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About Me
- Kirby Olson
- Upstate, NY
- PLEASE READ THE INTRO AND ANNE WALDMAN'S EXAMPLE BEFORE CONTRIBUTING! Send to Kirbyolson2@gmail.com.
13 comments:
Kirby -- you say this because Mr. Obama just today denounced the use of violence against protestors?!
Could that be because that until today, violence against protestors was sporadic, and performed by paramilitary groups within Iran, whereas today it was systematic, and pursued by agents under the direct control of the state?
Diplomatic clue 101: You don't lay all your cards on the table on the first day. Measure your response to your opposition, and give yourself room to escalate proportionately.
Fortunately, Mr. "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb; Bomb, Boom, Iran" McCain isn't President today. How do we escalate proportionately after the first air strike has unified Iran against us? Are you that eager to have a third front?
Right now, Iran is politically isolated externally, and divided internally. In its division, there is hope that more moderate, more responsible voices may emerge victorious. Khamenei has weakened himself by his immoderate stance in backing an obviously rigged election. The Iranians are not Arabs -- they will not stand for tyranny, and today, they know that tyranny is what they face.
I'm not sure that Obama even saw the Iranian leadership for what it was and has been since their revolution, and the subsequent slaughter that took place with regard to all other factions in the Carter years. Many many many editorials have called Obama out, and finally they basically wrote his speech for them. This is how he operates. He did the same thing with Georgia.
It's true on the other hand that McCain could be immoderate, and jump in headfirst. It's a difference of styles. McCain is bullheaded. Obama waits to see which way the wind is blowing, and then tries to sail with the winds of change, wherever they may blow.
Or so it seems to me. I find him deeply inauthentic. McCain at least had the virtue of being authentic for the most part.
Edwards was another fake, as it turns out.
Hillary is her own person, but her husband is another big snowflake, blown by whatever winds of change are moving at any given time.
I like McCain and preferred him because he could at least occasionally go against the crowd, and lead.
Obama just waits to see which way the mob is moving and then runs out and says yes yes yes, that's right! But how long can he keep doing this before people sense his fraudulence?
Kirby: Obama is a classic case of being way over his head in foreign affairs. As Commander-in-Chief his qualifications are . . . well, zero. And yes, the Big O is a fake built up ny media hype. . . .
perhaps obama is wittier than the media perhaps he is more attuned than hollywood perhaps he's read better books than rumsfeld perhaps he is possessed of a reflective philosophic intellect perhaps he shoots hoops in the afternoon perhaps he knows the language of the street perhaps his wife is smarter than he is and she keeps him honest she looks like an honest woman i'd love to sit and eat meals with that family perhaps he retreats to his study and listens to miles davis perhaps he still stokes on a cigar or cigarette on occassion maybe he's hip and cool like he portrays himself to be maybe it's not a media splash afterall i can tell he's already lost some sleep and is a bit greyer
is any perceived audacity coming from this president to be understood as inferior posturing when compared to the absolute bumbling of bush....i mean i think bush is still whirling the though around in his head and it must be killing him the thought that goes something like this
shit - what did i do??
i can't believe you'd let yourself appear in print and sound like hannity or oreilly those irish loudmouths i want to go into the ring with both of them i'll shut them up i will kick boxing rules
it would be tyranny to not at least have one ear attuned to the voice of the crowd
bush was of an intellectual type which does not allow for much meaningful connection to any idea any thing or anyone unless there's power involved...o he did bragg once about being a free market guy a true believer
shit even if he could play baseball i don't know where i'd put the guy were i to coach
maybe left field eighth inning or something
obama i'd send him to the plate to catch
he is our great african islamic chief he is our our tribal commander he is a mighty lion killer a warrior he is hope
i think he can win the game of spin
and it's all about spin somehow
but if the people are happy with the spin
why scratch the record like the scratchers on hiphop do
just let it play through
we got rhythm and blues and ghazals in the white house now baby
and great food and blues at night
let's be dancin some good ole R & B tonite
yeha
j
jh: Rumsfeld was a naval officer, which is something entirely outside the ken of a pampered guy (Columbia, Harvard) who decrees that everybody else learn another language but coyuldn't be bothered to learen another hisself (that puts me exctly five languages ahead of him). Some intellectual! Perhaps he could take lessons from Canadian Prime Minister Harper, who speaks fluent French. And perhaps someday the Big O could even manage to publish just one refereed article or book in his field of "race and law" in order to justify the media hype aboot him being some sort of "intellectual." Obama an intellectual? What a hoot!
Sorry for the typos--the computer room here in this St John's hotel is pretty dark. St John's is a haven for those sporting and getting tattoos--Em's going to get a couple more before we depart in a week and a half. We're moving here next spring and leaving Ann Arbor. Kirby, I'll send you a private email aboot perhaps arranging a meeting during the holidays later this year. We've quite a number of visitors coming this summer, so perhaps we'll have to wait till the Christmas holidays. Cheers,
Obama's everything to everybody. He's a cypher.
He's actually nothing at all, but an Obamaton.
jacques i am merely saying that he reads he is literate and he listens to good music and he maintains a curiosity about things he does not know
he is something like a masai warrior poet
running the long safari
he said to the leaders of iran "the world is watching" and indeed it is on twitter on youtube on facebook on videoplay on google they are watching on cellphone cameras the moving collage of in and out of focus images and garbled voices and yelling in the distance and screams and crack of gun fire i was thinking hey the cellphone is not a journalist but the imagery and the sense of what is going on in one particular place is pretty powerful...yet another way that little phone has revolutionized our world
i got the latest on tehran by a panicky young man behind a fence near some trees and it looked like maybe he was drunk but he was falling down and the camera would stay on and he was running near the fence and recording the live yelling of people...so i thought to myself this is better than the tv official news
yaaah
j
I'm not sure that Obama even saw the Iranian leadership for what it was and has been since their revolution, and the subsequent slaughter that took place with regard to all other factions in the Carter years.
Exactly Kirby, you have nothing to base it on because you are not sure and there is no body of data to analyze Obama's viewpoints on the Iranian regime since 1979.
Kirby have you seen Reagan in light of supporting the Contra death squads in Nicaragua in the 80's? The squads that attacked and raped women, blew up schools and committed every war crime you can imagine just so, insert horrific gasp, they couldn't nationalize their economy?
Are you familiar with Operation Ajax Kirb? If you can write a short narrative, without looking it up, about the Mossadegh in 1953 then I might actually believe that you know what you're talking about.
--Tom
Tom, I will grant you that there are problems with both leftist and rightist philosophies. the only way to keep the genocidal option to a minimum is perhaps to side with the righties, though, because now the leftists are in power.
Chavez is full steam ahead with destroying any opposition in his country. He's destroyed mayoral elections, and wiped out opponents all over the place, and put whole new systems in that guarantee he has greater and greater power.
He's well on his way to becoming Kim Jong-Il.
Well thankfully Chavez is not a fan of Daffy Duck.
Reagan was selling arms to our sworn enemies so that he could finanace an illegal war that America would never condone, and to free hostages. He is a criminal in the sense that Congress outlawed our direct involvement after we were caught mining the Nicaragua Bay. Of course we were arming Iraq as well so they could defeat Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.
Before you are quick to judge Obama, look more closely at the Republican Pantheon and you may not like what you see.
At the present moment, Republicans have very little to offer. They want Obama to "up the rhetoric" toward Iran; what will that do exactly? Iran is not going to listen to us and it will appear that we are once again, becuase it would be true, meddling in the internal affairs of a Middle Eastern nation. Yet we say nothing about Saudi Arabia which is about as progessive as Iran. Wait, they are actually a totalatarian monarchy, more Jacques' style.
Maybe Iran should have insisted on a complete recount of Floridean votes in the 2000 election to determine the real winner? Or would it seem odd that Iran dictate to us how we should proceed? This doesn't mean I approve of what they are doing at all. It is simply an Iranian matter and for the Iranian people to resolve: lest it develop into genocide which would be a war crime and a subsequent UN security resolution would be passed authorizing a multi-national peace keeping force.
--Tom
Tom's peddling more BS about me wishing a "totalatarian [sic] monarchy" to be a model for government. I'm not a believer in absolute monarchy, which was rather a late Renaissance creation. My political ideals go back--yea--unto the Middle Ages, thank you./
hey chavez claimed to have read noam chomsky
thats more that the righties
oh maybe obama reads noam chomsky
i think the young people in iran did hear obama and they agree with him but the irony is they are to some extent very adamant about traditional religious cultural norms...so it would be hard to explain the processions in tehran as being leftist....there is the promise of more voting more freedom i suppose that is a ridiculous preoccupation with democratic thinking that people should be able to have some say....no i think they heard obama loud and clear and i think even osama knows he's up against a fighter like himself...it may come down to a dual of wit and patience adn virtue between those two guys
in this corner in the newly tailored suit
we have obamamamamama
and in the long cotton desert garb of the bedouin we have
in the opposite corner
osamamamamamama
i think those two guys should get into the ring and duke it out
it's the only way
what follows is a poor attempt at a ghazal
half of the marchers in tehran are walking in their sleep/
they drink from plastic bottles and chant old songs
if i could keep from staying awake at night i would agree/
with the constraints of prison life as they are
fortunes of bird song crowd the air with more than anyone can stand/
this is the beginning of a day wrought in hell
before the landscape filters away in a duststorm/
make sure the tools of war are staged and cleaned
behind birkhas a beauty resides a beauty of ancient wisdom/
the look is one of tears and we bow in misunderstanding
there's a half a world between me and my former persian lover/
if she wants to call john hanson well giver her my cellphone number- have her call at night
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