Friday 26th of April 2024
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some lady .....

some lady .....

‘First Lady Laura Bush said this morning that "no one suffers more" than the president and she do when watching television footage of the carnage in Iraq -- potentially opening her up to charges that the first family is too removed from the anguish of American troops and their families.

The first lady was on NBC's Today show mostly to talk about the president's malaria initiative, but at one point Ann Curry showed some video from Iraq and asked Bush, in a hushed, solicitous tone: "You know the American people are suffering, watching --"

The first lady replied: "Oh, I know that, very much. And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander in chief who has asked our military to go into harm's way --"

No One Suffers More Than The President

yeah, right …..

Remember when bushit’s awful mother, Barbara, told Laura that: “All those dead people just muck beautiful minds.”

Poor Laura … poor bushit …. so much suffering …. so much sacrifice ….

Of course the families of “ordinary Americans” understand your sacrifice … your burden, as they mourn the death or maiming of a son, a daughter, a mother, a father, a lover, a friend …

How are the twins Laura?

All kitted-up & ready to “surge” … just like daddy did when he avoided the draft? Just like jabba did?

How many bushits & jabbas are at risk in America’s “long war” Laura?

How many Iraqi mothers, fathers, sons & daughters have to be butchered on the altar of your husband’s obscene lunacy & your country’s profligate ways?

Ah, the burden of privilege.

Get a Life!

Time to replay P!nk - Dear Mr. President.

The disconnected Bush family, and the repercussions of discovering that the all-powerful are permitted to surf over the suffering of the common horde, leads me to thinking about that awful double suicide of teenaged girls near Melbourne. Patrick McGorry and Jo Robinson wrote about it The Age, The difficulty with silence on suicide:

  • The internet has come under fire this week as a potential pathway to suicide. We have almost no scientific evidence on its effects, except we can say that in parallel with its rise in influence, we have seen a modest decline in rates of suicide in young people. This argues against the view of the internet as a risk factor. Some suicidal behaviour may be fuelled by internet contact, and not only in the young. But MSN and MySpace are used by young people to strengthen and extend their social bonds and peer relationships in the real world. This reflects the potent sociability of young people and others and adds another dimension to it. Personal websites, youth-oriented internet sites and text messaging are likely to be a protective factor in suicide risk by providing a kind of electronic safety net. There are many helpful websites for young people who are troubled or suicidal and these may be an easier form of help-seeking for some than talking to someone, or using traditional helplines.

Maybe, but are there phenomena opening up in cyberspace that can seduce and devour the vulnerable?

From Inside Second Life, the Web’s Would-Be Cyberpunk Paradise:

  • Second Life's financial backers include Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Pierre Omidyar of eBay, and Mitch Kapor, the Lotus founder who helped spark the PC boom in the 1980s. "Virtual worlds will be as important as, and eventually merge with, the Internet," Kapor promises. If this is sounding like the Internet in 1995, it's supposed to. But there's one key difference this time around. Unlike the Web, Second Life is controlled by one evangelical dude, Rosedale. And as the creator of this brave new world, he's starting to feel like a God.

Cringely (PBS) hits the mark, in Mean Time Between Failures:

  • There are Internet start-ups scouring the web by the hundreds right now looking for every imaginable form of content or commercial intention, but I'm guessing there isn't a single spider program specifically dragging back signs of hate. Why not? Search the web for hate and vitriol and despair, do some clever parsing and analysis to figure out the where and when, then throw a mapping mashup interface on it all with the simple goal of giving school principals and baseball coaches and worried moms and dads a place to look for trouble brewing in their schools, towns or neighborhoods.

It's possible these two poor girls were sucked in to a suicide pact by a third party in cyberspace. Cringely's suggestion has a lot of merit, and should be considered by our government.