https://skydancingblog.com/2020/05/04/monday-h-l-mencken-reads-boobus-americanus/
Category: News Current Events
Tuesday Reads: Coronavirus Deaths Mount as Evidence of Trump’s Pandemic Cover-up Emerges | Sky Dancing
Republicans in disarray! Not everyone agrees with McConnell’s desire for their states to go bankrupt
Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson: review
This has been my first opportunity to read a book as heavily redacted as this. That’s okay, this edition has a lengthy afterword by progressive journalist Laura Rozen to fill in the blanks. For instance, ms. Plame’s decision to become a NOC officer in the CIA.
If you recall from the first Mission: Impossible movie, a list of NOC agents was up for grabs which would’ve released their actual names to the spy world. In a crude inversion of life imitating cinema, what Tom Cruise was trying to prevent in that movie was exactly what Scooter Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney did to Valerie Plame.
Evidently the CIA has no romance in its heart either, as her courtship and marriage to Ambassador Joseph Wilson was deemed too sensitive to declassify. I’m still trying to get it in my head how the particulars of their relationship would be damaging to US foreign relations and intelligence gathering.
I’m grateful ms. Plame wrote this book. It’s a refreshing reminder to those seeing George W. Bush in a revisionist light, that his administration was just as corrupt as the current one. That his actions regarding Iraq and the Wilsons in particular were nothing less than pure evil. And I am frustrated that no one was held to account, that what Libby and senior Bush officials did in outing ms. Plame was an act of TREASON. Read it. It’s essential.
Culture: Stan Lee resurfaces 1968 ‘Stan’s Soapbox’ column to condemn bigotry ‘It’s totally irrational and patently insane to condemn an entire race’ — Michael1942’s Blog
By Julia Alexander Aug 15, 2017, 5:00pm EDT Marvel’s Stan Lee isn’t shy about speaking out against injustices facing society. Today Lee tweeted a photo of one of his Stan’s Soapbox columns, a monthly piece that ran in Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins news and information section between 1965-2001, from 1968. Lee’s tweet comes just days after […]
The worth of Walls: Berlin
In 1981, during The River tour, Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt ventured through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin, where the oppression was thick in the atmosphere. This visit changed Van Zandt from a man who once preached that rock and politics never mix, into a firebrand of justice.
Bruce said this in his bio, Born to Run:
“The power of the wall that split the world in two, its blunt, ugly mesmerizing realness, couldn’t be underestimated. It was an offense to humanity: there was something pornographic about it, and once viewed, it held a scent you couldn’t quite get off of you.”
Going up, 1961…
.…and coming down, 1989
The Berlin Wall went up in August 1961. It began to fall in November 1989. 28 years. I’ve lived almost twice that long. That’s how much walls are worth.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall
The Berlin Wall was 140 km (87 miles) long. Despite this, over 5,000 people successfully defected to the West by a variety of means.
The U.S, border with Mexico is 1,954 miles long. Think about that.
Religious Idiocy of the week
Televangelists: Christians Must Pray For Trump Because Democrats Will Make Bible Illegal
You people are making this too easy.I don’t know where you get these fantasies about Trump’s ‘godly wisdom’, because if that’s what he’s following, I want nothing to do with the Bible. Jesus said suffer the children to come unto him, not ‘tear the little ragamuffins from their w—–k parents and let them die in a frigid meat locker while we laugh at them’.
Leaving these poor children to die, after they fled a terrifying situation at home, is an obscenity. Tearing them from their parents is an obscenity. The abuse running rampant in Donald Trump’s immigration policy top to bottom is an obscenity, and that pretty much sums up one reason why I will have nothing to do with organized religion. That and I’m an intelligent, free-thinking man.
Onto the next one…
Catholic Priest Claims Autistic Children Are ‘Like Animals’ Caused By Porn, Masturbation, Adultery
Yes please, listen to a representative of the clergy who kept western civilization in poverty, fear and ignorance for a thousand years. Jesus, fuck this guy.
Oh yes, there are a lot of parents of autistic children who will agree with you on that! Honestly, do you have no filter. Did this actually sound good in your head before you let it spill out of your mouth? Truthfully, I don’t know much about autism, but I’m 99.978546% certain that your sexual activity has no determination on the genetic outcome of your offspring. But given the Catholic clergy’s predilection for raping choir boys, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t ya?
I don’t think you people have read the Constitution of the United States of America, specifically the First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of religion. Basically its a free pass. The government is NOT ALLOWED to touch our religion; you don’t get to tell us what to worship or what sect we are required to go to. That’s the shite King George II tried to pull on us in Revolutionary War days; we HAD to attend the Anglican Church– you know, the one where the King of England is the head of the clergy–in effect, putting him on the right hand of God.
Ridiculous, huh? We passed that amendment to make damn sure NO GOVERNMENT ever compels us to worship as THEY see fit. Religion in the United States has a unique mandate. We can’t touch it, can’t tax it, in fact clergy can say pretty much whatever they want without fear of arrest of murder, as has happened in some Latin American countries. The Bible is no danger of being banned. The Bible is one of the consistent best-selling books in this country, if not the world. I don’t foresee it going out of print in the near future, or any future. It’s past time to cut the crap, cos your fear-mongering is groundless.
source: USA Today, 2018, from the United States Constitution
