Tag Archives: Briseadh na Faire @ tpzoo.com

Moonlit Rainbow

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Moonlit Rainbow

colors dancing in the dark

clouds gently cup the face of the Moon
as She looks down with lovingkindness

while the Magician stands in the Sacred Place
raising His staff in solemn ritual

Love meeting Love

the light of Man and Moon entwine
in the darkness
(the Moonlit darkness)
broken only by the shadow of an owl
soaring overhead

as He draws down the Moon
She draws up the Magician
a door between realms opens

and they meet
in silent ritual
in timeless ritual

Love meeting Love

where Dance and Music were first conceived

colors dancing in the dark

Moonlit Rainbow

 

copyright 2010 Briseadh na Faire, used by permission

It Ain’t Over ‘Til it’s Over, and Even Then it Ain’t Over

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Peter Pan refused to grow up. Hillary Clinton refuses to give up. In latest twist on the campaign that wouldn’t die, Hillary is now going after superdelegates committed to Obama.

“One thing about superdelegates is that they can change their minds,” she told reporters aboard her campaign plane Sunday night.

The former first lady enters this week with an insurgent strategy not only to win over undecided superdelegates but to peel away Obama’s support from those party leaders and elected officials who already have committed to back him for the nomination.

Clinton’s strongest argument for becoming the nominee is that she leads in the popular vote. That is, after you count Florida, where neither candidate campaigned, and Michigan, where Obama voluntarily removed his name from the ballot, leaving Hillary to run unopposed. After initially agreeing that those states didn’t count, she now agressively argues that their votes should be counted, giving her the “lead” in popular votes. She somehow manages to divine the popular vote from states with caucuses to arrive at her popular vote totals giving her the lead.

All in all, it sounds like Hillary is playing from the NeoCon playbook: if you can’t beat ‘em, change the rules.

Bush+Nazi Germany=Profits!

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The Bush family fortune may be based, at least in part, from war profiteers dealing with Nazi Germany.

George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

Bush tossed out oblique slurs about appeasement, but his grandfather actually helped the Nazi war effort!

Briseadh’s Poetry Corner

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Who counts the sand
Falling gently in the hourglass?
Each grain a memory,
A memory in a crystal of time.

Who counts the tears
That fall in silent rage?
Each tear an outcry,
For vengeance in due time.

As the sand and tear drops fall;
Gath’ring torrents to the sea,
Who can stop the tide?
Who can change the course?
Who can heal the pain of each crystal memory?

Who will stop the sand?
Who will stop the tears
From falling, from falling?
Who will come to stop the children
From killing,
From dying?

Who will look into every grain
Of crystal time,
And hear mothers’ voices calling,
Crying,
Crying,
Dying…

When will the sand stop falling?
When will there be
The counter of the sand?

(all poems copyright 2008, Briseadh na Faire)

(all rights reserved)

Credit Check

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Credit card issuers have drawn fire for jacking up interest rates on cardholders who aren’t behind on payments but whose credit scores have fallen for other reasons. Now, some consumers complain, Bank of America is increasing rates based on no apparent deterioration in their credit scores at all.The major credit card lender in mid-January sent letters notifying some responsible cardholders that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving explanations for the increases, according to copies of five letters obtained by BusinessWeek.

You either write to B of A to opt out, no longer use the card and pay off the balance, or you’re stuck with the higher rate.

This may be the beginning of a trend. Time to check that junk mail for letters from your credit card companies warning of impending rate increases.

Zzzzzap! Taser parties surging in popularity

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They are called Taser parties — and the fact they are getting a lot of attention lately is anything but shocking.

“I think it’s because I’ve mixed a very commonplace event, like a Tupperware party, with an extremely controversial product like a Taser C2,” said Dana Shafman, an entrepreneur from Phoenix.

So, how are we going to protect curious toddlers from the taser in mommy’s purse? As this weapon becomes more and more common, well, tragedy is inevitable. The only question is, who’s child is going to die?

In Search of a Season

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“Can there be any greater folly than a war fought over religion? Is it so much easier to fight for our principles than to live by them? According to a wise priest I know, “Jesus didn’t ask to be worshipped; He asked to be followed, which is harder.” We search for signs of winter and Christmas, and settle for what we find until at last we look within. “

This article, by Bill Curry, sums up quite nicely where we are, and what we have lost along the way.

 The one thing we have lost the most is our love for our fellow person.  Phrases like “individual responsibility” and “opportunity” cloak the harsh realities that for many, there is no opportunity to rise above one’s birth status, and individual responsibility masques selfishness. Gone is the sense of compassion, replaced by a perversion of the old “give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” We neither give the man a fish, nor teach him how to fish. Instead, it is up to him to learn how to fish on his own; it is his “individual responsibility.” And, at the same time, we want to be able to leave the fruits of our labors to our off-spring without limits, little realizing that by so doing, we will increase exponentially the vast hoardings of the wealthy whose share of the total available resources will increase until a majority of the population is no longer able to survive.

 Conservatives see liberals as leading to everyone’s doom. Liberals see conservatives as doing the same. Pagans follow the teachings of Christ while Christians worship their King.

And the solution was put so eloquently above, “We search for signs of winter and Christmas, and settle for what we find until at last we look within.”

Warrantless Wiretaps – What, Me Worry?

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The Bush administration has been consistently and effectively raising the State Secret’s doctrine to defend against lawsuits related to warrantless wiretapping. Essentially, plaintiffs suing the government were dead in the water because they were prevented from obtaining any evidence at all to show their rights were violated. The government could do as it pleased, regardless of the Constitution, as long as it raised the State Secret’s doctrine to bar evidence of its wrong-doing.

 But the government made one tiny mistake.

The Al-Haramain case is unique because the government inadvertently released a document to the charity in 2004 that reportedly showed it had been wiretapped.

The government sought to suppress not only the document, but even witness’s recollection of having seen the document.

Enter a 1978 law, passed in response to Congress’s concern over revelations that the Nixon Whitehouse had been spying on political opponents.  The law allowed for a judge to review the contested evidence in secret. Bush is contesting the application of the law to the facts of this case, saying the law only applies to “people who are being prosecuted for espionage or terrorism crimes, and claim the evidence against them was obtained by illegal surveillance…” In other words, according to the government, American citizens and political opponents whose rights are violated by the government have no recourse against the government under the 1978 law.

Many players in the Bush Whitehouse served in the Nixon Whitehouse, and this has become the most secretive government in the history of the United States. Of course, no one could anticipate that they would spy on their political opponents.

 What, Me Worry?

Open Letter to Faiz regarding 9/11

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“We don’t do 9/11 conspiracy theories on ThinkProgress. There are plenty of places to discuss that, but not here. We’ve been clear on that. Comment by Faiz — November 19, 2007 @ 1:59 pm“

“Clear” links to :

” There was extensive discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. This is not allowed on ThinkProgress. If you want to do it, go somewhere else. If people continue to do so, they will be banned. Comment by Judd — September 4, 2006 @ 6:43 pm

“On that” links to:

“One thing we decided early on in this site is that it wasn’t going to be a venue to discuss 9/11 conspiracy theories. People make a reasonable point that, if that’s the rule, perhaps such theories shouldn’t be referenced in the main posts.

That’s fair enough. But this post [9/11 Conspiracy Theory Redux: Malkin Argues That Qana Was An Inside Job] is published and that doesn’t change our site policy.

Comment by Judd — August 2, 2006 @ 9:33 pm”

Fact: even the “official explanation” is a conspiracy theory.

Fact: the “official explanation” contains at least one impossibility – the cell phone calls from 40,000 feet.

Fact: if you refuse to discuss alternative explanations to 9/11, if you refuse to call for a criminal investigation into the crimes of 9/11, if you continue to bury your head in the sand regarding 9/11, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Faiz, as I ‘ve said before, you are free to ban me from your site. Until then, I shall continue to post what I feel is necessary to disseminate the truth. You have done a fair amount of touting your own horn about how Washington big-wigs read this site. Perhaps you should reconsider the choice to avoid discussions about the one crime that allowed Bush to: consolidate an unprecedented amount of power in the Unitary Executive; commit this country into two wars; abandon International Law regarding torture, secret renditions, and the Geneva Conventions; strip Constitutional rights from legal immigrants; etc., etc., etc.

Faiz, you should be at the forefront, calling for Impeachment hearings, calling for criminal investigations. Why are you content to post side-shows?

Why do you think some of us created this site??

Cierra la Boca!

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Spanish king tells Chavez to ‘shut up’

It seems Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez doesn’t know when enough is enough.

Chavez triggered the exchange by repeatedly referring to former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar as a “fascist.” Spain’s current socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero,responded during his own allotted time by urging Chavez to be more diplomatic in his words and respect other leaders despite political differences.

Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, but his microphone was off.

Spanish King Juan Carlos, seated next to Zapatero, angrily turned to Chavez and said, “Why don’t you shut up?”

Maybe someone should give Chavez that book on winning friends and influencing people…