I know that finding the right sunrise can be hard. So here is a guide to finding one in Connecticut.
This is Santa Barbara, California. This is also a sunset.
This is the state of Connecticut. See, it has miles and miles of shoreline.
Like this, the New Haven light house. It's right by the shore. Really.
This is a Connecticut sunset, notice the woods, notice the reeds, the bird, the kind of things one sees on the east coast North of New York. But since you didn't want a sunset, we can show you a Connecticut sunrise.
See the nice orange tones, the docks, the shoreline with the trees and bushes. Now, that's a Connecticut shoreline.
Here's another one.
And this is one with the Senator at the shoreline, a Connecticut shoreline. Maybe you can think calm thoughts in Westport, not Santa Barbara, and at sunrise, not sunset.
Seems Lieberman's ever incompetent spokesman Dan Gerstein embarasses himself again, according to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
helen ubinas in the hartford courant found out that joe-nertia's campaign manager was pretty agitated about the commercial that was supposed to have a calming effect on everybody:
gerstein was downright chafed when i called him about the new age-y lieberman ad that urges folks to step away from the negativity of the campaign and think of all the "good stuff ... like sen. lieberman saving jobs, improving health care and keeping us safe. eighteen years of honest leadership. there's nothing negative about that."
there's still no beating the lamont ads; the bad coffee one is my favorite. but cheesy as lieberman's new ad was, at least the sun-over-water video had a nice late-summery feel. then the lamont folks realized the "sunrise" was actually a sunset, and called it a metaphor for the senator's career.
and things got ... well, negative.
this is just more negativity coming from the lamont camp, gerstein fumed. "they're so blind in their hatred of joe lieberman that they have to make even the most trivial, silly things an issue."
breathe, buddy, breathe ...
"i've already gotten three calls about this. it just shows how tone deaf people are. why aren't they calling about lamont's flip-flop on earmarks? why isn't that an issue?"
ok, now he was making me tense.
"this is a camp that mocks joseph lieberman's wife and kids and we make one honest mistake that we own up to and they jump all over it. i can send you documents that show how much more negative they are than us, how they continue to resort to these kinds of tactics. ... it's not even a close call.
"
i thought we were all going to relax and get away from the negativity here.
helen goes on to make a really good point: this obsession with "liebermont," as she calls it, is getting as boring as tomkat/brangelina headlines. after a while, who cares anymore?
apparently, dan gerstein does:
"
it's actually a sunrise," gerstein initially insisted. "it's very much a sunrise."
actually, it's very much a sunset, as pro-lamont bloggers gleefully pointed out. they even tracked down the video used in the ad on the getty images web page. clip 843-2: "wide shot sun setting over ocean/ birds walking along water's edge/ santa barbara."
"wow," said gazeena, the helpful customer rep at getty images. "that's too bad."
there is a 30-day return policy, she offered. but it's only good for half the purchase price, somewhere around $1,000, she said. "and if it's already been used, i'm not sure that applies."
apparently that's not going to be an issue; gerstein said they were going to continue to use the ad.
"of course we will," he said. "why in god's name wouldn't we, just because ned lamont's people reflectively attack us? that's just insane."
good stuff, dan, remember? think about the good stuff ...
note to dan gerstein: take your own commercial's advice.
How much did Josh Isay collect for that POS ad? $50K, 100K? And all you get is humiliation?
Godwin's Law(also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a mainstay of Internet culture, an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. It is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil".
The law states:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. [1]
Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin argues in his book, Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided, as it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.
Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenetnewsgroup discussions[2], the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and Wikipedia discussion pages.
When Rumsfeld and Bush can no longer discuss the war on the terms they have claimed to have fought it on, killing nearly 3000 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have no arguments left. We have entered the world of Godwin's Law.
They aren't suggesting that the American people are appeasers, they are begging for one more chance by playing on nostalgia: "We're America, we're fighting a good war, give us more time". But time has run out.
The problem for Bush is that he tried to do his war on the cheap and that war needed to go as they planned. And it so didn't. Iraq is worse now than at any time in modern history. They kill people in hospitals.
This is the last ditch argument, the tug on the heartstrings of failures, but instead of rekindling nostalgia, it has enraged people. What Terri Schiavo started and Cindy Sheehan amplified, Katrina shouted. These people are clueless, they have no ability to get anything done right. When a choice is to be made, they will make the worst one possible.
So now, they use nostalgia to save themselves, because they have nothing else to use.
Courtesy of the Tagawa family Jim and Katherine Tagawa as newlyweds in 1944. Their families were still being held in the "Rivers" detention camp in Arizona.
Bonnie Henry Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.27.2006
They were a couple of California teenagers with little in common. Her name was Katherine Otomo, daughter of a surgeon educated in Japan and England. His name was Mitsugi Tagawa, son of a tenant farmer who sold fish and vegetables out of his pickup truck. On Dec. 7, 1941, the trajectory of their lives would forever change with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Within months, tens of thousands of Japanese living in the western United States, native-born included, were forced into hurriedly thrown-together relocation camps — the victims of wartime paranoia. Katherine and Mitsugi, who now goes by Jim, were no different, even though both were born in the U.S.A.
Just months after the United States declared war on Japan, both were shipped to the Gila River Indian Reservation near Casa Grande, where two relocation camps known collectively as "Rivers" seemed to spring up overnight in the barren desert.
"We arrived in a sandstorm. Every time we took a step, we were ankle-deep in sand," says Katherine, 82, who grew up near Los Angeles.
Flashback to the fall of '41: Katherine is a senior at Mark Keppel High School in Monterey Park, Calif. Her father has been dead two years, leaving behind a wife and six children.
Meanwhile, Jim is working the fields in California's Central Valley and attending school in Selma. "I was born four days after my mother got off the boat," says Jim, 83, who learned English only after he started first grade.
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, he was cultivating a vineyard on somebody else's land when his sister came running.
"She said the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor." He ran to the house, where his parents were listening to the radio.
"They could not understand what happened," says Jim, who translated for them. "They were as shocked as everyone."
Like millions of other young American men, Jim tried to enlist, only to be told by his local draft board that he had been reclassified to "alien ineligible." .................................
Even so, he says, "My parents were ready to accept it. They told me, 'This is your country.' "
As for Jim: "I was a little peeved. I shook Roosevelt's hand in 1932 when I was a Cub Scout and he came through Gardena in his open car." .........................
As for his first impression of Rivers: "I thought it must be a POW camp. There was a barbed-wire fence, sentries, a watchtower with armed guards."
Camp was set up in blocks, each block containing 14 barracks, one mess hall and a recreation hall. Schools and a hospital would soon follow.
At its crest, Rivers would hold 13,000 men, women and children — the fourth-largest "city" in Arizona.
Jim's family was assigned to the end section of a four-unit barracks. "There were tarpaper walls and curtains for room dividers," he says.
Before long, he landed a plum job delivering the mail by truck at Rivers, first at Canal Camp, and then at Butte Camp. Pay was $19 a month.
............................
By then, the U.S. government had reversed its stance on Japanese-Americans joining the service.
Jim promptly signed up, joining the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up solely of Japanese-Americans.
"There were 26 or so of us in camp who signed up," says Jim. "We left on a Greyhound bus."
Katherine was there to see him off. But there was no throng of well-wishers. "We were not that popular in camp," says Jim. ...............................................
"You could leave if you were going eastward and could support yourself," says Katherine, who briefly landed a job taking care of a 4-year-old boy in Dearborn, Mich., before joining her sister in Chicago.
On Jan. 15, 1944, she and Jim were married in Chicago. The newlyweds then returned to the camp where their families were still incarcerated, Jim proudly wearing his Army uniform.
In May of '44, he shipped out to join the 442nd, newly linked to the famed 100th Battalion that had already slogged its way through Salerno and Anzio, earning the nickname the "Purple Heart Battalion."
Jim, who fought in Italy and France, would earn several honors himself, including two Purple Hearts.
"Four from my own company got the Medal of Honor," says Jim, who like the rest of the 442nd was feted with a heroes' parade in Washington, D.C., upon their return in the summer of '46.
Long before then, Katherine and her two sisters had saved enough money to move her mother and younger brothers out of camp to Chicago.
Meanwhile, Jim's parents had been released and given a train ride back to California's Central Valley, where they resumed working in the fields.
Like millions of other veterans, Jim went back to school on the G.I. Bill, earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and eventually going to work for IBM. ............................................ "My mom was very smart," says Katherine. "She told me in the camp, 'Use this as an experience. This is tough, but we can do it.' "
Japanese Americans were jailed, then drafted. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought with a number of divisions, including the 36th, 34th, and 92nd in Italy and Southern France, ending the war in Northern Italy as a regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division. The division had a white regiment, black regiment and the 442nd.
Twenty two members of the regiment won the Medal of Honor for service in World War II naking it one of the most highly decorated regiments in the history of the US Army. Just Americans, by Robert Asoka is a recently published book about the regiment, their service and the discrimination they faced.
I bring this up because of the recent white house push to talk about fascism. They use cheap words to promote their failed ideas, but more on that later.
Olbermann delivered this commentary with fire and passion while highlighting how Rumsfeld’s comments echoes other times in our world’s history when anyone who questioned the administration was coined as a traitor, unpatriotic, communist or any other colorful term. Luckily we pulled out of those times and we will pull out of these times.
Remember - Rumsfeld did not just call the Democrats out yesterday, he called out a majority of this country. This wasn’t only a partisan attack, but more so an attack against the majority of Americans.
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and
shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars
yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every
American.
For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or
intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who
oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;
Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our
employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither
common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad,
suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of
human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the
kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still
fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it
is right — and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.
In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was
adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis.
For, in their time, there was another government faced with true
peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the
facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true
picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in
terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their
morality.
That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.
It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone
England.
It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all
treaties and accords.
It knew that the hard evidence it received, which
contradicted policies, conclusions - and omniscience — needed to be
dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew
the truth.
Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics
needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost
of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile - at
best… morally or intellectually confused.
That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this
evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way
Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.
History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England
- taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own
confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the
man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.
Excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.
His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the
modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern
version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.
But back to today’s Omniscients.
That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused… is simply this:
This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such,
all voices count — not just his. Had he or his President perhaps
proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin
Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago
- about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one* year ago - we all might be able to
swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful
recipe, of fact, plus ego.
But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own
arrogance, and its own hubris.
Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or
intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to
Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to enveloppe this
nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently
or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and
the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the
Emporer’s New Clothes.
In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?
As a child, of whose heroism did he read?
On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day
to fight?
With what country has he confused… the United States of
America?
—–
The confusion we — as its citizens - must now address, is
stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when
men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and
obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier
Americans always found their way to the light… and we can, too.
The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and
this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the
terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for
which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City,
so valiantly fought.
—-
And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country
faces a "new type of fascism."
As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew
everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he
said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.
This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.
—-
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble
tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist
Edward R. Murrow.
But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I
come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of
us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew
everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."
Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954.
"We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction
depends upon evidence and due process of law.
"We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be
driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history
and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;
"Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to
defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."
Ah, the vegetarian paradox. It's an odd state of affairs. Being the guy who snacks on soy, my fellow bread breakers seem routinely fearful that I'll mention the horrific conditions at the overcrowded feedlot their burger came from. Oddly, little interests me less than talking food politics over, you know, food. And yet, I get no end of flack for the tofu on my plate. You'd think I were cutting into a heaping pile of fly-infested cow shit for all the raised eyebrows and snide asides I get. A few things:
• I like tofu. Really, I do. I didn't order it as an implicit rebuke for your burger, or a way of karmically balancing our bill. I just like tofu. It soaks up flavor, is low in fat (so I don't get food comas), and is invariably cheaper. Generous as The American Prospect is, that matters.
• I really like cooking tofu. Much more so than meat. It's clean to handle, doesn't require I scrub my hands in scalding water, and ensures that my inattention and inexperience won't make either of us sick. And, again, it's cheaper, even more so for home use than restaurant consumption. Plus, I make it really, really well. If you're judging my cooking, my comparative advantage almost certainly lies in my skill with soy. I'd be a fool not to display it.
• What's up with the gender politics over dinner? I don't get my masculinity from my plate, I get it by driving my enemies before me, and hearing the lamentations of their women. Do girls get a lot of shit for eating vegetarian? Or is it just us Y chromosomes who people look at like we're slapping on lilac aftershave?
• I'm not judging you. If you think I am, you probably just feel bad about eating meat, and should better reconcile yourself to your culinary choices. The percentage of items on my plate that survived through photosynthesis really has no bearing on the morality of steak.
I don't like food cultism. I don't care what it is, raw food, veganism, low carb, South Beach, it's all variations on bullshit to me. Eat less, eat less fat, eat more fruits and vegetables, drink a LOT less soda, and exercise, which I am slowly working around to, and you'll feel better.
Like the Starbucks girls, they could eat pizza every day and put less calories in their bodies than a mochachino frappe whatever. A lot women/girls claim to be vegeterians as well, when they're doing everything not to eat, like smoking, drinking coffee and eating crappy salads while skipping breakfast. Doesn't mean they forget the ice cream from Cold Stone with the brownies, however.
If young Ezra likes tofu, he's in good company. I have no issue with it, and Jen loves a meatless meal.
Now, to be fair, most guys will mock men endlessly for being a vegeterian. We have a friend who was one in high school, three months in college, he was eating burgers and getting drunk like the rest of us. Hamburgers, with beef. And beer. No, Ezra, girls don't get shit for being a vegeterian, because most of us want to fuck them and eat something else, which is amazingly meat like. But if you're with the boys and start talking up tofu, you will take shit. Which is why young Ezra is so defensive. The boys and some of the girls have been wondering about his manilness.
See, but here's the deal, being a vegeterian is fine. Annoying the shit out of people about it is not. Making people accomodate you is not. It is not good manners to go to thanksgiving dinner and have someone make tofurkey for you or to go on about factory farming at the barbecue. And don't go on about health. I know meat eaters who are trim, rarely drink soda or coffee, and never smoke. And vegeterians who do all three. I mean, if you want to be an asshole and get up on a soap box and lecture people, fine. But that's like telling people how to fuck.
Even among bloggers, I'm sure Stoller and Big Media Matt would tease him over dinner, for a laugh if nothing else. But then Kos is a vegan, which I only know because I've actually talked to our leader in person.
Do I think veganism is silly? Sure, just like low carbs and every other variation. It's an artificial distinction in the way of good eating. Just like the fact that I hate most cheeses and yogurt, because I think it taste like vomit. Is that silly? Sure. Oh, I'm going to eat a pound of bacon and eggs, but bread will kill me. Please. Balance, it is balance which matters.
Anthony Bourdain talks about Charlie Trotter's new raw food cookbook. And while he praises how it was designed, he is deeply offended by how it came about. Trotter's co-author was travelling in Thailand and ran into Woody Harrelson, who told them he was on a raw food diet. Bourdain compared this to the American tourist who never eats outside his hotel in Paris. Pure xenophobia. Given the freshness and the quality of Thai cooking, it was bizzare to do this.
My only real beef with vegeterian eating is this: real meat is better than fake meat. I wonder what chemicals people shove into Boca Burgers and Morningstar to make it meatish. If you want meat once in a while, real meat is probably healthier for you in the end, like butter is over margarine.
Oh, and that a lot of "vegeterian" meals are as badly cooked as can be. I mean, one can make a clever meal with vegetables, if one wants to. But not if one has an agenda. Agenda cooking sucks.
But fuck it, I hate rules when it comes to food. Rules and cultism just bug the shit out of me, Just eat what you want and don't pester me about it.
If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month.
On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet.
Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.
But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he'd still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator's fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman's still the man to beat in the general election.
If this wasn't enough to drain the effervescence from the blogger bubbly, America's noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office.
Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer's big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes' distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie's rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest. ...................................
And yet, as the scrambling suits at Lamont headquarters and New Line Cinema now know, it's easy to be seduced by one's own hype, especially when that hype is preceded by a “www.” Now it's time to play catch-up ball. Lamont's handlers will have to face a candidate who will surely try to have it both ways on the campaign trail; New Line will have to sell a boatload of popcorn. That's the way the blog bounces.
As an occasional blogger myself, I'm still wary of the phenomenon. On one hand, it can be liberating to log on and spout off, unencumbered by editorial oversight.
On the other hand, as August 2006 clearly demonstrates, bloggers can just as easily get it wrong. That's worth remembering.
First, everyone expected Lieberman to continue running since he said so and no one has stopped anything regarding his campaign. The fact is that Lieberman's campaign, and I did not think this possible, has gotten worse since the primary. Lamont didn't win because of blogs, Lamont won because he worked the ground game while Lieberman tried to buy his. Now, Lieberman is still losing ground with voters and hasn't made any sign of building a ground team to actually canvas.
Not that the author here knows that.
The Internet doesn't win campaigns. It can only help them. Lamont is smart enough to take advantage of that while Lieberman isn't. Lieberman is losing ground in the polling and will continue to lose ground.
Snakes on a Plane did better than it would have with a traditional campaign, trust me on that. Without Internet support it would have not opened at number one at the end of the summer.
Lieberman is running a shell campaign without the ground team he needs to have any hope of winning. Watch the next series of polling
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 29 — Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that critics of the war in Iraq and the campaign against terror groups “seem not to have learned history’s lessons,” and he alluded to those in the 1930’s who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany. .........................
Comparing terrorist groups to a “new type of fascism,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”
..........................
“This is not an enemy that can be ignored, or negotiated with, or appeased,’’ he said. “And every retreat by civilized nations is an invitation to further violence against us. Men who despise freedom will attack freedom in any part of the world, and so responsible nations have a duty to stay on the offensive, together, to remove this threat.”
Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech on Tuesday did not explicitly mention the Democrats, and he cited only comments by human rights groups and in press reports as evidence of what he described as “moral or intellectual confusion about who or what is right or wrong.”
......................................
While he did not directly compare current critics of the war in Iraq to those who sought to appease Hitler, his juxtaposition of the themes led Democrats to say that he was leveling an unfair charge.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former Army officer and a Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, responded that “no one has misread history more” than Mr. Rumsfeld.
“It’s a political rant to cover up his incompetence,” Senator Reed, a longtime critic of Mr. Rumsfeld’s handling of the war, told The Associated Press.
Mr. Reed said there were “scores of patriotic Americans of both parties who are highly critical of his handling of the Department of Defense.
”
For some reason, the White House wants to call on the spirit and unity of the Second World War without any of it's sacrifices, no rationing, no draft, no restriction on travel, even a refusal to mention the war in any serious way, much less having their families participate in it.
Osama Bin Laden doesn't have Grossdeutschland and 2nd SS Panzer in some cave. He isn't enslaving a continent, he's not sinking the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.
He is not a threat to the stability of the United States. He cannot conquer the US. He is, at most, a threat to US interests. Yet, to beat Osama, the microchip militia and friends want to toss out the consitution and call anyone who questions them appeasers. It isn't us who is hosting Central Asian dictators who boil their opposition alive, or turn our back on repressive regimes or who has built a network of secret prisons.
If this was WWII, Barbara Bush would be in a uniform and not conducting tours of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Bush's bodyman would be training at Quantico or Benning for deployment overseas, not going to Harvard B School without the benefit of a BA. Jenna's boyfriends would be in uniform and not drunken louts working for daddy.
It's a pathetic comparison to the national sacrifice of World War II, and the only one which can be made by people who's knowledge of history doesn't go beyond a textbook.
Newsbusters | MSNBC | Posted Tuesday August 29, 2006 at 11:21 PM
Oh, Tucker Carlson. No sooner do you win us over by agreeing to wear very tight spandex on "Dancing With The Stars" and posing for pictures like this than you lose us utterly by endorsing Top Ten Most Wanted Man Warren Steed Jeff's right to enjoy sexual relations with girls aged 13 - 16. Newsbusters has the details:
On his MSNBC show of this afternoon, Tucker was outraged that Jeffs had been placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list:
"His crime was wanting to enter into life-long arrangements with women, or facilitating that between a man and . . . was this guy trying to undermine America, destroy our way of life or murder our citizens? No! What the hell was he doing on the Top Ten list?"
Carlson wouldn't back down even when guests A.B. Stoddard of 'The Hill' newspaper and Republican Frank Donatelli pointed out that Jeffs has been accused of sexual assault on a minor and other crimes.
Alas, Tucker missed the opportunity to refine his position on the Top Ten list ("murder our citizens" is pretty clear cut but the murky "undermine America" and "destroy our way of life" are wide open to debate in this instance). Instead, he tried to make a case for the defense of "the alternate lifestyle that is plural marriage." Democratic strategist Steve McMahon stepped neatly over the hole in Tucker's logic by pointing out that "Pedophilia, Tucker, is not an alternate lifestyle that's recognized anywhere as a legitimate one." Tucker still didn't stop, pointing out in his defense that the "women" were 16 (our quotes, not his). When McMahon pointed out that some of the girls were "as young as thirteen" Tucker still didn't recant, saying "It's a hard-nosed group here today!" Damn, some people are uptight about statutory rape.
I don't know what the fuck Carlson's problem is, but Jeffs was a predator who send hundreds of boys into the street to be homeless so he could keep his mitts on teenage girls. I mean, most of these folks are on welfare, so why didn't that upset him. Oh, they're white.
Alternative lifestyle my ass. It's child molestation. Carlson has four kids, I wonder what he would say if his oldest daughter wound up with a 47 year old boyfriend at 16. Think he'd be that tolerant?
When asked about his Connecticut for Lieberman candidacy having a negative effect on Democrats in House races in the state of Connecticut, Turncoat Joe said:
"Well, I guess I should say that they should have thought of that during the primary, but here we are."
Yes, here we are, you odious Turncoat.
Oh, and for all those who have been questioning whether Lieberman is campaigning with Republicans, you can watch Lieberman and Chris Shays campaigning together on video at a rally. Including Chris Shays saying about Lieberman that "we have a national treasure" in him at this public event, while introducing him to the crowd — and then later hugging him on camera (and then getting an admonishment from such PDAs in the future from a skittish Turncoat Joe).
Any questions now?
Memo to Rahm Emmanuel:
Take the hint, Lieberman is going to fuck your candidates over for spite. Petty bastard. Thought this would work out your way, huh? He doesn't give a shit about your House candidates. He just made that crystal clear, buddy.
You need to run him to ground or he will continue to fuck you over.
Lieberman has to be one of the most selfish pols in modern history.
REP. ALBERT R. WYNN has represented Maryland's 4th Congressional District since 1993, and in that time he has never faced a serious challenger. This year, in Donna Edwards , he does. Ms. Edwards, a lawyer and foundation executive with a distinguished record of civic activism, is Mr. Wynn's opponent in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary. Tough, articulate and knowledgeable, she is one of the smartest and most impressive newcomers in Maryland politics.
The 4th District, comprising parts of Prince George's and Montgomery counties, is heavily Democratic, a profile that meshes with Ms. Edwards's long involvement in liberal causes. She has championed a higher minimum wage, campaign finance reform and an array of environmental issues, and she fought for legislation to curtail domestic violence. Locally, she was an ardent opponent of National Harbor, the multibillion-dollar development underway in Prince George's, but she came around to supporting it when she was satisfied that it would include a balance of commercial, entertainment and residential components. Her assent removed one of the project's last major hurdles -- a fact that testifies both to her skill as an advocate and her openness to reasonable compromise.
Ms. Edwards worked for Mr. Wynn as a clerk in the 1980s, when he served in the Maryland House of Delegates. Initially she backed him for Congress, but since then, she says, Mr. Wynn has betrayed the principles that first got him elected. In making that point in a debate with Mr. Wynn this month, she left him out of sorts and on the defensive.
No wonder. As we've noted in the past, Mr. Wynn has often seemed more involved in playing the role of a kingmaker in Prince George's than in his duties in Congress. On key federal issues, he has cast himself as the most bipartisan member of Maryland's congressional delegation. That's great in theory, but too often his votes have been at odds with good government and the interests of his constituents. He has backed the estate tax repeal, a measure that benefits the richest Americans at the expense of the poor and middle class. He supported the Bush administration's energy bill in 2003, offering subsidies to oil and gas companies even as they were headed toward record profits. He has flip-flopped on fuel efficiency standards and opposed campaign finance reform. And he has tried to clear the way for casino gambling in Prince George's. All in all, it is a lackluster record.
On the war in Iraq, Ms. Edwards has scored points by attacking Mr. Wynn as Maryland's Joseph I. Lieberman -- a supporter of the war portrayed as too close to the Bush administration. Mr. Wynn backed the war at the outset, but he has since recanted, saying he was misled by bad intelligence. More to the point of today's debate, both candidates are calling for a U.S. withdrawal, a scenario that we believe would leave chaos in its wake.
Mr. Wynn insists he has been a successful pork-barrel politician; we suspect Ms. Edwards, razor-sharp and relentless, would be at least as effective. We disagree with her on some important issues, but we are convinced she would be the more forceful, principled and effective representative. And while her insurgent candidacy is an uphill battle, it should put Mr. Wynn on notice that voters expect quality representation in Congress, not just a local political boss.
I have not contributed any money this cycle to any race, and will not contribute to any race in Maryland or Virginia. After mocking the hapless and whiny Steele, there's no need to give a Republican or GOP-lite like Wynn any tool to go after their opponents. Therefore, I won't tell anyone to send any of these candidates money.
However, if people want to get involved in her campaign, this is her website
By Amit R. Paley Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 30, 2006; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- In a city with few real refuges from sectarian violence -- not government offices, not military bases, not even mosques -- one place always emerged as a safe haven: hospitals.
So Mounthir Abbas Saud, whose right arm and jaw were ripped off when a car bomb exploded six months ago, must have thought the worst was over when he arrived at Ibn al-Nafis Hospital, a major medical center here.
Instead, it had just begun. A few days into his recovery at the facility, armed Shiite Muslim militiamen dragged the 43-year-old Sunni mason down the hallway floor, snapping intravenous needles and a breathing tube out of his body, and later riddled his body with bullets, family members said.
Authorities say it was not an isolated incident. In Baghdad these days, not even the hospitals are safe. In growing numbers, sick and wounded Sunnis have been abducted from public hospitals operated by Iraq's Shiite-run Health Ministry and later killed, according to patients, families of victims, doctors and government officials.
As a result, more and more Iraqis are avoiding hospitals, making it even harder to preserve life in a city where death is seemingly everywhere. Gunshot victims are now being treated by nurses in makeshift emergency rooms set up in homes. Women giving birth are smuggled out of Baghdad and into clinics in safer provinces.
(Bridget Brown/ Bangor Daily News via Associated Press) Logan, 3, and Justin Holbrook, 14, rode to dinner with the life-size cutout of their father, Lieutenant Colonel Randall Holbrook, a Maine National Guardsman from Hermon, Maine. Guard families cope in two dimensions `Flat Daddy' cutouts ease longing
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | August 30, 2006
Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.
But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they're even closer.
Welcome to the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.
The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.
``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."
At the request of relatives, about 200 Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy photos have been enlarged and printed at the state National Guard headquarters in Augusta. The families cut out the photos, which show the Guard members from the waist up, and glue them to a $2 piece of foam board.
Sergeant First Class Barbara Claudel, the state family-support director who began the program, said the response from Guard families has been giddily enthusiastic.
As many reasons as I've had to criticize Kyra Phillips over the years I actually imagine she's probably an ok person, so I do feel a bit bad that her family life has just gone from zero to nightmare in 30 seconds...
``Live From'' anchor Kyra Phillips had apparently left the set around 12:48 p.m. EDT Tuesday for a bathroom break while the news channel carried Bush's speech marking the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Phillips' wireless microphone was turned on and picked up about a minute and a half of a muffled conversation she had with an unidentified woman where she apparently talked about her husband, laughed and talked about her brother.
``I've got to be protective of him,'' she said without being aware that the mic was on. ``He's married, three kids, and his wife is just a control freak.'' CNN anchor Daryn Kagan broke into the telecast immediately afterward updating viewers on what Bush had been saying.
Well, she said nice things about her husband.
You know, I think it's pretty clear to most people when someone doesn't like them. While humiliating, it's hardly a shock. Or it could be a kick ass family fight.
PIGS in blankets? “They’re back with a vengeance!” said Sean Driscoll, an owner of the silver-tray catering company Glorious Food in Manhattan. Though they never disappeared from the bar mitzvah circuit (where they are often called franks in jackets, the way Katz’s Delicatessen, being kosher, labels them), they had been disparaged as a cliché for too many years. The classiest caterers kept their distance.
But now you can forget caviar and sushi. Without pigs in blankets, it seems, no black tie cocktail hour is complete. They are more than acceptable; they are again being seen for what they are: perfect finger food, delicious and surrounded by the same aura of affection enjoyed by all comfort foods.
Mr. Driscoll’s company served them in June for a formal garden party at the Museum of Modern Art and for 4,000 people at the Robin Hood Foundation benefit. Waiters passed them in July at a party for the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y.
“They’re acceptable guilt food,” he said. “They’re not like buying a hot dog from a street vendor, and besides, the pastry is a good blotter for alcohol.”
Helene Cisek, the catering director for Eli’s Vinegar Factory, said that pigs in blankets are always the first things to be “gobbled up” and that for catered parties they always plan to have extras on hand.
Sometimes the blanket itself is more like a fine quilt. The franks might be tucked into flaky puff pastry by establishments like Daniel Boulud’s Restaurant Daniel, and his catering company, Feast & Fêtes. At Daniel, guests can pluck pigs in blankets from an elaborate puff pastry dome that is fitted with holes to hold the tidbits.
Marcy Blum, a wedding and party planner, said they had become essential at parties again, like at the black tie wedding last week at Cipriani Wall Street.
And Serena Bass, the English caterer, said: “We might be talking about hors d’oeuvres made of quail and moulard duck breast something or other, and the client will clutch her neck and ask, almost sotto voce, whether they could possibly have pigs in blankets. It’s almost embarrassing because it’s all anybody wants. We literally serve them all the time.”
Ms. Bass makes hers with kosher cocktail franks, dusts the puff pastry with poppy seeds and varies the standard pot of Gulden’s mustard with dips like quince paste and homemade barbecue sauce. They were on the menu for a house party she catered for Microsoft last week in the Hamptons.
A few weeks ago they were even served at a reception after a memorial service for a member of the board at Lincoln Center. “The family requested them because the deceased loved them,” said José Fong, the director of catering for Restaurant Associates, which handled the event.
Because some still see them as trite, variations can make the difference. Nisa Lee, a caterer in Pelham, N.Y., who specializes in Thai, Moroccan and other international cuisines, said she liked to put a modern spin on them by using duck sausage, chorizo and andouille and by wrapping them in phyllo or wonton skins. “They’re a big hit, no matter what,” she said.
The concept of pigs in blankets, that is, sausage meat in pastry, is familiar, in one form or another, in many cuisines. Saucisson en croûte in France, toad in the hole in England and even pot stickers in China and empanadas in Argentina are examples. They are close cousins to American pretzel dogs and corn dogs. Some say the American version originated in the South, where they are usually wrapped in biscuit dough.
One more sign of their popularity is that Dufour Pastry Kitchens, which has been in business for 21 years making and selling frozen hors d’oeuvres in all-butter puff pastry, will add pigs in blankets to the line. The company never used meat products before.
One summer, when I went up to see my sister, I had to fix lunch. Now, fixing lunch for kids is no mean trick. Read the New Yorker to see. Vegeterian curry isn't gonna cut it. So my sister had hotdogs, a can of dinner rolls, beans and a working oven.
So I cooked the franks, let them cool off, wrapped them in dough and baked them. They loved them. I simply didn't have any idea of what they would eat, so I told them what this was, fixed it, and they loved it. Well, my niece didn't like the beans that went with it, but they both ate the pigs in a blanket.
I think it's a great kid food with good portion control and can even make things like tofu franks palatable, with some mustard, of course. I think the commercial version tends to be greasy. If it was something I was making, I'd probably go with pork sausage or kielbasa, and I'd make them a little bigger.
As appetizers go, I really like mini quiche and stuffed mushrooms as well.
REUTERS/J.P. Moczulski (CANADA) Julie Ann Catherine Mason, wife of Master Corporal Jeffrey Scott Walsh and holding their seven-month-old son Benjamin, is consoled by members of the armed forces as she gets into her limo after a repatriation ceremony at the Canadian Forces Base Trenton August 12, 2006. Walsh was killed in what is believed to be a friendly-fire gun accident after arriving in Afghanistan only six days earlier.
This was sent my way from the Galloping Beaver, from the Great Wooded North.
I don't normally pay attention to this kind of blather, but this particular post deserves some treatment considering certain portions are intentionally deceiving.
First, the title. The shrill beaver. Apparently the author doesn't accept that questioning those in power is reasonable.
Then this:
Can a beaver run with it’s tail between it’s legs?
A clear indication that the author thinks this postcontains a suggestion that Canada withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan.
There is no such suggestion in that post. My suggestion is that Harper keeps touting "Canadian values" as the reason for being in Afghanistan and I'm not buying that line of bullshit.
The author is directed, in comments, to prior posts at TGB which point out that his basic premise is seriously flawed. He then goes on to suggest that he has difficulty reconciling any support I might have for the Afghanistan mission with what I've written.
He wants me to put in print something like this: "I, without reservation, support the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan."
Except that, I don't. My support comes with serious reservations, not the least of which is that I expect Harper to behave with a great deal more honesty. And, I have one other very good reason for questioning a committment of troops to combat.
I absolutely despise war.
I have a good reason for that too. Unlike the microchip militia, who cheerlead the use of military force without qualification, I've been exposed to war and combat - up close and personal - more than once. I've got a chestful of useless gongs and some permanent shrapnel wounds to remind me of days which I would rather have missed in my life.
I've experienced the exhilaration of close-quarters battle and the years of remorse that follow because I had no choice but to kill the teenage soldiers in the fire-pit to my front.
I've been beside a good man, a highly competent marine, who suddenly dropped like a bag of shit while I got splattered with flesh and blood. The movies make it look so much more dramatic and heroic than it really is. The truth is just a bloody, fucking mess.
I've been on the right flank of a patrol when the man on point stepped on a landmine. And all we could do was watch as he lay there screaming, his viscera splayed over the ground, the lower half of his body gone. He lived for over five minutes while the medic did a drill on him - with morphine auto-injectors. It ended with a colour sergeant screaming, "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" because he had been unable to protect a good man.
I've watched kids die. It ends everything. Their personalities cease to be a part of the team; their humour stops; their dreams end; and, their death affects a hundred other people - permanently.
I've had to call fire down on my own position while I watched my men nod. They knew, as I did, that there was little chance we would get out of it alive, much less unscathed. It was necessary at the time and the cost of that act is paid for in year after year of nightmares.
I have a direct and long-service association with both British and Canadian militaries. I have an affinity for the people who serve in those militaries and I have an interest in how they are committed. My interest is in their welfare, how they're led and how safe they are. Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, they are kids on an adventure. They won't come home that way.
I'm not "anti-war". I am, however, highly skeptical whenever troops are committed to combat. I expect that the real reasons for going to war will be clearly enunciated by the politicians who continue to live in comfort and convenience while others suffer and die.
To provide unreserved support for the Afghanistan mission is not only stupid, it is irresponsible. And, it is not contingent upon me to provide alternatives to the decisions of the self-styled warrior class, those who are prepared to waste lives while not risking theirs, be they prime ministers, presidents or keyboard commandos.
I will question everything about the Afghanistan mission. My support comes only when I receive rational, truthful answers. The canned rhetorical responses of the politicians serve only to cause my skepticism to increase. The fact that the initial assault on Afghanistan was a total cock-up and the US definition of "reconstruction" doesn't seem to carry with it any form of accountabilityonly fuels my desire to question the whole thing.
And as for this:
It’s difficult to reconcile his support for the mission and his experience with his post(s). I’ll take your word for it
Please, don't waste your fucking time. Your opinion doesn't matter to me.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that most Canadians, after reading of another soldier killed in Afghanistan, ponder whether to return their empty beer bottles or shine up the motorcycle. Almost no one considers that there are 27 Canadians who can never entertain such mundane thoughts because they were blown away in a mission that appears to lack long-term definition and has gone on longer than the US involvement in World War II.
Shrill? If you say so, pencil-neck. Just think. You could have used churlish.
You're welcome to yomp a mile in my old combat boots. On second thought, make that 50 yards. There's little point in continuing once the laughter starts.
This was the comment I left behind
KevinG ,
Go enlist and volunteer for Afghanistan if you support the mission so much. Because you simply need to shut your fucking mouth and listen to this man and his experiences. You've never had them, so you don't have ANY FUCKING IDEA what he's talking about.
You don't have to agree, but some respect is in order
There are things people lie about, and things they don't. Nightmares and watching friends die usually isn't one of them among the sane. The turd giving him a hard time has no idea what watching people die, and even worse, watching their families, is like. There is nothing worse than watching the hope drain from someone's face as they realize they've lost someone.
God, I'd love to take some chiclenhawks to a VA hospital
Soldiers defending our nation are fighting a two-front war. There's the well-known battle against foreign enemies like Al Qaeda. And now there's a domestic fight against companies that have targeted military personnel for payday loans at interest rates that typically exceed 400% and can run as high as 2,000%. A mounting body of evidence, including a report released by the Pentagon this month, shows that these legalized loansharks are damaging America's armed forces by driving thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen - as well as their families - into acute, crushing debt and even bankruptcy.
It's long past time for Congress to pass a strong law prohibiting the financial exploitation of America's defenders.
An estimated 22,000 companies nationwide offer payday loans or other short-term credit, typically a short-term advance on a borrower's paycheck. Many of the companies are based in states like South Dakota and Delaware that have no usury cap and can charge whatever interest rate they like, typically $15 per $100 borrowed.
That's more than 400% a year, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer rights organization.
More than 90% of the time, those who take out payday loans roll the debt over into at least five loans, typically paying $834 for a $339 loan, according to the Pentagon study.
As the war in Iraq swelled the ranks of the military in recent years, payday lenders have flocked like vultures to stateside bases, advertising wonderful-sounding "patriot" or "stars and stripes" loans to military personnel, who by definition tend to be solid citizens who can't skip town but are strapped for cash. A typical Army private first class makes only $17,000 a year, and statistics show soldiers are three times more likely to take payday loans than civilians ........................
That's a good start, but Congress and the Pentagon also need to raise military wages. Trying to live on near-poverty wages is how between 7% and 20% of all soldiers - an estimated 100,000 at a minimum - fall into the debt trap. And all this high-cost borrowing takes a heavy toll on the nation's strength: Under military rules, soldiers in deep debt lose their security clearance and can't be deployed overseas. That happened to 5,400 sailors and Marines in a single fiscal year, according to Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri.
"If a sailor has lost control of his financial health, he has lost the ability to deploy. If he cannot deploy, military readiness is impacted," says Rear Adm. Len Hering, who commands all Navy bases in California. The Pentagon study similarly concluded that "predatory lending undermines military readiness, harms the morale of troops and their families and adds to the cost of fielding an all-volunteer fighting force."
Our nation would surely go to war with an external foe brazen enough to target and weaken 100,000 active-duty soldiers. Our nation's leaders should be no less merciless at naming, and publicly condemning, the companies victimizing American troops and their families.
Considering half of all soldiers have dependents this is no small issue.
The more you learn about Allen, the more his dark side emerges.
Only a decade ago, as governor of Virginia, Allen personally initiated an association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council and among the largest white supremacist groups.
...After speaking with CCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum and two of his cohorts, Allen suggested that they pose for a photograph with then-National Rifle Association spokesman and actor Charlton Heston. The photo appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC's newsletter, the Citizens Informer.
According to Baum, Allen had not naively stumbled into a chance meeting with unfamiliar people. He knew exactly who and what the CCC was about and, from Baum's point of view, was engaged in a straightforward political transaction. "It helped us as much as it helped him," Baum told me. "We got our bona fides." And so did Allen.
Descended from the White Citizens' Councils...the CCC is designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In its "Statement of Principles," the CCC declares, "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."
Lowell at Raising Kaine dug up some quotes that illustrate what, exactly, the CCC and their good friend Allen are all about.
*"Each of the three major races plays a distinct role in history. . . . The whites were the creators of civilization, the yellows its sustainers and copyists, the blacks its destroyers." (www.cofcc.org, 12/98)
*Abraham Lincoln was "surely the most evil American in history," and Martin Luther King was a "depraved miscreant." (www.cofcc.org, 12/98)
*"The Jews' motto is 'never forget, and never forgive.' One can't agree with the way they've turned spite into welfare billions for themselves, but the 'never forget' part is very sound." (Citizens Informer, Winter/97)
*"The presence [in Congress] of even one white person with our interests foremost in his mind is simply unacceptable to the issues-obsessed conservative race traitors. Texas Governor George Bush and his brother Jeb in Florida have manifested their self-hatred by embracing Hispanics ahead of whites. Somehow we must find a way to relieve whites of their self-hatred." ("Open Letter to White People," www.cofcc.org, 12/98)]
These are Allen's allies, and it's why it's so important to get rid of Sen. Felix Macaca. Politics matters, and we have a duty and responsibility to help cleanse our government of those who might be wearing hoods were it 50 years ago.
50? No, more like today, if they could get away with it. Do they know Felix is a half Sephardic Jew with a mom from Tunisia?
Oh yeah.......
Gordon Baum, the CCC Chair standing with Allen, had a radio show called Right at Night. His co-host was Earl Holt, the local CCC Kleagle. Here's a letter Earl sent to Archpundit http://www.archpundit.com/archives/005982.html
Hey Commie:
Imagine my chagrin when I used a search engine to find commentary about myself, and there was your shallow, dilettante, asshole self, labeling me a "white supremacist."
Being the shallow, nigger-loving dilettante that you are, you probably DO consider niggers to be your equal (who am I to question this?): Yet, unlike you and your allies, I have an I.Q. in excess of 130, which grants me the ability to objectively evaluate the Great American Nigro (Africanus Criminalis.)
The nigro is 11.5 % of the U.S. population, yet he commits in excess of 55% of all felonies (although felonies are UNDER-represented in the nigro community, where observing the law is considered "acting White!") Moreover, he (or should I say she?)accounts for 48% of all ADC recipients in the U.S. We have spent over $7 TRILLION on "Urban Welfare Spending" since the mid-1960s, (black economists Thomas Sowell & Walter Williams) and the nigro is still as criminal, surly, lazy , violent and stupid as he/she ever was, while his illegitimacy rate is 80% nationwide, and over 90% in the "large urban areas."
By the way, those of us who tried to end forced busing in St. Louis did so because it is a colossal waste and nothing more than a symbolic gesture that has seriously deprived every school district in Missouri that doesn't benefit from a deseg program : It has cost the state of Missouri $3.5 BILLION since 1983, (another $3.5 Billion in Kansas City,) yet, the nigro "scholars" bussed to county schools under deseg "improve less academically than every other category of student in the St. Louis Public Schools," according to the Federal Court- ordered Lissitz Study.
Also, you lying asshole, in the 2003-2004 school year, St. Louis spent $11,711 per nigger -idiot in the public schools, yet, half of all students test at the 20th percentile (or lower) on nationally-standardized tests. (If I were Emperor, I would forcibly hand over you and all your commie apologists for nigro under-achievement to White, working-class parents of public school students, and let them have their way with you...)
Some day, You sanctimonious nigger-lovers will either have to live amongst them ("nothing cures an enthusiasm for integration like a good dose of niggers") or else defend yourselves against them. My guess is that you are such a cowardly and pusillanimous lot of girly-boys, they will kill fuck, kill and eat you just as they do young White males in every prison system in the U.S. That's right: When defending this savage and brutish lot, you must also consider their natural ( or should I say UN-natural) enthusiasm for buggery!
I honestly pray to God that some nigger fucks, kills and eats you and everyone you claim to love!
Earl P. Holt III 4029 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63110-3621
I have an IQ over 130, so I must be smarter than him.
Senator Allen sure does have some interesting friends.
Jennifer Lawless is running for the House in Rhode Island against agressively anti-choice candidate Jim Langevin. As Matt Stoller points out, her ad is terrific, exactly the kind of unapologetic ad a pro-choice candidate should be running in a blue state where pro-choice matters. It’s emotional, hard-hitting, it has authority and she picks a fight. She comes off as sensible, no-nonsense, and standing for something. Major, major kudos to her campaign for its messaging and the ad’s creators; it really works.
On the other end of the spectrum there’s NARAL, who are launching their own campaign to elect pro-choice candidates in the fall. Which is great, we wholeheartedly approve. On their info page regarding "what you can do about it," they call to "block anti-choice justices," and "elect pro-choice Senate candidates in 2006 who can help block anti-choice Supreme Court nominees." Fabulous. But do they mean Senate candidates Lincoln Chafee and Joe Lieberman, both of whom have NARAL’s endorsement, who both voted for cloture on Samuel Alito? Does this pass anyone’s smell test?
As a side note, long-term visitors to this site will remember that our Lamont/Lieberman and Chafee coverage began during the fight against Alito when the Gang of 14 announced it would vote for confirmation. I called NARAL that day and asked if they were going to pull Chafee’s endorsement as a result of his cloture vote. Many will recall we were told that NARAL did not consider a cloture vote to be "significant," and when I raised an objection to this I was told that someone would get back to me. Nobody ever did.
Recently I learned that they have pointedly never called back, assuming that I would just go away.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the city to stop illegally denying food stamps and other aid to battered immigrant women and children and to overhaul the error-plagued computer programs and training manuals that continue to lead welfare workers to turn them away.
The judge determined that high-level city policymakers had long been aware of the systemic problems, but did little or nothing to fix them until a group of battered women filed a lawsuit late last year. As a result, if the city and state continue to fight the lawsuit, the judge said, he will be highly likely to find them liable for “deliberate indifference” to violations of the plaintiffs’ federal and state rights.
“It is not the policy of the United States, nor of the State of New York, to leave destitute the battered immigrant wives and children of lawful U.S. residents just because their abusive husbands are no longer supporting them or providing them with a basis for obtaining aid,” the judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, wrote in his 83-page decision. He certified the lawsuit as a class action and issued a preliminary injunction against the city and state.
The judge commended the city for fixing some of the problems since February, when he issued a partial injunction and held nine days of hearings in the case. But he added that problems persisted because of inadequate training, poor computer design and faulty directives.
“The simple truth, moreover, is that the ameliorative actions now taken by the city and state defendants would not likely have been taken if this lawsuit had not been brought and had the court not issued its initial injunction,” he wrote.
After welfare reform, Giuliani made it much harder to get food stamps and other government services. Bloomberg has only made changes under court order, like this.
The Republicans' restiveness suggests that Bush may not be able to stick with his current Iraq policy through Election Day. Even if he does, he will come under heavy pressure from his own party after Nov. 7 to pursue a demonstrably more effective strategy -- or to begin pulling American forces out.
But he won't. There won't be a more effective strategy. And forces won't be pulled out.
This has been made clear over and over again. I don't know why people refuse to listen.
Here's where I disagree. Armies are physical beings. At some point within the next six months, there won't be an Army to deploy to Iraq. Three tours is about it. Afterwards, people start to think of quitting. Sure, you can send more Guard units, but they aren't the Regular Army. The recruits now, kids from youth prisons, kids with records, gang members, 40 year old women running from their responsibilities would have been politely shown the door at any time before March 2003.
The only possible solution is a draft, and no one is sending the Duke class of 2008 to die in the sandbox. Just isn't happening. In an era where kids wear helmets to go ice skating and even in peacetime parents oppose enlistment, who would vote for a draft?
So we face a conundrum. And Bush will handle it as he always has, by running. One day, Dick Cheney will be told he is a very sick man, with not much time and that the only way to save his life is to leave the WH. Bush will sadly agree, and pick someone else for them job. No, not Condi Rice. Maybe McCain. maybe Hegel, someone who is palatable.
Then, after a few weeks, when it is clear that the Iraq war is over, Bush, too, will be found to be near collapse, and Iraq will be President Hegel's job. And he will be the one to end the war
When Bush says this will be another president's problem, he is probably right. Only thing is, we're probably not talking 2009.
Last Wednesday at Hotline’s On Call blog, Marc Ambinder and Shira Toeplitz dropped a bombshell on the Democratic netroots the likes unseen since Jerome Armstrong was revealed a stock tout in a past life: Nicco Mele, the web strategist second only to Joe Trippi in credit received for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run, has been informally advising 2008 presidential candidate John McCain. Not to get too pedantic, but Dean is an anti-war Democrat and McCain is a pro-war Republican. Mele’s McCain affinity seems largely based on his efforts, however symbolic, to get money out of politics.
After Dean, Mele went on to found the Democratic-oriented website building firm EchoDitto, which has built a solid reputation for itself. This revelation, however, is causing trouble not just for consultant Mele himself but for his consulting firm as well. And as we’ll get to below, some snap judgments about the announcement have yet to be revised.
While I currently don’t know what role I’d like to have in 2008, if Sen. McCain runs I hope to be helpful. This is a personal decision for me based on my own first-hand experience. I like Sen. McCain - I think he should be president!
Make no mistake about it — this is conduct unbecoming of a progressive blogger. In one comment section at Daily Kos, he got nicked “Anakin Mele,” and despite emphatic statements that he is not on the McCain payroll, more than a few assumed he’d been bought off.
But among bloggers who know Mele personally, fellow Dean alum Rick Klau stood up for him and identified as a concerned friend:
To those who’ve suggested he’s abandoned his principles to support John McCain, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Misguided? Maybe. A sell-out? No way.
Anonyblogger Vermonter noted in an entry cross-posted on more than one lefty blog that the original Deaniacs weren’t always motivated by partisanship:
One of the things that most people wouldn’t know is that quite a few of the main Dean web people were not at all sharply partisan about Dean and would often say favorable things about his opponents. And had very nuanced opinions about a number of topics. Meaning, well, they were very reasonable, non-dogmatic people. But, McCain, Nicco? Really?
Vermont NPR commentator Philip Baruth saw it as the “latest sign of the netroots migrating” rightward, conflating the episode with former Kerry hand Peter Daou going to work for Hillary Clinton — hardly a move of the same order, especially as Hillary has begun inching away from the Lieberman/Bush position on Iraq.
Most consequentially, however, lead Kossack Markos Moulitsas revealed in his take nothing we didn’t know already, namely that he can’t be friends with people whose political beliefs he doesn’t share:
I used to consider Nicco Mele, a top former Dean webhand, a friend until his rabid desire for regulating the blogosphere led me to write him off.
And he didn’t call for anything he hasn’t called for before, namely Mele’s exile from the left, which MoveOn’s Zack Exley proposed (in another dKos diary) in a considerably more thoughtful manner:
McCain has a credible chance of convincing large numbers of uninformed liberals that he is compatible with a progressive agenda. What he’s got going for him is his association with campaign finance reform, and a personal demeanor full of cultural liberal signifiers. … If he can swing a handful of defections of high-profile progressives, then he’s got a real chance of adding the phrase “McCain Democrats” to the lexicon in ‘08. … Democratic consultants and figureheads need to know that going off to work for McCain means losing their place in the rising Democratic tide.
It’s certainly an appropriate strategy; in national politics, you can switch allegiances exactly once, and as Mele is finding out, even that comes at a price. Of course, if McCain wins the presidency, McCain Democrats won’t be wanting for work. And even if McCain loses, there are worse fates than taking on corporate accounts.
But Kos went further, giving the impression that EchoDitto itself had a material connection to the campaign, because the “expertise and intelligence he is gathering from the following clients can and will end up as part of the McCain arsenal in 2008.” No one can argue with this excerpt, but it implies no organizational responsibility on the part of EchoDitto. The firm’s initial public statement was inadequate, but nevertheless made clear it would have no part in a Republican campaign.
If EchoDitto had remained silent, he might’ve had a point. But I’m still waiting for Kos and a host of others to acknowledge that one evening later EchoDitto New York dir. Harish Rao announced that Mele was stepping aside as CEO:
Nicco’s recent post about his support for Senator John McCain has caused quite a lot of ruckus. We at EchoDitto disagree with his decision. While Nicco does not work for Senator McCain, his support for a possible McCain candidacy runs contrary to many of our core beliefs at EchoDitto. … Everyone in this world has to follow their own heart. Nicco has agreed to, effective immediately, take a leave of absence from our company. We hope he takes some time to re-consider his position. I am assuming Nicco’s responsibilities for the duration of his leave of absence.
Somehow, I expect Rao will be losing the modifier from his “interim CEO” title before long.
Yet the Kos-imposed embargo remains in place. And so does the one from Steve Gilliard. More suprisingly — at least based on my own impression — so does the one from DavidNYC at Swing State Project, and he’d even allowed that the perfect solution would be for McCain Mele to go.
All of which provides an interesting coda to the offensive ally renouncement wars (we really need a better name for that phenomenon) earlier this summer. It is surely too much to ask that bloggers distance themselves from every awful thing said by someone on their own side. But is it really too much to ask that they unrenounce after the key circumstances have changed? As renunciation warrior Glenn Greenwald once memorably asked, when does the “self-correcting” blogosphere start to self-correct?
Update: DavidNYC follows up, and asks some good questions that didn’t occur to me:
I recognize that political consulting isn’t bound by the same rules of professional responsibility, though perhaps it ought to be. So does this leave of absence satisfy me? I can’t say that it does, in part because we haven’t been told what it means. Does Nicco still have access to firm resources? To client information? Is he still drawing a salary or otherwise receiving money from the firm?
If Nicco straight-out left the firm, these questions wouldn’t exist. But even if EchoDitto answered them, I’d still be unsatisfied. How long will this leave last? Until Nicco changes his mind and admits his grave mistake? Until the end of the presidential election? Hell, what if - heaven forbid - McCain wins? Do we give Nicco a four-year or eight-year extension? And what if Nicco does come back - and then says he wants to support another Republican? What do we do then?
In an email to me this afternoon, DavidNYC pointed out that considering the degree of controversy, EchoDitto should have contacted its critics to alert them to Nicco’s leave of absence, something it apparently has not done. And as I said earlier, I don’t think Mele’s time with EchoDitto has long to go; they’ve revised their position once already, and I’d bet another is coming. If they don’t do this within another week or two, however, I think their critics would be correct.
I'll say publically what I've been saying privately.
First, fuck Beutler and his concern. I wonder what he would say if a GOP company did work for Lamont? These guys took partisanship and turned it into near treason. He can act all concerned about this because he knows on his side of aisle, the company would be hemmoraging clients as I write this. Bush is a fanatic for loyalty and Karl Rove doesn't bullshit with that either.
Until he severes all ties to his company, progressives would be foolish to give them more work. A lot of Ecco Ditto's clients raise their money from contributions. How can they raise money from progressives and fund McCain's web guy? Did he sever all ties from the company? No? Then fuck his leave of absence.
I don't care about him working for McCain. But man up and cross the aisle, don't play us for fools and say "well, I'll be away for a couple of months or a year" but still make my company rich.
Look, the people they get money from are sick of being stabbed in the back by people who say one thing and do something else. They don't have to pay for that, or someone's conscience. They support progressive causes, and a company which seeks to serve those causes either need to do so or cut the bullshit. How many Dem officials and pundits have been gutted for far less than this? You can't have two sets of morals.
Let me explain something else: the GOP web game sucks. Their blogs can't raise money or organize, they can't help their candidates and they have never come close to running a web based campaign like Hackett or Schrader. Even Webb benefitted from the web in a way NO GOP candidate has.
Look at the Laffey campaign, if the DSCC had pulled that shit, hell would have broken loose. But all Wal Mart Mike can do is whine.
So when people wonder what Mele is bringing to McCain, you can see it in Ecco Ditto's client list. And that is an issue to a lot of people.
Now, I'm not saying his belief isn't genuine, but he sold his company on the basis of shared ideological belief. Well, now the hand is being called. You sold yourself to us this way and we're gonna hold you to it.
Lately it seems the media has been playing the Race Card again by implying that there is racism in the Republican Party, despite the fact that, as Tony Snow has pointed out, "Racism isn't that big a deal any more." Virginia Senator George Allen's pollnumbers are plummeting because of the misunderstanding over his use of the word "macaca." Montana Senator Conrad Burns is in trouble because he asked to see the green card of his Guatemalan house painter. Pat Buchanan is being criticized for calling for a moratorium on all immigration, warning ominously that "by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built." The Weekly Standard is taken to task for depicting Al Sharpton as a chauffer, which is only derogatory if you think there is something wrong with the noble profession of chauffeuring. And last week Tramm Hudson, the Republican candidate for Katharine Harris's congressional seat in Florida, was attacked for raising an issue that I must confess I was not aware of until he brought it up: "I grew up In Alabama," he said, "and I understand, and I know this from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know to swim."
Frankly, I don't know how it is racist to point out that blacks can't swim and it seems to me it's better that we confront this problem instead of sweeping it under the rug. Think of how many lives could have been saved if we had known about this before Hurricane Katrina and done something about it. I wonder if liberals want to keep a lid on this crisis so that they can blame President Bush for the lives lost after the hurricane, when it may in fact have been the fault of African-Americans themselves for not learning how to swim. Clearly, Hudson was trying to help black people by discussing this issue and it's unfortunate he was forced to apologize for broaching the subject.
I really don't know where this idea that Republicans are racist came from. As blogger La Shawn Barber recently pointed out, the party that is historically the most racist in this country is not the party of Lincoln but the Democrats. "Do you recall watching those grainy black and white films of cops beating down protestors?" she writes of Civil Rights protests of the 1960s. "Chances are, they were Democrats. The man who came to symbolize the water hose tyranny was police chief Bull Connor, Public Safety Commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama, and a staunch Democrat."
I wonder if that is why so many Democrats like Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott and Jesse Helms became Republicans after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Apparently, they were so embarrassed by the historically racist legacy of the Democrats that they left the party. Ever since President Nixon's "Southern Strategy," which welcomed Southerners into the Republican Party and is often unfairly depicted as racist when it was nothing of the kind, according to La Shawn, the GOP has dedicated itself to turning a color-blind eye toward the issue of race. I should point out, however, that Nixon did have help from one Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Joseph Lieberman of his time, in instituting another of his pioneering policies on the issue of race, "benign neglect," which has been official government policy toward African-Americans ever since.
I don't know how people could think conservatives are racists when La Shawn has one of the top conservative blogs. Yes, although you would barely know it from her completely colorless prose, La Shawn is, in fact, black (and, apparently, a poor swimmer). You probably wouldn't know she was black at all except for the fact that she often needs to remind readers of how brave she is when she is continually victimized by unfair attacks for being a black conservative with very strong opinions. La Shawn did not get any special preferential treatment from the blogosphere. She floated to the top of the blogosphere by pulling herself up by her own bootstraps and not through any affirmative action plan, which she believes just makes blacks lazy and shiftless. She hates the way "race hustlers" continually depict blacks as helpless victims and deplores "dumbing down" standards to create more diversity in hiring and college admissions. No one had to dumb down the blogosphere to let her in. In fact, her success is all the more remarkable when you take into consideration that, according to her, "whites generally have higher cognitive ability than blacks."
But while I am happy that La Shawn triumphed over her lack of cognitive ability, I am concerned about the possibility of her drowning. I think something should be done about blacks' inability to stay afloat. No doubt Democrats would want to throw money at the problem by handing out free life preservers or providing government-subsidized boat rides or swimming classes. A better solution might be to consider vouchers or private accounts to pay for life jackets or private swimming classes. We might also consider a program modeled after Nancy Reagan's very successful anti-drug efforts, which got so many black people off of crack, perhaps by creating public service announcements with a catchy slogan such as "Just Say No To Drowning." But I think the best way to teach people to swim is the way my father taught me, which was to just throw me in the water and let me sink or swim on my own. You would be surprised at how effective this method is. I think this is the approach that truly embodies conservative principles. So if you happen to see La Shawn or another black person near a body of water, throw them in. They will thank you for it later.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: August 29, 2006
WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 (AP) — The Pentagon has done little to recover about $900,000 mistakenly paid to 75 Army reservists who have not reported for duty since late 2001, Congressional investigators said in a report on Monday.
Fewer than two dozen of the deserters have surrendered or been arrested, the report said.
The report by the Government Accountability Office details continuing problems with the military payroll system, which has been consistently criticized as convoluted and error-prone, with repeated instances of troops being overpaid or underpaid.
The number of improper payments and the money involved was probably significantly understated, the investigators said. The report said the Army and the Army National Guard and Reserve had acknowledged being unaware of the extent of the problem because there is no system to track such records.
The G.A.O. first reported the payment errors in 2004. It contacted Pentagon officials again this year to determine whether the money had been repaid or the deserters found.
A Pentagon spokesman, Brian Maka, said officials were still reviewing the report and its recommendations.
Congressional auditors identified 75 soldiers in the Army National Guard and Reserve who were designated as deserters for failing to report for duty when their units were called up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As I was eating my breakfast this morning — usually an uneventful engagement with a bowl of corn flakes, I pulled my face up out of the bowl long enough to glance at the television.
I’m picturing Marie sitting with her head flat down on the table, with her face completely soaked with milk and chunks of corn flakes. Suddenly, the television does something interesting! Marie jumps up and says “BLUGH MUGH MEEFOOO!” as milk and cereal spew out of her mouth and nose.
Alongside the 189 channels of “nothing good on,” the commercials tend to be over-done, or just plain insipid. However, this one got my attention.
Really? I kinda like the commercials myself. I have a huge man-crush on that Dr. Z asshole you see in those Daimler-Chrysler ads:
Oooh Dr. Z, with your freaky mustache and hottt German accent, u can get with Bradrocket anytime.
The backbone of capitalism, an intuitive entrepreneur had boldly taken up the challenge so badly needed in today’s politically correct and non-offensive society, sensationally illustrated by the inability of the American political class to come to grips with the necessity of racial profiling.
If you gave a monkey a jackhammer and had him go to work on the Rosetta Stone, the resulting tablet would still make more sense than whatever Marie just wrote.
A big-voiced and obviously Caucasian man of American roots breaks into his pitch as planes roar by and fly overhead:
“This is Air-Infidel Airlines; the airline for the rest of us.”
As corn flakes sputtered out of my mouth while nearly falling out of my chair, he commandingly went on:
“At Air-Infidel, we know who to look for, even if your Government is afraid to.”
The decor of the planes was a pinkish-tan color. Cartoon-like flying pigs were painted on the wing tips of the airplanes. The look was laughably eye- catching, and thunderously unapologetic in its message:
“White Power?”
“Here at Air-Infidel Airlines, we profile Muslims and men of Middle Eastern descent to the point of not allowing any of them on the planes. How about that? Now Granny and just about everyone else that is NOT Muslim can rest a bit easier knowing that here at Air-Infidel Airlines, 99.9% of the terrorist never even get to purchase a ticket, much less board the plane.”
As I listened to the commercial come to a close, I wondered if all those blond-haired, blue-eyed, one-legged, vegetarian, oboe-playing, Lutheran Norwegians — who everybody knows were definitely candidates for the terrorist watch list, will feel now that they won’t be so unceremoniously singled out as they were before.
Heaven knows we white people can’t be inconvenienced.
Sure, I’m having a bit of fun here, and at the expense of Muslims, that is true. That said though, is the concept so ridiculous? When the facts shout themselves silly pointing out that nearly every terrorist plot is hatched, designed, and perpetrated by Muslims and Arabs, maybe we do need an airline for the rest of us.
I hear this type of system used to work great back in South Africa.
But barring that, we have all heard of El Al Israel Airlines. It is as close to perfectly safe as one gets while flying. El Al’s safety record is impeccable. It adheres to the most restrictive rules and it screens every passenger. However, “Air-Infidel Airline’s” concept was even better; just ban Muslims, period.
Though Air-Infidel Airlines is totally fictitious, the issue of airline security is not. We all want peace of mind, and we all want to feel safe.
And we’ll do anything to get it, won’t we, Marie? We’ll ban Muslims from airlines, yes? And maybe… put them in camps too??!!! Ooh, that’s a delightful idea! I’m shocked no one has suggested it yet!
But feeling safe is not enough of a concern for Washington these days. It’s the political class who do not have the stomach to put to rest this ridiculous practice of political correctness.
Note how she declines to mention which political party is currently running all three branches of the federal government.
We are at war, and terrorist want to kill us. Islamic terrorist.
Terrorist want kill whites. Whites no like. Terrorist bad.
The Islamic fascists are serious in their intent to kill Westerners, so why shouldn’t the West be serious in its fight? Flights are being turned back almost daily, because the passengers are doing their own profiling by focusing in on the obvious. Though it is not their job, Mr. and Mrs. Main Street, USA are doing the job that President Bush and Congress ought to be doing.
Holy crap, I think she just criticized Bush for something. Sure, it was for not being crazy enough, but it’s a start.
OK, it goes on for a while, so let’s skip to the end:
The tools employed against terrorism to date, like The Patriot Act, warrant-less wire tapping, and the financial tracking of terrorist’ funds, are sensible and important programs that not only provide the American people some safety, but show that when politics are shelved for the greater good of the country, the country and its people always stand to benefit.
Disallowing the use of racial profiling because some guy from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says its “racist” makes about as much sense as putting out a fire with gasoline.
It’s time to put the political concerns — and the politicians that make them — aside and embrace reality. If pigs really could fly, Air-Infidel Airlines would be filled with concerned passengers who have always known just who it is that is trying to kill them.
I think she just called white people pigs, but I could be wrong. It’s always very, very, very, very hard to discern exactly what Marie is trying to say.
Wow, what about Turks or Chechens or Bosnians? Ooops
Not only is the cash-strapped NRSC spending millions running racist ads against fellow Republican Stephen Laffey in an effort to rescue the flailing incumbent Lincoln Chafee (R), but they are sending all the bodies they can as well:
Democrats were right in 2004: the Republicans have adopted a draft. It only applies, however, to party workers employed by state victory committees in the east of the Mississippi. For many it will be worse than boot camp. They are to be sent to Rhode Island to try to rescue Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee's re-election campaign in the September 12th primary.
Workers start arriving Friday and will be charged with sorting out the mess that Washington operatives believe is the Chafee campaign. First task may be to get Republican voters to forget Chafee's erratic performance in the last two of the four broadcast debates between the incumbent and his lively challenger, Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey.
Scores of GOP workers will begin arriving this week and stay through the open primary as they search for and then try to persuade some of the 70,000 registered Republicans and several hundred thousand independent voters eligible to participate in the open primary to support Chaffee. Draftees, many of whom may be more compatible with Laffey, will be paid by their home-state committees. Food and lodging expenses will be picked up by Republican National Committee.
Keep in mind what this means: assuming this report by the Hotline is accurate, the NRSC is pulling valuable workers in important battleground states like Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania for a full two weeks.
They are weakening their effort on behalf of weak candidates to rescue one of their incumbents from a primary battle. As the Hotline blog notes, some of those NRSC's staffers won't be happy to go and work for Chafee and against Laffey. It would've been like the DSCC forcing staffers to abandon their posts in hot contested races to go work for Lieberman and against Lamont.
Redstate's Mike Krempasky is already seeing red (pardon the pun) over the NRSC's anti-Laffey spending.
This is what your money is being spent on - attack ads on behalf of Lincoln Chafee. Give me a break. We're fighting on enough fronts to keep the Senate - and this is what Liddy Dole sees as a priority. No wonder their fundraising is in the tank. If Republicans want to make a real statement about their committment to winning elections, they ought to yank her BEFORE election day. Period.
Krempasky wrote that before the NRSC redirected half of their national staff to Rhode Island. I'm sure he'll be particularly pleased at that bit of news.
Wal-Mart Mike is gonna be pissed because Chaffee is gonna lose anyway and they're pissing this money away. But the degree of oppo and hostility towards Laffey makes the support Lieberman got seem weak by comparison. I mean, they sent Clinton and money, not this full scale war.
Back in the twilight world of the Republican primary for our junior Senator's seat, another magic moment with KT McFarland
For those of you outside of the NYC area, Staten Island is the only borough of the five that make up the city which reliably votes Republican, and is very much the darling of the Republican mayors they've helped to gift us with over the last twenty years (and yeah, Ed, I mean you too).
They feel very strongly about the respect they deserve from Republican politicians on Staten Island. Get it, too. They receive funding from the city far in disproportion to the taxes they pay, like a little internal suburb. Shoring up the wobbly career of Mr. Fossella, their far-to-the-right congressman with the little Abramoff problem (and the muppet problem, and the misuse of campaign funds problem - he's a diverse kinda guy), is sort of a pet project for our Mr. Bloomberg.
Which is why it's kind of sad that no-one on the team of Ed Rollins and some young socialites with time on their hands who appear to make up her campaign staff couldn't see the problem with this, from a campaign e-mail to her supporters
We started the weekend on Friday at the Staten Island Ferry and KT greeted passengers on the New York side.
In weeks to come, I predict campaign appearances on the New York side of the midtown tunnel, the New York side of the Brooklyn Bridge, a New York stop of the 1/9, and the New York side of 96th St.*
For his part, Mr. Spencer followed up the five-minute wonder that was the internet release of the anti-"facist" ad linking Hillary and bin Laden he couldn't afford to put on TV with another ad linking Hillary and Ahmadinejad that he can't afford to put on TV, and was roundly ignored. His campaign is also apparently claiming the much-coveted (!) Liddy Dole endorsement, which he doesn't, technically, have.
British soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrol the streets of Kabul, August 22. A suicide blast tore through a crowded bazaar in a southern Afghanistan town, killing 17 people and wounding nearly 50, a provincial government spokesman has said.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Faced with a public backlash in the birthplace of their movement, Taliban leaders in Kandahar are distancing themselves from deadly suicide attacks that they blame on a breakaway faction that works with "foreigners."
Suicide attacks aimed at western coalition troops have also killed many Afghan civilians, eroding local support for the Taliban, an extremist group often held responsible.
Published letters from Kandahar province's purported Taliban military council, however, said the group will take action against the attackers who are said to have connections with foreigners - possibly from Pakistan.
"Our council has determined that as soon as they can, they will demolish those Taliban who are linking with foreigners," reads one letter published in the weekly Surghar newspaper.
"We will punish them," says the translated version of the letter, addressed to "the senior and courageous residents of Kandahar City."
Killing civilians is damaging the Taliban's credibility, costing them much-needed local support in their campaign to retake power in Afghanistan, the military council acknowledged.
"Day by day, the people are going far away from us," the council said.
In a second letter, the Taliban military council describes how its leadership has been divided.
"One part is real Taliban," the letter said. "The other part is Pakistani intelligence, spies and servants of that Taliban."
Omar Samad, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, has suggested many insurgents are entering his country from Pakistan.
"We are seeing a pattern emerge over the past few months of more and more terrorists crossing our borders, coming into Afghanistan to target not only NATO troops, but also civilians, school teachers, nurses, road workers, religious figures, tribal figures - anyone that they deem as an obstacle to their attempts at disrupting normalcy in Afghanistan," Samad said recently.
The apparent split within the Taliban movement is seen as a positive development by NATO.
"It's a good sign," said a NATO source who did not want to be identified.
"We'd rather face factions than a united Taliban ... (But) by no means does this mean there's a good Taliban and a bad Taliban."
There's an element of personal honor in Afghan warfare and blowing yourself up doesn't permit that.
Chris Bowers has put together his House Forecast 2006 (PDF). It's quite the document, with a ton of great information.
it's manna for political junkies.
I currently project Democrats to take 15-25 seats, which would give them a narrow majority of between 218-228 seats. I am a little worried that in the final decisions I was too optimistic by a tier in a few races (FL-16, ID-01, IL-06, NY-24, OH-01, OH-02, PA-07, PA-08, TX-17 and WA-08) and too pessimistic by a tier in others (FL-13, IN-02, NY-20 and WV-01). Overall I think it is a very good forecast even if, perhaps, very slightly too optimistic.
What I am not worried about is competition. The sheer amount of information I offer in this forecast easily surpasses anything publicly available anywhere in the nation. In this forecast, I include the following:
* The top 60 House races in the nation, grouped by competitiveness tier.
* The names of both the Democratic and Republican candidates in all 60 races.
* The relative cash on hand in all 60 races
* The partisan voting index for all 60 districts
* The 2004 margin in all 60 districts
* The latest poll, if any, from all 60 districts
* Notifications as to whether each district is an open seat, held by a freshman, has a repeat challenger, or has been targeted for ad buys by the DCCC
* Mini-commentary on each district
I love blogs.
Update: And for the record, I still don't think we'll win back either chamber. I've seen the GOP close the deal too many times before for me to get complacent and cocky. Nah. I think we'll win 7-14 seats in the House, 3-5 in the Senate.
Yeah, I know such pessimism is tough when the numbers, data, and current events give so much cause for optimism, but I was burned two cycles in a row. I'm not getting my hopes up.
And in any case, I'm fully prepared (and eager, this time) to be completely wrong a third election cycle in a row
I disagree with Kos because the GOP is now facing real fights in places which had been safe, like Missouri and Virgnia.
Also, it was a massive mistake to run three black Republican candidates, two for governor. It will turn out that Blackwell and Swann will be drags on DeWine and Santorum. Republicans are going to stay home in large number and Dems are going to come out to vote.
The war has taken three years to be an issue, but now it is. Lieberman, who has a liberal record belying his big mouth, was run to ground in a primary centering on Iraq.
Complacent and cocky? No. But you get the feeling that something like 1974 is in the air, a major GOP disaster in the making. Bush is way too unpopular and Cheney hated to help their Congressional candidates. You have Chris Shays fumbling to explain his stand on the war, others suing Move On and worrying about Kos's vacation time.
And the best part, Republicans pulling out the stops to save Lincoln Chafee, who is likely to lose anyway.
You never see a disaster building. The GOP didn't see it in 1974, the Dems in 1994. It's the races you aren't watching which suddenly turn your way.
The biggest hint was the lack of Pavlovian fear over the the London bomb plot. Fear has it's limits and all this war talk about Iran didn't help matters
When Representative Charles B. Rangel held a news conference last week to endorse Andrew M. Cuomo for attorney general, he spent only a little more time praising Mr. Cuomo than he did chiding Mr. Cuomo’s leading Democratic rival in the race: Mark Green.
Mr. Rangel joined several other prominent Democrats who have condemned Mr. Green’s political strategy of criticizing Mr. Cuomo on an almost daily basis. Mr. Green refers to it as his “comparison campaign.” Others, like Mr. Rangel, call it negative campaigning that threatens to undermine Democrats as they seek to defeat Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican candidate, in the November general election.
“I would say that if you’re not going to win, don’t hurt the winner,” Mr. Rangel said of Mr. Green.
But Mr. Green is not out of the race by any means, and he has been aggressively campaigning as the Sept. 12 primary nears. A Quinnipiac Poll released last week showed him 13 percentage points behind Mr. Cuomo, within striking distance in a primary whose turnout is hard to predict.
Mr. Green maintains that he is not guilty of negative campaigning and is merely highlighting differences in the two candidates’ records. Mr. Green’s supporters maintain that an airing of Mr. Cuomo’s positions and record could help close the gap in the polls.
Mr. Green’s aggressive approach was highlighted by his sharp attacks on Mr. Cuomo in their Aug. 17 debate, when even Mr. Cuomo’s other opponents in the race criticized Mr. Green’s conduct, and audience members booed his comments. While Democratic officials have rallied around Mr. Cuomo, political analysts say an approach like Mr. Green’s can have its intended effect in the closing days of the race.
“The question is whether this kind of campaign can have an impact on the race,” said John H. Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center.
“And the record is clear that it can have an impact in the right circumstances,” Mr. Mollenkopf said, “if he is bringing out something that the voter is not inclined to like about a candidate, or it’s revealing something negative that the voter did not previously know.”
Mr. Mollenkopf added that the poll finding Mr. Green 13 percentage points behind Mr. Cuomo was conducted before Mr. Green was endorsed by the editorial page of The New York Times, and that the endorsement “could also have an effect on the race.”
How many black pols have endorsed Green?
Yeah.
It's because he made it quite clear that he didn't think much of blacks and Latinos when he ran for mayor. Pulling out the race card after eight years of Giuliani. Disgusting.
I have no great love of Andy Cuomo, but there isn't a day where Mark Green gets my vote for anything ever again. It's not even so much that he let his underlings distribute a cartoon of Freddie Ferrer kissing Sharpton's ass in Brooklyn, something that Bloomberg fired someone for in Staten Island, but that he walked into a room of black pols and said "I don't need you to win, I need you to govern"
Well, shit, he didn't need black votes then, why does he need them now?
BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 28 — The case against John M. Karr in the 1996 killing of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey collapsed Monday when DNA tests refuted Mr. Karr’s claims that he had committed the crime.
The announcement by the Boulder County district attorney, Mary T. Lacy, incited a storm of questions about why Mr. Karr, 41, had been believed in his admissions and how he could have led prosecutors into what became an elaborate global farce. Hordes of reporters had tracked Mr. Karr’s journey, from his apprehension in Thailand nearly two weeks ago to his return to the United States.
In a motion asking a judge to dismiss the arrest warrant, Ms. Lacy wrote that Mr. Karr’s obsession with the case and its details, combined with his own statement of guilt, had compelled her to act first and test later. But in the end, she said, his words were all there was.
“No evidence has developed, other than his own repeated admissions, to place Mr. Karr at the scene of the crime,” she wrote. “Mr. Karr was not the source of the DNA found in the underwear of JonBenet Ramsey.”
So what happened while this was on cable news? Anything?
KENNER, Louisiana (CNN) -- A man who pulled a hoax on Louisiana officials and 1,000 contractors by presenting himself as a federal housing official said Monday he intended to focus attention on a lack of affordable housing.
"We basically go around impersonating bad institutes or institutes doing very bad things," said the man, who identified himself as Andy Bichlbaum, a 42-year-old former college teacher of video and media arts who lives in New York and Paris.
"That would be HUD. At this moment, they're doing some really bad things."
Masquerading as Rene Oswin, an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Bichlbaum followed Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to the lectern Monday morning at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner.
In a speech to attendees of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit, he laid out grandiose plans for HUD to reverse course.
After the speaker read from a text he said had been prepared by his boss, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, a HUD spokeswoman said the department knew nothing about the man.
"Everything is going to change about the way we work, and the change is going to start here today in New Orleans," the man said during his speech.
Jackson, he said, had had to cancel his appearance at the meeting of 1,000 builders and contractors at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner because he had to stay in Washington to meet with President Bush .......................... Loiry said he was told a few minutes before he had planned to introduce Jackson that the secretary would be replaced by Oswin.
"We've done 75 national conferences, 25,000 people participated, and we certainly never encountered anything like this before," he said.
The man left a flier bearing a HUD emblem that said attendees could go to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a public housing project. A free lunch and transportation aboard buses were promised.
"They never materialized," Loiry said... ...........................................
In his speech, Bichlbaum said the department's mission was to ensure affordable housing is available for those who need it.
"This year, in New Orleans, I'm ashamed to say we have failed," he said.
To change that, HUD would reverse its plans to demolish 5,000 units "of perfectly good public housing," with housing in the city in tight supply, he said.
Former occupants have been "begging to move back in," he said. "We're going to help them to do that."
The government's practice had been to tear down public housing where it could, because such projects were thought to cause crime and unemployment, he said.
But crime rates in the city are at a record high and there is no evidence that people in the projects are more likely to be unemployed, he said.
The man added that it also would be essential to create conditions for prosperity.
Toward that end, he said, Wal-Mart would withdraw its stores from near low-income housing and "help nurture local businesses to replace them."
Wal-Mart was unmoved. "As evidenced by the fact that we recently reopened two stores in the New Orleans metropolitan area, there is absolutely no truth to these statements," said spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone.
In a comment that elicited applause from the contractors and builders, Bichlbaum said, "With your help, the prospects of New Orleanians will no longer depend on their birthplace, and the cycle of poverty will come to an end."
Finally, to ensure another hurricane does not inundate the city, Exxon and Shell have promised to spend $8.6 billion "to finance wetlands rebuilding from $60 billion in profits this year," he said.
.......................... "The only not-true part is, unfortunately, the part about them changing their minds. They are still going to tear down 5,000 units of affordable housing," he said. ...............................
Bichlbaum said Monday's prank was the latest in a series pulled off by The Yes Men, whose members have recently masqueraded as representatives of McDonald's, Halliburton and Dow Chemical.
"Fortunately, the law protects freedom of speech," he said. "What we're doing is not actually lying. It's actually exposing the lies. There's nothing morally wrong with what we're doing."
...................................
In Washington, HUD spokeswoman Donna White called the hoax "sick."
"This announcement is totally false; it's totally bogus," said Donna White in Washington.
No one named Rene Oswin works for the department, she said. "I'm like, who the heck is that?"
Jackson, White said, had never planned to address the meeting. "I don't even want to refer to it as a joke," White said. "At this point, it's not funny."
Annie Chen, media coordinator for Survivors Village, a tent-city protest for the reopening of public housing in New Orleans, applauded Bichlbaum's theatrics.
"Right now, a lie is better than the truth," she said.
Funny? You bet. Because HUD and the ideologues are fucking people over and someone needs to say that.
Equating their movement to the civil rights struggle of the 60s, a group of conservative pastors from across the nation endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell on Monday. At left is, Pastor Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Maryland, a Democrat.
Harry Jackson was already told about this selling out in a room full of black people. He thinks he can influence anyone with this bullshit?
Pam Spaulding posted this up at Pandagon. Being one of them lesbians and all, she's real upset about Blackwell's insane homophobia. Me, while that bothers me, it's the fact that he thinks he can sell black people down the river and get away with it.
Well how about this — Ken Blackwell, despite all the public support from the bible-beating Talibangelist Rod Parsley of Reformation Ohio and Russell Johnson, founder of the Ohio Restoration Project, his numbers continue to tank. These polling results are from Rasmussen.
During the past several months, Democratic Congressman Ted Strickland’s edge over Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has ranged from four to seventeen percentage points. Now, in our latest election poll of Ohio’s gubernatorial race, Congressman Strickland leads his opponent by an intimidating 57% to 32%.
We conducted the new survey August 22, several days after the Strickland campaign began airing positive TV ads about the Democrat. The health of the steel industry has been one issue this electoral season, and Strickland’s ad touts his help in securing a loan for an ailing steel company.
Blackwell: “Christians should show that they are not going to be whupped.”
Blackwell is not well established even with GOP voters, only 59% of whom now support him. He is perceived as conservative by 51% of all voters. By contrast, Strickland appeals to 88% of Democrats, and 55% of unaffiliated voters. A plurality of all voters (44%) see him as moderate.
Strickland is viewed favorably by 59%, Blackwell by 40%. Blackwell is viewed unfavorably by 55%. More ominously, 35% view him “very” unfavorably, a four-point increase since last month.
“I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed. I think it is a transgression against God’s law, God’s will. The reality is, again, … that I think we make choices all the time. And I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one’s genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist, or might make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think that they can be changed? Yes.”
Gee, Ken, why do you think you’re not gaining any traction with the rank-and-file fundie voters?Hmmmmm? You’re saying all the right things, but it’s just not gelling, is it? What could be the problem?
A side note: if you want to see religious black homobigotry in action, look no further than this campaign. A group of black pastors (who are Dems) is crossing over and joining white wingnuts like Russell Johnson to support Blackwell.
The ministers, including the director of the Memphis-based Coalition of African-American Pastors, say they support Blackwell’s conservative message, including his anti-tax position and his opposition to gay marriage…The minister group, Clergy for Blackwell, which includes black and white ministers, plans news conferences Monday in Columbus and Cincinnati in a move sure to add to a debate in Ohio over the role of religion in politics.
Katrina and their utter impotence in the face of it pretty much ended their influence in politics. Haven't heard much from TD Jakes after the Bush family humiliated him last year after Katrina. You can bitch all day long about Waters, Sharpton and Jackson, but they haven't forgotten Katrina and they got Lamont to toss it in Lieberman's face.
Look, Blackwell's problem is that white people know black people don't trust him, and if they don't trust him, why should they vote for him.
Katrina was the break point. Kanye West, despite an intense egomania, did the best thing possible for his career by going after Bush. He became a hero for it. TD Jakes kissed Bush's ass. They may listen to his sermons, but who could trust him? He failed to lead when leadership was needed.
A PHILADELPHIA QUAGMIRE? Stop the killing. U.S. out of Philadelphia now!
UPDATE: Iraq veteran Chris Seamans isn't impressed with the analysis in the Post article:
Among my other duties in Iraq, I was a convoy gunner. I am also a native of inner city Philadelphia who has spent almost all of my life in some of the city's toughest neighborhoods. I can say from direct experience that combat duty in Iraq isn't as easy or as safe as walking down the street in Philadelphia. This is a simple fact that the statistics you've linked to attempt to obfuscate. The statistics don't take into account the fact that the majority of servicemen in Iraq spend their deployments behind rows of T-walls, Hesco barriers, and checkpoints, and that the much smaller number of troops that spend their time outside the wire face far greater danger than young black men walking the streets of Philly. The statistics also ignore the fact that the American military has some of the best trauma care in the world, and that the number of people who live despite grave injuries vastly outnumbers those who die from them. (If I remember correctly, the Army said a little while ago that the number of deaths in Iraq would be four times greater if not for its ability to quickly evacuate casualties to top quality medical facilities.) This means that a lot more soldiers have faced potentially life-threatening injuries than just those who have died. If the proper statistics were referenced (or even available) I'd bet my next paycheck that they would back up the obvious reality: Iraq is a warzone that is vastly more dangerous than even the deadliest sections of Philadelphia.
Jeez, you figure when you read something positive about the war in the Big Media it's probably true. Oh, well.
But read this post from Dean Esmay, which seems about right.
ANTOTHER UPDATE: A response to Chris Seamans here:
No one is trying to say that Philadelphia is "more dangerous" than Iraq. (Well, okay, I'm sure someone somewhere is. But I'm not, Glenn Reynolds wasn't, and the Washington Post article didn't...)
Let me repeat: The point wasn't that Philadelphia is "more dangerous" than Iraq. The point was that the death rate in Philadelphia among black men was 11% higher in 2002 than it was in Iraq among US troops during the first three years of the campaign. For the purposes of the point at hand, the statistics referenced were, indeed, the "proper" ones and they're very clear.
I think that nearly everyone realizes that Iraq is far, far more dangerous than Philadelphia. But let's not pretend that it's more dangerous than it is. The statistics show how many people died in Iraq and they showed how many black men died in Philadelphia.
The ultimate point is that the numbers, when compared to each other, will probably surprise you.
Yes, by historical standards the war in Iraq isn't terribly bloody, which does tend to get lost in the media coverage.
The amusing part of this bullshit is that an actual black man from Philadephia is telling you that Iraq was scary dangerous compared to his hometown and they want to argue the point like he has no clue as to what he is talking about
Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters
They are the US troops in Iraq to whom the American administration prefers not to draw attention. They are the deserters – those who have gone Awol from their units and not returned, risking imprisonment and opprobrium.
When First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the US Army, who faced a court martial in August, refused to go to Iraq on moral grounds, the newspapers in his home state of Hawaii were full of letters accusing him of “treason”. He said he had concluded that the war is both morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law. His participation, he stated, would make him party to “war crimes”. Watada is just one conscientious objector to a war that has polarised America, arguably more so than even the Vietnam war.
It is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of American troops who have left the army as a result of the US involvement in Iraq. The Pentagon says that a total of 40,000 troops have deserted their posts (not simply those serving in Iraq) since the year 2000. This includes many who went Awol for family reasons. The Pentagon’s spokesmen say that the overall number of deserters has actually gone down since operations began in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is no doubt that a steady trickle of deserters who object to the Iraq war have made it over the border and are now living in Canada. There they seek asylum, often with the help of Canadian anti-war groups. One Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, has represented at least 20 deserters from Iraq in the Canadian courts; he is himself a conscientious objector, having refused to fight in the Vietnam war – along with 50,000 others, at the peak of the conflict. He estimates that 200 troops have already gone underground in Canada since the war in Iraq began.
These conscientious objectors are a brave group – their decisions will result in long-term life changes. To be labelled a deserter is no small burden. If convicted of desertion, they run the risk of a prison sentence – with hard labour. To choose exile can mean lifelong separation from family and friends, as even the most trivial encounter with the police in America – say, over a traffic offence – could lead to jail.
Many of the deserters are not pacifists, against war per se, but they view the Iraq war as wrong. First Lt Watada, for instance, said he would face prison rather than serve in Iraq, though he was prepared to pack his bags for Afghanistan to fight in a war that he considered just. They don’t want to face the military courts, which is why they have decided to flee to Canada. A generation ago, Canada welcomed Vietnam-war draft dodgers and deserters. Today, the political climate is different and the score or so of US deserters who are now north of the border are applying for refugee status. So far, the Canadian government is saying no, so cases rejected for refugee status are going to appeal in the federal courts.
But there is no guarantee that these exiles will ultimately find safe haven in Canada. If the federal courts rule against the soldiers and they then exhaust all further judicial possibilities, they may be deported back to the United States – and that may not be what the Americans want. Their presence in the US will in itself represent yet another public-relations headache for the Bush administration.
DARRELL ANDERSON
First Armored Division, 2-3 Field Artillery, at Giessen, Germany. Age: 24
Darrell Anderson joined the US Army just before the Iraq war started.
“I needed health care, money to go to college, and I needed to take care of my daughter. The military was the only way I could do it,” he tells me. As we chat, basking in the sun on a peaceful Toronto street, he fiddles with his pocket watch, which has a Canadian flag on its face. He’s wearing a peace-symbol necklace.
After fighting for seven months in Iraq, he came home bloodied from combat, with a Purple Heart that proved his sacrifice – and seriously opened his eyes. “When I joined, I wanted to fight,” he says. “I wanted to see combat. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save people. I wanted to protect my country.” But soon after he arrived in Iraq, he tells me, he realised that the Iraqis did not want him there, and he heard harsh tales that surprised and distressed him.
“Soldiers were describing to me how they had beaten prisoners to death,” he says. “There were three guys and one said, ‘I kicked him from this side of the head while the other guy kicked him in the head and the other guy punched him, and he just died.’ People I knew. They were boasting about it, about how they had beaten people to death.” He says it again: “Boasting about how they had beaten people to death. They are trained killers now. Their friends had died in Iraq. So they weren’t the people they were before they went there.”
Anderson says that even the small talk was difficult to tolerate. “I hate Iraqis,” he quotes his peers as saying. “I hate these damn Muslims.” At first he was puzzled by such talk. “After a while I started to understand. I started to feel the hatred myself. My friends were dying. What am I here for? We went to fight for our country; now we’re just fighting to stay alive.” In addition to taking shrapnel from a roadside bomb – the injury that earned him the Purple Heart – Anderson says he often found himself in firefights. But it was work at a checkpoint that made him seriously question his role. He was guarding the “backside” of a street checkpoint in Baghdad, he says. If a car passed a certain point without stopping, the guards were supposed to open fire.
“A car comes through and it stops in front of my position. Sparks are coming from the car from bad brakes. All the soldiers are yelling. It’s in my vicinity, so it’s my responsibility. I didn’t fire. A superior goes, ‘Why didn’t you fire? You were supposed to fire.’ I said, ‘It was a family!’ At this time it had stopped. You could see the children in the back seat. I said, ‘I did the right thing.’ He’s like, ‘No, you didn’t. It’s procedure to fire. If you don’t do it next time, you’re punished.’”
Anderson shakes his head at the memory. “I’m already not agreeing with this war. I’m not going to kill innocent people. I can’t kill kids. That’s not the way I was raised.” He says he started to look around at the ruined cityscape and the injured Iraqis, and slowly began to understand the Iraqi response. “If someone did this to my street, I would pick up a weapon and fight. I can’t kill these people. They’re not terrorists. They’re 14-year-old boys, they’re old men. We’re occupying the streets. We raid houses. We grab people. We send them off to Abu Ghraib, where they’re tortured. These are innocent people. We stop cars. We hinder everyday life. If I did this in the States, I’d be thrown in prison.”
Birds are singing sweetly as he speaks, a stark contrast to his descriptions of atrocities in Iraq. “I didn’t shoot anybody when I was in Baghdad. We went down to Najaf with howitzers. We shot rounds in Najaf and we killed hundreds of people. I did kill hundreds of people, but not directly, hand-to-hand.”
Anderson went home for Christmas, convinced he would be sent back to the war. He knew he would not be able to live with himself if he returned to Iraq, armed with his first-hand knowledge of what was occurring there day after day. He decided he could no longer participate, and his parents – already opposed to the war –supported his decision. Canada seemed like the best option. After Christmas 2004, he drove from Kentucky to Toronto.
But he says he has had second thoughts about his exile. Not that he is worried much about deportation: he has recently married a Canadian woman and that will probably guarantee him permanent residency. But he plans to return to the US this autumn, and expects to be arrested when he presents himself to authorities at the border. “The war’s still going on,” he told me.
“If I go back, maybe I can still make a difference. My fight is with the American government.”
It’s not only anti-war work that’s motivating him to go home; he’s thinking about his future. “Dealing with all the nightmares and the post-traumatic stress, I need support from my family.”
Anderson expects to be convicted of desertion, and he says he will use his trial and prison time to continue to protest against the war. He imagines that just the sight of him in a dress uniform covered with the medals he was awarded fighting in Iraq will make a powerful statement. “I can’t work every day and act like everything is okay,” he says about his life in Toronto. “This war is beating me down. I haven’t had a dream that wasn’t a nightmare since I came to Canada. It eats away at me to try and act like everything’s okay when it’s not.” Not that he feels his time in Canada was a waste. “There was no way I could have gone to prison at the time: I would have killed myself. I was way too messed up in the head to even think of sitting in a prison cell. I owe a lot to Canada. It has saved my life. When I came back and was talking about the war, Americans called me a traitor. Canadians helped me when I was at my lowest point.” ..................................
THE BRITONS WHO ARE SAYING NO
It’s not just Americans: hundreds of our own troops have ‘retreated’ from Iraq. Philip Jacobson reports
Over 2,000 members of Britain’s armed forces have gone long-term Awol since the war in Iraq started, and most are still missing. Before the fighting began, about 375 absconders a year were at large for any length of time, and were dismissed; that figure rose to 720 last year. About 740 men are thought to be on the run still, but have not yet been disciplined.
While the MoD denies that this trend reflects growing opposition to the war, lawyers specialising in court martials report a continuing increase in requests for advice from personnel desperate to avoid being posted to Iraq. Although the overall number of Awol cases has been fairly stable for a few years (about 2,500 annually), there is growing concern in the military about the “Iraq factor”. Before, most absconders were Awol for a relatively short time, typically owing to family or financial problems, or bullying, and either went back to their units voluntarily or were arrested quickly. Most were disciplined by their commanding officers; punishments ranged from demotion to “jankers”, a spell in a military jail.
But it seems that a growing number are ready to risk a charge of desertion — a far more serious offence than going Awol, with penalties to match. According to Gilbert Blades, an expert on military law, the MoD is playing down the true extent of the problem. “It is absolutely clear to me,” he says, “that the crucial factor in driving up Awol levels has been what more and more service people consider to be an illegal conflict.” As Blades sees it, the tightening of the legal definition of desertion in new legislation going through parliament is intended to deter potential absconders. Under the new Armed Forces Bill, people refusing active-service duty in a foreign country could be jailed for life. “It seems obvious this is a direct response to the situation that has developed as the war has intensified,” he says.
(08-26) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- The federal government has barred two relatives of a Lodi man convicted of supporting terrorists from returning to the country after a lengthy stay in Pakistan, placing the U.S. citizens in an extraordinary legal limbo.
Muhammad Ismail, a 45-year-old naturalized citizen born in Pakistan, and his 18-year-old son, Jaber Ismail, who was born in the United States, have not been charged with a crime. However, they are the uncle and cousin of Hamid Hayat, a 23-year-old Lodi cherry packer who was convicted in April of supporting terrorists by attending a Pakistani training camp.
Federal authorities said Friday that the men, both Lodi residents, would not be allowed back into the country unless they agreed to FBI interrogations in Pakistan. An attorney representing the family said agents have asked whether the younger Ismail trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan.
The men and three relatives had been in Pakistan for more than four years and tried to return to the United States on April 21 as a federal jury in Sacramento deliberated Hayat's fate. But they were pulled aside during a layover in Hong Kong and told there was a problem with their passports, said Julia Harumi Mass, their attorney.
The father and son were forced to pay for a flight back to Islamabad because they were on the government's "no-fly" list, Mass said. Muhammad Ismail's wife, teenage daughter and younger son, who were not on the list, continued on to the United States.
Neither Muhammad nor Jaber Ismail holds dual Pakistani citizenship, Mass said.
"We haven't heard about this happening -- U.S. citizens being refused the right to return from abroad without any charges or any basis," said Mass, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
McGregor Scott, the U.S. attorney for California's eastern district, confirmed Friday that the men were on the no-fly list and were being kept out of the country until they agreed to talk to federal authorities.
"They've been given the opportunity to meet with the FBI over there and answer a few questions, and they've declined to do that," Scott said.
Mass said Jaber Ismail had answered questions during an FBI interrogation at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad soon after he was forced back to Pakistan. She said the teenager had run afoul of the FBI when he declined to be interviewed again without a lawyer and refused to take a lie-detector test.
The Ismails had been in Pakistan partly so Jaber could study the Quran, Mass said. She said that neither he nor his father had anything to do with terrorism.
"They want to come home and have an absolute right to come home," said Mass, who has filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security and a petition with the Transportation Security Administration.
"They can't be compelled to waive their constitutional rights under threat of banishment," Mass said. "The government is conditioning the return to their home on cooperation with law enforcement."
Aviation watch lists were created in 1990 to keep terrorists off planes and track drug smugglers and other fugitives. But since al Qaeda's attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government has expanded the lists significantly. Members of the public cannot find out if, or why, they are on a no-fly list.
Michael Barr, director of the aviation safety and security program at USC, said the Ismail case appears to be unusual in the realm of federal terrorism investigations.
"You become what is called a stateless person, and that would be very unprecedented," Barr said.
He said U.S. law enforcement agents have understandably been "overly cautious" in recent years. "If they're going to err, they're going to err on the side of caution," Barr said. "What's happened in a lot of these things is that you're guilty until proven innocent."
Why are they not in federal court over this? These are American citizens, not residents, not illegals.
Charged with rebuilding his city and decisively re-elected six months ago, Mayor Ray Nagin remains an elusive character and a controversial leader—and miles of the Big Easy are still uninhabitable.
By Evan Thomas, Jonathan Darman and Sarah Childress
Newsweek
Sept. 4, 2006 issue - Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, had been avoiding a group of particularly determined—and strident—community activists who were after him to do more to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward, a working-class, predominantly black area that was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. A year after the storm, New Orleans water and sewer pipes are still badly damaged, and the city has been unable to certify that the water is drinkable in much of the blighted but once tightknit neighborhood known as Lower Nine. At a press conference on Aug. 1, the mayor tried to be good-humored when he was confronted by Vanessa Gueringer, a particularly vocal organizer for a community group called ACORN.
"Oh, Miss Acorn," said Nagin with a smile, "Are you still mad at me?"
"Hell yeah!" she shot back. "Is the water certified in Lower Nine?"
Nagin's smile faded.
"You can't see the good in anything," he said.
"No, I can't," said Gueringer, "because my community is still being locked out. And I'm still angry."
Nagin tried to reassure her about the water. "I'm working on it, I'm working on it, we have people down there every day."
"No, you don't," Gueringer snapped. "I know you're lying to me, Mr. Mayor."
Nagin walked away. (His staff later said he needed to get to an appointment.)
................................
Even so, he is the theater commander in the battle to save New Orleans, and the war is still not going well.
...................He lacks the dominating personal force of a Rudy Giuliani pulling New York together on 9/11. Nagin can be touchy about invidious comparisons with New York: questioned about the slow pace of rebuilding in his own city, he gave NEWSWEEK his controversial anniversary talking point—"They still have a big hole in the ground after five years."
Tough words, but it should be noted the damage wreaked by Katrina to New Orleans far surpassed the lasting physical impact of the downed Twin Towers. A year after the storm flooded New Orleans and killed more than a thousand people, the city has lost more than half its population. ...............................
There are, in some ways, two New Orleanses. The city's original crescent, "the sliver by the river" of high ground along the Mississippi, was not badly damaged by Katrina. Housing prices are booming and even Donald Trump is looking to invest. But the lower-lying areas stretching toward Lake Pontchartrain are still battered.
The sense of anger and suspicion among Lower Ninth residents, many of whom believe they are being conspired against by white uptown developers, has been a burden for Nagin. His attempts to deal with that sense of alienation bring into sharp relief the mayor's uncomfortable place in the Big Easy. He has always had a foot in both worlds of New Orleans, rich white as well as poor black. His almost unique position could have been a blessing, allowing him to bridge deep divides, something he has failed to accomplish.
...........................................
Nagin did create an ambitious-sounding Bring New Orleans Back Commission in late September and appointed a racially mixed (eight whites, eight blacks, one Hispanic) panel of local worthies to offer recommendations. The most forceful presence on the panel was a wealthy developer, 69-year-old Joe Canizaro, a "git-r-dun" type with close ties to the Bush White House. The commission brought in professional urban planners who suggested that a smaller, drier New Orleans might be healthier and safer. The planners suggested that parts of the lower-lying areas—which were disproportionately populated by African-Americans—be returned to cypress swampland. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Canizaro said he believed that the mayor would act on the BNOB proposals. "I had no doubt," he said.
Nagin now says that he never wanted the BNOB to be "his" plan but rather a forum for ideas that he could use or discard. When the plan was unveiled at a public meeting in early January, the hotel ballroom erupted with angry protesters. Conspiracy theories were racing through the black community that white developers wanted to drive blacks from the city and seize their property. (The Lower Ninth Ward, in particular, has a higher homeownership—about 60 percent—than most of the city.) Nagin began publicly backing away from the BNOB plan, insisting the Lower Nine would be rebuilt, or making ambiguous or contradictory remarks to a variety of different audiences. Canizaro was desperately trying to get Nagin to go to Washington and present the BNOB plan to policymakers and members of Congress, to show that the city would make wise use of federal dollars. Each time he asked Nagin, Canizaro said, Nagin would reply, "We're going to do it." But nothing would happen. "That was the height of frustration," Canizaro recalled. "That's when I realized the Bring New Orleans Back plan was in serious jeopardy."
...................................
Nagin's political instincts were spot-on. In a runoff election in May, he beat a white candidate, Mitch Landrieu, winning more than 80 percent of the black vote and about 20 percent of the white vote. ............... Actually, the 100 Day Plan envisions a bottom-up approach: each community will come up with its own plan, and these plans will be knitted together in a larger plan. With less than two weeks to go on Nagin's 100 Days, some communities, like middle-class Broadmoor, are far along, and some neighborhoods, like the Lower Ninth, are still basically nowhere.
Nagin himself has been out of town for much of the time, making speeches to various groups. His detachment vexes some local organizers. The Rev. Leonard Lucas Jr., the wealthy pastor of the Light City Church in Lower Nine, styles himself as Nagin's black conscience. Devoted to getting jobs and federal money into Lower Nine, Lucas seized on the reconstruction of the Jackson Barracks, the local home of a Louisiana National Guard unit, as a chance to get contracts for minority-owned companies. Lucas persuaded Nagin to go to a meeting on the project, and crowed afterward, "We got the mayor onboard and he liked it. He didn't like it—he loved it!" But then Lucas never heard back from Nagin. Now the reverend is bitter. "I've never seen a black man hate his people like that. All he did was sell his people out." Calling Nagin a "white Republican," he denounced the mayor for joining with the white business community in trying to drive blacks out of the city.
Nagin insists he's trying to restore black neighborhoods but accepts that he is going to be a target of frustration. "I'm the mayor, I take those hits at times," he says. Nagin worries about the effect of the rough publicity on his wife and kids, who only this past week were able to move back into their house, which was buffeted and flooded in the storm and is still not entirely repaired. ("My daughter went into her room, kissed the carpet, kissed her bed and kissed the wall," says Nagin.) He has been tending to his own soul, reading a book called "Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling," a New Age spirituality book that asks readers to remember the "voice in the Universe entreating us to remember our purpose ... " Nagin says his calling is to "find broken stuff ... I do turnaround, I do fixes, I start up stuff."
..............................
Carvin, the mayor's political adviser, says that Nagin "doesn't like politics. He's not comfortable with it. He's not comfortable with the wheeling and dealing that goes on in politics." Carvin, who has not seen much of Nagin since the election, is disappointed in his pupil. "He had a marvelous opportunity, having won the election against all odds, to try to pull it together and exhibit all the qualities that a leader should have," says the old political hand. "And he just hasn't done that." Until he does, New Orleans will remain a smaller, sadder city.
Nagin won because no one trusted Mitch Landrieu to do the job. That doesn't mean they trusted or liked Nagin. My mother cannot understand why he always seems to be smiling.The black folks are convinced he's looking to turn New Orleans into Las Vegas South, with them in permanent exile. The plan to turn part of the Lower Ninth Ward into swamp couldn't have said ethnic cleansing any clearer. New Orleans blacks are convinced the city doesn't want them to reclaim their homesteads.
Back in the twilight world of the Republican primary for our junior Senator's seat, another magic moment with KT McFarland
For those of you outside of the NYC area, Staten Island is the only borough of the five that make up the city which reliably votes Republican, and is very much the darling of the Republican mayors they've helped to gift us with over the last twenty years (and yeah, Ed, I mean you too).
They feel very strongly about the respect they deserve from Republican politicians on Staten Island. Get it, too. They receive funding from the city far in disproportion to the taxes they pay, like a little internal suburb. Shoring up the wobbly career of Mr. Fossella, their far-to-the-right congressman with the little Abramoff problem (and the muppet problem, and the misuse of campaign funds problem - he's a diverse kinda guy), is sort of a pet project for our Mr. Bloomberg.
Which is why it's kind of sad that no-one on the team of Ed Rollins and some young socialites with time on their hands who appear to make up her campaign staff couldn't see the problem with this, from a campaign e-mail to her supporters
We started the weekend on Friday at the Staten Island Ferry and KT greeted passengers on the New York side.
In weeks to come, I predict campaign appearances on the New York side of the midtown tunnel, the New York side of the Brooklyn Bridge, a New York stop of the 1/9, and the New York side of 96th St.*
For his part, Mr. Spencer followed up the five-minute wonder that was the internet release of the anti-"facist" ad linking Hillary and bin Laden he couldn't afford to put on TV with another ad linking Hillary and Ahmadinejad that he can't afford to put on TV, and was roundly ignored. His campaign is also apparently claiming the much-coveted (!) Liddy Dole endorsement, which he doesn't, technically, have.
Let me start by saying that "The Path to 9/11" is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible.
And here is more of what we can expect from this show:
This is the first Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden. One astonishing sequence in "The Path to 9/11" shows the CIA and the Northern Alliance surrounding Bin Laden's house in Afghanistan. They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in essence tells the team in Afghanistan that if they want to capture Bin Laden, they'll have to go ahead and do it on their own without any official authorization. That way, their necks will be on the line - and not his. The astonished CIA agent on the ground in Afghanistan repeatedly asks Berger if this is really what the administration wants. Berger refuses to answer, and then finally just hangs up on the agent. The CIA team and the Northern Alliance, just a few feet from capturing Bin Laden, have to abandon the entire mission. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shortly thereafter bomb the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing over 225 men, women, and children, and wounding over 4000. The episode is a perfect example of Clinton-era irresponsibility and
The producer of the show, Cyrus Nowrasteh, makes it clear he has a pro-Republican point of view in this interview:
FP: When you refer to the failed effort to stop Bin Laden in the 1990s, this was obviously the time of Bill Clinton. How much do you think his administration made us vulnerable to 9/11?
Nowrasteh: The 9/11 report details the Clinton's administration's response -- or lack of response -- to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests. The worst example is the response to the October, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen where 17 American sailors were killed. There simply was no response. Nothing."
We know this is simply bullshit. Yet ABC is airing this propaganda and will undoubtedly promote the hell out of it in the next two weeks.
Isn't it great working against the stacked deck of the corporate media? Ahhhhhh .... Democracy!
"The Path to 9/11," by honestly depicting the unfolding of events over eight years, makes it clear that most of the conspiracy leading up to 9/11 was hatched during the seven years of the Clinton administration, and that since Bush was in power for only eight months when 9/11 occurred, he can hardly be blamed for the entire disaster.
So who is the greater threat to Democracy? Terrorists or media consolidation?
EDINBURGH, Scotland - Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday ever-tighter political and economic control of the media is a major threat to democracy.
Democracy is under attack," Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. "Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time.
William Rivers Pitt has an excellent refutation of all this "blame Clinton for 9/11" b.s. over at Truthout, and even more truthiness compiled in a "datadump" over at Democratic Underground right now. It's something we should all brush up on to face the coming deluge.
Because heads up, folks! It's an election year, and the propaganda is gonna come fast and furious! From all sides, and from all corners of the corporate media universe.
It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
The Kos posters are divided on what to do.
I'm not. I don't watch anything about 9/11 and I think this will get shitty ratings like all the other 9/11 stuff.
But the way to deal with this is simple.
Write your local newspaper, call your local TV station, e-mail your Congressman protesting this bullshit. When CBS wanted to air that Reagan miniseries, the right forced it on to Showtime. All you can do is scream that this is an attempt to ignore Bush's obvious incompetence and refusal to heed the warnings of Clinton staffers about terrorism.
You can push back, hard, against this nonsense, like with DC 9/11 which had Bush as some kind of hero instead of the coward he was.
Deaths Drop in Iraqi Capital Even as the nation's toll climbs by at least 80, including 6 U.S. soldiers, officials credit a military sweep for Baghdad's lower tally this month. By Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writer August 28, 2006
BAGHDAD — An ambitious military sweep appears to be dramatically reducing Baghdad's homicide rate, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday — even as violence nationwide killed at least 80 people, including six U.S. soldiers in and around the capital.
Last month, the Baghdad morgue received more than 1,800 bodies, a record high. This month, the morgue is on track to receive less than a quarter of that.
ADVERTISEMENT Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki seized on the drop in slayings during a CNN interview.
"The violence is not increasing…. No, we're not in a civil war," Maliki said. "In Iraq, we'll never be in civil war. What you see is an atmosphere of reconciliation."
Although the smaller monthly tally offers encouragement to U.S. and Iraqi officials, it remains a triple-digit reminder that sectarian violence and insurgent activity continue to roil the country.
"It is not possible to create a democracy at the barrel of a gun…. We cannot even work freely as politicians," said Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni Arab member of parliament. "It is not possible for us to even hold meetings. We cannot travel between one province and another."
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of military forces in Baghdad, attributed the capital's declining violence to a sweep involving 8,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi troops aimed at stopping sectarian violence.
The troops, many redeployed from hot spots around Iraq, have patrolled the capital, searched houses and made arrests since Aug. 7. Similar sweeps in Baghdad and elsewhere since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 have reduced violence. But the bloodshed would increase when U.S. forces moved on.
Though the U.S. military has not issued a timetable for ending the sweep, officials say that patrolling Baghdad indefinitely would create dependency among Iraq's nascent security forces and tax U.S. resources and manpower.
The U.S. military, with 138,000 troops, is stretched thin in Iraq; many units are on their third deployments. Last week, the Pentagon announced an involuntary recall of as many as 2,500 Marines reservists. The Army has issued recall orders to 10,000 soldiers.
U.S. military leaders say they hope Iraqi police units, paired with American training teams, will be able to maintain security once the troops leave.
How desperate was the US to sweep Baghdad?
Three hundred soldiers already home from Iraq were sent back. From Alaska.
Oh yeah, 6 Americans died yesterday in fighting which killed 60 people.
The Frappuccino generation Starbucks says it doesn't market to kids. But its sugary coffee confections represent the new cool for teens. While nutritionists are gasping, the caffeinated kids are buzzing.
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Aug. 27, 2006 | It's just before 6 p.m. on a Wednesday night in Oakland, Calif., and the Starbucks on Lakeshore Avenue is packed. It has all the usual trappings of bland urbanity and sophistication: brick walls behind a line of baristas, oversize comfy chairs for lounging, and humming laptops scattered amid paper cups. About a quarter of the customers are under age 18. A tween boy out with his mom happily quaffs a milkshake-like Frappuccino, topped with a plastic lid shaped like a dome to What Starbucks is doing is taking a beverage that has traditionally been consumed accommodate the puffy mound of whipped cream drenched in caramel on top. Out front, teens sit at metal tables drinking their iced mochas, as they chat and check out passersby.
Kara Murray, 16, and Giana Cirolia, 16, breeze in from their summer internships. As part of a teen "leadership" program, Kara is working at the Oakland City Hall this summer, while Giana is deployed 9-to-5 at a local food bank. For these girls, who are both going into their junior year at Berkeley High School, summer is not about just hanging out. Tonight, they're taking an hour out from their busy schedules to explain to me how gourmet coffee has become the drink of choice at their high school, supplanting not soda so much as lunch altogether. "Think $4," says Giana. "That's what you pay for lunch. Not for coffee and lunch. Coffee is lunch. It's like the new mashed potatoes. Coffee is comfort food, especially when it rains."
And that's comfort to Starbucks and other makers of gourmet coffee, who are capitalizing on a boundless new world of teenage customers. To the Beyoncé set, coffee is the new cool. It hops them up with a wallop of caffeine that's much stronger than soda. As Giana says, "Kids go on a sugar, caffeine high all day." Nutritionists are not jazzed, of course, especially with childhood obesity on the rise. Those sugary, creamy coffee drinks are packed with enough calories to make a can of Dr. Pepper seem like Slim-Fast.
But the coffee chains are not deterred. In an affront to the earnest efforts of parents, teachers and school administrators to get soda vending machines out of schools, coffeehouses are moving in right down the street to meet demand for sugar and caffeine. There are two Starbucks within two blocks of Giana and Kara's high school as well as an outpost of the local chain, Peet's Coffee and Tea, and an independent coffeehouse.
Always careful to tailor its image as a socially responsible company, and differentiate itself from fast-food brethren like McDonald's, Starbucks states its "overall marketing, advertising and event sponsorship efforts are not directed at children or youth." But by creating a place where kids can go that sells sweetened drinks, which make bitter coffee palatable to younger taste buds, cafes are finding a way to hook (and brand) tomorrow's coffee drinkers earlier. Not that the smart kids don't know this. After all, when did health concerns ever trump peer pressure and the need to be cool?
"Almost all my older friends drink coffee," says Kara, explaining that she got into a chai tea latte habit last year, as a sophomore. Going out to Starbucks, "I feel very grown up," she says. "I hate to say that, but I feel super grown up." It's like the thrill of a trip to a fancy restaurant with your friends sans parents. Teachers don't seem to mind. Many of them let kids bring the drinks into class, whereas eating something as pedestrian and wholesome as a sandwich would be verboten. Although, Kara and Giana report, kids do seem to have a problem with all the coffee at noon. Fourth period, right after lunch, they are really wired, but by sixth they are crashing.
.................. For weight-conscious girls, the blended Frappuccino drinks and mochas can be a socially acceptable way to indulge. "It's like dessert, but you can have it for any meal," Giana says. "I feel like a lot of girls drink coffee because they don't want to eat." For girls who are trying to hide the fact that they're skipping meals, drinking coffee gives them cover. (Boys, the girls say, are more inclined to get their caffeine fixes from energy drinks. One of Giana's friends claims to have consumed seven cans of Red Bull in one day.)
Giana doesn't buy Starbucks' claim that it's not marketing to kids. She points to the section of the menu that's thick with chocolate, caramel and whipped cream. "That's the kids menu," she says, which she notes sagely is not good for diabetes. She compares the way the creamy drinks mask the bitter taste of coffee with how fruity mixed drinks make it easier for teens to down alcohol. "It's like chocolate milk for big kids," she says. ........................................
What troubles doctors isn't so much that kids consume some caffeine, but that they drink soda and coffee at the exclusion of eating well. Dr. Marcie Beth Schneider, who specializes in adolescent medicine in Stamford, Conn., echoes 16-year-old Giana in saying that among her teen patients, coffee is replacing breakfast. "I deal with teenagers mostly," she says, "and their No. 1 drink is Starbucks in the morning. They're not eating there. They're getting coffee. " She implores her patients to pick up a muffin or a scone as well -- a little actual food. "They use coffee so they don't have to eat because they believe that it is going to decrease their appetite," she says.
Caffeine is an appetite suppressant, but according to Jennifer K. Nelson, a dietician writing on MayoClinic.com, its effects last only a very short time and it ultimately doesn't contribute to weight loss. It is a diuretic, however, which teens will be unhappy to know causes the drinker to urinate more but not lose any excess fat.
When Schneider's patients complain of insomnia, her first question is: "What are you drinking?" Schneider says many teens use caffeine to stay awake, given they're not getting the more than eight hours of sleep that teens need.
Kara's packed schedule shows why. Tall chai tea latte in hand, she explains that for her, it's about the caffeine. She's one of the co-editors of the school paper, so she doesn't get home from school on Tuesday and Wednesday nights until 9 p.m., and then she starts her homework. Every other Thursday night, when the paper's coming out, she doesn't get home until after midnight, and then there's no time for homework. That's a two-Starbucks day.
Starbucks also provides a place for teens to be together that's not school, home, work or the library. ............................... For all its social appeal, Simon believes that it's not just the chance to hang out with their friends in public away from their parents that keeps kids coming back. "I think that Starbucks knows that by creating pleasant places for teens, and these drinks that teens like, they're creating lifelong brand loyalty," he says. "It's really fashionable to say that Starbucks is selling milk and sugar, but I don't think that it would work if they weren't selling a habitual product."
Michele Simon, director of the Center for Informed Food Choices in Oakland, takes a dimmer view. "by adults, and making it attractive to children with sugar and fat. They're using milk and sweetener as a way to soften the bitterness. You can even think of it as a gateway drug." It's irresponsible, she says, for Starbucks to claim not to market to kids while selling highly sweetened and highly caloric beverages that are attractive to them.
Even Giana, who at 16 sees through this sugary caffeinate scheme, is not immune to its lure. She doesn't drink coffee every day, but if she has a big school project to do, she goes for a double mocha to help her crank it out. Just like a grown-up office worker on a tight deadline at work, going to get the coffee has become part of this teenager's ritual of being under pressure. "It feels like you are doing something that is incredibly productive," she says with a laugh
A Carmel Frappacino with whipped cream has 430 calories per 16 ounces. A regular coffee has 15 calories. A quarter pounder has 420 calories.
Yet, a Frappacino has almost no nutritional value.
These drinks disguise the taste of the bitter coffee yet are ladened with calories. So anyone who works or lives near a high school has stepped over children with their ventis and grandes with whipped cream and caramel chattering away before slipping away for a smoke.
I personally think their coffee is overroasted, but it works for some folks.
You know how on summer Sunday nights, you can bounce around TV?
Well, the Science channel had a how on surviving urban disasters. Normally, disaster shows are entertainment. But this one was anything but.
The host, Les Stroud, is usully stuck in the ass end of Ontario for a week, up in the woods or some other remote place. For Katrina, it was about surviving a flood.
Very different show to watch.
Katrina, has been, most of all, a failure of the American spirit.
My mother thinks Ray Nagin is a glib asshole.
"He thinks everything is funny"
Unfair, but then the stupid fucker opened his mouth about 9/11 and he can't even get the shit off his streets.
But we, as a nation, has failed New Orleans. Black and white.
Where are the Churches. Where are the industrialists? Black America is wealthy and we just stand by and watch the corruption and the failure and say little. It's easy for Juan Williams to take shots at Sharpton and Jackson, but it was them and Ned Lamont, not the Black Republicans talking about Katrina. Not any Republicans.
Bush's failure has been complete, moral, economic, inspirational. And he has plenty of company.
But the worst thing about Katrina is not the damage to New Orleans,but the flood of open racism which came after it. It seems that hatred came along with the flood for many people. As if natural desperation really was showing the animalistic negro, and some people ran so hard and fast with it, they decided to pick on Mexicans as well.
If the best were the rescuers, the worst were the hatemongers who reveled in the pain of the survivors of Katrina and they were many and frequent.
When people look back at Katrina, a lot of people will be judged to have done less than they could have.
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and DAVID LEONHARDT Published: August 28, 2006
With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.
That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.
The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.
As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”
Until the last year, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by the rising value of benefits, especially health insurance, which caused overall compensation for most Americans to continue increasing. Since last summer, however, the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data.
At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising.
So are we going to get a book about black people in the economy, the one not affected by magazines and hip hop
On Monday, I wrote a diary about the Nazi rally scheduled for yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin, where I currently live, and the reason why I couldn't be there to protest, even if I decided that protesting would be better than ignoring the Nazis. I'm thrilled to report that only 60 Nazis had the guts to show up, they were outnumbered by protesters, and it rained on them the whole time. Sucks to be you, Nazi assholes, and it serves you right!
I, on the other hand, made a trip to my hometown, a place I refer to as Naziville for reasons that are obvious to anyone who read the other diary, to rescue a friend who desperately wanted to leave but needed help to do so. I'm happy to report -- as many of you requested that I do -- that we made it safely back to Madison without incident.
The trip started rather inauspiciously -- the deluge on Thursday night knocked out electricity and internet service to my building, and only electricity was restored by the time we had to leave, so I ended up having to do all the driving -- of my two co-conspirators, my girlfriend had never been to my hometown, and my little sister didn't know the route well enough because we moved away before she started driving. And of course, the rain continued pretty much all through Friday and for parts of Saturday, so our campground was... let's just say less than ideal. Still, we managed ok, we finished our trip to my hometown and arrived at my friend's house as planned at about 11 Saturday night, loaded up all her things, and hit the road a little before 4 a.m. There was one point on our way out of town that we thought we had been spotted -- I recognized one of the people I was hoping to avoid altogether, but he looked pretty drunk and the lighting would have worked against him anyway for the purpose of recognizing us -- but otherwise, the whole trip was as uneventful as any other time I've helped a friend move, except for the odd precautions.
After the long drive back to Madison, we unloaded all of my friend's things at another friend's apartment, returned the truck, and I came home for a well-deserved shower and to check my e-mail. Of course, internet service was still down, so I had to fix it, which is why it took until now to let you all know that we are ok. My friend is moving into her own apartment about six blocks from my own on Friday, and she starts her new job after Labor Day weekend.
I want to thank all of you who offered support, suggestions, and good thoughts and prayers for our well-being. We were very lucky that everything important went our way this weekend, but things could have gone wrong very easily. It is a comfort to know that in trying times, this community was here to support me, even though none of you know who I really am. From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of my friend, the new Madison resident, I thank you.
The Army has launched an investigation into claims by the parents of a young soldier from Utah that recruiters used false promises and forged documents to enlist him.
The 17-year-old was recruited from a youth prison in Ogden.
In a coincidence of timing, a Congressional report was released today detailing hundreds of complaints of recruiting irregularity and fraud.
In the Utah case, is it fraud or just a homesick kid who wants to come home?
To take the oath and join the military, a 17-year-old must have parental approval in writing. Steve Price of Brigham City was barely 17 when he enlisted last January. He was recruited while serving time at a youth prison in Ogden.
He's now a PFC at Ft. Stewart Georgia. He told us by phone, he believes his parents' approval signatures were forged.
Pfc.Steven Price: "I want out. Right now. It's all, it's all bull. It's all a game. It's terrible."
Staffers say they don't routinely bring in recruiters. But they did in this case because the boy asked for it and because they thought the army might be a good thing for him.
Counselors say the boy's divorced mother went hot and cold on the idea.
Levine Tupe, Youth Counselor: "Sometimes she was, and other times in our visits she wasn't in favor of him being deployed to the military."
The parental consent form provided to us by the boy's mother, Lisa Jensen, has what purports to be her signature on January 10th. But she told us, "That's not my signature."
Counselors say she did sign, in the presence of an Army recruiter.
Levine Tupe, Youth Counselor: "I know she did, because we were all there in the same room."
But the boy and his mother say she actually signed a different form a month later when it was too late to say no.
Pfc. Steven Price: "That paper was signed after I'd already signed and enlisted into the military."
The boy's divorced father apparently wasn't even at the signing, but his name is on the form too.
"I don't know if it's a big conspiracy," Dean Price told us. "But it is 100 percent fraudulent. That is not my signature." .................................
P.F.C. Price says Army recruiters are using fraudulent tactics because enlistments are in short supply. For obvious reasons.
PFC Steven Price: "The war-time, sir. Nobody wants to go to war."
Price told us he initially did want to go in, but now he wants to come home. He says recruiters made false promises that he wouldn't have to join a combat unit until he was 18.
A veteran recruiter told us he would never make such a promise because once you're in, you're a soldier.
This Utah case comes during eye-opening results of a new investigation into military recruitment.
The Government Accountability Office said accusations of wrongdoing by US military recruiters-increased by 50 percent in the last year.
Criminal violations like falsifying documents and sexual harassment more than doubled. Most of the charges are against the Army. The report showed recruiters were under pressure to meet enlistment goals while the Iraq death toll rises and America's job market is competitive.
It also faulted the Defense Department for not establishing a way to report recruiting violations.
People have been saying, what about the other races, why is there so much emphasis on Lieberman-Lamont when other people are running.
Ok, I haven't given to anyone, including Lamont, in this cycle. So I can't tell you where to send your money. But I can point out what races do need some attention.
Senate Brown-DeWine Ohio
This could be a real pickup for the Dems, considering the moribund state of the Ohio GOP
Webb-Allen Virginia
Allen is losing his shit really quickly. His little racial slip has created an opening for Jim Webb and his campaign team.
McCaskill-Talent Missouri
Jim Talent is a hack who deserves to lose and McCaskill is running a smart campaign
Tester-Burns Montana
Jon Tester came from behind to beat the DLC candidate and has the ability to beat the decrepit Burns outright
Menendez-Kean New Jersey
Tom Kean Jr. is a lying bastard trying to use his daddy's name to get to the Senate. This race hasn't heated up yet, but it will.
Ford-Corker Tennessee
Harold Ford wants to be President. But to do that, he has to get up the political ladder. While some people are enthusiatic about this race, I'm hoping he wins, but I expect the race card to explode off the table.
Casey-Santorum Pennsylvania
It's big tent test time. Casey is pro-life, but Santorum is so repellent I'd vote for almost anyone first. House
Kos has a list of the House and Senate races he's backing
Edwards-Wynn, D Primary Maryland
Donna Edwards humiliated DLC lackey Albert Wynn in a debate. She could do a lot better than he can in that seat. Gubinatorial
Granholm-DeVos Michigan
Dick DeVos is connected to Blackwater mercenaries and Amway.
Strickland-Blackwell Ohio
Crazy Ken is the tool of the wingnuts and 20 points down. He should stay that way. He scares the moderates and some folks ain't sending him nowhere.
Rendell-Swann Pennsylvania
Another beatdown. Franco Harris is campaigning for Rendell.
Angelides-Schwartzenegger California
A lot of people, like Kos, are unhappy with the way this race is playing out, but Arnold should be vunerable to a challenge especially when there is such discontent with the GOP across the country and over immigration.
Congeries of consultants, packs of pollsters, stretch-limos of strategists, and what have we got: Wal-Mart as the enemy.
I'm just getting around to taming my amazement at a New York Times story from August 17th, which described the demonizing of the Bastard out of Bentonville by the wise men of Democratic Party, summer 2006.
Specifically, the Times was reporting a speech made by Joe Biden, who is clearly in need of a crowd-stirring message, since he's never been able to awaken anyone beyond the bookers on the Sunday morning chat shows.
Adam Nagourney and Michael Barbaro of the Times wrote: "Among Democrats, Mr. Biden is not alone. Across Iowa this week and across much of the country this month, Democratic leaders have found a new rallying cry that many of them say could prove powerful in the midterm elections and into 2008: denouncing Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health care benefits." Not to mention its anti-union policies. ....................
1.It brings up the worst of the old lefty imprint. I'm not the first to say this, and I hope I won't be the last. Bashing America's largest company is redolent of a messianic extremism that will not bring back the Reagan Democrats. It sends a scary message to the millions of small business owners and entrepreneurs the Democrats needs to win.
Nor will treating Wal-Mart like it's Hezbollah - as with the ludicrously symbolic gesture of Hillary Clinton returning a "tainted" $5,000 contribution - encourage the kind of engagement that accomplishes anything. Compare that with the way in which environmental groups have sat down at the table with BP and others in an effort to reduce emissions.
2.It's hypocritical. There are a lot of companies who are worse corporate citizens than Wal-Mart, whether it comes to health insurance coverage or being the agent of child labor around the world, or energy policy. And when it comes to tobacco, although the Republicans take more nicotine dollars, the Democrats have their hands out, too.
3.It's a distraction from the real work the Democrats need to do in creating a coherent narrative. They've got strong and popular issues - opposition to the war, stem cell research, an administration that acts in desperate secrecy, millions who haven't participated in the selective boom - but there is no integration of the message. Check out the home page of their website - democrats.org - and tell me if this is an organization with a sharp and focused story to tell.
4.It's not even the best way to address the widening income gap. Let's talk about structural issues like education, tax breaks for wealthy corporations, unregulated hedge funds, and yes, the need for a living wage -- but let's not make Wal-Mart the entire axis of evil all by itself.
5.It's too late. Wal-Mart has seen the green light, even Al Gore has praised their environmental commitment and embrace of sustainability. Geez, they've even joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. The company is already the largest seller of organic milk, and wants to "democratize"organic food by making it only 10% more expensive than conventional grub.
And, as the Wall Street Journal wrote in a front page story this weekend, Wal-Mart has launched a charm offensive with Democrats. They're "sweetening health-care benefits for workers" among other initiatives, and although they haven't satisfied Jesse Jackson or Representative Rangel, the Journal quotes Paul Braithwaite, executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, as saying "Communication is good. It would be nice if other companies, such as Target, Kohls, Sears and others that hire African-Americans, and where African-Americans are consumers, would seek the same kind of dialogue."
The story also quotes Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. While he's understandingly "skeptical of many of the company's environmental promises, he also acknowledges the improvement. 'We are excited by examples where a company can do well by doing good...I would love to have everybody else copy Wal-Mart' when it comes to reducing oil consumption."
I can't think of a single national election where the Democrats gained any real ground by taking the evil corporation route. And the choice of Wal-Mart over Halliburton or Bechtel is a curious one. Which leads us to one unavoidable conclusion: Wal-Mart has learned and changed, but the Democrats haven't.
God, are you sure he isn't a Democratic consultant or a moron. I know it's hard to tell the difference some days, but, let me explain why Wally World is a Dem target
1) It supports Republicans. The vast majority of their political support goes to the GOP.
2) It is virulent anti-union. It spends millions to prevent the unionization of their stores. It is clear that in North America, stores that unionize will be closed. Which is why Wal Mart hasn't opened in New York.
3) It's expansion plans have drawn repeated grass roots opposition in blue areas like Chicago and New York. Chicago just passed a forced hike in the minimum wage for Wal Mart
4)The cost of health care by the miserable insurance Wal Mart has provided has created legislative action. Something like 75 percent of Wal Mart store employees are ineligible for the company's miserely health insurance plans.
5) There are 40 different lawsuits against Wal Mart, from refusing to promote blacks and women from refusing to pay overtime to locking cleaning crews inside stores. Wal Mart is a miserable corporate citizen, who's gained such a bad reputation that they have to now make minor concessions to public outrage.
Attacking Wal Mart is attacking the biggest supporter of GOP candidates and falls in line with the union campaign against the company. Wal Mart's corporate practices are harmful to America and some bullshitting with the CBC so they can expand in urban America is not the same as accepting their corporate responsibility which comes with their size and reach in America.
(AP Photos/Rebecca Santana) U.S. army soldier Sgt. Jason Mulligan, 28, is one of thousands of soldiers and Marines who left the active military but were pulled back in and deployed to Iraq.
The wars in the Middle East grind on. The situation looks grimmer than ever. The United States and Iran appear perilously close to war.
In spite of all this death and destruction, not everyone is unhappy. One young former Humboldt County resident named Anthony Mantova is about to get the war he has publicly wished for, even if he does not intend to personally participate. ...........................
Since he is such a fan of aggressive military solutions to solve the world’s problems, he should be eager to enlist. Mantova flatly refused to concede to serving the United States in the military.
The money quote from these conversations came when Mantova berated me for what he said was my “hillbilly, intellectually vacant and morally repugnant belief that ‘those who call for war must serve.’”
A 24-year-old, healthy man, Mantova — hypothetically at least — believes in “personal responsibility” and strongly defending America. He’s an outstanding candidate for military service. He simply lacks the heart to sign up.
These days, Anthony Mantova is a young fellow on the rise in GOP politics. He is the national field director for an organization called The Leadership Institute.
Based in Arlington, Va., The Leadership Institute is a 501c3 advocacy foundation. Created by longtime GOP operative Morton Blackwell, “The Leadership Institutes mission is to identify, recruit, train and place conservatives in politics, government and the media.”
................................
Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff and James Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon) are some notable graduates of The Leadership Institute. ............................
Some time ago, Anthony Mantova wrote a few guest opinions for The Eureka Reporter, all of which were resoundingly jingoistic. One was called “The Cost of Co-existence is Too High.” That last title begs the question, what cost is Anthony Mantova willing to pay?
None, apparently.
Mantova is very enthusiastic about combat, just so long as someone else is doing the fighting. He said it was unnecessary for him to enlist. This, despite the fact that combat tours have been involuntarily extended. Some troops have deployed into a war zone for the fourth time.
Mantova is of age, qualified to serve and has publicly, enthusiastically endorsed widening the war when there’s a shortage of troops.
Why doesn’t he sign up?
Mantova gave me unconvincing answers. He speculated how his enlistment might undermine civilian control of the military.
He compared himself favorably to the ancient Roman politician Cato the Elder, Winston Churchill and Socrates. Clearly, Mantova has a very high opinion of his intellectual abilities.
Finally, Mantova demeaned all service members and veterans with his “hillbilly, intellectually vacant and morally-repugnant” comments and dismissed the very notion of military service. He treated a deadly serious question as if it were a joke.
....................................
Guys like Mantova want all the glory without showing any of the guts. Since he works for The Leadership Institute, Mantova must aspire to lead something, some day. From what I can see, Mantova is showing no leadership qualities whatsoever — only glibness, smugness and self-preoccupation that borders on the sociopathic.
Those may get Mantova ahead in the short term, but will damage our country in the long run.
Is this the kind of leadership to which we can look forward?
Let’s hope not. I’m wishing Anthony Mantova a very brief undistinguished and unfulfilling career in politics. America has already had way too much of his kind of leadership.
When people wonder why those rich, drunk kids get hammered for not serving, it's cowards like this which do the driving of policy. He wants to play risk with other people's lives, lives like that IRR soldier now back in Iraq.
Sgt Mulligan may wind up dead or injured and asswipes like Mantova talk about war like it was some kind of game. What's even worse, it's that these guys don't even know how what they're saying sounds. It's all been this backroom kind of thing, one the national media hasn't touched. They'll ask a high school kid why he isn't signing on for our glorious colonial war in Iraq, but not people like this. And it would be a hell of a story to see the kind of sneering contempt these fuckers have for military service and those in the military.
CRANSTON, R.I. - U.S. Senate candidate Stephen Laffey said he regrets that he wrote columns denigrating gays when he was a college student.........................The paper reported that it received copies of the columns anonymously in the mail earlier in the week.
Laffey, 44................called the writings "sophomoric political satire" and said they do not represent his views.
"Do I regret some of these things? Sure," he said. "But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny."
The Republican candidate wrote them in 1983 and 1984 while studying at Bowdoin College in Maine. The articles appeared in a paper published by campus Republicans.
In one column, Laffey said he has never seen a happy homosexual.
"This is not to say there aren't any; I simply haven't seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet," he wrote. "All the homosexuals I've seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life."
In another column he wrote that pop music was turning the children of America into sissies, and criticized the singer Boy George, referring to him as "it."
"It wears girl's clothes and puts on makeup," he wrote. "When I hear it sing, 'Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,' I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs."
Oh, this didn't appear in the paper by accident. Bowdoin College, early 80's? Only two ways this appears in public, one, someone kept it, two, some Republican mole went to Bowdoin's library and looked it up.
No Dem would do this, for two reasons. One, why the subterfuge? If I was gay or a Dem, I wouldn't drop this off, I'd march into the Providence Journal with them, explaining how I got them. Two, you want to run against Club of Growth wingnut Laffey.
Come on, at a small school like Bowdoin College, these guys must have been freaks. Someone must have remembered this, or more likely, that he wrote for a local version of the GOP's Der Sturmer. College Republican rags were all the rage in the early 80's. It's how pundrix Laura Ingraham made her name at Dartmouth, by picking on a black professor. It was the training ground for the right, as much as the College Republicans.
If this is oppo and it reeks of it, the NRSC is now engaged in silent, deadly, nasty backstreet war with the Club for Growth folks. It isn't cheap to dig this shit up, and to use it against a Republican? They ran a crazy ad about illegals to use against Laffey, now this? Liddy Dole has declared war against Laffey in a way not even the bloggers used against Lieberman.
This is amazing. Oppo against a fellow Republican.
AP Photo/Jason DeCrow Take a look at the pictures below.
Somewhere, some son or daughter of the Beltway upper classes is either sneaking out of an apartment after furtive, drunken sex, playing Evercrack or sleeping off a boozy night.
They will spend Sunday over eggs and coffee, maybe watch a Nationals game, hop in the SUV and head to a mall, enjoying the end of the fetid Washington summer and do some shopping. Maybe they'll settle in for some midday sex or smoke a bowl of weed or run or any of the myraid of things that well off people do on Sundays.
Other people, people without such luxuries, will wake up, with rank, sweaty clothing, sore, because concrete makes anyone sore. The smell of piss fills the air. Sleep wasn't much, but you can't not sleep, even if it's miserably hot.
You spit out a little warm water because you'll wait to brush your teeth. A million years ago, you used Mentadent. But the plastic container is way too bulky to follow you here, so it's Colgate, what you used as a kid. And then you bury it so it won't explode in your gear, fucking it up. You shouldn't really have it, but you can't shave, there is no hot food, so the one luxury, beside that bible your uncle gave you, the one he had in Vietnam, is toothpaste.
You stand up, in a room you share with other stinking bodies, none over 24, because it's your turn to watch that street.
When Clint Eastwood did it, in the movies, it was cool, watching the street for bad guys. Now, it isn't cool, it is a deadly business. It is your life in microseconds. The wrong person, with the wrong weapon, and you could no longer exist.
You look at every alley, every gust of wind. It may be quiet in other places, but here, the bad guys, who in your quiet moments think aren't all that different than you, may pop up and start the day up with some gunfire, maybe a rocket.
This is your Sunday, it was your Saturday and it will be your Monday, when you get relieved and get a shower and hope the Halliburton food doesn't make you sick again.
And then there are the people who live in total fear. Who will shoot at you today, the Sadrists, the guerrillas, the police, the Americans, the contractors who have no law. Who will you have to fear today.
At least the Americans can go back to their bunkers and bases and sleep. Last week, some men took the people down the block out and shot them. Dead. Everyone. They were Shia, but who knows why? A crooked business deal, a death squad, who knows? All you can do is live and hope you don't get that knock on the door.
You have no base to go to, no place to hide. All you can do is run your errands, pray to be safe and hope for the best, the best meaning everyone in your house lives to the next sunrise.You aren't going for any run, not if you want to live. Anyone can shoot a running man.
Some days, you think you can stick it out, that it will get better. But some days, you want to leave. Life on the moon must be better.
And then, your sister's daughter never mentions her job. She speaks English, learned it at univesity. They have money, but is she working for the Americans? Is she that stupid? There are people who watch, who make notes. She hopes she isn't that stupid, because you don't know who that could kill.
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) joked about how a "nice little Guatemalan man" fixing up his house might be an illegal immigrant.
A leading congressional candidate in Florida said he knows, "from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers, and may not even know how to swim."
Two congressional candidates and a gubernatorial candidate believe people who "appear" to be Arab or Muslim should be subjected to racial profiling at airports.
And in one you may not have heard about, a Baptist church in Mississippi voted out a 12-year-old boy who "asked Jesus to live in his heart" -- because the child is biracial and church members didn't want the black side of his family attending with him.
If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don't know better, we are leading them astray and it's wrong.
When did this kind of public speech and action become ok again? Lou Dobbs bashes immigrants every day on CNN. O'Reilly is O'Reilly. The GOP is unleashing it's ugliness, and even so-called Democrats like Joe Lieberman use race-baiting as a campaign tactic.
Is it fear? Desperation? Arrogance? I'd like to think it's desparation, the GOP realizing it's got slight toe-hold on power and throwing everything they've got into keeping their base fearful and mobilized. But whatever the cause, the result is that the mask has been ripped off of a very ugly side to American politics. I hope the better angels of our natures prevail in November.
They missed the black kids being told to sit on the back of the bus in Louisiana and the skinhead walking away from an assault with a trip to the Holocaust Museum, some laser surgery and community service.
The GOP is flipping out because people are tired of big talk and little action and they're in their final reserves, out and out racism. Their immigration gambit failed, the war is collapsing and they have nothing left.
If I was Harold Ford and Bob Menendez, I would expect to be accused of misegenation and all manner of buggery before November
I was having a chat with DeanFan84 today and he commented that the return of Joe Lieberman to DC after having been pounded by the voters of CT in the Democratic primary was not going to be a warm and fuzzy moment. Joe is notoriously thin-skinned, and how is he going to be greeted? DeanFan84 and I saw CT Attorney General Richard Blumental flee the scene of the AFL-CIO picnic six weeks ago to avoid being seen with Joe (who was only 5 minutes away). The incumbency protection racket notwithstanding, politicians are politicians and Joe is publicly toxic. How is he going to feel when people openly shun him? People who are taking their cues from Hillary Clinton and her senior advisor, Howard Wolfson:
Gerstein touted Lieberman as an experienced lawmaker who is willing to put politics aside to get things accomplished. He went on to question the alliance between Lamont and Clinton, who, like Lieberman, voted to authorize the war.
"So, we’ll be curious to see whether Ned Lamont attacks Hillary Clinton’s record the way he has distorted Joe Lieberman’s," Gerstein said. "We suspect he won’t, which just goes to show that so much of what he is doing is political opportunism and not principle."
Clinton and Lamont’s campaigns both fired back at Lieberman’s campaign for characterizing them as using playbook tactics.
"Better than reading from the Bush-Cheney talking points," Wolfson said, in a dig at Lieberman’s perceived closeness with top Republicans on the war.
"We don’t apologize for being proud Democrats," Wolfson said.
Oh lordy. Lieberman is gonna need a fist full o’benzos to see this one through to the end.
Oh, Jane, how is going to get that money?
Wolfson is Hillary's man, he does the heavy lifting. If Gerstein would like to work in politics, fucking with Wolfson is not advised. I think that the dog whistle is at high pitch. If you want Hillary to be president, giving money to Lieberman is ill advised.
The next act is her raising money for him in Manhattan. Once that happens, Joe might want to find a graceful exit.
Lamont can spend a LOT of money if he has to, Lieberman can't.
You know that scene in Pulp Fiction? After Jules and Vincent show up to their buddy's house with a dead body?
JULES I don't wanna hear about no motherfuckin' "ifs." What I wanna hear from your ass is: "you ain't got no problems, Jules. I'm on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them niggers out and wait for the cavalry, which should be comin' directly."
MARSELLUS You ain't got no problems, Jules. I'm on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them niggers out and wait for The Wolf, who should be comin' directly.
JULES You sendin' The Wolf?
MARSELLUS Feel better?
JULES Shit Negro, that's all you had to say.
Well, that's what Hillary Clinton did this week, when she sent Howard Wolfson to work with the Lamont campaign. Because while it isn't clear to people is outside New York politics who this guy is, it is crystal clear to people inside the game.
HOWARD WOLFSON serves as a Partner at The Glover Park Group and heads the firm's New York office. He joined GPG after serving as Executive Director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for two years. At the DCCC, he oversaw advertising in over 40 media markets and was responsible for a $50 million budget. He also provided strategic, political and campaign advice on a daily basis to all Democratic House members.
Prior to the DCCC, Wolfson served as Communications Director for the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2000. He traveled extensively with Clinton throughout New York State and managed the campaign's research, policy and communications departments. During the campaign he made numerous television appearances on shows including Meet the Press, This Week and Larry King Live.
Wolfson was Communications Director for then Representative Charles Schumer's 1998 Senate campaign, developing and implementing extensive political, advertising and press strategies. He had previously served as Chief of Staff and Press Secretary to Representative Nita Lowey.
Wolfson graduated from the University of Chicago and subsequently earned a Masters in US History from Duke University. A New York native, he now splits his time between New York and Washington, DC, with his wife Terri.
He's a no bullshit kinda guy and Dan Gerstein is seriously overmatched. And he has solid insider creds without being a Washington guy. When he started with the Schumer campaign, nobody gave him a chance of beating D'Amato. By the time they finished, D'Amato lost by 10 points.
I don't know if I'd want him running ALL the campaigns, but in a close in fight, he's a proven winner, one of the few around in Dem consultant circles. And in this region, it sends a clear signal that the bullshit is over, Hillary is on Lamont's team and people better join up.
This grandmother led a cold-blooded mission to avenge the death of her son. Nine men were executed. Paul McGeough reports.
THE lined face peers from shrouds of mourning black. Wabila Felehi Hussein is a 50-year-old grandmother, and her life is imploding.
Muthanna, her 30-year-old son, is dead; Adel, her eldest boy, has fled to Egypt; Hanoon, her husband, is in near-catatonic shock. After 35 years in the mixed community of Hoorijab, on Baghdad's southern rural fringe, they were driven out under gunfire. Now 16 of them camp in a single room in the Shiite slums of Sadr City.
Even a short time spent with this family reveals the grandmother's towering strength. Until now, all the blood-letting has been laid at the door of organised insurgency cells, religious militias, death squads that operate within the national security forces and tribal gangs. But this woman is being hailed by thousands as the Shiite mother who spectacularly - and brutally - avenged her son's death.
US officials tick the boxes as they try to build a civil society - they have written a constitution, there have been elections, and new police and military services are in training. But it all collapses in a meaningless heap at the feet of Wabila Felehi Hussein. Iraq's democracy dream is being strangled at birth. Wabila Felehi's home town, Hoorijab, is near the gateway towns to an insurgency stronghold to the south-west of the capital that has been dubbed the Triangle of Death.
But the family insists that until just weeks ago the Shiite minority still shared meals and tea with Sunni neighbours.
But suddenly the word "alasa" - traitors - was in the air as Shiites accused old Sunni friends of fingering them for an insurgency clean-out of Shiites. Then on July 31, Muthanna, the fourth son of Wabila Felehi, was abducted from the makeshift shop where he sold ice, fruit and blackmarket petrol .......... The evening light was fading as they came to a point on the river bank where six bloated bodies floated face-down in waist-deep water. They recognised the clothing on one as Muthanna's and they confirmed his identity by two tattoos.
The brothers used a blanket to haul his remains up the embankment, laying him at his mother's feet. His hands were tied behind his back, there were two bullet wounds to the back of his head and he had been beaten.
.................................................
He said that after fleeing Hoorijab, the mother set her sons working their mobile phones, calling the few who they could still trust in Hoorijab to get the name of the alasa who might have given Muthanna's name to the insurgency. "They got the name of the son of a local tribal sheik who lived near their house," he says. "When she sent the boys, she insisted he must be brought back to Sadr City alive, because no one was to be killed unless they had proof of their involvement in Muthanna's death.
"He was interrogated and gave up nine more names. Eight of them were abducted and brought back for interrogation … and then they killed them with guns, knives and by bashing some of them. Adel killed six; Saad killed three."
So then, if this is democratic Iraq, Wabila Felehi Hussein is unimpressed with the new Middle East. But as she slip-slapped her hands in disgust, she was contemptuous. "This is not democracy … we have no stability, no future. It would be better if we all were dead … get me out of Iraq."
Tears streaming down her face, she hit bottom. "We were happy when the Americans came. They lifted the Saddam darkness, but now they have led us into a new, blacker darkness.
This woman has no law, no justice, no police to protect her.
Ed Alcock for The New York Times On a beach in western France, fresh mussels finish roasting on a bed of pine branches. They are eaten with just bread and butter.
A Passion for Mussels
By JULIA MOSKIN Published: August 23, 2006
ÎLE DE RÉ, France
THE few Americans who come to this scrubby Atlantic island all seem to describe it the same way. It’s “the French Nantucket,” according to New Englanders, or “Francehampton” to New Yorkers, who feel at home with its combination of lively beach towns, sandy potato fields, washed-blue skies and shellfish shacks.
The Île de Ré is about two miles out from the city of La Rochelle, and about 3,300 miles east of Portland, Me. The terrain may seem familiar, but once you sit down at one of the island’s restaurants, you know you’re not in the United States.
That’s because while clams and oysters are the stars of summer in New England, this region, the Charente-Maritime, is besotted with mussels. Yes, there are oyster bars and clam shacks on the beach that rival Maine’s finest, where the shellfish are cracked open and served raw, so fresh from the water that you can see them recoil from a squeeze of lemon.
But it’s local mussels that show up when villages here host big public dinners — the equivalent of pancake breakfasts — in the town square, like the “Fête Moules Frites” held in La Couarde-sur-Mer during the Bastille Day holiday weekend this year.
And mussels, not clams, are the primary ingredient for the local version of the New England clambake. Éclade de moules is a kind of ritualized mussel-roast, which can be as simple as a family beach picnic or can be expanded to feed hundreds for a wedding. It takes patience and steady hands to arrange the mussels in the traditional pattern of concentric circles. But other than that, it’s the simplest dish imaginable.
“For the real éclade de moules,” said a shellfish dealer at the Thursday market in the island town of Ars-en-Ré, “all you need is mussels, pine needles and bread and butter.”
The mussels are arranged on a plank of pine that has been soaked in seawater, then covered with pine branches or grape vines that are set alight. In about five minutes, the smoldering branches are swept away, leaving behind a bracing aroma and mussels filled with smoky meat.
Beyond éclade, mussels are on every menu, most often steamed open in white wine and seawater and finished with spoonfuls of crème fraîche. On the coast, the favorite dish is mouclade, in which mussels are steamed open and their top shells are removed, and then they are drowned in a succulent, curry-spiked cream sauce.
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
A judge spared a white man from a prominent family from a prison term today when he sentenced him for beating two black teenagers in what prosecutors called a racially motivated attack.
Instead, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Charles Spurlock gave Josiah Spaulding III to five years probation and 200 hours of community service at the Pine Street Inn or another homeless shelter. Spaulding, according to his sentence, will also have to visit the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill, make a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and remove his tattoos with Nazi symbolism.
Prosecutors had asked that Spaulding, who they described as a "skinhead," be sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in addition to five years of probation for what they called a “vicious attack.” He faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison with a minimum sentence of probation, according to the Suffolk district attorney's office.
"Judge Spurlock's sentence is one that addresses the very nature of the underlying offense,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley in a written statement. “Obviously we felt that committed time would also have been appropriate, but this lengthy probationary term, with these strict and very appropriate conditions, is a wise and thoughtful sentence.”
In July, the judge issued a split verdict in a bench trial on charges that Spaulding beat two 17-year-old black girls with a metal baton in a subway station on Nov. 22, 2002. According to prosecutors, he was with a group who shouted racial slurs at the teens on the concourse of the Park Street MBTA station. Spurlock found Spaulding guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, but exonerated him of civil or constitutional rights violations. ........................................ His father, Josiah Spaulding Jr., is president of the Wang Center, a performing arts center in Boston
Spaulding fled after the station after the attack and went to Amsterdam. In 2003, he returned to the United States and was initially held on $500,000 cash bail. Later Spaulding was released on personal recognizance and has remained free.
I hope there's a massive civil suit against him and the family.
Let's see, he commited a hate crime, fled from prosecution, has not served any time in jail and still has his racist tats.
Once upon a time 13 years ago, there was a controversy about U.S. Sen. George Allen, then a candidate for governor, and his private Confederate flag--the one he displayed in his home in Earlysville.
When the story broke, Allen said it was part of a flag collection, giving people the possible impression that some sort of United Nations of flags adorned the Allen household, one of them the Stars and Bars.
That impression, accepted by the media covering the flag flap, apparently is untrue. Spin control from 13 years ago may have reached its half-life and deteriorated somewhat.
Today, two former officials who visited Allen's log cabin home at different times recall only up to two flags on display there, a Confederate flag and, on an opposite wall, an American flag.
And he thinks people who practice good bicycle safey are "sissies".
On Nov. 4 of last year, Grant recalls, Allen displayed another telltale sign of his personality as the GOP senator was joking around in front of a Republican crowd that was rallying in Albemarle for the party's statewide ticket and local candidates.
"During his remarks, Allen spotted me in the crowd and mentioned me as his former Earlysville neighbor," Grant recalled. "Then he made a public wisecrack about me with what he called, and I quote here, my `sissy helmet.'
"I was in the crowd in my tan suit holding my bicycle helmet, since I had biked to the rally from where I parked my car over near the Four Seasons neighborhood," Grant said. "For the record, George Allen may consider wearing bicycle helmets as being sissy, but I don't. Being safe is not being a sissy," he said.
"Is it possible there is a trend here?" Grant asked, noting Allen's 1994 comment about knocking political opponents' " `soft teeth down their whiney throats,' reverence for Confederate flag decor, `sissy helmet' statements, and offensive cultural assumptions -- a la `macaca' -- about non-white U.S. citizens of other than his political persuasion."
Is it possible there's a trend? Talk about a textbook definition of "rhetorical question". This guy thinks he's running for president?
Listening to Joe Lieberman's defiant non-concession speech on August 8, I honestly believed that he was going to be a very competitive candidate in the long run. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Lieberman (C4L-CT) holds a double-digit lead over Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, almost solely on the strength of his overwhelming support from Republicans. Two more recent polls - one by Rasmussen and one by the American Research Group shows the race to be a statistical dead heat. Right now, it looks like this race could go down to the wire.
It won't, though. Just looking at the factors, there's no way Lieberman is going to be able to sustain a campaign for another 2 1/2 months. Come November, his campaign as an 'independent Democrat' will be a fading memory.
I still believe Lieberman's ego is too big for his own good. Nevertheless, I don't think that there will be a huge spectacle when he drops out, as Lawrence O'Donnell imagines. Instead, there are several harsh realities that the junior senator will have to face as he attempts to gain traction for his unaffiliated candidacy.
Rebuilding a campaign The day after Lieberman's loss in the Democratic primary, he fired his entire staff, replacing Sean Smith and Marion Steinfels with Sherry Brown and noted wanker Dan Gerstein as campaign manager and spokesperson, respectively. Last week, the Lieberman campaign hired a new media consultant and pollster, even though the recent work both Josh Isay and Neil Newhouse have done has been for GOP candidates. In particular, Newhouse's client list is entirely comprised of Republicans, including two in Connecticut (Governor Jodi Rell and Representative Rob Simmons). So it's clear that Lieberman has at least the head of his campaign put together. But as any anatomical expert will tell you, the head doesn't work so well without a body.
That's precisely where Lieberman's problem lies. First, the main point of access to a political campaign these days - the Internet - is one at which Lieberman is sorely lacking. After pathetically claiming that the Lamont campaign was responsible for hacking its website, a brand-new site was relaunched on a new host - but there has been absolutely no work done on it. There's a new ad hosted on YouTube, but judging from the messages left on the profile, as well as the comments left for the ad, people think it's a complete joke. There's not much scouring of his website to do - no issues page, no contact page - only two links for volunteering and donating money. It's hardly something that proactively makes people want to volunteer for the campaign. Additionally, it seems that Lieberman is having great difficulty finding a Democratic vendor who will work on his website. Leave it to those in the business to tell it like it is:
One firm, Media Mezcla LLC, which produces Campaign Engine, a Web site management platform, has been running online ads highlighting Lieberman's site outage as a way of drumming up business. "If Joe Lieberman had used Campaign Engine, his site would still be up," the ad reads.
Would Media Mezcla work for Lieberman's independent campaign if approached? "My firm works with Democrats and progressive candidates," said President Ben Schaffer. "Joe Lieberman is neither." (emphasis added)
Lamont's campaign still has its all-star tag team at the top - campaign manager Tom Swan and campaign spokeswoman Liz Dupont-Diehl. Recently, they've added former state Senate Majority Leader and Connecticut Democratic Party chairman George Jepsen as campaign chairman, and today, there's news that Clinton advisor Harold Wolfson and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's 'war room' advisor Stephanie Cutter will be joining the Lamont campaign as well. Whatever one may think of the D.C. consultant crowd - and Cutter certainly has her share of detractors - it's clear that the big guns are lining up behind Lamont. It'll be very difficult for Lieberman to match that kind of firepower.
Money Although the political system would be a lot better off with full public financing of elections, that's not the world we live in right now. After the primary, Gerstein reported that Lieberman had $2 million left after the primary. Considering that Lieberman raised over $1.2 million in the last 15 days before the primary, it's clear that he had the connections to raise money quickly and easily. The funny thing is, you don't hear a lot about Lieberman raking in money hand over fist nowadays. Sure, you have the occasional idiot like Steve Rattner state that he'll keep putting up money for Lieberman, but is this really going to play? You haven't heard Rattner or any other big-time Democratic donors so much as utter a word in favor of Lieberman since the first couple of days past the primary.
I'd have to agree with Steve Gilliard's take on the Wolfson addition to the Lamont campaign. It sends a clear message to the moneybags in New York that Hillary's taken a side - and they had better not cross her.
Wolfson is probably the one person in Hillary's operation I actually respect, besides Peter Daou. He helped Chuck Schumer into the Senate and is a pro. Dan Gerstein is a boy compared to him.
What this means is that Hillary is firmly in the Stop Joe camp.
More importantly, this sends a signal to the New York money people that she's committed to Lamont and they might want to not feed Joe money.
Lamont has a very large base of small donors who will probably be willing to donate again if called upon. In addition, big names within the Democratic Party, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. With a campaign stop with John Edwards under their belt and one upcoming with John Kerry, you can expect that more money will begin to flow into Lamont's coffers. It's only a matter of time until Lieberman's $2 million - an amount he raised as a Democrat - will dry up, while Lamont will have more money flowing in than before.
Iraq Put simply, this issue alone was most likely responsible for Lieberman's primary defeat. Although most of us know that Lieberman is still a true believer in the failure in Iraq, his increasingly 'finger-in-the-wind' positioning is going to cause him to lose even more support. Considering how Lieberman criticized Lamont in their July 6 debate for taking too many positions on the war, it's quite ironic that it's the senator who is now all over the map on the issue. Let's take a look at some of his latest political posturing on the issue - and keep in mind that this is all after the primary:
And I'm staying because I want to help end the war in Iraq as quickly and successfully as possible, in a way that brings stability to the Middle East and doesn't leave us even more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, attacked by fellow Democrats as being too close to the White House on the Iraq War, on Sunday called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign but said the United States cannot "walk away" from the Iraqis.
[...]
"With all respect to Don Rumsfeld, who has done a grueling job for six years, we would benefit from new leadership to work with our military in Iraq," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"Iraq has now become what everyone thinks it was before, another battlefield in this war with Islamic terrorists, and we've got to end it with a victory," Mr. Lieberman said during an interview with the nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Glenn Beck on Tuesday.
[...]
Mr. Lieberman also reiterated his belief that the war against terrorists could drag on for several years, and that pulling troops out of Iraq would allow the Iranian government to move in and would increase the price of oil.
"If we walk away, then the Iranians will -- as sure as I am talking to you -- surge into Iraq, certainly take over the south and the oil that's there," he said. "We'll be paying six or seven bucks a gallon. And that'll just be the tip of it. I mean, there'll be instability and war throughout the Middle East. We've got to wake up to this. It is the test, unfortunately, of not just this generation of American leaders, but of the next generation as well, because this enemy ain't going away."
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the three-term Democrat whose independent campaign for re-election is being seen nationally as a referendum on the Iraq war, said Friday he may consider a timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraq.
The proposal was floated by Republican Rep. Chris Shays, another Connecticut politician facing a tough re-election battle with an anti-war candidate. Shays has long been a supporter of the war and previously has opposed withdrawal timetables.
"It seems to me that Chris saying, maybe we ought to set some goals for when we want to get out and I'd like to see what he has in mind before I comment on it," Lieberman said while campaigning in New Haven, Conn.
Lieberman has gone from advocating a need to the end of the war to calling for Rumsfeld's resignation to telling Glenn Beck the war is on the scale of past world wars to saying he'll consider a Republican's plan - even though Shays' remarks may remind you more of Lamont's position than what Lieberman has advocated for the past 3+ years. The Republicans were able to make political hay out of John Kerry's perceived flip-flopping on the issue, even though it wasn't that blatant. Here, it's clear that Lieberman is struggling to win points however he can. 61% of America opposes the war in Iraq, putting the senator and his Republican cohorts in the severe minority of the country. Now, he may actually be moving towards the position that Lamont has been taking all along - setting a timeline to bring our troops home. If he hopes to win by belatedly taking the other side's position, he might do well to heed Harry Truman's words, with a slight modification: if voters have a choice between a real Democrat and a fake one, they're going to pick the real Democrat - Ned Lamont.
Conclusion To me, there's only so much momentum that Lieberman can claim from these recently released polls before the tide begins to turn once again. It's clear that the Democratic establishment, with the exception of a few traitorous senators, are strongly behind Lamont. He's getting the money to compete; he's bulking up his campaign while keeping true to his campaign's roots - the grassroots; and while he can continue to hammer away at Lieberman over other issues, the biggest one of them all - Iraq - is the gift from the senator that will keep on giving.
Lieberman seems extremely disinclined to officially accept Republican aid, no matter how much he'll need it to have any realistic shot of winning in November. However, with every important Democrat abandoning him, I don't see any choice for him except to drop out. It may not be next week, but come the days running up to November 7, I suspect we'll be spending our time focusing elsewhere - because Ned Lamont will be running virtually unopposed by then.
What he doesn't say is that Lieberman hasn't really done more than TV and national TV at that. He hasn't been willing to go on the local stations and he isn't really doing interviews. The problem is that Lieberman is talking a game, but he isn't playing one, while Lamont has hammered him on Katrina and built up political chits from people who count. Lieberman doesn't seem to really have an organization to run with and doesn't seem to be building one.
His fellow senators don't want to turf him out, or didn't, until they realized he's basically committing treason by going on Glenn Beck and sounding unhinged, and now running around with Republicans. Russell Shaw in the HuffPo may not think it's a campaign stop, but I wonder how many he's organized. It looked like one to me. All that praise from Rove was designed to cause trouble as well, maybe force the Dems to be rash and force him from the party.
But Lieberman doesn't have any idea what he stands for besides more time in the Senate. And that becomes more clear every day. First, it's World War III, now it's timetable? Who wants to give him more time in Washington?
Hillary sent a message to Lieberman. The next step is the cocktail party circuit with Lamont on her arm.
It's easy to sit outside and say "fuck Lieberman", but his collegues like him to some degree, even the Clintons. They don't want to go to the matresses with him, humiliating him out of public life. We may, but he never did anything for us. Chris Dodd came to him as a friend. John Kerry clearly not. Hillary is now saying "Joe, get out before we hurt you".
He hasn't been listening, and it's only a matter of time before Lamont really puts the screws to him. He's been laying back, running his race, without really savaging Lieberman. He hasn't attacked him hard for still running.
But his Katrina remarks are just the start of what could be coming.
No one wants to put Lieberman down hard, at least in DC. But that's what is coming. Because Lieberman is endangering other races, like the three House seats in play, the gubenatorial race and others. Because they don't want that fight with the DLC and friends during the election. They'll wage it if they have to, but they don't want to start that shit now. Come January, Howard Dean and friends have some long standing business to attend to. But for now, shoving Lieberman out of the way in as friction-free way as possible is the goal of the people who have to deal with him.
This came from the Strickland for Governor campaign in Ohio
In a stunning move, the Blackwell for Governor campaign today took the idea behind the Strickland for Governor factcheck blog, http://www.checkforyourself.com, and made a knockoff version called "Tell the Truth, Ted" (http://www.tellthetruthted.com).
Now, despite the fact that the site is ostensibly aimed at Ted Strickland, a shocking secret underlies the surface of the site. U.S. Representative Charlie Rangel (NY) is mentioned not once...not twice...but thirteen times.
Charlie Rangel is not from Ohio. Charlie Rangel is not a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio or, in fact, any other state. But with today’s salvo, it’s become obvious – Ken Blackwell is going after Charlie Rangel with everything he’s got.
Such a move is truly surprising, even to seasoned political veterans. It’s rare enough for a statewide political candidate to focus such a blistering assault on someone not on the ballot; it’s perhaps unprecedented to focus such an attack on someone who is in no way eligible to hold the position as he is not a resident of the state in question
No, Blackwell is trying to prove he isn't like those other negroes. Strickland is no better than a colored congressman from New York.
No one cares, Ken. You're too black for the wingnuts and too crazy for everyone else. You're probably going to lose by 30 points.
eclaring himself a "non-combatant," U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, in remarks at a New Haven press event Friday, raised anew the question of whether his "independent" candidacy will help Republicans hold onto three Congressional seats in Connecticut -- and control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Lieberman -- who after losing an Aug. 8 Democratic primary to Ned Lamont has launched a third-party bid to hold onto his seat in the Nov. 7 general election -- was asked whether he still endorses Diane Farrell, Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy, three Democrats looking to unseat endangered Republican incumbents Chris Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson.
“I’m a non-combatant,” Lieberman declared. “I am not going to be involved in other campaigns. I think it’s better if I just focus on my own race.”
Lieberman made the remarks at a Friday morning photo op held in the rain under an I-95 overpass in the Fair Haven neighborhood to tout his role in bringing $50 million to the state to help ease transportation gridlock.
“It’s a little awkward for me now” to endorse the Democratic candidates in the general election, he said, “since they all endorsed my opponent,” Democratic primary winner Ned Lamont.
The comment was significant because analysts from both major parties believe that Lieberman's campaign could help the three Republicans keep their jobs in the face of tough challenges. Lieberman's strongest support -- 75 percent in the most recent Quinnipiac poll -- comes from Republicans. If he succeeds in drawing more Republican voters to the polls to support his candidacy, that could help the Republican Congressional candidates. Those three races are considered among the 10 most competitive Congressional races in the country; both parties consider the races key to deciding which party controls the House in 2007. National Republican strategists and donors have come forward to help Lieberman's campaign; party leaders have abandoned the nominal Republican in the Senate race, Alan Schlesinger. Prominent Republicans like Shays and former Republican House leader Newt Gingrich have endorsed Lieberman.
Lieberman laughed Friday when asked if he was endorsing the three Republican Congressional candidates instead. He subsequently said they hadn't asked for his endorsement.
Today, Hillary Clinton and her senior advisor and spokesperson Howard Wolfson met with Ned Lamont and his campaign manager Tom Swan. By all indications, the meeting seems to have gone well.
A source in the Clinton campaign has confirmed that Clinton will do "an event" with Lamont. While no one seems to know what form that event will take, the Clinton source said it was up to Lamont and Swan. Hillary would do whatever they asked.
In addition, Howard Wolfson will be joining Team Ned:
Howard Wolfson will serve on an advisory role [to Ned Lamont] to help coordinate the national democratic response to Lieberman.
Wolfson's specialty is rapid response, and it is in that capacity that he'll help Lamont and Democrats respond to whatever crap Lieberman and Dan Gerstein peddle.
Finally, Hillary will raise money for Lamont.
So personal time, a top advisor, and money. Not a bad haul.
(Now if anyone is wondering about the Big Dog, he's got a whole different political operation.)
Ok, no more bitching about Hillary being half-hearted, Arianna.
Wolfson is probably the one person in Hillary's operation I actually respect, besides Peter Daou. He helped Chuck Schumer into the Senate and is a pro. Dan Gerstein is a boy compared to him.
What this means is that Hillary is firmly in the Stop Joe camp.
More importantly, this sends a signal to the New York money people that she's committed to Lamont and they might want to not feed Joe money.
What do I think turned the tide? Besides the fact that Lamont is conventional and sane, internal polls can wake people up. His internals look good, his ground game looks good, his response is on target and smart, his webteam is up to snuff.
Lieberman can claim none of that.
But people have been talking as well. Whether it's a need to manuver with Kerry and Edwards or that despite what's in the blogs, people see the damage Lieberman is doing, Hillary has had pixies whispering to her, saying "Joe must go".
What Wolfson is on board for is to blunt the Lieber/Rove talking points on the war, especially with New Yorkers who give to regional campaigns. They have to end this Lieberman thing quickly. Menendez needs help, the House races can be won, and Joerus the heretic stands in the way.
By Amit R. Paley Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 25, 2006; Page A14
BAGHDAD, Aug. 24 -- British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday and prepared to wage guerrilla warfare along the Iranian border to combat weapons smuggling, a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called the first expulsion of U.S.-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center.
"This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!" trumpeted a message from Sadr's office that played on car-mounted speakers in Amarah, capital of the southern province of Maysan. "We have to celebrate this occasion!"
Maj. Charlie Burbridge, a British military spokesman, said the last of 1,200 troops left Camp Abu Naji, just outside Amarah, at noon Thursday, after several days of heavy mortar and rocket fire by a local militia, which local residents identified as the Sadr-controlled Mahdi Army. Adopting tactics used by a British special forces unit in North Africa during World War II, 600 of the soldiers plan to slip soon into the marshlands and deserts of eastern Maysan in an attempt to secure the Iranian border.
The repositioning is the first public acknowledgment that forces from the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq have entered into guerrilla warfare to combat the insurgents and militias they have been fighting for more than three years.
The move also underscores both the rising power of Sadr's Shiite Muslim militia, which has clashed with American forces in an attempt to drive them out of the country, and burgeoning alarm over Shiite-ruled Iran's perceived role in exacerbating the sectarian violence roiling Iraq. U.S. officials have accused Iran of supplying bombs and other weapons to Shiite militias here.
The withdrawal sparked wide-scale looting at the base and then intense clashes late Thursday between Iraqi army forces guarding the camp and unknown attackers, a military intelligence official said. The volatile situation worsened when the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi army's 4th Brigade mutinied and attacked a local military outpost, said the official, who spoke on condition that his name not be used.
The British soldiers, members of the Queen's Royal Hussars, are preparing to trade their heavy Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior fighting vehicles for lightweight Land Rovers, Burbridge said. They expect to become a flexible, mobile force with no fixed base and receive supplies by airdrops.
"The Americans believe there is an inflow of IEDs and weapons across the border with Iran," said Burbridge, referring to improvised explosive devices, in a telephone interview from Basra. "Our first objective is to go and find out if that is the case. If that is true, we'll be able to disrupt the flow." He said the second goal was to train Iraqi border guards.
Burbridge acknowledged that constant shelling of the base in Amarah by militia forces, including 17 mortar rounds fired in recent days that wounded three people, were part of the reason the camp closed.
"By no longer presenting a static target, we reduce the ability of the militias to strike us," he said. But he rejected Sadr's claim that the British had been defeated and pushed out of Amarah. "It's very difficult to claim a victory without causing significant casualties."
The mood was quite different in Amarah, where jubilant residents flocked to Sadr's office to offer their congratulations. Drivers in the street honked their car horns in celebration. Some prepared to take to the streets to rejoice.
Part of this is to prevent the Americans from ginning up a reason for war with Iran. The other is that they want to provide less of a target.
The problem is that every retreat turns into a defeat, not because it is a technical one, but because it looks like one.
Keep in mind, they're fighting Shia insurgents here. A detail glossed over. I thought it was just civil war? Oh well.
The military value of motor vehicles in desert terrain had been proven to some extent during World War I. British Forces had used such vehicles as Rolls-Royce Armored cars and Ford Model T light trucks with great success. One British staff officer who was greatly influenced was Archibald Wavell and when he became one of the British Army's senior generals in the late 1930s he was receptive to ideas using small motorized units. In October, 1935 Lieutenant Fox Davies of the Durham Light Infantry wrote to General Wavell and suggested using "guerilla" type troops to operate behind enemy lines. Wavell thought "motor guerillas" would be a good idea and in 1936 he had Fox Davies placed in command of a unit which was sent behind the "enemy lines", with great success, in a military exercise. A British group of explorers led by R.A. Bagnold made many expeditions into the desert in the late 19930s from Egypt, studying the desert and it's characteristics, and perfected ways of navigating across the vast desert wastes like a mariner at sea. In 1940 Italy declared war on Great Britain and the Italian forces in Libya posed an immediate potential threat to the British in Egypt, and to the Suez Canal the gateway to the East. General Wavell was the British Commander-in-Chief in Egypt at the time and he took R. A. Bagnold into the Army as an officer and gave him the job of forming a motor patrol.
The LRDG was very much like a "private army", formed to meet the particular conditions of desert warfare. Major Bagnold (as he then was) acquired suitable vehicles and the Chevrolet 15 cwt truck used by the Egyptian Army suited his needs. This was a standard "platoon" truck on a Canadian-built Chevrolet chassis, fitted with desert tires and with an open body big enough to hold the stores and equipment needed for long trips into the desert. For desert operations with a very heavy load, they had extra leaves inserted into the springs, desert type tires, wire-less, and a condenser fitted on the running board and connected to the radiator to conserve cooling water. Doors and door pillars were removed, extra spare wheels fitted and pintle mounts were added for machine guns and antitank rifles. The load carried might be up to two tons, consisting of food, fuel ammunition, water and explosives for demolition work. Sand-mats of canvas and steel channels were carried to assist vehicles through the many shifting sands and dunes. A sun compass was usually carried in the dashboard, a Bagnold invention and theodolites and sextants were used to fix positions. The Long Range Desert Group's task for most of the time was watching, waiting, plotting enemy movements and reporting back by radio. The LRDG took delivery of new vehicles in May 1942, namely 30cwt types with military general service steel bodies. These were sturdier than the original type of vehicle and more spacious. Built by Chevrolet (Canada) these were simple a desert service version of the standard production Chevrolet types. Because the LRDG was made up of volunteers it never really had regimental status. The men wore whatever clothes were comfortable. Beards and other non-regulation military practices were common, adding much to the "piratical" flavor and swash-buckling image of the LRDG force.
It turns out that Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin was right in 1825 when he wrote in his magnum opus, The Physiology of Taste, that "the destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed." If you think this aphorism exaggerates the importance of food, consider that today almost 4 billion people worldwide depend on the agricultural sector for their livelihood. Food is destiny, all right; every decision we make about food has personal and global repercussions. By now it is generally conceded that the food we eat could actually be making us sick, but we still haven't acknowledged the full consequences--environmental, political, cultural, social and ethical--of our national diet.
These consequences include soil depletion, water and air pollution, the loss of family farms and rural communities, and even global warming. (Inconveniently, Al Gore's otherwise invaluable documentary An Inconvenient Truth has disappointingly little to say about how industrial food contributes to climate change.) When we pledge our dietary allegiance to a fast-food nation, there are also grave consequences to the health of our civil society and our national character. When we eat fast-food meals alone in our cars, we swallow the values and assumptions of the corporations that manufacture them. According to these values, eating is no more important than fueling up, and should be done quickly and anonymously. Since food will always be cheap, and resources abundant, it's OK to waste. Feedlot beef, french fries and Coke are actually good for you. It doesn't matter where food comes from, or how fresh it is, because standardized consistency is more important than diversified quality. Finally, hard work--work that requires concentration, application and honesty, such as cooking for your family--is seen as drudgery, of no commercial value and to be avoided at all costs. There are more important things to do.
.................... The reason that eating well in this country costs more than eating poorly is that we have a set of agricultural policies that subsidize fast food and make fresh, wholesome foods, which receive no government support, seem expensive. Organic foods seem elitist only because industrial food is artificially cheap, with its real costs being charged to the public purse, the public health and the environment.
Alice Waters changed the way American restaurants served food, then the way people ate. There would be no Food Network, no Whole Foods, none of the thousands of things we take for granted today if she didn't start using fresh, local ingrediants.
Julia Child was a classically trained French chef, cooking classic French food. While Child upgraded what Americans ate, Waters changed it. New York has a network of Greenmarkets because of the ideas Waters promoted. And all the fresh salads and organic food we take for granted, that's her legacy.
I've often thought modern American cuisine was Italian in ideology. Fresh ingredients prepared relatively simply and that was because fresh food rules the kitchen. Now, there's a renaissance of regional American cooking for many of the same reasons. People now value the food of their local areas and local traditions.
Take an American steakhouse. Before the 1970's, you would have seen creamed spinach, chateaubriand and beef wellington, bernaise sauce. Now, a steak dinner is grilled or broiled meat, vegetables and a glass of wine, much less complicated meals, which concentrates on the quality of the goods. Where would you eat a meal like that? Tuscany.
We're now just seeing the growth of Spanish and French regional cuisine as inspirations for American cooking.Waters promoted the idea that one could make good food not by technique alone, but by quality from the source.
In the last few years, Waters has worked with Bay Area schools to get them to teach nutrition and use fresh food.
Americans, despite our vast wealth, are just nowe returning to eat from the land and ending our love affair with industrial food.
By SUSAN HAIGH, AP Political Writer Thu Aug 24, 9:20 PM ET
HARTFORD, Conn. - The Gulf Coast is thousands of miles away, but the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has become an issue in Connecticut's hot U.S. Senate race.
Democratic primary winner Ned Lamont is accusing U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, now running as an independent, of not holding the Bush administration accountable for failures in responding to the disaster.
Lamont also says Lieberman, ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, mistakenly agreed to put the troubled Federal Emergency Management Agency under the control of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"I think FEMA worked really well when it had professional management as an independent agency," Lamont said in an interview this week. "And sure, it was Senator Lieberman who said, 'Let's redo FEMA.' It was Senator Lieberman who said, 'Let's put Michael Brown as No. 2 at FEMA.'"
Lieberman defends his record on Katrina, saying he visited the devastated region a week or two after the storm and several times later. He said he and Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, issued a bipartisan Homeland Security Committee report in April that was critical of all levels of government, from the White House to the New Orleans mayor's office.
Lieberman, in a secondary report, took sharper aim at President Bush, who he said appeared distracted from the disaster as it unfolded. "The president is, after all, the commander in chief — not only in terms of international crises, but in terms of catastrophes here at home," he said.
On Thursday, Lieberman said he has also consistently fought to get adequate federal aid delivered to the Gulf Coast region.
Lamont was scheduled to be one of the headliners Thursday night at a fundraising event for Katrina victims in New York City, where he is to outline his plan to prevent another similar tragedy.
The event, organized by the liberal organization MoveOn.org, will feature celebrities such as actress Rosie Perez and singer Moby, as well as some Katrina evacuees.
Lamont, a Greenwich businessman and political newcomer, defeated three-term incumbent Lieberman in the Aug. 8 primary by about 10,000 votes.
Lieberman is now running as an independent in a three-way race with Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger. Lamont has gained support by criticizing Lieberman for being too supportive of Bush and the Republicans on various issues, including the war in Iraq.
This is not the first time Hurricane Katrina has been an issue in the Senate race, which has attracted both national and international attention.
COUSHATTA -- Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.
The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.
Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also is considering filing a formal charge with the U.S. Department of Justice. NAACP District Vice President James Panell, of Shreveport, said he would apprise Justice attorneys of the situation this week. He's considering asking for an investigation into the bus incident and other aspects of the school system's operations, including pupil-teacher ratio as it relates to the numbers of white and black children, along with a breakdown of the numbers of black and white teachers employed.
"If the smoke is there, then there's probably fire somewhere else," Panell said in a phone interview from New Orleans. "At this point, it is extremely alarming. We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?"
Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.
No, no problems with Survivor.
You see some shit like this and there isn't much to say.
I was browsing at a newsstand in Manhattan recently when I came across a magazine called Felon. It was the “Stop Snitchin’ ” issue, and the first letter to the editor began: “Yo, wassup Felon!”
I was browsing at a newsstand in Manhattan and saw a magazing called High Times. It was the Colombian Weed issue and the first letter said legalize pot.
Another letter was from “your nigga John-Jay,” who was kind enough to write: “To my bitches, I love ya’ll.”
Another letter was from "420 Boy" who was kind enough to write:"Hydroponics is the shit"
Later I came across a magazine called F.E.D.S., which professes to be about “convicted criminals—street thugs—music—fashion—film—etc.” The headline “Stop Snitching” was emblazoned on the cover. “Hundreds of kilos of coke,” said another headline, “over a dozen murders,” and “no one flipped.”
Later, I came across a magazine called Low Riders and they had an article, no helmets in 50 states. Another glorifying Sonny Barger and the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels.
What we have here are symptoms of a depressing cultural illness, frequently fatal, that has spread unchecked through much of black America.
What we have here are symptoms of a depressing cultural illness, frequently fatal, which has spread through white America.
The people who are laid low by this illness don’t snitch on criminals, seldom marry, frequently abandon their children, refer to themselves in the vilest terms (niggers, whores, etc.), spend extraordinary amounts of time kicking back in correctional institutions, and generally wallow in the deepest depths of degradation their irresponsible selves can find.
The people who are laid low by this illness don't snitch on criminals, seldom marry, frequently abandon their children, refer to themselves in the viliest terms (redneck, cracker, white trash, trailer trash), spend extraordinary amounts of time kicking back in correctional institutions and generally wallow in the deepest depths of degradation their irresponsible selves can find.
In his new book, “Enough,” which is about the vacuum of leadership and the feverish array of problems that are undermining black Americans, Juan Williams gives us a glimpse of the issue of snitching that has become an obsession with gang members, drug dealers and other predatory lowlifes — not to mention the editors of magazines aimed at the felonious mainstream.
In his new book, “Enough,” which is about the vacuum of leadership and the feverish array of problems that are undermining white Americans, Juan Williams gives us a glimpse of the issue of snitching that has become an obsession with white supremacists, meth dealers and other predatory lowlifes — not to mention the editors of magazines aimed at the felonious mainstream.
“In October 2002,” he writes, “the living hell caused by crime in the black community burst into flames in Baltimore. A black mother of five testified against a Northeast Baltimore drug dealer. The next day her row house was fire-bombed. She managed to put out the flames that time. Two weeks later, at 2 a.m. as the family slept, the house was set on fire again. This time the drug dealer broke open the front door and took care in splashing gasoline on the lone staircase that provided exit for people asleep in the second- and third-floor bedrooms. In the Summer of 2005, there was a random murder in the Bay Area outside Berkeley. A woman was killed in a home invasion. Later, it was found that a neighbor was stealing credit cards and using her home as a mail drop for his budding hydroponics pot growing business.
Yes, Stop Snitching is odious. But I am tired of every American pathology being assigned to black America and people like Williams, who as Al Franken nailed him on, hasn't hear a single rapper while condemning them, wrings his hands and cries out for a solution.
My mother is in her 70's and she saw gangsters growing up.
Poor people go to jail, poor people deal drugs, poor people drop out of school. You don't think there's a white working class subculture which knocks education and has a link to criminality? The Meth explosion is evidence enough of that.
I'm tired of black authors looking at black America and whining about fucking music and criminals.
They never, ever talk about the lack of low to moderate skilled jobs, discrimination in the workplace and redlining. Or how wages have stagnated. Or the inability to transition kids from schools into apprenticeships in the work world. The poor and working class in America have much more complex and serious problems than rappers and stop snitching.
He claims it has nothing to do with his firm EchoDitto, where he is CEO, but that's bullshit. The expertise and intelligence he is gathering from the following clients can and will end up as part of the McCain arsenal in 2008. These organizations should consider finding new technical consultants.
This what TAPPED had on Mele and EchoDitto
MORE McECCODITTO. Following up on Ezra's post, here's the official EccoDitto statement on their CEO's reported flirtation with John McCain:
"EchoDitto was founded to further a progressive agenda online, and we are proud of the partners we've worked with over the past three years and the record we've built doing so.
As a firm, EchoDitto is committed to progressive campaigns and organizations. We do not now, nor will we in the future, support candidates or organizations that are not aligned with our social mission. Because of that fact, we do not now, nor will we in the future, support Republican campaigns. We have turned down such requests in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
Individually, the members of our team are free to support politically whomever they want -- such is the right of anyone in a democratic society.
A lot of people are asking me about John McCain. When I worked for Common Cause, I worked on the McCain-Feingold bill and worked closely with Sen. John McCain’s office. After Sen. McCain lost the Republican primary in 2000, I traveled with him as part of a group of campaign finance reform staffers as we criss-crossed the country working to secure support for the McCain-Feingold bill. I have long admired Sen. McCain’s work on campaign finance reform and his independent streak. If Sen. McCain runs for president, he’s got my support.
EchoDitto, the company that I co-founded and am CEO of, has not in the past, does not now, and will not in the future do any work for Sen. McCain in any way.
Right now, I’m involved in many projects that have nothing to do with presidential politics. While I currently don’t know what role I’d like to have in 2008, if Sen. McCain runs I hope to be helpful. This is a personal decision for me based on my own first-hand experience. I like Sen. McCain -- I think he should be president!
You know, we call that an insult to our intelligence in New York
He wants to work with McCain and get money from progressive groups? Who the fuck is he kidding?
For some reason, the Dean campaign got some very fucked up people involved. Idealists who had no clue on how to run a ground game, and who quickly turned on progressives when they got the chance. There was that Teachout woman, now this.
I can't see giving a dime to anyone who hires EchoDitto for any reason. If I wanted to give to McCain, I would.
But I don't make these decisions. I don't run a 527 or think tank. I think the people who do have to make a decision about who gets their contracts and who doesn't.
I'm tired of "so-called progressives" who say one thing and do another.
However, I'd like to hear some other opinions. I plan to post them on another thread.
I was planning to let this pass, but as Lee Siegel digs himself deeper and deeper into some catacomb of self-righteousness over James Kincaid, he's begun flinging his dirt all across the left, a schtick that's grown tiresome. Now, because too few people appear to agree that Kincaid is a child molester, we're all a bunch of "liberal automatons" and "clueless knuckleheads" who "respond like growling Pavlovian dogs to any suggestion that people cannot indulge their every sexual appetite."
So let's talk this one out -- one blogofascist to another. Kincaid is an English professor who studies the sexualization of children in American media. The other day, he wrote a piece for Slate on the reemergence of Jon Benet, arguing "JonBenet would not get all this attention did we not want to bestow it. It's not the media forcing on us something we'd rather not have: We're lining up at the trough to be fed...[it] allows us to fulminate against trivial problems while ignoring huge problems close to home, meanwhile wallowing in self-righteous porn babble: We are able to use the half-clothed bodies of children as centerfolds while professing shock that anyone would so display them. The story is always the same: Somebody else finds the bodies of children irresistible and we want the chance to rail against these monsters, meanwhile relishing the details of the very bodies we claim indifference to. It is a classic example of scapegoating."
Siegel criticizes Kincaid for being a "a very snide and superior writer," which, for obvious reasons, I can't help but point out (Writer, heal thyself!). More alarmingly, in three posts entitled "James Kincaid and Pedophilia," he asserts that Kincaid's belief that we view children sexually and so take a subconscious glee in fulminating endlessly about those who would sexualize them, obviously reveals him as a pedophile. Siegel, floating high above any evidentiary standards or textual support, has now argued this point in three separate posts, the last of which accused the left of being in cahoots with pedophiles. His advice for us, as I understood it, was that we'd begin winning elections when we ceased supporting NAMBLA. Wonder why James Carville never thought of that.
......................................
Here's the post Siegal wrote, and incredibly was allowed to run
At the end of yesterday's post, I asked Professor James Kincaid, who writes regularly on the subject of pedophilia, to be candid about whether he thinks sex between adults and children is justified. Today I found this quote from Kincaid on the official website of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
"It is possible that the [boy-lover's] marginal position alerts him not only to self-interest but the pains suffered by all the outcast. This is not a necessary consequence of [loving boys], of course, any more than virtue is of poverty. Still, that passion for helping the child is so strong in relations [between men and boys] that even the police acknowledge it."
"That passion for helping the child," Kincaid says. Yes indeed. (NAMBLA's bracketed phrases replace Kincaid's original terms, "pedophile" and "pedophilia.") So I guess Kincaid has frankly admitted his predilections after all--if you know where to look for them. What a shame that editors still publish his disingenuous screeds against the media's sexualization of children. They really just seem like ways for Kincaid to hide his own appetite for children behind his indictment of all of us hypocritical "voyeurs" out there.
Indeed, if that were the case, Kincaid's lust for children would, in his eyes, be a noble attraction. He's honest about his desire, you see. The rest of us are secretly titillated victims of one panic-inducing hoax after another. Kincaid actually believes, as he writes in his Slate article, that the scandal of Catholic pedophile priests was just another media-contrived "drama." These "dramas," says Kincaid, distract us from cases in which children are horribly beaten. Instead, he writes, "we focus our attention, almost all of it, on stranger-danger: things like abductions..." Stranger-danger. Cute. And again with the weaseling "we." Kincaid should start reading the newspaper. The New York Times, not to mention less encompassing local papers, routinely report heartbreaking cases of child abuse. The names Quachon Browne and Nixmary Brown tragically spring to mind.
I don't think there is anything worse than violence, including sexual violence--children don't "consent" to anything--against children. Call me callow and earnest, but people like Professor James Kincaid and his enraged, whiny supporters should be stigmatized, and they should be proscribed.
Frank,
Who the fuck runs the TNR online?
Lee Siegel, in a barely coherent rant, just accused James Kincaid of being a pedophile with NO evidence. I don't know, that comes real, real close to libel the way I learned it. I mean, he's quoting an edited comment from NAMBLA as evidence.
God, doesn't anyone edit anything over there? Because when you accuse a man of having sex with children, you're defaming his reputation and accusing him of being a criminal. I mean, a smart editor would publish an apology and retraction asap, before the lawyer letter arrives.
TNR seems to be in freefall. Marty's racist rants, not confirming e-mails and then being churlish about it, but this, well, this is bad. Real bad. I mean the man is an expert in pedophila, and for Seigel to slip the surly bonds of common sense and turn him into a child raper, well I think you're going to have another fucked up weekend. In fact, I think Friday is going to suck for you.
For the first time since it went on the air in 2000, the hit CBS reality television program “Survivor” will divide its teams — or tribes, as they are known on the show — along racial lines.
For the first half of the series this fall, four teams of five members will be made up of blacks, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and whites. They will compete in weekly challenges against each other, and the losing group will have to vote out a member of its own team.
Mark Burnett, the series producer, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the decision to organize the teams by race was made in group discussions with CBS executives and was in no way intended to promote racial divisiveness.
“In America today,” Mr. Burnett said, “I really don’t believe there are many people who hate each other because of their race. But even though people may work together, they do tend in their private lives to divide along social and ethnic lines.”
..................................
Both CBS and Mr. Burnett acknowledged that the new format could be criticized. “I know it’s going to be controversial,” he said. “I’m not an idiot.”
In a statement, CBS said it “fully recognizes the controversial nature” of the format change. But it expressed confidence in the program’s ability to handle the situation sensitively.
If they finish airing all the episodes I'll be surprised.
If Burnett was Irish, forget Asian or black, he'd know better. Seeing the squaddies with their hard looks at the men in the pub, he might have a clue people that people can need very little reason to hate.
Because nobody could have predicted it — Joe Lieberman will be campaigning with GOP candidates Jodi Rell and Rob Simmons today at the Groton sub base (the one that Holy Joe claims to have singlehandedly saved). Simmons, you’ll remember, is the GOP candidate running against Democrat Joe Courtney for one of those hotly contested Connecticut House seats. You know, the ones where the Democrat is supposed to be helped by Lieberman’s indy bid, right? At least according to the DCCC and the email that reader ems forwarded to us yesterday:
From: DCCC [mailto:dccc@DCCC.ORG] Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:09 AM To: XXXXXXX Subject: RE: Comments
We apologize for your frustration. It is actually very likely that this competitive race will actually help Congressional Democrats by making sure every Democrat is out at the polls. Rather than a bland race where Lieberman will surely win and no one will care, there is now a heated race that will bring every Democrat out to the polls, thus increasing the chances of a Democratic sweep of the Connecticut House seats.
If it’s in the bag like this, one has to wonder why Rahm Emmanuel will take to the state to campaign with Dianne Farrell today. Perhaps he too has heard that the foliage is lovely in Connecticut this time of year.
Or maybe the DCCC has come out of the ostrich tuck. I have no way of knowing what constellation of influence led them to a Come to Jesus moment, but ems has now forwarded this:
Mr xxx,
My name is Joseph from the Online department. I am one a several people that check the DCCC Inbox. I apologize for having sent this email. I had not realized that I had sent this email to you until I saw it on a blog this morning. I had written this draft intending to send it to our Online Editor, Jesse Lee, for approval and instead accidentally sent it to you. This is not the official policy of the DCCC and should not be taken as such. If you have any further questions email lee@dccc.org directly.
Thanks for your understanding and apologies for my mistake.
Joseph
Right-o. I’ve only had two beers and I’ll lrespect you in the morning too, honey. Promise.
You can contact the DSCC and let Chuck Schumer know how happy you are about this turn of events here.
Wow. What a knife in the back to DeStefano and the House candidates. He's a Democrat like Laval supported a Free France. Jesus, what a betrayal.
I can't wait until Joe's new friends forget to support him like they promise. Because that's coming.
I can see some war supporting Dems not supporting Lamont, but working for the House candidates. But this? And then supporting Rell? Well, you can forget union support for sure now. If I was running field for Lamont, I would do a weekend sign and lit drop to make the point about Lieberman's falling support.
This seems suicidal to me. He's just made the rest of the Connecticut Dems jump into the boat with Lamont, because Lieberman is going to hurt them all. Even if people wanted to remain neutral, or indifferent, they can't. Lieberman has turned on them all with this move.
By Michael Noer How do women, careers and marriage mix? Not well, say social scientists.
Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.
Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage. While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.
Not a happy conclusion, especially given that many men, particularly successful men, are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations. And why not? After all, your typical career girl is well-educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure…at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?
Many factors contribute to a stable marriage, including the marital status of your spouse's parents (folks with divorced parents are significantly more likely to get divorced themselves), age at first marriage, race, religious beliefs and socio-economic status. And, of course, many working women are indeed happily and fruitfully married--it's just that they are less likely to be so than non-working women. And that, statistically speaking, is the rub. ................................
So why not just stay single? Because, academically speaking, a solid marriage has a host of benefits beyond just individual "happiness." There are broader social and health implications as well. According to a 2004 paper entitled "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage?" marriage is positively associated with "better outcomes for children under most circumstances," higher earnings for adult men, and "being married and being in a satisfying marriage are positively associated with health and negatively associated with mortality." In other words, a good marriage is associated with a higher income, a longer, healthier life and better-adjusted kids.
A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.
I had something smarmy to say, but fuck it, have fun.
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted August 23, 2006.
Establishment Dems treat their political party like a house in the fucking Hamptons. Who died and made these people gatekeepers to anything?
Question: Are bloggers too powerful? Answer: Do I think they're important? Yes. Do I think the [bloggers] and Al Sharpton alone are the future of the Democratic Party? No! Welcome in, contribute, but it's about winning in November and moving the country forward, not about a firing squad in a circle. -- Q&A with U.S. representative Rahm Emmanuel, Aug. 28 issue of New York magazine
I badly want to move on to another topic in this column space -- there is very little in the world that is less interesting than the Democratic Leadership Council and their ilk -- but this stuff is fast becoming just too unbelievable to ignore.
What exactly does self-appointed congressional mega-celebrity and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rahm Emmanuel mean (says a friend of mine in congress of him: "He's an amoral, showboating cock") when he says, "Do I think [bloggers] and Al Sharpton are the future of the Democratic Party?"
That's actually not hard to figure out; it's political hack-ese for the human sentence bloggers = Al Sharpton. As for what he means by that: just think about the thought process that had to go into Emmanuel's adding of the phrase "and Al Sharpton," when Al Sharpton wasn't even part of the question. Ask yourself if you really believe Emmanuel isn't aware that he's addressing the mostly white, Upper West Side readers of New York magazine when he "offhandedly" ties bloggers to the legendary gold medallion-wearing icon from forty blocks north in Harlem.
These DLC types are amazing, they really are. Their pathology is unique; they all secretly worship the guilt-by-association tactics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, but unlike those two, not one of them has enough balls to take being thought of as the bad guy by the general public. So instead of telling big, bold whoppers right out in the open, they're forever coming out with backhanded little asides like this one, apparently in the hope that only your subconscious will notice. I won't be surprised if they respond to the next electoral loss by a DLC candidate by having Bruce Reed argue in the Wall Street Journal that "bloggers, Queer Eye, and Arabs with syphilis are not the future of the Democratic Party."
Then there is the phrase, "Welcome in, contribute, but..."
Welcome in? What is this, a political party, or a house in the fucking Hamptons? Who died and made these people gatekeepers to anything?
What Emmanuel appears to be saying here is that "bloggers" -- by which he really means "people who voted against Lieberman" -- are welcome to "contribute," but not welcome to actually decide elections. In other words, we'll take your votes, but we'll decide who you vote for. An admirable sentiment for an elected official. How is it that these people have avoided being pitchforked to death for this long?
Finally, the "firing squad in a circle" line has been a DLC favorite for years. DLC chief Al From has been pimping it at least since the last presidential race. It's time we officially retired this line, which is really just a sorry take on the lame old high-school guidance-counselor saw: "Now, Jimmy. When you shoot spitballs at Vice Principal Anderson, you're really shooting spitballs at yourself." And little Jimmy thinks: No, actually, I was shooting spitballs at Vice Principal Anderson...
What's amazing about the "firing squad in a circle" line is that it is inevitably used less than five seconds after the DLC speaker has just finished dumping on Michael Moore, peace activists, or whoever the party's talking-points-vermin of the day is (In this case, Sharpton and bloggers). He denounces Michael Moore as a disgrace to the party, then turns around and says that when we attack the party leadership, we're only hurting ourselves. These tactics are so transparent and condescending that one longs for some kind of cosmic referee to just drop down from the heavens and unilaterally disqualify their users on the grounds of their overwhelming general wrongness -- but the maddening thing about these DLC creatures is that that referee never arrives, and Al From is back on page one again the next day, shaking his head and grumbling piously about "unity" and "consensus" and "the lost art of bipartisanship."
The unspoken subtext of this increasingly bitter debate between the Democratic Party establishment and the supporters of people like Ned Lamont and Hillary Clinton's antiwar challenger, Jonathan Tasini, is a referendum ordinary people have unexpectedly decided to hold on the kingmaker's role of the holy trinity of the American political establishment - big business, the major political parties, and the commercial media. The irony is that it's the political establishment itself that has involuntarily raised the consciousness of its disenfranchised voters.
The surge in support for Lamont initially came from people motivated by two simple things -- a desire to protest the war in Iraq, and physical revulsion before the wrinkled, vengeful persona of Joe Lieberman. But the party, in fighting back, attacked not on the issues but on the means of protest -- blogs, grassroots activism, Lamont's independent wealth. In doing so it threw into relief the essential parameters of the problem, which is this; the Democratic Party has been operating for two decades without the active participation of its voters.
It raised money by appealing directly to companies in private fundraisers, and it used the commercial media to enforce its policy positions, in particular its desire to "clearly reject our antiwar wing," as Al From put it a few years back. It's a simple formula for running one-half of American politics; you decide on John Kerry two years before the presidential vote, raise him $200 million bucks, and let CNN and the New York Times take care of any Howard Deans who might happen to pop up in the meantime. The same greased track is being prepared for Hillary Clinton right now, and we can be quite sure that guns are already being aimed at Russell Feingold.
It's been an essentially oligarchic system of government, where all the important decision-makers have been institutions, with any attempts by ordinary people to circumvent the system coldly repressed. Remember 2000, when Ralph Nader was not only not allowed to debate with Al Gore and George Bush, but wasn't allowed in the building -- not even allowed in a second, adjoining hall in the building, not even when he had a ticket? Well, we have a replay of that proud moment in hour history going on now, with Hillary's Senate primary opponent Tasini being shut out of debates by New York's NY1 TV channel (owned by TimeWarner) which is insisting that qualified candidates not only reach five percent support in the polls (Tasini is at 13 percent and rising) but raise or spend $500,000. Said NY1 Vice President Steve Paulus: "All Tasini would need is for each [New York state registered voter] to send him a dollar. Right now, with the money he's raised, he does not represent the party he claims to represent."
So a war chest is now the standard for representation? In order to get on television, you need a dollar from every voter? (Are we electing a Senator or holding a Girl Scout raffle? What the fuck?) And this is decided by... an executive for a corporate television station? One that recently sent a reporter [Adam Balkin] to Japan to do features on high-tech toilets? In other words, NY1 will pay to put an exotic Japanese toilet on a few million or so New York television screens -- but insists on seeing a half-million dollar deposit before it will put a Democratic candidate with 13 percent support in a televised debate? Am I missing something?
This schism within the Democratic Party is the most interesting thing to happen in American politics in decades, because due to a system error, people have temporarily been allowed back into what had been a totally closed process. They're working round the clock to fix the loophole, though, because the Emmanuels of the world know what's coming if they don't. The firing squad. And this time it won't be in a circle.
Time to translate:
Look, this is between us rich, white folks. You don't think we take that nigger Sharpton or those crazy bloggers seriously. Let them raise money for us, run around for us, and that should keep them happy. But demand a seat at the table, please. We'll bullshit them a little, and they'll go away and leave us to our business.
Fucking with Sharpton is a dangerous game. Ask Terry McAuliffe. He's from Brooklyn, not some Chicago suburb, and even New Yorkers don't fuck with people from Brooklyn lightly. I'm sure that Mr. Emmanuel will be regretting those words on several levels.
Neither Sharpton or the blogging comunity is less intelligent that the good Congressman. As he will find out.
Rudy Giuliani did his level best to ignore Sharpton, and made him immensely powerful. Michael Bloomberg meets with him, and he supports the mayor's iniatives. Hmmm..........
When will white pols learn. No matter if you think Sharpton is a total bullshit artist, there are too many black people he's helped for that not to have a backlash.
I wish I had saved a picture from last year. TD Jakes shows up with Bush to a Houston shelter after Katrina. He's meeting a family. The father looks ready to kill. Picutres of Sharpton has people holding on to him, beseeching him.
People forget why there is loyalty to Sharpton among black voters, and that's not something people should do. The Central Park Jogger case is one reason. When the police framed five boys for a rape they didn't commit, he and his aides stuck with the families until they were exonerated over a decade later. You can't buy trustworthiness like that.
But the broader shot is to potrary Lamont as an aberation, a unique event. To keep the DLC folks and their enablers happy.
At this point, all they can do is postpone the firing squad, not prevent it.
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-book22aug22,0,2913140.story?coll=cl-books-util BOOK REVIEW Myths of a 9/11 hero, debunked After the terrorist attacks, Mayor Giuliani was the man. Now his leadership comes under fire in "Grand Illusion." By Kit R. Roane Special to The Times
August 22, 2006
'Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11' Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins HarperCollins: 390 pp., $25.95
Few reporters who covered New York City government during Rudolph W. Giuliani's reign would dispute that the mayor saw himself as a powerful leader destined for greatness. But many were shocked when much of the country began to agree.
Giuliani was a lame duck when 2000 drew to a close, a mayor whose political stature was in a tailspin and whose private life was being rocked by illness and scandal. A local tabloid had revealed Giuliani's long-term affair with a pharmaceutical sales manager, which led to an equally public call for divorce from his apoplectic wife. Meanwhile, prostate cancer had forced him from a tepid U.S. Senate campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
To Giuliani's political enemies, this delicious farrago had been a long time coming. They relished the comeuppance of a man whose self-assured rhetoric often came off as mean-spirited bullying and who most often reacted angrily to criticism when he wasn't being dismissive in the extreme. Many New Yorkers thought Giuliani would have had trouble being elected dogcatcher. Talk of a run for president of the United States would have been rich indeed. But as Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins note in "Grand Illusion," their superb dissection of the reality behind the Giuliani myth-making after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: "What a difference a day made." ..........................................
But although Giuliani's "quick response and personal fearlessness ... provided a clean and reassuring narrative," Barrett, a senior writer at the Village Voice, and Collins, a senior producer at CBSNews.com, argue that there is a darker, more important narrative of the mayor's failures, one they contend cost many lives on Sept. 11 and may contribute to future illnesses and deaths due to lax safety standards during the cleanup. The tone of "Grand Illusion" is often prosecutorial. But the writers' extensive research results in a convincing indictment of Giuliani's priorities as mayor and his later self-promotion as a terrorism expert.
..........................................
The focus of their ire is Giuliani's claim that, although the magnitude of the attacks was unforeseeable, he had assumed from the moment he came into office in 1994 that terrorists would attack New York City and so he made the city's emergency response a priority. There has been little in Giuliani's record to support that claim. But "Grand Illusion" now reveals a record that directly contradicts it.
It is not that Giuliani wouldn't have had reason to prepare. After all, terrorists had exploded a car bomb underneath one World Trade Center tower in 1993. But Barrett and Collins' detailed research shows a mayor who utterly failed to grasp the importance of readying the city for another terrorist attack. Lou Anemone, the police department's chief operating officer during much of Giuliani's tenure, recalls trying to brief the mayor on a citywide terrorism security plan in 1998. "Rudy glazed over," he said, adding: "We never had any discussion about security at the World Trade Center. We never even had a drill or exercise there.... There was just a lack of recognition of the problem at City Hall."
................................ But the wealth of material paints a clear picture of City Hall ineptitude in the face of continuing terrorist threats.
Some of the book's sources may have an ax to grind. Giuliani dismissed one of them, New York's current police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, when he became mayor in 1993. And some may have minimized their own failings. Jerome Hauer, Giuliani's first director of the Office of Emergency Management prior to Sept. 11, is lauded by the authors for attempting to force the city's notoriously antagonistic police and fire departments to work together. But Hauer also was intimately involved in some of the mayor's biggest missteps, chief among them locating the city's emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex.
...................................
Luckily, "Grand Illusion" is too well-sourced for such concerns to be a major issue. The book handily punctures a hole in the myth of Giuliani as a praiseworthy terrorism czar who had prepared his city for the tragedy that unfolded. Although there is plenty of blame to go around, Giuliani, as mayor, set the tone of his administration and picked the people who would be counted on to respond appropriately. At both tasks, he failed miserably, the book shows, choosing politics over public safety.
"The facts — depressing but unavoidable — were that Giuliani had allowed the city to meet the disaster of September 11 unprepared in a myriad of ways," write the authors, a statement that rings depressingly true by the end of "Grand Illusion."
Yeah, Kelly hates Giuliani.
Kelly was a Marine Infantry officer, Vietnam Vet, former street cop and retired from the Marine Reserves as a Colonel. He thinks Giuliani is a pussy.
The whole thing of Giuliani as hero was bullshit anyway. He did his job on 9/11, but Kerik didn't. A lot of people didn't, and his money making after 9/11 was sleazy.
What people don't understand is that when Giuliani became mayor, Sharpton was little better than a joke. Tawana Brawley had done a number on him in the press. His lawyers were in deep shit and facing legal sanction. Calvin Butts was getting a lot of positive press while Sharpton's Brooklyn base was stagnating.
By the time he left City Hall, Sharpton was the most powerful politician in the city.
Why?
Because he was the only opposition to the mayor and he NEVER called him a racist. Which left Giuliani sputtering. Giuliani's disrespect towards half of the city was amazing. It was as if he was at war with black New York. By 9/1o he was headed towards ignominy. Even Ed Koch had no use for him.
The glow of 9/11 lasted about a week in New York. Yes, just one week. Two things happened which reminded people exactly why they hated him.
One, Giuliani tried to extend his term to March, 2002. Pataki was going along with it, but Roger Green, head of the Black and Latino caucus in the Assembly threatened to block legislation if they even tried it. Then Gail Collins delivered the final blow condemning it in the Times.
Two, the weekend after or close to it, it's fuzzy, Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live with 100 firefighters, cops and EMT's. Not one black person included. People noticed. I remember seeing this and being pissed. 100 people, not one black face.
While the rest of the country was falling in love with him, New York was planning to move past him and his racist confrontational methods. Giuliani's baggage is massive and this is just part of it.
Bush said again on Monday that he would keep US troops in Iraq until 2009 and argued that for the US to withdraw would send a bad message to reformers in the region. He said he is concerned about that talk of civil war in Iraq and seemed to admit that he isn't very happy most of the time about the way things are going, but added that he doesn't expect to be joyous in wartime. He admitted again that Saddam Hussein did not "order" 9/11, but went on to again link Baathist Iraq to the threat of terrorism against the US, an unproven charge.
I am not a psychiatrist and don't play one on t.v., so treat what follows as political satire please, and nothing more.
But what strikes me about Bush's Monday appearance is how consistent it is with what I understand of the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. Let's look at it this way:
'1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).'
Bush is not content to be the most powerful man in the world. He thinks he is on a mission from God, and has decided that he is going to "reform" the Middle East, and turn Middle Easterners into something else. He is the Great Transformer of these other peoples' lives. The reason he has to stay in Iraq until the end of his presidency (it is all about him) is that he cannot admit that he did not succeed in being the great Transformer of the Middle East, that in fact he screwed up the Middle East royally. Because such an admission of any slightest mistake, much less a major series of failures, would fatally threaten his sense of grandiosity. Thus, he can't pull troops out of Iraq not because of practical military considerations, but because it would send the wrong signal to regional "reformers," i.e. Bush's mini-me's, the people fulfilling his sense of grandiosity.
Nobody else is in the picture here, just Bush. He doesn't ask any sacrifice from the US public for the war, as Bill Maher and others have noted. The heroics are his alone. The rest of us should go shopping (so as not to interfere with his self-image as Atlas of the Middle East.)
' 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. '
Bush suffers from T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") syndrome. Lawrence, despite polite denials, clearly thought that he led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and wrote:
' All men dream: but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant. '
Bush, like Lawrence before him, imagines that he is inspiring a people to accomplish things they couldn't do without him. (That is why he can't admit that the Lebanese have been having elections for decades, and has to pretend it all started with him.) And all he gets for his inspired Transformation of others' lives is carping about the expected oil contracts in Iraq not being there. There is even prickliness from the French. Lawrence might have sympathized.
3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions) 4. Requires excessive admiration 5. Has a sense of entitlement.
He is the Decider. He doesn't need Security Council resolutions to start wars. He doesn't need warrants for wire taps. He is entitled. He is the War President (never mind that he chose to go to war in Iraq and so made himself into the war president, and that the war presidency would be over with by now if he were any good at it.)
' 6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends. 7. Lacks empathy'
Bush only "worries" that eventually there may be a civil war in Iraq. He doesn't admit that he made a whole country of 25 million people into guinea pigs, and that as a result 3,000 are dying a month in civil war violence of the most brutal kind. '
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him 9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes. '
Saying that he can understand that having over 2600 of our troops come home in body bags and over 8,000 come home seriously wounded, with limbs gone or brain or spinal damage, is a cause of "anxiety" to the American "psyche" is patronizing. He knows better about why this has to be. The inferior people are a little upset, but that is because they don't understand that he is the Transformer. What they're upset about is just the side effect of the Transformation. They don't believe. They can't see the Transformation before their eyes. They are inferior.
An Iraq War veterans group says the call-up of thousands of Marines from the Individual Ready Reserve, announced by the Pentagon today, is "one of the last steps before resorting to a draft."
"This move should serve as a wake-up call to America," said Jon Soltz, an Army captain who served in Iraq and heads the group VoteVets.org, which raises funds for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans running for Congress. "Today's announcement that thousands of Marines in the Individual Ready Reserve will be called back to go to Iraq is proof that our military is overextended, and there is no plan for victory in Iraq."
While the Pentagon has repeatedly maintained the armed forces have met their recruiting and retention goals, Soltz says, "Today's actions speak louder than words."
The IRR are reservists, who have returned to civilian life, don't drill on a regular basis and prior to the Iraq war were rarely called to active duty. The Army has been dipping into their IRR pool since shortly after the beginning of the war, but today the Marine Corps said they also planned to call thousands of these traditionally last resort troops back to active duty.
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The Bush administration has stated that the reinstatement of a military draft is unlikely. Earlier this summer, Vice President Cheney told reporters he is supporter of an all volunteer military.
"We keep the provisions for the draft in case circumstances should arise where it might be needed," he said, "but I don't foresee the development of those kinds of conditions any time in the future.
The Duke class of 2008 is not going to Iraq for George Bush. The GOP will be turfed out of office first. Support for the war is a lot more fragile than people think. Hell, even black and latino kids are not enlisting in the numbers they used to. If they had, Steven Green and his ilk would never have been allowed to enlist.
Bush can stay in Iraq as long as it's a colonial war with a volunteer army. Once the draft becomes an issue, the war in Iraq is over. Bush can say what he wants, but no one wants a draft their kids would serve in.
Even floating this as a trial balloon means all the patty cake about Jenna and not Jenna will be over, as would his bodyman going to Harvard B school without finishing college. People will want to know why no member of the Bush family is in the military. And all this "well, they're individuals" crap would be tossed under the bus like so much litter.
The chickenhawks have proved that this war is only popular as long as the Casey Sheehans of the world die and their mothers shut up about it. They try to draft middle class white kids to be Army Infantry or Marine Riflemen and all hell breaks loose.
It's been easy to ignore or tee off on Sheehan, but if they seriously talk about the draft, she'll be taken as seriously as a hurricane warning.
Bush's colonial war has gone on because most people could ignore it. Once that is no longer the case, his war and his presidency is over.
On the August 23 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh suggested that the competition in a new season of CBS' reality TV program Survivor, in which contestants are reportedly divided into competing "tribes" by ethnicity, "is not going to be fair if there's a lot of water events." In support of this assertion, he cited a March 2 HealthDay article reporting that "young blacks -- especially males -- are much more likely to drown in pools than whites."
During the program, Limbaugh suggested that "people at CBS" are "scratch[ing] their heads" and asking whether "the swimming portion" of the new Survivor competition is "going to be fair." When pressed by an African-American caller to identify "[w]hich team ... would be the worst swimmers and why," Limbaugh stated that "the white tribe would be the best swimmers" based on the performance of white athletes at "the Olympics." After apparently disconnecting or cutting the volume level of the caller, Limbaugh said: "[Y]ou're saying I'm being racist because I'm saying blacks can't swim." He further protested: "I mentioned the swimming comment only because it's not going to be fair if there is a lot of water competition in this. It just isn't. It is not a racial or racist comment at all."
In support of his assertion that his comments were "not ... racist," Limbaugh cited a March 2 HealthDay article reporting that "young blacks -- especially males -- are much more likely to drown in pools than whites." But the study on which the HealthDay article was based did not address the swimming abilities of African-Americans in general. HealthDay reported that "[r]esearchers don't know why black kids are at higher risk of drowning," that "[m]ost of the black [drowning] victims ... drowned in public pools," and that "[t]he study didn't examine whether the victims had taken swimming lessons or whether the pools were supervised by lifeguards." Additionally, the article noted that according to the study, "people from poorer families were more likely to drown" -- "regardless of race," and that one author of the study suggested "[f]uture research" will be done to "examine whether swimming instruction reduces the risk of drowning."
Regarding the new Survivor series, Limbaugh also stated that there "are many characteristics ... that you would think would give [the African-American tribe] the lead, and the heads up in terms of skill and athleticism and so forth." He also stated that "our early money" is on "the Hispanic tribe" -- which he said could include "a Cuban," "a Nicaraguan," or "a Mexican or two" -- provided they don't "start fighting for supremacy amongst themselves." Limbaugh added that Hispanics have "probably shown the most survival tactics," that they "have shown a remarkable ability to cross borders" and that they can "do it without water for a long time, they don't get apprehended, and they will do things other people won't do."
Limbaugh also asserted that "the Asian-American tribe" -- whom he called "the brainiacs of the bunch" -- "probably will outsmart everybody," but while "intelligence is one thing ... raw, native understanding of the land -- this is probably why the Native Americans were excluded, because they were at one with the land and they would probably have an unfair advantage."
He added that "the white tribe," "if it behaves as it historically has," will "bring along vials of diseases" and "will wind up oppressing" the other tribes by "deny[ing] them benefits" and "property," but will later "try to put [the other tribes] on some kind of benefit program." He further asserted that if CBS "allows ... cheating" and "oppression," "then of course the white tribe is going to win."
Limbaugh's statements about the swimming abilities of people of African descent recalled recent comments by Tramm Hudson, a Republican candidate for a Florida congressional seat who stated that "blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know how to swim." Hudson has apologized for his comments, calling them "stupid."
From the August 23 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: The new Survivor is actually a race between races, ladies and gentlemen. It premieres on September 14th. They're going to pit four tribes of people against each other: the African-American tribe, the Asian-American tribe, the Hispanic tribe, and the white tribe. And they are going to actually have a battle of races on the next Survivor. They know that it's going to be controversial. They know it's going to -- and people at CBS, behind the scenes, who just have heard about this, sort of scratch their heads -- say, "What the hell are we doing? What are we going to do -- the swimming portion, how is that going to be fair?"
[...]
LIMBAUGH: All right. Back now to this Survivor story: A race between races. In just a couple of weeks, the new season of Survivor will take 20 castaways to the Cook Islands -- the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They will be split into four tribes and they will compete against each other. The four tribes are these: the African-American tribe, the Asian-American tribe, the Hispanic tribe, and the white tribe. Noticeably absent here -- the Native-American tribe. But I guess they had a full boat, so to speak, when they have -- when they have 20.
So, you look at this and you say, "OK, here we are. We live in a society where we're not supposed to cause racial friction. We've been getting away from this, so we're all one, we're all the same." This is -- this is incredible. Now, we've got the Survivor series segregating contestants into tribes. Not even groups! We're calling them tribes. I don't know how many people still watch this show; I guess quite a few, because it's still on the air. You might cause riots on this show, or in the country as a result of this show. But here are the -- here are the tribes: the African-American tribe, the Asian-American tribe, the Hispanic tribe, and the white tribe. Now, of these four tribes, just off the top of your head, who do you think has the advantage? Who do you think here is going to win? Do you think it's going to be the white tribe? The Hispanic tribe? The African-American tribe? Or the Asian-American tribe? We've been looking at this here amongst ourselves, and our early money is going on the Hispanic tribe, providing they stay unified.
We don't know who makes up the -- I mean, we've got the names here of all these members of the tribes, but Hispanic encompasses a lot. You could have a Cuban in there. You could have a Nicaraguan. You could have a Mexican or two. You could have any number. And you know, if they start fighting for supremacy amongst themselves, that could lead to problems. But our early money is on them anyway, because these people have shown a remarkable ability, ladies and gentlemen, to cross borders, boundaries -- they get anywhere they want to go. They can do it without water for a long time. They don't get apprehended, and they will do things other people won't do. So, our money, early money, is on the Hispanics.
The white tribe, I have to tell you -- I don't have a whole lot of hope in the white tribe. The Asian -- the Asian-American tribe probably will outsmart everybody, but will that help them in the ultimate survival contest? Intelligence is one thing, but raw, native understanding of the land and so forth -- this is probably why the Native Americans were excluded, because they were at one with the land here, and they probably would have an unfair advantage.
The African-American tribe, tough to handicap on this one, because you just -- it's -- it's -- there are many characteristics here that you would think give them the lead and the heads up in terms of skill and athleticism and so forth. The Asians, as I say -- the brainiacs of the bunch. The Hispanic tribe -- they've probably shown the most survival characteristics of any -- What? What are you shaking your head about for? What are you -- well -- well, I don't know that CBS is going to let them get away with that. The -- we were talking about the white tribe. We're speculating among ourselves that if the white tribe behaves as it historically has, they will bring along vials of diseases; they will end up oppressing the other groups; they will deny them benefits; deny them their property, steal it from them, and you know, put them on some kind of a benefit program. The white tribe put everybody else on some kind of benefit program, but the benefit program, of course, will not be enough. There will be no education. The white tribe will not allow any health care.
[...]
CALLER: You just made it something right here. When you said, right before your first break, right before your break, you said, "Who has the disadvantage for swimming?" You know, how can you say any team has a disadvantage for swimming? Which team do you think would be the better swimmers? Which team do you think would be the worst swimmers and why?
LIMBAUGH: The best swimmers?
CALLER: Go ahead and say it.
LIMBAUGH: Uh.
CALLER: Say the word.
LIMBAUGH: If you would just let me answer the question I'd be happy to tell you. OK, who's gonna be the best swimmers in this group. Ah, put those African-Americans, Asian-American tribe, Hispanic, uh. Well, no, I'm -- looking at the Olympics, you'd have to say the white tribe would be the best swimmers.
CALLER: The Olympics. You're judging by world-class athletes?
LIMBAUGH: Yeah, you just look at the Olympics.
CALLER: Ha ha. Nice. Good one. You're looking at world-class athletes. I'm an African-American man. You know, mid age, you know. I'm 35 years old.
LIMBAUGH: Well, now, wait, wait a second, though. If the Hispanic tribe has a Cuban in it, those people swim 90 miles, you know, sometimes for freedom. So you know, you just never know. That's why you've got to watch the show.
CALLER: Right, well, I like the way you play around with that. And what you do is you tease the racism card throughout this nation right now. And of trying elevate it and say you know what --
LIMBAUGH: Look at this! I am playing the racism card! I'm telling you what a major network is doing in its prime-time schedule. They're pitting races against each other in this stupid Survivor format, and you tell me I'm being racist. [laughs]
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Now, I want to address one thing. I heard you, [caller]. You accused me in a sly way of being racist by making comments about who would win the swimming competition. I know what you're saying. You're saying I'm being racist, you're saying I'm being racist because I'm saying blacks can't swim. I have here a story, and I read this from HealthDay news. "One of the largest studies of its kind confirms that young blacks -- especially males -- are much more likely to drown in pools than whites. In fact, almost half of all recorded drowning deaths among people aged 5 to 24 are among blacks, according to the study in the American Journal of Public Opinion [sic: American Journal of Public Health]. Blacks are especially likely to drown in motel and hotel pools, while whites tend to drown in private pools." Now, I mentioned the swimming comment only because since this is known, this is not going to be fair if there is a lot of water competition in this. It just isn't. It is not a racial or racist comment at all. It's an example of how we're so tightly wound. And I am by no stretch am the first person to reference these studies and these facts.
CBS is going to take some real heat over this. A good on paper idea, in reality, it's going to be ugly, especially if the white team starts to lose.
Damn, can the GOP remind us of who they are more often?
Joe2006.com is still pretty much down, what with the withering hacker attacks that weren't, and the FBI investigation that would smite said hackers that has sort of fizzled out and gone away.
In reality, Lieberman's site went down on Election Day because they had incompetents running it, hosting it on a shared machine with over 70 other sites, unable to deal with the crush of election-day traffic. They played the crash for political effect, but really, it was all just run-of-the-mill incompetence of the kind that marred his entire primary campaign.
Realizing this, Lieberman's campaign is looking for someone to build them a new site. But the search is going poorly.
It seems major Democratic technology groups are turning down Senator Liberman's (Lieberman-CT) offers to provide technology support in his go-it-alone re-election campaign.
First was Blue State Digital. When approached by the Lieberman campaign, their response was "Thank you for your inquiry about Blue State Digital's technology services. Unfortunately, we cannot be of service to the Lieberman campaign. We work exclusively with Democratic candidates."
Many ironies here, folks. First, Blue State Digital does our technical work, and provides our tools for meaningful online participation. That Senator Lieberman's staff didn't know that is another sign of their web-incompetence. Second, it's the Blue State tech team we offered to send them on election day as they cried foul over their website "hack" to anyone with a camera, microphone, or steno notepad.
And after Blue State Digital, Plus Three closed the door as well. In a similar fashion, the company told Senator Lieberman to find another vendor, they too will not work with the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.
I have a source outside of Plus Three that says they were offered $300K to build Lieberman's website. Not chump change, yet Lieberman was still rejected.
I'd be happy to continue to give public kudos to any Democratic firms who reject Lieberman's advances. Just drop me a line.
This was in the comments
I'm from Blue State Digital
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- and it's more than just the tech stuff that they need.
The request that came in from them through our web site, under the "What kind of services are you interested in" said, "Establishing a better online presence and building online relationships. Please contact ASAP."
We tell people all the time that online you need more than an "if you build it, they will come" mentality. You need to get in the weeds, reach out to people, offer value, meaningful engagement, empowerment, etc.
But in order to do those things effectively, you have to stand for something bigger than just your campaign or organization. That's pretty much the opposite of the Lieberman approach -- it's all about him.
My guess is that they could have a web site as crazy-commercial and produced as Chipotle but it's not going to help the situation any. (Or at least not until Lieberman decides to also have a live streaming video of guacamole-making.)
Here's the problem: Dems aren't going to work for him, and more importantly, what he wants is a complete web team and web strategy.
Only problem, the people who can execute that either have jobs or won't work for him. Sure, he can hire Republicans, but their web efforts are far less successful, in both raising money and helping candidates. And of course, it alienates him from other Democrats.
How clueless are they? They went to Lamont's web team.
But it goes beyond that.
They should have had this on board during the primary. Instead, they let their campaign manager contract this out to his friend. A crony hire. Of course, it failed on election day, because it was sharing server space with 70 other sites. In a statewide election.
But because Dan Gerstein is a moron and has alienated much of the blogging community with his slanders on our character, he has no access to the Democratic talent base who could get his ass out of the jam they're in.
They put $300K on the table and were refused outright by two firms. That's a lot of money to say no to. But they did.
So, again, if Dems aren't taking his money for web work, who's going to walk the streets for him? He's wasting money on a 2 minute ad TV buy, which is a mistake of the highest order, instead of trying to build an organization which will get his voters to the polls and get him support on the web.
He needs a competent web team if he's ever going to reach volunteers and he's not anywhere near that.
I laugh when I hear people like tweety say "this will be a close race". Yeah, ok. So who's going to do Lieberman's scut work. He can't even find web help at inflated prices.
