« Impeachment. Removal. Treason Trial. Jail. Now. ».
Author: AirBeagle
Another Ann Arbor Winter
Winter has settled in with a vengeance and the solstice isn’t even until tomorrow (at 1.30pm, to be exact). The storms began well before Thanksgiving and there have been at least three or four of them since then. The temps have been getting steadily chillier and chillier, and the snow on the ground, since it’s…
Breaking the Quiet
It’s been a long month ….. working on various projects at the library, including a set of pages about the 2005 election cycle, fighting asthma, hibernating with the onset of what was an earlier onslaught of winter weather than usual. Steve has been fighting asthma and bronchitis, and he’s been snowed under with a heavy…
Asi es Nuevo Mexico
Stuff like « this » makes me wonder if my desire to return to my home state is really all that wise of an idea: ‘An essay contest at a New Mexico high school asks students to explain why preserving marriage between men and women is vital society and why unborn children merit respect and protection. The…
Our World Tonight: Cast of Characters
« Meet George W. Bush »; he can’t catch a break, even from « an old comic book character ». Now, « meet Deborah Davis ». And « meet Al-Jazeera ». And finally, « meet Frank Rich », who sums it all up rather nicely.
Rational Revolution
Joining my rather long blogroll is a fascinating read: « Rational Revolution ». Highly recommended. Check it out.
He Lied, People Died
“How amazing is it that we live in an empire that impeaches presidents over legal consensual sex acts but not over illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people?” Just keep piling up « the evidence » baby, maybe we’ll have an impeachment yet: ‘Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World…
White Thanksgiving
Wow. Winter’s back. And it’s already Thanksgiving! Where did the year go?
Thank You and Good Night
“… it’s impeachment time and then let’s replace the dipsticks with a bipartisan McCain and Murtha combination, acknowledging the even division in the electorate.” Everybody needs to take note of this rather extraordinary thing that has happened: the Iraqi government that our Empire installed has called for our legions to be withdrawn and declared that…
Courage and Conviction vs. Cowardice and Coercion
“Rabbi Yoffie! You’re my new hero!” We need more courageous heroes like « Rabbi Eric Yoffie » to speak more truth to power: ‘The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them “zealots” who claim a “monopoly on God” while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler’s….
Paradox? Or Hypocrisy?
“Jesus, save us from your followers!” I’ve been meaning to blog this for weeks, to read it into the record, so to speak. But what with grad school hell, I just haven’t had time. I’ve long thought that we need to take Jesus back from his followers. And Bill McKibben wrote up « some persuasive arguments »…
The First Snow of the Season
Yesterday was the first snow of the season ….. just a few flakes, but there was a definite dusting on the ground this morning, and the temps are unmistakably wintry. I guess Indian summer is officially over.
In the Rain
I love this! ‘… I thought he sought the privacy of rain, the one time no one was likely to be out and he was left to the intimacy of drops touching every leaf and tree in the woods and the easy muttering of drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind grass dams. He…
Mike Cox: Republican Hypocrite
Before I forget, I didn’t fail to notice that the « Fascist Michigan attorney general who is trying to strip faithful Michigan couples of all their health insurance is himself an adulterer »: ‘Attorney General Mike Cox announced Wednesday he had an extramarital affair and accused the state’s most famous attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, of threatening to expose…
Just Married
Thank you, Canada! And thank you Neil Hodgins and all our wonderful friends! Pics are up: « The Wedding » « The Reception »
Just Married
Thank you, Canada! And thank you Neil Hodgins and all our wonderful friends! Pics are up: « The Wedding » « The Reception »
Comments Up
Comments are working again, thank goodness. Fire away.
Comments Down
Commenting is broken at the moment. Something in the CSS of the new skin. Will be back later today.
Is It June Yet?
Grad school is high stress and keeping me busier than a one-armed paper-hanging porcupine in a balloon factory. It’ll be over soon, thank god. Things I’ve learned: Don’t question the pedagogy. Just because you’re paying $14,000 ($20,000 if you add in interest) per semester in out-of-state tuition (even though you’ve been a resident for over…
Civil Liberties Objections are Eccentric
“The fact that government is secretly tracking my life and sharing that information with private corporations in a completely unaccountable way shows me that America has crossed over into a fascist twilight of sorts.” « Here’s » something interesting that needs to be more widely read than it will be: ‘The FBI now issues more than 30,000…
Cold Weather
Cold is finally here. Temps have been frigid the past several days, with highs not hitting 50 and lows easily dipping down near freezing. The past couple of days have even necessitated gloves and a parka. A few people are still walking around in shorts but they are few and far between. The mass grumbling…
Straw Breaking the Camel’s Back
Dear UM Undergraduates, I’ve accepted that it’s part of the social landscape now for you to walk into a wing of a library that is supposed to be used for study and instead use it as an open-air forum for your cell phone conversations, and I’ve accepted that some of you don’t care what you…
Department of …
From our « Clueless Department »: ‘Delta Air Lines Inc. will likely ask its pilots union to extend an agreement to recall retired pilots to prevent staffing shortages as it ambitiously expands its international service while operating under bankruptcy protection, chief executive Gerald Grinstein said Tuesday. Grinstein made the comments after a news conference set up to…
Life in the Empire
“These weren’t the works of psychopaths — they were people fighting against something intolerable that many of us know is there, but hasn’t been named yet.” « The Kinder, Gentler American Empire »: ‘… it’s a fairly powerful event to find a decent-sized book that does nothing but articulate a series of truths about the American Life…
Pat Tillman, Hero
“As with most of the Mayberry Machiavellians’ schemes, this is yet another one that is coming unraveled.” Great national hero and former darling of the fascists, Pat Tillman, has, gasp the horror, been « outed as a Noam Chomsky lover » — and boy is Ann Coulter ever pissed: ‘“I don’t believe it,” seethed Ann Coulter. Her…
Wrong Again
It’s been back up in the mid-80s with high dewpoints for the past several days, just proving once again that trying to predict weather in Michigan is (especially if you’re a rank amateur, like me) a fool’s errand.
Autumn Is Here
Today did, in all seriousness, feel for the first time like autumn. It didn’t really get much above 60 degrees all day (it’s supposed to dip down to 36 tonight), and there was that unmistakable bite in the air that hasn’t been around for at least five months, or whenever the freak day or two…
Overheard Outside the School of Social Work
“It’s just like wintertime out here today!” “I know, isn’t it horrible?” And so the next five or six months of kvetching begins …..
Super! Sonic!
“I wanna go supersonic before I die and time’s a-wastin’!” Finally, « some visionary thinking », which has been in major short supply here in the 21st century: ‘Barely two years since the last Concordes were retired, Airbus, the European aircraft consortium, is looking at plans for a new generation of supersonic passenger jets. The manufacturer, in…
Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off Our Benefits!
Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…
Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Benefits!
Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…
New Orleans is Not the Only Thing That Sank to a New Low
« Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl = Despicable Low Lifes »: ‘Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions’ legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had…
'On Your Watch …'
« Bill Maher has a message for the Failed Boy Emperor »: ‘You’ve performed so poorly I’m surprised that you haven’t given yourself a medal. You’re a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we’ve lost…
No Comment Needed From Me
‘I’ll send my sons if he sends his daughters. Put those two drunk bitches on a plane and let them go fight. At least I know my sons would be getting some on the way.’ —Comedian Damon Wayans, quoted by the New York Daily News, on the conditions for the Emperor to send Wayans’ sons…
Autumn?
Yesterday actually felt like the first hints of autumn to me — it was very hot, like it’s been for the most part for at least the past three weeks here in Ann Arbor, but it also was somewhat windy, the heat was accompanied by less humidity than it has been, and there was a…
'From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey.'
I think Cornel West « perfectly sums up the state of the Empire »: ‘What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: ‘You are on your own’. Well, they really were on their own for five…
Insanity
In among all of the commentary and images over the past few days about Katrina, I’ve noticed a recurring strain along the following lines: the people who remained in New Orleans during and after the hurricane were too stupid, lazy, or both to leave; and nobody who lived in a place like New Orleans (either…
City Beneath the Sea
I’m melancholy tonight, listening to « Harry Connick Jr.‘s » Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, Basin Street Blues and, especially, City Beneath the Sea, his love song to New Orleans, which is one of a handful of my favorite cities on the planet. Tears my heart…
Which Fascist is More Outrageous – Denny Hastert or the Waterbury Fascist-American?
On top of all the shameful and outrageous things we’ve seen this week, comes « this »: ‘House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city. “It doesn’t make sense to me,” Hastert told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago in editions published…
Update
My friend phoned late last night (Wednesday) — he and his dog got out of New Orleans okay. Here is a list of « FEMA-approved relief organizations » if you are interested in donating to the effort to save the glorious city of New Orleans, which from the looks of things is descending into unimaginable…
Katrina
I have a dear and old friend who lives in New Orleans. He has lived in the French Quarter for the past few years. He loves New Orleans, and he has always sounded profoundly at home there. I have never had the fortune of visiting, but his stories about being there have always made the…
Approval from Jerry Falwell
Gosh. I feel so … honored. « Jerry Falwell now approves of me getting my master’s in elementary education », as long, of course, as I don’t ‘recruit’ the little buggers … whatever that means: ‘“I don’t think homosexuals should be granted a special minority status,” he told the paper. However, he said that gays, including teachers,…
Finally Admitting What the Rest of Us Have Known for Three Years
« Oops! Our Bad. »: ‘The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad. The United States no longer…
27th Most Liberal City in the US
According to a new study released by the « Bay Area Center for Voting Research », Ann Arbor is the 27th most liberal city in the country (Detroit is 1st, San Francisco 9th, Flint 10th, New York 21st).
Birds of Summer
Saw a bird hopping around on the grass on my way to the bus stop Tuesday morning that I couldn’t identify (nothing new there, I still can’t identify most birds) — gray and brown tail feathers in alternating patterns, sort of robin-sized, and sporting a prominent bright red spot on the nape of its neck….
Price of Tea
Recently the price of tea went up from $1.59 to $2.12 at my favorite pitstop, Cafe Ambrosia. Seeing as how the price hadn’t been hiked in 2 years, they were entitled to charge a little more. Nonetheless, there’s a subtle psychological barrier that makes it unappealing to buy a pint glass of tea for over…
Summer Already Winding Down
Looks like the undergrads are starting to stream back into town … a sure sign summer is coming to an end after the zenith (if you can term it that) of Art Fair. No tidal wave yet — I walked home from campus this evening and the neighborhoods around East University and Packard are still…
New Gallery: Burns Park Beagle
« 30-Jul-05: Burns Park Beagle ».
Life in Jebby Land
« Just another day in Florida »: ‘A mobile home belonging to a gay couple was torched and an offensive epithet was spray-painted on the front steps, authorities said. Paul Day, 25, and Christopher Robertson, 23, returned home from errands Monday to find their house in Kings Manor Mobile Home Park in Lakeland burned and the words…
Tehran: The Next Hiroshima
Those of you who voted for the Fascists in the last election need to understand that a vote for Bush was a vote for « this »: ‘In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon,…
