Tag Archives: Peron

Will occupying the streets Sept 17, Oct 6 and 15 precipitate an American Fall?

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“American Fall” would be a pun, yes. A pan-Arabian-like Spring causing the US anti-democracy to tumble, being the objective. The English riots have put a dark spin on what might be Middle America’s reception to popular uprising, but mark the dates, because the brass ring nears whether you have the courage or not, and you won’t have the stomach for the alternative.
 
You’ve probably already sensed the buzz about #SEPT17, campus groups across the country have been bypassing the conventional chaperones to coordinate OCCUPY WALL STREET. Can they do it? Not without your help, and that doesn’t mean switching your phone service or knocking on doors to Get Out The Vote.

Donate, organize or help with the logistics. If you’ve the temerity, attend in person. At the very least, you’ll have your expenses reimbursed when the city settles your civil suit against them for false arrest. New York City already budgeted for the insurance policy that will pay the legal settlements for the probably now textbook law enforcement practice of kettling inconvenient protests. Or, thinking positively, you may just witness history. To make history you have to make it. Don’t leave it up to the Little Red Hen if you want a piece.

Next up is #OCT6, although the day varies regionally. The date marks the 10th anniversary of the Afghan invasion, but social justice groups of all stripes are throwing their sundry complaints unto one banner and have organized marches nationwide. Of course the nationals aims to SEIZE DC, where activists will converge on Freedom Square, English for “Tahrir Square”, with plans to camp there until the people’s voice is heard. DC has passed ordinances against overnight protests, but Freedom Square may be cut some slack for being off the National Mall. It’s a smaller public space which lies on the diagonal between the White House and the Capitol Building, abreast of General Tecumseh Sherman’s horse actually.

The determination to reclaim American Democracy with an action in DC hopes to recreate Madison Wisconsin on the Potomac, with the same grassroots support for a broad set of issues to which both parties have shown themselves unresponsive.

A successful DC foothold will get real traction being closely followed by an international call for a worldwide uprising. #OCT15 is being spearheaded by Spain’s movement for GLOBAL DEMOCRACY. Will it dilute regional efforts to have actions running concurrently, or will synchronized demonstrations overwhelm our transnational overseers? We can wait and see, or we can give it our best shot.

Here are more graphics in support of the kickoff September 17. Borrowing from Tunisia and Egypt, and before that Chicago 1968, it’s US Days of Rage.

In the course of a single spring we’ve seen massive demonstrations which provoked governments to interrupt cellphone service, shut down internet access, and answer protestors with direct gunfire. To what extreme will the USG be driven? What rights remain inviolate in the US? Not communication. Activist cellphones were blocked on the BART in San Francisco to thwart protests against police brutality.

Sea Shepherd ripostes with broadside

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Sea Shepherd ripostes with broadside


This time when the Japanese whalers came abreast their eco-defense adversary to douse them with water cannons, the Sea Shepherd crew surprised them with a torrent of superior caliber! Yes, it sounds like a pissing match, the essence of swashbucklers. This one is worthy of Patrick O’Brian but we’ll have to wait for Whale Wars Season III for the full adventure. Score: Japanese fleet chaperoned now for three days with no breaking free in sight.

Greed is the God of Capitalism

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John McCain, seriously out of touch. [video]

McCain claims his Nazi rhetoric is acceptable, because he was a POW 40 years ago.

They should just call it what it is: the KKK Party.

The German Nazi Party is starting to look tame compared to the vile fascist bigotry of the GOP.

Americans’ BS Detectors Off Charts With Palin, by Garrison Keillor

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone’s mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, “One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Sixpack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars,” people smelled gas.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Oct 12 notes, thomasmc.com.

Life, Love, Liberty and Lunch

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graduation cheyenne mountain high school julia marie walden
I’m taking over the Bachelor Nutrition Series. Yes, Eric is a bachelor. But he’s my bachelor; as such, he’s carefully tended and well fed. The Simple Nutrition Series (its new name) should be geared toward those who know something about the body and, as such, desire nutritious fare but who, for whatever reason, find themselves culinarily challenged for a spell.

Proper equipment, fresh ingredients, adaptable recipes, sufficient time and talent — all components of good nutrition — are in short supply when one finds herself alone, in a dorm room, on a big college campus, hungry for both food and companionship. Yes, the hot pot is small consolation, and stands in the way of starvation. But wouldn’t it be great if a moveable feast was a genuine possibility? If the way to the heart is truly through the stomach, shouldn’t a girl come prepared for the journey?

My lovely Julia graduated from Cheyenne Mountain High School this weekend. Voted Most Likely to Win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Best Sense of Humor — both make me so happy! — she did not win the Next Rachael Ray title. So begins my Fifteen Freshman Recipes Cookbook.

Freshman Fifteen #1 — Tortilla pizzas
I will not sing the praises of the lard/bleached-flour combo known as the tortilla. Pure dreck if you ask me. But, in a pinch, it can be the foundation for a nutritious gourmet pizza.

The PRESTO Pizzazz Pizza Oven is a stand-alone device that can cook a fresh or frozen pizza in minutes. We experimented with it tonight and discovered a few nutritious alternatives to Totino’s, using flour tortillas as our crust.

I placed the following items along the counter:
marinara sauce
olive oil
chopped fresh garlic
chopped fresh cilantro
chopped fresh basil
chopped fresh spinach
black beans
sliced black olives
turkey pepperoni
sliced roma tomatoes
sliced green pepper
sliced green onions
pineapple tidbits
shredded cheddar
shredded mozzarella
shredded swiss

We used the above ingredients in various tasty combinations and had a really lovely time of it.

A few combinations we discovered:
-black beans, tomatoes, cilantro, green onions, cheddar
-olive oil, spinach, garlic, basil, swiss
-marinara, pepperoni, pineapple, black olives, mozzarella

Each pizza took about six minutes, and ended up crisp and delicious. Not exactly haute cuisine, but definitely a step up from the ramen noodles of my era!
julia walden cheyenne mountain high school

Trading Benjamins

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Chinese yuan with Chairman Mao
My 14-year-old son is going to China next month, along with a group of classmates and chaperones. Yesterday I went to Wells Fargo to exchange $400USD for Chinese yuan. A small currency exchange, cash for cash, very routine. To accomplish the task, however, I was required to provide two forms of identification. This was not a glance-at-the-information kind of ID check, which would’ve been pointless to begin with. No, the clerk put the information into the bank’s data base before handing me the money.

I asked her, “Why on earth do you need my personal information to exchange currency?” She said, under her breath, “Have you ever heard of the Patriot Act? The government requires us to gather this information so they can identify potential terrorists.” She went on to tell me that Wells Fargo is the only bank in town still willing to deal in foreign currency. The other banks have opted out so they don’t have to jump through government hoops and engage in data mining to benefit our nosy and intrusive administration.

Walking out of the bank with my red notes, Chairman Mao watching me, gave me a creepy sense of foreboding.

Will the Obama speech trump tribalism?

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The press misleads us about the war, the economy, the environment, our health, even our food. Would you care to proffer one topic for which they do not present a perspective skewed by corporate interest? I can’t. Our national media cannot still broach the suggestion that our president is an imbecilic jackass. And now they’re fawning over Obama.

Oh the usual Fox buffoons are raising their objections, but I suspect it’s their turn as good cop bad cop, further building this perfect storm of electoral excitement. Everywhere I go, I hear friends talking about Obama’s speech. Oh it was some speech. Historic? Momentous? But are those their words? To compare it to JFK means to eclipse MLK like he was unsliced bread. Have you heard the speech? Is this buzz generating from you?

As a theatrical chorus setting the tone, the media is showing a wildly selective memory in rationalizing their adulation. Did we/they mean to skip over Reagan? He gave good speech. Many actors have made memorable speeches. And politicians. I favor James Galloway’s speech before the Senate, before that, I remember Oliver North’s.

Men of substance can make great speeches. Literary heros come to mind. What would happen if Americans held the presidential candidates to those standards? Czechoslovakia did. Couldn’t the most powerful elected office in the world command a higher wisdom quotient?

Barack Obama is certainly quick witted and persuasive. Has he persuaded you with the intelligence he’s displayed as a legislator? Going to war, the Patriot Act, Torture, Impeachment? Has he voiced concerns for health care reform, for example? You think Obama isn’t at liberty to be candid about those problems NOW?

Back to the media: who do you suppose our corporations, Wall Street, the World Bank, and the Military Industrial Complex want to see in our highest office? Bush is term limited, so who’s the next “best man for the job?”

I can see Americans voting for a woman, half the population are women, one hundred percent of everybody’s mothers are women. We’ve always entrusted teaching and nursing to women. More and more of our professors, judges, mayors, and governors are women. Hillary Clinton not only has political experience, she’s had a close personal brush with the top job. And to assuage any chauvinists, Hillary will have a male presidential chaperone, the traditional spouse and mentor, himself a role model to chauvinists. Is this woman electable? You have only to look beyond the media defamation to see a fully competent “bitch”.

Barack Obama’s speech may have addressed the issue of race in America with a finesse to make you swoon. So did he resolve it, put it to bed, as the media would like our own excited buzzings to conclude? Racism is in our hands, isn’t it?

I’d like to ask you, if you’ll turn off the telly for a mo, in your heart of hearts, will American voters, 90% of them who are white and can get into the polls unobstructed, will they vote for a black man? Visualize the red state voters who returned Bush to office for a second term. Visualize the ugly operatives, Christians and Blacks among them, who conspire to uphold Neo-conservative power, will they acquiesce to a black challenger?

I too would like to hope, but I’d like to hope Americans wake up to the difficult, self-critical rhetoric it’s going to take to reclaim our democracy. God Damn the anti-democratic corporate mouthpieces for offering us a calculated false hope. When Obama looses, they’ll shame us for not showing faith enough in hope.

Parents and the teenage drug dealer

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I sympathize with parents who have a child on drugs. I’m thinking not so much about the child who’s doing fine in school, or has ambition and is moving forward. I’m thinking more about the kid who isn’t, who’s discovered a rut of drugs and complacency and nothing but drugs and instant gratification. I’m thinking the two are mutually exclusive, but that may be my prejudice.

It’s one thing to indulge that child, and quite another to endanger everyone else’s.

Maybe the parents think that drug use is okay. Maybe it’s cute, or harmless. Maybe it reminds them of their youthful experimentation. I’m not sure those parents are in touch with today’s controlled substance options.

I wish all parents could attend just one Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meeting to hear about what addicts these days are up against. Hear how drugs destroy families, or preoccupy lives or derail ambitions or usurp the joy to be found in just everyday things. Sometimes the chemistry of addiction overtakes a person’s every daily thought until they die.

It’s not simply pot, mushrooms and cocaine nowadays. Today there are all variations of meth, crack, heroin, ecstasy and speed in deadly combinations. Pot heads may argue that they only abuse pot, but marijuana today is laced with any of the above ingredients as fortifiers. The old pot high may still satisfy That 70’s Show, but kids today expect a more potent hit.

But to discuss the issue of dealing. Maybe some parents are proud of their child’s entrepreneurial initiative. Maybe they see it as making the best of an otherwise unprofitable fixation.

Maybe it’s like being the parent of a bully. The problem is not my bully, the self-assertive domineering chip-off-the-old-block, the problem is that the other kids are submissive and lesser and thus deserving. It’s survival of the fit, of my DNA. Maybe parenting a drug dealer is like that. The problem is not the dealing, we think, it’s the other kids who need the drugs and can’t arrange clever dealing setups like my kid.

What’s a parent to do? Call the cops on their own kid? Jeopardize the child’s academic career, give him a criminal record to haunt him until always? That would be my argument to call the cops before he turns 18, so his record as a minor will be expunged. Otherwise, the option certainly does seem extreme.

On the other hand, to do nothing is off-the-chart selfish. Selfish. Your kid is not dealing to 30 year-old opium addicts in the big city. Your kid is dealing in school! High school, junior high, grade school, wherever. Your kid is turning dozens if not hundreds of other kids onto drugs. Many of whom will follow his sorry footsteps and cause anguish for their parents. Were you feeling lonesome in your anguish? How thoughtful of you to share your bad parenting.

If you’ve set your kid up in his own unsupervised apartment, you’ve given your neighborhood a drug den. A place for other kids to hide and get into trouble. I’ve seen how accounting for a kid’s time works, you’re diligent, you expect other parents to be diligent, thus supervision for every kid’s activities is accounted for. Enabling a drug den is worse than going on vacation and not telling your friends that your house or child will be unsupervised. You’ve created a full time unchaperoned oasis. Did you have that as a child?

If your drug dealer begins to report vandalism to his car or house, which he says can only be random, you’ve got a whole lot of possible suspects. It could be the neighbors who resent living next to a house from which carloads of kids come and go at all hours of the night. It could be an angry parent who’s caught their child there. It could be rival students who resent the drug-dealer swagger that interrupts the otherwise traditional jock-based hierarchy of a school class. But clearly someone wants your child to move. I say move him!

It could be a rival drug dealer who’s been pushed out, or who’s trying to push in to the territory. The territories being the schools remember, however many schools are involved. It could be a distributor to whom your child passes money. Or fails to pass money. This isn’t Weeds where all the money changing, if terse, is convivial.

Is it going to take a panicked phone call in the middle of the night to convince you? A call from your child dealer asking you for $6K as soon as the bank opens to pay off some goons who will otherwise kill him, because the money’s gone lost, or there’s some misunderstanding, but “trust me, these guys won’t listen to reason.”

I don’t think it’s such an unselfish thing to ask of a parent, to keep a child clean, and to do their part to keep drug dealers out of the neighborhood. If you’ve got more children coming up for example, it’s not unselfish at all. Or if you think of your children’s friends as your children, as precious and delicate as your own.

Are you really thinking, if my child doesn’t deal it, somebody else will? Well social responsibility really doesn’t work that way. Yes somebody else will. Let it haunt their conscience.