THE "SAVE OBAMA'S BLACKERRY CAMPAIGN!" ACHIEVES
ANOTHER CONVERT.

post from Ezra Klein on 21 January 2009 08:01:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

John Podesta takes to The LA Times to defend Obama's Blackberry:An off-line Obama isn't just bad for Barack. It's bad for all of us.The president's ability to reach outside his inner circle gives him access to fresh ideas and constructive critics; it[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_name
=the_save_obamas_blackerry_camp

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Personal Responsibility

post from Ketchup Is A Vegetable on 21 January 2009 08:00:32 AM. © Ketchup Is A Vegetable

I hate to begin this enlightenment by criticizing the new Chief Executive. But that’s what makes enlightenments what they are. President Obama spends a lot of language talking about personal responsibility and public service. It is a good theme, and it is refreshing to hear a President implore the average American to pitch in. But [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.kiav.net/?p=1423

Digg this

WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR COVERT PROGRAMS

post from Ezra Klein on 21 January 2009 07:45:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

Tom Ricks writes that the first major foreign policy decision won't be about the Afghan war or Pakistan's instability. Rather, "the first question facing him will be whether to continue the Bush administration's covert programs, foremost being the[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_name
=what_happens_to_our_covert_pro

Digg this

World Celebrates, Riots on Obama's Inauguration
Day (Fox News)

post from memeorandum on 21 January 2009 07:40:22 AM. © memeorandum

Fox News:
World Celebrates, Riots on Obama's Inauguration Day — While much of the world celebrated the arrival of the new American president on Tuesday, some regions saw angry protests. — In Iran, protesters burnt posters of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and waved flags in support of Gaza, Reuters reported.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.memeorandum.com/090121/p8#a090121p8

Digg this

Bush, Rumsfeld should be pursued for torture: UN
rapporteur

post from uncomfortably numb on 21 January 2009 07:37:00 AM. © uncomfortably numb

"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks to be broadcast on Germany's ZDF television Tuesday evening.read more | digg story

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/uncomfortablyNumb/~3/518908557/bush-rumsfeld-shoul
d-be-pursued-for.html

Digg this

U.S. Stocks Slide in Dow Average's Worst
Inauguration Day Drop (Elizabeth Stanton/Bloomberg)

post from memeorandum on 21 January 2009 07:35:05 AM. © memeorandum

Elizabeth Stanton / Bloomberg:
U.S. Stocks Slide in Dow Average's Worst Inauguration Day Drop — Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks sank, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst Inauguration Day decline, as speculation banks must raise more capital sent financial shares to an almost 14-year low.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.memeorandum.com/090121/p16#a090121p16

Digg this

Visions of Collapse

post from Once Upon a Time... on 21 January 2009 07:35:00 AM. © Once Upon a Time...

Oh my, yes. Lots of visions of collapse, my own personally and our society's more generally.

Because of what now seems to be a constantly growing list of health problems, I am close to completely housebound at this point. On too many days, getting out of bed and managing to sit at the computer for longer than thirty minutes is considerably more than I can manage. I'm very, very poor, which means that besides not being able to afford the unimaginable luxury of health insurance (not that such insurance is worth a damned thing nowadays), I can't afford to get health care at all. From time to time, I receive emails from people sincerely trying to help, usually pointing me to government programs for which I might qualify and the like. For many reasons, I can't and won't go that route.

You'll find a major clue to the explanation in the middle of this essay. (I shy away from stating what should be the obvious point in simple declaratory form on the front page of my blog, and I would greatly appreciate it if you wouldn't state it that way, either. I've made certain choices, but I also don't intend to offer myself up as a martyr, which strikes me as altogether pointless. I'm more than sufficiently at risk as it is.) I refuse to support a system designed to provide torture and widescale murder as its chief products. Short of living on a self-sustaining farm, I have removed myself entirely from this system, which is the only one on offer in the United States at present. For me, asking "Why do you support?" is not a rhetorical question. Would that it were not for others, perhaps a million or two. That might actually make a difference. So unless I can pay for it, I will never receive medical care. And I will never have the kind of money needed for the medical problems I have. One of these days, I'll have a major emergency of some kind, most likely some kind of heart episode. Perhaps I'll call 911 at that point, perhaps not. I doubt it will make a difference with regard to the outcome.

Since I'm virtually housebound, I rely on deliveries to survive, mostly of groceries -- and cat food! thank goodness for Petco -- but also books and CDs, usually when people generously purchase an item or two off my Wishlist. Occasionally, as I did recently, I'll order a book for myself, when I have a little more money than that needed for the basics. So UPS delivers here fairly regularly, sometimes several times a month. With a dependability that is truly stunning, UPS informs me from time to time that they "tried" to deliver a package, but were unable to do so because my address was "incomplete" and an apartment number had not been provided. I live in one of those buildings where each unit has its own individual street number. So my street address is also the apartment number. They're one and the same. I have reason to believe this is not unheard of, and it should certainly not be unfamiliar to a delivery service.

Because of the failure of these "attempted" deliveries, I have explained this unremarkable fact to UPS roughly 20 times in the last three years or so. I expected a delivery yesterday. When it hadn't arrived by about 7 PM, I checked the UPS website. Another "attempted" delivery had failed, for the identical reason. I spent about 15 minutes on the phone with UPS last evening and was assured the package would be delivered today. This morning, I checked the UPS website again. The address was still described as "incomplete" for delivery purposes, so they had sent me a postcard -- to the address WHICH IS ALSO MY APARTMENT NUMBER -- requesting that I provide the complete address, which they've had for years.

So I called UPS again. They had no record at all of my phone call last evening. So I had to explain all of this all over again. I demanded to speak with a supervisor. When I finally did (about 10 minutes into the phone call), I lost it. I just lost it. "How many times do I have to explain this to you?," I practically yelled. "Is there anything else I should do, anything else I can do?" Of course, there isn't. I'm completely helpless. All I can do is explain the same damned stupid fact to them over and over and over and over, unto eternity, or until I die, which at the moment I hope is within the next few months.

For whatever bizarre and disturbing physical reasons, as this latest UPS episode went on, my left foot began swelling to double its normal size. This happens fairly often (although not usually in such a dramatic fashion), and is pretty unnerving (I understate). It's now almost an hour later, and my foot is beginning to return to a more normal appearance. It's also stopped throbbing and hurting as much as it did earlier. But what strikes me about all these dealings with UPS, and the reason I mention this (besides trying to make you all feel incredibly sorry for me so that you'll send me money, which I'm about to ask you to do), is the utterly rote, inhuman response I always get. "But the message says they don't have your full address. ... What? ... Oh, that is your apartment number? But isn't that the street address?" Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

It's like trying to break through a massive brick wall. And this has happened about 20 times over the last few years. I've explained it many times, and it simply doesn't make any difference. I've even been assured that the matter has been explained to the local Los Angeles delivery center, and I've spoken to people at that center myself. They tell me the problem has been fixed, and future deliveries will be fine. It will never be fixed. I recently remarked that most people have never learned to think, and I meant that statement to apply to more complicated and weightier matters. But it is astonishing to me, and more than slightly terrifying, the degree to which this inability to think is true of the great majority of people with regard to everything. I have frequently experienced this with my writing -- a recent example concerns the issue of "intelligence" and the common misunderstandings about its actual role in policy decisions. I've explained that issue (and a number of others) with carefully crafted arguments, marshalling a great deal of evidence, on a number of occasions over a period of years -- and with very rare exceptions, it's as if I've said absolutely nothing.

I understand at least some of the major reasons for resistance of this kind; as I've mentioned, I'll be exploring them in my series on tribalism in politics. At least, I will if a heart attack doesn't kill me first.

At any rate, this latest enthralling episode with UPS has put me off my game today, insofar as the writing I had planned is concerned. This is but a small sampling of the joys that constitute my life. And now that you're all thinking about what a poor miserable wreck of a human being I am, I'll ask for donations. Yeah, I'm sneaky that way.

I offer my sincere thanks to those who have made donations in the last week or so, as I thank all those who support my writing. Without those recent donations, I would have been entirely broke a few weeks ago after paying the January rent and the three or four basic monthly bills. But now, I'm again down to my last couple of hundred dollars. And another first of the month rapidly approaches, so the begging bowl comes out again. The cats are fine. Cyrano is fine, too; he has been incredibly pleased with himself about this post, and he promises more. When I had a little "extra" money some months ago, I ordered several months' worth of cat food from Petco, so the kids are alright, as they say. I suppose I could get used to cat food, if need be.

I eliminated the Amazon donation button in December, since Amazon eliminated its Honor System program. The PayPal button is in the upper right. When you use it, it still indicates that you're donating to The Sacred Moment, which is my other site (primarily where the Alice Miller essays and my series "On Torture" can be found; I had once planned to maintain both sites on an active basis, but subsequently changed my mind about that). But the designation is immaterial; donations using PayPal come to me via either site.

So that's today's tale of woe. Very sorry for the self-indulgence. I hate UPS. But some of you are wonderful. My deep thanks, as always, for your time and consideration.

Read The Full Article:
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/01/visions-of-collapse.html

Digg this

Wednesday Open Thread

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 21 January 2009 07:33:23 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

"Well, I took the guitar and I didn't know how to tune it. So, I tuned it to an open chord. I put my thumb across and found the other two notes needed to play seven million songs."

Richie Havens - Born - January 21, 1941

video details and more

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=24166

Digg this

How Many People Attended the Inauguration

There will be a number of estimates on crowd size. They'll come from a number of sources. But did you ever wonder how they actually calculated the estimates?

The old record for largest inauguration on the mall was said to be LBJ in 1965, with 1.2 million. That number was determined by the National Park Service, which always did the counts for Mall activities. Well, up until 1996. The Park Service said that the Million Man March in 1994 didn't attract anywhere near a million people. Others disagreed. Congress stripped the Park Service's money for counts. But the Park Service will come out with a count for yesterday.

What they do is use aerial photographs, dimensions of the area, and crowd density to generate a number. So, a crowd density of one person per 2.5 square feet would generate a much larger crowd than the usual density of one person per 5.0 square feet. The Park Service has historically used the 5 sf number, and they use their own Mall map grids.

No one, though, will be counting the people who were there, but turned away. Nor who watched on jumbotrons in museums on the mall, as reported by one of our commenters. (See comments under the "turned away" link.)

The DC police will be calculating, but they have said they will not be releasing their numbers. (USA Today, 20 January, page 6A).

I imagine that once the numbers are in for live attendence, parties in bars, restaurants, hotels, offices, and those who watched on TV or via live stream, it will be something amazing. That at noon, eastern time, people all around the world stopped, looked and listened. All at once. Probably it will be the biggest audience for anything in the history of the world.

RAH!

Read The Full Article:
http://www.Demconwatchblog.com/diary/584/how-many-people-attended-the-inauguratio
n

Digg this

Dutch Neo-Nazi Geert Wilders Must Stand Trial

I lived in Holland for 4 years after graduating from college. Although I had a close friend, Willy Wouda, who was a die-hard monarchist, I didn't know, nor even ever met, any real right-wingers. Of course, I was in Amsterdam, then very much a working class town. And in the 70s Dutch people were still a little touchy about right-wingers, the Nazi atrocities still fresh in the collective consciousness. But as much time has elapsed since I was there as had elapsed from the time of the Nazi occupation and when I first arrived. And Holland's right wingers make no bones about their... tendencies.

The head of a neo-Nazi/GOP type political party, the Freedom Party (PVV), which defines "freedom" as something exclusionary... sort of how Bush used the term, got some bad news today. Geert Wilders, a vicious racist and member of parliament, sometimes called the "Tom Tancredo of the Lowlands," was told by the Dutch Court of Appeals that he must stand trial.

If you haven't seen the Muslim-bashing movie he made that's landed him in hot water, Fitna take a look:

video details and more

As rightists are wont to do, Wilders projects his own psychosis onto his perceived enemies, in this case calling Muslims "fascists" and likening the Koran to Mein Kampf, the Bible for right wing loons the world over. So right now Wilders is reduced to pleading the case for freedom of expression and the Dutch courts are drawing a line in the sand about "hate speech." The judges say he went beyond the leeway granted to politicians and that his statements and writings have been an incitement to hatred and discrimination.

Trying to rally Dutch xenophobes, Wilders claims that the ruling jeopardizes everyone who opposes the "Islamization" of the country. "Participation in the public debate," he whines, "has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted... Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?"

Maybe we could send Heath Shuler over to continue his work. American fascists and xenophobes, of course, stand firmly with Wilders.

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/01/dutch-neo-nazi-geert-wilders-must-sta
nd.html