Friday, November 25, 2011

Happy Holidays!

This was last years Thanksgiving post: How prescient am I!? I didn't know we had the 99 percent then as a movement but we all should have. So, eat your turkey and have your little dinner time squabbles because it seems nothing much changes as long as the same old turkeys stay in power at the top.

There is this story

And this story

Then there was this story

It's not exactly a poem, but it is some of what's happening in our country during this holiday season.  I have ignored the stories of frantic holiday shoppers trampling other frantic holiday shoppers on the aptly named Black Friday.  Extraordinarily sickening this year.  Somehow more so this year than any I remember.  The dark freakshow of materialism in a down economy.  I might be one of those crazed shoppers if I had a family counting on me to provide it with all the American Christmas creature comforts (like a bigger flat screen TV than last years version).  And I might be the provider who finds death preferable to the alternative since the future doesn't look rosy unless you're one of the top 2%.  If Thanksgiving was a disappointment to children of the 99ers, imagine what Christmas will be...  Don't know what the 99ers are?  You must be a member of the TeaParty or one of the 2% at the top.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Newt Gingrich Is A Big Fat DooDoo Head


I have reposted this because... Well...  Newt is a still a big fat doodoo head. At the time I first posted this, I was letting google ads, advertise on my blog, and every time I said something nasty about Newt, which was often, low and behold, there was Newt, hawking some shit of his on my site. It was almost enough to keep me using google ads, but not quite.

Thanks to The Lazy Iguana for this wonderful art work. Now I have photoshop envy.

So, just tell me Newt is not a Media Whore! Last time I posted a piece about Newt being a media whore, I got a google ad suggesting that you could get actual messages from Newt if you just push this button. Now I'm creeping myself out. But I needed the money. So I guess that makes me a whore too. And don't forget to check the sidebar. I do not agree with the statement that the NYTimes is a liberal newspaper. (I'm guessing google ads has not figured out that I'm a liberal). Newt is spreading the love, and probably herpes as well. So when you come a callin, bring a condom.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Media Whore Newt Gingrich


I'm reprising my old Newt posts. I've loathed Newt for a long time. Honest whores deserve some respect but politicians who are nothing BUT whores do not. Newt is the worst of the worst and I've written a few posts about this particular whore.  Now that the old whore is running for President again, it's time to replay the old posts, so here we go:  6/7/09

"Whores and politicians become respectable if they stick around long enough, as someone once observed, and the same is plainly true of media personalities – especially in a culture that never pauses long enough to remember anything. Where amnesia is the rule, there can be no accountability for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Patrick Buchanan and the rest of the broadcast mob denouncing the "racism" of Sonia Sotomayor. If anyone remembers who they are and what they have said over the years, their complaints about the Latina Supreme Court nominee will only elicit raucous laughter." Joe Coneson, from an Opionion piece in Salon June 5th

Then on Face the Nation this morning we have half the program devoted to the outrageous bullshit of Newt Gingrich. My question is WHY? There are so many skeletons in Gingrich's closet I can't list them all, but another resoursful blogger has and you can see them here.

When Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist on Twitter, he ignited a debate over her objectivity. Both sides of the argument had a chance to respond on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Senior White House advisor David Axelrod defended his administration’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor against attacks that she is a racist.

"I think what she believes, harry, is that everyone is the product of their experiences. She's the product of hers," he told guest moderator Harry Smith.

"Have there been patterns of discrimination? Of course there have been. We all know that," he admitted, referencing the numerous occasions where Sotomayor said a “wise Latina woman” would make "better" decisions than a white male.

Axelrod called Gingrich’s comment “unfortunate” and said, "I think that it is so unfair and so unreflective of who she is."

Later in the program, Mr. Gingrich had a chance to respond.

He explained that he rescinded his initial comment because he called Sotomayor a racist, when really he does not know the nominee and meant that her comments were racist.

"One of the challenges for the administration is having first chided me for language, then having said she didn't mean it, and then having said she ought to restate it. Now they face the fact that she has said this, written about it four or five time," he argued.

He argued that, "if you say people of this ethnic background are superior to people of this ethnic background, take out her language and put in the word white. Put in white male where she had Latina, that person would be disqualified from the court. Also would be disqualified as a juror."

Gingrich admitted that it is "very doubtful" she will be disqualified as a high court pick because of her earlier remarks.

"She said the court should be radical. The court should rewrite law. The court is where policy is made. That's a direct quote. I'm not very comfortable having somebody at that level with that level of power," Gingrich said.


This is the first time I know of that anyone's asserted that Sotomayor said she was "superior" to a white man. And Harry Smith just let it stand, no challenge to that outrageous lie, no question about how Newt jumped from calling her a racist, retracting the term "racist", but then saying she has stated that she is superior to white men. Jesus, why is this idiot allowed to go on a Sunday morning news show and lie without even a challenge? Harry Smith, you are a disgrace for letting that one stand. Since Newt is not an elected official of any kind, just an over-the-hill has-been, why are he and Buchanan, Rush and Glen Beck getting so much play in the mainstream media?

Friday, November 18, 2011

Old Sports Injuries

I was always athletic. Sure, some of it was forced. I was taken on ski trips before I could walk. We rode horses, went swimming. I remember none of this but there are photos to prove that baby Peggy was the game little sport.   And some of that love of sports stayed with me.

I loved softball until breasts got in the way. I loved skiing but not the same way my hyper-competitive friends in Jr High and High School did--like it was a game of chicken and if you weren't willing to actually risk killing yourself every run you weren't really skiing.  I always liked the wide open bowls more than the narrow rutted chutes. I liked the beauty of the carved turns, the gentle spray of snow on a sudden perfect stop. I liked the clothes. When I was skiing, skis were long, children.  It was harder then.

Last time I went skiing was early in the incarnation of Deer Valley.  My last ski injury was there. It was a torn anterior cruciate. I was skiing with Tom.  I couldn't keep up with him, so he was riding up on the lift as I was going down. He saw it happen beneath him. I think that's how it happened.  I was trying to keep up with him.  Bastard!  It's so embarrassing to be taken off a mountain in a basket by the Ski Patrol. But thank god for them. I was in agony. It's a very painful injury.  You can hear it happen.

Good thing skiing wasn't my favorite sport.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Child Rape: It's Personal!

Finally the whole nation is talking about it. It doesn't surprise me that this time it's big time college football that gives us another opportunity to get it right. Oddly, I don't have much hope we will. We've been here before. Only when it's boys, and only when it's all male institutions and all male institutions we revere out of all proportion to the horror to the crime they have committed, serially, creating many, many victims, over decades, leaving lifetimes of wreckage that will ripple out into the lives of others when we stop and look in horror and wait. Will we just look and move on this time again? I was a raped child. The wreckage lives on in me. It's personal!

The perpetrators of these crimes have lived like heros, gods among men, rewarded with riches and fame, and honors.  Are we shaken enough to stop for a moment and gasp? What have we done! Will we hold them accountable?  Will we charge them all (and there are many) with the crime of child rape? Will we fully investigate?  Will we find all the victims? Will we pay them reparations for their injured lives, the therapy they'll need, the emotional support they will continue to need? Are we willing to keep our eyes focused on the worst within what we thought was our best?  If we're asking men who worship sports heroes and famous coaches to do that job for us, I fear we'll be let down.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

He Tweets!

One of the reasons I no longer blog is that I tweet. Twitter takes care of my need to vent. Twitter is the place for news and politics. Every political writer I admire is on twitter and I can follow their tweets whether they follow me or not.  But what amazes me is that often they follow me back. Another thing I've noticed about twitter is that news breaks hours faster on twitter than it does on the broadcast news.  If you hear it on TV, it's old news.

Most of my blogger friends are there too, and/or on facebook. You guys were the ones who nagged me onto facebook. Now I've been called a friend whore. I can't help it. When Ezra Klein friended me I was hooked.

Anyway, Tom called.  Now he tweets.  He's catching on fast.

I'm still agonizing over the Hook for the book. It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to write. Should be only a sentence or so. A very good short paragraph. Impossible. I'll keep trying.

See you on twitter.

Love,
Peg