Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The future
We are moving to Berkeley so and I'm overwhelmed by a season of graduations, Gabriel's, Ciuapilli's and Biggest and Bestest Graduation at Wellesley. For my sister Leticia whom I am so proud of, more pictures will be coming on the blog. I have decided I truly want to go to law school hopefully in the next 3 years. Getting a master would be good but it needs to be in the bay. I don't know what will happen but I'm exicted that what will happen will be good. Plus were going to the reunion in New Haven. I need to finish before then and I will but I just wanted to write about the excitement and other things are shaping up for the future.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Steve Gilliard RIP
Orcinus does one of the best jobs to remember Steve.
Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007
Saturday, June 02, 2007
--by Sara
It's not news to anyone that the Internet is an emotionally complicated place. It binds us tightly to people we may never see in person. It makes us care about things that are farther away than we might ever imagine. It gives us communities in which we can celebrate and grieve things that those we share our meatworld homes with may not understand.
I'm coming up hard against all those walls today. My birthday -- the last one of my forties -- dawned with the news that one of my favorite online friends-I've-never-met, Steve Gilliard, died this morning in a Manhattan hospital.
It was not unexpected. Steve was already on kidney dialysis, and had survived a previous heart surgery. So those of us who were part of his blog's lively online community were deeply concerned when took ill in late February with a heart valve infection. A valve replacement surgery followed; and when he came to, it became clear that he'd had a stroke during the operation. From there, things went downhill, with moments of hope cycling with despair.
In terms of grandeur and prestige within Blogtopia, The News Blog was similar in many respects to Orcinus -- a down-home two-person blog with a strong perspective, loyal following, and Technorati rankings right in the same range. It was my second online home after this place -- a home I shared with a group of regulars who were as eclectic and lively as the subjects Steve covered, and whom I came to regard as some of my best online friends.
Gilley's main contribution to the progressive conversation was his incredible depth as a military historian. That was the blood and bone of his blog -- careful explanations of strategy and tactics, illustrated with annoted satellite pictures of Baghdad neighborhoods showing what our troops were facing, and interlaced with stories from other wars throughout history in which troops had found themselves in similar situations. It was the kind of interpretive, explanatory war reporting Americans used to get before Vietnam: here's where we're going, what we're doing, what we hope to achieve. And, too often, Gilley's analysis -- simply by showing us the players, the field, and the scoreboard -- also showed us with perfect clarity why we were going to lose.
His blogging voice was brash and authoritative -- just what you'd expect from a lifelong New Yorker. We gave him no end of shit for the bold pronouncements and predictions he'd occasionally issue, which would often enough turn out to be dead wrong. But when he wrote about New York politics (he was merciless on Giuliani, and it's one subject on which we will be poorer without him), he had a way of making even an expat on the opposite coast care about the local political oddities of the Big Apple. Reading Gilley on NYC was like reading Molly Ivins on Texas. You could only sit back, mute, at the gobstopping wonder of it all.
Earlier in his career, Gilley worked for several years in Silicon Valley; and he and his blogging partner, the lovely and talented Jen, made scathing critiques of the tech industry's overhyped anything-goes corporate culture. As an African-American man, Gilley knew the same lesson that I'd learned as a woman there: Any time an employer starts making the office "more like home," it's because they never intend to let you go home. The day they put in the gym and hire a chef for the employee cafeteria, your life, as you once knew it, is over.
Beyond that: any time a company starts making noises about how the "old rules don't apply" to them, it means they have no intention of respecting the values those old rules represented. Those of us who depend on scrupulous attention to those traditional employment rules to protect us from abuse, exploitation, and discrimination should not welcome this announcement as happy news. It means they're going to screw you. Gilley knew -- and was gutsy enough to say right out loud -- that rich white West Coast boys with Stanford engineering degrees can be every bit as racist and sexist in their business practices as any southern cracker.
We had several rather heated arguments about this before he convinced me he was right. I don't think I ever conceded the point outright, but he got me to re-think those years of my life, and frame them in a way that helped me get some peace. I'll always owe him for that, and I regret that I didn't thank him for it.
What happened to The News Blog after Gilley took ill was one of the more remarkable experiences I've had in my online life. Within hours, TNB's commenter community seamlessly stepped up and found a way to keep the thing going -- and then kept it up, day in and day out, for nearly four months. Part of it was that we didn't want to lose each other's good company; but most of it was that we knew the blog was Steve's life and livelihood, and we wanted him to have it to come home to when he got well.
Steve, of course, didn't make it easy. He took all the access and account information with him into his initial coma. But a system emerged as Jen found workarounds, and a volunteer webmaster stepped in, and all of us took turns submitting stuff that we thought was in keeping with Steve's vision of the blog. Two of us emerged as the blog's strongest voices, launching what should by rights become stellar blogging careers (Lower Manhattanite and Hubris Sonic, let me know where you land); but we all chipped in with the usual mix of tech and humor and Steve's signature food blogging to keep several posts going up per day.
A lot of blogs have meatspace metaphors for the kind of "place" they are -- whiskey bars and whaling shacks and public streets and cozy salons. TNB had been, perhaps, a sort of busy midtown coffeehouse with a raucous group of regulars. But when Steve went into the hospital, it transformed into a 24-hour vigil of close friends hanging out in the waiting room of a Manhattan hospital, keeping each other fed and entertained while worrying, praying, and waiting together for the news.
And today, we got the news we dreaded most. Gilley is gone. The News Blog has gone dark. Jen told us from the first week that it would be closed down if Gilley died, and I expect she'll stick to that.
And the rest of us are left counting our losses. There are too few African-American voices in the progressive blogosphere anyway, but Steve's was simply irreplaceable. I've lost an online community I valued deeply. We'll mourn together for a while, and then scatter. It's the way of things in the online world: the feelings we have for people are very real; but sometimes, we're forced to reckon with the reality of just how ephemeral the connections that bind us are. The contradiction is not one that is sitting comfortably today.
It is the most beautiful of June evenings here in Vancover. My family's getting ready to take me out. We'll take a walk through the rhododendrons and heron rookery in Stanley Park, then find a seaside restaurant for dinner, and maybe go see a movie or take in the scene down on Robson Street. For a few hours, we'll celebrate what's been achieved in 49 years -- a loving and sturdy marriage, handsome children, a comfortable home, work that suffices, money enough, more good things to come.
And I'll resolve more firmly to drop some weight, watch my blood sugar, get those heart checkups...and keep blogging. If we're going to fill the silence left by the loss of Steve Gillard's great big voice, we're all going to have to keep ourselves strong, stay healthy, and learn to speak up a whole lot louder for what's right.
Updated with corrected information on Gilley's health. He wasn't diabetic.
3:40 PM Spotlight
Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007
Saturday, June 02, 2007
--by Sara
It's not news to anyone that the Internet is an emotionally complicated place. It binds us tightly to people we may never see in person. It makes us care about things that are farther away than we might ever imagine. It gives us communities in which we can celebrate and grieve things that those we share our meatworld homes with may not understand.
I'm coming up hard against all those walls today. My birthday -- the last one of my forties -- dawned with the news that one of my favorite online friends-I've-never-met, Steve Gilliard, died this morning in a Manhattan hospital.
It was not unexpected. Steve was already on kidney dialysis, and had survived a previous heart surgery. So those of us who were part of his blog's lively online community were deeply concerned when took ill in late February with a heart valve infection. A valve replacement surgery followed; and when he came to, it became clear that he'd had a stroke during the operation. From there, things went downhill, with moments of hope cycling with despair.
In terms of grandeur and prestige within Blogtopia, The News Blog was similar in many respects to Orcinus -- a down-home two-person blog with a strong perspective, loyal following, and Technorati rankings right in the same range. It was my second online home after this place -- a home I shared with a group of regulars who were as eclectic and lively as the subjects Steve covered, and whom I came to regard as some of my best online friends.
Gilley's main contribution to the progressive conversation was his incredible depth as a military historian. That was the blood and bone of his blog -- careful explanations of strategy and tactics, illustrated with annoted satellite pictures of Baghdad neighborhoods showing what our troops were facing, and interlaced with stories from other wars throughout history in which troops had found themselves in similar situations. It was the kind of interpretive, explanatory war reporting Americans used to get before Vietnam: here's where we're going, what we're doing, what we hope to achieve. And, too often, Gilley's analysis -- simply by showing us the players, the field, and the scoreboard -- also showed us with perfect clarity why we were going to lose.
His blogging voice was brash and authoritative -- just what you'd expect from a lifelong New Yorker. We gave him no end of shit for the bold pronouncements and predictions he'd occasionally issue, which would often enough turn out to be dead wrong. But when he wrote about New York politics (he was merciless on Giuliani, and it's one subject on which we will be poorer without him), he had a way of making even an expat on the opposite coast care about the local political oddities of the Big Apple. Reading Gilley on NYC was like reading Molly Ivins on Texas. You could only sit back, mute, at the gobstopping wonder of it all.
Earlier in his career, Gilley worked for several years in Silicon Valley; and he and his blogging partner, the lovely and talented Jen, made scathing critiques of the tech industry's overhyped anything-goes corporate culture. As an African-American man, Gilley knew the same lesson that I'd learned as a woman there: Any time an employer starts making the office "more like home," it's because they never intend to let you go home. The day they put in the gym and hire a chef for the employee cafeteria, your life, as you once knew it, is over.
Beyond that: any time a company starts making noises about how the "old rules don't apply" to them, it means they have no intention of respecting the values those old rules represented. Those of us who depend on scrupulous attention to those traditional employment rules to protect us from abuse, exploitation, and discrimination should not welcome this announcement as happy news. It means they're going to screw you. Gilley knew -- and was gutsy enough to say right out loud -- that rich white West Coast boys with Stanford engineering degrees can be every bit as racist and sexist in their business practices as any southern cracker.
We had several rather heated arguments about this before he convinced me he was right. I don't think I ever conceded the point outright, but he got me to re-think those years of my life, and frame them in a way that helped me get some peace. I'll always owe him for that, and I regret that I didn't thank him for it.
What happened to The News Blog after Gilley took ill was one of the more remarkable experiences I've had in my online life. Within hours, TNB's commenter community seamlessly stepped up and found a way to keep the thing going -- and then kept it up, day in and day out, for nearly four months. Part of it was that we didn't want to lose each other's good company; but most of it was that we knew the blog was Steve's life and livelihood, and we wanted him to have it to come home to when he got well.
Steve, of course, didn't make it easy. He took all the access and account information with him into his initial coma. But a system emerged as Jen found workarounds, and a volunteer webmaster stepped in, and all of us took turns submitting stuff that we thought was in keeping with Steve's vision of the blog. Two of us emerged as the blog's strongest voices, launching what should by rights become stellar blogging careers (Lower Manhattanite and Hubris Sonic, let me know where you land); but we all chipped in with the usual mix of tech and humor and Steve's signature food blogging to keep several posts going up per day.
A lot of blogs have meatspace metaphors for the kind of "place" they are -- whiskey bars and whaling shacks and public streets and cozy salons. TNB had been, perhaps, a sort of busy midtown coffeehouse with a raucous group of regulars. But when Steve went into the hospital, it transformed into a 24-hour vigil of close friends hanging out in the waiting room of a Manhattan hospital, keeping each other fed and entertained while worrying, praying, and waiting together for the news.
And today, we got the news we dreaded most. Gilley is gone. The News Blog has gone dark. Jen told us from the first week that it would be closed down if Gilley died, and I expect she'll stick to that.
And the rest of us are left counting our losses. There are too few African-American voices in the progressive blogosphere anyway, but Steve's was simply irreplaceable. I've lost an online community I valued deeply. We'll mourn together for a while, and then scatter. It's the way of things in the online world: the feelings we have for people are very real; but sometimes, we're forced to reckon with the reality of just how ephemeral the connections that bind us are. The contradiction is not one that is sitting comfortably today.
It is the most beautiful of June evenings here in Vancover. My family's getting ready to take me out. We'll take a walk through the rhododendrons and heron rookery in Stanley Park, then find a seaside restaurant for dinner, and maybe go see a movie or take in the scene down on Robson Street. For a few hours, we'll celebrate what's been achieved in 49 years -- a loving and sturdy marriage, handsome children, a comfortable home, work that suffices, money enough, more good things to come.
And I'll resolve more firmly to drop some weight, watch my blood sugar, get those heart checkups...and keep blogging. If we're going to fill the silence left by the loss of Steve Gillard's great big voice, we're all going to have to keep ourselves strong, stay healthy, and learn to speak up a whole lot louder for what's right.
Updated with corrected information on Gilley's health. He wasn't diabetic.
3:40 PM Spotlight
Monday, May 28, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Another Lopez goes down!
George Lopez, the first Latino to lead a television series successfully, isn't laughing.
ABC, he said, has "unceremoniously" canceled his self-titled comedy, which over the years chronicled his personal life from his sad childhood growing up with an abusive grandmother, to his alcoholism and kidney transplant.
"The George Lopez Show" will live on in syndication, but that's not making Lopez feel better about not getting the chance to tell one final season of stories. Lopez said Steve McPherson, ABC president of prime-time entertainment, called him over the weekend to explain that "financially" it wasn't working out, that the network would lose money if it picked up the show again.
That explanation was painful to hear, Lopez said, considering the way the network has shuffled his show over the years -- four different time slots in five years -- and putting it up against "American Idol" time and time again.
It all contributed to the show's low ratings, a point not lost on Lopez who noted that this season his show out-performed two freshman comedies that were renewed: "Notes from the Underbelly" and "Knights of Prosperity."
"I’ll take the good and the bad," Lopez said. "I took the five years of good and I did a lot with the good. My popularity, I was involved in charities, I overcame my illness, all on TV. I shared all of that with America—every secret I had. Every personal feeling. Every emotion. Everything was open to the show. And what happens?"
Lopez said he attributed the cancellation in part to the fact that the show is produced by Warner Bros. Television, and not ABC Television Studios. Using some colorful language that cannot be printed in a family newspaper, Lopez scoffed in particular at another ABC pickup: "Caveman," about two brothers and one best friend, described as sophisticated cave dudes living in modern-day Atlanta, who will continually find themselves at odds with contemporary society.
"I get kicked out for a...caveman and shows that I out-performed because I’m not owned by [ABC Television Studios]...So a...Chicano can’t be on TV but a...caveman can?" Lopez said. "And a Chicano with an audience already? You know when you get in this that shows do not last forever, but this was an important show and to go unceremoniously like this hurts. One hundred seventy people lost their jobs."
For his part, Lopez will be fine. He has an HBO special and a movie coming in the summer, and a deal with Warner Bros. to produce television movies.
"TV just became really, really white again," he said.
--Maria Elena Fernandez
ABC, he said, has "unceremoniously" canceled his self-titled comedy, which over the years chronicled his personal life from his sad childhood growing up with an abusive grandmother, to his alcoholism and kidney transplant.
"The George Lopez Show" will live on in syndication, but that's not making Lopez feel better about not getting the chance to tell one final season of stories. Lopez said Steve McPherson, ABC president of prime-time entertainment, called him over the weekend to explain that "financially" it wasn't working out, that the network would lose money if it picked up the show again.
That explanation was painful to hear, Lopez said, considering the way the network has shuffled his show over the years -- four different time slots in five years -- and putting it up against "American Idol" time and time again.
It all contributed to the show's low ratings, a point not lost on Lopez who noted that this season his show out-performed two freshman comedies that were renewed: "Notes from the Underbelly" and "Knights of Prosperity."
"I’ll take the good and the bad," Lopez said. "I took the five years of good and I did a lot with the good. My popularity, I was involved in charities, I overcame my illness, all on TV. I shared all of that with America—every secret I had. Every personal feeling. Every emotion. Everything was open to the show. And what happens?"
Lopez said he attributed the cancellation in part to the fact that the show is produced by Warner Bros. Television, and not ABC Television Studios. Using some colorful language that cannot be printed in a family newspaper, Lopez scoffed in particular at another ABC pickup: "Caveman," about two brothers and one best friend, described as sophisticated cave dudes living in modern-day Atlanta, who will continually find themselves at odds with contemporary society.
"I get kicked out for a...caveman and shows that I out-performed because I’m not owned by [ABC Television Studios]...So a...Chicano can’t be on TV but a...caveman can?" Lopez said. "And a Chicano with an audience already? You know when you get in this that shows do not last forever, but this was an important show and to go unceremoniously like this hurts. One hundred seventy people lost their jobs."
For his part, Lopez will be fine. He has an HBO special and a movie coming in the summer, and a deal with Warner Bros. to produce television movies.
"TV just became really, really white again," he said.
--Maria Elena Fernandez
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Pilli blogging
Long time no blog her pictures, here's her picking veggies at a local farm and at Cesar Chavez day making a friend with her parasol. I'm trying to keep it up. Going to Avenal this weekend for Old Timers Day.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Wenesday night videos
Me & you
Say it Right
Signs
these should keep the internet me occupied (PS) pilli blogging is on its way back.
Say it Right
Signs
these should keep the internet me occupied (PS) pilli blogging is on its way back.
Scrubs
This is by far my most favorite show, it reminds me that things will be ok because its a sitcom but that weird situations do happen to relationships and with life. The dark humor is what I thrive off on. Much in the way that the Harry potter books deal with the bubble that we lived in at Yale. But anytime you have a chance to watch especially now that there in reruns on all kinds of stations. Anyways heres a clip from the show.
Nnamdi - My Chocolate Bear
Nnamdi - My Chocolate Bear
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
in the 60's mood - Viva los Monkees
One of the originally made boy bands. I love Davie Jones... and the line... I need sunshine on my brain.
I'm a believer
Pleasant Valley Sunday
I'm a believer
Pleasant Valley Sunday
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Friday night accident
I was in a accident that totaled my car on friday night. I'm sad its gone the escort got me across the country and almost made it for the final trip to cali. I'm ok but my face got a bit of a beating. Here's the picture.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Weekend Pilli Blogging
Pilli has been gone for one week. I miss her and her mami. I wanted to share some pictures since there gone and I just scanned one of my favorite pictures ever with my sister.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Read Bulletin
From: Walter
Date: Mar 11, 2007 8:46 PM
Subject For those of you who dont know
Body: I have finally been given a date for my brigades deployment to Iraq. We will have boots on the ground July 30th, meaning I will be leaving the states sometime around July 15th ish. Right now my Block Leave is scheduled for the last two weeks of June, which is a good thing because if it doesnt change then Ill get to turn 21 at home. We are also already being told to expect an 18 month deployment possibly longer.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
back in the day 1998 style
when things were better and life was easier... hootie ruled,
then when the Stile's disease hit their song time got me through the long nights.
this was the first song I danced to after I got better in the future birthplace of pilli.
then when the Stile's disease hit their song time got me through the long nights.
this was the first song I danced to after I got better in the future birthplace of pilli.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Aunque no sea conmigo
Song I remember from Ciuapilli's snowy birth.
This last video is dedicated to all the Mecha de Yalies working their butts off to get ECCSF going. La union hace fuerza.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Mil hora
Got the test in a few hours heres a good Sonora Dinamita Cover of Mil horas by the Agrentina band Los abuelos de la nada. A bit too sexy but the song is great plus a song for lety.
Long week
So this has been a really long week. Night classes suck and I have an insurance test on Tuesday I need to be ready for all while trying to do like 5 different things for SVrep. Damn I didn't do enough in that regard this weekend. So I'm going to have a tough beginning of the week and hot damn its valentines day...man I can't wait for President's day, so I can just sleep in. Anyways here's a belated pilli picture and a video of a song I didn't know Julieta Venegas had covered with Jarabe de Palo and the original version below that. Plus if you like good fusion music like I do please check out Pistolera a fusion band from NYC who's coming to the southwest at the beginning of March for more info and a taste of there cool song Algo pa que te olvides or something so you can forget. Pistolera.net
Monday, February 05, 2007
Late night video & post
I post this video because of my weekend at a National Leadership Summit on Immigration Policy
which went very well and fills me with hope to truly get an immigration policy that will give legalization to all the million people that need it in the country.
I am going to be writing more especially my weekly post of pilli pictures so check it out every friday to see what pilli's up to, I'm going to be taking classes for an insurance exam I'm going to be taking in a week or two pretty soon.
Drop a comment if you have a chance.
this other video is dedicated to Denise who has left Arizona for the safer and better confines of Ohio.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
I love drew
Drew Barrymore's nude sprint
Jan. 23, 2007 07:44 AM
Drew Barrymore loves to run naked in Irish fields.The actress - who claims she has outgrown her wild teenage years - admits she still loves to be spontaneous sometimes.Drew confessed to Parade magazine: "I'll drive in Ireland and park my car and run out into the field and rip all my clothes off and just run in the wheat fields naked. That's for no one to see. That's to have that freedom of feeling at one with nature. So I am completely unguarded, still."
The 31-year-old star admits she still finds it difficult to forget her troubled childhood, but is determined to remain positive.Drew, who recently split from her boyfriend Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti, said: "It was hard. My childhood lacked structure, stability and consistency. You want to place blame on people, but I don't think it's fair. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. You can let that be your downfall or a springboard to become something better."For me, I just thought, 'What a waste of time to be angry at my parents. What a waste of time to feel sorry for myself.' The best thing I can do is learn all the things I've learned from them, good and bad, have my own family someday and just keep on going. So many things are thrown at us as human beings, but you can't let any of them get you down, or you're just going to be defeated."After starring in classic sci-fi film 'E.T.' aged just seven, Drew started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol by the time she was nine, smoking marijuana at 10, and taking cocaine at 12. Drew opened her heart about her childhood drug use in her 1990 autobiography, 'Little Girl Lost'.
Jan. 23, 2007 07:44 AM
Drew Barrymore loves to run naked in Irish fields.The actress - who claims she has outgrown her wild teenage years - admits she still loves to be spontaneous sometimes.Drew confessed to Parade magazine: "I'll drive in Ireland and park my car and run out into the field and rip all my clothes off and just run in the wheat fields naked. That's for no one to see. That's to have that freedom of feeling at one with nature. So I am completely unguarded, still."
The 31-year-old star admits she still finds it difficult to forget her troubled childhood, but is determined to remain positive.Drew, who recently split from her boyfriend Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti, said: "It was hard. My childhood lacked structure, stability and consistency. You want to place blame on people, but I don't think it's fair. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. You can let that be your downfall or a springboard to become something better."For me, I just thought, 'What a waste of time to be angry at my parents. What a waste of time to feel sorry for myself.' The best thing I can do is learn all the things I've learned from them, good and bad, have my own family someday and just keep on going. So many things are thrown at us as human beings, but you can't let any of them get you down, or you're just going to be defeated."After starring in classic sci-fi film 'E.T.' aged just seven, Drew started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol by the time she was nine, smoking marijuana at 10, and taking cocaine at 12. Drew opened her heart about her childhood drug use in her 1990 autobiography, 'Little Girl Lost'.
I like her and depression sucks
Mandy Moore: I struggled with depression
Mandy Moore told Jane magazine her depression came on as if "someone had flipped a switch in me."
POSTED: 11:53 a.m. EST, January 23, 2007
Story Highlights• Mandy Moore: Though "positive person," was hit by depression• Says breakup contributed but not only reason• "Writing has been really therapeutic," she says
NEW YORK (AP) -- Mandy Moore has a lot going for her, including a starring role opposite Diane Keaton in the upcoming comedy "Because I Said So." Even so, she says she's grappled with depression.
"A few months ago I felt really low, really sad. Depressed for no reason," the 22-year-old actress-singer says in an interview in the February issue of Jane magazine, on newsstands Tuesday.
"I'm a very positive person, and I've always been glass-half-full," she continues. "So it was like someone flipped a switch in me. I wanted to figure out why."
Moore, newly single after high-profile relationships with actor Zach Braff and tennis standout Andy Roddick, says her recent split with Braff didn't help matters.
"The breakup added to what I was going through, but it's not the complete reason," she tells the magazine. "It definitely doesn't help if you're already in that place ... ."
Moore, who is working on a new record at a studio in Woodstock, New York, and feeling better for doing it, says writing songs "away from friends in L.A. or New York" is good for the soul.
"Writing has been really therapeutic," she says of her music. "These little nuggets that have come up over the past eight months have made me look at things in a different way."
Moore started out as a squeaky-clean teen singer and later crossed over into movies with featured roles in such films as "A Walk to Remember," "Saved" and "American Dreamz."
"I feel bad that people wasted their money on such trite, blah pop music," says Moore about her earlier music.
Moore has been looking inward a lot of late.
"I've been going through this really crazy time in my life -- it's what I imagine people fresh out of college go through," she says. "I'm asking myself life-altering questions, like 'Who am I? Where do I fit in this world? What am I doing, what do I want to do? Am I living to my full potential?' "
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Happy thankgiving, Merry Christmas &Happy 2007
We I've been away from my blog for long time. I just haven't been in a writing mode. Lots to talk about but not wanting to write. Living in AZ again new job as an insurance guy going decently. My organizing job was more than worth all the time and money spent to get a democratic congress elected and working in California. Mari's doing great busting her butt to get her grad school apps done and out and were glad at the progress pilli is making in school she is very inventive and creative. Will probably blog time permitting and I think the Colts will win the super bowl.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Yale Ivy League Champs Beat Harvard 34-13!!
Final
Yale (8-2, 6-1 Ivy)
Harvard (7-3, 4-3 Ivy)
1 2 3 4 T
7 13 0 14 34
0 7 0 6 13
Yale takes down Harvard for share of Ivy League title
Go sons of Eli!
Yale (8-2, 6-1 Ivy)
Harvard (7-3, 4-3 Ivy)
1 2 3 4 T
7 13 0 14 34
0 7 0 6 13
Yale takes down Harvard for share of Ivy League title
Go sons of Eli!
Friday, November 17, 2006
Friday Pilli blogging
this one month old pilli picture is in honor of Jackie's visit from Detroit to who showed Ciuapilli how to properly be in a car seat. This also marks the first week of me begin part of an Insurance agency in Phoenix things certainly have changed in the last week. Mostly postitive, I turned 26 and thank everyone that sent a cared or called me on or around the 15th. We are still not done moving everything to the new apartment but will get around to it most of this weekend. I'm excited and have a really good vibe about this place. If your ever in town please stop by. paz y amor.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
He had the math.....the wrong math
How'd that happen?
Karl Rove: The Architect's Faulty Specs
Rove believed in his metrics. He miscalculated. How did Bush's guru get the numbers so wrong?
By Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
Nov. 20, 2006 issue - President Bush knew he was in for a rough night. As he settled down in front of the TV in the White House residence to watch the election results, the numbers were already grim. By 8 p.m., long before the polls closed out west, Bush realized it was over. "It looks like this is going to be a rout," he lamented to a handful of aides.
...................................
How did the man they call Bush's brain get it so wrong?
...................
Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House—enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists—to study just how wrong the polls were.
His confidence buoyed everyone inside the West Wing, especially the president. Ten days before the elections, House Majority Leader John Boehner visited Bush in the Oval Office with bad news. He told Bush that the party would lose Tom DeLay's old seat in Texas, where Bush was set to campaign. Bush brushed him off, Boehner recalls. "Get me Karl," the president told an aide. "Karl has the numbers."
The numbers looked a lot less rosy to the other architect of the campaign—RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. It was Mehlman who built the much-vaunted turnout machine. But he feared that many inside the party were relying too much on technology, like voter databases, and had lost sight of the bigger picture: that voters were turning against them. "We've built a great new car, but the gasoline for the car isn't us; it's the candidates and the issues," Mehlman told NEWSWEEK. There was no bigger issue than the war, which Rove had pushed as a winning theme for the GOP. As he flew back to D.C. on a private jet two days before the elections, Mehlman scribbled his predictions on a card—not to be revealed until after the elections. His numbers were much closer than Rove's: the GOP would lose 23 in the House (5 short of the final tally), 5 in the Senate (1 shy) and 6 governors (spot on). Last week Mehlman announced he would step down and pursue opportunities in the private sector.
Rove blames complacent candidates for much of the GOP's defeat. He says even some scandal-tainted members won when they followed what he calls "the program" of voter contacts and early voting. "Where some people came up short was where they didn't have a program," he told NEWSWEEK. But even Rove concedes that there were several hardworking incumbents, like Mike Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania's Eighth District, who simply couldn't overcome the odds. In an election overwhelmed by war and scandal, the program was no match for their party's problems.
Mehlman may be the only Republican with a clue. Rove is a fucking idiot. Program? He's got one third of evangelicals voting for Dems, moderates fleeing from the GOP and he wants to talk metrics?
Mehlman actually gets that the path of Rove and the GOP means defeat for the foreseeable future, and he tried to alter it, but he didn't have much of a chance. Why don't the GOP gets that the American people have tired of them.
posted by Steve @ 2:33:00 PM
Karl Rove: The Architect's Faulty Specs
Rove believed in his metrics. He miscalculated. How did Bush's guru get the numbers so wrong?
By Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
Nov. 20, 2006 issue - President Bush knew he was in for a rough night. As he settled down in front of the TV in the White House residence to watch the election results, the numbers were already grim. By 8 p.m., long before the polls closed out west, Bush realized it was over. "It looks like this is going to be a rout," he lamented to a handful of aides.
...................................
How did the man they call Bush's brain get it so wrong?
...................
Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House—enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists—to study just how wrong the polls were.
His confidence buoyed everyone inside the West Wing, especially the president. Ten days before the elections, House Majority Leader John Boehner visited Bush in the Oval Office with bad news. He told Bush that the party would lose Tom DeLay's old seat in Texas, where Bush was set to campaign. Bush brushed him off, Boehner recalls. "Get me Karl," the president told an aide. "Karl has the numbers."
The numbers looked a lot less rosy to the other architect of the campaign—RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. It was Mehlman who built the much-vaunted turnout machine. But he feared that many inside the party were relying too much on technology, like voter databases, and had lost sight of the bigger picture: that voters were turning against them. "We've built a great new car, but the gasoline for the car isn't us; it's the candidates and the issues," Mehlman told NEWSWEEK. There was no bigger issue than the war, which Rove had pushed as a winning theme for the GOP. As he flew back to D.C. on a private jet two days before the elections, Mehlman scribbled his predictions on a card—not to be revealed until after the elections. His numbers were much closer than Rove's: the GOP would lose 23 in the House (5 short of the final tally), 5 in the Senate (1 shy) and 6 governors (spot on). Last week Mehlman announced he would step down and pursue opportunities in the private sector.
Rove blames complacent candidates for much of the GOP's defeat. He says even some scandal-tainted members won when they followed what he calls "the program" of voter contacts and early voting. "Where some people came up short was where they didn't have a program," he told NEWSWEEK. But even Rove concedes that there were several hardworking incumbents, like Mike Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania's Eighth District, who simply couldn't overcome the odds. In an election overwhelmed by war and scandal, the program was no match for their party's problems.
Mehlman may be the only Republican with a clue. Rove is a fucking idiot. Program? He's got one third of evangelicals voting for Dems, moderates fleeing from the GOP and he wants to talk metrics?
Mehlman actually gets that the path of Rove and the GOP means defeat for the foreseeable future, and he tried to alter it, but he didn't have much of a chance. Why don't the GOP gets that the American people have tired of them.
posted by Steve @ 2:33:00 PM
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Math Major?
Where's your math at now ROVE??? What didn't add up? forgot to carry the 1? either way you lose and America wins!!
Monday, November 06, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
Very Niiice - Life is difficult
the intro to M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled:
Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction tha tshould not be and tha thas somehhow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.
Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction tha tshould not be and tha thas somehhow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
Friday before
So we have a new apartment just need to turn on the lights and get the key probably all on wenesday. And my registration stuff is going alot better. 2200 is a great number considering our bad start. well here's a pilli picture from the computer webcam.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Friday, October 13, 2006
What the dems should do.
Guest: Jacob Hacker
Democrats need a clearer and more forward-looking economic vision, and I argue that they should embrace a vision that combines a commitment to economic security with a faith in economic opportunity. This vision—which I call an “insurance and opportunity society”—is starkly opposed to the ideal of an “ownership society” outlined by conservative critics of the welfare state. The premise of conservative’s ownership society is that we can only be free to pursue the opportunities in our lives if we do not share risks with others. An insurance and opportunity society, by contrast, is based on a very different premise: that we are most capable of fully participating in our economy and our society, most capable of taking risks and looking toward our future, when we have a basic foundation of financial security. In this vision, economic security is not opposed to economic opportunity. It is its cornerstone.
In The Great Risk Shift, I argue that an insurance and opportunity agenda must include the preservation and improvement of existing social insurance programs, like Social Security, but simply cannot end there. Our framework of social protection is overwhelmingly focused on the aged, even though young adults and families with children face the greatest economic strains. It emphasizes short-term exits from the workforce, even though long-term job losses and the displacement and obsolescence of skills have become more severe. It embodies, in places, the antiquated notion that family strains can be dealt with by a second earner—usually, a woman—who can easily leave the workforce when there is a need for a parent at home. Above all, it is based on the idea that job-based private insurance can easily fill the gaps left by public programs—when it is ever more clear that it cannot.
This means the emphasis should be on portable insurance to help families deal with major threats to income and big blows to household wealth. It also means that these promises should be mostly separate from work for a particular employer: a commitment that moves seamlessly from job to job. Yes, this will sometimes mean that government has to take the lead, but it will also mean a system of economic protection that’s more family friendly, more conducive to having kids, more supportive of obtaining new skills, more accommodating of employers buried under the cost of their benefit obligations—in short, more supportive of a large productive workforce that will lessen the strain on programs for the aged. It also means a system much less imperiled by the demographic shifts that have placed Medicare and Social Security in danger.
Instead of slashing existing protections, in sum, we should work to include families in the bargain—by, for instance, expanding Medicare to younger Americans, upgrading unemployment insurance to reflect the changing character of job loss, and ensuring that 401(k) retirement plans are broadly distributed and are capable of providing guaranteed benefits for the remainder of retired people’s lives.
I won’t go into the detailed agenda that I lay out in The Great Risk Shift here. I will, however, mention one novel proposal I have developed that I call “Universal Insurance”—a kind of umbrella insurance policy protecting working families against catastrophic drops in income or budget-wrecking health costs. I have outlined Universal Insurance in considerable detail for the Brooking Institution’s Hamilton Project, and I encourage those interested to find out more about the plan on the Project’s website As you will find if you visit the proposal, my estimates suggest that Universal Insurance would cost much less than what the government now spends to subsidize 401(k) plans each year. In turn, it would lift more than 3 million Americans out of poverty, and cut Americans’ chance of experiencing a 50 percent or larger income drop in half.
All these changes will not come without struggle, of course, and the struggle will be fierce. Yet we should not forget the principles at stake. If we acquiesce to the “creative destruction” of American-style capitalism, then we also have to accept that many Americans, at one point or another, will be hit with disasters they cannot cope with on their own. Providing protection against these risks is a way of ensuring that the dynamism of our economy is politically sustainable and morally defensible. It is also a way of ensuring that Americans feel secure enough to take the risks necessary for them and their families to get ahead. Corporations enjoy limited liability, after all, precisely to encourage risk-taking. But while today we still have limited liability for American corporations, increasingly we have full liability for American families.
This must change.
Democrats need a clearer and more forward-looking economic vision, and I argue that they should embrace a vision that combines a commitment to economic security with a faith in economic opportunity. This vision—which I call an “insurance and opportunity society”—is starkly opposed to the ideal of an “ownership society” outlined by conservative critics of the welfare state. The premise of conservative’s ownership society is that we can only be free to pursue the opportunities in our lives if we do not share risks with others. An insurance and opportunity society, by contrast, is based on a very different premise: that we are most capable of fully participating in our economy and our society, most capable of taking risks and looking toward our future, when we have a basic foundation of financial security. In this vision, economic security is not opposed to economic opportunity. It is its cornerstone.
In The Great Risk Shift, I argue that an insurance and opportunity agenda must include the preservation and improvement of existing social insurance programs, like Social Security, but simply cannot end there. Our framework of social protection is overwhelmingly focused on the aged, even though young adults and families with children face the greatest economic strains. It emphasizes short-term exits from the workforce, even though long-term job losses and the displacement and obsolescence of skills have become more severe. It embodies, in places, the antiquated notion that family strains can be dealt with by a second earner—usually, a woman—who can easily leave the workforce when there is a need for a parent at home. Above all, it is based on the idea that job-based private insurance can easily fill the gaps left by public programs—when it is ever more clear that it cannot.
This means the emphasis should be on portable insurance to help families deal with major threats to income and big blows to household wealth. It also means that these promises should be mostly separate from work for a particular employer: a commitment that moves seamlessly from job to job. Yes, this will sometimes mean that government has to take the lead, but it will also mean a system of economic protection that’s more family friendly, more conducive to having kids, more supportive of obtaining new skills, more accommodating of employers buried under the cost of their benefit obligations—in short, more supportive of a large productive workforce that will lessen the strain on programs for the aged. It also means a system much less imperiled by the demographic shifts that have placed Medicare and Social Security in danger.
Instead of slashing existing protections, in sum, we should work to include families in the bargain—by, for instance, expanding Medicare to younger Americans, upgrading unemployment insurance to reflect the changing character of job loss, and ensuring that 401(k) retirement plans are broadly distributed and are capable of providing guaranteed benefits for the remainder of retired people’s lives.
I won’t go into the detailed agenda that I lay out in The Great Risk Shift here. I will, however, mention one novel proposal I have developed that I call “Universal Insurance”—a kind of umbrella insurance policy protecting working families against catastrophic drops in income or budget-wrecking health costs. I have outlined Universal Insurance in considerable detail for the Brooking Institution’s Hamilton Project, and I encourage those interested to find out more about the plan on the Project’s website As you will find if you visit the proposal, my estimates suggest that Universal Insurance would cost much less than what the government now spends to subsidize 401(k) plans each year. In turn, it would lift more than 3 million Americans out of poverty, and cut Americans’ chance of experiencing a 50 percent or larger income drop in half.
All these changes will not come without struggle, of course, and the struggle will be fierce. Yet we should not forget the principles at stake. If we acquiesce to the “creative destruction” of American-style capitalism, then we also have to accept that many Americans, at one point or another, will be hit with disasters they cannot cope with on their own. Providing protection against these risks is a way of ensuring that the dynamism of our economy is politically sustainable and morally defensible. It is also a way of ensuring that Americans feel secure enough to take the risks necessary for them and their families to get ahead. Corporations enjoy limited liability, after all, precisely to encourage risk-taking. But while today we still have limited liability for American corporations, increasingly we have full liability for American families.
This must change.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Friday, October 06, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Myth of me
I'm not a gifted writer or gifted at much else. What I am is blessed with a lot of great people and loves of my life. But within all that love I've realized that it’s too hard to be everything to everyone. My myth of myself has been severely rocked and nearly wiped out of existence thanks to an unsettling time with in my beloved California. Work is going unevenly as well but at least that has an end date, this other unsettled time does not at all seem to have any end date. I'm hoping one day to be able to rewrite my myth of myself but I'm not going to have time to do that for a good while.
Things are changing so fast I wish I could catch up and make the best decisions although I know there are consequences for all our choices. I'm hoping I got all my organizing and politicking out of me so I can focus on making some grub so I can take care of my little pilli. I think going back to Phoenix makes the most sense but the consequences are riff with peril. Staying in California is a very selfish notion for the myth of me and I've come to understand that especially after finding out home is an artificial construct. I've always thought myself quite talented at making a safe place for myself in spite of the difficult environment around me but that talent has either run out or finally eludes me. My patience’s has come to its end and this myth that I'm a patience person is wearing thin to me and frankly it worries me what I am left with without my patients. But inspite of it all I think there is hope somewhere in all this stress and confusion, there has to be especially after 5 years of feeling lost I'm ready to get on my game on. To all those that care don't dispare just ask me how I'm doing when I turn 26 in November. We'll see where the myth stand because as all good tall tales they sometime need to be revised to be made better.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Pilli bloggin
haven't done one of these for a few weeks. Lots of stuff going on might be getting a place in LA. Really getting into the voter registration thing and traveling alot. Hoping to find something steady in Central Cali but only god knows. Enjoy some pictures from 20th Ramirez Family Reunion. One is all the cousins on my mother's side and then all the cousin's of my mother on my grandmother's side. Then Pilli and Emily playing DS. cool
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
9/11 post
this is the best I've read on the issue.
keith oberman
Olbermann speaks
This hole in the ground
Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.
Five years later this space is still empty.
Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country's wound is still open.
Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.
Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President -- and those around him -- did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?
Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.
So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.
keith oberman
Olbermann speaks
This hole in the ground
Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.
Five years later this space is still empty.
Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country's wound is still open.
Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.
Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President -- and those around him -- did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?
Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.
So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.
stolen post
this post speaks to one part of my life drama at the moment-
------------------
September 4, 2006
When What We Love And Who We Love Are At Odds
categories: news
Whatever his animal conservation and awareness accomplishments, Steve Irwin's clownlike persona and the unfathomably unpredictable circumstances of his death make him a poor posterboy for discussing the issue of whether to continue extreme behavior after you have a kid.
[And no matter how experienced he was or how many precautions he took, there is no way anyone can convince me that it was anything but exploitative and irresponsible to put on a show about feeding a crocodile while dangling his kid alongside the chicken.] But none of that lessens the tragedy of a family--with two small children--losing their father so early in their lives.
For me, croc feeding joined skydiving and most of jaywalking, even, on my personal list of Things I Could Conceivably Rationalize Before The Kid, But That I Now Feel Too Burdened With Responsibility To Stay Alive To Take Up. That list is going to be different for everyone, and none is or should be the Dad In The Plastic Bubble, but I really wonder where and how you negotiate the line between yourself and your family.
People have taken me to task for the tone of my Irwin post, fine. But Andy's one-line link to the news had a tagline that's haunted me all day: "died doing what he loved." It's a statement, rationale, explanation that's meant, I guess, to help make sense of an otherwise senseless, random event.
I wanted to type 'accident,' but the whole point is that it's not referring to some banal everyday activity like crossing the street or a sudden illness like stage 2 pancreatic cancer, or even something stupidly avoidable like standing under a tree in a lightning storm. Beyond the basics, though, we regularly put ourselves at varying degrees of risk doing "what we love" whether that's our jobs, our hobbies, our compulsions, or our passions. And when that risk-reward calculation goes south, it's not just we who pay the price, it's our families.
Reading Irwin's story, I immediately flashed back to May 18 a Thursday night, when I got ambushed in my car by an NPR commentator's tribute to extreme skiing pioneer Doug Coombs. Coombs and one of his brightest protege's were killed in April while skiing a series of 50-degree couloirs in the most dangerous part of the extreme skiing mecca of La Grave, in the French Alps.
The commentator, Alex Markels, like many, many people who knew or skied with Coombs, was in awe of him and had near-endless stories of formative experiences to tell. [This Coombs tribute from the Denver Post is similar, only longer.]
It was a heartfelt tribute to a sorely missed friend who clearly touched many lives and "died doing what he loved," but right at the end, Markels mentioned that now someone else will have to teach Coombs' 2-year-old son how to ski, because his dad can't.
Well, I promptly lost it and had to pull over. I'm a lameass skier and getting worse with every winter I miss, but teaching my kid to ski is on the shortshortlist of things I've always envisioned when I became a dad. As I sat there, though, I felt ambushed: was it obvious only to me that no amount of praise from friends or customers was going to offset the absence of his father in that kid's life?
But what can you do? Coombs' entire life, it seemed, was death-defying skiing. His wife is an extreme skier, too. He runs extreme skiing tours and makes extreme skiing documentaries. Can anyone really expect him to stop being who he is just because a kid comes along? No one can answer that for anyone but himself, and that's my whole dilemma.
I'm lucky, I guess, because the things I love don't cause me to face death or injury too often. Or at all. But even so, I feel there is so much more at stake now, including the well-being of someone who cannot possibly understand, much less accede to, the concept of risk, that there are now whole worlds of things I just won't do because of what some outcome may do to my kid's life. Most of the time, I'm totally cool with that; hell, most of the time, I don't even notice. But then something like this happens to remind me what sacrifices I face, and--and well, it's like wrestling a big ol' croc. I reckon. And I guess it makes me ramble.
posted by greg at September 4, 2006 4:12 PM | add to del.icio.us
------------------
September 4, 2006
When What We Love And Who We Love Are At Odds
categories: news
Whatever his animal conservation and awareness accomplishments, Steve Irwin's clownlike persona and the unfathomably unpredictable circumstances of his death make him a poor posterboy for discussing the issue of whether to continue extreme behavior after you have a kid.
[And no matter how experienced he was or how many precautions he took, there is no way anyone can convince me that it was anything but exploitative and irresponsible to put on a show about feeding a crocodile while dangling his kid alongside the chicken.] But none of that lessens the tragedy of a family--with two small children--losing their father so early in their lives.
For me, croc feeding joined skydiving and most of jaywalking, even, on my personal list of Things I Could Conceivably Rationalize Before The Kid, But That I Now Feel Too Burdened With Responsibility To Stay Alive To Take Up. That list is going to be different for everyone, and none is or should be the Dad In The Plastic Bubble, but I really wonder where and how you negotiate the line between yourself and your family.
People have taken me to task for the tone of my Irwin post, fine. But Andy's one-line link to the news had a tagline that's haunted me all day: "died doing what he loved." It's a statement, rationale, explanation that's meant, I guess, to help make sense of an otherwise senseless, random event.
I wanted to type 'accident,' but the whole point is that it's not referring to some banal everyday activity like crossing the street or a sudden illness like stage 2 pancreatic cancer, or even something stupidly avoidable like standing under a tree in a lightning storm. Beyond the basics, though, we regularly put ourselves at varying degrees of risk doing "what we love" whether that's our jobs, our hobbies, our compulsions, or our passions. And when that risk-reward calculation goes south, it's not just we who pay the price, it's our families.
Reading Irwin's story, I immediately flashed back to May 18 a Thursday night, when I got ambushed in my car by an NPR commentator's tribute to extreme skiing pioneer Doug Coombs. Coombs and one of his brightest protege's were killed in April while skiing a series of 50-degree couloirs in the most dangerous part of the extreme skiing mecca of La Grave, in the French Alps.
The commentator, Alex Markels, like many, many people who knew or skied with Coombs, was in awe of him and had near-endless stories of formative experiences to tell. [This Coombs tribute from the Denver Post is similar, only longer.]
It was a heartfelt tribute to a sorely missed friend who clearly touched many lives and "died doing what he loved," but right at the end, Markels mentioned that now someone else will have to teach Coombs' 2-year-old son how to ski, because his dad can't.
Well, I promptly lost it and had to pull over. I'm a lameass skier and getting worse with every winter I miss, but teaching my kid to ski is on the shortshortlist of things I've always envisioned when I became a dad. As I sat there, though, I felt ambushed: was it obvious only to me that no amount of praise from friends or customers was going to offset the absence of his father in that kid's life?
But what can you do? Coombs' entire life, it seemed, was death-defying skiing. His wife is an extreme skier, too. He runs extreme skiing tours and makes extreme skiing documentaries. Can anyone really expect him to stop being who he is just because a kid comes along? No one can answer that for anyone but himself, and that's my whole dilemma.
I'm lucky, I guess, because the things I love don't cause me to face death or injury too often. Or at all. But even so, I feel there is so much more at stake now, including the well-being of someone who cannot possibly understand, much less accede to, the concept of risk, that there are now whole worlds of things I just won't do because of what some outcome may do to my kid's life. Most of the time, I'm totally cool with that; hell, most of the time, I don't even notice. But then something like this happens to remind me what sacrifices I face, and--and well, it's like wrestling a big ol' croc. I reckon. And I guess it makes me ramble.
posted by greg at September 4, 2006 4:12 PM | add to del.icio.us
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