mojave_wolf

Magic Mushrooms

2009-12-27T05:15:26Z

I am reading Alice in Wonderland. Either I have never read it before or don't remember it, and I barely remember bits and pieces of watching a movie and cartoon version when I was little.

Primary conclusion thus far: If acid had been invented back then, I'd be convinced Lewis Carroll was tripping. But it wasn't. Then, I thought to myself, I frequently think things as bizarre as this, albeit I tend not to write it down so as not to be thought madder than a hatter, and I've never tried acid either, so maybe he's just weird like me.

Then I got to the part where she eats the mushroom. And thought "A-ha!" And rushed off to write this post. Would it have been a better post if I had discussed the book more, perhaps w/quotes or scene descriptions? Or discussed drug experiences? I don't know. But this is the post you get.

Oh, my second thought -- Alice isn't always particularly considerate, and makes me look like the soul of tact, which takes some doing.

Okay, this is freaky

2009-12-26T20:00:38Z

and reminds me I should do another Dollhouse post or two, but we're gonna do a rewatch of the last few eps this evening, so I'll wait on that. But meanwhile, in real life . . .

http://www.correntewire.com/two_one_day

One of the large mental health hospitals in Israel was recently surprised to receive a young, good-looking patient in a psychotic state who was accompanied by a personal security guard, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Sunday.

The doctors, who asked why the woman was accompanied by a guard, were shocked to learn that she was a Mossad agent and that the security guard was not assigned to her in order assure her safety or protect her life, but to ensure that she not reveal any state secrets in her shaky mental state.

The Mossad guard's orders were clear: "It is forbidden that the organization's secrets be passed on to those unauthorized to hear them." The doctors, who are unaccustomed to the presence of a third party during their treatment sessions, were left with no choice but to acquiesce to their demands. In addition, the staff had to receive a security clearance before being allowed to work on her exceptional case.

To their complete amazement, another young woman, also accompanied by a secret agent charged with ensuring that the she not leak any state secrets, arrived at the institution just a short time later. The doctors learned that she, too, is a Mossad agent.

True Blood & Dead Until Dark

2009-12-26T19:47:09Z

Our newest "start at the beginning and sloooowly get caught up on a pay cable TV show" project is HBO's True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels. For those not in the know, tis yet another modern day "vampires are out in the open and shakily legal" thing, sort of like a kinder, gentler, LKH series set in the Lousiana bayous.

The first season of True Blood seems to correspond more or less to Dead Until Dark, the first of what looks to be about 10 novels and counting. I have finished the novel. No one is ever going to confuse it with Les Miserables or Foxfire or Neuromancer (or, to pick a series, this ain't A Song of Ice and Fire) , but it's well written and entertaining. Long story short, Sookie is a telepathic waitress in a backwoods bar & grill who winds up dating a vampire. We have a serial killer running around murdering women who date vampires, some of whom are waitresses. Dead Until Dark is reasonably well done, and while your world will not be diminished if you miss it, recommended if you like this sort of thing.

But True Blood . . . this is a fantastically successful TV show, I gather, w/really great ratings for HBO. And some of the episodes are interesting and fun and adequately done enough to make it a guilty pleasure. Sometimes. (and I usually don't like the term guilty pleasure; I'm fine w/most of my pleasures, even if they don't qualify for high art. But this? I do feel vaguely embarrassed about). And I think expanding on the role of Lafayette and adding the character of Tara were good choices. The cinematography is outstanding. I've hardly ever (possibly never) seen a better looking tv show. Clearly, a lot of money goes in to the production, and it shows. They mostly get the Southern atmosphere right, even tho only a few characters actually have what I remember as a Louisiana (props to the guy who plays Rene in particular for getting it right) accent, the rest is generic Southern. The guy who plays Jason does one of the best jobs ever of playing a completely self-centered idiot--he's funny but not in a trying too hard way; he plays stupid and full of himself without realzing that he's either so that it's actually really funny and somewhat likable some of the time. Most of the supporting roles are nicely played, and there's lots of gratuitous nudity and sex.

But . . . sometimes the acting and/or directing is laughable. Sometimes the writing is so godawful I don't think DeNiro and Nicholson and Streep directed by Ridley Scott could make it other than laughable. It is hard to believe this is from the creator of Six Feet nder and the writer of American Beauty. Then I remember that Six Feet Under went from brilliant into a death spiral a couple of seasons in, and I think the writer must've kept spiraling. (These are all by Alan Ball, right?) There is a lot more preachy speechmaking (generally on behalf of worthy causes, but still, I think anyone not seriously stupid would get the anti-bigotry messages without the sledgehammer dialogue thrown in sporadically). This being produced in an industry where going to 12 step meetings is possibly the single best way to network for non-Scientologists, it figures that not one but two! addiction subplots have been added. The one w/Tara's mom works. The one w/Jason (and later Amy the psychopath) does not.

Most of all, far too much of this show, sometimes almost entire episodes, have us scratching our heads and looking at each other and going "WTF? Why are they doing that? Why are they saying that? Why are they acting like that?" This is to the point of practically killing the show several times over. And then you have things like pale faced vampires with tan bodies that have me wondering if they did this just to see if anyone would notice. Or Sookie's boyfriend crawling out the ground and pulling her down and them deciding to fuck while he's covered with dirt for no particular reason (someone w/different tastes than us just thought this was hot? the true blood equivalent of mud wrestling? symbolic in a way neither of us got at all?). And there's a vampire going on about his one regret about not being human anymore was leaving his son to be raised by a bunch of women, cause the horror of boys w/out men, yanno (the book isn't exactly revolutionary in its gender thnking by modern standards, but it's not backwards-misogynistic, either; the show *frequently* is).

Ummmmm, if you want something that looks pretty while your brain is turned off, this might work. And it has moments.
Not the worst thing ever by a longshot, but that this show is massively successful while so many good shows have failed over the years boggles me brain and causes my sense of justice pain.

Music to start the holiday with

2009-12-20T18:44:33Z

I have always thought Gram Rabbit's "Angel Song" was some of their best work musically, but somewhat unfairly held against it that it's practically their only song not sung by Jesika von Rabbit (tho she does provide a beautiful, memorably haunting backing hum). Todd Rutherford (who I think wrote the lyrics on this one) can actually sing very well, though, and this is a great song. You really need the (incredibly wonderful) music to get a feel for it, but here are the lyrics, as it fits, and I felt like sharing.

Angel Song, by Gram Rabbit

Just past a new beginning
When everything was lost
I heard an angel singing
To those who paid the cost

She sang the last tomorrow
Was surely meant to be
Just past a new beginning
When everyone was free

Her notes were drenched in sorrow
Her melody was soft
Her words spoke of a sinking ship
Which no one could get off

Her sadness wrapped around me
Her face began to blur
I turned to face the future
And the last thing that I heard

Just past a new beginning
When everything was lost
I heard an angel singing
To those who paid the cost

To save the last tomorrow
To right where we've gone wrong
With hope we stand before you
To sing the angel song

Yet more Dollhouse!

2009-12-18T02:26:47Z

Cause more eps tomorrow night, I think.

anyhow . . .

I realized the other day that s2 is not *all* the wonderment I have made it out to be; the first two episodes actually were pretty weak in a lot of ways (definitely very very weak in comparison to the rest of the season). But, they had their moments.

First: the good/great: Claire's character, especially her interaction w/Topher and Boyd. Amy Acker be awesome.

The intentional bad: Ballard was kinda creepy and seriously fucked up in that first ep. I mean, wow.

The accidental bad, from ep 2: (behind cut for spoilers) : Yes, this was otherwise a good episode, but the whole idea that mother/baby bonding is stronger than all other loves, and the one thing that will cause the programming to go haywire. I found this annoying and offensive and wrong-headed, all 3.

This does, by the way, finish my list of objections to this season. So far, at least. The rest has been slam bang awesome. And the Priya ep that I was arguing about in my last post was really wonderful and arguably the best of the show to that point.

*oh wait! one more pair of issues: How did Paul and Echo find each other? I'm guessing he was somehow scanning police reports across the country and found "small homeless brunette beats crap out of sheriff's deputy" and went to that town to look for her and she was still there trying to figure out how to get the other woman out of jail and suddenly memories. Seems kinda of a stretch but I can buy it.

&

much bigger issue: Why the hell is the new, more evil Rossum not just terminating Ballard for going awol for a few months? This seems a bigger stretch, tho I'll buy it for the sake of the show?

&
minor quibble: DeWitt giving Topher's blueprints to the scumbuckets to get her illusory power back: Surely at this point she realizes it is illusory and they can take it away at any time, and the only way to really gain their respect would be by offing the dude like he asked if she'd considered (and which Sasha and I had been mentally urging her to do already; hell, go to war w/the fuckers, even if you're outnumbered and the odds are against; beats the fuck out of the status quo). I don't think what she did was entirely out of character and I can see why someone would assess the situation the way she did, I just think it's wrong-headed and I gave her a lot more credit than that.

And one more good thing from the first two eps: the idea of programming someone to think she's an undercover agent pretending to be something she's not . . . I usually don't notice or care about meta, but that was kinda interesting if you can get past the sheer creepiness of the whole thing being Ballard's idea, in however good a cause.

Problems in Dollhouse

2009-12-16T01:22:13Z

Okay, I think the show is great. Otherwise, these niggles would be irrelevant and not worth discussing. But there are leaves to niggle, things gone askew, bits not fully thought out

On the off chance someone who wants to watch it hasn't, I'll put this behind a cut due to extensive discussion of s2 ep 4 (or maybe 3, I get this and the serial killer ep mixed up)(I mean the traditional serial killer, not one of the ones w/Alpha). . .

Problem that has very little to do w/anything except I don't think Joss & Co thought of it, and they should have -- No one seems worried about AIDS. The Dolls get thrown out on sexual engagements quite frequently, and as far as we know they are not using condoms. Yet, no one seems worried about pregnancy or STDS. Which in the case of pregnancy and treatable conditions, okay. But herpes and especially AIDS? Does Rossum have a cure we don't know about taht they're sitting on? It's about the only thing that makes sense.

Problem really worth discussing:

In s2 ep 4, for those of you who don't know, we find out that Topher thinks he has done a great humanitarian thing w/regards to Sierra, who was brought to the Dollhouse as a beyond-helping-with-drugs paranoid schizophrenic and is now cured thanks to him. We find this out because Topher finds out (along w/the rest of the house) that this one guy who keeps, errr, renting out, Sierra for romantic engagements was actually an evil scumbag who took advantage of his being a rich neuroscientist to kidnap and drug Sierra's pre-Dollhouse persona (whose name I'm blanking on right now, to my great shame) and then get her shipped into the Dollhouse cause he was pissed she turned him down. Repeatedly. So, Topher gets a conscience, and when the higher ups basically horder him to keep sending her to the rapist, or rather, send her on a permanent engagement to be his wife, he rebels and gives her back her real personality and tells her what happened. This results in the world being polluted with one fewer evil rich scumbag. So far, so good. But . . .

Boyd says to Topher, "You had your first ethical quandary. It didn't work out too well". Okay, problem the first. How could this possibly have worked out better?

Sierra goes back to teh Dollhouse to finish out her five years, apparently because she's so upset she murdered the guy. Ummm, wtf? And tells Topher before going back under that she doesn't want to remember killing him.when her (totally invalid) contract is up. Ummmmm, wtf?

I realize Hollywood is home to an ultra-sheltered, faux pacificist brand of liberalism, in which it's great for bad guys to get beaten up and killed and we all get to have fun watching but those doing this, even in self-defense, even to serial rapists, must feel awful about it. And I've heard real people in real life express such sentiments. Strangely enough, not one of these people has actually been directly victimized by such a person. And all these people are way too smart not to realize that, however gross and messy the clean-up was (and that was very well done), they just removed an awful evil power from the world and kept him from doing more damage. I don't see anyone in real life reacting this way. "OMG, this guy who raped me and mindwiped me tried to rape me again except this time I killed him! OMG I don't wanna remember killing someone!" This was just seriously fucked up.

It says something to the quality of writing and acting and directing (and for some of you, Eliza has a small roll in this, so it's other people's acting) that I still thought this was a truly great hour of television.

It's too late, baby, now it's too late

2009-12-15T18:32:56Z

but I'm gonna make one more stab at recommending Dollhouse to people, even though only 4 episodes left before it's gone.

(yes, it's cancelled, so anyone thinking about eventually checking out, time to do so is NOW, while they are showing two eps per week)

I know how tiresome people pushing shows can get -- it's quite possible one reason I didn't particularly care for the two Firefly eps I tried was because of the intensity with which people kept insisting I watch it, at a time when I was still holding a grudge towards the entirety of Mutant Enemy for s6 of BtVS-- so feel free to disregard. But otherwise . . .

if you're a fan of Joss Whedon's work at all, the episodes from the last part of s1 through the first 8 of s2 is arguably his longest sustained strech of great work; s2 in particular has lately had a string of terrif episodes that compare favorably with the last half of s4 Angel ("Shiny Happy People" and the rest of the Jasmine arc), s3 of Buffy (that show's most consistently good season, I thought), and great stuff from the end of Buffy s2 like "Passion" and "Becoming" (and yeah, "Once More With Feeling" deserves mentioned even if it was in s6).

This is science fiction, not fantasy, and it's very good science fiction, that is taking a potentially world-changing premise and exploring it to its logical conclusion. It also does one of the best jobs of examining various aspects of human nature and our relationship to both modern corporate society and technology and our responsibility or lack thereof.

Among noteworthy things to point out:
The dude who plays Victor is an amazingly versatile actor.
People have attacked Eliza Dukshu's acting in this series, but I think she's doing a bang-up job.
Alpha has killer fashion sense.
Topher has horrible judgement.
Two hi tech nerd sociopaths w/a geeky crush on each other and poor social skills meeting for the first time is kinda cute.

I might write something more serious later, but probably not.

Before I go, six other great shows loved by moi which lasted two seasons or less (there are more, but these just free associated their way into my head):

American Gothic
My So-Called Life
Twin Peaks
Profit
Kindred
Excalibur

I break my hiatus for surprising bit of uplift in news, for those who haven't heard

2009-12-13T17:45:36Z

h/t several places, but this copied from TGW in my feeds, just in case you haven't heard . . .

HOUSTON - Houston became the largest city in the United States to elect an openly gay mayor on Saturday night, as voters gave a solid victory to the city controller, Annise Parker.

Cheers and dancing erupted at Ms. Parker's campaign party as her opponent, Gene Locke, a former city attorney, conceded defeat just after 10 p.m. when it became clear he could not overcome her lead.

"Tonight the voters of Houston have opened the door to history," she said, standing by her partner of 19 years, Kathy Hubbard, and their three adopted children. "I acknowledge that. I embrace that. I know what this win means to many of us who never thought we could achieve high office."

I may have to rethink my opinion of Houston. Rather, I must and have already rethought my opinion of Houston, which I previously thought of as a conservative oil town. Obviously, it's a lot more enlightened and socially progressive place than I knew.

For those unhappy w/the current state of politics

2009-11-22T19:07:17Z

A couple of you have mentioned a desire for third parties in your own blog or here, and few more have expressed extreme discontent with the current democratic party. Here's your chance to reach an audience of people with overlapping concerns.
So, even if you don't normally read or like this blog, you might want to follow me to here:

http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/2009/11/21/dreaming-of-diocletian/

Violet (blog host) said:
We are broken and busted and in desperate need of change. And no, I don’t mean “change we can believe in,” which is obviously change we can’t believe in. If representative democracy is ever going to work again, I think we need to find a way around the existing two major parties. That’s . . . why I decided to put up this post.

She said elsewhere:

Ideas, suggestions, and arguments welcome. Pass this along to anyone you know.

I have two comments there thus far, even tho the second was never finished; feel free to be critical of them or anyone and everyone else, as long as it's constructive (tho most of the people there are Hillary partisans, so keep that in mind). It's a feminist blog but the focus for this should include everything you think is relevant to a 3rd party. We are both otherwise occupied here so probably won't see me making many more comments the next couple of days, but wanted to pass this on because I know some of you have good ideas and I think this could be a valuable forum to really get something important started. Gotta run now.

In memory of the anti-Stupak

2009-11-16T04:36:41Z

This guy died in 1992, but Digby's post tonight memorializing him seems appropriate . . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/good-conscience-by-digby-whens-last.html

Former Assemblyman George M. Michaels, who cast the deciding vote to liberalize New York's abortion law in 1970 . . .

represented a largely rural, mostly conservative and heavily Roman Catholic constituency . . .

on April 9, he realized that the measure was doomed without his support. He rose to take the microphone, his hands trembling. "I realize, Mr. Speaker, that I am terminating my political career, but I cannot in good conscience sit here and allow my vote to be the one that defeats this bill," he declared. "I ask that my vote be changed from 'no' to 'yes.' " . . .

I guess that would be considered to be foolishly self-sacrificing in these days of "common ground" and looking for an easy way out. It's just a bargaining chip for more important issues about which Real Americans feel strongly. But there was a time when it was a matter of conscience and people thought such things were worth paying a political price for.

Example #274 of "Life is fair!"

2009-11-16T03:06:32Z

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1109/p17s03-ussc.html
(h/t to gxm17 in comment 92 of open thread at reclusive leftist)

Person w/world record ski jump can't compete at Vancouver Olympics unless she and fellow women ski jumpers win lawsuit. Official reason: Not enough good women.

Note, again: Lindsey Van, the world record holder for either gender, is a woman. Fuck. I realize this would mess up their whole medal count system, but as Sasha just said, since they're talking about ratings, think the Olympic ski jumping audience would go through the roof if we had a bunch of women competing w/the men and one of them was the favorite? And even w/the women competing separately, people would tune in to watch just to see if she jumped further than the guys. Why not?

It's almost midnight.

2009-11-13T07:24:45Z

When it is, and it will be by the time most of you read this . . .

today is my day.

My lucky # growing up, long before the movies, was 13. My name is Jason. I even briefly played goalie in gym hockey.

Gotta mean something.

Last post for a bit, promise

2009-11-12T21:32:39Z

The wind has picked up, and dust devils keep forming and spinning away, and it's making these roaring sounds around the house, and the way the clouds are filtering the sun gives the light the most amazing cast.

::loves::

Christian Charity at it's finest!

2009-11-12T21:02:11Z

Melissa at Shakesville: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/11/this-is-totes-what-jesus-would-do.html

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

Yes, god cares more about you only having sex w/someone of the appropriate sex, than about letting people suffer or starve, because God Is Love! And this is how one demonstrates one's following of that heart-of-Christianity concept!

Also at Shakes:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/11/stupak-starts-making-threats.html
(short version: Stupevil says it will be double crossing him to leave his amendment out of final bill, and 40 dems will vote w/him against any final bill that does so)
Congratulations, Democratic Leadership. That's the inevitable result of treating choice as an optional position for members of your caucus.

Marley found a bone

2009-11-12T20:25:12Z

A big bone. We were walking in the desert this morn and as usual she was out of sight and I had no idea where she was and after a while turned around and headed back. A minute or two later, she catches up to me, trotting along w/a , dirty bone in her mouth. I would guess it was the end of a previously buried horse or cow leg bone.

There are horses out here, not so many cows, but none running free in the desert, and this was close to no one's house, and generally seems unlikely anyone buried a horse out there recently.

Tres bizarre.

My post

2009-11-11T03:11:24Z

I was going to post on the health care bill, and comment in a couple of threads. I was going to answer someone over at Solarbird's, and I was going to comment at Violet's where she asked people what they thought, and, stuff. But.

Sasha has actually read the bill. Really. Not just comments on it. (eta: I was wrong. She has read all the summaries, including the detailed one, and she has *started* the bill, which is 1900 pages wrong, if my brain addled fever has things right this time.) And she thinks, it is, IF (and ONLY if) you remove the Stupevil Amendment, (eta: and if it does what the summaries say' it does,) it has some good stuff. Many people are saying many contradictory things about it, so I assume some of this is subject to interpretation. So, I was going to read it, and see if, minus Stupevil, it was Not So Awful as is rumored (i.e., a step in the right direction, as opposed to a giant waste of time and effort to ensure continued insurance company profits, which was the impression I actually had it would be even w/out Stupevil, the Amendment That Must Be Ax-Murdered, which is, really and truly, every bit so awful as is rumored, and which I have read)(and the other question is, can we believe the people who say this will not survive the senate? yes, if they think doing otherwise will get them ridden out of town on a rail, but then, the good parts might not survive the senate either, so the whole thing will have to be reread, which, well, not a fun time).

Alas.

I have a fever. Yeah, I know. I'm wanting to write on health care reform, and I am prevented due to sudden unexpected illness. Isn't it ironic? (yes I really do think) Probably the beginnings of new sort of swine flu, which is invariably fatal and has mutated so that it can be transmitted through computer connections and picked up by reading the blogs or other writings of infected persons, symptoms to commence w/in 7 days of reading, severe symptoms to commence within 10 days of that. If this turns out to be the case, to all of you whom I have fatally infected, I apologize. Just remember, by the time you know whether or not to be mad at me, I'll already (should this hypothetical scenario.be true) probably have been visited by a cute goth girl wearing an ankh who will have taken me by the hand and led me in a merry dance, singing "it's a wham, bam, shang a lang and a sha la la la day" (what, you thought we'd sing" (Don't Fear) The Reaper?"). (yes, confused puncuation. When in doubt, slam them upside the head with everyhting including the kitchen sink until squirrels race by the window). And this would be wonderful, except, I would feel bad for my SO and pack, having to stare down at my dead body and wondering what to do with it, and probably feeling sad. So, this can't happen, unless we all die at once, in which case a cute goth girl wearing an ankh who would lead us all in a merry dance, singing "it's a wham, bam shang a lang and a sha la la la day!" would be a welcome site indeed. Or sight, as the case should be.

Um. I was going to say something else. It might have had some relevance to soemthing. But I can't remember what it was. So, instead, I shall go back to doing what I was doing before I got sick, and imagine myself inflicting much misery upon many deserving miscreants via pyrokinesis, ax cleaving, and sledgehammer bashing. Except for moments of fun and pleasure, I had been doing that a lot all weekend, cause I've been just one raging cauldron of pissed off at and about all sorts of things, and to imagine unleashing the rage was sometimes a pleasure, and sometimes it just happened, but always there lurking around the edges.. Probably this was a contributing factor to me finally getting sick when I had been blithely shrugging off all the coughing people around me for weeks. Possibly it was an early symptom of infection. ( Sasha says yes. I was overly murderous in my rage, and if I had been feeling such rage at other things, then it was almost certainly sign of something wrong)

Which, hopefully, will not really transmit itself to y'all who are reading this. Unless someone I don't like is reading this, in which case, well, them getting it would be a small consolation prize for me getting it. As long as I get to keep the pyrokinesis. And in case y'all haven't figured it out yet, I'm not nearly as insane as I probably sound. Which is not to say I'm exaggerating even a tiny little bit. Cause, am not. Stream of consciousness babble can get addicting, and addiction is bad, especially if it's to somethign that will annoy people (be thankful I'm not speaking compulsivy in rhymes and referencing Etrigan, cause that would robably be worse), so I shall stop now.

Anyway, was almost convinced by Sasha's reading that bill as whole was better than advertised before got too hot/cold/sleepy/other to pay attention. Derailment, thy name is fever!

May they scream in agony for weeks as all the cells in their body explode one by one

2009-11-08T17:13:22Z

http://www.openleft.com/diary/15915/dems-who-voted-for-the-stupak-amendment-to-restrict-womens-rights

I would like to point out it's a piece of shit democrat who proposed this legislation, and 64 of them voted for it, and the rest voted pass the healthcare bill with this attached. I hate the Democrats more than I hate the Republicans right now, and have no love for any who voted for this in any way shape or form, even those who tried to do something better initially and even those who are hoping it gets removed in conference. If they all choke to death on their own feces, it will be too good for them.

As for those who actually voted for this amendment, see my title.

What is even the purpose of having a Democratic Party at this point, except to rubber stamp the desires of their corporate donors while providing rhetorical cover that convinces the somehow-still-delusional-masses-of-sheep out there that we have something even vaguely resembling a representative government, when in fact we do NOT?

I hate them. I truly, truly hate them. More than I hate Obama, who was predictable to be this awful and has hardly even disguised what he's about, and more than I hate the Republicans, who may be batshit insane and who frequently advocate flat out evil, but who are at least upfront about what that they are trying to do. But all the democratic leadership who have given all appearances of being sane, willing to pass a not even good healthcare bill that will effectively gut abortion rights (and in general not cover a lot of women's services, as covered extensively at reclusive leftist and tgw and corrente and various other places) more than. the Republicans have ever managed?

Oh, wait, but at least they've been good for the environment and stopped the onrushing police state W started and ended war and . . .

Seriously, all of them. ALL OF THEM. EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF CONGRESS WHO CAVED ON THIS . . . and by caved I mean gave this cover by voting for it at all or even who refusedto denounce in absolutely vicious terms their fellow congress people who voted for this ebola virus of a bill . . .

The Democratic Party as currently constructed is a worthless heap of diseased Cheney vomit.

Please refer to my reference to the inverted totalitarianism discussion. If we aren't totally there yet, we are close enough, and unless people wake up, we might as well be. And if this doesn't wake a majority of democrats up and they are stupid enough to follow the msm and hail this legislation as a good thing, then it really is hopeless, war is over, might as well sit back and watch the world rot to death.

See here for quotes from *before* this dipshit amendment passed:
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/2009/11/04/a-year-later-world-suddenly-gets-what-pumas-were-talking-about/#comment-35449

So it turns out that the Democratic-sponsored health care reform bill will officially treat women as unpersons: freakish beings whose bizarre, non-human needs cannot possibly be considered part of basic health care. Perhaps we’re extra-terrestrials:

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological “well visit,” leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. Nor are these services protected from “cost sharing,” which means that, depending on what’s in the bill that emerges from the Senate, and, later, the contents of a final bill, women could wind up having to pay for some of these services out of their own pockets.

As for abortion, no fucking way, Jose:

The bill also prevents affordability credits from being used to pay for abortion coverage; the credits would help middle-class and working-class Americans purchase insurance coverage on the private market. Eighty-seven percent of existing private insurance plans cover abortion, which is significantly cheaper and less medically risky than pregnancy and childbirth. After reform, if insurers want to continue to provide such care, the House bill would require them to segregate all government funding from the co-pays individuals pay into the plans. Abortions could only be paid for out of the “private” side of the ledger.

That was *before* the Stupak amendment. Which made things exponentially worse. And I was otherwise having a good day yesterday, until they apssed that on Saturday night hoping no one would notice. The hell with them all.

Those who voted for this amendment, primary them, and if that fails, you might as well vote for a Republican in the general if they get out of the primaries, because while they will almost certaintly be as bad, they can't be worse, and this will get the evil shit out of the party for which their is faint hope. (see, here: http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/07/stupak-amendment-passes-64-dems-ask-for-primary-opponents/ )

Or, alternatively, a real 3rd party that is actually liberal, and leave the dems alone forever in the pile of ashes they have made of their party.
Anyone who has money and free time and hope who cares at all about the future of the world should start investing in such a thing now.

Inverted totalitarianism & suppression of dissent

2009-11-04T14:14:18Z

I realize this may seem trivial compared to my last post, but thought it an interesting topic to bring up. (and this has actually been on my screen unposted since yesterday morning, so, adding stuff)

Corrente has a new chat feature that you can see on the side of the page (at least if you're a logged in member, dunno if otherwise?); I'll put the whole thing that came up this morning under the cut, cause, again, interesting, but here is what I thought key part:

Johnson, quoting Wolin, says this: "The genius of our inverted totalitarian system 'lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual…' "

This was done quite effectively post-9/11 by using "patriotism" and "unity" as cudgels, with dissenters from the Bush admnistration being not only divisive and potentially treasonous, but not "grown-ups". And it's still being done now, using a variety of different tactics, but one thing practically all sides do (and I am guilty of myself on occasion) is marginalize people/opinions by suggesting that anyone who holds it is looney tunes. And clearly, some people do hold opinions that are woefully in conflict with reality and it annoying and time consuming (arguably pointlessly time consuming) to explain things that should be elementary to people who are almost certain to dismiss it anyway (try explaining the concept of "patriarchy" to one of those guys who say "women hold all the power" sometime, or why taxes and spending are necessary to a Republican or doctrinaire libertarian/Randian, and I wish you the best of luck with this). But opposing conventional wisdom? Not always looney tunes. (remember when something like 70%+ of the country was sure Saddam had nukes and was all ready to come after us and we had to invade in a hurry, and the tiny minority of us who thought he didn't and were sure he wasn't and that invading was a really, really bad idea were supposedly wacked?)

And there are plenty of political positions that are dismissed out of hand even though they are the sort of thing reasonable people can disagree on. I was going into more details on this, but if I do, this post will never wind up being written, so I leave you w/the thought above.

Otherwise, on the positive, yay Washington! I think, havent' seen final #'s. Fuck all in main. Yay districts in CA and NY. VA, not a surprise. NJ? HUGE surprise. All of these things have implications worth thinking about. The country seems split 50/50 'tween homophobes and non-homophobes, which not great but really no excuse for dems to keep running scared here, either. A relatively left leaning dem runs as himself and wins in a supposedly conservative dem CA district, and the wingnuts chase out the pro-gay, pro choice, pro labor Republican woman, Fox says she is dropping out to ensure the conservative win, she promptly endorses the democrat, and even w/her taking several % points after dropping out, the dem still wins. So, the media wisdom about both parties should move to the right to appeal to more people is clearly, um, way wrong. Corporatist, prudent incramentalist NJ Dem gov. bearing strong political/econ resemblance to Obama running in liberal state gets smashed because people are angry about the economy. Anger about the economy is real, and not limited to wingnuts. Democratic leadership, take heed. White house shows how deeply involved it is in all these things by saying Obama isn't watching the results. Wonder how long that will take to get walked back? Though more and more Obama is reminding me of Bush I.

(I dunno how to bring up what has gone before)
* 17:25:02 Jeff W But co-oping public opinion through a "tribalism" (normative) approach would fall within "inverted totalitarianism," I guess. (Sorry for the confusion.)
* 17:22:48 Jeff W Oops, sorry, I read the bolded part of the quote as meaning the opposite of what it says.
* 16:24:56 Jeff W Well, I haven't read Wolin's book (yet), only Chalmers Johnson's review. It doesn't appear as if there is a specific connection but Johnson, quoting Wolin, says this: "The genius of our inverted totalitarian system 'lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual…' " It defnitely could be a dynamic within the IT framework, I guess.
* 15:23:46 lambert Does "inverted totalitarianism" connect to Silber's "tribalism" and if so, how?
* 14:56:01 lambert It's not about personalities, but "access blogging." You can't on the one hand organize your blogging around access in 2009, and on the other hand claim the presumption of good faith that bloggers could, say, in 2003, when they were really "hippies." That is the nub of the issue.
* 14:17:38 Jeff W Well, I defended you, lambert, in my own tepid way: [url] I characterized "your position" all over the place, badly, of course, but made it clear it was "my view" of your position. Apologies in advance if I blew it completely.
* 12:19:01 Jeff W I like the Keynes post. (And I have to remember to use the word chary every so often.)
* 08:55:12 lambert Even if its fiction, it's still a good example. Reminds me of Keynes on the influence of long dead economists. And I'm sure there are utopian communities with direct influences (as opposed to dystopian states, I grant).
* 07:42:32 Michael Kwiatkowski How many examples of Hitchens lying are there? Plenty.
* 01:04:55 Jeff W Christopher Hitchens says "George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il Sung set up his system [in North Korea], and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint."[url] I wonder how many examples there are of this sort of thing.
* 23:07:35 BDBlue They certainly do, Jeff W. I can just see someone saying "disaster capitalism, what a fabulous idea" and mean it.
* 19:58:43 lambert Interesting discussion. Thanks!
* 18:55:40 Jeff W That was an interesting post. The problem, I think, with all these descriptions—"disaster capitalism," "inverted totalitarianism," etc.—is that they become prescriptive in the wrong hands. :(
* 18:52:26 Jeff W Thanks, BDB, I agree with your assessment completely.
* 15:13:38 BDBlue Cool, it worked!
* 15:13:12 BDBlue Here's the link I was talking about, I don't agree with the blogger re the markets failing, they did fail, but the article is interesting anyway. [url]
* 15:05:03 Jeff W BTW: to post a link, just paste in the link (and the chat will automatically put in the [URL] thing.
* 15:02:24 Jeff W BDBlue: And re inverted totalitarianism, here's Glenn Greenwald saying the same thing to Bill Moyers (yesterday) that I said to you. [url] (Moyers asked why Americans aren't taking to the streets.) It's only a minute.
* 14:49:20 Jeff W Sure thing. Thanks, BDBlue!
* 14:03:19 BDBlue Jeff W, re inverted totalitarianism, take a look at this post about social mgt. of the housing crisis, esp. walking away. Now I just realized I don't know how to post a link in the chat. D'oh.

Very Important Post

2009-11-03T06:37:33Z

Bumper sticker I saw today, awesome or tacky?

"If you're gonna ride my ass, at least pull my hair."

Happy Birthday!

2009-11-03T03:07:14Z

Hopefully you will see this before tomorrow; sorry kinda late.

Happy Birthday don_fitch!

"It's so hard, living in the devil's playground . . ."

2009-11-01T15:58:02Z

(I started writing this last night; then got distracted partway through; hope everyone had a Happy Halloween or a sensational Samhain, as the case may be, and yay for a full moon on this particular holiday!)

They’re playing only Halloween appropriate music on the local music show tonight, which says something about the depth of musical talent in such a small area and the inclinations of the local artists, that a few dozen bands can easily fill two hours of music w/one song each given such a theme. And then there’s Gram Rabbit, & to a lesser extent Shawn Mafia, a majority of whose songs would probably be appropriate, and lol, a Shawn Mafia song just came on, The Devil Song, “What you gonna do, whatcha gonna do, sweet darling, when the devil comes looking for you?”; and heh, now a second one, “Death in D Major”)(and lol again, then there was news, and we had a visit from Nipty and Nipster {our names for them, I dunno their real names, but they like to nip, therefore their names}, Patches' two puppies next door [we don't know what happened to Patches; she disappeared in late Spring] who are less than a year old but already as big as Marley, and I had to take them back and put them in their yard, and when I get back, Gram Rabbit, "The Devil's Playground").

Finished reading “The Red Tree” this afternoon, then took a nap for a little over an hour that seemed like several, and woke to the canines barking at something outside and Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” on the radio, which seemed quite appropriate for what I had been reading. I think I had been dreaming about writing an extended review of the book, and then lay back down and proceeded to keep writing the review in my head once I established there was nothing serious going on w/the dogs, and somehow finished it before the song was over. It’s not a very long song, so I must’ve been really nearly done in my dream, and still half dreaming when I first woke up. This was followed by the song (guessing at the title) “You’re Never There”, which is absurdly appropriate, and two more pre-local music songs (especially apt, ?"All Good Things Come to an End"?, which had me convinced that my state of mind was interpreting everything to be relevant to the book. which is sort of what you might get if you placed a bitingly angry, deeply grieving and deeply depressed lesbian narrator into an updated combination of Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" and one of Lovecraft's New England stories (gender and orientation noted only due to the male-centricness of those stories--downright sexism in Lovecraft). It's also a ghost story, thought there may or may not be any "real" ghosts in it. Anyway, after my last entry, I figure I owe y'all a cut, plus, I can't really discuss this as I'd like to w/out spoilers. So, be warned, many spoilers ahead. And I no longer remember my dream review, so you'll get something lesser.

This is a spooky book where you never quite know what's real -- It's ostensibly the journal of author Sarah Crowe, haunted by her lover's suicide, who rents a small house in rural Rhode Island in an effort to finish a contracted novel. But there's more than a little uncertainty about whether the manuscript that shows up on her editor's desk weeks after her apparent suicide is actually by her, and if it is, whether she's being haunted by more than grief and loss, or going crazy, or both (and if she's going crazy,at what point does her account cease being reliable?). And to the extent it is her journal and she is seeing things accurately, how much is she embellishing, since at one point she says she made up half of a dream she wrote while writing (or is she lying when she says this, and why?). She finds a manuscript in the basement (or, to be precise, just out from under the house through a door decorated w/myriad religous symbols into a cavern that extends outward from the basement) that purports to be a book a previous, now decased due to suicide, tenant of the house wrote about the supposedly haunted giant red oak on the property. Then there's another boarder, Constance, who may or may not be real (tho she is mentioned in the editor's framing story, a fact I forgot while reading the book, but which still doesn't entirely settle the question), and if she is real, might be simply another artist or the ghost of Sarah's lover Amanda or the ghost of the lover of another previous tenant who went on a killing spree about 80 years back, or some sort of changeling or some non-human entity. Constance finds a short story (and an outstanding & haunting short story it is in its own right) that appears to have been written by Sarah and dedicated to Amanda during her time at the house, but which Amanda has no memory of writing. There's lots of local folklore mixed in, some of which might be really real (real as in real world folklore, not novel folklore, I have to check this later)(and the tree in the novel was inspired by a real-this world real-tree).

Ghosts abound in the story -- Sarah constantly dreams of Amanda, and at times one wonders if the dream Amanda is the *real* Amanda trying to communicate, or warn, and at other times it seems to be an apparition sent by the possibly demonic tree or a servant of it or the tree itself taking Amanda's form; there's a ghost Sarah saw when she was young, there's a ghostly half-human figure seen by Sarah and Amanda, there's the ghost of his dead lover seen by the possible (probable? his account isn't entirely reliable either) serial killer, who is killing on what he thinks is her behalf, another former tenant of the house recounts seeing the ghost of his dead wife and hearing her voice, Constance saw an apparition from past days and the apparation saw her, and as mentioned, I was at several points unsure of whether Constance herself is a ghost, and Sarah is certainly haunted by Amanda's memory.

The land itself seems haunted, full of timeslips and sudden distortions of distance, perspective and direction.

All of this comes together in a boil of mounting anger and frustration and despair and growing unease and increasing tension and several scare the heck out of you moments, along with some of the best dreamscapes you're likely to see. There's not much "action" here but a lot happens and it's not slow and the sense of menace and dread and it's hard to know which is more terrifying that the author is simply losing her mind or that she's being slowly cut off from the rest of the world by something that feeds off of her blood and grief and fear.

Also, great sensual depiction of the landscape and the characters and general wonderful atmosphere.

Brilliantly written book, perfect for this time of year.

Halloween Dreams

2009-10-29T18:07:26Z

As should suprise none of you, Halloween is my favorite holiday. Yeah, I think it even tops Christmas, though there is a lot to be said for good will and good cheer and winter warmth. (Speaking of which, it got into the 30's here last night, and was very windy. Since my car has developed a short circuit in the lighting department, which keeps blowing all my fuses, so I can no longer drive it at night, I got to have a fun, 7 full miles walk last night, from about 7 to 7:30-ish, carrying groceries into the face of the wind; they were light groceries, but if you're not in shape for it that gets tiring. Also, the bottom of my shoes are getting worn out) Anyway . ..

The last book I finish before Halloween (barring either grave catastrophe or an impossible lightning read of some other book) is going to be Caitlin Kiernan's The Red Tree. I'm about 100 pages from the finish ,but let me say right now, this thus far an *awesome* book, and perfect for this time of year. It's going to rank with "Low Red Moon" and "Silk" as my favorites of hers, I think, tho these are all very different books (with a lot in common, at the same time). One of the interesting things about this is just how much I have in common w/the protagonist; I grew up in a small town 40 miles or so from the Birmingham, AL city limits, and this character grew up in a small town about 15-20 miles away. And referenced "Mayberry" from the Andy Griffith Show, and one of the main supporting characters, Goober Lindsay, is from my small town. Also, the narrator focuses on dreams and a tendency to digress in her writing a lot, and in case none of you have noticed, I every now and then have a tendency to digress. Wandering are my thoughts.

And, two days ago (I was occupied yesterday, so didn't get around to writing this until now), there was a dream sequence that was so reminiscent of a dream I had around New Year's way back one year in college. I worked it into the novel I was then writing, and I would just copy that more immediate transcript into here but, hey, lost the manuscript. Still, it seems appropriate for this time of year. So, a bit over 20 years later, told very baldly and without much attention to detail because I'm sleepy and my shoulders ache and I want to go back to bed, here is my then-dream:

I was having some sort of other dream, I don't remember what, when I suddenly walked out of it. I mean, literally, I was dreaming, and I saw this cloud of mist or fog, with a hole in it, and on the other side of the whole were beautiful rolling green hills, sort of glowing with a vibrant golden cast. And I walked along the hills a bit with more mist on each side but blue sky and sun above, and I realized I had been dreaming before and was not physically awake now, but felt this was somehow a different sort of dream, more real. (this was before I had ever tried or even knew what lucid dreaming was, though it did spur a great deal of research into dreams and lucid dreaming in particular; I got quite good at that while living alone in LA a couple of years later, was doing it almost every night for a bit, but it's one of those things you have to --or at least I have to--consciously practice to be able to do)(plus, in general or in their entirety, I did not find deliberately sought after lucid dreams to be more real, or meaningful,in any sense, or if I did I've forgotten it now). And at some point there was no long mist on any side, or sunlight overhead, or a sense of being in a dream at all. I was walking in a broad path, or more like a giant stretch long rectangular field, much too wide to be a road, with large trees on all sides with a giant cliff a hundred or a couple of hundred yards off on one side of the trees (I'm not great at estimating distance, especially from that long ago and someplace I never saw again), and everything was basically normal except there was a really strong sense of the *aliveness* of everything. Grass, trees, rocks, etc. Which I know a lot of these re always alive, but, seemed moreso here. From being more real than a normal dream, this was more like more real than everyday reality; everything was vibrant and stirring like when the wind's picking up right before a storm. And over head the sky was a mass of rolling glowing grey clouds, lit up by interior lightning, sort of. And everything just had this sense of importance. And I felt especially alive and just walking there was kinda fun.

And then I saw this *huge* old stone church, with moss growing on a lot of the stones (and they were huge stones)(giant block wallks, but with an attic still of giant stone blocks, shaped more like the top of a house than the flatness you'd except from a temple, and I haven't been to a church or been back home in so long I don't even remember what sort of roofs they normally have, there, seriously, but I remember this) in a clearing cut amidst the trees. And there was a cloaked and cowled figure standing in front of it beckoning me closer. I think I may have been vaguely scared or nervous, I must have been, but I can't remember now, just the sense of extra aliveness and importance. The church was the most alive and vibrant thing there, except maybe the sky. There was no face, just darkness, under the cowl when I got closer, and it pointed towards an open door, double doors like a lot of churches except big like a cathedral door, at ground level, and I looked in and there were candles and darkness and a a constant chanting that I couldn't understand and a lot of shadowy figures moving in there, and I was absolutely certain that if I went in *that* way, they would kill me. I remember the dilemna, I felt I had to go in, but I knew for 100% certainty that I was going to be stabbed to death with long curved knives with golden handles that all of the shadowy figures were carrying, even though I couldn't actually see any knives.

And suddenly I started floating upward, towards the window in the middle of the top floor or attic or whatever and I thought "yeah, maybe go in this way" then I floated through the window and there was suddenly nothing but a whole universe of nothing but crushing darkness extending infintiely in all directions; no windows out or light or anything (so don't ask me how I knew the darkness extended infinitely in all directions; I just did, or at least thought I did). I mean *literally* crushing, it's like my spirit was floating there and was a coherent whole and it was being literally crushed. And I fough the darkness as hard as I could, desperately fighting not to just get compacted out of existence, but this massive, massive weight crushing in equally from all sides until I was an ever shrinking sphere and I fought desperately but hopelessly and I was really able to think of nothing else but trying to survive and then suddenly this glowing white light filled me up and I was a sphere of glowing white light and I was still being crushed but I had an interneal pressure to counter the external and I lashed out at the darkness with the light (Yeah, yeah, I get the Genesis imagery here, sorta) and then I was being filled up with more light than I could stand and I thought *that* was going to destroy me even as it was saving my ass, and giant lashes of burning white light swept into the darkness and the light was burning and destroying the darkness and the darkness recoiled and I remember thinking it seemed hurt and I actually felt sorry for the darkness and wondered if I should stop what was happening but didn't know how and I was also thinking I was going to be destroyed, just seared out of existence instead of crushed, and at some point there was no darkness anymore, just pure white light, and then I woke up.

I woke up relieved at being alive and exhausted. Then went back to sleep and slept normally, but I was groggy as hell all the next day. I was home for Christmas break, I can't remember if it was New Year's or not but it was around there, and Mom got really mad at me for staying in bed all day and acting out of it when I was awake, but so exhausted and groggy. I started feeling better that night and was fully recovered the next day.

Very strange.

ps- thanks to BrigidsBlest for doing a "31 favorite Halloween movies" list, as it reminded me of two of my all time favorites, "The Masque of Red Death" and "Near Dark" both definitely belonging in my all time top ten, I think. The latter is a good movie for sensuality and romance,too, a very great sad and beautiful date movie, if anyone's looking for such a horror movie and hasn't seen it.,

Swim Out Past the Breakers, Watch the World Die (some more)

2009-10-23T03:24:00Z

Not sure about the source, but heard it onABC radio news today. Only 57% of Americans now believe there is strong evidence for mainmade global warming, down from 77% in 2006. And this is a war I thought our side was winning/had already won. Yikes!

"Swim Out Past the Breakers, Watch the World Die, Pt 14"

2009-10-21T03:49:01Z

Go here:
http://jblaque.livejournal.com/735379.htm

Another truly gruesome story, this time of birds on uninhabited islands in the middle of the pacific dying in droves because they ingested our garbage.

That the powers-that-be haven't yet tried to do anything about the floating islands of garbage in the ocean, when anyone with the tiniest amount of imagination and brains would have to realize it's going to lead to more and more things like this, and then combine with the increasing # of dead zones in the ocean . . .

But no, we have to bail out wall street and the insurance companies and try to protect Blackwater goons (I don't have the link in front of me, but if you don't know what I mean by that last, google Blackwater, rape, Franken, Republicans, and you'll see what I mean; Franken was the good guy here, btw, go Minnesota for electing him).

Swim out past the breakers, and watch the world die. (part 13.7)

2009-10-20T19:23:04Z

If you click on nothing else I ever post, click here:

http://www.correntewire.com/priorities_pravda

(chart comparing what is spent on the financial bail-out in just 12 months to various other things spanning years and centuries)

Now, think about what we could do w/the money it cost to invade Iraq, and then think about how the financial services bail out dwarfs that.

Fully funded federal health care for all? Check.
Fully funded college education for all who want it? Check.
Enough money to every individual in the country that everyone not already well off would see a noticable improvement in living standards for at least six months? Check.
Vast investment into renewable energy resources that could give us energy independence and fight climate change? Check.
All of this combined? I dunno, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Would all of these things have actually sent money into the economy to help pull us out of the current state of nastiness so they wouldn't have had to invent a "jobless recovery" and things' would actually really be getting better? Yes.

So, hundreds of millions better off and better long term prognosis, or save a few rich people? Clearly, more important to save a few rich people. Or, Larry Summers grasps key economic fundamentals well hidden from stupid people like me. Pick one. (to be fair: third conceivable alternative: Larry Summers is horribly wrong but well-intentioned and thinks he knows what he's doing and it really will be best for all and has actually crunched numbers and this all made sense to him)(or, see here: http://www.correntewire.com/headlines_say_it_all_goldman_exec_named_first_coo_sec_enforcement#comments)

Equally important, if not moreso, re: global warming, melting icecaps, and bad stuff happening faster than models predict:
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/014498.php

Also important, takedown by climate scientists of new book that is either deliberately false or woefully misguided (and in either event appears to deliberately mischaracterize the opinions of primary sources, according to said sources):

http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/12/superfreakonomics-errors-levitt-caldeira-myhrvold/

Naked capitalism on the state of our press: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/msm-reporting-as-propaganda-no-one-minds-our-new-financial-lords-and-masters-edition.html

Hawaii as possible health care reform model, except no one is studying it: http://alegrescorner.soapblox.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=3704

Democratic leadership in action, re: student loan improvements; http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/youve-got-to-be-kidding-me-by-digby.html

People are fucking evil, part 5 Trillion: http://jblaque.livejournal.com/734714.html (gov't approves new horrible way to kill prairie dogs that will also damage ecostystem even as prairie dog numbers continue to precipitously decline) (aka more democratic leadership in action, aka wow, it's so much different w/Bush gone! part 97)