jeudi 2 novembre 2006
Moist Boiled Fruit Cake
Fruit cake is one of those foodstuffs reviled in childhood and not truly appreciated until you're older and wiser. I used to hate fruit cake when I was little, but now the mere thought of homemade fruit cake, heavy and moist with plump and juicy currants, raisins and sultanas, is reason enough to make me drool.Small slices taken with a fresh cup of tea is my preference, and with Christmas not too
By Bush's definition, 70% of Americans are dissing the troops
You know, I've read Victorian novels in which tightly-corseted women had less trouble recovering from a shock than the wingnut noise machine has had recovering from John Kerry's lameass attempt at humor.
Funny how they aren't having the same vapors about John Boehner blaming the generals on the ground instead of Donald Rumsfeld or about how the Bush Administration is stiffing the Army of nearly $18 billion it needs. Or about how the military has had to lower its recruitment standards so that it has enough cannon fodder to feed to Iraqi insurgents. And funny how they didn't have the vapors about this or this.
No, of course not. Of course they wouldn't be outraged about that, because they know that ONLY Mr. Bush is a patriotic American. ONLY Mr. Bush has the welfare of Americans at heart. ONLY Mr. Bush supports the troops. Except that he doesn't. Except that the evil little troll that emerges more and more every day from behind the affable mask that President Bush and his zonked-out beast of a wife present to the public is every bit as evil as any of the men he loves to shake at the American people in the hopes of scaring them. Keith Olbermann was right on the money last night. George W. Bush, and those who continue to blindly follow him, are the ones who should apologize. They should apologize for this war. They should apologize for their lies. They should apologize for advocating torture as a means of keeping Americans safe. They should apologize for using American troops -- as human shields for their own political careers.
I'm not defending John Kerry, who is either the most inept public speaker on the planet, or a mole seeking to help out his old Skull and Bones brother. His awful 2004 campaign and his timing this week were so bad I wouldn't necessarily rule out the latter.
But while there is that hard-core 28-33% who would support George W. Bush no matter what he did, no matter how heinous his actions, a majority of Americans are waking up. That hard core are the abused children who need so badly to believe that Daddy really loves them that they decide his beatings are just how he shows it. But it's quite possible that everyone else has realized that when Bush speaks, it's opposite day and that it's time to support the opposite of what he says:
Funny how exactly what Republicans are warning against is exactly what Americans WANT Democrats to do should they take control of Congress after next week's election. And even more surprisingly:
Whether John Kerry was talking about George W. Bush the other day, or cautioning California college students that if they don't study hard, they too will be just cannon fodder to feed Dick Cheney's bloodlust, is immaterial. For it's the Republicans, including the whore John McCain, a man who ought to know better, who are the ones dissing the troops -- troops like Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson:
We owe it to Alyssa Peterson and the soldiers like her, who have had their trust in their leaders betrayed by venal, greedy men like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, to tell them next Tuesday, "Enough is enough."
Funny how they aren't having the same vapors about John Boehner blaming the generals on the ground instead of Donald Rumsfeld or about how the Bush Administration is stiffing the Army of nearly $18 billion it needs. Or about how the military has had to lower its recruitment standards so that it has enough cannon fodder to feed to Iraqi insurgents. And funny how they didn't have the vapors about this or this.
No, of course not. Of course they wouldn't be outraged about that, because they know that ONLY Mr. Bush is a patriotic American. ONLY Mr. Bush has the welfare of Americans at heart. ONLY Mr. Bush supports the troops. Except that he doesn't. Except that the evil little troll that emerges more and more every day from behind the affable mask that President Bush and his zonked-out beast of a wife present to the public is every bit as evil as any of the men he loves to shake at the American people in the hopes of scaring them. Keith Olbermann was right on the money last night. George W. Bush, and those who continue to blindly follow him, are the ones who should apologize. They should apologize for this war. They should apologize for their lies. They should apologize for advocating torture as a means of keeping Americans safe. They should apologize for using American troops -- as human shields for their own political careers.
I'm not defending John Kerry, who is either the most inept public speaker on the planet, or a mole seeking to help out his old Skull and Bones brother. His awful 2004 campaign and his timing this week were so bad I wouldn't necessarily rule out the latter.
But while there is that hard-core 28-33% who would support George W. Bush no matter what he did, no matter how heinous his actions, a majority of Americans are waking up. That hard core are the abused children who need so badly to believe that Daddy really loves them that they decide his beatings are just how he shows it. But it's quite possible that everyone else has realized that when Bush speaks, it's opposite day and that it's time to support the opposite of what he says:
A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesday and say Republicans will maintain or increase troop levels to try to win the war if they hold on to power on Capitol Hill, according to the final New York Times/CBS News poll before the midterm election.
The poll showed that 29 percent of Americans approve of the way President Bush is managing the war, matching the lowest mark of his presidency. Nearly 70 percent said Mr. Bush did not have a plan to end the war, and 80 percent said Mr. Bush’s latest effort to rally public support for the conflict amounted to a change in language but not policy.
Funny how exactly what Republicans are warning against is exactly what Americans WANT Democrats to do should they take control of Congress after next week's election. And even more surprisingly:
By a slight margin, more respondents said the threat of terrorism would increase under Republicans than said it would increase under Democrats.
Whether John Kerry was talking about George W. Bush the other day, or cautioning California college students that if they don't study hard, they too will be just cannon fodder to feed Dick Cheney's bloodlust, is immaterial. For it's the Republicans, including the whore John McCain, a man who ought to know better, who are the ones dissing the troops -- troops like Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson:
Army specialist Alyssa Peterson was an Arabic speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at the Tal-afar airbase in far northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border. According to the Army's investigation into her death, obtained by a KNAU reporter through the Freedom of Information Act, Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.
Instead she was assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was sent to suicide prevention training. But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle.
We owe it to Alyssa Peterson and the soldiers like her, who have had their trust in their leaders betrayed by venal, greedy men like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, to tell them next Tuesday, "Enough is enough."
mercredi 1 novembre 2006
"This president must apologize"
Keith pulls no punches in this special comment -- not even where that hypocritical whore John McCain is concerned. Bravo to Mr. Olbermann for refusing to my the McCain mythos, when whatever "straight talk" McCain may have ever stood for has been abandoned by the side of the road, jettisoned in the name of McCain's sick hunger for the presidency.
UPDATE: A Thursday editorial in the New York Times says much the same thing, only with less passion:
There's no need to wonder. We already know the answer.
Fasten your seatbelts, folks. Whatever happens next Tuesday, it's going to be ugly.
UPDATE: A Thursday editorial in the New York Times says much the same thing, only with less passion:
But when candidates for lower office make their opponents out to be friends of Osama bin Laden, or try to turn a minor gaffe into a near felony, that’s just depressing. When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don’t, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading.
This is hardly the first time that Mr. Bush has played the politics of fear, anger and division; if he’s ever missed a chance to wave the bloody flag of 9/11, we can’t think of when. But Mr. Bush’s latest outbursts go way beyond that. They leave us wondering whether this president will ever be willing or able to make room for bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship in the two years he has left in office.
There's no need to wonder. We already know the answer.
Fasten your seatbelts, folks. Whatever happens next Tuesday, it's going to be ugly.
Unintentionally Funny Tabloid Cover Juxtaposition of the Day
This is now the second or third tabloid cover story we've seen on a rumored presidential divorce in the offing.
Funny....when the president's name was "Bill Clinton", the mainstream media picked up on EVERYTHING the tabloids ran.
But the double standard is no longer a surprise -- what's REALLY fun is the placement of the gruesome crime story teaser -- right under the picture of Captain Codpiece (headline enlarged by me for readability):
Funny....when the president's name was "Bill Clinton", the mainstream media picked up on EVERYTHING the tabloids ran.
But the double standard is no longer a surprise -- what's REALLY fun is the placement of the gruesome crime story teaser -- right under the picture of Captain Codpiece (headline enlarged by me for readability):
Why the Kerry flap is a distraction
So the right-wing echo machine has its knickers in a twist and is reclining on a chaise longue fanning itself because "John Kerry dissed our troops."
For those who haven't seen what John Kerry said at a rally for Phil Angelides on Monday, here it is:
The problem is that while the transcription of what Kerry said is clear, when viewed on video (linked here), the words "us" and "stuck" can be perceived to blur together so it sounds like "You end up getting stuck in a war in Iraq."
And yes, that does sound like Kerry is saying that if you're intellectually lazy and don't study hard, you end up stuck in Iraq.
The problem is threefold.
First of all, even the misinterpretation of what Kerry said is true -- that if you for whatever reason don't have access to a great education, either because you're poor, or come from a nightmarish home, or have an undiagnosed learning disability, or if you're just struggling to get through adolescence, you may find yourself with no other opportunities in a shrinking job market than to join the military, and if you join the military these days, you're going to end up getting stuck in Iraq. However, this is not the fault of those kids who have no other choice, it's the fault of the way the Bush Administration has managed not just the war but the overall economic situation in the U.S.
The second problem is that it opens the door to the Mighty Wurlitzer to do its thing -- and as we know, a well-coordinated noise machine tends to make the meme stick. Even my own mother, who's well-informed, thought Kerry had said something stupid.
The third problem is that the whole flapdoodle is a distraction -- a distraction from Laura Bush's jump on board Rush Limbaugh's Throw the Sick Guy Down the Well bandwagon on Saturday that Michael J. Fox is "manipulating people's feelings" about stem cell research. The Thorazine Queen is largely seen as the "human" face of the Bush Administration, the "nice lady" whose popularity far exceeds that of her husband. I wonder just how popular she would be if more people saw her coldbloodedly brand a man as "manipulative" whose condition has clearly deteriorated since the LAST time she attacked him in the name of supporting her husband's pointless and idiotic policy.
And while there are those who are lauding John Kerry to the skies for standing up to the ridiculous charges that he somehow dissed the troops, I'm less than impressed. Where the hell was this guy two years ago, when it mattered? In 2004, we still had a chance to save this country from the clutches of a madman. Now a Republican Congress, with the help of certain spineless Democrats (*cough* Bob Menendez *cough*)have given this lunatic complete and unfettered power to apprehend indefinitely anyone HE decides is an "enemy combatant." So frankly, I'm really not interested in what John Kerry has to say, because he's a day late and a dollar short. Especially when his remarks are distracting from a story that would reveal that behind Laura Bush's Stepford Wife mask is a woman every bit as cold-hearted as her mother-in-law.
UPDATE: When even John Derbyshire, a man so wingnutty that he has called for the murder of Chelsea Clinton lest she reproduce, is saying that it was obvious that the intellectually lazy person John Kerry was talking about was George Bush, those who are still having the vapors (*cough* Barry *cough* -- you know, I really hope I get over this cold soon...) about Kerry's lame-ass and bungled "joke" look pretty damn silly:
(Thanks to John Cole for pointing this out.)
For those who haven't seen what John Kerry said at a rally for Phil Angelides on Monday, here it is:
"I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."
The problem is that while the transcription of what Kerry said is clear, when viewed on video (linked here), the words "us" and "stuck" can be perceived to blur together so it sounds like "You end up getting stuck in a war in Iraq."
And yes, that does sound like Kerry is saying that if you're intellectually lazy and don't study hard, you end up stuck in Iraq.
The problem is threefold.
First of all, even the misinterpretation of what Kerry said is true -- that if you for whatever reason don't have access to a great education, either because you're poor, or come from a nightmarish home, or have an undiagnosed learning disability, or if you're just struggling to get through adolescence, you may find yourself with no other opportunities in a shrinking job market than to join the military, and if you join the military these days, you're going to end up getting stuck in Iraq. However, this is not the fault of those kids who have no other choice, it's the fault of the way the Bush Administration has managed not just the war but the overall economic situation in the U.S.
The second problem is that it opens the door to the Mighty Wurlitzer to do its thing -- and as we know, a well-coordinated noise machine tends to make the meme stick. Even my own mother, who's well-informed, thought Kerry had said something stupid.
The third problem is that the whole flapdoodle is a distraction -- a distraction from Laura Bush's jump on board Rush Limbaugh's Throw the Sick Guy Down the Well bandwagon on Saturday that Michael J. Fox is "manipulating people's feelings" about stem cell research. The Thorazine Queen is largely seen as the "human" face of the Bush Administration, the "nice lady" whose popularity far exceeds that of her husband. I wonder just how popular she would be if more people saw her coldbloodedly brand a man as "manipulative" whose condition has clearly deteriorated since the LAST time she attacked him in the name of supporting her husband's pointless and idiotic policy.
And while there are those who are lauding John Kerry to the skies for standing up to the ridiculous charges that he somehow dissed the troops, I'm less than impressed. Where the hell was this guy two years ago, when it mattered? In 2004, we still had a chance to save this country from the clutches of a madman. Now a Republican Congress, with the help of certain spineless Democrats (*cough* Bob Menendez *cough*)have given this lunatic complete and unfettered power to apprehend indefinitely anyone HE decides is an "enemy combatant." So frankly, I'm really not interested in what John Kerry has to say, because he's a day late and a dollar short. Especially when his remarks are distracting from a story that would reveal that behind Laura Bush's Stepford Wife mask is a woman every bit as cold-hearted as her mother-in-law.
UPDATE: When even John Derbyshire, a man so wingnutty that he has called for the murder of Chelsea Clinton lest she reproduce, is saying that it was obvious that the intellectually lazy person John Kerry was talking about was George Bush, those who are still having the vapors (*cough* Barry *cough* -- you know, I really hope I get over this cold soon...) about Kerry's lame-ass and bungled "joke" look pretty damn silly:
John Kerry is awful, and anything we can do further to degrade his political prospects is worth doing. But really, I saw a clip of him making the much-deplored remark, and it was obvious that the dimwit in Iraq that he referred to was George W. Bush, not the American soldier. It was a dumb joke badly delivered, but his meaning was plain. My pleasure in watching JK squirm is just as great as any other conservative's, but something is owed to honesty. There's a lot of fake outrage going round here.
(Thanks to John Cole for pointing this out.)
Baby Cakes by Renee, Summer Hill
There's little doubt that cupcakes are so in right now. One patty pan cake topped with a thick swirl of icing provides simultaneous worship of an idealised childhood, the dainty dessert, and the simple homemade girly aesthetic.Dainty dessert becomes miniscule mouthful at Baby Cakes by Renee in the inner west's Summer Hill.About a dozen different baby cakes greet us in this cake shop /cafe. The
And another gargoyle behind the affable demeanor is revealed
This time it's Senator George Macaca Allen, whose brownshirts yesterday roughed up Mike Stark, a first-year law student, constituent, and proprietor of Calling All Wingnuts. Allen's goons roughed up Stark, throwing him against a plate-glass window, after he shouted out a question to Allen about whether he had spit on his first wife. Allen, a tobacco-chewer, has been known to spit at people who dare question his authority.
Stark asked an inflammatory question, to be sure, but well within the standards set in the 1990's, when the media decided that asking a president about marks on his penis was fair game. The reason Stark asked the question is that there is speculation that the allegation appears in the divorce papers from Allen's first marrriage. Yes, first marriage. Given that Allen is presenting himself as a champion of family values and marriage, a question about whether he spit on his first wife -- and the accompanying revelation that Mr. Sanctity-of-Marriage has himself been divorced -- is germane to the image he's trying to present.
Judge for yourself. The video is linked here, because for some reason, YouTube videos aren't loading for me -- are they for you?
And Mike Stark quite correctly responds:
Republicans have been screaming about the way we draw parallels between Republicans and Nazis. Up until now, it's been hyperbole. But when we have a situation where the Federal government is building what it calls "temporary detention facilities", the President of the United States is claiming that Democrats are more dangerous than terrorists and his strategists are referring to the possibility that he might have to deal with Democrats as "a cataclysmic fight to the death", the parallels are no longer hyperbole. And watching Allen's goons rough up a citizen yesterday just made the parallels that much more vivid.
Stark asked an inflammatory question, to be sure, but well within the standards set in the 1990's, when the media decided that asking a president about marks on his penis was fair game. The reason Stark asked the question is that there is speculation that the allegation appears in the divorce papers from Allen's first marrriage. Yes, first marriage. Given that Allen is presenting himself as a champion of family values and marriage, a question about whether he spit on his first wife -- and the accompanying revelation that Mr. Sanctity-of-Marriage has himself been divorced -- is germane to the image he's trying to present.
Judge for yourself. The video is linked here, because for some reason, YouTube videos aren't loading for me -- are they for you?
And Mike Stark quite correctly responds:
Letter from Mike Stark
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Oct 31, 2006
The following is a letter to NBC29 from Mike Stark, the man who was tackled for a comment he made at Senator Allen's campaign stop in Charlottesville on Tuesday.
My name is Mike Stark. I am a law student at the University of Virginia, a marine, and a citizen journalist. Earlier today at a public event, I was attempting to ask Senator Allen a question about his sealed divorce record and his arrest in the 1970s, both of which are in the public domain. His people assaulted me, put me in a headlock, and wrestled me to the ground. Video footage is available here, from an NBC affiliate.
I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government. I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign. Why are his divorce records sealed? Why was he arrested in the 1970s? And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions.
George Allen defends his support of the Iraq war by saying that our troops are defending the ideals America stands for. Indeed, he says our troops are defending our very freedom. What kind of country is it when a Senator's constituent is assaulted for asking difficult and uncomfortable questions? What freedoms do we have left? Maybe we need to bring the troops home so that they can fight for freedom at George Allen's campaign events. Demanding accountability should not be an offense worthy of assault.
I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today. George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray. All he had to do was say, "This is not how my campaign is run. Take your hands off that man." He could have ignored my questions. Instead he and his thugs chose violence. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I'll be damned if I'll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.
It just isn't the America I know and love. Somebody needs to take a stand against those that would bully and intimidate their fellow citizens. That stand begins right here, right now.
W. Michael Stark
Republicans have been screaming about the way we draw parallels between Republicans and Nazis. Up until now, it's been hyperbole. But when we have a situation where the Federal government is building what it calls "temporary detention facilities", the President of the United States is claiming that Democrats are more dangerous than terrorists and his strategists are referring to the possibility that he might have to deal with Democrats as "a cataclysmic fight to the death", the parallels are no longer hyperbole. And watching Allen's goons rough up a citizen yesterday just made the parallels that much more vivid.
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