Displaying 0 To 0 Of 0 Comments NSA to Launch New Cable Channel: “ICU TV” Nirek – back in the 60s and 70s I lived in TN where small towns nearby had the Ben Lomand Rural Telephone Cooperative. As late as 1975 parts of CA up the coast from Santa Barbara still had the Gaviota telephone coop. No dials. Operator assist only, and yes party lines. Never knew there could be EIGHT on a line though. That would make you be efficient in your conversations! » Posted By choicelady On November 6, 2013 @ 8:09 am Oh wow – yes, we had a party line when I was little. Then we got a private line and thought we were in hog heaven. That was the McCarthy era, too and although my folks were not “commies” by any stretch of the imagination, my mother did worry about eavesdropping. Unlike rural phones, we did not even know who the other parties were. I’d entirely forgotten that – but yup. That surely was trading privacy for convenience. And so it goes… » Posted By choicelady On November 6, 2013 @ 8:07 am Privacy is now seen as secrecy. How idiotic. I can’t determine when that all happened, and it is always about YOU not about ME – until the exhibitionism kicks in. I REALLY don’t understand how having my phone number strung in a pile of a kajillion others is worse where no one, maybe not even me, can FIND mine in specific than the fact that if I check out sheets and towels on a web site, I get that retail vendor popping up everywhere. I don’t even have to BUY something – they track me down just for looking!!! Bring back downtown stores where I can window shop without consequence! I don’t know how to convey to kids that what they post – getting drunk, sexting, bullying – stays as part of their record forever. Keeping things to yourself about yourself is not paranoid, just adult. I seriously do not get it. It all went to hell with ‘let it all hang out’ I think. Can we ever stuff the genie back into the bottle? » Posted By choicelady On November 5, 2013 @ 9:38 pm Well, AdLib if this is not another reason to ditch cable and go back to rabbit ears, I don’t know what is. Too funny! The very notion anybody would care – other than Tweens who think every movement is worth note – is hilarious! But this is what the GGs and Snowdens of the world think IS going on. It’s not, but this new cable venture would confirm their worst fears. Though the thought of watching some of THEM shower or go beddy bye is pretty appalling. Does NSA actually care about our recipe exchanges, our whining about our in laws, even our thoughts about healthcare.gov? I seriously doubt it, and if this doesn’t drive out notions of how interesting our neighbors are, nothing much will. It sure makes me clear that my life as a spy is NOT ON. How much boring would I do for pay that I cannot bring myself to do for free? None. I guess this would appeal to those who avidly watch “reality” TV – people on deserted island, people vying to see what disgusting bugs they will eat, people who will sell out to a stranger by marrying for pay. All of that escapes my interest, so here is a suggestion – anyone who sits down to watch that stuff is PRIME fodder for becoming an NSA spy. If you can watch a bunch of losers do icky things to one another for money, you obviously will do ANYTHING for money yourself. This may be a way to end the unemployment problem. Hire couch potatoes without jobs who are devoted to reality TV to watch I C U 24/7. The rest of us then can get on with our lives – and with duct tape over the cameras in our bathrooms. » Posted By choicelady On November 4, 2013 @ 2:50 pm Trick or Trick – Republican Halloween Theme Songs LOVE it, AdLib. Just one question – how many times did you have to listen to the original to get your rhythm? It’s right on the money! VERY singable, and I will be humming it night and day. PERFECT. Now – to get it viral and to the people who ARE doing the Shutdown Crash! Hope it makes ’em squirm. Nahhh – but it does make us laugh, and that’s the best recipe for their ultimate demise! Thank you! » Posted By choicelady On October 31, 2013 @ 9:25 pm Obama Won’t Let Me Keep My Crappy Health Care Amen, Sally, amen. I’m so sorry you got cancer! I trust you are now well? That’s shocking because, yes, it CAN happen to anyone. I knew an older couple who led the most abstemious of lives. He lived to be 103 but 20 years earlier had a heart attack and prostate cancer, and she died at 90 of a brain tumor. Things happen to even the BEST of us, and insurance keeps you from having to deny yourself the treatments you need to keep going. Crap insurance is NO insurance. And if the companies cancelled people – well, so what? having high deductible bare bone treatment plans is being robbed BY the insurance companies. Why do people think that’s better? » Posted By choicelady On October 30, 2013 @ 7:11 pm Oh no, Kalima! Sorry – the reaction was general and NOT directed at you at all! I agree with you – just venting about the crap-o-la I’d heard over the last couple of days. I’m so sorry if it seemed I was directing at YOU as opposed to, whoever they are, the ranting and raving naysayers. YOU are WONDERFUL. » Posted By choicelady On October 30, 2013 @ 7:08 pm ACA did not cause cancellations. Cancellations caused ACA. ACA did not cause massive premium hikes. Massive premium hikes caused ACA. ACA did not impose service and coverage caps. Coverage caps caused ACA. Why do you have maternity care if you’re a guy? Because it’s a package. Women have PSA and proctology coverage. It’s a package. Doesn’t cost less without those. Doesn’t cost more with them. I hope never to use dialysis or open heart surgery – it’s just there. Grow up GOP and snarky people. This is not free market stuff – you do not pay more for anything in the plan, and you’d only jack to costs if you tried to remove it. Get a grip – this is cheap, affordable, and comprehensive. You never had it so good. » Posted By choicelady On October 30, 2013 @ 6:10 pm I would just remind the young and healthy that it takes one motorcycle rollover like the one that stopped traffic for an hour yesterday to turn you from “Invincible” to “vegetable”. And you’re kinda gonna want help when that time comes – any minute now. The young are NOT subsidizing the old. We have paid your education and all other costs, and now we’re asking you to take – gasp – PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for making sure your bar fight patch ups are not put on OUR backs. Health insurance is like liability insurance on your car – it assures the world that you’re not stiffing the rest of us. Suck it up, admit you’re not immortal, and pay a small premium if you’re poor to get insurance that keeps us all free of YOUR debts. Only fair. We already paid for your education. Now use it. » Posted By choicelady On October 30, 2013 @ 6:06 pm GOP House to Hold Hearings on Why They Still Control the House Oh – my dream is coming true. Issa is investigating ISSA!!!! Thank you Jesus! Or whoever. » Posted By choicelady On October 25, 2013 @ 5:13 pm The Chicken Little Syndrome – Why Some On the Left Root For Their Own Failure I think it’s 18? To actually pass bills don’t we need 218 votes? I’m getting a headache not remembering… » Posted By choicelady On October 23, 2013 @ 10:28 pm Wow. That’s very insightful. » Posted By choicelady On October 23, 2013 @ 10:26 pm That’s a fascinating story, KT. I did not know that about your history. I’m awfully glad you came out OK! Too many men did not. The only other people I know who had that “choice” were a couple of Jewish twins who also got busted for drugs, got the choice to go into the military – and washed out. They then converted and became rabid RW Christians who led the anti-abortion movement in NY, made a ton of money, and now are national leaders of the most extreme of the extremes. Thank you for NOT doing that! Really – I REALLY thank you for NOT DOING THAT! » Posted By choicelady On October 23, 2013 @ 10:25 pm You may be the ONLY person I know drafted TWICE. Sorry that happened to you! But it makes a GREAT story! » Posted By choicelady On October 23, 2013 @ 7:26 pm jj – what scares me is that if it’s not about “ME” it carries no weight. I know far too many people who fought against Vietnam simply because they hated the draft and its interruption of their own lives. It takes real maturity and a LACK of narcissism to pursue issues that are not affecting yourself personally. Most of the folks in the Civil Rights movement actually went beyond self interest. That is true to some extent among those seeking economic justice – we’re not steelworkers, auto workers, whatever – but trying to get people engaged in issues that are NOT about themselves is like pulling teeth. The anger comes from safety. Nothing most of the Left whines about actually impacts them or their trust funds or 401Ks or any of the things that keep them safe, secure, happy. They were mute during the Bush spying. They weren’t Muslims. Now their phone number may be ( MAY be) in a list of billions – whoa. First Amendment Fourth Amendment Benghazi! Outrage. I cannot discount the racist factor. Progs are impossibly racist. Always have been. I saw that in the 60s and it never changed. The real people engaged with anti-racism who are white are pragmatic, grounded, kind hearted, visionary. Those who though PBO would be a Superfly don’t deserve the title ‘progressives’. I think the ‘politics of me’ is at the heart of progressive/Lefty disengagement and anger. They love being armchair critics. You cannot get those sorts of people to help out women needing help accessing abortions and other procedures at womens’ clinics, but wow do they expound (wrongly) on the Religious Right. They do nothing because complaining is their highest form of ‘activism’. Part of the anger is guilt. They don’t DO anything. Part of it is a vision of perfection that they think they desire – but they really want a new society for the comfy, not the afflicted. So they complain, they rant, they criticize because building something real is just too much work, too much time, too hard. I have a belly full of these people. They take symbol and show over reality. They are USELESS. And they will take the majority of Americans with whom they don’t share wine tastings and throw them under the bus. Here’s the dark and dirty secret – they are totally willing to see every social program destroyed because they care NOTHING for the disaffected. They can whine. But if they really cared for the poor and POC and homeless they’d get off their butts – but it’s too much damned work. They are parasites on the back of progress. I’ve had it with them. » Posted By choicelady On October 23, 2013 @ 7:25 pm Tea Party Republicans Fit The Mayo Clinic’s Description of Sociopaths LOl!!! It could be a connect the dots contest – who said this famous thing. The problem might be historical relevance (I think we all know ‘sic semper tyrannus’), but it would be an interesting exercise to see if we can indeed tell the difference between psychopaths and, well, other psychopaths! I eagerly await the Pop Quiz on American Nut Jobs with great eagerness! I wonder if Cruz and Bundy are related or if that glazed gleam of snide superiority is jus a hallmark of their dementia? All the shooters recently have looked alike. Perhaps the crazy just pops out at the end? » Posted By choicelady On October 17, 2013 @ 4:18 pm OK, AdLib. Now I’m totally creeped out. Not only do the words fit the patterns of behavior we see, the photo of Ted Bundy looks remarkably like some of Cruz. Shudder. You have identified some pretty scary things. When psychologist Robert Coles, author of many books about children living under various conditions, identified the unexpected class, “Children of Privilege”, he honed in on their too-frequent detachment from people around them. They saw others as objects to serve or gratify them, not as whole people with rights and feelings. We discussed this in terms of Mitt, but it seems to exist within the frame of any person who thinks they are the center of the universe. Remember “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fischer? She wasn’t especially wealthy but WAS raised as an entitled child. She thought she’d been abused because her father would not buy her a Ferrari. I am NOT making that up. She shot her lover’s wife in cold blood because she though she was entitled to him just because she wanted him. That same determination to ‘have it all and have it NOW’ runs through Sarah Palin’s veins as well as all the others’. Someone once made a simplistic but telling warning to women in the dating world – if he is nasty to the server, look out. The Baggers do embrace the gamut of pathologies, and perhaps they appeal to only those who share the trait – fellow feeling and all that. It might explain why too many Emos, also children of privilege, seem more comfortable with the Bagger leaders than with our President and with anyone who has a sense of the common good. Others matter? Don’t be ridiculous! » Posted By choicelady On October 17, 2013 @ 12:52 pm Breaking the Back of the Baggers That can be a good strategy for the national budget, but they have done horrific harm to the PRIVATE sector – businesses and even their supporters. The willingness of any person to see all others as ‘collateral damage’ and to dismiss them is sheer evil. To do that you deny the fundamental humanity of others. You are perfectly free to sacrifice yourself. You are NOT free to sacrifice others to your ideology. They can never make whole those whom they have harmed. It makes a mockery of their pretense at caring about “the people”. » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 8:29 pm However awful King can be, he’s been a breath of fresh air on the Dominionist nutjobs. Did you see that following the vote one of the House stenographers went bonkers and seized the microphone ranting about how God cannot be denied, this is not a God-led nation or the Constitution would not have been written by Masons – she obviously has been captured by the very forces King despises. How terribly sad. That is why King is correct – these extremists are exerting a horrible influence on too many people! » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 8:26 pm Thank you, dear kes! It’s up to EIGHTY SEVEN GOP FOR YES Something is going on. Wow. » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 7:24 pm AdLib and Agrippa – with 75 GOP votes FOR this measure, votes cast in the fact of threats from the Kochs etc., something very amazing is occurring. I figured on 18-21, but it’s at least 75!!!! Wow – that strips power right out of the House GOP crazy. » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 7:21 pm But Costello was cute. McCarthy? Not so much. » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 7:19 pm SEVENTY FIVE REPUBLICANS JUST VOTED YES ON REOPENING THE GOVERNMENT AND RAISING THE DEBT CEILING DESPITE THREATS FROM THE RIGHT. Something massive is changing. Something GOOD is happening here! » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 7:18 pm Nullification is a subject taught at Regent U. Law School, famously Pat Robertson’s university, home to John Ashcroft and others. Their emphasis on nullification comes from the refusal to believe that precedent really establishes the law, that even the Constitution can be thwarted if they do not like it. I heard one of their faculty arguing in federal court who read precedent after precedent that went AGAINST his clients declaring, “Clearly THIS is wrong” over and over and over. Nullification boils down to a belief even your granny would not accept that ‘saying so does TOO make it so ’cause I said so!” Like THAT wouldn’t get you a thump on the noggin from your grandmother… That is what we need to provide – good sense we all value. All this distortion of law, of fact, of philosophy about what America is or is not needs a good thump on the noggin. No brutality – just a smart reminder that we do have “common good” values here that for the most part have held us together or that we had to fight to assure. AND that you do NOT rule the world. If you cannot use the laws – as the Civil Rights movement so wisely did – to the betterment of all people, it’s no freaking use to pretend they don’t exist, that they are wrong, that you are exempt from them, and that you have the singular right to overturn the entire system because you cannot overturn the laws. We are not a Christian nation. Private property is not even IN the Constitution. You do not have the right to opt out of our democratic processes when you’re an elected official. You don’t have the right to your own law, your own facts, your own superiority. Nullification is a total fiction. Don’t like it? Move on. » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 3:38 pm Looking at commentary on MSM, I found a reference to the Tea Party’s embrace of “nullification”, the John C. Calhoun ante-bellum belief that minorities should be allowed to “nullify” laws they do not like. In Calhoun’s case it was anti-slavery concerns. It supposes that the will of the individual or small group should be allowed to transcend the will of the majority. That tension has existed for centuries in the colonies then the U.S. No one would dispute that when Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson decided they were ‘true light’ believers who lay outside Congregationalist predestination dicta, that they should have the right to practice what they believe. They were ejected from MA Bay Colony and created Rhode Island that from its inception was religiously diverse, opening the first Synagogue in America. The difference between practitioners of conscience and those believing in nullification has everything to do with upon whom that ‘nullification’ falls. If it is your choice for your own self, it’s fully in keeping with the Constitution. If it is your choice imposed on others, if it flouts the laws decided via elected or electoral process and that lets you keep imposing on others, then it’s not Constitutional. The Baggers who believe they should be allowed to nullify things such as ACA want this not just for themselves – and they actually already have the right to stay out of the Exchanges – but to impose that nullification on whole bodies of people in the states where Baggers run things. No use saying they’re doing this ‘for the good of the people’ because the people don’t get a voice here. It was horrid when Calhoun asserted that an entire region should be able to imprison Black people as private property, and it’s horrid today that the Tea Party demands the overthrow of democracy so their Dominionist/Libertarian views become the rule EVEN IF no one else wants them, EVEN IF no one wishes a theocracy, EVEN IF no one else wants government help in times of need to end. Those who pretend to know better than anyone else how things should be are not entitled to nullification of how the majority see the world. They may live by their own lights for themselves. They may NOT impose their views on the rest of us. That is what Americans are now waking up to about the Tea Party. They are not rugged individualists at all. They are dictatorial in their demands and goals. That is why the Tea Party and its host the GOP are now at the nation’s all time low in support. We don’t want them. At all. » Posted By choicelady On October 16, 2013 @ 2:00 pm How to Win a Congressional Election Against Your Republican Opponent – 2014 kes – that once was articulated by a very wise Assembly member we had. I never forgot the wisdom of it. » Posted By choicelady On October 11, 2013 @ 12:08 am Absolutely, funk. If it helps – go for it! » Posted By choicelady On October 11, 2013 @ 12:07 am Brilliant, funk! This is exactly what is needed from now through the elections. The GOP is the party of not just wanton spending but of utter irresponsibility in being deadbeats by refusing to pay for what they spent. THEY spent. They seek nothing less than the demise of federal government, and they therefore are violating their oath of office. They wish to end democracy therefore violate their oaths and their citizenship rights. They seek a theocracy and therefore abandon both the Constitution and the millions who do not share their beliefs. They espouse family values but let little children go hungry thereby harming their own constituents. They are mad with power, mad with misplaced anger, and mad with delusions about what America is. Good candidates or an insane party. If you think it’s only the ‘lesser of two evils’ when you vote, why in the world would you pick the GREATER of the two? » Posted By choicelady On October 10, 2013 @ 1:35 pm Our 200,000th Comment! We’re Celebrating With a Comment Contest! Oh thank you for posting that delicious comment from bito. Damn I miss him and KQuark. They have left holes in our firmament that will never be filled. I loved them both, and I guess the holes are how we can look at the stars and hope they are also twinkling up there with them. I hope they somehow know how much we love them still. » Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 10:18 pm Thank you, dear Kalima! I will hoist the first coffee to you! » Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 10:16 pmComments Posted By choicelady
«« Back To Stats Page
Home Stats