Truth AND Dare

My Heart Is Broken!!!!!

Hardcorebrat62 — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:24:50 GMT

My Heart Is Broken!!!!! George Carlin died. Ive lost a part of me tonight. My mother, whom I love and adore but well lets just say I don't agree with very often, introduced me to Mr. Carlin when I was about 9 years old. She loved him. My VERY VERY VERY (Id add a few more very's but I get this sick feeling about what if she read this someday and stop) Catholic and conservative Mom. I, from what I was told quite often was 'Just like your Dad....you poor thing"...hilarious and no, really pretty half and half) My Mom would let me stay up and watch George Carlin on Johnny Carson and let me tell you that was WAY past her (I still stay awake till 2 easily...like my Dad, I guess) bedtime so I think my Mom was seriously addicted to him. I have been devoted to him ever since. The deliveryman for the TRUTH. I could dig it man, even if I didn't even have boobies yet. The talent of making one laugh and think deeply at the same time is rare and extremely alluring. Well, to me it is and I guess my Mother as well. It never had escaped me as I listened to all of his work later on as an adult that Mom loved him too. My very (squared) Catholic, conservative Mother. Her secret lefty freaky side...hmmmm part of me maybe? I saw George in live performance a few years back at one of those sad Indian gaming casinos in the Northwest (Oh, right, they have those here too....egads...never mind). When he came on stage the first thing he said was..."you know what you don't hear much about anymore?......................PUSSY FARTS"!!!!!! (Oh my gawd my mother loves this guy!!!) I nearly (ok maybe I did) peed my pants. It was one of the better times in my life during those time. I'm glad I blew that wad O' cash even if on the less than appreciative. I loved it and especially tonight see its full value. George Carlin changed my course in life. He showed me raw uber truth. I liked how something could be ugly or painful yet at the same time enriching, beautiful and most of all hilarious beyond explanation all at the same time. He was the master at making us laugh at our demons. He is the lord king sumthin of showing us the lessons and absurdities in our humanness. Part of my sense of humor has been noticeably shaped by George Carlin and for that I have always been proud. Dennis Miller and Dave Chappelle are close behind. George Carlin has always been a voice of unerring reason and perspective to me and the gut wrenching laughter was just a great side effect. Its funny in a perhaps not so funny way (like Carlin at times) but I am FAR more heart broken and full of loss for George Carlin right now then I ever was at the news of my own fathers death. The man I supposedly am so much like. The irony being, this other man my mother loved would inspire and effect me most. Did she know? Crafty she is indeed. I always suspected. I love how I have seen the world with a George Carlinian Mindset. Oh how I weep...I love you Sir Carlin. You FUCKING RULED!!!!!! Oh and thanks Mom, seriously, thank you very very very very very (squared) much. I love you.

Wall Street Must DIE!!!!

Hardcorebrat62 — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:48:45 GMT

Ive been reading Steve Frasers 'Wall Street' and then tonight I came upon this http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/business/2008/06/20/sot.stupak.enron.loophole.cnn Where as CNN states 'Congressman Bart Stupak says energy traders are manipulating energy markets and artificially inflating gas prices.'. We are being...no...no... we HAVE been for far too long, manipulated by a bunch of thieves. I encourage anyone who reads this and see this video to read Stave Frasers book (It's tiny, don't worry) and then think hard about what these charlatans are doing. Allowing any of this bullshit to continue only indicates our complicity in this thievery yet we don't think about how they are stealing from the poor and keeping it. The Market (from what I have read and heard so far) is a HUGE lie and its only getting worse. We as a nation let alone as individuals MUST start to fight this 'Overlord'. You've been dumbed down and distracted into a state of ignoring the truth and now they are simply robbing you blind while you nod your complacent heads. Now that its starting to really pinch and you can feel the pain can you see a little more clearly? Yet how do we change this? This and the other entities at work are mammoth and proliferating. Its starting to become clear that we are going to need to start making some serious sacrifices to fight these demented, gluttonous, ego maniacal grifters from screwing us into not only a depression but the loss of the dignity we as Americans have always desired to represent in the past (I'm sorry we just don't seem to desire to represent anything much any more unless you count be ever increasingly the most obese and stupid people on the planet). We not only getting screwed but we are bending over and spreading it for them and letting them video tape it for the net...DUMBASSES!! We have become the sustenance for the bottom feeders. READ , WAKE UP AND FIGHT THE POWER OR PERISH....dummies. Read this and then go buy the book. The New York Times April 20, 2008 First Chapter 'Wall Street' By STEVE FRASER The Aristocrat William Duer was running for his life. An enraged mob was chasing him through the streets of New York. If they caught up with him they would beat him to a pulp ... or worse. Luckily for Duer the sheriff got there first. While his pursuers cried, "We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money," he was hauled off to jail, where he would spend his few remaining years. Once a man of distinction and wealth, William Duer was now ruined, left to contemplate what might have been. The year was 1792, and Wall Street had just experienced its first crash, for which William Duer and a secret circle of New York grandees were mainly to blame. They had conspired to speculate on the bonds just issued by the newly created federal government. Soon they found themselves deeply overcommitted and forced to liquidate their holdings, causing the fledgling market to collapse and its manipulators to flee — in Duer's case to debtors' prison; for the more fortunate among them to safer havens out of state. Even though there was no formal or even informal stock exchange in those days; even though the local economy went about its business largely unaffected by the mysterious machinations of financiers, there were still plenty of ordinary people who suffered. Real estate prices collapsed, credit dried up, house building stopped. The general distress spread from businessmen to "shopkeepers, Widows, orphans, Butchers, Cartmen, Gardeners, market women and even the noted Bawd, Mrs. McCarty." What made Mrs. McCarty and her neighbors irate was something more than their own losses, grievous as these might be. They and many of their fellow citizens hated Duer and his confederates not only for what they'd done but for who they were. The Revolution had just ended, and tempers had barely cooled. Suspicions and animosities directed against covert monarchists and Tory aristocrats still electrified the political atmosphere. And Wall Street's first inside traders seemed to match that ignominious profile. After all, William Duer was a merchant prince. He lived in manorial splendor on a Hudson River estate, catered to by liveried servants — this at a moment when dressing the help in livery was considered a deliberate provocation aimed at the democratic sentiments of American patriots. A onetime officer in the British army, educated at Eton, Duer was the offspring of a wealthy West Indian planter. He had migrated to colonial New York in hope of enhancing his fortune. Once there he had married into the highest echelons of colonial society. His wife, "Lady Kitty," was the second daughter of General William Alexander, who laid claim to a Scottish earldom. Lady Kitty's grandfather was Philip Livingston, a prominent member of New York's most distinguished family dynasty. Duer's closest friends and associates included other great dynastic clans of old Dutch New York: the Macombs and the Roosevelts, among others. His commercial interests extended from powder-, saw-, and gristmills to distilleries and maritime supplies. While Duer had supported the Revolution (indeed, he was a member of the Continental Congress and a signatory of the Articles of Confederation), he was widely suspected of profiteering at its expense. He sold, at inflated prices, precious supplies of timber and planks for barracks and ships to Washington's desperate army of independence. He provisioned the Continental Army with horses, ammunition, cattle, and feed but was suspected of hoarding supplies of rum and blankets, and even of engaging in sub-rosa trading with the enemy. After the Revolution, Duer escalated his pursuit of social elevation and material enrichment, a quest that culminated in his fateful attempt to corner the market in government securities. And here he was counting on a special bit of good fortune: he was a confidant of the nation's first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was a Revolutionary War hero and a founding father. But by the 1790s, he was also the man most widely suspected of harboring elitist sentiments dangerous to the democratic aspirations of the new nation. During the Constitutional debates he had argued on behalf of a lifetime presidency and imagined the Senate as a kind of House of Lords. In his capacity as President George Washington's secretary of the treasury, he had devised a plan for funding the national debt that had accumulated during the war and in the years afterward. The federal government would sell its own bonds to make good on the nearly worthless securities issued by the states and the Continental Congress during the Revolution. Hamilton assumed that the purchasers of these new securities would be merchants, bankers, and others of substantial means. By acquiring these bonds they would help establish the creditworthiness of the new nation. In turn, that would, Hamilton hypothesized, attract capital from home and abroad which would jump-start the commercial and industrial development of what was, after all, an underdeveloped country. Hamilton was candid in his view that the new government ought to rely on men of social eminence and wealth. Their resources and public-mindedness made them uniquely prepared to lead the nation, or so he thought. They would constitute a vanguard whose financial wherewithal and disinterested commitment to the nation's welfare would help realize his vision of America's one day joining the ranks of the world's great powers. Hamilton himself came from inauspicious social beginnings, a West Indian of illegitimate birth. But he felt an affinity for New York's patricians, having married Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of General Philip Schuyler, war hero and patriarch of a venerable Knickerbocker clan, one of the Hudson River patroons. Hamilton trusted these circles implicitly, convinced of their rectitude and devotion to the country's future fame and glory. He was infatuated with caste and riches. The problem was that people like Duer turned out to be less public-spirited than Hamilton supposed. Duer's ties to the Schuyler clan afforded him access to Hamilton, who appointed him an assistant secretary of the treasury. Duer and his "6 percent club" of fellow speculators hoped for inside information on the government's pricing of its new securities in order to get a jump on the market. Hamilton, whose integrity was irreproachable, rebuffed Duer and warned him against gambling on the national debt. Duer, ignoring him, crashed and burned, as would many a Wall Street inside trader over the next two centuries. Much of Duer's estate was liquidated at sheriff's sale. Lady Kitty lived out her life in severely straitened circumstances, dwelling at the edge of fashionable society and compelled to take in genteel boarders. Moreover, as the struggle between the followers of Hamilton and Jefferson over the fate of the American Revolution grew ever nastier during the 1790s, Hamilton's rumored connection to the Duer plot kept resurfacing. Indeed, in 1797 Hamilton felt compelled to publicly acknowledge an adulterous affair with the wife of a Duer accomplice while passionately denying that he had ever conspired to enrich himself or others at the nation's expense. He denounced his "Jacobin" enemies — Jefferson and James Madison especially — accusing them of pandering to the prejudices of the mob and slandering his reputation in order to subvert his efforts to turn America into a great commercial republic. And he was not entirely wrong. Jefferson, Madison, and other leading Democratic-Republicans had known of the treasury secretary's sexual transgressions for years but never seriously suspected him of public corruption. However, they were vehemently opposed to Hamilton's financial and mercantile plans: to his proposals to create a national debt, establish a national bank, and subsidize manufacturing in the infant nation. Jefferson and his allies were not against trade. But they envisioned an agrarian republic, not a commercial one, made up of independent middling farmers trading with Europe only for those necessities not produced at home. In this way the new nation would be immunized against the infection of urban luxury and squalor, the war of class against class, and the moral rot that they felt characterized the Old World. Those mysterious arteries of finance, in particular, were the portals through which this political disease could most easily penetrate the healthy social organism. Nor was the danger strictly economic or moral. Hamilton's "Jacobin" enemies were not merely opposed to his plans; they saw them as part of a malevolent conspiracy to build up a "moneyed aristocracy" allied to the government which would inevitably undermine the democratic accomplishments of the Revolution. Duer was viewed as a felonious member of this anti-republican "aristocratic faction." In a word, Hamilton's alleged connection to his Wall Street confreres embodied, in miniature, the Tory Counterrevolution. As the Democratic-Republicans saw it, this was a plot to establish a financial aristocracy like the one ensconced in England. Looking across the ocean they could easily see how an incestuous relationship between the money men and the central government (in England, the monarchy; in America, presumably, the executive branch) threatened to make the government the exclusive preserve of the privileged. The great executive powers of France and Great Britain, so the anti-monarchists believed, floated on a vast sea of public debt. That funded debt had in turn engendered big banking institutions, well-oiled markets for money, new forms of investment, and a whole new class that traded in public securities. An alliance between this moneyed class and the Crown had overawed independent sources of political authority. According to Jefferson the real sin in Hamilton's design was that it would "prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy of which the English constitution is to be the model." This was perhaps the inevitable fate of the Old World, but it was precisely to avoid this fate in the New that people had fought and died. Wall Street thus found itself on the front lines of a war between aristocracy and democracy. With stakes that high, exploiting the enemy's sexual peccadilloes seemed an excusable political tactic. Partisans of Jefferson tirelessly spread the alarm. All through the 1790s, publicists, pamphleteers, and politicians warned about bankers and speculators fattening on the public credit. Even President Washington, who in the end favored Hamilton's strategy, worried, and he queried the treasury secretary: Would not the new capital ultimately pose a threat to republican government by "a corrupt squadron of paper dealers"? Hamilton's plan was a bonanza for such people, an unholy alliance of aristocracy and money. These speculators had bought up the securities issued by the states and the Continental Congress at rock-bottom prices from their original holders: desperate veterans, farmers, and other ordinary folk. Under Hamilton's scheme these rich bond buyers could now redeem their once worthless paper at its full face value. War was waged in churches and by sensationalist pamphleteers; in novels, poems, and newspaper doggerel; on the stage in theatrical satires; and in furious political jeremiads. In his satiric "Chronology of Facts" in the National Gazette, Philip Freneau pronounced 1791 the "Reign of the Speculators." He invented a mock plan for the creation of an American aristocracy whose meticulously graded and serried ranks mirrored rising levels of speculative practice from "the lower order of the Leech" to the middling "Their Huckstership" on to the sublime "Order of the Scrip." Jefferson inveighed against the sleaziness and injustice practiced by those who bought up worthless "continentals": "Speculators had made a trade of cozening them from their holders. ... Couriers and relay horses by land, and swift sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all directions," buying up paper securities so that "immense sums were thus filched from the poor and ignorant." Madison worried that "the stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the Government, at once its tool and its tyrant; bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamorous combinations." John Adams, who often allied himself with Hamilton and shared with the treasury secretary a conservative conviction about the inevitability of social class distinctions, nonetheless observed that "paper wealth has been the source of aristocracy in this country, as well as landed wealth, with a vengeance." When Duer's speculative bubble burst popular revulsion was palpable. Speculators became derisively known as "Hamilton's Rangers" and "Paper Hunters." Newssheets filled with talk of "scriptomania," "scripponomy," and "scriptophobia." A Philadelphian, writing to his local newspaper, anguished over his efforts to find safe passage through the factional battlefield. Although loath to join the local Jeffersonian Democratic Society, he still wanted to reassure his neighbors that he was certainly "no tory, no British agent, no speculator." Madison summed up the moral and political outrage: "There must be something wrong, radically and morally and politically wrong, in a system which transfers the reward from those who paid the most valuable of all considerations, to those who scarcely paid any consideration at all." There is a grand irony at the core of this political dramaturgy, an irony that would infuse American attitudes about Wall Street for generations to come. Both sides of this fateful confrontation were right, yet both chased after phantoms. Hamilton had envisioned enlightened men investing for the public good. Jefferson saw "sharpers" and "gambling scoundrels." Both turned out to be correct, as the sad career of William Duer, an enlightened scoundrel if ever there was one, exemplified. But both founding fathers were at the same time wrong as they prophesied a final conflict between enemies that were more imaginary than real. Hamilton was hardly a feudal aristocrat. Nor did he harbor serious thoughts of resurrecting a titled aristocracy in the New World. He did, however, entertain real anxieties about "mobocracy" and genuinely feared the leveling instincts of the "Jacobin" democracy, which seemed to him ready to countenance the wholesale repudiation of lawful contractual obligations. But the respectable freeholders of town and country were hardly revolutionary levelers. There were no bloodthirsty sansculottes preparing to erect guillotines; nor were farmers, however angry about government excise taxes and other matters — as Shays's Rebellion suggested — ready to burn down the manorial estates of their feudal overlords in some version of an American jacquerie. Moreover, alongside this fanciful specter Hamilton cultivated a parallel consoling delusion that men like Duer (if not Duer himself) were capable of a kind of disinterested behavior that is sometimes associated with an idealized version of the virtuous aristocrat. Funding the national debt would help nurture a national ruling class, a regime of "the wise, the rich, and the good." He was convinced that "those who are most commonly creditors of the nation, are generally speaking, enlightened men." He said of the rich and well born: "Their vices are probably more favorable to the prosperity of the State than those of the indigent and partake less of moral depravity." But it turned out, to Hamilton's chagrin, that modern commercial society — the kind of society he championed for America — bred men of commerce whose commitment to public service often took a distant back seat to the pursuit of the main chance. That was Hamilton's dilemma, one William Duer exemplified. So too, the Jeffersonian democrats attacked what they thought of as an aristocracy. But it turned out to be a fledgling plutocracy. True enough, this capitalist-minded untitled elite would now and again try to assume the trappings of the pedigreed aristocracy, if only to beef up its presumptive right to rule and its own social self-confidence. In New York, the Federalist followers of Hamilton formed the Knights of the Dagger to assault Democratic-Republicans, dispersing their public rallies and tearing down their Liberty Poles. William Duer's son was one such Knight. Dressing like aristocrats, decorating their homes, horses, and carriages with heraldic crests, cultivating the accents of the British upper class, hosting fancy-dress balls and fetes, and otherwise aping the customs and mores of European gentility were very much in vogue among the Federalists of Hamilton's day, as they would be again, more emphatically, during the Gilded Age at the turn of the twentieth century. John Pintard, one of Duer's co-conspirators who only escaped debtors' prison by fleeing New York, was at the same time a man of distinctive cultural refinement, a founder of the New-York Historical Society, an author of works on medicine and topography, and an expert on Indian cultures. (He later returned to New York and resumed a lucrative career on the Street.) Without question many a Federalist openly admired the English constitution, especially the way it institutionalized social hierarchy. Federalists scarcely concealed their hopes — their expectations, actually — that a similarly deferential political order would install itself in America and that they would preside over it. Secretary of State John Jay, Hamilton's good friend and political ally, candidly asserted that "those who own the country ought to govern it." In the end, however, William Duer's insatiable acquisitiveness gave the game away. He and his cohorts viewed the new nation as an incomparable opportunity to indulge in the pursuit of happiness. For them, as for so many of their fellow citizens, this meant the pursuit of property. But it was precisely that fellowship of desire uniting the aristocrat with the commoner that comprised the Jeffersonian side of the dilemma. Smallholding farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers, the living body of the Jeffersonian anti-aristocratic persuasion, were themselves wholly invested in the same quest for propertied independence, albeit on a more modest scale. Time and again in the years that followed, struggling farmers, anti-monopoly small businessmen, upstart entrepreneurs in search of start-up capital, railroad workers, coal miners, artisans, and laborers suffering under industrial tyranny would single out Wall Street as their archenemy. Just as commonly, however, they would depict those rapacious financiers as if they were not so much a capitalist plutocracy as a blue-blooded aristocracy, an alien species, running against the American grain. (Continues...) Excerpted from Wall Street by Steve Fraser Copyright 2008 by Steve Fraser. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Home Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

This has all just made me have a headache

Hardcorebrat62 — Sun, 25 May 2008 04:16:06 GMT

Im glad this statement by Robert Kennedy Jr was made today but damn if it still isnt a huge shame. This election process should have been full of thoughtful positives and mind bogleling insights. Huge gains forward. A new day. Change. Experience. After 8 painful years....finally a glimpse of intelligence. Instead its been a school yard brawl. We missed the opportunity to do something profound and exemplary. Oddly enough we had it in our power to set the examples we had hoped our candidates would and yet we chose pettiness. I sure hope they both can step back, examine who they are, what they hope to be and what this country really really needs and then make the right choices. I hope they can BOTH break down their walls, put down their guns, open up their minds and perhaps embrace what they both share so as to create the tool towards real change in this once great land. Stop bickering and looking for fights. We are all human and we know you are both tired and dazed and off path. Lets start over before its too late...ok? RFK Jr. Says No One Should Be Offended May 23, 2008 10:23 PM This evening Robert Kennedy Jr., who has endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., cautioned folks not to be offended at Clinton's mention of his father's assassination when discussing why she was staying in the race and how there was precedent for the primaries lasting until June. In a statement, Kennedy Jr. said: "It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June. I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband's 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June. I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense."

Just a thought..

Hardcorebrat62 — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:42:36 GMT

I was reading the news and catching up on the world when all of the sudden it hit me. With all the clashes, discordance, strife, war, schisms, stupidity and belligerence that the humans of this ball create why, why, why do we even bother to try and "save the planet". Which is disingenuous. Lets face it, we are not trying to save the planet. In fact the planet will do well, better even, in fact splendid, without us. We are trying to save our own asses. Lets stop bullshitting! So we humans cant seem to ever figure out how to just let bygones be bygones, we cant share, we all want it all, we are mostly egocentric jackasses with our own itinerary. We are "saving" all of this for what? One would think that at a time when the end could possibly be in site we could learn to get along better. Ok, maybe not my site but certainly my great grandkids...if there are any. I surely advised my daughter to make breeding a serious decision. I do my part daily and then some to be kind to the planet but damn it I have much trouble being kind to the ever increasingly stupid residents of this place. I breathe in, sigh...chuckle to myself and roll my eyes. Humans, the worst species this planet has ever endured. Lets save the planet so we can kill each other some other way. Brilliant.

Only in America

Hardcorebrat62 — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:56:44 GMT

So I have been paying $25 a month for dental insurance on top of the $360 a month for medical. It came packaged together when I joined Kaiser. Three years later (that would be an investment of around $900 by now just in dental coverage) I come to find out that what I have is an "assistance" package and not really a good dental insurance. In fact, recently I have had to pay for everything but $50 of approximately $800 so far. Ive paid $750 of the $800. I need a LOT more done which could end up being in the range of $10,000. I called Delta Dental and was told they don't have better coverage for a self employed individual. I called Kaiser and they only offered to let me cancel the coverage, in fact it seemed like she wanted me to cancel it. So I have now WASTED $900 that I sure as hell could have used to cover the care I now need but instead I GAVE IT AWAY to Kaiser and Delta Dental. Let me also mention that when I went to Kaiser recently to see a Podiatrist for foot pain (I'm a hairdresser) I was told that Kaiser could do nothing for me and that I would need to see a private Podiatrist to get the help I needed. That would of course involve me paying that private doctors private fees, never mind the fact that I thought I was going to 'THRIVE' with my Kaiser coverage. I had to go it alone and Derek bought me a over the counter orthodic which thankfully worked well. The fact remained though that I was paying almost $400 a MONTH for dental and medical coverage out of my own pocket and I received NOTHING in return. Now I must consider traveling to South America to receive affordable dental care. As an American I can not adequately take care of myself with the services offered in this country. In this country I can work hard, buy my own insurance and then find out that I really don't have any insurance at all. Thieves everywhere. Free country...my ass. I sure hope universal health coverage includes dental. Maybe I will have to wait a few years. I hope my teeth can wait too. Anyone want to donate ten thousand dollars to a good cause? My smile? Sigh.

Life

Hardcorebrat62 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:36:38 GMT

D sleeps after a long day and a very wierdly interesting weekend. Ive overdosed on KQED again and feel the sky is falling but Natalie was here and although she didnt call when she got home...again...I always love a visit and she reminds me why I care so much and that gives my anxiety purpose. I remind myself of what is good, right now and breathe deeply, trying not to cry over my fear of what a Natalie at my age will contend with. I read there will be no more bananas in ten years and it made me weep. I read that in twenty-seven years there could be no more bee's and therefore no more fruits and vegetables. The frogs are dying as well...and the bats...and wheat...Im breathing and reminding, I swear. I remind myself of all I have. I am happier than ever and I have the most amazing best friend in the world who makes me crazy at times but always fills me with...gosh, really he fills me with life as fuckin dorky and care bears dumb as that sounds. I must fucking rule, thats all I know. Still, the bee's and Ive never wanted banana bread more.

Decision 08...WOW!!!

Hardcorebrat62 — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 07:49:56 GMT

Writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the founding editors of Ms. magazine and a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, supports Hillary Clinton. Her daughter Abigail, who supports Barack Obama, is an author and former producer for Mike Wallace at "60 Minutes." Watch their take on the role of feminists in the context of Hillary Clinton's candidacy. One Family's Split Decision ~~ http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/408/

Its Jacks World

Hardcorebrat62 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:51:33 GMT

I just finished reading the new interview in Mens Journal with Jack Nicholson. Wow! I love what he learned from his girlfriends and what he says about marriage. I still will though(get married)...for the right one...yeah thats right (I have to wait till the decades over for some reason I laugh at). I couldnt find the interview online but I guess it will be here http://www.mensjournal.com/ after January is over. There is a reason its Jacks world ...indeed. http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2007/12/09/2007-12-09_jack_nicholson_cant_help_being_a_dog.html

My furry doppelgänger.

Hardcorebrat62 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:35:29 GMT

We are both extreme sensualists. We both love to be rubbed the right way. We both love a long nap. We both enjoy stretching. We both love adoration. We both love warm things. Most of all we both love the same man with all of our heart and soul and mind and body and best of all we don't hate each other for it ;) If I have to share my pedestal around here I am glad it is her. My sweet lil princess furry, second daughter, cuddle buddy, my baby kitty Calliope.

Spending MY $800

Hardcorebrat62 — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:14:46 GMT

Current mood: disgusted If the bat shit crazy Bush administration does give us each $800 (well not all of us. Do those off grid and unemployed get anything?) Id like to send mine to a soldier in Iraq. Yeah that would pump up the economy for a few seconds there too. Good grief. Smoke and mirrors anyone? Lame. The empire is falling, thats hella clear. Currently listening : Recipe for Hate By Bad Religion

Thoughts on happiness

Hardcorebrat62 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:54:34 GMT

Thoughts on happiness Happiness must make us weird. People seem to either love it when they see it or they squirm in its presence. Ive had a lot of this lately. Most are thrilled for me and seem to be feeling the 'infection' of it. Bliss is like that. Yet a few obviously are..I'm not sure what it is really, hmmmm....pissed, dismayed, jealous and some I am sure, just cautious for me. Don't worry, this is as real as it gets. My heart feels famous I am so violently happy. Yeah, because I love him. I think to myself 'wow, I thought at this age I would be winding down, settling but no...I'm just getting really started.' Late bloomer? No dears, it takes a while to finesse some things, yu know. I'm like a damn fine wine. A ripe cheese maybe? Oh I slay myself. My finest gift may not only to be able to laugh so heartily (and trust me a LOT of folks find that charming about me) but most importantly, hell..life savingly..I laugh at myself the most. Life really is funny. I am living in the right now, now. Reveling in the midst of it. Not looking back (oh I recall and trust me I made a map) and a little dreaming, mixed nicely with a 45 year old wisdom, a lot of real planning and a positive attitude...what a recipe. Yet the right fuckin now is whats got me rapt. It was always right in front of me wasn't it? Yeah it was but I was blind until my miracle opened my eyes. Ok, you can puke now. Bitches, he loves me flaws and all, ha maybe even more because of my flaws.Whatever. I know this to be true and so absolute...I am truly happy. So much so its weird. I'm finally proud to be a huge weirdo. Miracles happen, I fuckin swear it.

Goodbyes aren't ever easy but sometimes they are the best thing to do

Hardcorebrat62 — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:16:09 GMT

It could be seen as inappropriate to post something this personal here but I decided to do it or a few reasons and I spent days thinking it over. I decided it was the best thing to do because it gives it the permanence I want it to have and the closure to a long sorrowful tale I began a few years back. I've traveled far too many long and winding roads to get here but I am thrilled to say I have arrived at a destination I could have only ever dreamed of. I am happy, at peace (as much as real life can provide..lol) and very much in love with my best friend and the person I wish to spend every day of the rest of my life with. I'm lucky to know he feels the same. It is however time to say goodbye to the past. So here it goes. Dear Jeff, In some ways it felt good to know you wanted to be friendly and make contact recently. In other ways it felt like it had begun to do a bout a year ago. Needy and hoping I would...fuck, I cant imagine what you think I could do, really. Your recent contact was in no way warranted and although friendly and lacking (thankfully as it was surprisingly) of crudeness it was odd. I am sorry that it seems like things are hard for you right now. I get the sense that you are alone and I know from experience how afraid that makes you feel. Don't deny it. It is part of what has fueled your never ending quest for any form of attention even though far too often it was from those that were beneath you in all ways. You are desperate for love and validation yet unable to return that in kind. I know too well and I paid a price too high but finally I am able to look back, see it as a grand if hard won lesson and not only move on but move forward with a fury. Jeff, I am finally happy. A happiness I never even thought I was able to find in the real world. The stuff dreams are made of. Fantasy made real right here in my life. I know the world thinks it "weak" of one to find power and strength and a true sense of happiness in another but I now see that as total fucking bullshit. If it were not then why do so many seek so hard and far and long to find any form of love? If it is weakness then I shall go happily weak forever more. I'm NOT sorry my feminist sisters. I love an amazing man and he loves me and THAT is a power I have always wanted and needed. It redeems me and fortifies me. It gives me purpose and drive. It makes all the other things I am working for and on have a bigger purpose. I love Derek, he loves me and together we have found a truly amazing partnership. I tried for far too long to make you feel your power but for so many reasons that was not meant to be. I did see a great man in that lost little boy that you hang on to far too much. At the time I did love you in a way that felt like the universe had exploded. I was in love with the Jeff that you refuse to let be. I don't even bother trying to understand that anymore. Its your battle not mine...I wish I had understood that a long time ago. It would have save me a lot of sadness and pain. I do and will hang on to the fantastic memories we made but I am afraid to say that the anger and hurt I endured (and yes foolishly it was my fault to endure it so long but please see where you created that feeling in me that there was somehow a "chance" we could be what we were when we were at our best together, which was powerful but sadly not as often found as the rest) is what is embedded in my soul. I'm lucky though, I have been able to change it into something worthwhile and productive. The lessons I learned in loving you have made me able to be the person I am now who is able and deserving to see the gift of love I have in Derek. I am more patient because of you...who'd a thunk it? I am more able to know my boundaries because of you. I am able to make my case more succinctly now. I have learned to do something amazing....to bend to become more strong. I didn't do that with you and we all know how I broke. I am more open and unafraid to speak from my heart and my mind instead of just my gut reaction, yeah that can be a real bitch, I know. I know now fully where my lines are drawn, what I will and will not deal with, and I make damned sure that it is not only understood but respected. I surprise myself even more then I surprise Derek with that. Interestingly enough I feel like I am at the same time better able to let go of things now. Maybe that push me pull me contest we played taught me this. I now know better how to encourage and critique in a productive way. I now know how to accept encouragement and criticism in a healthy and productive way. Not to say I cant still be a five star biotch, don't worry...I am still Maria. I want to tell you that I loved you with all my heart. In many ways you will always hold a place in my heart but now its time to move on. I know you didn't mean to hurt me but the reality is that you did. Worse than any other person in my entire life. I have forgiven you yet now I think it best for both of us to let go, move on and live. I'm sorry to say I find no value in continuing communication with you. I am happy now and I want and need the past to be just that, the past. I hope that you will find everything you are seeking. I hope you will someday love yourself as much as I did love you. I hope you achieve all of your dreams and find love and happiness with someone who truly is your best friend. Kinda like we were but without the drinking and screaming and insanity and lying and cheating and oh ok never mind...LOL! Seriously though I hope you do find someone like me again, someone who loves you warts and all. Someone who wants you to do your best. Someone who thinks you're the funniest, smartest, most incredible man around. Now that you are on a healthy road with sobriety and hopefully spending time understanding the why of you this should happen in time. I will always believe in you, please try it for yourself. It took me a long time to understand that not only could I not fix you but I wasn't enough inspiration to help you fix yourself. Please consider why I wanted to do that so badly. I saw all of the best of you, deeply and profoundly and it amazed me and I wanted so much to be a part of that. I know what you are capable of. Please remind yourself of that daily. Jeff, I am never going to communicate with you again. Yes, we did get pounded by the weather today and the reason I don't respond to your text messages is this....I am not merely someone to turn to when you are lonely and desperate for any kind of interaction. I am a woman who believed in you, loved you with all her heart and soul, tried her best albeit indeed I see that was lacking and in the end never was going to be enough to help you. I am your past now. Make it a lesson and learn. Move on and forward with a vengeance. Be happy ok Smirky? Be a HAPPY!!!!!. I don't go around loving just anyone so take that as a gift. I wish you ALL the best in life. I will love you forever but this is goodbye forever. I know you wish me the same, thanks. I will always smile when I think of you. Good-bye.

Is it some kind of new breeding experiment???

Hardcorebrat62 — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 04:29:42 GMT

Is it some kind of new breeding experiment??? Current mood: exanimate I notice too many people going so wacky far to the right and others going way fucking insane to the left these days. They go so far around the spectrum of ideas that they end up not only touching but now intermingling and dare I suggest it...breeding? Ok, maybe its the Libra in me that insists on balance...gag, choke, puke. Is it hard to imagine that a truth and a peaceful one at that, finds it self in a middle ground of compromise? No one need give in just find out where you find common ground and embrace that fully BEFORE dissecting with warped lenses what you don't share. If you open your mind you can easily see how much we all share in common and that should bind us. People, we may not have a lot of time left, right? Disgrace to waste our chances at world peace and freedom for everyone due to selfishness and ignorance....its not hard if you try to give peace a chance. Happy New Year to ALL. Love, Maria Currently listening : Imagine By John Lennon

Damn dem christians are hot

Hardcorebrat62 — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:36:09 GMT

This was on an ad here on Tribe. Im sorry, its just too funny. Hubba bubba Jesus lova' Yikes.

Gosh, Santa Sucks

Hardcorebrat62 — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:23:12 GMT

I kinda get the concept of Santa Clause. Basically the whole god will reward you in heaven in the after life if you are really good and obedient thing. But eventually folks got a little testy with havin to wait that long so they decided to make a once a year thing where IF you were good and obedient you would get gifts from a crazy guy who lived up in a fucking ridiculously cold area of the planet and made a bunch of strange midgets make toys for him to deliver to kids he had been spying on all year and the best part was he would do it in only one night while flying around in the sky in a sleigh pulled by what???? Reindeer?? Sure Ill buy that. But don't forget the holiday this fabulous whack job comes around for is of course the birth of gods son. Oy! I guess people tried to push for more and wound up with Easter too. Candy and eggs (nice combo by the way, yuck). To hell with waiting until after I am dead I want prizes for being good now or all bets are off!!! And so it went..... But what about all the kids that went with out year after year? Some kept believing and trying harder to be good. Some made it I suppose, to Santa Quality goodness. Others must have become bitter when seeing good over looked or even demeaned. Sadly, many must have just been filled with resentment and never could see the bigger picture. Gee, thanks SC. Maybe Virginia O'Hanlon was hoping it was true he wasn't real...dummy. Maybe she was trying to rectify why she kept getting nothing every year. Uh it looks as if she may have been Irish and well...yu know in 1897 times was tight fer them folks. Francis Pharcellus Church never had kids... Ironic??? I cant help but wonder about all of the kids that never got what they really wanted. Yeah, the boy who wanted dolls and the girl who wanted trucks. The kid who wanted a paint set but got a doctor kit instead. Their destinies decided by good ole Santa? What about when we all find out the truth? That our own parents had lied to us..while telling us to never lie. Its amazing any of us made it out of childhood with our heads screwed on at all. I could never figure out how ANY one could eat that many damned cookies in one night...well until I met Derek...LOL. Oh I knew it was a big fat stinky weird lie but I wasn't stupid and I was greedy and needy so I played along for a good long time. Gimme, gimme gimme! Oh, yeah, I over indulged Natalie but shockingly divulged the truth when she was about 5. I was not in a good mood, cleaning house and throwing out a beat up desk she had. She cried out "No, Santa gave me that" and I turned around and said..."there isn't any Santa and there isn't an Easter Bunny and there isn't a damned Tooth Fairy either, I AM SANTA AND THE EASTER BUNNY AND THE TOOTH FAIRY!! For one split second the look on her face was that of "Holy shit thats hella cool" until it sunk in a bit and her head went bent down. I remedied my harshness by informing her (um and a friend of hers whom I watched frequently, sorry Jessica Caponio, I didn't mean to freak you out) that even though no, Santa and the Bunny and the Fairy were not real we could still pretend. Like a fairy tale like sleeping beauty or snow white and the little mermaid...and oh gee a whole bunch of other fairy tales about how men come to save us and give us gifts...what the hell? Prince on a white horse...Ill put my money on Santa first. Ah, so the streets are teeming with idiot drivers going to the mall and people are ruder then ever this time of year but I guess in some ways its still a rare time of year when we at least try, even if it does more often feel forced, to feel joy and peace and good will towards men. Unless they take your parking space of course. Happy Hella Dazed everyone. Remember, there isn't a Santa Clause so just be naughty...but in a nice way, ok ;) Peace on Earth..and I mean that!!!!! Maria Look at this...its insane cold at the North Pole...I mean, why would ANY one live there year round? http://www.weather.com/outlook/homeandgarden/holidays/northpole/

Bravo and me too!!

Hardcorebrat62 — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:21:49 GMT

Click here to return to the browser-optimized version of this page. This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071210/hedges Hands Off Iran by CHRIS HEDGES [from the December 10, 2007 issue] I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But an attack on Iran--which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election--will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions. This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'état that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic. Let us hope sanity prevails. But sanity is a rare commodity in a White House that has twisted Trotsky's concept of permanent revolution into a policy of permanent war with nefarious aims--to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to strip citizens of their constitutional rights. A war with Iran is doomed. It will be no more successful than the Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon in 2006, which failed to break Hezbollah and united most Lebanese behind that militant group. The Israeli bombing did not pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 65 million people whose land mass is three times the size of France? Once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters and cruise missiles on Iran, this is the choice that must be faced: either send US forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war, or walk away in humiliation. But more ominous, an attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with possible Silkworm missile attacks by Iran against oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send the price of oil soaring to somewhere around $200 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a global depression. The Middle East has two-thirds of the world's proven petroleum reserves and nearly half its natural gas. A disruption in the supply will be felt immediately. This attack will be interpreted by many Shiites in the Middle East as a religious war. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia (heavily concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province), the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey could turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We could see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and widespread sabotage of oil production in the Persian Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for US troops. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has so far not joined the insurgency, has strong ties to Iran. It could begin full-scale guerrilla resistance, possibly uniting for the first time with Sunnis against the occupation. Iran, in retaliation, will fire its missiles, some with a range of 1,100 miles, at US installations, including Baghdad's Green Zone. Expect substantial casualties, especially with Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies calling in precise coordinates. Iranian missiles could be launched at Israel. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, will become treacherous, perhaps unnavigable. Chinese-supplied antiship missiles, mines and coastal artillery, along with speedboats packed with explosives and suicide bombers, will target US shipping, along with Saudi oil production and oil export centers. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, closely allied with Iran, may in solidarity fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already struck by missiles from Tehran, could then carry out retaliatory raids against both Lebanon and Iran. Pakistan, with its huge Shiite minority, will become even more unstable. Unrest could result in the overthrow of the already weakened Pervez Musharraf and usher Islamic radicals into power. Pakistan, rather than Iran, would then become the first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon. The neat little war with Iran, which many Democrats do not oppose, has the potential to ignite an inferno. George W. Bush has shredded, violated or absented America from its obligations under international law. He has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, tried to kill the International Criminal Court, walked out on negotiations on chemical and biological weapons and defied the Geneva Conventions and human rights law in the treatment of detainees. Most egregious, he launched an illegal war in Iraq based on fabricated evidence we now know had been discredited even before it was made public. He seeks to do the same in Iran. This President is guilty, in short, of what in legal circles is known as the "crime of aggression." And if we as citizens do not hold him accountable for this crime, if we do not actively defy this government, we will be complicit in the codification of a new world order, one that will have terrifying consequences. For a world without treaties, statutes and laws is a world where any nation, from a rogue nuclear state to a great imperial power, will be able to invoke its domestic laws to annul its obligations to others. This new order will undo five decades of international cooperation--largely put in place by the United States--and thrust us into a Hobbesian nightmare. We must as citizens make sacrifices to defend a world where diplomacy, broad cooperation and the law are respected. If we allow these international legal systems to unravel, we will destroy the possibility of cooperation between nation-states, including our closest allies. The strongest institutional barrier standing between us and a war with Iran is being mounted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Adm. William Fallon, head of the Central Command; and Gen. George Casey, the Army's new chief of staff. These three men have informed Bush and Congress that the military is too depleted to take on another conflict and may not be able to contain or cope effectively with a regional conflagration resulting from strikes on Iran. This line of defense, however, is tenuous. Not only can Gates, Fallon and Casey easily be replaced but a provocation by Iran could be used by war propagandists here to stoke a public clamor for revenge. A country that exists in a state of permanent war cannot exist as a democracy. Our long row of candles is being snuffed out. We may soon be in darkness. Any resistance, however symbolic, is essential. There are ways to resist without being jailed. If you owe money on your federal tax return, refuse to pay some or all of it, should Bush attack Iran. If you have a telephone, do not pay the 3 percent excise tax. If you do not owe federal taxes, reduce what is withheld by claiming at least one additional allowance on your W-4 form--and write to the IRS to explain the reasons for your protest. Many of the details and their legal ramifications are available on the War Resisters League's website (www.warresisters.org/wtr.htm). I will put the taxes I owe in an escrow account. I will go to court to challenge the legality of the war. Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression. Maybe not. I do not know. But I do know this: I have friends in Tehran, Gaza, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. They will endure far greater suffering and deprivation. I want to be able, once the slaughter is over, to at least earn the right to ask for their forgiveness.

Life is weird....

Hardcorebrat62 — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:55:58 GMT

ups, downs and shaken all up. It occurs to me while watching Maynard lounging and considering the irony of him. He was a final stepping stone to a prize. Like the tests in Willy Wonka. I start with Natalie..beautiful, sweet, and my only child...so, yeah she was an absolute cunt when she was a teenager and it really irked me who she reminded me of. Yet I love her unconditionally. Really, it feels like the blood that coarses through me. I couldn't live without her. Anyone else I love anywhere near as much had won a rare and special place. Wow, they convinced me to allow to give them some the heart that should go to Natalie. Then Jeff. Wacky and evil but cute and funny. I survived that...wow I really did, didnt I? Thanks all for being so patient and concerned. What a blithering fool. I have no idea who that person was, I swear on my daughters life. Then on to Maynard. Wacky and evil but cute and funny...but no sex. I am perhaps not such a bitch after all...hmmmmm. I traveled many roads with these creatures that not only are a part of my heart but in so many ways, they are a part of who I am. Ah but then falter, I had done not too long ago. My savior was Brandy from Free Ass and I think she was found by my Mike, aka DBF, I love you and thank you, thank you, thank you! And now I am with Derek. I can happily report that the lessons learned with Natalie, Jeff and Maynard have formed me to be holder of the elusive and I always figured pure bullshit fantasy idea of nirvana, soul mate, perfection I learned from books and movies. Its true, its true, its true. It really can happen. My prize for loving and learning and growing. It was a rocky road but the cloud ride is worth it. Its been a year now as official and I love him more and more every moment. We may kill each other with love...what a way to go. Life is weird and really quite grand.

Warming to new ideas

Hardcorebrat62 — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:56:52 GMT

I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why people get so damned angry at the concept that humans don’t know everything and that quite possibly we are not only the most powerful and intelligent species on the planet let alone the universe but perhaps indeed we are dismal failures in almost all areas save for perhaps being astounding at being perverse. I’ve expanded my ideas and position on global warming and ecology to include these ideas. Perhaps we messed up too much and cant clean it up and cant reverse the damage (yet I can tell that far too many people arrogantly believe we can…um we cant even figure out how to get along let alone how to clean up hundred of years of damage to an entire planet…. people please). Perhaps although YES we did enhance and trigger and speed up most of the things changing in our world in this regard but also there is this thing called evolution and as hard as this bitter pill might be to swallow its quite possible we just aren’t meant or ha ha ha we lost the ability to be part of the next step in the evolutionary process. Adapt or die? Maybe. Change what needs to be changed because it’s the right and sensible thing to do. Clean up the messes we made as best we can and work hard at preventing more yet we MUST now also look at what happens next in the event that we can not fix this. I use this analogy. Ever dropped a glass of wine on a floor? It’s taken mere seconds to make a mess yet can take quite a few minutes to clean it up. You might wish to argue ‘well it can take days to mess up my bedroom but only an hour to clean it up.’ NO. It took NO TIME to mess up because you did it totally unconsciously (Uh, I don’t consciously mess my bedroom up and I guess there are indeed people who do, like Keith Moon, but usually we don’t do it on purpose and of course some people NEVER make messes but really now who likes those kinds of people anyway) and so therefore it took no time yet now takes an hour or more. Really, it obviously depends on how messy you are but if we are gonna use this as an example of mankind and the planet Id have to say that the bedroom was pretty much a damned disaster. So the science seems to see us needing about 50 to 100 years to clean up this problem effectively to save the world (Hmmmmm from what I keep reading the world will survive its just us humans and a few other creatures that cant adapt well who might not make it but the planet on the whole will indeed survive and who knows maybe do damned well with out us…Im just sayin). Im pretty sure its gonna take a lot longer to make any serious enough changes to completely reverse the damage we’ve caused let alone to slow down what might just be inevitable after all. In a nutshell ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and if you don’t figure out how to adapt to the changes you’re not gonna feel fine’. Isn’t this all Darwinian anyway? It’s surely human to not want to address our inherent weaknesses and faults let alone our monumental ones. It’s surely human to not enjoy the prospect of the human species being defunct. It’s surely human to get so tangled up in one idea and not allow other ways of thinking so as to just … maybe who knows… we could find some real concrete answers about how to have some form of humanity be part of the future of this planet. Yes, I am hoping of course that my progeny will remain but nevertheless maybe its not heresy to believe that we cant just clean up the planet and it will all be fine. Oh wait there is tons of scientific evidence too support that actually we can not do so. So with that in mind…what’s next? To be so arrogant as to believe we can ‘save’ the planet will certainly deliver us to failure. We could possibly maintain our presence here IF we acclimate and adapt by searching for the means and ways to do just that. That takes time and money and great minds. Most of the best minds and surely plenty of the resources are currently being totally devoted to saving concepts and not to adaptation concepts. We need a balance if we are to hope that humankind will still being here to reap some more mayhem on good old mother earth in the future. Its is scary to think about but not as frightening as our most likely painful demise if we decide to not take ALL the possibilities into account and make changes and prepare for what comes next. I’m all for being green but we need to look at all the grey areas too or we could end up in the red and that would make us blue. Yeah, that’s a stretch but it was fun tryin. ;) Open minds saves lives…maybe. Have a nice day, seriously. Maria

READ THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hardcorebrat62 — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 04:53:52 GMT

Truthdig Mission … Evolving http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070913_mission_evolving/ Posted on Sep 13, 2007 By Peter Scheer President Bush capped off his administration’s weeklong campaign to convince America that the “surge” is working with a televised address on Thursday. Nestled among assorted pseudo-announcements and stale slogans was a telling pitch from a president who has repeatedly revised his motive for war: “Our mission in Iraq will evolve.” The surreal timeline of the Iraq war is littered with moments like these—too many about-faces and nonsensical blunders to keep a firm grip on reason. Bush invaded a country to rid it of imaginary weapons of mass destruction. When he didn’t find any, he declared victory and changed the mission to democracy building. When that strategy led to a theocratic government unresponsive to sectarian bloodletting, the mission became about stability. And now, the one goal supporters of the war seem determined to realize is to achieve some vague, if delusory, sense of victory. So, the president tells us, as we attempt to follow his circuitous logic, that the mission is evolving, as though it were some determined organism destined to adapt to adversity and thrive. “General Petraeus also recommends that in December, we begin transitioning to the next phase of our strategy in Iraq. As terrorists are defeated, civil society takes root, and the Iraqis assume more control over their own security, our mission in Iraq will evolve,” Bush proclaimed from his Oval Office desk on Thursday. “Over time, our troops will shift from leading operations, to partnering with Iraqi forces, and eventually to overwatching those forces. As this transition in our mission takes place, our troops will focus on a more limited set of tasks, including counterterrorism operations and training, equipping and supporting Iraqi forces.” Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Terrorists defeated, civil society taking root—it’s almost enough to make us forget we’ve heard it all before. That’s just the problem with propaganda in the Information Age—fact travels as fast as fiction. Take, for instance, the president’s and Gen. Petraeus’ celebration of Anbar province, which they would have us believe is Iraq’s answer to Beverly Hills, thanks to the surge. The administration’s insistence aside, only 38 percent of Anbar residents rate security positively, and one of America’s much publicized allies in the region, Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was just assassinated. How many soldiers had to die to achieve such stunning success? The mission is “evolving” because it is the best way to conceal that there is no longer a coherent mission, if there ever was one. Just ask the surviving members of a brave group of active-duty soldiers who offered their take on the war in a New York Times article they wrote shortly before one of them was critically injured and two others were killed. Here are just a few insightful excerpts from their seminal essay: “Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal.” “In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear.” “Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages.” Well said. Now if only we could get that on television. President Bush’s prepared address: Good evening. In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment. In Iraq, an ally of the United States is fighting for its survival. Terrorists and extremists who are at war with us around the world are seeking to topple Iraq’s government, dominate the region, and attack us here at home. If Iraq’s young democracy can turn back these enemies, it will mean a more hopeful Middle East and a more secure America. This ally has placed its trust in the United States. And tonight, our moral and strategic imperatives are one: We must help Iraq defeat those who threaten its future and also threaten ours. Eight months ago, we adopted a new strategy to meet that objective, including a surge in U.S. forces that reached full strength in June. This week, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before Congress about how that strategy is progressing. In their testimony, these men made clear that our challenge in Iraq is formidable. Yet they concluded that conditions in Iraq are improving, that we are seizing the initiative from the enemy, and that the troop surge is working. Read more Click here to read more about Army Sgt. Omar Mora in the Houston Chronicle. President Bush White House photo / Eric Draper A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman. Copyright © 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Web site development by Hop Studios | Hosted by NEXCESS.NET

You Can't Even Remember What I'm Trying to Forget

Hardcorebrat62 — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 02:45:35 GMT

The Threepenny Review http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/brock_w05.html Winter 2005 You Can't Even Remember What I'm Trying to Forget Rebecca Brock "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." — Milan Kundera People say to me, "You're a flight attendant? I don't know how you do it." "I was afraid to fly before, but now," they say. Usually I don't answer. Sometimes I tell them, "Once I'm on the plane, I'm okay." But driving to the airport, parking my car, riding the shuttle to the terminal, waiting for the time to walk down through the crowd of people and then waiting for security, wondering what they will take away from me this week that they let go last week-all of that, and the whole day before of packing, the night of not sleeping, that's when I could say to them, "I don't know how I do it either." As my plane—a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737—lifted up out of Man-chester, New Hampshire, on September 11th, 2001, the first plane slammed into the first tower. By the time we were in the sky space above New York, the second attack had already happened. The pilot called us on the interphone. "One at a time. Now," he said. When I went into the cockpit, the captain's first words were, "This is no bullshit. Two planes just flew into the World Trade Center. We're flying right over it." "Planes?" "One's a 737, may have been one of ours. Nothing for sure." "Passenger planes?" "This is an attack," the captain says. "Don't tell the passengers. We don't know who is on this plane but everyone is a suspect. Be careful." I left the cockpit and went to the back of the plane. I stopped to look out the small round window, aircraft right, back galley door. I moved the red door strap that is used to alert provisioners and others that the door is armed, the emergency slide is set to blow. I could have drawn a line, a straight line, from the towers to my chest. I stared transfixed at the picture now common: the building gashed in shreds and smoke in two lines like weary fingers winding down the coastline. In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien often writes about Vietnam War vets who can't let go—including the book's narrator. "I should forget it," this persona writes, "but the thing about remembering is that you don't forget." For O'Brien's narrator, "telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat. Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exactly what had happened to me." This compulsion to explain is shared by most witnesses and survivors found in literature. Some, such as the grief-stricken old cabby in Chekhov's short story "Heartache," are compelled to speak but unable to find a willing ear. Iona wants nothing more than to tell the story of his son's death, yet he is denied this mercy three different times until, overcome by the "shining eyes" of his mare, he ends up telling his horse everything. Iona's grief is described as a grief that "would flood the whole world," yet the world isn't listening. The world is asking Iona to pay attention to the road, to drive faster, to let it get some sleep. In Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno," Cereno is one of six Spanish sailors to survive the murderous uprising of his ship's living cargo of slaves. Cereno's eventual rescuer is confused at the newly freed man's dark mood, his inability to rejoice at his return to civilization. "You are saved," he says, "what has cast such shadow upon you?" He admonishes Cereno to look at the sky and see that the sun, even the sea, has "forgotten it all." "Because they have no memory," Cereno says in response, "...because they are not human." Through his own enslavement, Benito understands the desperation of the slaves and recognizes what happens within the soul of the victim. Unlike his contemporaries, Benito tangibly grasps the full horror. Benito Cereno is like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner come back from the deep depths of human suffering and frailty—wrecked, stunned, and beholden as both witness and victim. But whereas the Ancient Mariner waylays wedding guests with his dark tale, Benito Cereno retreats into a monastery and dies a scant three months after his rescue. For him, there is no return. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is perhaps the most widely recognized story of return and the compulsion to speak about it. In this tale, the Ancient Mariner carelessly shoots an albatross that has brought his ship much luck. The wind and the water cease to move, and the boat is stuck "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." The bird is hung around the Mariner's neck, and every last member of his crew falls dead "with heavy thump." The Mariner is left alive but loses even his ability to pray. Spirits reinhabit the bodies of his crew long enough to guide the ship back home, where the Mariner is "forced" to begin his tale. This telling, the Mariner says, "left me free," but he is compelled, again and again, to speak of his experience: Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns. "The bright-eyed Mariner" seems almost immortal as he tells the wedding guest his tale of death and life, complete with prayers and praises "for the dear God who loveth us." Does this voice, this compulsion to tell the "ghastly tale," allow the Mariner his life? If Benito Cereno suffered the same compulsion—to tell the tale until he told it right, in all its facets, with all its thick webbing of emotion and paradox —would this give him enough to live on, in his return? How much of our return depends on the availability of our own voice? The ability to make both the memory and the human endure in the "normal life" of return? The poet T. S. Eliot wrote: "We had the experience but missed the meaning." "How is a throat slit with a plastic knife?" a pilot asks me. "Do you know how long it would take someone, to cut flesh with plastic?" That day, in the cockpit, right as it was happening, the captain said to me, "The only thing I can figure is they got one of the girls. That's the only way they could get me out of here; I think I'd have gone out if they killed one of my girls." We have all heard. We have listened, gasped, and formed ourselves new lives. Or not. A flight attendant called from the first plane, and when asked, Can you tell us, what do you see? she answered, "I see buildings, water, and oh my God, oh my God." And then, nothing. Now the cockpit doors are fortified: electric keypads and double locks. Pilots tell me, "No one's getting in." But my neck, this body, is out here on its own. A few weeks later, over and over I hear it—pilots saying to me, "If anything happens, you're on your own." The Vietnam War is famous for its veterans who can't return to normal. They're on street corners, and in jail cells, VA hospitals, insane asylums. In Dispatches, Michael Herr writes about what he saw Vietnam do to others and to himself: "Back in the World now, a lot of us aren't making it. The story got old or we got old." The young soldiers were often impressed that Herr, a reporter, was there when he didn't have to be. Herr writes: "Always, they would ask you with an emotion whose intensity would shock you to please tell it, because they really did have the feeling that it wasn't being told for them, that they were going through all of this and that somehow no one back in the World knew about it." "The war was over and there was no place to go" is the opening line of Tim O'Brien's short story "Speaking of Courage." It's a story about Norman Bowker, a veteran who's made it back to normal, though he can't find a way to function there. Instead he drives around the town lake in his father's car, telling his war story to an imagined audience that includes (at times) his father, an old girlfriend, the Kiwanis club, and a group of workmen. Norman Bowker, O'Brien tells us in a subsequent addition to the story (called "Notes"), later killed himself with a jumprope in a locker room. Bowker came back from the war—back to his small town, to the daily routines of life without war. But there was nowhere to go; the road ran out. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is an oft-used parallel to the horrors of Vietnam. Conrad explores not only Marlow's journey into the heart of the Central African jungle, but also his return: "I found myself back in the... city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams...I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew..." They could not possibly know the things I knew: Marlow becomes another Ancient Mariner, forced to tell the story, to wander the world with the curse of what he's seen and where he's been. Speaking slowly, in a sort of trance, his arms resting at his sides like Buddha in meditation, Marlow states: "I have a voice, too, for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced." Much of literature attempts to explore the fear that comes after catas-trophe, the ache and loss that come with survival, with the whole of living. Mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. I knew my husband was in Washington, D.C., but I didn't know where he was or how and I wanted, suddenly, to be already pregnant. That was my second thought, on the plane, as I watched. The first came from a poem by Rilke: I heard the words "You must change your life." But there were drinks to be served. Trash to be collected. My hands tried to steady the four-ounce cup of soda, the loudness of the white plastic trash bag. The passengers knew nothing. No one on the plane asked, "What are we flying over?" I went back to the cockpit with questions. While I'd been serving drinks, the Pentagon had happened, but not Pennsylvania. Not yet. The captain put a hand up to stop my voice and listened to Air Traffic Control through his headset. He turned a few buttons, hit a switch. "Here," he said. "How's this?" Voices filtered in, Air Traffic Control. They were calling out flight numbers, names. They said: There are still eight planes—no, six. Four. Five planes unaccounted for. All planes not on the ground in fifteen minutes will be shot down. But they didn't let us land in Baltimore—home. They sent us down to Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, and I played their words over in my head the whole time until landing. The captain asked us to secure the cabin for arrival. I formed sentences as I took passengers' trash. I asked them to bring their seats forward, put up their tray tables. "I didn't know there was a stop in between." "But we're going to Disney World," whined a small child. "Is something wrong with the plane?" "Will there be a refund?" "There's nothing wrong with our plane," I said. "I'm not at liberty to tell you right now," I said. Finally, I perfected a response: "Right now every plane in America is being grounded. You'll understand once we land." Some flight attendants told me they didn't know anything until they landed, walked through the crowds, and saw a television. We taxied to a stop on the runway. I looked out the window and saw hundreds of planes lined up in front of gates, backed onto the runway, parked in colorful lines stretching silver, tan, white, grey, blue. There were planes from almost every major United States carrier: all down, grounded indefinitely. In a van full of stranded flight attendants and pilots, the radio was on with the first numbers. They'd added up the things known for certain, such as the number of passengers on the planes, the number of crew. I repeated the number for myself—something like 184, 167—and choked on it like dry bread. Someone said, "Have you found your husband yet? Isn't he in D.C.? Have you talked to him?" "I don't have a cell phone," I said. Seven cell phones, handed to me from all directions, dropped in my lap. I woke them up in Idaho. Unable to reach my husband or my parents, I phoned an aunt who asked me why I was calling. I told her to turn on the news. Before hanging up I said, "Just tell everyone I'm okay." About my husband I said, "I don't know. I don't know yet." When my husband finally answered the phone at our house, I said you're home to his hello and then we didn't speak for a moment. Finally he said that people had called us from everywhere. There were already eight messages when he got home. "Number Five was you," he said. The hotel doubled up our rooms, but I was glad for company. Jen and I sat on our beds in the hotel room and stared at the TV, screaming out in unison when the towers fell. It had already happened. This was a rerun for many, but our first time to see or even realize that a building could shudder like that, could shimmer light and break apart like a man falling to his knees without bending at the waist. We worked the phone numbers that defined our lives. The phone rang when we weren't calling out. We talked at the same time—Jen on her cell phone-and we stole each other's phrases, each other's memories. Someone told us about the firefighters, how they were climbing up the stairs when the buildings fell. We fell asleep in uniform. We slept for six hours and woke, the news still going, the same images playing out. José Saramago's Blindness is an exploration of extreme circumstance and humanity's ability (and inability) to survive it. An epidemic of "white" blindness spreads rapidly through all levels of a fictive society, sparing only one woman described as "the doctor's wife." Within a matter of months, "time is coming to an end, putrescence is spreading, diseases find the doors open, water is running out, food has become poison." Because her vision remains unimpaired throughout the novel, the doctor's wife becomes the beacon of the story. She is able to observe what those around her are only surviving. The reader is tied irrevocably to this woman. "You do not know," she tells her blind companions. "You cannot know, what it means to have eyes in a world in which everyone else is blind... you can feel it, I both feel and see it." When a blind man who is also a writer discovers that she has kept her sight, he says, "That means that you saw everything that has happened." "I saw what I saw, I had no option," she answers. The writer says it must have been "horrible." The exchange that follows touches on the incapacity of words to describe what has been endured: "You are a writer, you have...an obligation to know words, therefore you know adjectives are no use to us...there is no need for us to say it was horrible, Do you mean that we have more words than we need, I mean that we have too few feelings, Or that we have them but have ceased to use the words they express, And so we lose them..." The doctor's wife is not just a witness; she is the only witness. The sights and circumstances of the last months are burned into her being. The question she asks her husband, at the novel's conclusion, is not why did you go blind but why did we go blind. She recognizes that she has become entirely different from who she was. She has suffered an orgy of rape, she has killed with her own hands, bathed the corpse of a dead woman, washed excrement from the body of her husband-even watched as her blind husband made love to another woman. She is more than capable of survival. For her companions, the return of sight is a liberation. But the doctor's wife has no such joy to cling to. As sight returns to the city, she weeps "because...at that moment her feeling of loneliness was so intense, so unbearable." Soon after her husband recovers his sight, he says, "When life gets back to normal, and everything is working again...it is a matter of weeks." Though the blindness has happened to a whole society, it is as though it hasn't happened at all. It is September 14th, and the plane is empty except for six flight attendants and five pilots. We are going home. They call this a ferry flight. We are in uniform, but there are no passengers. This means anything goes. A pilot pretends to do the safety announcement. Another pilot pretends to do a drink service, tossing us cans of coke and water. The pilots take off with the cockpit door open. A flight attendant holds onto the front seats, standing on a safety information card. The plane tips upward on take-off and he slides, laughing, to the back of the plane. We do not wear our seatbelts. We spread out around the empty plane. I stare out the window as we climb up through clouds and then fly in over the Chesapeake Bay. I am looking for my house. Sometimes, when the leaves are gone, I can see it from the plane. We are all quiet as we come in to land. W. G. Sebald's novel Austerlitz is based on one man's need to tell his story. Jacques Austerlitz is a survivor of another kind: one without knowledge of what he has survived—a secondary witness to the Holocaust and its displacement, a lost man trying to become found. He eventually discovers his Jewish heritage, the fact of his journey as a four-year-old out of Holland to London (where he was adopted before his parents' death and not told of his origins). For much of his life, he has had no knowledge of what he was returning from. For Austerlitz, return is not so much what he can see but what he can remember. As a child he'd worried for the squirrels in winter, asking how the squirrels knew where to find "their hoard" if the "entire forest floor" was covered in snow. "How indeed do the squirrels know," the adult Austerlitz asks the narrator, "what do we know ourselves, how do we remember, and what is it we find in the end?" Nearing the conclusion of this novel, Sebald's narrator tells of a man standing at the edge of an unfenced, abandoned mine pit that falls a "thousand feet" deep: "It was truly terrifying to see such emptiness open up a foot away from firm ground, to realize there was no transition, only this dividing line, with ordinary life on one side and its unimaginable opposite on the other." This image offers a tangible, visceral version of an idea that was expressed as follows in Milan Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting: "It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life-and herein lies its secret-takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch." Austerlitz himself lives within this "fraction of an inch." The extreme circumstance of his forgotten history and displaced existence allow Austerlitz to exist astride this border between collapse and recovery, the edge of the pit and the pit itself. Three weeks after 9-11, I have fingerprints done. A violation of my civil liberties. But you want to work, right? You need the job, right? And so fuck the liberties—here are my hands. I strip at security checkpoints while passengers file past me, smirking and looking at me suspiciously. "Take your shoes off, please. Open your bag, please—what is this?" A nail file. I forgot. Sorry. "You won't get it back. Arms up—I'm going to feel around your breasts. Undo your belt, please. Feet up. Turn around. Take your hair down, please." All I need is music. Don't worry, folks, I'll be back tomorrow for another show. People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything. And still I see a woman in row four, cutting an apple. With a four-inch knife. In March 2002, the flight attendant I am working with tells me she's ready. She may be small, she says, but she's mean. She outlines her plans for fending off terrorists. She says, "I kind of hope something happens, you know?" She wears an American flag pin on the lapel of her blazer. She sits on the jump seat, waiting for her life to change. Months later, a girl, a passenger on one of my flights, was sleeping, her legs and arms curled up against her chest. She was probably twelve or maybe thirteen; she looked like any other girl with her family coming back from Florida in July, except that her legs and arms were covered with slashes—raised pink and purple lines on her skin, like a prisoner's record of time but more erratic, like a child's drawing of grass in a picture. The cuts were still fairly new along her arms, more faint along her legs. This is grief, I thought. And who is more truthful? She, who scars herself with visible sadness, or me, who did not quit, who is still walking and talking as though the world didn't change for me all those months ago? Playing things down, keeping the lid on. The girl, I think, has it right somehow. She wears it, her tears scarred into flesh. The colossal made personal. The personal made colossal. I don't know anything. I'm just learning how to see and to hear. I want to find a way to say and believe: live, don't be afraid until you have to be. I heard Ed Ochester read his poem "Cooking in Key West" nine months after September 11th. The poem is about a family that buries their homosexual son in an unmarked grave. The stark, humbled grief of the last stanza forced me into a gasp of recognition. This was it. This was what I felt, had been feeling ever since standing in the back galley of that airplane, aligned perfectly with the New York City skyline, still complete. The towers were standing but burning, thick black smoke and flames pouring out of the ripped edges. Saramago writes, "The only miracle we can perform is to go on living...to preserve the fragility of life from day to day, as if it were blind and did not know where to go, and perhaps it is like that, perhaps it really does not know, it places itself in our hands, after giving us intelligence, and this is what we have made of it." What we have made of it cannot be as important as what we can make of it, will make of it, once we've figured out how to give words back their meanings. As absolutely as we need the ordinary tasks of living—the post office, the grocery store, food and sleep—we need just as much the extraordinary: to destroy complacency and ignorance, to give us the chance to make something new. Or maybe just to remind us that nothing is ever ordinary. Whatever form return takes—be it madness or vision—the writer's challenge entails not forgetting the complexities of both the shattering experience and the irrevocable change. "This is your real destination," Eliot writes in "The Dry Salvages." "Not fare well, But fare forward." That day, on the airplane, Rilke guided me: "You must change your life." But now when I remember that day, I hear Ed's voice saying, "I don't know anything. I'm just learning how to see and to hear." This, I now see, is the beginning of my return. Rebecca Brock, a recent graduate of the Bennington College Writing Seminars, still works as a flight attendant. This is her first publication. I found this writer when researching more about this wonder and amazing place ~http://www.macdowellcolony.org/index.html Check it out, Maria