Drink up, Bitches

Yes. I stole that from fairlane. I don't give a shit. What I got to offer should make you drink up, bitches. I got Barbies. I got Pink Floyd. I AM QUALIFIED.

Sit down, shut up and LISTEN:

You got something? You a hottie black chick singer in Denver? Call me. I obviously can only comp a couple measures in solo mode. I need you if you can sing. Like you can't tell.

Love ya! Gimme some singer love!

Just Call Me "Aunt Bea"

Yep.

Summer is here, and it's time to play outside in the garden, and then do stuff with the produce.

Mind you, I don't have any vegetables yet but I have mint, tarragon, sage, lettuce and spinach to beat the band. But what I really wanted was PICKLES. We're out of last years crop.

So we went and found jalapenos on sale and bought what I figured would be enough for 10 pints.

Spent yesterday "putting them up" bread-and-butter style. Mmmmmm.

Fit in a blueberry pie too while we where at it, and I had my whole Mayberry gig going on.

We had Mac & Cheese for dinner too. Unconventional Bumpkin I suppose, but I don't care. I like all this stuff.

Clarke Suggest Shunning Iraq Invasion Liars

Former Clinton and Bush administration counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that we need "some sort of truth and reconciliation commission" and that the eventual remedy for the Bush administration’s pre-war Iraq lies might be to ostracize them.

Clarke said, "I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives."

Think Progress has the video.

National Conference for Media Reform

The National Conference for Media Reform is this weekend. Hurray for them!

I especially like the fact that Bill O'Lielly is pissed off about it.

From Timothy Karr at FreePress.net:

What O'Reilly is afraid to admit is that the media reform movement encompasses everyone who thinks our mainstream media -- that means you, Bill -- could do a lot better.

[snip]

Murdoch's News Corp has spent tens of millions of dollars on well-heeled lobbyists who roam the halls of Washington to peddle policies that allow Murdoch to gobble up local media outlets without any respect for journalism or accountability to the public -- you know, people like you and me, whose interests O'Reilly claims to be looking
out for in the "No Spin Zone."

O'Reilly's real aim is to discredit those of us who have caused his boss so much heartache -- who by our outspoken activism have shown that Murdoch's idea of media consolidation is bad for journalism, bad for democracy and just plain bad for America

Our movement now numbers in the millions, and, as evidenced by last month's tremendous victory in the Senate, we've started chalking up victories against the
lumbering media conglomerates that still control the news agenda for millions of
Americans.

O'Reilly has every right to be scared because we're coming after him and the broken and dishonest media system he epresents.

Here's Billo being himself:

He just hates it that normal people don't want media consolidation, and people DO want Net Neutrality. Neener neener, Bill.

I expect that there will be some great vids of the speakers this weekend, and great stuff to post from it next week.

Uprising!

[Cross posted at Les Enrages.org]

Pitchfork? Check.

Torch? Check.

Unruly attitude? Check.

OK let's go:

In all the noise and fury of the last primary run, and Scott McClellan's book last week, there's a unruly gem in them thar hills:

"David Sirota is a clear-headed and principled hell-raiser for economic justice. More like him and we'll have a real uprising on our hands. "
—Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine"

Do I have your attention, Mob? Good, I thought so.

I saw this on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" show last night. I am a latecomer to David Sirota. He has been blogging on Squarestate.net which is a major Colorado progressive blog, (credentialed to the DNC by the way) and I always thought he was interesting, but I had never dug fiercely into him before. Last night's show had me absolutely riveted.

You can watch the whole show here, but I have excerpted a couple of points:

His observations about Obama, the political process this cycle being the "starting point, not the end point" and further observations about "direct action" making Wall Street and K Street "scared" are just music to my ears. Literally.

Just listen to what he says about the Iraq War. We've been saying it for the longest time!

AMY GOODMAN: David Sirota, you talk about conflicts of interest within the antiwar movement: the antiwar movement, which enjoys widespread support, and the politicians who ally themselves with pro-war consultants.

DAVID SIROTA: Right. What happened, in the chapter that I reported on the antiwar movement, is back in 2007, what we found is that you just had an election where the Democrats were elected promising to end the war, and what ended up happening was that the same Democratic Congress refused to really do what it takes to actually end the war. And part of that was, I think, a strategic decision on behalf of the antiwar organizations in Washington about how they said we could end the war. You had consultants who were simultaneously being paid by the Democratic Party and Democratic Party politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

DAVID SIROTA: You had Hildebrand Tewes. You had consulting firms. They were the lead consulting firm. And I don’t mean to pick on them. It’s just that they were the consulting firm that was heading up the major coalition in Washington of antiwar groups. And so, the strategy that came out of those antiwar groups was we have to simply bash the Republicans to end the war, when in fact, of course, Congress was controlled entirely by Democrats. Last I checked, Democrats have forty-one senators in the US Senate, if they wanted to filibuster a bill to continue funding the war [sic-they could]. They haven’t done that. Yet the strategy kept saying, well, we have to only focus the ads, the media buys and the pressure on Republicans. It was sort of a dishonest strategy, and I think it had something to do with the fact that you have organizations in Washington that put partisan affinity over movement goals. [emphasis mine]

He is totally speaking our Unruly Language, I do believe. The part about sneaking into the Exxon Shareholder meeting is GREAT!

Watch the whole show, (Sirota's interview starts at 30 minutes into the stream) and buy the book. I have never EVER said buy something before on this blog, but I'm telling you I am buying it, and from what I saw of the interview, Sirota's insights into the whole political process and "direct action" really speak to what we as the Unruly Mob hold dear.

Pitchfork? Check.
Torch? Check.
Unruly attitude? Check.

OK let's go!

TAGS: Democracy Now!, David Sirota, "Uprising", Let's Do Something Besides Blog

The Pie Fighing Is Over!

Thank goodness, it appears that with the exception of a few crusts and some whippedcream to be tossed about, the Pie Fighting Season is just about over. I couldn't be more happy. The blood letting and internecine warfare was really getting on my nerves, and I'm very much looking forward to all that winding down.

I'm sure Kos, HuffingtonPost and the like will stay shrill for a bit longer. Afterall, it's hard to sing a new song when you've become really, REALLY good at the one you've been singing.

An additional reason that there are a few crumbs left to be thrown is that Hillary Clinton has a very short window to remain credible and viable as a Senator. She'll be very busy negotiating behind the scenes I am sure. And the top tier blogs will cry "Foul!" "Get off stage!" "Your song is DONE!" And I suspect that in a week or so, there probably won't be anymore provocative statements out of the Clinton campaign, and we'll have All-Obama-All-The-Time coverage in the blogosphere and the traditional media. And watch the turn the media will take.

That's all fair grist for the mill I suppose. In a way, those top tier candidate blogs who run their blogs as a business will owe Hillary Clinton a small debt; they'll be able to keep their traffic up for a while longer. It's fairly well known that blog traffic declines a bit in the summer. The ones who have remained steady and growing have always been the issue blogs like Firedoglake, Digby, Glenn Greenwald, ThinkProgress etc.

I'm expecting and hoping that the temporarily-candidate-oriented blogs will return to the issues, as it's going to be very important that the traditional media has a countervoice in the blogosphere as large as possible. Especially during the Democratic Convention here in Denver this August. I fully expect and predict the traditional media to paint it as looney and "how could you possibly vote for these unorganized, messy and LIBRUL LIBRUL LIBRUL people who hate America?"

A Democratic victory in November is not a sure thing, and is going to be closer than most expect I would predict. I say 10% spread or less. The same bastards who brought you Swiftboating are doing just fine, thank you, and do you expect the Republican Party to play anything but dirty? I didn't think so.

So the most important thing is to vote. Just pull the Dem lever and call it done. I think most Clinton supporters will end up doing so.

Now that the pie fight is over, we can focus on having some actual nice pie, not the cheap kind one makes to throw. Here's a recipe we do at Chez Unconventional. I invite you to have a slice:

Monday Morning Smiting Coming Down

June 2nd, 2008

Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster:

You know I usually just telepathically send you these requests. However at this time, I feel the need to write them down, so I don't forget, as I am wont to do. So to begin this weeks Smiting Requests -

Please smite the Three Headed Hydra of my part of the Blogosphere - Google, Blooger and Haloscan. But please smite them in a nice way, so that they straighten out and work consistently. Maybe sneak up on them very quietly and then shout "BOO!" or something like that would cure their nasty "hiccups."

For the rest of the Smiting, please get all Pastafurious on their asses:

Please smite whoever is responsible for Sam Seder going off the air.
Please smite Jonah Goldberg for being such a tool.
Please smite Michelle Malkin for scoring a victory against donut loving Democrats.
Please smite the jerks at Gitmo who have been torturing a young man.
Please smite Rush Limbaugh for the usual I reasons I ask you every week.
Please smite Bill Kristol and Michael Goldfarb, and smite them mightily.

If you can't get all the miting requests done, please consider just smiting Goldfarb, for saying stuff like this:

The Times indicts the Bush administration for exposing terrorists captured
abroad to "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Boo
hoo.

Boo hoo? About Torture? And he's a fan of Dictators? SMITE HIM! Just like you eventually smote the Russians, after you did a good job of scaring them first.

Thanks as usual -
UC.

TAGS: Flying Spaghetti Monster, Smiting, Frikking Tools,