I can’t put this in to words.
Hispaniola has been rocked by a 7.0 earthquake.
I felt the effects here in D.R. .
Friends in Haiti (facebook because phones are down) are saying it’s very very bad.
I copied one of the messages but withheld the name for privacy reasons.
You’ll just have to trust me on this one.
LIMBAUGH: I got two more stories in the stack today about how black unemployment is through the roof. Black unemployment is terrible. The black frame of mind is terrible, they’re depressed, they’re down — Obama’s not doing anything for ’em. How is that hoax and change workin’ for ya? They’re all livid. I mean, they thought there were gonna be an exact 180-degree economic reversal and it’s done nothing but get bad for everybody, but they’re especially upset about it because they look at him as one of them, and now they feel abandoned. And I’m sure Tiger Woods’ choice of females not helping ’em out with their attitudes there either.
This is really low.
Even for this clown.
Fuck you Rush.
Fuck. You.
I think I can.
I’m back to writing …
… in my mysterious and sexy way.
(actually I’m back to sharing links)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
We had a great debate on the Moose on Michael Moore in a recent diary and I wanted to share with you peeps a letter he wrote.
I was going to put it in an openthread but it is in the 3 digit range and many might not see it.
Here is a bit :
All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is 202-456-1414). But don’t abandon the best hope we’ve had in our lifetime for change. And for God’s sake, don’t head to bummerville if he says or does something we don’t like. Do you ever see Republicans behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican presidents and they still couldn’t get prayer in the public schools, or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that, but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came up nearly empty handed. No wonder they’ve been driven crazy lately. They’ll never have it as good again as they’ve had it since Reagan took office.
But — do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering, we just pack up our toys and go home.
I don’t have much to add other than …
Amen.
I stumbled upon this essay over at Kos.
Found it fascinating enough for me to write a “diary” on it.
“So you wanna talk about Hilter . . .”
http://svenworld.wordpress.com/
We’ve seen the new meme as of late by Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the corporate anti health care enablers to call President Obama a racist and compare him to Adolf Hitler. Thankfully, there’s a lot of push back to this disturbing trend, ranging from the last wails of a dying breed to fascism on the rise.
As a German, I’m not only part of my people’s long collective struggle to come to grips with our past, but I have personally grappled with my own family history and how to approach a subject so fraught with emotion and almost mythical proportions. I am so reluctant and utterly shocked to even write in response to such a patently absurd comparison that borders on the mental fringes between frightfully deluded and clinically insane. However, as painful as it is, there are times when we are asked to fearlessly descend into the darkest corners of our consciousness in order to evolve and transcend, and this is one of those times.
A very interesting read.
I’ve been slowly getting up to speed on all the blogosphere biz but still not quite there yet. By pure luck or coincidence I got to see DailyKos at its worst. I read many blogs and remember very few authors. Over at Kos I read all of Meteor Blade’s stuff and that’s about it (the Kos frontpage is a joke). Imagine my surprise when I read a diary about the banning of a very well known diarist who uses TocqueDeville as his/her handle.
I’ll let a part of TocqueDeville’s GBCW diary do the talking.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…
Community
Lastly, a lot of people have been suggesting that I must have been warned. Let me be clear: I was never warned. I was just suddenly locked out.
If Markos had simply asked me I would have been more than happy to clarify my position on the record. I would have explained my true intent and the whole bit about gross negligence and put all this conspiracy business aside. But instead I was just locked out. That is a lot of power for one individual to have over another. And that’s one of the reasons I haven’t asked to be reinstated and would not accept it if it was offered. I will never allow someone to have that kind of power over me again.
This point offers a nice segue to something I’ve been wanting to say at Daily Kos for a long time though: Don’t call this a community.
Imagine if everyone were to have gotten together 6 years ago and said, we need a community website for progressive Democrats that we can use to organize, raise money for our candidates, and spread our message. How do we want to do it?
Now imagine someone stood up and said, “I have an idea. Why don’t we create this website. I will run it and provide the servers. For doing so, I will run ads and get all the ad revenue. Sound fair?”
“We’re still listening”, someone replies.
“I would also, of course, have complete and absolute authority over who can come, and who can stay. I will set the terms of the site, and I will set the rules. If someone breaks my rules, or even if I just get the sense that someone has broken the rules, I will banish them into the aether, never to be seen again. Still listening?”
[Silence]
“And most importantly, I will decide what gets printed on the home page. It will be my sole discretion who gets to speak and who does not. And to top it all off, since I will be the owner of the site, the site will be named after me – “Daily Me”.”
What do you think the response would have been? I’m pretty sure that people would reject that proposal and secondly, I’m pretty sure that this individual would be excluded from any future meetings of the steering committee.
That is what Daily Kos turned out to be. It is a disturbing model for a progressive community. I’ve always had a problem with it. But my abrupt banning draws it into focus for me again. At some point, progressives need to think about a truly open source model for online community organization. One that reflects the values and principles of democracy and fairness that all progressives share.
Heh.
I’ve been having an internal struggle ( spiff vs. spiff cagematch) on where I’m at and what my contribution to this great blog is. For those that don’t know me I’ve got a …err…peculiar …umm..style.
My “diaries” will be rants for the most part, unstructured and a bit different. I’ll probably regret a lot of what I’ll write and I’ll let you know when I slip up. But I’d rather just write and not think about it to much. Serious stuff will be written ( like today for example) but for the most part I’ll just ramble about whatever the fuck is on my mind.
With that being said. Here goes.
Quick background info. I’m not getting into finer details to protect the privacy of the patients and out of respect to the country which has trusted me with treating their people. I also might not use great technical terms and might mention the wrong names. Sometimes translating in my head is slow and like I said before. These are more off the cuff than any other thing.
I work in a pediatrics hospital in a country a lot poorer and with a lot less than the U.S. Great medical staff that does a lot with less. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bombed out war torn hospital. It has some state of the art shit and it is a very nice looking building. Its burn unit is one of the best I’ve ever seen ( in the US or elsewhere) for example. But a lot of times. The amount of patients that visit the hospital makes overcrowding (2 to 3 patients per bed) a real issue. We run out of everything. A new small shipment can be located in the morning but when it is 3 AM and its not there it makes things very hard for both docs and patients. We use cheaper drugs for the most part because for the most part, all patients are very, very poor. For instance. A lot of them don’t have enough money to buy blood or platelet packs for their family members. Maybe they’ve got to eat only bread and milk with a bit of plantain and salami for weeks in order to have enough money for the basics. The hospital provides most services free of charge but even the smallest thing, paying for a 5 dollar test, becomes hard on the patients family. I’m just giving those still reading an idea more or less. I’ll expand as I go along or mention things here and there.
What do I do?
everything.
Whatever the hell is needed from me. I’m not a surgeon so I don’t operate and I’m not a nurse so I can’t get the life saving needles and catheters in veins of patients. But I do just about everything else.
This is another important detail. Every single person. From the lab technician who analyzes the samples. The janitor/cleaning peeps who maintain everything as clean and sterile as possible. The dude who runs the pharmacy. Those who wash the sheets and clean the beds. For young docs such as myself, sometimes (most of the time) the most important person in that room with you is an experienced and well trained nurse. I know our buddy Rage is getting into this field and I can’t begin to tell you how important nurses are to hospitals and they should get even more respect than they get. My ass has been saved and I’ve been able to provide better service and comfort to patients because I had a great nurse on shift with me.
Like in all proffesions a lot people suck at their jobs. A lot of bad doctors everywhere.
A lot of bad nurses. Ect. But these are in the minority.
The most important thing to remember is that even if it is 4 AM and you are manually getting some blood into a kid …
**1cc PER MINUTE.
SLOW. **
Even if you are desperately trying to save a kid with a 1 in a 10,000 chance of making it by working on him for hours at God knows what our of the night …
Even if you are doing rounds ( going all over the hospital and getting to know the patients history and making sure they are on the right meds and have had the correct tests among other things) and once you finally see everybody you are told the dozens of new patients have arrived and they need your ass A.S.A.P. in the E.R. for some heavy lifting.
Even when all this is going on and you haven’t slept a wink or eaten in hours …
You’ve got to remember that while it sucks to be doing something so tedious, challenging, hard/boring, easy/fun when you’ve been up all day and all night …
the patient is going through what you are going through ….
plus…
they are sick and scared. They’ve been there for weeks or days sometimes sharing rooms on a daily and nightly basis with strangers without being able to understand why they have to suffer so much. All I do is for my patients and I always try to remember this. I’m human and my mind does drift into being annoyed at some situations and angry.
Sometimes building up a shell, becoming desensitized to pain of others is the only way to help them and get through the night/day. This has been my biggest struggle and what I will probably talk about in my next “diary.”
Dealing with this is an adventure I’ll share with you guys.
It’s going to be interesting to see the vibe of my comments and , Where I’m at a year from now.
Questions are very welcome ( help me jog my brain and think better) as is advice or whatever.
This is a SpacemanSpiff diary which means they can be treated as Open Threads. Jacking the comments and going off topic is fine by me and welcome.
I didn’t read this after writing it which is kind of the point of this exercise.
Editors please fix it up (typos and other errors) as you see fit please (pretty please?).
I’m off to bed. Have to get up early tomorrow.
Gotta go help save some lives!
p.s. Any ideas on what I should name these rants/journals/thoughts?
I guess making threats against the President’s life can get you in trouble.
Who would of thought?
Chris Bowers has a great essay up at Open Left with numbers that might surprise you (or not).
Michael Steele is putting the G in G.O.P.
Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”
Huh, you sleepy or some shit Steele? Seems like your babbling because that shit was in the gamma quadrant of understandability. I know the G.O.P. be getting their feelings hurt a few times with the rejection and clowning of their ignorance but this be out there even for these fools.
MixMaster Mike Steele has been doing a lot of outlandish shit as of late and while when he entered the game he seemed to be bringing something good to the game. At this point it feels like he is just a clown. When he came out I was checking for homie, he had some real potential now he is just acting a fool.
Ya dig?
On a more serious note.
This looks awfully ridiculous and cynical of the G.O.P to try and pull immediately after America elected Barack as President. This follows along the lines of “Let’s Get Palin As VP To Get the Hillary Vote” tactic they used last year.
How obvious and pathetic can you get?
“There was underlying concerns we had become too regionalized and the party needed to reach beyond our comfort” zones, he said, citing defeats in such states as Virginia and North Carolina. “We need messengers to really capture that region – young, Hispanic, black, a cross section … We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”
But, he elaborated with a laugh, “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”
One armed midgets? 
Why didn’t we think about that?
There is a cultural of self-denial in the dominant culture, beginning with the corporate media which both enables and condones the gimmickry of the GOP. If the GOP is ever going to climb out of that big hole they’re in, they’re going to have to stop thinking like second graders (no offense to 2nd graders out there).
Micheal Steele wants to give them a hip-hop makeover? That’s rich. The political equivalent of turning my grandma into a pole dancer.
It is insulting for Steele to imply that young African Americans will suddenly feel they are important to the GOP just because of some tricked out advertising.
Try being relevant first, Mr. Steele.
Change the hateful and divisive GOP messages, Mr.Steele.
Address racism, sexism, homophobia, gang problems, and immigration, Mr.Steele.
Most critically, the Republican party needs to hit the streets THEMSELVES if they want to connect with disenfranchised Americans, not just toss candy from the float and wave. Some community organizing to find out what people different than you are actually thinking might do you good. And yes, the people you classify as the urban-suburban hip hip crowd are different than you.
No one is going to take any of you seriously until they see some worn old GOP habits dying….hard.
This is the first thing that came to my mind and I’m sure you peeps thought about it too. So I’ll just go ahead and add it to the diary.
M.C. Rove for your viewing pleasure. 
(barf bags not included)
Maybe some of you thought I should add some snark tags.
Sad thing is I’m dead serious here.
In the truth is stranger than fiction vibe I give you the inspiration for Michael Steele and his new marketing strategy.
Heh.
Check out the classic Nas beatdown on FOX.
Very approriate here.
Mr.Steele. Hip Hop has something to say to you.
Sly Fox
The sly fox
Cyclops
We locked
In the idiot box
The video slots
Broadcast
The Waco Davidian plots
They own YouTube, Myspace
When this ignorant shit gon’ stop?
They monopolizing news
Your views
And the channel you choose
Propaganda
Visual cancer
The eye
In the sky
Number five
On the dial
secret agenda
Frequency antenna
Doctor mind bender
Remote control
soul
Controller
Your brain holder
Slave culture
Game’s over
What’s a Fox characteristic?
Slick shit
Sensin’
Misinformation
Pimp the station
Over stimulation
Reception
Deception
Comcast digital Satan
The Fox has a bushy tail
And Bush tells
Lies and Foxtrots
So I don’t know what’s real[Chorus]
Watch what you watchin’
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Big Brother is watchin’Watch what you watchin’
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Fox 5 is watchin’[Verse 2:NaS]
The Fear Factor got you all rattled up
O’ Reilly
Oh really?
No rally needed
I’ll tie you up
Network for child predators, settin’ ’em up
Myspace pimps, hoes, and sluts
Ya’ll exploit rap culture, then ya’ll flip on us
And you own the post, and ya’ll shit on us
What is they net worth?
They gon’ try to censor my next verse?
Throw ’em off the roof neck first
While I’m clicking my cursor
Reading blogs about the pressure they put on Universal
It gets worse while I’m clicking my mouse
While they kickin’ my house
They figured us out
Why a nigga go south
It’s either he caught a body, no sleep they watchin’!
I watch CBS
And I See B.S.!
Tryin’ to track us down with GPS
Make a nigga wanna invest in PBS[Chorus]
Watch what you watchin’
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside o
f the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Big Brother is watchin’Watch what you watchin’
Fox keeps feeding us toxins
Stop sleeping
Start thinking
Outside of the box and
Unplug from The Matrix doctrine
But watch what you say Fox 5 is watchin’[Verse 3:NaS]
They say I’m all about murder-murder and kill-kill
But what about Grindhouse and Kill Bill?
What about Cheney and Halliburton? (Halliburton?)
The backdoor deals
On oil fields
How’s NaS the most violent person?
Ya’ll don’t know talent if it hit you
Bringin’ up my criminal possession charges with a pistol (pistol)
I use Viacom
As my firearm
And let the lyrics split you
Who do you rely upon?
They shoot shells at Leviathan
I’m dealing with the higher form
Fuck if you care how I write a poem?
Only Fox that I love was the red one
Only black man that Fox loves is in jail or a dead one!
Red rum
Political bedlam
Don’t let the hype into your eyes and ear drum
Murdoch on Fox
Not 18 with Barracas
And he hate Barack cause
He march with the marchers[Outro]
I pledge allegiance to the fair and balanced truth.
Not the biased truth
Not the liar’s truth
But the highest truth
I will not be deceived
nor will I believe
In the Propaganda
I will not fall for the Okey-Doke
I am tuned-in[NaS]
Watch, cause they’re watching
Watch what you’re watchingBetter watch, cause they’re watching
Watch what you’re watchingMe-Me-Media
Misleading yaWatch what you’re watching
Word.