This started as a response to fairleft, but I think that it's important enough to warrant a diary.
For a long time, now, I have concluded that anti-Zionism is profoundly counterproductive toward the goal of Palestinian peace and prosperity. The reason for that is that it drives most Jewish people away from the movement for Palestinian justice and no one, outside of Israelis and Palestinians themselves are more invested in the issue than Jews outside of Israel. This is particularly true for American Jews because American Jews, obviously, have some influence with the American government, particularly when it comes to US I-P policy.
So, since election day I've been searching for a single word to encompass the feelings I'll have on the day in which Barack Obama will be inaugurated.
It's a word that has to connote joy and wonder and the adrenaline charged exhilaration of escape (from the politics of the last eight years) and anticipation and triumph and, well, BOTH "the kit" AND "the caboodle".
For the record, I stand by my loathing and denunciation of Israel's current actions in Gaza.
There are some pretty major disagreements about the history and policy on this issue here at MLW -- but there is also some MASSIVE anti-Semitism coming up because of this current conflagration and I can't tell which issue is making me more sick.
A few people have gone completely haywire, in my estimation, in another thread -- people, by the way, who long ago ceased to call themselves members of MLW -- who actually went elsewhere and have sometimes made a hobby of trashing MLW as loudly as they can -- and seem to have returned with the sole intent of engaging in a flame war about the current crisis in Gaza and about I/P.
The comments made by these returned "MLW exiles," for lack of a better term, indicate the kind of sheer loathing one reserves for -- well, child molesters, frankly. And they do not reserve it for "The State of Israel" -- they do not seem to distinguish in the slightest between Israel, its politicians, its citizens, or Jews in general. THAT is anti-Semitism. It does NOT take a Jew to recognise that, and it does NOT take a ZIONIST to recognise that.
Due to conditions of extreme hostility, I have canceled the Question of the Day. Please do not consider this a Question of the Day, because it is most certainly not a Question of the Day.
This is something else entirely.
What, exactly, I am not certain, but it is not, as some of you will suppose, a Question of the Day.
Perhaps BOTH of my regular readers will possibly recall that I have predicted on countless occasions that as president, Mr. O. probably wouldn't actually cede back to the Congress many--if ANY--of the 'emergency powers' arrogated unto the Presidency by the Busheviks.
"As a US senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama routinely criticized the accretion of presidential power during the Bush years. But in the run-up to assuming the presidency himself, the President-elect has gone silent on whether he would roll back powers claimed during the Bush years - or support congressional efforts to do so."
As Jerome a Paris has noted, among others, Paulson and others of his ilk have started blaming the Chinese and Germans for our economic woes:
The US Treasury Secretary said that in the years leading up to the crisis, super-abundant savings from fast-growing emerging nations such as China and oil exporters - at a time of low inflation and booming trade and capital flows - put downward pressure on yields and risk spreads everywhere.
This, he said, laid the seeds of a global credit bubble that extended far beyond the US sub-prime mortgage market and has now burst with devastating consequences worldwide.
What a sorry load of ... well, let me go for a better analogy than that ... and then dig more deeply into the whys and wherefores of its load of ...
(Recycled for Sunday, because Saturday's is too fucking full of I/P bullshit. - promoted by Maryscott O'Connor)
"Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side
where all the hotshots are, then it's a game,
all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on
the other side, where there aren't any hotshots,
then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."
(Late in the day for a new O/T may as well recycle...rant on about Gaza under the watchful gaze of peace-nik Stills. Abandon all hope ye who enter... - promoted by durrati)
The original "George W." (Courtesy of Campus Explorer)
Riffing off my comment of yesterday in the mightee Jed L's diary, one asks if Harry Reid, our favorite "Senatorial Grandpa", knows just what he's doing these days.
E.g., even if Reid is not a racist or criminal for arranging for Blag's buddy, black man Burris, to be PHYSICALLY EXCLUDED from the Senate,---does it make for good presentation/theater?
I think Karl "boooo" Rove once said that political commercials made the most sense if you left the sound off, e.g., seeing Ronald Reagan's teeth shining and waving in the breeze like the American flag was more moving to voters than hearing Walter Mondale's brilliant recitation of American textile export stats or whatever. And one must say, doing a possible George Wallace--even just in appearance, not in spirit--on Burris may not be the best for the future of the Democrats, or even the future of Harry Reid.
The results from some tests came back today. I have pancreatic cancer. It is untreatable. I will die in 2009. I am not telling you this for pity, or for whining. I have known this was coming for awhile, and have made my peace with it. I am telling you this to urge you on in your fight for universal health care. And to urge you to continue to fight to support the Obama administration, loudly, whenever you feel you can.
I've been gratified by the good response in the blogosphere to the Petition for a Special Prosecutor.
I believe most people, if they take even the smallest bit of time to find out the extent to which human rights abuses and crimes against humanity have occurred via torture, promulgated by this misAdministration and admitted to freely by Dick Cheney, know the right thing to do is to give them a fair trial, which means an investigation and, if proven guilty, conviction and the full penalties of the law for those who were involved, no matter at how high a level of power.
Even the folks who have made comments saying they are against holding those in power accountable do not deny crimes took place.
Yet there are obstacles, and I'm not speaking of the usual obstacles of the media and those in power. There are obstacles within the minds of the citizens of the United States of America.
I thought I would take a moment to discuss a hugely important aspect of the "war on drugs" that doesn't get any airplay in the "US Mainstream Media" - you know: the "proper media" where if something is mentioned, it's real (like WMD's being in Iraq, for example) and if it's NOT mentioned, it's not real, sort of like with the medical potential of the cannabis plant. Never hear about that reality, do you?
Today we'll talk, briefly, about another downplayed aspect of the "war on drugs": The War on Drugs is one of the Primal Forces of Corruption.
On the flip is a discussion of the dynamics of how the war on drugs corrupts law enforcement officers and nurtures the worst people humanity has to offer.
As the disaster that has been the Bushevik regime staggers into its final, feculent, fraudulent days, it is worth wondering if there might have been ANY tip-offs at the beginning which might have alerted us to the catastrophic clusterfuck that awaited us?
There were:
Ten signs that the disasters and catastrophes of the last 8 years should have surprised NO ONE (I wrote this in December, 2000).
What if:
1. The self-declared "winner" of a closely contested, vital, national election LOST the national total popular vote, but "was declared the winner" based on some old colonial/imperial/racist holdover from the nation's pre-democracic and un-integrated past...
Come 2009, I will commence on a new path. I will exercise regularly, smoke not at all. A healthy diet will become my regime. On Monday, January 5, my life mission will be realized in my work. The opportunity to inaugurate again, to give birth to me at my best will inspire a rejuvenation. Today, I resolve to . . . not make a single New Years resolution. In truth, I never have committed to change. Yet, the person you see before you is not the same being that might have appeared on any other day, of any other year. I have evolved, and so do we all.
(Kathleen and Jooools are now officially sharing Thursdays, my new victims, Bwhahahahahaha - promoted by devilishadvocate)
OK here is what happened........
I get this email from one of my son's friend's mom; she sent it to 4 moms:
We will be gone Monday, Tuesday and back on Wednesday morning. Will you please help me make sure that there are no parties at our house? Sam looks at me all innocent with big brown eyes and says, "Gosh, mom, I sure won't have any parties." Hmmm. I need your help! Please help me make sure there are no parties!
This was my response to her.......
ALERT PARTY PATROL!!!!!!
Gosh darn Suzy WE were the ones planning to have a party at your place while Sam (her kid) was at work!! It feels really good that you think we have control over these kids........ LOL........ OK no seriously we will do everything in our power (LOL) to make sure there are aren't 200 muddy feet, puking drunk, lighting fireworks, screwing in your bed, racing up and down the street with music so loud the world can hear it kids at your house. LOL
You guys have a nice relaxed, carefree trip and don't worry we got your back.
Kathleen
Bob Dylan Won a Pulitzer? Abu Dhabi bought the Chrysler Building? Bozo, the Clown, died, too? Who knew?
The United States marked the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Over four million Iraqis had fled the country or been internally displaced, and the total cost of the war, currently about $650 billion, was expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five years.
Oil rose above $147 a barrel, and Abu Dhabi bought New York City's Chrysler Building for $800 million. Somali pirates stole a Saudi supertanker.
President George W. Bush announced that North Korea was no longer a state sponsor of terrorism. The CIA expanded its covert operations in Iran.
Bozo the Clown died, as did Jesse Helms, William F. Buckley Jr., Paul Newman, Heath Ledger, Indonesian dictator Suharto, comedian George Carlin, didgeridoo master Alan Dargin, and, at age 110, Louis de Cazenave of the Fifth Senegalese Rifles, one of the last two living French veterans of World War I. "War," he once explained, "is something absurd, useless, that nothing can justify."
The below has very little "political" in it, other then since the election, with no common enemy and too much time on our hands, "we've" spent a lot of time yelling at each other, which brought to mind...
(image above: Bryce National Park, Utah. Photo by Ron Niebrugge)
On Friday, December 19th, the BLM kicked off a hotly disputed, possibly illegal, oil- and gas-lease auction of public lands in Southern Utah near Arches, the White River, the Desolation/Green River region, Canyonlands, Nine Mile Canyon, the Book Cliffs, and Deep Creek Mountains. It had been organized, and pushed through as a parting gift to the Busheviks' loyal owners and managers in the energy industry.
One man figured out a way to really screw it up. He's the recipient of...
(Cool picture is from NASA.gov--your tax dollars at work)
Each first of January that we arrive at is an imaginary milestone--
at once a resting place for thought and meditation, and a starting place for fresh exertion in the performance of our journey.
The man who does not at least propose to himself to be better this year than he was last must be either very good or very bad indeed.
One of the easiest predictions to make in 2009 is that President Obama - and the Democratic majorities in Congress - will never be able to do anything right. The Villagers will never give them a pass the way that they did for the GOP and one is tempted to ask, "Have you ever stood in front of these doors?"
Well, for now: let's celebrate the year of 2008 politically (if not personally) - and regardless of how 2008 was personally, we all can hope for a bright 2009. Stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
Blagojevich just threw a massive monkeywrench into the system with his decision to appoint former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.
With the help of a few people who ought to know better, this may now begin a debate about race in the Senate and set off a whole set of conflicts that ought never have happened.
Somehow, a lot of Dims apparently have been seduced (or narcotized by Obamanic Kool-Aid) into believing "post-partisanship' is possible to the GOPukes. Even announcements like today's from GOPuke "leadership" that the Party plans to obstruct the Obama agenda "unless GOP(uke-friendly) proposals" are part of the mix (Puke spokesperson on NPR, ME, 2nd hour) does not seem to have the capacity to dis-abuse the 'true-believers' of the folly of 'trusting' the Pukes to act in any way other than in their narrow, partisan self-interest. The country can go to hell, if in doing so it allows the Pukes to regain one House or the other in '10, and drive the Dims and Obama into oblivion in '12.***
D-day, on her/his own blog today raised--and answered--the "obstruction" question:
Well, for those of you who have been following this little drama, this certainly didn't take long. My bride and I are moving.
Now, I love my wife. Really, I do!! We've been married for 25 years in absolute bliss. But this was actually painful to me. Our previous two moves were dictated by necessity and/or opportunity and we were limited in our choices of abodes. This time, I started taking down telephone numbers, scheduling appointments, dragging her to visits and open houses, and I vowed to let (make) her decided, just so I couldn't be blamed for the choice of domicile.
We visited a grand total of 6 places. She loved them all. She always liked the last one better than the one before, but she was always upset with me that we didn't apply and move in immediately to the one we just visited.
So, I surrendered. The last place we visited had a very nice manager who was very enthusiastic about our possible residence (called 3 times the next day to see if we'd decided), got approved in 2 hours, and we're delivering the deposit/rent and signing a lease today.
As 
