“Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. Rather, it’s the mastery of fear. It’s getting to the point where our fears do not stop us from daring to think new thoughts, try new things, take risks, fail, and start again. Fearlessness is all about getting up one more time than we fall down.”
– Arianna Huffington
– Arianna Huffington
Or as the Japanese would say, “Fall down 7 times, get up 8.”
Bang, bang: Newsvine
…Paul Gourley, chair of the College Republican National Committee, said Wilkins [the woman organizing the event] is an independent contractor hired to recruit students to the GOP, but he said the reported activities were not authorized. Wilkins declined to comment Tuesday night.
The events were reported by the University of Michigan newspaper, The Michigan Daily.
The “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” event reportedly allows participants to win prizes for catching others posing as illegal immigrants and a “Fun with Guns” event allows people to shoot cardboard cutouts of top Democrats such as Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry with a BB gun or paintball gun, the newspaper reported.
Well that actually makes sense in a weird way, since I think that anyone deciding to become a Republican these days would have to be morally bankrupt and a total a-hole to boot. What better event to lure people like that to join up?
And I suppose it’s also comforting that “Republicans … distanced themselves” from the fun. It probably would have been better had they “condemned” it, but “distancing” is a baby step toward decency. I guess.
(Good Morning CabinGirl!!)
Distancing: what one does when one actually approves of the behavior, but doesn’t want to own up to it. A close relative of plausible deniability.
Yep. I knew that. Weird, isn’t it that reporters don’t seem to?
It’s a lie they didn’t know what was going on. A BFL (Big eFfing Lie).
Yep, you know somebody had to sign off on payment for that beforehand.
I’m sure they’re already planning other similar events around the nation.
Chafee wins.
If they were Democratic leaning they never should have voted for Chafee.
coming your way soon: NYT
Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne.
”If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. ”(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”
This is so screwed up, I don’t even know where to begin. Regular law-abiding citizens at demonstrations should be the guinea pigs to try out new weapons for war to keep the international community happy?
(sigh) I guess it’s stories like this that make me wish I didn’t know how to read.
This. is. beyond. anything.
I just followed a link from Urban Survival to that story. Unbelievable at first glance, but then it’s difficult to put anything beyond this cabal that’s controlling Washington. What’s next?
Sorry I didn’t mean to copy your news item LOL I’ve been running around with my hair on fire over this. xoxox!
No worries. 🙂
in Iraq: WashPo
At least 62 unidentified bullet-riddled corpses–all bearing signs of torture–have been found throughout the city since last night, said Brig. Gen. Abdullah Mahmood of the Interior Ministry.
Some of the bodies had been beheaded. Attacks on police patrols killed an additional 27 people this morning, officials said.
The beat goes on.
Now I finally know what Sonny and Cher meant.
it’s worse than a zombie movie.
Weather on Earth has a surprising connection to space weather occurring high in the electrically-charged upper atmosphere, known as the ionosphere, according to new results from NASA satellites. Researchers discovered that tides of air generated by intense thunderstorm activity over rainforests in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia were altering the structure of the ionosphere far above, where earth’s atmosphere interacts with the “solar wind.”
Speaking of space weather, another pet theory of global-warming nay-sayers has been knocked down a peg: Changes in the Sun’s brightness over the past millennium have had only a small effect on Earth’s climate, according to a review of existing results and new calculations performed by researchers in the United States, Switzerland, and Germany.
A study of 40,000 Japanese indicates green tea can significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, but had no effect on cancer rates. Other researchers caution the effect may be due to the rest of the Japanese diet, however.
Researchers have developed an animal detection system designed to give motorists warning that wildlife may be active near a roadway. The system reliably detected elk along and on U.S. Highway 191 in Yellowstone National Park. How effective the system is in reducing animal-vehicle collisions will be evaluated during the next two years.
Hey, remember last month’s volcano alerts? Well, nevermind: The Philippines lowered the alert level around a restive volcano in the central Philippines late on Monday, opening the way for some people in temporary shelters to return to their homes and farms, officials said.
A detailed analysis of the relative health of Americans, dividing them by race, income, and county of residence has revealed that there are eight “Americas,” ranging from the good health of many Asian-Americans to the third-world situations in which poor African-Americans find themselves. A summary of the research is here, the full article is here, and a related article on public health policy implications is here.
Another research report based on the “unplanned experiment” of the grounding of the US airline fleet after 9-11 has been issued. Previous research looked into the effects on weather, and found a drop in cirrus clouds, which hold in the earth’s heat at night. The current report looks at infectious disease rates, and finds the start of the 2001-2002 flu season was delayed two full weeks by the break in the spread of infection when the aircraft were grounded. The findings might affect whether or how travel restrictions are applied in the event of a future flu pandemic.
Link
The inescapable signs of disillusionment surrounding the Bush administration in its sixth year, facing a second mid-term election, suggest far more than the usual syndrome of incumbent weariness. These are the rumblings of a regime crisis.
President Bush’s whole party bears the burden of his accumulated self-generated difficulties not only because of their overwhelming scale but also because the Republicans have sustained disciplined one-party rule in which congressional oversight has been largely suppressed.
The congressional Republicans’ feeble assertion of institutional authority has made changing the Congress the only way to revive it and check and balance Bush’s radical presidency during his remaining two years.[snip]
Bush’s radical political strategy depends upon the radicalism of his policies. It cannot be captiously described as mere spin. Bush and his chief political operative Karl Rove’s strategy of extreme polarization in order to achieve maximum turnout of the conservative base requires constant agitation around the most abrasive social issues, but above all war without end. But even gay marriage, abortion, and guns would have proved insufficient without politicization of a projected perpetual war in which the opposition is depicted as “appeasers,” “pre-9/11,” and “Defeatocrats.”
In Bush’s second term, Rove’s deliberately divisive approach failed at achieving a national political realignment, but it has succeeded in restructuring the Republican Party. Rove’s imperative of unifying the right-wing base leaves the party in pieces. Bush’s earlier political successes have laid the groundwork for possibly profound losses in the future. The religious right has moved to the center of the party, the moderate remnant pushed to the fringes. A potential wipeout of moderate Republicans in the Northeast and Midwest in 2006 and 2008 will make the potential of Republican Party emerging as a moderate force that much more improbable in the future.[snip]
In response to his catastrophic policies, Bush stays the course, and turns up the heat on ever more inflammatory rhetoric to electrify his base as its energy runs down. Rather than rethinking his counterproductive policies, he is redoubling his bets on his polarizing strategy.
Bush’s radical presidency has recast the character of the party, its purposes and appeal, and Republicans’ disorientation in the 2006 mid-term campaign is only the first inkling of coming disintegration.
Sorry for the length of this, but I think Sydney Blumenthal really puts it together well. His take on this is that by the very nature of Bush’s radical extremism, it is unsustainable. The bottom line is, we need to take heart and push on. The extreme fear mongering and divisiveness of the Bush/Rove/Cheney strategy may be ratcheting up volume wise, but perhaps we are witnessing the initial death throes of Bushivism. Hallelujia!
Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs
POSTED: 7:56 p.m. EDT, September 12, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.
The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.
“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”
The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.
Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.
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Couple this with what I shared back in Jan. and if this doesn’t scare you… nothing will.
America’s new Gestapo: The United States Secret Service Uniformed Division. A buried provision, Sec. 605 of the Act, creates a federal police force under the Secretary of Homeland Security with the power to violate the Bill of Rights. In fact, it’s entire mission appears to be the creation of a militarized Bill of Rights suppression force with special emphasis on first amendment suppression.
“There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the ‘United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'”
The United States Secret Service Uniformed Division –let’s just call them the SS for short– are empowered to “make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony.”
Any “offense”? What constitutes an “offense”? Sorry, doesn’t say. And where exactly will Bush’s shiny new SS –no doubt festooned with the latest anti-personnel weaponry and “crowd suppression” technology– have jurisdiction? Well, a few places, but especially at events “designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance” (SENS).
What exactly is a “special event of national significance”? Unfortunately, this can be anything. No person protected by the Secret Service need even be involved. So SENS is anywhere the administration or the SS themselves say it is. And once you find your unfortunate self within the Bill of Rights-free bounds of an SENS, the Gestapo can pretty much have their way with you. I wouldn’t count on the Supreme Court taking too hard a line on any abuses of this new thug squad either, as it is accountable to no one but the administration, and you know what a wide latitude is given to America’s new “unitary executive”.
The obvious use for this act is to put the Code Pinks and Cindy Sheehans of the world behind bars for embarrassing dear leader with uncomfortable signs, chants or t-shirts at pro-administration, pro-endless terror war gatherings of one sort or another. The less obvious use is that the administration now has an armed wing it can deploy at will anywhere expressions of dissent against the government might spring up in the future.
Such dissent can now be put down and silenced with extreme prejudice. How’s that for PATRIOTIC?
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This Regime isn’t about “fightin’ for our freedom”… because they are taking them away.