reading
Here’s some links to Gore’s appearance on All Things Considered. Al Gore: ‘The Assault on Reason’ in America All Things Considered, May 25, 2007 · You would be forgiven if you confused Al Gore’s book signings for campaign events — with overflow crowds and a stream of will-he-or-won’t-he questions. One thing is for sure: The former vice president turned Continue Reading
The review I quoted in my previous post closes with this “conclusion” that this book is “angry” and “blistering” while An Inconvenient Truth was “accessible” and somehow NOT “blistering”. I wonder how much of An Inconvenient Truth this reviewer actually watched. And I have to just shake my head at political analysis that treats any harsh reactions to the Bush Continue Reading
NYTimes has a good review of Gore’s new book. I had said earlier, just as people had begun reacting to the book upon its release, that it doesn’t require “political aspirations” to be sufficiently offended at the Bush administration enough to write a book. And yet for all its sharply voiced opinions, “The Assault on Reason†turns out to be less Continue Reading
re: this: http://wp.theoblogical.org/?p=4039 Joe in the channel9 forum responded with this bit of advice, which seems to have worked! Thanks Joe! If you have the CPU being pegged at near 100% by svchost.exe after launching Writer, the fix is to go into Services control panel and disable the Windows Live Setup Service. Sorry about this, we’ll try to make sure Continue Reading
With all the critique I give of the idolatry of “our democracy”, and how “America” and it’s “ideals” are elevated to deity status, I actually have some sense of confidence in “what this country CAN be”; but it has grown increasingly hard to feel confident that our “politics” is much more than lipservice to those “ideals”, and very little to Continue Reading
A scene in Munich, where the “team” assembled to exact vengeance on the planners of the Munich massacre, this romantic, serious music is playing as the men talk about “being assassins”; the whole scene is shot with an air of “these are ordinary men about to do bad things”, but these are “necessary” things; things they have to “live with” Continue Reading
The article to which Eric points us has me quite studious this morning. The only proper sense of “theocracy†is the simple recognition that God rules the world. Of course, the matter is not “simple” when one considers the radical re-ordering of the very questions that get asked when one begins here. The wrestling with the powers like the state and “the city” (Cavanaugh Continue Reading
If this guy wasn’t such a “player” in this administration’s outright, cynical misleading of the public and national leaders, this would be comical. Great post by Juan Cole: Feith in the Situation Room: Three Lies Former No. 3 at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, has been found guilty by the Inspector General of “inappropriate” behavior Continue Reading
These things (see quote below) have been brewing for months, and people keep writing articles about it, but I’d perhaps like to hear of a massive national human blockade or something; something to say to these lunatics “no way, you evil, arrogant, dangerous idiots”. How about our brave media getting this unbelievable nonsense onto the airwaves and spelling it out Continue Reading
James K.A. Smith , in speaking about a Jeff Sharlet Harper’s article he read, found himself drawn to a Dylan song re-rendered by Buddy Miller, I’ve been ruminating on Buddy Miller’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “With God on our Side,†on Miller’s Universal United House of Prayer album so I went to iTunes to look it up , and downloaded Continue Reading
No doubt, ThunderMan. I also don’t see the Vice-President demanding that the government seize the financial records of Bechtel or KBR. It seems that war profiteering is protected by privacy, but the financial records of citizens are not. In short, if you are powerful and wealthy, then the VP deems your privacy as a right that must be held even Continue Reading
I realized something just a few days ago as I was continuing my reading in Taylor Branch’s Parting The Waters: America In The King Years 1954-63 (I had borrowed it from the public library last January and got through about 300 pages of it before it had to go back……I anticipated buying it, but then the hardback version disappeared from Continue Reading
I heard about this guy on an NPR segment this morning. The words above are from the first song I played from a free download of an album called Mockingbird. To get the download, you have to send the link to 5 friends emails (and he promises the emails are not saved to a list, but simply to send the Continue Reading
Dave Winer expresses one small hope of mine: I pay taxes, I wish they were lower, but I don’t believe any of the bullshit the Republicans throw around about Democrats. I see the money they channel to themselves, the billions they spend on Iraq, as a major major tax, one that they’ve managed to hide, for now, but it won’t Continue Reading