Looking forward to more mess in HCR this week. Not.

Good Monday morning, BT and sleepy pups. Drove to work in the dark again thanks to DST, but it won’t last long and oh that evening daylight!

Yep. Getting up in what looks like the middle of the night gets stale, but being able to sit outside after work and watch the birds never palls.

Yes, my kids will no longer get off the bus with only 20 minutes of daylight remaining.

Daylight, but rain for 3 days. Supposed to be sunny tomorrow, though.

The longer they carry on this theatrical fake reform, the less time they have to spend on everything else that is so screwed…like the economy. I’m oddly surprised that any Americans support either of these parties, considering their lack of ethics and political dishonesty. Neither party ever seems to tackle any problem head on. Most of their legislation turns out to be everything BUT that which they pretend to be doing. It’s idiotic.

Well, here in NW Indiana we won’t be sitting outside for a month or so yet. It’s gloomy here this morning, rained ALL weekend, but I think sun is forecast for tomorrow, and a warming trend this week — may get to 60!

I don’t have anything new to type about the jerks in D.C.

Sounds like you have a case of political fatigue, brought on by Insurance Reformitice. Be careful with that. It requires vast amounts of fresh air to spur the senses back to reality and a night out with dinner and sometimes dancing. It’s a hard virus to overcome nowadays.

Now this is interesting reading, in a real reporting way. Surprised the US media is not reporting this. NOT.

Another night-time raid on a housing compound in Afghanistan. Another bunch of innocent Afghans killed. Another round of lies by the US-led forces of the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Only this time, among the dead are two pregnant mothers and a teenage girl.

http://thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/494

No doubt these pregnant women were really not pregnant, but carrying explosive bomb vests. That’s what the US military would report anyway. How do GI’s that are supposed to be the good guys, live with themselves? I could not kill women and children, whether given orders or not.

As soon as the weather improves and I can spend most of the day outdoors, I’ll cease to care.

For those that didn’t read the link. After killing these people, the military eventually admitted their screw up and offered the family $2000 per dead. Can you believe this stuff? Words cannot describe.

I work outdoors (if there is any work) so I hope to be in the same boat! Been off since before Christmas, so hopefully there is some work on the horizon. If not, hope the weather is nice enough to start work around the house.

Another lovely day here in the UK, we have even worse politicians than the ‘jerks in D.C.’ ! pending general election…oooh can’t wait for more of the same rubbish. Dave – Guitar Teacher – Reverse IP Search

o.k. psych majors, I’m still seeking a psychological explanation for the evolution of my feelings on health care:

- dashed hopes, irritation & frustration, to

- can’t watch it, bummed out, to

- watching it as if I’m wrapped in a plastic bubble filled with cotton removed, to

- WHAT A FUCKING JOKE HA HA HA … I hope when / if they pass it they also outlaw reading books! MAKE everyone join the john birch society! the worse the piece of shit stinks, the better! ya hoo!

is there a clinical name for my mental disease?

rmm.

But your worse pols can’t do as much damage as the U.S. ones can.

Stages of grief?

is there a clinical name for my mental disease?

Yep. It’s called being normal.

I gave up cigarettes for this?

Part of the blame has to rest on the American public itself. Far too passive, far too many susceptible to propaganda and spin of a corrupted, lazy and complicit corporate media and far too many citizens who are completely ignorant of the outside world.

The problem with your pols is far too many follow the example of pols in the U.S. and eCHAN is correct, since the U.K. is no longer an empire your pols do far less damage.

Do you think the citizens have changed very much from the 50′s and 60′s?

Heh. Noam Chomsky is the guest on democracynow today. He sez the antiwar movement had a major influence on the invasion of Iraq. Compared to VN, the U.S. behaved much better in Iraq. No wholesale destruction of crops, of the environment, no use (or little use) of chemicals, etc. In VN, the antiwar movement didn’t get started for years, whereas in Iraq it started before the invasion.

I suppose we should be thankful for small favors.

Wow. The lab Chomsky worked in at M.I.T. in the 1960s when he started his antiwar activities was 100% funded by the Pentagon.

Mornin’, BT, pups

This line from Gorilla’s Guides’ header puts US policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan in a nutshell:

The only thing these sand n*****s understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it.

Absolutely! The “citizens” have been bombarded for 60 years with propaganda, spin and cultural tripe thanks to the TV box. The only thing most Americans know about the world outside of the U.S. is what they hear and see from the media. Currently the “general” population has a reading level of a 7th-8th grader. That might be acceptable in a totalitarian anti-democratic regime but is deadly for a nation that would pride itself as a “democracy.”

I’m not exhausted, I’m looking forward to this week. How else will low info Americans learn anything?

Don’t let the screws get you down.

: )

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Irak: 4,383

US KIA Afghanistan: 1,020

Iraki and Afghan casualties: estimates vary to over 1.5M

US MBS 2010: 9.052 and counting

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

Chomsky sez that it was communist party activists in the U.S., who worked tirelessly, who got the New Deal enacted.

No one around like that anymore.

Small favors indeed!

60 years ago television was very different. We didn’t have the 24/7 spin then. It was Lawrence Welk and Quick Draw McGraw. As for knowing about the world outside of the US, I don’t think people were any more informed then than now. Maybe more people read magazines, but that was probably spin too. Do you know what the “general” population’s reading level was 10, 20, 40 years ago?
People are only bombarded if they actually turn that tube on, though. I’m not trying to argue that the media is doing an honorable job, however.
I have a friend in her 60′s and she still takes one class a semester at the local college and travels to a foreign land once a year. She has a good pension and saved wisely. She also doesn’t have any children. :)

and you don’t read that in the history books.

Good Morning….I have a lovely “older” friend who truly believes the happiest folks are the unmarried women who worked….making their own choices, no tangles with children. That is her observation. Interesting, I think.

I guess I’m saying I don’t believe people are less informed now, just that we are more aware of the less informed. That’s what I think.
I also think that parents were maybe more involved in the kids lives then than now. Life was more simple and there was more time.

Only 25% of U.S. citizens carry a passport. In the 30′s, 40′s and into the 50′s there were far more newspapers and magazines with a far wider range of opinions and ideologies that were read widely. Good for your friend who sees education as a life long process. Many Americans today, however, are suspicious and distrustful of education.

Well, we’re all different which is a good thing. I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything.

When I was growing up, the magazines on the coffee table were Psychology Today, National Geographic and Time.
Then, in the 70′s, I had Mother Jones and Rolling Stone on my coffee table.
Today, I get my news from the computer and shows like The Daily Show, Bill Moyers, PBS and British news.

Yes, different, of course. She is older, has a world of friends…I just think her opinion is fascinating since the “old maid”/spinster is usually such a target for whatever…

New post up top…

You didn’t have Ramparts on that coffee table?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course. It’s been my experience that for the most part people who have never had children are a little more self absorbed and less likely to compromise and share.

Never heard of it.

Howard Zinn’s movie The People Speak arrived Sat. Watched it after the Rays game was over (they lost). Well done. Lots of old pix and clips. Inspiring and entertaining.

I remember it when it was a little devotional thing.

Okay, I just looked it up. Heaven’s No. My parents were Republicans. No such stuff at my house, but then in school, I met my friend Greg and he got me caught up on that “lefty” stuff. I imagine his parents might have had that one.

Maybe that = contentment…who knows? ;)

Oh, I see now. That would have been on My coffee table. Don’t know how I missed it. Must have had my head in the sand.

with the help of the us government, we have been working as slaves to enrich wall street bankers for at least 20 years.

no matter who we vote for, the gov’t continues to help new york suck wealth out of the country.

Ha! If one doesn’t have to care about other people’s stuff, life could be a lot easier.

And I was thinking maybe she knows women who happened to learn autonomy at an early age….for whatever reason did not feel the pressure to get married.

You don’t remember the new left publication? It exposed much of the government falsehoods in the 60′s into the 70′s.

Yeah, Obama doesn’t seem to be able to see the difference between “Wall Street” and the economy. Apparently he thinks they are one and the same.

Oh, I missed the part where one only gets married so they don’t have to be responsible?

Oh, I remember ‘em both but not a lot of folks remember it before it went all radical an’ shit. My granma, even though not Catholic, kept a number of devotional mags around. Don’t ever remember her talking about god or religion. Didn’t go to church while grampa used to go to the big Methodist church and sleep through the sermon.

I forgot that Ramparts started as a Catholic literary magazine.

I’m wondering why grampa went to church. To get out of the house? Maybe he liked the music. *g*

Or that part where women could not get credit until the ’60s? Com’on.

Donald Duncan on the Nam 66.

Donald Duncan “The Whole Thing Was a Lie!” was published in Ramparts magazine, the New Left’s most prominent publication, in February 1966.

Come on, what? I must have misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that some women learned to be autonomous and didn’t need to get married. And, then women got credit and what? I’m missing something. Sorry.

I can never find Duncan’s “The Decline and Fall of Morale in Vietnam” but I remember it starts out describing funnels of smoke from the burn and stir all over the country.

I think it was to get out of the house. They slept in separate rooms. They were going to divorce in the 30s but “that” just wasn’t done in the South in those days.

Maybe he liked the attention from the church ladies. Could be. Still, he could have gone bowling.
Must have been hard on people to live in those times.

http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/index.php/teacherlore/donald-duncan-vietnam-was-a-lie-1966/

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_15?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+new+legions+donald+duncan&sprefix=The+new+legions

Main public library in San Francisco has a complete collection of Ramparts. Should be digitized and available.