Motley Moose – Archive

So I received an email from my friend and President Barack Obama this morning.  He has announced his intention to pursue another term as presiding executive of that circus of dysfunctional acrimony that passes for the US government.  I was immediately reminded of the headline in The Onion on the morning following his election: “Black Man Given Worst Job in the World.”  

I have supported Obama since the primaries.  But I can no longer do so.  What kind of nut job would ask for a second helping of what he’s received?  I have come to question his sanity.  Do we really want a pathological masochist with his “finger on the button” to “answer the 3AM call?”

I have had this diary floating in my head for awhile. I hesitated to write it because it really had nothing to do with politics, it certainly wasn’t serious, given all that was going on in the world and at home. Then again because everything right now is so serious wars, nuclear meltdowns,budget battles etc etc I thought some might enjoy the distraction.

So here goes  . . . The Story on how my pilot call sign became POTUS.

One would be forgiven for feeling a weight on one’s soul with each sporadic, slowly unfolding fragment of unfortunate news from the Fukushima Daiichi reactor crisis.  While not newsworthy in an “info-entertainment” sense it is probably inevitable that we continue to follow the sombre narrative as if a friend or acquaintance was declining slowly:

The government expects that several months may be required before radioactive particles stop being released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, its top spokesman said Sunday.

”If we apply methods considered to be normal, I believe that it will be something like that,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference, when asked whether at least several months would be required before the plant crippled by the devastating March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami is brought under control.

Several months needed to stop radiation from Fukushima plant: gov’t Kyodo 3 Apr 11

NYT caption: In an image provided by Tokyo Electric Power Company, contaminated water from the crippled No. 2 reactor is seen leaking through a crack and draining into the ocean at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in northern Japan on Saturday.

But several months of what?:

Experts estimate that about seven tons an hour of radioactive water is escaping the pit. Safety officials have said that the water, which appears to be coming from the damaged No. 2 reactor, contains one million becquerels per liter of iodine 131, or about 10,000 times the levels normally found in water at a nuclear plant.

Hiroko Tabuchi and Ken Belson – Efforts to Plug Japanese Reactor Leak Seem to Fail NYT 3 Apr 11

OK, we are surely getting a crash course on nuclear physics and public safety as the ramifications of the continuing radiation impacts are quantified locally and in the world at large.

A lot of arguments have been put forward against the current military intervention in Libya. While I understand the arguments of those who are sincere with their criticisms of the choices of the US President I believe that win or lose this action is the correct one to take at this time.

Our involvement in Libya is about Libya, but it also about the whole of the Arab Spring. What is at stake is the possible – just possible – attainment of every major liberal goal for millions upon millions of people. The ultimate success of the Arab Spring would do more for human rights in the world than all efforts towards that goal combined could possibly hope for.

Where is Eman al-Obeidy?

A successful Arab Spring could lead to an African Fall. The population of effectively sadistic oppressive regimes in the world could fall dramatically in a few short years. Coming decades could see vibrant cities and societies where the very idea today is seen as so absurd as to not even enter serious conversation. Continental swathes of land soaked with blood, suffering and injustice could be saved from perpetual grinding hopelessness.

If my country did not at least try do what we can to foster this fragile moment of hope I think I would consider joining the cynics who believe we have lost our value in the world.

Has anyone else heard of Mondegreens? I knew what they were, just didn’t know there was a word for them, and have just discovered this in James’ Gleick’s excellent new book ‘The Information’.

They’re when you mishear a lyric like:

“When a Man loves a Walnut”

or

“He’s Got the Whole World in his Pants”

On a Bkos thread tonight I mentioned this, and people came up with some brilliant examples, including the video below, linked by Anathema, which is an entire song subtitled in Mondegreens

Enjoy, more examples below the thread.  

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

It has been fashionable to compare President Barack Obama to many of his predecessors. Liberals, facing the toughest midterms since 1994, have taken to recalling the presidencies

Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan – two men who faced similar challenges during the same parts of their terms, yet ended their terms with high approval ratings and respected legacies. Conservatives prefer the example of former president Jimmy Carter.

In the early days of the Obama presidency, it was also rather fashionable to measure Mr. Obama against another president: the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nowadays this comparison is less used. Mr. Obama and Mr. Roosevelt, however, do have at least one interesting similarity – and it is a similarity few talk about.

It begins with Mr. Obama. The current president is a consistent consumer of the tobacco industry’s products.

More below.