Chamblee54

One thing you can say about the war on drugs except alcohol…if you want something to write about, this subject is always there. Of course, if you want to say something good about it, you might have to be creative. Or, borrow a comment from another blog. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
If you support prohibition then you’re either a black market profiteer, a terrorist, a corrupt politician, a sadomoralist, a wing-nut socialist, fake-conservative or a prohibitionist excrementalist. If you support prohibition then you’ve helped trigger the worst crime wave in history, raising gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.If you support prohibition you’ve a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike. If you support prohibition you’ve helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons. If you support prohibition you’ve helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets. If you support prohibition you’ve helped to escalate Murder, Theft, Muggings and Burglaries. If you support prohibition you’ve helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property. If you support prohibition you’ve helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent. If you support prohibition you’ve helped create the prison-for-profit synergy with drug lords. If you support prohibition you’ve helped escalate the number of people on welfare who can’t find employment due to their felony status. If you support prohibition you’re responsible for the horrific racial disparities which have breed generations of incarcerated and disenfranchised Afro Americans.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped evolve local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, controlling vast swaths of territory with significant social and military resources at their disposal.If you support prohibition you’re promoting a policy which kills our children, endangers our troops, counteracts our foreign policy and reduces much of the developing world to anarchy. If you support prohibition then you are guilty of turning the federal, state and local governments into a gargantuan organized crime syndicate, interested only in protecting it’s own corrupt interests. — The very acts for which we initially created governments to protect us from, have become institutionalized. Thanks to prohibition, government now provides ’services’ at the barrel of a gun. Neurotics build castles in the sky, psychotics live in them; the concept of a “Drug-Free Society” is a neurotic fantasy and Prohibition’s ills are a product of this psychotic delusion. Prohibition is nothing less than a grotesque dystopian nightmare; if you support it you must be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, corrupt or criminally insane. If you support prohibition then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, foreclosed homes, and the complete loss of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights.
There are many levels to the war on drugs except alcohol. The next story deals with the issue of using marijuana for cancer patients. In our efforts to restrict the use of cannabis, we are preventing terminally ill patients from getting relief from the horrid side effects of chemotherapy. ( The issue of why a terminal patient is receiving chemotherapy is another post for another day.) In the story linked above, a lady tells her doctor that she uses marijuana to combat the side effects of chemotherapy. The doctor threatens to turn her in to her insurance provider. We live in a sick society.

Bill Zeller decided that living was not a good idea. He left behind a beautifully written note. He tried to hang himself, but only succeeded in cutting off the oxygen to the brain . He was taken to a hospital, but the damage was done. Life support was terminated 3 days later.
Mr. Zeller tells a story of being raped as a young boy. ( We have no choice but to take his word.) This led to a “darkness”, which left him unable to enjoy life. His achievements did not allow him to escape the darkness. Finally, he felt that action was needed.
The knee jerk reaction in a case like this is that the person “should talk to someone”. Unfortunately, it is not that clear cut. Mr. Zeller describes confiding in people, and being burned. Another problem is what the well meaning person might say. Many people would say to look to Jesus for the answer, not knowing that fundamentalism was  part of Mr. Zeller’s burden.
A third factor keeping people from talking is the laws requiring professionals to report cases of sexual abuse. These laws are a case of unintended consequences. This comment tells the story.
There is a dirty secret associated with mandated reporting for mental health professionals. Patients understand the rules, and we worry that many never reveal what is troubling them most deeply because they know that the moment they do, we become police officers rather than healers–we are compelled by law to throw them into even greater emotional turmoil at the moment they most need a safe space to talk. Some individuals would no doubt choose to expose their abusers after a period of therapy, but the state has decided that patients have no right to privacy when they’ve been victimized in this most awful way.
I understand that the rationales for the reporting mandate are the protection of victims from further abuse and the protection of others who might become victims. But when the reporting mandate prevents victims from reaching out in the first place, they are further victimized.
The law doesn’t require us to report patients who reveal to us that they have committed a murder. In fact, the law requires us to maintain their confidentiality. We can only violate confidentiality if we believe that such a person poses an immediate danger to others or if we know that that a specific person is in imminent danger. But victims like Bill Zeller don’t even have the rights of a murderer when they enter the consulting room.
While he cannot claim to understand what drove Bill Zeller, PG has had trauma in his life. Much of this hurt has been caused by Jesus worshipers, and by extension Jesus. When PG tries to talk about this pain, he is interrupted, made fun of, told he does not understand, and preached to. When you multiply this pain, this feeling of helplessness and solitude, by the more explosive affair of childhood sexual abuse, and one can begin to see why Mr. Zeller felt he had no other choice. ( Mr. Zeller was 27. PG is 56. Whatever pain and disappointment he has felt, PG  appreciates the privilege of living those extra 29 years. Perhaps, if Mr. Zeller had hung in for a few more years, the darkness would have been bearable. You only get one life.)
The pictures in today’s post are from The Library of Congress . They were taken in 1864, during the War Between The States. These are details of group photos.
An army (even yankees) consists of individuals . When you go closer and closer in the pictures, you see that this is a collection of men. Every one has a mother and father. Most have sisters, brothers, wives, and children. The death of every man is a tragedy.
One of these group photos was army surgeons, who had a hideous job in that war. The pain those men heard can only be imagined. How did they deal with the darkness in the years after the killing?

JoemyG-d has been running videos of number one hits lately. Today, the numero uno is from 1966. It is by the Monkees, called “I’m a Believer”.
PG always liked the Monkees. They were the twelve year old’s band when he was twelve years old. There was an article in the Saturday Evening Post about the “Pre Fab Four”, and a classmate of PG said that he was disillusioned. Certainly no one was confused about the made for tv nature of the band. The rumors…which turned out to be true…said that the Monkees did not play the instruments on their debut album. Still, a seventh grader is easily amused, and the show was fun to watch.
“I’m a Believer” was written by Neil Diamond, aka the Jewish Elvis. Mr. Diamond played guitar on the Monkees version of IAB. ( Michael Nesmith does a convincing imitation in the video. It is not known if he was wearing the green hat.)
IAB is part of the rock tradition of misunderstood lyrics. PG thought that Mickey said he “needed sunshine on my brain”. PG did not learn the truth for many years. One afternoon, he heard a band on the radio do IAB, and the lyrics were understood. What the song really said was, “when I needed sunshine I got rain. “
The message above is a repost . The video in the original post is no longer on youtube, but there was no shortage of replacements. The video used today is one PG remembers from the TV show. The pictures are from The Library of Congress
The other video, with unfortunate sound, is from the second year of “The Monkees”. PG did not like Mickey Dolenz with frizzy hair, and quit watching the show. 13 is a year older than 12. The fall of 1967 found PG as an eighth grader, or “subbie”, at a grungy high school. This was the first year after the black schools had been closed, and a few people were not happy about it.
The other video has the word believer in the title. (The middle of the word believer is LIE.) One afternoon, the disc jockey at WQXI said he was tired of playing that stupid song by the Monkees. Before long, the Monkees were replaced by the Partridge Family.

On February 29,1945, a train left a secret platform beneath the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC. The most important car in the train was the Ferdinand Magellan, the private ride of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The train took “the Boss” to Warm Springs, GA.
On April 12, 1945 (the day before Friday 13), the President was posing for a painting. The artist, Elizabeth Shoumatoff, was a friend of Lucy Mercer Rutherford, who was also in “The Little White House” that afternoon. Mrs. Rutherford was the long time mistress of the President. At roughly 1:00 pm, The President rubbed his brow, and said ” I have a terrific pain in the back of my head”. His head slumped onto his chest, and he died.
What happened in the next few days is the subject of FDR’s Funeral Train. PG found this book at the Chamblee library, and found it enjoyable, and thought provoking. For a story with a well known outcome, there were a lot of subplots, and food for speculation. Pictures for this book report are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
When it became obvious what was happening, the first chore was to get Lucy Rutherford off the premises. She left quickly, along with Ms. Shoumatoff, and an assistant. Somehow, Eleanor Roosevelt learned the Mrs. Rutherford had been with her husband, and was not pleased.
Fred Patterson was called at this Atlanta funeral home, and told to come to Warm Springs to prepare the body for burial. Unfortunately, the cerebral hemorrage had clouded the President’s face beyond repair. This, and the President’s expressed dislike of open coffin funerals, led to a closed coffin at the ceremonies. The closed coffin led to speculation that the President had been dead for some time, and that an impostor had been playing the role of President.
Mr. Patterson brought a copper lined coffin with him, weighing over 600 pounds. The setup of the Ferdinand Magellan made it impossible to bring the coffin onto that car. Another car, the Conneaut, was found to carry the remains to the funeral. A passenger window was removed, and the coffin was passed in through the window. A wooden bier was built for the coffin, and covered with a Marine Corps blanket. The bier was built high enough to enable the coffin to be visable through the window.
When the coffin was about to be placed on the train, it was learned that no one had brought a flag. A flag was borrowed from a flagpole in Warm Springs to put over the coffin.
The Ferdinand Magellan was armor plated, and had bulletproof glass. It weighed 142 tons. An engine powerful enough to carry this car had to be found. When the train was leaving Washington, en route to burial in Hyde Park, NY, three couplings broke, from the strain of this car. Finally, a coupling was made to work, and the train proceeded to Hyde Park.
The part of the journey from Washington to Hyde Park had two trains, with every important official in Washington on board. Among them was the new President, Harry Truman. Truman had been a compromise choice as Vice President, and was not told very much. He was quickly educated, and produced a speech to give to Congress the following Monday.
On this Friday the thirteenth, no one foresaw an early end to the War. While Germany was in bad shape, no one knew how much longer they would hold out. As for Japan, it was assumed that a gruesome land invasion would be needed to end the conflict. Only a select few knew about the atomic bomb, which had still not been tested. Some felt it would not work.
One of the lesser known passengers on the Washington-Hyde Park train was an economics advisor to the President named Laughlin Currie. In addition to his duties for the American government. Mr. Currie was widely believed to be on the payroll of the Soviet Union. He gave regular reports to the KGB. Which leads to one of the questions …did the Soviet Union know about the atom bomb?
The answer may not be knowable. What is known is this. On August 6, the US dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. On August 8, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, invading Manchuria. On August 9, the US dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki. This may be a coincidence.
Another point to ponder involves Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, a cardiologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Dr. Bruenn had been treating the President, and is given credit for adding a year to the President’s life. The question today is, what if the President had died in 1944? Henry Wallace would have become President, and probably would have been elected to a term of office in the fall elections. (Or maybe not. Mr. Wallace had offended enough people to cause him to be kicked off the ticket.) How this would have played out, especially with regard to the war effort and the Yalta conference, is anybody’s guess. That extra year of life for Mr. Roosevelt may have been a very good thing for the United States.

There is a nifty new facility on the web called UnsuckIt. It has a collection of “buzzwords”, which are not about the effects of marijuana. BWs are trendy sayings that supercool business types…aka douchebags…like to say.
When you go to the site, you have a choice of using a search engine field, or browsing through an alphabetized list. When you type into the field, you can choose “UNSUCKIT” or “I’M FEELING DOUCHEY”. An example is that eighties favorite, Bottom Line. (The Bottom Line on Miss Winfrey is that it’s too big.) The word is defined, and some text below says “The douchebag who said this probably also said Bottom Line, Get Our Ducks in a Row, or Socialize.”
When you enter Bottom Line, and click “I’M FEELING DOUCHEY”, you get the word Incentivize. This means to encourage or persuade. Maybe Incentivize makes you forget that all you did was threaten to lay people off.
By now, you may have noticed a fondness for the words Douchebag and Douchey. This traditionally refers to a device used for cleaning tender regions of the human anatomy. The use of this product speaks well for the recently washed. PG is puzzled as to why these phrases are used as insults. When you enter Douchebag in the search engine, the results are Organic and Top of Mind.
While Suck has a longer history of perjorative use, it is also a bit of a puzzle. If babies didn’t Suck they wouldn’t get fed. The oral majority Sucks, and is better for it. When you enter Suck into the search engine field, the phrase that pays is Team Player.
The browse window has some fun expressions. It starts with Accelerated Emergence of High Maturity Behaviors, and ends with Wow Factor. In between we see delights like Boil The Ocean, Dog’s Breakfast, Make It Pop, Negative Growth, and Paradigm.
HT this waste of time goes to aphilosophersblog . They had a feature, on the efforts of the Pepsi Generation to stay with it. “We see the emerging opportunity to ‘snackify’ beverages and ‘drinkify’ snacks as the next frontier in food and beverage convenience.” All I wanted was a Pepsi.

This is a blog post about blogging. If this does not appeal to you, then skip to the pictures. They are from a square dance, held at a home in McIntosh County, Oklahoma. This event was in 1939 or 1940. They were originally in color, but look better in grayscale. The Library of Congress is a wonderful use of big government.
PG is a compulsive bookmarker. Whenever anything catches his fancy, he adds the url to his bookmarks. When the bookmark tab has 91 entries, it is time to sort them out. There is a variety of folders on the desktop, but the top rung for bookmarks is “frequent”. It is accessible by cntl+alt+F (gimme an F), and has the sites that PG wants to see on a daily basis. With this cleanout, four sites were added to the frequent folder.
Mayberry is a return to the frequent folder. The previous version of this blog, Large Tony, was a favorite before it graduated a couple of years ago. Mayberry is about the life of a man named Tony, who lives with his Granny in the Tennessee mountains. Tony recently announced he is back to posting something everyday. There is a meme floating by now, called the 30 day blog challenge. Tony has combined a few of the lists to come up with 64 topics. If he follows through on this, it will be highly entertaining. ( PG signed up for a blog every day challenge once called NABLOPOMO. Yes, that sounds a lot like NAMBLA. PG tried a month of NABLOPOMO, and decided to leave it alone. He still gets emails about it.)
The next blog to be promoted is A Philosopher’s Blog . With the miracle of alphabetization, APB is the number one blog in the frequent folder. PG got into a bit of a comment skirmish here recently.
Mr. Magus71 ( is that pronounced MAGOO, like the cartoon character?) If you spell checked your comments, they would make more sense.
Mr. chamblee54, Wow. You were born in 1954 and you’ve resorted to critiquing my spelling on hastily posted comments and also to name calling? Are you blogging from your mother’s basement?
And what exactly is the spell check problem besides me spelling avarice with an “E”–once, do you see in my post above? Perhaps you don’t understand military lingo. Or German names of cities?
Also, I have a bad connection and short time in Konar Province, Afghanistan. I race to make posts while the screen moves up and down on me and sometimes i lose entire posts when i hit “Post Comment”. Actually, I’m a very good speller–but a search and peck typer.
But thanks for being such a jerk. Merry Christmas.
chamblee whatever your age is: Seriously, spelling is a non-issue.
And if you’ve watched this site for a while, m simply doesn’t misspell excepot in instances such as he’s described above. Watch this site more closely for some who would present non-facts as facts. Or define words in unique ways. This thyme you merely gave magus a easy way to avoid responding to my explanation of his misundertanding of my 24/2010 11:57 post.
So their you goes. Apply your spell-grammer-cheker to this reply if you want something to do.
This quote is from the Wikipedia page for Jim Backus “He was the voice of the near-sighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo. In 1952, he had a brief scene in Don’t Bother To Knock with Marilyn Monroe. Years later, when Backus was a frequent talk show guest, he would recount the time Monroe urgently beckoned him into her dressing room. Once there, she exclaimed in her breathy voice, “Do Mr. Magoo!”[citation needed]”
In addition to Mr. Magoo, Mr. Backus was Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island, and the father of James Dean in “Rebel without a cause”.
chamblee, I think you have left the Riemann sheet on which the rest of us are dwelling. To understand Magus, I would not look to Jim Backus but rather to Magi, Zarathushtra, etc.
Good times.
There are two more blogs that were made frequent clickees. Blog for democracy says it is a progressive political voice. The election season is over, and BFD and her BFF, peach PUndit, are not going to have the yukkfests they had in 2010. ( Or maybe they will. Georgia politicians seem to be frustrated rock stars, without the makeup artist.) Recent stories here include pregnant women shackled in Georgia prisons, and a Macon legislator’s comment about Republican laundry.
Palestinean Pundit is another internet outlet that tells tales not heard on Fox news. It is frequently written in Arabic, and often does not provide links for it’s stories. Nonetheless, whether you are concerned about the targets of Israeli guns, or want to “know thy enemy”, the Palestinead Pundit has some stories that should be getting more attention in America.
The lead story as this post is written regards Christians in Gaza. Most people assume the occupied territories are 100% moslem, but this has never been the case. The story starts: This is a very alarming article written by a well-known human rights activist in Gaza. Basically it is a threat against all Christians in Gaza (a very small number) that they will be targeted if a death sentence against a convicted killer of a Christian in Gaza is carried out. It threatens to target all Christians in Gaza and calls for driving them out!
The Christians in the Middle East have been having a tough time lately. In Iraq especially, as the secular Baath regime was replaced with fueding factions of Islam, the Christian community has been under attack. Many Iraqi Christians have fled the country. The ever vocal Christian community of America, with it’s intense support of Israel, have been strangely silent about the security of Christians in the Middle East.
Another story not widely reported in the USA is the return to Iraq of “charismatic” Shia leader Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr. He has been out of Iraq for four years, coincidentally the time when the “surge” was “pacifying” the country. “The son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, Sadr had reportedly been pursuing religious studies in the Iranian holy city of Qom.”
The headline in PP is “The Electric Drill Team is Celebrating: Sayyed Sadr Returns to Iraq after Four Years outside Country”, with a picture of Mr. Sadr, beside a portable electric drill. The use of the drill, applied to the temple, is the trademark execution technique of the shia militias.

The following is a repost . PG has not changed his mind on this “eternal” subject in the last year. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” One of the pictures is Atlanta Stadium, later known as Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. It was built when PG was 11 years old, and was the original Georgia home of the Braves and Falcons. It’s shortcomings became apparent, and it was replaced. On a saturday morning in 1997, the stadium was blown to bits, with PG as a witness. In less than a minute, the field of dreams ( many were nightmares) became a cloud of dust over I75/I85. There was little speculation about the soul of Atlanta Stadium.
At roughly this time six years ago, PG was at a memorial service. A lady who grew up near PG had passed away. The service, in a Methodist Church, was full of talk about life after death. This talk did not give PG comfort, and served to remind him of why he does not go to church. Some, of the family of the deceased, did find comfort in the talk about life after death.
PG was trolling the blogosphere, looking for good words to put between pictures. He was tired of a number of subjects. None of these subjects were going to go away, although others can be expected to tire of reading about them. Then he found a post in Making Chutney about the ultimate subject that will not go away…life after death.
PG decided a while back that life after death is a better descriptive than “eternal life” or, G-d forbid, “Salvation”. Jesus Worshipers are obsessed with life after death. It is mentioned at almost all gatherings of Jesus Worshipers. PG finds the whole matter annoying.
So anyway, the New York Times published an op ed piece, written by Charles Blow.  It seems as though the “Pew Forum”…which may or may not comment on deodorants…published a survey. The bottom line of the study is that 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.
Gee, thats big of them.
Who says that life after death is a proper matter for a religion to discuss? And even if it is, why do Jesus Worshipers talk about life after death ALL THE TIME? Also, does a belief in life after death justify the rudeness and shouting that Jesus Worship is known for?
Jesus Worship is the dominant religion in our culture. Many people see other religions through the priorities of Jesus Worship. It is a surprise to many to learn that not everyone is as concerned about life after death as they are. Or, that many simply do not agree with the Jesus Worship plan for life after death.
PG decided a long time ago that the correct answer to the question ” Where will you spend eternity?” is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. The use of cusswords is optional.

At Senior Citizens they had a quiz the other day. I lost by one point. The question was where do women mostly have curly hair? Apparently, the correct answer was Africa . I’ve heard that Apple have scrapped their plans for the new children’s iPod after realizing that iTouch Kids is not a good product name. My wife told me I was no longer romantic, so I booked a table for the two of us on Valentine’s Night. Problem was she sucks at snooker & eight-ball. You can say lots of bad things about pedophiles but at least they drive slowly past schools. A biker goes to the doctor with hearing problems. “Can you describe the symptoms to me?” asked the doctor. “Yes. Homer is a fat yellow lazy bastard and Marge is a skinny broad with big blue hair.” A buddy of mine has just told me he’s getting it on with his girlfriend and her twin.I said “How can you tell them apart?” He said “Her brother’s got a moustache.” Being a modest man, when I checked into my hotel on a recent trip, I said to the lady at the registration desk, “I hope the porn channel in my room is disabled.” To which she replied, “No, it’s regular porn, you sick bastard.” The Chinese discovered how to weave prayer mats out of plastic explosives … prophets are going through the roof !!

Juan Cole at Informed Comment posts today about a document release from Wikileaks. The document is a cable sent by April Glaspie, the ambassador to Iraq, about a meeting with Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. This was shortly before his invasion of Kuwait.
In 1990, Iraq was recovering from a horrendous war with Iran. That war started Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, possibly with encouragement from the United States. ( At the time of this invasion, Iran was holding Americans hostage in the American embassy. The United States was not pleased with Iran.) Iraq failed to get a quick victory, and the war became a bloody quagmire, with hundreds of thousands of casualties.
In 1990, Iraq was rebuilding, and Kuwait was flourishing. Oil was being over produced, driving down the price. Kuwait was accused of “slant drilling”, i.e. drilling under the border, and stealing oil from Iraq. At one point, a meeting was held between officials of Iraq and Kuwait . “Saddam…sent his foreign minister to Kuwait to meet with the Emir Al Sabah, the former leader of Kuwait, to try to resolve some of the… issues” between Kuwait and Iraq, Piro will recall. “And the Emir told the foreign minister of Iraq that he would not stop doing what he was doing until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. And that really sealed it for him, to invade Kuwait. He wanted to punish…Emir Al Sabah, for saying that.”
On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein summoned to American Ambassador, April Glaspie , to a meeting. The cable is Ms. Glaspie’s account of the meeting. PG cannot see a green light for invasion in this account of the meeting. Many say Ms. Glaspie could have made much more explicit the dire consequences of invading Kuwait.
The transcript of the meeting has been declassified for some time. It is available on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. It is worth noting that this transcript is not sworn testimony, and could contains lies and mistakes. It is also the POV of Ms. Glaspie, and Mr. Hussein may have gotten a different idea of what was said. Perhaps, to Mr. Hussein, it was a green light for an invasion.
The invasion of Kuwait, eight days after the meeting, on August 2, 1990, set in motion events that affect us to this day. A coalition was formed to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. There was talk of going to Baghdad and deposing Mr. Hussein at the time. The military action stopped after driving Iraq out of Kuwait, reportedly at the request of Saudi Arabia. Twelve years later, the United States attacked Iraq, and drove out the Hussein government. We are still there.
Historycommons.org has a timeline with a wealth of information about the progression of Saddam Hussein,  from ally to next Hitler. The comments section for the post by Juan Cole at Informed Comment is the source of several links in this story, and has a lively commentary about this matter. Pictures for this post are from The Library of Congress

Those fun loving unicorn hunters at Lake Superior State University, in sunny Sault Ste. Marie Michigan, have issued their annual list of banished words. In the spirit of the new decayed decade, PG presents the banished words in a poem. Pictures are from The Library of Congress
The viral wow factor turned epic fail
A backstory a-ha moment
Facebook BFF female or male
Mama grizzlies don’t pay the rent
The American People and not a tourist
Google the clothes I’m just sayin’
Man up Live life to the fullest
Refudiate those who don’t win

It is new years day. The desktop is littered with word documents, where a post was started and allowed to languish. One use of this rainy day is to recycle a few of these thoughts.
Mike Vick has been through some changes. He was the most exciting athlete of his graduating class. (perhaps not the best phrase to use in this case). Drafted by the Atlanta Falcons, he took the birds to the NFC championship, and signed a nine digit contract. The next step was prison and disgrace, a convicted dogfighter. ( This is a field day for hypocrites, as carnivores became champions for animal rights.) Falcons owner Rankin Blank did what he had to do, and released Mr. Vick from his contract. The Philadelphia Eagles gave the man a second chance, and Mike Vick is now having a spectacular year. As long as the Eagles don’t play the Falcons in the post season, PG wishes Mike Vick well.
It seems as though the Judge who accepted Mr. Vick’s guilty plea placed him on probation, after he was released from Federal Prison. A condition of his probation was that he could not buy, sell, or own a dog. Now, Mr. Vick is telling a sob story about wanting a dog for his daughter. “Vick said in his interview with the Grio that his daughters miss having a dog, and that the hardest thing for him is “telling them that we can’t have one because of my actions.”
This is a high profile case, and lots of people are talking about it. Should Mike Vick be allowed to own a dog? Should Eddie Long be allowed to Preach? Should the faceless moneymongers at Goldman Sachs be allowed to play with our economy? The list goes on and on.
One of the delights of the internet is liveapartmentfire . LAF is the product of a TV reporter, who likes to tell tales out of school. A recent post discusses his habit of writing stories that rhyme. He did a few before the invention of rhymezone, an internet tool for creating rhymes. (With ads from yellowbook360, beyond yellow) The comments should not surprise anyone.
to be the first commenter//on this seventh day of winter//to make known my feelings//above the squawks and squealings//with a video to embed//like a luncheon spread//rising up out of the fog//into a coffice written blog// chamblee54
Doug’s rhythmic post//sure pleases me the most//nearly as much as buttered toast//on a frozen Monday.///He casts tweets to the wire//blogs at Live Apartment Fire//reports, comments, raises ire,//often brings the fun-nay//.As for me, oblivious of parameters,//Something’s way wrong with my pentameter//And when it comes to rhyme,//I’ll take Kuralt, Osgood, and Newman anytime.//jcburns

BloggingheadsTV put up a year in review diavlog this week. One of the chatters, Conor Friedersdorf, moonlights for Andrew Sullivan , and had this to say: “In what must be one of the gloomiest Bloggingheads yet recorded, Michael Brendan Dougherty and I discussed the big stories of 2010. The clip above is our lament about the three ongoing wars that the United States is waging and the alarming erosions of civil liberties that have characterized the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.We discuss the film The Social Network , the meritocratic elite, and the commodification of friendship here.”
The word commodification ( spell check suggestion:humidification)has crept into the national conversation recently, and has PG asking a rude question. It deals with pronunciation, and how this affects meaning. Is this word pronounced kuh-mod-uh-fahy, where you make a commodity of friendship? Or is this phrase pronounced kuh-mohd-uh-fahy, where you make a commode out of friendship? Is there really a difference between the two concepts?
Getting back to the diavlog, one of the themes was the erosion of civil liberties by our government, and how BHO has not been any different from the Presidents before him. PG contributed a comment.
This was a great dv. I was going to write something for my blog, but realized that this was worth paying attention to. One rule of multi tasking is that you don’t write things while listening to conversations involving thoughts. I switched gears, and got some serious work done on visual photos.
One of my concerns about the election of BHO was that he was a glib politician, telling people what they wanted to hear. Once he was in office, the new boss would turn out to be the old boss. BHO would exploit the erosion of liberties that previous adminstrations had effected.
With regards to liberties and war, this has been the case. The idea that a government would say out loud that it has the right to kill citizens that it labels “terrorist” is appalling.
Somewhere in this dv…and I don’t feel like going through the whole thing to find a dingalink, get over it Bob…one of the actors said that even if BHO doesn’t follow through on this newly proclaimed power to label and eliminate, that the next POTUS could take the precedent and become the tyrant we have feared. ( In the case of the P woman, it would be a tyrantess.)
The Greenwald-wired dustup doesn’t seem to be getting much attention, but should. There are too many fishy things about that story. I have long suspected that Bradley Manning is taking the fall for many others. It would be interesting for this affair to go to trial, and see exactly what the evidence is against Mr. Manning. If the only thing the government has is logs of IM conversations…which can be easily faked…then it would seem the government does not have a case. It might even be that Private Manning is innocent, or be found innocent in a trial.
And what was a private doing with access to all of that data? Mr. Friedersdorf suggests sanctions for over classifying information. When you have too many items classified, then you have too many people with access to this data. chamblee54