Better Stick To Print

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a Wednesday editorial page feature called “Blog Cabin” which, I guess, is supposed to be some sort of random sampling of what is going on in "the blogosphere" (I hate that term...sounds like a submerging device in a bad Irwin Allen '60s Sci-Fi movie). The theme of such apparent burning importance yesterday was why the T.V. series “The West Wing” was cancelled and the effect that will have.

Though I didn’t pay much attention to the Inquirer feature, I have to admit that the excerpt I read from Russell Shaw of The Huffington Post was actually pretty good. My point, as you’ll read below, is that they could have featured topics that, if nothing else, generated much greater site traffic.

(I never really watched The West Wing myself, but my in-laws have been regular viewers for awhile. Their opinion is that it was about time for that to happen, thinking the show had pretty much run its course. Besides, seven years is an eternity anyway for a T.V. show, and it will no doubt live on in syndication forever somewhere. I know it was good – people like Dee Dee Myers from the good old Clinton days contributed to the show, and I would watch anything with Martin Sheen for some period of time anyway. Besides, it sounds like they were setting it up for Alan Alda’s conservative character to take over. Seeing that happen in real life has been unpleasant enough; I don’t think too many people want to see that on T.V. also.)

I seriously wonder about the Inquirer’s judgment when it comes to this sort of thing. I should point out that, a few months ago, they printed two posts supposedly representing conservative and liberal points of view on the outing of Valerie Plame, one by some wingnut called The Florida Masochist which did absolutely nothing to help the newspaper reader understand what was going on.

On another occasion, their blogging correspondent Dan Rubin posted some story that was supposedly a big deal regarding the fact that MoveOn.org ran an ad over last Thanksgiving showing our troops serving in Iraq in shorts, when some conservative blogger crowed over the fact that that isn’t the standard uniform for our troops, though it is for British troops, so how could those dumb liberals know what they’re talking about? When this was brought up to Eli Pariser of MoveOn, he acknowledged the screwup but pointed out that the most important fact of the ad – namely, that 150,000 of our troops were in Iraq over Thanksgiving – was still correct.

Since I believe the Inquirer needs help when it comes to figuring out and reporting on what it is that’s going on in “the blogging world,” (not much better than the other phrase, I guess), please allow me to summarize what has been transpiring lately at the sites I visit, and I will try to plug some others that are highly worthwhile but less visible.

- Atrios, The Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, and other sites/bloggers have publicized a site that contains an open letter to Chris Matthews of MSNBC, telling him that he should apologize to Michael Moore for comparing him to Osama bin Laden. All kinds of related stuff regarding Matthews has come out also, mainly the fact that he is an utterly unconscionable shill for George W. Bush.

- The Daily Kos (among others) has a quote from right-wing uber blogger Glenn Reynolds basically stating his overall disdain for reader blog comments because of their “incivility,” though Kos finds an example of Reynolds’ own guilt on that score.

Update 1: I was looking for an inflammatory quote from Reynolds in the Kos post. This doesn't contain it. I'll keep looking, because I know I saw it somewhere.

Update 2: This is what I was looking for from Reynolds (in the Digby post linked to Kos):

There was a time when the Left opposed fascism and supported democracy, when it wasn't a seething-yet-shrinking mass of self-hatred and idiocy. That day is long past, and the moral and intellectual decay of the Left is far gone.

Typical...

- Another issue that has received a lot of attention from the individuals mentioned above is the fact that Deborah Howell, the ombudsman for the Washington Post (I believe Dan Froomkin is back in that role now, but I’m not sure – I’ll keep checking) shut off the Washington Post’s reader comments blog when she decided that there were too many comments containing profanity. After Howell and Jim Brady, another Post senior editor, responded in a testy back-and-forth exchange with other bloggers concerning the exact number of the profane posts, the Post eventually relented and reopened the blog (Froomkin eventually re-entered the fray and said the profane posts constituted “a tiny minority”).

- Tim Russert, on “Meet The Press” last Sunday, asked Illinois Senator Barack Obama about Harry Belafonte’s recent disparaging comments towards Dubya. If Belafonte were working for Obama or acting in any official capacity with his organization, that would be understandable. However, this is not the case, leading to the conclusion that Russert asked Obama this question because he and Belafonte both are black, and somehow Russert thought Obama would know by osmosis or something, which is borderline (if not overt) racism.

Here are other widely discussed topics at other, less-well-known sites:

- Savant at The Brand New Bag has all kinds of good stuff on the Dubya/Jack Abramoff connection (as does TPM Café).

- Brendan at Brandoland has been all over the problems with the Iraqi Reconstruction for the last couple of days.

- The Bulldog Manifesto/The Talking Dog have an excerpt from an interview with an attorney representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

- Itsez is full of populist rage over what working Americans have to deal with today (wages, health care, etc.).

- Liberal Serving comments on the apparent reappearance of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a small town in western Maine (I always reserve judgment on that sort of thing myself or withhold it altogether).

I’m actually starting to wonder if the paper wants to portray bloggers generally as somewhere between tweedy academics who actually have talent and all-out cranks who digest cable news programs 16 hours a day and then crank out stream-of-consciousness rants in between ingesting coffee and Skittles. Is that the rationale behind their topic selection?

I guess next Wednesday’s “burning issue” will be the bloggers’ take on the rumors of a lesbian relationship between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. Stay tuned!

Calling The Invisible Man

Like many of you (I would guess), I’ve seen our heating bills rise this winter, though thus far we’ve lucked out with mild temperatures. However, if this winter holds true to form, we will eventually be socked with an arctic blast over the coming weeks that will require consuming more heat to keep our toes from turning blue, as well as other areas of our anatomy. Also in this area, gas seems to have leveled off a bit near the $2.40-$2.50 a gallon range, depending on where you are (still below the post-Katrina gouging levels, but way too damn high).

When this sort of thing has happened in the past, Congress, leaping furiously into action in an effort to pretend to do its job, immediately schedules hearings, parades a bunch of crooks and cronies in front of the T.V. cameras while waxing its indignation in the most dramatic manner possible, and then goes back to sleep for awhile. This was in effect when the Senate Energy Committee held hearings last November and called in the heads of the oil companies for a friendly little “heart to heart,” which was rudely interrupted when Barbara Boxer actually stood up and did her job by motioning that the executives be sworn in just like anyone else who has sat beside a congressional committee of one type or another. Pete Domenici called forth the fury of Chevron, Amoco, and Exxon-Mobil and put her back in her place.

(I mean…this isn’t just the imperial presidency, but the imperial government right? We can’t have anyone actually represent us…I mean, my God; what was Barbara Boxer thinking?).

Well, I got a crazy thought (getting to the point in a minute). In the past, sure, we’ve called out the head thieves and violators of the environment at the oil companies, but we’ve also called upon the Secretary of Energy to ask him or her “whaddayagonnadoaboutit?”

We all know that Dick Cheney is really in charge in that area, but I knew we had somebody taking up office space with that title acting as a front. The problem is that I couldn’t remember who it was.

Since inquiring minds need to know, I did some trusty Google searching, and it found out who it was. It turns out that it’s some guy named Samuel Bodman.

Who is this mook, you may well ask? Well, it turns out he was a big wheel at that gigando mutual fund company near Boston, Fidelity Investments, before he landed at Cabot Corporation, a specialty chemical maker in the same area. It’s not entirely clear how much he knows about energy, but he definitely knows Bushco, having “cut his teeth” in this administration under former Treasury Secretary Don Evans (see, Evans is, quite probably, Dubya's "best buddy").

This is why Cabot Corporation is noteworthy (from this story):

In October 2002, Bodman's former company came under fire when a United Nations Panel of Experts produced a report accusing the company, along with several other US corporations, of helping to fuel the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) while he ran Cabot by purchasing coltan from Congo during the conflict and illegally plundering the country's vast natural resources.

This explains what Coltan is and why it is important. As stated in the linked text, “When refined, coltan becomes a heat resistant powder, metallic tantalum which has unique properties for storing electrical charge. It is heavily used for printed circuit boards included in cellphones.”

Cabot has publicly denied the allegations in the UN report, but a report by the Belgian Senate states that Eagle Wings Resources International had a long-term contract to supply Cabot with coltan, which it too purchased from Congo during the war.

In response, environmental Friend of the Earth United States (FOE) and the UK-based human rights group Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) filed a complaint with the US State Department last August (2004) against Cabot and several other western corporations for its role in aiding the rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo by conducting business there, essentially inadvertently aiding a violent conflict that contributed to widespread human rights abuses.

What can be done about this?

There is very little the "man on the street" can do to prevent Coltan exploitation as it is not a "visible" component of cellphones that can be differentiated when shopping, but continuing pressure on circuit board manufacturers has lead to many demanding that their Coltan supplies only come from legitimate sources. Similar pressure on other users of Coltan can also help to ensure that only legitimately mined and sold Coltan is used in circuit boards.

I know there’s a lot to digest here, so I’ll try to summarize:

- We’re getting gouged on our heating costs (and nobody can blame Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for it any more, as well as using them as an excuse for bad economic news).
- When Democrats try to stand up for us by demanding accountability, they get hooted down.
- We have a phantom C.E.O. as the Secretary of Energy.
- He doesn’t have much experience in the business (I’m not sure how relevant “specialty chemicals” are…we could also be talking about peyote for all I know), but he does know how to be Dubya’s kind of guy.
- His former company sought a material used for PC board conduction of electricity by aiding a resistance in the Congo that ended up fueling existing wars and leading to widespread human rights abuses, and also ruining the environment in the process (according to a U.N. report).

To paraphrase Brendan…”Samuel W. Bodman – Working For You!” And as far as complaining about the price of gas goes…well, let’s just say that we’re all giving Hugo Chavez and his buddies a good laugh.

Update 1/27: Speaking of Chavez, it turns out that he's going to help the poor of Philadelphia by supplying discounted heating oil (registration required). How pathetic that the supposed richest country on earth has to rely on a South American socialist to provide for its neediest citizens because the capitalist cabal that is busy running us into the ground doesn't feel that there's enough of a profit in it for them.

Conti Take A Joke?

Geez…I mean, just because he got busted on for supposedly using the money he got from the illegal PA pay raise to buy a new hot water heater (by John Grogan of the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others), does that mean that he has to do this?

(and yes...just to set the record straight, Conti returned the dough from the "unvouchered expense" pay raise.)

Actually, Conti really isn’t bad for a Repug, since, when you work in state and local politics in PA, you actually have to provide something that approximates constituent service. I realize that’s something that the Abramoff crooks and the Dobsonite zombies in our nation’s capital will never understand, but fortunately, Conti does.

I can’t help but think this is a great big “middle digit raised on high” from Conti to Harry Fawkes, chairman of the Bucks County, PA Republican party, for supporting Mike Fitzpatrick in 2004 in the congressional election to fill Jim Greenwood’s vacant seat, even though Greenwood himself preferred Conti. Of course, I have absolutely no way of knowing that for sure. Also, since Conti has some talent and ability, it sounds like he has some prospects lined up both in the business world and academia also, so I’m sure he’ll be fine.

One of the individuals Alison Hawkes, the reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, referred to as a possibility to run as a Republican for Conti’s seat is Dave Steil, our PA state representative. I would support Ginny Schrader regardless, but I’d have a tough time since Steil has actually done a good job.

Oh well. At least it should make for a more interesting campaign.

Don't Love That Dirty Water

(with apologies to The Standells)

ABC and other media outlets have reported that Kellogg, Brown, and Root (which is, of course, a subsidiary of Halliburton, as I’m sure we all know by now), according to testimony of former Halliburton employees at “Camp Junction City” in Iraq, provided untreated water to base personnel for “showering, shaving, and laundry.”

(That sound you heard was Dick Cheney’s heart skipping a beat in joy because that meant an uptick in the company’s share price – see, the cost of cleanup means higher company compensation from the government as part of their “cost plus” arrangement. However, in case The White-Haired Prince Of Evil experienced this palpitation for any other reason, some may want to keep the paddles ready just in case.)

The ABC news link mentions that KBR company spokesperson Melissa Norcross stated as follows:

"Although these individuals claim to have been adversely affected by the water at the site, they have provided no medical evidence to substantiate their claims," she said.

Ms. Norcross, somehow I believe that, if Ben Carter and Ken May were to produce the “evidence” you seek, then you would become as utterly nauseated as they are. Also, patient medical information happens to be confidential, such as the test results of your last pap smear.

This note at the end of the ABC story is “business as usual” also:

Halliburton is not sending any representatives to today's inquiry, and no Republicans are participating in the inquiry.

That’s a great, big, raised-on-high-middle-digit aimed at the whistle blowers and the committee from those good corporate citizens at Halliburton. And you’d better believe the Repugs would avoid this committee like those kids in the swimming pool in “Caddyshack” avoided the Baby Ruth bar.

This link from Halliburton Watch provides more interesting details, including this choice item.

Carter and May also describe instances where a site manager urged everyone to conceal contamination information from the company's health and safety department. According to May, statements were made in an "All Hands Meeting" by then Site Manger Suzanne-Raku Williams, Warren Smith, and acting Medic Phillip Daigle suggesting that if anyone became sick, it was probably from the handles from the port-a-lets toilets and not from water contamination. In response, Ken May resigned out of disgust and frustration.

Yep, those bad “port-a-let” handles also cause syphilis and gonorrhea too. Didn’t Carter and May watch the Army training films?

And I haven’t even mentioned how KBR enforces its strict standards in food preparation yet, have I?

Seriously, if you want to do something about this (the equivalent of chopping at a brick wall with a butter knife at this point, I know, but that’s the type of fight we’re looking at with the Repugs in charge – and, now as always, it must be said yet again: THANK YOU RED STATE VOTERS!), then sign this petition from Rep, Louis Slaughter to set up a Truman-style commission such as the one our former president founded during World War II to investigate fraud and waste.

If you’re hoping for the “DLC-Repug-Lite-Democrats” to do it for us, keep hoping. As Truman himself might say were he with us now, the buck stops with you and me.

Ashes And Sack Cloth Time

Local PA politics (be warned…)

As a Roman Catholic, I should point out that the Lenten and Easter observance is the most sacred time of the liturgical year for members of our faith. It is over a month away, but in spite of that, it’s probably a good time for me to do penance of a sort (and by the way, I am not trying to be irreverent towards that by what I will say afterwards in this post).

Am I going to apologize for anything I’ve said about Dubya, Cheney, Condi, Rummy, Scumbag Santorum, Gonzales, Alito, or any one of a number of other miscreants?

No. The person I have in mind is Andy Warren, one of the Democratic candidates for the U.S. House seat in the Eight Congressional district in Bucks County, Pa. I think the worst thing I ever said about him was calling him a horse’s butt in a post awhile back, but still, I think I should cut the guy a bit of a break.

I’ve had some communication with him recently (really can’t get into the circumstances…long and boring story anyway), and I think he means well enough. He may actually be running for the reasons that he says he is; namely, because he thinks he can make a difference and help this district with the issues impacting our lives and those of our families.

That being said though, I should state flatly that, unless we see the greatest political meltdown in the history of recorded time by Warren’s primary opposition (namely Patrick Murphy), Warren is going to be absolutely flattened by Murphy a few months from now.

This is a link to Andy Warren’s website, which I found after about three different Google searches (a comparison to Murphy’s slick site is almost a cruel exercise).

To say that it contains the usual political bromides is being kind. To say that you get NO CLUE as to what Warren believes to be the most important political issues in Bucks County is being kinder still. There are even word spacing problems and a stray typo or two in the site text.

Also, I have to point out that Warren is not the most photogenic person you are ever likely to meet. I’m sorry if that’s being unkind, but it’s the truth, and people vote based on that stuff (hell, people do EVERYTHING based on that stuff). I’m not a movie star either, but on the other hand, I’m not running for the U.S. House.

(Note: the photo in my profile is that of actor Patrick McGoohan in the mid ‘60s around the time he made the T.V. series “Danger Man” in the U.K., which became “Secret Agent” in the U.S. with that kickin’ theme by Johnny Rivers, probably the best T.V. theme song ever recorded for my money. I’ve always admired McGoohan as an actor and also as a person who has tried to project some sense of morality in the characters he portrayed, even the bad ones. I’d put my real photo there, but I’m more handsome:-).

Andy, please let me speak frankly here. Patrick Murphy has a HUGE leg up on you at this point in the blogger community (I don’t even think most other bloggers even know you exist), which means money and positive word of mouth among other Democrats, and I would guess that most of them are younger voters who wouldn’t respond to you anyway even if Murphy had no web presence at all (Murphy being a “fresher face” aside from his solid credentials). This is partly because Murphy is a veteran returning from a war the majority of the people of this country don’t want us to fight.

Besides, even if, by some cosmic circumstance, you actually DID win the Democratic nomination, the Repugs would find all kinds of ways to push your buttons and make your life a living hell in the general election. And with your penchant for making the wrong remark at the wrong time, you'd be sunk in nothing flat.

I read that when Warren decided to run for the Democratic nomination, he left his job at PENNDOT “immediately” to begin campaigning (if that’s true, then not bothering to give notice was highly unwise). If I were in his shoes, I’d go back to Eddie and try to cut the best deal I could to get my old job back, assuming that is still possible.

Update 1: Speaking of upcoming PA elections, "Sideshow Bob" Casey Jr. and his UTTER, STUPID JOKE OF A CANDIDACY FOR THE U.S. SENATE officially hits a new low (via Atrios). However, Ed Rendell has depressed me unutterably by casting his lot with Scalito as well. And lest anyone be confused by adding this update to this post, rest assured that I would sooner drill a metal stud into my forehead than feel any sense of remorse for these comments.

Chuck, it looks like you're the only shot we have.

Update 2: I just received an email containing all kinds of stuff on Fitzpatrick, including donations from Jack Abramoff (tee hee...thanks to Eric Karp). You can link to all the information here.

In A Broken Dream

(yes, I know that technically doesn’t count as a solo tune…sue me).

After reading this post from the blogger First Draft (via Atrios), in which Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the NSA stated that instead of “probable cause,” illegal spying can be carried out on “a reasonable basis to believe,” I realized how truly blessed I was that I could now vent on what are, to me, two of my most loathsome subjects:

George W. Bush….AND ROD STEWART!!

Yes, he was great with the Faces. Yes, he had a nice run as a solo performer for a time. But guess what, Rod? IT’S OVER. Actually, I’m incorrect about that. IT’S LONG PAST OVER! Don’t ever imagine covering a Cole Porter show tune again, or I may be motivated to perform an act of violence.

Also, I remember those moments of bitchiness you had with Elton John (hey, as long as what he does behind closed doors is consensual, what the hell do I care? Besides, I’ve seen him put on some great shows) and Paul McCartney (whining because you were criticized for remarrying and he wasn’t…hey Rod, Linda DIED, OK? You last trophy wife just got too old for your liking, apparently. You get it?).

With all of that in mind (about Dubya/Hayden/Gonzales…the whole sorry bloody lot)…

If I listened long enough to you
I couldn’t think, because my brain would turn to goo
Knowing that you lie, straight faced while I try
To still find a reasonable basis to believe

General, F.U. – take your warrantless searches
And tell your boss to comply with the law
General, F.U. – Our laws and our courts
Will still be here when you’re gone, after all

Though your methods often give me pause
You listen with a standard lower than probable cause
The Constitution we’ll kiss bye bye, and hope al Qaeda will die
As we look to find a reasonable basis to believe

(tinny violin solo)

If we trusted everything you say
We’d all be brainwashed by the NSA
Ramadi would be blight, no terrorist “wedding” in sight
With no one left to find a reasonable basis to believe

Oh, by the way Rod, one more thing:

Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, Tom Waits…NO MORE COVERS!!

It's Not Over Yet

I meant to get around to this last week, but...

Dear Friend,

Last week I asked you to sign a petition calling on Senate Democrats to stand together and block Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Your response was overwhelming. Twenty-five thousand people across the country signed the petition to make their voices heard -- an incredible accomplishment. And, I thank you.

Today, we are delivering the petition to Democratic Leaders in the Senate to let them know how concerned we are about Samuel Alito and the threat he poses to our fundamental rights and freedoms. While the debate rages on in Washington about the politics of opposing Alito, this petition will remind them that some things, such as the sanctity of our constitutional protections, are more important than the political winds of the moment.

This week's news out of Washington, D.C. is heartening. We applaud a growing group of Democratic Senators, who are taking a stand and opposing the Alito nomination. Samuel Alito is an extreme conservative who showed his true colors in the hearing room. For all the reasons in our petition, this is not a man who belongs on our nation's highest court. He cannot be trusted to safeguard our Constitution.

We have never backed down from a fight -- and we won't this time. Thank you for caring so deeply about our American traditions and values.

Your friend,

John

This is how someone with true leadership qualities acts in a public forum - basically, they lead. As Molly Ivins tells us in quite possibly her finest column, Mrs. Clinton and some of the "DLC Democrats" would do well to follow John Edwards' example.

Monday Media Moron Number Two

This insufferable partisan dreck actually appeared in the Inquirer yesterday from Kevin Ferris, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to say anything about it.

The wrong committee to probe wiretapping

You can learn a lot in a Senate confirmation hearing.

For one thing, you can learn who's qualified for a job. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. showed why the American Bar Association rated him well-qualified. He's smart, experienced, and he's a model of sound judicial temperament. He answered question after question - often the exact same question over and over again - calmly, with dignity, and with respect for his interrogators.

Do you mind giving us some insight into the content of Alito’s answers? Do you mind devoting even a spec of your column to the fact that Alito’s answers featured numerous “I can’t recall” moments such as the entire Concerned Alumni of Princeton flap and his decision to rule in the Vanguard case even though he was a sizeable participant in one of their mutual funds? Oh, and I like the way you sneak in “interrogators.” My guess is that there are veterans out there who have been taken prisoner in war who would object to such an offhand comparison of senators doing their job – the whole “advise and consent” thing – versus the enemy subjecting our people to inhumane treatment.

You can also learn who might not be qualified, including certain U.S. senators.

Let the blanket generalizations begin!

Which leads to the third thing:

The Senate Judiciary Committee isn't the right place to examine the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping ordered by President Bush. Try the Senate Intelligence Committee. Or assemble a panel of experts to question witnesses. Just keep it away from Judiciary.

This actually is an interesting point, but the problem is that such hearings, as far as I’m concerned, MUST be conducted in the open. I believe that the Senate Intelligence Committee would reserve the right for closed-door hearings, but I would need to investigate that more thoroughly. As you will read, though, I didn’t follow up on Ferris’ suggestion because his column will quickly dissolve into a comical rant very shortly, one that really doesn’t deserve serious consideration by anyone.

Despite the best efforts of chairman Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) at the Alito hearings, the nominee's actual answers took a backseat to speechifying, smear tactics and partisanship. And the games continued after the hearings. Sen. Joe Biden (D., Del.) complained that the system was broken. Skip the hearings, and go right to the Senate floor, he said. (Why? So the nominee cannot defend himself? Keeps emotional spouses out of camera range?) Sen. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) says the confirmation process is too political. (Pause to let readers' laughter subside.)

Funny, but I don’t recall Ferris complaining about “partisanship” when Newt Gingrich and the GOP attack dogs in Congress barked like crazy whenever Clinton and Gore did anything they didn’t like (Trent Lott and his childish whining about Al Gore’s claim that he “invented the Internet,” when in reality Gore misspoke and meant to say that he took the lead role in government funding for development – absolutely true, by the way – reached almost Biblical portions to the point where it is now virtually impossible to remove the misquote attributed to Gore from the English-speaking lexicon). I also don’t understand Ferris’ bizarre remark that a nominee “could not defend himself” in the event of a Senate floor vote, when in reality the majority leader could call for an up-or-down vote without comment on either side. Also, Ferris (in one of his MANY disingenuous moments) recalls Martha Alito’s crying on cue from Lindsay Graham so it could be dutifully recorded for all time as being initiated by some "evil, partisan liberal."

Yes, there was some Democratic hyperbole, but in my opinion, it was deserved. Acknowledge that there has been hyperbole on both sides with all parties believing they were right, and then move on. And one more thing – I know, as far as you, Glenn McCoy, and your other fellow travelers are concerned, Ted Kennedy is a drunken, womanizing, liberal blowhard. Ha ha – what a riot (keep it up, and I’ll keep making the same snide remarks about Dubya, as well as his past fondness for a certain powdery white substance). Well, I hate to break the news to you, but assuming that you have any pretense of fairness whatsoever, I would ask that you read this (which doesn’t even discuss Kennedy’s military service, by the way). Also, I seem to recall Specter getting all in a huff over Kennedy’s insistence on seeing the Alito letter regarding the whole “concerned alumni” flap, when in reality Kennedy had made the request for the letter on December 22nd, but for some reason the letter had not been produced. That sounds like a reasonable source of disagreement to me.

With luck, the Alitos can tune this committee out after its expected vote on his nomination Tuesday. With NSA hearings scheduled to start next month, however, the shrill partisanship will ramp up again.

As well it should, seeing as how Dubya clearly broke the law in accordance with the FISA and continues to do so.

Of course, there should be hearings on the NSA affair. Even the President agrees.

That’s “mighty white” of Dubya, wouldn’t you say? I mean, especially since, well…you know…we allegedly elected him to office anyway.

Update: Speaking of the preznit, here's to that whopping 36 percent approval rating that was just announced (hat tip to Atrios). Woo hoo!

As Michael Franc, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, argues, the country is now putting in place the tools it will need to fight Islamic fascism for the long term, just as, in the late 1940s, Harry Truman and a bipartisan coalition created the institutions that would see us through the Cold War. Hearings, Franc says, could help set the agenda.

Since Ferris didn’t point out that The Heritage Foundation tows the right-wing Repug line 150 percent with NO ALLOWANCE for a dissenting point of view, I feel I should do that myself. Of course, I’ve seen Ferris point out that MoveOn.org and People For The American Way are organizations which traditionally support Democrats, which is just about always the case. Can you say “double standard”?

Also, by "created the institutions to see us through The Cold War”…you mean, “institutions” like the HUAC? It would have been nice if Ferris had prodded Franc a bit more on what he meant, but I suppose that would have conflicted with his apparent role of right-wing shill and talking point stenographer.

"Go back and look at the 9/11 commission hearings," he says. "There was good incisive questioning on big concerns that needed to be resolved by policymakers... . In an open democracy, we need as many of those moments as possible to help understand what's at stake. Not just sound bites, but legitimate constitutional issues."

You can thank Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton for that (and as we know, Kean pointed out towards the end of last year that the Bush Administration and the Repug congress have fallen woefully short of implementing the committee’s recommendations. Also, the 9/11 Commission never even would have been assembled if Dubya had had his way; it took Congress, prodded by the victims’ families, to make it a reality.

There's the rub. Will we get sound bites or incisive questioning from the Judiciary Committee? Or will witnesses merely be props in the back-and-forth between Democrats attacking the administration and Republicans defending it? Such antics risk ignoring the main issue.

As I said, when Repugs attack, they’re “defending America from government waste,” or “fighting terrorism.” When Dems attack, it’s “not supporting the president,” or “advocating a liberal agenda” (or “performing antics like partisan interrogators,” as Ferris might say).

"This is really about penetrating the communications of the enemy in a war where intelligence is more important than in any war we've ever had," says Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted suspects in the first World Trade Center bombing. "We can't conquer their territory. We can't blockade them. Our only effective offense is to gather information to try to find out what they'll hit next and try to prevent that."

No it isn’t. It’s about gathering any kind of information that may be available whatsoever about Americans in order to silence dissent. Why else would Bush care about what kind of search engine keyword searches people are using on the Internet? Do they really think someone is going to “Google” the following: “al Qaeda, bin Laden, terrorism, destroy Sears tower, fertilizer bomb, nuclear warhead”? If they do, then we’re worse off with these clowns that I thought.

As I and others have pointed out already, it is incredibly easy to get a warrant to conduct a wiretap. Hell, you can even go ahead and do it without one as long as you get one within 72 hours. Obeying the letter of the law on this really isn’t that difficult – Clinton managed to do it just fine.

That's the sobering starting point for any hearings on the NSA wiretaps. And there are a host of questions to raise, many of which cannot be answered in an open, made-for-TV hearing:

Why can’t they be answered in front of TV cameras? I guess that doesn’t jive with some Stalinist, police-state fantasy you have of how this country should work, does it?

How exactly does the NSA wiretapping work? Is it necessary? Does it help keep al-Qaeda in check? Is it preventing attacks, saving American lives? Are we sure it's not targeting political opponents? And if it is necessary, how does the program continue? Does the president alone have the authority or does the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in the 1970s, need to be updated to fight a 21st-century war?

These questions, as far as I’m concerned, are largely irrelevant, though I will acknowledge that we should be careful about revealing details on T.V. However, there has already been FAR TOO MUCH secrecy with this government, and it’s not like they’ve done a very competent job with it either.

To answer these questions, the country needs leaders more focused on wartime enemies than political foes. And right now there's good reason to suspect that the senators who grilled Alito are not up to the job.

I don’t think Tom Coburn is certainly up to it, based on his bizarre riff in front of Alito on prostitution during the hearings (yes, I know he meant to lead into yet another attack on Roe v. Wade, which you can kiss goodbye to if Alito gets in anyway - and isn’t it curious that Ferris omits that but takes a shot at Ted Kennedy? Sure…that’s really “fair and balanced,” isn’t it?).

I think this is the deal with Ferris (and by the way, what exactly is “Back Channels”? I guess that’s some type of bogus category name that the Inquirer came up with to make it as nondescript as possible to placate one group or another, like calling “Review and Opinion” the “Currents” section, which doesn’t make sense to me either):

He started out as some kind of faux liberal type who, some time ago, got on his metaphorical high horse about, of all things, paying reparations to slave descendants, but was soundly rebuffed (and by the way, I know John Conyers took the lead on that, but I give Conyers credit for realizing that there were all kinds of problems with that issue and giving up on it – e.g., my ancestry is partly Irish Catholic, and though my descendants didn’t come over to this country shackled, they were about three or four steps ahead of the blight from the potato famine, and they ended up cleaning toilets and doing similar work for long hours in indentured servitude also; since there were anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia and elsewhere in this country into the 1920s, why wouldn’t I qualify for reparations? See where it starts to get “sticky”?)

Since that little misadventure, Ferris has been pretty dogged in “waving his right-wing colors,” even, at one point, saying that Bush should “take a bow” for helping Democracy to flourish in Iraq, or words to that effect, when in reality all that is flourishing in Iraq is violence and the Shiite influence of Iran. I only recall these little tidbits from Ferris’ inglorious work, since I have to admit that I am prone to ignore him based on all of this. However, I actually paid attention to him on this occasion, when I guess I should have known better.

I should actually complain to the publisher about this bilious nonsense, but I have a feeling the paper is more concerned with what will happen to them after they’re sold and how they’ll meet their payroll and maintain circulation, which are huge concerns I realize. However, continuing to kow tow to the right wing bullet heads by publishing dross such as this will not do anyone any good and may, in fact, hasten the paper’s demise anyway.

Monday Media Moron Number One

Today's scurrilous Glenn McCoy cartoon, dutifully republished in the Inquirer, shows a couple sitting at a dinner table with the man reading a newspaper (never the woman to McCoy's way of thinking, I guess) saying "I can't remember why we didn't vote for Al Gore in 2000" in the first panel, and in the second panel, a highly uncomplimentary caricature of Gore on television appears with him yelling, "George Bush should be impeached for spying on terrorists!," and the man reading the paper says, "Oh, now I remember."

I recognize partisan political crap when I read it, but there's a problem here beyond that, and that is that Gore never called for Bush's impeachment in his recent speech on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, though he did accuse Bush of breaking the law, which is absolutely correct.

As I've said before, it must be nice to be a conservative and a Repug apologist and not feel bound by anything that approximates fairness, truth, or reality as we know it.

A Journey To Hell

There are many reasons to go to the T-Nation site, which I frequently do to read about men's health issues, bodybuilding tips which have virtually no impact on anything I do since I spend way too much time sitting behind a workstation plunking on a keyboard (like right now), and a wide variety of other matters which impact the site's predominantly male audience. Also, if you venture to the site, you will probably see some clip art which has appeared from time to time at this location (with the proper attribution in the popup, of course).

I went to the site a few days ago and came across a post by Doug Herman, a USAF veteran, about the war with Iran which I pray to God will only be theoretical, though I am anxious a bit on that because both of the leaders involved (Bush and Ahmadinejad) are, for my money, crazed cowards stoked by their own kind of perverse fervor.

Herman's post is, I think, a tour de force of what we would be looking at in the event of this horrifying development. It is followed by a good deal of thoughtful commentary, mixed in with the requisite Clinton bashing for no particular reason (and some Dubya bashing also, which I believe is completely deserved).

The one area where I disagree with Herman is the aftermath of what he envisions as the assassination of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan (probably the scariest possibility for me in that entire region - I think the guy's a thug, but the alternative is far worse...a little similar to the situation in Iraq with Hussein before we launched the war - funny that many people saw that but Dubya didn't).

Let's say Pakistan is taken over by al Qaeda (yes...it gives me a chill also). Who do you think they go after first? My guess would be India, since that feud has been churning for at least 60 years and probably much longer. Can you imagine what would happen to the computer software industry in that event, to say nothing of the human and environmental horrors?

So Pakistan and Iran unite, taking the Shiite-controlled regions of Iraq with them and what's left of India. How do you think Russia and China will respond? My guess is that the two countries form a pact, then move in and take over everything, launching their own aggression against each other after the rest of Asia is controlled by Beijing. And in that scenario, my money is on the Chinese, making THEM the next great superpower with the U.S. officially relegated to permanent third-world status.

I've read that, traditionally, presidential administrations conjure up scenarios such as these as part of foreign policy risk analysis. I have no clue about what Bushco is doing or not doing on this front, and their horrific performance on other matters doesn't make me feel like they're doing what they should here either. I truly pray that there is some pragmatist somewhere in that bunch who doesn't think nuclear war will initiate The Rapture, lifting everyone out of their clothes and onward to Heaven, or whatever other hokum it is that they believe.

As you read Herman's post, I would ask that you keep all of this in mind, as well as the fact that Bushco (restating what I said in the "Boots" post below, I know) will be trying to frighten us with this into November. However, even with these highly unnerving possibilities "on the table," it is still up to us to act with reason and courage and not panic. And as others have pointed out, Bush's staggeringly juvenile reference to Iran as part of the "Axis of Evil" some years ago alienated moderates who supported us in the region and hastened the rise of nationalistic nut cases like the one presently fronting for the mullahs who are really in charge.

Recipe For Japan Beef Stew

I may have mentioned this before, but I’ve really gone back and forth, as it were, on Froma Harrop, the columnist for the Providence Journal. I’ve seen her write some terrific stuff such as her most recent column on the troubles of California congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, and I’ve also read some utter dreck from her.

As you keep that in mind, please allow me to say a word or two about “Fast Food Nation,” Eric Schlosser’s landmark novel ostensibly about the fast-food industry. As I noted on the old site at another time and place:

To all of you "blue staters", read the sections of the book that pertain to the meat processing plants and how they're run and please explain to me why we should ever vote for a Republican again. Clinton tried to clean that up, but the Republicans took over Congress in '94, and everything lapsed back to how it was under Reagan and Bush Sr. I don't want to describe anything else, because it is beyond nauseating. To all of you "red staters," don't read it BECAUSE I WOULDN'T WANT YOU TO ACTUALLY THINK AND TRY TO USE YOUR BRAINS, BECAUSE YOU MIGHT HURT YOURSELVES!

OK, I should take it easy on my fellow “red state” Americans, for now (even Cynthia Sneed…I have to “give her a kick” once in a while…don’t I?)

Schlosser’s book is not only an expose of the fast-food industry, but it really lays bare so much of our unhealthy way of life that I believe it should be required reading for just about everyone. To me, though, aside from Schlosser’s sickening but (I’m sure) utterly accurate descriptions of meat processing plants in this country, such as Con Agra and Excel, the most gut-wrenching and, ultimately, heartbreaking portions of his book had to do with describing the effect of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) on humans (especially children) who end up eating meat tainted with disease from brain and spinal cord tissue. I’ll just leave it at that and let you, dear reader, do any further research on that if you so choose. Basically, if you EVER see any portion of a burger or poultry that is even slightly undercooked and you've eaten any of it, stop eating it immediately, save it for possible tests, and be wary for any symptoms you might feel or notice over the next 24-72 hours or so, and be prepared to go to a hospital emergency room if you do (I’m completely serious).

The reason I started out with mentioning Froma Harrop is that she attacked Schlosser over a year ago (cited by the American Meat Institute here) over claims that our packing plants are still unsafe. Harrop advocated a voluntary system of compliance that must have been music to the ears, so to speak, of the meat and poultry producers of this country.

Well, guess what, Ms. Harrop? I’m sure that Japan would tell you at this moment that our supposed voluntary system of compliance is a joke (also, I did some checking around on Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, and aside from the fact that he used to be a Democrat, I haven’t really found anything else wrong with him, so he may actually be the right person to handle this…Bushco actually does something right for a change – stop the presses!).

I worked for an import/export company at one point in my illustrious career (insert snide remark here), and I can tell you definitively that import requirements for this country are stringent and restrictive in ways that you cannot imagine, and thank God that is the case. I have no familiarity with such requirements for Japan, but I can guess that they are at least as much that way for them, and probably more so.

This is an area where you need EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT REGULATION AND INTERVENTION. Assuming that everyone involved will otherwise act as good boys and girls is a recipe for suicide.

I don’t know if Bush has cut the budget for enforcement at our plants or loosened food safety regulations. I suspect the answer is yes, but I can’t prove it, so I could be wrong. If I can, and I’m right, I will update this post PDQ (here's some background on other food-related tricks that Bush and his cronies have tried to pull, particularly at the time of the last mad cow scare in December 2003).

As for Ms. Harrop, I will await her next column on this subject.

Time To Fix Our Boots

It may take awhile for me to make this point, but I ask that you work with me on this.

Last night, Turner Classic Movies ran “The Longest Day,” a truly great film adaptation of a truly great book, and I managed to help put the young one to bed and turn on the T.V. in time to watch the very end. I’d seen it before many years ago, and its depiction of D-Day was as involving and realistic as audiences were willing to accept for the year it was made (1962). I believe this is partly because World War II and the Allies’ invasion of Europe at Normandy Beach upon which the book and film were based was probably still a vivid recollection for many people who watched it; I would guess that many people who read the book or watched the movie actually fought on D-Day or know someone who did. Of course, Stephen Spielberg recreated this in a much more realistic manner in “Saving Private Ryan” as we know, and for that, I believe we all owe Spielberg a debt, lest we all forget Robert E. Lee’s quote about war.

Anyway, I was able to watch the movie at the scene where a young PFC, patrolling cautiously near a French farm house, comes across a German soldier. The PFC immediately takes cover, thinking the soldier has his back turned towards him. However, the PFC, seeing that the soldier isn’t moving, comes from behind his cover and moves towards him slowly. As he approaches, he sees that the soldier has a bullet hole near his head and shoulder.

At that moment, a voice calls out from behind, saying, “He’s dead, Yank.” The PFC immediately flips and takes cover once more before he spots the person who spoke to him. It’s a downed British soldier, played by Richard Burton (I think the rank of Burton’s character was major), who is sitting on the ground against the stone farmhouse near some livestock with hay scattered nearby. I don’t know who the actor was who played the PFC – Richard Beymer, maybe – but the PFC approaches Burton and sits down next to him, and both men smoke cigarettes.

Burton’s character tells the PFC that he killed the German from close range, and he asks the PFC if he’s ever killed a man, and the PFC says no. Burton then says that he’s sitting down because he received a shrapnel wound in his leg and, since the doctor ran out of stitching material, he gave Burton a heavy dose of morphine and used staples to close the wound. Burton, obviously still dazed from the morphine, tells the PFC that he hopes it doesn’t wear off before he’s rescued (the PFC glances at the wound and a look of revulsion crosses his face).

Burton then looks over towards the dead German soldier and says, “Do you see anything wrong with him?” The PFC shakes his head no, as they both look at the soldier from behind hanging dead over a wooden fence (Burton does almost all of the talking in this scene until the very end). Burton tells the PFC, “His boots are on backwards,” causing Burton and the PFC to laugh a bit with an expression bordering on disdain and amusement.

And I thought to myself, that approximates the state we are in at this moment. Our boots, metaphorically speaking, are on backwards. I’ll do my best to explain that.

Given the fact that protective footwear is critical for everyone, especially someone in the midst of a battle, why would a soldier let this happen? Panic (answering the call to battle without enough time to prepare)? Fatigue (exhaustion for any number of reasons)? My guess is that it would be some type of distraction or another.

Could you imagine an army fighting without boots (even though the Viet Cong reportedly fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia wearing sneakers, which I would partly attribute to abject poverty but also because of the terrain)? The boots are insurance of a sort when it’s time to march, charge, attack in close quarters, or take cover. Our “boots” would represent sound, reliable sources of information that we can rely on to form our opinions as we do battle with the distractions all around us in our quest to try and resolve the issues that truly matter (the war in Iraq, jobs, the economy, education, the environment, etc.).

I’m speaking symbolically about “boots,” I know, but I’m being quite literal about everything else. Anyone who believes that we aren’t at war in this country (and I’m not even talking about Iraq) might as well believe in the Easter Bunny as far as I’m concerned.

It is a war of symbols, spin and propaganda that has been foisted on us by the Repugs and their acolytes in the right-wing media echo chamber, and we have no choice but to engage them in it. What’s more, the enemy is gaining around in places that we once held sacrosanct as we tried to form our opinions in as reasonable a manner as possible. CNN (which published what I thought was a truly obnoxious column in the Business section of their site about pensions a few days ago, implying workers were dumb to rely on them instead of private accounts) recently hired right-wing demagogue Glenn Beck to spout his garbage (and by the way, they pretty much blew off Al Gore’s recent excellent speech blasting Dubya’s domestic spying). The Washington Post (the newspaper that stood above all others during the Watergate scandal) recently hired Deborah Howell as ombudsman, a person whose goal seems to be to silence a dissenting point of view (Atrios and others have been all over this for the last couple of days - Update: the reader blog that Howell shut down seems to be up again as of 1/20). The New York Times, the supposed “paper of record” that turned a blind eye to Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, downplayed Gore’s speech also.

I believe that what we’re witnessing are “street skirmishes” being fought by the Repug shock troops in the media at this moment (Chris Matthews comparing bin Laden to Michael Moore, for example, along with other histrionics from Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough). That would seem to indicate a lull in the fighting for now, so to speak, in anticipation of major new offensives to distract and manipulate us that would leave us in approximately the same state as the German soldier killed by Burton’s character. And make no mistake…we’ve already seen a preview of things to come with release of the most recent bin Laden tape (at this point, the fact that this guy’s head isn’t rotating and roasting on a spit instead of spewing his cowardly garbage to try and scare us is HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS – and John Kerry was dead-on with his most recent assessment, by the way).

Another tool to try and frighten/distract us will be manipulation of public opinion over the possibility of war with Iran (the subject of a recent Atrios post that was absolutely brilliant and I’ll plan to have more on that soon). I think we can also look forward to the return of color-coded alerts and even the possibility of another Anthrax scare in an effort to get our “lizard brains” pumping into overdrive.

The Repugs, knowing that this has all been done before and that the majority of the voters in this country are FINALLY getting wise to it, will no doubt add new wrinkles of one type or another. They know that this is the only chance they have to hold onto power, because, as Bill Clinton stated at the 2004 Democratic Convention with typical foresight, “they need a divided America, and we don’t.”

The Repugs know that they are losing, and that will make them even more desperate. Their best weapons are our apathy and neglect and a supine opposition party (which makes our task all the more urgent, because both of those discouraging prospects are definitely “in play”).

It is up to us.

This is meant as sort of a “catch all” post, because I know I won’t be able to call them on all of their attempts to distract us, trying to induce panic as we fight off our own fatigue at times (make no mistake…this will be a tiring exercise until it is resolved one way or another in November). I would only ask with all humility that you check back here periodically to obtain the best information that I am able to provide to help you form your opinions. Also, there are plenty of fine, esteemed individuals, some much better than I, who I link to over in the right column to help you in this process.

I mentioned that the PFC with Burton in the French farmhouse scene in “The Longest Day” doesn’t say much, but he does have probably the most important line of dialogue. He pauses after Burton takes a long drag on a cigarette, glances towards him as he contemplates the D-Day battle which, at that point, is winding down, and says, “I wonder who won?”

By mid November, let us all hope that we know the resounding answer to that question with an unmatched feeling of pride and accomplishment.

Update 1/20: They couldn't be more obvious, could they?

Update 1/30: Leonard Pitts, Jr. nails it (registration required).

99 1/2 (Wouldn't Do)

Got to be a hundred…and it was. Nothing but a hundred percent effort coming through in that voice, whether he was singing/shouting “I’m In Love,” “634-5789,” or “Land Of A Thousand Dances.”

The early R&B music from Atlantic is for me, short of The Beatles, the “music of the gods,” and I know he is now in the pantheon.

One Witch Hunt Ends

David Barrett ended the longest investigation conducted by an independent counsel today with the release of 746-page report. Barratt, ostensibly, set out to investigate former Clinton Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, but, upon realizing there wasn’t anything to investigate, decided to turn the proverbial molehill into a mountain.

Lars-Erik Nelson of The Nation summed up Barrett’s activities as follows (excerpt from this):

The Cisneros prosecution was equally abusive (as that of Mike Espy, former agriculture secretary under Clinton who was the target of another special prosecutor appointed at the behest of the Republican congress). Independent counsel David Barrett charged Cisneros with felonies worth ninety years in prison for concealing the extent of his relationship with a former mistress. Then, on the first day of jury selection, he allowed Cisneros to plead guilty to one misdemeanor and pay a $10,000 fine.

Of course Barrett, being the individual who ran “Lawyers For Reagan” in 1980, refused to take “I give up, you got me,” for an answer. As the blogger Betty The Crow reports, Barrett proceeded to milk his investigation, which he tried to focus on the IRS, for over ten years.

So, out of a prosecution at a cost of $10 grand, he ended up closing out this fandango for a tag of $3 million on our dime (hmmm...shades of Ken Starr?). So what do we get for our money?

This, to quote the CNN report (buried near the bottom of the story):

"The inaccurate statements and unfair insinuations contained in this final report are too numerous to catalogue," said Jo Ann Farrington, former deputy chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section.

Robert S. Litt, one of the Justice Department officials involved, called Barrett's suggestions of obstruction "a scurrilous falsehood," adding that the report was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."

One of Barrett’s ridiculous claims is that he was thwarted by Janet Reno into investigating Cisneros’ finances more thoroughly, but as Nelson pointed out in his column, Reno actually antagonized the Clinton Administration by giving Barratt access to a year’s worth of Cisneros’ records, which, given the fact that this was a joke of an investigation anyway, was more than generous.

I’m still “on the fence,” more or less, on the issue of whether or not the independent counsel law should have been allowed to expire (of course, how con-veee-nient is it for the Repugs that it has in light of all of the shenanigans coming out with Jack Abramoff and the “K” Street project), but I’m inclined to believe that it should have been renewed, even with the possibility that political nonsense such as Barrett’s investigation could happen again.

So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Our tax dollars in the amount of $3 million down the drain on this nonsense.

It sounds to me like someone should be appointed to prosecute the prosecutor.

Just Call Us Party Animals

In an effort to keep the story of our air strike in Pakistan in the news in as favorable a light as possible (which would be a neat trick in a twisted kind of way, considering the fact that we killed 18 people, and despite any lies that Bushco will try to foist on us, I have a feeling the vast majority of them were innocent), expect the representatives of our government who are carrying out acts of murder in our name to maintain the “drip, drip, drip” of keeping this story alive, continuing to try and spin the words and pictures for a little while.

So according to the first rumor, we had killed the No. 2 guy in al Qaeda, which has been beaten to death already by this administration. Now, we have supposedly killed “a chemical weapons expert.” In an effort to keep this story in front of everybody, I think we can look forward to the following additional deaths:

- Second in charge of munitions
- Third in charge of management of illegal funds from Bahrain
- Second in charge of regional topography maps
- Propaganda liaison with Al Jazeera
- Coordinator of linens, sandals and prayer rugs responsible for laundering (hey, YOU try to get sand and powder burns out of a white linen ihram, OK?)
- First in charge of maintaining notebook PCs with wireless access to pick up video streaming from CNN and Fox News
- Omar Sharif (hey, if you’ve been out of the public eye for awhile, death can be a great career move for some people)
- Al Qaeda intern in charge of beard trimming and removal of camel manure
- Second in charge of management of illegal funds from Bahrain
- Third in charge of maintaining supply of rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles
- Fourth in charge of munitions (claims that this person was actually second propaganda liaison with Al Jazeera proved not to be credible)
- Custodial administrator and bathroom attendant at what is reputed to be a terrorist training camp on Seram Island near Jakarta, Indonesia
- Vanilla Ice (see Omar Sharif)
- The author of the "Mujahedeen Data Form" (at long last!)
- Third ancillary operative in support of second-in-charge administrative functionary to the recruitment officer for al Qaeda expansion across Europe and central Asia (hey, Bushco will find somebody, even if they have to invent this person)

Yes, I know this is more stupid than funny. That's my intention, given the story.

And by the way, The Bulldog is absolutely right.

I Prefer Mocha Espresso Chip

Has Ray Nagin lost his mind? Or does he just see "the handwriting on the wall"? (or maybe he’s getting “a piece of the action”…)

I’d heard about his most recent remarks about rebuilding New Orleans, which I hate to admit is problematic all by itself because Bushco refuses to support a plan to restore the area in a way that would better protect it from future hurricanes.

Well, I just went to Brandoland and read the latest from Brendan on this, and he urges all “Google monkeys” to go to work and find out more on Joseph C. Canizaro. This is important because of the following excerpt from the L.A. Times:

Despite Nagin's effort to ease tensions, residents across racial and class lines lashed out Wednesday at what they considered a land grab engineered by the city's elite.

Much of their ire was heaped on New Orleans developer Joseph C. Canizaro, a key architect of the plan, whose name elicited boos from the standing-room-only auditorium crowd.

"How many people from my backyard are up there?" Harvey Bender, a laid-off city maintenance worker from eastern New Orleans, yelled at the officials. "I'm ready to rebuild and I'm not letting you take mine," he said. "I'm going to fight, whatever it takes, to rebuild my property. It's going to be baby Iraq for Joe Canizaro."

Under the plan — which can go forward with Nagin's approval — New Orleans would impose a moratorium Jan. 20 on building permits in the areas hardest hit by Katrina's floodwaters.

To accelerate the process, Nagin's commission is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release updated flood plain maps, which could effectively make the decision for many homeowners by raising home insurance rates and setting other new financial barriers to redevelopment.

Neighborhoods that failed to meet the critical-mass test would be shrunk or eliminated altogether; a new city agency called the Crescent City Redevelopment Corp. then would buy out residents OR SEIZE THEIR PROPERTIES THROUGH EMINENT DOMAIN (Brendan's emphasis).

Oh, goody.

I tried not to lift everything from Brendan’s great post, but only to provide context. There’s other stuff that he points out about how the residents of “chocolate city” (and by the way, how far would a Caucasian get if he or she said something like that?) would get compensated for, at best, 60 percent of the pre-Katrina value of their property without the right to negotiate a deal for themselves.

Update 1/18: OK Ray, I'll cut you some slack for now.

I made a joke the other day about Pat Robertson going back to NoLA after it’s rebuilt and having buildings collapse on him because Halliburton didn’t construct them properly (and make no mistake, they’ll make out on this through KBR, their subsidiary), but after reading this, I almost would like to see that happen to the “have mores” who would stand to make out on this.

Well, getting back to Canizaro, I feel almost embarrassed to point this out because it was too easy to find, but after doing my “Google monkey” thing, guess what I came up with?

Canizaro is A MEMBER OF DUBYA’s PIONEER CLUB!

Here’s more on Canizaro (and Sue Ellen? What about Jock and J.R.?)

(…dated ‘80s reference – sorry.)

Another thing…can we have a moratorium on people invoking God for a little while (C. Ray, that means you, along with Wingnut Pat and everyone else)? She just gave me a call because she wants everybody to knock it off :- )

Party On, Dude!

Oh, I’ve seen this guy!

Yeah, I know it was him. He and his old lady were stumbling out of Condom Nation on South Street the other night, clutching tight onto a couple of bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He was getting really loud too, trying to hail a cab. He kept yelling out that he was late for a “kegger” at a buddy’s house at 3rd and Pine, and he had to make a stop there and then head north to Market Street before the Funk-O-Mart closed. I think he was looking for rims, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t think they had any. Oh well.

She was making a racket too. Wearing a pair of denim chinos and a leather jacket with a bandana that looked like the US Flag wrapped around her head. She looked familiar too. I think it was Betsy Ross.

…

OK, enough – “National Lampoon” has nothing to worry about from me.

To commemorate Ben Franklin’s 300th birthday, The Philadelphia Inquirer has published a whole bunch of related print and online content – I’m gradually making my way through it. Franklin, as we know, was truly a citizen of the world, being a true genius and also a world-class master of intrigue. However, his imprint on life in Philadelphia is absolutely indelible, as it should be.

I thought this article conveys a bit of Franklin’s importance, though I would have to make this post considerable longer to truly do him justice (and if he were alive today and writing a blog, I guarantee you that his site would have more hits than anyone else).

Entrepreneurial genius
By Stacey Burling
Inquirer Staff Writer

Ben Franklin may be best known for taming lightning and governments, but what made his storied contributions to mankind possible were his hard work and skill as a businessman.

He arrived in Philadelphia a nearly penniless teenager and retired at age 42, rich enough to lead a comfortable middle-class life while pursuing his real passions, science and politics. In an endearing gesture that seems almost inconceivable by today's avaricious standards, he gave away to society the ideas for inventions that could have made him even more money: the lightning rod, the Franklin stove and bifocals.

The hero of this quintessentially American rags-to-riches story combines the industriousness and frugality that his Poor Richard made famous with shrewdness, great timing, clever self-promotion, prodigious social skills and - here's the part that makes his act hardest to follow - a really great brain.

"This guy may have more neurons than any American who's ever lived," said Michael Zuckerman, a Franklin expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tied to Franklin's 300th birthday Jan. 17, the city is now heading into months of celebration and marketing of what those neurons wrought in business, science, civic life and literature.

Franklin seems so singular a personality that one wonders how he would fare in the modern corporate world. In fact, a slew of historians couldn't come up with a single modern American who embodies his remarkable range: the insatiable curiosity coupled with practicality, the business acumen, the political skill and scientific insight, the craftiness and charm, the desire to do public good.

Everyone falls short.

"Trying to find his analogue today is next to impossible," said Rosalind Remer, a historian who, as executive director of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, is in charge of the national birthday celebration.

The best we can do is an amalgam of many people with big, but not big enough, personalities. Oprah Winfrey? New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg? Jimmy Carter? Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page? Financier George Soros? Morals pundit Bill Bennett? The Daily Show's Jon Stewart?

Franklin was, of course, the product of a different time, one with far fewer people and institutions and much less information. This much blanker slate made it easier, though no less admirable, for the self-educated Franklin to found a hospital, a library, a university and a trade group while being one of the best writers and scientists of his time.

"To look for a Franklinian person today, you would have to go outside the United States," said James Green, librarian at the Library Company of Philadelphia, which Franklin founded.

Printing was the field that Franklin's candlemaker father chose for his fifteenth child. Midway through training with his brother in Boston, the ambitious Franklin fled to Philadelphia, where he eventually started his own printing business.

Hard work played a part in it, but Franklin used networking and charm as well to gain backing from rich patrons. He also started a group, the Leather Apron Club, meant to elevate craftsmen like himself through networking. As a bonus, the group helped him. Throughout his businessman period, his many relationships and even his first forays into politics fed his business.

He was "interested in anything that will serve his interest and the public interest at the same time," said David Waldstreicher, a Temple University history professor who has written about Franklin and slavery.

Franklin quickly realized that printing alone was not the best strategy to obtain security and wealth. The most successful printers also controlled content and accepted financial risk, so he also became a publisher.

He bought and improved a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, that became the most popular in all the colonies, said J.A. Leo Lemay, a University of Delaware English professor and Franklin expert. Thanks to Franklin's gifts as a writer, the paper was livelier than others of its time, more local, and open to more points of view, historians say. Then he created the very popular Poor Richard's Almanack.

Franklin thought big. Though his methods weren't unheard of at the time, he was one of few entrepreneurs to attempt vertical integration, or franchising.

He helped set up friends and relatives in print shops that also sold his products throughout the colonies. He sold supplies for paper making and made his own ink.
On the political side, his connections as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly got him a government printing contract. As postmaster, he got free mail privileges and the opportunity to make mail routes, and hence distribution of his products, far more efficient.

"He was really good at surveying the landscape to see where the weaknesses were and exploiting the holes," Remer said. Franklin's scope as a businessman, she said, made him one of the first to think of the colonies as a whole.

Through it all, he cleverly promoted his products and honed his own image. Some find his manipulativeness unappealing, and he takes flak from Waldstreicher for owning slaves and accepting ads for runaway slaves and indentured servants.

Nonetheless, biographer Walter Isaacson calls Franklin the best American business strategist of his time and the country's "first great publicist."

He also credits Franklin with helping create the middle class through his support of craftspeople and shopkeepers.

For all his business success, money was not Franklin's prime goal. He quit with enough to live well, but not ostentatiously, in retirement.

"I don't think he was that interested in wealth," Waldstreicher said. "He was interested in control, in power, in power to do good things and to become a bigger person in the world."

In a famous letter to his mother, said Montana State University historian Billy Smith, Franklin wrote, "I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich."

While his electrical experiments began during his printer phase, most of the scientific and political work for which he is remembered took place during the more gentlemanly decades of his life.

"Making a lot of money by the time you're 42 is the easiest of all the things Franklin did," said Richard Shell, professor of legal studies and management at Penn's Wharton School.

If Franklin was working now, what would the corporate world do with him?

Even among the modern multitudes, he'd still stand out, his admirers say.

Although far fewer people were alive in his day, Franklin was nonetheless world-famous.

"He was not a big fish in a small pond," Yale historian Edmund Morgan said. "He was a big fish in a big pond."

All of the qualities that made him so successful in his time are just as useful today.

"It's hard to apply a 300-year-old intelligence to the world we have now," Shell said. "Of all the founding fathers, he seems to be the one, if you plopped him down today, would adapt."

Smart as he was, Franklin would have to specialize nowadays. You can't learn physics in a couple of years anymore. Few think he'd want to spend years mastering the minutiae of 21st-century genetics.

"The only thing that's clear is that he wants to be great," Zuckerman said. "He wants to be recognized for his greatness. What that would translate to now? Maybe a rock musician."

Shell sees him as an "extraordinary blogger."

Others agree he'd thrive in the information age. "He was entrepreneurial," Isaacson said. "He loved new technology. He loved science. He loved inventions, and he would be the master of the digital revolution today."

More pieces of Benjamin Franklin's resume will appear in coming editions. For the complete resume, go here.

Bill Bennett my ass...

Update: Here's some great stuff from Bill in Portland, Maine, courtesy of The Daily Kos.

Our Daily Dose Of Dread

Gee, I wonder if there’s a connection between this….

…and this?

It seems like every time Bushco gets some bad numbers, they have to “poke us with a stick” via their bought-and-paid-for corporate media.

Henry Crumpton appears to be an able administrator in the counterterrorism field by all appearances (based on my admittedly limited investigation), but with the pronouncements he recently made in London, he appears to have made it clear that he is now a Bushco shill (assuming he wasn’t already).

“Al Qaeda is coming to murder you in your beds, dear little children. They’re going to use nukes and or chemical weapons. Trust Great White Father Dubya to protect you and never question him, even when he is illegally spying on you.”

Ambassador Crumpton, I have a simple request. Please confine your public comments to factual information that can be reasonably corroborated and treat us like adults. That would be a refreshing change for this administration.

Does any other country on earth have to be subjected to this vile crap?

Update 1/19: And CNN willfully plays along also (yes, I know they have to report it, but I definitely question their methods...what an act of journalistic genius to hire right-wing fascist Glenn Beck, by the way).

Legacy Of A Dream

Profmarcus at Take It Personally has some good words about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we are commemorating today (linking to an extended post by Juan Cole). Also, here is more from a diarist at The Daily Kos. Finally, Geov Parrish at Working For Change has some chastening words (some of it is a bit of a stretch, but I think he's basically correct).

The Philadelphia Inquirer also had an excellent editorial today (trying to recover from their horrific endorsement of Alito yesterday). The paper also had a story on Friday of students at Barratt School in South Philadelphia watching a speech that King gave at the school in 1967 and how moving an experience it was for them (registration required for both).

Update: By the way, check out The Raw Story for info on Al Gore's speech invoking King and attacking Bushco for its assault on the Constitution (hat tips to Atrios and Brandoland).

Philly.com posted a link to an excerpt of King's Barratt School speech; it was truly wonderful to watch and listen once more. I've tested this and it should work fine (best for broadband). Here's the link.

Go, Ginny, Go!

Local Pa politics...

As some of us know, Patrick Murphy and Andy "Mr. Warmth" Warren are running against Repug incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick for the 8th district U.S. House seat. In 2004 and 2002, Ginny Schrader ran for the seat against Fitzpatrick and Jim Greenwood, respectively, and of course lost both times. Many people thought that Ginny was aiming a bit too high and that she should run for local or statewide office before she took a shot at Washington, especially since she didn't have a record of government service. I thought that was partly a bum rap, because Ginny has a lot to offer, and being a woman, I think she has to meet a lot higher of a standard than a man would have to meet when trying to do the same thing.

Also, I've met Ginny a couple of times and spoken with her, and I have no doubt that she would be a bright, able legislator. However, in this bedrock Republican area where I live, the fact that she's a working woman in somewhat of a Hillary Clinton mode automatically turns people off. That's not fair, but that's the reality.

Ginny had tough fights the two times she ran previously for different reasons. Running against an entrenched incumbent like Greenwood who actually was moderate on a few issues was just about an unwinable campaign from the start, but when Greenwood bailed in '04, that evened the field for her. However, the Repugs revved up their slime machine and poured a ton of dough into Fitzpatrick's campaign, and that ultimately made the difference (at one point, they ran an attack ad claiming that Ginny, a Jew, contributed money to Hezbollah...Ginny was correct to blame Fitzpatrick for that before the start of one of the debates, though he sat impassively and claimed that he knew nothing - which is pretty cowardly, I think - angering Ginny to the point where she stormed out after tossing a file of documentation on him; Ginny was right on principle, but unfortunately, she lost on that in the court of public opinion).

Well, she's going to give it another shot, running against Joe Conti for the PA State Senate. Good for her.

I think she has a shot because the Repugs are divided on Conti, and also because Conti took some heat for a time for refusing to reimburse the state for that horrible pay raise they tried to sneak through last summer. It should be noted that Conti eventually did reimburse the state for the raise.

The Repugs are partly divided on Conti because they're in typical "take no prisoners" mode, trying to unseat him the same way they tried to unseat Arlen Specter by running anti-abortion zealot Pat Toomey against him in '04 Repug primary, with Specter beating back that challenge (I was actually rooting for Toomey because I thought Joe Hoeffel would be able to beat him in the general election...oh well).

I went to the Grassroots PA site, which is basically another Repug mouthpiece, and I read a post from July '04 where they basically beat up Conti for voting for "the infamous Ed Rendell tax increase" (which was meant to restore education funding and balance the state budget, but heaven forbid that a politician handle finances responsibly as far as the Repugs are concerned...don't tell me that they know what they're doing in that area when even John Bogle of Vanguard, a lifelong registered Republican, can't understand them any more). They also go after Conti for accepting "controversial campaign contributions from strip club owners."

Oh mah gawd! No wonder these Repug "pillars of moral virtue" are all in a tizzy! Call James Dobson and Pat Robertson immediately! I think we need an intervention here!

If Ginny runs a skilled, issues-based campaign - which I believe she is certainly capable of doing - then I believe this race could be won, especially if somehow Conti is knocked off in the primary by an ultra-right Repug nut case in the Toomey mold. What is ironic is that, except for Conti's misstep on the pay raise issue, I think he's actually done not too bad of a job. Before he left office to cash out and take the "Big Pharma" job, Greenwood had actually pegged Conti for his U.S. House seat, but that didn't sit well with Harry Fawkes, Bucks County PA GOP chairman (I believe I confused him with Hank Miller sometime ago in another post having to do with local politics - oops). Fawkes had Fitzpatrick in mind all along, because that played better with the fundamentalist stooges currently calling the shots for the Repugs in Washington (Fitzpatrick being Catholic and all that), so it was "exit, stage left" for Conti.

So it sounds like we're off and running, and here's to a better outcome for Ginny in November.

Besides, I think we've received the first positive sign already; J.D. Mullane said she's making a mistake (I'd worry if he agreed with her).