"How Is This Poem by Nobel Laureate in Literature Czeslaw Milosz Relevant to The Democratic Party As It Currently Exists?" (originally posted May '08)

for Vast Left



A Task


In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:


We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons


But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one


Considered himself as a lost man.


. --Czeslaw Milosz

Obama's Not-Bush Nobel Win Results in Massive Mob-GOP Head Explosion

One must work really really hard to feel compassion for so very many Mob-GOP exploded heads.




Not to mention how hard it would be to feel compassion toward the shamelessly sexist exploded heads of the idiotic faux-left.

[Hat-tip to actual liberal blog, Corrente.]

Bloggers Call Out WaPo for Pro-Sadist Pro-Cheney Propaganda

Washington Post: Official Stenographer for the Pro-Torture Crowd

Barney Frank Slam's Rabid Rightists' "Vile, Contemptible Nonsense"

Barney Frank says arguing with wingnut "like arguing with a dining room table."



Great job.

Like T.S. Eliot Said, "Hurry up, please. It's Time" --- for --- NETROOTS NATION IN SECOND LIFE

Now's your chance, you proud Luddites. Hey, look. You can stay proud. You can stay Luddite. You can, as buddhists do, regard your coming to SL so very lightly -- as being like a dream, a flash of lightning, a bubble in water, a magician's appartion.

Impermanent. Not truly existent. Like a rainbow, like the disappearing dew on grass, like mist, yes, I could go on all day, but don't you really want me to stop?

Yes, it's true, time is passing, and now it's time for Carpe Diem time. Yes, I am now actively actually recruiting people to Teh Second Life lifestyle. No, srsly. This means *you.*

It's free. It's Green. It offers tangos. It transcends space. It's so durn super-progressive it would make Orrin Hatch weep,well, it would if he *had*tears.

What's not to love, eh?



Here's your portal to the portal to: NETROOTS NATION IN SECOND LIFE

The Baseline Scenario

Oh.

This could be fun: The Baseline Scenario


Hat-tip to Corrente.

VastLeft: An Atheist's Lullaby

From the inimitable Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy:

An Atheists' Lullaby

None Dare Call It Torture. Not Quite "None," But Close

However, turns out that NOT prosecuting torture is a violation of international law. Oopsie.

The United Nation’s top torture investigator has suggested it is illegal under International law for President Barack Obama to announce that the United States government has no intention of prosecuting low-level CIA officers who carried out torture sanctioned by the Bush Administration.

President Barack Obama’s release on Thursday of four Bush administration memos sanctioning torture has been widely praised. However, word that government will go so far as to offer a fully-paid legal defense for agents who applied torture techniques to terror war prisoners has triggered loud criticism.

“Like all other contracting states to the UN convention against torture, the US has committed to conduct criminal investigations of torture and to bring all persons to court against whom there is sound evidence,” Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, told Austrian weekly paper Der Standard.

“They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very clear,” Nowak told the paper. “The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility.”

“In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manfred Nowak [...] said the United States had committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

You Can Never Be Too Rich, Too Thin or Too Traumatized. or, PAY YOUR [expletive deleted/warningintentional use of sexist frame] TAXES LIKE A MAN

Teabagging. [coughchoke spit].

So the cons are trying to tough that one out? Bwahahah. Now teabagging is their BRAND.

And they're too pussy to pay their taxes.

Oy.

So, some otherwise perfectly nice people for whom I was set to volunteer my valuable time and really very high end clinical skills [it's not me, it's my training] to treat Vets with PTSD.

Some otherwise perfectly nice people started saying some critical things about Obama [which I am perfectly capable of doing myself, mind you] and I reminded them that in addition to being a card-carrying buddhist [well, actually I didn't remind them of that] I am a card-carrying bleeding heart liberal [and why else would I be offering to work for NOTHING].

And one of them said it was fine as long as I wasn't a socialist.


No, really.


I kid you not.

I thinktheir idea of being a socialist means being someone who's for universal health care, btw.

So -- what am I, boys and girls? Socialist?

How about "commie
pinko"?

Freeper Fascists Hold "Teabagging" Parties -- No I'm Not Making This Up

Sydney-sider cricket enthusiast Mr. NBFH is always accusing me of being unfairly contemptuous of Republicans.

(As in -- He-- "Dear, there must be one good Republican." Me, after long pause -- "Uh -- there used to be John Lindsay?")

Perhaps this story is why. Or this one. Or you can join the tea-bagging yourself.

Sure, the forces of bushist fascism are lookin' to spread around some new kinda tea-bag-meme propaganda, just like they usta get away with, but it looks like they've swallowed more than they can chew.

No, really the tea bag theme sucks for them, no? I mean, as is said: hilarity ensues. It's really really so getting rubbed in their mugs.

Egg all over their faces? Is that what that is?

Technorati Tags: GOP, tea party, Republicans,

Red China Brown-Noses Dirty Bush!!

Do Not Undo Bubble Boy's Glorious Legacy!!, China begs.

O Frabjous Day!!

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" he chortled in his joy.

Now remember, boys and girls: if you don't put aside your negative future projections just for the day, then the Bushist fascist terrorists win!

No no. Just kidding.

No threats.

But a little positive outlook just for the hell of it wouldn't come amiss.


Please click on, listen to, and most of all, enjoy Steely Dan's "Change of the Guard."

And if you're not going to an actual Inaugural Ball, you are cordially invited to attend the virtual Inaugural Ball in Second Life. It's carbon-footprint free. There are celebratory events going on all day. Just need a computer with a graphics card.) See "Celebrating the Inauguration on Your Computer" at The General's.

Na na na na, Na na na na, Hey hey hey --- Good-BYE!!

The Original Version. Well worth a listen.

Na na na na, Na na na na, Hey hey hey --- Good-BYE!! Parrty in SL. Inauguration Party Coming Right Up

More info at Jesus' General's "Celebrating the Inauguration on Your Computer.".

Bush: Never Having to Say He's Sorry

Sydney morning Herald: Bush admits mistakes but is unapologetic.

No really. He's not?

Panetta: Anti-Torture American

Why are we even having this discussion?

What is wrong with the pro-torture crowd, anyhow?

Screws loose? Child abuse?

"Obama Picks Anti-Torture Chief for CIA" at Mother Jones.

Lots of Blood for Lots of Hubris

"With this level of self-regard, it’s no wonder that Bush could remain undeterred as he drove the country off a cliff. The smugness is reinforced not just by his history as the entitled scion of one of America’s aristocratic dynasties but also by his conviction that his every action is blessed from on high. Asked last month by an interviewer what he has learned from his time in office, he replied: “I’ve learned that God is good. All the time.”

Once again he is shifting the blame. This presidency was not about Him. Bush failed because in the end it was all about him."

Frank Rich.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Department of Been There Done That

RevPaperboy has tagged one, with what he describes as the "latest stupid blog meme", and one must respond.

It's a job thing. One must make a list of all the jobs one has held so far.

So.

Jobs in chronological order (paying):

horrible job as clerk typing letters on stock certificates, Boston

GS-1 civil servant ordering wastebaskets and other supplies, Philly

dancer in bar, Pittsburgh (the tame kind of dancing, not pole-dancing. but dicey, dancing on actual bar 3 ' wide 4 feet off floor next to cash register w/out help of contact lenses while acrophobic )

grant writer, Boston Model Cities program, Roxbury (I don't know how I landed this job. I had just dropped out of college to work with the theater company below, to the dismay of my family of origin. My co-wokers were nice people, and there was a fabulous classic sub place across the street.)

actress, Blood Theater, Cambridge/Roxbury, w/desperately funny playwright who morphed into screenwriter & went on to pen "Air America," one of NBFH's fave movies.

camp counselor teaching theater & dance (Camp Sunningdale), Maine

actress, summer stock, Albany NY (including a charming love scene in Foster's "Tom Paine" as Marguerite Bonneville with Tom Paine, played by John McTiernan, later of the many Die Hards, which partially made up for (but not entirely) his having earlier slapped me viciously across the face (in character of course, Talthybios vs. Hecuba) during an improv for Nicholas Nabokov's production of Sartre's "The Trojan Women" at Planting Fields experimental college. yes some part of me after all these years still wants to punch him back but I'm buddhist now lucky for you, John, dear. ; )

general factotum, Academy of American Poets, NYC

actress, director, playwright, teacher for experimental theater in Chelsea, NYC; also festivals & gigs in US, Germany (Dusseldorf Schauspielhaus, Munich Theater Festival; Warsaw, Poznan, Teatre Kalambur, Wroclaw, Poland; residencies at Antioch, SUNY Albany, Bard, somewhere in Pittsburgh, too. What I remember best is at the Dusseldorf Schauspielhaus, still acrophobic, wearing five-inch high platform shoes, a floor-length blue silk dress, standing on the very edge of a table three feet off the floor, leaning backwards over the edge of the table, holding a mirror in my hands, and suddenly having a total blank for my lines. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. But then, they came to me. And I did not fall off the table and break my head.)

book shelver, Cornell Univ. Medical College/New York Hospital

new! just remembered! --->New York City Board of Elections, Proportional Represenation Balloting poll worker, Staten Island.

research secretary, later research editor on the uses and functions of language in medicine, CUMC-NYH

highly-paid fecal homogenizer, CUMC-NYH

Wang sec'y at CBS News Finance & CBS Records Law

Voice-over "The Emperor's New Clothes."

hopelessly inept waitress at east village famous ethnic restaurant on 2nd ave, the Kiev. Lasted maybe four days.

ESL teacher, ELI, Kathmandu, Nepal

travel & tourism writer; w/occasional news writing & restaurant reviews, and endless articles on Tibetan rugs, Kathmandu

editor for reports of international development projects, Kathmandu

breeder of a classic line of Tibetan Mastiffs, Kang-ri ( 'snow mountains' in Tibetan)

writer of Regency novels, novellas & short-stories for Zebra books

nanny, Boston

teaching assistant at residential school for violent traumatized girls, MA

licensed clinician specializing in treatment of complex trauma & dissociation, The Trauma Center, Boston (Allston)
& practicing elsewhere at NFP agency in MA now

---
unpaid work:

candystriper counting surgical sponges
counselor-in-training at riding camp
modern dancer
actress at LaMaMa E.T.C.
actress, several indie films, including a war protest flick where I played a corpse and had to undergo three hours of wound application and three hours of wound-removal all in the service of lying verrry still. which I did SO very well. lie still, I mean.
poems in the Paris Review, Chelsea, the Mississippi Review, Hanging Loose, Nimrod, and other small literary magazines and anthologies
translations of poems from Spanish, Nepali, Tibetan into English
back-up singer for 2 song demos
actress, director, playwright, Himalayan Amateurs/Extreme Off-Off Broadway Alliance
editor-in-chief for 706-page biography of an 18th-century Tibetan lama (initially translated into English by 6 different translators, among them four non-native speakers of English, each with a different native language.)
Youth Committee chair for American Women of Nepal
fashion-show choreographer
meditation instructor
publisher of dharma pamphlets, Mirror Editions, Kathmandu
Editorial board member, the Nalandakirti Journal, Rumtek, Sikkim
Brownie Guide Leader, Kathmandu
Member of the Board, The British Primary School, Kathmandu
board member, DC, Nepal
actress, community theater on NE isthmus
LMHC intern at elementary schools, middle school, domestic violence/sexual assault resource center
actress, writer of plays at other community theater on NE isthmus
board member, SSI-USA
state-certified domestic violence/rape crisis counselor

Now I must tag others. Hmm.

democommie at polrant.
The Out of Joint Times.
Advice From Abu Shri.
Kvatch at Ragebot.

Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays.

Keep the faith, baby.

Nothing to It But to Do It

Gates orders Pentagon to draw up plan to shut down Gitmo.

How hard was that, really?