Conflucian Cocktail Party: Fundraiser for Pine Ridge

In the song, Edmund Fitzgerald, the storm that caught the freighter off guard was called the Witch of November.  The Witch came early again this year but this time to South Dakota.  The early blizzard has buried the Pine Ridge Reservation under feet of snow and taken out power to the reservation.  Here are some details from people on the scene:

Subject: Pine Ridge Needs Help!

It is not often I send something like this out, and am sad to have to do so.
However, anything any of you can do would be great, mention it on your radio
shows and blogs, call and help or even call the state reps. and committee of
indian affairs…Here is the email I got,,,

Where is the Red Cross?  Where is FEMA?  Where is the National Guard?
The Lakota Reservation in South Dakota has been struck with a huge,
early season snow storm. Elderly people are without propane, there is
a great lack of food, medicine and warm winter clothing.

According tho the president of the Reservation, the State of South
Dakota is doing almost nothing. The roads are still not plowed and
people are dieing.

They need our help in way of wood, propane, warm winter clothing,
food and assistance with plows.

If you are in the area and have the heart to help these folks, go to
the Porcupine School or call 605-867-1111.

If you can, send money, call and get details on arrangements. If you
can send materials, as this is going to be a long winter for the sick
the elderly and the children, the address is

Republic of Lakotah
P.O. Box 99
Porucupine, SD 57772

Winters are brutal in this area, and this one is worse than they can
deal with. Any and all help will be remembered by the people for
their entire lives, and lives is what this is about.

Please, with our Holidays coming, help these people NOW while we can
still help. People are dieing right now.

Feel free to contact John for more information.

John Stroebel
PO 166 Centennial Wyoming 82055
307-745-3493

Tonight we dedicate our fundraiser to Pine Ridge to buy blankets, food, propane and other necessities for  the cold nights of November.

Welcome to the Conflucian Cocktail Party.  This is the day every week when we gather together with friends and have a bit of fun for a worthy cause.  To the left of the bar is Rico, our bartender with flair.  He’s agreed to stay on past the election because he likes us that much.  Tonght’s special cocktail is a White Witch.  You can also order Causmos for $10.00.  The button below will take you to The Confluence PayPal account for Pine Ridge.

I’d also like to call your attention to Al Franken’s Recount fund. You can buy a $10.00 Causmo and help Al get one Senate seat closer to that filibuster proof majority. Think of it. One more senator on Hillary’s side. I donated $50 this afternoon. If you donate, add .60 to your total to let him know we’re here.

Tonight’s music is from our friends NativeAmericansAgainstObama describing the unfolding events at Pine Ridge:

Ladies and gents, we run a classy joint. Those of you who can’t keep your trigger words to yourselves should leave them with Florence, our lovely checkroom attendant. The waiters will be circulating shortly with some wild rice cakes, popcorn and pumpkin bread. Please drink responsibly and tip your servers generously.

Also, join me and the other Conflucians at 10PM EST for Conflucians Say on PUMA United Radio (PURrrr).

Evil Clowns Open Thread

myiq2xu flirts with angienc

What favorite blogs did you have to stop visiting this year?

Obama the money machine

Remember how they said we should vote for obama cuz he would raise lots of money for the entire Democratic Party?  From LAT:

Transition Alert: Obama’s change agenda on-hold until you pay DNC’s debts.

The Ticket reported, jokingly, the other day about the latest Barack Obama fundraising appeal.

He’s the fellow who raised way more than $605 million and, would you believe it, won the presidential election campaign to bring real change to Washington.

As an important part of changing the money culture of Washington he was asking for another $30 donation from everyone on the e-mail list.

It seems that in addition to his 6/10ths of a billion dollars to move into the White House, the Democratic National Committee spent way more than the $100 million in cash it had raised.

In fact, it took out “substantial loans.”

 

(h/t Joseph Cannon)

MediaFreude!

MediaFreude

And now, for something completely different: 

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow – the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy – is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

So, shockingly, the story about Sarah Palin not knowing Africa was a continent was a hoax, as was its source. I wonder how many other of the nasty stories about Governor Palin supposedly coming from the McCain campaign were actually “sourced” to this fraud?

And it’s not like no one knew about this guy. But Fox News and MSNBC are just too darned kewl and fashion-forward to do old-fashioned things like, ya know, checking sources and stuff.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

(snip)

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”

Ya think?

Zombie Liars

This is your brain on Kool-aid

(graphic by Joseph Cannon)

 

Judging by the comments to my previous thread about zombie lies, a few of the things I thought didn’t need to be said needed to be said.  That’s okay, that’s why the blogosphere is superior to the traditional (old) forms of media: immediate feedback and the ability to interact with readers.

The first thing I left unsaid was an explanation as to why we should build and maintain a one-stop reference site debunking Obama propaganda and Axelrovian talking points.  The election is over, so why dwell in the past?  Shouldn’t we move on and find new battles to fight?

If one of PUMA’s goals is going to be reforming the primary/caucus system so that what happened this year never happens again, we need people to know the truth.  Now honestly, if Barack Obama ends global warming, cures cancer, brings peace to the entire world and ushers in the greatest period of prosperity in our nation’s history, few people will care a whole lot about how he became President.  But if (when) his popularity drops down to G-Dub/Nixonian levels, they will be asking “How the hell did this empty suit get elected?”

Once upon a time the “progressive blogosphere” was the only place dedicated to telling the truth about Iraq and the Bush (mal)administration.  They called themselves the “reality-based community” because they refused to drink Dick Cheney’s Kool-aid or repeat his zombie lies.  Eventually the American people realized the media was lying to them, due in part to truth-telling bloggers.

But the meltdown of the progressive blogosphere is the reason why WE should build our own anti-propaganda database.  This past year we have seen far too many examples of respected bloggers tossing aside years of hard-earned credibility to worship Teleprompter Jesus.  Some were guilty of sins of commission, others committed sins of omission, but either way we obviously can’t count on anyone else to do the job and do it right.

The last point I neglected to make is that our goal is not to convince Axelrove’s paid bloggers and trolls to put down their sippy-kups and recognize that the clothes have no emperor, our goal is to counteract the lies that those zombies are spreading.  We don’t need to argue with them, when we see one of them squat and pinch-out a zombie lie on the carpet, we can cut & paste a zombie truth over it.  But when we encounter a real person who has been deceived by the lies and propaganda spread by Obamanation, we won’t have to search for the antidote.

Thursday: Who could have predicted?

Black Tuesday 1929

The stock market took another dive yesterday on news that there was a limit to taxpayer generosity.  From the AP we learn:

The latest selling pressure has been stoked by a run of bad U.S. corporate news over the last week. Grim news from the likes of department store chain Macy’s Inc. and consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Co. weighed on U.S. stocks Wednesday with the Dow Jones industrial average down 4.7 percent at 8,282.66, its third straight loss.

In addition, investors reacted nervously to the announcement from U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the original $700 billion financial rescue package won’t be used to purchase troubled assets from banks. The Treasury will instead rely on buying stakes in banks and providing more direct help to consumer debt markets.

“News that a plan to buy troubled mortgage assets has been shelved in favor of tackling problems with non-bank and consumer finance is certainly going to heap yet more concern on the market,” said Matt Buckland, a dealer at CMC Markets.

Well, well, well, the very idea that the government would turn its attention to consumer finance instead of buying up worthless assets of banks has prompted the market to take its dishes and go home.  Oh, I’m sure that Dakinikat will school me on how all these things are interconnected and more complicated that it looks.  But it is how it *looks* that troubles me.  Perception is reality, right?  What I percieve is a bunch of predators who’ve been making out like bandits, literally, holding the rest of us hostage if we don’t help them clean out the last stack of dollars from the bank vault.

What’s even more frustrating is the interview that I’d heard recently of Nancy Pelosi discussing the Paulsen bailout bill.  To paraphrase Nancy, “Oh, sure, it wasn’t the best bill we could have thrown together but we never saw this coming so it caught us by surprise and we didn’t have a whole lot of time to react.”  Really?  Well, of course she expects most Americans to believe that.  They don’t have time to research their news obsessively.  But I seem to recall that the financial meltdown and the mortgage crisis were being discussed for going on a year now and Hillary was worried about the mortgage industry back in March of 2007.  We have it on video.

What the heck was Barack Obama doing prancing around Europe like the Fresh Prince of Berlin back in July when the financial $#%* was about to hit the fan?  If he knew it was coming, and how could he not given the history of the movement conservatives favorite charitable foundation- themselves, why wasn’t he back in the US working on heading this sucker off?

The finance industry we once thought of as solid has bit by bit started to melt down to the point that it is now a soft, shimmering gelatin on the point of liquification.  One senses that it wouldn’t take much for the whole thing to collapse.  Maybe I’m crazy but the problem seems to be exponentially worse than it was only a couple of months ago when we thought it was a serious but fixable problem.  Now, it seems catastrophic, like 9/11, the Iraq War and New Orleans after Katrina.  It’s the Bushie legacy.

Who could have predicted?

In other news:

• Ryan Lizza atones for his lapse of truth earlier this year when he wrote about Obama’s trail of destruction in Illinois but rewriting the history of the Obama campaign.  Yep, they were perfect.  Nothing they did was wrong.  Hillary was a baddie.  She was mean and aggressive.  I know, I know, why would we want to listen to this crap, right? Well, if you don’t know it’s out there, there’s no way to know that you have to set the record straight.  Listen to the interview that Lizza gave Terry Gross a couple of days ago on Fresh Air.  Compare and contrast with the interview he gave Terry last summer.

Zombie Open Thread

 

Obama! Obama!

Simon Pegg raises an important issue:

ZOMBIES DON’T RUN!

[…]

I know it is absurd to debate the rules of a reality that does not exist, but this genuinely irks me. You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can’t fly; zombies do not run. It’s a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits. A biological agent, I’ll buy. Some sort of super-virus? Sure, why not. But death? Death is a disability, not a superpower. It’s hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.

More significantly, the fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.

However (and herein lies the sublime artfulness of the slow zombie), their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you’re careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them – much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares – the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.

Another thing: speed simplifies the zombie, clarifying the threat and reducing any response to an emotional reflex. It’s the difference between someone shouting “Boo!” and hearing the sound of the floorboards creaking in an upstairs room: a quick thrill at the expense of a more profound sense of dread. The absence of rage or aggression in slow zombies makes them oddly sympathetic, a detail that enabled Romero to project depth on to their blankness, to create tragic anti-heroes; his were figures to be pitied, empathised with, even rooted for. The moment they appear angry or petulant, the second they emit furious velociraptor screeches (as opposed to the correct mournful moans of longing), they cease to possess any ambiguity. They are simply mean.

Simon misses one point: even though slow zombies can be avoided, they, like death, occasionally get you by surprise no matter how careful you are. 

Personally, fast zombies scare the bejeebus out of me.  What’s on your mind?