This is what happens

when unbridled greed meets hereditary power. Allow me to introduce the reigning heads of the lovely country of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit:



From the Guardian:

Not content with lese-majeste laws to protect the revered monarchy that are among the world's most draconian, Thailand is to build a wall around the kingdom to keep out detractors.

But the barrier will be virtual, a national internet firewall to block websites deemed insulting to the throne of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who at 80 is the world's longest serving monarch.

For the princely sum of almost £9m the Thai information ministry will shield the king and his adoring subjects from the sleights – real or perceived – of those who mock online.

Thailand's government, locked in a bitter struggle with staunchly royalist demonstrators who have been on the streets for months, has been accused of harbouring republican tendencies and being hostile to the monarchy.

It refutes the charge, but the move to construct the firewall appears to be the result of pressure from the powerful military and its demand that criticism of the monarchy be stamped out.

The firewall will also give Thailand's bureaucrats the power to block other websites it labels inappropriate, like those run by perceived terrorist groups or showing pornography. But the first target will up to 1,000 websites suspected of carrying material regarded as offensive to the king.

Last year the government, which was appointed by the military after a coup in 2006, blocked the YouTube website for weeks after its parent company, Google, refused to take down a posting.

The 44-second clip showed a picture of the Thai king with a pair of women's feet suspended above his head. In Thai culture feet are regarded as dirty and the lowest part of the body.

Thailand's lese-majeste laws are harsh by any standard, promising 15 years imprisonment for anyone who "insults, defames or threatens" the royal family.

But the law allows anyone to make an accusation against anyone else, with the result that it is often abused to ensnare rivals.

The Thai prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, has ordered police to be especially vigilant and special branch are monitoring community radio stations suspected of airing lese majeste content.

Thailand is a mess. Making sense of the political and social scene has become almost impossible. Who's doing what to whom and why? Who knows? There is some kind of hooha going on between the Thai military and the Cambodian military on their mutual border but what the aim of this battle for an ancient temple might be? Nobody, including the Cambodian forces, can figure it out. The Thais aren't telling, either.*

IMO, those two royals are scary looking. Maybe they reflect an internal rot spreading through their country?

* Background information: Preah Vihear Temple

Well, I guess

if you are looking for something that is either hilariously funny or headache inducing, this would be it:

Interview Palin

OMG omg omg omg omg

I'm trying really, really hard to keep from laughing.

from The Mudflats:

"McCain Camp Figures Out Sarah Palin’s Problem!

29 09 2008

Rarely do things actually make me laugh out loud, alone in a room…especially the Wall Street Journal. But, there’s a first time for everything.

(clearing throat and trying to be serious)

Apparently Republicans have figured out what Palin’s problem is, and what she needs to do to bolster her plummeting poll numbers. I DARE you to keep a straight face.

Some prominent Republicans and senior members of Congress have expressed worries about certain facets of the Palin campaign, particularly that Gov. Palin may be “overprepared” and not encouraged to be herself, an adviser said.

And, the same article plants the seed for the “need to spend more time with my family” excuse that some are starting to think may be the excuse used to mark the end of her candidacy if things tank after the debate.

“For his part, Mr. Palin has worried about the frequent separation of his wife from her family, friends and Alaska staff, an adviser said.”

Ahhh…Todd is not pleased.

But, back to the debate on Thursday… Here’s the strategy we can expect.

“It’s time to let Palin be Palin — and let it all hang out,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist. Yes, enough of that”overprepared” rigid Palin who lets none of her personality escape. Go ahead….let it all hang out. I’ve got my popcorn."

Ok, never mind. I'm guffawing...

gawd, really?

From The Agitator:

A Carefully-Planned, Not-At-All-Slapped-Together Number Pulled Out of Thin Air

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

I don’t know about you, but when this administration says, “just trust us,” I think we’d all be justified to run screaming in the other direction.

[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

That was Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon an article went up at Forbes.com with this passage:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Link

Honest, you just can't possibly make this shit up. You just can't.

Read it and weep

Read, if you would, Driftglass' bolg from Tuesday 9-9, "Talking to ourselves." found here:

Driftglass

I love this guy. I don't know who he is but he could be speaking from my mouth.

This, in particular, caught my attention:

"They are barbarians, and in 2004 we finally had to confront the terrible, irrefutable fact that what is wrong with America is not the fault of a handful of DeLays and Bushes and Roves, but millions of our fellow citizens, who are soul-sick in a way that can never be cured because their tiny, angry, lizard brains simply do not work like ours.

They are not simply uninformed, but proudly, hatefully ignorant, and no matter what you or I say, no matter how many mountains of facts are laid out in front of them, they will go right back to the polls again this Fall, vote to sink another shiv into democracy's back, and go home thinking they've done God's work."

After you get to that, keep reading.

And weep.

Lies and damned lies

I got a fund-raising letter from the McCain campaign in the mail yesterday.

It's chock-full of the sort of half-truths and outright lies that I expected.

If I had the time and inclination, I'd highlight all the wrongnesses and send it back to them.

As it is, I haven't the time nor the inclination. I am seriously considering getting my hot pink highlighter out and writing NO WAY on the first page of the letter and sending it back to them.

On their 42 cents.

You just can't make this shit up Redux

Holtz-Eakin: McCain helped create BlackBerry

Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."


Uh HUH. Wonder what the folks at Research in Motion think of that one?

With the incredible amount of dumbassery proceeding from the Republicrat campaign, how can anyone IN THEIR RIGHT MIND even give a moment's thought to voting for those fools?

The pot calling the kettle black, redux

This is far and away one of the most disgusting and hypocritical things the Republicrats have pulled yet:

Obama Waffles

WHAT did she say?

"PALIN: We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen."

OK, now wait just a darned minute... Vigilant? When the US has been, over the last decades, overwhelmingly the one nation that has "invaded smaller" countries. Oh, no, WAIT! It's only smaller "democratic" countries she is concerned about. Does this mean she is just fine and dandy with someone invading non-democratic countries? And what standard does she use to define "democratic?"

Wish someone would explain all that to me.

An Alaskan native speaks out

from OCA:

An Alaska Native Speaks Out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska

By Evon Peter

Something to hide...

Check out this horrific video from the American News Project:

Palin's Hidden Base

"Sarah Palin has something to hide, especially from swing voters: her deep roots and thriving base of support among social conservatives who are thrilled at the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade, among other things. Palin and the GOP leaders at the 2008 Convention avoid speaking frankly about the social conservative agenda, but ANP got an earful when we spoke with GOP delegates and anti-abortion activists at the convention. -Harry Hanbury"


Those people just scare the living daylights out of me. The only thing worse than their stupidity is their total earnestness and absolute lack of rationality.

From The Nation

"Lipstick on a Wingnut" by Katha Pollitt, September 10, 2008

"John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his running mate partly because she is a woman. If you have a problem with that, you're a sexist. She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop. If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you're a super-sexist. "When do they ever ask a man that question?" charges that fiery feminist Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex--and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

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If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl's privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol's "decision" to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America. Palin's even said she would "choose life" if her daughter was pregnant from rape. Can't you just hear Bristol groaning, "Mo-om...!"

The Republicans bashed Barack Obama as a "celebrity," but now they've got a star of their own, so naturally the rules have changed. Nothing would suit them better than for the media to spend the next two months spellbound by the wacky carnival on ice that is the Palin family: Todd, aka the First Dude, the kids, Levi the hunky bad-boy dad-to-be--well, maybe not him so much after his expletive-adorned MySpace page briefly came to light ("I'm a fuckin' redneck"; "I don't want kids"--whoops). The snowmobiles, the moose burgers, the guns, the hair, the glasses that are flying off America's shelves (starting at $375 a pair, and she has seven). Fretting over the work/family issue alone should take up enough column inches to employ all the female journalists in America from now to next Mother's Day. And don't forget that op-ed staple, What Does This Mean for Feminism?

Well, I'm not playing. I don't care about Sarah Palin's family. I don't care if she's a good mother. I don't care if she's happily married, or who shops and who vacuums, or who takes care of the kids while both parents are at work. I don't want her recipe for caribou hot dogs, either. Life chez Sarah and Todd might make an adorable sitcom (Leave It to Jesus?) or a scathing tell-all a decade or so down the road (Governor Dearest?). Either way, so what? This is an election, not The View. As for feminism's meaning, what can you say after you've said that her career shows that even right-wing fundamentalist women have taken in feminism's message of empowerment and that's good, but that Palin's example suggests women can do it all without support from society and that's bad?

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations--how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?--the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

§ Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists' babies?

§ You say you don't believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us what scientists you've spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?

§ If you didn't try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?

§ What is the European Union, and how does it function?

§ Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?

§ What is the function of the Federal Reserve?

§ Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?

§ Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion?

§ You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn't you mention him even once in your convention speech?

§ McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won't wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?

§ You're suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska's northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?

§ You've suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. How do you know?"

More obfuscations by the veep nominee

Interesting story, indeed...

Well, well, well....

Imagine ole Meggie being a Republicrat bigwig...

"Former eBay chief Meg Whitman is one of the fastest-rising stars in the GOP universe, and her stature as national co-chair for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign was highlighted Wednesday with her speech on economic reform at the Republican National Convention.

Whitman, who lives in Atherton, regularly travels with the campaign and has done nothing to discourage talk that she's interested in running for governor of California in 2010. But a year ago, Whitman was a decline-to-state voter who hadn't cast a ballot in some of the state's most important elections.

Records from San Mateo County show that the billionaire businesswoman became a Republican last September and did not vote in more than half the federal, state and local elections since she registered to vote in the county in September 2002. "

Whole story here.

IMO, considering the fact that she seems to be a greedy opportunist she fits in very nicely with her choice of political parties.

That's me, a netroots fan

OCA article

This struck me in particular:

"Millions of Americans, especially the "netroots," those drawing their information and inspiration from the open sources of the internet, are finally connecting the dots between the burning issues, moving beyond limited concerns to radical awareness. A politicized new majority is waking up to the fact that the proverbial "end" is near. We must move beyond "business as usual" and tepid reform. We must link together our burning issues, unite our heretofore-fragmented forces and communities into a qualitatively more powerful current, and press and confront the Fortune 500 and the nation's thousands of elected public officials-before it's too late."

I have never been very political as I have been working to raise a family and hold things together. Now, though, I am participating more actively because I see disaster not far down the road if we don't rise up and change things. Want a for instance?

Back some while ago, I heard from a local legislator in response to a message I sent in regards to biofuels and alternative energy. After some thought, I responded with a plea for foresight and judgment in the use of ethanol and the need for an acknowledgment of issues far greater than just the economy of Iowa. In other words, please Ms. Legislator, think beyond the county lines and Des Moines because Iowa will stand or fall with the rest of the country and world.

Has she responded in kind? Has she responded at ALL??? No. Perhaps my words fell on deaf ears. Perhaps she didn't understand what I was saying. Perhaps she doesn't want to know and prefers her insular and insulated opinion.

I don't know but her lack of response is indicative to me of a very good possibility that she really doesn't understand.

We must move beyond that type of purblind, introspective, selfish view. We must. There is no longer room for selfishness and greed. As the writer of the article states neither major party offers hope. The Republicans are controlled by a small, select group of neo-conservatives, neopentes and dominionists. The Democrats as a whole are timid and scared of losing their majority in Congress so they huddle around their campfire and bar the doors. Reminds me of the dwarves in C.S. Lewis finale to the Narnia books, "The Last Battle."

This too strikes a chord:

"A potentially world-changing segment of the body politic is finally waking up to the fact that single-issue politics and limited-focus organizing cannot address the current Crisis. Facing a generalized breakdown of the political and economic System and a rapid degradation of global life-support systems, it is obviously insane to keep repeating, "My issue and my organization or my blog is more important than yours," or to wait for the Democratic Party and its latest middle of the road messiah, Barack Obama, to save us."

That may, in truth, be our only hope. Not a top-down change but change from down here upwards. How we proceed, how we build networks, understanding, will decide the destiny of our country. Nay, perhaps the destiny of the world.

Can we afford to ignore? Can we not heed the call? No.

So, from here to where? I don't know but I am looking forward to finding out.

"Moscow can't be trusted"

In light of further information on what has been going on in Georgia, I am changing this post.

South Ossetia has not considered itself part of Georgia since 1991. It has been a unaligned demi-nation, the majority of whose citizens consider themselves Russian. The logistics of this whole ting are complex as there have been several referendums concerning independence in S.O. Not recognized by western nations, nor the Russian Federation, S.O. insists on it's independence. (This gets around to the point of who it is that should be making judgments about what alignment a people should choose.)

On August 7th, Georgian forces killed 10 Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Even before that there were hints of Georgian interference in S.O. resulting in what were considered human rights violations. When Saakasvili ordered the attack on Tskhinvali. There are differing stories on whether, in fact, there was actually an aircraft manufacturing facility in the city. One fact that is clear is this: August 7th, Georgian forces killed 10 Russian peacekeepers in S.O. and the ensuing incursion/invasion displaced many people and has caused widespread misery.

There are widely disparate stories about who/what/where/why/when and how things have happened. Given the fact that, over the last years, Moscow has actually behaved itself pretty well when considering external and foreign affairs while the guvmunts of the west have been notoriously aggressive in foreign and external affairs.

Saakashvili's cries of "Hungary! Poland! Finland" ring false. S.O. is not a sovereign nation in the sense of the above-mentioned entities. Since the Russian Federation doesn't officially recognize S.O. as being independent, rather considering it as something related to a protectorate, they certainly weren't likely to sit back and ignore what they would consider blatant and irresponsible aggression from Georgia. (It should be mentioned that, unlike the west, the R.F. doesn't recognize Georgia as an independent state. This makes the fact that the R.F. pretty much turned a blind eye to the war games conducted by the US/Israel/Georgian forces within Georgia.)

There is such a huge disparity between what is coming out of the R.F., S.O. and the western nations that it makes me highly suspicious.

Condy Rice's posturing, the news media's shrieking, the wailing and moaning about a third world war? Given the long history of the US and UK's guvmunt's mendacity and prevarication, I take it all with a very large grain of salt.

IMO, the leadership of the R.F., even given my distaste for Putin, could run circles around all of the western states leadership without trying, both in statecraft and intelligence. It has been said that there are no stupid Russian politicians. All the dumb ones are dead. I tend to agree. The west, on the other hand, rewards dumbassery with power and privilege.

mules, ducks and elephants

Watched the State of the Onion address last evening.
There were elephants on one side of the aisle and mules on the other side and a lame duck behind the podium. Quite a zoo.
The duck would quack for a while, pause. At the pause, the elephants all promptly bounced to their feet and began beating their front feet together.
The mules, hunkered down in their seats, glowered.
This went on through the whole spiel. It would have been amusing if it weren't so damnably infuriating.

This is a great article about the address:
Consumer's Guide to the State of the Union Address


We are having a Winter Storm. Not just a little snow and a light breeze, a really, truly upper-Midwest howler blizzard. Lucky we aren't getting any more snow that we are.
For reasons known only to themselves, a number of area schools chose not to cancel classes. Now they have decided to dismiss. Well, OK, that's fine but one of them, to our southwest, won't let the buses out of town to take kids home. Visibility is just too bad. So there will be some really furious parents who will likely get on snowmobiles or in other snow-worthy vehicles and take their lives into their hands to fetch their kids. I expect some pointed questions to the superintendent of that school district as to why he didn't cancel school in the first place. He may be looking for a new position in Florida or somewhere else warm.

Just for illustration purposes, for people who are not familiar with blizzards.... this was taken around 11:45 am central time on my way eastbound back from town.
It's gotten much worse since then.
I think I will stay in the house.

Stuck in the house with bored teenagers. What fun... have been surfing around, looking at blogs. Just read one about "food safety." Uh, OK. I suppose it would be best if I don't point the blogger, an obviously well-intentioned soul, to my recipe for either prime rib nor French roasted beef. Poor thing would have an apoplexy. I'd hate to have someone's demise on my hands, especially if it weren't the result of food poisoning.