Trying Too Hard

      I was thinking of writing a long piece about the developments in Copenhagen today, but there are a number of things that are still up in the air, and I don’t just mean Air Force One, but I don’t know enough about it, though the news is all over this.  And that’s the problem.  Too many sources with too much divergent information.  Some places say there is a deal out there that looks good, while others say things are very much in the air, seeing how a number of developing countries are unhappy that they weren’t in on the negotiations.  Then there’s the story out that President Obama saved the whole thing.  Then there’s the story that the Chinese scuttled the whole shebang.

    TMI, at least for me, right now.  The headache that I’ve had since about 4:00pm isn’t helping things.  Watch a viddy:

  

   Then I thought about talking about the upcoming health care showdown.  I already have a headache, like I said, I don’t need to talk about Ben Nelson and his holding out on this vote and the bullshit with that f****** idiot Goldfarb and the fake Base closing B.S. story to give me a second one.

   Then I thought about writing about CPAC officially being co-sponsored by the John Birch Society.  That’s one I could sink my teeth into, those Birchers are a bunch of racist evil hate filled nutbags, and have been from the get go, and all the re-branding in the world won’t fix that.  Then I realized something was fundamentally wrong with my entire approach.

   I was just reaching too friggin much.  Time to pull it back a bit, I can get to each of these tomorrow or Sunday. At this point I’m just trying to fight the pain in my head, caused by pushing too hard and the cold that I’ve been fighting for the past few weeks. I can set the Birchers and the rest of the crazy people on fire later. 

    I think a few viddy’s and I am done. 

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    Don’t ya wish you could get those windows that do that neat trick that the windows do at the 2:50 part of this video? Aren’t you happy that isn’t YOU in that cocoon that the President is in here?

    

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    A viddy that did nothing to help me find a cohesive theme for today’s blog.  But a blog doesn’t need a theme, per se.  This is Naomi Klein opening up a can of whoop ass on Hillary Clinton.  Kill Kyoto.  “Structural Adjustment” No legally binding agreements.    How does that work? How CAN that work?  You hear that things are going bad, then things are going well, then you hear this.  Oof.  I’m gonna need time to digest all of this.

  

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     That’s it from me. Later!

Today’s nuggets, picked more or less at random,Via Wikiquote:  I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.  Charles Dickens

The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition. Legislation is, in one point of view, to be considered as an attempt to provide against the excesses of this deplorable mistake.  Percy Bysshe Shelley

One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.  Francis Galton

Republicrat

       …and it was such a good idea too.    A viddy from earlier today, before the news on Health Care reform came out.

    

      It seems that Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has finally gotten what he wants, something that resembles a consensus on Health Care legislation.  At the cost of the public option.  The liberals gave in to their more conservative counterparts,  saying that so long as other coverage options were available, and their were tighter restrictions on insurance companies, they could live with the result.

     Unfortunately that doesn’t guarantee that the bill will get the 60 votes necessary.  Ben Nelson, Republicrat from Nebraska has threatened to join a GOP filibuster if stronger Abortion language wasn’t placed in the bill.  Ben had an amendment of his that would do just that voted out of the bill today 54-45.

    So what does that mean? If Ben stays true to his word, that means that the public option has been abandoned essentially for nothing.  It means that all the hard work by Harry Reid, all the behind the scenes finagling between Mark Pryor and Chuck Schumer  and Sen. Rockefeller on this bill will have come to naught, all because of the bass ackward mindset of Ben Nelson, Republicrat. 

     Now I understand the need to be an independent player in politics.  I understand the need to bend to the will of the people.  And abortion IS an important subject, which needs to be addressed in any health care legislation.  But I think what Sen. Nelson here is doing is nothing short of hijacking the entire party, the entire nation, both parties, playing both ends against the middle for his own personal political gain. 

    Your amendment was defeated. You were given a chance, but simply didn’t have enough backing for your idea for it to get through.  Some days you can’t win, Ben, we understand.  Do what the rest of us do, Senator.  If you can’t win, lose.  

    Maybe the Democrats think they can get Sen. Snowe, Democlican from Maine, to vote for the bill and bypass Ben.  And maybe they think they can get ben to sign on without the his abortion amendment.  Would not surprise me if they threw Ben a bone($$$$$) in the legislation. 

   Either way this bring me to another point…

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   Republicrat.  Democlican.  Blue Dog Democrat.  Moderate Republican.  The parties are so similar to each other at times they seem indistinguishable from one another, because they’ve all been bought.  Yes yes, they play their roles well.  Republicans all for big business and the Democrats all for the protection of the Constitution, or if you are from the other side of the political spectrum, Democrats all for spending all of your money, and the Republicans all for fighting for your rights.  They are interchangeable. 

  

    That doesn’t mean there aren’t good people in the legislature.  There are.  But as time goes on, it seems as though that number gets smaller and smaller.  What it does look like is that with lobbying and moneyed interests still infesting Washington, that both sides of the aisle are lining up to get their slice of the pie. 

    Of the Money, for the Money, by the Money.  Capital M Money.  Not the few bucks you and I have in our pockets, but the MEGABUCKS that Goldman Sachs and McKesson and Exxon bring.  Lobbyists buying the votes, just like they have for years by putting money in the coffers of senators and representatives who may legislate bills that would directly impact their industries.  It makes a mockery of politics in America, and a pauper of the people.  It pisses on the Constitution, shits on the Bill of Rights and wipes its ass with the Declaration of Independence.

     We the people need to find a way to rid Washington of their corrupting influence.  THIS is perhaps the biggest blunder of the Obama Presidency, allowing this to continue, when he ran for President on a platform of change in Washington, of getting rid of the influence of lobbyists in Washington.  He KINDA got rid of the influence in the White House proper, passing a rule saying that no one who has lobbied for the last 3 years in a particular industry may do work for the White house relating to that industry….then almost immediately made exceptions. He has however done nothing to stem the tide of lobbyists buying our democracy, pulling the rug right out from under our feet.

    Sometimes, capitalism is evil.

    There oughta be a law…. you’ve heard that stock line a thousand times from a million people.  Never from me.  For a reason, I don’t believe there ought to be a law for everything.  That way lies madness.  But here I will deviate from my normal path and say it.

     There ought to be a law, prohibiting lawmakers from getting cash or favors, directly or indirectly, from lobbyists of any industry whatsoever.  We need untouchability on the part of our lawmakers, not transparency, a word you hear much from beltway insiders.  Transparency isn’t the key here, transparency only shows us that you have been bought and by who.  It doesn’t fix the problem.  What we need is a wall between corporate America and the Congress to keep our lawmakers honest, not a clear view of who has been bought.

    Pie in the sky bullshit, I know, not something you usually get from me.  But it would be nice though, wouldn’t it?  One can hope.

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That’s it from here.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via wikiquote:  Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better.  Justin Dart

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.  James Madison

The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.  J.R.R. Tolkein

Sunset In Afghanistan

     Who says I don’t love America?   A big picture before I take a look at the big picture.  I didn’t get this pic from my usual source, I.E., Wikipedia commons.  I got it from another fine wordpress blog (hope he doesn’t mind), head over and take a look.  Seriously, go take a look for me.  I haven’t read much of it, went over just looking for pics, maybe i missed some hella content.  Drop me a line if you like what you see there. 

      Thanks!

    An anime Sarah Palin?  The Gun…the Wink.. the bimbette thing… Seems fairly Palin-like.   Ahhhh, who cares, there be important stuff going on out there….

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Kabul

       30,000 new troops in Afghanistan, says President Obama, in a speech at West Point.  Bad news there, but not a surprise.  If it gets the job done, meets the objective, and we have an exit strategy, a realistic exit strategy, I can get behind this.  I don’t want to have troops there, but if it takes 30,000 American troops 2+ years to properly train the Afghanis so we don’t have to stay there in a decade long holding action, which was an actual option to my knowledge, and then bring our fine men and women home, then I am fine with it. 

     Very Unbush-like.  An actual exit strategy.  Very UnBush-like, fixing a mess that someone else left.   Our president has had to add tens of thousands of troop already to shore up an already deteriorating Afghanistan.  The situation is still bad, but this move is meant to stabilize the problem well enough, to make it the afghanis problem, so we can get on with our lives. 

    And we can get on with the job of actually killing Osama Bin Laden.  That being one of two main points of the original exercise in Afghanistan, even though Rummy screwed that up by letting OBL through to Pakistan due to his own skittishness.   The other main point being to fight the Taliban, who were as much the enemy as Al-Qaeda.  We got rid of some of them, but they retreated into the mountains.  The job the President is doing here is to keep them in check, by strengthening the Afghanis so we don’t have to fight them ourselves.

   For those of you with short memories, President Obama campaigned on getting out of Iraq (which isn’t happening fast enough) and ramping up the war in Afghanistan and the war against Al-Qaeda.  I will be happy when this whole thing is over, when we can say we are done there.

   

   And there is no victory here.  None.  Victory would be the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the destruction of Al-Qaeda.   Osama is a question mark, he will eventually die,whether we get to him before time does, is part of an uncertain future, but Al-qaeda, they cannot be defeated, not at least in a traditional military sense.  There is no one place that you could take that would give us the victory.  There is no WWII type goal.  No Berlin to besiege, no Tokyo to firebomb. 

    We are firefighters, they are 1,000  fires. There is no victory against 1,000 fires, you put out one fire, and go to the next one, work until the job is done.   The big question now is one of cost.  How do we pay for this?  That is a question I cannot answer.  We’ll find out soon enough.

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    That’s it from here.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, Via wikiquote: Let us learn our lessons. … Never believe any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events… incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations.  Winston Churchill

War is not a pathology that, with proper hygiene and treatment, can be wholly prevented. War is a natural condition of the State, which was organized in order to be an effective instrument of violence on behalf of society. Wars are like deaths, which, while they can be postponed, will come when they will come and cannot be finally avoided. Philip Bobbitt

Anagram: Can’t Stop To Save My Soul/ Postman Covets Outlays

      

     I’m looking for work, and there are job openings out there, but no one calls back.  It happens, and I will find something, that isn’t the issue, it seems that the more I look the less I see out there on the job front.  My wife is now helping me do this, and in fact sent in some resumes to a few places that I probably normally wouldn’t have.  Places in new jersey, jobs where the job description is close to but doesn’t really match my skills.  Maybe I should have been looking there in the first place, but I tell you I am not enamored of the thought of going back to working on copy machines.

     Which is why I’m so happy that on Monday I’m going to be going to be looking into training in other fields, so I can have a career and not just a McJob.  Don’t get me wrong, any work that pays the bills is fine by me, but just the thought of going back to those benightedly useless tree killing pieces of shit that do no good for anyone anywhere, and make it possible for the people who work them to just barely make ends meet, makes me wretch. 

    A lot of good people waste their lives working in offices, and I’ll be damned if I stick around and do that for the rest of my life.  My wife deserves better from me.  The World deserves better from me.  I deserve better from myself. 

     That said, I’ll go back to it if I have no choice.  Temporarily though, not permanently.  I’ll gladly break rocks in the sweltering heat and the frozen tundra for the rest of my life before contemplating working in a copy center as my main source of income.  Better to die burnt and blistered on a God forsaken rock shoveling shit than go back to that. 

   Just filled with happiness today, ain’t I? 

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     I’ve been filling time until I can get myself work again.  Running more, much more.  Eating more, much more.  Starting fights online, if you read my previous post you know what I’m talking about.  The running is perhaps the easiest for me to do.  Sure I beat the hell out of my feet and my legs, but so what? I also make myself stronger.  I now run longer distances, much longer than I used to.  Time was when the most i would do, absolute maximum would be 40 miles in a week, and this year I hadn’t hit 30 miles a week up until last month.  Been racking up the mileage this month though.  Been working in 2 and 3 day blocks, with one day off in between.  Just finished a 2 day block where I ran 26 miles in those 2 days, and the previous 3 day block, I ran 32 miles.  58 miles in my last 5 run days.  This time 2 months ago, I would be lucky to have run 25 miles in that time.  

     And I took today off and I’ll have Saturday off, so it’s looking like tomorrow may well be another very long run.  Might go 3 hours, just to see if I can do it.  That would be, if I have my times correct, 22 miles tomorrow.  We’ll see. 

    But that’s OK.  I have been taking cold baths afterwards to heal up faster and I tell you it works wonders on my legs.  No worries. And I am actually gaining weight because I am hungry as hell after these long runs, and I eat like a damn pig. 

    The fights online are almost as addictive as the running and eating are.  I actually registered with the newspaper the Kansas city star just to fight with people.  I saw an article there on Jimmy Carter bringing up the race card, and there were these people saying he’s an idiot and he has no idea what he’s talking about and Obama got all these white votes therefore there is no racism.  That kind of happiness.

    

      A short aside.    

    I will not say every bit of anger at the current administration is race based.  It clearly isn’t, but the undercurrent is there, and it isn’t inconsequential.  Witch doctor photos, the birthers, Rush Limbaugh’s racist rants, these things are part of the discussion, and they are racist.  Denial of racism doesn’t make racism go away, it just covers it up for those who want it covered up.  And what happens when you fight on the side that has this as a weapon in it’s arsenal is you get pegged with the tag  “racist” yourself, like it or not, true or not, because you stand with those who are racist. 

     Back to the fighting.

    I don’t mind if you think he’s an idiot.  It’s a free country, speak your piece.  Now the other stuff I have an issue with, so I went out of my way to register with this newspaper just to mess with these people.  I walked in and picked on quite a number of people.  They called me moron, they hated me something fierce.  I didn’t mind.  Let’em yammer, ain’t no skin off my ass.  They were yelling about Van Jones and Professor Gates.  Peripheral issues at best, I thought, and told them so.  They called me more names.  LOL says I.  Old issues say I.  If you can’t see inherent racism in white people yelling about black people who have nothing to do with the main issue (Jimmy Carter, the alleged idiot, talking about how there’s still hate in America), then you are blind.

       They didn’t respond to that last bit.  Gave’em something to chew on, and I don’t think they liked the taste of it, either.

     If you are going to hate, Own it, be it, Live it.  Don’t run in fear from the truth your own emotions confront you with.

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      That’s about it for me, except the quotes.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Via wikiquote:  It is not good to settle into a set of opinions. It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that. At first putting forth great effort to be sure that you have grasped the basics, then practicing so that they may come to fruition is something that will never stop for your whole lifetime. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, “This is not enough.”

By just one single word martial valor can be made apparent. In peaceful times words show one’s bravery. In troubled times, too, one knows that by a single word his strength or cowardice can be seen. This single word is the flower of one’s heart. It is not something said simply with one’s mouth.  A warrior should not say something fainthearted even casually. He should set his mind to this beforehand. Even in trifling matters the depths of one’s heart can be seen.

Anagram: Reflection/ Trifle Once

       This is simply going to me tossing a few random thoughts out there.  Just a few thoughts that have floated through my mind.

    Why is it that when conservatives whine about liberals, one of the mantras we all hear is “Get a Job”? I’ve never understood that.  Liberals, and moderates tend to work more and harder than conservatives.  Not a put down, just the truth.  Conservatives tend towards the fat lazy bastard/bitch end of the spectrum.  

    Is it me, or is all advertising stupid? Can we shoot these useless idiots please?  They serve no purpose whatsoever.  Here’s an example:

   

    And if you like ads that are entertaining, maybe you need to find something else to do with your time.  Like get a job, or a life.

    Sometimes I buy books, that for some reason I don’t read.  That annoys me, but sometimes I get in over my head and buy something out of my league.  Such was the case with The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Propaganda by Jacques Ellul.  I’ll get to them, eventually.  But not right now.

    I could probably list at least 30 books where I’ve done that, but then again there are probably a list of 30 books that I read over, and over, and over again.  Common Sense, by Thomas Paine, Candide by Voltaire, Marcus Aurleius’ Meditations, Last Chance To See, By Douglas Adams.

    I have been a left wing partisan for a great number of years, and have leaned left even when I didn’t really think much about politics than I had to.  If you don’t like it, kiss my ass.  I’ve been noticing more and more Right wingers out on the internet lately.   And that’s cool, there is a place for everyone.  We should all try to occupy the same space, lib and con, rep and dem, moderate and extreme wing nut.  Discuss things in a civilized tone. 

  Taxes, Taxes, Taxes.  Seems to be on everyone’s lips.  And why? Because they’re gonna go up. No one’s happy about it, but it’s not like we didn’t know this day was coming.  We’ve known for years.  Douglas Holtz Eagin 4 years ago in a CBO report said as much.  And you didn’t even need that to know.  Taxes had come down for years.  Billions in revenue cut, and services had not been cut in kind to meet the loss of income generated by those tax losses.  Defense spending went through the roof.  Medicare and medicaid spending, up.  Health care costs skyrocketing.  Did you seriously think prices would stay down forever? Or even a few years more?

   If you answered yes, are you high or just stupid and full of bullshit?

    Monday is the 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing by the Apollo 11 crew.  And the good news is we are going back.  If it is possible, I’m going this time.  Now I seriously doubt they need copy operators or supervisors on the moon, but I can learn another job to get up there. 

    Thinking of other lines of work, I am thinking of writing a book. It’s more in the moving from dream to concept stage, but It’s getting there.  It could be about going from drunk to runner, and some tales of derring doofus on the road from point A to point B.  It could be about politics, or guitar playing, or how to be an evil bastard, or it might come to nothing. 

  I’ll let you know what, if anything, happens. 

    Irony spotlight of the day: Amazon becomes big brother, and deletes 1984 and Animal Farm from kindles around the planet, remotely. 

     Joy. 

    That’s it for me, except a second viddy.  No commentary on it, just watch.

   

   That’s it for me.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, By Charles Dickens, Via Wikiquote:  Whether they were right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.

All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

 

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.