It's coming...

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I know it's been a while. and wondering what kind of stuff i should post here. Some scary stories maybe?

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

A Machine that helped him to breathe was on it's last.  It had been wearing out and towards the end, quickly.  Next followed the patient, who was already brain-dead.  There was simply, nothing more that anyone could do.  What can will power do, at this point?  Is there still possibility of a miracle?  Could something change at the last minute?

I had been walking down an Arkansas road late in the afternoon towards a friends house.  My mind was wandering to kill time and as usual, I was settling into my mode of 'deep thoughts'.  It's healthy right?  I just need to make sure I don't lose grip of reality.  It was an hour and a half before I got to Brians' house.  He was a few hours into his game console networking a tournament.  Once you get one of these, life in Arkansas is easier to live.  Theres' no need for me to bring up what I was thinking, even though it was about his Dad who drifted off into infinite sleep nearly a year ago.  Even though it seems like a short time ago, so many things have happened between then and now that Brian adjusted quickly.  Maybe thats' why he spent so much time on his game consule.  He really wasnt so active anymore, now that I thought about it. 

After a few hours of gaming, I had forgotten all about his Dad.

So the month is coming to a close.  It started off kinda shitty when I got fired, but also kinda of relieved too.  There was just too much pressure.  So I returned to the bar that I used to work at.  We had a bit of a problem the last time, which was resolved, but there is still no room for opportunities there.  So I've keep looking, and something told me to contact a friend at a bar I like to go to on lower greenville.  So happens that one of them had recently left, and low and behold.. they told me to come in today to talk to the boss and see what we could do.  Well it just got better and better, and I'm the new bartender there.  Now, I've got my foot in the door and updating my resume.

Oh happy day!

Mr Bin Laden says he has not spoken to his father for eight years

One of Osama Bin Laden's sons is in Qatar after being deported from Egypt and Spain following failed asylum bids.

Omar Bin Laden, 27, has said he does not share his father's views and has not seen him since 2000.

His British wife, Zaina Alsabah Bin Laden (formerly Jane Felix-Browne) said their condemnation of al-Qaeda had put their lives in danger in the Mid-East.

Their legal status in Qatar was not known. They have also been unsuccessful in securing British visas.

Mr Bin Laden, one of the al-Qaeda leader's 19 sons, made his claim for asylum in Madrid during a stopover on a flight from Egypt to Morocco with his 52-year-old wife.

We have finally found somewhere where we can stay and we thank the government - we cannot thank them enough Zaina Alsabah Bin Laden

He said the petition was rejected due to "insufficient evidence of danger or threat to [his] life". An appeal against the ruling is also believed to have been rejected.

The couple were then barred from entering Egypt, where they have lived for the past year. It was not known why Egypt denied them entry.

Officials at Cairo airport said the pair were deported to Qatar, where Mr Bin Laden, who has Saudi nationality, should normally have the right to live.

"We have finally found somewhere where we can stay and we thank the government. We cannot thank them enough," Mr Bin Laden's wife was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

Omar Bin Laden, a metals trader, says he has urged his father to give up violence and has not seen him for eight years.

Mrs Bin Laden says his life is in danger because he "stands up and asks for peace".

With the election over and President-elect Obama setting up his transition administration, particular agendas become evident. Among them are issues that display stark differences between the current Bush administration’s policies and those promised by Barack Obama.

Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post report, November 9, 2008:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team….

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

“The kind of regulations they are looking at” are those imposed by Bush for “overtly political” reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama’s team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush’s appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

Some of the Bush administration policies are easier to change than others. The closing of Guantanamo might take longer than some suspect. Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle from the Miami Herald write, November 7, 2008:

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees, predicted that Obama would move to close Guantanamo relatively quickly. She’ll reintroduce legislation to do so early next year.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” Feinstein said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Although Guantánamo isn’t expected to be as thorny as the issues of interrogation techniques, detention without charges and eavesdropping, it may take longer to close than Obama wants because of the question of what to do with high-value terrorists. The Obama administration could end up moving them to prisons scattered across the United States as it sorts out who should remain jailed and where others should be sent.

On the other hand, some policies can be reversed with a simple request. Alta Charo, a Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law & Bioethics at the UW-Madison Law School, indicated that it would be very simple for President Obama to make federal funding available to more embryonic stem cell lines. All he would need to do is “give a simple order to the director of the National Institutes of Health.”

The recent article from the Washington Post echoes Prof. Charo’s assertion:

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush’s controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson’s.

Bush’s August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.

But Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said that during Obama’s final swing through her state in October, she reminded him that because the restrictions were never included in legislation, Obama “can simply reverse them by executive order.” Obama, she said, “was very receptive to that.” Opponents of the restrictions have already drafted an executive order he could sign.

The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.

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So I found out the hard way, that my uncle is a neo-con republican.  He wanted to have a debate about the economy and Obama and all that and just turned into Hannity right before my eyes, it was very creepy.

My mom tells me today that her aunt died and she doesn't want to tell my grandfather, because that is his sister... and now, I will have to continue having a casual conversation with my grandfather... knowing what I know.

I hate...

.. my life.

Needed for This Election: A Great Rejection

Oct 29, 2008 By Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon's ZSpace Page / ZSpace

It could be a start -- a clear national rejection of the extreme right-wing brew that has saturated the executive branch for nearly eight years.

What's emerging for Election Day is a common front against the dumbed-down demagoguery that's now epitomized and led by John McCain and Sarah Palin.

A large margin of victory over the McCain-Palin ticket, repudiating what it stands for, is needed -- and absolutely insufficient. It's a start along a long uphill climb to get this country onto a course that approximates sanity.

McCain's only real hope is to achieve the election equivalent of drawing an inside straight -- capturing the electoral votes of some key swing states by slim margins. His small window of possible victory is near closing. Progressives should help to slam it shut.

Like it or not, the scale of a national rejection of McCain-Palin and Bush would be measured -- in terms of state power and perceived political momentum -- along a continuum that ranges from squeaker to landslide. It's in the interests of progressives for the scale to be closer to landslide than squeaker.

As McCain's strategists aim to thread an electoral-vote needle, it cannot be said with certainty that they will fail. Who can credibly declare that an aggregate of anti-democratic factors -- such as purged voting rolls, onerous requirements for voter ID, imposed obstacles to voting that target people of color, inequities in distribution of voting machines, not counting some votes as they are cast, anti-Obama racism and other factors -- could not combine to bring a "victory" resulting in a President McCain and a Vice President Palin come Jan. 20, 2009?

Under these circumstances, the wider the real margin for Obama over McCain, the less likely that McCain can claim sufficient electoral votes to become president.

Progressives are mostly on board with the Obama campaign, even though -- on paper, with his name removed -- few of his positions deserve the "progressive" label. We shouldn't deceive ourselves into seeing Obama as someone he's not. Yet an Obama presidency offers the possibilities that persistent organizing and coalition-building at the grassroots could be effective at moving national policy in a progressive direction. In contrast, a McCain presidency offers possibilities that are extremely grim.

 Some progressives, as a matter of principle, have come to a different conclusion. They're eager to cast their votes for a presidential candidate (Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney) who can't win.

Of course people's votes are entirely their own, to do with as they see fit. But the right to do something is distinct from the wisdom of doing it.

Last week, a mass email from the Nader for President 2008 campaign began by telling supporters: "Ralph Nader is at 5 percent in The Show Me State -- Missouri. And he's moving up. That's according to the most recent CNN/Time Missouri poll." The celebratory tone of the message was notable. Nader was polling at 5 percent in a crucial swing state -- where polls showed that McCain and Obama were in a dead heat. No wonder, on the same day as the email message, McCain spoke at rallies in suburbs of St. Louis and Kansas City.

Nader's potential effect on the election may be too small to increase the chances of a McCain victory. But from all indications, even if McCain and Obama were tied in polls across the country, the Nader campaign would be proceeding as it is now. What does that tell us about the logic of pressing forward with a vanguard approach even if it might serve the interests of right-wing forces that most progressives are straining to roll back in this election?

From the 1960s through the '90s, Ralph Nader had an unparalleled record of fighting for progressive reform. But the 2008 campaign of Nader and running-mate Matt Gonzalez has a frozen-in-time quality. Their campaign makes an electoral argument that focuses largely on Democrats, not Republicans. Much of Nader's pitch for votes is centering on the charge that Democrats are as corporate and compromised as ever -- and in many ways he's right. But he ignores the reality that Republican leaders keep getting worse and more right-wing; they are clearly more dangerous than many assumed a decade ago.

The historical trend is clear: Bush-Cheney have been further right and more reckless than even Newt Gingrich, who was further right than Ronald Reagan, who was further right than his Republican predecessors. And Palin speaks for herself.

My former co-author Jeff Cohen puts it this way: "Focusing on Democratic corruption is not the problem. The problem is developing an electoral strategy that fails to acknowledge how increasingly extremist Republicans are. It reminds me of that George Carlin joke: 'Here's a partial score from the West Coast -- Dodgers 5.' An electoral strategy has to assess the current positions of BOTH teams."

At this point, is an Obama victory a cinch? Maybe not. Consider this New York Times reporting published on Oct. 24: "Pollsters say there has never been a year when polling has been so problematic, given the uncertainty of who is going to vote in what is shaping up as an electorate larger than ever. While most national polls give Mr. Obama a relatively comfortable lead, in many statewide polls, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are much more closely matched. Even a small shift in the national number could deliver some of the closer states into the McCain camp, making an Electoral College victory at least possible."

In fact, it's possible that Obama could win a clear victory in the popular vote while McCain manages to claim enough electoral votes to move into the White House. Crucial to such an outcome would be Missouri (which, as the Times notes, "has been a bellwether in every White House race during the last century except 1956"). Is taking that risk worth the satisfaction of getting a couple percent of the vote for Ralph Nader for president in 2008?

The Nader campaign actually seems to be gunning for swing states in the stretch drive of the campaign, as if to maximize the chances that the Nader-Gonzalez ticket could be a factor in how the electoral votes end up being divided. Last week the Nader campaign announced that, beginning on Oct. 28, "Mr. Nader will make his final rounds campaigning in traditional swing states Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania."

All year, the Nader campaign has been asking rhetorical questions such as (in the words of an Oct. 22 press advisory): "Why is it that so-called liberals and progressives continue to support Democratic candidates like Obama whose campaign slogans and rhetoric do not match their stated positions and voting records?"

And: "Why do we progressives continue to delude ourselves that we stand for core, liberal values and then work for candidates who demonstrate that they have no commitment to these values?"

This fall, the answers to these largely valid questions revolve around a truth that trumps many others: A McCain-Palin administration would be such a disaster that we want to do what we can to prevent it.

When I've spoken to dozens of audiences during the two months since the Democratic National Convention (where I was an elected Obama delegate), there's been an overwhelmingly positive response when I make a simple statement about Obama and the prospects of an Obama presidency: "The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place."

Looking past the election, progressives will need to mobilize for a comprehensive agenda including economic justice, guaranteed healthcare for all, civil liberties, environmental protection and demilitarization.

The forces arrayed against far-reaching progressive change are massive and unrelenting. If an Obama victory is declared next week, those forces will be regrouping in front of our eyes -- with right-wing elements looking for backup from corporate and pro-war Democrats. How much leverage these forces exercise on an Obama presidency would heavily depend on the extent to which progressives are willing and able to put up a fight.

It's a fight we should welcome.

Norman Solomon's books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" and "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State." For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com