Even More Quibbles and Bits

They just keep raining down, I swear. Tiny morsels too small for a full post but too big to swallow whole.

>>I had the privilege of seeing Zeitgeist: Moving Forward on its release day a couple of weeks ago, with over seventy like-minded denizens of Monterey, CA. Expect a review within the next few days - and BTW - a shout out to The Alternative Café for drinks at reasonable prices and a seat for the unbeatable price of $0. The Zeitgetist-Monterey chapter is planning on another public screening due to popular demand, so stay tuned;

>>Have you been following Egypt and Tunisia lately? This, my friends, is where the rubber really meets the road as to whether our nation is fully committed to democracy. Amy Goodman has been following this story like a hawk on Democracy Now, and Thom Hartmann has an interesting take on this, insofar as the side on which our Administration’s bread is buttered;

>>I hope you have your copy of The Shock Doctrine handy, especially when Rep. Paul Ryan takes the screen or the speakers. His SOTU response sounded like a bad sales pitch for a bill of goods, known as Friedmanism.

>> I’ve heard and seen the speculation regarding the circumstances surrounding Keith Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC. Only he knows what really happened, so I won’t try to get into his head as to his rationale. But apparently, he wasn’t the only one who left, as several NBC executives also tendered their resignations in the shadow of the Comcast merger. He’ll be back, somewhere. But I can only wonder about what will happen with those he brought over and are staying behind - Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell, etc.

>>I’ll just say it: Julian Assange is a hero.
Governments are pissed at him because they have no control over him. They’re trying, though - it’s still a challenge to get credit card donations to WikiLeaks. I haven’t heard anything substantive about the sex-related charges against him in Sweden - which I speculate were trumped up at the behest of a certain ally across the big pond from them with a very vested interest in keeping certain information out of the news cycle.

>>More updates as I get the chance.

Quibbles and Bits, New Years Edition

Delectable or detestable - take your pick:

>>The holdup on updates has been in part due to my right hand healing from my dermatologist taking curette to skin on two fingers. As I’m typing this, they’re still in bandages, and I’m literally fat-fingering ½ of the words I’m typing, slowing me down considerably and causing much frustration. Two more weeks of these bandages and I should be home free - I hope;

>>As I’m returning to school in pursuit of my long-delayed Bachelor’s Degree, updates will likely become more sporadic, as time and brain space allow;

>>We can speculate all we want about the true motivation of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ assassin wanna-be (who succeeded in ending several other lives, including that of a nine-year-old girl) - till we’re either red or blue in the face. I’ve observed the overheated rhetoric flying back and forth over the last several years, with ever-increasing intensity, and felt that it was only a matter of time before something like an assassination attempt took place. The only person who can tell us definitively what his motivations were, though, is the shooter himself, and the last time I checked, he wasn’t cooperating with law enforcement (why should he? His life is over anyway). The disseminating of this overheated rhetoric (and I’m sorry, but the basest examples of this are coming from the RIGHT wing, not the left) is a factor in this scenario, for sure, and while I agree that the worst of the pack (Beck, Palin, Bachmann, Limbaugh, et al.) have blood on their hands, that’s only part of the story.