Motley Moose – Archive

We’ve seen calls for a no-fly zone from several fronts ~ both at home and abroad.  It seems to be the favored form of intervention of British PM Cameron, US Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Kerry as well as any number of twitterers.  We have seen calls for a no-fly zone in Libya, too, to be sure.  On the flip side, Gaddafi has vowed to use whatever military he has to fight a no-fly zone.

Me?  I don’t mind the idea (those three years I spent as a Data Processing Technician in the Navy made me a military expert) as long as the US does not take the lead.  I firmly believe, as SoS Clinton has said recently, the UN and/or NATO and/or the Arab League should take the lead.

What I find intriguing are the thoughts of SecDef Gates who, as you know, is a holdover from the Bush Administration and former CIA deputy director for intelligence during the Reagan years.

Governor Walker is beginning to walk back on his refusal to negotiate over his draconian union busting attempts.

New emails and conversations have come to light unveiling the first attempts at compromise from Walker over his stance on collective bargaining…possibly a good first step, but, is it enough?

Kids care more about being healthy than some might give them credit for. A lot of kids might beg mom for sugary cereals, but it turns out that they aren’t necessarily after the sugar itself. According to a new study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, given a choice between cereals in plain boxes labeled “healthy” and “sugary,” most kids will pick the healthy cereal. This indicates that some of the messages kids are being sent about the importance of a balanced diet and leading a healthy life are making an impact. Unfortunately, when a colorful cartoon character is placed on a cereal box, kids tend to choose it no matter what it tastes like.

Chris Hedges has posted quite a long article in Truthdig called This Time We’re Taking The Whole Planet With Us. It is devastating… not because it makes up a fantasy of destruction, but because it deals directly with the truth. Here are 2 excerpts, but I urge you to go HERE and read it all… then tell your friends and even casual aquaintences to read it… then look at what is being done in Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana and other places dominated by Tea Party attackers and decide to join the rest of us in doing something…anything…about it (I recommend listening to Michael Moore’s speech from Saturday which I posted earlier this morning.

Well, one at least. Here’s some of what the whackadoodle had to say yesterday:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose authority is teetering amid a popular uprising, said in an interview with a French newspaper on Sunday that an Islamic holy war would engulf the Mediterranean if the insurrection in Libya succeeded and that “we will go back to the time of Red Beard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransoms on boats.”

Of course, this isn’t particularly surprising from an omnicidal dictator who fancies himself a Flemingesque mastermind. Red Beard? This from an asshat who takes fashion advice from Capt. Crunch.

We tend to think of morality as being what is good and right, but of course that’s not necessarily the whole definition. More specifically, it can be defined as conformity to conventional and generally accepted rules of right conduct. Which makes sense, naturally. Society – the majority – supposedly determines cultural/national mores. Yet I don’t understand, then, how it is that the Republican party is so widely viewed as the party of morals and values. Whose values?

Only about 15% of American believe that abortion should be illegal in all cases, yet pro-forced birth Republicans pretend to speak for what is right and moral in regard to reproductive rights, and people seemingly let them get away with it. They represent clearly, in my view, immoral viewpoints on a plethora of topics and issues, and yet somehow it’s Democrats and liberals who are more frequently perceived as having loose morals? Republicans generally support revoking a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body, promoting or overlooking institutionalized racism, cutting spending for public works and programs that help disadvantaged people, opposing fair pay, preventing LGBT marriage and equality, dissolving unions, privatizing pretty much everything, preventing a large percentage of the population from having access to health care, letting corporations run wild at the expense of the public, maintaining and in some cases even strengthening the death penalty…

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Presidential election results are often pictured through electoral college maps, a useful and simple tool. Looking at the competition of the two parties throughout time provides a quite interesting exercise. Certain states turn blue, then red, then blue again. Others stay the same color. One election the map is filled with red; the next election blue makes a comeback. And on and on it goes.

This is in fact quite deceiving. What the electoral college does not show is the history of third-party challenges to the two-party system. In 1992, for instance, presidential candidate Ross Perot finished with 18.9% of the vote – yet not a single state in the 1992 electoral college showed his third-party run.

Since 1992, however, third-parties have had quite a rough run. This graph shows the third-party vote after that year:

More below.

Evenin’, Moose.

I will admit that I’m not much of a poet, though I love poetry deeply. There are a lot of reasons I don’t share poetry here. One is that I haven’t actively written poetry in years. In fact, I burned my “collected writings” in the late spring of 2006. (Perhaps best if I don’t go into why.) The other reason I don’t share poetry here is that I’m a bit embarrassed. Like I said, I’m no true poet. When I do write, I tend to be melodramatic to the point that it makes me shake my head when I go back and read.

Still, the Moose is a bit slow of late, and I’ve shown my ass here plenty of times – so why should I be embarrassed by a bit of bad poetry? And I know we’ve got poets here (I am looking at you in particular, John and Peter). So let’s see it, folks. Good poetry, bad poetry, and everything in between. Sonnets, epics, haikus, whatever. Serious, depressing, cheerful, or cheeky, I wanna see some writing here. Feel free to make up goofy shit on the fly! No one has an excuse not to post at least ONE silly limerick or haiku. 😉

I recently linked an article on Facebook to a talk by Bill Gates on the state of public education in our country today. One commenter maintained that Bill, as a “monopolist,” has no right to comment in any way about our public school system until he’s willing to put his own kids into it. Another said that the public system underperforms and that since private schools deliver superior results, all schools should be privatized. This diary is an attempt to respond to both.

 

As the mainstream media, like other traditional organisations, struggles to place Libya into acceptable, familiar narratives the actual events emerging renew the dramatic, populist story of the courage and determination of people aroused by the taste of freedom.

Overnight Az Zawiyah, in opposition hands and surrounded on all sides, has endured a concerted attack by forces loyal to the Qaddaffis including the ‘elite’ security battalions of the regime:

TRIPOLI, March 4 (Reuters) – Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Friday fought their way into Zawiyah, a town near the capital that has for days defied his rule, killing a rebel commander and pinning fighters into pockets of resistance.

At least 30 civilians were killed in the clashes, residents said by telephone. An improvised force of rebels was pushed back to the central square in Zawiyah, about 50 km (30 miles) west of the capital Tripoli, a rebel spokesman said.

“We are under siege, we are surrounded from the east, west and south, only the north is open because it opens to the sea,” Ali, a resident, told Reuters by phone. “Electricity has been cut, we are in the dark … Maybe they are planning an attack.”

Maria Golovnina – UPDATE 3-Gaddafi forces fight to seize rebel Zawiyah Reuters 5 Mar 11

It is 3:50AM in Az Zawiyah now and only daylight will reveal the outcome.