Consequences

I recommend that you take the time to read an article entitled The World As It Is by Chris Hedges. I found this poem within it:

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom
evil is done
Do evil in return.

-- W.H. Auden

Why is this basic reality so hard for people to comprehend?

Dry bones

For those of you who attend liturgical churches, you know that one of this morning's readings was about the Valley of the Dry Bones!

The two Democrats

Please read this about Clinton and Obama:

We need both of these candidates on the ballot in November. I don’t care which one is which, we need them both to inhabit the executive branch and the presidency of the Senate. We need them both to cut it out now and to come together by the end of this month. Deciding it by tossing a coin and winning the election in November is preferable to the self-destructive campaign that is going on now. If you are scandalized by that suggestion, would having McCain in the presidency, with whatever Republican from the Brown Shirt wing of the party chosen to “balance” the insane war-monger wing that McCain represents, be more beneficial for democracy in the United States?

We need these two Democrats to support each other. This is their chance, they shouldn’t bother thinking about future elections. They won’t be forgiven in four years if their personal ambitions end up giving us four more years of disastrous, Republican piracy.

I think I agree.

It's today, everybody

Friday cat blogging!

Henry

Comic relief

Oh, my, this is good. It's the Helsinki Complaints Choir. Enjoy:



Tip of the hat to Echidne of the Snakes.

Today's CNN QuickVote

I'm really concerned about this:

Will the Democrats' extended fight for the presidential nomination help or hurt their party?

Help - 29%

Hurt - 71%

This election is ours to lose and it looks like that's what we're hell bent on doing.

The media

I found this on an Alternet comment:

Henry Kissinger is an evil old toad, but he is known to speak the truth now and again, as when he said "I only watch the media to see what is being fed to the American people."

Please, please, people. Don't get all your news from the mainstream media. Explore alternative sources. Read newspapers from overseas. Read Media Matters for fact checking and bias exposure. Don't be gullible!

Sounds like the honeymoon is over

Go on over to Alternet and read an article entitled "Here Come the Media Attacks on Obama". Here's how it gets started:

With Sen. Barack Obama now emerging as the Democratic front-runner, clear signs suggest that his press treatment will soon change and that the media will fall back into their routine of viewing -- and critiquing -- leading Democrats through the eyes of Republican spin.

Just last week, we saw how a single line from a Michelle Obama speech was seized upon by conservative partisans, led by Fox News, to suggest she is not patriotic, and how that attack was given a wider airing in the mainstream press. (CNN casually raised questions about Barack Obama's patriotism, as well.) We've also seen the media-manufactured narrative take root that Obama is the leader of a cultish following (more on that below), which dovetails with the creeping media meme
that Obama is a phony.

Meanwhile, in Sunday's New York Times, Obama was twice described as being overly effeminate: He's an "elusive starlet" who prefers "playing the tease," while espousing a "feminine management style." Compare that to the media's portrayal of Republican Sen. John McCain as sort of a man's man, and it's obvious where those competing narratives are headed.

Writing at Slate.com, John Dickerson announced he's had enough of the Obama euphoria: "Isn't there a natural limit to our enthusiasm for to this kind of sweeping phenomenon?" By "our," I suppose Dickerson meant voters, but my hunch is he was likely referring to journalists and how they had reached their "natural limit." I'm not sure this foreshadows a full-fledged media backlash against Obama, but it certainly suggests a fundamental shift is on the horizon. The pendulum is swinging.

This was so, so predictable. I hope the Obama people are truly prepared for the nastiness that's coming.

Personally, I think either Clinton or Obama would make a fine president. What really bothers me about Democrats, however, is our lack of party discipline. We should not be tearing each other apart during the primaries which is only giving free ammunition to the Republicans. Heck, I'm starting to wish that our party's nominee was secretly chosen by people in a smoke-filled room.

UPDATE: Here's someone's comment I found on AMERICAblog:

Anybody remember the Twiglight Zone episode called "The Shelter"? The two sides of this Dem campaign are acting like the insane mob who are willing to do anything to get into the only bomb shelter available, including battering the door down and thereby making the shelter useless. I sure hope we can all stand to look at each other when this is over. I'm afraid the experience may detroy us all.

I think the writer has a really good point.

Tuesday hope blogging

Leno on Prince Harry

I hope this snark has come to Bush's attention:

Here's a story that was leaked to the press today. You know, Prince Harry, God bless him, serving his country. He's in Afghanistan on the front lines and he's been there before. Of course, it's been a huge secret. But he's been serving on the front lines in Afghanistan. Of course, President Bush was stunned when he heard this, and he said, 'His dad couldn't get him out of it?'

--Jay Leno

So when are the Bush twins signing up?

A quote I just found

More cynicism for today, I'm afraid!

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

-- William S. Burroughs

How's this for cynicism?

Jon Stewart WARNED John McCain about the fundies

This was broadcast April 4, 2006.

Is it me or has John McCain really aged over the past two years?

The Bush Tragedy

Sorry about the commercial at the beginning of this. It's worth wading through!

This is what we're in for:

War

I want to give you two excerpts from some articles sent to me by Tulsa Peace Fellowship.

Here's the first and this happened right here in Oklahoma:

A recently divorced airman who served with distinction in Iraq chased his ex-wife out of military housing with a pistol before killing his two young children and himself.

Tinker Air Force Base officials on Wednesday identified Tech. Sgt. Dustin Thorson, a military computer expert, as the killer in the shootings Monday.

His former wife had filed an order of protection against him last year, saying he had threatened to kill 4-year-old Dylan and 9-year-old Jourdain if she filed for divorce.

Thorson had been under the care of a mental health professional, Brig. Gen. Lori Robinson said. She would not say whether his mental problems were related to stress from his crumbling marriage or his experiences in Iraq.

Now take a look at this:

A few months after Sgt. William Edwards and his wife, Sgt. Erin Edwards, returned to a Texas Army base from separate missions in Iraq, he assaulted her mercilessly. He struck her, choked her, dragged her over a fence and slammed her into the sidewalk.

As far as Erin Edwards was concerned, that would be the last time he beat her.

Unlike many military wives, she knew how to work the system to protect herself. She was an insider, even more so than her husband, since she served as an aide to a brigadier general at Fort Hood.

With the general's help, she quickly arranged for a future transfer to a base in New York. She pressed charges against her husband and secured an order of protection. She sent her two children to stay with her mother. And she received assurance from her husband's commanders that he would be barred from leaving the base unless accompanied by an officer.

Yet on the morning of July 22, 2004, William Edwards easily slipped off base, skipping his anger-management class, and drove to his wife's house in the Texas town of Killeen. He waited for her to step outside and then, after a struggle, shot her point-blank in the head before turning the gun on himself.

I don't think I want to comment on these events. Let's just think about them.