This is what an AssHat looks like...
Wed May 14, 2008 at 05:39:09 PM PDT
**Sigh** Yesterday, Larry Kissell, a candidate we all admire (running as a Dem. in NC-8), posted a diary asking Kossacks to follow a link to the Progressive Patriot's Fund, headed by Russ Feingold. Kissell asked us to vote for him in a competition among progressive candidates there; the Prog. Pats Fund would give the candidate with the most votes $5,000.
I had the temerity -- the nerve --to compliment the diary, and make a suggestion. Now, I'm an Asshat. And all because I said...
Myanmar: Deus In Adjutorium Meum Intende
Tue May 06, 2008 at 02:10:34 PM PDT
Matins. Lauds. Prime. Terce. Sext. Nones. Vespers. Compline. Eight times a day, people all over the world stop to chant or pray the Liturgy of the Hours. "Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise," begins Matins, sung in the wee, still-dark hours of the morning. But the other Offices -- the Offices that punctuate the working day, all begin with a different prayer, precisely because in the day hours there is work to be done, there are needs to be met, there are burdens to be overcome: Deus in adjutorium meum intende," begins each one -- "God, come to my assistance." And then, "Domine, adjuvantum me festina! -- Lord, make haste to help me!" In Myanmar, there is work to be done; there are needs to be met; and there are burdens to be overcome. If you listen, you can hear a version of that prayer rising up out of Myanmar right this very minute. That prayer is being directed to God. That prayer is being directed to us.
The Baseball of Politics
Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 06:01:36 PM PDT
It's World Series season, and lately, I've been thinking a lot about Jackie Robinson. I'll tell you right off the bat, pun intended, that I've cribbed a lot of Jackie Robinson's biographical material from Wikipedia. And I'll tell you something else: This post isn't really about Jackie Robinson. Or, at least, it's not just about Jackie. It's about many of my other heroes, too, -- it's about Frederick and Harriet. It's about SoJo and Martin. And if you think about it, it's about Barack. But I'm starting with Jackie because I think most of us at DKos will see the point if I do. Round the bases with me...
The Incredible Shrinking Woman
Sat Jun 23, 2007 at 12:24:27 PM PDT
I promised to drop by from time to time, and let my DailyKos family know what's been happening since I first wrote a diary on the discovery that I have small cell lung cancer. I am far from being a helpless victim of this disease. In fact, I've developed a wonderful plan, and I'm here to tell you the good news: my plan is working. Let me explain:
A couple of weeks ago, I send this missive around to family and friends who are faithfully keeping vigil with me on my cancer watch: "I'm planning to stay at La Quinta at least until Friday," I tell them, knowing the powerful nausea that awaits me, "so I can have someplace cool and solitary to crawl back to after my chemo on Tues, Wed, and Thurs. I'm planning on holing up with a leakproof wastebasket, a huge bottle of mouthwash, and a thesaurus of really foul swearwords." But I refuse to let anything get me down, so I conceive a plan. "On the bright side, though," I tell them ... (Make the jump)
Goodbye Cruel World - I'm Outtie
Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 08:50:15 PM PDT
Left Turns, Cars, and God: Sixteen-odd years ago, as I'm driving to a grocery store, I make a left turn out of my driveway, and just as I am about to accelerate out of the turn, I hear a voice from the back seat of my car -- a voice unequivocally not mine -- say something so clear and startling that I have to turn over my shoulder to see who is talking. The voice says, "Prayer works." No one is in the car except me. And, apparently, God. It seems that God does not mind being chauffeured around by a woman who has a history of getting into car accidents. The voice of God changes my life.
Two weeks ago Friday, I am making another left turn, this time from a side road onto a rural two-lane state highway. I hear a voice -- this time unmistakeably mine -- and although I am not talking aloud, I hear myself say: "I've got lung cancer." Like that other left-turn voice from 16 years ago, this voice changes my life. I've smoked two packs a day for just under 40 years. All you second-hand smoke exposed johnny-come-lately carpetbaggers can go cheney yourselves; I came by my metastatic small cell lung cancer the honest way. I earned it.
Internet Explorer 7 is a Frikkin Nightmare!
Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 08:49:31 AM PDT
Unh, uhn. Don't GO THERE, girlfriend. You won't like it. Stay away from Internet Explorer 7 like it was the plague. Because it is. Tabbed browsing? Hah. You'll be the one pickin' up the tab, I can promise you that. Easy-to-access-RSS feeds? Yeah, right. As in Reboot, Sweat, Swear. Easily read fonts? Sweetheart, how clearly can you see when you're crying?
Look, I know this is a political blog, and some of you will question my writing this diary. But hey ...DailyKos is a computer blog. We're computer people. Some computer news affects us. And I wouldn't be a friend of this site and the fine people I've met here, unless I warned you: IE 7 is a frikkin nightmare.
CNN to First Muslim Rep: Prove You're Not The Enemy!
Thu Nov 16, 2006 at 10:05:27 AM PDT
First Fox, now CNN decides to abandon any semblance of journalistic integrity. They've descended into outright bigotry. I saw this first at
Huffington Post, and followed it over to its origin, at
Media Matters: Glenn Beck interviewed Keith Ellison (D-MN-elect), whom we all know is the first Muslim ever elected to Congress. And Glenn Beck, straightfaced, had this to say right off the bat -- just to get things straight, mind you:
[Y]you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
It's just as outrageous after the jump.
FILTH. That's Right. I Said It.
Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 10:08:48 PM PDT
They're filth. There.
I said it. They're filthy people. They cheat, they lie, they are ruthless, and they have zero integrity. Worse ...when they lie and cheat, they hide behind little old ladies while they do it. "They" are Republicans, and they are destroying our country. They are destroying something truly beautiful.
Today, up now on the frontpage, is a story about the Republicans using robocalls to make six, seven, eight calls in a row to voters. The robocalls are designed to sound -- at least, in the beginning -- as though Democrats are generating them. If the listener bothers to listen long enough, the robocall bashes Democrats. But if the listener hangs up too soon, the robocall just redials. It's harassing. It's maddening. It's infuriating to listeners who, naturally, blame the Democrats for the harassment. The NRCC, which is behind the robocalls, won't pull them. It's a dirty trick being played by filthy people. We've got to stop them. And we have to do it while not becoming them.
KISS the Republicans Goodbye: A GOTV Diary
Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 02:46:17 PM PDT
When I go into my get-out-the-vote spiel to undecided voters, people don't hear a word I say about Iraq. Not because they're not listening; they are. For the most part they're polite, they're listening, and they're paying close attention. No, the reason people don't
hear a word I say about Iraq is because I don't
say a word about Iraq. Not. One. Word.
In these final days of GOTV, undecided voters have to be persuaded to vote Democratic. We're the ones who have to persuade them. That means we've got to understand what it is that they're undecided about. And believe me, people ...it ain't Iraq.
Violence, Truth, and the Perfection of Allah -- Pope Benedict's Dilemma
Mon Sep 18, 2006 at 05:52:53 AM PDT
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
--(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance)
Which brings us, naturally, to the Pope and his remarks on Islam.
What FRESH HELL is this??!!
Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 04:15:41 PM PDT
The Loch Ness monster? A sea-sasquatch? A Chernobyl-chimera? What fresh hell
is this??!!
Some Russian sailors found some sort of sea creature in Sakhalin, all the way in the Easternmost part of Russia (near the Sea of Japan), and photographed it. None of them could identify the dead creature, and neither can I. But it looks awfully scary. What's your best guess?
BIBLE CODE BASHES BUSH! (With Poll)
Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 11:59:51 AM PDT
The Bible Code is real. Hidden inside the Bible, waiting for discovery from its very beginning, is a complete history of the whole world. Sir Isaac Newton knew it, as did Elijah ben Solomon, the Gaon ("Genius") of Vilna. They spent their adult lives trying to break the Bible Code, but their lifelong work at cracking the code ended in futility because the Code was intended to be 'opened' only in the computer age.
Well, the computer age is upon us, and the Bible Code has been broken. What is it? What does it say? What does it tell us of America? Recent research has conclusively shown that the Bible Code contains some explosive predictions and prophecies about the current Bush Administration. It's bad, people. It's real bad.
Profiles In Couric
Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 02:00:29 PM PDT
Man o man. What is going on here? CBS News used to be a venerable source of the truth. Edward R. Murrow. Walter Cronkite. Robert Trout. Dan Rather. Those were real news reporters and real news anchors. No more. These days, CBS is the American Idol of television newscasters. It tried to be progressive, hiring Katie Couric as network television's first woman solo nightly-newsanchor. But CBS wasn't progressive enough to take her seriously. And she, apparently, isn't ready to take herself seriously. She is, quite literally, afraid to be a woman of substance.
The Gifts That Keep On Giving
Sun Aug 20, 2006 at 09:17:48 AM PDT
I want you to go through all the pockets in your clothes closet, today. I want you to lift up the cushions on the sofa. I want you to dig under the car seats. I want you to sift through the lint at the bottom of your handbags. I want you to come up with about 5 bucks in loose change, today, and send it in to one of the 35 Democratic candidates who are running in competitive races.
The most recent (August 16th) Cook's Report lists 35 House seats that are either toss-ups (either party could win) or that are leaning Republican but are by no means assured a Republican victory. It lists another 11 seats that are leaning, but not assured, Democratic. In all, there are 46 campaigns that could really, really use some money from us.
What for you ask?
More Magical Thinking About Race
Tue Jul 25, 2006 at 02:07:50 PM PDT
I read an interesting diary today, mrsdbrown1's
Of Seating Charts, Racism, and Looking in the Mirror. The diary, a sensitive piece on preparing to teach inner-city kids, contained this nugget at its heart:
"It's hard in our culture not to hold stereotypes about groups of people with whom we have little or no direct interaction." The diary generated these two responses:
"There is one point that I didn't see [mentioned - the fact that many [African American] kids feel that academic accomplishment is somehow anathema. I know teachers in the Milwaukee school system (one of the most racially segregated in the country) mention this as a significant obstacle to their students' success." And also this:"That was a huge problem among my latino students. Doing well in school was definitely not cool. I had an African American colleague who said that she believed that the students thought that doing well in school equated to selling out."
Jump.
We're So Fine, There's No Telling Where The Money Went
Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 06:23:53 PM PDT
Today's LA Times has an
editorial that supports a tantalizing bill, S.2590, which is currently wending its way through Congress. The bill is tantalizing because it is being sponsored by notable pork-buster Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and co-sponsored by, among other strange bedfellows, Barack Obama, Rick Santorum, Hillary Clinton, George Allen, and Evan Bayh. The bill is tantalizing because it provides an indispensable tool to maintaining a healthy democracy. The bill is tantalizing because it could be one of
the biggest pains in the ass of all time. It's the
Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. If it's a godsend, and I believe on balance that it is, then truly, god is in the details. If it's a scourge and a curse, then the devil is in the details, too. Here's the 411 ...
Homeland Security: Oh God ...We're All Gonna DIE!
Wed Jul 12, 2006 at 03:21:10 PM PDT
UPDATED to provide a working link to the full report (original link to full report stopped working ...but then, we're talking about DHS, right?) Back in December of 2003, President Bush released a directive --
Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection -- which was basically intended to continue a Clinton Administration policy of getting federal agencies to identify and prioritize America's critical infrastructure and key resources
(CI/KR), in order to protect them from terrorist attacks. The task has fallen to that paragon of preparedness, the Department of Homeland Security.
Well, Here's The Outcome: Old MacDonald's Petting
Zoo ...The Mall at Sears ...The Bean Fest ...Nix's Check Cashing Place... Good Lord! If this is the way DHS keeps tabs on critical infrastructure and makes funding decisions to protect them (and us) from terrorists, then I gotta tell you ... we're not gonna make, folks. We're all gonna die. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) just issued its report critiquing DHS's National Asset Database. A summary of the salient criticisms, after the jump.
The Flag Burning Consolation Prize
Mon Jun 26, 2006 at 11:57:09 AM PDT
Today's Supreme Court decision in
Randall v. Sorrell couldn't have come at a timelier moment. In striking down a Vermont campaign finance law that was intended to limit political corruption and the need to raise huge amounts of cash to mount campaigns Randall took the opportunity to re-affirm its 1976 decision in
Buckley v. Valeo.
I think it's important for all of us to realize that the Supreme Court's re-affirmation of Buckley today, ties very intimately into the current flag burning amendment debate! Maybe this needn't be a total loss after all. Jump.
