Pardon Me

I'm not writing about much today. I've had two days of savage pain which neither the CBD oil nor the Tylenol extra strength alleviate.

I'm getting used to days like these. I know they pass. And who knows why they pass? Some wooey magic? The body going phooey, let's give her a break?

I felt miserable.

And I considered the hidden life of Facecloth (my personal petname for you know what). I posted jokes and comments and updated some of my web pages and thought: No one could ever tell from these posts that I was distracting myself from my rebelling body. And posted a picture of the sun washing the dark windows of houses as it slid below the horizon sitting by the lake with its dog park and missed my Ansa. I can make more room on the pity-pot if you wish.

And apologies for the swimming in the sea of me post.

But there you have it.

The US is what it is, a cesspool of fascism and racism and all the other isms of nearly 50% of its population. A terrifying thought. And their Mussolini at the top of the heap screaming and yelling like a toddler, condemning his own country's voting security with every blast and no one from his party marching out there and seizing him by the neck and throwing him into one of his own cages. Why are they complicit in his treason?

Be that as it may on this rambling Saturday, where the pain is not showing its face so much.

I hung this picture which I got on the Great Northern Peninsula. I absolutely love it.

And optimistically picked up my Book Club's selections from the library where I was greeted by name by the librarian.

I'm telling you, we need to cling to the small things like never before.

Hanging In

"Hang In There" was a phrase used oftentimes in the good old days.

I'm trying not to despair and rage and rant today when I see the actual horrific numbers of USians who voted for this narcissistic monster who doesn't give a shyte about any of them. Is this the soul of the USA laid bare? The mirror relecting this psychopathic sub-human? Who sees them die, who sees them infected and never throws a glance their way? Who has never exhibited a shred of compassion? Who whines like a 2 year old? Who can turn his back on children in cages and lose track of their parents? And uses the USA as a personal ATM?

My friends in the USA are terrified. With just cause. The world is terrified.

Is there hope? I've stopped tracking the ongoing results. He may have bought the electoral college. Who knows? And the supreme court is in his pocket to declare him a winner. Well, hold on, he already declared himself the winner. Breaking more laws which seem meaningless when it comes to this dictator.

So on to other stuff:

Personal Positives ------------------

(1)Finally, finally I get lab work done in my home. A lovely man showed up yesterday to do the fluid extractions and will fire off the reports to my doctors on line. How wonderful is this? The clinics and hospitals were such such a challenge. (2)I listen to the ordinary sights and sounds outside my window and celebrate them. The ordinary is so important these days. The horns of the ships in the harbour, the community bus pulling up for the resident shoppers ($5.00 return to take them far and wide to different stores and then come back hours later to pick them up) (3) A little flurry of snow, reminding us that winter is on it's way. Now it's gone, like a breath. (4) My new cleaner, Jessica, has to be seen to be believed. Never have I had a cleaner like her. So thorough and energetic and she cleans, like everything. (5) I change my sign on my little blackboard every month. This month is "gratitude". I think of the small things and the large things that keep me grateful. Living in Canada, living in Newfoundland, with no new cases in 9 days now. And only 4 active ones. A prime minister who keeps our borders closed to the USA and begins more serious negotiations with the EU.

So Hang in there USA!

Cartoon of the Week

Well, the Republicans keep saying they're the voice of the people, right? And this is what the people want, right?

Blog Jam

Did you know that Mississipi just narrowly defeated a bill defining a fertilized egg as a "person"?

Sometimes I am so grateful I live in Canada and don't have to deal with these incessant insanities of our neighbour to the south of us. My ongoing sympathies to my wonderful USian friends who have to suffer these idiocies while the reality of our doom-headed planet is ignored.

Sometimes I shed just a tiny wee tear when I see Graham Nash and David Crosby, those of my Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young days (oh major, major fan I was, I was) who performed at the New York Occupy HQ yesterday. Why do I cry? Oh, you know, like they got OLD and, well, so did I, but we are all still shouting out against injustice.

And a Limerick man explains the Wall Street shenanigans for everyone:

Photo of the Week

Be Careful What You Read and When You Read It

The supposedly grand old lady of newspapers, The New York Times, was caught with its knickers down today for the manner in which it framed the OWS demonstrations, subtly changing the language in the space of 20 minutes:

'changing the first line of a story about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. The change subtly shifted the blame for the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge from the police to the protesters. In the first version of the story, police allowed them onto the bridge and then “cut off and arrested” them. In the second, there was a “showdown” in which demonstrators “marched onto the bridge.”'

Thanks to my friends at Sociological Images.

Read it here.

Has The Revolution Begun?

There has been very little significant coverage of the Revolution on Wall Street. All main stream media has to talk about are arrests. But I thought to ponder the manifesto and discuss it with a few friends today. It all makes so much sense and I applaud those participating. Will they make a difference? I doubt it. The oligarchy's tentacles are everywhere, including the police-puppets. But the movement is spreading and we're not going down without a fight:

Occupy Wall Street Protesters General Assembly—Declaration of the Occupation of New York City:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

* These grievances are not all-inclusive.

The U.S. is in what century again - the 18th?

I was shocked to read in the Guardian today of the sentencing of mothers to prisons in the U.S. Mothers who have lost their babies either pre- or post-birth on suspicion of drug use or in one case attempted suicide by ingesting rat poison.

An example of the increasing insanity of not granting women full autonomy with their uteri under the sole ownership and direction of the government:

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

And there are many more mind boggling charges in this disturbing article. Read it here.

More and more as the US descends into a madness barely touched upon by Dante, my heart breaks for my many USian friends who are so sickened by all of this.

We may have thought Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" outrageous when first published but another read now makes it eerily prophetic.

Theocorporatocracy.

Seriously?

Sometimes I just despair of the human race. I really do. Please bear in mind I don't own a TV set so am not subjected to a lot of what the rest of you have to undergo here in North America on yer big screaming screens.

But Weiner's weiner? Seriously? Seriously?

It seems like I can't open even so-called serious news sites without being inundated with blurbs, images, blurbs, yabber.

This in a world that is tanking sideways with commodities in short supply, floods, starvation, climate change, peak oil, etc. Not to mention economic catastrophe.

And apart from anything else, has it crossed any of the media's shyte-for-brains that this is all feeding into Weiner's exhibitionist fetish?

Big time.

H'm? H'm??????

Quote & Cartoon of the Week

"All across the Middle East in the streets, people are demanding democracy. It's amazing. The only way in America you get people to get worked up like that is to threaten to give them health care." –Bill Maher

H/T BartCop

A Modern US President.

Being an uber-fan of Gilbert & Sullivan and their incisive operettas about the political shenanigans of their time, I was thrilled to see the Pirates of Penzance lyrics updated for President Barrack Obama.

H/T Time Goes By

The Poor Downtrodden Whites!

"For far too long white Americans have been told that diversity is something beneficial to their existence. Statistics prove that the opposite is true. New Hampshire residents must seek to preserve their racial identity if we want future generations to have to possibility to live in such a great state. Affirmative action, illegal and legal non-white immigration, anti-white public school systems, and an anti-white media have done much damage to the United States of America and especially New Hampshire. It is time for white people in New Hampshire and across the country to take a stand. We are only 8 percent of the world's population and we need our own homeland, just like any other non-white group of people deserve their own homeland."

—Ryan J. Murdough, a Republican candidate for the New Hampshire State House.

Let me get this straight:

So they stole the land they live on from the indigenous peoples. They then enslaved black Africans to work the land and do their bidding. They then allowed brown people to do the work that was beneath them.

And now they're whining for a 'homeland'?

I get it.

Is this what pre-Nazi Germany looked like?

Did anyone else feel sickened reading this in The Guardian yesterday?

Thousands upon thousands of Arizonians (landed emigrants or not) are leaving the state because of Bill SB 107 which allows the government and its agents to stop and arrest citizens on the suspicion of being off-white in colour and possibly undocumented. And if you or I help them, we can also be charged.

Politicians have responded to demands for the border to be strengthened and for more deportations, culminating in SB 1070. The legislation, in effect, turns Arizona's undocumented residents into criminals, handing responsibility for enforcement from immigration officers to the police. Anyone without proper papers who comes into contact with the police – be it for something as minor as a broken brake light – can have their documents checked if police suspect them of being illegal immigrants, and find themselves rapidly deported. Anyone who helps an undocumented person, whether by housing them or offering them work or even feeding them or giving them a lift, can also find themselves in trouble.

Many successful businesses in Phoenix are closing their doors due to this repressive, obscene and regressive legislation. Many parents are leaving because of the fear of future harrassment of their children. Many brilliant students can't attend prestigious universities because of laws against raising scholarship funds to do so.

I am chilled to the bone.
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PS And I'm sure there will be some that think I am extreme in my opinion, but from the reading I've done over the years, this is exactly what Germany was doing in the thirties. I would love to be corrected.

Sarah Palin's Life As Told by the Google Search Engine

I couldn't resist posting this as it makes the rounds of the interwebz.

Moral and Political Degradation

There is an extraordinary essay over at Crooks & Liars by Ian Welsh on the current political and moral status of our neighbour down south.

He writes this:

It is also noteworthy that spending billions on turning brown people into a fine red mist (a.k.a. the Afghan war) is acceptable, but health care (a.k.a. saving actual American lives) is something which can't cost money. What an interesting--and clearly evil--set of priorities that reveals. I guarantee that real healthcare reform would save more American lives than the entire war on terror—assuming said "war" hasn't cost more American lives than it's saved, which is almost certainly the case.

and also of Gitmo North where prisoners who can't be convicted for lack of evidence are held without trial:

people whom the government judges there is not enough evidence to convict, will be held indefinitely without trial. This is the very definition of tyranny. Any nation which does this is a nation of men, not laws. America has forsaken its fundamental premise and proved its degradation. Yes, this started under Bush, but as Obama embraces this, it because a bipartisan project and the new elite consensus. This is now something which has been confirmed as US policy which is extremely unlikely to change no matter who is in power.

The whole article is well worth reading in full, along with the comments.

It is heartbreaking for so many, many Americans, who had the glimmering of hope and now see it utterly destroyed.

Posted subsequently:

My friend Annie writes of a child soldier (the first in the world being prosecuted for war crimes) being included in this obscene US travesty of justice. He has been held without trial since 2002. The Canadian government is complicit in this by its silence.