Stats

Comments Posted By choicelady

Displaying 451 To 480 Of 5,146 Comments

FOUND: Paul Ryan’s Lost Budget!

AdLib – all this, CPAC and this morning’s press conference, reminds me of an Ugly American experience I had in Poland some years ago.

I was with an international group in a restaurant in Krakow, when American tourists from a bus trip came in.
One of the men in the tour group wanted ice water. The hostess, who did speak pretty decent English, tried to say they did NOT serve it. So, because he did not hear her or listen, HE SPOKE LOUDER. When you don’t speak the other person’s language of course it works fine if you speak your own MORE LOUDLY. THAT ALWAYS GETS THROUGH, RIGHT?

That’s the GOP. Didn’t work this time? SPEAK MORE LOUDLY. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, find out WHY they don’t serve ice water. DEMAND it LOUDLY. That’ll bring ’em to your side. (They don’t serve it because they use ice to cool things and use tap, not safe bottled water, for that ice.)

Even though you want people to come to your view, you never EVER find out theirs and just insist yours is ALWAYS correct and therefore it’s obviously a case of YOUR failure to listen.

LOUDER. Yup. That’ll work.

Guy did not get his ice water. Grumbled all night. Just like Reince.

» Posted By choicelady On March 18, 2013 @ 7:04 pm

LOL!!!

I guess though, we should NOT laugh, AdLib – funny as you make it, the tape of the white supremacist at the CPAC convention indicates this is not entirely too far out for some people, especially the wage slave part. Add in the OTHER comment from the ‘47% tape’ where Romney extolled the virtues of the Chinese slave labor camp, saying the ‘security’ was to keep people OUT not keep them IN, and you can see we have folks in America who think this is just ducky.

Yeah those Welfare Queens. I guess they finally did find one. ONE. And because, like the 87 people prosecuted for voter fraud, where there is one there MUST be millions, then these slashes to the safety net HAVE to be justifiable, right?

Right. That’s where they are. Hard Right.

And that’s why they are wondering why everyone to the OTHER side – which begins with conservatives who aren’t stupid all the way on to actual socialists – never votes for them and their remarkably “common sense solutions”.

They don’t have a messaging problem. They have a REALITY problem.

» Posted By choicelady On March 18, 2013 @ 4:06 pm

Killing Mitt Romney Softly With Our Votes

I got a wonderful coffee mug at the Shakespeare festival in Ashland Oregon. It’s Shakespeare’s insults. One fits Mitt and Ann perfectly:

“Highly fed and lowly taught.”
All’s Well That Ends Well, Act ii, Sc.2

That’s our Romneys!

» Posted By choicelady On March 5, 2013 @ 5:59 pm

I am totally sick of these deluded narcissists.

We got the message. They sneer at us – even those who work, pay taxes, serve their country. The fact we do that is IN ITSELF a source for their contempt. We heard that – and we’re MORE than the 47%. We are the majority of AMERICANS, and he did NOT win “the majority” but lost because he glommed onto the MINORITY – fearful white people.

These people are despicable. They’re worse than W in their sense of entitlement, and I never thought I’d find anyone more boldly self serving than he.

He is blaming his campaing OK – because he’s blaming his STAFF not himself. These are the same people whose credit cards he cut off election night leaving them to get home on their own money.

It was all summed up when he said, “I LOVE firing people who give me services.” That’s all of us. The ‘servers’ he despises, looks down on, and kicks in the gutter.

Just shut up Romneys. You are NOT Americans – you live in a tulle-lined fantasy world because you can. Take your money and move elsewhere. Or if you don’t – just SHUT UP. We don’t want to hear it because we never again wish to hear from YOU.

» Posted By choicelady On March 4, 2013 @ 10:11 pm

VAWA – There Should Never Have Been a Debate On It’s Merits

OK – if God is taking on the idiots, may His/Her/Its aim be straight and true taking THEM out and leaving the rest of us!

Passover is near. Let the chips fall where they may, but not on us.

» Posted By choicelady On March 11, 2013 @ 7:31 pm

Sue – I do not even need to recap a single thing. You have noted ALL the hypocrisy, lying, obfuscation – everything.

One note I KNOW you and I agree upon, is the deeply overlooked creepiness of how many Republicans are also Dominionist Christians whose reading of Scripture justifies abuse against women. I should like to affirm LOUDLY that Scripture says no such thing, but THEIR reading of it, the Old Testament only, twists meanings and seems therefore to make the husband the owner of his wife.

When you put together that self righteous self justification with the obviously erratic and peculiar deviance only the GOP can attain (never heard of a Dem patronizing a prostitute to have her diaper him…) you find a world view of sexual and physical abuse as a normative standard.

Of course these men don’t want to protect women! They think abuse is “normal”. Wouldn’t want to hurt MEN now would we? That IS what got said about the failure to protect indigenous women – it could hurt men (white men) if they were hauled into tribal courts and made to account for the rapes they perpetrate on tribal lands.

Never underestimate the force of phony religious justifications for any of this. Too many good ol’ boys have either a legacy, friendships, or a sick desire for abuse to want to make men accountable for the harm they do against women.

VAWA is a bombshell in their world. Wonder how many legislators rushed out and put attorneys on retainer. You know. Just in case…

» Posted By choicelady On March 11, 2013 @ 4:58 pm

Bob Woodward Feels Threatened By Girl Scouts and Puppies

You may well be right about him. All I know of him after high school is via the book and movie – and of course it would make him look good.

Bernstein WOULD have the clout of Woodward had he not cheated on his very pregnant wife, Norah Ephron. He looked the perfect ass when she wrote about him and turned their life into a hit movie. He never was looked on the same again.

Woodward, having deep GOP roots at home in his youth, apparently has never shaken them off, Watergate notwithstanding. He’s now made himself the perfect buffoon. His caught up with Bernstein at last – just on the slippery slope DOWN.

» Posted By choicelady On March 2, 2013 @ 6:14 pm

PERFECT, Sally. Right on the money!

» Posted By choicelady On March 2, 2013 @ 8:01 am

I think back in the day they both did excellent work. It was Woodward who knew “Deep Throat” and used that contact very well. The pity is that he has let his success go to his head, has produced books that did not ‘triangulate’ with two sources for major assertions, and has written more and more “Republican” types of statements: well, it COULD be true…

He needed the firm hand of Ben Bradlee apparently. He is going over the top more and more, and now he just looks stupid. What a waste of talent. Reversion to his high school superficiality (see my notes on him below) was NOT inevitable but is definitely occurring.

» Posted By choicelady On March 2, 2013 @ 7:58 am

OK – I went to high school with Bob Woodward. He was ahead of me, an “older man”, typical BMOC, very popular from a very well-to-do home. His daddy was a big shot Republican judge, and he was a kid of privilege. In “All the President’s Men” each author wrote of the other. Bernstein wrote of Woodword that it was not sure that English was his native language. That was pretty much his rep in HS – BMOC but not BBOC – Big Brain on Campus. He was cute, had a great smile, wore pegleg jeans beautifully. And…that’s about it.

That aside, those two did amazing work. It’s probably never been equaled outside of the Pentagon Papers. He rose to the moment. He’s never been able to equal his own self since.

Bob has reverted to high school Bob. He writes – and every time I become less and less sure he is telling the truth. His “interview” with dying CIA director William Casey was, even to me a fan, deeply worrisome in its apparent falsehood.

I don’t read him anymore, books or paper, and it was only with this flap I learned he’d been a strong Bush war policy supporter. Now how can he have cred? Between that and the nagging rumors about the Casey “interview” being made up, the man is crumbling away.

He ought to go back home and live in the glory of his past. He’s not making much of a present or future at this rate.

» Posted By choicelady On February 28, 2013 @ 6:48 pm

Oscar Night- When “not boring” is high praise

Hey Murph – I was more or less dragooned into watching the Oscars this week, since I was with friends who wished to carry on their tradition of Oscar night. Overall it was fun, but I’m in a deep sulk about the overlooking of Beasts of the Southern Wild. I did not expect that tiny Quevenzhane would win best actress (in fact I think that would be wrong given all the years others have worked) but the film is now one of the top two of my entire life for wonderfulness, and it did not even get a mention in virtually every write up and in the overall presentations. It was stunning – and amazing because every time I projected something horrid was going to happen, the simple acts of human kindness shown by the actors belied my expectations and fears.

I loved “Lincoln” – I agree that it was the first time the grit and reality of the time was fully fleshed out in the man, the surroundings, the racial issues, the slimy politics to achieve greatness. I suddenly understood Lincoln as a real person – NOT the granite monument of supernatural proportions. It made the accomplishments all the more powerful. I loved it, DD Lewis’ portrayal, and the story behind the event we all knew.

But I will always love “Beasts” best. Having it get no real recognition seems to me another major oversight about what happens to film that have Black people as the heroes, Black people as the stars, Black people as powerful. Thank GOD for Michelle or I’d think Hollywood had become the GOP House of Reps. They still have a long way to go, but Michelle put them wise.

Thanks for the review, Murph. Look forward to next year!

» Posted By choicelady On February 25, 2013 @ 8:13 pm

Short Posts

I disagree that there’s more clout. He doesn’t care. Won’t comply because there’s no downside to that. Congress can arrest Barr and others NOW – especially those not in gov’t service – so that isn’t different.

The FEAR is actually winning. Think of the consequences of succeeding even in convicting. This is NOT something to be entered into for the sake of ‘doing something’. Impeaching and NOT convicting. Impeaching AND convicting. Whatever happens the consequences will be negative. ALL bad. We can’t win this, but we CAN win open ended hearings making the crimes public.

Let’s not enter into this without reviewing the consequences of what can happen. Nobody much is discussing this other than those of us who have grave reservations about it.

With a seriously demented man in the WH, it is not your Clinton story. It’s uncharted waters far more like Nixon and his raving delusions than anything else. Let’s be careful.

» Posted By choicelady On May 31, 2019 @ 10:22 am

I would just say that every barrier to an open ended hearing – Trump’s refusal to permit testimony, provide documents, etc. – exists in impeachment. I don’t see the Dems’ reluctance to impeach being about the election. I see it as deep worry about SUCCEEDING. They impeach, the Senate fails to convict, and we will unleash a tyrant even more demented and lawless than what we have.

Suppose we DID convict him. We get Pence. Pence is both the quiet tool of the Dominionists AND the handpicked Russian preference chosen by Manafort. Because he’s so quiet, people think he’s toothless. He’s far MORE dangerous to our Constitution than Trump precisely because of that. His agenda is more rational, calculated, vile – Trump’s is about Trump. It’s blatant and publicly despicable. Pence’s is rooted in creating a theocracy through stealth and quiet take over. I fear him more than I do Trump for the ties he has to Franklin Graham and to the Mercers as well as to the far RW in the Senate.

The question isn’t about burying the information. It’s about exposing it in ways that help us and don’t shove us into a corner we can’t escape.

» Posted By choicelady On May 31, 2019 @ 7:49 am

I gently disagree that the Dems are cowardly here. Nancy Pelosi wants what I want – a Watergate style investigation. Why? Currently there are 15 House committees exploring aspects of the Yam Man’s criminality. That is “all hands on deck” with different focuses and ability to garner info on the dude.

Switching NOW to impeachment means ONLY Judiciary can do this, and palbably, it restricts the numbers of staff and eyes on the information.

Watergate was about a particular event, but it was thrown open to all manner of crimes related to or concurrent with that issue. We spent over a year hearing testimony, reading evidence, and it was game changing – it made clear beyond doubt that Nixon deserved to BE impeached. Watergate hearings started in 1973, but the articles of impeachment were filed July 27, 1974.

That is how this should go again. Every aspect of his crimes under the various microscopes all building TOWARD impeachment next year.

Now the one fly in the ointment – Mitch has already said NOTHING about impeachment will reach the Senate floor. He might not actually be able to keep that promise since, in no small measure, it’s actually up to Justice Roberts who presides over the trial. On the other hand, if we do not have a 2/3 majority of the Senate – the jurors – willing to convict, this is potentially VERY dangerous. Look what happened when he could screech the Mueller report ‘exonerated’ him – which it did not. If the Senate failed to convict, he’d be unleashed and even more unhinged. We do not need a Pyrrhic victory that results in our nation’s demise while we hold the lofty moral “win” for all to see.

So beware your wishes. We impeach if and ONLY if we can convict. Otherwise we use the evidence in public to let voters know what a slimebag he is. He’s not likely to win UNLESS he can claim he won this battle – so let’s not give him a chance. Voting him out and indicting him immediately after the inauguration of a Dem president? Priceless.

» Posted By choicelady On May 30, 2019 @ 6:57 pm

Cuz the bitch who called them was an official at a bank and therefore as a white woman is totally above reproach. This is naked racism at its most disgusting. I am surprised ONLY that the kids were not shot. Seriously surprised no lethal force was used.

» Posted By choicelady On June 8, 2015 @ 8:56 pm

Oh not at all! This is the perfect place to show how outside the mainstream he is. I’m SO grateful to him for showing his true self right at the git-go. No hiding, pretending to be mainstream. Nope – he’s a Dominionist through and through. It’s right out there for all to see.

» Posted By choicelady On March 23, 2015 @ 4:44 pm

They already are, Nirek. And, if thoughtful analyses from people who really understand things is to be accepted, there are major inroads into their forces. This act of destruction, far less horrific than the slaughter of innocent people, will turn out to be another nail in the ISIS coffin. People are sick of the barbaric acts that ISIS employs. They are losing members, losing ground. American media don’t say that – it’s important to keep ISIS looking powerful so they can pump for more war, disrespect the decisions of this president. But those with insight are noting a real decline in ISIS control and that’s due to Mid East nations taking a major role in their own defense.

» Posted By choicelady On February 27, 2015 @ 7:54 am

Thank you, kes – that’s powerful. So is the cited story below:

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/11/7527697/ahmed-malek-merabet-eulogy-charlie-hebdo/in/7271890

The brother of the slain Muslim police officer may have had the most important message of all. I saw it on MSNBC but almost nowhere else. It’s worth reading this story.

» Posted By choicelady On January 11, 2015 @ 11:13 am

When the reaction is to insist it’s wrong to ‘SELF-censor’ every bit as much as to BE censored, we enter an arena of such colossal self-centeredness there is almost no word for it. Not reflecting on what one does – assuming anything at all that we think is golden – is very dangerous.

The deaths of all these cartoonists and journalists is horrific. No matter what they wrote or drew, their slaughter is unspeakable. Our Muslim communities around the world who are trying to strive for peace have denounced these deaths and the deaths of the people in the kosher market as the REAL insult to Islam.

But I do think we who are poking sticks in other people’s eyes have to consider if what we do is responsible, too. The massive lack of self reflection and unfettered “free expression” that abounds is simply NOT helping anything at all.

» Posted By choicelady On January 11, 2015 @ 11:04 am

I definitely agree for ALL extremists that the point is violence, never mind the ’cause’.

I do have a funny story about that I will recount just to ease the pain. Outside a reproductive care clinic, a demented passerby stopped and said to protesters, “I could help you out here. I could get dynamite and blow it up. I could just blow it up for you. I can do that – I can blow it up.” As he wandered away, a prochoice escort watched him and then said, “I don’t think he’s so much anti-abortion as he is pro-dynamite.”

That’s the problem with too much of our world. They’re not acting to right wrongs. They’re just blowing it up.

» Posted By choicelady On January 11, 2015 @ 10:58 am

Welcome home! I’m glad you can resume some part of your own life and that you found good care for your mom. I know she will miss you, but I bet she also gets that you need to keep your own homefires burning.

Of course you came back in the worst weather period, but hey…

Take care – hope all goes well there in O- HI – O.

» Posted By choicelady On January 9, 2015 @ 2:35 pm

kes – Thank you. I appreciate your understanding. I’ve been questioning this issue since Vietnam when the political cartooning of my anti-war peers got so vile. I think there is NO room for censorship, but I also think there has to be room to talk about what, ultimately, that speech is for and how it impacts the issues we supposedly care about. I think that is a conversation way overdue.

» Posted By choicelady On January 8, 2015 @ 1:23 pm

Agreed. I’m trying to figure out how to move away from the vulgar to the engaged. It’s not easy. Canada has a ban on Holocaust denial – is that good or bad? I don’t know. I know that however despicable the words and acts, I did think the Neo-Nazis had a right to march in Skokie, IL some years ago even though many Skokie residents were survivors.

But if ALL speech is free, then societally there needs to be an engagement on speakers’ responsibilities for that speech. We are not having that conversation at all.

» Posted By choicelady On January 8, 2015 @ 8:12 am

Hi AdLib – It is the time honored “I disagree with what you say…” that IS the foundation of free speech.

I will also add the real version of sticks and stones is “words will break your heart”. That said, there is no issue of censorship that I am advocating but responsible speech arising from inside our own understanding of history, politics, and humanity. That is what lets vile speech of racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny among many other things flourish. We don’t seem able to disagree with one another without going to that level.

That now said, the most vile hate that results in death is beyond what any speech can inflict. But will we stop the deaths if we don’t at least ask ourselves and our society if what is being said is responsible and adds to our greater understanding of issues?

» Posted By choicelady On January 8, 2015 @ 7:47 am

I do NOT disagree about the violence and extremism, but within the context of French imperialism that continues into cultural obliteration, there is something beyond what the rest of us can tolerate.

The cartoons are not about extremism. The cartoons are about people’s ideas. By once again obliterating any kind of understanding of the place of Mohammad within Islam and the imperialism against Islam starting with the Crusades, the cartoonists just rend the beliefs, NOT just the extremism, of a people who are pretty embattled in Western society.

We who are largely secular about our faith traditions don’t have the historical baggage and fear. I look on these attacks on Islam (again, NOT on the extremists) as the same as Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites do about Jewish faith and people. We are appalled and rail against the latter because we know the history and shudder at mocking the deaths of 6 million people. We don’t know the history of Islamic and Arab people under siege from the west. It matters here. It seems to me to be the same thing as those who mock the Holocaust and Judaism in vile and disgusting images.

Most people in the Western world have little to fear. What are the ‘hate symbols’ against us? Do people hold up images of Cromwell to taunt Anglicans? Who’d know even if they did? No one remembers or much cares. The Anglicans triumphed.

History is written by the victors (save for a few really compassionate revisionists, of course.) I think part of what underpinned these dreadful acts today is a failure of the French to remember their horrific legacy. I heard on NPR that one of the shooters was born in Algeria, and the torture, the indifferent murders, the cultural imperialism over the Algerians has just been dismissed. I think the utter cruelty of the cartoons within this context was horrid. Maybe it would not matter to people not previously oppressed by the French, but to some it does matter that once again their faith is part of a political football to be offered in mocking disdain.

I just think we need to ask again – just because you CAN due to free speech, does that mean you SHOULD? I think we have to own this in new ways. It’s certainly not about squelching anyone but about picking targets that matter. Extremism? Always. Culture and faith? Maybe we need to think it over. Satire and critique need to be way more than dropping drawers and hollering, “Yah, boo, sucks to you” especially when those uttering the taunts come from a background where oppression was the act of their forebears.

» Posted By choicelady On January 7, 2015 @ 9:53 pm

I am sickened by the murders of 12 people today at the Paris magazine. Once again fundamentalists appear to have decided that those who mock them are worthy of only death – and death at their hands, not the one they worship.

And yet – and yet – in the back of my consciousness I want to ask a serious question. Were the things Charlie Hebdo published actually satire or were they hate speech? Is vulgarity the same as satire? Is mocking a belief – not its extremists but the core principles as someone outside that arena distorts them to be – actually serious commentary?

I remember as a very young child seeing attorney Joseph Welsch confront Joe McCarthy asking, “Have you no decency?” I wonder if any of us does anymore. Do we have any decency? Do we give people room to be different AND room to grow?

Muslims in the USA are working their way through some tough questions about how they can co-exist with issues that once were prohibited – LGBT equality, women’s equality, etc. In the middle of this come people, secure in their belief that they have all the insights, who think it’s fine to slime someone else for being different. That sneering contempt short-circuits the ability for us to find community and growth no matter who we are.

From “The Mommy Wars” – the battle between mothers who work outside the home and mothers who do not – to faith and belief and politics and even residence (rural v urban) we have gotten to the point where it appears that the ONLY way to validate one’s own choices and ideas is to denigrate and even kill those who are different, whose choices are not ours.

Just because you CAN speak freely and say whatever you want, does it mean you should? Is any one of us so in possession of real “truth” that we can belittle those who are different?

Fundamentalism is sickening when that “right to kill” becomes a way of life. But isn’t ‘liberalism’ doing something of the same when it takes on the belittling of others we don’t understand – and make no effort to do so?

France has a HUGE legacy of violence against Islam. Anyone doubting the genocidal nature of French culture in Arab nations, especially Algeria, needs to see “The Battle of Algiers”. The French have banned Muslim women and girls from wearing hijabs – head coverings – in schools and work. They did the same, eradicating all aspects of Islam from Algerian society right down to prohibiting Muslim rituals in weddings. And yet despite this horrific legacy of cultural genocide, we celebrate Charlie Hebdo’s mocking of Islam – of issues that they clearly do NOT understand or care about – with vulgar cartoons designed TO inflame. Nothing of French history seems to be owned by the French today. Only the right to free speech no matter how vile.

And they DO have a right in free speech.Everyone does. But do they have the right to perpetuate hate within that framework? Do they have the right to ignore their own genocidal history with respect to Islam? Is it RESPONSIBLE speech – or only feel good ‘gotchas’ that prevail?

NO ONE is responsible for his or her own death at the hands of extremism. The extremists are 100% guilty of these murders. The people who worked at Charlies Hebdo are true victims of fundamentalist violence.

And yet I cannot help asking if we defend ‘free speech’ no matter whom it hurts or what culpability of our own it ignores, aren’t we committing a kind of intellectual violence as well? The right to be left alive to speak is without question. But do we not have the responsibility to determine whether we are perpetuating hate and violence ourselves in what we do and say? Self-reflection is hard, but both fundamentalists and liberals MUST engage in the work. Too many lives have already been sacrificed. Too many more lie waiting in peril for us NOT to discuss it all. NOW.

» Posted By choicelady On January 7, 2015 @ 8:17 pm

That’s right up there with “Bad Spellers of the World Untie!”

» Posted By choicelady On August 27, 2014 @ 10:42 am

As good as any other explanation at this point!

» Posted By choicelady On April 6, 2014 @ 1:14 am

Milt Shook over at PCTC notes that nothing will ever change until we do one thing – get off our butts and VOTE that change. This means assuring we have a solid majority of elected officials that are basically on our side. We may not trust or like them, but it is the control of Congress, both houses, that begins the change.

There is no “third party” that can do anything but erode this capacity. There are 134 ‘third parties’ none of them capable of doing more than undermining one of the two major ones, and the conservatives to RW extremists know better than to do that. Liberals do, but progressives do not. Ideological purity is childish under this structure, and the structure is not changing. To refuse to vote or to support someone who cannot win is not wisdom but abetting the outrage.

Woe to us if the system DOES collapse under a Democrat because the only response Americans know is to switch sides. We did not stand up to the Tea Party – we caved. When constituents do not speak in SUPPORT of an issue such as health care then the elected officials won’t either.

Liberals and progressives have to be in this for the win, not for some kind of feel good “I’m too good to vote” purity. If the Right can do it, why can’t we? Time to grow up and stop demanding what is not YET accessible but what could be if we’d only do the hard work of democratic electoral politics NOW.

» Posted By choicelady On April 4, 2014 @ 8:37 am

Well, of COURSE! Everything that ever went wrong at any point in history is Obama’s fault!

» Posted By choicelady On March 19, 2014 @ 11:45 pm