Saturday, March 5, 2011

NOTES FROM STARTSHIP ONE-THOUSAND-FOUR SOUTH GROVE AVE

THE COSMIC JOKER TOOK A MULLIGAN AND DECIDED TO HIT US WITH SOME MORE SNOW, ALTHOUGH, BLESS HIM, IT'S LIGHT AND LOVELY.


EMPTIED OUT TWO MORE BIG STORAGE BOXES AND ROOM IS JUST OPENING UP ALL OVER. I COULD HAVE A PARTY OR AN ORGY OR BOTH IN MY BEDROOM, IN CASE ANY ONE WOULD LIKE TO CUM IN MY MOUTH.


FOLKS ARE AT CHOIR PRACTICE, I AM THE HEAD OF HOUSE.


LAURA NYRO, ELO, CSN&Y - I SEE THAT IT IS EMPTY
                                                        AND THERE ARE DEVIL'S IN MY HEAD!


GOT TO GET IN 36 HOLES TODAY, AND I DON'T MEAN OF THE ORGY KIND, ALTHOUGH, THAT WOULD BE NICE TOO.


THE LOCAL BOY'S B-BALL TEAM'S SEASON ENDED, 41-46 VS. LIBERTYVILLE.  NICE SEASON GENTLEMEN.


TOO LATE TO KEEP THE CHANGE,
TOO LATE TO PAY.
NO TIME TO STAY THE SAME,
TOO YOUNG TO LEAVE.


LOGGING OFF AT 9:05 A.M.


WILL UPDATE LATER.


OUR WAITRESS IS WEIGHIN THE PRICE OF THEIR WINKING.
WHILE STARS SIT IN BARS AND DECIDE WHAT THEY'RE DRINKING.
THEY DROP BY TO DIE CAUSE IT'S FASTER THAN SINKING.



THE COSMIC JOKER TOOK A MULLIGAN AND DECIDED TO HIT US WITH SOME MORE SNOW, ALTHOUGH, BLESS HIM, IT'S LIGHT AND LOVELY.

EMPTIED OUT TWO MORE BIG STORAGE BOXES AND ROOM IS JUST OPENING UP ALL OVER. I COULD HAVE A PARTY OR AN ORGY OR BOTH IN MY BEDROOM, IN CASE ANY ONE WOULD LIKE TO CUM IN MY MOUTH.

FOLKS ARE AT CHOIR PRACTICE, I AM THE HEAD OF HOUSE.

LAURA NYRO, ELO, CSN&Y - I SEE THAT IT IS EMPTY
                                                        AND THERE ARE DEVIL'S IN MY HEAD!

GOT TO GET IN 36 HOLES TODAY, AND I DON'T MEAN OF THE ORGY KIND, ALTHOUGH, THAT WOULD BE NICE TOO.

THE LOCAL BOY'S B-BALL TEAM'S SEASON ENDED, 41-46 VS. LIBERTYVILLE.  NICE SEASON GENTLEMEN.

TOO LATE TO KEEP THE CHANGE,
TOO LATE TO PAY.
NO TIME TO STAY THE SAME,
TOO YOUNG TO LEAVE.


Friday, March 4, 2011

ASK AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN

WHEN BEN AND I GOT MARRIED,
WE BOTH PRAYED FOR A GOOD AND PERMANENT MARRIAGE.
AND GOD GAVE US AN AUTISTIC CHILD.


10 YEARS ON, I LOOKED UP AT HIM ONE NIGHT, AND SAID
"I'M NOT LEAVING, EVER.  HOW ABOUT YOU?"


AND HE REPLIED, 
"I CAN'T. WE CAN'T. WE'RE IN IT FOR THE DURATION."


SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND.


IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO MERELY ASK, FOR THEN
WE RUN THE RISK OF PASSIVITY, WAITIN' ON THE DOUBLE "E."


GOD DOTH PROVIDE ALL THINGS TO THOSE WHO WAIT
IN HIS SEASON, IN THEIR SEASON, WHEN THEY ARE READY
TO EMBRACE THAT FOR WHICH THEY PRAYED.


THUS WE MUST BOTH:
ASK & 
SEEK.


NOT. HIDE. AND. SEEK.

Thursday, March 3, 2011


Why a Wisconsin Sheriff Refuses to Serve as Governor Walker's "Palace Guard”

No one has worked harder – and smarter – to keep the peace in Madison during the dispute over Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to crush public employee unions than Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney.
veteran lawman who came up through the ranks of the sheriff’s department in the state’s second largest county before being elected sheriff in 2006, he’s hugely popular in the capital county – winning reelection in 2010 with 71 percent of the vote. He’s also hugely respected, as a key contributor to the work of the Governor’s Council on Domestic Violence, the Governor’s Council on Wisconsin Homeland Security, the Wisconsin Supreme Court Task Force on Mental Health and Criminal Justice System, Wisconsin law-enforcement groups and the National Sheriff’s Association.
That respect has served Sheriff Mahoney as he has worked long hours to help coordinate the response of various law-enforcement agencies to demonstrations that have attracted over 100,000 people, round-the-clock sleep-ins and sit-ins at the state Capitol and even clashing rallies between a small Tea Party contingent and a very large union crowd.
There has been no serious violence, no serious destruction and no serious arrests.
So you would think that Governor Walker and his aides – as well as their media echo chamber – would be hailing Sheriff Mahoney.
Of course, you would think wrong.
Sheriff Mahoney’s determination to preserve the peace, protect demonstrators and officials and respect basic liberties has earned him the scorn of those who are calling for an aggressive crackdown on dissent. 
As the governor and his aides have attempted to limit access to the state Capitol – which the Wisconsin constitution says must remain open to all citizens – Sheriff Mahoney has steadily argued that he and his deputies are present both to maintain public safety and to defend the right of citizens to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances.
As Walker’s lawless approach has gone to extremes, culminating in a failure by the governor’s Department of Administration to obey an order from a Dane County Judge that the Capitol be opened, Sheriff Mahoney has become more explicit in his objections. 
The sheriff objected when Dane County deputies, who have been frontline officers from the start of the recent protests, were the doors of the Capitol were not opened. Finally, he pulled his officers from the scene.
"When asked to stand guard at the doors that duty was turned over to the Wisconsin State Patrol because our deputies would not stand and be palace guards," said Sheriff Mahoney. "I refused to put deputy sheriffs in a position to be palace guards."
The sheriff and I have walked the Capitol several times in recent days and he has reflected again and again on the importance of respecting the Constitution and maintaining a free and open space for honest debate and dissent.
"I smile everyday at what I am seeing take place in this building," the lawman told me as we walked amid throngs of protesters on Sunday, before Walker's administration ordered an aggressive crackdown on dissent. 
The crowds have been noisy and passionate, he said, as might be expected when issues of such consequence are at stake. But they have also been responsible and respectful."They've helped law-enforcement agencies to keep the peace, and we have helped to assure that they can exercise their First Amendment rights," the sheriff explains.
Even the signs on that decorate the walls of the Capitol met with his approval. "Freedom of speech!" he said, explaining that even as the building is cleaned, efforts are made to keep the displays of sentiment with regard to the budget bill in place.
"We're an example to the world about how to run a democracy," said Sheriff Mahoney, with clear pride in his voice.
The sheriff was right. Unfortunately, Governor Walker appears to have forgotten that a democratic state respects the rule of law, not the mandates of the monarch.
So the sheriff is not going to lead a palace guard.
Instead, he will guard the Constitution that so many praise but far too few defend.

Non-Violence: The Unconquerable Authority

Muhammar Khaddafy’s brutal reaction to the aspirations of his own people is becoming a textbook case in the futility of opposing the citizens from whose consent a leader’s political authority derives, however illegitimately. Instead, his stubborn egotism has led to absurd violence, even civil war. At moments like this, the world trembles with indignation and apprehensive hope.
The non-violent invincibility of people power, the argument of Jonathan Schell’s underrated masterpiece of political philosophy, The Unconquerable World, may be coming true before our eyes again as it did in the Philippines in 1986 and Czechoslovakia in 1989. We do not yet know which model will dominate in the short run in the Middle East and Northern Africa, the violence of state power, or the non-violence of citizens seeking their rights as leaders abdicate peacefully. Citizen invincibility is not manifesting in all cases without additional tragic sacrifice to the callous will of dictators. But in the end it will prevail.
Meanwhile we Americans need to acknowledge our own role in the stagnation and double standards pervading desert autocracies. Our subtle oppression has been as abundant as the oil underneath those sands that we covet and even assume is rightfully ours, obtainable by any means necessary. As we condemn Khaddafy’s brutality, let’s not forget our own over-reliance on military “solutions”—rationalized by our own desperate conviction that we can only fight fire with fire, only prevail with raw power, with weaponized drones over Pakistan or million-dollar-a-year soldiers attempting to kill people and win their hearts and minds at the same time.
The subversive and hopeful message of Egypt’s Tahrir Square is that change does not have to come by violence, just as the message from Tripoli—or Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq—is that violence only cycles into worse violence. If unarmed citizens in Tahrir Square can create positive change, why can’t the most powerful democracy on earth choose to bring about change not with military violence, but with magnanimous humanitarian aid and adherence to international laws and institutions? Khaddafy, if he survives, could be brought before the International Criminal Court to be tried for crimes against his own people, no thanks to the U.S., which does not recognize the Court’s legitimacy (though our Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, did express her happiness that Khaddafy’s case had been referred to the Court).
From what source does civil authority ultimately flow? Isn’t it the deep truth, with variants found in all the texts of the world’s major religions, of the golden rule?
We have already come close, with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, to the polar opposite of this universal rule: if you try to destroy me totally, I will destroy you totally, and if we really let fly with everything we have, we will all be dead ten times over. Khaddafy’s refusal to accept less than absolute control may well lead to his own death.
Enough Egyptian citizens understood that as they wished to be done to, so should they do. In this they demonstrated that the Gandhis and Kings of this world are not some idealistic exception. The strategies of non-violent change have become just as realistic and practical as the notion that dictators can deny their citizens’ aspirations by brute force has become unrealistic and impractical. Building schools for girls in Afghanistan is not only a more realistic way to increase U.S. security than 800 foreign bases; without so many bases we could afford to pay our own teachers and civil servants a living wage in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,” asserted President Kennedy in a resonant aphorism. This applies universally, to protestors and the governments trying to appease or oppose them, to near-failed states and to great powers. Non-violent alternatives are available to all governments as well as all protestors. Autocrats can capitulate peacefully and fly into exile, and free and fair elections can, with forbearance and hard work, fill the power vacuum. The mother of all might-have-beens comes to mind—what is happening now in the region could eventually have happened in Iraq without disastrous U.S. meddling.
After 9/11, stereotypes of a mysterious, unknowable ‘other,’ an other who hates us for our freedoms, quickly took over. The “enemy image” gripping the collective American psyche morphed from Soviet communists who tried and failed to make peaceful revolution impossible in Eastern Europe, into suicidal Islamic martyrs who tried and failed to make violent revolution inevitable.
Now these Arab and Persian and Sunni and Shia and Coptic Christian ‘others’ not only have faces and names, they are martyring themselves for the same liberties we ourselves hold dear. On a planet so small that that the news flashes instantly from Wisconsin to Bahrain, Tripoli to Jerusalem, isn’t it time we gave up enemy-images altogether? We are one human family. In the spirit of Tahrir Square, isn’t it time to reject the illusory authority of violence and embrace the unconquerable authority of non-violence?


Wisconsin Governor Defies Court Order to Open Capitol

Local Sheriff's Department Refuses to be Part of the "Palace Guard"

MADISON, Wisconsin – In a dramatic turn of events at the Wisconsin State Capitol Tuesday, Governor Scott Walker defied a court order to open the Capitol for normal business operations. State legislator, Representative Marc Pocan, called the move "not only unprecedented, but contempt of court as well."
On Monday at 8:00 a.m., the Wisconsin Capitol building, which was the site of dozens of major protests in the last two weeks -- including one of over 100,000 on Sunday -- was virtually locked down as the Governor moved to limit protester access in advance of his scheduled budget address on Tuesday.
After untold numbers were turned away at the door Monday and told they could not speak to their legislators, Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney pulled his deputies from the Capitol saying it was not their job to act as "palace guard." Wisconsin has some of the strongest open meetings and open government laws in the nation, and the local sheriff's department had played a key role in allowing protesters to exercise their legal rights in a public space, while keeping the protests inside and outside the Capitol safe and incident-free.
On Tuesday morning, it became clear that nothing had changed. Former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager petitioned the Dane County Court to open the Capitol. That petition was heard early on Tuesday and a temporary restraining order granting the request was issued promptly at 9:30 a.m.
The order said that the respondent "shall open the Wisconsin Capitol to members of the public during business hours and at times when governmental matters, such as hearings, listening sessions and court arguments are being conducted." The Capitol had dozens of hearings scheduled Monday and Tuesday. It has long been state law to allow unfettered access to the Capitol building when legislative business was underway. Now citizens are faced with a barrage of new rules. They could see their legislator, in some instances, if they called ahead and were escorted by an aide. (Some Republican legislators could not be bothered to ferry their constituents into the Capitol building.) They could attend a committee hearing if they called the Sergeant at Arms to register in advance. All people entering the Capitol are wanded. "Even after 9/11 we never did any of this stuff," one protester in the crowd said.
By 10:30 a.m., a crowd of about 500 had gathered outside the Capitol seeking to be let in, but were blocked by a coalition of police from around the state. The diverse crowd of protesters included a contingent from the Jackson Correctional Center in Black River Falls, a group of Janesville firefighters and representatives of the Menominee Indian tribe from Northern Wisconsin.
Someone grabbed a megaphone and read the court order, prompting emphatic cries of "Let Us In!" and "Whose house? Our house!" But as the day wore on and no additional access was granted, tensions were high and many were left dumbfounded and disbelieving. The state Department of Administration issued a statement late in the day, stating that the limited access measures they had in place were compliant with the court order.
The whole matter ended up back in court at 2:15 p.m. Hoping for a quick resolution that would allow the Capitol to open for the Governor's budget address, the burgeoning crowds were disappointed when the court hearing wore on and on and was eventually extended into the next day. In the mean time, well-dressed supporters of the Governor were granted tickets and escorted inside. Various lobbyists were seen entering and exiting the Capitol including the lobbyist for alcohol and tobacco interests in the state.
"You expect this kind of thing in Alabama not Wisconsin," said one person at the barred door, referring to the Governor George Wallace's attempted to deny black students their civil right to an education in 1963.
When the Governor's budget was unveiled at 4:00 p.m., it became quite clear why the Governor feared his constituents. No Wisconsinite will be unaffected by the bill. He cuts funding for schools and local governments by $1 billion, Medicaid and Badger Care by $500 million, ends state aid for recycling, expands school choice, gets rid of phosphorus rules that keep lakes and rivers clean, and cuts programs that poor college-bound students. He hands out $82 million in corporate tax breaks -- on top of the $100 million already approved -- while at the same time he takes away $42 million in tax credits for the poorest Wisconsinites. A crowd now registering many thousands made a ruckus outside that could be heard faintly inside the Assembly Chamber. The few protesters who managed to make it into the chamber were escorted out after one let loose a single "boo."
All this on top of his "budget repair bill" which guts collective bargaining for state workers -- a 50-year tradition in Wisconsin. "What we're seeing is a hostile corporate takeover of Wisconsin," State Senator John Erpenbach, one of the Wisconsin 14 currently visiting the great state of Illinois. Plus, the budget will result in the "absolute annihilation" of public education, according to state Rep. Tamara Grigsby.
Today, a new day will dawn on Walker's Wisconsin. Already voters are expressing buyer's remorse. A new poll says if the election were held again today, Wisconsinites would elect Walker's opponent 52-45. If Walker keeps this up, Badger State voters may have a chance to do so in a recall election next year.