Check The Diagonal

Finding the balance...

I've said this before, I have a ton of respect for the folks who blog for a living.  During my somewhat pedestrian foray into my own blog I've found the exercise to be both emotionally and physically exhausting.  There is pain and disillusionment and very little elation to be gained by paying attention, and through that it has become clearer to me why so few Americans vote and even fewer pay attention to politics at all.  It is very hard.  Its hard to separate the bullshit from what is real, the sales pitch strategy from legitimate positioning, fact from fiction.  The system is either by design or nature built to encourage disinterest, mistrust and apathy. That combined with a full time career, school and a family life leaves me little energy or motivation to come here and be pissy. 

That said, I enjoy it here and occassionally being pissy.  Its a far cry better than screaming at myself in the mirror.  And so, I am working on finding a balance where I can be active enough here to justify its existence, and perform in real life to the level I expect of myself.

Poem for Sunday

I am sad that I can find little reason for the insane protests and fury from the right other than race.

THEME FOR ENGLISH B by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

1951

More blasting of the Right, from the Right

Worth reading here.  If the Republican Party was anything like David Frum I imagine much could get accomplished in Washington in a bipartisan way....unfortunately, they aren't, they're like Glenn Beck.

The ultimate happy ending of the story should not however close the page on this appalling episode of broadcast recklessness and political cowardice. We conservatives are submitting our movement to some of the most unscrupulous people in American life. This submission disgraces conservatism, discredits Republicans, and damages the country. It’s beyond time for conservatives who know better to join us at NewMajority in emancipating ourselves from leadership by the most stupid, the most cynical, and the most truthless.

Hehe..good luck with that David.

The Hypocrisy of 9/11 Worship

I’m a NYer through and through.  I grew up way Uptown at the intersection of the birth of hip-hop, crack and Miami Vice.  I rode the A train and the 100 bus to school and then work for 30 years before I left NYC.  I lost two friends and the brother of another in the bombing and many of my friends and family either in construction or the NYPD worked the site in the aftermath.  So, that day wasn’t evening news fantasy for me, I lived it. 

Yet, every year on the anniversary of 9/11 I find myself becoming completely enraged by the guilt driven subservience that surrounds this day.  It’s the same sentiment used by the Bush Administration that allowed them to get us into an unjust war in Iraq and made us a country that tortures out of fear.   We trusted them and they used our goodwill to soil our country in the name of political power and ideology.

And today, my Facebook and my e-mail and my television are all lit up with memorials and fond memories and tear jerk-er, bleeding heart string pulling insanity.  What about how 9/11 happened in part because we had a disinterested and unengaged half-idiot President?  What about the lies that were told during the run up to the Iraq War? What about the countless American lives lost in that unnecessary war and the ones that will be lost tomorrow?  Where were the bleeding hearts when the Walter Reed scandal broke?

What about the illegality of torture and the men who approved it and shoved it down the throats of Americans using fear as a weapon, using the bodies of my friends who died as a weapon?  Today these men not only walk free but are given every opportunity by the MSM to disgrace the 9/11 victims and their memories. 

Yet, today of all days is supposed to be sacrosanct.  We are to utter no ill words on 9/11 lest we be cast out as unpatriotic. 

The entire summer news cycle was dominated by one health care LIE after another with not a single Republican or MSM outlet standing up in its wake.   And I am supposed to give a shit and bow my head for a moment of silence while the MSM and the politicos continue to use the dead of 9/11 as a tool to distract me, make me feel afraid and ashamed.   We cry over 8 year old dead bodies but the 40M+ living without insurance in America who die or lose their homes without it are pawns in a game where truth no longer matters?  Maybe I’ve reached the height of personal disillusionment and cynicism but I can’t bow my head in prayer for something that could have been prevented eight years ago while not doing a single fucking thing to effect change for the Americans who are alive today and need help.  The Republicans have figured this out, and truth will not rue the day.  The torture administration will never be prosecuted, lies will always be forwarded and never called out for what they are by the MSM and Obama will not realize his potential as President.  Yea, 9/11 is a sad and tragic day in American history but not because some buildings blew up 8 years ago.

Poem for 9/11

Never forget those who died on 9/11/01 or how their memory was used to fuel the unnecessary war in Iraq.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-Wilfred Owen

Just a thought

Isn't this exactly why we want to move all GITMO detainees into the United States?

Twelve days ago, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was released by the Scottish government. His freedom came two decades after a bomb, which was smuggled on to Pan Am Flight 103, exploded over Lockerbie, killing 11 people on the ground and 259 people on the plane. The only man convicted of the crime, al-Megrahi spent just eight years in prison — less than a fortnight for each victim — and was welcomed back to Tripoli as a returning hero.

The GOP's alternative to universal coverage- Oh grow up!

Representative Lynn "The GOP is looking for a Great White Hope" Jenkins thinks the answer for uninsured Americans is that they should "be a grown up and buy their own health insurance."

The woman questioner in the video is a full-time working, single mother of two whose employer does not provide health coverage. I cannot imagine any more grown up than that.  This is not a welfare case and if it were, the government would already be paying for her health care.  This woman works for a living and wants an insurance option that she can actually afford to pay for herself and Lynn Jenkins laughed at her. 

Call Lynn Jenkins and let her know single working mothers who cannot afford health care for their children is no laughing matter.

Washington, DC Office
Phone: (202) 225-6601

Topeka Office
Phone: (785) 234-LYNN (5966)

Sums it up...

I found this over at Ballon Juice.  They just don't get it do they?

Dick Cheney's Richard Nixon moment

Dick Cheney was on Fox News this weekend working tirelessly to keep his sorry self out of a visit from the special prosecutor.  The man is clearly terrified of being called up under oath.  If there ever was a man who needed to be its Cheney.  Unfortunately, my bet is that it will never happen.

 Transcript here.

WALLACE: One specific question about Holder, the Obama administration -- you put out the statement saying that you were upset that President Obama allowed the attorney general to bring these cases. A top Obama official says, hey, maybe in the Bush White House they told the attorney general what to do, but Eric Holder makes independent decisions. 

CHENEY: Well, I think if you look at the Constitution, the president of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. The attorney general's a statutory officer. He's a member of the cabinet.