"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Dispatch from Casa La Brilliant: The Aftermath
Posted by Jill | 10:57 PM
I heard this gorgeous song on Pandora today and have been pretty much a mess the rest of the day. Antoine Dufour, Song for Stephen:



I am probably going to spin off further posts about this new life I'm trying to live into a different blog. It may be public, it may be by invitation. I'll let you all know if I decide to make it by invitation only and you'll be able to request and invitation. But I think that further episodes of the Deeply Personal don't really belong here.

I've gone back to work this week. I think it's good for me, it gets me back to something that passes for normal, it eliminates that irrational raw gnawing fear that they'll forget I work there, and it gets me back into the land of the living. My colleagues have been wonderful. This bunch that balks at gift cards for our administrative assistants raised $420 for the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge, FOCAS, and the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network. I've been pretty much OK this week until I heard the song posted above. Sure, I get a bit weepy, especially when I get home after work, but all things considered I've been OK. But tonight I was driving home and a massive wave of grief just washed over me just as I was getting on 287 north and it was as if the words I WILL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN were written in fire on a two-by-four that was delivered soundly to the bakc of my skull.

It's a grief tinged with rage, because in a moment of madness last night I decided to listen to some of the recordings I made of medical appointments we went to. In a way, having these recordings make Mr. B. seem not quite so gone because his voice is still there. But it also underscores that concept of "NEVER". Where the rage comes in is just how often the word "hydration" appears, no matter who is talking -- Dr. Chess Club talked about hydration. Dr. Endearingly Nerdy Brain Doctor talked about hydration. The radiotherapy nurse talked about hydration. The oncologist talked about hydration. Hydration hydration hydration, and Mr. B. simply would not do it. In his last few conscious days, he developed a hankering for tomato juice, and went through two 64-ounce bottles in three days; probably 4-5 bottles during that last week. I argued with him that this was not hydration, but he insisted that he was allowed to have juice, and after thirty years, I knew that the more I dug in my heels the more tomato juice he would drink. It is a thing you guys seem to always do and it makes us nuts. So tonight the crying jags are not just about the grief that's really starting to hit now, but they also have an element of YOU DUMBASS...IF YOU HAD JUST HAD SOME GODDAMN WATER YOU'D STILL BE HERE.

I hate this.

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Saturday, February 18, 2012

**headdesk**
Posted by Jill | 7:45 PM
What can one even SAY about this:
"I’m here to save America from communism,” the former "Saturday Night Live" cast member and Tea Party activist Victoria Jackson said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend in Washington. As she walked the corridors she was treated like a rock star by CPAC attendees who raised their fists to her, shook her hand and thanked her for her far-Right political activism.

"The people of California voted that they did not believe that gay marriage -- no gay marriage," she explained to HuffPost Gay Voices. "They voted that. A judge, probably gay, activist judge, overturned that. That’s what I’m talking about -- communism."

She explained further that it could lead to living in pods. "Do you know what the housing is going to be like when we all live in a pod?" she asked. "And we all take public transit? It's going to be Russia. It's going to be Cuba."

As CPAC attendees who passed by expressed their gratitude to her for, as one described it, "speaking the truth," Jackson offered her thoughts on Barack Obama: "This president was raised marxist. His parents, his grandparents, his college professors, his whole life, he’s been immersed in marxism, even his church. Jeremiah Wright did not preach Christianity. He preached black liberation theology, which is marxism disguised as religion."

And she’s not happy with the Republican field either: "Republicans and the Democrats are looking the same these days. Newt Gingrich and Mitt are socialists. I think Santorum is the only conservative."

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Friday, November 19, 2010

I wonder what made Phil Griffin decide to do this?
Posted by Jill | 7:31 PM
Politico:
MSNBC said Friday that it is suspending “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough for two days after he acknowledged giving eight previously unknown $500 contributions to friends and family members running for state and local offices during his tenure at the network, a violation of parent NBC’s ban on political contributions by employees without specific permission from the network president.

“I recognize that I have a responsibility to honor the guidelines and conditions of my employment, and I regret that I failed to do so in this matter,” Scarborough said in a statement. “I apologize to MSNBC and to anyone who has been negatively affected by my actions,” he said, adding that after he was made aware of some of the contributions, he called MSNBC President Phil Griffin “and agreed with Phil's immediate demand of a two-day suspension without pay.”

Olbermann's back on the air, Worst Persons is back, and all's right with the world. What, Griffin is getting a conscience now? Or is he just turning into the network equivalent of George Steinbrenner, only instead of lusting for the back page of the New York tabloids, he's lusting for the front page of Politico.

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Worst. Vacation. Idea. Ever.
Posted by Jill | 6:20 AM
The Titanic Memorial Cruise, coming in 2012.
Make sure you go to that lifeboat drill. You don't know just how realistic they're planning to make this.

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

What's all this about national security?
Posted by Jill | 7:28 AM
Going unnoticed in all the hoopla over Sarah Palin this week was the news that Alberto Gonzales took classified documents about the government's wiretap program home and neglected to keep them locked up "because he couldn't remember the combination" to his safe -- and that the Justice Department is not going to prosecute. If you needed any further proof that Michael Mukasey's Department of Justice is about protecting his bosses and predecessor and not about upholding the law, there it is. So let us have no more talk about Sandy Berger, shall we?

But playing fast and loose with national security isn't the exclusive province of those currently in power. The woman who is running for the office of Waiting For McCain to Sneeze, in an effort to score cheap political points off of her son's service, has violated Operational Security.

Here is Sarah Palin, telling the world the date her son is to be deployed to Iraq:




Jon Soltz of VoteVets explains how this may very well be a violation:
Calling around to a couple of Public Affairs Officers (PAO) who would be handling the flow of information about Track and his unit, VoteVets.org found out that, first, Track is not deploying on September 11. He may be part of a deployment ceremony that day, before going to Kuwait, though one Public Affairs Officer said that any details of the upcoming ceremony hadn't been made public yet by the military.

Governor Palin may have spilled the beans on that one, while showing she doesn't know the difference between a soldier deploying to Iraq vs. one preparing to deploy to Iraq. And while not illegal, if she really did believe that's when he's deploying to Iraq, then she didn't know enough to keep quiet about that to keep from violating OPSEC - something a potential Commander in Chief should know.

But, more disturbing, and definitely in violation of security, are an explosion of stories that say specifically where in Iraq Track is deploying to, which have been dutifully eaten up by right wing websites, and reprinted. I will not reprint it here, because I would only be compounding the issue. But, unfortunately, it is very easy to find on the web at this point.

It is simply impossible that any reporter could figure this out on their own. Just by knowing Track's name and the date he is heading to Kuwait, one could not figure out specifically where Track and his company would be going in Iraq. There's a reason it's impossible to figure that out - because the military doesn't want that information out there. It only serves to aid the enemy to know where are troops are moving.

Did the Pentagon release that information to the press?

No, according to another PAO that VoteVets.org talked with. In fact, this PAO said, the military was actively trying to quash this story, and keep reporters from repeating all these details, because it was a clear OPSEC violation. The PAO was adamant that the military has no idea how these details got out there and doesn't want them out there.

So where is this information coming from, if not the military? Certainly not the Obama campaign, which would not gain anything by promoting Track's service. The only people who I can think of would be those in the McCain-Palin campaign.

If the McCain-Palin campaign has disclosed details about Track's company's movements to gain stories in the press about it, they will have put many American lives in danger - not the least of which would be Track's.


Heckuva job, Sarah.

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Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Gee, maybe the voters aren't so dumb after all
Posted by Jill | 9:57 PM
How bad a decision do you have to make that not even a population that conflated Osama Bin Laden with Saddam Hussein, who fears that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, and is more likely to vote on American Idol than in a presidential election, is fooled?

Jack Cafferty reads some e-mail, and that dog ain't huntin':




If McCain weren't so downright terrifying a prospect as President (and make no mistake -- any lead less than 10 points is close enough for Republicans to steal through disenfranchisement and "flawed" (read: rigged) voting machines) you could almost think he's a Shakespearean figure, done in by hubris and lust for power. He wants the presidency so badly, and he'd do anything to get it. So last week the maverick, the straight talker, the one who doesn't insult your intelligence, blew the reputation he's worked a lifetime to have, so that a bunch of people who think dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark will vote for him. It's almost sad.

Almost.

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