How heroic! He managed to escape without the anarchists tearing him to shreds with their bare hands.

whoa, dude, it’s just like the WTO protest of ‘99! Maybe if they survive sticking it to The Man, they can pick up some slacker chicks. I hear that they all have piercings down there.

I missed the part where Mr. Zombie explains what he was doing amidst the “anarchists.” Was he reporting? Or instigating?

It looks like the whole cities ablaze. I can see the fire from here in Pa.

I nominate him for the 101st Fighting Keyboardists’ Distinguished Service Cross, i.e. the “+” key from Pantload’s Krispy Kreme smeared laptop.

Charles Johnson . . . mugged by histrionics

I guess that this makes them all POW’s now, just as masturbating to “Red Dawn” made them all veterans.

“Currently trapped with anarchists…”

lol. what a hoot. no group i’d rather be trapped with.

Just spoke with Senator Salazar. Turns out he’s a Lakers fan

Marxists are more fun.

Woo, Egy. You are really hob-knobbing there! Was he wearing his cowboy hat and bolero tie? Lakers or FiredogLAKER fan?(I think I already know the answer)

lol – well, maybe i’ve just had some bad experiences with marxists who demand other people in the group do things their way. the anarchists seem much more laid back and eager to work together. guess it’s just my ignorance and lack of experience showing. need to hang out with more marxists. *g*

Actually, I think they think masturbating made them non-virgins…

did ya set him straight dahlin ?

Digg it

…and of course, he’s a Lakers fan – prolly Cowboys, Notre Dame, and Duke basketball fan as well /s

Rubbing shoulders with anarchists. Crickey! Like Shaun of the dead. You can get your anarchists news here, if you please.

You know if everyone starts playing prisoner of war, it’s going to lessen the impact of former POW John McCain’s story

lol.

68 minutes of terror, eh? The above line is a hoot, though would like to know why pepper spray was used. Granted, not wb-ing… but what was the situation? What is the Denver police story? A lot of frustrated lefties might have made that pilgrimage. I’m feeling so bummed about corruption, I don’t have much will for anger and never had respectable courage for risk-taking. JRE was a tough blow. MLK had a dream. And it was a marathon one. Did Obama have a big enough dream? Equal to Darth’s or Rove’s evil nightmares? FDL is an oasis of sanity and I respect that, but hyped-up convention celebrating this Party after corporate psychopathology ruling this country on both sides of the aisle has me bummed.

He was probably in an elevator and the gal next to him thought he was a creep and dosed him with pepper spray on her way out.
You know how these guys like to hype things out of perspective.

By the way, brilliant pic! Steve McQueen???? It sure looks like that moment. What a great movie! Thank you.

o/t

speaking of Cheney’s nightmares . . .al-Maliki
Bitchslaps him hard

alank – awesome comment yesterday on mccain’s pow experience.

but today i think you should have linked to indymedia.

I think that’s more a symptom of small group dynamics than anything else. We went through the same thing in SPFP, caused a split. Most of the regulars were, still are, Marxists so it was more a personal thing than ideological. Some just want others to toe their line. I see a Marxist as one who wants to change the economic system and having to work very hard to educate folks about the foibles of capitalism as we know it. Forcing folks to toe a line doesn’t help that effort.

Wish I could count the times I saw that movie in San Diego when it came out.

“Two…two hundred and fifty?! You oughta be locked up, you know that?”

Salazar doesn’t support the values of his party, what makes you think he would support the sports teams of his home state?

I can’t *wait* to vote against that guy in four years.

Correction – You oughta be locked up. You too.

I agree that Indymedia remains a very useful portal.

SD – you make an awesome counter example. it was really only two people – in two different groups. actually nice enough people but difficult as hell to work with. groups that try to operate by some form of consensus can really be monkey wrenched by one person in a way an authoritarian organization is not.

anyway, i shouldn’t have made a negative generalization. thank you for the correction!

Yeah, but you’re not a wingnut. There was a protest in DC a few years back where some of the cheeto-eaters who dubbed themselves “protest warriors” bravely went in to confront the protesters, got their asses kicked by some anarchists, and had to be escorted out by the police. Zombie may well know about that, and probably thinks he’s a hero just for being near some anarchists.

actually nice enough people but difficult as hell to work with

One of the main problems in groups not formed in an hierarchical manner. Explains why Rethug groups are normally more organized and in lockstep. All us free thinkers don’t like being told what to do, which in theory makes us anarchists. Huh, say what? Now I’m confused. *g*

Ammon Hannity (have no idea how it’s really spelled) defined an anarchist to Utah Phillips thusly: An anarchist is anybody who doesn’t need a cop to tell him what to do.

Anarchists are not necessarily synonymous with Beider Meinhof.

Corporate media is quite skilled at building an image and using it to pigeonhole individuals/groups when it suits their needs. WTO Seattle comes to mind.

McQueen and Garner did it for me in that movie.

McQueen’s character… precursor for Cool Hand Luke. Now, there’s a noble dream about teamwork and honor, eh?

great, great quote – thank you. it sent me googling and here’s something i found on a page titled:

Utah Phillips’ Stories, Songs, and Poems (Part 1)
transcribed by James Han

I said, “What is it?” And he said, “Well I can’t give you a book by Gandhi -
you wouldn’t understand it. I can’t give you a list of rules that if you sign
it you’re a pacifist.” He said, “You look at it like booze. You know,
alcoholism will kill somebody, until they finally get the courage to sit in a
circle of people like that and put their hand up in the air and say, ‘Hi, my
name’s Utah, I’m an alcoholic.’ And then you can begin to deal with the
behavior, you see, and have the people define it for you whose lives you’ve
destroyed.”

He said, “It’s the same with violence. You know, an alcoholic, they can be dry
for twenty years; they’re never gonna sit in that circle and put their hand up
and say, ‘Well, I’m not alcoholic anymore’ – no, they’re still gonna put their
hand up and say, ‘Hi, my name’s Utah, I’m an alcoholic.’ It’s the same with
violence. You gotta be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your
capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people
whose lives you messed with define that behavior for you, you see. And it’s
not gonna go away – you’re gonna be dealing with it every moment in every
situation for the rest of your life.”

I said, “Okay, I’ll try that,” and Ammon said “It’s not enough!”

I said: “Oh.”

He said, “You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial
America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of
weapons. The weapons of privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege,
economic privilege. You wanna be a pacifist, it’s not just giving up guns and
knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving up the weapons of
privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that.”

That old man has been gone now twenty years, and I’m still at it. But I figure
if there’s a worthwhile struggle in my own life, that, that’s probably the one.
Think about it.

I’d always wanted to write a song for that old man. He never wanted one about
him – he’s that way – but something mulched up out of his thought, his
anarchist thought. Anarchist in the best sense of the word. Oh so many times
he stood up in front of Federal District Judge Ritter, that old fart, and he’d
be picked up for picketing illegally, and he never plead innocent or guilty -
he plead anarchy.

And Ritter’d say, “What’s an anarchist, Hennessy?” and Ammon would say, “Why an
anarchist is anybody who doesn’t need a cop to tell him what to do.” Kind of a
fundamentalist anarchist, huh?

And Ritter’d say, “But Ammon, you broke the law, what about that?” and Ammon’d
say, “Oh, Judge, your damn laws the good people don’t need ‘em and the bad
people don’t obey ‘em so what use are they?”

Well I lived there for eight years, and I watched him, really watched him, and
I discovered watching him that anarchy is not a noun, but an adjective. It
describes the tension between moral autonomy and political authority,
especially in the area of combinations, whether they’re going to be voluntary
or coercive. The most destructive, coercive combinations are arrived at
through force.

Like Ammon said, “Force is the weapon of the weak.”

And corporate media incredibly ignores HUGE images when convenient …. seriously impressive numbers of liberal protestors. Have to get those images and accurate numbers from foreign press, ironically. MSM propagandizing steam-roller.

got chills. thanks. moral authority. needs to be a talking point forever.

It’s the same with violence. You gotta be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people whose lives you messed with define that behavior for you, you see. And it’s not gonna go away – you’re gonna be dealing with it every moment in every situation for the rest of your life.”

Today we call it PTSD.

This is part of “The Life and Times of Utah Phillips.” I copied it from TUC Radio a couple years ago. Great stories.

There’s an interesting old movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement” with Gregory Peck. A great moment in the film when a Jewish man who has been ambushed by discrimination simply talks about “nice” people smiling uncomfortably and looking away when people tell racist jokes.

As I read your psssages, I think of the collusion of the passive witnesses to violence and injustice. And the quote from Edmund Burke about how evil thrives when good men do nothing.

Sometimes I think of the whole anti-codependency self-help wave of consciousness raising and wonder if the pendulum has gone across the line to narcissism and even to reptilian sociopathology.

Granted, stress makes people narcissistic. And PTSD makes one narcissistic in a desperate, drowning kind of way. But there is a moral autism that seems to be growing in our country and the world. Trickle down sociopathology? Or did it trickle up, too, to give Bush TWO friggen terms. And when the first Gulf War was covered and MSM NEVER EVER reported casualties counts on the Iraq side … but pridefully reported the low number of casualties on the US side I was stunned by such grotesque apathy for non-U.S. human lives. So many still have that sensibility.

Even when Katrina happened… it was to citizens… but then xenophobia.. is the word…. find the differences to fight the empathy for them and continue in denial and fight for a rotten status quo.

I don’t get the “anarchist” part. Anarchists are Libertarians. They both believe in the same thing when it comes to laws. Where’s the argument? Maybe they just don’t look like Ron Paul’s supporters and that is what the author is making comment on?

Cowboy tie – check. And believe me, not every man can pull off this look. On him i works. Hat [inside eek] – check. He was quite a gentleman. He wanted to know what firedoglake meant and was amused about the Lakers part.

To be fair Senator Salazar said he favored the Nuggets first, and then the Lakers.

Marcy and I got a quick interview with Blue Am candidate Annette Taddeo of south Florida, she is SUPER. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

I see a Marxist as one who wants to change the economic system and having to work very hard to educate folks about the foibles of capitalism as we know it.

Oh for fuckssake, junior. I mean go nuts and all, but, believe me, nothing nothing is more patronizing to someone worried about their job and their kids and their mortgage and/or rent than someone ‘educating them’ about the foibles of capitalism. In a previous era of my life I was a (failure of a) union organizer. I grew up with union people. I believe in unions. But to a person — and I mean every single union member I knew — would have beaten the tar out someone spouting the pompous bullshit and phony platitudes of Marxists. They wanted to own a house, drive a car and go on nice vacations. To those with middle class visions of the American Dream, utopia is on another planet.

Anarchists are Libertarians.

Now you’ve done it. If a libertarian is a Republican who likes to smoke pot, an anarchist is a libertarian without a checking account.

A big shoutout to my pals Harriet the Miers and Josh the Bolten.

Judge Bates just issued an order denying their motion for a stay in testifying before Conyers’ HJC. This probably means that your government will file an emergency motion with the D.C. Circuit plying their same goofey argument that not having Bolten and Miers’ ass dragged before conyers to take the 5th or issue nonsense answers like Fredo Gonzales did is in the best interest of you the citizens of Banana Republic America.

Judge Bates’ Order Denying a Stay to Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten in House Judiciary v. Miers, et. al.

Bates Denies Stay to Scumbags Miers and Bolten TPM Muckie

On to the Federalist Society martinets (21 of ‘em) in the D.C. Circuit. They’re open 24X7 for electronic filing.

And Harriet Miers who was actually nominated as a bufoon for the Supreme Court bench is actually learning a little federal appellate procedure that she never knew courtesy of your tax money.

The Soundbyte I knew would happen finally made it into a McCain ad this morning, the mindless comment that she and McCain have the Commander in Chief experience but Obama only has an empty speech. Not on you tube/google vid yet but on your tee vee soon.

This is the video that is now part of a McCain commercial. It is my choice for the single dumbest thing Clinton has said in the primary:

Video Hillary “I have experience; McCain has experience and Obama has a speech

You left off Yankees/Red Sox in your listing.

Ugh, that video is wrong in about five different ways. I always was afraid that come the general election, she would be a better fighter against McCain than Obama is proving to be – you got to give props to Hillary, she knows how to twist the knife better than any politician I’ve ever seen!

I hope things pick up soon, I’m starting to get nervous…

If you’re over 65 you may call me junior. If not, you will call me sir.

“I was a POW for THIRTY AND A HALF minutes. I escaped.”

OK sir, you sound like you are 19. Marxism is as big a joke as capitalism for entirely the same reason. People are exploitative by nature.

Mark Penn writing a speech for Bill Clinton tomorrow night lends support to my idea to meet the Clintons at the airport and rendition them out of Colorado.

But the question remains, has he infiltrated any vegan potluck dinners yet?

ABC news has video footage! It also called it a “small riot” (and mentioned the pepper spray) but when you click the link it brings up this video of protesters having a sing-along.

You’re probably right. Here’s Bill Clinton in Denver today, courtesy of The Hill:

He said: “Suppose for example you’re a voter. And you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. A skeptic might even say that the son of a bitch is so anxious to get back into a position of power that he’s willing to undercut Obama. That same skeptic would observe that the son of a bitch is arrogant enough to believe that Hillary would get a warm welcome in 2012 despite.

The latest from Zombie:

…Healthy except for a little pepper spray in eye.

Heh– the ad I’m seeing ‘twixt post and comments is for “Bausch & Lomb Alaway: Stop Itchy Eyes.”

The Dems as far as what has been seen by Homer and Mable Travis, in Gravel Switch USA, have sure been squandering this convention. They have not touched any of the issues on the FDL set of blogs, none that Marcy, Tbogg, or the orange and blue one ever talk about.

Schumer’s Road Forward to Tuesday night is Paint Dry City–the type of mind set that brought us the capitulating Congress that approved wiretapping with the PAA, and every Bush policy initiative proposed in the past two years with the unwavering support of the Dems.

They needed to talk about torture, firing US Attorneys, the open ended $15-20 billion Dover Coffin factory in Iraq that is killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and has 4 million to 5 million, assholes like Cheney, Miers and Bolten who no matter what the outcome is in the D.C. Circuit and there will be action there even though people harbor the idea Bates’ order is not an appealable order will never answer any quewtions whether their butt is hauled before SJC or not.

It’s a shame that the corporate choreographed convention could not have lit into McCain and Bush and if they keep campaigning this way and Obama doesn’t realize he’s in a fight you’re going to see McCain and the 200 million dollar sugar mommy in that White House.

I wish I had a nickle for every specious piece of crap promise that there will be health care education access and the best world class education for every child.

It’s hard to determine which is more systemically broken–the education system in this country with the average high schooler using the word like ten times in every sentence fragment like, and never seeing a kid in high school come home with an actual non-fiction or fiction book in their hands because they don’t read them, or the health care system where access is so badly broken that a huge percentage of this country doesn’t present for a medical workup until they are in far advanced stages of bread and butter diseases.

Ho Hum. The Paint still keeps dryin’. I want whatever Olbermann’s smoking/drinking.

Every time Buchannan asks why Hillary isn’t on the ticket, I ask why he doesn’t get McCain to put her on his.