http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4614667 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4614667)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4603158 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4603158)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4601401 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4601401)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4586976 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4586976)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4569626 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4569626)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4549483 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4549483)

The hollow gospel of the liberal leisure class from The Waterman who remains "above the fray" in his mastery of nothingness.

All the while taking sides where the demarcations are only imagined.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4614667

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4603158 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4603158)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4601401 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4601401)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4586976 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4586976)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4569626 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4569626)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4549483 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4549483)

The hollow gospel of the liberal leisure class from The Waterman who remains "above the fray" in his mastery of nothingness.

All the while taking sides where the demarcations are only imagined.

That is one dumbass "body of work" he's got going over there. Metaphors, analogies, hell near-deification..all in the support of Obama. Or, maybe more truthfully, shit-talking Hilary..

Aw, you're just pissed because he's poachin' on your turf. Bet you didn't know that the Iroquois were just suburban philistines like "us". They lived in three bedroom long ranch houses, sought nothing other than to accumulate useless shit and were so alienated from their surroundings that they mystified the most banal crap, giving it a ridiculous spiritual significance... just like "us".

You still got a login over there? I'm around monday. Whatta ya say we kick Waterman's ass for him?
.

Ignore my posts here, but please, a little judgment;)

http://tinyurl.com/3y3ks4

http://tinyurl.com/yog43b

http://tinyurl.com/yrj85v

http://tinyurl.com/yrj85v

http://tinyurl.com/yruk6d

http://tinyurl.com/2bs8y4

http://tinyurl.com/2nydso

And I like H2O Man, a gentleman always.

Aw, you're just pissed because he's poachin' on your turf. Bet you didn't know that the Iroquois were just suburban philistines like "us". They lived in three bedroom long ranch houses, sought nothing other than to accumulate useless shit and were so alienated from their surroundings that they mystified the most banal crap, giving it a ridiculous spiritual significance... just like "us".

You still got a login over there? I'm around monday. Whatta ya say we kick Waterman's ass for him?
.


Matthew Arnold was the champion of Victorian 'high culture' countering the forces of the Philistines. In his Essays in Criticism (1865) he pointed out (in his essay on the German poet Heinrich Heine) that "'Philistine' must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light." In fact German students applied it to the long-suffering townspeople of university towns. In another context Arnold wrote, 'The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich... are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.' From his example, 'Philistine' passed into the enlightened liberal's armament of cultural scorn. - wiki

Interesting in light of Heine being the object of Pisarev's energetic criticism...

from the DU father figure aimed to get the party units in line or at least singin' around the camp fire in unison.

"Ripples In Time"

Oh brother.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4627348 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4627348)

from the DU father figure aimed to get the party units in line or at least singin' around the camp fire in unison.

"Ripples In Time"

Oh brother.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x4627348 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4627348)

Its like this guy takes his morning shit, then logs onto DU and drops an even bigger metaphorical load. Gotta give him one thing, the bastard's regular..

"Audacity" is a virtue best practiced in moderation

You should compile all of your mini-essays and title them The Tao Of Bullshit Artistry. A companion piece to equally insipid Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Even by the severely limited standards of inane political commentary, what you write is unbelievable.

Alternately, you've cast Obama as MLK, JFK, Muhammed Ali, and Jesus. You've also bluntly stated that his vacuous talk is the same as that of people who've DIED for their "talk". You further suggest that either he (or Hilary) would somehow curb the unimaginable levels violence conducted in the name of the United States everyday in all parts of the globe (including the Homeland, incidentally). In the most blithering of ironies, you've further asserted that playing within the rules of the primary process counts as election theft if it involves Hilary politicking for super delegates. So you're for "democracy" and "playing by the rules"..until you're against it. Someone might rub two brain cells together and draw a parallel to our beloved Democracy on a larger scale..but, nah.

Now we get the gooey Dennis Kucinich hippy bullshit. "Ripples of energy"? We're all one essence, right? And the collective power of our Hope heals all wounds, yes? You've piqued my intest..tell me more../sarcasm

What you're engaged in is low-brow partisanship. Why try to dress it up with bogus high-brow pretension and overdone allusions that would do any Hollywood hack proud? Barack Obama is about as Messianic as Mr T for God's sake! You can try to mask the fact that he stands on nothing, represents nothing and says nothing but who pray tell is buying your charade? People with their heads planted firmly in the same clouds as yours, maybe.

You peddle syrupy inspirational drivel at a bargain cost. Only it has no fire, spirit, or life. Your hero, Barack Hussein Obama, doesn't even exist. He was invented out of thin air. Just as flimsy are your painful, contrived metaphors and the ballads you exult him with.

How fitting.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=4632310 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4627348&mesg_id=4632310)

"Audacity" is a virtue best practiced in moderation

You should compile all of your mini-essays and title them The Tao Of Bullshit Artistry. A companion piece to equally insipid Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Even by the severely limited standards of inane political commentary, what you write is unbelievable.

Alternately, you've cast Obama as MLK, JFK, Muhammed Ali, and Jesus. You've also bluntly stated that his vacuous talk is the same as that of people who've DIED for their "talk". You further suggest that either he (or Hilary) would somehow curb the unimaginable levels violence conducted in the name of the United States everyday in all parts of the globe (including the Homeland, incidentally). In the most blithering of ironies, you've further asserted that playing within the rules of the primary process counts as election theft if it involves Hilary politicking for super delegates. So you're for "democracy" and "playing by the rules"..until you're against it. Someone might rub two brain cells together and draw a parallel to our beloved Democracy on a larger scale..but, nah.

Now we get the gooey Dennis Kucinich hippy bullshit. "Ripples of energy"? We're all one essence, right? And the collective power of our Hope heals all wounds, yes? You've piqued my intest..tell me more../sarcasm

What you're engaged in is low-brow partisanship. Why try to dress it up with bogus high-brow pretension and overdone allusions that would do any Hollywood hack proud? Barack Obama is about as Messianic as Mr T for God's sake! You can try to mask the fact that he stands on nothing, represents nothing and says nothing but who pray tell is buying your charade? People with their heads planted firmly in the same clouds as yours, maybe.

You peddle syrupy inspirational drivel at a bargain cost. Only it has no fire, spirit, or life. Your hero, Barack Hussein Obama, doesn't even exist. He was invented out of thin air. Just as flimsy are your painful, contrived metaphors and the ballads you exult him with.

How fitting.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=4632310 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4627348&mesg_id=4632310)

What a pistol!

Nice, is that propaganda? I think so.

"Audacity" is a virtue best practiced in moderation

You should compile all of your mini-essays and title them The Tao Of Bullshit Artistry. A companion piece to equally insipid Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Even by the severely limited standards of inane political commentary, what you write is unbelievable.

Alternately, you've cast Obama as MLK, JFK, Muhammed Ali, and Jesus. You've also bluntly stated that his vacuous talk is the same as that of people who've DIED for their "talk". You further suggest that either he (or Hilary) would somehow curb the unimaginable levels violence conducted in the name of the United States everyday in all parts of the globe (including the Homeland, incidentally). In the most blithering of ironies, you've further asserted that playing within the rules of the primary process counts as election theft if it involves Hilary politicking for super delegates. So you're for "democracy" and "playing by the rules"..until you're against it. Someone might rub two brain cells together and draw a parallel to our beloved Democracy on a larger scale..but, nah.

Now we get the gooey Dennis Kucinich hippy bullshit. "Ripples of energy"? We're all one essence, right? And the collective power of our Hope heals all wounds, yes? You've piqued my intest..tell me more../sarcasm

What you're engaged in is low-brow partisanship. Why try to dress it up with bogus high-brow pretension and overdone allusions that would do any Hollywood hack proud? Barack Obama is about as Messianic as Mr T for God's sake! You can try to mask the fact that he stands on nothing, represents nothing and says nothing but who pray tell is buying your charade? People with their heads planted firmly in the same clouds as yours, maybe.

You peddle syrupy inspirational drivel at a bargain cost. Only it has no fire, spirit, or life. Your hero, Barack Hussein Obama, doesn't even exist. He was invented out of thin air. Just as flimsy are your painful, contrived metaphors and the ballads you exult him with.

How fitting.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=4632310 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4627348&mesg_id=4632310)

What a pistol!

Nice, is that propaganda? I think so.

Thanks BP, you should jump in. A few more and we'll have our own club over there :)

"Audacity" is a virtue best practiced in moderation

You should compile all of your mini-essays and title them The Tao Of Bullshit Artistry. A companion piece to equally insipid Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Even by the severely limited standards of inane political commentary, what you write is unbelievable.

Alternately, you've cast Obama as MLK, JFK, Muhammed Ali, and Jesus. You've also bluntly stated that his vacuous talk is the same as that of people who've DIED for their "talk". You further suggest that either he (or Hilary) would somehow curb the unimaginable levels violence conducted in the name of the United States everyday in all parts of the globe (including the Homeland, incidentally). In the most blithering of ironies, you've further asserted that playing within the rules of the primary process counts as election theft if it involves Hilary politicking for super delegates. So you're for "democracy" and "playing by the rules"..until you're against it. Someone might rub two brain cells together and draw a parallel to our beloved Democracy on a larger scale..but, nah.

Now we get the gooey Dennis Kucinich hippy bullshit. "Ripples of energy"? We're all one essence, right? And the collective power of our Hope heals all wounds, yes? You've piqued my intest..tell me more../sarcasm

What you're engaged in is low-brow partisanship. Why try to dress it up with bogus high-brow pretension and overdone allusions that would do any Hollywood hack proud? Barack Obama is about as Messianic as Mr T for God's sake! You can try to mask the fact that he stands on nothing, represents nothing and says nothing but who pray tell is buying your charade? People with their heads planted firmly in the same clouds as yours, maybe.

You peddle syrupy inspirational drivel at a bargain cost. Only it has no fire, spirit, or life. Your hero, Barack Hussein Obama, doesn't even exist. He was invented out of thin air. Just as flimsy are your painful, contrived metaphors and the ballads you exult him with.

How fitting.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=4632310 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4627348&mesg_id=4632310)

What a pistol!

Nice, is that propaganda? I think so.

Thanks BP, you should jump in. A few more and we'll have our own club over there :)

Very well done. Tech 9 needs no help. I was going to to take a whack at this guy but I think I'll hunt him somewhere else. Maybe we can give him a facial tic. In any case, I can think of few better examples of "propoganda", from either side of the coin... with T9 doing a little agit (as in AgitProp). The very best "prop" is true... The very worst is that belabored jive of the Waterman. Shit, you can hear him wheezing.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Kg99.jpg/300px-Kg99.jpg

Did you know that a Tec-9 is just a cut down "Swedish K" from Vietnam War fame? Just another example (like heroin addiction) of chikens comin' home to roost, even if most don't notice. I wonder if Air America flies to Afghanistan?

http://world.guns.ru/smg/kp_m45.jpg

Did you know that a Tec-9 is just a cut down "Swedish K" from Vietnam War fame? Just another example (like heroin addiction) of chikens comin' home to roost, even if most don't notice. I wonder if Air America flies to Afghanistan?

http://world.guns.ru/smg/kp_m45.jpg

I actually didn't know that which is kind of surprising (to me at least). Anyway about Waterman, ClericJohn messaged me over there and tells me he's quick with the Ignore button so he might not be a live one anyway. At first I thought Chlamor was exaggerating this idiot's cachet then I saw the fucker's posts all over the front page of DU.

Atop everything else, H20 Man is a closet theocrat. I became one of his higher-priority targets a couple years back when I pointed out -- correctly and in the midst of a major DU thread -- that the hate-war so many American Aboriginal groups are waging against archeologists and archaeology is merely part of the far greater hate-war the Abrahamic fundamentalists and their Big Business sponsors are waging against any and all expressions of secular knowledge -- an unprecedented general offensive against reason itself. H20 Man was so infuriated by my disclosures, he momentarily shed his nominally secularist disguise, first to belittle my belief in the need for absolute separation of church and state, next to attack the implied constitutional principle that scientists should be protected from superstitious persecution. Unable to prevail by logic or intimidation, he then spewed an extended deluge of slanderous insults portraying me -- a man who had gone to jail for the cause of African-American civil rights -- as a disruptive and inflammatory racist who should be banished from the site forthwith.

Given the willful ignorance of DU members, my rebuttals were no doubt as pearls before swine, but at least I did not let H20 Man intimidate me to silence as he and his ilk have silenced so many others. But I am only one small voice warning against the encroaching darkness. Few people outside the archaeological community are aware that aboriginal traditionalists long ago joined hands with the fundamentalists to suppress all evidence of non-indigenous pre-Columbian presence in North America -- especially the extensive European and North African settlement that occurred here from approximately 4000 years ago through about 600 BCE.

Fewer still are those who understand the magnitude of the censorship imposed by the traditionalist/fundamentalist alliance, now at least 30 years old -- that facts accepted everywhere else on Earth are permanently banished from U.S. classrooms, that U.S. students are thus robbed of a huge part of their human heritage. The associated taboos are so vindictively enforced, U.S. academics dare not even acknowledge the existence of the physical evidence, much less allow it to be investigated in any greater detail. Worse, U.S. aboriginals themselves have deliberately purged their own oral traditions of any material that might contradict the traditionalist lies of omission. The now-forbidden literature, much of it tragically destroyed forever, included large bodies of lore describing trans-oceanic seafarers and/or light-skinned “Old People” as peaceful sharers of vital prehistoric technology -- the real reason the inhabitants of the Americas so foolishly welcomed the European invaders whose genocidal conquests began in 1492.

The aboriginals who seek to suppress this knowledge do so because they are desperately afraid its acceptance will weaken their entitlement claims -- a legitimate fear ironically expressed in a patently suicidal alliance with oppressors who, once in power, will unquestionably ban and persecute all expressions of non-Abrahamic spirituality. Not coincidentally, the feminist fear and hatred of pornography (and First Amendment freedom in general) has fostered the same sort of ultimately self-destructive united front. In either case, the eventual victims are welcomed with open arms. So certain are the fundamentalists of ultimate victory, they will lend their might to their future prey whenever there is even the faintest prospect of expanding theocratic tyranny. Otherwise powerless, the prey eagerly accept -- much as the doomed insect accepts the invitation of the Venus Flytrap. Such is the ethos of which H20 Man is a leading disciple.

As to what propelled the fundamentalists into alliance with aboriginal traditionalists, it is not enough to merely posit the obvious -- that, by definition, fundamentalists despise and reject any learning for which they cannot find scriptural approval. Nor is it sufficient to note that official suppression of science in the name of religion -- any religion -- nullifies the separation of church and state and thereby erects the basic framework of theocracy: a huge victory for the fundamentalists that in fact portends the eventual extinction of U.S. liberty. But deeper consideration -- ironically abetted by the very non-pornographic books the feminists’ own anti-pornography allies would consign to flames -- reveals the fundamentalists are particularly threatened by the rapidly growing archaeological evidence of pre-patriarchal, pre-Christian inter-racial peace. Presaging not only theological heresy but political subversion, this evidence ever-more-strongly implies the origin of present-day human savagery lies in not in human nature per se but in the proto-Abrahamic advent of patriarchy and the subsequent forcible imposition of Abrahamic dogma -- particularly the violent misogyny attending proclamations of ownership and seizures of property rights. Thus the Abrahamic father god is increasingly suspect as the originator of genocide -- an indictment all the more substantiated by the fact it so often provokes a murderous response.

It is equally indicative that -- whether fundamentalist or (purportedly) secular -- today’s crusade to loot us of knowledge frequently necessitates its own brands of violent intervention. Its perpetrators are therefore routinely aided by the forces of government at all levels of the United States. For example the Clinton Administration destroyed one of the most important archaeological sites on the planet merely to placate its aboriginal allies. Thus Army Engineers acting on direct White House orders bulldozed the 9,500 year-old Kennewick Man site to eternal oblivion, lest its priceless evidence -- now lost forever -- weaken aboriginal claims of primacy. Likewise the Bush Administration and its state-and-local counterparts now deliberately suppress any additional information its minions deem ungodly: note the increasing prohibitions not just on birth control and stem-cell research, but on the studies of evolution, environmental science and even astronomy.

That this war against knowledge is waged by both political parties via an always-compliant apparatus of governance proves the extent to which it -- and the underlying drive toward theocracy -- is a manifestation of an overall ruling class policy. Conceived and implemented with maximum cunning, its ultimate goal is to reduce the working class to the helplessly malleable ignorance that was the characteristic mentality of the European Dark Ages -- a condition that in Russia was deliberately maintained by the Tsar and his government and persisted as official policy until Marxism triumphed via the revolution of 1917. The Tsar’s method was to deny education to anyone who was not part of the aristocracy. The U.S. method achieves the same end through the seemingly antithetical policy of compulsory public schooling. Its real purpose is “dumbing down,” a reassuringly trite euphemism for the premeditated destruction of human minds -- an atrocity tantamount to collective rape if not mass murder.

The result is already grotesquely apparent: the modern, can’t-find-the-Americas-on-a map equivalent of the unfathomable nekulturniy that characterized the muzhiks of Tsarist Russia. But the greatest horror of such vacuousness is not its waste of human potential; it is the dreadful ease with which it can be shaped into whatever conformities (and however much violence) its rulers deem necessary -- a quality as prerequisite to the perpetuation of capitalism today as it was to the defense of Tsarist autocracy a century earlier. In either expression, the again-revitalized Ku Klux Klan or the nearly forgotten Black Hundreds -- and in either extreme, the lynching or the pogrom -- its essence is the homicidal ignorance bred and bolstered by religion. Once more, that to which H20 Man stands as eager disciple -- in this instance probably more out of stupidity than intent -- but nevertheless so bottomless in its hatred of teachers and learning that in its Russian form, the only cure was elimination of the entire muzhiki culture.

Not surprisingly, H20 Man therefore openly applauds the irreparable destruction of evidence by which the federal authorities aggressively protected superstition, routed science and strengthened theocracy -- the deliberate reduction of the Kennewick site to eternal uselessness, an act no less evil than the wanton burning of the famed library at Alexandria. H20 Man’s jubilation at this outrage (and thus his support for the entire war against knowledge) reveals him as a prime embodiment of the forces of moronation, forces that -- carried to the modern Moron Nation extreme -- not only deliberately cripple the public’s understanding of politics but knowingly rob us of the ability to even glimpse the potential of socialist transformation. In short, H20 Man is an enemy of reason itself.

(By way of full disclosure, I had it on seemingly reliable authority -- now too long ago for me to remember the sources -- that H20 Man was a prime, behind-the-scenes mover in my ousters from DU and PI. But whatever the truths here, in these matters I bear him no grudge: such ousters are made inevitable by political realities in which H20 Man is at best no more than an especially compliant puppet, a useful idiot of the most perfect sort.)

Loren Bliss
18 February 2008

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
blood on the leaves and blood at the root.
…strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
…Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
for the sun to rot, for the tree to drop.
Here is a strange and bitter crop."
--Lewis Allen/ sung by Billie Holiday

You can tell a tree by it’s fruit. The Obama campaign is providing a crop of positive messages. The fruit of the Obama tree is hope. It is safe to serve to your entire family.

The Clinton campaign’s yield has rotted over the weekend. It looked sweet at the end of last week’s CNN debate, but it has a strange and bitter odor now. It is poison, and unfit for democratic consumption.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=4761164 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4761164&mesg_id=4761164)

You may call it"The hollow gospel of the liberal leisure class,and a mastery of nothingness",but I simply call it delusional

I think that both of the democratc candidates -- Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- have solid histories of working to empower families and communities, in a way that helps to reduce the conditions that contribute to the tragic violence in homes, schools, and in the streets of our towns and cities. I support Barack Obama's run for the presidency, but I have great respect for the work that Hillary Clinton has done in this area over the years.

The differences between the democratic and republican parties is stark, indeed. And no matter who our nominee is, I hope that we can unite behind him or her, because the outcome of the November election will help to determine the course our nation will take. Few phrases are more revealing that John McCain's saying that our nation will remain in Iraq for another 100 years, and that he has to be honest in saying there will be more wars in the upcoming years. bullshit
What kind of person wants to deliver a message of "don’t get your hopes up"?

Barack Obama is communicating a living Hope to the people of this country. If Senator Clinton disagrees with the specifics of his message, then she should put her cards on the table. But let’s not try to dismiss him with "talk is cheap." .No wonder the guy likes Obama.Maybe he sees some of himself in him.They're both pretty goos bullshitters.

The thing is,though,that Obama doesn't believe his own bullshit.

"Every protest, every dissent, whether it’s an individual academic paper, or a Founder’s parking lot demonstration, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age. That attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness. Within the context of a society that we perceive – now, we can talk about reality, and I would like to talk about reality sometime, authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and what we have to accept of what we see – but our perception of it is that it hovers often between the possibility of disaster and the potential for imaginatively responding to men’s needs. …

"But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation, a liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity so as to be free to create within and around ourselves. To be educated to freedom must be evidenced in action, and here again is where we ask ourselves, as we have asked our parents and our teachers, questions about integrity, trust, and respect. Those three words mean different things to all of us. Some of the things they can mean, for instance: integrity – the courage to be whole, to try to mold an entire person in this particular context living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. …..

"Trust. This is the one word that when I asked the class at our rehearsal what it was they wanted me to say for them …..What can you say about it? What can you say about a feeling that permeates a generation and that perhaps is not even understood by those who are distrusted? All they can do is keep trying again and again and again….to win again what we’ve lost before.

"And then respect. There’s that mutuality of respect between people where you don’t see people as percentage points, where you don’t manipulate people, where you’re not interested in social engineering for people. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. And the word ‘consequences’ of course catapults us into the future. …."
--Hillary Diane Rodham; Wellesley Graduation Commencement Speech

When Senator Hillary Clinton was a 21-year old, preparing to deliver the commencement speech at her graduation ceremony, she was proceeded by US Senator Edward William Brooke III. The Massachusetts republican used his speech to attack college students who were engaged in protests across the country. Brooke not only discredited the student protesters’ tactics as "primitive breast-beating," but said they were "merely exploiting issues for the sake of some ulterior motive." Senator Clinton began her speech as it was prepared, but then began to speak off-the-cuff, in a poignant response to Senator Brooke.

In 2000 and again in 2006, I actively supported Hillary Clinton’s campaigns for the US Senate seat from my state – the same seat that was held by Robert F. Kennedy. In those years, I had the opportunity to meet her twice, and found her to be more impressive in person, in an informal setting, than on television.

However, during the 2008 democratic primary, I had concerns about the influence of people closely associated with her campaign. I expressed my concerns then, and am not looking to rehash the divisive primary contest again. Yet I recognize that Senator Clinton represents a significant number of democrats, including some of my closest friends.

Yesterday, I spoke with one of those friends in the early evening hours. Although she had hoped that Obama would pick Hillary Clinton as his VP, she fully supported the eventual democratic ticket. She and her husband had been at my house on election night, and had celebrated Barack Obama and Joseph Biden’s victory.

She asked me if I thought that Senator Clinton would accept the offer to become the next Secretary of State? I said that she already had, and that this would be announced publicly soon. This morning, my wife said that she was looking forward to talking to our friend at work, to hear her reaction to the news that Senator Clinton has indeed accepted the position.

As with anything and everything that President-elect Obama decides upon, there are both good and bad potentials with the selection of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. DUers have, in recent times, identified many of both the good and bad potentials with this choice. I’m confident that most of us are able to recognize that it isn’t a black-and-white issue.

While I believe that there were several other equally qualified choices, I respect that Barack Obama picked Hillary Clinton, and that she has accepted. It was an important decision on both of their parts. I suspect that Senator Clinton put a lot of thought into her decision-making process, and that this included reviewing what her goals have been since she was that young college graduate. And I hope that at some point, when she was alone and engaged in this self-examination, she remembered her commencement address at Wellesley.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 32x7905743 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7905743)

"Every protest, every dissent, whether it’s an individual academic paper, or a Founder’s parking lot demonstration, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age. That attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness. Within the context of a society that we perceive – now, we can talk about reality, and I would like to talk about reality sometime, authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and what we have to accept of what we see – but our perception of it is that it hovers often between the possibility of disaster and the potential for imaginatively responding to men’s needs. …

Do you think that is lifted straight from Anthony Giddens..or maybe worse, vice versa?

I've been reading Percy Blythe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound recently and, really once you break through all the sweet and honeyed lyricism and the high language, it boils down to much of the same airy fairy sentiment. He was the husband of Mary Shelley (frankenstein, Mary's mother Wary Wollstonecraft was also an important feminist) but died under mysterious circumstances before he turned 30. His reputation is clouded in several layers of contentious insider squabbles, but he is now acknowledged by the post-modern lit crits to be a bonafide "genius"

A watery grave indeed..