Bye, Mike. Loved the puppy

Stay dry, Mike. Stay dry


Keep Cash Coming, Steele Tells The GOP
Campaign Insiders Fear Priority Shifts

By Matthew Mosk and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 29, 2006; Page B06

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele has been reaching out to key Republican leaders in recent days, urging them to continue directing resources to his U.S. Senate bid.

In an interview yesterday, Steele confirmed what some people close to his campaign have said privately -- that tightening races in other key states have taken priority in the year since high-ranking Republicans persuaded Steele to run, in part by promising the party's lasting financial support.

"I understand that they didn't know what the landscape was going to look like a year away," Steele said. "The dynamics have changed."

Steele said he is confident that he will have the money to run competitively. But sources close to his campaign said concerns about the availability of national money increased recently, especially when national Democrats invested $750,000 in television ads for his opponent, Baltimore area U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, in the days following Cardin's primary victory.

"They've made the commitment to have Sen. [Hillary] Clinton come here, Sen. [Barack] Obama come here. The natural question is: 'This is what these guys are doing; what are you prepared to do?' " Steele said.

..........................................

"A lot of people were watching what happened to Kweisi," Steele said yesterday, adding that those voters will want to know, "Will my party be bold in its effort to show that it's commitment is different from theirs?"

Two things: one, Steele desperately needs national party help because he has no base of funders locally. See how much money Russell Simmons hands out. Those white guys filled his ears with that nonsense and now they cut the rug out from under him. Bob Erlich's money people were laughing at him last year.

Now, he has no place to turn but to the people who thunk this up. And they now face a breakthrough on all fronts. He doesn't have people to back him up. He just doesn't have the resources and the Dems have local money to spare.Cardin has local resources which means he doesn't have to rely on ActBlue help.

The fact is that the right blogosphere cannot raise the money to help their candidates and Steele is a victim of that.

posted by Steve @ 10:56:00 AM

What about the atrocities?

Japanese militarism in action

Wary Eye Cast on Abe's 'New Japan'
The freshly minted premier seeks to revamp the pacifist constitution and instill patriotism in classrooms. His backers deny they're militaristic.
By Bruce Wallace, Times Staff Writer
September 29, 2006

TOKYO — For those who view Japan's swelling nationalism through suspicious eyes, there is plenty of evidence that the World War II loser is straining at its pacifist shackles.

New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed to rewrite Japan's war-renouncing constitution. He yearns for a robust role in world affairs, and has even mused about the possibility of a pre-emptive military strike against North Korean missile sites.

Abe's talk of a "new Japan" also includes a plan to inculcate patriotism in schools and put an end to teaching what he calls a "masochistic" version of Japanese history. His newly minted Cabinet tilts so far to the hawkish side of Japanese politics that Mizuho Fukushima, the opposition socialist leader, has christened it "a Cabinet to prepare for war."

So as Abe took power this week, wary observers warned of a virulent form of nationalism they say is moving into the mainstream for the first time since Japan's defeat in 1945. Those voices came from American and European analysts, not just from China and Korea (the usual suspects, to Abe supporters), where memories of Japan's imperial aggression still burn. When Abe suggested during the summer that it might be necessary to take out North Korea's missile bases in self-defense, South Korea's government spokesman said the declaration "unveiled Japan's expansionist nature."

Is Japan sliding back to the dark days of the militarist 1930s? Are the Japanese really prepared to surrender their breathtaking materialism for the sort of foreign adventures that brought ruin upon their grandparents' generation?

Absurd, the Abe crowd responds.

"No single Japanese person thinks we are going back to that period," says Yoshihide Suga, one of the governing Liberal Democratic Party's most conservative members and someone who was an early Abe ally on the need to take a hard line with North Korea. "Other countries accuse us of going in a militarist direction, but we are just trying to become a normal country."

Those who dispute parallels with the 1930s point out that military spending then was the largest single budget item, whereas now it is less than 1% of Japan's gross domestic product. And unlike the 1930s, Japan no longer has a command economy tailored to the needs of the armed forces, and civilian leaders do not bend to the will of the army and navy.

Yet Abe's supporters do want to roll history's clock back if only as far as 1945. Their quarrel is with the political culture that was thrust on Japan after the war. Their targets are the American-imposed constitution and an accompanying education system they accuse of weakening traditional Japanese values and leading to a morally flabby nation.

"When we mention conservative politics, it is not the same as prewar politics or militarism," says Hakubun Shimomura, deputy chief Cabinet secretary of Abe's new government. "It is not an arrogant nationalism. We are not hostile to other cultures. But we want Japanese people to respect traditional Japanese culture, a culture that goes back more than 2,000 years but which has been weakened in the last 60 years."

It is a recurring theme with this new generation of nationalists. Yes, we got rich under the postwar American umbrella, they say. But the excesses of foreign values also infused an individualistic streak that diluted the social harmony at the core of Japanese society.

Foreigners look upon Japan as a remarkably cohesive society, but conservatives here see runaway egotism. And they complain that it has led to more broken families, a dearth of discipline in schools, youths adrift without jobs or hope — and even children who kill their parents.

And they fret that a rapacious capitalism accompanying globalization is undermining Japan's business culture, which has traditionally been far less cutthroat.

"Abe's stance is that postwar Japan is bad," says Takashi Tachibana, a commentator and author who has written about Japan's prewar intellectual class and is a critic of the new prime minister. Tachibana says Abe sees the constitution and the 1947 basic education law as the underpinnings of a stunted postwar era, "the root of all evils that need to be fixed."

Abe's is not a minority view. Polls show nearly two-thirds of Japanese support a new education law that would require schools to teach patriotism. Although teachers have resisted school board directives ordering them to stand, face the flag and sing the national anthem at school ceremonies, others see patriotic education as simply code for restoring discipline in classrooms gone wild.

No one in Asia is going to take this well.

The Japanese act as if someone else raped and murdered their way across Asia.

posted by Steve @ 3:51:00 AM

Unfucking real

Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

The book, bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release, is the third that Mr. Woodward has written chronicling the inner debates in the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq. Like Mr. Woodward’s previous works, the book includes lengthy verbatim quotations from conversations and describes what senior officials are thinking at various times, without identifying the sources for the information.

Mr. Woodward writes that his book is based on “interviews with President Bush’s national security team, their deputies, and other senior and key players in the administration responsible for the military, the diplomacy, and the intelligence on Iraq.” Some of those interviewed, including Mr. Rumsfeld, are identified by name, but neither Mr. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney agreed to be interviewed, the book says.

Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.

It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.

posted by Steve @ 3:45:00 AM

Ethics, right?

Sleazebag Al Pirro and his wife

Pirro & Pirro, a Partnership of Love, Power and Distrust

By LESLIE EATON and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: September 29, 2006

To hear Jeanine F. Pirro’s supporters tell it, she is a wronged woman leg-shackled to a loser, an ambitious and effective wife brought low by her badly behaved husband, Albert.

Now her fears about his philandering have set off a federal investigation into possible eavesdropping and have threatened to derail her quest to become New York attorney general.

But to many people who have been watching the couple for decades, the Pirros look a lot like an echo of that other Westchester power couple, the Clintons, who are also political and financial partners whose fates and fortunes are profoundly intertwined. The Pirros live in Rye, the Clintons in Chappaqua.

When it comes to the Pirros, “There’s no question they are partners, there’s no question it’s a symbiotic relationship,” said Murray Richman, a Bronx defense lawyer who knows both of the Pirros. “There’s no question Jeanine would never be where she is without Al.”

Mr. Pirro, 59, a lawyer and lobbyist, has provided money and political contacts for his wife’s career and has financed their way of life: the fancy cars, the expensive houses, the pampered pot-bellied pigs. Her campaigns have been heavily financed by his business associates in Westchester, where he has a hand in many real estate projects. She, in turn, reflected her glamour and political power onto him.

“Picture those two as the celebrities, the royalty, the power brokers in Westchester,” said Bennett L. Gershman, a former prosecutor and professor of law at Pace University who has been a frequent critic of Ms. Pirro, 55.

The Pirros’ relationship has often come with a cost to Ms. Pirro, starting two decades ago when she dropped her bid for lieutenant governor in the face of questions about her husband’s ties to a company in the garbage-hauling business, an activity that was often linked to the mob. (At the time, she said Mr. Pirro was not comfortable revealing his clients.)

During Mr. Pirro’s 2000 trial on charges of tax evasion, it became clear that she had benefited from his largess. But prosecutors said they were not accusing her of knowing that her husband improperly deducted as business expenses items ranging from her two-seater Mercedes to a $135 gold mirror. More recently, mobsters were caught on tape claiming that Mr. Pirro had tipped them off to an investigation conducted by the Westchester district attorney’s office when Ms. Pirro ran it, a claim he denied.

Ms. Pirro’s loyalty to her husband has confounded those inside and outside the political world, and this week she hinted at why she stood by her man. At a news conference on Wednesday, she confirmed that she had talked to Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is now a security consultant, about planting a listening device on her husband’s boat. But she said no taping was done, and claimed that federal investigators looking into the matter were conducting a “political witch hunt.”

Then she said she was tired of having to justify her relationship with her husband. He is a “great father” to their children, she said — a teenage son and a daughter in college. “These are personal choices that I have made, and I shouldn’t have to keep explaining them.”

But earlier in her career, she was happy to talk about Mr. Pirro, whom she once described as “the most exciting person I knew: quick, bright, always doing, very much an activist.”

I don't care how much money Al Pirro has, he's a fucking loser. He's done this passive-agressive career damaging shitto his wife for over a decade.

What kind of joke would it be to have an Attorney General with a felon for a husband and who claims personal vendetta when investigated by the feds. Come on, she's no victim. He fucks around on her, got another woman pregnant and then still embarasses her.

posted by Steve @ 3:27:00 AM

Congressman, we have your e-mails

Congressman, sit down. I'm Chris Hansen of
Dateline NBC. What were you planning
to do with the 16 year old boy?

FL-16: Foley (R) writes creepy emails to 16-year-old page
by kos

Thu Sep 28, 2006 at 09:37:58 PM PDT

Creeeeeeeeepy. This is approaching "live boy" territory.

A 16-year-old male congressional page concerned about the appropriateness of an e-mail exchange with a congressman alerted Capitol Hill staffers to the communication.

Congressman Mark Foley's office says the e-mails were entirely appropriate and that their release is part of a smear campaign by his opponent.

In the series of e-mails, obtained by ABC News, between the page and Rep. Foley (R-FL), Foley asks the page how old he is, what he wants for his birthday and requests a photo of him.

The concerned page alerted congressional staffers to the e-mails. In one e-mail, the page writes to a staffer, "Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out."

Foley's office acknowledges that Foley wrote the e-mails to the page but says they were completely innocent and that Foley is only guilty of being overly friendly.

The e-mails were sent from Foley's personal AOL account. In one, Foley writes, "did you have fun at your conference...what do you want for your birthday coming up...what stuff do you like to do."

In another Foley writes, "how are you weathering the hurricane...are you safe...send me an email pic of you as well..."

The page forwarded that e-mail to a congressional staffer saying it was "sick sick sick sick sick."

Aravosis has the emails (follow the link above to read them), and has one in which Mark Foley emails the page to tell him how hot his (the page's) friend is.

I just emailed will...hes such a nice guy...acts much older than his age...and hes in really great shape...i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey now headed to the gym...whats school like for you this year?

This story has hit the district press. Bizarre? Yeah. But it has legs.ge

What a crazy election this has become.

On the web: Tim Mahoney for Congress (Democratic candidate in the district)

Foley ran around last cycle swearing he wasn't gay. Now he's hitting on pages? That's a pretty big leap, from closeted gay to potential Dateline subject. What the hell was he thinking?

And then he's commenting on how hot his friend is?

Paging Chris Hansen.

No, seriously, watch Dateline NBC and this is the pitch they use. It's called grooming.

posted by Steve @ 1:42:00 AM

Impotence vs. Power

(AP Photo/Joe Songer, Pool)
And I will apply the electrodes myself if
I need to, and I will need to. The press thinks
they're getting back their press room. Hah,
it's now the high value interrogation center.


It is the act of the impotent to make threats they cannot carry out. You can rage all you want about torture, but you can't punish anyone, and that is what is needed. The ability to punish. Just like the fundies and the Club for Growth. Ignore them and people run for your seat and run commercials against you.

I heard the same thing after Alito as well. But it's impossible without leverage. You can't get politicians to vote your way unless they fear you. Making threats you will not carry out makes you look weak and ineffective. And you will not carry them out because no matter how disgusted you, more is at stake. And everyone knows it.

The way to prevent people from selling out is simple: they have to fear you. They have to fear what you can do to them. It is better to be loved, but fear works very well in politics. It took conservatives 15 years to scare people and build their base. And they stuck it out, despite a setback here and there. Because, in the end, their goal was to control who sat in Congress. Not just the White House, but Congress. They trained them, they cultivated them and they built networks.

People need to stop with the threats, note this and act to get the power to prevent it from happening in the future. This is a prime demonstration of fear and power. As long as you lack that, you cannot push your beliefs.

posted by Steve @ 12:10:00 AM

Led by cowards

Bush is, was and will remain a coward as long as he lives.

The torture bill is a cruel joke, so riddle with flaws, so uncostitutional, it won't survive the District Court. Which is the calculation Dems in tight races made.

They once read people the first Amendment and most of them thought it should be outlawed. Given a choice between politics and right, politicians choose politics. So they duck their heads and pray. Don't be shocked. We elect politicians to do our bidding and can be fired. And some will certainly be.

Debating torture is pointless. Because Bush cares ohnly about power, not the law. so if he has to strap the electrodes to gonads in Poland or Uzbekistan, well, that's that. You cannot debate torture with Bush. You can only expose it and shame him. Because as bad as this is, and it's akin to the Japanese internment or the forced removal of the Indians by Andrew Jackson, it is nothing compared to what is happening in Iraq.

If people knew the stakes of the war in Iraq, they would be outraged at the squandering of the Army, the way Bush is wrecking it by sending it to fight a war where 70 percent of the people want us to go and 60 percent support the resistance. What Bush has done is not only ruin the reputation in the United States, but endanger our allies like Egypt.

Not only are the Taliban learning to fight the US from Iraq, they're training there and probably coming home with the RDX we didn't secure in 2003.

Things could not have gone more wrong. No call for sacrifice, no sense of national duty.

But I save my true ire, not for the Dems, backed into the nastiest of corners, but who don't have the power to stop such madeness, will is another topic for another day.

Congress is supposed to check the President, not ride his coattails. I'm going to read a lot of angry posts about how the Dems didn't do this or that. What about the GOP? Defense of the constitution doesn't just belong to select individuals. It is Congress's job to protect the Consitution, not just run for office.

We cannot give them a pass. We cannot just say that's the GOP. Because if some Democrats played politics, it is the Republicans who betrayed the constitution. It is far too easy to write off their duty to the nation based on politics. Oh, well, they're wingnuts. No, they are elected to defend the constitution, not the Republican party. And in that, they have betrayed this country and it's ideals,

We have a bunch of small business radical conservatives, people who worry more about taxes than the consequences of their actions for oh, American soldiers overseas. The Congress only cares about their narrow issues, and not the good of the county. And that should enrage all of us.

We have the worst Congress possible. One beholden to the White House and refusing to do their job for the sake of party loyalty. They don't believe in America, they believe in the GOP. They are cowards of the worst sort, the kind that knows the consquences of failure and still refuse to act.

posted by Steve @ 8:09:00 PM

We can't do it alone

We won't be at the Milan
fashion show with our
rich liberal backers

All this talk of torture reminds me of the impotence of the blogosphere. Sure, we can raise money, but we have almost no voice in policy and that is because we lack money. NARAL, HRC, they can come to us for support and money, but do nothing to support us.

The reason people are so frustrated with the torture vote is because we have no real pressure on sitting senators and house members. If we could run ads in their districts about torture, a lot of minds would have been forced to stand up to Bush on this issue.

But the liberal money people don't understand what we do and are wedded to old methods. They want to underpay staff and expect miracles. Some rich people need to admit they're rich and start paying the people who do politics like they pay their personal staff. The day of underfunded staff has to end.

You guys pay your fair share and more, where are the rich liberals? When do they kick in? When do they realize that their methods suck.

Postscript: Thanks for all the offers of help on getting a Mac. I just bought a 1.83 Ghz Mac with 1G of memory, which I installed myself. Jen is still deciding on a desktop, which has to be PC-based because of work. Maybe Jen will buy one as a holiday treat.:)

Any recommendation on software? If anyone had an OEM or duplicate Windows XP disk they no longer have installed on their machine or a Student edition of Office, I wouldn't be upset. Jen can avoid a dual boot system, but I can't

Oh yeah, how hard are hard drive upgrades.

posted by Steve @ 10:56:00 AM

posted by Steve @ 10:56:00 AM

More Good News from Iraq

Not hard core enough

Cleric Said to Lose Reins of Parts of Iraqi Militia

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: September 28, 2006

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has lost control of portions of his Mahdi Army militia that are splintering off into freelance death squads and criminal gangs, a senior coalition intelligence official said Wednesday.

The question of how tightly Mr. Sadr holds the militia, one of the largest armed groups in Iraq, is of critical importance to American and Iraqi officials. Seeking to ease the sectarian violence raging across the country, they have pressed him to join the political process and curb his fighters, who see themselves as defenders of Shiism — and often as agents of vengeance against Sunnis.

But as Mr. Sadr has taken a more active role in the government, as many as a third of his militiamen have grown frustrated with the constraints of compromise and have broken off, often selling their services to the highest bidders, said the official, who spoke to reporters in Baghdad on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak publicly on intelligence issues.

“When Sadr says you can’t do this, for whatever political reason, that’s when they start to go rogue,” the official said. “Frankly, at that point, they start to become very open to alternative sources of sponsorship.” The official said that opened the door to control by Iran.

Mr. Sadr’s militia — dominated by impoverished Shiites who are loosely organized into groups that resemble neighborhood protection forces — has always operated in a grass-roots style but generally tended to heed his commands. It answered his call to battle American forces in two uprisings in 2004, and stopped fighting when he ordered it. But as the violence in Iraq has spread, evidence of freelancing Shiites has accumulated.

After the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, bands of militants dressed in black, the favorite color of Sadr loyalists, drove into neighborhoods, kidnapping and killing Sunnis. Mr. Sadr, who was abroad at the time, returned home and gave a rare public speech calling on his followers to stop, even proposing joint prayer sessions with Sunni clerics. Still, the rampage continued.

In Basra, a province in southeastern Iraq, Mr. Sadr has less direct control over militiamen, and they have tended to operate to suit their own agenda. Local leaders there have said that he has disciplined some members and fired others, but with little overall effect. He has run through four different leaders in Basra, according to the intelligence official, and has even had to shut offices temporarily, when local leaders ignored him and acted on their own.

Mr. Sadr is still immensely powerful, with as many as 7,000 militiamen in Baghdad, the official said. And the cleric has turned that firepower into political might. His candidate list won about 30 seats in Parliament this year, one of the largest shares. The participation was a central goal for American officials, who tried for months to persuade him to stop fighting and enter politics.

Still, six major leaders here no longer answer to Mr. Sadr’s organization, according to the intelligence official. Most describe themselves as Mahdi Army members, the official said, and even get money from Mr. Sadr’s organization, but “are effectively beyond his control.” Some of those who moved away from Mr. Sadr saw him as too accommodating to the United States. Others saw him as too bound by politics, particularly as killings of Shiite civilians in mixed neighborhoods began to soar.

Rogue Sadrists providing cover for criminals and killing as they feel.

Just another comma, right?

posted by Steve @ 9:59:00 AM

France's Arab Army

Les Indigenes shows how North African soldiers were
marginalised

French film aims to unite nation
By Alasdair Sandford
BBC News, Paris

French President Jacques Chirac has announced that the pensions of foreign soldiers who fought in the French army are to be brought into line with those of French ones.

The pensions were frozen in 1959 - "crystallised", in the official language - meaning that 80,000 veterans in 23 countries receive less than one-third of the amount given to their French counterparts.

In spite of a long campaign from veterans' associations, successive governments refused to budge.

In 2002 a partial "de-crystallisation" adjusted foreign pensions to take account of the standard of living in the relevant countries, but they still lagged well behind.

In the end, what has pushed the president to act is a new film, called Les Indigenes, telling the story of North African soldiers who helped to liberate France in World War II.

According to some of the cast who attended a private screening at the Elysee Palace, President Chirac was visibly moved by the movie. So too was his wife, Bernadette.

"Jacques, we must do something," she reportedly said.

Powerful scenes

The announcement on pensions comes on the day Les Indigenes is released in France.

The word means "natives", the term commonly given to African soldiers at the time.

The film is about the campaign from Provence through to Alsace in 1944-45 as seen through the eyes of four soldiers, who leave their homelands in Algeria and Morocco to fight for France.

The Hollywood-esque nature of the film is reflected in its English title, Days of Glory. The fear and courage of the men is evident amid the powerful battle scenes.

There is discrimination but also a warm welcome from the French people. One soldier hopes to marry a French girl he meets in Provence but is forced to leave her behind.

The film also recounts the love-hate relationship between a young Moroccan recruit and his French superior.

The symbolism of some of the scenes is striking.

African soldiers with only a limited command of the French language sing the Marseillaise and hoist the French flag with pride.

Arab men sacrifice their lives to liberate a village in Alsace, but the survivors are ignored as official photographers snap the white French troops who arrive on the scene afterwards.

The bulk of the Free French Army was Moroccan and Algerian from 1942 on. The French have pretended this wasn't true since 1945. It was this experience which set the stage for revolt in the post-war period.

posted by Steve @ 3:26:00 AM

Raining shit

At least they don't get shit on

Heralded Iraq Police Academy a 'Disaster'

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 28, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 -- A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

The Baghdad Police College was built so poorly that feces and urine trickle from the ceilings, and floors rise inches off the ground and crack apart.
The Baghdad Police College was built so poorly that feces and urine trickle from the ceilings, and floors rise inches off the ground and crack apart.

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

Bowen's office plans to release a 21-page report Thursday detailing the most alarming problems with the facility.

Even in a $21 billion reconstruction effort that has been marred by cases of corruption and fraud, failures in training and housing Iraq's security forces are particularly significant because of their effect on what the U.S. military has called its primary mission here: to prepare Iraqi police and soldiers so that Americans can depart.

Federal investigators said the inspector general's findings raise serious questions about whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has failed to exercise effective oversight over the Baghdad Police College or reconstruction programs across Iraq, despite charging taxpayers management fees of at least 4.5 percent of total project costs. The Corps of Engineers said Wednesday that it has initiated a wide-ranging investigation of the police academy project.

The report serves as the latest indictment of Parsons Corp., the U.S. construction giant that was awarded about $1 billion for a variety of reconstruction projects across Iraq. After chronicling previous Parsons failures to properly build health clinics, prisons and hospitals, Bowen said he now plans to conduct an audit of every Parsons project.

"The truth needs to be told about what we didn't get for our dollar from Parsons," Bowen said.

If you were an Iraqi and this is what you were subjected to, how would you feel about the Green Zone government?

posted by Steve @ 2:49:00 AM

Losing an American Army

Kasserine Pass

Burnside

Friedenthal

Lucas

Dean

Bush

Four of these men help to destroy an American Army in the field. One is doing it as we speak

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short
An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.
By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer
September 25, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.

"This is unusual, but hell, we're in unusual times," said a senior Pentagon official involved in the budget discussions.

Schoomaker failed to submit the budget plan by an Aug. 15 deadline. The protest followed a series of cuts in the service's funding requests by both the White House and Congress over the last four months.

According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army's budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker's request a 41% increase over current levels.

"It's incredibly huge," said the Army official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity when commenting on internal deliberations. "These are just incredible numbers."

Most funding for the fighting in Iraq has come from annual emergency spending bills, with the regular defense budget going to normal personnel, procurement and operational expenses, such as salaries and new weapons systems.

About $400 billion has been appropriated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through emergency funding measures since Sept. 11, 2001, with the money divided among military branches and government agencies.

But in recent budget negotiations, Army officials argued that the service's expanding global role in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism — outlined in strategic plans issued this year — as well as fast-growing personnel and equipment costs tied to the Iraq war, have put intense pressure on its normal budget.

"It's kind of like the old rancher saying: 'I'm going to size the herd to the amount of hay that I have,' " said Lt. Gen. Jerry L. Sinn, the Army's top budget official. "[Schoomaker] can't size the herd to the size of the amount of hay that he has because he's got to maintain the herd to meet the current operating environment."

The Army, with an active-duty force of 504,000, has been stretched by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 400,000 have done at least one tour of combat duty, and more than a third of those have been deployed twice. Commanders have increasingly complained of the strain, saying last week that sustaining current levels will require more help from the National Guard and Reserve or an increase in the active-duty force.

The Army is collapsing before our eyes. The WH is still in love with the RMA bullshit, this fantasy of robo soldiers and robot planes stomping ass like a Roman legion in Gaul.

Instead, on ABC tonight, a patrol from the Big Red One was supposed to meet up with Iraqis, and they never showed up. Oooops. Yeah. We can train them to fight their cousins.

Someone should ask Bush where Wenck and Steiner are. Because he's getting that delusional.

posted by Steve @ 12:29:00 AM

Alms for bloggers

A place I won't be going with lobbyists

Buttons fixed

Ok, we've been asking for contributions and things have gone well. Which is good, because this is our last drive for the year. Once the week is over, we won't be pestering you again until after the new year.

But Jen and I have come to a decision. A surprising one actually.

No, we won't be adopting any orphans or moving to Kenya

We're going to be MacBook owners. Well, Jen is thinking seriously about it.

I'll let that sink in for a minute.


Time's up.

Now, I do most of my work on a custom AMD desktop, and I've had an AMD laptop as a back up. But I don't use the laptop outisde of my house much because it's heavy. Jen has come to the same conclusion. We'd like to be able to travel with a machine and not feel like we're porting supplies for Sherpas.

My laptop isn't extremely heavy, or uncomfortable, but it's enough of a pain in the ass that I don't take it too many places. Jen, owns a Dell which is like a brick, and works on a ThinkPad. She also has an 11+ year old desktop she's replacing before the holidays.

But we can't take our machines too far without adding a lot of weight, and it's a pain in the ass.

Now, many of you are under the misaprehension that we hate Apple. We don't We hate Apple hype and the mindless cult of Apple. This idea that a Mac is some kind of special machine and Jobs is some kind of special genius is silly. And I still hate those idiotic commercials. I hate Apple marketing with it's smug certainty

But I have held the same position on the i/MacBook for years. It is the best product Apple makes, including the iPod. Why? Because it is light, easy to use and has a nice keyboard, better than a lot of Windows-only laptops. See, and that's the other point, Windows only. MacBooks can now run Windows, so I don't have to replace all my software.

The reason I mention this is two fold, one, I expect to take a bunch of shit for this, which I don't mind and you have a right to know how we use our funding. The simple fact is that I can't afford to be offline and need redundant systems. I mean, after all the debates on Mac, where I attack Apple marketing and Apple fans attack me, it would be achingly dishonest not to mention this.

Which is why I didn't buy a MacBook last time out. It also helps to be able to use Safari and Firefox for Mac when dealing with reader issues. But, compared to windows only boxes, it is surprisingly cheap. Sure, you can get an AMD laptop from CompUSA, but have you picked one of them up? They weigh a ton.

Jen opposed my pro-MacBook arguments for years, hell, until this week. But then her technolust took over.

It's a serious financial decision to get another box, but the functionality increase is such that I think it's a wise decision, and I think Jen would agree. She doesn't take money from the site, but I did promise to help her with the desktop because her's is 11 years old. As old as my nephew, no, a couple of months older and he's a sixth grader.

Did I absolutely, positively need it? Honestly, it isn't a critical purchase, I still have working computers, but I think it will make for a better blog.
As usual:

Stephen Gilliard
217 E86th St
NMB 112
New York, NY 10028

posted by Steve @ 8:59:00 PM

Breaking: Kerik-Pirro involved in federal investigation

Running for what, Rudy?

Feds Investigating Jeanine Pirro

ALBANY, NY (AP) -- Republican state attorney general candidate Jeanine Pirro has been told she is under federal investigation for allegedly plotting to secretly record her husband, Albert Pirro. That's according to two people familiar with the situation.

No recordings were ever made, said the two people, who spoke to The Associated Press only on condition of anonymity.

Pirro has scheduled an afternoon conference in Manhattan to discuss, quote, ``an official investigation into her personal life.''

The sources said authorities last year overheard Pirro having a telephone conversation with former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, a private security consultant.

They said Pirro suspected her husband of having an affair and that she and Kerik discussed possibly placing a recorder in a room to listen in on him.

The sources said FBI agents approached Pirro last week and told her she was under investigation by the United States attorney's office in Manhattan.

A spokeswoman for US Attorney Michael Garcia said she could not confirm that

Oh man, I walked in the door and saw this nonsense on TV. Pirro, who was just embarassed for refusing to revue the case of an innocent man locked up for 16 years, which her successor did, and then having her husband arrested for speeding twice. Now, she's involved in illegal wiretapping, allegedly. With Bernie Kerik no less.

So I wonder what AG Cuomo will do when he takes office?

posted by Steve @ 5:07:00 PM

Owens in suicide bid

Terrell Owens

Police: NFL Star Terrell Owens Attempts Suicide
Controversial Dallas Player Tells Authorities He Overdosed On Painkillers

CBS News) DALLAS Controversial Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens has told police he tried to kill himself by overdosing on pain medication, even putting two more pills into his mouth after a friend intervened.

A Dallas police report released Wednesday morning said Owens told his friend "that he was depressed."

The friend, who is not identified in the report, "noticed that (his) prescription pain medication was empty and observed (Owens) putting two pills in his mouth," the police report said.

The friend attempted to pry them out with her fingers, then was told by Owens that before this incident he'd taken only five of the 40 pain pills in the bottle he'd emptied. Owens was asked by rescue workers "if he was attempting to harm himself, at which time (he) stated, `Yes.'"

CBS affiliate KTVT in Dallas-Fort Worth and other local media had reported that Owens had been taken to Baylor Medical Center Tuesday night, possibly for an allergic reaction to pain medication he is taking for his broken hand.

According to the Dallas Police Department incident report, Owens told police he took more than 30 pills in a suicide attempt.

Sources tell KTVT that Owens was taken to Baylor Hospital by Dallas Fire Rescue and that emergency room doctors attempted to induce vomiting.

Baylor Hospital officials continue to deny Owens received treatment. However, federal privacy laws allow people to block their name from being released.

"This is not serious," Owens' publicist Kim Etheridge had said in Wednesday's online edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

A suicide bid isn't serious? Owens is a weird guy, pretty much friendless, but this is really surprising. He's got to be a very unhappy man.

posted by Steve @ 11:22:00 AM

No Rabbits, no hats

Get Osama? Are you high? I like living.


The October surprise is highly unlikely to be the surrender or death of Osama Bin Laden or an attack on Iran.

Why?

The US doesn't have the strength to attack Iran and stay in Iraq. Any increase in the tempo of operations in Iraq could mean a countrywide rebellion. The British and other allies would be forced to leave Iraq, crippling US force protection there.

As for Osama, you going to Waziristan to get him? Musharraf sure as shit isn't. He just told the world that he was blackmailed into fighting with the US. You think he has any incentive to hand over Osama and then die in the process? I think not.

I mean, anything is possible, but even Bush, well the sane people around him realize that the US hasn't come close to making a case against Iran. And no matter how odious Iran's powerless president is, we ensured his election. Besides, Iranians are of a like mind on nuclear weapons, they want them. If that's an October surprise, it's going to be one on Bush.

posted by Steve @ 2:45:00 AM

It's not one news story

Who the fuck has this in their
office? Besides a Klansman?

This ran on NRO

The Allen News Spiral

09/26 01:47 AMFrom Salon to AP to the New York Times. Let's see how many Republicans are quick to distance themselves from George Allen based on this kind of reporting. The Left is counting on it. These things can easily spin out-of-control on the Republican side as Republicans are often fearful of being on the wrong side of a perceived breaking scandal. I've seen it over and over again. And watch as they claim the moral high ground when doing so.

In this case, the allegation against Allen is placed before the public eye by a liberal online "news" website. It is then picked up by the Associated Press. Then it spreads to outlets like the New York Times — "two former acquaintances of Senator George Allen said ... in the 1970's and 1980's ...." And no matter how many other acquaintances say otherwise, a few weeks before an election none of that matters. Allen's long public record, which includes reaching out to minority communities as a southern governor and senator, is soon forgotten. What matters are the allegations of two former acquaintances. They are to be believed above all others, and above all evidence of this public man's actions, no matter what......................

This pathetic defense isn't going to cut it. Allen's racial attitudes are bizzare in the extreme. His idolitry of the South is freakish, the kind that people are embarassed by, haunted by.

Understand this: Allen was considered a racist by Virginians in 1972. His racial beliefs offended people who grew up in a state where some towns shut down the public schools for five years because of Brown v Board of Ed. These young men grew up in a segregated world, but Allen's behavior shocked and offended them at a time of high racial tension. It's been downplayed now, but the early 70's had a lot of racial conflict which didn't always make the papers or even the history books.

Yet, despite all that, long before interracial dating and blue NoVA, his conduct, as they say, shocked the conscience of his fellow teammates.

Who in God's name would refer to someone as Wizard because their name is Shelton? Only two kinds of people, ones with a snarky sense of humor or a racist.

I can reach out to anyone to serve my purposes, doesn't mean I respect them. Allen clearly has internalized white supremacy to the point that mentioning his Jewish heritage is an offense. He can't accept it gracefully. He has a lifelong obsession with the Confederacy to the point of embracing racist images. A noose? What decent person would associate themselves with lynch law? What lawyer?

Allen didn't want to just embrace the South, he wanted to embrace the racist part of the South, the part most Southerners shoved to the gutter. I mean, in 1996, he's meeting with White Supremacists.

Boy, I sure as shit wouldn't want to be Del. Benny Lambert right now. He crossed party lines, pissed at Webb, and endorsed Allen. Now it turns out, he may be a hate crime committing racist.

posted by Steve @ 1:00:00 AM

Reasons to Hate Republicans 52

(AP Photo/Brian Kersey, File)
Maj. Tammy Duckworth, Ret. She was shot
down over Iraq and lost her legs. Her
opponent can find Iraq on a map.

Rivals for Hyde's seat argue over Iraq

By DEANNA BELLANDI, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 22, 7:45 PM ET

CHICAGO - Two candidates vying for retiring GOP Rep. Henry Hyde (news, bio, voting record)'s job squared off in a radio debate Friday, with Democrat Tammy Duckworth saying the U.S. needs to focus on getting its troops out of
Iraq and Republican Peter Roskam contending that she was advocating a "cut-and-run" strategy.

Duckworth, who lost both legs in the war, said during a taping of WBBM-AM's "At Issue" that she and Roskam are "worlds apart" on Iraq and how to bring American troops home. She said the pullout of troops from Iraq should be tied to the training of Iraqi forces to defend themselves.

"Even if it's just two policemen in a kiosk in the middle of nowhere at a traffic checkpoint, then I want to bring two Americans home," she said.

Roskam, a state senator from Wheaton, countered that the suburban Chicago district is not a "cut-and-run district" or one that embraces a timetable for a pullout from Iraq.

I think veterans should be e-mailing his campaign about his comment. He think he's a tough guy because he runs. See how he would live minus two legs.

posted by Steve @ 12:37:00 AM

Hell in Iraq

(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)

"It is Not a Miserable Life. It is Worse Then Miserable" - A Doctor's Day in Baghdad

By Dr. ANON
Baghdad.

I have a big family. My eldest two are already dentists and both abroad. I have one daughter just married one month ago. so I am not yet a grandpa. Although I have perfect job satisfaction, Full Professor, with MRCP, FRCP and a couple more degrees from London and France, things are so unhappy here in Baghdad, there is no quality of life at all. There are no services: we are loaded with garbage, as it is not collected more than once every so many weeks, the garbage collectors are also afraid of being killed. We have almost no electricity, no fuel, bad water supply, and what's more you could get killed whether you are Shiite or Sunnite, if you fall in the wrong hands. I nearly got killed on several occasions, I cannot count the sheep sacrified for my safety till now.

As for our colleagues, nearly none is with me from our medical class, all have left the country, the last one two months ago, to Oman. The only one left with me is XXXXX, he is a physician in the department of Medicine

It is not a miserable life. If there is a grade more than miserable, then it will be ours!

We work no more than three days a week in the university, medical city, the one which was elegant and beautiful is now surrounded by garbage and barbwires and concrete blocks from all directions. We don't spend more than three hours maximum at work, so that totals to nine hours a week. This is the maximum that anyone is working. In the afternoons most of my colleagues say that they have completely stopped going to their private clinics, for fear of death or abduction. I do no more than one and a half hours in the afternoon, I have to feed my big family. I come back rushing to my house after that, we lock our doors and do not leave at all.

What about shopping? What shopping? You must be joking! It is called Marathon Buying, for I try to spend no more than ten minutes getting all the needed vegetables, fruits and food items--this is on my way back from university, ie three times a week. I also spend another ten minutes in the afternoon on my way back from clinic buying gas (benzine, car fuel) for my home electric generator. It is all black market reaching four to five times the official price. If I need to get it legally, I have to spend overnight in line in front of the gas station, people bring their blankets, water, food, and sleep in the street in front of the gas stations. Of course sometimes I speak nicely to the guard of the gas station, presenting my ID and my buisness card and ask them if I could fill my car off-line. Sometimes they kick me out, othertimes I would get lucky and the guard has some rheumatic complaints, back pain or knees pains and bingo! I can fill my car off-line, with a promise to bring him medicines. Of course without any physical exam or investigations, if I was too lucky, and the stars where on my side that day, then I may even be allowed to get an extra 20 litres of gas for my generator.

A month ago, there were militia men with their guns, storming the dormitories of resident doctors in the medical city. They were particularly looking for doctors from Mosul or Anbar. There was a big fuss, and target doctors went into hidings, none was caught. Next day, two of them -- rheumatology post-graduates under my supervision -- asked me to give them leave to go to their hometowns and not be back except for their exams, and that even their training and teaching be taken there. I agreed, because they were leaving anyway. They would have been killed if they were caught, not because they have done any crime, but just because they are Sunni from Mosul and Anbar.

I believe that many doctors from southern parts of Iraq, who were Shiites, also left the dormitory on that day, because they feared that they are not safe anymore, and that next time it will be their turn, when maybe Sunni militia gunmen will come. So everyone left. Actually in that week I had prepared a lecture for post-grad doctors in the medical city. No one appeared, as all resident doctors had left. Of course many have come back again, but are terrified. Yet life has to go on.

The same applies for other hospitals, services are almost non-existant now. I was in Yarmouk hospital two days ago. The resident doctor whom I was visiting was living in a place in the hospital with broken, dusty furniture, wood and metal scattered all over, doors and windows broken. It looked like an animal barn. I was requesting a death certificate for a colleague. I went with him to the morgue where he kept the death registry. Outside the morgue there were the bodies of two young men, both shot in the head, laid on stretchers in the open air. The hospital was barricaded behind huge cement walls-- the hospital itself had been targeted several times by car bombs. A few months ago, doctors in this hospital declared a one day strike because they were being regularly beaten and wounded by officers of the National Guard. The hospitals are frequently raided by militia men who pull the wounded out of their hospital beds and drag them to where they will be executed.

Attendance of patients to hospitals has dropped tremendously. We used to see an avrerage of 100 one hundred patients in our consultation clinic at Rheumatology every single day prior to 2003. We don't see more than twenty these days. Don't ask me where did the patients disappear to? Many are scared to leave their homes and go to the hospitals. The hospital used to provide medicines for the chronically ill, for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. We used to have a monthly blood check followed by a month supply of DMRDs. These supplies are now so infrequent, blood checking is not done. Because services are so irregular, most patients got fed up and decided it is no more worth it to attend hospitals. Even simple NSAIDs most of the times are not available to patients coming for acute complaints. Many who used to come from towns and cities away from Baghdad, for better treatment in the capital city, now think it is too risky and dangerous to travel to Baghdad for follow ups. Instead, patients stop their therapy altogether, or depend on local facilities and whatever simple resources they get where they are, regardless of whether it is efficient or not. The financial situation of most families in Baghdad has gone so much down, that many find it is a luxury to treat chronic illnesses. The priority is for food, fuel and staying alive.

This is a small summary of what and how we are living.

Bush thinks this will get better? This kind of killing is hellish to imagine and it is what we unleashed, anarchy.

Bush is swearing that this is a comma.

A comma for him, hell for Iraqis.

posted by Steve @ 12:20:00 AM

Can they do this?

Hmmmm, meat

New York City Plans Sharp Limits on Restaurants’ Use of Trans Fats

By THOMAS J. LUECK
Published: September 27, 2006

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Yesterday’s initiative appeared to ensure that the city would eventually take some formal action against artificial trans fats. If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.

The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs.

The city would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, sharply reducing most customers’ intake. The fats are commonly found in baked goods, like doughnuts and cakes, as well as breads and salad dressing.

Officials said that the typical American diet now contains 5.8 grams of trans fats per day, and that a single five-ounce serving of French fries at many restaurants contained 8 grams of trans fats.

Members of the Board of Health, all mayoral appointees, expressed vigorous support for the proposal, which was drafted by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The board members said that the initiative could set an example for the nation, and that New York City should play a leading role because of its high rate of heart disease and because New Yorkers consume more restaurant meals and takeout food than most Americans.

The proposal met immediate resistance among restaurant owners, who said banning trans fats would raise their costs and change the taste of some items. “I’m wondering if there are grounds for a lawsuit,” said E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, which represents about 3,500 restaurants in the city.

Does the city have the power to regulate what people serve in food? I honestly don't know.

posted by Steve @ 12:07:00 AM

Why we come to you

Oh, and we won't be sucking up to the government
like our media does





Jennifer Nix had dinner with Democratic donors

Last night, I found myself in a private dining room at an upscale San Francisco eatery with four Democratic funding luminaries: a Bay Area venture capitalist, a honcho from an online auction site that shall remain nameless, a member of the Democracy Alliance and a Bay Area developer. I was, by the way, looking very forward to this dinner. Even bought my first pair of Jimmy Choos for the occasion–making me a mere 6′1".

.................................

There was much more about the blogs I wanted to share, too–the excitement about ideas and activism, the communication, the amplification of new voices and new messages. And in a San Francisco crowd, I was expecting to see some of my excitement reflected back at me.

Ummm…not. These funders sucked the life blood and optimism out of me in under half an hour. And left me plenty depressed today, I might add. But, now I’m just pissed.

Once again, I find myself in the awkward spot of not really being able to name names, because I was there as an invited guest, and I mostly don’t want to hurt my hosts’ chances of ever being funded again. But so much of what I see on the left can be so damned ridiculous that I believe it’s my duty to expose and try to change it. If we can’t talk about these things, admit they’re counter-productive, fix the mindset and move on, we’ll always be stuck in our losing ways. So, here goes.

..............................

Now let me first say this. The developer guy was enthusiastic, about everything. Expecially about windsurfing. So, no complaints there. But you should have seen the sour pusses on the other three. Sour, unimpressed and each ready to launch into their tired list of concerns and complaints as only the Monied Left can do. Never mind that NPI was doing something, urging consultants and media buyers to add something new and different to their bag of tricks–attempting to reduce waste and misdirected messaging. Democracy Alliance Gal turned up her nose and came back with, "Yes, but what effect are those cable impressions having?" What I wanted to say was, "Well, sugar, we don’t know yet, because we’re just about to start trying out this strategy…but what we been doin’ ain’t been so hot, and the Republicans kick our asses on targeted messaging." The other two funders, following her lead, muzzled any enthusiasm they might have felt bubbling up to the surface about this new strategy idea. Strike One.

For your sake, dear readers, I’m only picking the four things that bugged me most about this dinner. What was Strike Two, you ask? Well it was when Online Auction Guy coolly lambasted Simon for (I believe he said) bending over backwards to support the blogosphere, "…when you know that the blogs are leading us down the path of unelectability." He blasted the blogs for getting Ned elected in the primary. This pompous statement was also incredibly hypocritical because Online Auction Guy had also just held forth on his company’s amazing efforts to promote net neutrality to their users. I asked him, "What about the blogs’ tremendous work to fight for net neutrality?" And on this point he casually threw a scrap of compliment the blogs’ way, while clearly thinking Online Auction Company was the true leader of the Save the Internet Coalition.

Venture Capital Man, who hadn’t read the Buy Cable memo, and probably wasn’t aware of many of the other memos NPI has released this year trying to lay out the technological and political opportunities that progressives and Democrats need to capitalize on in order to make some important strides, advised that Simon’s group should write a strategy memo, akin to the infamous Powell Memo that launched this Golden Age of Wingnutdom. Taken together, the strategy memos that NPI has offered up begin to look a lot like their Dem 2.0 version of the 1971 Powell Memo, but Venture Capital Man just hadn’t connected the dots. Strike Three.

................ Sadly, it’s usually the people that hold the purse strings who don’t know what we stand for, and they would rather hold on, white-knuckled, to the money and complain rather than reward those that are doing something. They’re rich. What have they got to lose, really? Strike Four.

So, my lost optimism today has me hopping mad. Hey, Funders! Look around. It’s a new world since 1992, and Bill Clinton can’t save you Centrist Democrats who’ve capitulated over and over and moved so far to the right that you’re where conservative Republicans use to be. We are not "crazy 60s types" who don’t care about winning elections. And we are not the radical fringe. What we are is the growing voice of a Democratic party that actually stands for Democratic principles and a progressive agenda. The blog audiences are growing, and we’re starting to get heard on the national stage. We’re getting things done, and talking to others, getting them involved, active, signing up new voters, raising money. We’re publishing books and getting them onto the bestseller lists. We want to work with you to get more done, to get more Democrats and progressives elected.

There’s plenty being done. Plenty of folks who do know what progressives and Democrats stand for. Plenty of successful efforts. How about noticing, and letting some money flow? In case you haven’t read it, here’s how the conservative philanthropists do it.

Consider this your memo.

Aren't you tired of the same old song and dance from liberal money people. The GOP shits their pants at blogs, even Karl Rove is wary of them, and this is how our people think of us, treat us.

At some point we're gonna have to challenge them, call them out, because shit has to change. No point in keeping them happy when they don't seem to care about what we're doing. So we do what we have to, look out for ourselves.

As usual:

Stephen Gilliard
217 E86th St
NMB 112
New York, NY 10028

posted by Steve @ 2:15:00 AM

About heroes and cowards

They look happy

John Baptiste got up before Congress today and said in so many words "the army is breaking" Paul Eaton suggested that many generals today are lackies of Rumsfeld.

Do not be fooled. This is politics. They are right, but make no mistake, this is the military trying to play politics to save the Army. They should have been heroes two years ago. Now, they are merely honest.

I think some people on the left are too quick to tar the military as of one mindset or that everyone should have resisted going to Iraq. Look, most people join the Army because of the benefits, and they got Iraq instead of happy childhoods.

At the same time, the right acts as if any criticism against the troops is akin to Lenin calling for revolution.

When I think of heroes from Iraq, I most often think about the doctors and nurses who have to deal with the wounded and the dying. They have to tell kids that their friends aren't coming back, people are going home with missing parts. That's courage, more than most people have.

Most soldiers don't see combat. Even in war, their job changes little from stateside. But we have people who are losing their families because of the constant deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. They may not complain, but eventually, they lose their marriage, their homes, everything.

Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs in a helicopter crash in the sandbox, was accused by her opponent of being a "cut and run" democrat. Crass would be nice for such a comment.

But that's who we are facing. Cowards for whom words are cheap. People who have no idea of what they are truly talking about. The Army is at a crossroads, and so is the country. We need to admit Iraq is lost, mainly because they keep killing people like animals there. It's anarchy, more like the Congo than Lebanon.

We are not a cowardly nation, but we are led by cowards. The men who think the methods of the secret policeman have a place in the US. Men who have no faith in the rule of law.

posted by Steve @ 1:54:00 AM

No silent majority

Another day in the sandbox

No Silent Majority for Bush

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; Page A21

What could prove to be the most important factor in the 2006 elections is overlooked because it is unseen: The Republicans cannot try to curry favor with a "silent majority" that favors the Iraq war because a majority of Americans, both vocal and quiet, have come to see the war as a mistake.

President Bush's defenders have cast opponents of the war as weak on terrorism. Yesterday, Vice President Cheney accused Democrats of "resignation and defeatism." But the charges have not taken hold, because most Americans don't agree with the premise linking the war on terror with the war in Iraq.

And blame for the failures in Iraq has fallen not on some liberal coterie supposedly holding our generals back but on the choices of civilians in a conservative administration. Those civilians, and their allies outside the administration, find themselves under increasing fire from leaders of the military and the intelligence services for bad planning, flawed analysis and unrealistic expectations.

Moreover, the tone of the opposition to this war is quite different from the tenor of some sections of the movement against the Vietnam War. Reaction to "hippie protesters," as the phrase went, allowed President Richard Nixon to pit a hardworking, patriotic "silent majority" -- it was one of the most politically potent phrases of his presidency -- against the privileged, the young and the media, whom his vice president Spiro Agnew memorably characterized as "effete snobs" and "nattering nabobs of negativism."

As the historian and Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose noted, tiny minorities -- "they numbered less than 1 percent of the demonstrators," he wrote of a 1969 rally -- "waved Viet Cong flags . . . and even burned American flags" and served as "magnets to the television cameras." They were used to exemplify an entire movement.

By contrast, critics of the Iraq war, deeply influenced by the post-Sept. 11 climate of national solidarity, have been resolutely patriotic and pro-military. They have often chastised the administration for offering American troops too little in the way of body armor and armored vehicles, and for shortchanging veterans.

posted by Steve @ 1:41:00 AM

No quick return for Boondocks

Syndicate Says 'Boondocks' May Not Return
Cartoonist Hasn't Answered Pleas to Resume Comic Strip

By Laura Sessions Stepp
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; Page C01

It's over for "The Boondocks" comic strip, at least for now. After six years -- a remarkably short run for a strip that found its way into 300-plus newspapers, including The Washington Post -- Universal Press Syndicate told subscribers yesterday they should start looking for someone to replace political/social satirist Aaron McGruder.

Apparently, the mind behind young black radicals Huey and Riley Freeman has gone Hollywood, or at least has further hopes of doing so, and has decided he can't devote himself to the grind of a daily strip. His late-night animated show, "The Boondocks," on the Cartoon Network was recently renewed for another season, the first-season DVD is out, and a film is reportedly in the works.

Perhaps for McGruder, whose broad and sometimes outrageous characterizations forced readers to confront racial stereotypes and caused cartoon editors to blanch, the future of the funny papers is in pixels rather than picas.

The cartoonist, 31, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. A message on his voicemail indicated he was taking some time to "restore his creative juices."

The heavies at Universal are clearly not happy with the way McGruder handled the situation, although they worded their news release carefully.

"Although Aaron McGruder has made no statement about retiring or resuming The Boondocks for print newspapers . . . newspapers should not count on it coming back in the foreseeable future," Universal's president, Lee Salem, said in the release. "Numerous attempts . . . to pin McGruder down on a date that the strip would be coming back were unsuccessful."

He's responsible for 22 Comedy Central episodes of the Boondocks TV show and is apparently doing most of the work on them. The two don't match. It's really hard to do a cartoon and a strip at once, and both are labor intensive.

posted by Steve @ 1:31:00 AM

From Lebanon to the Congo

Joe Lieberman wants to make you better
secterian killers

Lieberman Calls for Having More U.S. Troops Training Iraqi Forces

By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: September 26, 2006

EAST HAMPTON, Conn., Sept. 25 — In his first major speech on Iraq since his loss in the primary election, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman called on Monday for the number of United States troops embedded with Iraqi forces to be doubled or tripled, to speed up the training of the Iraqis and help hasten the withdrawal of the Americans.

In a 40-minute speech at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post here, Mr. Lieberman, who has been under attack for his support of the war, said that those troops could be added through redeployments, rather than by committing additional troops in the region.

At the same time, he called for increasing the overall size of the United States Army and Marine Corps, to better prepare for looming conflicts.

“We’ve got to do that to make sure we are building the numbers and types of units we need to fight and win the kinds of conflicts that we are likely to fight — unconventional conflicts — during this century,’’ Mr. Lieberman said.

“This is not going fix the shortages we have now in Iraq, or reduce the strain on our forces,” he said. “It will begin over time to give us the greater capabilities we will need.”

Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat in his third term in the Senate, is running for re-election as an independent.

He said that he did not back an open-ended commitment — as the victor in the Democratic primary on Aug. 8, Ned Lamont, has accused him of doing — but that he also opposed setting a timeline for withdrawal.

And he attacked Mr. Lamont, portraying his rival’s position on the withdrawal of American troops as “giving up on Iraq.”

The Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, is far behind in the polls.

Mr. Lieberman’s speech came on the heels of the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that as result of the war in Iraq, the overall terrorist threat to the United States has grown rather than diminished since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Like other Democrats around the country, Mr. Lamont seized on the report, saying it showed that the policies of the Bush administration had failed, and he said that Mr. Lieberman had continued to support them. “Trying to make a military statement there is just making the situation worse,” Mr. Lamont said on Monday during a campaign stop in New Haven, adding that Mr. Lieberman was still calling for “more of the same.”

But Mr. Lieberman used the news of the intelligence report, which he said he had not read, to argue that a deadline for withdrawal would make the threat of terror “exponentially worse” and give a battle plan to factional militias, insurgents, terrorists, Syria and Iran.

How? Where are the extra troops to train Iraqis? Where are the troops to increase the military? We need to hammer him with these questions. Because there are no more troops for Iraq. There is no one else to call. Of 33 Brigades, of those not engaged in combat, two or three are ready to fight.

Lieberman wants Americans to continue to die in a pointless war, one where the army is stretched to the point where felons, austistic kids and revenge seeking parents are now being recuited. A volksturm of the willing. What's next, recruiting 16 year olds? Maybe we can recruit a young American's division of teenagers, some foriegn legions of illegal aliens, or hell, even criminals.

The Dirlewanger Brigade was made up of the scum of the German Army, pure criminals. Led by former child molester Oskar Dirlewanger his unit had rapists, killers, anyone who wanted to fight for Germany.

Who says you couldn't get some of the bangers from Chino for the same deal. Pardon them at the end of their service, let them form their own units and we could easily raise more men to send to the sandbox.

posted by Steve @ 1:02:00 AM

The New Poll Tax

Stricter Voting Laws Carve Latest Partisan Divide

By JOYCE PURNICK
Published: September 26, 2006

MESA, Ariz. — Eva Charlene Steele, a recent transplant from Missouri, has no driver’s license or other form of state identification. So after voting all her adult life, Mrs. Steele will not be voting in November because of an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register.

“I have mixed emotions,” said Mrs. Steele, 57, who uses a wheelchair and lives in a small room in an assisted-living center. “I could see where you would want to keep people who don’t belong in the country from voting, but there has to be an easier way.”

Russell K. Pearce, a leading proponent of the new requirement, offers no apologies.

“You have to show ID for almost everything — to rent a Blockbuster movie!” said Mr. Pearce, a Republican in the State House of Representatives. “Nobody has the right to cancel my vote by voting illegally. This is about political corruption.”

Mrs. Steele and Mr. Pearce are two players in a spreading partisan brawl over new and proposed voting requirements around the country. Republicans say the laws are needed to combat fraud, especially among illegal immigrants. Democrats say there is minimal fraud, if any, and accuse Republicans of suppressing the votes of those least likely to have the required documentation — minorities, the poor and the elderly — who tend to vote for Democrats.

In tight races, Democrats say, the loss of votes could matter in November.

In Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest in population, election officials said that 35 percent of new registrations were rejected for insufficient proof of citizenship last year and that 17 percent had been rejected so far this year. It is not known how many of the rejected registrants were not citizens or were unable to prove their citizenship because they had lost or could not locate birth certificates and other documents.

In Indiana, Daniel J. Parker, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said: “Close to 10 percent of registered voters here do not have driver’s licenses. Who does that impact most? Seniors and minorities.”

A law in Indiana requiring voters to have a state-issued photo ID is being challenged in the federal courts, as are the voting laws in Arizona and in many other states.

Republicans say the Democratic complaints are self-serving.

“Democrats believe they represent stupid people who are not smart enough to vote,” said Randy Pullen, a Republican national committeeman from Arizona who championed a statewide initiative on the new requirements. “I do not.”

The new measures include tighter controls over absentee balloting and stronger registration rules. The most contentious are laws in three states — Georgia, Indiana and Missouri — where people need government-issued picture ID’s to vote, and provisions here in Arizona that tightened voter ID requirements at the polls and imposed the proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration.

Several other states are considering similar measures, and the House of Representatives, voting largely along party lines, recently passed a national voter ID measure that is headed for the Senate.

The debate in Washington and the state capitals has been heated, with only one note of agreement: that voting, once burdened by poll taxes and other impediments, is as divisive an issue as ever.

“I have never seen such a sinister plot — I won’t say plot, I’ll say measure — as to target a group of people to try to make it difficult for them to vote,” said Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat and former governor of Georgia who is fighting the new identification law in his state.

Voter fraud=brown people voting.

Keep worrying about Diebold. They're passing the new poll tax as we speak.

posted by Steve @ 12:50:00 AM

The Hidden Authoritarian

X-Gov: Kinky's racist tendencies
by kos

Mon Sep 25, 2006 at 04:44:53 PM PDT

The more we find out about Kinky Friedman, the crazier the notion is that any self-respecting Democrat might vote for him in Texas' bizarre four-way gubernatorial race.

Or here's some more examples, this time in audio:

"It's like what old Abraham Lincoln said once he sobered up, ya know... I freed the what?"

Or

"Yeah, reminds me of old Jimmy Carter's Christmas card that he sent to Khomeini some time ago that said 'Ho Ho Ho, the Niggers were the spies."

And there's this:

Then I come down to Houston, I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling, there were no bowling balls. The people here throw 'em all in the sea, thought they were nigger eggs...thought they were nigger eggs.

And here he is speaking of Katrina survivors in Texas:

"The musicians and artists have mostly moved back to New Orleans now. The crackheads and the thugs have decided to stay. They want to stay here. I think they got their hustle on, and we need to get ours," Kinky said.

This is not a serious man, and certainly not a serious candidate. There are people who think voting for him would be cute, like Jesse Ventura, but Kinky is no Jesse Ventura. Not even close.

This craziness has been getting wide media play in Texas. Kinky says his detractors just don't know humor when they see it. That this is political correctness run amok. Whatever. It seems clear that Kinky doesn't know when to turn this shit off. And he's supposedly running for governor of the second largest state (population-wise) in the country, not for Chief State Satirist.

In a four-way race, Chris Bell merely needs to bring home Democrats and he has a chance to pull it off. If Democratic defections went to a halfway decent alternative third party guy, it would be one thing (Texas Dems have been AWOL of late). But this racist gasbag?

On the web: Chris Bell for Governor

No, Jesse Ventura took his job and getting votes seriously.

Kinky Friedman is a racist. He can bullshit reporters, but he's racist. He ain't making those jokes to black audiences.

Anyone who think he's a joke: he's running for a real job. Dealing with real people.

Imagine if a Randall Dale Adams case came up with Governor Kinky in charge. He comes out with this racist, wingnut bullshit then, nobody would be laughing. One callous governor is enough.

posted by Steve @ 12:32:00 AM

Another day, another pitch

And I won't be having drinks with
the Washington Kool Kids Klub

I was watching 60 Minutes last night, and as I listened to Katie Couric fuck up an interview with Condi Rice, I realized that she's in the wrong fucking job. Because I don't give a fuck what music Rice, the woman who's success was allowed by deferring to powerful men, work outs to. Although, I did find it weird that a 52 year old black woman likes to work out with Zeppelin.

Seriously, most black women her age like different music. Vastly different music. And her insistence in comparing the sandbox to the Civil Rights Struggle. Condi, no, the fucking shia aren't ready to have a multiethnic democracy while death squads kill people.

That simple observation is not one you'll see come from Tom Friedman, Daid Broder and the unethical New Republic. Which is insane.

Yesterday, we ran two pieces on the idiots Ana Marie Cox is getting for Time. Perry Bacon writes a piece where he gets everything wrong and shows the kind of ignorance I once saw in college,when some future wall street assclown asked if Pearl Harbor was a disaster. Not that she would notice. Then there's WATB Nyhan, a one man truth squad ready to slam liberals at the drip of a nose. Time paid them money. No, really, it did. While the reporters and editors at In These Times serve lattes in their off hours so they have a place to live. Bullshit which has to stop.

We have to make our own news because they think we're idiots. Cox wants to be the next Sally Quinn, but without the reporting chops or penchant for dating married men. If we don't do it, they'll give us Katie Couric forgetting we're not watching Today.

You wonder why blogs are important? Look at the imploding Allen campaign. Guess who got that started.

You're getting what you pay for. Sometimes it's nonsense, but a lot of times, it's things which
don't appear in other places.

Jen wanted me to mention that she doesn't really get money from the site, being a fancy Ivy League educated lawyer and all. In reality, I have to give her things because she contributes every day. She said to me the other day, among the nicest gifts anyone has given to her are the PS2 and iPod nano she got from me for working on the site. I would have paid to see the reaction of her secretary when that showed up.

But of course, Jen likes to downplay her role here because she doesn't think it's a big deal. I disagree and our friends disagree, of course, and I bet you would too. This site wouldn't exist without her, although she blushes when I say that. And when she did that, there wasn't any money to share, much less PS2's.

Best gifts ever? Wow, I wouldn't even expect that from my nephew.

As usual:

Stephen Gilliard
217 E86th St
NMB 112
New York, NY 10028

posted by Steve @ 9:23:00 PM

Come on

BREAKING: AP Does Story on Allen, "N- word"
Mon Sep 25, 2006 at 10:48:09 AM PDT

Well, the Salon.com story just broke into the main stream media. Bob Lewis, an AP reporter has this story: Virginia senator denies ex-teammate's charge he used racial slur

Here's how it begins:

A former teammate of Sen. George Allen during his years as a University of Virginia football player said Allen frequently used a racial epithet to refer to black people.

Allen vehemently denied the allegation in an Associated Press interview Monday.

Another key part of the story:

Allen called Shelton's claim "ludicrously false."

"The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false," Allen said during an interview with AP reporters and editors. "I don't remember ever using that word and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary."

Four other Allen teammates also defended Allen and rebutted Shelton's comments in statements Allen's campaign released.

This is very important that AP has done the story. That means that papers all around the country and around the world could pick up the story. It also means that George Allen is likely to be stuck in the macaca for a lot longer.

I would encourage you to watch your local papers over the next several days. Contact the reporters that you know, and suggest that they investigate and report on this controversy.

If your paper doesn't do a story within the next few days, then do a letter to the editor. And, if the paper does have a story, then consider doing a letter to the editor if the information is inaccurate or incomplete. And, if the paper has an online "Comment" feature, add your thoughts and analysis on the story.

Give me a fucking break.

I would more understand a Virginian like Webb having said nigger, but I would bet his father would have slapped the piss out of him for doing so. Contrary to myth, a lot of Southerners had no truck with that bullshit.

Allen created this faux southern persona, left UCLA at the height of its national sporting fame, between Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Mark Harmon, to go to the then obscure University of Virginia? The same kid who trashed his school when a black team was going to play them and hung a Confederate flag in his bedroom he had to hunt down?

Maybe it was because he wasn't going to be a UCLA football star, but it's more likely he couldn't deal with the increasing numbers of negroes on campus.

Whatever the reason, the idea that he didn't call blacks niggers or some other degrading term is impossible to believe. Just impossible. He wasn't a Southerner. He didn't go to Duke, he went to UVA for a reason. He thought he could be a cracker and find support. He had idealized the South his entire life. Not just the South, but the Confederacy and its racist ways. Not just as a teenager, but as a US Senator, when he appeared in the uniform of an officer of the Army of Northern Virginia in a movie.

So the idea that surrounded by Southerners, in the South, at a time of intense racial tension, that he didn't use the word Nigger, is hardly worthy of comment.

posted by Steve @ 4:23:00 PM

A bigger deal than it seems

The Superdome

New Orleans ready for NFL return

The NFL's New Orleans Saints make an emotional return to their Superdome home on Monday as they host Atlanta.

The Superdome became a symbol of the devastation inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina last year.

It housed up to 25,000 increasingly desperate homeless people in conditions that degenerated into squalor.

But a major refurbishment programme means the venue is now ready to host NFL games again, with all Saints' home matches sold out this season.

Saints running back Deuce McAllister said: "The city of New Orleans couldn't be more excited to show the world it's back."

This means a lot, more to New Orleanians than outsiders. The Saints ARE New Orleans's team, win, mostly lose, it is their team and to have the Superdome back means the city won't be forgotten.

Football is so important that people were watching the Saints in shelters. New Orleans is far, far from back, but the Superdome and the Saints means there's some
hope it may come back.

posted by Steve @ 4:09:00 PM

Wow, you're a racist

I got an email today. It was all about "white pride". I got it from someone I know. It was so... Jeez. I don't even have a word for what it was. It was so wrong on so many levels, that I decided (as challenged at the end of the email) to pass it on. Only I added some commentary and factual clarification.

The email itself is in blockquotes below the fold.

Let me know what else I should add.

As I said in the intro to the diary, the email is chopped up (in order) and in the blockquotes. My responses come after each point made by the emailer.

Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to this?

There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Native Americans, etc. And then there are just Americans.

I'm paying attention.

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You Call me "White boy," "Cracker," "Honkey," "Whitey," "Caveman" ... and that's OK.

I don't really know how to respond to this. I don't have this experience. I literally can't remember being addressed in a way that singled out my race. I have been addressed in a way that singled out my gender, but that's another story.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ... you call me a racist.

That would be, simply, because if you address another person in this fashion, you ARE a racist. The same goes for the epithets directed to a white person above. To characterize another person in terms that are largely considered profane, hurtful and reprehensible is to invoke racist language. Sorry.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

This is literally one of the most ridiculous and uneducated arguments I've ever heard. I don't know about whites committing "a lot of violence" against you (presumably minorities, as in all non-whites), but I DO know that whether or not whites commit "a lot of violence" against minorities is totally separate from the fact that ghettos can be dangerous places to live.

I would further point out that ghettos are not delineated by color. There are white ghettos (go to Appalachia, for starters), hispanic ghettos, black ghettos, etc. and so forth. The common thread in a ghetto is poverty. I'm frankly distressed that when you think of a ghetto, you think of ethnicity and not of poverty. Perhaps its the long-standing tendency of the powerful to refer to the poor as being poor because of their color that has you confused - has it occurred to you that it's strange for you to think of the color of a ghetto first before you think of the tragedy of poverty? Is it remotely possible that those who don't want to deal with the issue of poverty have made it an issue of race in an effort to divide and distract us?

You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi You have the NAACP. You have BET.

If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) ... we'd be racists.

Wow. Where do I start.

Regarding the United Negro College Fund, you might visit this page on its website for a better understanding of its history. Suffice it to say that the UNCF was founded in the 1940s to address DIRE inequities in access to higher education by people of color. The reason there is not a United White College Fund, historically speaking, is because white children were not denied access in the way that black children were. Plain and simple. Further, you might enlighten yourself somewhat and understand what the UNCF does today, to include keeping black Universities solvent. Oh - and the reason there ARE black Universities, at a very simple level, is because blacks were denied access to white Universities.

Regarding Martin Luther King Jr. Day, your argument is ridiculous. We also have President's Day to commemorate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two white Presidents (as if there's been any other kind). The designation of the Day is to commemorate a great American. It's sad - you've totally missed one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s key points from his "I have a dream" speech - that people be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. The designation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day was that principle in action - his character made him a great American and granted him a Day like other great Americans.

Regarding Black History Month - are you really that shallow? Do you even know how or why it was established? Black History Month was the progression of Negro History Week, which began in 1926. Negro History Week was a response by prominent African American Carter G. Woodson to the misrepresentation of negroes in history. It was an attempt to RE-EDUCATE with the correct facts. It was also an effort, over time, to breed tolerance and unity. It came out of everything good as far as intentions are concerned and, thankfully, continues to this day. The fact that Black History month offends you is precisely the reason we need to have it.

You might also be interested to know what other celebratory months are out there:

- January: Bath Safety Month; Blood Donor Month; Careers in Cosmetology Month; Cervical Health Awareness Month; Eye Care Month; Oatmeal Month; to name a few (source)
- February: American Hearth Month; American History Month; Candy Month; Canned Foods Month; Friendship Month; Library Lovers Month; Potato Lovers Month; to name a few (source)
- March: Foot Health Month; Frozen Food Month; Irish-American Heritage Month; Social Worker's Month; Women's History Month; to name a few source)

I won't drag you through every month (if you want to see the list, click here and scroll down a bit to find the links). Hopefully you see how ridiculous it is to be annoyed about the designation of a month or a day or a week or a year of observance. In the next part of your email you talk about others related to religion and/or ethnicity, highlighting them as a bad thing. I hope one of two things happens after you read this: first (and best) you don't EVER complain again about such ridiculous things; OR you apply your outrage equally and send an email about how Noodle Month is unfair to whites or how Potato Lovers month is unfair to Potato Haters, etc. and so forth. Do you have nothing better to do?

Continuing.

If we had a White Pride Day ... you would call us racists.

If we had White History Month ... we'd be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites to "advance" OUR lives ... we'd be racists.

We HAD "white pride" days. They looked like this:

In fact, the White Pride movement that dominated American history was so strong that Southern whites, full of pride and believing that southern blacks didn't deserve to vote (despite the fact that the law guaranteed them this right), murdered in the name of white pride anyone who stood in their way:

This history is not all ancient, either. If you Google the issue you'll see that "white pride" marches and demonstrations continue to this very day.

We're all just trying to survive your "white pride".

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.

Wonder who pays for that?

Well, in the case of the Chamber of Commerce, individual members pay for it. This link to my local Chamber of Commerce swhows the dues. This link (PDF) shows that the Black Chamber of Commerce is also paid for by member dues. And this link for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce shows that it is paid for by membership dues.

Does that answer your question?

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships you know we'd be racists. There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US, yet if there were "White colleges" THAT would be a racist college.

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride you call us racists.

Perhaps you should refer to the discussion of the United Negro College Fund on the issue of the whites v. blacks and college access, admission and monies. A little research may help you better understand that a huge chunk of American hisotry is all about the United White College Fund (and the United Male College Fund, for that matter). I'm at a loss to understand why a private foundation to help achieve parity in college admissions is a bad thing.

I'm not sure where you are getting your information on the Million Man March, so I went to their website and saw this, excerpted from their Preamble:

"This historic event brought nearly two million men to the Nation's Capitol. It demonstrated the willingness of Black men to atone to God for our shortcomings as men, husbands and fathers; it demonstrated our willingness to reconcile differences at home, school, church, organizations and in the society in general; it demonstrated our willingness to accept responsibility to change our behavior and to strive to make our communities a more decent place to live."

My emphasis added. I don't know where to begin to point out how roundly this contradicts other things you have said in your email. Perhaps you should make even a small effort to understand what you write before you write it.

It also seems to me that being proud of one's heritage is a good thing. I'm proud of my French-English-Irish-Cherokee-Mexican heritage. I'm also proud to be an American. If you are really so very affronted by the idea that you can't have a "white pride" demonstration, you need to blame those who came before you (see KKK picture and Mississippi Burning reference above) - not minorities.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society ... you call him a racist.

This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to begin or if I should even bother. You say in this one statement that all minorities are criminals and violent thugs. Do you know any black people? How about Hispanic people? Have you ever seen a white person charged with a crime? The blanket you throw over this community is racist. That's why it's called such.

I am proud. But, you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists?

Where do you live? Again, I'll ask you: do you know anyone who is a minority and, if so, have you ever taken the time to talk to them about the subject? I had a very dear friend in college who was very light-skinned. She was bright, hard-working, and had made her way on merit. She would frequnetly tell me about racism within the African American community related to the relative lightness or darkness of a person's skin. As a white person, this had really never occurred to me and I was curious, so I asked her for examples. She told of being invited to be a bridesmaid in a wedding for a very distant acquaintance. The reason she was asked was because she was light skinned. The bride's family wanted only light-skinned people in the wedding party.

I can't personally relate, being white and all. But a simple conversation with someone who is non-white would help you understand that racism exists in all directions. What a stupid thing to say.

There is nothing improper about this e-mail.

Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.

There are many things improper about the email. For one, the logic used to make your "argument" is faulty at best and ridiculous at worst.

What makes it almost funny, though, is that it's an email basically asserting that you are not a racist, that your "white pride" should not be construed as racism, yet is is laden with racist, separatist overtones. Your outrage that there is a fund for (gasp) blacks to assist with college is one of those overtones. Your digusting and blanket accusation that minorities "...rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us" is offensive in the extreme.

Your email is the very reason we need the NAACP, UNCF, Black History Month, the Black Chamber of Commerce, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, etc.

Funny how that worked out.

Not only am I proud enough to send this on - I'm sane enough to correct you and to call you what you are.

A racist.

This made me laugh

posted by Steve @ 2:11:00 PM

It's not a comma in the sandbox

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Sgt. Ben Brody along Warriors Walk at Fort Stewart,
where Eastern redbud trees memorialize the Army
Third Infantry Division’s dead in Iraq.

Unit Makes Do as Army Strives to Plug Gaps
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: September 25, 2006

FORT STEWART, Ga. — The pressures that the conflict in Iraq is putting on the Army are apparent amid the towering pine trees of southeast Georgia, where the Third Infantry Division is preparing for the likelihood that it will go back to Iraq for a third tour.

Members of the Third Infantry Division have been conducting training exercises in preparation for a third deployment to Iraq. But equipment for the training is short, and the time for it has been reduced.

Col. Tom James, who commands the division’s Second Brigade, acknowledged that his unit’s equipment levels had fallen so low that it now had no tanks or other armored vehicles to use in training and that his soldiers were rated as largely untrained in attack and defense.

The rest of the division, which helped lead the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and conducted the first probes into Baghdad, is moving back to full strength after many months of being a shell of its former self.

But at a time when Pentagon officials are saying the Army is stretched so thin that it may be forced to go back on its pledge to limit National Guard deployment overseas, the division’s situation is symptomatic of how the shortages are playing out on the ground.

The enormous strains on equipment and personnel, because of longer-than-expected deployments, have left active Army units with little combat power in reserve. The Second Brigade, for example, has only half of the roughly 3,500 soldiers it is supposed to have. The unit trains on computer simulators, meant to recreate the experience of firing a tank’s main gun or driving in a convoy under attack.

“It’s a good tool before you get the equipment you need,” Colonel James said. But a few years ago, he said, having a combat brigade in a mechanized infantry division at such a low state of readiness would have been “unheard of.”

Other than the 17 brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, only two or three combat brigades in the entire Army — perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops — are fully trained and sufficiently equipped to respond quickly to crises, said a senior Army general.

Most other units of the active-duty Army, which is growing to 42 brigades, are resting or being refitted at their home bases. But even that cycle, which is supposed to take two years, is being compressed to a year or less because of the need to prepare units quickly to return to Iraq.

After coming from Iraq in 2003, the Third Infantry Division was sent back in 2005. Then, within weeks of returning home last January, it was told by the Army that one of its four brigades had to be ready to go back again, this time in only 11 months. The three other brigades would have to be ready by mid-2007, Army planners said.

Yet almost all of the division’s equipment had been left in Iraq for their replacements, and thousands of its soldiers left the Army or were reassigned shortly after coming home, leaving the division largely hollow. Most senior officers were replaced in June.

When Bush said Iraq was a comma, he was speaking in dog whistle to the fundies. It comes from a saying "Never put a period where God puts a comma".Which means things will get better. Which is, of course, insane.

Well, shit, they're now deploying units with no weapons and less training. The Iranians are taking careful notes. Why? Because when the Great Shia uprising takes place, they want to know which units to hit first. Or direct the Shia to attack.

The Third ID is going to get to Iraq and use clapped out equipment because they had to leave their equipment in Iraq.Sorry.Oh, and the Iraq auxillaries can't function.

posted by Steve @ 7:55:00 AM

The sinkhole of the Internet

Stick a bottle in his mouth

Our friend and fellow NYU alum August J. Pollak swings for the fences for whiny beeotch Brendan Nyhan.

Just to recap: After being humilated for writing something blatantly wrong about Atrios for no reason other than his Spinsanity-era style of attacking liberals for the sake of personal amusement, Nyhan sees this as a sign of liberals being unable to "deal with" his Spinsanity-era style of god-like proclamations blessed upon him by the higher authority that is the ability to pay $8.95/month for bandwidth. Nyhan is asked by the editors of the left-leaning online publication that hired him to actually be a left-leaning writer, and realizing he isn't going to be paid to bitch about more popular liberals while pretending to be one he quits, then proceeds to whine about it on the Time.com blog- a bastion of political intellect so shown by its hiring of Ana Marie Cox, the woman who knows absolutely nothing about actual politics, and Andrew Sullivan, the man who has been absolutely wrong about everything for the last four and a half years. In this auspicious venue, he laments the actions of major publications not taking political writing seriously. For an encore, Nyhan suggests the American Prospect has nowhere near the credibility of The New Republic, which has seen the departure of multiple writers and editors in recent years for various major infractions of journalistic ethics.

All in all, it really makes you wonder how the Prospect could have let a catch like that slip through their hands.

Look at who their Internet editor is and ask yourself why such shitty pieces are running in Time. We're no longer discussing gossip and anal sex.

I mean, who the fuck cares about Nyhan's "non-partisan" bullshit. Am I supposed to pity him because Mike Tomasky got tired of his bullshit. My ass has the credibility of TNR and I have at least 40K more readers than they do. Nyhan wants some kind of think tank or media job where he can shit on liberals and play patty cake with conservatives and he got called on it.

posted by Steve @ 1:22:00 AM

Allen called blacks nigger in college

Teammates: Allen used "N-word" in college
Three members of Sen. George Allen's college football team remember a man with racist attitudes at ease using racial slurs.

By Michael Scherer

Sep. 24, 2006 | George AllenThree former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.

Shelton also told Salon that the future senator gave him the nickname "Wizard," because he shared a last name with Robert Shelton, who served in the 1960s as the imperial wizard of the United Klans of America, a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. The radiologist said he decided earlier this year that he would go public with his concerns about Allen if a reporter ever called. About four months ago, when he heard that Allen was a possible candidate for president in 2008, Shelton began to write down some of the negative memories of his former teammate. He provided Salon excerpts of those notes last week.

On Sunday morning, Salon spoke with David Snepp, a spokesman for Allen's Senate office, to ask for a response to the recollections of the three former teammates. E-mail and phone messages were also left for Bill Bozin, a spokesman for the Allen campaign, and Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager. Though Snepp indicated that the campaign, and probably Wadhams, would respond, eight hours later no one in the Allen camp had replied to Salon. Chris LaCivita, a consultant to the Allen campaign, hung up when a Salon reporter reached him mid-afternoon Sunday. Additional attempts to contact the campaign were unsuccessful.

The racial attitudes of Allen, a once formidable presidential contender in 2008, have become an issue in his highly contested reelection campaign against Jim Webb, a former Marine and author. Last month, Allen was videotaped calling an Indian-American college student "macaca," an obscure word for monkey that is also used as a racial epithet in some parts of the world. Allen has since apologized to the student, saying that he made up the word, and did not know its other meanings.
........................

In public statements, Allen has said that he realized later in life that the Confederate flag was a symbol of violence for black Americans, and he has expressed some regret. "There are a lot of things that I wish I had learned earlier in life," Allen said in an appearance this month on NBC's "Meet the Press." But Allen has maintained that he never harbored any discriminatory attitudes toward blacks. "Even if your heart is pure, the things you say and do and the symbols you use matter because of how others may take them," he said in the prepared transcript for remarks to a luncheon with black educators on Sept. 13.

Over the past week, Salon has interviewed 19 former teammates and college friends of Allen from the University of Virginia. In addition to the three who said Allen used the word "nigger," two others who were contacted said they remember being bothered by Allen's displaying the Confederate flag in college, but said they do not remember him acting in an overtly racist manner. Seven others said they did not know Allen well outside the football team, but do not remember Allen demonstrating any racist feelings. A separate seven teammates and friends said they knew Allen well and did not believe he held racist views. "I don't believe he was insensitive," said Paul Ryczek, who played center in Allen's year before joining the Atlanta Falcons. "He had no prejudices, biases or anything else."

..........................

The three former teammates, however, painted a very different picture of Allen when he was around his white friends. Shelton said he feels a personal responsibility to tell what he knows about Allen's past, especially now that Allen has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. "I got to know Allen a little too well," Shelton said, adding that he does not believe Allen should hold elective office. "He had prejudices that were deep-seated."

Shelton said no political animosity has driven his decision to speak out. He has switched between Democratic and independent registration in recent elections, he said, and does not consider himself politically active.

Shelton played football with Allen in the 1972 and 1973 seasons, according to the team media guides from those years. Shelton remembers Allen's attitudes about race surfacing early in their relationship. At one point, Shelton says, Allen nicknamed him "Wizard," after United Klans imperial wizard Robert Shelton. "He asked me if I was related at all," Shelton remembers. "I knew of that name, and I said absolutely not." .................. "Everyone called me 'Wizard' that knows me from those days," said Shelton. "My nickname stuck."

Shelton said he also remembers a disturbing deer hunting trip with Allen on land that was owned by the family of Billy Lanahan, a wide receiver on the team. After they had killed a deer, Shelton said he remembers Allen asking Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. "He proceeded to take the doe's head and stuff it into a mailbox," Shelton said.

................................

No, Allen isn't a loathsome racist. He just appears to be deep in his marrow.

posted by Steve @ 12:19:00 AM

I'm really stupid, I write for time, and I never worked for Suck

The Netroots Hit Their Limits
Liberal online activists are finding you can't move elections with just modems and IM
By PERRY BACON JR.
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR

Posted Sunday, Sep. 24, 2006

You've heard the story: the Netroots, the Democratic Party's equivalent of a punk garage band—edgy, loud and antiauthoritarian—are suddenly on the verge of the big time. The gang of liberal bloggers and online activists who helped raise millions of dollars for Howard Dean's presidential campaign two years ago are now said to be Democratic kingmakers.

......................

So they're branching out. Beyond posting exhaustive pieces about bias in Fox News coverage and uploading videos of presidential wannabe George Allen making a fool of himself, they're adopting the old-school tools of electoral politics, like canvassing their neighborhoods and calling their member of Congress. They're getting nitty-gritty in their focus too. The liberal online fund-raising group ActBlue, for instance, is trying to get activists to donate serious money to state-legislature campaigns that bloggers once considered too unsexy to care about. The goal is to put Democrats in control of state governments, where many key decisions are made.

The Netroots phenomenon began in 1998 when two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs circulated an online petition demanding that Congress, in their phrase, "move on"—that is, stop trying to impeach President Clinton. Thus was born MoveOn.org, which now has 3.2 million members. Most of the bloggers who have become Netroots leaders can trace their influence back only a couple of years, to 2003 and '04, when the growth of partisan liberal online activism was spurred by a strain of antiwar, anti-Bush fervor and frustration with congressional Democrats for not standing up to the President. Blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD grew rapidly. Today their combined readership (more than a million people weekly) dwarfs that of the dead-tree versions of established purveyors of liberal thought like the New Republic, which has a print circulation of about 62,000. The conservative Rightroots movement is only just getting started.

Because the Netroots are bound by a medium and not by geography, they have been able to nationalize fund raising for congressional and Senate races more effectively than other groups of their size and relative inexperience. They are also the liberal rival to conservative "noise machines" like the online Drudge Report and talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. When Allen called an opponent's political operative by the racial slur macaca at a recent rally, the blogs touted the video, and the incident became a national story, contributing to a troubled campaign that has shrunk Allen's lead in his Senate race from double digits to 3 points.

Yet a coarse estimate of the Netroots' numbers shows them to be something less than a groundswell. The readership of the largest liberal blogs and the membership of MoveOn suggest that the Netroots could total 6 million people, and that assumes blog audiences don't overlap, which they do.

.......................

No one recognizes the Netroots' limits more than the activists themselves, which is why they are changing their tactics. First of all, they're becoming pragmatic about policy goals. There's little demand from the Netroots for Democrats to support gay marriage, for example, even though 91% of the people who gave money to or worked on Dean's campaign back it, according to a 2005 Pew poll. "We're not asking anyone to commit political suicide," says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn. If the Democrats win the House, it will be on the strength of moderate candidates in places like Indiana, many of whom don't support one of MoveOn's top priorities, a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

....................

What's more, the Netroots are, paradoxically, attempting to maximize their effectiveness by going off-line. MoveOn is organizing its members to make a combined 5 million phone calls before Election Day, asking people to vote for Democrats. Markos Moulitsas, who runs Daily Kos, is talking about building real, bricks-and-mortar gathering halls where progressives can meet and organize political activities in person. Jane Hamsher, who runs the piquant online hangout Firedoglake, and other bloggers have started the "roots project," in which they employ nonweb political tactics like writing letters to the editors of their local newspapers. "We can hammer the New York Times and the Washington Post forever," Hamsher said, but "candidates are more influenced by what we're doing in their own backyards."

Even with these changes, the Netroots won't be kingmakers. The fact is, day-to-day campaigning in 2006 is not very different from how it was in 1996: candidates call a few very rich people to ask them to give money so the campaign can run ads on television and hope soccer moms catch them between cooking dinner and driving to practice. If the Democrats win in the fall elections, the roots of that victory will not be on the Net.

I once said to a friend who knows this well, "a few dedicated men can cause a great deal of damage if they choose". That was a paraphrase of a comment about the WWII Special Operations Executive, but the point is this. The online audience may be small, but they are incredibly active and smart.

70 percent of you will send an e-mail to a politician or a newspaper. That is an insane response rate. Which one could easily find out.

No, elections are not like they were 10 years ago. If you read your own damn copy, it would point out that Webb got 281K online, no small amount of money. He couldn't have gotten that 10 years ago. Ask Donna Edwards about online support, or Ned Lamont. Bloggers know that what happens online is a prelude to what happens offline, because many have worked in the field, as I have. But what being online does is allow people to organize, to talk, to plan, to share ideas. That didn't exist 10 years. Before Meetup imploded, that was the obvious example of how one moved from online to offline.

Some of these people wouldn't be running in November without online support.

Oh, and this anti-authoritarian thing. Jen and I would probably be the most anti-authoritarian of the bunch, and she's an Ivy League educated lawyer and I'm a pro-veteran freelance writer. FDL is run by a former federal prosecutor and MBA holding Hollywood producer, Escaton by a former Economics professor, TPM by a historian with a Ph.D from Brown, Daily Kos by a lawyer, AmericaBlog by a lawyer, need I go on? Black Flag this is not.

But I'll let Stirling Newberry take it from here.

posted by Steve @ 5:38:00 PM

Brightening up your Sunday

Weekly Standard Goes Apeshit on George Allen!

by lowkell

Sun Sep 24, 2006 at 03:07:46 AM PDT

If you're a Republican politician, you really know things are getting bad when a leading conservative magazine attacks you, brutally mocks you, and otherwise rips you to shreds. Well, that's exactly what has happened to George Allen, with The Weekly Standard's just-released October 2 issue. It's bad news right from the git-go, with the front-page picture of Allen and a monkey (see above) and the article's title, "George Allen Monkeys Around: Forget the presidential campaign. Can he still win his Senate race?"

• lowkell's diary :: ::
• 
  

Ouch. That's bad. But it gets worse.

After a lengthy discussion about how much Allen's sister hated him and about George's growing up "in a testosterone-heavy household," the article gets into Allen's political career. It's fairly flattering on his time as governor, except for a couple of big problem. First, it cites Ryan Lizza's extremely negative, May 2006, New Republic cover story on Allen. Then, it proceeds to denigrate Allen's time in the U.S. Senate, commenting drily that "Allen is less a skilled legislator than a talented executive." The problem, of course, is that Allen is running for re-election for 6 more years as a legislator. Whoops. As if all that's not bad enough, the magazine also points out that Allen's "top three accomplishments" in the Senate are "thin branches from which to hang a presidential bid." Not good.

But it gets worse. The article next turns to a lengthy, blow-by-blow, extremely unflattering description of the whole "macaca" incident. While the Weekly Standard does not believe Allen actually is a racist, it does call him an "oaf" and asserts, point blank, that Allen is "at odds with Virginia's future." A lengthy discussion follows about how Virginia is rapidly turning "blue."

The article then turns to the recent Webb-Allen debates, concluding that Allen lost the Meet the Press debate "soundly." As to the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce debate, here's what the Weekly Standard has to say (bolding added for emphasis), and it's devastating:

Among conservatives, the conventional wisdom is that Allen won this second debate, but that since it took place in the middle of a weekday, he will be unable to reap the benefits of victory. This is wrong. While Allen might have had a good showing substantively, the story that emerged from the debate was his irate reaction to WUSA-9 television reporter Peggy Fox's question on a recent report in the Forward that he might have been descended, on his mother's side, from the Lumbroso family of Sephardic Jews.

Fox embarrassed herself by asking the question as though she were the grand inquisitor at a show trial. But Allen embarrassed himself too, first by standing there, agape, staring at Fox for asking the question, then by refusing to answer it. Worse, Allen lied. He told Fox, "My mother's French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. And I was raised as she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian." It turns out, of course, that the report in the Forward was accurate; by the end of the week, Allen had admitted that his mother informed him in late August that she was raised a Jew. Etty Allen said that she had asked her son to keep her heritage secret, which might have led to his dissembling at the Chamber of Commerce debate.

Still, Allen's move to embrace this newly uncovered part of his heritage has been flawed. He clumsily joked to the Richmond Times-Dispatch that his mother's Judaism is "just an interesting nuance to my background" and "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops." His campaign quickly accused Webb supporters of anti-Semitism for posting video on weblogs of Allen's reaction at the McLean Hilton debate. But this attack was silly. Webb's supporters weren't criticizing Allen for his heritage; they were publicizing his fumbling attempt to cover it up. As this goes to press, the issue shows no sign of disappearing.

In recent days Allen has been recast as a sort of bumbling phony, confused about his identity and his message. His encounter with S.R. Sidarth and his campaign's lame response tripped him up, but that was only the beginning. Steve Jarding, a Democratic consultant and adviser to Webb, said that what hurt Allen most about "macaca" was that it subverted his image as a likable guy. "Ninety percent of Virginians are aware of that tape, according to our polling," Jarding told me. "It cast a doubt on everything George Allen built up over 25 years."

Wow, that is some seriously bad press right there for George Allen. First of all, we've got the conservative Weekly Standard stating point blank that Allen lied about his Jewish heritage. And, while criticizing Peggy Fox's question as too harsh, the Weekly Standard rips into Allen for his godawful, bizarre response. Second, the magazine totally absolves the liberal blogs of "anti-Semitism," calling this entire right-wing, pro-Allen line of attack "silly." It even goes so far as to call Allen a "bumbling phony!" And remember, this is not coming from a liberal blog or the so-called "liberal media," it's coming straight from one of the leading, most respected conservative magazines in the country. That really hurts because it's very difficult for the Allen apologists to write it off or explain it away. It certainly will be fun to watch them try, though! :)

In the end, the Weekly Standard concludes that Allen could be saved in this campaign by one thing and one thing only - money, and lots of it! But even there, the Weekly Standard believes it's a problematic situation for Allen, given how "free media have dominated the campaign--the stories on macaca, the Lumbrosos, and so on." The magazine believes that "this will only continue if Allen keeps performing as badly as he has in recent weeks."

Ee gads, is that all?!? Sadly for Allen, it isn't; the Weekly Standard can't resist taking one final parting shot at him:

If he fails, it will be only partly because the Virginia that captured his heart as a young man is slowly vanishing. Mainly it will be because of Allen himself.

As I said, this article is brutal. How will the Allen campaign, already reeling, deal with THIS?!?

Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign. The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.

posted by Steve @ 11:34:00 AM

The paradox of the Black Republican pt 4

They tried that once and this is what
we got

Michael Steele's No Substance Strategy

by Matt Stoller, Sat Sep 23, 2006 at 02:50:55 AM EST

I'm watching Maryland politics with tremendous interest. On the heels of Al Wynn's stolen election, I see Michael Steele attempting to run a campaign entirely based on African-American resentment of Democratic fecklessness and institutional racism. Gregory Kane at BlackAmericaWeb sums up this attitude.

So, once again, black folks in Maryland got chumped by the Democratic Party.

Think of it as a quadrennial tradition. In 2002, Maryland's Democratic Party chumped black folks. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, then lieutenant governor of Maryland who was running for governor as a Democrat, overlooked dozens of qualified black Democrats to choose a white running mate.

She lost.

Republican candidate Robert Ehrlich, then a congressman, chose Michael Steele, a black Republican, as his running mate. Ehrlich is now governor of Maryland, running for a second term. The first black candidate elected to statewide office in Maryland -- lieutenant governor -- was a black Republican, not a black Democrat.

This year, two black Democratic candidates ran for statewide office. Former congressman and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume ran for a U.S. Senate seat. Stuart Simms, a former Baltimore state's attorney who headed both the state departments of juvenile services and correctional services and public safety, ran for attorney general of Maryland.

Last week, both Mfume and Simms lost, rejected by the majority of Maryland's Democrats. And what were the Republicans doing? What the Democrats failed to do in 2002: Making history.

...

By this time, Republicans are saying "been there, done that" regarding putting a black candidate on the gubernatorial ticket. They've moved on to making a black candidate running on his own the party's nominee for a statewide office.

And what are Maryland Democrats doing? Like I said before, chumping black folks.

The rejection of both Mfume and Simms should provide Maryland's black Democrats with some food for thought and prompt some questions. And the first question should be why white Maryland Democrats don't vote for black Democratic candidates for statewide office in the same proportion black Maryland Democrats vote for white candidates for statewide office.

This resentment isn't fake, and it could have political resonance. Political and social icon Russell Simmons endorsed Steele, and the anger at Mfume's loss in the primary might boomerang. At the same time, Michael Steele's signs are identifying him as a Democrat. He's not talking about Iraq, taxes, social justice, or anything substantive, and has called George Bush 'my homeboy'.

Michael Steele's campaign is that of a dilettante, completely devoid of real political discussion. It's sort of working, with the polls tightening in Maryland. Before Cardin's primary win, it was conventional wisdom that Cardin would just kill Steele, and that Mfume was the less viable of the two. I supported Mfume in the primary because I never bought this line, and while I don't expect Steele to win this, it's important to realize that the resentment that Steele is playing on is very real. Despite a very large cash advantage, Cardin only narrowly beat Mfume, 43.8 to 40.4 in the primary. Cardin's a good guy, and a real progressive, but he's an insider who is tied into the Hoyer machine and isn't the heroic candidate-type that plays well in 2006.

First, as I told Matt, Kane is the house conservative at the Baltimore Sun. I exchanged e-mails with him over the summer. So this is his pitch to see how stupid black people really are.

Sure, there are some people frustrated with the Democratic Party, but the fact is that Steele has no appeal to black voters except on color. He has to play the race card, but leave out his alliances to some of the most reactionary elements in the GOP.

People may even say that they might vote for him, the same way you say you might sell your
Escalade for a Lexus, but it never really happens.

Black Republicans face a true paradox. On one hand, they belong to a party which demands total feality. Any black Republican who falls from grace is soon shoved aside like Armstrong Williams or Claude Allen. The feality demanded of them borders on degregation, so they have to justify their stands in bizzare, and often demeaning ways.

Kane, who rarely, if ever, raises his voice against the white Republicans who ensure his career, wants black Democrats to turn on their own interests on the basis of race alone. Yet, they assure their white patrons that they are colorblind, like Shelby Steele, even suggest that they should no longer feel guilt about racism.

They subvert the language of black nationalism to coopt it for a subservient agenda. They say the Dems founded the Klan, that blacks are being treated unfairly, stomping their feet and hoping people will be fooled by their arguments. They want blacks to carry out the goals of the GOP, so they can finally be relieved of the social isolation which results when they let people know they were Republicans.

Which is why they rely on the image of the plantation to degrade black Democrats. They use this term to reflect the contempt and weakness many blacks view them with. So they try to turn the tables. Only problem is that they cannot come to the black community on issues, so all they have is a racial appeal, the kind that Dems have not used in 20 years. When Black Democrats ask for votes, they appeal on issues, not skin color.

The problem is that the GOP doesn't respect blacks, period. Ken Mehlman did his outreach bit, but Tom Tancredo is as popular as ever. And it was GOP members who wanted to undermine the Voting Rights Act.

Black Republicans like to say on the sly "he's really a brother", meaning he's really gonna stick up for us. Which, of course, never turns out to be true. Steele's lack of character is already established.

Because, unlike the frustrated voters posters mentioned in another thread, they know their agenda is more involved. Steele would be a shitty candidate regardless of color. Just because Erlich picked him, he's done little to help him run for office and if it wasn't for the national party, Erlich would have let him fail without so much as a smile.

Black Republicans would deny it, howl when you say it actually, but many of them simply have a problem in being black. Look at LaShawn Barber. She says nothing when white supremacists comment on her site. She defends white racists. What kind of self-esteem issues are going on there?

A lot of these people want to feel special, different than other blacks. They aren't comfortable in their skin. Now, some would deny it, but how come they always defend their patrons, no matter how racist their comments or offensive their actions. There's something going on there which makes them seem off or odd. They revile people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton but consider Condoleeza Rice a role model. The Condoleeza Rice who doesn't remember the civil rights movement.

Clarence Thomas is the archtype of this.

He looked for support from black groups and got it, based mostly on skin color. Even Anita Hill was denied support by these same groups. They were working on the idea that a black voice would explain and defend our perogatives. They didn't even have to wait until he got on the court to know that wasn't going to happen. During the testimony, he described his sister as a loser on welfare. In reality, she was a nurse's aid caring for a sick aunt. Rolled her right under the bus to look good in front of white people. That ended the relationship between him and black America, and in the 15 years since, he's been a man without a country.

A mediocre justice, more joke than jurist, he is the shame of black America, a man who had every advantage and used it to harm people.

But going back to Kane's original point, Steele is an affirmative action hire in the worst sense, a politician with no spine, no ideas, just a party man in an expensive suit. No one can say that about even Al Wynn. The quality of black Democratic candidates is much, much higher. Kweise Mfume was a former Congressman and head of the NAACP. Steele would be lucky to run for the General Assembly if he didn't have other uses.

That racial appeal made by Kane shows a contempt for black intellect, the idea that many black voters are emotional children, and people who have never shown solidarity now expect it without question. But black voters have moved beyond that. Solidarity doesn't trump issues. At some point Steele, who will lose white votes anyway, will have to discuss issues other than puppies. And then he'll sink like Swann, who's running an issue free campaign as well, and Blackwell, who's issues are so wingnutty he's scaring the crap out of people

posted by Steve @ 1:31:00 AM

About Torture

This is America, no matter how much
we wish it isn't

When I was in college, I would occasionally go to the Law School library. One of the books they had was Amnesty International's report on human rights. And you could read about various ways governments would torture people.

And then you'd get to the United States.

Where it would mention the death penalty.

People need to come to grips with something. All colonial powers use torture. How else can they control their enemies. The British used it against the Irish, the French against the Algerians, and the Americans against the Afghans and Iraqis.

Khalid Sheik Mohammad is one of hundreds, if not thousands of people who have faced some form of American torture. I would think the prisoners of Abu Ghraib would trade a little waterboarding for the rape of children.

Bush and Rumsfeld wanted to show how ruthless they were, so they went for torture as a way to show their enemies times have changed. Of course, torture is the idiots way of interrogation, and now Bush lives in fear of open courts and public testimony.

We must be concerned about the acts our government does in our name. We have a moral duty to oppose torture. But we have to decide how to do that. I think the best way is hearings in a Democratic house. It may be the only way.

But we need to get over ourselves as well. Our allies are not shocked by allegations of torture. We used to execute children, like Iran does. We execute the mentally ill and retarded. We are the only western country which uses state murder as punishment. When other countries, even our neighbors object, we sneer at them.

So why is anyone surprised that a man called the Texicutioner, who found a way to send minor criminals into the heinous Texas prison system, would turn to torture to save his failing war on terror.

When people say "is this what my country's come to?" I want to say "were you asleep for the last five years?"

Didn't anyone notice US troops shooting into Iraqi crowds, beating the shit out of protestors, humiliation at Gitmo with menstrual blood. How could you not know, at least in your heart, people were being tortured. Who was going to stop it? They'd locked an American citizen in a dungeon for years, without a lawyer. Once Rumsfeld said the words "enemy combatent" the Geneva Convention would be observed in the breach. A class of POW outside Geneva? That was it right there. Secret prisons? Bush should have been impeached the day we heard of such things.

Now, we don't have the luxury to sulk or be disgusted. A great many crimes have been committed and they have neither made this country safe, defeated our enemies or delivered
any measure of justice. We have to either find a way to bring the criminals to heel or live with worldwide scorn.

Frank Rich says in his new book, it isn't that Bush is stupid, but he thinks he's smarter than everyone else.

It might have been surprising Bush would cook up a law so convoluted that no court is going to endorse it, but we live in cynical times. They don't care if we debate torture, as long as we don't debate their failed war in Iraq.

This is not a debate about what this country has become. It is a debate about what this country is and how we change it.

posted by Steve @ 12:56:00 AM

A cruel calculation

Dina Matos McGreevey

The Making of a Gay American
Thirty-four days after I was elected governor of New Jersey, I began a secret affair with an aide named Golan Cipel. It destroyed my career, ruined my marriage, and helped me discover who I really am.

* By James E. McGreevey
..........................

There were moments when the ripping misery of this life became too great, moments when I thought about “becoming gay” and all that that entails. One of these moments came after I lost my first race for governor to Christine Todd Whitman in 1997. I thought to myself: You’re at a fork in the road. You could give this up and be yourself. This is your last chance.

But I felt compelled to keep running for governor. I’d lost by a mere 27,000 votes. My political potential was enormous. I think I decided that my ambition would give me more pleasure than integration, than true love. Coming to this realization made me feel not suicidal, exactly, but morose. It’s hard to describe how it feels to surrender your soul to your ambition.

Among other things, I was anxious about marrying Dina. I had met her at a campaign event—she was an uncommonly beautiful 31-year-old blonde in a red double-breasted suit. When the event was over I walked her out to her car and kissed her. I’m still not sure what made me do it. Loneliness, I suppose. Maybe she just seemed like the perfect politician’s wife; it might have been that self-serving. Our romantic life was troubled from the start, but I loved her deeply as a friend and companion. And I did believe I was offering her some things she truly coveted: the stability of marriage, the prospect of a loving family, a chance to share a life of public service, political excitement in spades.

In November 1999, I won reelection as mayor of Woodbridge by a landslide. And the following February, on Valentine’s Day, I slid an engagement ring on Dina’s finger. All the while, I never stopped campaigning for governor

..................................................

I craved love. For years sex had been all that was available to me. From the time in high school when I made up my mind to behave in public as though I were straight, I nonetheless carried on sexually with men. I visited bookstores in New York and New Jersey and had sex in the small booths there until I became too famous to risk discovery. I lurked around parkway rest stops, exchanging false names and intimacies with strangers. But there never was an emotional meaning to these trysts, even the few that were repeat engagements.

The only place where I had ever found any real pleasure in these encounters was in Washington, during my law-school years. At the juncture of Sixth and I Streets, just around the corner from Judiciary Square, there was an abandoned synagogue and a narrow alley leading to the long-forgotten gardens in back. Every night, rain or shine, this hidden pocket of Washington filled with men just like me—almost all of them wearing business suits and, on most of their left hands, proof that they’d made the same compromises I had. We were the power brokers and backroom operatives and future leaders of America. We just happened to be gay.

..................................

On December 10 or 11, after I rebuffed several requests for meetings, Golan reached me on my cell phone, upset that I’d been out of touch. I invited him over to the condo for a late dinner, to assure him that he had a future in the administration. He arrived in a suit and tie, dressed impeccably as always. With Dina still in the hospital with our newborn, I was left to my own devices for dinner. I think we ate cold cereal.

He was politely appreciative. We sat at the dining-room table talking and half- watching the cable news, our shared addiction. I don’t know at what point it occurred to me that something more was about to happen. But I know how it started. I stretched out on the couch and placed my legs over his knees, as I’d done previously in the car. I then leaned forward and hugged him, and kissed his neck. His response was immediate and loving.

It was wrong to do. I wasn’t an ordinary citizen anymore. There were state troopers parked outside. My wife was in the hospital. And he was my employee. But I took Golan by the hand and led him upstairs to my bed. He kissed me. It was the first time in my life that a kiss meant what it was supposed to mean—it sent me through the roof. I pulled him to the bed and we made love like I’d always dreamed: a boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine kind of love. When he was gone, I realized that this might all explode on me one day, but I just didn’t care. I felt invincible then.

My circumstances made having an affair excruciatingly difficult, but not impossible. I visited Dina and Jacqueline every day in the hospital, and my heart ached to have our baby home, but until they returned I spent as much free time as I could with Golan. I loved our time together, whether talking politics over cups of tea or trying to remember whose T-shirt was whose at the end of the bed.

When Dina finally got home, our condo became a scrum of familial activity. But, knowing how much work I had ahead of me, the crowds at the condo paid little attention to me.

Once, after an exhausting day in the transition office, I made secret plans with Golan to see him later, at his apartment. The state troopers, now my constant companions, dropped me at the condo and parked around back. When I was sure they couldn’t see me, I pulled on my running clothes and slipped out the front. Golan’s apartment complex was roughly half a mile away, but difficult to get to on foot. I ran along the sidewalk for a while, then below a railroad underpass before returning to the sidewalk and ducking into his building.

He greeted me in his briefs. “Did anybody see you?” he asked, closing the door quickly. We kissed, hard.

I had to think about this for a while. When I saw his Oprah interview, I could barely watch it. It seemed off, creepy.

And then I realized, if he had been on Jerry Springer, people would have booed his ass the minute he showed up. Now, if you don't watch Springer, you might not realize that the audience is gay indifferent, if not friendly. So you see black guys kissing black guys, lesbians, guys telling their girlfriends they're gay.

But when they cheat, they get booed. It normalizes gay relationships in a way you rarely see on TV.

I know what McGreevey did was hard, coming out in a public way. But, there isn't anything noble about what he did.

He's now Mr. Out gay, when he was a coward his entire life, hurting people, cheating, having affairs. Now, I'm in no position to judge when he should have come out or not. I have no idea what that's like.

But I have an idea of what ethics is like.

Here he is, describing what he could bring to his wife, except for a faithful, loving husband. He didn't have to marry her, he didn't have to get her pregnant. He pretty much admits he used his second marriage to run for governor, which is pretty despicable on it's own.

I doubt he even cared that his public sexual escapades would place his wife's health at risk.

Then, with his pregnant wife in the hospital, he brings home his new boyfriend and has sex in his marital bed. We would hardly want to read this if he had done this with a woman. There would be only scorn for such a person. But because he describes it as a moment of discovery, it's supposed to be cool. But it's reprehensible. He didn't even care about the sanctity of his marital bed.

Well, let's talk about Dina McGreevey for a moment. Not only did she not know her husband was sexually active outside their marriage, but was having risky sexual encounters with men. Then, after having this man's baby, she finds out in the worst way short of seeing him fucking some guy, that her husband was gay. People speculated that she knew, but one look at her face showed that she had been the victim of a cruel calculation.

Jim McGreevey wanted to be governor more than he loved the woman he married. He never says he was faithful to her at any point in their relationship. He may apologize for the complete and utter humiliation she may feel at some point, but what he was doing was totally selfish.

Now Cipel is saying he never had any sexual attraction to McGreevey, but that doesn't sound honest. If it hadn't been Cipel, it would have been someone else.

He didn't have to marry his second wife with the cruel calculation he did. He could have found a willing beard. But he didn't, because his only thoughts were about his career and his success. I mean. this is a guy, now parading around with his boyfriend, who opposed gay marriage.

I think the idea is that you're supposed to feel sympathy for McGreevey, and I do, to a degree. But that degree stops when it comes to how cruelly he hurt his wife. And then he comes off as just another cheating husband with no respect for his marriage.

posted by Steve @ 12:18:00 AM

Found and sent home

A Doughboy Killed in Action Is Home at Last

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (AP) — Eighty-eight years after Pvt. Francis Lupo fell in battle near the Marne River east of Paris, his remains have been recovered and identified by the Pentagon.

Private Lupo, of Cincinnati, was killed on July 21, 1918, while attacking German forces near Soissons, France. His remains were found by a French archaeologist in 2003 and identified by the Pentagon’s Joint P.O.W.-M.I.A. Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.

He is the first World War I casualty to be recovered and identified by the special command. The Pentagon said on Friday that Private Lupo, of the Army, would be buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery.

Private Lupo was 23 when he was killed in some of the most gruesome fighting of the war. An extract from the diary of an officer in his unit described the artillery and aerial attacks in stark terms. “Oh, how maddening are these horrible bloody sights!” he wrote, according to an Army history of the war. “Can it be possible to reap such wholesale destruction and butchery in these few hours of conflict?”

posted by Steve @ 12:11:00 AM

The headfake

i


Here's a question: if you had a foolproof, invisible way of changing elections, why would you risk the ire of most Americans to impose new restrictions on voting?

Why bother? You can shift votes in swing districts and win without anyone noticing.

It's not that Diebold isn't deeply flawed, but even if you could shift votes, you can only change a few votes in a few districts.

The GOP has launched an offensive of vote suppression which has gotten only some notice on the blogs, but it has been ongoing and intense. While Robert Kennedy was going on about Diebold in Ohio, he downplayed how Ken Blackwell shifted the vote. Long lines and fewer machines in Democratic districts, more machines in the suburbs. You wouldn't have to do that with Diebold under your control.

Most people who comment on elections have never worked one. It slipped past people that the average age of an election worker is 72 years old. Who you then ask to work14-16 hour days and expect friction free elections. Election workers are party employees. They have a vested interest in the outcome of elections. They are hired by the local party workers.

The GOP loves the distraction of Diebold because people fill Kos diaries with it, it demoralizes people, and they can get about the real business of voter suppression. You think they're gonna rely on a machine to control voting? Please. Diebold is the first step in automating elections. More of a test bed than anything else, and unlikely to be used for more than a few years.

No. We're talking long term discouragement of voting, not shifting a few votes here and there and risk discovery, but to discourage whole blocks of people from voting by making it so difficult
that they would not bother.

In the segregation-era south, they created poll taxes to make sure whites would dominate politics. Blacks had an under 10 percent participation rate.

When the immigration issue is settled, and people gain citizenship, you can't Diebold away new Congressional districts and voting blocks. But you can taint their vote by claiming voter fraud, implying that Hispanics are letting illegal immigrants vote. You can diminish their claim to citizenship by implying dual loyalty. In short, you can discourage them from voting by forcing them to prove their identity.

So while liberals have been wringing their hands over Diebold, Republicans, led by Red State Erik, have been passing laws demanding voter ID's. First in Georgia, then Missouri, then in the House.

Why do this, if they have Diebold?

Because Diebold is a head fake. They don't care about Diebold. They care about the declining number of white voters and the need to erect barriers to prevent minorities from having more political power. It's only a matter of time that Hispanics are voting blocks in Southern and Midwestern states. Voter ID laws discourage elderly black voters, who have a high participation rate, as well as non-English speakers.

The GOP is perfectly content to ignore Diebold, because they're looking to shrink the voting pool.

posted by Steve @ 8:23:00 PM

Are they out of their fuckiing minds?

Sgt. Michael Donohue estimates that he owes
the city $100,000.

New York City’s Reservists Are Asked to Return Iraq Pay

By ANDY NEWMAN
Published: September 23, 2006

When they were called up for military service in the wake of 9/11, hundreds of uniformed city workers in the Reserves faced the suspension of their city health and pension benefits. The city offered them an option: it would keep paying their salaries and continue their benefits, but when they returned they would have to repay the city their city salary or their military pay, whichever was less.

On its face, the offer made sense. And many reservists had only a few days to get their affairs together before shipping out — hardly enough time to consult accountants. Nearly all took the deal. As the war dragged on, more than 1,600 city employees, mostly police officers, signed up for the benefits program.

Now the bills from the city are coming due, for far more than many veterans imagined they would have to pay — as much as $200,000 — and often for more money than they ever received.

The city is demanding that the veterans repay their gross salaries, even though they never saw about a third of the money, which went for taxes and other deductions. The commissioner of administrative services, Martha K. Hirst, said veterans should be able to get back the difference between gross and take-home pay by amending their tax returns. But several tax accountants said the city had created an accounting quagmire.

David Gitel, a tax accountant in Manhattan, said that if the employees paid the money back over several years — which many will have to do — rather than in a lump sum, they could lose thousands of dollars in income-tax and social security payments.

“It’s an interesting experience,” Mr. Gitel said.

For now, the Police Department, which waited as much as four years to begin asking for the money back in the spring, is stepping up its collection efforts. On Thursday, hundreds of officers received letters in their pay envelopes threatening legal action if they did not make repayment arrangements within 15 days.

A city official, who was unwilling to be identified lest he incur his colleagues’ anger, gave an explanation for the delay. “People have been talking about it here for some time, about getting around to doing it,” he said. “It’s probably the hero thing. Why make a top priority of telling somebody to give back money when they just went off to war?”

Under the terms of the deal, nontaxable military housing and food allowances also count as military pay. Those allowances can nearly double military pay, in some cases making it more than city pay. Many veterans who did not read the fine print said they thought they would have to repay only their modest military take-home base salary.

On Monday, the City Council will consider a resolution to ask Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to stop counting military allowances as income.

Assistant Police Chief Michael Collins said that after the letters went out on Thursday, many officers contacted the department to begin repayment. The department hopes to recover more than $15 million, he said.

The odds are the city may not get a dime. This is a cheap way for Albany to make nice with the cops. Throw this on top of 9/11 illness and this is a giant fuck you to the people who work for the city. I can see Albany wiping much of the slate clean. This is going to get ugly. Allowances and combat pay? Come on.

posted by Steve @ 1:56:00 AM

HP Scandal grows

Noah Berger for The New York Times
Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard,
said that Patricia C. Dunn had resigned as the chairwoman
of the company. He apologized to those whose privacy was
invaded in corporate spying.

Chairwoman Leaves Hewlett in Spying Furor
By DAMON DARLIN and MATT RICHTEL
Published: September 23, 2006

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 22 — The furor over Hewlett-Packard’s spying operation claimed its highest-ranking victim on Friday with the immediate resignation of its chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn.


The move was announced by Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive, who will now succeed her. But even as he offered an account of an investigation gone awry, and offered apologies to those whose privacy was invaded, he made it clear that many questions had yet to be answered.

His voice shaking, Mr. Hurd said a review of the means used to trace leaks from the company’s board had produced “very disturbing” findings. He also conceded that “I could have, and I should have,” read a report prepared for him while the operation was under way.

The investigators’ zeal led them into a shadowy world of surveillance, and in the end the giant computer company was embarrassed by its own use of technology.

Two executives who supervised the effort were also reported to be leaving.

In addition to direct surveillance, the operation entailed the use of possibly illegal methods to obtain phone records of board members, journalists and others; an attempt to place software on a reporter’s computer to track e-mail; and a study of the use of clerical workers and cleaners to infiltrate two news organizations.

At a news conference at Hewlett-Packard’s headquarters here, Mr. Hurd said it had been proper and necessary for Ms. Dunn to try to stem leaks of confidential information. But he added, “While many of the right processes were in place, they unfortunately broke down, and no one in the management chain, including me, caught them.”

It was the company’s first public discussion of the revelations that have engulfed it for more than two weeks. Mr. Hurd took no questions, with the company saying he did not want to pre-empt his testimony next week to a House subcommittee looking into the Hewlett-Packard affair.

In a statement provided by Hewlett-Packard, Ms. Dunn said she had resigned at the request of the board. But she said that while she had the responsibility to identify the source of leaks, “I did not propose the specific methods,” and those who performed the investigation “let me and the company down.”

According to people briefed on Mr. Hurd’s plans, Kevin T. Hunsaker, its senior counsel and director of ethics, and Anthony R. Gentilucci, its Boston-based manager of global investigations, will leave the company. Mr. Hurd did not speak to this issue, and the company declined to comment.

Some industry analysts had expected Hewlett-Packard to announce more directly who it felt was responsible, inside or outside the company.

This is going to court, several courts. Between California's anti-stalking laws and federal law, you have a legal nightmare for HP.

They must have thought they were in a movie. They weren't. Dunn better have a real good criminal and civil lawyer.

posted by Steve @ 1:48:00 AM

Hezbollah's victory parade

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Hundreds of thousands of people attended a
rally in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday.

Vast Lebanon Throng Hails Hezbollah Chief, Who Calls the Militia Stronger

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: September 23, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 22 — Hundreds of thousands of people stood Friday and chanted “God, God, protect Nasrallah.” It was the moment they had waited for: Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in person, declaring that his militia was stronger than ever and that no army in the world could force it to disarm.

At the rally, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, declared that the militia had emerged stronger from its recent war with Israel. "Not a single army in the world will be able to dismantle our resistance," he said, and asserted that Hezbollah still had 20,000 missiles in its arsenal. It was Sheik Nasrallah's first public appearance since the war with Isarel started in July.

This was Sheik Nasrallah’s first public appearance since the war with Israel started in July, and it was steeped in defiance: at Israel, the United States, Arab heads of state and those political forces in Lebanon aiming to clip Hezbollah’s political and military power.

If there was any thought the war weakened Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrallah had a different message: “It is stronger.” Even after Israel’s 34-day bombardment of Lebanon, Hezbollah, he said, still has more than 20,000 missiles. “Not a single army in the world will be able to dismantle our resistance,” Sheik Nasrallah said, as he stood beneath a big banner that read “The Victory Rally.” “No army in the world will be able to make us drop the weapons from our hands.”

The crowd was mammoth, packing every corner of the 37-acre square in the southern suburbs of Beirut. There was a plastic chair for nearly everyone, and a baseball cap for protection from the sun. Hezbollah’s martial choir belted out chest thumping music. The crowds waved flags, wildly cheering for Sheik Nasrallah, who has become a folk hero to many here and throughout the Arab world. The audience came on foot, by car and by bus from the south and the north, and in every case, people said they came because Sheik Nasrallah asked them to.

“Whatever Sayid Hassan wants Sayid Hassan gets,” said Hossain Zebara, 29, using a title reserved for descendants of the prophet Muhammad. Mr. Zebara said it took him 24 hours to walk from his home in the southern part of Lebanon to be at the rally. “We came to show the American administration, the British administration, the French administration, that the resistance population is increasing, not decreasing.”

That was exactly Sheik Nasrallah’s point — a show of strength to those who would challenge him from abroad, and those who would challenge him at home. In a country of about four million, turning out hundreds of thousands of people in a disciplined, highly orchestrated event, is a sign of strength.

But the rally also highlighted some of the deep divisions among Lebanon’s different factions, as the crowd at times chanted slogans calling the Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, a “worm” and “Jew” and calling for the prime minister to leave office.

Sheik Nasrallah sought to overcome some of that by calling for unity in a speech that tried to define him as leader who is not just a local force, but a regional force as well. He gave voice to one of the primary feelings that has fueled anger throughout the Muslim world: a sense that Muslims are being victimized in places like Iraq and Gaza, and the world does not care. “How long will it go on that the world keeps quiet?” he asked.

And he aimed hard at Arab leaders, criticizing them for not being willing to fight Israel. “These Arab leaders prefer to protect their thrones as opposed to protecting Palestine,” he said, taking a shot at the traditional power brokers, like the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

This was achingly predictable.

When Sadr holds a similar rally in the Green Zone, it will look a lot like this.

Wasn't the IDF supposed to kill this guy? Ooops.

posted by Steve @ 1:25:00 AM

The coming end of the Iraq War

Iraq engulfed by tide of violence
By John Simpson
World affairs editor, BBC News

Manfred Nowak, the UN's chief anti-torture expert, captured the headlines round the world when he suggested that torture could be worse in Iraq now than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Torture is indeed at appalling levels in Iraq. Everyone, it seems, from the Iraqi forces to the militias to the anti-US insurgents, now routinely use torture on the people they kill.

Each day, bodies are found with appalling injuries, particularly in Baghdad.

At the Baghdad mortuary, I was told that more bodies now showed signs of torture than of a clean death.

But new figures show that the picture is worse in other ways.

The number of violent deaths for July and August reached a total of 6,600 - 13% higher than the figure for the previous two-month figure.

'Too late'

They come at a time when 147,000 American soldiers are deployed in Iraq, the majority of them in the area around Baghdad. In recent months, reinforcements have been brought in to try to curb the violence.

The figures seem to indicate clearly that the US forces simply do not have the answer to the basic problem. The same applies to the British forces in Basra and the south, where the situation is also deteriorating.

Some 147,000 soldiers may seem a large number, and it is more than the US Department of Defense had been hoping to deploy in Iraq by now.

But the overwhelming majority of them are not out on the streets, stopping the bombings and kidnappings and murders.

The total number of fighting soldiers in the American force is probably about 18,000 - quite a small number, given the area they have to cover and the size of the problem.

Even so, more troops does not seem to be the solution. It is probably too late now to introduce different tactics, but in policing hostile towns and cities there is no effective alternative to the foot patrol.

A well-trained platoon can control quite a large area, making it hard for their opponents to gather together and carry out attacks. Of course, armoured vehicles can cover more ground, but as soon as they have passed, the insurgents can come out of hiding again.

The Americans have never put enough foot patrols in the streets, and they long ago lost control of many towns and cities as a result.

The Iranians know this. It will guide their strategy for the next month or two. Americans like to pretend that we control our fate, but we don't. It's an arrogance of good fortune. But our stay in Iraq is controlled by other people and they will tire of us.

posted by Steve @ 12:16:00 AM

A bit of conjuring

Damn, that's a lot of people to buy my house

You can read all over the liberal blogosphere about the torture bill, which has so many challenges to court authority that, like the CDA, it is destined to be overturned, even by the Roberts Court. Forbidding the use of international law, limiting the right of judicial review, use of secret testimony, coersed testimony. What court is going to uphold this?

Hell, are the Republicans going to pass this in a week? I think their priority is the Berlin Wall south myself. It might pass, or the Senate might not want another loyalty test on their record. But what exactly are 44 Dems going to do, besides give Rove his campaign theme in the last month of the campaign.

This is about two things, Bush as daddy protector, and showing the GOP who's boss. Run from me during an election, will you.....

Sometimes, when I read the empassioned pleas for a Pyhrric stand by the Dems, I wonder where people have been the past five years.

You know, Lieberman would jump to defend torture in a heartbeat. He would do his "non-partisan" shitck and get free publicity for his flagging campaign. And Rove would say the Dems don't want to protect America.

And most people would wonder why the Dems are defending terrorists.

Any time the deeply cynical Rove tosses something so odious in the air, you have to wonder why. Partly, because CIA officers are going to jail, as are their bosses. Partly to talk about anything but Iraq. But nothing to do with the heinous immorality of torture.

People have been blogging that the Dems relied on McCain. Please. Did Harry Reid take stupid pills? All Rove had to do was wave a mailing list in front of his nose and he had him. Please. No, McCain fought with Bush and created the image of a divided GOP, which has helped in several campaigns, in Colorado, Arizona and Rhode Island.

This is all politics, disgusting, loathesome politics. But whining about not opposing torture doesn't mean anything. Getting elected, tossing the law into a dustbin and investigating how the GOPCPA fucked up, that does something. Investigating Gitmo does something. But that something only happens after a victory.

Anytime someone argues that this makes the Dems look weak, well they sang that same song during Schiavo and we know how that worked out.

Besides, the one fact you need to keep in mind for the next six weeks is this: people's mortgages are going to double. Don't worry about anything else. People are going to lose their homes. Lose them outright. And that will drive who they vote for. Bush is going to talk about his great economy while people get a $7000 mortgage bill. All those ARM's are starting to come due and people can't pay them, can't sell their homes.

A fair amount of liberal bloggers sometimes forget the realities of people's lives. A luxury politicians don't have if they like being employed. There are a hundred outraged posts on torture, but when someone suggested that the economy might be an issue, well, they flipped out.
In the real world, the economy matters as much as Iraq. The Housing bubble is about to explode. The flippers are already being hammered, and the 0 percent down people are next. People who bet on ARM's are also about to get their bills due.

Rove much rather debate torture than people losing their homes.

posted by Steve @ 12:10:00 AM

The paradox of the Black Republican pt 3: the dishonest campaign

Are you kidding me?

Democrats accuse Steele of 'political identity theft'

By Jennifer Skalka
Sun reporter

September 22, 2006

No, Maryland voters, the printer did not make an error. Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's new campaign signs seem to identify him as a Democrat.

A "Steele Democrat," they read.

The bright blue placards and bumper stickers made their debut yesterday in Baltimore during an event announcing a new coalition of Democrats supporting the lieutenant governor's U.S. Senate bid. Steele, of course, is the Republican nominee for Senate and a former chairman of the state Republican Party.

The group and accompanying signs appear to be the latest Steele effort to distance himself from an unpopular White House and a Republican Party struggling to maintain its hold on Congress. The state Democratic Party chairman immediately accused him of "identity theft."

Steele supporters said the term was akin to calling someone a "Reagan Democrat."

No elected Democrats showed up for yesterday's event, and the crowd was composed largely of participants in the I Can't We Can substance-abuse-recovery program in Park Heights.

Among the few recognizable Democrats to appear was William H. Murphy Jr., a Baltimore lawyer who has ties to Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

"I'm sick and tired of being taken for granted by the Democratic Party," Murphy said.

"We don't embrace George Bush, we embrace Michael Steele," he said. "We don't embrace George Bush's vision of America, we embrace Michael Steele's vision of America."

Donald F. Norris, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said that while such cross-party coalitions are a routine campaign gimmick, Steele's new signs are "underhanded" and a "dirty trick."

"Oh ho, we're a blue state, aren't we?" Norris said. "This is an obvious attempt on the part of a candidate who is behind in the polls to confuse the voters about which party he actually represents. To me, it's a form of dirty politics."

To add to the party confusion, a Democrat with the last name Mfume endorsed Steele yesterday.

Michael Mfume - son of former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume - linked arms with Steele in Baltimore.

"I'm here, and I'm in support of Mr. Steele," said the younger Mfume, whose professional experience as a film and music producer includes directing the horror movie Ax 'Em, according to Internet postings.

How stupid do they think black voters are?

When some store owner in Ohio put up a Blackwell poster in his store, one customer said outright that he'd lost his business. They wouldn't even admit supporting Blackwell to the black reporter who was questioning them, much less use their full names for attribution.

Now, how pathetic is this event, a bunch of crackheads and one of Mfume's eight kids. Not one elected black official. Steele is desperate for Mfume to support him, but I guess Mfume might want another political job one day. Which he won't get if he supports Steele.

When people ask, "Steele only has to get some black votes" or "maybe people will believe that thing about the KKK", I just shake my head. For some reason, blacks have been cast as emotional children when it comes to voting. As if black skin is enough to claim allegiance. That may work for Allen Iverson, but not in politics. The idea that Steele, after his open, flagrant support of hard right Republicans, can now come to blacks for support is insane. They know who he is. And they dislike him.

Black people know their history. They know who is on their side and who isn't. I'll get more into this later, but politics is personal in black America. Which is why politicians tred lightly even around Louis Farrakhan, forget Al Sharpton. You may disagree with them, but disrespect them at your peril.

Let's say I'm at a party. Everyone is talking politics. And I get up and say I support Bush. People will walk away from me, people will shout me down. What was a pleasant evening would get nasty fairly quickly. Someone would invariably ask me if I thought I was white. The ad hominem attack popular in black politics.

One shorthand that black authors and screenwriters use to depict a character who is isolated from their family is to make them an uptight Republican.

Steele isn't playing nice guy and trying to play Democrat because people disagree with his politics. It's because they disagree with being a Republican on a far more fundamental level. I've never used the invective here I've heard casually about most Republicans. The only one who's exempted from that is Colin Powell. And that's because he hasn't been a craven lackey to the right.

But I don't think most people outside the black community understand how reviled the GOP is. It's more than politics, it's personal. Sure, some people want to talk to the GOP, but those efforts always fail. Because the GOP isn't serious.

I mean, black commentators openly debate if Katrina was genocide or not. In that kind of environment, the GOP isn't going to get a hearing.

Look, Al Wynn, who is not a Republican, is ass deep in trouble for his stands on issues. Steele is no Al Wynn. His views are rejected by the black community. Which is why he wants to run an issue free campaign.

And every attempt where he tries to sound not goofy, it makes him look even worse. He talks about how he likes Mike Tyson, who scares the shit out of everybody, or calls Bush his "homeboy". A dignified, educated black man calling anyone a homeboy will work the nerve of most older black people, but Bush, shit, hand out the tap shoes and tux.

What people outside the black community don't get is the utter isolation of black Republicans from the community. There isn't one elected to a higher office than small town mayor. None can run for state office, much less state wide office on their own. Forget Congress.

There was an article from the Washington Post a couple of months ago, about a Dept of Ed official, a rising black Republican "star". The thrust of the article was that he couldn't even talk politics with his grandmother. In most black families, the grandmother is a revered figure, both matriarch and confider. For this man to be that isolated from his grandmother was a sign of his total disconnect from the community. One of his friends, a man who helped raise him, said "you know, I think the white people took him from us". That is a damning phrase.

When black people reject black Republicans, it's a personal rejection as well as a politicial one.

Steele may well get some black votes. But the fact that his audience was a bunch of crackheads today bodes ill for him. He should have had his Democratic, elected supporters with him.

Exactly.

posted by Steve @ 5:19:00 PM

The friends of Joe Lieberman

Lieberman’s Fundraiser Ran the Abu Ghraib of Rehab

Who's going to endorse him next, Lyndie England? Stephen Green? Augusto Pinochet?

I wonder what Dan Gerstein is going to say about this. Please let him call Lindsay a liar, please.

posted by Steve @ 5:00:00 PM

Facts not checked

FactCheck.org Falsely Claims Republicans Didn’t Vote Against Body Armor for Troops

Media Matters Analysis Shows ‘Vote Vet’ Ads are Truthful and Based on Verifiable Recorded Senate Votes

September 22, 2006 (Washington, DC)- In recent days, both The Arizona Republic editorial page and the website FactCheck.org have both incorrectly attacked a television advertisement by the newly formed group Vote Vets criticizing Sen. George F. Allen (R-VA) for his April 2003 opposition to a Democratic amendment that would have increased U.S. National Guard funding for body armor as "deceitful" and "just plain wrong". However, A Media Matters analysis clearly shows that the ad in question is truthful and is based on entirely on verifiable, recorded Senate votes.

See our full analysis here: http://mediamatters.org/items/200609220002

Sen. Dodd Amendment to Increase Funding for Body Armor

On October 2, 2003, Allen and other Republicans voted against a Democratic amendment to the $87 billion emergency supplemental bill to increase the amount of funding devoted to body armor and battlefield clearance to ensure that both needs were met.

The Dodd amendment would have added $322 million to the $300 million the Senate Appropriations Committee had already attached to the underlying bill for small arms protection inserts (SAPI) body armor and battlefield cleanup. In his October 2, 2003, floor statement, he noted there was “not enough money in the bill to do both,” citing a September 26, 2003, report by the assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller that requested an additional $420 million for the battlefield cleanup alone.

Dodd repeatedly made that his intent in offering the amendment was to make certain that U.S. forces in Iraq were provided adequate body armor, which he described as a "top priorit[y]."

Sen. Landrieu’s Amendment to 03 Supplemental Approps Bill:

Near the end of the ad in question, a citation appears onscreen: "Vote #116, 108th Congress, 1st Session." This is the April 2, 2003, Senate roll call in which Republicans unanimously voted, 52-47, to table Landrieu's amendment to the fiscal year 2003 supplemental appropriations bill for the Iraq war.

The amendment offered by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) would have added a little more than $1 billion to the bill for the procurement of "National Guard and Reserve Equipment."

The Republic and FactCheck both conceded that Sen. Landrieu made clear in a press release that the $1 billion measure included funding for helmets and bulletproof vests. But both outlets have nonetheless argued that, because Landrieu did not specify "body armor" as a "priority" when discussing the legislation on the Senate floor, the assertion that Allen voted against body armor is "false" and "scandalous."

But Landrieu repeatedly stated on the floor that the bill would ensure that National Guard soldiers had "helmets" and other "force protection" equipment intended to "minimize causalities."

· In her March 20, 2003, floor statement introducing the measure, Landrieu repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. government was "underfunding our Guard and Reserve" and expressed shock at "the lack of equipment, the lack of money in this budget to fund their current operations." She added, "For too long, the Guard and Reserve have received hand-me-downs from the Active component. ... Let's give them their rifles, their helmets, and their tactical equipment so we can, as we know we will, win this war."

· In a March 26, 2003, press release, Landrieu further explained that the bill "targets shortfalls identified by the National Guard and Reserve in their Unfunded Requirement lists," including the "shortage of helmets, tents, bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests":

· In her April 2, 2003, floor statement on the amendment, Landrieu said, "When we talk about force protection and minimizing casualties, you don't have to be an expert in warfare to understand one of the ways you can minimize casualties is to give your Guard and Reserve the best training and the best equipment.”

Excerpt from Dodd's Statement on the Senate floor:

DODD: According to the U.S. Army, the President's supplemental bill falls short of over $200 million for critical gear for our soldiers slated to rotate in Iraq and Afghanistan in the months ahead. This amendment was designed specifically to see to it that those U.S. troops coming into Iraq, into a theater of war, would receive important equipment they need to perform their missions effectively. This equipment includes important high-tech body armor, bullet-proof helmets, special water packs to keep soldiers hydrated, and other survival gear.

[...]

DODD: Now, in response to the Army's request, the committee added $300 million to the present supplemental request which could be used for either this additional equipment or the clearance of weapons and mines still lingering on Iraqi battlefields. It says it right here, in the Congressional Record, dated October 1, 2003, when the Supplemental Appropriations bill's accompanying report was printed. On page S12222, there is a chart detailing expenditures in the Army Operations and Maintenance account. $300 million is to be allocated for ``SAPI body armor/Rapid Fielding Initiative or battlefield cleanup.''

But the Army says it needs an additional $420 million just to handle the Iraqi battlefield clearance. As the pending legislation stands now, there is still not enough money in the bill to do both, and both items--more safety equipment and Iraqi battlefield clearance--are top Army priorities.

[...]

DODD: I think we need to address both of these issues. For those reasons, I have asked my colleagues to support this amendment to allocate an additional $322 million for the critical equipment of our troops and adequate resources for battlefield clearance to fully meet the Army's current requirements.

[...]

DODD: I don't want a soldier out there getting hurt because they don't have the right equipment. I didn't make this up. The Army didn't come to me specifically. They made this case on September 26, the source was a briefing provided to Congress' defense committees by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller, entitled, ``FY04 Supplemental Request for the Global War on Terrorism: The Army At War.'' That is where it comes from. I appreciate what the committee did with $300 million. But the committee report says you have to make a choice: Clearing up the battlefield or provide funding for soldiers' equipment. And I don't think the Army ought to be put in that position. I don't think you ought to ask them to have to make that choice. That is the reason for the amendment.

BACKGROUNDER:

The Vote Vets Ad

The television ad in question depicts Army reservist Pete Granato firing a gun at two mannequins -- one outfitted with a "vest left over from the Vietnam War" and the other wearing "modern body armor." Granato explains that the "difference is life or death" and demonstrates that while the new body armor stopped the bullets, the outdated equipment did not. He then holds up the modern vest and states, "Senator George Allen voted against giving our troops this. Now it's time for us to vote against him."

While the ad has not yet aired in Arizona, where incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Kyl is being challenged by Democrat Jim Pederson, the Republic wrote the editorial in apparent anticipation of its appearance, describing it as "a certifiable 'hit piece' campaign ad that is believed to target at least four Republican lawmakers up for re-election, including Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl."

AZ Republic Editorial

In a September 19 editorial, the Republic described the Vote Vets ad as "a certifiable 'hit piece' " and decried its "scandalous assertion" that Allen voted against providing modern body armor for U.S. troops.

But the Republic's criticism -- that Landrieu did not use the words "body armor" in her speech on the legislation -- does not undermine the ad's assertion that Allen voted against legislation that would have increased funding for "helmets" and "bullet-proof inserts," as the press release made clear. Further, it ignores the fact that Landrieu did refer in her floor statements to the need for "helmets" and other "force protection" equipment intended to "minimize causalities."

FactCheck.Org Analysis

In a September 21 post, FactCheck went further than the Republic editorial's criticism, incorrectly claiming that the Vote Vets ad "falsely accuses Republicans of voting against body armor for troops." In the first paragraph of the purported rebuttal, FactCheck unequivocally asserted that Landrieu's amendment "had nothing whatever to do with body armor":

posted by Steve @ 4:30:00 PM

Not so fast

Dems to run on ... the economy?
By kos

Arianna:

Democrats have decided that the way to win in November is -- I kid you not -- to make the economy the central issue of the campaign.

"We've got to go on the offensive," explained a senior Democratic aide, "and keep our eye on the ball -- and that's the economy."

"We're not going to win 15 seats on the war in Iraq," said another Democratic staffer, insisting it is the economy that will, in the words of Roll Call, "bring the party across the goal line."

Sen. Debbie Stabenow is quoted as saying the 2006 election "is all about jobs."

And, in a memo sent to Democratic staffers, the party's Senate leadership claimed "while Iraq may be high among the concerns of the American people, it is a distant reality in comparison to the day to day challenges many families face filing their gas tanks, paying for college, saving for retirement and securing a job."

A distant reality? Oh. My. God.

See, that's why I don't think we're going to win back the House or Senate. Because you can always trust Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

For the record, we heard this in 2002. We heard it in 2004. I gave the argument the benefit of the doubt those years. I think I actually bought it in 2002. But apparently our vaunted leadership in DC is incapable of learning lessons.

They obsess about 1968, yet they couldn't be bothered with the far more relevant years of 2002 and 2004. I don't understand it.

More Arianna:

The 2006 election -- and with it control of the House and the power to investigate the Bush administration's abundant outrages -- is there for the taking... if only Democrats would put down the economy crack pipe and put their energy into hammering Bush and the GOP for their many tragic foreign policy and national security failures, which have combined to make America far less safe.

The numbers couldn't be any clearer. Seventy-seven percent of voters think that it's time to give new people a shot at running Congress. But while Democrats continue to hold a lead when voters are asked which party they plan to support in November, Republicans are making significant gains in convincing voters they are better able to handle national security and the war on terrorism. According to a new LA Times/Bloomberg poll, voters give the GOP a whopping 17 point advantage on the "who'll keep us safe?" question (nearly double the number who felt that way in June). At the same time, 56 percent of voters don't believe that America is making progress in Iraq. (What's more, Bush's numbers on the economy have greatly improved in the last three months).

Which is why Democrats can't take their eye off the real ball -- making the case that Iraq is not, as Bush continues to claim, the centerpiece of the war on terror, and has, in fact, compromised America's ability to combat terrorists and protect our homeland.

I'll be shocked if we wake up on election day controlling either chamber of Congress. If we do, it'll be because enough candidates decide to give those DC consultants and staffers the middle finger and run the race they know they need to run to win.

This isn't pure madness.

Ford just announced that they're going to buyout anyone who wants one and close plants. It may not be THE issue, but to the mayor about to lose his Ford plant, it's a massive deal. To those people who have that ARM coming do and their mortgage payments are going to jump one or two thousand dollars in a month are going to have real concerns. For Debbie Stabenow, facing the loss of thousands of good jobs, that's her issue.

Then, of course, Bush is going to talk about how the Dems are going to raise taxes

I don't think you cede the ground to the GOP on the economy. With all those zero down payment mortgages and low ARMs hitting market rates in the next three months, the economy is going to be more of an issue. The slow deflating of the housing bubble is clearly happening. People can't sell their homes and they can't pay their mortgages.

Oh yeah, ask the elderly how they feel about Medicare Part D. It's like a Hoover on the wallets of the elderly. And they are not happy about it.

Iraq is important, but so is losing your home. And if the Dems ignore it, the GOP will say everything is fine.

I think that you CAN win 15 seats on Iraq. The question is how many more do you win after that? Combine the economy and Iraq, you have two issues the GOP have no answer for.

There is a total mess lying out there between second mortgages, ARM's and unsellable homes and yelling about Iraq doesn't address that one bit.

posted by Steve @ 11:04:00 AM

Who is the NBRA: the paradox of the black Republican, pt II

Sisyphus Shrugged has this backgrounder on the National Black Republican Association. ccraft corner

	Well, that's one way to go about it. There are certainly others. For instance: yesterday, Steve Gilliard posted this We've learned of a major shake-up at the Washington-based National Black Republican Association, with six of the 10 NBRA board members resigning in recent days over various disagreements. "The organization and its current leadership is heading down a much different direction than was envisioned by myself and the other board members," says Christopher R. Arps. Similarly, the Rev. Eric M. Wallace, chairman of the African American Republican Council of Illinois and a candidate for lieutenant governor, writes in a resignation letter obtained by Inside the Beltway: "If you guys decide to formulate another organization based on actually helping our people, let me know. If you choose people with a servant's heart, then I am in. I serve because of my relationship with my Savior. I am a Christian first, a father second, a minister and scholar third, and a black man fourth, and then a Republican. Heaven help me if I ever get these out of order." Three resigning board members, we're told, frowned on signing a "statement of commitment" sent to them by NBRA Chairman Frances Rice, concluding with: "My failure to sign this statement confirms that I am not a member in good standing of the NBRA and am not eligible to be an officer in the NBRA or a member of the NBRA Board of Directors." Board member Bill Calhoun, in a memo to Ms. Rice also obtained by this column, wrote: "Regarding your request for me to sign a letter of commitment, is this being requested of all board members? This appears discriminatory." So here is me all confused, because I try to keep up, and I've never heard of this "grassroots" group. Unfortunately, their web page is no longer active, and Google didn't cache it before it became inactive. Luckily there are other sources. First off, I hadn't heard of NBRA because they only actually filed with the FEC in June. Pretty nice address for a startup, neh? My favorite quote from the rollout, FYI: This will be the first time that black Republicans have organized under one house in the party's recent history, said Deborah Burston-Donbraye, an Ohio-based political consultant and deputy director for public affairs for the Justice Department under President Reagan. "We're getting to that younger generation that is not as knowledgeable... Meet Mrs (er, Lt. Col) Rice Frances Rice is an attorney and an African-American woman who served in the Army for 20 years before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. While in the Army she served as a company commander, an adjutant in a basic combat training brigade and a prosecutor in courts-marital. Upon retiring, she was awarded the Legion of Merit. She is currently serving on the Board of the Military Officers Association of Sarasota, the SaraMana Black Republican Club and the SaraMana Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization that helps low-income residents become homeowners and small business owners. In these positions, she puts both her Juris Doctorate and MBA degrees to good use. She was recently appointed by Governor Jeb Bush to serve on the Medal of Merit Board for the state of Florida. Frances is married to Peter Rice, a retired diplomat from the U.S. Department of State. as reported by the lady herself. Of course, she left a few things out. For instance, Husband Peter? Is also the treasurer of the NBRA, as well as the Secretary of the Republican Party of Sarasota (Mrs. Rice was also on the board of that organization at one time, before she formed her "independent" black Republican political group, the Saramana Republican Club. The Saramana Republican Club shares Mrs. Rice's personal e-mail address, which is also used by NBRA and by RPOS as a contact address for "Republicans seeking elected partisan political office" to "provide brief information for our email newsletter about their events and their campaign office (and other contact information)." So, OK, the Rices are apparatchiki of Jeb Bush's political organization. Surprise surprise. There was, though, another familiar name on the Board of Directors page. From the bio of young Mr. Arps, the Communications Director who just quit His political experience includes a stint as a St. Louis Field Representative for U.S. Senator Jim Talent of Missouri, and as an appointed aide to the St. Louis County Council. Mr. Arps was also a consultant to the 2002 successful campaign of Missouri State Represenatative Sherman Parker. He served in a patronage position with the St. Louis County Board of Elections during the contentious 2000 Presidential elections. Mr. Arps is divorced and has an eleven year old daughter. That name, Sherman Parker, sounds awfully familiar (Mr. Parker is also on the Board of Advisors of NRLA) Well, I found him. Mr. Parker was the politician of color featured on the webpage of the The African American Republican Leadership Council. The African American Republican Leadership Council had their moment in the sun a few years ago when they were dragged forward by the GOP to support Trent Lott against any accusation that nostalgia for segregation was in some way unsupportive of people of color. Mr. Parker, you will be amused to hear, was later named Chair of that seemingly moribund organization. He prides himself on his work with Mr. Ashcroft. So you see? Sock puppets are not only relatively cheap and easy to make with materials you already have sitting around, you can recycle them. Side note: you might have noticed that NBRA co-founder Mr. Sidney F. Dinerstein is not pictured on the meet the Board page. Conceived around the time of last year's presidential election, the black Republican association joined the activism of Cadogan and Roberts with the fund-raising ability of county Republican Chairman Sid Dinerstein, who also is a member of the new group's board. Dinerstein espouses the view that there isn't a person alive who wouldn't be better off as a Republican, and enthusiastically goes prospecting for converts among long-standing Democratic constituencies. "Palm Beach County happened to have the right people at the right time. You're not going to find a group of black activists and a white, Jewish county chairman who are going to sit down and put the time in everywhere," Roberts said. Maybe they couldn't find a picture.

ahhhs. -- hmmm?

These people think black voters are idiots.

posted by Steve @ 10:29:00 AM

The paradox of the Black Republican pt 1

When I read that grovelling nonsense issued by the National Black Republican lackies, it made me laugh. It assumed that black people had no sense of history and they were going to enlighten
us.

Which is why black Republicans are disdained by most black voters.

I know why black people became Republicans, because when my father was a 21 year old Marine, he registered as one, I think in 1957-8. My mother, who has lived in New York her entire life has been a Democrat for much of that time. The difference was simple. Until 1932, blacks who could vote were loyal Republicans. It was FDR who started the shift. In 1960, the split was equal between Nixon and Kennedy. But by 1964, the drive to integrate the Democratic Party was on in force. Why? One woman, Fanny Lou Hamer.

Hamer at the Democratic National Convention

In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or "Freedom Democrats" for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair.

The Freedom Democrat' efforts drew national attention to the plight of African-Americans in Mississippi, and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for a second term; their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention's decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes in the election. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as "that illiterate woman".

Hamer was invited, along with the rest of the MFDP officers, to address the Convention's Credentials Committee. She recounted the problems she had encountered in registration, and the ordeal of the jail in Winona, and, near tears, concluded:

"All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?"

In Washington, D.C., Johnson panicked, calling an emergency press conference in an effort to divert press coverage away from Hamer's testimony; but many television networks ran the stunning speech unedited on their late news programs that night. The Credentials Committee received thousand of calls and letters in support of the Freedom Democrats.

Johnson then dispatched several trusted Democratic Party operatives to attempt to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, including Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (who was campaigning for the Vice-Presidential nomination), Walter Mondale, Walter Reuther, and J. Edgar Hoover. They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan. But when Humphrey outlined the compromise, saying that his position on the ticket was at stake, Hamer, invoking her Christian beliefs, sharply rebuked him:

"Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people's lives? Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I'm going to pray to Jesus for you."

Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer. In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states' delegations in 1968.

Why didn't she just join the GOP? Well, Barry Goldwater opposed civil rights and the power base in the South was the Democratic Party. So she went where the power was. Martin Luther King, according to his biographers never announced a party preference, and he may have never voted, considering he lived in Atlanta and travelled a great deal. What he clearly was not was a Republican, one of the silly charges that this group makes.

The 19th Century history they cite is much more complex than they want you to believe.In 1866, many white Southerners did not have the right to vote, while blacks did. Only those who had sworn loyalty to the Union had their rights restored. The Klan was created as a social union
which then morphed into terrorism. It was not founded by Democrats in the sense that it was a party organ, it wasn't. But as time went on, there was a LOT of overlap. But the most famous
cases of Klan dominance were in Republican-dominated states, Oregon and Indiana

David Curtiss (“Steve”) Stephenson (21 August 1891 – 28 June 1966) was Grand Dragon (state leader) of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and in 22 other northen states, whose conviction for murder led to the end of the second wave of Klan activity. He is considered to have been one of the most successful Klan leaders up until his downfall.

He was born in Houston, Texas, moved with his family to Maysville, Oklahoma, where he worked as a printer's apprentice and was active in the Socialist Party. In 1920 he moved to Evansville, Indiana, where he became a salesman and joined the Democratic Party and the Ku Klux Klan. In November 1922, Stephenson backed Hiram Wesley Evans in his attempt to unseat William J. Simmons as Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; upon Evans' ascendancy, Stephenson was made Grand Dragon of Indiana and 22 other northern states.

Membership in the states for which he was Grand Dragon grew dramatically. Stephenson acquired great wealth, political power, and hubris. In a speech to the 1923 Fourth of July gathering of the Ku Klux Klan in Kokomo, Indiana, Stephenson began, “My worthy subjects, citizens of the Invisible Empire, Klansmen all, greetings. It grieves me to be late. The President of the United States kept me unduly long counseling on matters of state. Only my plea that this is the time and the place of my coronation obtained for me surcease from his prayers for guidance.” Encouraged by his success, in September 1923, Stephenson severed his ties with the existing national organization of the Ku Klux Klan, and formed a rival Ku Klux Klan. Stephenson changed his affiliation from the Democratic to the Republican Party; and notably supported Republican Ed Jackson when he ran (successfully) for Governor in 1924.

Publicly a Prohibitionist and a defender of “Protestant womanhood”, his spectacular 1925 trial for murder led to the downfall of the “Second Wave” of Klan activity. Stephenson was responsible for the abduction, forced intoxication, and sadistic rape of Madge Oberholtzer (who ran a state program to combat illiteracy), all leading to her death. Amongst other things, Stephenson had ferociously bitten her so many times that one man who saw her described her condition as having been “chewed by a cannibal”. Stephenson was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on 25 November 1925.

In vengeful response to his conviction and to the refusal of Governor Jackson to grant clemency or to commute his sentence, on 09 September 1927 Stephenson released lists of public officials who were or had been on the Klan payroll.

The Klan defeated the Republican governor of Oregon and ran a Democrat who worked with a Republican legislature, Seventy percent of Oregon's voters were Republicans

The rise of the Klan

Perhaps the most menacing trend during the decade was the rise of anti-Catholic bigotry and racist vigilante movements, which established a firm foothold in the state. The Ku Klux Klan formed chapters in Portland, Eugene, Medford, Roseburg, and other Oregon communities. Its members donned robes and paraded through streets igniting crosses and intimidating Catholics and minorities. In 1921 Medford Klan organizers perpetrated "necktie-parties" (near lynchings) against two African Americans who they suspected of bootlegging as well as against a piano dealer who had filed a lawsuit against a Klan member. Deploring the incidents, Governor Ben Olcott declared that:

"Oregon needs no masked night riders, no invisible empire, to control her affairs.... The true spirit of Americanism resents bigotry, abhors secret machinations and terrorism, and demands that those who speak for and in her cause speak openly, with their faces to the sun."

But the Klan's rise in the early 1920s carried considerable political clout. In 1923, the Klan-dominated Oregon Legislature passed an Alien Land Law that barred Japanese land ownership. The new law came on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Japanese people could not be naturalized citizens. And, the law passed despite the fact that Japanese Americans held less than one percent of Oregon land in 1920. Similar laws passed in Washington, California, and many other states.

The Ku Klux Klan enjoyed a warm reception from many Oregon communities in the 1920s as Catholics and minorities suffered both blatant and subtle bigotry.
The Ku Klux Klan enjoyed a warm reception from many Oregon communities in the 1920s as Catholics and minorities suffered both blatant and subtle bigotry.

The organization also endorsed an initiative measure to require children of ages 8 to 16 to go to public schools. While other reasons were given, a primary impetus of the measure was to wipe out Catholic schools in the state. Approximately seven percent of Oregon students attended private schools, many of which were Catholic. Most of the state's newspaper editors either supported the measure or remained neutral.

Turning the Progressive tool of direct legislation into a reactionary weapon, supporters convinced Oregon voters to pass the compulsory school measure by a vote of 115,506 to 103,685 in the November 1922 election. They also managed to get Walter Pierce, who supported the measure, elected governor, replacing Ben Olcott, a staunch opponent.

The Oregon Legislature decided not to enforce the measure until the courts ruled on it. Finally, the United States Supreme Court in "Pierce vs. Society of Sisters" unanimously ruled in 1925 that the bill was an unconstitutional violation of parents' rights to send their children to schools of their own choice. By the time of the ruling, the Klan largely had faded from prominence, a victim of internal conflicts, corruption rumors, and the second thoughts of Oregonians.

It seems that the Black Republicans have forgotten about the easy alliance between the Klan and the Republican Party, which was never as open as it was in the 1920's. The Democrats certainly have a long and nasty relationship with the Klan, but only in Republican dominated states, did the Klan actually take power. That's not something Frances Rice mentions when she's posting up at Free Republic and buying radio time.

What they also don't mention is the Southern Strategy

In addition to the splits in the Democratic Party, the population movements of World War II had a significant effect on the makeup of the South. The addition of many Northern transplants significantly bolstered the base of the Republican Party in the South. In the post-war Presidential campaigns, Republicans did best in the fastest-growing states of the South with the most Northern settlers. In the 1952, 1956 and 1960 elections, Virginia, Tennessee and Florida went Republican all three times, while Louisiana went Republican in 1956, and Texas twice voted for Eisenhower and once for Kennedy. In 1956, Eisenhower received 48.9% of the Southern vote, and he became the second Republican in history (after Grant) to get a plurality of Southern votes.

Many states' rights Democrats were attracted to the 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater was notably more conservative than previous Republican nominees, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower. Goldwater's principle opponent in the primary election, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, was widely seen as representing the more moderate (and pro-Civil Rights), Northern wing of the party (See Rockefeller Republican, Goldwater Republican). Rockefeller's defeat in the primary is seen as one turning point towards a more conservative Republican party, and the beginning of a long decline for moderate and especially liberal Republicans. Goldwater’s primary victory is also seen as a shift of the center of Republican power to the West and South

In the 1964 presidential race, Barry Goldwater ran a very conservative campaign (sometimes described as libertarian), part of which was an emphasis on "states' rights". As a conservative, Goldwater broadly opposed strong action by the federal government. In his state of Arizona, Barry Goldwater has been a co-founder of the state NAACP and had led the campaign to desegregate the state’s public schools. However, although he had supported all previous federal Civil Rights legislation, after much consideration, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and second, and that it was an interference with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose. This States' Rights stand has been interpreted as an appeal to racist white Southern Democrats, and undoubtedly attracted many. However, this vote proved devastating to Goldwater’s campaign, contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964. One Johnson ad, “Confessions of a Republican” ran in the North, and associated Goldwater with the Ku Klux Klan. At the same time, Johnson’s campaign in the Deep South publicized Goldwater’s full history on civil rights. In the end, Johnson swept the election, including a significant majority in the South. However, besides his home state of Arizona, Goldwater managed to pick off five Deep South states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, almost certainly because of his anti-civil rights position.

At this time, Senator Goldwater’s position was at odds with most of the prominent members of the Republican Party, dominated at that time by the East Coast Episcopalian Establishment. A higher percentage of the Republican Party supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did the Democratic Party, as they had on all previous Civil Rights legislation. The Southern Democrats often opposed their Northern Party mates--and their Presidents (Kennedy and Johnson) on civil rights issues. The point man in the Senate for delivering the votes to break the filibuster against the measure by 17 Democrats and one Republican was conservative Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois.

[edit]

Roots of the Southern Strategy

In the election of 1968, Richard Nixon saw the cracks in the Solid South as an opportunity to tap into a group of voters that had heretofore been beyond the reach of the Republican Party. The United States was undergoing a very turbulent period in 1968. The founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and most influential member of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. His death was followed by black rioting throughout the country. Martin Luther King’s policy of non-violence was being challenged by more radical blacks and by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. There were protests, often violent, against the Vietnam War. The drug subculture was causing alarm in many sectors. Nixon, with the aid of Harry Dent and then South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who had switched to the Republican party in 1964, ran on a campaign of states' rights and "law and order". Many liberals accused Nixon of pandering to racist Southern whites, especially with regards to his "states' rights" and "law and order" stands.

As a result, every state that had been in the Confederacy, except Texas, voted for either Nixon or George Wallace (a Southern Democrat running as an independent), despite a strong tradition of supporting Democrats. Meanwhile, Nixon parlayed a wide perception as a moderate into wins in other states, taking a solid majority in the electoral college. He was able to appear this way to most Americans, because the strategy often consisted of code words that meant nothing to most Americans, but were emotionally charged for those in the south. Because of this result, the election of 1968 is sometimes cited as a realigning election, but such a belief also ignores the fact that the Democratic Party swept every Southern state except for Virginia in the Presidential election of 1976, after the last admitted advocates of the Southern Strategy had left positions of influence within the Republican Party. Others argue that the strong Democratic showing in the South in 1976 was the exception that proves the rule, and was directly influenced by the fallout of the Watergate scandal, in which Southerner Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent Ford and a disgraced Republican Administration.

[edit]

Evolution of the Southern Strategy

As civil rights grew more accepted throughout the nation, basing a general election strategy on appeals to "states' rights" as a naked play against civil rights laws would have resulted in a national backlash. In addition, the idea of "states' rights" superficially took on the patina of a broader meaning than simply a reference to civil rights laws, eventually encompassing federalism as the means to forestall Federal intervention in the culture wars.

On August 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan, as a candidate, delivered a speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi at the annual Neshoba County Fair. Reagan excited the crowd wild when he announced, "I believe in states' rights. I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them." Philadelphia was the scene of the June 21, 1964 murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, and this speech has used by critics to demonstrate Reagan’s alleged hidden racist message. However, it is difficult to argue that the choice of site in itself was inherently racist. The Neshoba County Fair has been a popular campaign stop for presidential candidates, and has also been visited by John Glenn, Jack Kemp and Michael Dukakis during their respective Presidential campaigns.

Charges of racism have been lodged in subsequent Republican races for the House and Senate in the South. The Willie Horton commercials used by supporters of George H.W. Bush in the election of 1988 were considered by many to be racist. Other examples include the 1990 re-election campaign of Jesse Helms, which attacked his opponent's alleged support of "racial quotas," most notably through an ad in which a white person's hands are seen crumpling a letter indicating that he was denied a job because of the color of his skin. Most professional academics—historians, political scientists, sociologists, culture critics, etc.––as well as Democratic party supporters argue that support for what conservative acolytes depict as a new "Federalism" in the Republican party platform is, and always has been, nothing but a code word for the politics of resentment, of which racism provides the fuel.

Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, reported in the October 6, 2005 edition of the New York Times of a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Prof. Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discusses politics in the South:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say 'nigger'—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger." [1]

The thing is that Black Republicans have to ignore a lot of history to try and convince black voters to vote Republican. They have to create a partial history which bears little resemblence to reality. Much of what they claim simply distorts history and is clearly not true.

But why did they do it? Because of a bizarre mix of delusion and off-kilter racial appeals. But more on that later.

posted by Steve @ 2:43:00 AM

Forget about Osama

Next stop, Pakistan

US threatened to bomb Pakistan 'back to stone age' after 9/11: Musharraf

Thu Sep 21, 4:15 PM ET

NEW YORK (AFP) - The United States threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" in 2001 unless it cooperated in the US-led war on terror, President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview.

Musharraf, whose support for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan was instrumental in the fall of the hardline Taliban regime after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said the threat came from former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.

The Pakistani leader said the comments were delivered to his intelligence director, according to selected transcripts of the interview with CBS television's "60 Minutes" investigative news programme due to be broadcast Sunday.

"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the stone age'," Musharraf said.

"I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf says in the interview. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that's what I did."

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Pakistan abandoned its support for the Taliban, which was sheltering Al-Qaeda leaders, and became a front-line ally in the US-led "war on terror."

Pakistan has arrested several senior Al-Qaeda members including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 attacks.

The South Asian country has also deployed around 80,000 troops on the rugged border with Afghanistan to hunt pro-Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants who sneaked into the area after fleeing the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Armitage's alleged threat also demanded that Pakistan turn over border posts and bases for the US military to use in the war in Afghanistan, which ended with the Taliban regime's collapse in late 2001.

Other "ludicrous" demands required Pakistan to suppress domestic expressions of support for militant attacks on US targets, according to the CBS, which produces 60 Minutes

As long as Bush is in office Osama will remain free. Karl Rove is talking up some "October Surprise", but it's unlikely to be Osama. Once Armitage laid on the blackmail, the Pakistanis have given us the help we demanded, and not one ounce more.

Oh yeah, attacking Iran might be an October surprise, for US troops who will face a massive uprising if so much as one bomb falls on Iran.

posted by Steve @ 12:30:00 AM

Politics on a wire

Republicans Reach Deal on Detainee Bill

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: September 22, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans reached agreement Thursday on legislation governing the treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects after weeks of debate that divided Republicans heading into the midterm elections.

Under the deal, President Bush dropped his demand that Congress redefine the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, handing a victory to a group of Republicans, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose opposition had created a showdown over a central aspect of the rules for battling terrorism.

The administration’s original stance had run into fierce resistance from former and current military lawyers and Mr. Bush’s former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They argued, as did Mr. McCain and the other two senators leading the resistance, that any redefinition would invite other nations to alter their obligations and endanger American troops captured abroad.

“There is no doubt that the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved,” said Mr. McCain, who was tortured during more than five years as a prisoner in North Vietnam.

Members of Congress and administration officials announced the deal after emerging from a tense and intricate all-day meeting in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office in a Senate building, saying they would try to push it through in the five days Congress is scheduled to meet before lawmakers leave to campaign.

A lot of people on Kos are pissed, and rightly so, but they didn't understand two things.

One, there probably isn't enough time for this to pass, reconcile with the House and then go to the White House, same with the wiretapping bill. It's going to take some effort to get them through, and there are more than a few people who don't want any vote on this at all. The compromise ie enough for them. A bill can wait.

Two, this isn't about torture. It never was. It was about Bush punishing the GOP for running from him. He was going to make them pay for their "independence" by forcing this. I wondered why he would bring this up when it would bring a nasty debate up during the election.

Well, that was it. He wanted the Dems to make outraged noises. They didn't. I wish this was about morality, but it isn't. It was a Rove trap. He wanted to make the Dems look weak and make them the party of terrorism.

No matter what the bill said, McCain and Bush were at each other, allowing Bush some of his scariest performances of the year.

"I'm trying to protect your family, Matt" was my favorite moment of creepitude. The local papers were whining that Chavez called Bush satan, but half the UN clapped. And one should take a message from that. Even an insane insult is applauded about Bush, one of the most despised leaders on the planet.

This is not a debate about torture. That's coming next year in a House and hopefully, Senate committee next year. This is a debate about seeing if the Dems would fall for a trap.

The White House is as cynical as a Hollywood press agent. They will push any issue for advantage, even torturing prisoners. Even as written, much of it will not survive legal challenge. But when you start getting angry, remember, these people aren't concerned with the law, but with winning. And that is all they care about.

posted by Steve @ 12:15:00 AM

ABC 7 Eyewitness News

Now we have Tom Kean Jr. lying about his spokesperson blogging on Blue Jersey.

Come on, we have IP addresses. You can't lie about this when there is proof and reporters have the same IP on their e-mails. Jesus.

This campaign is a shell.

posted by Steve @ 12:09:00 AM

Stealing an election, Al?

Gimmie that vote

Al Wynn Brags of Stealing the Election

by Matt Stoller, Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 01:46:03 PM EST

posted by Steve @ 8:55:00 PM

Don't tell anyone

This isn't me. I wasn't
there

Steele Calls for Black Republicans to Drop Ads

Thursday September 21, 2006 11:06am

BALTIMORE (AP) - Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele is calling on a group running radio ads encouraging black Marylanders to vote Republican to take their ad of the air.

The National Black Republican Association's radio ad that aired in Baltimore identifies Martin Luther King Junior as a Republican and blames Democrats for founding the Ku Klux Klan. Democrats are complaining that ads distort history.

Steele calls the ad "insulting to Marylanders."

Steele, a black Republican running for Senate, says he has not heard heard the spot, but does not oppose Republican efforts to assert the party's real place in history.
.......................

Why does he hate the ad? It says "vote Republican" and was pissing people off with it's lies

posted by Steve @ 8:09:00 PM

A miserable thing

This is from a Michigan football supporters site

A Post We Wish We Didn't Have To Write

Last June, we put up a post about Sgt. Adam Knox of Whitehall, Ohio, showing off his Buckeye pride (see below) in a way even we here at the MZone could support. And while you know our history of poking fun at our Big 10 rivals to the south, in that post we said, "It's pictures like this that should make us all -- Bucks and Wolverines alike -- appreciate how fortunate we are to be debating college football in the blogosphere while folks like Sgt. Knox are putting their lives on the line day in and day out. A sincere thanks to him and his fellow soldiers."


Thus, it is with great sadness that we discovered on Deadspin that Sgt. Knox was killed over the weekend in Iraq when his patrol came under fire from enemy forces. He was just 21 years old.

Something for all of us to think about this weekend when we get too high after a big victory or too low after a bad call. This puts such "important" things in painful perspective.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the Knox family.

posted by Steve @ 10:58:00 AM

HUD chief said told staff to fund allies

I work for King George, not the American
people. What can they do for me?

Exclusive: HUD staff told to favor allies

Inquiry finds no proof aides heeded Jackson's urgings 07:07 AM CDT on Thursday, September 21, 2006

By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson urged top aides to take contractors' politics into account when handing out grants and deals, an internal department review has found, though there is no "direct evidence" that favoritism actually occurred.

The department's inspector general began investigating Mr. Jackson after he boasted in a Dallas speech that he'd once scuttled a deal because the would-be contractor disparaged President Bush.

The 340-page report – issued so far only to Mr. Jackson and a handful of lawmakers but shown Wednesday to The Dallas Morning News – revealed no hard proof of favoritism at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Jackson, former head of the Dallas Housing Authority, claimed full exoneration. But detractors called it a scathing portrait of cronyism that cast doubts on his judgment and integrity.

"We found no direct evidence that political favoritism played any role in awarding grants or contracts from the Secretary of HUD or any of his subordinates," said the report from the inspector general, who reports to Congress, not the agency.

Several top HUD officials – themselves political appointees – testified that Mr. Jackson told senior staff at a meeting a few months before the April 28 speech in Dallas that they should consider contractors' political leanings. He urged them to give contracts to Bush supporters and voiced concerns about any going to active Democratic donors, the aides said.

"I have never touched a contract," Mr. Jackson said Wednesday, in his first interview about the furor his Dallas speech sparked. "I just ad-libbed a little more than I should have, and I regret that."

Soon after the Dallas speech, Mr. Jackson apologized, saying he had made up the story to liven up a talk to minority real estate executives.

He and aides variously described it as "anecdotal," "hypothetical" and a "joke." But the investigation revealed that key elements were true.

HUD's chief procurement officer, Assistant Deputy Secretary Aronetta "Jo" Baylor, told investigators she'd jolted awake at 4:30 one morning, 12 days after the Dallas speech, recalling an incident that fit Mr. Jackson's description, except that the contractor had suffered no penalties for his impertinence.

They'd been in the lobby at HUD headquarters, and bumped into W. Brian Maillian, head of Whitestone Capital Group, a minority-owned firm that sells assets for government agencies. He had written a proposal and won a contract after 10 years of effort – all part of the description Mr. Jackson used in his Dallas speech.

Mr. Maillian expressed thanks for a $3.7 million contract and pointedly said he didn't care for the president.

"Mr. Jackson rolled his eyes," Ms. Baylor testified, and a bit later, "Mr. Jackson said to me that it really bothered him that people [expletive] dog-out the president but still want contracts and money from the administration, that it drives him nuts."

Mr. Jackson told investigators he didn't recall the incident. Mr. Maillian said he's well known around HUD as a Democrat but didn't recall making the remark, and had no complaints – "Not even close."

His contract was extended in January and is now worth $6.1 million.

Mr. Jackson, told investigators the story he'd told in Dallas was "clearly false."

"I've gotten to be 60 years old. I've never done anything illegal or unethical, and I didn't do it this time, other than shoot off my mouth. That's what I did and I made a serious mistake doing it," he testified. "I lied and I regret having done that, and my family and I have paid a price, but I can tell you that it did not happen."

Mr. Jackson, a longtime Bush friend, spent three years in HUD's No. 2 job before being sworn in to lead the $32 billion agency in April 2004. He and scores of underlings testified that political considerations have played no role in contract decisions.

The investigation found a few instances of delayed or curtailed contracts involving Democratic vendors but no proof that politics was to blame.

Such considerations were discussed among top HUD officials – though they were not quick to admit that to investigators.

In an initial interview on May 17, for instance, HUD Chief of Staff Camille Pierce said there was no political litmus test and she never heard Mr. Jackson express sentiments akin to those he expressed in his Dallas speech.

"He doesn't care whether it [a contractor] is a Democrat or a Republican. That doesn't matter," she told investigators.

In a follow-up interview on June 8, investigators confronted her with testimony from Cathy MacFarlane, who resigned that month as HUD's assistant secretary for public affairs. Ms. MacFarlane told investigators that at a senior staff meeting, Mr. Jackson "made a statement to the effect that it was important to consider presidential supporters when you are considering the selected candidates for discretionary contracts."

And Ms. MacFarlane told investigators, "I think it was a political [appointee] talking to a political, saying if all things are equal, you're giving out a contract, give it out to the family, you know."

The testimony stirred Ms. Pierce's memory.

"He did say that he did not want contracts awarded – he did say something about political groups, maybe to Democrats or something like that," she said in the follow-up interview, though she added that "if I had thought he was serious, I would have gone in and said, sir, that's ridiculous."

posted by Steve @ 10:42:00 AM

How Lieberman lost

This is an excerpt from a GQ article online about the Lieberman-Lamont race

THE KISS OF DEATH

How the frenetic, heated, and borderline-insane race to oust Democratic Senate hawk Joe Lieberman brought new meaning to the term “partisan politics”

The final leg of the campaign starts early, in already sweltering heat. Ned Lamont, his wife, Annie, and their aide-de-camp Marc Bradley stand outside the Messiah Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, waiting for Congresswoman Maxine Waters to arrive. Outsiders tend to think of Connecticut as leafy, white, and wealthy, but its three biggest cities—Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport—are hardscrabble, black, and poor. Which means they’re rich in Democratic primary voters, and on this morning the biggest collection of those voters is at church. As dozens of parishioners stream by in their colorful Sunday best, Ned stands in his somber business suit, looking awkward and anxious. He turns to Marc and says they should go in and sit down, but Marc insists that they wait for Maxine to usher them in. “Tom was very clear about that,” he says, referring to Tom Swan, Lamont’s bulldog of a campaign manager. Eventually, Maxine arrives and leads them to their pew. She follows the sermon with her Bible open, while Ned and Annie survey the scene, looking pleasant and a little uncomfortable. Then Maxine stands up and introduces Ned—an extremely wealthy former selectman—as a man “speakin’ my language” because of his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war.

“Morning, everybody,” Ned says to the congregation at Messiah Baptist, without waiting for Messiah to answer back. “I’m Ned Lamont, and I’m running for U.S. Senate.”

Six months ago, Ned was just another Democrat outraged at Bush’s war and at the way in which the White House, as he saw it, avoided taking responsibility for the disaster it had created in Iraq by branding as unpatriotic anyone who dared criticize the direction of American policy. What ultimately persuaded him to run, though, was when Congressman Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet, called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and in the national conversation that followed, Joe Lieberman declared, “We undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” To Ned, this was the final straw—not just a Democrat saying he still supported military involvement in Iraq, but a Democrat implying there was no place in America for the questioning of a policy that a majority of Americans now disagreed with.

It’s somewhere between forbidding and impossible for a primary challenger to defeat an incumbent senator, and in early May, Lamont trailed Lieberman by forty-six points in the polls. But progressive Democrats are as angry now as they’ve been in generations, about Iraq and Katrina and about a centrist Democratic philosophy that they believe is gutless in its unwillingness to confront a failed Bush regime. And when Ned entered the race, Joe quickly became a lightning rod for that rage.

The liberal blogosphere, spoiling for an intraparty fight, discovered, vetted, and then put all their chips down on Ned’s campaign. National sites like Daily Kos, MyDD, and Firedoglake raised money and created buzz, and Tim Tagaris, Lamont’s young Internet director (and an ex-Marine), took online strategy from virtual to hard-core. In baggy shorts and a backward baseball cap, Tagaris marshaled a thoroughly obsessed band of local bloggers into a stunningly effective combat platoon. Among other psyops, they created the now infamous float dubbed “The Kiss”—a giant papier-mâché depiction of the smooch Bush laid on Lieberman after his State of the Union address last year. “The Kiss” dogged Lieberman at public events, humiliating him, infuriating his supporters, and cracking up passersby. And a squad of video-camera-wielding locals with names like Spazeboy and Connecticut Bob disseminated footage of these guerrilla operations to the blogosphere (at no cost via YouTube), and a brand-new form of political combat was born.

posted by Steve @ 2:29:00 AM

You still wind up dead

PASGT Body Armor


ChickenPlate body Armor

FactCheck.org alleges false claims in VoteVets/Hillsman ad
by AlphaGeek
Wed Sep 20, 2006 at 09:21:22 PM PDT

I like the VoteVets "AK47 & body armor" ad by Bill Hillsman. I liked it a LOT. It was almost too good to be true.

Turns out I was right -- it is too good to be true. FactCheck.org alleges that, in pursuit of a hard-hitting political message, the VoteVets ad is misleading or downright incorrect in several areas.

False Claims About Body Armor

A new group falsely accuses Republicans of voting against body armor for troops. Both sides have misled the public about this issue.

After years of listening to Republican lies, I want to believe that the Democrats are the "good guys", dedicated to telling the truth and exposing corruption. I know that this is never going to be 100% true, but I can't help feeling let down when we stoop to the level of the lying Republicans.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.factcheck.org/...

A few key excerpts:

Summary

A new ad claims Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia "voted against giving our troops" modern body armor. He did no such thing. The ad cites a vote on an appropriations amendment that had nothing whatever to do with body armor.

The ad also claims troops were sent to Iraq with flak vests "left over from the Vietnam war," another falsehood. The ad actually shows an improved vest that wasn't available until the 1980's.

The newly formed group responsible for the ad, VoteVets.org, is reported to be considering similar ads attacking several other Republican incumbents, and has already announced their intention to start running them against Sen.Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

This is a nasty tactic - accusing an opponent of playing with the lives of American troops - and both sides have stooped to it. This line of attack actually began with Republicans in 2004, when President Bush's campaign repeatedly accused his Democratic opponent John Kerry of voting against body armor.

We de-bunked Bush's claim at the time, but now there is even less excuse to make such an accusation because later investigations have made it clear that the initial shortage of up-to-date body armor was not the result of any vote in Congress, but instead was a classic supply-chain foul-up. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office laid the shortage to the inability of manufacturers to meet the Pentagon's sudden increase in demand, and logistical mistakes by the Pentagon in getting the gear shipped to Iraq and distributed.

This is a well-researched article which clearly explains how the VoteVets ad is 'fact-impaired'. Before donating money to support the airing of this ad (which, admittedly, is powerfully moving) ask yourself if we really need to lie and as outrageously as the Republicans to win, and whether the ethical and moral cost is worth it.

I know we can do better. Are we so desperate to win that we must abandon our principles and attempt to deceive the voters into supporting our causes? I thought that was something that Republicans do, not Democrats. America deserves better than Republican-style lying with a Democratic paint job.

You know, by the Woodland Camo design, it is clear that it isn't a Vietnam-era vest, which was olive drab. But I think I can forgive a 25 year old for not knowing it was a PASGT vest, he wasn't even born until 15 years after Vietnam. But if he got the era wrong, the AK rounds make the point that Fact Check misses.

American troops were sent to patrol Baghdad with those PASGT vests, and at points without adequate bullets. American units, converted to infantry, had to patrol with AK's. A Connecticut unit was deployed with M-16's instead of M-4's.

Congress could have done what families did, find the money to buy the vests commercially. Thousands of soldiers had to buy their own vests, and then be reimbursed later. So to nitpick on the details is meaningless. Should they have been more careful? Sure.

But remember the real issue is that US soldiers were sent to patrol Iraq with vests that did not protect them. It was a US vest, it was worn in Iraq and AK rounds ripped through it.

Now, one could add extra plates, but in 120 degree heat, that protection could kill you of heat stroke.

posted by Steve @ 1:50:00 AM

About that Osama

Just chillin' in my crib in Waziristan

A Disastrous Disconnect
by georgia10
Wed Sep 20, 2006 at 07:22:43 PM PDT

CNN:

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush said Wednesday he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader's location.

"Absolutely," Bush said.

The president made the comments Wednesday in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. (Watch Bush state his position on Iran and the war on terror -- 18:06)

Although Pakistan has said it won't allow U.S. troops to operate within its territory, "we would take the action necessary to bring him to justice."

But Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told reporters Wednesday at the United Nations that his government would oppose any U.S. action in its territory.

"We wouldn't like to allow that at all. We will do it ourselves," he said.

First, let's talk about the tragic hypocrisy of Bush promising action on bin Laden even though he has a proven track record of inaction and deliberate indifference towards the world's most wanted terrorist.

Second, let's talk about Pakistan. That "ally" that has struck a deal with the Taliban, that "ally" who was caught on tape admitting that if bin Laden was caught, he wouldn't be taken into custody as long as he was a "peaceful citizen." For all the talk of Pakistan's "cooperation" in the War on Terror, if bin Laden is located in Pakistan, are we going to have another Tora Bora on our hands? Because outsourcing the job worked so well last time...

Next, let's talk about coordination. Does anyone else find it incredibly disturbing that five years into the bin Laden manhunt, the United States and Pakistan obviously have yet to reach a consensus on how exactly to pursue the guy?

They aren't only not on the same page, they aren't even reading the same book when it comes to contingency planning.

I wonder what George Bush and Perez Musharaff will talk about when they meet this week. You know, besides selling Pakistan our F-16s, and helping them develop nuclear technology, all while our great "ally" in the war on terror seals its borders to us and jeopardizes the capture of the most wanted man alive.

If this were a competent president, the who, what, when and where of bin Laden's capture would be the central topic of discussion.

But, alas, as evidenced by five years of failure, "competency" and "foresight" are two concepts that are entirely foreign to this administration.

And their troops shoot at US patrols who cross over the border, because they hate Americans. But if Bush let that figleaf drop, he'd be lucky not to lose a hundred seats in the House.

posted by Steve @ 1:41:00 AM

Sound familiar?

Mr Bush on an aircraft
carrier

Crime-Fighting Mayor Finds Himself Embroiled in Charges

By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: September 21, 2006

JACKSON, Miss., Sept. 20 — Most politicians who run afoul of the law are accused of bribery, kickbacks or ethics violations.

But not here in the state capital, where Mayor Frank Melton, an erratic figure who took office in July 2005, does nothing by the book. Mr. Melton has disdained such basic functions as drawing up the city’s budget in favor of cruising through the city’s worst neighborhoods in a police department “mobile command center.”

He is known for carrying two guns, wearing a police jacket and a badge, searching cars, knocking on doors and raiding nightclubs while brandishing a large stick.

Mr. Melton’s activities now threaten to derail his career. Last week, he was indicted on eight charges, including burglary, malicious mischief and causing a minor to commit a felony. Prosecutors said he had illegally carried sidearms and improperly helped demolish a duplex he says was a crack house.

Although no drugs were found in the house, occupied by a man with a history of mostly petty crimes, the mayor’s sledgehammer-wielding crew took down its front wall.

Despite the indictment, the city’s frustration with crime has kept the mayor a popular figure. At the City Council meeting on Tuesday, he was bolstered by people chanting, “Fight, Frank, fight,” and criticizing other officials for inaction.

The mayor portrays himself as a man whose mission, lowering the city’s crime rate, has been hampered by the slow-moving wheels of government.

“The only mistake that I made was a procedural mistake,” Mr. Melton said when asked this week about the duplex demolition. He did not take the time to have the house declared a nuisance, he said, because young children next door were being exposed to the drug trade.

In June, he declared a state of emergency for the city, using the latitude this gave him to impose a curfew on the homeless.

Yet it is not clear that Mr. Melton’s unorthdox tactics have had any beneficial effect. This year, crime in Jackson has increased by about 16 percent over the same period in 2005, according to police reports leaked to local newspapers. (The city generally declines to release statistics.)

In April, the Hinds County district attorney, Faye Peterson, was forced to drop murder charges against an accused gang member, she said, when it came to light that Mr. Melton had provided an apartment and cash to a crucial prosecution witness.

Mayor Melton, who is NOT a police officer and never has been, has taken to ignoring the law to attack crime.

Oh yeah, the home he destroyed belonged to a mentally ill man and there was no evidence of drugs found. And it may not actually be affecting crime.

Sound like the war on terror to you? Fuck up the wrong guy because he possibly might be guilty, and then live with the messy consequences?

posted by Steve @ 1:26:00 AM

Wow, how stupid could you be?

You were trained by who?

Israel 'trains Iraqi Kurd forces'
By Magdi Abdelhadi
Arab affairs analyst, BBC News

The BBC has obtained evidence that Israelis have been giving military training to Kurds in northern Iraq.

A report on the BBC TV programme Newsnight showed Israeli experts in Kurdish areas of north Iraq, drilling soldiers in shooting techniques.

Kurdish officials have refused to comment on the report and Israel has denied it knows of any involvement.

The revelation is set to cause enormous problems for the Kurds, not only in Iraq but also in the wider region.

Inside Iraq as well as in the wider region Israel is seen as an enemy of Arabs and Muslims.

'Against Israeli law'

Kurdish politicians will most likely come under pressure to explain what their semi-autonomous government has been up too.

Israeli security experts who spoke to the BBC said they could not have worked inside Kurdistan without the knowledge of the Kurdish authorities.

The news will most probably increase the tension between the Kurds and other Iraqis.

Iraq's neighbours, too, will be outraged.

I wonder how the Sadrists will take this? My bet, not well.

posted by Steve @ 1:04:00 AM

Dee Dee Dee

I guess Dan Gerstein isn't the only idiot in a Republican campaign

The Sockpuppet Has No Sock
by: jmelli
Wed Sep 20, 2006 at 21:39:19 PM EDT

Star Ledger:

Blogger claims Kean campaign is behind anonymous postings
The founder of the liberal political blog Blue Jersey says he’s figured out where some anonymous postings critical of Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez came from — the campaign of Republican candidate Tom Kean Jr.

"Nonsense," said Kean campaign press secretary, Jill Hazelbaker.

Hazelbaker denied the campaign had anything to do with the postings. “Oh, please,” she said. “I’m very busy. I don’t have time to focus on Blue Jersey. ... I don’t blog.”

But Juan Melli, a graduate student at Princeton University who created Blue Jersey (www.bluejersey.net) last year, said today the Internet Protocol address on postings from “cleanupnj” and “usedtobeblue” match Hazelbaker’s.

Besides using a false identity, Melli claimed, the poster pretended to be an “ardent Democrat” while shilling for Kean. “She lied,” he said. “This is a campaign tactic that’s not part of the honest debate.”

Hazelbaker argued that the address Melli said was on the postings is not the campaign’s IP address.

But it is the same IP address that appears on numerous official campaign e-mails sent by Hazelbaker to The Star-Ledger through the course of the campaign.

Hazelbaker said tonight she could not explain why that IP address shows up on her e-mail, but that the campaign’s technical staff assured her Melli had it wrong.

“It’s nonsense. That’s my comment,” Hazelbaker said. “We’re talking about a left-leaning blog whose candidate is imploding. I don’t blog and it wasn’t me. Period.”

I'm sure this was just another one of their many "coincidences".

She's obviously lying and worse, lying to the media. They will soon come to distrust every word from her mouth. One guy has already managed to get into the New York/New Jersey media with this and it will quickly come to define the Kean campaign. First, they commissioned a documentary accussing Menendez of being a crook, despite what prosecutors say. Now, when clearly busted, and the IP number is a public record with a public document which ties back to the owner, she's lying to the same people covering her campaign.

Even worse, the Times and Star Ledger reporters checked the IP of their Kean e-mails and got a bingo. It's fairly easy to check if you know how, and their techies knew how.

Then she called the blogger, Juan Melli, a liar. Yeah, a Princeton grad student has time to lie on Tom Kean.

I covered Bob Menendez back in the day, and knew he would be a Senator. Not because he was dashing or handsome or even a politicial genius. But because he was the only honest man in a room full of crooks. North Jersey politics is sleazy as hell, but Menendez isn't. Think Sopranos without the killing.

Kean Jr. is an empty suit. The US Attorney tried to say Menendez ran some scam on a house a non-profit is using, but that was covered at the time, 1996. His daddy isn't going to get him a Senate seat this year.

posted by Steve @ 12:53:00 AM

They don't love you, Joe

He just wanted a quickie, Joe. Just a quickie
As long as you gave it up, all was good. But
he's not gonna do anything for you

President to visit Greenwich to raise funds

By Neil Vigdor
Staff Writer

Published September 20 2006

GREENWICH -- President Bush may be playing it coy about whom he is supporting in Connecticut's Senate race, but he isn't holding anything back when it comes to raising money for state Republicans.

The Connecticut native will return Monday to his father's Greenwich hometown for the third time during his presidency, headlining a $15,000 per couple GOP luncheon fundraiser at a private home in the Riverside section of Greenwich.

The White House confirmed Bush's visit yesterday but released few details about the event, which a spokesman said was private.

State GOP Chairman George Gallo said the fundraiser will energize the party's faithful.

"We're absolutely excited and ecstatic to have the president of the United States come to Connecticut to support the Republican Party and the Republican team," said Gallo, who is hoping to raise about $400,000 from 30 couples.

Gallo said proceeds will support the party's effort this fall and its entire ticket, including U.S. Senate nominee Alan Schlesinger.

"He's one of our candidates, so absolutely," Gallo said.

Schlesinger, a former Derby mayor and former state representative, is trailing incumbent Joseph Lieberman and Democrat Ned Lamont in the Senate contest. Lieberman, who is running as a petitioning candidate after losing the Democratic primary to Lamont, has historically enjoyed strong Republican support. Bush has declined to endorse Schlesinger, fueling speculation that he is supporting Lieberman.

posted by Steve @ 7:40:00 PM

You can ask or be told

Get the fuck out......

THE BAKER/HAMILTON COMMISSION....Last month we printed a story by Bob Dreyfuss about the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan team headed by longtime Bush family friend James A. Baker III and former 9/11 Commission chair Lee Hamilton. Their charter is to figure out what to do in Iraq, but the ISG's work has been done under such a heavy veil of secrecy that no one has much of an idea of what they'll recommend. Nonetheless, there were clues, and our piece ended with this quote:

"The object of our policy has to be to get our little white asses out of there as soon as possible," another working-group participant told me. To do that, he said, Baker must confront the president "like the way a family confronts an alcoholic. You bring everyone in, and you say, 'Look, my friend, it's time to change.'"

Today, Eli Lake at the New York Sun says that the ISG met with its expert working groups on Monday and were told pretty much the same thing:

According to participants in that meeting, the two chairmen received a blunt assessment this week of viable options for America in Iraq that boiled down to two choices.

One plan would have America begin its exit from Iraq through a phased withdrawal similar to that proposed this spring by Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania and former Marine. Another would have America make a last push to internationalize the military occupation of Iraq and open a high-level dialogue with Syria and Iran to persuade them to end their state-sanctioned policy of aiding terrorists who are sabotaging the elected government in Baghdad.

....The Iraq Study Group is likely to be as influential as the 9/11 commission, which Mr. Hamilton cochaired with a former governor of New Jersey, Thomas Keane. While the Iraq panel is not charged with assigning blame on past policy failures, as the 9/11 commission was, it does have the ability to give new legitimacy to a withdrawal strategy and force the administration's hand on policy.

So: Bush should either plan to withdraw from Iraq or else open up talks with Syria and Iran. It's hard to know which of those two options he'd loathe the most, and even with Baker delivering the bad news it's hard to see Bush agreeing to either course. By the time the ISG delivers its recommendations officially, though, he might not have much of a choice.

I think that day is coming. If you look at the polls, Bush is going to face a hostile House, which means questions will be raised and Bush will look fondly upon his 33-44 percentage approval ratings. But them, the habilitual coward will simply crawl inside his real mommy, a bottle of Jim Beam, and quit. When he says this will be another president's problem, he means it. He just doesn't mean 2009.

posted by Steve @ 7:21:00 PM

They think we's stupid

See, I deserved to be whipped. I was bad

Steele Backer Courts Mfume

Darlene Jackson wants Democrat Kweisi Mfume to consider supporting Republican Michael Steele for Senate, and wrote a startling open letter this morning to Mfume that she distributed to the group she heads, the Black Republican Council of Maryland.

In it, she says prominent black politicians -- including U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings and state Sen. Nathaniel McFadden (D-Baltimore) -- are "walking behind the mule" by supporting Democrat Benjamin Cardin.

Here's an excerpt of her letter:

"Walking behind the mule, these Black democrats got the blues. Michael C. Dawson, in his book Behind the Mule, asserts that 'the foundation of the blues is walking behind the mule way back in slavery time.' Therefore, I submit that Cummings, McFadden and the others need not to walk behind the mule. Mfume, your hard work, extending over four decades, got rid of all that. Now, Cummings and his 2-live crew want to return to the mule."

Jackson's group has been a longtime advocate of Steele's, and routinely writes letters encouraging its membership to get on board the Steele campaign.

Jackson's letter yesterday praised Mfume for his strong showing in the Democratic primary. In predominately African American communities, Mfume won by wide magins, and lost overall by only two percentage points. That's been encouraging to Steele aides, who believe there is a strong desire among black voters to see Maryland send an African American to the U.S. Senate this year, regardless of party affiliation.

Jackson called it a positive sign that Mfume failed to attend Cardin's rally in front of Baltimore City Hall yesterday, where Cummings, McFadden and others pledged their support for the Democrat.

Mfume's reason for missing the rally was unclear. He has hinted strongly that he will be endorsing Cardin, and Cardin said at yesterday's rally he expects Mfume to announce his support soon. But his absence yesterday was noticed.

As Jackson put it, "No one saw you in front of Baltimore City Hall yesterday, shaking hands with the contender-pretender. The truth is the Maryland Democratic Party needs you, now. But why would it risk its loyal support to anoint all white men to the November ticket? Mfume, I say take your time and do what is best for your people even if it means crossing over."

Black Republicans always play the race card when they want you to do something. But when asked to actually stand with black people against their Republican masters, they always fail to do so.

Then, they always insult black Democrats, who have the support of the majority of the community. Do they think these insults work? Do they think that gains support from people or draws their contempt? What they never seem to realize that when they insult popular black officials and then seek to court their voters.

Just because Michael Steele is black doesn't mean he represents the community's interests. You know, most of the time, Jackson and Sharpton ask people to vote based on interests. Even in the contested Brooklyn congressional race, compentence was as much in play as race. Steele has no record of supporting blacks or their interests.

Clarence Thomas played that card, I'm black, support me. But when it came time to support black people, he was nowhere to be found. He even sold out his own sister to make himself look good.

Michael Steele has never stood for the interest of black people, yet assumes he can be black enough to get black voters without delivering for them. Ask Al Wynn how that's going.

posted by Steve @ 5:18:00 PM

Redstate Poll Tax defeated again

Georgia Law Requiring Voters to Show Photo ID Is Thrown Out
Judge Says Some Would Be Disenfranchised; State Plans Appeal

By Darryl Fears and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 20, 2006; Page A06

A state judge yesterday rejected a Georgia law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification, writing in his decision, "This cannot be."

Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. said the law, pushed by Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) to fight voter fraud, violates the state constitution because it disenfranchises citizens who are otherwise qualified to vote.

State officials vowed to appeal Bedford's ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court before the Nov. 7 general election.

The timing of the judge's decision could have political ramifications in Washington. The House is set today to vote on legislation that would require voters in 2008 to present a valid photo identification that "could not have been obtained without proof of citizenship."

The bill is part of a package of measures designed to demonstrate a new get-tough attitude on illegal immigration and border security.

"There have been enough reports over the years of voter fraud that it is time to have a picture ID to ensure the integrity of our voting process," House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said yesterday.

Like the Georgia law, the federal legislation would almost certainly be challenged in court. A coalition of interest and civil rights groups, including the NAACP, AARP, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, denounced the bill yesterday, saying it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of minority and elderly voters.

Georgia's law was challenged by Rosalind Lake, an elderly black woman who was left partially blind after being nearly electrocuted in her home, is unable to drive and could not easily obtain a voter ID, her attorney said.

The lawyer, former governor Roy Barnes, argued that even though the state offered to deliver an ID to Lake's home, it could not do the same for everyone who is similarly challenged.

"We have a low voter participation," said Barnes, a Democrat. "We're going to make it more difficult?"

In previous elections, Georgians could present any one of 17 types of identification with their names and addresses, including a driver's license, utility bill, bank statement or paycheck.

Perdue and other proponents of the law said it is needed to curtail fraud. They cited an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that said 5,000 dead people were listed as having voted in the eight elections preceding 2000.

But the fraud happened primarily in absentee balloting, Barnes said. Under the new law, absentee voters are not required to show identification.

"This is the most sinister scheme I've ever seen," Barnes said, "and it's going on nationwide."

Poor Redstate Erik. He came up with this really cool way to ensure GOP control of the South, by keeping those filthy negroes from voting, and the courts repeatedly stopped them.

Life must suck for you.

posted by Steve @ 4:48:00 PM

Do not play with me

You fuck with me, I will fuck you up

Man bites panda after zoo attack

A drunken Chinese tourist says he bit a panda who attacked him after he jumped into a zoo enclosure to "hug" the bear.

Zhang Xinyan, 35, had drunk four draught beers before deciding to enter the Beijing Zoo pen belonging to six-year-old male panda Gu Gu.

The startled Gu Gu bit both legs of his intruder, who responded by biting "the panda on its back", Mr Zhang was quoted by state media as saying.

Mr Zhang said he had not realised pandas could be violent.

He told the Beijing Morning Post that he had come to the Chinese capital "only to see the pandas".

"The seven-hour train ride was exhausting, and I drank bottles of beer when I arrived then had a nap," he added.

Punishment

The newspaper said Mr Zhang had a "sudden urge" to touch Gu Gu with his hand, so he jumped over the waist-high railing into the enclosure.


No one ever said they would bite people. I just wanted to touch it
Zhang Xinyan

"When he got closer and was undiscovered, he reached out to hug it," the newspaper added.

Mr Zhang was bitten first on his right leg, and then on his left.

posted by Steve @ 4:17:00 PM

He is not a JEW

See, I eat them, I'm not a JEW


George Allen is a pig (no pun intended)
by John in DC - 9/20/2006 11:35:00 AM

Salon's quote of the day:

Virginia Sen. George Allen, explaining how news that his grandfather was Jewish is "just an interesting nuance to my background":

"I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops."

Where are Abe Foxman and the ADL on this?

Wow.

He really has issues with his Jewish background. He can't be a JEW. Jews are not what George Allen is about. Jews are weak and nerdy and he's a man's man. A son of the South, not some JEW.

This is so fucking sad it's beyond words.

posted by Steve @ 12:30:00 PM