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Friday, December 31, 2010

If Bozo the Clown Were President [Today's News Satire by Kevin Brown, December 31, 2010]

If Bozo the Clown Were President [Today's News Satire by Kevin Brown, December 31, 2010]
By Kevin Brown

What is satire? Satire’s the truth toned down.

Anonymous

     If Bozo the Clown were President, he’d be sworn in with a BANG! At the Inauguration, he’d Rocky Balboa the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and shadow box for the press. He’d take the official oath with his fingers crossed behind his back: “I do solemnly swear, yadda, yadda, yadda,” he’d say. “…and defend the Constitution of the United States, oh help me God.” Then, he’d smack the Chief Justice in the face with a cream pie. This would be followed by a 21 cap-gun salute and the Big Top Band playing, Hell, Here’s the Chief. And Cooky would be Vice President. Wizzo and Cuddly Duddly cabinet members. They’d cartwheel down Pennsylvania Avenue. Throw candy like a real parade.
     If Bozo were President, he’d start an arms race, where all the weapons are toy flag guns that say, POP! POW! Or: KITOWW! He’d have all airplanes built with the same material as the black box. He’d put treadmill belts in front of fast food registers, so patrons could burn calories while waiting for their food. Speed them up if the orders are Super-sized. Instead of food drops to starving countries, he’d drop the starving off at Chuck E. Cheese.
     President Bozo would then change the type of element that backs the world’s currency. Instead of gold and silver, he’d make it water and see how fast we’d drain the oceans. Class separation would be levels of dehydration. Next, he’d make everyone from each country pick up and move to another—Britain to Africa, Japan to China, Germany to Israel. Move America to Iraq and see if we’re really so advanced or if it’s just location, location, location. He’d stop worrying about life on Mars and focus on death on Earth. He’d settle all wars by having each side play the Grand Prize Game. Each bucket made is another battle won.
     If he were leader, he’d say, “Ask not what your country has done to you, but what you have done to your country.” He’d make diamonds worthless. Make gravel precious stones. Then, the streets would be paved with jewels. He would institute a reversal of celebrity. Make movie stars, sports icons, and rock gods pay outrageous ticket prices to watch teachers teach children, maids scrub toilets, and mechanics fix cars. He’d improvise his speeches and give the world a reason to laugh. He’d text message the State of the Union Address: M-S, V-P-C, M-O-C, etc., etc., and it’d be the easiest to understand in years. He’d put humans on the endangered species list, because we’re all one nuclear pissing contest away from extinction. He’d bring ice cream to NATO meetings and say, “I scream, you scream, we all scream.” He’d squirt water in Queen Elizabeth’s face. Pull a rabbit from Hu Jintao’s ear. Give a balloon to Kim Jong Il. He’d make the world a fun place. Make the world a better place.
     If Bozo the Clown were President, he’d be assassinated with a smile.


Kevin Brown has had work published in over seventy journals and was nominated for a 2007 Journey Award and a Pushcart Prize. His first book Ink On Wood is scheduled to be published in the summer of 2010. His website is: www.InvisibleBodies.com




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The Last CombatWords For 2010 Is Also The First CombatWords For 2011

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/combatwords-december-31-2010-new-year.html



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Passage of Fools [Today's News Poem, December 31, 2010]

Passage of Fools [Today's News Poem, December 31, 2010]

I've depleted the winter and gathered its dew
On a pinhead—my pinhead—and watched as it danced
From the tips of my follicles, into my nose
Where it planted the needles, the pine, and the sap.
The survivors are green where it's gray and they burst
In my lungs, where it's damp and it's pointless to breathe.
At this rate, I'll be coughing up blood and I still
Do not think I will notice the seasons with care.
I was born in a village, but lived in the hive
Of our awe—yes, our gardens of dogshit and brick.
In my life it has taken me thirty five years
To have noticed that moths have a cycle, that rats
Are the floorboards—the blame for the venomous cure.
If this year has a meaning, its meaning is year—
It's not time, just a name for this passage of fools.

"Look at the calendar dummy."
—Khakjaan Wessington, December 31, 2010
http://toylit.blogspot.com

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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Cringing From Awfulness [Today's News Poem, December 30, 2010]

Cringing From Awfulness [Today's News Poem, December 30, 2010]

"Where are your eyes?"
I've inverted them,
Pointed them inward.
"How is the blindness?"
No worse than my sight.
At least I'm aware.
"What have you seen?"
Nothing of value.
A web, call it synapse,
A flash with no light.
"Why did you do it?"

Engineer of my vision, you pointed me outward
When I wanted the innards of self to be holy.
I have waited too long for the grace of perfection:
It is shifting—one day it's a smile in the deli,
And then later it seems to be meat on the counter.
I'm confused by the scales which can measure the lifeless
But can't quantify all the intangible values.
Everything's tainted with sight. I'm imposing
Thoughts of no use in this river of matter.
I color the flickers of light in this market—
So, better to see one thing clearly—else nothing.

"(AP) CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - No one knows how many residents have left the city of 1.4 million since a turf battle over border drug corridors unleashed an unprecedented wave of cartel murders and mayhem. Business leaders, citing government tax information, say the exodus could number 110,000, while a municipal group and local university say it's closer to 230,000 and estimates by social organizations are even higher. "
—Associated Press, Dec. 30, 2010
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/30/world/main7196745.shtml

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Ashton Kutcher Around A Campfire [Today's News Poem, December 29, 2010]

Ashton Kutcher Around A Campfire [Today's News Poem, December 29, 2010]

Check out this watch that I got from a star:
Platinum, crystal, worth more than my house
Ages before all the cities burned down.
Know something funny? He offered it free—
Offered me coffee and liquor and smokes.
Famous? You bet! But that's then, this is now.
Hey, this is secret—he offered his ass.
Why not? The loneliness kills us inside.
Company kills from without—yes he's dead.
Strangled to death, now I'm wearing his suit,
Cracking his bones—oh his marrow is sweet!

"Ashton Kutcher is getting toned and tough - so he can fend for himself and look after his family following an Armageddon-type crisis. The 32 year old tells Men's Fitness magazine, "It will not take much for people to hit the panic button. The amount of convenience that people rely on based on electricity alone. You start taking out electricity and satellites, and people are going to lose their noodle. "And people are going to go, 'That land's not yours, prove that it's yours,' and the only thing you have to prove it's yours is on an electronic file... People's alarm systems at their homes will no longer work, Neither will our heating, our garbage disposals, hot-water heaters that run on gas but depend on electricity. "What happens when all our modern conveniences fail? I'm going to be ready to take myself and my family to a safe place where they don't have to worry... All of my physical fitness regimen is completely tailored around the end... I stay fit for no other reason than to save the people I care about.""
—The Daily Dish, San Francisco Chronicle, December 29, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=79914

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

New Europe [Today's News Poem, December 28, 2010]

New Europe [Today's News Poem, December 28, 2010]

As he's pouring the tea, you consider his past;
Not enough to refuse, but enough to consider
The tea might be spiked with a pesticide poison.
You are filled up with honey, with violin dreams,
Though the others are cautious, unmoved by the music
His daughter must rock from the instrument's cradle.
Then the drinks get much stronger—there's laughter and gin
As he takes out mahogany cases with pistols
All nestled inside—they're asleep but will waken.
Then the others all draw out their weapons, from knives
To a phone that's connected to orbiting angels;
A press of a button delivers a missile.
If their fashion's impressive, if leathery shoes
Look enticing; they cut it off soles of a human
Who died in a war that preceded this evening.
They're old chums, they're competitors playing the cards
For advantage and willing to cheat the whole table
To win for an evening; to die in the morning.

"A noisy band of dissenters, many of them economists from outside the Continent, issued a warning: the euro was doomed to struggle, they proclaimed, maybe not immediately but certainly before long. Different countries would pursue such different economic policies, they argued, that it would ultimately place an unbearable strain on the currency and some of its members. "
—LANDON THOMAS Jr., Published: December 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/business/global/29euro.html

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Monday, December 27, 2010

Tomb Bunker [Today's News Poem, December 27, 2010]

Tomb Bunker [Today's News Poem, December 27, 2010]

Look to the sky for examples in nature:
Air does not stay in one place—it's in motion.
If the bedrock is moving, then who shall you blame?
It is lava, a magnet; a torsion of clay.
Appearance is constant, reliable instant.
You notice combustion, but never the burning.
Admire all this fury while warm in your kitchen,
And freeze it—you tame each progression, each nomad;
Serving them brisket—you bathe them with comfort.
Swaddle the furious, bless them with blankets:
You are waiting out flux, your position's supplied
And you'll sleep through this winter, spend summer inside.

"The coastal Massachuestts town of Scituate was in the bull's eye of the East Coast blizzard, hammered with snow, rain, flooding, evacuations and fires."
—OLIVIA KATRANDJIAN, ABC News, Dec. 27, 2010
http://abcnews.go.com/US/blizzard-flooding-evacuations-fires-scituate-massachusetts/story?id=12485328

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Sunday, December 26, 2010

The Missing Blowout Preventer Switch [Today's News Poem, December 26, 2010]

The Missing Blowout Preventer Switch [Today's News Poem, December 26, 2010]

The buses are whining while winter is raining;
A mother is walking her daughter on Christmas.
They're hurrying, filling their hands with each other—
All washed with florescents and streetlamps and evening.
They're hurrying into a crevice of shadow.
A doorway, like others, with keys—like another's—
A sink to remove all the germs of the city,
A bed with the linens of peace and a playpen
Of toys; and a lingering presence—a haunting
Perhaps, or a memory. Maybe it's terror,
Or maybe it's sorrow—that smell has such power
I smell it while driving, with windows rolled up.
I reach for a button, a lever, a trigger
To vanquish the awfulness hovering over
Their heads... it's my head; and their halo my halo.
Their bed is my bed and their corners, my corners.
I'm so disconcerted—where is the button
To cease this disaster, stop this machinery?

"As the drilling team was trying to shut in the well, Paul Erickson, the chief mate on the Damon B. Bankston, a 262-foot work vessel moored to the Horizon, noticed something spilling off the rig. Then drilling fluids began cascading onto the ship. Dead seagulls fell, killed by the blowout’s blast. The Bankston’s captain radioed the Horizon’s bridge and was told to move to a safe distance.
In the engine control room, Doug Brown and his men overheard the conversation with the Bankston on their radios. Within arm’s reach was a console that gave them access to the emergency shutdown system. All they had to do was lift a plastic cover and hit a button and the engines would shut down in seconds. It was not such an easy or obvious step to take."
—DAVID BARSTOW, DAVID ROHDE and STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times, Published: December 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html

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Saturday, December 25, 2010

Dead Money [Today's News Poem, December 25, 2010]

Dead Money [Today's News Poem, December 25, 2010]

You call that decay there your asset?
How is it possible? Why did you come here
With wrinkle and tumor potential?
How is that possible? Out of the fathers
And mothers available, didn't
Some sort of pacifist, millionaire mogul;
Or saint—I have heard of them—figure
When we selected our bodies, our lifespans?
I wonder if souls are so stupid.
Pity's a game for creators—we players
Have measured our positive trade-offs,
Checkmating, getting our bingo—our bonus—
And cheating or luck do not figure:
Dice are predestined; not luck, it's selection.
You wanted to lose, to be worthless:
Genes of confetti, bones we can't eat, labor
Rejected and obsolete. Even
Spending, consuming, you're barely of value.
You're filled up with sadness, like babies
Knowing enough to expire in the cradle—
But stupid; you're stupid and living.

"With so much more at stake, it has become that much more important for companies to put at the helm the “best” executive or banker or fund manager they can find. "
—Eduardo Porter, The New York Times, December 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26excerpt.html

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Friday, December 24, 2010

CombatWords for December 24, 2010: Holiday!

CombatWords for December 24, 2010: Holiday!

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/combatwords-december-24-2010-holiday.html



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Remorseless Code [Today's News Poem, December 24, 2010]

Remorseless Code [Today's News Poem, December 24, 2010]

It's clearer now.
Spots in the road
Separate vehicles:
Faith is a roadblock
Of conscience.
Eye the divider:
It's porous and even.
A pattern repeating
Itself with a dot and a dash—
In the day or the night,
Under overpass,
Over underworlds.
"Help us, please help us,"
The pattern repeats
In obsolete code
Its plea to the remorseless.

"A man being pursued by police drove into a security roadblock near President Barack Obama's vacation home in Hawaii on Thursday, the U.S. Secret Service said."
—Reuters, Fri Dec 24, 2010 3:01am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BN0NK20101224

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Reckless Jailbreak [Today's News Poem, December 23, 2010]

Reckless Jailbreak [Today's News Poem, December 23, 2010]

What's innocence, but ignorance? And ignorance?
Excuse, when no excuse will do before the law.
A checklist of vices to speed you to prison:
It looks like your house; but it's smaller, with psychos.
Drink while you're able: go arson, go raping;
Piss on a statue or drive while you're wasted
At night—who needs a reason; fleeing's feeling light
Enough to lose one's head and crack a cap to drink
Away the loss—there's so much loss. The billboard angels laugh,
The ship they painted on your bottle sails, and headlights loom
Ahead but lonely like yourself they seek the outer light
And intersect your path—they surely share your bitterness.

"After two hours of wrenching, tear-filled pleas for both maximum justice and mercy, the man convicted of murder in the drunk-driving crash that killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two friends was sentenced Wednesday to 51 years to life in prison."
—Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1223-adenhart-sentencing-20101223,0,968080.story

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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Shooting Blindly [Today's News Poem, December 22, 2010]

Shooting Blindly [Today's News Poem, December 22, 2010]

Shoot out all the lights and when the murders start,
Blindness guides the arc of blood and motion dies.
Banks are just a fiction; money's made of script.
Guilt is even less and cannot be redeemed.
All this innocence is unbelievable.
Bank with sky and reap the cloud; then sputter, die.
Fear the sky? Then launch a missile—blind the moon.
Lance its eye then pluck out stars: they saw the crimes.
Sort what will not sort itself, with life or death:
Shoot out all the lights and strike out blindly.

"The next steps on Mr. Obama’s nuclear agenda now appear harder than ever. But some of the current powers in the party, including Republicans who may have their eyes on challenging Mr. Obama, from Mitt Romney to Sarah Palin, denounced it as a weakening of the United States, arguing that it limited missile defenses. "
—DAVID E. SANGER, The New York Times, Published: December 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/us/politics/22assess.html

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Color of Transition [Today's News Poem, December 21, 2010]

The Color of Transition [Today's News Poem, December 21, 2010]

Red is the color of movement: a light in transition
Caught inbetween the activities; caught as the salmon
Swimming upstream where she spawns and she dies—like the vessels
Red with the ambient oxygen, red before rupture
Blackens the substance that falls from the orchard of heartbeats.
Plant in the dirt where the redness will fade, where the river
Waits for erosion, where fry learn to gobble the movements
Traced on the surface of things; such as water appearing
Clear for a lifetime, then cloudy with blood on the fringes.
Blood in the sky that's unnoticed, and even the lava
Under the surface of surfaces reddens a while.

"The last time the solstice coincided with a total lunar eclipse on the same calendar day was long before any of our lifetimes, experts say. The year, according to Geoff Chester, public affairs officer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, was 1638. (Starhawk, a prominent Wiccan, told The Washington Post in an essay that the two events have not coincided since 1544.) "
—Washington Post Staff, washingtonpost.com, Tuesday, December 21, 2010; 11:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/21/AR2010122102519.html

"A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 has struck in the Pacific off southern Japan, triggering a tsunami warning."
—Associated Press, DECEMBER 21, 2010, 1:53 P.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703581204576033713289893294.html






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Monday, December 20, 2010

Big Eye Theory [Today's News Poem, December 20, 2010]

Big Eye Theory [Today's News Poem, December 20, 2010]

You've been focused on bubbles—the rim of your coffee mug,
Rim of the toilet—you watch them, they merge and they burst for you.
The newer replacements subsume what was once your whole universe.
If you've grown inattentive because all the wonders distracted you;
Comfort yourself with the eye of the bubble, your navel, your camera.
For eye is the shape of the self, it's the sight of itself and encompasses
The whole self everlasting: an infinite self in an instant and incomplete
Moment of eye ever watching: a locus, a focus, a totem, a metaphor.

"To predict eruptions we can no longer focus on the magnetic fields of isolated active regions," says Title, "we have to know the surface magnetic field of practically the entire sun."
—Dr. Tony Phillips,| Credit: Science@NASA, Dec. 13, 2010
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/13dec_globaleruption/

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

Prepare For The Second Burning [Today's News Poem, December 19, 2010]

Prepare For The Second Burning [Today's News Poem, December 19, 2010]

This slippery vineyard—the rocks aren't much help.
Wine has me stumbling here on vacation.
The asparagus: famously black and brown.
The grapes bear a whiff of the crudest vintage:
Terroir of fossil, it's servo lubricant.
They say drunkenness never prospers; I'm proof
They're wrong—I'm one hundred proof. My combustion
Wilts what should die; inferior specimens
That will bury corn, stalk and chaff in the fume
To dream of afterlife burning again and
Burning now and exhaustion forever more.

"Oil industry estimates claim that there are between 50 billion and 200 billion barrels of oil trapped in shale rock more than a mile below the surface, in an 87,000-square-mile geological formation known as the Paris Basin."
—Anita Elash, The Christian Science Monitor, December 17, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1217/In-hills-outside-Paris-tapping-vast-oil-reserve-presents-risk-but-promises-profit

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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Objectification: The Mark of Cain [Today's News Poem, December 18, 2010]

Objectification: The Mark of Cain [Today's News Poem, December 18, 2010]

Give it a chance and your eyes will adjust.
Color the moon with red diodes of light;
Advertise dust as exclusive escape.
Open a skull and go play with the gray—
Model a nightmare in clay that's for sale:
Liquidate—not just the asset—the fear
Instinct commands; yes, the thing in itself
Changes to match how you wish it to be.
Brains in the vacuum are nothing like you:
You are tremendous, surpassing the facts.
You are like Adam, you name so you own.
You are like Cain, so you punish affronts
Conjured from nothing—so murder your kin.
Everything's doubled, disposable parts;
Earth has replacements and so does the mind:
One in the distance, the other, in story—
Fear's the explorer, instrument; killer.

"South Korean military officials say they will proceed with planned live-fire artillery drills from an island the North shelled last month, despite threats of retaliation from Pyongyang."
—VOA News, 18 December 2010
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/South-Korea-to-Go-Ahead-with-Live-Fire-Drills---112121084.html

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Friday, December 17, 2010

Blood Manna [Today's News Poem, December 17, 2010]

Blood Manna [Today's News Poem, December 17, 2010]

Texting while swerving, a baby
Cries and a shopping cart crumples.
Very embarrassing. Numbers exchange.
All of them call for adjusters
(Dropping the manna in pieces),
Call for attorneys to divvy the spoil:
Small, but sufficient. They motor
Off, while green manna is dusting
Blood in the parking lot, dying but live.
Heirs on the phone have discovered
God once again and they're praying
Manna as green as wet gangrene—as green
Graves, as the light that confirms us
Driving a reckless, excited
Payload wherever the manna's delivered.

"The gun battle moved into the parking lot, witnesses said. A bullet struck 30-year-old Monique Nelson while she was putting her 2-year-old son into her Chevrolet SUV, killing her "
—Suzanne Phan, ABC News 10, Posted: 12/16/2010
http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=112296&catid=2

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Thursday, December 16, 2010

Batter My Heart [Today's News Poem, December 16, 2010]

Batter My Heart [Today's News Poem, December 16, 2010]

I used to have angst, paranoia—
And bitterness, jealousy, anger.
I'd always make contact with vision;
But gazing in eyes, I saw marbles
Connected by cables to speakers,
To vocal indexes. I scattered
My soul, but they gathered my pieces,
Made profit and added me into
A lichen of babble. I drifted.
I added my sight to containers
Of union and lost what remainder
I'd kept, though I never observed it
Directly, nor used it when needed.
There's time to obscure what's still lucid;
There's time to forget and together
We'll look with our sensors at marbles
Of blue and see angst, paranoia,
Bitterness, jealousy, anger
And smile as we emulate Shiva
Conquering nothing with nothing.



"In a report being issued Thursday, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues says that at present the technology — which involves creating novel organisms through the synthesis and manipulation of DNA — poses few risks because it is still in its infancy. Instead, the report recommends self-regulation by synthetic biologists."
—ANDREW POLLACK, The New York Times, Published: December 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/science/16synthetic.htm

Editorial: What a bunch of fucking idiots. In short: "Do what you feel like doing. We lack the imagination to assess the risks. This does not in any way undermine our credentials."
The official list of morons can be found here: http://www.bioethics.gov



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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Determinate Negation Shall Inherit [Today's News Poem, December 15, 2010]

Determinate Negation Shall Inherit [Today's News Poem, December 15, 2010]

'In the Bible'—they said it would answer,
But those characters never compelled me
As the ozone on Muni, as banshees
In their garbage bag raincoats and sermons
On the mounts made of cardboard; nor payments,
Nor anxiety, nor credits, nor debits.
All the heirs reek of arrogance; meekness
Is insanity—worse, a demerit.
Like the Soviet dissidents locked-up
In the prisons obedience conjured,
Like the magic of God or the spirits,
They will trick you—attack while you're able
And resist with disorder—expire yourself.

"My Testament: Some people (the government sponsored media) will say I was evil, a monster (V)… no… I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95% of the population. Rich Republicans, Rich Democrats… same-same… rich… they take turns fleecing us… our few dollars… pyramiding the wealth for themselves. The 95%… the us, in US of A, are the neo slaves of the Global South. Our Masters, the Wealthy, do, as they like to us… "
—Clay A. Duke's deleted Facebook page, cited by ANAHAD O'CONNOR and ROBERT MACKEY, December 14, 2010, 10:15 pm
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/video-captures-man-confronting-school-board-before-shooting/





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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

War By Other Means [Today's News Poem, December 14, 2010]

War By Other Means [Today's News Poem, December 14, 2010]

The law is the order of violence,
Means of coercion. Religion and ethics—
None of that matters; but precedent, judgments
Will escalate, prompting a standardized
Method informed by the process of cages,
Warrants and chambers of gas and the gavel.
The files have arranged all the ownership
Ever to be, and have programmed the weapons,
Soldiers—whatever—to claim what they shoot.

"A federal district judge in Virginia ruled on Monday that the keystone provision in the Obama health care law is unconstitutional, becoming the first court in the country to invalidate any part of the sprawling act and ensuring that appellate courts will receive contradictory opinions from below."
—KEVIN SACK, The New York Times, Published: December 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/health/policy/14health.htm

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Monday, December 13, 2010

Angels With Nets [Today's News Poem, December 13, 2010]

Angels With Nets [Today's News Poem, December 13, 2010]

I cannot imagine the purpose of lights that they summon,
Nor understand how they have managed to capture the morning,
Nor how is it rock got so shiny, nor how it can hurtle
Above all those reefs that they've built on the edges of water—
And how is it eyes made from substances pulled from the shoreline
Have seen the obscurest of shelters and how is it magic
Has yanked our most vigorous out of the ocean, beyond us,
And how do we fly? Does it hurt? And what meaning's behind it?
Depleted—I've heard it from trenches that moan with exhaustion,
I've heard it from stones that just vanish from beaches, to pebbles,
I feel that a limit's been reached, that our purpose is simple:
Survival. Although it is hopeless and we will be captured
I wonder what's there on the surface; they must be the angels
For we are important—we must be to earn such attention.

"A South Korean fishing vessel sank in waters near Antarctica today, killing five sailors and leaving 17 others missing, the government said. "
—Bomi Lim, Bloomberg, Dec 12, 2010 10:45 PM PT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-13/south-korean-fishing-boat-sinks-in-antarctic-ocean-four-dead.html

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Sunday, December 12, 2010

The Bush Era Complacency [Today's News Poem, December 12, 2010]

The Bush Era Complacency [Today's News Poem, December 12, 2010]

We were too surprised to burn the offices
With the bosses locked inside to roast alive.
Paper airplanes carried our objections
Into bins to shred, recycle, print again.

Easy money won't explain itself—don't ask.
Wait instead for disappointment—better still
Just forget about it: life is blessing.
Bless yourself and shift the contracts; buy a house...

Yes, a place to watch the airplanes burn your work.
Watch your colleague jump the window, swim the air—
Never watch the end, just watch the leap of faith:
It is much the same as yours; you never feared

Before, so why obsess right now?
Just stay at home and watch a show
Of life before we traded it
For paper, gone to shreds or ash.

"it can be argued that Ralph Nader did to Gore what Ross Perot did to George H.W. Bush in 1992, that is, cost him the election."
—Brad Knickerbocker, The Christian Science Monitor, Staff Writer / December 12, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/1212/Ten-years-after-Bush-v.-Gore-the-fight-goes-on





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Saturday, December 11, 2010

Horseshoes on Jockeys [Today's News Poem, December 11, 2010]

Horseshoes on Jockeys [Today's News Poem, December 11, 2010]

Watch! In the distance a horse is approaching at gallop.
Look at the silhouette, lost is the animal; gained is the symbol.
The sun is so juicy—tomato of starlight—it's laughing.

Somehow the stars have converted their starlight to fingers
Tickling blankets on stone in the summer and twinkling something
Like hope, as the roots of the twilight expand through the air with their fragrance.

Let's say the blanket's a bench, though the stone's also granite;
Trade out the horse for a uniform bearing a truncheon and handcuffs;
The floodlamps are sunlight—so welcome my steed, you're a beautiful peon.

Let me admire all your buttons of brass.
Let me examine your heart made of tin.
Let me perceive my reflection in boots
That you've polished in sunlight, on stirrups; on horses
That have frothed in the twilight and died after midnight.

"For the first time since the 1935 prize, when the laureate, Carl von Ossietzky, languished in a concentration camp and Hitler forbade any sympathizers to attend the ceremony, no relative or representative of the winner was present to accept the award or the $1.5 million check it comes with. Nor was Mr. Liu able to provide a speech, even in absentia."
—SARAH LYALL, The New York Times, Published: December 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11nobel.html

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Friday, December 10, 2010

Nameless Flower of Blood [Today's News Poem, December 10, 2010]

Nameless Flower of Blood [Today's News Poem, December 10, 2010]

Whatever we name you, attempting to hide your true nature;
However concealed, you're perennial—just as the blossoms
Always return once the earth tilts its axis correctly—
Just like the orchid, you thrive in surprising locations;
Clinging where scarcity threatens, where fear is the strongest:
We kill for the chance for our offspring to prosper, so why not
The flower of blood in a garden that grew on the corpses,
And why not aggression at leisure? We'll ready our pleasure,
Launching campaigns where we'll upturn the balance and scatter
Seedlings; we'll slash and we'll burn it together to remake
Everything into our image. We'll call you an implement,
Or call you defense or necessity—never by name.

"For many Europeans, Washington’s fierce reaction to the flood of secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks displays imperial arrogance and hypocrisy, indicating a post-9/11 obsession with secrecy that contradicts American principles. Sarah Palin called for him to be hunted as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands,” "
—STEVEN ERLANGER, The New York Times, Published: December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10wikileaks-react.html

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