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Comments Posted By choicelady

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Time Out for O/T – Vol. 15

It was the fault of the Pennsylvania Railroad. They invented time zones and DST. Ben did something else, but I forget what…

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 11:53 pm

Oh Ques – that is simply amazing! Thank you!

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 11:52 pm

Why would you deserve punishment for lifting this from HP {spit} and putting it where it will do some good? It’s a GREAT piece. Every now and then HP {spit} does good work. Just proves even a blind pig can find an acorn once in awhile.

So you took it over here for full appreciation. Good on you!

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 11:45 pm

LOL!!! But can you do it and NOT untuck the quilt the way Gracie can? EVen my cats make more mess than she does! Amazing!

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 3:01 pm

Thanks, JKK – I signed.

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 2:57 pm

Redemption – there were signs held up yesterday and in earlier days in Madison by people who said, “God help me, I VOTED for Walker!”

Yes, people do learn. I am over holding them in contempt so long as they move forward WITH us. We need every living, breathing soul to back the recall and to make manifest the issues of the GOP attack on working families. Maybe they are late to the table, but they’re here.

Now – to get out the people who sat it out. We need them, too.

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 2:02 pm

Cher – I heard him say, at the beginning of all this, that collective bargaining is a right. I saw (no idea where anymore) his support for public employees. He has not been quoted on the things he HAS said. I’m used to my organization being left on the cutting room floor, but I’ve never seen anything LIKE the way what Obama – THE PRESIDENT – says is ignored unless it can be fanned into some RW slavering attack on him!

I’m fine with his staying on the nation’s business, sending in Solis (who’s wonderful, BTW) and keeping his focus on the idiot House. That is his job.

I say again – if you would not expect FDR on the hustings, ask yourself why you DO expect it from Obama. And then ask what earthly good would it do?

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 1:59 pm

Oh that is just TOO funny! I can’t believe a cat trained itself, or learned from observation, how to FLUSH! I had a cat we used to call “the plumber in gray Carharts” for the same obsession, but he never learned to flush. This cat is clearly up the scale on evolution!

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 1:53 pm

Truth – I SO agree.

WTS – if you would not have expected FDR to do something “symbolic” then don’t expect it of Obama. If you know that people today would kill the president, then don’t ask him to do this. I agree with Truth that change happens bottow up, not top down. LBJ told Rev. King that it was up to the movement to MAKE him sign the Civil Rights bills. Lydon wasn’t at Selma or anywhere else on the lines, in the movement. That is NOT his job! Expecting the President to show his commitment that way is expecting the wrong things from a president and from THIS president.

I’ve said before that Obama is very wise in staying OUT of this because his presence would be fodder for pushback. The GOP main page is already saying these people in WI are “Obama’s union bosses” but that is not being printed in most news stories. Obama is letting people speak for themselves – we have SO needed that respect from leaders! That is why we have the energy in this movement – it is the people, not politicians, not professional organizers but real people. The union folks have come IN SUPPORT not to tell folks what to do. That is a major reversal and a critical one. After years and years of watching people being shut out of their own movements, this is so refreshing and energizing.

We don’t need Big Daddy. We just need ourselves.

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 10:48 am

Hi Truth – around CA it takes only a few DOZEN Baggers to get massive media coverage. When they stormed health care town halls, they were spotlighted. When they were calmed by local clergy and others, the media LEFT. When they hit the front steps of the Capitol – front page coverage. When public workers did the same in equal numbers, inside small story.

The MSM need to be visited by us all in coalitions. We need to have ed board visits, and failing that, pickets of the papers and TV stations for inaccurate coverage.

It’s time for ordinary people to be heard. Schwarzenegger said that the people speaking out for those in need were “special interests” which, by default, included people of faith from diverse backgrounds. Who then is NOT a special interest?

We seem determined to reduce “the public” to the guy who sits on his couch with a beer, who has NO engagement with civic issues, who is not union, who belongs to no organizations or even recreation groups, and who never did anything but gripe to his buddies and his wife all equally unengaged. The “model citizen” is thus one who does NOTHING for his or her community, state, nation. Wow. We are ALL taxpayers, so that meme won’t float. The model American is the guy in “Bowling Alone” who cares nothing for others and has no real friends. That is reductio ad absurdum as a standard for “citizen”.

Time to stand up for working families that make up all of us, connected or not, and to remind people united we stand, divided we fall. To opt out is sheer laziness, and to opt in with lies and misinformation is to be a patsy. Get smart and get engaged.

Teabaggers are just now figuring out they were sold a bill of goods. We need to keep that moving. Not blame them, take them back into community and keep them informed, get them engaged, help them find their voice. There were signs saying, “God help me, I voted for Walker!” People CAN learn and move on – with us.

» Posted By choicelady On March 13, 2011 @ 10:38 am

Riiiight. But while I was watching, four ACTIVE quakes hit, two here in CA, two in the swarm around the Mediterranean.

Now I KNOW quakes in CA happen every day – but I’ve never seen things quite as zippy as that map makes ’em out. Can’t help thinking Gaia is shaking off the stresses from yesterday. Just hope she does so quietly… Went through the 1971 quake in LA which was awful and the clusters that preceded Mt. St. Helens even though seismologists SWORE they were unrelated to the blow. I just know that after the volcano went, we stopped having quakes in CA. I’ve had enough, thank you. They aren’t fun anymore.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 10:07 pm

bito – I guess I over-reacted, but I must say it’s destabilizing to see so much volcanic and earthquake activity all at once!

My money is on the billions of years, not the 6000. However, I don’t particularly cotton to the idea we’re ‘wearing out’ as a globe. I kind of like it here. But life is what life is, so we kind of have to suck it up, don’t we?

If we’re 2 cm closer, does that get us reductions in air fare? Just asking.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 10:03 pm

I’m just getting over the earthquakes and you want me to think ASTROIDS???

Hey – I know about the one that will probably hit before I die. Between the earthquake yesterday and that, the End Times wing nuts are out in FORCE. Tim LeHaye, author of the “Left Behind” series is crowing over current events even though he predicts the End somewhere in the next 20 years, not right now (he has book deals to finish – first things first, please.)

Saw a guy with the “rapture is coming May 21” sign today. Until now there have just been billboards, but I bet the earthquakes made ’em decide God required a bit more commitment than just that?

The astroid is just complicating matters. One Apocalypse at a time, please? I’m getting confused.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 9:59 pm

As a newbie I found that all VERY alarming! Thanks for letting me stand down. MUCH appreciated! I’ll put the survival kit back now…and the flak jacket, the battery operated radio, the liferaft…

Whew.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 9:52 pm

I’m familiar with his response to the massacre.

Only thing that came out of that was the birth of the corporate flak. Rockefeller hired Ivy Lee to put out positive, soothing stories about how WONDERFUL the Rockefellers were as a benevolent, Christian family.

People are just disposable. Even the warm and lovable (gag) Pat Robertson sees nothing wrong in contributing to the conflict diamond holocaust – his Christindustry owns a mine in Zaire where he treats the indigenous miners kinda like his forebears did their slaves. But I bet he brings Jesus to ’em…just as his forebears did their slaves. That’ll fix things right up, won’t it?

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 9:46 pm

Scat? SCAT??? That’s probably the person who posts “Boo hoo crybaby” when you express feelings for others.

Clearly the site has gone over to pure dementia. Welcome back to sanity!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 9:39 pm

Un – everybody? You remember last night someone, and I apologize because I don’t remember who, posted that new weird site on global disaster alerts? It is http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

I’d suggest taking a look RIGHT NOW because there are freaking earthquakes ALL OVER THE WORLD. They are circling the ‘Rim of Fire’ but are HUGELY swarming Europe, mostly the Mediterranean, but even POLAND that I never heard ever had one before. They are MINOR, but they’re breaking out in swarms.

I just think we should be PAYING ATTENTION.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 9:20 pm

Ummmm – actually. No. There have been hundreds of accidents. Meltdowns are just one form. I wrote about this in the 70s – before Three Mile Island – and found out through FOIA documents that accidents and emissions are routine. The most dangerous PART of nukes is the refinement of fuel, second the disposal of spent rods, and the dirtiest and most foul the extraction of ore. Breeders are NOT an answer – rather than water they use liquid sodium to cool the rods. One single drop of water into that sodium? It BLOWS. Happened in a commercial breeder outside Detroit – total cover up. It’s a dangerous and hideously expensive way to boil water.

Biomass plants cost 1/20 the amount and produce 1/10 the energy making them TWICE as efficient and infinitely more cost effective. They don’t have air quality problems either – been running them for years. They take garbage and use it as fuel, extracing the hazardous wastes (plastics) before burning. They limit the land needed for landfills and produce energy. Good solution for many communities and cities. Investor owned utilities are totally in to overkill – long line wasteful transfer of energy so they like nukes as central production lines (as they even do with wind and solar which is totally stupid) but local biomass is vastly MORE efficient. They also don’t kill people.

If we look at ONLY the Big Accidents then we can so easily be duped into thinking commercial nuke power production is “safe” but that kind of cherry picking of what is an “accident” and omitting processing and disposal overlooks the thousands of problems that exist daily with emissions and related problems. These forms of power generators are terribly dangerous at all stages of production. It’s not cost or safety effective as an answer to greenhouse gas emissions.

FAr, far better choices are available that have NONE of the hazards.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:38 pm

Funny – I never saw one word about ACORN storming the Chamber. That WOULD have been front page news, so I think – THEY LIE!!! ACORN may have gone in and insisted on talking, but the never EVER would have “stormed” the Chamber without Faux news making a big stink about it.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:26 pm

Oh freaking WONDERFUL!!!!!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:23 pm

Tah-DAH!!!! Go for it!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:22 pm

Oh good – I’d LIKE to be like that! Thank you for saying that! Made my DAY!

I’m heading into a meeting with yuppie arrogant BS artists in about a week. I think I have to put on my mantle as an elder (I deny that daily but it’s a fact) and point out to these idiots that the new group they want to form to “have CA show the nation how things are done” is lost before it begins since CA hasn’t led the nation in anyting but overpriced housing and concentration of wealth since 1978. These bozos need to heed WI, OH, blue collar people, manufacturing, unions, farmers – anything but themselves! So yeah – a little ‘tude is needed. I will revist your comments and refresh my determination next week. Thank you my friend!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:20 pm

Redemption – I know that with the exception of the gorgeous mountains in western NC it did not seem “southern” to me either. The western part is so beautiful – but that’s where the folks were who gave aid and comfort for years to Eric Rudolph after he bombed everything he could and harmed a wonderful nurse I know who worked in a women’s clinic, also killing an off duty police officer. It’s now hard for me to want to go there with the knowledge people thought he did the right thing.

I’m so glad your son is growing up seeing “human” before anything else. Eventually that WILL take over the world (white extremists are gnashing their teeth – all two of ’em left from the meth). To me it’s very hard to understand race as a factor in whether one does or does not like someone. It’s no more relevant than height. It defines NOTHING about someone’s character.

You might appreciate one of the best stories I heard told by Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Nation Indian (he uses that term) and best-selling author whose books I highly recommend. He spoke to a conference on “Facing Race” in 2008 and told the audience that he’d left in both heartbreak at one moment and gales of laughter the next that we HAD to see that Condi Rice WAS the manifestation of Rev. King’s dream. While every backbone in the audience crackled in unwillingness to accept her no matter how far she’d come, into the silence he paused, then said, “Is it possible I hate her JUST for the content of her character?” Two years later we all are STILL laughing!

May your son’s world have that measure alone by which to judge.

And do get to Charleston and listen to the stories. They are beyond amazing. And see Catfish Row – it’s REAL! And then find tiny Blackville and hear their stories. I never talked to anyone there – I arrived at 11:00 on a Sunday morning, and you can imagine how THAT turned out! Not a soul to be seen! I wish you better luck and another day of the week!

And I LOVE line dancing! Learned the Electric Slide at a party for a Black city councilman I worked for in NY and love to this day. Funny how that dance transcends race and culture!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:13 pm

We will do whatever you and Kalima think best – we just don’t know what that is. We watch the reports from the reactors with growing horror – no one yet knows what will finally happen. They SAY the inner building blew up but that the containment shell is intact – but then how could you see smoke? We don’t know, watching from afar, any more than you do. All we DO know is that people are suffering, and we want to help. Please let us know what’s best to do?

You and Kalima and your families are very precious to us. We stand ready for whatever you need.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 8:01 pm

Hi Auntie – I used to do corporate power research and said the only groups I’d never research were extremist and the Mafia. Turns out I already WAS with corporations, and later took up extremists, too. They both will kill ya.

I’m thinking of taking up gardening…

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 7:57 pm

From time immemorial, that has been true. Every single contract with the private sector unions and even management has been abrogated at the will of capital. Some of us have been screaming about that for YEARS. This is part of ‘the great risk shift’ where employer contributions to pensions have become CAPITAL that goes to the new owner in a merger and acquisition. Some corporations such as Bethlehem Steel simply dumped their pensions onto the public via the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation – the employee part, not their part – and walked away. GM survives in part because they voided the health benefit contract – now the union picks up its own health care. Over and over we have seen discrimination AGAINST employee contracts. The tears and mewling over NEVER breaking contracts exist for ONLY those with business, no matter how ill delivered, how corrupt, how much over-run, how worthless. Employee contracts? Toilet paper.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 7:55 pm

That would be J.P. Morgan’s song. He once said, “The meek shall inherit the earth – but NOT the mineral rights.”

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 7:50 pm

You’re number ONE! YOu’re number ONE! There. We can’t do much else, but we CAN cheer Japan ON!

Seriously Kalima – we are SO sorry this has happened to you, WTS, and the people of Japan. It’s beyond awful. We’re scared for you and praying for northerly winds to keep radiation away. The reports we hear are horrible. There is nothing comforting to say other than you have our hearts and hope that the reactors STOP melting down and releasing radiation!!!

I don’t know if I missed it, but did you find your cats and are they OK? Somehow that has haunted me. Once we knew you were all right, that seemed VERY important.

We think of you constantly and wish you and everyone well. I cannot imagine how horrible this experience is for all of you. If there is ANYTHING we can do from so far away, please let us know?

Peace and NO MORE aftershocks!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 7:49 pm

Is that real or photoshopped? Oh I SO hope it’s real!

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 5:15 pm

Just do NOT give to Samaritan’s Purse. That’s Franklin Graham’s “charity” where you have to take Jay-zus before you get food and water. Man ought to be horsewhipped.

» Posted By choicelady On March 12, 2011 @ 5:14 pm