June 23, 2005

if you're feeling good, you haven't been paying attention

Hey, I know it's summertime, you're getting ready for a little vacation fun -- a little escape from the humdrum.

And so it's a perfect time for our government and its rabid supporters to begin slipping some mean deeds by us why we veg out under the trees with our cold beers. And they're doing that "marketing" thing again, paying some high-priced flaks to sell us some more bills of goods that are toxic to this democracy of ours (certainly what's left of it).

Pay attention. Follow the links.

The Republican group Progress for America released the television ad “Get Ready” on June 22. In a news release, the group reports that the ad will run through July 1 as part of a $700,000 effort to “warn opinion leaders in Washington, DC and beyond that some Democrats will soon unleash a fury of dishonest and ugly attacks about any Justice that President Bush nominates to the Supreme Court should a vacancy occur.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department yesterday began working with a private marketing firm to create a database of all U.S. college students as well as high-school students between ages 16 and 18, to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment.

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Conservative Union, the nation's oldest and largest Conservative grass roots organization, sharply condemned today's highly controversial 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that local governments may use imminent domain to take people's homes and businesses and turn them over to private developers.

Are you all feeling a little less relaxed now? Well, at least you're not feeling as DUMB as I do after posting about "The Medium is the Massage," a little paperback book by Marshall McLuhan that's been nestled in my various bookshelves since the mid-sixties. I should have taken the time to do a little research before I posted, but time is something I don't have much of these days.

But Mark Federman, whose blog "What is The Message" looks at all things McLuhanesque, left a comment. Between his explanation, and the one left by my friend Frank Paynter, I am now more informed about how the message got massaged into the little book in my possession.

I feel like a salmon swimming upstream. I keep realizing how much I don't know anything about. I keep realizing that my mom and I each have too much stuff and I'll never get it packed in time for the move. And I keep realizing that there's no stopping Bush and his crew.

I'm definitely going to hide out in the woods until it all blows over. Which it will, you know. It's all ebb and flow. The ol' Dharma Wheel.

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Old Comments (2)

  1. Old Horsetail Snake on 24 Jun 2005

    You suppose they got any fish in Walden Pond so we can ride it out while eatin' good?

  2. Elaine on 24 Jun 2005

    I don't know about Walden Pond, but the property to which I'm moving abuts a pond that gets stocked with fish. And then when I get my veggie garden in, I can really go underground.