Freaky Friday Open Thread

This is amazing ! (11.00 / 4)

It is a matter of life and death, see the documentary Food INC and vote no to corporate take over of our food every time you buy groceries  

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by: Kathleen @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 08:57:11 AM CST

Masculine societies collapse? (0.00 / 0)

I guess the Republic of China is in its last throes, "if you will."

Pee for your Corporate Overlords

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by: digdugboy @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 09:14:00 AM CST

C'mon ddb (0.00 / 0)

Don't you remember when this kind of nonsense passed for wisdom?

It's in the grand tradition of seeing things "through the prism of..."  Prisms so distort things that we are often lured into thinking that we are seeing things in a brand new way that yields great insights.  In fact, what we see is systematic distortion.

Interesting here is this one:

Act quickly, think slowly.

Not far from the great anthem of anti-intellectualism in the hippie-antiwar movement of the sixties, namely, "Act first, think later."

Thinking, one might say, is bourgeois, and leads to a failure of correct praxis.


"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 10:08:35 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I love the notion that intuition (0.00 / 0)

trumps intellect; that somehow apprehension of truths are pre-cognitive.

When I was in college I would occasionally kid my professors by saying something like, "Well, I intuit this to be the case."

"Ohhh, is that right, Mr. Karmafish?  You intuit this to be the case, do you?"

"Yup.  Are you suggesting that all your 'facts' and fancy arguments and logic somehow trumps my intuition?  I intuit that you are wrong, sir."




Lord of the Karmafishes

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by: Karmafish @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 18:01:56 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Someone's diploma looks mighty fine (7.50 / 2)

Dr. Karmafish!

In loving memory: Sophie, June 1, 1993-January 17, 2005. My huckleberry friend.

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by: Paul in San Francisco @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 22:23:47 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Were you there in the sixties? (0.00 / 0)

At no time did anyone say "act first, think later."  And the hippie movement and anti-war movements were not the same.  Hippies were self-absorbed little pricks. Now they are corporate hacks, maybe even CEOs, and I'll bet a number of them are televangelists.

Thinking is not bourgeois.  I would argue that thinking is the anti-bourgeois.  Saul Bellow, in one of his novels has some character say that it is quintessentially bourgeois to think that the sun comes up to give us light, and that the purpose of a pig is ham.  Although I fucking love pork chops.

In a democracy, citizens get the government they deserve.  Scary, ain't it.  

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by: Phronesis @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 21:41:52 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I don't know about that. (10.00 / 1)

My mother was both a hippie and an anti-war activist. I can still smell the mix of pot, gum erasers, and dayglo paint. We had George McGovern stickers on our bathroom mirrors, for Christ's sake. I was very little, but I was there. My mother did not grow up to be a corporate hack. She was an art teacher. I do take your point about the disappointing shallowness of the movement, that revealed itself over time. I think it says more about human nature than hippies, but I'm notoriously misanthropic. Mostly, I think it's a cautionary tale about drugs, alcohol, and addiction. So many who started out with such promise got sidetracked by addiction because they mistakenly thought that drugs could liberate them. Amazing the way movements and individuals can implode because of substances.  

"What fresh hell is this?" -- Dorothy Parker

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by: Curmudgette @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 22:21:00 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Maybe (0.00 / 0)

in my increasingly clouded memory the hippie movement and its retreat into self-absorbtion (is that a word?) reflects the death of the New Left that arose out of my generation's attempts to apply the tactics of the Civil Rights movement that gained traction beginning after WWII and the Fifties and Sixties.  

For me Timothy Leary is the ultimate cop out to the powers that be.

In a democracy, citizens get the government they deserve.  Scary, ain't it.  

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by: Phronesis @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 16:13:07 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I don't know a whole lot (6.00 / 1)

about Leary, but what I know, I don't like. The substance issue is, again, a seminal one. On the one hand, I think there was some value to the exploration of psychadelics, but it was done so irresponsibly. I'm a firm believer that psychotropes should be done in a conscious, shamanic context, with people who actually know something about and respect the spirit world. Leary and his ilk didn't qualify. From a shamanic perspective, if you go free-wheeling around non-ordinary reality like that, you can actually damage the structure of this reality... which actually might explain a few things.

I agree with you about the degraded nature of the hippie generation, at least towards the end of it. The summer of love turned really ugly. On the other hand, the music was awesome. Now, as the 70s progressed, well, the world just went to hell in a hand-basket... and the fashions! Yeesh.  

"What fresh hell is this?" -- Dorothy Parker

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by: Curmudgette @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 17:15:00 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Does this mean (6.00 / 1)

That you weren't a great fan of disco and polyester leisure suits?

"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 18:36:37 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Leary (0.00 / 0)

Leary's famous mantra was Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out: the  perfect definition of pathetic self-absorption.  I'm not anti Leary because I'm anti drug, but because Leary advocated disengaging from the crappy world of dealing with other people to try to make sense of our common purpose and retreating into oneself.  

 

In a democracy, citizens get the government they deserve.  Scary, ain't it.  

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by: Phronesis @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 19:02:20 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Timothy Leary was a moron. (7.50 / 2)

Not only did he believe that you could gain "enlightenment" from a pill, but predicted that due to the "psychedelic revolution" the cities would clear out and there would deer grazing in Times Square by 2007.

He also split the Movement by rejecting young political people as "young men with geriatric minds."

I did a little reading into this and I'm a surprised that Alan Ginsberg didn't smack him upside the head.




Lord of the Karmafishes

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by: Karmafish @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 19:22:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Karma (0.00 / 0)

Are you saying that Leary had a low IQ, or merely that you don't agree with him on certain things.  More interesting is to contemplate what you would have thought of him and his cohorts, including Andrew Weill, in 1965.

Alan Ginsburg probably didn't smack him up the side o' the head because he most likely agreed with him.  Remember, Ginsburg was the rare beatnik who became a hippie.  Most beatniks, who tended to be serious about things, were not into the drop out bit, more of a drop out and work against it mode.  Some were politicos.

Some hippies thought that to complain about the violence and corruption of politics but continue to play on the same field was useless and hypocritical.  these were the ones who weren't moved by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, or Marcuse.

Funny thing happened to me once.  I had a friend who disappeared when he became disillusioned.  turns out he went to Europe, but only his sister knew where he was.  I would see her (and his parents) every so often, mostly because his parents were really suffering, but also because i missed him.  One day, I told his sister that I got my noptice to report for a draft physical, and it would be nice if he were here to talk to about it.

So, a week or so later, I'm at a leftist political rally. Chip Marshall was the first speaker.  Suddenly, he just stops, and then looks over the crowd (it was outdoors) and stuttered "Allen Ginsburg."  So, like everyone else in the crowd, I turned to look, saw him with a little entourage, but then my eyes caught site of my friend and his sister!

So we meet up, and he asks me what was going on.  So I tell him.  And he says to me, "Mad, you're not a politico are you?"  He gave me a little lecture on being peace.

meanwhile, Ginsberg is asked to say a few words, but declines, saying that it was a bad scene or something.  "Not the place for his poetry."  (He actually had come for a controversial appearance at the U reading his poetry later that night.  It had taken about six months to get clearance.)  That ended the political rally, although the SDS still was recruiting.

After the reading, we retired to a small apartment off campus, where everyone sat at the foot of the master.  He didn't seem to think that political action was of much use for solving the world's problems.  The more politically active among us wrote him off and left.  He and his long time companion got the one bed in the one bedroom, and the rest of us slept all over, and all over each other, in a drug-induced haze.

At the reading, he read a new poem of his, saying that it was from the sixth (I think) hour of a trip on Ell Ess Dee.

WALES VISITATION

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
         Trees moving in rivers of wind
                                             The clouds arise
  as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
         above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
                                                      along a green crag  
         glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine-

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
  but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
         of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
                                 the wisdom of earthly relations,  
         of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
                 orchards of mind language manifest human,
  of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry  
         flowering above sister grass-daisies' pink tiny
                                 bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs-

Remember 160 miles from London's symmetrical thorned tower
         & network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
  the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
  heard in Blake's old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
  clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey-
                    Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind  
                                undulating on mossy hills
  a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
                                         on the mountainside  
  whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
                                    in granitic undertow down-
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
         and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
                    and lifted the lambs to hold still
  and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave

A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
  a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven's ocean  
                                                     tonned with cloud-hang,
                    -Heaven balanced on a grassblade.  
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
         One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
                    Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering  
         to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
                                through shivering flowers on the mountain's head-

No imperfection in the budded mountain,
         Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
  daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
                                          grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,  
                             horses dance in the warm rain,
         tree-lined canals network live farmland,
                             blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn'd hills,
         pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern-

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!  
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
                     each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,  
                                            myriad-formed-
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped  
         doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
  & look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
         breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn-
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,  
         smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
            tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness-
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
         moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,  
  trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,  
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
            hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,

Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart  
                              Calling our Presence together
         The great secret is no secret
                    Senses fit the winds,
                              Visible is visible,
         rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,  
                    gray atoms wet the wind's kabbala  
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
         rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
  breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
                    Heaven breath and my own symmetric
         Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
                    Sounds of Aleph and Aum
                              through forests of gristle,  
         my skull and Lord Hereford's Knob equal,  
                                      All Albion one.

What did I notice? Particulars! The
         vision of the great One is myriad-
  smoke curls upward from ashtray,
            house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
                                starless
               upward in motion with wet wind.

I knew that the admin people in attendance were upset by the LSD mention, but when I heard "smelling the brown vagina-moist ground," I looked up just in time to see them leaving.  The group who invited him were reprimanded and were not allowed to issue any more invitations.  I mean, who knows what filth they might have wanted to bring to the U.?

Times were a bit different then.

"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 03:28:08 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Oh, and btw, (7.50 / 2)

Aldous Huxley, had he lived, would have decked him by the late '60s.

Guru My Ass.




Lord of the Karmafishes

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by: Karmafish @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 19:27:03 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Again, from shamanic perspective, (4.50 / 2)

because that's where I classify responsible use of psychotropes, his attitude was dead wrong. This is why I say it was irresponsible. Because I firmly believe that the spirit world people discover when they do hallucinogens is as real as this world, I don't take it lightly when people "turn on and tune in." Dropping out is exactly the wrong way to process that experience. Shamanic cultures know that there is a temptation to dissociate from this reality, and take many safeguards to prevent that. From a shamanic perspective, to not apply to this world what you learn in that one makes the entire experience meaningless. Indigenous people who use plant teachers, don't have neat, clean chemicals. They use plant materials that make you ill. You vomit, you have diarrhea, you feel physically wretched, just to have that experience. Recreational it's not. For the indigenous shaman, taking ayahuasca or peyote is work. It's done to problem solve; not escape. The escapism and self-indulgence you describe in Leary was totally antithetical to creating the world of peace and grazing deer he desired. Such an ass.

"What fresh hell is this?" -- Dorothy Parker

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by: Curmudgette @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 20:17:52 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I feel you are a bit harsh on Leary (0.00 / 0)

the drugs he was into were thought to be mind expanding, psychedelic drug.  He was exploring and learning.

I am a child of this time and took many of these drugs, many times.

Did you ever read the book, Be Here Now, it was written by Ram Dass?


It is a matter of life and death, see the documentary Food INC and vote no to corporate take over of our food every time you buy groceries  

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by: Kathleen @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 21:50:17 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Kathleen, (9.00 / 1)

I suspect that Curm and I have more sympathy for Dr. Leary than you might glean from our comments.

I can't really speak for Curm, but speaking strictly for myself, I am Gen X and as a young Karmafish was strongly influenced by your generation and the Counterculture.

At a time when most of my peers were embracing business culture, I was a hold-out.  I believed in the possibility of spiritual self-transformation and that psychedelics could give us a little taste of IT... THE BIG IT.

My problem with Leary, is that I came to realize that he was irresponsible.  Even Huxley told him to cool it.

Of course, the ironic thing is that when Kesey and the Pranksters showed up on the lawn of that mansion in upstate NY it was Leary who looked like the stodgy one.

Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) stood in the driveway and told Kesey and Mountain Girl and the rest of 'em that the doctor could not be disturbed because he was deep in meditation.

Kesey thought that Leary had a stick up his butt.

Can you imagine?

Kesey thought Leary was too conservative.

:O)

Lord of the Karmafishes

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by: Karmafish @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 22:21:01 PM CST

[ Parent ]

As I said above (9.00 / 2)

I agree that they're mind expanding, but without proper respect they are also dangerous. Not just to yourself, but to the entirety of this reality. It's because I take their mind expanding nature so seriously, that I also take their abuse so seriously. Not all psychonauts are as publicly irresponsible as Leary was. I still think they are most safely and properly utilized with the understanding of their full potential.  

"What fresh hell is this?" -- Dorothy Parker

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by: Curmudgette @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 22:33:06 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I agree with you (6.00 / 1)

these drugs were an extremely useful tool that expanded my awareness beyond what I think I could have achieved in the western environment I grew up in.

I personal think that Leary made the mistake of being so open about what he was doing and was persecuted for this.  His wife and mother of their 2 kids committed suicide before he discovered psychedelics maybe this is why he through caution to the wind.

Psilocybin from the mountains of Mexico was by far the most electric, intense, life changing, mind expanding drug I ever ingested and what started Leary on his journey the good and bad of it.  It was new uncharted territory for everyone who wasn't under the guidance of a shaman or spiritual teacher.  

It is a matter of life and death, see the documentary Food INC and vote no to corporate take over of our food every time you buy groceries  

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by: Kathleen @ Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 07:39:53 AM CST

[ Parent ]

This is why it's dangerous. (6.00 / 1)

It was new uncharted territory for everyone who wasn't under the guidance of a shaman or spiritual teacher.

 

The plants, themselves, are teachers, but when you are using them within a tradition, that has been cultivated for thousands of years, probably dating back to the paleolithic era, you benefit from the knowledge of proper use and respect. Too many westerners took them because they had weird hallucinations, and it was fun. To the shaman, those aren't hallucinations. They're passage into a separate realm, that is related to this world; that is actually the reality behind this reality. It's taken very seriously. And they also know that it's potentially dangerous, because it is so very, very real. I had a conversation with a woman some years ago who told me about an experience she had with the type and quality of LSD that has been very hard to get since the sixties. She had some connection. I don't know. She said it was very different from most of what passes for acid now. So she took this LSD with a group of people, some of whom she barely knew. After they came down, they compared notes, and discovered that much of what they'd experienced was identical. They actually saw each other in the trip, and of course, thought it was part of the "hallucination." No. What was happening was that they all went to the same place in non-ordinary reality. Some of the things they saw, but didn't understand, were confirmed in this reality weeks later. One of the things they all saw at the end of their trip was the room they were in racing past them like a subway train. They had to run to catch the train, to get back into the room. All I could say to her was, thank god you caught that train. Because if you hadn't, a good part of you would still be there, and your body might be in a mental hospital. This is the kind of thing there are precautions and rules for in shamanic cultures. People do get stuck in non-ordinary reality, or lose parts of themselves there. In our culture, we call that mental illness. You can do very serious damage to yourself from not knowing the safeguards. Hell, I've had to journey to repair damage from plain, old marijuana use.

It's not necessary to use psychotropes to enter non-ordinary reality, either. A drum beat of 7 cycles per second works fine, and has been used by shamans from time immemorial. It's legal and somewhat safer. But I totally understand why, in our culture, the drugs and plant teachers were necessary to break through the limitations of our thought process. Graham Hancock's "Supernatural" was a real eye opener for me. He's so very British. I think he probably really needed to be at the mercy of ayahuasca to pierce the veil. What he discovered was a very deep healing process that shifted him out of a prolonged depression. This is the purpose of the plant teachers. To heal. It's not entertainment. And it's usually done to heal individuals or the community, as a whole. So the way it was done here in the sixties was a real mixed bag. When these substances are used to indulge the ego, to navel gaze, to escape, the results can be disastrous, and more than a few people wound up in institutions or dead. Some were scarred by "bad trips." I had an boyfriend in high school who was badly injured that way. These things are not to be taken lightly.  

"What fresh hell is this?" -- Dorothy Parker

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by: Curmudgette @ Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 09:25:38 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I agree (6.00 / 1)

it is amazing that so many made it through given the whole picture; reckless youth, street drugs, ignorance and lack of guidance.  For me I am grateful for the experiences but it was very risky behavior to say the least.  I am so relieved my son never felt the need to experiment in this way.

It is a matter of life and death, see the documentary Food INC and vote no to corporate take over of our food every time you buy groceries  

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by: Kathleen @ Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 10:25:51 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Phronesis (5.00 / 1)

Yes, I was there.

At no time did anyone say "act first, think later."

I'd hate to have to defend that statement.  How would you go about it?

In fact, i said it, and the like "Don't think about it, just do it," many times.  Many others did also.  The conversation might go like this:

A:  I'm not sure we should overturn the police car.

B:  Don't think, just act.

So, the idea is that thinking is bourgeois if it keeps people from carrying out revolutionary acts.  Sort of Marxism 101.

You may also have heard:

C:  I'm not sure i should take this, what'd you call it, LSD.  I heard it could mess up your chromsomes.

D:  Be spontaneous, man.  Don't think about it, just take it.  It'll expand your mind.

I remember one couple who hitchhiked everywhere, but always wanted to be the John Cage of hitching.  So they would go up on the road and flip a coin to determine which direction they would hitch.  if they didn't get a ride in a half hour, they would simply cross the road and hitch in the other direction.

Finally, another Saul, Alinsky, who said:

"One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other."

Certainly no one thinking about the situation would ever believe that.  So if someone whose decisiveness was waning because, he said, "some of those people may be innocent, and they could get hurt," might be told that he must act now, think later.

Ah, the sixties.

"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 19:07:46 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Misconstruing Alinsky (0.00 / 0)

Alinsky's comment isn't that one act before one thinks.  His comment is that when acting, one has to believe that he is absolutely correct and that those who think otherwise are absolutely wrong.  Sounds like your friends The Teabaggers to me.  

As a matter of fact, your last paragraph,

Certainly no one thinking about the situation would ever believe that.  So if someone whose decisiveness was waning because, he said, "some of those people may be innocent, and they could get hurt," might be told that he must act now, think later.

could be used to caution the recklessness of their so-called movement.


In a democracy, citizens get the government they deserve.  Scary, ain't it.  

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by: Phronesis @ Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 19:10:12 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Phronesis (0.00 / 1)

I just quoted him, and noted that no thinking person would ever believe that he was absolutely right and that those who think otherwise are absolutely wrong.  Ergo, Alinsky is saying that a thinker can't act.  You are free to parse it any way you want for your own purposes.

As Nietzsche:

Not suited for a party man.  Whoever thinks a great deal is not suited for a party man.  he soon thinks himself right through the party.

Sounds like your friends The Teabaggers to me.  

And you, my friend, are an asshole.  As your note indicates, you think of them as more your friends, hinting, as you do, that they follow Alinsky's rules.  And, in fact, much of what you right here reminds me of the Tea Party movement in that it is unthinkingly ideological, and brooks no thought in opposition.

And, btw, Alinsky is absolutely wrong on the point.  The real goal is indoctrination, to create non-thinking followers who won't spoil an action by questioning it.

btw, how many buildings have those reckless Tea Party-ers blown up lately?  My bet is that they are in general too feckless.


"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 02:47:48 AM CST

[ Parent ]

measure twice cut once or (0.00 / 0)

How about think twice act once?

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by: oldtomblood @ Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 12:52:43 PM CST

[ Parent ]

otb (0.00 / 0)

might be a good rule!

"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Sat Feb 06, 2010 at 01:28:00 AM CST

[ Parent ]

The union comment (2.00 / 2)

Yesterday, puzzled remarked that some counties around her used laypersons for the role of Guardian ad litem.  She noted, "I find that--odd."

Considering that GALs represent others, often abused children, in legal matters, I can see why she said it was odd.

So I responded thus:

Sounds like  (0.00 / 2)
your union is falling down on the job!

Two people saw fit to goose egg this comment.  I find that--odd.  Because it is smack dab on the money.  but neither offered an explanation, so i am still in the dark on what my great sin was.

Consider the best union on the planet, the AMA. Do you think that they would ever allow a situation where mirrim, say, would remark, "My county requires doctors to do appendectomies and hernia repairs, but other counties around us allow layperson to do them.  I find that--odd?"  That union would never let medical procedures be farmed out to lay persons.  And yet the lawyers' union has allowed legal representation to be farmed out to lay persons.  and that was what i commented on.

I did do some quick googling, and i found that in many places that i found, lay GALs were considered a part of a team with a real lawyer.  Yet, i wouldn't expect to see that some surgical clinic allowed laypersons to do appendectomies and hernia repairs as a part of a team that included a real doctor.

Am I missing something here?

When puzzled said she found it odd, i asked myself how it could happen.

As we used to say on the ball field when the ball got loose, "Li'l help?"

"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 10:30:15 AM CST

perhaps (0.00 / 0)

it was the characterization of Bar Associations as unions.  Many "professionals" would consider that to be a derogatory reference.

But since I didn't rate the comment, I can't speak for those who did.

Insert witty quote here.

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by: puzzled @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 10:47:25 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Thanks, puzzled (0.00 / 0)

I sometimes forget that.  Perhaps having the organization that works on your behalf seen as something other than a union is part of the strategy that makes the AMA such a great union.

"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite.

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by: Madscientist @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 18:35:07 PM CST

[ Parent ]

As a (7.75 / 8)

politics junkie, I was amazed watching President Obama attend that House Republican retreat in Baltimore today...

If you didn't see it, CSPAN is replaying it live at 8P EST.

Literally, it was a Press Conference with POTUS as the Star and GOP pols playing the role of the press.

A.  It was political genius  B.  For the most part, he was superb.
THAT guy who I saw is a "leader."

A little shocked nobody has mentioned it.

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by: PHIL. I. STINE @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 17:04:09 PM CST

I saw it too (6.75 / 4)

it was the most promising thing I have seen, that is what I expect from government!  They were actually acting like adults.

I hope the president actually starts to lead and take this never ending dog and pony show we have been watching down.

It is a matter of life and death, see the documentary Food INC and vote no to corporate take over of our food every time you buy groceries  

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by: Kathleen @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 18:56:43 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Yes (8.00 / 3)

I'm watching Olbermann politicize and conflate it (as is his nature) and Maddow being level headed about it.

I've been working in politics since I was 13.  He probably saved his Presidency today.  Compare his numbers to Reagan (first two years) all you want, his Presidency was in free fall.  

He sort of found his sea legs today.  

He destroyed about five Right Wing Narratives in 90 Minutes.

The Republicans also looked good but not...as good. I imagine half way through it they were wondering why they allowed it to be broadcast on TV.  But, the whole thing is good.  

Now both the President and the Congress have to figure out how to lead while maintaining their requisite power amid the seething partisanship of our internet and broadcast media nation.  It ain't easy.  I'm watching it right now on MSNBC.  A true partisan like Olbermann should realize it is more important to just air the event in primetime than to do play by play.  Then again, it's really all about him.  As it is with most media people.  Feed the beast.

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by: PHIL. I. STINE @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 19:19:22 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Olbermann also (6.67 / 6)

misused "begs the question" again. Grrrrr....

"What fresh hell is this?" -- Dorothy Parker

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by: Curmudgette @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 19:40:25 PM CST

[ Parent ]