Displaying 121 To 150 Of 280 Comments Crediting the GOP with their success due to their “40 years of hard and slow work, building a base bottom up” ignores the actual conduit for their success: a self-interested corporate owned/controlled media which has over the past few decades become an unapologetic propaganda machine. Mislead, misdirect, create phony conflicts, little discussion of the merits of real issues nor the use of critical thinking skills while discussing them, cover all GOP/tea party events, and deny coverage of democratic events or causes unless they can be presented with a negative tone. » Posted By cyrano1 On September 22, 2011 @ 9:04 am I second that!!! And atdnext, thanks for BEING!! Your short piece echoes everything I’ve learned in a lifetime: Quit bickering, stay positive, put on your walking shoes, get involved, and keep moving towards changing what’s wrong by actively working to get it right. All politics are local! » Posted By cyrano1 On September 22, 2011 @ 8:16 am rabbits eat their food twice. Once through ingesting raw sources such as grass/alfalfa/greens, and again through ingesting the resulting set of feces (pellets). Quite efficient!! (You need a convincing sales pitch though.) 🙂 » Posted By cyrano1 On October 17, 2011 @ 3:09 pm Thanks Emerald and Bito! Perhaps since the OWS movement is becoming a global exercise, Obama’s speeches and the OWS movement will become “relevant” enough for the MSM to give more voice to it – and most importantly, more Americans will actually tune in, listen, and learn. Our complacency could be in the process of making the difficult transition to actually assist firing up the engines, gain momentum, and crank on the wheel to change course. We’re still only at beginnings of the “tuning in” stage aren’t we? Power in change lies only with including everyone – from those who want to reform our system from within to those who simply want to dismantle it and start over. Thus far, it seems to be loose enough for all takers. Divisive pronouncements like Jack Weinberg’s famous “Don’t trust anyone over 30” mantra created a schism in the Vietnam war protest movement, and such splintering off in message and purpose will also arise in this movement. I’ve long been sold on the solid foundations giving truth to Obama’s inclusive, soaring speeches, and this is yet another one which really slams home the reality of the struggle. Positive results can be achieved only if a MAJORITY of us WORK TOGETHER to sustain the long term effort to get us there. Obama: “That is what our schoolchildren remember best when they think of Dr. King -– his booming voice across this Mall, calling on America to make freedom a reality for all of God’s children, prophesizing of a day when the jangling discord of our nation would be transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” A “beautiful symphony of brotherhood” may be a bit farfetched to most of us old folks since we have some grasp of the generally fleeting “brotherly” nature of humans as opposed to the innate mutually supportive nature of termite colonies, but his “jangling discord” reference is absolutely spot on!:) » Posted By cyrano1 On October 17, 2011 @ 3:00 pm Thanks Bito! I only just learned of his speech through your post, and instead of watching the video I gave it the real test by downloading and reading the text instead. Stunning! If only more people could truly understand in their guts that it takes relentless often unrewarding hard work to achieve some measure of justice in the endless quest for a LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. » Posted By cyrano1 On October 17, 2011 @ 10:17 am They’re clones! Absolutely chilling!!! » Posted By cyrano1 On July 19, 2011 @ 5:38 pm Spot on!! You nailed him!:) » Posted By cyrano1 On July 19, 2011 @ 2:41 pm Didn’t James Carville become a Republican during the gulf oil crisis? What happened to him anyway? Poof! Here he is as “Scorpius” from “Farscape”, an Australian sci-fi series. » Posted By cyrano1 On July 19, 2011 @ 2:24 pm Waaay too funny and irresistible! Thanks for the post and the great stuff here! My additions: John McCain as Joe BTFSPLK from “lil Abner” (who walks around with a perpetually dark rain cloud a foot over his head. Once he appears on any scene, dreadfully bad luck befalls anyone in his vicinity.) [img]http://deniskitchen.com/docs/bios/bio.jbtfsplk.jpg[/img] Haley Barbour: [img]http://deniskitchen.com/docs/bios/bio.bullmoose.jpg[/img] Entire GOP: [img]http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/2921/pogo1qk.jpg[/img] [img]http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/sandusky/pogo01.jpg[/img] George Will: (self-appointed candidate selector) [img]http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii278/angelolopez/pogo2.jpg[/img] Dick Cheney: [img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QMuDihPPyPA/S-lNegJaYNI/AAAAAAAAM58/0aBllqcUJJc/s1600/kelly01.jpg[/img] [img]http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSNYTJZcUqXKIuM1qj-JTUSO_grJLgG17F6T4gSN4PXd1f3doiv[/img] [img]http://i839.photobucket.com/albums/zz311/tobiagorrio/052a-1.jpg[/img] Sarah Palin: [img]http://deniskitchen.com/docs/bios/bio.stupefyin.jpg[/img] Newt, Haley Barbour, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell: [img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UPJNu7wlCUE/TY9MU3YCT7I/AAAAAAAAB8I/Im-t6nxhb54/s1600/kelly_pig.jpg[/img] [img]http://deniskitchen.com/docs/bios/bio.marrysam.jpg[/img] » Posted By cyrano1 On July 19, 2011 @ 1:07 pm Absolutely!! We’re staring out at grey, sitting at our computers instead of being outside, and I’m debating about turning the furnace back on. But if, as I’ve promised, I move to Reykjavik if Bachmann wins, things could get worse………….. » Posted By cyrano1 On July 19, 2011 @ 3:04 pm In jest ( I think?) maybe eventually science will progress enough to accurately pinpoint those with brain wiring prone to acting out with violence due to the violence depicted in fictional entertainment. Then we can simply implant them with Orwellian tags which prevent them from watching the kind of horror films the rest of us are able to watch without viewing them as recipes for our own future actions. 🙂 » Posted By cyrano1 On March 28, 2011 @ 7:45 pm I’ve often pondered on the fact that I found it so difficult to watch Schindler’s List that I waited for it to come out on DVD to allow for breakdown breaks. (disclaimer: As a child I saw actual newsreel footage of holocaust victims and was permanently scarred by it) – yet I could watch a movie like “True Lies” which is choked with over the top violence and thoroughly enjoy it. Obviously it has to do with one’s personal reaction to a documentary approach in depicting a brutal reality and the ability of the viewer to separate from reality to enjoy the violence of sheer fantasy wrapped in humor. Most recently, the constant re-playing of footage from the tsunami that hit Japan became a kind of pornography to me. Thousands of people were about to die or were dying as we watched transfixed by ever more astonishing video of that well documented event. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 28, 2011 @ 5:45 pm What a beautifully written, well thought out, thought provoking article! And I love the new “POF” acronym you’ve coined. Violence, sex, and religion seem to be the three targets for stretching the boundaries into wretched excess inspiring reactive censorship, aren’t they? Relying on your description of “Grotesque”, I support the decision in the UK to ban the Shiraishi film without the usual fear of encroaching censorship many of us fear here in the US. I believe we’re so polarized here in this country that we lack the common sense to find commonality in making these decisions. For instance, the right wing will continue their belief that any new gun regulations are a “slippery slope”, thus choosing senseless violence over sensible legislation – just as the left will defend against any encroachments into “civil liberties” and “freedom of speech” which pry the doors even wider to accept more boundary stretching POFs. We’ve come a long way since I was a kid and all films I remember depicted bloodless violence and fully clothed married couples were required to have one foot on the floor in the bedroom. Religion really wasn’t even a target. I wouldn’t want to return to that stifling climate; yet like many now, am very uncomfortable with the coarsening of our culture as it becomes more inured to any standards of “decency”. Defining “decency” of course, is the real challenge – and here in the US, evangelical religious groups have claimed ownership of the “decency” (morality) movement, excluding and rather successfully labeling us secularists as a pack of elitist souless cretins. Since that movement is pushing towards replacing our government with a theocracy in a nation currently in the process of enabling them by dismantling education, privatizing, defunding, and ultimately eliminating what’s left of an educated electorate, we’re in a ticklish situation as far as censorship is concerned. We have an interesting dynamic which doesn’t really affect what I think of as a solidly secular UK, and which in my view complicates the “slippery slope” argument here in the US. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 28, 2011 @ 10:28 am Spot on Killgore! I was actually quite surprised that Clinton, disregarding potential political fallout, made these very pointed and accurate observations. Even my lib friends are somewhat astonished when I tell them I’ve stayed glued to Al Jazeera since the Egyptian crisis, and will continue watching simply due to their intelligent newscasters who actually deliver real content. I think most Americans still believe it’s a West-hating Arab propaganda machine starring ranting ideologues – which it most definitely is not. Instead delivers a surprisingly in-depth global overview!! Al Jazeera along with BBC and CBC, and PBS actually deliver. All of them, in my view, report more accurately than our locals about events unfolding in our own country. Why did Lawrence O’donnell spend half of his broadcast earlier this week on covering Charlie Sheen? Sagging ratings? Isn’t the common factor of content-filled broadcast news the fact that they’re non profit? No commercials, full of content, and free of corporate bias. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 5, 2011 @ 8:51 am KT: I only have my memories as a guide. As a very small child I had a caged hamster which I almost starved to death due to my negligence. I finally “remembered” I had a hamster and rushed to the cage where I found the pet immobile and cold to the touch, I was horrified with remorse, and I put it under a strong light to provide heat. Much to my relief it revived enough to begin eating and drinking again and was soon exercising on its wheel as if nothing had happened. My overwhelming sense of guilt and the realization that I was the sole caretaker of a caged creature caused me to make the moral leap into thereafter taking more responsibility for my own actions. Isn’t this a case of innate morality finally moving into the level of consciousness? And to move it there, in my case, it took the thoughtless act of neglect to awaken it? My brother at around age eight, threw a rock at a squirrel and killed it. He was stunned and shocked that his act of “fun” brought a sudden violent end to a life. When we talked about these experiences many years later, his belief that his choice created a life-altering realization mirrored my own. Some acts in our childhoods seem to awaken our own sense of morality through our personal experience in recognizing the consequences of our own thoughtless acts or inaction. BUT: We were raised on a farm and were taught how to kill and dress farm animals at a young age. Somehow we got over the “morality” issue (learned to be immoral?), and compartmentalized in order to help with the family business. Mowing hay and bailing it always caught a few skunks in the process, so weeding out and discarding the spoiled bails containing skunk carcasses was also a routine chore. Do some of us who grew up at such a basic level of existence have a different take than those who grew up picking out their shrink-wrapped meat at supermarkets? » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 7:16 pm Neuroscience, free will and determinism: ‘I’m just a machine’ A fascinating article by Tom Chivers: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8058541/Neuroscience-free-will-and-determinism-Im-just-a-machine.html excerpt: “What happens if someone commits a crime, and it turns out that there’s a lesion in that brain area? Is that person responsible? Is the damage to the machine sufficient for us to exempt them from that very basic human idea that we are responsible for our actions? I don’t know.” He refers to a major project in America, where “lawyers, neuroscientists, philosophers and psychiatrists are all trying to work out what impact brain science has on our socio-legal sense of responsibility”. The major project mentioned above: The Law & Neuroscience Project; supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. (investigates the diverse and complex issues that neuroscience raises for the criminal justice system in the United States.) http://www.lawneuro.org/Default.aspx » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 5:40 pm ghsts: Check and mate!! And were they all “bad” or immoral?? or just following the (“immoral”?) stronger leaders in reinventing “meaning” for their existence? Which was the cause for my Tanzania post above. It appears to many of us that culture defines (or ill defines) “morality”, possibly more than it’s an assumed innate trait we can all tap into. Many here define morality as living by the “do no harm” mantra – until it butts up against the wall of personal threat – in which case, survival justifies infringing on this “morality”. And “threat” seems to always be continually redefined with our shifting perceived realities. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 12:15 pm ghsts: Thanks! You’ve nailed it! Too many of us in our short lives believe that humans in their accumulation of knowledge over thousands of years have “progressed” as a result of it. Rather than understand that each new human brought into existence has to do all of the homework all over again. William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” delivers that message brilliantly. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 11:20 am PW: Gotta agree with that! One of the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome (a high form of autism) is a lack of empathy. Suspect this is just the tip of a very large iceberg of brain wiring mysteries. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 10:58 am PW: Great question!! Are we increasingly becoming more Darwinian due to our system of government – or is it our wiring? We’re seeing more push back lately in the Wisconsin/Indiana/Ohio collective bargaining arguments which seem to have provoked enough thought to trend us back towards the more “moral” position in supporting the majority rather than submit to the powerful – which seems to indicate some flexibility in our thinking. A sense of community versus a country full of Ayn Rands? I will always continue to yield to type A drivers though. Fear of death or expensive car repairs I guess. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 10:52 am In Tanzania, witch doctors create “powerful magic potions” from the body parts of Tanzanian Albinos. Are those who only “remove” body parts and leave their victims alive deliberately choosing the more “moral” option over those who choose to kill albinos and then take what they want from the remains? Is annihilation of the “other” driving the real motives behind the practice, made excusable through the guise of religion or superstition? I never did take classes in cultural anthropology so am relatively clueless. Morality as practiced in social groups, it seems to me, is a construct full of qualifiers created by a “thinking” species which too often creates self-serving misleading labels. Such as re-branding our own United States war machine as “peace keeping forces”. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 4, 2011 @ 10:02 am Cher: Thanks, thanks, thanks! All of this content, and the MSM “news” today is focused on the latest developments in Charlie Sheen’s “antics”. » Posted By cyrano1 On March 1, 2011 @ 12:35 pm And what we need is more CFO’s and CEO’s being led out of buildings in handcuffs. Wasn’t the reasoning on the bailouts that our plutocracy is so systemic, we’d tank if we took them all down overnight? I think the grace period should be declared OVER!!! » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 5:03 pm And the only life they value is that of the unborn. After delivery, that baby had better have great bootstraps!! » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 2:59 pm Oh my gosh!!! JRT!! Yay! And I love the graphs!! What we need is the means to get the word out. We keep preaching to the choir!! » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 2:24 pm The Crisis of Reality:Conclusions KBy23: Thank YOU!!! I’ve so often realized that through dialogue with intelligent people we find out what we really think by struggling to put jumbled thoughts into words. You helped me very likely much more than I contributed to you! No easy road home says it all!!:) » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 7:35 pm KB723: I know that most of us at one time or other deal with the moral challenge of pulling the plug to enable (enforce) self-help instead of simply enabling further dependency via bailouts. Sometimes it actually works and they will find pride in work, education, and self-reliance. Other times I think they lack the energy or motivation or self confidence (or wiring?) to make the jump. Instead they gravitate towards the streets or the welfare system or find an SSI solution to provide a bare sustenance. It’s so difficult isn’t it? I’m grappling now with the dilemma of the two children of my step-daughter who despite my protests was crippled by enabling well into her thirties. She finally found the means to obtain welfare and SSI benefits, and has supplemented her income by living off the generosity of others as well as her biological parents who continued to “help” until both of them died a decade apart. I had to watch as she burned through both of their separate inheritances which provided some quick cash, and now at 52, she’s the mother of second generation SSI recipients whose only experience is within the system and who are now entering young adulthood. Everyone left in the family (I’m the only one left in my generation) is now finally refusing to bail any of them out at this point. Time to break the chain of dependency created by the parents of my generation onto their grandchildren who were born and raised on it? Seems cruel, immoral and unfair somehow, but it seems to be the only recourse. Left out of this are the years of tears, frustration, and attempts to intervene which I’m sure you can relate to. I have no answers, just experience that tells me that the sooner we demand accountability, the better able our children will be to fend for themselves, and the longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes. And for some with difficult wiring or disabilities, the welfare and SSI systems seems to be the only recourse after all. Don’t our lives get more complex when our sense of morality and desire for fairness hits the wall of reality? I finally realized that in writing this response that my strong reaction of guilt through the dilemma of my friends was the result of shock. The realization that my decades long image of their stability was suddenly replaced by their destitution and helplessness – in the elderly – my generation. » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 7:05 pm Cher! Thanks for the reminder! Maslow’s Hierarchy definitely is in play here. I did some ground work in trying to point them as you suggested, but they’re definitely self-directed in continuing as they are now. The latest planned income source is selling “stuff” on e-bay, which involved having someone else set up the account under another name since my friends were blackballed by e-bay for some previous “activity”. I stopped inquiring further. Didn’t want to know. I gave them a set of sterling flatware to serve as a nest egg for this new venture; and given the price of silver lately, they should have realized maybe enough to pay up some back rent. I guess we can’t fix stupid can we? But our government, at the very least, should ENFORCE contributions into our social security system. My friends actually made a pretty good living when they were in business. I’m actually really quite angry with them for making me feel like a calloused heel – until I finally realize it’s I who’s making me feel that way. 🙂 » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 5:34 pm Bingo!! Succinct and spot on! » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 5:04 pm Killgore: Thanks! I’ve also had friends and family trying to help me get past this, but the nagging guilt just keeps my head spinning. I’ll now add further ammunition on my side of this which I felt was taking unfair advantage in the first post. My friend’s wife who is much younger and still able to work chooses not to. And when they called to request a chauffeur, they make sure I brought them a pack of cigarettes along with the other goodies. That they were virulently life-long anti-government Republicans never did sit very well with me, yet I honestly don’t think their political ideology entered into my decision to pull the plug. Thanks again! » Posted By cyrano1 On February 28, 2011 @ 4:42 pmComments Posted By cyrano1
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