Comment @ MindSay 
me
Are they good/bad?
When/why do they happen?
When do you know you have an obsession?
Alice Walker, for those that don't know, is a well known feminista. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner for her book, The Color Purple, published in 1983. She lived in the south during a time that racism was heavily prevalent and has since made the issue the central theme of some of her other written works. She is a well known speaker on the subject and frequently comments on women's issues as well. More can be found on her at the Wikipedia article, found here.
The article in question was written in support of Barrak Obama.Her premise is that he is the man we need for "Change". Unfortunately, her article is written in a manner that strikes one to want this amorphous 'change'. What change we are to be for is somewhat left to the imagination...and more over, we are expected to fall into the glorious crowd of followers of those seeking 'change'. But by the end of the article, I am still waiting for what exactly this change entails. Oh yes, she lists what she would change. She even lists good reasons for those changes. But ironically, none of what she wants is something that Obama seems to have commented on in a way that shows his plans.
So the question becomes, why is she truly supporting Obama? She says it is Not because he is black. Not because he is young. Not because he is a racial supporter. Not because...insert whatever here. And yet, the only reasons I can see for her to be so effusive in praise is the fact that he is a young, up and coming, black politician. Heaven knows he doesn't really support the change she seeks.
Do I respect her struggles growing up? Absolutely. Do I willingly read her thoughts and consider them? Again, yes. Does her background and her accomplishments cause me to consider her thoughts any more deeply than I would Barbra Streisand's? Um. no.
So let me know when you have something truly thoughtful to say....and get your people to contact my people. We'll do lunch.
Dixie currently feels:
Bored 
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20 lines of pointless information relating to today.
1.
I had a three hour Textiles exam. I've nearly completed my work, and I still have about seven hours left on it.
2.
I finished colouring two more bits of #1263 artwork.
3.
The picture of the "happy hybrid" I promised to draw for Mrs Mac was photocopied and pinned on her wall in the library office.
4.
I've eaten all of nana's Oreos in the biscuit tin.
5.
Nana's bathmat feels like wet seaweed, and it's nice.
6.
I was infuriated in English by pointless threats by a pointless twat who can't insult me, because he's done no coursework, and I have, har har har. Thick cunt.
7.
I just used one of the "four most offensive swearwords" in my blog. Gaspz.
8.
I'm listening to Benzin by Rammstein. It sounds funny, because he keeps saying words that are the same in both languages; like gasoline and explosive.
9.
"dixie hates textiles" has come up as a suggested tag. ROFL.
10.
Emily should be home this week. I'm looking forward to it.
11.
Amy had me in fits during Textiles, imitating our teacher's walk.
12.
I started playing Pokémon XD again today.
13.
I got a 5 star ranking on Ruby on Expert level on Guitar Hero III earlier, for the first time.
14.
I played Heir Kommt Alex on Expert level for the first time, without playing it on Hard before, and I didn't fail.
15.
When Dixie says "she didn't fail", that really means she managed to finish the song, but she got a shitty 3-star ranking...
16.
Parry has been reading this blog, apparently. Wow, I'm going public.
17.
I don't like black pudding. Dad was frying it yesterday and it smelt horrible.
18.
I ate a packet of Original Hula Hoops earlier. The packet is on the desk beside me.
19.
The "lastest comment" window is a response in Finnish. - It looks like it, anyway.
20.
Dixie has never actually tasted TRIPE, but it doesn't look or sound nice.
...Remember children...
...Chicken legs are scary...
...CHILDREN OF THE SEA...!
Transcript
Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the President’s cataclysmic deception about Iran.
There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr. Bush has left us with tonight.
We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three
about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible
hyperbole —
or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked —
at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so —
whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.
A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief.
It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction:
A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer,
a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency:
an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.
After Ms Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night,
the timeline is inescapable and clear now.
In August, the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence,
Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always
see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be,
in essence, crap.
Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president, Ahmadinejad:
“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III,
it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have
the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”
And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric
was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.
Or was it, sir, to scare the Americans?
Does Iran not really fit into the equation here?
Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the
same template you used to scare us about Iraq?
In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, sir,
would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.
A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing
that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged,
irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria
and his own delusions of omniscience.
Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Bush.
The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, sir, that you see in the mirror.
And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised intel \
as long as two weeks ago — briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit
of this imminent threat four years ago — who never bothered to mention it to his boss.
It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency,
it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed,
behind-the-scenes string-puller.
Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance,
it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president’s evil ventriloquist,
or he thinks he is.
What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information
of this urgency and this gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning,
instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation — or a criminal one?
Mr Bush — if you can still hear us — if you did not previously agree to this scenario
in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you’re the Remington Steele —
you must disenthrall yourself: Mr Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers,
cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented
presidency in which the facts have become optional, the intel is valued less than the hunch,
and the assistant runs the store.
The problem is, sir, your assistant is robbing you — and your country — blind.
Not merely in monetary terms, Mr. Bush, but more importantly, robbing you
of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk,
for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.
Mr. Cheney has helped, sir, to make your administration into the kind our ancestors
saw in the 1860’s and 1870’s and 1880’s — the ones that abandoned Reconstruction,
and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland…
Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr. Bush.
Presidents who will be remembered as functions only of those who opposed them —
the opponents whom history proved right.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland… Bush.
Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.
But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it,
he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.
The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s website.
It is staggering.
March 31st: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon…”
June 5th: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons…”
June 19th: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon…”
July 12th: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons…”
August 6th: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…”
Notice a pattern?
Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out,
so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President,
not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror —
but there may not even be a tree there…
McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.
August 9th: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium,
which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program…”
August 28th: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons…”
October 4th: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon…”
October 17th: “until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t
real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”
Before August 9th, it’s: “Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.”
After August 9th, it’s: “Desire, pursuit, want… knowledge, technology, know-how to enrich uranium.”
And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003…And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th…
And that term suspending is just a coincidence?
And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?
Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true —
something like “what the definition of ‘is’ is” —
but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.
Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial…
but ethically, it is a lie.
It is indefensible.
You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months,
after the guy on the other end had already hung up.
You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.
And more over, you must have realized that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz,
and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.
We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department,
cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?
And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?
You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August, but you also knew it was all accurate.
And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent,
you merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside,
while you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of —
as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote “nuclear holocaust” —
and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: “World War III.”
My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase
“George Bush has no business being president.”
Well, guess what?
Tonight: hanged by your own words and convicted by your own deliberate lies…
You, sir, have no business being president.
Good night, and good luck.
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