Poem titled "First Impressions"

Image by jcolman via Flickr

Poem titled "First Impressions"

By Peggy W @ HubPages (a friend)

From Denny: This is a lovely short six line poem that you will enjoy!

Libations Friday! 10 July 2009

From Denny: It's Libations Friday over at The Social Poets. Here's what is featured today - Video of how astronauts drink coffee from an open mug in weightless space, essay about the CIA why its important to write to change the world.

Photo by once and future @ flickr

The Social Poets CIA Denny Lyon Politics Society and Culture News Coffee Video Lyon

Round and Round the Obvious: Republican Liars, CIA, the Speaker

From Denny: OK, this is rich and I just have to comment since I grew up in the CIA. What the Republicans are doing is unacceptable. What are they doing? Lying, lying and lying some more in the way of misdirection away from the guilty Party: them.

What I find almost as annoying are the media folks who can't seem to remember what they reported for eight years under the Bush administration. It's like they have a collective Who Me? amnesia.

Is the Speaker telling the truth? Yes. How do I know? I watched the news like everyone else during the Bush years and it was clear she and all other Democrats were pushed out of the small loop of information. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice and Gingrich were the main players, the true holders of power and dominance, policy and decision makers. When the CIA reported what they didn't want to hear, like the bald-faced truth, they demanded they rewrite their reports.

Remember the Valerie Plaume incident? They outted her (which is treason by the way even when they do it) because she came back with nuke info they didn't want to hear and she and her husband constantly contradicted Cheney and Bush's public lies with the evidence. By outting her they lost years of experience and destroyed a tough intelligence network to build.

Only fools would destroy an information-gathering network about the status of rogue nukes in the world and still believe they are patriots protecting the country. Protect us from people voting in these destructive fools who would not know a good decision if it jumped up in their faces and begged them to take it home and sleep with it for free.

How else do I know? I know the culture and the historical beginnings of the CIA. The CIA was originally created as "The President's Men" much like the Jesuits were created as "The Pope's Men." The CIA have always been the loyalists to whichever President is sitting in office, any party. They do what other agencies and public words cannot - whatever needs to be done, legal or illegal.

They basically can enable someone who is corrupted by absolute power and that's exactly what happened in the case of the Bush-Cheney years. After all, Bush and Cheney kept firing all the knowledgeable, competent and people of good character in the CIA, the Pentagon, and everywhere they had reach until they finally found enough weak and greedy people to carry out their bidding.

The short version is that Bush ordered them to lie and present false information. He ordered the CIA to withhold information from the Democratic members of Congress AND any moderate Republicans who just might share that info with Democrat friends across the aisle.

This fiasco belongs to the Republican Party and their minions (lobbyists) and enablers (voters). The press needs to grow a pair and quit forcing us to listen to the whiners who couldn't tell the truth if they tried. Maybe it's time to go to a one-party system as the Republicans have proven themselves useless to this country in our time of great need. They are too busy planning their next grab for power. The CIA has never truly been the issue today or in the past. They were just the reaction to the action set by Presidents.

Without the political party to direct and task them the CIA has no mission other than to gather information worldwide. What IS the issue are two events: the ruling political party who sets the policies and toxic politics into motion and the voters who enable that direction.



CIA Republicans Democrats Speaker Pelosi Gingrich politics Congress lobbyists voters Rove Bush Cheney information-gathering United States

Coming Soon: Photographic Memory in a Pill?

From Denny: This sounds too good to be true! The only problem I ask is this: So, do you have a pill for extra capacity brain storage? :) Because you know people would go wild with this, testing it by reading whole Oxford Dictionaries, encyclopedias, going to the Library of Congress and reading through the entire library - the largest in the world - just to find out how much they could retain.

From the folks over at Popular Science. Here's an excerpt:

"Scientists isolate a protein that significantly increases visual recall

"Wish you had a photographic memory? Well, Encyclopedia Brown, drugs may amp your brain up to that point soon. A group of Spanish scientists claim to have singled out a protein that can extend the life of visual memory significantly. When the production of the protein was boosted in mice, the rodents' visual memory retention increased, from about an hour to almost 2 months.

"Unlike the long-term memory creation that was imaged recently, this memory extension only applies to memories made through the poorly-understood visual cortex of the brain."

For the rest of this brief article just click here! Thanks for visiting!

Video: All the Truth About Chocolate and Antioxidants

From Denny: When The Social Poets became too much of the Wild Wild West I started dividing my interests into many blogs so people wouldn't feel quite so dizzy when they landed. As my first blog, this has always been a "Musings" kind of blog but was also developing a lot of competing themes, so I began a pack of other blogs to handle the information overload for readers. The scope is narrowed on the other blogs, themed, for easier reading - and so you have the comfort of knowing what to expect when you visit.

When people are stressed we do like to develop healthy routines - like reading favorite sites and blogs - as a distraction to help mediate our mood from work or whatever. To give you an idea of my food blogs this is a video I'm running over at my two food blogs, Romancing The Chocolate and Comfort Food From Louisiana - even over at my health blog The Healing Waters.

This is a great little video chock full of useful information about how the decisions you make to get the most out of that chocolate benefit factor. She gives you percentages of chocolate to sugar for best antioxidant value and tells you how much (really how little) of a percentage of your favorite candy bar has of real chocolate. Also, beware of how chocolate is processed because you can completely lose your antioxidant value!

Video: Interview with Comedian Sarah Silverman

From Denny: This is an interview with comedian Sarah Silverman. What it gives you is an inside look of the person and how comedians can develop. Her comedy is often labeled as "demented." Granted, it is a bit; offensive to some as she adores skewering convention, political correctness (which ever side happens to be in power) and rebels against wanting to make nice and be sensitive to others. In other words, she goes for the shock value. Fortunately, her kind of shock value is more than crass or crude but forces people to think, well, about how they think toward the world - just how did they come to think like this? - that's basically her question to her audience. It's a good interview interspersed with her comedy clips.



Sarah Silverman comedy video political correctness critical thinking interview Katy Couric CBS News Arts Performing Arts Comedy Central comedian

Cheeky Quote Day! 8 July 2009

From Denny:

It's Cheeky Quote Day over at The Social Poets blog.

What's offered? Lots of funny quotes, a customer service joke with a dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks banker and 2 comedy videos. Enjoy! For Cheeky Quote Day, go here.

Silly photo from photobucket

How Do You Cultivate Inner Happiness?

This is what I've featured today over at Beautiful Illustrated Quotations, my Quotes blog:

From Denny: What I so enjoy about quotes are two things: they are short, and therefore, easy meditations and also they often speak a facet of the truth in an amazing way! This is the first quote I've run across that discusses more than cultivating personal harmony or doing outward actions to help cultivate happiness. When you read between the lines what this author is talking about is acquiring a particular attitude toward self BEFORE you begin cultivating happiness - pretty cool take on it!

Quote

“Happiness is really a deep harmonious inner satisfaction and approval.” — Francis Wilshire

Photo by h.koppdelaney @ flickr

happiness meditation harmony mental health arts literature health self-help love Francis Wilshire quotes quotations

Video: Nutritious Chocolate, the New Super Food?

From Denny: Looks like the news industry is just now catching on to what you and I know about our beloved chocolate: it's a superfood! What took them so long? :) Check out this informative chocolate video about a new chocolate product packed with antioxidants. Beats taking vitamin pills hands down for weight loss especially!

MSNBC videos chocolate weight loss antioxidants diet food super food

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Video: Independence Day Trivia

From Denny: This is well worth the watching! While I knew most of the dry facts - what I didn't know were some of the ancedotal stories that went along with those historical facts that spoke a lot to the personalities and conflicts of that time.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Independence Day Fourth of July America Thomas Jefferson George Washington Declaration of Independence people and society holidays United States CBS videos American history

Video: The Crown of Liberty

Then First Lady Nancy Reagan reopens Statue of Liberty on 100th birthday Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: This is a really good video on the updates to and the history of visiting the Statue of Liberty AND you get an inside view from the top looking out over the harbor - best video I've seen on the recent renovation project. It's nice to see we have an administration who promotes freedom instead of fear by reopening the Statue of Liberty and other federal buildings like the White House to the viewing from the public!


Watch CBS Videos Online

CBS Statue of Liberty freedom America United States travel renovation video Obama tourism New York Manhattan Society and culture