Special Blog Post:
The Five Weird Things about Your Host Challenge
No problem. No problem at all.
Five weird things about the Dark Wraith.
◊ He can sleep no more than four and a half hours at any given time.
· There are too many things to do before death.
· There are not enough things to do afterward.
◊ He drinks anywhere between 30 and 40 cups of coffee a day.
· Coffee should always be brewed strong enough to compromise weak ceramics.
· Cheap coffee is always the best.
◊ He was once removed (read that as 'extracted') from a jail by the Red Cross.
· Perhaps someday, readers will be told a little about that whole fiasco.
· Someday is not today.
◊ He has made a living (more or less) at the following jobs (among others):
· grocery stock clerk
· busboy
· business consultant
· cook
· director of a school
· dishwasher
· oilman
· optician
· owner and principal of a penny stock brokerage firm
· paid human test subject for medical studies
· preacher
· professor
· singer
· soldier
· stand-up comedian
· stockbroker
· teacher in a K through 12 private school
· writer
◊ His nose points about 25 degrees to the right.
· Rule 1: Do not try to straighten your own nose when it gets broken.
· Rule 2: See Rule 1 about thinking you can fix the first mess the second time your nose gets broken.
Mindful that some bloggers do not like to be tagged for these projects, should anyone named below prefer not to participate, apologies are offered in advance. As much as anything else, the tagging is for the purpose of encouraging readers here to have a look at a few good blogs. With that, herewith are the tagged souls:
· Missouri Mule of BlondeSense
· Charles Perez of The Fulcrum
· The Left Behind Child
· deborah at The Moon's Favors
· Mary at One Woman Wrecking Crew
The Dark Wraith has thus met the challenge and moved it to new and fertile blog ground.
Published 1/14/2006 06:03:00 PM
<< 37 Comments Total
Dark Wraith,
You have been removed from a jail by the Red Cross....more input, please!
ok, shutting up and going to do my 7, I know I am way behind.
Good evening, Lizzy.
By the time you read this response, you'll probably already have read my long-winded comment on your latest post over at Night Bird's Fountain.
The Dark Wraith does like to bluster.
LOL!!! Wow, you got that right. Can you do me a favor? What is your opinion on this:
Could a filibuster possibly end in a game of chicken that hurts the Democratic party? We filibuster Alito. Then if Frist invokes the so-called nuclear option, he gets confirmed anyway. Then if we follow through on our threat to make every sentence in every bill read out loud in the Senate before it may be voted on, we will effectively shut down the government, nothing will be voted on.
Give it to me long winded!! ;)
Good evening, Lizzy.
There is a myth that has run for years and years that the government can be shut down by parliamentary action (or inaction). That's not how the chambers of Congress work: business can be done quite effectively even in the presence of filibusters and reading-of-the-bills types of procedural moves.
More importantly and to the point of your question, the Republicans have no desire whatsoever to face a call for verbatim readings: far, far too much of their mendacious activity is being accomplished by the very inability of legislators to plow through the hundreds of pages that make up the bills going to vote. The last thing the Republican leadership wants is a full reading that would give Congressmen—and more importantly, their staffs—the opportunity to hear every last word and have time to catch meaning, nuance, and implications.
The Democrats have been scared to death of the Republican majority since Bush took office. Now, the Democrats have the opportunity to be scared to death of the power in their hands. They are flying a plane into an updraft: the Republicans are becoming associated in a material way with the corruption scandals running through Washington, and if the Democrats play their hand well, the Republicans will become associated with a distasteful erosion of public trust in other ways, too. In my judgment, while Americans are generally way too insensitive to abuses of civil rights and all of that, those same Americans will get upset once they begin to personalize the Bush Administration's apparent belief that people are no longer presumed to be innocent and therefore not subject to snooping.
That loss of the feeling of personal sanctity in the Republic is going to become an issue with many Americans who would otherwise have no problem with such outrages as renditions and torture.
Getting back on point, the Democrats have a huge upper hand in the fight that could come this next week; but because there is always the risk of having the media turn on them, the Democrats see extraordinary risk of "backlash" in the offing.
At this point in the ballgame, the Democrats could count perhaps 42 strong-willed members who would hold together. The Republicans could count on probably five turncoats in an ugly confrontation.
Here's a critical path for you to consider:
◊ The confirmation of Alito goes to the full Senate with Bush calling for an expedited vote.
◊ The Democrats want to open debate but get cut off.
◊ One Democratic Senator, having taken the floor, does not quit.
◊ The filibuster, having begun, turns to the media, which is much better managed by the Republicans.
◊ At the same time, the Republicans surprise the Democrats by what appears to be a speedy move to the nuclear option.
◊ The Democrats hold the filibuster ground, and the Republicans do a rapid vote on the nuke.
◊ Game over... for the Alito process.
◊ Budget bills start getting calls for readings.
◊ Parliamentary moves on both sides try for different reasons to quell the ugliness. Before the media, the Republicans effectively argue that the "government will shut down" if the Democrats' irresponsibility isn't put to an end.
◊ Alito, now safely packed into his Supreme Court seat, becomes a poster boy for the Democrats for what's wrong, not with the "process," but with Mr. Bush, himself, and with a culture of cronyism and corruption.
◊ The Democrats begin to find their wind: the media is finally using the words "corruption," "cronyism," and "Republican" all in one breath.
◊ With the election season heating up, a very old and time-honored American tradition is building a head of steam: throw the rascals out.
◊ While turn-coat Democrats like Lieberman try to hold onto the old status quo, more powerful Democrats begin to press what increasingly appears to be a high-octane, anti-Republican sentiment.
◊ Powerful media forces (even Fox News in small but significant ways) begin to play to the new market, very carefully and subtly at first, but with increasing vigor into the Autumn. The big network newscasts begin to run pieces stating the obvious that we bloggers have been screaming about all along.
◊ Indictments in the Summer and Autumn fall into place like manna from Heaven.
◊ The Republicans are slaughtered in the November election.
◊ Once in control of both houses of Congress, the Democrats keep the Republicans' nuclear option and expand it as they immediately open impeachment proceedings against President Bush.
◊ High-ranking Administration officials are dragged before Congress to testify on all kinds of matters, and the Republican minority is simply shut out.
◊ Bush is impeached in the House, and the Senate trial ends his career as President, along with that of Dick Cheney. The Democrats take control of the White House, vowing to bring the country back to sanity.
◊ The Republicans go back to their caves and plan their next comeback in a couple of decades.
Not that anything will actually happen this way; but I thought you'd like an interesting scenario upon which to ruminate for a while.
The Dark Wraith got awfully optimistic there during that story, didn't he?
Optimitic - You sure did!!
Dark,
Is it all right if I post your optimism...Atrios did, why can't we??
I just read Daou's column in Salon, the one that's such a major downer. It bemoans the fact that what you just envisioned by rights by now really ought to be just about to take place. He imagined a scenario for the Alito hearings where the Dems. would have prepared ahead of time and had the bloggers participating in the public crucifixion of a judge who has no business being on the Supreme Court.
But no, the Party of Asses prefers to stay that way......
- oddjob
Perhaps if you cut back on coffee, you might be able to sleep longer? No, you mention there are too many things to do. Perhaps, the coffee keeps you going?
Did you ever mention how your nose got broken? That, and the jail extraction, sound like some great stories.
With all those different jobs, you would be able to find work, any time you moved.
Wow! Interesting answers.
Good evening, Lizzy.
You are certainly welcome to republish that comment. You might want to add the disclaimer that it is a rare occasion, indeed, when the Dark Wraith provides an optimistic scenario.
It's bad for my image to be optimistic, and it's also bad for my health.
The Dark Wraith ages rapidly when his happy genes are functioning with too much abandon.
Good evening, Trailer Trash.
The broken noses were from a time when I was much younger... before I learned that a hand mage is far less powerful than a thought mage.
The Dark Wraith will let it go at that for now.
Good evening, OddJob. I had seen references to that Daou piece, but I've been avoiding it like the Plague. In fact, I wasn't planning to even confront this whole issue; but I'm glad Lizzy sort of got me to think about it on a critical level.
You are correct: the Party of Asses has a pathway to success, and the constituent asslets are going to blow it.
The Dark Wraith wonders if there's a good recipe on the Internet for donkey stew.
Dark,
Well, no sooner do I ask for permission to post that optimistic scenario....bam the power goes out.
Just got it back...darn cold here and windy!
Good evening, Lizzy.
Sort of a metaphor for our time, isn't it? The power went out of the Democrats some time back, too.
The difference is that, even though the Democrats keep talking about energizing their base of support, they still haven't figured out how to turn the power switch back on.
The Dark Wraith considers applying a high-voltage cattle prod to the donkey.
LOL!!
But, but I will never stop pushing the Senators and Congress to start doing the right thing!
Good evening, Lizzy.
I was going to avoid stirring up trouble over on Night Bird's Fountain for a while, but I had to greet the Heretik over there.
You have quite a cast of readers and writers over there. Some are a bit more... shall we say, aggressive; but that's definitely a good thing in many ways. It certainly can draw the crowds, and it gives folks a chance to let some sentiments flow out into the open. I am forever worrying about an impression of what one might call 'monolithism' in progressive thinking: although the diversity of views is the great power of the progressive intellectual peoples of this country, it is also a source of diversion that seems to keep us from the near perfection of unity that propels the Republicans to win all too often. It just amazes me sometimes that conservatives I know still have old-time values, but they are staggeringly willing to suspend their own skepticism and even their fundamental principles when it comes to supporting that imbecile in the White House.
In the end, debate is good, though; and I've come out a bit singed from time to time in the Blogosphere (although it's been nothing like the old days was I was a paid corporate hit man on message boards). I did get into a bit of a tangle awhile back when blogenfreude took over at Agitprop; and I was chewed on just a little bit recently at the Blogging of the President, although in that latter situation I got the impression most of the readers decided it was better to leave the strange person alone than to engage him in debate or discussion.
I suppose being afflicted of verboseness is a boon when one is something of a loner anyway. This leads me to a rather important and timely question: to wit, If a ranter rants in the wilderness, and there is no one around to hear him, does he really drive people away?
The Dark Wraith can only wonder at the wonder of it all.
Hi Dark Wraith,
That you were an oilman demands the upmost in respect from me. Crane?
Charlie
paid human test subject for medical studies
And this whole time I thought Spam was tested only on animals.
Good afternoon, Mr. Goat.
Sadly, the human testing on Spam™ had been completed long before I came on the scene. I do, however, make myself available for trials on new products should they ever need me. I would have been happy to test their Spam™ with Cheese, although I might have been a bit biased, given that cheese is something I consider mandatory on Spam™ anyway. I'm hoping they'll come out with a Spam™ with Relish and Mushrooms one of these days, and I'll be right there to try it before it hits the market.
Huh. I could swear I hear something that sounds like people reading that line about the Spam™-Relish-Mushroom combo and blowing their groceries.
The Dark Wraith is wondering if someone in the audience doesn't find that culinary delight extraordinarily appealing.
Good afternoon, Charlie.
It was nothing exotic or particularly heavy. I did consulting for a corporation, and the several of the principals were men who had spent their lives in the oil and gas business. They saw the corporation as a means to get moving with projects that were their true love, exploration for and exploitation of hydrocarbons, but my advice was strongly against using the corporation for that purpose, so we ended up doing some of the old game of building partnerships and all of that.
Once I got into the business of oil and gas, especially when I started spending time in the oil patch, it got into my blood in a serious way. We did just about everything ourselves that we could. Although we had a lot of losses, we were able to keep going because we did everything on the cheap. We got positive cash flow from the workovers and other relatively minor messes we got our hands on. Once the others explained to me the concept of "working interests," I was able to set up a few arrangements that did better by us.
We were doing a total hodge-podge of deals. Near the end of that era, we were working on an MTBE facility that was pretty much just a bunch of abandoned storage tanks (at least that's what it looked like to me). To this day, it makes my teeth hurt thinking about how good that run could have been, although I'm still suspicious of how easy it seemed to be to produce the stuff. That hodge-podge also included such things as a whole pile of seismics we got our hands on and tried to broker. The problem was that the thumpings were all 2-D, and everyone wanted 3-D stuff, even though what we had our hands on covered some decent territory. In the end, the data was good for nothing but collateral because we got a high valuation on it even though no one seemed to want to buy it from us.
But like I said, we did just about everything we could without benefit of outsiders, other than day workers who made their livelihoods mostly pulling spot duty for losers like our group. But we had at least one person of our own who could do just about anything that needed to be done, including a couple of the toughest Mexicans I'd never want to have as opponents in a fight. There was a lot of horse trading for equipment that I never got involved in; and I can tell you right now that, as much as I learned in my time in the business, I could have spent a lifetime doing the work and I still wouldn't have known as much as the other men with whom I spent my time.
Our loose arrangement of convenience finally unraveled for good, primarily because of... well, never mind. My interests in various projects evaporated or I sold them for pennies, and that era of my life was over.
But I'll tell you something, Charlie: there are a couple of things I need to do every now and again in my life, just because I need to. For one thing, there are times when I need to just stand for a while in the dead of night in the parking lot of a truck stop so I can listen to the rigs singing down the highway. For another thing, once in a while I need to be in the woods alone with a campfire and my blue percolator coffee pot bubbling. And for another, every once in a blue moon, I need to stand in the choking heat of a Texas sunset, smelling the acrid hydrocarbons permeating the air and looking off into the distance at flare tips waving their colorful fires in the darkening sky.
Just every once in a great while, Charlie.
The Dark Wraith has gotten a bit more personal than he probably prefers.
The yearnings, I think, reflect on the learning experiences of life.
And sometimes, they reflect upon the afterthought of grief.
And the forethought, I suppose.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
Goodness, that's quite the peripatetic life you've led!
I find it interesting that you become uncomfortable upon bearing your soul a little. Interesting, because I think it's often at these moments that you do your most impactful writing. I am Become Battle was such a moment, and we are all the better for it. So let it all hang out, man!
I too, enjoy, the sort of solitary, dead at night commune with the Universe that you describe above, as I think many of us do. Standing in a silent street at midnight, gazing up at the flickering stars overhead with nothing but the mournful wail of a ditant train's horn to keep us company, makes one feel so very small, and at the same time, so very vast. It's good for the soul.
I require such nourishment on a near daily basis. Fortunately, I live so close to the ocean I get what I need. Its regular behavior becomes predictable, but seeing the horizon with not a speck of land upon it, and knowing that 70% of the Earth is likewise, and both utterly ignorant of and indifferent to my own existence......
- oddjob
I did not see TV Whore on your list of jobs. Here's your new calling:
Great 'Factor' Debate Contest Rules
Well, I'll tell ya, Mr. Goat: I'm not all that sure Fox would be interested in my sorry self for a round with O'Reilly. That Open Letter to Bill O'Reilly I published got this blog some hits from what appeared to be Fox-related services, so I suspect they'd move right past my application.
Knowing O'Reilly, the game is going to be to choose what appear to be typical people who are inexperienced in the broadcast medium. That means his opponents will be out of their element; so even if they're great at debating or arguing, they'll be fighting (to borrow a martial arts phrase) in their opponent's dojo.
Not a good way to start one's career in broadcast pseudo-journalism.
The game will be worse than merely the on-air part. The whole lodging and meals package they describe is going to throw off someone who isn't a pro at this sort of thing. Moreover, O'Reilly will very likely greet these people, if not at a pre-engagement dinner, then certainly back stage; and there, he'll be every bit the consummate, professional, friendly, supportive "co-host" who will put them completely off their guard when, once those cameras swing into action, he'll turn into the pro-class attack dog his audiences know.
In other words, Bill O'Reilly is an actor; and despite my disgust with the man, he's an actor of high quality who knows how to use his tools—the most important of which is that microphone—to flaunt his power.
For the hapless souls they choose to go up against O'Reilly, then, that stage is nothing but a slaughterhouse waiting for lambs.
That's what I smell, anyway; but then again, I'm paranoid beyond all reason.
But then again, I'm still alive after all these years.
The Dark Wraith doesn't go into spooky houses that yell, "GET OUT!" either.
"We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence," she said. "I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."
Well it wasn't exactly the media and news making the statement. But it was one female Senator from New York.
Peace!
Good evening, Lizzy.
I must say that Sen. Clinton has been worrying me in no small measure with some of her stances of late; but she did a whole lot to get me comfortable with her after that broadside against Bush.
How many other United States Senators have gone as far as she did in laying out the reality of Bush's service as President? I would dare to say she's about it as far as rip-the-twit-a-new-one goes.
Another interesting part of this drama is that the CNN poll that's asking people what they thought of her remarks is coming out heavily in favor of what she said about Bush being one of the worst Presidents in American history. Even though those polls aren't scientific, they do tend to reflect prevailing sentiments among certain groups of people who are not always on the progressive side of an issue.
Now, if we can just figure out how to graft some of that spine of Senator Clinton's onto other Democrats, we might just get something going here... like a filibuster, for starters.
And that makes me wonder if Clinton's trying to lead into something next week along those lines. I honestly don't think she would risk her run for the Presidency in 2008 on this issue, but she just might be signaling her support for some other Senator to take the necessary action.
The Dark Wraith will have to wait and see, though.
I have to agree w/Mr. Shakes on this:
I find it interesting that you become uncomfortable upon bearing your soul a little. Interesting, because I think it's often at these moments that you do your most impactful writing
Though, it's not necessarily your life but your...presence...that reminds me of someone very dear to me. I find the similarity both amusing and a bit unnerving.
Also, in regards to this:
Now, if we can just figure out how to graft some of that spine of Senator Clinton's onto other Democrats...
It's a damn shame Paul Hackett isn't elected. Yet.
I have to agree w/Mr. Shakes on this:
I find it interesting that you become uncomfortable upon bearing your soul a little. Interesting, because I think it's often at these moments that you do your most impactful writing
Though, it's not necessarily your life but your...presence...that reminds me of someone very dear to me. I find the similarity both amusing and a bit unnerving.
Also, in regards to this:
Now, if we can just figure out how to graft some of that spine of Senator Clinton's onto other Democrats...
It's a damn shame Paul Hackett isn't elected. Yet.
Oh for pete's sake.
Well, the link works in the second one.
C'mon Dark Wraith, you weren't chewed up at the Blogging of the President, you just went at the post from a different angle of its point. You pointed out that their sound advice wouldn't happen, and they agreed. No biggie, and I'm sure that for once they appreciated a commenter at their level.
They just lost one of their big three, the (true) conservative Oldman to illness, and I think it'd be great traffic for you if these two blogs corresponded more often. Stirling Newberry, the main poster, posts a lot over at Truthout and the Daily Kos, and always gets recommended, and back during election time they were in the top 100 in the Truth Laid Bear's ecotraffic.
That aside, how's the Big Brass Alliance working out? And you were a soldier once? For how long and for whom?
- Tim M.
Good evening, Tim.
I'm certainly glad you put up a comment over here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is your first time giving us here at The Dark Wraith Forums your thoughts, which are appreciated in no small measure.
We have a slightly different perspective on the Blogging of the President. As I post comments at various blogs around this corner of the Blogosphere, I occasionally encounter a kind of opposition to my analyses that has to do with the approach I take, which seems sometimes cold, calculating, and almost sympathetic to a view incompatible with progressivism or even humanistic thinking. That was in small evidence at the Blogging of the President, although the respondent there didn't take anything even approaching a harsh word. Also, interestingly, if I recall that thread, none of the actual BOP writers addressed the discussion one way or the other, even though you directly asked about this blog. Mr. Newberry would have put himself into a difficult position at best by getting involved. (Although for some time I thought differently, I've come to the conclusion that my success as a blogger is not going to be through the endorsement of those with a wide and devoted audience; instead, if success is in the offing for The Dark Wraith Forums, it will come by way of readers who actually like this place because of the intensity and breadth of articles and discussions here, spurred in no small part by the readers, themselves, and their commentaries.)
A more high-octane version of disagreement in views occurred this past week at Night Bird's Fountain, where a single comment by me (long-winded as it was), intended to be coldly analytical, drew some more pointed fire from one of the bloggers there, the criticism being in some ways mildly ad hominem but in other ways addressing a fundamental divergence of views of how events and processes should be contemplated. Interestingly, other writers for Night Bird's Fountain took a vocal stand in that back-and-forth.
This speaks to a different character and quality of Night Bird's Fountain, not because there was a spirited defense of what I'd said, but because of an open dialectic process there that seems rather less evident at the Blogging of the President. Even the gentleman who took sharp and somewhat sarcastic exception to me advances that dialectic because it requires all who write and comment to consider their thinking and the extent to which they wish to communicate and the extent to which they wish not to consider what they deem inappropriate commentary.
In my judgment, Tim, this is a metaphor for the Democrats. The Party is strong because it is forced over and over again to see the world from the perspectives of various underrepresented views. It creates an intellectual culture that must assume there could be merit in an argument and the great possibility for the right of dignity in many of those arguments.
That presumption of the challenged thinking can lead to a weakness not suffered by those who give no quarter to new arguments. The Right—in particular, the Christian Right—understands exactly what constitutes a meritorious view on any given subject, and its constituents do not labor under the delay and doubt of consideration.
Were we to be a monolithic construct—were we to abide those within our ranks who want us to be like that—we would not have been so vulnerable to the destructive politics of the new breed of Republicans. Even strong men like Murtha, Kerry, and Cleveland become nothing more than easy marks for character assassination, not because they, themselve, are weak, but because they are not part of a monolith of belief, action, and resolution.
No matter how hard we progressive bloggers are trying, we're getting little traction because we think we're speaking with one voice, but we're not. That's just not us.
Does this mean a future of one political defeat after another? Certainly not; but it does point to a need to find an effective means by which the essential principle of open dialogue, inclusiveness of thinking, and sensitivity to new information can be made immune to the crushing politics of invective and slander that are the hallmarks of the Right-wing Republicans.
I am open to suggestions, ideas, and prescriptions.
Oh, and in partial response to some questions you asked, I was U.S. Army, 13-Echo (cannon fire direction specialist), mid-'70s.
But that was a lifetime ago. Back when I was young (and wore my nose considerably straighter).
The Dark Wraith should probably put a limit on the number of words he allows himself in any given comment.
OT, DW have you ever received a stock promotion from this email address: udydrtrttsd@mapllc.com ?
I just did, and having never had it happen before, I was just wondering.
It's promoting a stock called "Extreme Innovations (EXTI)". I have never sought stock advice via computer and will be deleting this spam immediately after posting this question. (It may well have come in through some other avenue, but yours is the one most concerned with economic matters, and that was what led me to think of you. I have no way of knowing how this promotion found me.)
- oddjob
- oddjob
As I posted that last message your blog appeared to crash, for I got that index of stuff as I did the last time you crashed, when you crashed for a few hours.
- oddjob
Good afternoon, OddJob.
You're probably going to hear me have a cow at some point this evening. First, I'll find out what's going on with the server again, then I'll check into that stock.
Neither of those investigations will bring the sunshine to my personality, I suspect.
The Dark Wraith enjoys looking into things that will keep his temperament on the dark side.
Hope that's not a veiled reference to where the sun don't shine.
The sun don't shine in any direction I look, Mr. Goat.
That, unfortunately, probably says a lot about where my head is usually located.
The Dark Wraith gets in front of the obvious rejoinder that would follow.