Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for March 2014

The Daily F Bomb, Thursday 3/6/14

Interrogatories

What is your favorite kind of cracker? What do you like to have on your cracker?

Who’s your favorite astronaut?

Do you ever eat frozen food (after it’s thawed and prepared, of course)? Examples?

The Twitter Emitter

Thursday Morning Herd Check-in

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

   


    PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary

        Fierces on the Weather Critter Comment are obligatory welcome.

What are we afraid of?

I’m sitting here at work (home office/spare bedroom) looking at Sam and Fran asleep on the bed across the room from me (they are cats in case anyone doesn’t know that) and thought about picking up my Kindle to either see if I needed to take a turn at Words with Friends or to read a book I’ve already read.  (Work is slow right now, what can I say?)

I’ve done a glance around the Internet and I’ve checked all my email accounts (two work and two personal) and I was in a bit of stream of consciousness thought I guess while I thought about picking up the Kindle.

I’m not sure why but I got to thinking about North Carolina and West Virginia (check Google News for the latest insanity the latter is engaged in) and slid over to Ukraine and then on to protests.

And I wondered why don’t we protest more?  I don’t mean “we” as in Moose I mean we as in Americans.

The Daily F Bomb, Wednesday 3/5/14

Interrogatories

When was the last time you went to the dentist? How was it?

What is your favorite branch of science?

What critically acclaimed movie did you hate?

The Twitter Emitter

Wednesday Watering Hole: Check In & Hangout for the Herd

Good morning, Moosekind.  


  PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary! 

        Recs on the weather jar comment are still welcome.

The common Moose, Alces alces, unlike other members of the deer family, is a solitary animal that doesn’t form herds. Not so its rarer but nearest relative, Alces purplius, the Motley Moose. Though sometimes solitary, the Motley Moose herds in ever shifting groups at the local watering hole to exchange news and just pass the time.

photo Moosewateringhole_zpsfce12127.jpg

Michele Bachmann’s Words Encourage Anti-Semitism

Michele Bachmann’s words about the Jewish-American community selling out Israel simply because we strongly support President Obama and the Democratic Party do nothing less than encourage one of the oldest, and most dangerous, anti-Semitic memes – that of dual loyalty.

Of Jewish support for President Obama, Bachmann said:

The Jewish community gave him their votes, their support, their financial support and as recently as last week, forty-eight Jewish donors who are big contributors to the president wrote a letter to the Democrat [sic] senators in the US Senate to tell them to not advance sanctions against Iran. This is clearly against Israel’s best interest. What has been shocking has been seeing and observing Jewish organizations who it appears have made it their priority to support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel. They sold out Israel.

This is nothing more than Congresswoman Bachmann telling us that our primary loyalty should be to Israel because we are Jews and Israel is the Jewish State and that we should vote accordingly.  Bachmann is not the first Republican to engage in such behavior and she will certainly not be the last as Republicans have long tried to use this as a wedge issue to win more Jewish votes; a plan that heretofore has failed miserably, as we remain one of the most reliably liberal and Democratic groups out there.

The fostering of this perception, however, is very dangerous to the Jewish community.  It encourages people to treat us as outsiders.  After all, if we’re not completely American because we all have this dual loyalty, then we shouldn’t be treated as full Americans many would then proceed to argue.  Our loyalty would become suspect and the haven, and home, that America has been to us would disappear.

My great-grandparents fled Latvia and Poland so that they could escape the pogroms and the violence and the systematic oppression from the government.  Encourage dual loyalty on our parts, and then create that perception in the minds of our fellow Americans, and all that nastiness could quickly come back.  None of this, however, comes to mind to these Republicans because they don’t really care so much about Jewish-Americans or the safety and welfare of Jews in general.

In the end, Jewish safety and welfare is completely irrelevant to Bachmann because we’re just pawns in her desire to see the realization of the end times postulated in the Book of Revelation.  That is what Bachmann and her ilk are concerned with.  We are only here to help bring about the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world.  While it is not hatred of the Jews that we have seen in other corners of the world, it is certainly not love for the Jews that we see here.

What Bachmann, in her apocalyptic fervor fails to understand is that Jewish-Americans do not wish to be part of her schemes.  We vote on the issues that are most important to us.  All one needs to do is look at the various social and economic issues.  On pretty much each and every one of them the overwhelming majority of Jews come down on the liberal side.  That is why every Democratic presidential candidate has won the Jewish vote for nearly 90 years running.

Congresswoman Bachmann, I think I can speak for the vast majority of Jewish-Americans when I say I can’t wait until you’re back home in Minnesota for good at the conclusion of this Congress.

Seeking Sojourner’s Truth

photo SojornerTruthbust_zpsfbca41df.jpg

Every time I walk onto the campus where I teach, at SUNY New Paltz, I pass the Sojourner Truth Library. The library was named for her in 1971, and houses a large collection of her papers and articles. I love to enter the library to view the mural , created by artist Rikki Asher, and 13 graduate students.

When I drive through Ulster County New York, where I live, I’m often reminded that Isabella Baumfree, born around 1787, who later took the name of “Sojourner Truth” in 1843, was enslaved here, along with many other black women and men. Slavery in New York began in 1626, when NY was still New Netherland.

The Daily F Bomb, Tuesday 3/4/14

Interrogatories

How far from where you grew up have you ended up? If you still live nearby, did you ever live far away?

Have you ever littered? Have you ever picked up after litterers?

Have you ever gotten revenge on anyone? Can you tell us about it?

The Twitter Emitter

In the News: Texas Tea Wrecks?

Found on the Internets …



A series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of material

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Tea Party Might Just Fizzle In Ted Cruz’s Texas

For Texas tea partiers, Tuesday’s primary might just be a grim day. Tea party candidates running in federal elections this cycle have struggled to get a foothold in the Lone Star state as the movement turns five.

The best example of the fizzle is one-time conservative favorite Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), who’s run such an incompetent campaign against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that even other tea party groups have turned against him.

Maybe arming fetuses is not as popular as Stockman thought it would be?

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Rudderless Tea Party Searches For Meaning Five Years On

WASHINGTON: Several hundred die-hard Tea Party activists Thursday found themselves sandwiched between a much larger convention of chiropractors and the annual fly-in lobbying convention of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Held at a Washington Hyatt, the fifth anniversary event for the Tea Party Patriots was a far cry from the halcyon days of 2009 when tens of thousands of conservatives descended on Washington for a Tea Party rally.

But more than sheer numbers was missing from Thursday’s event: The day lacked either a single leader or issue to rally around. While Obamacare may have birthed the movement, it no longer motivates the Tea Party, if Thursday’s lineup was any evidence.[…]

Bachmann used her off the cuff speech to hit everything from the rise of China to the budget. Bachmann, who will retire at the end of this year, even warned the movement to not “take your marbles and go home” simply because of their 2012 electoral defeat.

Rep. Steve King, one of the early adopters of the Tea Party mantle, took a more philosophical approach, arguing the movement is about securing the fundamentals of Western culture like “liberty” and “free markets.” […]

Indeed, the only thread that ran through the day was the idea that the Tea Party can still wield power in the next election. At one point a Tea Party Patriots official took the stage to announce the group had raised more than $1.1 million over the last 10 days, announcing, “Let’s show those establishment people and the permanent political class we mean business and we don’t need their money, ’cause we gots our own!”

Bachmann’s calls for the gavel of Harry Reid got polite applause, but the biggest cheers – and the fact that Republicans should be most concerned about – came when Rep. Tim Huelskamp called for the forcible end to Speaker John Boehner’s leadership.

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More …

Tuesday Morning Herd Check-in

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  


    PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary!   

        Fierces on the Weather Critter Comment are obligatory welcome.

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