Intelligence Squad

Bush finds his inner human

2006-04-30T15:27:00.000-04:00

These guys in the Bush administration are so funny.

A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated
humanely by their own governments, officials said.
Administration officials have said they hope eventually to transfer or release many of the roughly 490 suspects now held at Guantánamo. As of February, military officials said, the Pentagon was ready to repatriate more than 150 of the detainees once
arrangements could be made with their home countries.

So now the US is concerned about whether the detainees will be treated humanely?

You can't make this stuff up.

More of That Good News From Iraq

2006-04-29T19:18:00.000-04:00

The Iraqis are not exactly feeling "liberated"...

Baghdad -- A majority of Iraqis say their country is in dismal economic shape and getting worse, with 3 of 4 respondents also describing security in the country as poor, according to a new poll conducted by a conservative American think tank.
The poll reveals a population with little optimism about its economic future. The findings show that Iraqis believe jobs are harder to find, electrical service is poorer, and corruption has increased dramatically since last year. And 62 percent of respondents said Iraq is more politically divided today than in the past.

Fat Hypocritical Piece of DooDoo

2006-04-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill., center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a new conference at a local gas station in Washington, Thursday, April 27, 2006 to discuss the recent rise in gas prices. Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive back the few block back to the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The Baby With the Bathwater

2006-04-27T09:17:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, April 26 —The Federal Emergency Management Agency was so
fundamentally dysfunctional during Hurricane Katrina that Congress should abolish it and create a new disaster response agency from scratch, according to a draft of bipartisan recommendations proposed by a Senate committee.

Not necessary. Just get competent people to run it, let it report to the president, and give it a bigger budget.

The new agency, which would still be part of the Department of Homeland Security, should be more powerful, with additional components that would give it a budget twice as big as FEMA's, the report's draft recommendations say.
It would assume functions spread throughout the department, like preparing for disasters or terrorist attacks, protecting the nation's infrastructure and distributing grants to state and local governments. And during major catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina, the agency's director would report directly to the president.

Uh...right. Like I was saying. But forget the Homeland security connection. Let it be a free agent like it used to be -- when it was effective, like under Bill Clinton.

Another Year of the Black Republicans

2006-04-26T18:22:00.000-04:00

Every couple of years we get a "Will this be the year the GOP makes inroads with blacks?" news cycle.

WASHINGTON - Ken Blackwell is a man on a mission. A hulking former college
football player who currently serves as Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Blackwell is running this year to become Ohio’s first African-American governor. And he faces his first test in achieving this feat when he squares off next week in a competitive GOP primary, which he’s favored to win.

He isn’t the only one on a mission, though. Two years after Illinois Democrat Barack Obama was elected to the Senate (becoming the third African-American since Reconstruction to serve in that chamber), the Republican Party is featuring four top-tier African-American candidates -- Blackwell, Keith Butler in Michigan, Michael Steele in Maryland and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania. All of them are running for either a Senate seat or governorship in states with sizable black populations.

Yes, a black Republican or two could get elected, even statewide, if s/he is willing to adopt positions harmful to the vast bulk of black Americans. The number of such candidates is typically small, but no one should ever say never.

The more important thing is this: will they do it by convincing significant numbers of blacks to vote against their own interests, a la working class whites voting for the GOP? That would be tragic. If they do it by convincing Republican voters that it's safe to vote for a black, that's one thing. But if they do it by conning a significant number of superficial blacks into voting for whoever has black skin, that would be a sad development. Blackwell, the asshole, and Steele, the shucker-and-jiver, are trying to be of the first type. Swann, with zero political experience whatsoever, is trying to be the second type. I don't have a strong read on Butler, but my sense is that he's simply on a personal crusade, and he has no idea or concern about who actually votes for him.

The Remaking of New Orleans

2006-04-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

Great to know Bush has a "black" man deciding the fate of to New Orleans' public housing residents:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson shed little light Monday on the future of public housing in hurricane-battered New Orleans, but said that “only the best residents” of the former St. Thomas housing complex should be allowed into the new mixed-income development that replaced it.
SNIP
“Some of the people shouldn’t return,” Jackson said. “The (public housing) developments were gang-ridden by some of the most notorious gangs in this country. People hid and took care of those persons because they took care of them. Only the best residents should return. Those who paid rent on time, those who held a job and those who worked.
SNIP
“I’m a little disturbed that even today they want to bring a racial component into the hurricane. This isn’t about racism, this is about people suffering,” said Jackson, pointing to the large number of Vietnamese fishers along the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods were ruined by the storm. “It’s important (to remember) that everybody suffered in this disaster, not just black people. It bothers me tremendously when I see the so-called leadership in the black community, the liberal community zeroing in (on) how much more difficult it was for African-Americans than it was for white Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans.”
SNIP
Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, the future of the 10 public housing complexes in New Orleans remains an open question. Times have never been tougher for low-income people as a shortage of rental housing after Hurricane Katrina has seen rents to historic levels. While HUD has re-opened some complexes, such as Iberville, most of the others remain closed and surrounded by protective fencing. Eager to return, former residents have marched in protest to force the government to open more, but HUD has so far refused.
SNIP
I think they are getting ready to demolish public housing,” said Laura Tuggle, an attorney with New Orleans Legal Assistance. “One of the hardest parts of redevelopment is having to relocate residents of public housing. That job was done for them.”

So in Jackson's mind, the disabled, the elderly, the unemployed should basically take a hike.

It's clear that Bush crew and the whites of New Orleans have no interest in ever seeing any of the poor blacks return. Given that the odds are thatLandreiu will defeat Nagin in the mayoral runoff next month, it is likely that they will never be allowed to return.

Oh, and while I feel for the Vietnamese fishermen who lost their livelihoods, I'd like to think that the African-Americans who lost everything, including their lives, would register more powerfully in Jackson's mind. But then again, he's a Bush black, so...

Like, I'm Totally Doing God's Will!

2006-04-24T22:33:00.000-04:00

The president of the United States sounds like a combination between a second-rate ValleyGirl impersonator and a sidewalk preacher.

Help.

NEW YORK President Bush today said he had tried to avoid war with Iraq diplomatically to the max." Speaking to a business group in Irvine, Ca., he admitted mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion, but he defended the troop level, saying "it was the troop level necessary to do the job," and he would commit the same number if given a second chance.

SNIP

Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy. "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true," he said. "One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

Somebody please impeach this man. And his sinister vice resident, too. Now.

Wrong Target

2006-04-24T12:40:00.000-04:00

(CBS) LOS ANGELES Several black activists plan to join members of the Minutemen Project to protest illegal immigration, which organizer Ted Hayes touted as the "biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery."The protest, organized by Hayes' Crispus Attucks Brigade and the American Black Citizens Opposed to Illegal Immigration Invasion, is scheduled to start at 1 p.m.Hayes, a homeless activist, alleged that most homeless people in Los Angeles are black and illegal immigration compounds the problem since blacks refuse to accept the "slave wages" that many illegal immigrants accept.

I have an idea. How about instead of rallying with racists against desperate people, you rally with desperate people against employers who pay "slave" wages.

Oh, and illegal immigration is the "biggest threat to blacks" since slavery? A little over-the-top, no? Or have we forgotten our friend Jim Crow, who murdered, terrorized, and subjugated millions of blacks for decades?

Another Bin Laden Tape

2006-04-23T17:50:00.000-04:00

Rather than summarily dismiss this, as the Bush administration will undoubtedly do, they would do well to think about what he saying, because no matter what the US thinks about bin Laden positions, he remains a hero and a truthteller in the minds of countless millions of Muslims worldwide.

"It is scornful to people that your warplanes and tanks are destroying houses over the heads of our families and children in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Pakistan and then you smile at us and say that we are not enemies of Islam but enemies of terrorists," bin Laden said, according to excerpts of an audiotape attributed to him and broadcast by the al-Jazeera network.
SNIP
He also turned to Palestinian politics, arguing that decisions by Western nations to stop Palestinian aid programs because of the recent legislative victory by the militant group Hamas amounted to proof of a "Crusader-Zionist war" on Islam.

Fighting bin Laden is about more than capturing and/or killing the man. It's about undercutting the arguments he puts forth. By its actions in recent years, the US-British alliance has done much to actually enhance the appeal of his arguments to many sectors of Muslim society.

Good Terrorism and Bad Terrorism

2006-04-19T12:10:00.000-04:00

CARACAS, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing the United States for not deporting two Venezuelans linked to 2003 bomb attacks on the Colombian and Spanish embassies
in Caracas.
The decision not to extradite Jose Antonio Colina and German Varela, who were former Venezuelan national guard officers, showed that Washington believed "there is good terrorism and bad terrorism", Rodriguez said in the statement.
On April 12, a U.S. court declined to extradite Colina and Varela, currently held at a U.S. immigration center in Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas, saying that they might be persecuted or tortured. Rodriguez said that the torture allegations were a "pretext", noting that there were no cases of torture under President Hugo Chavez's seven-year rule.

George W. Bush on Nations That Protect Terrorists:
"United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor terrorists, because they are equally guilty of murder." -- October 6, 2005

"To promote peace in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder" -- February 2, 2005

"The Arab states must take concrete steps with all parties to create a regional environment conducive to peace, lend financial support to the Palestinian people, and refuse to assist or harbor terrorists." -- January 9, 2005

"I laid out a doctrine, David, that said if you harbor terrorists, you're equally as guilty as the terrorists..." -- November 4, 2004

"Secondly, we are confronting regimes that harbor terrorists and feed the terrorists and support the terrorists. I set a doctrine that these regimes are equally as guilty as the terrorists. When a President speaks, he must speak clearly and he must mean what he says." -- October 29, 2004

"Part of this new war, this different kind of war is to confront regimes that harbor terrorists, that support terrorists, that could supply them with weapons of mass murder. This is an essential part of the war on terror. When America speaks, we better mean what we say. And I said right after September the 11th, if you harbor a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists..." -- February 5, 2004

"Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes. " -- May 1, 2003

"When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves." -- October 7, 2002

"And our enemy is not the people of any nation, even when their leaders harbor terrorists. Our enemy is the terrorists themselves, and the regimes that shelter and sustain them." -- October 6, 2001

"Well, I think most people in the world understand that I was very serious, and they're serious, when we say if you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist." -- September 25, 2001

******************************************************************************
Now I get it. Any nation that harbors a terrorist is just as guilty as the terrorist...unless the terrorists come from a country whose leader regularly humiliates George W. Bush. Then those terrorists are cool with the US.

Daddy, What Side Were You On in the Iraq Civil War?

2006-04-18T08:33:00.000-04:00

More of that progress in Iraq:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Snipers held rooftop positions as masked Sunni Arab insurgents said they were gearing up for another open street battle with pro-government Shi'ite militiamen in Baghdad's Adhamiya district on Tuesday.
The Arab Sunni stronghold is still feeling ripples from overnight clashes on Monday that appeared to be the closest yet to all-out sectarian fighting.
It's a reality that has Washington scrambling to avert civil war as Iraqi politicians struggle to form a government four months after parliamentary elections.
A U.S. military spokesman said 50 insurgents attacked Iraqi forces in the middle of the night in a seven-hour battle that killed five rebels and wounded an Iraqi soldier.
Fighting was so fierce that U.S. reinforcements were brought in to the northern district, home to some of Iraq's most hardcore Sunni guerrillas and the Abu Hanifa mosque, near where Saddam Hussein was last seen in public before going into hiding.

That last sentence holds the key.

As it becomes clearer that much of the Iraqi "forces" are actually Shiite militias looking to exterminate Sunnis, every time the US comes to the aid of said "forces," it essentially is choosing one side against the other in that country's civil war. Given that most of the Middle Eastern muslims are Sunnis, this could have explosive ramifications for the US's presence there.

Because there are so many other causes

2006-04-17T08:57:00.000-04:00

This New York Times editorial points to the tragedy that despite having burned through $200 million, the US has failed to built most of the Iraqi hospitals that it had planned to:

Two years ago, the United States government promised to build more than 140 badly needed health clinics in Iraq, bringing basic care to underserved areas outside the big cities. That could have done a lot of good, saving innocent Iraqi lives and building good will for the United States in places where it has grown dangerously scarce. A generous cost-plus contract was awarded to Parsons Inc., an American construction firm, to do the work, supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Now, with roughly $200 million already spent and financing from Washington set to run out in less than nine months, it appears extremely unlikely that most of those clinics will ever be built. As The Washington Post reported earlier this month, the Army Corps of Engineers predicts that no more than 20 clinics will actually be completed — out of 142.
SNIP
Let it not be said that thousands more Iraqis died needlessly because America walked away from its promise of health clinics with less than 15 percent of the job done.

The Times' heart is definitely in the right place, but this feels a little melodramatic. Of all the causes of needless death taking place in Iraq as a result of the US's actions, the lack of new health clinics must be pretty near the bottom.

Self-Hatred

2006-04-14T09:18:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post tells us that:

A new, limited-edition shoe from Adidas-Salomon AG, part of the "Yellow Series" and decorated with the face of a character who has buck teeth, a bowl haircut and slanted eyes, has provoked a heated debate about the lines dividing racism, art and commerce.
The character on the shoe is the creation of a San Francisco graffiti artist, Barry McGee, who is half Chinese. McGee, who calls the character Ray Fong after an uncle who died, said the image is based on how the artist looked as an 8-year-old.
[SNIP]
Others point out that McGee's mother is Chinese and that he often uses art to explode stereotypes of Asians. On the blog AdJab, Adam Finley wrote, "My theory . . . is that Adidas is trying to target a younger, hipper demographic that is already familiar with the underground art world and the images can seem controversial when not seen in the proper context."

The proper context. Hmm.

I don't care if McGee's mom is Chinese. The proper context is that in a society that until recently reveled in exactly this kind of racist imagery of Asians, this design is at best ignorant. This is a guy who never directly encountered or understood the vicious racism that swirled around him as a kid.

I mean, they made it part of "Yellow Series" of shoes. Could they be a little more fucking blatant?

Sucker

2006-04-14T08:35:00.000-04:00

This young Iraqi learned two ugly lessons about the great American State Department in one shot.

Najah Ali, an Iraqi flyweight boxer, has every right to feel aggrieved. When he was in the spotlight during the 2004 Olympics, the State Department was only too happy to exploit him for propaganda purposes. But when he applied four times for a student visa to study in this country, that same State Department found reasons to turn him down. It's enough to make any fair-minded observer cry foul.
What made Mr. Ali useful to American diplomacy at the Olympics in Athens was his ability to speak English and his willingness to praise the United States. He didn't do all that well in the ring, where he lost in the second round. But he stood tall as a symbol of his struggling country's efforts to right itself. As chronicled by Geoffrey Gray in yesterday's Times, he offered to give interviews, routinely praised the United States' invasion of Iraq and declared Americans the best people he met in Athens.
None of that cut much ice when he applied for a student visa, at considerable expense and danger. American officials who interviewed him questioned whether Mr. Ali was really a serious student and expressed concern that he might not leave the United States once his studies were completed. Never mind that the University of Houston had already interviewed him and was eager to get him. Never mind that I.B.M. expressed interest in employing him in Egypt should he choose not to return to Iraq. There was just too much risk that Mr. Ali might actually like the country he had been praising and might choose to stay here.

Lesson one: the Bush adminstration will use you and throw you out like toilet paper any chance they get
Lesson two: who gets to come to the US and who doesn't is often based on arbitrary and nonsensible evaluations

Not Scared

2006-04-13T11:05:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times:

Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions, even as a senior Iranian official said Iran would defy international pressure and rapidly expand its ability to enrich uranium for fuel.

Doesn't matter. If Bush feels he needs to bomb Iran to boost the GOP or his dead presidency, he'll do it, nuclear threat or not. Even short of that, the potential to make Iran the new boogeyman that Americans need the heroic GOP to protect us from will ensure that we will not stop hearing about the alleged threat from Iran anytime soon.

New Documentary Shreds Giuliani

2006-04-13T00:04:00.000-04:00

I will be there, ordering the jumbo popcorn combo.

Rudy Giuliani reinvented himself after the September 11th attacks.
But now, as the former mayor toys with the notion of running for president in two years, comes a new and blistering documentary that will serve to remind people about Rudy Guiliani's unpopular appeal, pre-9/11.
[SNIP]
"There is something very deeply pathological about Rudy's humanity. That he was barren, completely emotionally barren on the issue of race," the film remarks.
The movie opens May 12th at a theater on East Houston Street. It'll probably have only a limited run, but it will be released on DVD this fall -- right at the presidential campaign season heats up.

Most Americans have no idea what a vicious, mean-spirited, racist Guiliani is. They know him only as "America's mayor," the one who held it together and struck the right tone on 9/11.

But black New Yorkers experienced 8 years of a very different Guiliani. And the thought of that SOB even contemplating the presidency makes many of us absolutely nauseous. I hope this documentary captures that accurately. It may be crucial for the future of American society.

Immigration: the Bottom Line

2006-04-12T16:11:00.000-04:00

So much for the GOP eating into the Democrats' advantage with Hispanics.

I've written a piece on the immigration issue as a guest blogger at mydd.com. Check it out.

Afraid to be Right

2006-04-11T15:30:00.000-04:00

From the latest Washington Post poll:

...47 percent in the latest poll say they "strongly" disapprove of Bush's handling of the presidency -- more than double the 20 percent who strongly approve. It marked the second straight month that the proportion of Americans intensely critical of the president was larger than his overall job approval rating. In comparison, the percentage who strongly disapproved of President Bill Clinton on that measure never exceeded 33 percent in Post-ABC News polls.

...more than four in 10 Americans -- 45 percent -- favor censuring or formally reprimanding Bush for authorizing wiretaps of telephone calls and e-mails of terrorism suspects without court permission.
A majority of registered voters, 55 percent, say they plan to vote for the Democratic candidate in their House district, while 40 percent support the Republican candidate. That is the largest share of the electorate favoring Democrats in Post-ABC polls since the mid-1980s.

So, the Republicans have no issue going for them and are at historically low levels of popularity, and half the country strongly disapproves of Bush's performance and wants him to be censured for ordering warrantless wiretapping of US citizens... but the Democrats are running from Senator Feingold's censure resolution faster than if he had proposed reparations for African-Americans. Who are they afraid of upsetting? The little 20% who strongly back the president?

If it's not proper to censure -- not even impeach, just censure -- the president at this point in history, when is it ever proper to censure the president? Do the democrats stand for anything other than fear-induced paralysis?

McKinney's Hair

2006-04-07T11:02:00.000-04:00

I hate discussing the politics of hair. I hate that there is such a thing as the politics of hair. But the Cynthia McKinney has unavoidably resurrected the issue, so here we go.

Her hair was looking kinda crazy at that news conference. So what?

As Washington Post reporter Robin Givhan points out:

...talk turned ugly on blogs about her news-conference hair. It became the impetus for all sorts of racially driven insults about her locks and their natural texture. A black woman's hair is an easy, timeworn source of racist mockery. It has become an exhausting cliche of self-loathing whether it is kinky, hot-combed, braided, locked or chemically relaxed. (Indeed, plenty of black folks see all kinds of dire race-traitor undertones in Condoleezza Rice's smooth, controlled cap of hair.) A black woman's hair is a bottomless source of inspiration for essays, books and documentaries.

Some of that "racially driven" commentary was better described as "racist." It included an incredible outburst by nationally syndicated radio host Neil Boortz on both his radio show and his blog which included likening McKinney's appearance to that of a "ghetto slut," "ghetto trash," and "a welfare drag queen." It was an unabridge expression of how many white Americans are uncomfortable with non-conformist black hair styles.

Then again, her hair was out of control. It wasn't just that it was in a natural style, but that it appeared completely ungroomed, which is a separate matter altogether.

Typically I find that when anybody goes out in public with such an appearance, she is trying, usually too hard, to make a statement about how non-conformist she is. I usually ignore such unspoken statements in evaluating a person -- they are too easy, to obviously designed to draw attention to themselves. If you want to show me you're non-conformist as a member of Congress, challenge unapologetically the unacceptable behaviors of the Bush administration and the Republican caucus in Congress. That alone makes you a rbel nowadays.

And on that measure, Ms. McKinney is in fact a genuine non-conformist. And that's alright with me.

Condi, You're Doing a Heckuva Job!

2006-04-06T12:15:00.000-04:00

Maybe one day the US will learn when to mind its own business.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 5 — A top adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Wednesday that the visit this week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain had backfired, prolonging a deadlock over a new government and strengthening Mr. Jaafari's resolve to keep his post.

"Pressure from outside is not helping to speed up any solution," said the adviser, Haider al-Abadi. "All it's doing is hardening the position of people who are supporting Jaafari." He added, "They shouldn't have come to Baghdad."
His comments were echoed by several political leaders on Wednesday, including Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

[SNIP]

The visit by Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw appeared to grate even on politicians who oppose Mr. Jaafari. "They complicated the thing, and now it's more difficult to solve," said Mahmoud Osman, an independent member of the Kurdistan Alliance, speaking Wednesday about Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw. "They shouldn't have come, and they shouldn't have interfered."

Unfortunately for the Iraqis, interfering is the whole point of this exercise. The invasion was the first step in a process of installing a US/Britain-friendly puppet who sell oil rights to Western companies at friendly rates. No matter how bad things get in Iraq, the US will not waver from that goal. So get ready for more sectarian violence, guys.

On Cynthia McKinney

2006-04-05T11:49:00.000-04:00

All right, this whole thing has gotten way out of hand.

She was supposed to be wearing her Congressional pin when she passed through security. She forgot. Fine, it happens.

The cop didn't recognize her. Well, there can't be too many black women entering the Capitol, but that still doesn't mean the cop should be expected to recognize her. Maybe he was new.

She maybe didn't hear the cop calling out to hear. Completely plausible.

She probably reacted instinctively when the cop grabbed her -- or as my sister says, "You don't just sneak up on a black woman like that. We're gonna react."

Did she "hit" the cop with her cellphone? Or did she "poke" him? Or did she "shove" him? I'm hearing multiple descriptions of what happened. Only a videotape, it seems, can sort this out.

Seeking to press charges against her, whatever actually happened, is ridiculous. Cool heads can easily come to the conclusion that this behavior is not about McKinney's race, but about her lack of an apologetic attitude. Additionally, there are more than a few folks in Washington -- even among her Democratic colleagues -- who hate McKinney for her refusal to embrace the herd mentality that has handcuffed the congress -- especially the Democrats -- over the past several years. Whether the Capitol Police are among that group, I don't know.

McKinney is being ridiculous as well with her overreaction to the events. Her race had little to do with the incident itself, though it has a lot to do with the external reaction to the incident. But to see her go on CNN and respond to the question "did you hit the officer?" with "Well, before I bring on my two lawyers..." is embarassing.

Both McKinney and the police are acting like children at this point. This whole thing needs to be dropped immediately.

John Kerry Calls For Iraq Deadline

2006-04-05T10:08:00.000-04:00

Holy cow! Someone in the US Senate taking a stand on something! Catch me -- I'm going to faint!

Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.
If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end.

I still can't believe what I'm reading. A presidential hopeful from the Senate is actually calling for US troop withdrawal by the end of this year.

Study: Bush tax cuts making rich richer

2006-04-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

From CNN:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - President Bush's tax cuts for investment income have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000, according to a report Wednesday. An analysis of Internal Revenue Service data by The New York Times found that the benefit of the lower taxes on investments was more concentrated on the very wealthiest Americans than the benefits of President Bush's two previous tax cuts.
The Times analyzed IRS figures for 2003, the latest year available and the first that reflected the tax cuts for income from dividends and from the sale of stock and other assets, known as capital gains.
According to the study, taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million reduced their investment tax bill by an average of about $500,000 in 2003, and their total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.
These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income.

And in other news, the sun is hot, and the Pope, it turns out, is Catholic.

Now There Are Many Saddams

2006-04-04T15:00:00.000-04:00

This is not the reaction the Bush crew had in mind when they proudly displayed their trophy dictator after he had been captured:

ARBIL, Iraq, April 4 (Reuters) - Many Kurds who learned on Tuesday that Saddam Hussein could soon face trial for genocide against their community shrugged their shoulders, saying they had more pressing matters to deal with.
"I am happy that Saddam will go on trial because of everything he did," said 39-year-old Sahar Ibrahim in Baghdad. "But it really won't matter. There is no security in the country now. "It is much worse than before. At least then we knew what the danger was."
[SNIP]
"There was once one Saddam Hussein, now we have many, many," said Shawan Abdul Wahab, a 33-year-old engineer. "Saddam Hussein should not be executed
because he was better than our current politicians."

Sure, We Believe You

2006-04-04T10:22:00.000-04:00

Columbus -Secretary of State Ken Blackwell made an embarrassing announcement Monday: He accidentally bought stock in Diebold Inc., a voting machine maker that benefited from decisions made by his office.
In a required filing with the Ohio Ethics Commission, the GOP gubernatorial hopeful said his hefty portfolio included 178 shares of Diebold stock, which sold for a loss. "While I was unaware of this stock in my portfolio, its mere presence may be viewed as a conflict," Blackwell wrote in a letter that accompanies his annual financial disclosure statement.

Accident, my ass.

Ohio's place as ground zero in the 2004 presidential election has helped shine a light on what may be the most corrupt and immoral chief election official in the U.S. And I'll say it again: for a black man to be involved in such unethical behavior around the right to vote fairly is almost too painful to recognize. Can't say enough how much I hate this man.

Tom DeLay: The Hammer Falls

2006-04-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

Nine months ago the most powerful man in Congress. Today, chicken-s___ quitter.

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a primary architect of the Republican majority who became one of the most powerful and feared leaders in Washington, said this morning that he will give up his seat rather than face a reelection fight that appears increasingly unwinnable.
[SNIP]
The decision came three days after Tony C. Rudy, his former deputy chief of staff, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and corruption charges, telling federal prosecutors of a criminal enterprise being run out of DeLay's leadership offices. Rudy's plea agreement did not implicate DeLay in any illegal activities, but by placing the influence-buying efforts of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff directly in DeLay's operation, the former aide may have made an already difficult reelection bid all but out of reach.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think: it couldn't happen to a better guy. I hope the SOB gets burried under a blizzard of indictments and convictions in the coming months and years for all the crap he pulled in Texas' redistricting and helping that sleazeball Jack Abramoff buy off the Republic Party in Washington.

On the other hand, he had a good chance of actually losing he re-election bid this November, and I would have loved to see him suffer that ignominious fate -- and then get taken down with indictments and convictions.

More of that Good News from Iraq

2006-04-03T15:43:00.000-04:00

Schools and hospitals, schools and hospitals...

BAGHDAD -- A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.
The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.

"Looks Like a Ghetto Slut"

2006-03-31T17:27:00.000-05:00

Wow: another racist right-wing talk show host! I'm so shocked!

On the March 31 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Neal Boortz said that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) "looks like a ghetto slut." Boortz was commenting on a March 29 incident in which McKinney allegedly struck a police officer at a Capitol Hill security checkpoint. Boortz said that McKinney's "new hair-do" makes her look "like a ghetto slut," like "an explosion at a Brillo pad factory," like "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence," and like "a shih tzu." McKinney is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia.

Voting Rights Act: Renew It

2006-03-29T11:58:00.000-05:00

ATLANTA, March 27 — Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a former builder who represents a jigsaw of predominantly white areas just south and west of Atlanta, acknowledges that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone achievement of the civil rights movement, was necessary in its day to register blacks and overturn decades of laws preventing them from voting.
But times have changed, Mr. Westmoreland said.

Not really. It is still rare for blacks to be elected from majority-white districts -- unless the blacks were incumbents in a majority black district that became majority-white through redistricting. Race-based voting continues today. Without the Voting Rights Act in its current state, there would be fewer black congressmen today. Period.

Congress will be considering renewing the Act next month. It's a no-brainer. Renew it.

This Is a Really Bad Idea

2006-03-28T09:39:00.000-05:00

This has to be one of the most irresponsible things a US intelligence agency has ever done.

WASHINGTON, March 27 — American intelligence agencies and presidential commissions long ago concluded that Saddam Hussein had no unconventional weapons and no substantive ties to Al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion. But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government.
Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops.
Less than two weeks into the project, and with only 600 out of possibly a million documents and video and audio files posted, some conservative bloggers are already asserting that the material undermines the official view. On his blog last week, Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama, quoted a document reporting a supposed scheme to put anthrax into American leaflets dropped in Iraq and declared: "Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!"
Not so, American intelligence officials say. "Our view is there's nothing in here that changes what we know today," said a senior intelligence official, who would discuss the program only on condition of anonymity because the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, directed his staff to avoid public debates over the documents. "There is no smoking gun on W.M.D., Al Qaeda, those kinds of issues."

Since there is no way for people sitting at home on their computers to be able verify the authenticity or accuracy of these documents, much less the quality of translation, this data dump can only serve to confuse, rather than enlighten, the American people.

Confusion is exactly what the Republicans want right now. As the American people finally start to realize how disastrous the decision to invade Iraq was, the GOP is desperate to throw whatever sand it can find into their eyes, the better to blind them to the realities of the ever-worsening situation there. That stuff is politics as usual. The tragedy is that the American intelligence community is allowing itself to be used so blatantly as a political instrument, and doing more hamr than good for the American people and the world.

Not only that, by conducting this "experiment," the intelligence community si basically saying, "We don't think we've a thorough job. So we'll let untrained amateurs do the job that we get paid to do, because maybe they can do it better."

That instills confidence.

In Case You're Interested...

2006-03-28T08:41:00.000-05:00

From the Palm Beach Post:

Your vote is not safe.
So warned author and political activist Tom Grayman... on Sunday night, armed with tales of disenfranchisement past and present as he spoke to a crowd of about 80 at St. John Missionary Baptist Church.
The answer to Florida's election chaos in 2000 — the electronic voting machine — does not reassure the author of Ghosts of Florida: Making Elections Fair for Blacks, an account of how he believes some groups are repeatedly stymied in their attempts to vote.
The electronic machines, he said, are the next vehicle for the "very creative, very devious and very serious" members of the establishment who want to keep certain groups, particularly blacks, from having their votes count.
"The way they record our vote, the method that they use, the process, is completely hidden," Grayman said of the machines. "It is completely unobservable by human beings.... That in and of itself makes them completely unacceptable for this role."

I Weep for USA

2006-03-25T12:39:00.000-05:00

The president admits to violating federal law to conduct unconstitutional surveillance on Americans, and the opposition party is worried that calling for his impeachment is a "distraction" from "more important" issues.

A Zogby International poll showed that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed President Bill Clinton should be impeached during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.
SNIP
Democrats remain far from unified. Prominent party leaders -- and a large majority of those in Congress -- distance themselves from the effort. They say the very word is a distraction, that talk of impeachment and censure reflect the polarization of politics. Activists spend too many hours dialing Democratic politicians and angrily demanding impeachment votes, they say.
SNIP
"Impeachment is an outlet for anger and frustration, which I share, but politics ain't therapy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts liberal who declined to sign the Conyers resolution. "Bush would much rather debate impeachment than the disastrous war in Iraq."

Frank ignores the fact that arguing impeachment would be arguing Iraq. Part of the charge against Mr. Bush is that he lied the US into the war in Iraq, which war has proven a disaster. It's all connected, baby. You can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Shortchanging New York City's Children

2006-03-24T09:19:00.000-05:00

If New York's Governor Pataki tries to run for president on some sort of successful-republican-in-a-democrat-state positioning, I'll be sure to remind everyone about how he sat around and did nothing after a court told him to increase funding for New York City's schools.

An appeals court ruled yesterday that New York City schools were being shortchanged by at least $4.7 billion annually in state aid, adding more firepower to the city's plea for more education money as lawmakers try to wrap up work on a state budget.
But in its ruling, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court said that only the governor and the Legislature, not the courts, could determine the exact amount of education aid.
The ruling is the latest twist in a more-than-decade-long court battle over state aid for New York City schools. More than two years ago, the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, ruled that students in New York City were being denied a sound basic education and ordered the Legislature and the governor to address the problem. They did not.
In its 3 to 2 decision, the Appellate Division ordered the Legislature to consider a plan to direct between $4.7 billion and $5.63 billion to New York City schools — more than either the governor, the Senate or the Assembly have put forward in their plans.
"This directive does not merely urge the governor and the Legislature to consider taking action," Justice John T. Buckley wrote in the majority decision. "They are directed to take action.
The matter for them to consider is whether $4.7 billion, or $5.63 billion, or some amount in between, is the minimum additional annual funding to be appropriated for the city schools."

A Negro Talking to Himself

2006-03-23T13:29:00.000-05:00

For nothing more than shock value, CNBC recently interviewed lunatic Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, during which he indicated that the ideal punishment for sexual predators is throwing them in a prison and making them "listen to a Negro talking to himself."

Fun Is Against the Law!!

2006-03-22T23:46:00.000-05:00

I wish I lived in a state where there's no real crime to prosecute...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.
The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.
The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.

People leave private homes drunk, too. Will the TABC start knocking on doors and forcing drunk people to stay in their friends' homes under threat of arrest? If they are really worried about drunk drivers, they should wait by cars parked near the bars and advise people who are intoxicated not to get behind the wheel.

Mississippi Outlaws Sex Toys -- There is a landmark legal battle of constitutional proportions being fought down in Mississippi. It involves fundamental rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, not to mention the rights of certain small business owners to satisfy their customers. This week, another court refused to recognize Mississippians’ right to find companionship for 29.99 and so a law outlawing the sale of sex toys will stand.

“A person commits the offense of distributing unlawful sexual devices when he knowingly sells, advertises, publishes or exhibits to any person any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs or offers to do so or possesses such devices with the intent to do so.”

I can't even begin to understand what this law is all about. Other than that there are a disproportionate number of people in Mississippi with sticks up their rectums who think pleasure is a sin.

Three More Years of This

2006-03-22T12:34:00.000-05:00

Mr. Bush's press conference yesterday was an utter mess. One can't summarize it. One can't excerpt the highlights (or lowlights). You have to read about it here. Then remember that this guy is president until January of 2009.

In for the long haul, baby!

2006-03-21T15:31:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON -

President Bush said Tuesday the decision about when to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq will fall to future presidents and Iraqi leaders, suggesting that U.S. involvement will continue at least through 2008.

Making Progress

2006-03-21T09:25:00.000-05:00

George W. Bush tells us that progress is being made in Iraq. How much more progress can the country stand?

BAGDHAD, Iraq, March 21 -- In a bold raid at daybreak, a band of at least 100 insurgents stormed a police station in the town of Muqdadiya northeast of Baghdad today, killing at least 18 police officers, wounding four others and freeing all of the 33 prisoners being held in the station, officials in the Interior Ministry said.
The insurgents shelled the police station with mortar fire before attacking with rifle-propelled grenades, hand grenades and machine guns, the officials said. Reports of the number of insurgents killed or captured varied widely, with the Interior Ministry saying only one was killed and the American military putting the number at five.
The attackers destroyed about 20 police vehicles and set fire to the police station and a nearby courthouse before escaping, the Iraqi officials said. An Iraqi army unit that tried to reach the scene to support the police during the attack was disabled by a roadside bomb as the convoy passed through a city gate.
American ground forces and two American OH-58A Kiowa helicopters rushed to the scene in support of Iraqi troops, said Sgt. Doug Anderson, a military spokesman. The helicopters came under small-arms fire and one soldier was wounded, he said. The helicopters both landed safely.
SNIP
The Iraqi police found nine bodies in Baghdad on Monday, each handcuffed and blindfolded with gunshots to the head, in the latest indication of a wave of sectarian vengeance sweeping the capital.
SNIP
Police investigators in Salahaddin Province have accused American troops of executing 11 civilians, including several children, during a raid last Wednesday on a house in Ishaqi, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Monday. According to the investigators, the Americans had lined up the civilians and shot them, then killed livestock and destroyed the house, the official said.
SNIP
In Baghdad, an improvised bomb exploded Monday under a vehicle carrying commandos from the Interior Ministry and several detainees, killing three of the commandos and three detainees in the Karrada neighborhood, and wounding two commandos and a detainee, a ministry official reported.
SNIP
Also on Monday, a bomb exploded inside a coffee shop in a Sunni district of Baghdad, killing 3 people and wounding 22, the police said. A bomb also exploded under a bus parked outside a restaurant in eastern Baghdad, killing 4 people and wounding 10.
The police in Kirkuk found the bodies of two Iraqi soldiers who had been kidnapped two days before. The victims had been stabbed to death, the police said.

Cheney Moves the Goalposts

2006-03-20T09:07:00.000-05:00

In his mind, it's not even about Iraq, and it's not about whether the troops can leave this year. No, son -- it's much bigger than that:

On CBS News' "Face the Nation," Mr. Cheney sought to place the war in a broader context. "It's not just about Iraq, it's not about just today's situation in Iraq," he said. "It's about where we're going to be 10 years from now in the Middle East and whether or not there's going to be hope and the development of the governments that are responsive to the will of the people, that are not a threat to anyone, that are not safe havens for terror or manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction."

Everyone who thought on March 19, 2003 that the US was embarking on a 10-year plan to democratize the Middle East raise your hands.

Grim

2006-03-20T08:47:00.000-05:00

New York Times tells of a raft of new studies showing that things are even worse for inner-city black men than has been widely portrayed.

Many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially when it comes to determining the scope of joblessness. For example, official unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated.
"If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).
In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills.
SNIP
Terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black youths. Scholars — and the young men themselves — agree that all of these issues must be addressed.
Joseph T. Jones, director of the fatherhood and work skills center here, puts the breakdown of families at the core.
"Many of these men grew up fatherless, and they never had good role models," said Mr. Jones, who overcame addiction and prison time. "No one around them knows how to navigate the mainstream society."

I'm with Jones. When whole neighborhoods of black men essentially abondon their children, those kids -- especially the males -- grow up with no sense of personally or communal responsibility. Key to solving this will be getting into the collective psyche of the subculture, understanding the benefits and gratifications that motivate this kind of behavior, and understanding why those benefits either don't exist or are not motivational for whites and Hispanics of similar economic stations.

Iraq Civil War: It's Official

2006-03-19T17:19:00.000-05:00

Former prime minister says so:

LONDON -- Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said in a TV interview aired Sunday. His comments were immediately rejected by Britain's defense secretary.
Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp. there was no other way to describe the increasing violence across the country.

As does Republican Senator Chuck Hagel:

"I think the former Prime Minister is correct. I think we've had a low grade civil war going on in Iraq for the last six months maybe the last year-our own generals have told me that privately George, so that's a fact."

Happy Operation Iraqi Freedom Day!

2006-03-19T10:11:00.000-05:00

A look at three years in Iraq: www.intelligencesquad.com/id136.html

An Idea Whose Time Had Come a Long Time Ago

2006-03-17T09:46:00.000-05:00

MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) -- Alabama lawmakers are considering pardoning hundreds, possibly thousands, of people who were arrested decades ago for violating Alabama's segregation laws.
The idea of a mass pardon gained traction after the death last year of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who had refused to give up her bus seat to a white man half a century earlier.
Even though the law allowing segregated seating on city buses was eventually overturned, Parks' conviction is still on the record, said Rep. Thad McClammy.

Iraq Civil War, Step 4.3

2006-03-16T14:51:00.000-05:00

It isn't blue uniforms facing off against gray uniforms across a skirmish line. It's more like this:

Elsewhere, Shiites and Sunnis have become refugees in their own country, as they flee neighborhoods and outlying villages where they have found themselves members of a suddenly unwelcome minority.
On the other side of Baghdad, more than 50 Shiite families from nearby villages have turned the classrooms of the Al-Shahid Al-Jazairi elementary school in the Shiite neighborhood of Shoala into a refugee camp. They sleep on the school's cracked tile floors, atop dust-colored mattresses donated by neighbors, and cook with kerosene camping stoves.
Mohammed Hussein, a 32-year-old Shiite shopkeeper from the Sunni-dominated suburb of Abu Ghraib, near the infamous prison, has taken shelter here. The day after the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, he says, he found a notice pasted to the door of his women's clothing store in the Abu Ghraib market."We have information that you are engaged in suspicious activities and have cooperated with suspicious people," the notice read. "You have 48 hours to leave." It was signed by a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigades. Hussein collected his family and fled that same day.
"Now I don't have anything," he says. "I had to leave all the goods in the store, and all my furniture in my home. It's not safe to go back to get them." At least 10 other Shiite families fled Abu Ghraib that same day, he says. Hussein, once content to live among Sunnis, is now vowing to fight his erstwhile neighbors. "I don't have the money to buy guns, but if they try to attack me again, I will fight even if I have to use stones," he says.

When even the threat of violence creates a refugee situation, you have civil war folks.

Bombs Away!!!

2006-03-16T11:16:00.000-05:00

Story number 2 explains story number 1.

Touché

2006-03-15T10:06:00.000-05:00

While there is still no doubt that Saddam deserves everything that is coming to him, he did make a couple of points in the courtroom yesterday that needed to be made:

Mr. Hussein called on Iraqis to stop fighting each other and said that "criminals" were responsible for the bombing in Samarra that touched off waves of sectarian killings.
The trial's chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, repeatedly interrupted Mr. Hussein, telling him to stick to the charges against him.
"This is a criminal court, we are not in politics," the judge said. "If it wasn't for politics neither you nor I would be here today," Mr. Hussein retorted.

Iraq Civil War, Step 4.2

2006-03-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

Posted without comment, from today's New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 14 — The police reported finding 68 bodies today scattered around the city, as the wave of reprisal killings for Sunday's attack on Shiite civilians appeared to gain steam.
[SNIP]

The wave of killings followed a graphic display of street violence on Monday, in which Shiite vigilantes seized four men suspected of terrorist attacks, interrogated them, beat them, killed them and left their bodies dangling from lampposts on Monday morning, witnesses and government officials said.
[SNIP]

The toll, as reported by an Iraqi Interior Ministry official, was equal to the worst of the many bombings that has racked the city over the last year, but spread out in individual acts of violence across its entire breadth.
[SNIP]

On Monday, in Sadr City, the Shiite section in Baghdad where the terrorist suspects were executed, government forces vanished. The streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and machine guns.
They set up roadblocks and poke their heads into cars and detain whomever they want. Mosques blare warnings on loudspeakers for American troops to stay out. Increasingly, the Americans have been doing just that.
There seems to be no minimum age to join the action. A playful boy named Musa, who said he was 11 but looked about 8, was part of a 4-foot-tall militia struggling to drag chunks of concrete into the street to block cars on Monday. "We're guarding the road," Musa explained. He was carrying a toy pistol. Some of the other boys had real ones.

Censure

2006-03-13T16:27:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm watching Senator Russ Feingold from Wisconson introduce a resolution on the floor of the Senate to censure President Bush for authorizing illegal warrantless spying on Americans as part of his so-call "war on terror." The president's actions violated the 1978 FISA law explicitly requiring a warrant for any such surviellance. Bush, assuming the powers of a king, simply decided, with no foundation, to ignore the law.

A very strong argument can be made that impeachment is the appropriate remedy for what Mr. Bush has done. According to polls, about half of the American people agree. In classic afraid-of-their-own shadows, though, the Democrats in Congress won't touch it.

Censure, then, could be seen as a compromise -- a chance to strongly rebuke the president for his actions and make a statement that even after 9/11 the US is still a nation of laws, but without taking the nation through the trauma of an impeachment.

GOP senators are right now trying to wreck Feingold's flow. Frist of Tennessee is trying to take time away from Russ, while Specter of Pennsylvania is demanding to see a copy of the resolution before Russ speaks. Feiny is having none of it. He's speaking his peace. He's acting like a member of Congress -- something in shockingly short supply these days among both Democrats and Republicans.

The disturbing thing is that most Democrats are afraid to support even this half-measure. Think about that: they are afraid to make a statement that the president broke the law and his actions were not acceptable. What are they afraid of? Half of Americans agree that his actions were wrong. It's just a statement of how you feel. When you're afraid of how you feel about an issue of significant importance, you're useless as a so-called representative. You should resign. Even worse, if you don't think what Bush did is wrong, well...

This Is So Depressing

2006-03-11T09:38:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post tells us that we should expect all fund-raising records for the 2008 US presidential race to be obliterated. The key, and depressing part, comes here:

One of the least known but most important dimensions of the early competition to raise cash is securing the support of men and women who have proven effective in the past at raising large sums -- usually from a well-tended network of business associates, corporate subordinates and clients.

Although the article didn't mention in, the same phenomenon is taking place in high-profile US Sentate races as well.

This is why our government has become so unresponsive to the interests and concerns of the American people. Why so many Democrats in Congress voted to assault the middle class with last year's bankrupcy law, and why Republicans regularly pass laws to give the US treasury away to the titans of big industry. This, in short, is why the US government sucks.

Monkey In the Middle

2006-03-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

An article in The Washington Post explains the US's role in the Iraq Civil War:

"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the... Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they're able to," Rumsfeld told the Senate Appropriations Committee when pressed to explain how the United States intended to respond should Iraq descend wholesale into internecine strife.
If civil war becomes reality, "it's very clear that the Iraqi forces will handle it, but they'll handle it with our help," Abizaid said later when asked to elaborate on Rumsfeld's remark.

First of all, it is too late to "prevent" a civil war. A strong argument can be made the civil war already exists -- just that it's being fought with car bombs in "asymmetrical" style rather than a a traditional two-army/one-front war.

Even if one doesn't accept that there currently is a civil war in Iraq, one must recognize that the conditions have already been laid for one to breakout: sectarianism dating back to before the formation of the country, sectarian violence, the sudden removal from power of the formerly dominant sect, no strong overseeing force, lots and lots of (oil) money to be controlled by whichever becomes the dominant sect. Under these conditions, the country will always be on the brink of, if not actually in the midst of, a civil war. The only way to "prevent" such a war in that instance is to keep the sides physically separated -- which, even if it were possible, is not something the US military is well-equipped to do.

Secondly, security forces do not "handle" civil wars like this. The assumption underlining the US's stance is that the Civil War will essentially be Sunni civilians fighting the mostly-Shiite government. While there certainly is plenty of that, the events of the last few weeks have shown us that Civil War in Iraq is also about Sunni civilians fighting Shiite civilians, with the words of various religious leaders holding sway over the masses. Not only is the Iraqi military not in a good position to "handle" such circumstances, many -- if not most -- of them will likely join one side or the other. In that case, the only way for the US to "help" is to pick one side, obviously the Shiites, and start shooting along side them. And what a disaster that would be to what's left of America's image in the muslim world (most of the world's Muslims are Sunnis).

The Iraqi people may very well "handle" the situation on their own: if, for example, influential religious leaders from the various sects can convince all involved to call off the fighting; if the Iraqi people simply grow weary of inflicting death and destruction; or if one side simply vanquishes the other. But the Iraq military won't "handle" the Iraqi Civil War any more than the US military "handled" that country's civil war. And the current US forces are no more appropriate to "handle" Iraq's civil war than, say, the French military was during Sierra Leonne's civil war.

There are no good options for the US military. It needs to be prepared to get out of the way.

There Must Be A Way In Somewhere!

2006-03-09T12:02:00.000-05:00

Republicans still trying to find an entry point into the black community:

Republican leaders, preparing a strategy for several critical elections this year, are expanding their outreach efforts to black voters by offering a two-day training session for minorities interested in running for public office, becoming political advisors or facilitating GOP campaigns.
[SNIP]
The session is open to any Republican minority candidate running for public office in 2006. While attending the two-day-training session, Wall said, black candidates will learn how to run grassroots campaigns, raise funds, build a 72-hour get-out-the-vote program and win their specific races.

I'll hand it to them: the GOP will do just about anything EXCEPT SUPPORT PROGRAMS THAT ADDRESS THE NEEDS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS in an effort to win (or steal) our votes. Will the Democrats have a countermeasure? Or just take us for granted by assuming that the Republican effort will fail? Stay tuned.

Prepare the Circular Firing Squad

2006-03-08T09:48:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters and blunt what has been a clear Republican lead in using technology for political advantage.
The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles. Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and they say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.
Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence that the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean is ready to compete with Republicans on the technological front. "The Republicans have developed a cadre of people who appreciate databases and know how to use them, and we are way behind the march," said Ickes, whose political technology venture is being backed by financier George Soros.

This is nasty.

Let's say what this is really about: Hillary's run for 2008. Hillary will need every possible tool at her disposal to have a shot a winning the '08 presidential election, and as the consummate insider, she both dislikes and distrusts Dean to be the caretaker of one of those critical tools.

So, rather than raise money for and try to work with the Democratic National Committee, this renegade crew decides to compete against them. Classic "insiders" vs. "outsiders" Democratic self-immolation.

As a candidate, Dean blew away fundraising records using the internet. Under Dean, the DNC is connecting with rank-and-file voters like never before. But none of that is good enough for Ickes and his posse.

Well, I wish everybody the best of luck on this. But if the idea is to target communications to the individual household to drive up turnout a few percentage points, I know of one group for whom these random database approaches will mean little: African Americans. Unless you're bringin' the funk with actual programs, policy votes, and outreach over the years between elections, you can forget "energizing" the black vote, no matter how many targeted mailings, phone calls, and home visits you make. John Kerry comes to mind as one who failed to catch on to that fact. Likewise Bill McBride, who was slated to unseat Jeb Bush in 2002.

Like I said, though, good luck. Hope whatever approaches the Democrats work up take control of the White House away from the a destructive GOP.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2006-03-07T12:21:00.000-05:00

A new animated series will be running on the Cartoon Network Sunday nights, starting March 19. Called "Minoriteam," the show is about a group of superheroes whose powers are exaggerated "minority" racial and ethnic stereotypes. They fight against an all-white clan of supervillians, who also are embued with racial stereotypes.

The heroes:
Non-Stop, a Middle-Eastern convenience-store owner who is immune to all forms of live ammunition.
El Jefe, a Mexican that fights crime with a leaf blower and cannot speak English.
Dr. Wang, an Asian Human Calculator and the leader of the Minoriteam.
Fasto, an African-American man who is known as "the fastest man that ever was."
Jewcano, a man with the powers of the Jewish Faith and a Volcano.

The villians:
The White Shadow, leader of the clan of supervillians, with a head/helmet in the shape of the Illuminati Pyramid.
The Head of the Cheerleading Squad, who is always snooty and impossible to please.
The Corporate Ladder, a ladder with a stool at the top who is impossible to scale/climb.
The Standardized Test, a man with an eraser on his head.

If the program shows how ridiculous the stereotypes in question are, well, that could be something. Even still, it would risk failing in the same way the classic sitcom "All In the Family" did back in the 1970's.

Back then, the producer, Norman Lear, and the star, Caroll O'Connor, wanted to use Archie Bunker's general ignorance as a way to spoof the racist cracks he regularly spouted. The idea was to show that only uneducated cretins believed the kind of stuff Archie believed.

The problem was that way too many Americans didn't get the joke. Rather than laughing at Archie, they found themselves laughing with him. Put another way, nobody ever went broke underestimating the sophistication of the American people. "All In the Family" was a huge hit right out the box, but after a few seasons Lear began phasing out the racism in Archie's character, realizing that he was just adding to the problem rather than helping solve it.

Here's hoping "Minoriteam" doesn't duplicate that unfortunate side effect.

Everything Going in the Wrong Direction

2006-03-07T11:32:00.000-05:00

New ABC News/Washington Post poll tells us:

a) most Americans think the Iraq War is a fiasco, not worth the cost, and want the US to start pulling out

b) most Americans think Bush has no plan for dealing with the Iraq War fiasco

c) most Americans think the Democrats have no plan for dealing with the Iraq War fiasco

d) five weeks ago, the Democrats had a 14-point advantage over the Republicans on who was considered better equipped to handle the country's problems. That lead has now completely evaporated.

If the Democrats fail to at least make a sizable dent in the Republican lead for control of Congress this November, it will likely be because they could not present a convincing plan for dealing with the Iraq War. The failure ties back to the decision about half of them made four years ago to vote to give Bush the authority to inflict this catastrophe on the people of Iraq. Whether they actually bought in to the idea that Saddam was a threat to US or they just wanted to be on the "winning" side, too many Democrats made what was simply the wrong choice in 2002, and we are all paying for it now.

ON EDIT: Then again, this Gallup poll shows Dems holding a 14-point lead in the generic "which party will yuo vote for" question, so perhaps things aren't so bad for the Dems after all.

Thanks, We'll Pass

2006-03-06T15:10:00.000-05:00

Even in the heart of military country:

More Blacks Deciding Not To Serve

Defense Department statistics show that the number of black active-duty enlisted personnel has declined 14 percent since 2000. The decrease is particularly acute among the troops most active in the Middle East: The number of black enlisted soldiers has dropped by 19 percent and the number of black enlisted Marines has fallen by 26 percent in the same period.
Even in this area near Fort Bragg, where serving in uniform is a family tradition, the drop in Army enlistment by blacks from 2000 to 2005 matches the national average.
[SNIP]
The lack of support for the war by blacks -- in uniform or not -- is striking. A poll of Cumberland County residents, commissioned last year by The Fayetteville Observer, showed that 69 percent of whites said the war in Iraq was worth the costs. Only 19 percent of blacks agreed.

Some will see this as a sign that blacks are less patriotic than whites. I see it as a sign that blacks are more likely to hold a healthy -- and well-advised -- skepticism toward the motivations of the US government in this war in Iraq.

Is This the Kind of Civil War Tom Friedman Wanted?

2006-03-06T11:16:00.000-05:00

From January of 2005, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman:

This is a tough call, but I hope the elections go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 30. We have to have a proper election in Iraq so we can have a proper civil war there.
[SNIP]
We don't want the kind of civil war that we have in Iraq now. That is a war of Sunni and Islamist militants against the U.S. and its Iraqi allies, many of whom do not seem comfortable fighting with, and seemingly for, the U.S. America cannot win that war. That is a civil war in which the murderous insurgents appear to be on the side of ending the U.S. "occupation of Iraq" and the U.S. and its allies appear to be about sustaining that occupation.
The civil war we want is a democratically elected Iraqi government against the Baathist and Islamist militants.

What do you mean "we," kemosabe? I don't want any kind of civil war. Got that?

Then in September of the same year:

Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind.

Don't know whether the US is in fct arming the Shiites and Kurds, but in any event, the current bloodbath in Iraq appears to be going more-or-less as Mr. Friedman would have it. Bravo, Tom. Maybe one of these days, you'll be able to salvage a "see, I was right!" moment from the steaming pile of human carcasses you cheered on.

The Deal With the Insurgents

2006-03-04T11:29:00.000-05:00

This guy who served in the Indian Army fighting rebels in Kashmir makes a good point with respect to the US in Iraq:

"I joined the insurgents only because of you," the young Kashmiri man told me, sobbing, "because of the way you humiliated me, they way you tormented me. To regain my honor, I picked up the gun." It was one of my more shocking encounters during my two and a half years of counterinsurgency duties as an Indian Army officer in Kashmir. Shocking, because it was the antithesis of everything I had worked toward. The self-awareness that inevitably dawns on all soldiers in a combat zone came upon me: I was not a part of the solution; I was the problem, or at least part of the problem.

That sounds familiar. But then:

Almost four years have passed since I left the Kashmir Valley. Although the conflict gets less public attention, civilians, soldiers and militants still die every day. Despite the seemingly endless daily toll, a few months ago the commander of India's Northern Army at the time, Lt. Gen. Hari Prasad, had the confidence to declare that "normalcy is round the corner."

That also sounds familiar. Dangerously so. And then:

True, the level of violence in Kashmir has decreased and this augurs well for peace in the valley. But the Indian Army has not, and can never, quash the insurgency. On the contrary, one of the first lessons taught to all soldiers deploying in Kashmir is that an insurgency can never be militarily defeated. It can only be managed until a political solution is found — a lesson that the Bush administration would do well to remember.

The problem here is that the Iraqi insurgency is not just about fighting the occupiers. In Iraq, the insurgents are also fighting against their own government, in an effort to precipitate civil war, or at the very least, perpetual chaos that prevents the formation of a meaningful civil structure in which Sunnis are officially the weak minority. That extra twist keeps our Indian friend's advice from being fully applicable. Holding down the insurgency until a "political solution" is found won't be enough, because even if and when such a solution is realized, the moment the US steps back, the chaos will start again, probably in earnest. It's a no-win situation, with the only fully applicable lesson from prior world events being: once you step in dogcrap, it takes a lot of time and effort to get it off your shoe. Even then, the smell lingers.

Poll Roundup

2006-03-03T09:17:00.000-05:00

Looking mad ugly for the commander-in-chief:

BUSH JOB APPROVAL
Cook 40%
Fox 39%
Gallup 38%
L.A. Times 38%
Qunnipiac 36%
CBS 34%

U.S. ON RIGHT/WRONG TRACK
L.A. Times 30%/64%

APPROVE OF BUSH ON FIGHTING TERRORISM
Gallup 47%
CBS 43%

APPROVE OF BUSH ON IRAQ WAR
Gallup 35%
CBS 36%

GENERIC CONGRESSIONAL BALLOT: D/R
FOX 48%/34%
Gallup 53%/39%
Democracy Corp 48%/40%

Forget Democracy?

2006-03-02T12:45:00.000-05:00

This guy gives us something to think about. I think he pretty much nails it when he talks about how democracy at gunpoint is a bogus concept. That's why Iraq is a disaster right now.

The lesson to take away is that where it involves other despotic regimes in the Middle East] region -- none of which is nearly as despotic as Hussein's -- the last thing we should do is actively precipitate their demise. The more organically they evolve and dissolve, the less likely it is that blood will flow.

I take exception, though, to his suggestion that an effective tyranny is more moral than an ineffective democracy.

"[B]efore the names of Just and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power," Thomas Hobbes wrote in "Leviathan." Without something or somebody to monopolize the use of force and decide right from wrong, no man is safe from another and there can be no freedom for anyone. Physical security remains the primary human freedom. And so the fact that a state is despotic does not necessarily make it immoral. That is the essential fact of the Middle East that those intent on enforcing democracy abroad forget.

The morality comes not through the efficiency and efficacy of the system in question; the morality comes through the sentiment and philosophy of the system. Democracy, as a system, is always more moral than tyranny, because the former system is about -- at least in theory -- empowering the individual, whereas the latter is about disempowering the individual. Now, democracy is sometimes practiced in an immoral way -- witness the United States, for example. But that is not to say that the concept of democracy is in those cases immoral, but rather the practicioners are.

We'll Get To It One Day...

2006-03-02T11:14:00.000-05:00

This is so annoying. The state government here in New York can't agree on anything. It usually takes them until late Spring to pass the annual budget. And now they've applied their childish bickering ways to the process of modernizing our voting equipment. I can't believe that six years after the Florida 2000 fiasco, I'm still going to be voting on creaky, rickety lever machines that are almost as old as my mom. (How old is that? Let's just say that I am in my late-30's.)

ALBANY, March 1 — The Justice Department sued New York State on Wednesday for failing to overhaul its election system and replace its aging voting machines. It is the first lawsuit the federal government has filed to force a state to comply with the voting guidelines enacted by Congress after the 2000 election debacle.
The new federal guidelines were designed to prevent the kind of electoral chaos that marred the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and to make casting ballots easier for disabled voters. But New York State's efforts to modernize its election system
have fallen far behind the rest of the nation, delayed by Albany's chronic gridlock and partisan bickering.
New York was supposed to create a statewide database of registered voters by Jan. 1 to make it easier to register and to detect fraud. It has not even come close to doing so, the lawsuit contends.

Those fools better not make me have to go up to Albany and crack some skulls. I take my vote very seriously, and I don't appreciate it being used as a political football!

Say It ain't So

2006-03-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

This is absolutely incredible. Mind-boggling. Clearly there is something going on underneath that I don't know about, because on the surface, this is breath-takingly disrespectful.

Legendary entertainer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte on Tuesday explained his absence from Coretta Scott King's funeral. Belafonte told reporters before a speech at Case Western Reserve University that President Bush influenced the King family to disinvite him from the funeral in suburban Atlanta on Feb. 7.
Belafonte, known to be a friend of Martin Luther King Jr., said he was told about the decision the day before the funeral, at which he had been scheduled to speak.
The King children made the final decision, Belafonte said, but they were "fiercely intimidated by the president's representatives." Belafonte has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration.

I can't believe I missed this little twist (The Black Commentator was on it a couple of weeks ago).

Harry Belafonte was a good friend at least of Martin if not also Coretta. Bush, on the other hand...well let's just say he had zero relationship with the deceased, her family, her friends, her life, her calling, her activities, her philosophy -- you get the point. In fact, it's not even clear why he wanted to attend the funeral to begin with. There was no way he was going to change any minds regarding his attitude towards African Americans, if that's what they were thinking. He's worked hard to build up his reputation in that matter over the last five years. One speech at a funeral couldn't undo that kind of damage.

But for whatever reason, he wanted to be there, and so, apparently, was able to influence the remainder of the guest list. Now the next question is: why in the world would the King family want George Bush there? For the generic honor of having the president speak at your mother's funeral? For that you disinvite a man who has given so much of his life to supporting Coretta and the causes she took as her own? For that you defer to a man who meant NOTHING -- no, make that: LESS THAN NOTHING -- to your mother? Could the children of Martin and Coretta King have so little integrity? Or perhaps there is, as is usually the case with any Bush sleaziness, MONEY involved. Like money that the King Center desperately needs to continue to carry out its mission. Money that could come from, say, a federal grant or new line in the federal budget. Again, could the children of Martin and Coretta King have so little integrity?

Lots of stuff here that is perplexing and/or distressing.

By the way, Happy 79th Birthday, Harry.

"The End of Iraq"

2006-03-01T08:01:00.000-05:00

The tragedy rolls on, reaching all corners.

We did not discuss Sunni or Shiite inside this mosque," said the sheik, Abdel Rahman Mahmoud, 74, whose courtyard was strewn with crushed blue glass and charred scraps of paper from the fire that sectarian rioters set last week. "People thought of us as neutral."
Here in the mixed neighborhood of Zayuna, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians live side by side, and residents always felt immune to sectarian violence. So when it exploded last Thursday, so did many dearly held beliefs.
"I used to keep in my mind that Iraq will come back one day," said Shirouq Abayachi, a Zayuna resident who was pondering her country's fate with friends in a social club in central Baghdad on Tuesday. "Now the Iraq I wish to have cannot come back. There is no core left to rebuild."
[SNIP]
Iraqis in Zayuna wanted desperately for it not to be true; the phrase "Iraqis are brothers" was on everyone's lips. Once they had glimpsed the underside, many turned away, not wanting to see, but some, like Ms. Abayachi, seemed transfixed.
"Maybe I see the end more clearly now," she said over a lunch of salads and a cocktail. "The end of Iraq."

One way or another, Mr. Bush's adventure was always destined to be remembered as historic. It appears very likely, now, that it will be so-remembered for all the wrong reasons.

US Troops: We Want Out of Here

2006-02-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

A new poll is out on the attitudes of US troops in Iraq toward that war. Interesting findings include:

72% want the US troops out in the next year
85% think the war is retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11
77% think the war is to stop Saddam fron protecting al Qaeda in Iraq

This is very sad news. It suggests that our troops have completely bought into the thoroughly discredited claims that Saddam had a role in 9/11 and had relationships with al Qaeda. This proves, by extension, that the best way to send an Army into an unjustified war is to keep them ignorant of the facts, the better for them to focus on completing the "mission."

And yet, we see that the troops, having lived this "mission" for the past few years, have decided they've had enough.

Never Forget

2006-02-27T11:34:00.000-05:00

Just in time for Black History Month, The Birmingham (Al.) News is publishing never-before-seen photos from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's as it took place in Alabama. The photos had apparently been buried in a closet since the time they were taken, and some intern just happened to stumble across them this month.

The link to the photos is here. Some of the ones I found particularly interesting are below.

Alabama National Guardsmen protecting a bus carrying black and white "Freedom Riders"

The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth stares down a vigilante looking to block blacks' access to a bus terminal

John Lewis, now a U.S. congressman, in a march from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery, protesting for full voting rights. Minutes after this photo was taken, the marchers, including many children, were attacked by state troopers wielding tear gas and clubs.

The mayor of Birmingham upon learning of the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist church, in which 4 little black girls were killed.

One of many instances of peaceful student protesters being attacked with fire hoses in downtown Birmingham.

The Pain of Iraqi Life

2006-02-26T21:57:00.000-05:00

On top of everything else, they have this:

Three days of a virtually round-the-clock curfew, imposed Friday to quell unprecedented Shiite-Sunni clashes in Iraq, have left families running short of food in Baghdad and three other provinces. Store shelves are going bare and, at some hospitals, officials said patients were dying for lack of medicine and supplies.
[SNIP]
"Life is a mess in Iraq now," said Abbas, who was wearing tracksuit pajamas in midafternoon. "It will be worse than before when they lift the curfew. When there is a curfew they hide, and when it is lifted they go to the streets with their car bombs."

[SNIP]

"We are having deaths because we don't have the necessary medicine and supplies," said Muhammed Ayash Kubaisi, manager of a hospital in the northerncity of Tikrit.

Curfews are not the answer. The violence will return, even if at lower levels, once the curfew is lifted. And in the meantime, the curfew itself obviously brings its own problems.

One hates to say it, but it may be that the only answer is for the US to get out of the way, let Iraq have its civil war, then be ready to help with the cleanup. Otherwise, the Iraqi government, with US assistance, is doing the equivalent of bandaging an open sore. At some point, the sore becomes a raging infection, one which threatens to kill the patient.

Going Backwards

2006-02-25T12:28:00.000-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022401816_pf.html

The number of Iraqi army battalions judged by their American trainers to be capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. help has fallen from one to none since September, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
But the number of Iraqi battalions capable of leading the battle, with U.S. troops in a support role, has grown by nearly 50 percent. And the number of battalions engaged in combat has increased by 11 percent.
[SNIP]
When Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in September that the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting independently of U.S. troops had dropped from three to one, the news triggered an uproar among Democrats arguing for an early pullout.

So, the Iraqis are becoming more dependant on the US troops, not less.

Oh No She Didn't!

2006-02-25T02:35:00.000-05:00

Rita Cosby has her own program on the MSNBC news channel. Here she is offering commentary on the Demcrats' electoral strategy on the nightly program "Hardball" hosted by Chris Matthews:

VIDEO

COSBY: I am offended, I think, that churches would turn over their rosters [to Republican electoral campaigns]. There needs to be this clear separation of church and state...And I also like what the Democrats are doing. I mean talk about a wacky thing: they're going after the "hoodlum vote." I mean that, I think, is clearly racist. Clearly they're going after the African American vote. And I think on both sides it's pretty disgusting.

MATTHEWS: Wait, back up a notch. Going after "the hoodlum vote?"
COSBY: Yeah, they're going after the felons. They're going after the convicted felons. They're going after these rosters and saying some of these felons should be able to vote. So what they're doing in turn is saying: OK the conservatives are going after these churches,...we'll get the votes of those with criminal records.

It will be interesting to hear how she tries to spin her way out of that crack. Once again the media showing much love to minority communities.

War President

2006-02-24T14:05:00.000-05:00

So much for that...

From a political perspective, President Bush's national security credentials have clearly been tarnished due to the outcry over this issue. For the first time ever, Americans have a slight preference for Democrats in Congress over the President on national security issues. Forty-three percent (43%) say they trust the Democrats more on this issue today while 41% prefer the President.
The preference for the opposition party is small, but the fact that Democrats are even competitive on the national security front is startling. In Election 2002, the President guided his party to regain control of the Senate based almost exclusively on the national security issue. On Election Day that year, just 23% rated the economy as good or excellent, but the President's Party still emerged victorious.

The only thing "startling" about this finding is that it took so long for Americans to figure out that Democrats have been trying to put together a real national security stance, while Mr. Bush was merely posing and throwing out his chest. John Kerry and Chuck Schumer have been trying to get Bush to focus on the lack of security at America's ports for years.

I've Heard of Early Voting, But...

2006-02-24T11:45:00.000-05:00

Black Box Voting, which studies the problems with electronic voting machines, has been on the case of Palm Beach County, FL, for a long time. After finally getting hold of the voting records from the 2004 election, she found:

The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night. Black Box Voting successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election. After investing over $7,000 and waiting nine months for the records, Black Box Voting discovered that the voting machine logs contained approximately 100,000 errors.

In other words, some large number of votes that appear to have been included in the final tally also appear to be completely bogus.

"ATM"-style electronic voting machines are a dangerous solution to the problem of punch cards and chads. Simply put, there is no way to know whether the machines are correctly recording the votes that the voters cast. Even if the machines offer a paper receipt, there is no proof that the the machine's memory actually reflects what is printed on the reciept.

Given dramatic demonstrations in recent years of underhanded behavior surrounding elections, there is only one way to hold a trustworthy vote: with paper ballots that are counted by hand. This is the direction the US must move in.

Iraq Civil War, Step 4.1

2006-02-23T08:44:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 23 -- A wave of sectarian violence, executions and recrimination swept Iraq Thursday following Wednesday's attack on a revered Shiite shrine.
Authorities in Baghdad, struggling to restore order, expanded an existing curfew in an effort to get people off the streets after dark. They cancelled all leaves for Iraqi security forces. Politically, the process of negotiating a new government appeared to be in even deeper trouble than before, as some Sunni politicians, protesting what they said was a lack of protection for Sunni mosques attacked overnight, said they were pulling out of the negotiations.
There were a great number of disturbances reported across the country Wednesday night and Thursday, too many to accurately track let alone verify.

As Mr. Bush will stubbornly refuse to start even pretending to pull the US out before the new government looks like it's up and running, the stalled negotiations are just what we don't need to hear right now.

The article then goes on the list just a handful of examples of the chaos exploding around the country. It closes with this disturbing coda:

Followers came running late Wednesday when a Sadr preacher took up a bullhorn outside Sadr's offices to give the direction that the armed, angry crowds were waiting for. The mosque attack was the work of "occupiers," or Americans, "and Zionists," said the cleric, Abdul Zara Saidy. In Iran, Shiite leaders echoed the accusation.

When the Shiite start believing that en masse, it's game over, son.

Not Just "No..."

2006-02-22T16:12:00.000-05:00

At 4:10pm, CNN reported that Republican Congresswoman Sue Myrick of North Carolina issued a statement on the UAE port deal:

"Dear Mr. President: in regard to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO, but HELL NO!"

Link: http://myrick.house.gov/letter%20to%20President%20UAE%20ports.PDF

Iraq Civil War, Step 4

2006-02-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

In response to the bombing of the Shiite mosque this morning, the following has happened:

**BAGHDAD - At least 28 Sunni mosques and an office for the Iraqi Islamic Party in Baghdad were attacked by gunmen after the bomb blast in Samarra. Police said one mosque was completely burnt while others were attacked by gunfire and rocket propelled grenades. Three clerics and three bodyguards were killed, and another cleric was kidnapped, according to interior ministry sources. Gunmen used rifles and RPG rounds in the latest mosque attack, in the southern Saidaya district of Baghdad, a witness said.
**Hussein al-Falluji, a leading Sunni politician, reported attacks on at least 75 Sunni mosques around the country with most in eastern Baghdad.

BASRA - Storage depots belonging to the main Sunni religious body in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, were reported by local police to be on fire after three grenades were thrown from moving cars while residents were at prayers.

Update: missed this stuff too:

Police found nine bodies of Sunni Muslims, most of them shot in the head, in two neighborhoods of Basra, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of militia reprisals. Protesters in Najaf, Kut and Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City also marched through the streets by the hundreds and thousands, many shouting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans and burning those nations' flags.

Really Im-Port-ant

2006-02-22T09:10:00.000-05:00

This thing with the United Arab Emerates controlling American ports is getting very interesting:

President Bush yesterday strongly defended an Arab company's attempt to take over the operation of seaports in Baltimore and five other cities, threatening a veto if Congress tries to kill a deal his administration has blessed.
Facing a sharp bipartisan backlash, Bush took the unusual step of summoning reporters to the front of Air Force One to condemn efforts to block a firm from the United Arab Emirates from purchasing the rights to manage ports that include those in New York and New Orleans.

Why is this so important to Bush? He hasn't vetoed anything his entire presidency. But this? Now would be the time for journalists to do, well, you know, their job.

Choice bits from the article:

...some of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks used the United Arab Emirates as an operational and financial hub.

Hmmm.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) called Bush politically tone-deaf.

No kidding.

"If the president insists on using his first veto on this bill, Congress should give him the opportunity to do so," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who, along with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), has promised legislation to ban firms owned by foreign governments from controlling operations at U.S. ports.

Finally, something for Hillary "National Security Democrat" Clinton to show some chops against Bush on.

"It's strange that the administration didn't consult Congress," a Republican leadership aide said.

Oh, how cute and naive.

The United Arab Emirates provides docking rights for more U.S. Navy ships than any other nation in the region...

Ah ha! Payback for letting the US secure the oil flow..

So Basically, Two Years of Chaos For Nothing

2006-02-21T15:16:00.000-05:00

Boy the Bush crew must be disappointed about this headline:

Exiled Aristide says he's ready to return home to Haiti

Well, That Was Quick

2006-02-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

Wasting no time testing out Alito's chops:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court wasted little time jumping back into the contentious abortion issue, agreeing Tuesday to review the constitutionality of
a federal law banning a controversial late-term procedure critics call "partial
birth" abortion.
The case could provide a judicial sea change with new Justice Samuel Alito, who joined the high court January 31, replacing Sandra Day O'Connor.
O'Connor, the first woman on the high court, was a key swing vote for a quarter century, upholding the basic right to abortion. The views of Alito, a more conservative jurist, could prove crucial in the new debate.
A federal appeals court had ruled against the government, saying the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 was unconstitutional because it did not provide a health exception to pregnant women facing a medical emergency.

Here we go, folks. Step one in what could be the climactic battle over the right to choose.

So Full Of It...

2006-02-21T10:41:00.000-05:00

What idiots. They scheduled a P.R. stunt promoting Bush's push for renewable energy research at the lab where he just cut funding for renewable energy research.

On Tuesday, Bush plans to visit the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., to talk about speeding the development of biofuels.The lab, with a looming $28 million budget shortfall, had announced it was cutting its staff by 32 people, including eight researchers.
But in advance of Bush's visit, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman over the weekend directed the transfer of $5 million to the private contractor that runs the lab, so the jobs can be saved.

We saw this coming a few weeks ago.

No Rules

2006-02-21T10:20:00.000-05:00

The US kidnapped an innocent foreigner and sent him another country to be tortured. And that's OK, right?

NEW YORK -- A federal judge has tossed out a civil rights lawsuit filed by a Syrian-born Canadian man who claimed U.S. counterterrorism officials deported him so he could be tortured in Syria.
Maher Arar had sued the officials in 2004 in what was believed to be the first case challenging extraordinary rendition - the policy of transferring foreign terror suspects to third countries without court approval.
U.S. District Judge David G. Trager rejected arguments that Arar was protected by the Torture Victim Prevention Act, which allows U.S. courts to assess damages for human rights abuses committed abroad.
Trager said that as a non-citizen, Arar couldn't demonstrate that he has a viable cause of action under that statute. Citing "the national security and foreign policy considerations at stake," the judge said Arar had no grounds in a U.S. court to claim his constitutional right to due process was violated.

Now, if he had been a terrorist, the US courts would have had jurisdiction. He could have been tried here. But since he not a terrorist and not a US citizen, he has no standing in US courts. That sounds fair, right? Anything for "national security." Really, I don't understand why Bush doesn't just start ordering the permanent detention or summary executions of Democratic leaders and liberal activists, claiming that secret evidence that he is not required to reveal shows that they have been vacationing with al Qaeda.

Silence Ain't Golden

2006-02-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

Steve Gilliard found something interesting out of New York:

A founder of a black police organization said yesterday that he was facing departmental charges for publicly criticizing the city's handling of a terror alert last fall.
If the disciplinary action were to result in dismissal, Captain Adams, a 22-year veteran scheduled to retire on March 17, could lose his pension. Mr. Siegel said that the captain was planning to run in Brooklyn for a seat in the State Senate.

Adams's crime is that he went on TV and and said that that subway terror alert last fall was a cover to excuse Mike Bloomberg for skipping a mayoral election debate at the Apollo theater in Harlem.

I've long felt the same way: the "alert" was one of those quasi-meaningless alerts that Tom Ridge had raised to an artform when he was Homeland Security Director. And the information had been held back for days and released on the very night that Bloomberg was planning not to face the voters of Harlem.

But the funny thing is how blatant the NYPD is being in trying to dismiss this guy days before his pension kicks in. Do they really think we won't figure out what's going on? Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly have spent the last 4 years cleaning up the mess that Rudy Guiliani had made of the relationship between the police and the black community. If they pull this stunt, it will undo most of that work in one shot.

Revolution Redux?

2006-02-18T12:33:00.000-05:00

An interesting look back at when Newt Gingrich led the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

However, I think the authors are being unfair to the Democrats by inplying that their leadership lacks the fervor that "new blood" would bring. They imply that the old liberals are holding the party back. In fact, old-school cats like John Conyers, Henry Waxman, and Charlie Rangel are the spark of the Democrats in the House. They have done more to try to make America understand the negative impacts of every scandal and misguided policy coming out of the Bush administration than a chamber full of young guns like Harold Ford ever would.

What's undermining the Democrats chances to retake the House is that nobody, old or new, has the guts to support the efforts of these long-timers who, thanks to their safe seats, can afford NOT to be afraid of Bush and the weakened Republican slime machine.

"No F---ing Reason."

2006-02-17T11:11:00.000-05:00

One of the many tragedies of the Iraq fiasco is that for the young guys being sent over there, it takes some kind of calamity before it dawns on them that there is no good purpose for their being over there.

As Call sat in the schoolhouse, preparing to go out, he heard two loud bursts from the .50-caliber machine gun on the roof.
Specialist Michael Pena, a beefy 21-year-old from Port Isabel, Texas, had opened fire. Boom-boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom.
Call and his men dashed out the front door. Pena had shot an unarmed Iraqi man on the street. The man had walked past the signs that mark the 200-yard "disable zone" that surrounds the Alamo and into the 100-yard "kill zone" around the base.
The Army had forced the residents of the block to leave the houses last year to create the security perimeter. American units in Iraq usually fire warning shots. The Rakkasans don't.
A few days later, Call said his brigade command had told him, "The Rakkasans don't do warning shots." A warning shot in the vernacular of the Rakkasans, Call said, was a bullet that hit one Iraqi man while others could see.
"That's how you warn his buddy, is to pop him in the face with a kill shot?" Call said incredulously. "But what about when his buddy comes back with another guy ... that and the other 15 guys in his family who you've made terrorists?"
Looking at the man splayed on the ground, Call turned to his medic, Specialist Patrick McCreery, and asked, "What the f--- was he doing?"
McCreery didn't answer. The man's internal organs were hanging out of his side, and his blood was pouring across the ground. He was conscious and groaning. His eyelids hung halfway closed.
"What ... did they shoot him with?" McCreery asked, sweat beginning to show on his brow. "Did someone call a ... ambulance?"
The call to prayer was starting at a mosque down the street. The words "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - wafted down from a minaret's speakers.
The man looked up at the sky as he heard the words. He repeated the phrase "Ya Allah. Ya Allah. Ya Allah." Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
He looked at McCreery and raised his finger toward the house in front of him. "This my house," he said in broken English.
McCreery reached down. With his hands cupped, he shoved the man's organs back into his body and held them in place as Call unwrapped a bandage to put around the hole.
"He's fading, he's fading," McCreery shouted. Looking into the dying man's eyes, the medic said, "Haji, haji, look at me," using the honorific title reserved for older Muslim men who presumably have gone on Hajj - pilgrimage - to Mecca.
"Why? Why?" asked the man, his eyes beginning to close.
"Haji, I don't know," said McCreery, sweat pouring down his face. An Iraqi ambulance pulled up and the Humvees followed. They followed the man to the hospital they'd raided a few days earlier. The soldiers filed in and watched as the man died.
Call said nothing. McCreery, a 35-year-old former foundry worker from Levering,
Mich., walked toward a wall, alone. He looked at the dead man for a moment and wiped tears from his eyes.
A few days later, Call's commander asked him to take pictures of the entrails left by the man Pena had shot, identified as Wissam Abbas, age 31, to document that Abbas was inside the sign warning of deadly force. McHenry, who was driving, told him, "There's not going to be much left, sir. The dogs will have eaten all of it."
Pena was up on the schoolhouse roof manning the same .50-caliber machine gun. He didn't say a word about the man he'd killed. As he stared at a patch of earth in front of him, at Samarra and its wreckage, he couldn't contain his frustration.
"No one told me why I'm putting my life on the line in Samarra, and you know why they didn't?" Pena asked. "Because there is no f------ reason."

Vaporizing a guy on his way home in a hail of bullets. It's Amadou Diallo all over again.
Except Iraqis don't protest over unjust killings. They respond with bombs.

Al Qaeda: Terrible Pay, Great Vaction Time

2006-02-17T10:42:00.000-05:00

I guess their health insurance plan isn't too hot either:

"The corporate culture appears to be similar to other modern organizations," the study states.
Indeed, some of the documents used by researchers indicate that al Qaeda has vacation plans -- seven days every three weeks for married members, five days a month for bachelors -- and provides its members with 15 days of sick leave a year.
One document states that al Qaeda operatives must request vacation 10 weeks in advance, and another document outlines the pay scale for members: about $108 a month for married members, less if they're single and more if they have more than one wife.

"Glory Road"

2006-02-16T15:22:00.000-05:00

Regarding this feel-good movie about the first all-black basketball team winning the 1966 NCAA championship: I have no interest in seeing the movie. Apparently my suspicions -- that this was going to be a Disneyfied they-all-lived-happily-ever-after depiction of a tense racial environment -- were correct.

The victorious team arrives at the El Paso airport and is greeted by enthusiastic fans befitting the return of any champion. Clearly, their achievement enlightened whites, including a once-reluctant campus community, regarding the capabilities of blacks and destroyed the rational of anti-black racism.
However, several of the black players remember their return differently. Two years after the game, cerebral and feisty point guard Willie Worsley told a reporter that after the airport reception, a parade and a banquet, “that was about the end of it. We were never campus heroes. We were never invited to mixers or anything like that.” Before and after that game, the predominately white university community, including the coaches and administration, made it clear to the black players that they were there to play basketball and garner the little known school athletic prestige and revenue, but to do little else. Worsley stated that he and the other black players continued to be treated like “animals” by their white coaches, teammates and others at the school. “You play basketball and that’s it. When the game's over, they want you to come back to the dormitory and stay out of sight.” The racial discrimination that black student-athletes experienced at Texas Western, however, is absent from Glory Road.
[SNIP]
In 1968, Worsley and teammates David Latin and Willie Cager were among a number of black student-athletes at the school who revealed to Sports Illustrated a litany of racial prejudices condoned by the athletic department and university. For instance, blacks continued to be assigned segregated housing on campus and during road trips, could not rent housing in several well-to-do white neighborhoods surrounding the campus and were denied the routine and extralegal financial and summer job assistance doled out to their white teammates. Additionally, they were harassed by white students and coaches, including Haskins, if they dated white co-eds. They also complained that several members of the administration, including athletic director George McCartney, openly referred to them as “niggers” and made them the butt of racial jokes. In the film, McCartney is portrayed as a liberal ally of the basketball program.

It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White?

2006-02-16T13:09:00.000-05:00

This is a little creepy.

Black.White.," a six-part documentary that makes its debut on March 8, follows the race-swapping experiment of two families. The white Wurgel-Marcotulli family of Santa Monica, Calif., (along with Rose Bloomfield, the 17-year-old daughter of Carmen Wurgel) and the black Sparkses of Atlanta, including Mr. Sparks's
wife, Renee, and 16-year-old Nick, undergo a racial transformation through the magic of sprayed-on color, wigs, contact lenses and other makeup tricks. The
whites appear black; the blacks appear white.

I guess I'll give the show a try, but the make-up thing and the wigs makes me uncomfortable. Reminds me too much of blackface performances.

It's not clear from the article whether the families will engage in activities like applying for a job, a loan, trying to rent an apartment, house hunting, or any of the other major activities in which racial discrimination can be life-altering. That would be interesting to see.

I Got the Power

2006-02-16T10:40:00.000-05:00

Not enough attention being paid to this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that an executive order gives him the authority to declassify secret documents, but he would not say whether he authorized an indicted former aide to release classified information.

Obvious implications for the Valerie Plame outing case.

Anybody know what this order is he's talking about?

UPDATE:
So it's this Executive Order 13292 he's talking about. Interesting. It was issued in March 2003, and it granted new power to the vice president to classify information. It does not, however, say anything about the power to de-classify information. And apparently, the rules on that are very specific. And Dick Cheney, if he unilaterally declassified information, has broken them.

Dropping Paul Hackett

2006-02-16T10:26:00.000-05:00

Here's what's so offensive about the Hackett scenario:

Although Hackett was running for US Senate, his first responsibility would have been to the people of Ohio.

Ohioans did not vote for Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, or Rahm Emanuel. For them to have the level of influence they apparently had (assuming the story we're hearing is true) in the Ohio primary smacks of outsider interference.

The Democrats of Ohio should have had the chance to choose whomever they wanted as their nominee. Then, the national party can swing into action to help get him/her elected. To have meddled in Ohio's decision before the process even got started was improper.

Along those lines, I'd say that if the Ohio Democratic Party wanted to meddle in the primary process, I would be less offended by that. Ohio elected Democrats are chosen by democratic voters from Ohio, and are empowered to act on the behalf of those voters. There is a fair and logical basis for those elected officials to choose a US Senate candidate for their state, though I still prefer the more democratic approach of letting primary voters decide where possible.

Haiti Mess

2006-02-15T14:48:00.000-05:00

The latest election in Haiti is truly chaotic and tragic.

The election commission made a mistake releasing preliminary totals with only 15% of the ballots tallied, especially since that 15% was not a geographically or demographically-balanced subsample of the voters. By announcing early on that Preval was up to 61% of the total, the commission set up expectations that always had a fair chance of not being met. Now that most of the ballots have been counted and apparently show Preval getting something just short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff, it looks like votes are being stolen -- whether or not that is actually the case.

Either way, voters are poised to go off if Preval is not declared winner on the first ballot.

On the Cheney Shooting

2006-02-15T09:22:00.000-05:00

You know, the way Cheney handled the shooting story is really the way he handles every controversial event he's involved in (think about the no-WMD scandal or the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal):

Try to keep your activities secret
When word gets out, blame the victim/leaker
Toss out multiple explanations/excuses for what you've done
Watch everyone grapple with the four different cover stories while you move on to your next crime

Also, I see parallels with Clinton/Monica in terms of the quality of the incident:

High official acted recklessly
The matter is non-public, non-policy, non-politics-related
The cover-up, more than the event itself, is the big crime
The media are in a frenzy

Now yes, there is a diffrence this time: someone nearly died. And alcohol is rumored to have played a role, which obviously adds to the seriousness. But there are some weird consistencies in what the way the media are behaving. Because the bottom line is, no one really thinks Cheney intentionally shot the guy. So in an administration in which Cheney was key to spreading lies that have led to the actual deaths of tens of thousands of people; to covering for a policy that appears to violate federal law and the US Constitution; and to the revelation of the identity of an undercover CIA agent, one who was tasked with helping stop the spread of nuclear weapons, why is it this incident that gets the media all up in Cheney's rectum?

Bush Hates Democracy

2006-02-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

Has there ever been a more undemocratic US President than George W. Bush?

He came to the presidency through undemocratic means.
He's trying to force democracy on Iraq at gunpoint, with thus far disasterously violent results.
He and his agents have worked to undermine or overthrow democratically-elected regimes in Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, and now in the Palestinianian Territories.

JERUSALEM, Feb. 13 — The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.
The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.

As Steve says, this is the more stupid of two clear options for bringing about the desired change. If the US and Israel actively participate in attempting to cause Hamas's downfall, it will only make Hamas into martyrs, guaranteeing an increase in their popularity. The smarter option, assuming Hamas is planning a ruinous build-up of its militias, is to let them fail to deliver the services to their people. Then they will be weakened organically, and can be defeated through natural democratic (or at least homegrown) procedures.

Will the Bush people ever learn that they have neither the right, nor the ability to chose other nations' leaders?

Backfire

2006-02-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

No doubt the idiots in the Bush administration responsible for participating in the overthrow of Aristide from Haiti thought that installing their own puppet would be a cakewalk. They thought the same about Iraq, too...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 13 -- Haiti's hopes for a peaceful presidential election exploded Monday in a torrent of violence as mobs overturned cars, set piles of tires ablaze and built elaborate roadblocks across major highways, protesting delays in the vote count and alleged fraud in last Tuesday's balloting.
Demonstrators paralyzed cities across the country, from Cap-Haitien in the north to this impoverished seaside capital, where tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand that Rene Preval -- a former president and favorite of this city's poor -- be named president.

Furthermore, there is some funny business going on with the vote count, that I'll have more to say about once the final tally is announced.

Fratricide

2006-02-13T23:55:00.000-05:00

I hate this crap!

Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.
Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.
Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.
[SNIP]
"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.
[SNIP]
Mr. Fern added that Mr. Brown's fund-raising abilities made him the better Senate candidate. By the end of last year, Mr. Brown had already amassed $2.37 million, 10 times what Mr. Hackett had raised.

More $$ equals better candidate? That's the kind of thinking that will keep the Democrats chained to secondary status in the Congress forever.

If there is one thing I can not stand, it is an overly-calculating elected official. And in a time that cries out for leaders with principle, the Democratic Party in DC seems to have been completely overrun with such cowards. They are so damned afraid of everything: of competition, of Republicans, of taking a potentially controversial stand on an issue. If this is how they feel elections should be run, why not simply forgo the primary process and give the nomination to whichever Democrat raises the most money? And calling financiers to tell them to stop donating to a candidate of your own party? That is sleazy as hell.

Boy do we need public financing of campaigns. Fast.

IDIOTS!

2006-02-13T23:02:00.000-05:00

Gee, did Cheney know when he orchestrated the outing of an undercover CIA agent just to undermine her husband for being a critic of the Iraq War that he was simultaneously crippling the US's ability to keep track of potential Iranian nuclear weapons?

The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

Dilema of His Own Making

2006-02-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

Time magazine has an article on the "dilema" of being Barak Obama. The basic point is that everybody wants a piece of him, so he's bound to disappoint some people.

I've said it before, and it bears repeating: The primary reason folks went gaga over Obama is that 1) he's black and 2) he gave a moving, well-delivered speech about national unity at the Democratic national convention in 2004. That's it. Before he cast a single vote in the US Sentate, he was being seriously discussed by DC insiders as a presidential candidate. That's absolutely ridiculous. Obama may ultimately prove to be presidential material, but it is WAY too early to be salivating over him at this point.

What is making me uncomfortable about Obama is not that he is not liberal enough. It's that he seems to have a zeal for seeking 'harmony' and 'unity' for their own sake. In that way he is reminiscent of Harold Ford in the House of Representatives. They both radiate the vibes of men spending too much time in their current postitions with their eyes turned toward that higher office (Ford: the Senate, Obama: the Presidency).

So far, I have had no trouble resisting joining the cult of Obama -- not because I think he is bad leader, but because he simply hasn't done enough or shown enough passion to warrant such worship.

Still Winning Those Iraqi Hearts and Minds

2006-02-13T11:15:00.000-05:00

The video is just lovely.

And nothing says 'let's be friends' quite like a late night raid on one's home, during which you point guns in the faces of children, and walk off with cell phones, walkmans, and watches.

How Do They Know What He Looked Like?

2006-02-11T09:29:00.000-05:00

This is weird:

Presidents are often memorialized in their most famous moments -- George Washington crossing the Delaware, Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill.
Now President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard has been immortalized in bronze. The National Guard Association of the United States yesterday unveiled a bust of a young Lt. George W. Bush. The association expressed its pride in Bush, who is perhaps its most famous alumnus around today.
Bush's service may still be a bit of a sore subject for him, though. He seemed no more eager to talk about it yesterday than he did in his 2004 reelection campaign, when critics questioned whether he manipulated his guard service to avoid having to serve in Vietnam.

If Only She Could Skate...

2006-02-11T09:07:00.000-05:00

Two different standards? Wow, this is really shocking, isn't it?

In December Congress speedily passed special immigration legislation to benefit just one person: an ice dancer. As a Canadian, she couldn't join the 2006 U.S. Olympics team. But a law was written that lasted exactly two days, long enough for her to be fast-tracked for citizenship and sent to compete for the United States.
Around the same time, we at the Safe Harbor Project at Brooklyn Law School received notice that the U.S. immigration system had denied entry to Teresa, a 14-year-old African girl who has been stranded as a refugee in Guinea almost all her life. She is trying to join her adoptive mother, Momara (no real names are used here, as is generally practiced with asylum), a refugee from Sierra Leone who was granted asylum in the United States.
Teresa's harrowing story began when she was born in the bush, where everyone from her town had fled to escape rampaging rebel forces threatening to kill them. Her birth mother died giving birth to her. Without a second thought, Momara scooped up the infant and from that moment on considered Teresa her own.
[snip]
Since she is not Momara's biological child, she can qualify for a visa only with proof that she is adopted. The Department of Homeland Security denied her application because she does not have an "official adoption decree" from Sierra Leone.
[snip]
The country does not have a functioning government, much less a formalized adoption procedure.

Maybe if the girl tried out for the US track team...

Can We Af-Ford Him?

2006-02-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, African American Congressman Harold Ford from Tennessee added to his aura of muddled centrism with an entry on the Huffington Post blog about Coretta Scott King's funeral.

After a couple of paragraphs of boilerplate commeration, Ford wrote:

As the nation paused yesterday to reflect on what Mrs. King meant to each one of us, it is important remember [sic] we cannot divorce the way she lived her life from the way we celebrate her after her passing. Funerals should not be ceremonies to fabricate a life's works. Instead, they are a time to celebrate with honesty and dignity a woman's life, and to consider the legacy that she has left behind.

In the comments section following the post, readers demanded Ford to explain just what, exactly, he thought might have been "fabricate"d about her life in the funeral. It sounded like Ford was dipping a toe into the those-Negroes-don't-know-how-to-behave waters as part of his ongoing effort to become U.S. senator from a Southern state.

I read his post over a couple of times to try to figure out just what he was getting at. For, as sickening as his obession with "centrism" is, I was having a hard time accepting that a Southern black man, even Ford, would actually be questioning the truths that were spoken at the funeral.

This morning Ford appeared on the show of radio racist Don Imus and commented further on the King funeral. Despite a couple of remarks that the world could have done without ("Some things may have been said that were out of wack." On the Presidents Bush: "I thought they were both awesome!"), his words there made it clear that he was speaking of those who would deny the truth of what Coretta's life was about as the fabricators -- the haters on the right we heard from Tuesday.

The reason Ford stumbled over himself on what should have been a slam-dunk condemnation of Right's crybaby response is that he is so concerned with maintaining that center line, he is afraid of saying anything that will offend large numbers of the white Southerners in his home state that he needs in order to achieve his short-term goal. A less cautious and more authentic black -- and Democrat -- elected official would have written that those on the right are giving us crocodile tears over the uncomfortable truths about the immoral activities of their beloved president that Coretta's death and life give us pause to take note of.

But that would have been too direct. Too "liberal."

Besides, that Ford would regularly appear on Imus (who today told Ford that Jimmy Carter is a "weasel," "dishonest," and was "just trying to embarass President Bush," before certifying that "I know I'm right and you're wrong, Congressman.") speaks volumes about who he sees as his constituency.

Just Following Orders

2006-02-09T16:56:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well. It looks like "Scooter" Libby is rolling over on his old boss, Mr. Cheney.

This is gonna be REAL good.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Can you just imagine a Vice President being indicted?

More on Coretta

2006-02-09T10:31:00.000-05:00

The reason, I think, that conservatives are in such a huff over the words spoken at Coretta King's funeral is that her death, and the corresponding attention paid to reviewing her life, unmasks the perverted nature of their brand of Christianity.

Conservatives like to think they own the patent on the image of Christ and definition of morality. Yet these same people can spend an entire afternoon defending a decision to launch an unprovoked war against a non-threatening country, which action has lead to the deaths of tens of thousands to-date. These same people go mute if you ask them to explain the morality of cutting taxes for rich people while cutting funding for Medicaid.

That Coretta's life stands in sharp contrast to that of faux Christians like George W. Bush and so many of his supporters was unavoidable Tuesday, and that's what upset them so much.

Spilling the Beans

2006-02-09T09:57:00.000-05:00

Uh-oh! Better get Alberto on the phone so we can work up some sort of dubious legal justification for stopping this...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless the White House forbids it and offers legal support.
Brown's stance, in a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, follows senators' complaints that the White House is refusing to answer questions or release documents about advice given to Bush concerning the August 29 storm.

Imus Be Listening to a Racist

2006-02-08T13:06:00.000-05:00

Apparently Don Imus, radio host whose show is simulcast on cable news outlet MSNBC, was troubled by yesterday's Coretta King funeral. He implored the mourners to "act like Jesus," whatever that meant, and called Jimmy Carter "despicable."

If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black! (Actually it isn't, since the kettle has been inaccurately described in this case.)

You might find it interesting to know over the years, Imus and characters on his radio show have:

compared the appearance of black NBA players to apes
called award-winning black New York Times journalist Gwen Ifill "the cleaning lady"
referred to award-winning black New York Times journalist Bob Herbert as a "quota hire"
referred to residents of Harlem as "molignans" (the Italian equivalent of "coons")
referred to the black wife of former Secretary of Defense William Cohen as a "big-haired ho"
called tennis players Venus and Serena Williams "animals"

And in a July 19, 1998 interview on "60 Minutes," Imus admitted to hiring a producer specifically "to do nigger jokes" for the show.

So I'll be damned if I'm gonna let a dusty racist cracker alcoholic like Imus tell me how to mourn the loss of a leader in my community.