50 year study says conservatives are 'followers'

"when people are frightened, they tend to go to these authority figures. They tend to become more conservative."

White Supremacist Rush Limbaugh calls Rape Victims "Ho's"

Notorious civil rights foe, Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show today, referred to the Duke rape victims as "ho's" -- a derogatory term meaning "black whore". Granted, the apologist, and eventual fall guy for BushWorld, says a lot of things you might expect from a drunken college fratbrat, but Mr. Limbaugh dropped out of college three decades ago. Like so many childstars, Rush is stuck performing the same schtick to the same schmucks show after show,year after moribund after. No wonder these folks don't believe in evolution. They never evolve!

Like an ex-conservative friend of mine said just today: You can't trust Rush because he ALWAYS defends Bush. He doesn't have his own mind." Imagine how Rush must feel being of one mind with a man who makes Dan Quayle seem intelligent! At least Quayle never ordered the killing of thousands of people. His stock has actually risen because of Bush.

The great thing about listening to NPR, say, instead of Rush and his clones, is that you hear the full spectrum of opinion, from the best minds of our time, but you also get the added benefit of information, knowledge, wisdom, and good music. Not the adolescent misinformation and hyperventilations of a man still acting out his college fantasies, and clones.

Rush talks about manliness, but if he were a real man he would stand up to Bush once in a while, and take a chance. But alas, he is bought and paid for. He MUST say the things he says, or he is history. He is the man who could have been a Man, but chose excess instead.

What is full, empties. It's a fact of nature. And he's been full too long.
He should get out while he's ahead.

Anonymoses TV : Week of March 20, 2006

Juggle with the Beatles

CLICK ON LINKS BELOW FOR MORE AMAZING TV.

BLOGGING
What is a blog? - Robert Scoble
What is a blog? - David Sifry
What is a blog? - Chris Pirillo - Money with blogs
What is a blog? - Howard Rheingold
Dutch Bloggies 2006

POLITICS
Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the American People
PNAC and the NEOCONs: wanted a new Pearl Harbor
Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War
George Lakoff on Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think
"Stick It" from Boston Legal (James Spader)
The Boat and the Bomb : 20th Anniversary of the Bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
Iraq War - Chomsky
Election 2004: Republican Terror Manipulations, How They Work and Why
Al Franken, The Truth (with Jokes)
Being Opinionated in America: Maureen Dowd & Thomas Friedman
George Soros - The Bubble of American Supremacy
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: 20th Annual Evening for Peace - Jonathan Schell and Harry Belafonte
Journalists Under Fire: Vietnam & Iraq
Iraq War - Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey - Killing Civillians in Iraq
The Illuminati Families who Rule the World
Charlie Rose - Gore Vidal / Pierre Salinger
Frank Zappa on CNN's Crossfire (1986)
Clip from Manufacturing Consent
John and Yoko's Year of Peace
Cornel West - Democracy Matters
The Secret Government - Bill Moyers
John Edwards campaign speech
Speech by Al Gore on January 16th on Domestic Spying
A Conversation with William J. Clinton

HUMOR
Problems of Right-wing activists
Ed Thompson's Trumpet Duet
Long John Johnson, all the livelong day - Cat talking
Choco Party - Japanese Commercial
The Fartlighter
Chris Bliss - live comedy performance
Chris Bliss - television appearances
Monty Pythons the Knights and the Holy Grail
Farting Preacher
Titanic reenacted in 50 seconds

SPIRITUALITY
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It
His Holiness - The XIV Dalai Lama
Krishnamurti with Trungpa Rimpoche
Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark - Laurence Gardner
RUMI: POET OF THE HEART

FILM
Ritual In Transfigured Time - Maya Deren
Le voyage dans la lune - Melies
les francais au travail - Lumiere
Metropolis [1927] - Fritz Lang
un chien andalou - Luis Bunuel & Salvadore Dali
Man Ray Avant Garde Collection - Surrealist masterpieces
L'AGE D'OR [1930] - Luis Bunuel
Zero De Conduite 1933 - Jean Vigo
Battleship Potemkin - Eisenstein
Rhythm 21 - Hans Richter
Ballet mecanique - Fernand Leger
Nosferatu [1922]
His Girl Friday
My Man Godfrey $$

MUSIC
Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring - Josh Groban
I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles
The Beatles - I'm Down - Live at Shea Stadium 1965
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Music Video by The Beatles
John Coltrane - Naima Live 1965
John Coltrane - Live 1963
SummerFest 2004: Chick Corea: Rehearsal
The Kinks "Well Respected Man" on Beat Beat Beat!
Ten Years After - I'm going home (live woodstock)
Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead Tribute
Dave Clark Five - "Catch Us If You Can"
dead can dance - milan 2005
Jon Anderson - tour of the universe tour
Enya Tribute to WTC 9/11
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds "Nature Boy" Music Video

CULTURE
Tim Leary before leaving us
Robert Anton Wilson, Part One
Robert Anton Wilson, Part Two
County Sligo, Ireland
Gurdjieff inParis (1949)
Gurdjieff & Friends tour France (1949)
Concert of Sacred Music by Gurdjieff
NASA - Hubble view of the universe
Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man 1975 - Ashley Montagu
African American Lives - Henry Louis Gates III
Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are"
ArtsPass: John Singer Sargent 1856-1925
UNC vs Duke - Matt jumping over Bonfires
Andy Griffith Show: Andy Discovers America
The Biltmore Estate - Asheville, North Carolina

Norton Resigns After Abramoff Revelation; Justice O'Connor Warns of Dictatorship

• Interior Secretary, pictured with Abramoff, resigns abruptly
• O'Connor chides GOP attacks onjudiciary, warns of dictatorship
• Sandra Day O'Connor Warns Against Partisan GOP DeLay/Bush Dictatorship.
• Fancy Frist Campaign ad attacks gays, judges, African Americans
• Focus on the Family denies lobbying for Abramoff; E-mails refute
• Bush: "How will I know if it's unconstitutional?" - World Net Daily Condemns Bush's Absentee Presidency"
• At Conservative Forum on Bush, Everybody's a Critic

The Importance of the Importance of the Importance of Living

Great-grandmother

Strange the things we discover while looking for other things. Today, while searching the net for certain concepts contained within the perennial classic guide to living -- "The Importance of Living", by nobel Laureate, Lin Yutang -- I was led to a column called "The Importance of The Importance of Living", by Linda Nicholls, who, among other things, is a great-great-grandmother. I'm not sure of the recency of the photo, but lordy, if it is recent, I would have to proclaim the importance of The Importance of The Importance of Living, at least to the degree to which it may have contributed to the remarkable preservative by-products. For, as Ashley Montagu discovered, evolution is the degree to which we retain youthful characteristics and flexibility. Apes suck at this. We are different. And so in differing degrees.

Frankly, I think Yutang's classic should be read along with Tzu's "Art of War" and Clauswitz' "On War", by those who would choose war as a "viable" option. The "Tao te Ching" and the poems of Rumi would also be useful reads before hurling your citizens into a death and more death situation. Instead of yanking from the top shelf, too many leaders these days pull from much lower shelves. Even the bottom shelf.

Mister Yutang reminds us of the worth of non-soldiers, who are at least as worthy as soldiers and soldier-type folk, for whom taking (or giving) orders is a way of life. But this is but a small part of large life, and one that is to be looked at as unfortunate. Civilization, as Erich Fromm noted, began as an act of disobedience...but may end in an act of obedience.

Fascism feasts when all are of one mind. But who are the enemies of multiculturalism?
Yutang shares Whitman's love for the cosmic and free individual. Groupthink can go to Hell.

Yutang, more importantly, celebrates the importance of humor, particularly as regards political ideologies. When he wrote the book, in the late 30s, Germany was the big offender. Ultra-conservatives East and West are the big offenders today.

The world needs to lighten up. Let the sunshine in!

While the world, buying their philosophy from the bookwall at Wal-Mart, becomes ever purpose-driven, Yutang helps us understand the meaninglessness of such inventions.
While the true purpose of life, which relates to the laws of Heptaparaparshinokh, gets buried among the plethora of infantile fantasies.

A wise man won't be busy, and a busy man can't be wise.

The Wuss Awards

Nominations for the Wuss Awards' coveted "W" are being accepted.

Who do you think was the biggest wuss of 2005?

We at Anonymoses have pondered this issue, and are in the process of narrowing down. So far, it seems Rush Limbaugh is leading the pack.

For those of you who do not know Mr. Limbaugh, let me just say that he is an entirely biased college dropout from the backwater of Missouri who is paid massive sums of money to say whatever is necessary to keep the ignorant from the truth, and to basically keep them angry. And although he claims to have a talk show, most of the talking is done by Rush himself, although he occasionally takes a caller, who invariably must wait and wait and wait for him to shut his nervous trap and allow someone else to speak.

Most of those who do get through are what are called "dittoheads" or "dittoholes" or "the uneducated". All they are there to do is to high-five Rush, and further pump up his already full-blown adolescent ego.

Should a dissenting voice make their way through the gatekeeper, Rush hyperventilates, yawps, and talks over them...then hangs up on them. Then he goes on and on about how the previous caller was a liberal this or that, and then goes on to argue with someone who is no longer even able to respond.

Like many. if not most, conservative bloggers, dictation is the rule. Comments are disabled. And their wussiness is complete.

But unlike their fearful leader, Rush and the Reichblog, do not actually kill and maim others...while sitting comfortably behind a desk or a Rove. This is perhaps the height of wussiness.

The Media deserve their own category of wussiness though, since they helped shoehorn the Wuss-in-Chief into office, and have shilled for his corporations ever since.

So many wussies, so little time...

Poll at Daily Kos

When will conservatives learn their role?

There is no need to yell and scream. No need to be strident and shrill. What is needed is that conservatives learn their proper role.

Now by conservative, I mean people who are not creative, but who are, in the main, reactionary.
In America, it has long been the case that the creative class tended toward liberality, since that is, in large part, what enables them to be creative. Creativity is a generative and generous act.

But many of those who are not creative make the mistake of becoming, or being, reactive, as if reactivity balanced creativity. But this is not the proper order. The proper thing for the non-creatives to do is to be receptive, not reactive. Creativity is the yang, receptivity is the yin.

All of life is infused with both characteristics. No one is completely one way or the other. There are simply aptitudes and orientations.

America is prevented from evolving naturally by this miscalculation. Instead of great ideas being nurtured and developed by those who would be receptive, instead they are reacted against, shot down, and the balloon bursts...if it is ever given wind in the first place.

The second mistake of the reactives is that reaction is, to the extent that it is mechanical, the antonym of consciousness. As DH Lawrence once wrote: "Death is not evil. Evil is mechanical."
And so it is with mechanical humanity -- if the oxymoron hasn't already smacked you on the face or fundament. And mechanicality is a state against which one must ever struggle, as modernity itself seems to lull one into its hypnotic laze. (Here laze is meant to indicate the gestalt of laziness...and to not neologize might be a glaring example of said laze.)

Allied with this unconscious, mechanical reactionariness are the onion layers of delusion (Maya) caused by the buffers from reality caked on with each ego-centered supposition, as if every knucklehead were indeed the actual center of the universe.

Creatives, for their part, need to understand that a gift is a gift, and that gifts can be taken away if not stewarded with proper care. Midwiving reactives into receptives may be a role you have to take up. Alas, friends are better than foe. Make it all worthwhile.

Americans are growing weary of the ululation, the pounding fists, the adolescent bravado. Fix the most basic structures, and the rest will become much easier to attend.

These things and more have been uttered under the influence of Anonymoses, uncle of all blogs, and may not be taken as medicine. If conditions persist, consult your physicist.

Life...or something like it

LOSLI has awarded this blog, anonyMoses, with BEST SOUTHERN BLOG.
(Very perceptive of them!)
:)

Among the other winners are these gems:

Best Liberal:Eschaton
Best Moderate:The Moderate Voice
Best Video Blogging:Crooks and Liars
Best Humor Progressive:Jesus' General
Best Humor Conservative:Protein Wisdom
Best Progressive Reporting:Daily Kos
Best Conservative Reporting:Instapundit
Best Limericks:Mad Kane
Least likely to Put Cream in His Coffee / Pissed off Progressive: Rook's Rant
Best Californication: (Meant in a good way)Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Best DC Blog:INDC Journal
Best Law Blog:Talk Left
Best American Flag Themed Posts:The Pirate's Cove
Best Semi-retired Blogger:Charlie from The Pusillanimous Wankers
Best Southern Woman's Blog:Iddybud
Best Snark:T-Bogg
Best Blogger Jess is Still Trying to Get:Ayn Clouter
Best at Finding Silly Sites of the Day:Pen-Elayne
Best Community:The American Street
Best Caption Contests:Rox Populi
Most Reminiscent of Hunter S. ThompsonBillmon
Best Jeff Gannon / James Guckert CoverageAmerica Blog
Best Blog to Make Jess Smile... Even When I Try Not TooTild
Best Maha BrahaThe Mahablog
What the F***k BlogWTF Is It Now?
Best Blogger Without a Blogroll (That I Can Find)Uggabugga

IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT -- EVER? - Yahoo! News

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.



In a related story from Bloomberg, Americans Want Different Type of President Next Time, Poll Says

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Three in five Americans want the next U.S. president to be completely different from incumbent George W. Bush, according to a poll by Time magazine.

Bush's policies in Iraq and high gasoline and energy prices had a ``very negative'' effect on his overall job rating for 45 percent of respondents, according to the poll, conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1. The results showed 36 percent would like the next president to have policies similar to those of Bush, compared with 60 percent who want a different type of leader.

The findings indicate Bush is failing to reverse flagging approval ratings after laying out his strategy for Iraq in a Nov. 30 speech. The poll showed 41 percent approve of the job Bush is doing while 53 percent disapprove, little changed from results in September after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. Of those who disapprove, 76 percent said they were unlikely to change their opinion of Bush.

A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies

A Revision Thing...
Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005. All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity. Originally from Harper's Magazine, October 2003. By Sam Smith.

(Thanks to FullThroat and Ra Bourbon for this nugget.)

With such gems as...

-It was absolutely clear that the number-one threat facing America was from Saddam Hussein. -We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda had high-level contacts that went back a decade.
-We learned that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and deadly gases.
-The regime had long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations.
-Iraq and Al Qaeda had discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq.
-Iraqi officials denied accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials simply were not credible. -You couldn't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talked about the war on terror.
-The fundamental question was, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer was, absolutely.
-His regime had large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas, anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox.
-Our conservative estimate was that Iraq then had a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. That was enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.

-The United States was not interested in the oil in that region.
-We were intent on ensuring that Iraq's oil resources remained under national Iraqi control, with the proceeds made available to support Iraqis in all parts of the country.
-The oil fields belonged to the people of Iraq, the government of Iraq, all of Iraq.

On and on the lies go...

And people are still dying for them.

The Hula Hoop & The New Liberal Physical Policy

Ancient Liberating Device


The Hula Hoop (or Hoola Hoop if your brain is bad) is making a liberal resurgence, thus partially justifying a notion once held by the gigantic Robert Reich (not to be confused with the diminutive Robert Reich who was never Secretary of Labor) and ushering in an age of physical liberality which some predict will cause the physical conservatives to finally retreat into their wally white world where one wonders where the yellow went, but not much else, lest one include animadversive gasguzzle shokinah or other oopsishnesses.

According to the author of "Hands of Light", simply making these gyrating motions with the human thorax is juvenative and restorative, or in other words, evolutive -- anathemae to many with conservative physical policies. But such ignorationalistic damming of reality will not stand against the rising waters, the pent-up aching rivers, of Nature, even as she rises in us. And thus the brave Hula Hoop will have saved the day, and the world will, once again, love America, or at least North Carolina.

[Andy Griffith theme]

How A Hula Hoop Helped Save Gay Whales from Rational Nuking
The String Cheese Incident

The American Conservative: "Money for Nothing"

Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.

When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption.

End of the Bush Era

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

E.J. Dionne explains how and why the Bush era came to an end on September 2, 2005...

Excerpts:

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

Promises! Promises!
Broken promises!

Pax Americana & The Neo-Conservative Agenda

Ecozoic

EXCERPT:
The Neo-conservatives believe that a global Pax Americana can be established and that it is America's responsibility to rise to the occasion. A type of Manifest Destiny. Some would call this hegemony, or liberation, or empire building, or democratization. In this day of sound bite marketing these labels can all mean about the same thing. Analyzing this in terms of Republican or Democratic politics is also limited because this is a policy is spanning administrations. Is the US actually pursuing a vision of "enlightened" domination of global geo-politics? What are the pros and cons of this approach? Will it engender democracy or an unruly backlash? How far is the military willing to extend itself? Is this the rise of an empire? Who will pay and who will profit? How will Europe respond? What is the future of the United Nations? Will it make the world a safer place?
:END OF EXCERPT

Uh, no!

"I simply do not understand why all parties cannot simply cooperate." - Rodney Luther King

The Glorious Scamp
dedicated to the brave deserters

My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier. The scamp is probably the most glorious type of human being, as the soldier is the lowest type, according to this conception. For things are not so simple as they sometimes seem. In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.
- Lin Yutang


Perhaps the time has come for us to discuss an exit strategy.


Our "boys and girls" are still our "boys and girls" regardless of whether they are in Iraq or Canada. And judging from what I have seen and heard from the excellent News Hour report, the ones that have walked away from the war are perhaps the sanest, best and brightest of the lot. And we are losing them, just as we are losing children in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We cannot expect to win a world worth having by seizing it like a dog. We need to be what we want to become, not hope that our violent acts will make room for a peaceful, harmonious life. Doesn't work that way. The deserters may simply be trying to save their own souls.

Are the soldiers gentlemen? We'd like to think so. So let us assume they are, and that they welcome any discussions that might improve their conditions, within and without.

We need to become better people. We have been doing ungentlemanly acts on a global scale, and are, as such, underserving of emulation. And yet retribution is nearly guaranteed, and yet, mercy still breathing, we may be able to become, as some have suggested, a humanitarian superpower, and not simply a military superpower. Any bully can beat up people. It takes greater care and skill to heal people.

Can we not become a nation of healers?

Can we not reverse the bad karma generated by mean-spirited policies?

When will we ask: "How can we help"?
and stop asking: "What's in it for me"?


If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty,
He would not be shouting, and not be angry.

If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you.
-Chuang Tzu

What is the Republican Party?

City Pages - The Undoing of America - Gore Vidal

EXCERPT
What is the Republican Party? Well, it used to be the party of the small-town businessman, generally in the Middle West, generally sort of out of the mainstream. Very conservative. It now represents nothing but the gas and oil business. They own it. And the people who go to Congress are simply bought. They are lawyers who are paid to represent Halliburton, big oil, big banking. So the very rich corporate America has a party for itself, the Republican Party. The Democrats don't have much of anything but a kind of wistful style. They just want everyone to be happy, and politically correct at all times. Do not hurt other people's feelings. They spend so much time on political correctness that they haven't thought of what to do politically about anything. Like say "no" to these preemptive wars, which are against not only the whole world's take on war and peace, but against United States history.

Learn more about your dying country, and how it is being killed.

Proof the Right Wing is dumbing down

Right-Of-Center Bloggers Select Their Favorite Columnists - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

What has softened the skulls of the Right Wing of late? Is it that they are expected to follow their fuhrers where'er they may lead, and in the process have, themselves, had to slow their cerebrations to a point where fossilized cryptonazis in the bright autumn of their senescence, boys like Rich Lowry, or anyone named Limbaugh suffice as thought leading?

Thanks to the Right Wing News for sharing the embarrassing results of their very scientific study (shown on the other side of this link.)

Give the list a serious pondering, and ask yourself if you envision yourself as someone who would be impressed by such folk as listed there. And should the answer be a resounding "yea"...you may want to redouble your efforts at trying to understand why you never saw reasons to finish high school, or pay attention in college, were you one of the lucky ones.

Oh sure, there are one or two in the favorite columnist list who actually do think thoughts. Hitch and Brooks come to mind. But Coulter, David Limbaugh, Michael Barone?

Thoughts don't convey any better when yelled, and yet yelling seems to be a favorite mode of speech among the more famous voices of the Reich. What is so wrong with speaking in modulated tones, like they do on NPR, PBS, BBC, or other non-Rightwing sources of information. And what is wrong with information? What is so great about hearing Purchased Opinion day in and day out? If opinion is your gig, why not shoot for unpaid opinion? How do you know paid-for opinion is not just PR? Would Rush Limbaugh give a fair assessment of Gutter Helmet? What are the down sides of this unusual sartorial accessory, and would a good haberdasher recommend wearing one? Certainly not with white tie.

So while the Left and Center have to suffer folks like Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Bruce Springsteen, Bill Moyers, Garrison Keillor, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Rumi, Lao Tse, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and other Princes of Peace, the Right get to skim from the very top of humanity, and find such radiant sources of Eternal Light as Ann Coulter and Rich Lowry? Sure they are cute, but so is a puppy just learning to walk.

I remember when I first became interested in philosophy. I found great delight in finding a philosopher I liked, and then searching for the thinkers THEY liked. And then the ones THEY liked, and on back to God. Never, in a million years, would I end up at William F. Buckley or Charles Krauthammer or George Will -- fine folks though they may be.

Sometimes it is best to look beyond our time and our place, in order to get a view that is not, in some way, influenced, or paid, or purchased by this or that company, group or movement.

The people on this list are too often at odds with time-tested universal wisdoms, and I can only think that it is either because they are unfamiliar with time-tested universal wisdoms, or that they are simply saying basically what they are paid to say.

One cannot impart even a tenth of one's understanding to another man, and only half to another woman, but that does not mean we should not lament the dumbing down, the awful rowing toward ignorance and ignobility.
It does little good to worry about it, and it is probably best that people learn from their own mistakes.

But, if you find that you are one of those who swoon and gush at the opinions of such and such on said list, it would do no harm to ask: Who are their influences? Whom do they find to be worthy of study? And then go to them, if there is a them. Trace them on back. If nothing else, it will free you momentarily from the Drudge.

Journalism

The Raw Story | Secret Service records raise new questions about discredited conservative reporter
(via Dan Gillmor)

Charlotte/Matthews Bloggers meetup at Kaldi's Koffee House at &pm Saturday

Quality vs Quantity
Notes from our first meet-up!

When I walked into Kaldi's Blog Cafe, I could have been faced with a throng of angry young Hitlers...in which case I could have called the meeting a smashing success because of all the people who attended. But alas, it is quality, not quantity. So instead of a throng of screeching Hitlers, I got two young men, one of which I brought myself, and the other of whom wandered over to where my driver and I were eating quiche, pastries and fruit, and drinking Kaldi's high-octane house blend, and said, in English, "Is this the blog group"? That young man was Steve Dunn, of the Begging to Differ blog, and president of the Plaza-Midwood Association. The fellow I brought was Jack (Le Petit Jacques) of History of Time Travel.

As I had only posted the meeting 2 days before, I really didn't expect anyone to be there, except maybe Pam, whom I wanted to help with blogging. And so to even have one show up was a bit of a miracle. Steve himself said that he had only seen the announcement an hour or so earlier.

My first impression of Steve Dunn was that he could have been a twin brother of Jack my my dear friend, Rob Urban, with whom Jack and I like to party in Amsterdam, Paris, Manhattan, Charleston, and occasionally Charlotte. So when I blurred my vision, which is something we right-brainers like to do, I could imagine three old friends once again gathered...only the setting was more reminescent of the Harvard Club than the funky European haunts (although The Grand had some elegant spaces, and is highly recommended), and so to incorporate that image, I would have to blur Jack into, say Ken Phillips, and Ken, Rob and I had some great conversations at The Club, while Jack, even though his sister lives and teaches in Cambridge, never made it up to visit.

And so people are blurring left and right, and I'm thinking "this is some goood coffee"!

Unblurring my eyes, I began to see that Steve was not Rob, and Jack was not Ken, and I was not Clay Aiken. I was Sidney Poitier. A white Sidney Poitier. Well, off-white. Clinton-white. And Jack and Steve were having a discussion.

I finally finished wolfing down my food and joined in...

The discussion ranged from Sidebars, to Amsterdam, to bloggercons and meetups, and on to pedagogy; How and what does one need to teach when teaching blogging, and what are the best ways to effect that change?

My own vision is that we will grow a network of blogger meetups through our large county, and focus on teaching the teaching of blogging. In other words, we can teach people how to blog, and then teach them how to teach others how to blog. In this way, we can grow the Charlotte blogosphere in a most efficient manner, and, among other things, have a goodly number of bloggers with important things to convey when the September 17th BlogFest, BloggerCon, or whathaveyou comes to Charlotte.

One of the things we discussed was what I perceive to be a certain slowheadedness in Charlotte when it comes to innovation. Steve tended to disagree, but I am not sure what proff he could point to to show how fast we are. And I know that the folks in Greensboro and Chapel Hill will tend to back me up, as their blogosphere has evolved far beyond Charlotte's blogosphere, which, alas, it still largely inchoate. But Steve did make some good points in support of a fastheaded Charlotte, and when compared with, say, Gastonia or Marshville, he certainly has a point. But as I was discussing with Jack on our return home...we, in Cambridge, were discussing HDTV in 1980, while I never heard a peep about it here until, oh, the late '90s. And when I moved back to Charlotte, from Massachusetts, back in '96, having been on the Net for a couple of years...very few people had even heard of the Internet. Now the same applies to blogging.

I wish it were otherwise. But alas, Charlotte does not have a Harvard, an MIT, a BU or BC, a Brandeis, a Radcliffe or Wellesley...where the future is constantly being created. But some of the people in Boston would point to the West Coast, and that that there is where the future is actually being created. It is a relative thing, but take a drive out into the boonies, and you will see this relativity in practice.

And so a compromise is in order... Charlotte is in between Greensboro and Spartanburg...and I'm glad we are ahead of Spartanburg.

The Laws of Physics states that for every action there is a reaction, and so one comes to expect that no matter what one says, there will, sure as Physics, be a reaction, and often an opposing reaction. And, just as with Begging to Differ, there will be Thesis, Antithesis, and, occasionally, Synthesis. All to please Hegel, the comb-over philosopher.

But I digress...

Steve, it turns out, lives about 3 blocks from me, and so I suggested we find a closer place to have microlocal meetups...but we both agreed that Kaldi's is a good place to have them until that point where splinter groups are needed. Until that time, I hope to continue to meet and grow other meetups. As President of the Plaza-Midwood Neighborhood Association, Steve could teach and organize those folks, and I can talk to the folks at the Commonweath-Morningside Neighborhood Association and get them involved.

John McBride is blogging for the Elizabeth neighborhood, so I will talk with him, and see if we can get our adjoining neighborhoods together on some projects as well. And where help is needed, help will go. At least as far as I am concerned.

I'd like to see what the folks in Dilworth, NODA and other areas of town are doing about it. Charlotte is so big, and such a car-dependent city, the notion of having a city-wide meetup for all time is simply impractical. This is what BloggerCons are for. But prior to that time, I hope to see a thousand pints of Lite springing up all over this county. We will need all the help we can get.

I am going to contact the good folks in Greensboro, Chapel Hill and Cambridge to learn not to reinvent the wheel, and to glean the good things they have already discovered.

If the Charlotte media is going to have an essential blackout of blogging, which seems to be the case, it will be up to bloggers themselves to spread the word. I am excited about the prospects.

Steve, Jack...thanks for coming out. It was a real pleasure, and I look forward to picking your ample and protean brains again very soon. And for those who may want to join us...don't worry if you don't have a laptop or even a computer. If you have one, you will be accommodated, but what is more important is simply your presence.
I didn't even bring pencil or paper. And your level of skill is also unimportant. If you are a seasoned blogger, you can help with the planning of the BloggerCon. If you are new, you can receive help on getting started. Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive...it doesn't matter. This is about education, not culture war. All viewpoints are welcome.

Go Tarheels!

When: Saturday, April 2, 7:00 PM
Where: Kaldi's Koffee House, 157 N. Trade Street, Matthews, NC
What: Charlotte/Matthews Bloggers meetup

Follow the Love: A Freeper jumps ship

A freeper says: "Time to part company"

Excerpts:

The whole Terri Schiavo case has changed everything for me. A mob mentality took over the first few days after the order to pull the tube was given. Anyone who did not toe the line was attacked. I saw a dedicated active-duty member of our armed forces called a “Maine liberal” for simply asking why troops in harm’s way did not get the same sort of “all-nighter” attention that Terri Schiavo got. It was a reasonable question – we have 40-year-old P-3s still out there. We have a war on terrorism still going on, in case folks have not noticed.
...
I’m sick of the way the Terri threads spun out of control, and the vicious attacks launched at reasonable people who came to a different conclusions about the situation or who pointed out facts that certain people found inconvenient. This is not what I signed on here for.
...
I do NOT want the federal government to be involved in any culture war. “Culture” was never mentioned in the constitution, thus I believe it is left to the States or TO THE PEOPLE (see the Tenth Amendment).
...
In the process of Free Republic leaving me, I now find that I fear the social conservatives as much as I fear the loony left. As a result of coming to this conclusion, I ask that my account be deleted and all posts I have made, save for this opus and the ping to my friends be removed.

I predict that more and more people will learn that it is better to follow the love than chase after money and popularity, and good people like Leach, Chaffee, Snow, Shays, Spector, Warner and others will realize that "the love" is no longer in their party. It has been pushed out by hate, reaction, bloviation, diversion, irresponsibility, obscurantism, greed, micranimity and a lack of respect for Truth.

Massive link dump

These are imported from an older anonymoses.

1-Click BlogRolling4ad RecordsAlchemy JournalAlt.MuslimAmerican ProspectAmpersandAmphetadeskAndrew NorthrumanonyMosesAntiwarmonger
ApostropherArts and Letters DailyAstronomy Picture of the DayBaghdad BurningBartcopBegging to DifferBig Sur TapesBlog of Collective IntelligenceBlog RevolutionBlogdex
BloggerBlogistanBlogpulseBlogs at Harvard LawBlogskinsBlogspotBlosxomBoilingPointBoing BoingBookslut, The
Brad DeLongBringthemhomenow.orgBuzzflashCafePressCharlotte.comChristopher LydonCitiesForPeaceCol. David HackworthConblog-The IndepunditConsortium News
CounterspinCrisisPapersCrooked TimberCultural CreativesCultural Elite, TheCyberjournalist.netDaily Brew, TheDaily KosDaily Rant, TheDalkey Archives
Dave BarryDave WinerDaypopDem UndergroundDemocrats.comDesultorDoc SearleDonkeyRisingDreamvirus JournalE-ThePeople
Ed ConeEFFEsther DysonExitZeroFacets MultimediaFastPoliticsFinnegans Wake ConcordexFirst StoneFlorida BlogFreethinker's Page
Glenn ReynoldsGreat American SpeechesGreyMatterGuardian UKHack the PlanetHarvard Political ReviewIddybudIn These TimesIncendiary IntrospectionIndy Media
International Sentinel, TheJim HightowerJohn SuggJuan ColeLabyrinth (Medieval resources)LeanLeftLeft is RightLefty Directory, TheLegitGovLiberalSlant
Literary KicksLive JournalLucy PerkinsMadKaneMadKaneMahablogMaureen DowdMaxSpeakMedia MattersMedia Revolution
MediaBurnMedieval Mayhem by SkelligsravenMeerkatMichael MooreMilly IvensMitch KaporMore from HarvardMother JonesMovable TypeMWO
Mystic Fire VideoNatalie DavisNative American Raven LoreNews is FreeNIONNION - signersNorth Carolina Experiment, TheNorth State BlogsOJROnion
Online JournalOxblogOxford Democracy ForumOxytocinPaidContentPBS OnlinePerfunctoryPeter MerholzPhilip GreenspunPlucky
PopdexProject CensoredPublished.comRadio UserlandRaptorMagicRaw StoryRebecca's PocketRobert Anton WilsonRSSifyToolRumi
Salam PaxSalonSecond-Class CitizenSisyphus ShruggedSkippy the Bush KangarooSlactivistSlashSlateStand DownSyndic8
Take Back the MediaThe NationThe Rational Liberalthinking while typingTom BurkaTom TomorrowTomPaineTroubleTicketsTrueMajorityTruthOut
UK Guradian WeblogUK Parliament on the WebUnanswered Questions 911Utne OnlineVillage Voicew.bloggarWallace StevensWanted: A Vast Left-Wing ConspiracyWeblogs.comWhiskeyBar's List o' Lies
Who's Who in MysticismWintermuteZ-NetZope

Broken TrainWeblog Against WarOxytocinPeace BlogsLEFT is RIGHTAlternative Online News OutletsEatonweb/NCDU BlogsThe Rodent's BurrowCentrifugalForceOmega Point 2012

salonified blogsThese are some of the blogs recommended by readers of TableTalk at Salon.com.

AgonistArmedLiberalBeetleSympathyBillmonT.Bogg

CalpunditCitizenCitesClaremont Weblog

Command-ostCounterspinBarryCrimminsCursorDailyKosDearRaed

DigbysblogDisgustedLiberalEhrensteinland

FailureIsImpossibleTheGrandOldPartyHermesPress Insurrection

JaneGaltJubileeIraqTheLeftCoaster

LetterFromGothamLiberalOasisLinkPopularity

LyingSocialistWeaselsMainstreamListMajorBarbaraJ.Marshall

MaxspeakMingReportMyPhDNathanNewman

NewLeftBlogsNuisanceNealPollackQuasipunditRittenhouseRogerAiles

SalonBlogSDSessionsSDPP.orgRobertScheerSkyeDreams

SlicedAndDicedSmirkingChimp

TAP AlternateUsn-dem-vetVaara

WealthBondageWorldCrossing/WebX

Conservablogs: American Prowler Thomas Sowell Walter Williams Best of the Web InstaPundit DailyPundit Andrew Sullivan Zonitics Croooow Blog Regions of Mind The Daily Rant Indepundit Minor Groove Poor and Stupid C-Log VodkaPundit Lileks Jim Miller Virginia Postrel USS Clueless Cut on the Bias Protein Wisdom Man Without Qualities Insolvent Republic of Blogistan Midwest Conservative Journal Blissful Knowledge Hokie Pundit Coyote at the Dog Show Cranky Professor MWO Watch LeftWatch John Ellis Craig Schamp Volokh Conspiracy Blogs of War Campus Nonsense Little Green Footballs Bjorn Staerk Tim Blair Happy Fun Pundit OxBlog Right Wing News HawkGirl La Blogatrice Education Weak Daimnation! The Razor's Edge Blogs of War Bo Cowgill broc7 Bucket o' Rants Ben Fischer Hoystory Media Minded Rodger Schultz Jane Galt Truth Bomb Gut Rumbles Pejman Samizdata A.I. Rottweiler Big S Blog Accuracy in Academia Amateur Economist Great Questions of Economics EconoBlog Whigging Out More Than Zero North Georgia Dogma Random Thoughts Brothers Judd Safety Valve Silfray Hraka Possumblog Belligerent Bunny Site Essential Vermont Reactionary Light of Reason Natalie Solent Red Letter Day N.Z. Bear Shark Blog Recovering Liberal Overtaken Adventures in Bureaucracy Jeff Jarvis Spoons Experience Opinions Galore Power Line

NOTABLE AUTHORSChinua Achebe Alfred Alcorn Martin Amis Donald Antrim John Barth Donald Barthelme Richard Bass Hugo Adam Bedau Alexandra Boris David Bowman Susie Bright John Cage Ethan Canin Noam Chomsky Robert Coover Guy Davenport Philip K. Dick Brian Eno Jeffrey Eugenides Karen Joy Fowler Robert Fripp William Gass William Gaddis William Gibson dgk goldberg Peter Gomes Alan Gurganus Jim Harrison Alan Hollinghurst Nick Hornby Danilo Kis Milan Kundera Elmore Leonard Lynn Margulis Armistead Maupin Cormac McCarthy Jonathan McVity China Mieville Rick Moody Flann O'Brien Ben Okri Tom Robbins Dori Sanders Sam Shepard Todd Siler Lee Smith Terry Southern Neal Stephenson Bruce Sterling Alexander Theroux Frederick Tuten Earl Thompson William T. Vollman David Foster Wallace Robert Anton Wilson

Sadly the links are through the Wayback Machine.