Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama talk about the right to protest…in *other* countries…
…and gets a well-deserved standing O!
sucks to be mayor bloomberg right now, billionaire or no billionaire. nothing short of irene wreaking not mere havoc but downright devastation on NYC this weekend will put him in the clear, and even though he was a totalitarian prick about term limits (when his was up) he’s not the kind of prick (think rick perry) who’s gonna cross his fingers and hope some people die just to save him from the screaming post-non-hurricane chorus of “why the fuck that asshole shut the subway down for?”
he can’t win unless the city loses (and at least a few people get killed). i don’t think he wants to win that badly. but if irene miraculously takes a right and puddles out to sea limp as a used magnum, bloomie’s got hell to pay on monday as a result of our lucky break.
he’s a good financial manager (i voted for him twice, never again after termlimitgate) (nor christine quinn neither, same reason), but not much of a hiring manager. between the asshole who bungled our xmas blizzard so badly (and got rode out of town on a rail so quick afterward i don’t even remember the moron’s name) and cathie black’s board-of-ed fiasco, he’s got a knack for putting the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. or whatever combination of those three leave eggs dripping off that expensively manicured face and the city fucked six ways from sunday.
so blizzardgate slithers into irene, and bloomie’s stuck between a rock and a hard place; a snowball and a rainfall. poor little rich boy.
meanwhile, it’s like a festival up here today. almost like we were (already) having a blackout. everybody with their reusable bags and wheelie wagons last-minuting for batteries and shit.
here’s the water shelf at rite-aid from 11 this morning: 
and NYC’s idea of securing the public trashcans: 
we’ll find out some time tomorrow how well this old trick worked out for the poor schmuck at the dry cleaners who thought she didn’t really need to bother about a rollgate…
no, silly, of course it doesn’t stop the windows from breaking. point is that it might stop your head getting scythed off by a giant flying shard if they get smashed by an upside-down garbage can or some such. can’t hurt.
i’m doing my windows, just like i did for hurricane gloria in ’85. you doing yours?
i want to thank the brave few non-tea-party senators who voted NO to the atrocious debt-ceiling surrender bill:
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
seven names. only seven senators in the whole fucking fetid shuddering mess that is our congress DID THEIR JOB AS ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES TO PROTECT THE EVERYDAY CITIZENS WHO VOTED THEM INTO OFFICE.
as for the rest, all i can say is SHAME ON YOU. with a double-helping of shame and a great big fuck-you to charles upchuck schumer (D-NY). and they called Gillibrand the blue dog? no, schumer is the dog, a mangy one. fleas & everything.
and as for obama, i’m just not going to waste any more breath on the spineless liar that i SO regret helping to elect.
i’m no big fan of hillary clinton, but nobody would call her ball-less. she’s also savvy enough to know that negotiating doesn’t mean bending over with a tube of vaseline. maybe they don’t teach that stuff at harvard.
A T O M I C S A M U R A I
talk is cheap when it’s nothing more than a prime-time positional soundbite.
for the past two hours, plainclothes egyptian police (not in uniform, but still carrying their police IDs) have been attacking the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square. the revolutionaries — peaceful protestors, hundreds of thousands of people protesting PEACEFULLY for a week — are calling for international help, begging for help.
the police have now taken over some army carriers and are firing into the square. mowing down the doctors, lawyers, carpenters, students, housewives and shopkeepers of the protest. the egyptian army is standing by doing nothing more than mouthing the words “calm down”.
PRESIDENT OBAMA, GET OFF YOUR ASS AND OUT OF YOUR OFFICE AND ONTO CNN AND MAKE IT CLEAR TO MUBARAK WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW.
police OUT of the square. egyptian army STOP the rock-throwing, STOP the violence — on either side, though it’s coming almost entirely from the undercover police.
NOW. RIGHT NOW.
Tahrir Square (courtesy of The Guardian, UK)
“We don’t want to micromanage” politics in egypt.
did our secretary of state actually say that? maybe nobody told her we’ve been bankrolling the current regime for more than a quarter of a century. what is that, if it’s not micromanaging egyptian politics?
listen up: IF IT WASN’T FOR THE UNITED STATES AND THE LUNACY OF ITS ISRAELI PROTECTIONISM PROGRAM, MUBARAK WOULD NOT BE IN POWER RIGHT NOW, THE TRADE CENTER WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ATTACKED, WE WOULDN’T BE AT WAR IN IRAQ AND LIKELY NOT EVEN AFGHANISTAN.
pardon me for hollering.
i am sick to death of the lies and the bullshit and the let’s-make-nice-kissy faces crap that emanates from this government.
anybody remember reagan saying “i’m a contra”? same fucking thing here. it made me sick then, and it makes me sick now.
obama: grow a pair and tell — TELL, don’t ask, we’ve already paid handsomely for the right to do it — mubarak to step aside. and do NOT give him asylum in this country.
hillary: grow a pair and start telling some semblance of the truth. the prime-time soundbites are really getting old.
CNN, NYT, MSNBC: how about some NEWS? why am i watching al-jazeera for updates on the egyptian revolution?
al-jazeera is running a live feed. if you don’t have realplayer, you can get a smaller version of their feed on firedoglake.
and hats off to the brave correspondents of al-jazeera, which has been shut down by the dictatorship but which has gone underground and continued reporting live.
they already KNOW there’s a better way — i get as much email from the orgs that send me these kinds of packages as i do from those that don’t.
guess which orgs get my donations? right. even ones i love as much as amnesty international.
get WITH it, people!
and yes, i know 7 minutes is too long for a video. but hey, i got a lot to say. and i didn’t curse much at all. for me.
so.
hint: it’s not blue.
and it’s the taproot of every one of our problems. social, environmental, political.
ask the wrong question and, whatever the answer is, it’s meaningless. start (or continue) asking the right questions. try to inspire the people in your life to do the same.
we’ve gotta start somewhere…
