calimary
calimary's JournalImagine how much more carnage and DEATH there would have been - with a gun instead of a knife.
That is all.
I found it karmic and MOST satisfying when I read an article about his fading days
in comfort (of course) at home. There was a passage detailing reagan seated in an easy chair, in one corner of a dark little library-like "office" room at home in Bel-Air, with the curtains closed, blanket draped over him, Nancy fussing over him as usual, and aides coming and going. Of course his Secret Service detail was close by. There was a description of a snow globe with the White House in it, on one of the shelves among the memorabilia in the room. And at one point he was described as looking at it (or somebody showing it to him) and saying "does that have something to do with me?"
Gotta admit - I found that EXQUISITELY satisfying in a karmic kind of way. Whether you admired or despised him (count me among the latter) you have to admit he had one helluva great life. Movie star, TV star, SAG president, commercial spokesman (hell, GE BUILT his fancy all-electric Pacific Palisades home for him - in which he did a lot of commercials as a GE spokesman), nationwide radio commentator, fawning rich people crawling all over him and showering him with their support and sponsorship, California governor, President of the US for two terms, fancy ranch in Santa Barbara, fancy home in Bel-Air that his rich friends bought for him, etc etc etc. What a life! An amazing life in anybody's book. A life ANYONE would be proud to have lived. Rich, famous, popular, protected, fawned over, cleaned up after, able to sell and shill and smooth-talk with the best of 'em, downright worshipped by far too many. I STILL burn with hatred for this bastard even as I write this.
And in the end, it was all taken from him. All his memories. All gone. GONE! He lived long enough to lose it ALL. All the King's horses and all the King's men. That big-ass fancy-ass hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars' worth of presidential library with a whole fucking Oval Office replica AND an Air Force One in it, and a BIG slab of the Berlin Wall, surrounded by hot-'n'-cold-running sycophants 24 hours a day, and the statues of him and the buildings and roads and schools and monuments named after him, and the photos of him with Gorbachev and Thatcher and every other world leader AND fabulous awards and honors from Queen Elizabeth and the Pope, and a gravesite of elegance and splendor and opulence and 24-hour guards - none of which he ever had to pay for. And he was ultimately robbed of it ALL. Unable to remember ANY of it. To have lived that kind of life - at the VERY VERY VERY TOP of the human ziggurat, and he was unable to remember ANY of it. It was all wiped away. In the end, none of it existed for him anymore. Or meant a THING. Like it never even happened. It was all taken away from him while he sat there, increasingly mindless, helpless, and drooling. And - HORROR OF HORRORS!!!! OUT of the spotlight!!!!! Fade to black. It ended in NOTHINGNESS. While he was still alive to "see" it, more or less. ALL of it taken away, leaving him a pathetic irrelevant helpless shell.
Miserably small, and VERY cold comfort, but somehow I found it beautifully fitting and profoundly well-deserved in a karmic sense. How appropriate that it should end that way for him.
It'll be champagne for me!
AND some fancy chocolate. Hopefully, I'll still be able to enjoy the tastes when that whiff of sulfur wafts through the air.
OF COURSE!!!!! Goes without saying, Ken!
I'm a supporter for sure, but I'm also very quick to admit she is an imperfect candidate. The main thing that kept me from voting for her and not then-Senator Obama was her support of the Iraq War. Anyone with that powerful an intellect and brains that brilliant should have been able to see through bush/cheney, and she just finally went along. That one's hard to forget. But I'm damned if I'm gonna support anybody else, especially those who don't have as strong a shot at it. I WANT TO KEEP THE WHITE HOUSE!!! At least until we can safely replace Ruth Bader Ginsburgh AND hopefully one of the CON assholes on there.
MY idea of a perfect candidate, if you really wanna know, is Alan Grayson, because he REALLY speaks for me! He'd kick 'em in the teeth and demand that they say "thank you sir, may I have another"! And he doesn't have a prayer. 
Welcome to DU, betterdemsonly!
I will support her because I want those brains in the Oval Office.
And yes, that said, I AM still bothered that that formidable brainpower still allowed her to swallow whatever bush/cheney was force-feeding everyone about the Iraq War.
But O'Malley and everyone else here would not have a chance against the momentum of a chris christie or a rand paul or - Heaven FORBID - jeb bush. O'Malley and the others need more time to gain a national identity. They can't yet compete the way she can. AND she might have the wind at her back because she's another ground-breaker. A LOT of people voted for Barack Obama the first time because they wanted to be part of that historical first. They wanted to be able to tell their grandchildren that they helped elect the first African American president. Even if they didn't like him. We might well have another round of that in 2016, assuming she does run. Who would not want to be able to tell their grandchildren that THEY were on the leading edge of THAT ground-breaking historical achievement, too? I think THAT might be what propels her to victory, too. Now that Americans have had a taste of a black President, one of the few categories left to break through that White-Boys-Only Club is the woman's contingent. She might have a tougher time going for a second term, but I think she'll clinch it the first time she tries it, from this point.
I'm thinking SHEER RUTHLESS STRATEGY here. O'Malley and people like Corey Booker and/or the Castro brothers in Texas, and YES! Elizabeth Warren, and the like are an EXCELLENT farm team. Remember, Elizabeth Warren JUST GOT THERE. But we've got some good bench strength and by the time President Obama leaves office, we'd have some really strong prospects for the future. They just need some more time to add to their own luster and national name recognition. If one of them were her Vice President, we might well be setting ourselves up for a LONG run in the Oval Office!
As long as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is so old and frail, it is URGENT that Democrats hold onto the White House. By any means necessary. Otherwise, we're finished as a nation because the next Supreme Court justice will come from the scalia-wannabe crowd.
Hillary Clinton may be imperfect. Certainly. She has a lot of baggage from the 90s that you can feel sure the bad guys will dredge up. All that Vince Foster and Whitewater crap yet again. And it won't really hold a lot of interest because that's such old news. But they'll bring it up. And she voted for the war, allowed herself to fall for it. Nevertheless, I think she's our best prospect. And it's more important to have a DEM in there - and KEEP the White House BLUE. At least until we can change the nature of the majority on the Supreme Court.
EYES ON THE PRIZE, GUYS!!!!! Who's got the best chance to WIN???? I think it's Hillary. I love Joe Biden, but he'd have more trouble trouncing people like chris christie and the rest of those jerks.
NOBODY who's a proponent of ayn rand EVER gets my vote!!!! EVER!!!!
I do believe he flatters himself into thinking he is presidential material. Funny that he worships that Apostle of Selfishness ayn rand, while he'd probably be first in line to vote for a mandate that declares America a "Christian nation." NO Christian has ANY business espousing an ayn rand philosophy!!! Who knows, maybe ayn rand was the Antichrist? She sure is the antithesis of everything I was taught that Jesus stood for.
Hope you'll "like" it on Youtube!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. It was pretty silly, alright!
But yeah, that's him and his band - he's the lead singer and principle songwriter, although the bass player (tall, blond, likes to show off his body - and it's rawther well-worth showing off), and the drummer (long brown hair, short, stocky and teddy-bear-ish). The new kid, thin and long brown hair, hasn't really established his persona yet.
THAT SAID, ...
Somehow they STILL represent all four of the "archetypes" that the Beatles once did:
Brilliant brash neurotic band leader,
Tall sexy bass player,
Quiet somewhat contemplative guitarist,
Cute funny cuddly drummer who's shorter than the other three!
This is it, exactly. Anybody still doubting? Do some reading on ralph reed.
He was out there DECADES ago - during reagan - preaching the gospel of starting by running for school board. Nobody cares. A few votes in the standard low-turnout elections are all you need to get elected. And THEN, you're IN! Then you start building. Alliances, connections, name recognition, media friendlies, and you help your fellow religious nutcases in, too - while your own power base helps you build your own momentum. Next top: city council or alderman or whatever. Then: Congress. Then, Senate or the governor's mansion. And then - hey why not go for the big one? OR make friends with all the potential big ones so you get nominated for some high appointee job - Supreme Court maybe?
It IS going on at this very moment. It's an infiltration. A vile sort of "peaceful" takeover. Systemic, from the ground up. It's been going on since the 70s and 80s. reagan just opened the floodgates and gave them all cover, as well as one of those "friends in high places." The teabaggers are doing the same thing. So are the misogynists and American Taliban in the states - targeting women's reproductive rights. So are the Roe v Wade haters. So are the why-do-blacks-need-voter-protections fiends. And they move from state to state, metastasizing like a cancer. It's underway at this very moment. It's in full flower at this very moment. And they will not be stopped. They ARE patient. And they're ALWAYS thinking, always maneuvering, always sneaking, always moving targets. They're ALWAYS on it.
And OUR side, on the other hand, is really only just starting to wake up.
Exactly! I always figured that NO topic of conversation was off-limits.
That way, your kids learn that they can talk to you about all kinds of stuff, and don't have to be afraid that something bad will happen or you'll get mad if they bring up something they think you're not gonna like or for which you'd judge them harshly.
Besides, as a parent, wouldn't you want to have an opportunity to weigh in, and put YOUR spin on it? And help your child to understand some of the finer or more complex points to whatever question comes up? For example, when I was a kid, I got my early sex education from my friends, so I believed all kinds of odd things before my mother FINALLY got around to telling me some stuff, and most of that didn't come til after "that" class in fifth grade for which we all had to bring a note home to get a parent's signature of approval, in advance.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,220
