The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Thursday
Nov142013
The Commentariat -- Nov. 15, 2013
NEW: Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: Justice Clarence Thomas addressed the conservative Federalist Society Thursday & told the audience he loved his job. If I may quote him directly, "Whoop-de-damn-do."
Jon Passantino of BuzzFeed: "President Obama threatened Thursday to veto a House bill that would allow insurance companies to continue offering existing health plans after millions received cancelation notices due to the Affordable Care Act.... The Administration supports policies that allow people to keep the health plans that they have,' the White House said in a statement Thursday evening. 'But, policies that reverse the progress made to extend quality, affordable coverage to millions of uninsured, hardworking, middle class families are not the solution. If the President were presented with [the bill], he would veto it,' the statement concluded." ...
... Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Several insurance company CEOs have been called to a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House Friday afternoon." CW: Could be an awkward meeting after Obama kinda trashed them in yesterday's presser. See, esp., Karoli's & Beutler's reports below. ...
... Ashley Parker, et al., of the New York Times: "President Obama bowed to mounting political pressure from across the country and on Capitol Hill on Thursday and announced new rules that will let insurance companies keep people on health care plans that would not have been allowed under the Affordable Care Act.... Despite the president's reversal, Speaker John A. Boehner said that he intended to push ahead with a House vote Friday on a measure that would allow consumers to keep their canceled plans without penalty and allow others to sign up for them. Mr. Boehner said that he was skeptical of the president's plan, and that the new law needed to be overturned." ...
... CW: If you didn't hear the press conference & have time to listen while you're washing your socks or something, I think you'll be glad you did. The President, IMHO, hit exactly the right tone, especially when answering some of the snarkier questions. The full presser is available in yesterday's Commentariat. The transcript, via the Washington Post, is here. ...
... Ed Kilgore, on the other hand, was not impressed with "Obama's crow-eating presser": "... he occasionally made very good sense, but not with the sort of crisp or vivid language that would break through to regular folks who keep hearing Obamacare is a 'mess.'" ...
... Jonathan Cohn: "It's not clear how much impact [Obama's fix] will actually have, which means many (and probably most) of the people losing coverage aren't likely to get those same policies back. But it appears the plan does minimal damage to the rest of Obamacare, which means the millions of people about to get insurance for the first time -- or get cheaper, more comprehensive coverage than they had before -- will still get those benefits." ...
... Karoli of Crooks & Liars: "... the President said with regard to the one-year delay announced today, 'the Affordable Care Act is not going to be the reason why insurers have to cancel your plan.' He went on to describe what might have happened if they didn't have the ACA to blame, saying 'the insurance companies still may come back and say we want to charge you 20 percent more than we did last year, or we're not going to cover prescription drugs now. But that's in the nature of the market that existed earlier, and that's why I'm trying to fix it.'" CW: Answer that, John Boehner. ...
... KOMO News, Seattle, & the AP: Washington State Insurance "Commissioner Mike Kreidler said Thursday he won't allow insurance companies to extend their old policies that didn't meet the requirements of federal health care reform. An estimated 290,000 Washington residents have received notices that their old insurance policies will be canceled." ...
... ** Brian Beutler: President Obama's "solution combines a clever p.r. stunt, a stalling tactic, an act of retribution, the genuine possibility of transition assistance for some, and a large political and substantive gamble. It bears the hallmarks of desperation and frustration and determination, but it just might work. The idea isn't to retroactively fulfill the promise he made to everyone whose plans have been canceled, but to demonstrate to the public that there's now nothing in law requiring carriers to dump policyholders or uphold their cancellation notices, so that the public takes its concerns and grievances directly to the carriers." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Obama's announcement mainly leaves the law in the same place it's been for a month and a half: waiting to see if the administration can fix the website." ...
... Gene Robinson: "It was a necessary retreat, but President Obama made clear Thursday that his bottom line remains unchanged: 'I'm not going to walk away from 40 million people who have the chance to get health insurance for the first time.' The president's pledge should be the nation's bottom line as well." ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: Obama's Katrina, blah blah. ...
... Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "For insurance regulators and health insurance carriers, though, [the President's] supposed glide path is about to create a whole bunch of headaches." ...
... Greg Sargent: It's unlikely that any of the legislative "fixes" that have been proposed will ever turn into a bill the President will sign. So the "fix" is in, and it's Obama's.
... Digby: "In the end it's ... older healthy people, who will join up right after the unfortunate sick people who've been denied insurance up until now. And that will go a long way toward stabilizing the exchanges and getting this off the ground, regardless of when the youngsters who think they are going to live forever can be coerced into jumping into the pool." ...
John Judis of the National Review: "Obamacare's launch fiasco will hurt us for years to come." CW: Uh-huh. So will the Benghazi fiasco, the IRS fiasco, the Syria fiasco, the Fill-in-the-Blank fiasco.
** Scott Lemieux in the American Prospect on "the indefensible filibuster of Nina Pillard." Lemieux's main point is crucial: it isn't just that Republicans are filibustering President Obama's nominees; they are filibustering moderate nominees: "Obama (like Clinton) has tended to pre-compromise by selecting more moderate nominees. The kind of judges Bush (II) and Obama are nominating are simply not comparable. Nominees like Pillard and Patricia Millett are not the liberal equivalent of radical Bush nominees like Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen." CW: Harry Reid & Senate Democrats simply must blow up the filibuster for the sake of future generations.
AP: "President Barack Obama is nominating a Harvard Medical School physician as the nation's next surgeon general. Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy is co-founder and president of Doctors for America, an organization that says its mission is to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, high quality health care. He also started a nonprofit that focused on HIV/AIDS education in India and the United States."
Ylan Mui of the Washington Post: "Janet Yellen defended the Federal Reserve's stimulus program and communication efforts during a Senate hearing Thursday morning on her nomination to lead the central bank." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker assesses Yellen's testimony: "The first woman to run the Fed isn't just a highly trained economist and a good communicator; evidently, she's also a pretty savvy politician."
Racism, Euro-Style. Paul Krugman: "What's scary here is the way this is turning into the Teutons versus the Latins, with the euro -- which was supposed to bring Europe together -- pulling it apart instead."
Charlie Savage & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "The Central Intelligence Agency is secretly collecting bulk records of international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union -- including transactions into and out of the United States -- under the same law that the National Security Agency uses for its huge database of Americans' phone records, according to current and former government officials." ...
... Law Prof. Eric Posner, in Slate: The U.S. should continue spying on foreigners. "A government gains advantage from obtaining information about a person only if it can use force against that person. Foreigners are protected by national boundaries. That is why it makes sense to give constitutional privacy protections to citizens, and not to foreigners who live overseas. The call for an international right to digital privacy will go nowhere, because it makes no sense."
Foreign Affairs. Carol Leonnig & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Secret Service agents and managers have engaged in sexual misconduct and other improprieties across a span of 17 countries in recent years, according to accounts given by whistleblowers to the Senate committee that oversees the department. Sen. Ronald H. Johnson (Wis.), ranking Republican on a Homeland Security subcommittee, said Thursday that the accounts directly contradict repeated assertions by Secret Service leaders that the elite agency does not foster or tolerate sexually improper behavior.... Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan hung up on a reporter seeking comment.... One whistleblower ... told The Post on Thursday that senior management was fully aware of agents hiring prostitutes on foreign and domestic trips."
David of Crooks & Liars: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) faced howls of laughter from an audience in Washington, D.C. on Thursday when he claimed that he 'didn't want a shutdown' over President Barack Obama's health care reform law."
Joan Walsh of Salon follows up on comments Akhilleus made yesterday: "... it's outrageous that a man who has enjoyed many millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded medical care doesn't give a damn about the uninsured in our society, but that's Dick Cheney. Still, I was a little startled to hear the former vice president express total indifference to questions about his heart donor in a revealing interview with Larry King.... It's a window into his utter entitlement and self-absorption, and he comes off as an even bigger monster than I'd thought."
If you missed Nancy Youssef's analysis of Lara Logan's Benghaaaazi! "report," there's a link in yesterday's Commentariat. As Ed Kilgore writes, "The questions go on and on in ways that will make it difficult to maintain the scapegoating of [fake hero Dylan] Davies as having duped the innocent Logan.... CBS says it's now performing a 'journalistic review' of the whole story, but it sounds like the network is just a few feet ahead of the bloodhounds." ...
... Eli Lake of the Daily Beast: Dylan Davies "is going dark," claiming he received a note threatening his family. Wales police are investigating. CW: I hope his claim is untrue; it sounds like another hoax to me.
Some People Do Not Respect Mark Halperin
Driftglass: "The loud, gargling noise you may have heard earlier ... was the sound of NBC Legitimate Journalist Mark Halperin giving Glenn Beck one the the noisiest radio blowjobs I have heard in a long time. Highlights included Mr. Halperin explaining how 'honored' he was to be on Glenn Beck's radio show after which he spent several minutes loudly agreeing with Beck on the 'obvious' Liberal bias of the media, and how he has to explain to those few, ign'rant journalists who may dispute Mr. Halperin's infinite wisdom in such matters that whether it is true or not, 'over 50%' of Murrica believes the media to be the Commie Stooges of the Kenyan Usurper. And that is the important thing." ...
... "Hacko di Tutti Hacki." Charles Pierce: "For going on three decades now, there has not been a hackier hack on this little blue marble than Mark Halperin. He is the worst thing to happen to political journalism since the mob in Alton iced Elijah Lovejoy. He is walking journalistic potato blight. He is a living, breathing, suppurating punditizing boil on the asscheeks of a once-proud profession."
Fred Kaplan of Slate on why he's no longer a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist: He read the footnotes.
Local News
Patrick Marley & Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "In a late-night session that stretched from Thursday into Friday, Republicans in the state Assembly approved measures to reinstate Wisconsin's voter ID law, tighten early voting hours, limit the ability to recall elected officials, create anti-abortion license plates and restrict access to the site of a proposed iron mine in the North Woods.... [The bill] would allow voters to cast a ballot without a photo ID if they signed sworn statements saying they were poor and could not obtain a photo ID without paying a fee, had a religious objection to being photographed or could not obtain birth certificates or other documentation necessary to get a photo ID. All Republicans voted in favor of the bill and all Democrats against it.... The measure now goes to the Republican-run Senate, where it faces an uncertain future."
News Ledes
New York Times: "A senior Obama administration official said on Friday that a solution could be found for one of the major stumbling blocks to an agreement that would freeze Iran's nuclear program, and that the accord might be achieved next week."
Reuters: "China will ease its family planning policies and abolish a controversial labour camp system, according to a key document issued after a ruling Communist Party meeting, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday. Couples will be allowed to have two children if one of the parents is an only child, as part of an adjustment of the birth policy to promote 'long-term balanced development of the population in China', it said."
Reuters: "A Chevron Corp. pipeline exploded near a tiny Texas town south of Dallas on Thursday, shooting flames high in the air and prompting evacuations from nearby homes and a school district, but no injuries were reported, the company and emergency officials said. The explosion south of Milford, Texas, was caused by a construction crew that accidentally drilled into a 10-inch liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) line.... He said all workers were accounted for."
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Reader Comments (25)
Excellent blog post in the New Yorker by Jelani Cobb: “Who’s Still Afraid Of Interracial Marriage?”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/11/whos-still-afraid-of-interracial-marriage.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&m
Travel with me through time to a few days back when talk of R. Paul's purloined prose was breakfast, lunch and dinner. At the time I was maybe more bothered by Paul cribbing from Wikipedia than by the cribbing itself because while I applaud the "democratic" approach to research and fact compilation, I'm also wary of the dangers of letting everyone in on the game.
To wit: Came across this today when reminding myself of exactly what the X,Y,Z Affair during the first Adam's administration was all about. Here's part of the Wikipedia entry (See if you can pick out the good part): "An American diplomatic commission was sent to France in July 1797 to negotiate issues that were threatening to break out into war. The diplomats, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, were approached through time travel by agents of the FFM, also known as the Federal Fancypants Ministry,Talleyrand, who demanded bribes and a loan before formal negotiations could begin. Although such demands...."
Had to look up what FFM really means in internet parlance, which turns out to be more in line with a special kind of ministering, rather than a Ministry.
So while I can't get as exercised as maybe I should about stealing from the less-than-authoritative, and sometimes plain funny, Wikipedia, I just wish Paul had flexed his puny historical muscles had copied that one. Would have served him right.
Good morning, let me tell a story that says it all about US healthcare. The Dean of the medical school comes to my office to tell me how frustrated he is about the fact that he offered an orthopedic surgeon a position with a minimum income of $500k salary plus clinical and his wife refused to allow such a drastic cut in income. The best part of the story is that it happened 23 years ago.
Then 4 years ago I am having lunch in Lisbon and next to me is a physician from Madrid. She wants to understand the story about the ACA, At one point I asked her what does she get paid. About 75kEuros (about $100k). Any problem with that. Oh no, she was totally pleased with her salary.
Yes all humans want to have money, but America is really special.
Perhaps the most striking part of the president's address on the ACA problems came across in three words that you will never, ever hear from the mouth a single Republican, 'bagger, or wingnut (or plenty of Democrats): "It's on me."
Taking responsibility for the problems is a big boy thing to do.
Conservatives, who are congenitally prevented from uttering the word "responsibility" when it applies to themselves, can only scream about their rights and unfair victimization, and mewl about "those people".
I'm not too happy about backtracking on the original plan, but this part of the ACA rollout may fade into history five or six years from now when millions of Americans can visit a doctor for preventive medical treatment before getting to the point of having to rush to an emergency room when you're at death's door (the Republican Plan).
He made a mistake, he owned up to it, and he said he'll fix it.
But he also made a point of focusing on why we needed this thing fixed in the first place. And it ain't because the plans in place were so almighty badass. It's because most of them suck. And insurance companies can charge more for "suck" anytime they want.
People still need and want affordable healthcare. Republican attempts to play politics with people's lives is business as usual but that doesn't make it any less disgusting. I guess when it's always someone else's fault, you don't need to concern yourself about that. As Dickmeat Cheney likes to sniff, "That isn't a priority" for them.
Ken,
I know the Age of Enlightenment was a bridge to the scientific advances of the Industrial Revolution, but time travel? Tallyrand was a talented guy, but time travel? Pretty cool. Maybe that was how he was able to survive all the potential trap doors in early 19th century Europe. He knew what was coming.
Which brings me to a facile but nonetheless compelling comparison between the parties involved in the X,Y,Z Affair, John Adams, philosopher, president, multi-linguist, co-creator of the country, John Marshall, the Supreme Court justice who set the tone for centuries afterwards, and Tallyrand, (who survived a monarchy, the Terror, Napoleon, Empire, and another monarchy and thrived in an era of great instability), to name only three, all of whom sit high on historical pedestals surveying the eras they bestrode, and that beacon of light, reason, literary appreciation and political acumen, Little.Randy.Paul, delusional fantasist, racist, plagiarist, abductor, and self-certified eye guy.
Go on, laugh if you must. I did. For three seconds, until bursting into tears.
Why is it that certain eras have so many talented people and others get dollar store lunch meat?
I know, I know, there are plenty of talented people around today. Just that most of them looked at politics and said "No fucking way, Jose."
And those who did look at politics and said "Oh Yes! A chance for me to parley my fractional skills and non-existent understanding of the real world into money and power! Sign me up", are what we're stuck with. Just imagine Boehner, Issa, Li'l Randy, and Louie Gohmert going up against someone like Tallyrand. I'd stand in line to see that shit.
Where did you say that time machine was?
And the answer to the question, 'How could John McCain ever have selected Sarah Palin as his running mate?" See Charlie Pierce for asked and answered in his post of today: "Turns out (McCain) ...he's just the grumbly old fart at the end of the bar at the VFW post, gassing on about stuff he doesn't understand." Strikes me that they were a poifect couple of ______________ (fill in your own pejorative here!)
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/john-mccain-on-john-kerry-foreign-policy-111513
Akhilleus: Glad you saw the humor in the Wikipedia entry I stumbled across, tho' I notice I made it more difficult by dropping an "and" in my next-to-last line...or maybe I should blame it on the Wikipedia "editors," who seem to be lurking everywhere on the net.
As to where have all the good ones gone, the likes of Adams, Tallyrand et. al., I believe a good part of the answer is, as it is for so many of the other things that frustrate many of us today, our sheer numbers, the way in which we have organized those numbers, that is ourselves, and the ethos (es?) which animates so many of those organizations.
Yes, there is more talent living today than at any time in history. I have noted before how many fine writers are out there, more than I could hope to keep up with. In a technical sense, in the displayed ability to string words together, no previous generation has had so much fine writing served up on its national and international plates, but...
...while our numbers provide us with more talent, they also act to diminish the relative achievement, certainly the exposure or notoriety, of any one writer in particular. Loud, clear voices are lost in the cacophony. We live in the midst of chorus, not solos. I suspect we will have no more Hemingways--to pick just one of last century's giants-- or if we do, he or she will not have the staying power Hemingway had. His or her voice will be lost almost immediately in the wave of the next enthusiasm.
The same is true in other fields. For reasons beyond numbers alone the individual has faded into the background. Top-down organizations like Walmart, the world's largest private employer and retailer, organize many millions of people in ways that are specifically designed to elicit as little independent thought and action as possible. The same is true of most corporations, who demand and depend on obedience and lockstep behavior from their millions of employees.
I see the autocratic corporate arrangement as medieval, and we have called the first few centuries of the medieval period the Dark Ages for a reason.
Now corporate influence (spell that $$$$) is so great that it has infected government and our schools. The effect of money and its lop-sided distribution is the other factor at work, I believe.
Today we have a population the world has never been asked before to support; we are, swaddled in corporate structures from birth, structures that serve as straitjackets on adults, and we have drunk the kool-aid of greed that sees wealth accumulation as the only value worth pursuing.
Those three factors are not all of the answer, I'm sure, but I believe they head us towards one.
A dangerous plague has been taking over our beloved country these last couple decades, and it's name is Entitlement. All these moochers fucking around on the job, shirking their responsibilities, walking around like they own the place without a true contribution to society. They revel in their ability to spread their shit stains on our social fabric and then shrug and point fingers when the time comes to face the consequences.
These moochers can bring down a company, lose billions of dollars in senseless risk-taking, unnecessarily fire thousands of employees and put the savings in their bank accounts, torture fellow human beings, completely falsify information and spread it across the nation, endanger our national security, manipulate the public to further their own narrow interests...
This social class of parasites has been wreaking havoc on our society, yet instead of dropping down the heavy axe of justice on their overinflated heads, they been enabled and protected by their mooching counterparts.
For these moochers, facing the music means heading down to their private box seats on Broadway. For these social parasites, facing the music means a golden parachute with a permanent hand in the collective cookie jar. For these pompous leeches, accountability is reserved to the underlings.
The true crisis of entitlements resides in the overcrowded halls of power. Once a certain degree of power has been achieved, complete dereliction of duty means a bonus rather than termination. Utter incompetence is swept under the rug before Truth can be told. This culture of entitlement has reached dangerous heights and must be addressed if sanity is to be recovered.
Next time these vagabonds come out calling for cuts in entitlements, I recommend we wheel out the guillotine; start with the messengers.
Safari,
Why stop with the guillotine? I mean, it's a good start, but where many of these moochers are concerned (thinking of here of two whose name starts with K, as in street, and ends with H, as in hegemon. Your mention of the Dark Ages opens the door to far more interesting and appropriate punishment for these vermin. Decapitation is too quick. Way too easy for these rat bastards.
I'm for a good old fashioned burning at the stake, or flaying alive, or bit of the old red hot pincers to the (very small) privates. Then there's always being drawn and quartered, broken on the wheel, or a good public short-drop hanging.
Really, at this point, I'd settle for a good beating followed by rendition to a black site in Syria or a Turkish prison. And can we arrange to have them accompanied by Dick Cheney?
Oops, sorry, that was Ken who had mentioned the Dark Ages in his post. I'm conflating comments (isn't there a law against that?).
No matter, the idea is still a good one.
I realize that an actual "Kill a Moocher" day sounds (and IS) pretty barbaric. But it isn't a lot different than what these assholes do by proxy and at a distance to thousands of others every day. Instead of killing them quickly, they find ways to kill them slowly and viciously. You want a living wage? Fuck you. Food stamps? Fuck you AND your kids. Healthcare? Die, bitches.
Okay, now I'm back to extended torture. The wingers should appreciate an eye for an eye sort of thing, no?
@Ken Winkes: Years ago when Wikipedia was young, I heard an NPR story (I think it was) about the site. As a test, a college professor made false entries on five or ten Wiki pages. Unlike the one you cite, the entries the professor made sounded plausible; they just weren't accurate. Within several hours, other contributors had removed all of the professor's incorrect entries.
No, I don't take Wikipedia as gospel, & I don't think anyone should. But when I need to find a quick answer to something or other, as you did, Wikipedia is generally a good source -- or at least a good starting point, if you want to dig deeper.
By the way, the time travel bit you cited this morning on the X, Y, Z Affair is not there anymore.
Marie
@ All. I find the comments suggesting torture & murder pretty disturbing. Let's stay away from there. There are better ways to deal with jerks than lopping off their heads.
Marie
The Boeing Machinists' rejection of the company's contract offer (the my way or we'll hit the highway offer it might be called) is just the next chapter in the war between corporations and their workers. As I've said many times, it's an unequal struggle becoming even more so. I implied that this AM and said so last week in my comment on Boeing and the State of Washington. Today Tim Egan said it, as he often does, much better:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/egan-under-my-thumb.html?h
@ All. I can't agree with the notion that our politicians are so much worse today than in times past. If I had a choice between voting for the Rand Paul of 2013 & the Robert Byrd, say, of 1965, I'd vote for Paul. Sure, Ted Cruz is an asshole, but his assholiness is the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy, as many have pointed out. Louie Gohmert? Surely, he's not the first stupid loon to grace the halls of the Capitol. Did we ever have a vice president as bad as Dick Cheney? Well, maybe not. (On the other hand, the alternative wasn't great -- Joe Lieberman is not responsible for torturing & killing as many people as Dick Cheney is, but you can be certain that thousands of Americans have suffered terrible illnesses, & some have died from those illnesses, because Joe Lieberman decided he didn't favor allowing those 55 & older to buy into Medicare, after all. And Lieberman, of course, loved Dick Cheney's war.)
I don't want to get into a discussion of literature, but it's safe to say that many critics would tell you there were/are better writers in the 20th & 21st centuries than Hemingway.
As for the Wall Street moochers, they are not better or worse than Wall Street moochers have ever been. That they get away with more than they did in 1938 is a function of Congress, not of the characters of Wall Street entrepreneurs. The Gilded Age, the crash of 1929 happened because of the character of our financial moguls, who were different from today's financial moguls only in that they were mostly WASPs.
Human nature is what it is. It's true that cultural norms can mitigate human nature to some extent, but the American culture -- to the extent that it has changed -- has changed for the better.
Marie
Re; Secret service man, take away your number; "have engaged in sexual misconduct and other improprieties across a span of 17 countries". Slackers, what are they doing in their free time?
Only seventeen countries? Can you see them looking at the President's schedule? "Oh, good Columbia again!
RE: Violence: I've seen enough of the real thing to wish it on anyone. A teenage Vietnamese girl still haunts me. It was in the summer of 1970. We had been patrolling accompanied by helicopter gunships. Suddenly, Viet Cong began shooting at the gunships. It was suicide, but they did it anyway. Among the dead was that girl. She had been shooting at them with an old US M1 cabine, not noted for its power. The pieces of her weapon lay all around. She had been standing in front of a sheer rock face which was pockmarked with scores of bullet strikes. She had at least 20 bullet holes in her. I admired her courage, but the fulility of it all got to me. She was at the age where she had her life in front of her. What were her dreams?
I knew then we could never win, if we stayed 100 years. Ever since then I hate violence and killing.. I still ask Why?
"These three things remain: Faith, Hope, and Love, but the greatest of these is Love."
Apologies for the sermon from an unbeliever.
Bob Hicks
Marie's Kung Fu is strong. I second the torture comments. The talent on this site is apparent, but I confess that the penchant for vitriol which is often on display leaves me with the feeling that some of us are at risk of becoming opposite numbers, much like that which we have, in a sad commentary on humanity, come to despise. Then again, negative one plus one does equal zero, and zero is a fine place to begin. If no one rose to cancel out the takers, then the makers would never have a chance.
BTW: remember to thank your underpaid hand-workers; they break their backs to keep us safe and fed and free to express at our keyboards.
Pardon me. I second Marie's comment about torture comments. What a difference a word makes.
Pardon me. I second Marie's comment about torture comments. What a difference a word makes. 2nd try. First got lost in the ether.
@ All. I repent for my figurative guillotine comments and no more blood will be spilt in my comments, so help me Sister Mary Elephant.
My entitlement comment wasn't necessarily only directed toward politicians, however. I was referencing the current incubation of half-assness in general that seems to be reappearing across the landscape. Politicians, bankers, journalists, CEOs, malevolent rich in general: they all have more power and influence than they've ever had in our political system (IMHO) and yet when they make complete asses of themselves and fail miserably at their "specialities", rather than a replacement they get a bonus. Surely this pattern has repeated itself in history and I don't claim that these are new phenomena but the prevalence and impact is surely enhanced by the concentrated wealth coupled with the innovation in communication technology. Yet these clowns remain in office/employed/on air/etc. because they believe with their accrued wealth and ignorance they're "entitled" to stay and continue their idiocy.
Misinformation and mediocracy has established itself as the soupe du jour and it's served warm daily to the cold hungry masses. Perhaps it's always been this way, but I guess I had been hoping for more. Silly me.
Akhilleus. I give up! No doubt I will do many head slaps once you reveal the two K.....H villains but I'll try to bear my embarrassment with some dignity.
Now excuse me while I go look up FMM. (I hate all these acronyms.)
@Marie. Have we had this discussion about Hemingway before? Seems like. It's not what he wrote that makes him memorable, it's how he wrote it... even though, as Patchen said, he writes like a bull--big chest, spindly legs.
Barbarossa, your story of the Vietnamese girl reminds me of a photo/story that I saw for the first time yesterday. It is called the photo of the girl in the black blouse, taken in Mi Lai. It is of a group - some children, an old woman, and the teen girl who is buttoning up her blouse. All, except the girl who concentrates on buttoning her blouse, are terrified. And all are about to die. It is a picture worse than the naked child running from napalm and worse than the pictures of the dead in the Mi Lai ditch.
Here is the link to The Girl in the Black Blouse:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-when_b_4252803.html
Jeez. Tammy Duckworth voted for the Upton bill.