Some 'Bling While You're At It?

This is all well and good, but my concern is how well the stains and smell will wash out when the grease trap of burger remains splatters on them and the blowback from the fry vat shortening musses up the designer logos.

And that's not even considering trying to clean up after a kid gets sick in the lobby from the food and whatever may get on your "duds" then (sorry - hope you're not eating as you read this).

My suggestion would be to add a scrolling LED dog tag with the attire, and if they're going to plug movies, the first one could be "Super Size Me" by Morgan Spurlock :-).

A Sap For A Tree

If the voters of Florida actually send her to the U.S. Senate, they should be forced to renounce their citizenship.

Luckily, We Fired HIM

Whenever a story appears involving the Supreme Court, somehow as if by magic, Robert Bork reappears under the inevitable headline, “Conservatives Still Smarting Over What They Perceive as Bork Injustice,” or some variation thereof, pertaining to the defeat of his nomination for the Supreme Court in 1987.

Putting aside the fact that it’s at best counterproductive and at worst a monumental waste of time to keep fighting battles that are over 18 years old, let’s consider the fact that, after the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were sufficiently cowed by the resulting conservative backlash as a result of Bork’s defeat, the next candidate, Antonin Scalia, had a cakewalk, and he is at least as bad as Bork could have been. Worse, he will probably be the next chief justice, since Rehnquist will surely follow O’Connor’s path out the door now.

Also, regarding Judge Bork, let’s recall his role in the Watergate scandal for a moment (yes, he had one).

See, Nixon was getting mad at special prosecutor Archibald Cox because, well, gosh, it seemed the man was getting too close to the Oval Office during the course of his investigation (imagine that). I’ll let William Rivers Pitt provide the next bit of information.

…In Watergate, Congress did not commence impeachment proceedings to hold President Nixon accountable for his abuse of power until the American people demanded action after the Saturday Night Massacre (in which Nixon ordered the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to keep him from getting incriminating personal tape recordings).

And this information appears courtesy of CBS News (this is what happened):

When Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the White House, refused a presidential order to make no further attempts to subpoena the Nixon tapes, President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned as did his deputy, William Ruckleshaus.

I seem to recall that Nixon fired Ruckleshaus, but if CBS News said he resigned, then I’ll defer to them.

So guess who ended up firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox?

U.S. Solicitor General Robert H. Bork.

So, as far as I’m concerned, Bork put party loyalty above his duty to protect our government and the Constitution. That tells me all I need to know about his qualifications, now or ever, for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Also, Bork testified before Congress in 1987 that he did not believe there was such a thing as a constitutional right to privacy. Maybe not literally, but I would strenuously argue that such a thing exists in the spirit of the Constitution and in its implementation as the foundation of our government over lo these 229 years.

I would humbly ask that you keep this in mind the next time you hear Robert Bork pontificating about the importance of an “originalist” orientation for a Supreme Court justice.

The American Reich

I should tell you that this post is particularly inflammatory, but I believe not without cause. It may also seem in particularly bad taste for July 4th, but as far as I’m concerned, it needs to be stated.

I’ve read a great deal of news articles and columns where the authors don’t seem to understand the mood of the country and why there is no unified resistance to the Iraq war or the policies of the Bush administration in general (granted, a lot of these authors are liberal or progressive, and yes, there is a difference between the two). I believe there are several reasons for this.

One is the fact that the mainstream media upon which most of this country relies for information has been totally co-opted by a pro-business, conservative agenda more concerned with stories such as the tragic disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba and how the latest GDP numbers from Bushco are going to affect the leading economic indicators on Wall Street such as the Dow Jones industrial average.

Another is the truly ineffectual state of what laughably passes for an opposition party in this country. David Sirota (yet another plug) has posted twice on this subject over the last week, with the most recent one having to do with how 28 Democratic legislators in the House actually voted against a bill from fellow Dem Rose DeLauro to ban government contracts to companies that use offshore loopholes to avoid paying taxes in this country (including the pathetic Rahm Emanuel of Illinois who, when asked last year if we were right to invade Iraq without WMD actually said yes!). The bill was ultimately voted down (another Democrat who caved was John Murtha of Pa., a former Marine who I thought knew better).

Another reason is the fact that Bushco are, collectively, the most skilled propagandists I’ve ever seen, unfortunately. With their “Project for a New American Century” they envisioned a way to consolidate power by allowing for a total collapse of our economy and creating an environment for an attack on this country (Note 1: I will NEVER say that they knew 9/11 was coming and let it happen, if for no other reason than because Barbara Olsen, wife of connected conservative lawyer Ted Olson, was killed in the Pentagon attack, and she was definitely one of their own). Subsequently, the people of this country would instinctively rally around a leader who, by all appearances, was trying to put things back together.

Given all of this, I have this to offer regarding the mood of the vast majority of the people in this country. I think it can best be described as a kind of shocked anxiety, not having a clue as to what’s coming next and kind of numbed into a state of inertia because of repeated “fear and smear” warnings from Bush and his acolytes (how many times did Bush shamelessly mention 9/11 in his speech on Iraq last week?). That definitely explains the results of the election as far as I’m concerned, along with the fact that John Kerry was running an unimaginative campaign with themes from the 90s, along with voter intimidation and harassment in Ohio and Florida along with electronic fraud.

Bush’s strategy to shape public opinion in this way (assuming for a minute that he came up with this himself, which would be giving him far too much intellectual credit) recalls Nazi propaganda of an earlier day, as far as I’m concerned (Note 2: I am NOT saying that Bush is Hitler, only that he’s trying to copy Hitler’s tricks). All politicians and other propagandists want to address favorable audiences, but Bush and his cronies have elevated this throughout his administration in a manner not unlike der Fuehrer riding in the open jeep on his way to address the sixth Nuremberg Party Congress in 1934.

One difference I would note is that, after World War I, Germany was in such a state politically and economically that they were ripe for domination by a group such as the National Socialists. In this country, the conditions had to be created for plutocratic rule.

Though I am not old enough to recall the rise of Nazi Germany firsthand, I have a pretty clear picture of how those sympathetic to Hitler felt during that time, particularly in Austria. It was a total unquestioning acceptance of his policies, much like I see in the followers of Bushco today. Also, it was pretty clear early on that the Nazis sought world domination (thank God Winston Churchill had read Mein Kampf and understood what Hitler was about in the 30s while the rest of England was recovering from WWI), and everything they did was geared towards achieving that goal, and their followers dismissed some of the pre-war rhetoric about eliminating non-Aryans as some type of fictional propaganda. Bushco is relentless in their goals also, and they do not, nor have they ever, sought a compromise on anything. Likewise, I see the same sort of denial among their followers regarding news stories about what really is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Gitmo.

Germany as a nation suffered long-term repercussions for their support of Nazi Germany, and I’m afraid this country is in for the same fate because of its collective support for Bushco.

However, one note of hope that we can hang onto this day is that, due to the framework of our government and the vast well of patriotism and people doing the right thing on a grass roots level of either party, as far as I’m concerned, the kind of fascist rule that Bushco is trying to foist on us will never take hold. It is my hope and dream that that will be the case now and always.

A Friend Of The Earth Passes

A tribute to Senator Nelson...

Giving Thanks

During this holiday weekend, I think it’s appropriate to take a minute and reflect on all of the people and blessings in general for which we can be grateful. Here are some of mine:

Our service people all over the world, including our reservists, who make the dangerous and often lonely sacrifice to preserve our way of life (we can, as always, send our prayers and good wishes to both them and their families). With our people in mind, I should mention that Michael Moore's site has a link called, "How Can I Help The Troops," and the Friends of Bruce Cockburn site has a link to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko, who survived dioxin poisoning, believed to have been administered during the campaign by government agents, and won the presidency in December after courts overturned the election of his rival. This is unbelievable to me – as much as I dislike Dubya and the conservatives, I would NEVER consider doing something like that to them.

(Yushchenko, by the way, is this year’s winner of the Liberty Medal, but due to schedule conflicts, he will not receive it until September 17th, Constitution Day, in a ceremony at the National Constitution Center.)

The governor of Washington State, Christina Gregoire, whose election was validated after two vote recounts against Repug challenger Dino Rossi

The rescue of one member of a U.S. special operations team in Afghanistan, which tempers somewhat the loss of 16 other special ops members when their helicopter was shot down in that area

The rescue of Shasta Groene in Idaho, and the community support that made that possible (Though the outcome for her brother doesn't look good, let's pray and hope for him also.)

The news about Karl Rove which Newsweek will blare out to the world shortly (which precedes, of course, the inevitable denials from Rove’s lawyer…what else can you expect?)

The fact that Howard Dean hasn’t said anything stupid for the last couple of weeks (continually keeping my fingers crossed on that one:-)

Shadow Of A Doubt

From the Associated Press, reported in this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer:

A former top Iranian secret agent said yesterday that the hostage-taker in a 1979 photograph that has come under intense scrutiny is not President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a former militant who committed suicide in jail.

Saeed Hajjarian, an adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami and a former high-ranking official in the Intelligence Ministry, identified the man in the photo dating to the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as Taqi Mohammadi.

Iran's newly elected president has been accused of being a main participant in the taking of American hostages at the embassy. Six former U.S. hostages who saw the president-elect in photos or on television said they believed Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Ahmadinejad.

Fine. You know what I want to see, then? I want a complete list of all of the terrorists (not "students" as far as I'm concerned) who held our people hostage in 1979; their names, faces, date and time last seen and where they are now, and I want the list to be verified by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. It's just a bit too convenient that this Taqi Mohammadi guy just happened to commit suicide in jail to avert any suspicion (it's always easy to blame it on the dead guy, right? - see Iran-Contra and Casey, Bill).

Revenge Is Sweet

I'll be curious to find out how you look in an orange jump suit, Karl, you creep (to wit...).

One Rolex = 1,000 Meals Ready to Eat

Leave it to the Bucks County Courier Times editors, grinches that they are, to point this out (though I reluctantly admit that they have a point).

Thumbs Down to Live 8 organizers who plan to shower performers with expensive gifts – all while bringing attention to poverty in Africa.

Performers aren’t getting paid for their performances but organizers plan to thank them by offering Hugo Boss gift bags loaded with $3,000 in high-fashion goodies. Artists can also personalize their bags by adding $2,000 Gibson guitars and a $4,000 Bertolucci watch.

What? Hello? We realize that these sorts of gifts are often made available to celebrities at awards shows and other star-studded events, but are expensive gifts in the name of poverty really appropriate? Why not forego the gifts and just write a check for the same value (even half the value!) to an African aid organization?

We can only hope that artists, struck with a feeling somewhere between irony and guilt, will chose to shun these gifts. But we’re not holding our breath.

By the way, it looks like no "Live 8" TV for me, since I'm having a full day with the young one:-( (that's OK).

A "Taxi" For Those In Need

What follows is a great Guest Opinion column that appeared in today's Bucks County Courier Times from a man named Greg Rossi about “Live 8,” but more importantly, about a guy who was trying to feed the hungry and not making headlines in the process years ago:

(Rossi is a clinical social worker and a therapist with a private practice in Yardley.)

Today, artists performing at Live 8 will raise money for impoverished people.

Three decades back a passionate and dedicated singer-songwriter steadily gave 50 percent or more of his concert proceeds to organizations that fed hungry people and worked to eliminate the cause of hunger.

Tragically, 24 years ago on July 17th, a car accident on the Long Island expressway cut his life short.

His name was Harry Chapin.

“Feed the man dying of hunger,” the legal philosopher Gratian said, “because if you have not fed him, you have killed him.” Harry Chapin understood these words well. He believed that while it was important to feed the hungry it was also important to free them – to address and remedy the systemic and structural causes of hunger.

Harry knew that there was – and still is today – more than enough food to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet. He understood that hunger is a symptom of poverty and poverty is a symptom of underdevelopment.

Harry was on a mission because he had a vision. Believing that people are basically good, he understood that hunger is a solvable problem, and that heartfelt compassion, when tempered with prudence and reason, can alleviate myriad forms of human suffering.

Harry also understood that compassion is fundamentally an attitude, a choice, and in the final analysis, a decision – the willingness to enter into the heart of someone else’s suffering and be moved to alleviate it. From the gift of one’s heart, he knew that all else, and more flow.

To that end, his passion and his commitment were endless.

So what did Harry do? In addition to committing half of his concert proceeds, this singer-songwriter lobbied then-President Carter to authorize a Presidential Commission on World Hunger, actively served on it, and co-founded the World Hunger Year organization. Sometimes referring to himself as “a third-rate folk singer,” he was a tireless advocate for oppressed people.

In our own country, bodily hunger has many disguises: a child who cannot learn in school because he doesn’t have enough to eat; a senior citizen whose fixed income forces a choice between medication and energy bills; an unemployed person whose resources are necessarily limited and inadequate. Of course, spiritual hunger; be it for companionship, connectedness or community is no less painful.

What can one person do to feed the hungry?

Join an organization such as Bread For The World or World Hunger Year, volunteer at a soup kitchen, or write your legislators to restore funding for school lunch programs. Support the social outreach efforts of your synagogue or church. Read about the systemic and structural roots of hunger. But don’t stop there. There are other hungers. Visit a nursing home, befriend a lonely teenager, or spend time with anyone who has lost a loved one. In your own way, share from your heart. Connect.

The courage to feel others’ pain, the passion to do something about it, a love for humanity, and determination to alleviate human misery – Harry’s was a life well lived. In a tribute written just after he died, Ralph Nader and Mark Green wrote that Harry was “a model of what Justice Felix Frankfurter described as ‘the highest position in a democracy – the office of citizen.” They concluded, “That was no third-rate folk singer. Only a first-rate American.”

Today with Live 8 we celebrate the irrepressible human spirit and the enthused determination of young and older people to touch the lives of others with the kind of patriotism that sees beyond race, creed, class, orientation and national borders to recognize, instead, a friend in the face of those, who, for any reason, suffer.

Compassion that frees, heals and empowers is the kind of music and “live aid” that would make anyone sing out. It was one of Harry’s gifts, it imbued his art and his life, and it was a song he never tired of singing.

That office of citizen? It belongs to us all.

Let's Send A Message

And now, some words from Sen. Patrick Leahy from the beautiful "blue", green mountain state of Vermont:

This morning, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement from the United States Supreme Court.

This is a momentous time in our nation's history. The next justice will have enormous influence on a woman's medical decisions, the rights of workers and consumers, the civil and privacy rights of us all, the enforcement of our environmental laws, how our elections are conducted, and nearly every other aspect of our lives.

We cannot allow the independence of our courts to be threatened by a judicial activist who places personal ideology above the law. The Supreme Court is no place for fringe judges. And the Senate is not a rubber stamp for any president's nominations.

Join me in calling for inclusive, thoughtful deliberations during this process:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/norubberstamps

The Constitution requires that the President seek the Senate's advice and consent in making appointments to the federal courts. As a Senator and as the Democratic leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I take this responsibility very seriously.

America must maintain separate but equal branches of government. Neither the legislature, nor the judiciary, should be subjugated to the will of any president - or to the loudest wing of any political party.

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/norubberstampsmps

In recent years, the President has chosen a path of confrontation rather than consultation with the Senate.

I voted against Janice Rogers Brown, a judge quoted telling conservative audiences that the New Deal "mark[ed] the triumph of our own socialist revolution," and that elderly Americans who depend on Social Security "blithely cannibalize their grandchildren."

I voted against Priscilla Owen, a judge who inserts her opinions into the law so freely that President Bush's own attorney general once called her behavior "unconscionable ... judicial activism."

Once again, the power to avoid political warfare over a judicial nominee -- this time to the Supreme Court -- is in the hands of the President. The process begins with him.

President Bush will decide whether there will be a divisive or unifying process and nomination. If consensus is a goal, bipartisan consultation will help achieve it. I believe that is what the American people want and what they deserve. The President can unite the nation and the Senate with his choice, or he can once again divide us.

Join me in calling for meaningful consultation between the President and Senators on both sides of the aisle at:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/norubberstamps

If the President chooses a Supreme Court nominee because of that nominee's ideological fervor or record of activism in the hope that he or she will deliver political victories, the President will have done so knowing that he is again choosing the path of confrontation. He will do so knowing that we will once again be forced to defend our belief that the Supreme Court should not be an arm of either political party. It belongs to all Americans.

If the right-wing activists who were disappointed that their nuclear option was averted convince the President to choose a divisive nominee, they will not prevail without a difficult Senate battle. And if they do, what will they have wrought? The American people will be the losers: The independence of and respect for the judiciary will have suffered a damaging blow from which the judiciary may not soon recover.

We need to send a message that the Supreme Court should be above such partisan politics at:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/norubberstamps

The President and Republican leaders have a choice: choose a battle that divides America, or seek a middle ground with a nominee we all can trust to fairly interpret and uphold the Constitution and the law. Let the Senators who will make this important decision know that America doesn't want us to rubber stamp the President's nominee. Tell them now:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/norubberstamps

I will be working with Democracy for America during this historic period to keep you up to date on the Senate's deliberations. If you would like to send me your thoughts during this debate, please do so at:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/norubberstamps

Thank you,

Senator Patrick Leahy
Ranking Democratic Member, Senate Judiciary Committee

Justice O'Connor Steps Down

I'm sure you've read the story by now, but in case you haven't...

(David Sirota had another good take on this, by the way...this site isn't really a commercial for his blog; it just seems that way sometimes.)

In my mind, Justice O'Connor distinguished herself in recent years, particularly in her remarks about the eminent domain ruling recently (though, as I said, I think she was arguing about something other than what the court was ruling on). Another diplomatic moment for her came in this area when she was awarded the Liberty Medal at the opening of the Constitution Center on July 4, 2003, and the stage scaffolding around her collapsed. (It was a squabble between two of the unions, and I'm a union guy, but even I admit that's what happened...trust me.) Luckily, neither she nor Gov. Ed Rendell were hurt. However, Sen. Rick Santorum was denied the blow on the head that he truly deserved then as now:-).

Justice O'Connor also wrote the 5-4 decision of the court in 2003 endorsing race-based college admissions at the University of Michigan's law school. To me, that was another conservative hissy fit anyway. Sure, go nuts over this, but then wouldn't there be a problem with "legacy" college admissions because they often receive preferential treatment also?

Anyway, I think one of the best ways to appreciate her work is to read these quotes from decisions in which she was involved to one degree or another (even though she was one of the "Stop-The-Bush-Gore-Recount" bunch, I think she redeemed herself somewhat). These are from "womenshistory.about.com".

• Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.

• I don't know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job.

• We don't accomplish anything in this world alone, and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something.

• Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.

• Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don't know how much history young women today know about those battles. (2003)

• Society as a whole benefits immeasurably from a climate in which all persons, regardless of race or gender, may have the opportunity to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and remuneration based on ability.

• Yes, I will bring the understanding of a woman to the Court, but I doubt that alone will affect my decisions. I think the important thing about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman, but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases.

• The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.

• The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men's and women's earnings for the same work.

• Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.

• Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.

• The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.

• We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.

• The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.

• (PLANNED PARENTHOOD v. CASEY, June 29, 1992: Opinion written by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter; joined in part by Stevens and Blackmun) Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet, 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade (1973), that definition of liberty is still questioned.

We are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed, in three parts:

1. The right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability.
2. The State may restrict abortions after fetal viability if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies which endanger the woman’s health.
3. The State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus that may become a child.

• The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community. (from Lynch v. Donnelly, concurring opinion, 1984)

• It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.

• A moment of silence is not inherently religious.

• It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.

• Senator Barry Goldwater, in response to Jerry Falwell's statement that "good Christians" should oppose Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court: "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."

Update 7/6: For another opinion, click here.

Support Through Dissent

In light of the upcoming holiday, I thought Ellen’s Goodman’s recent column about everyone with a “Support Our Troops” decal on their vehicle was thought-provoking, though I have to admit that I don’t feel “silenced” in this debate. As far as I’m concerned, “SOT” is code from Frank Luntz meaning, “shut up and do what Bushco tells you to do,” though I have seen those stickers sharing space with Kerry/Edwards stickers (kind of makes we wonder, though that’s probably just a well-intentioned gesture).

I also thought Bill Moyers had some great things to say about this a few weeks ago in a speech defending himself against Kenneth Tomlinson, Bush's hit man recently put in charge of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Here is what Moyers recalled saying on a broadcast of NOW before the start of Iraq War II about all the "Support Our Troops" decals and jacket/dress pins:

“I wore my flag tonight (on my jacket), (for the) first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans. Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustain me, whose armed forces protected me and whose ideals inspired me. I offered my heart’s affection in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood. So does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15th.

"So what’s this doing here? I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo, the trademark – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On most Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official labels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book of orthodoxy on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.

”But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapel while writing books and running web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks, even as they call for spending more on war.

”So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government, and it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war, except in self defense, is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”

I couldn't agree more.

Intelligent Psychosis

Someone called Michael Shermer has a great message for Kansas (courtesy of The Huffington Post).

Memo to Howard Dean

Read David Sirota's blog post today...

READITREADITREADITREADITREADITREADITREADITREADITREADIT!!!!

Blue Dress Stain vs. Iraq

The Daily Kos reminds us that Bob Herbert, Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, recently had this to say:

The incompetence at the highest levels of government in Washington has undermined the U.S. troops who have fought honorably and bravely in Iraq, which is why the troops are now stuck in a murderous quagmire. If a Democratic administration had conducted a war this incompetently, the Republicans in Congress would be dusting off their impeachment manuals.

To be sure.

Also, Jamo Foser is blogging today for The Al Franken Show site (link in the right column) with more great thoughts in a similar vein.

(update 7/1 - Chris Floyd does it again!)

A Coward In Charge

In a way, I’m surprised by this, but in a way, I’m not.

If our former hostages say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of those criminals, then I believe them.

The problem is that we really can’t do anything about it. What we should do is go to the U.N. and try to get some satisfaction; namely, an investigation into Ahmadinejad’s background to find out if he really was one of them. If it turns out that he was, then he should make reparations of one sort or another to the hostages he victimized.

You’re reading this (hopefully) and probably thinking, “I’ll just bet he tries to blame Bush for this somehow”.

Yep.

Because we wasted so much good will after 9/11 on Bushco’s illegal war (as well as that truly idiotic “axis of evil” reference in that State of the Union speech a few years ago), we don’t have the credibility in the eyes of other member nations in the U.N. that we once did to get moving with what I suggested above (and yes, we DO NEED THE U.N., in case any right wing knuckle draggers out there are reading this). Trying to get that whack job John Bolton named U.N. ambassador (who probably will get in as a “recess” appointment, unfortunately) doesn’t help the cause either.

As a result of our poisoned relations with so much of the rest of the world, nationalist sentiments are taking over. That explains the election result in Iran (and Rummy can have as big a hissy fit as he wants to over it, but it won’t change a thing). Of course, God forbid that we would actually reach out to Iranian moderates like Khatami. By our strident rhetoric, we put people like him on the defense immediately and cut off any chance we may have of reform.

Do you want an example of the right way to reach out to leaders who are trying to get democracies started in their countries? Read “The Unfinished Presidency” by Douglas Brinkley about Jimmy Carter, especially the chapter about Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua. When was the last time you heard about turmoil in that country, by the way?

(Here's an update...and why exactly should we take the word of thugs and criminals?)

200 Years Of...Shopping?

My policy on the old site that I've tried to carry forward here was that I wouldn’t write about BS involving media personalities, though I know I made a joke about Tom Cruise earlier (and how could you not…let’s be honest).

I’m about to make another exception. I’d heard a little bit about this business with Oprah Winfrey and this high-end French department store that turned her away, but I really hadn’t read much about it until a few minutes ago, and I can tell you that that was quite by accident.

Apparently, what happened is that she had planned to shop after hours, possibly (depending on the account) to buy a watch for Tina Turner, her dining companion of the evening in question, and the store told her that they were closed and couldn’t accommodate her because they were setting up for some kind of publicity event. Another account stated that, though Winfrey and three friends saw others shopping inside, neither a clerk nor the store manager would let her in.

What really gets me about this, though, is some of the rhetoric that has been flying around regarding Winfrey and this story.

“The presumption in America is that if you have the wealth, you’ll get equality, but where’s Oprah’s equality?” asks Bruce D. Haynes, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis. “It picks up on every inkling of discrimination that a black person might experience in daily life.”

People, we’re talking about shopping at a department store here. It’s not like a cab in midtown Manhattan refused to pick her up on a rainy night at rush hour, or a cop stopped her illegally while she was driving and arrested her for a loaded handgun or a crack pipe, or she was denied a mortgage by an unscrupulous realtor because of the color of her skin.

She wasn’t allowed to shop at a department store because it was closed. I’m going to repeat that: She…wasn’t…allowed…to…shop…at…a…department…store…because…it…was…closed.

“Winfrey’s friend, Gayle King, who was there, told Entertainment Tonight, ‘Oprah describes it as one of the most humiliating moments of her life’.”

She…wasn’t…allowed…to…shop…at…a…department…store…because…it…was…closed.

Harpo (Harpo Productions, Winfrey’s company) says Winfrey plans to discuss the incident in the context of race relations on her show this fall. Winfrey referred to the incident as “her ‘Crash’ moment,” a reference to the film dealing with this topic.

Let me just share something with you, OK? Now I am definitely just an average guy, no big deal in the scheme of things. On our honeymoon in Vermont, my wife and I wanted to buy a chandelier from a store in Manchester Center, but we got there a few minutes late. I tried calling the place, and my wife knocked on the door of the store, and they eventually let us in. However, they didn’t have to do that. It would have been a big pain in the butt to go back there again later, but we know that that would have been on us if that had been the case. Rightly or wrongly, that story is my frame of reference in this matter.

I know this may be strange talk coming from someone who calls himself The Liberal Doomsayer, but this is where I come down on the whole thing with Oprah Winfrey. There’s a word, and that word is ‘context’ (another word is ‘perspective’). When you stack this up against the civil rights struggles of the 60s, lynchings, and all of the other awful misery African Americans have had to endure in this country, I just don’t see where, to paraphrase Bogie, “this amounts to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

One more thing: In case you’re wondering, I’m white.

Smile Awhile

Or, as the minister eulogizing Chuckles The Clown on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" said, "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."

(courtesy of SFGate.com...)

Risky Business Indeed

Geez, first he jumps all over Oprah's couch, then he gets all combative with Matt Lauer on the Today show, and now he says we should believe in aliens.

You think maybe Tom Cruise needs a shrink or something?:-)

A Slender Thread

This has been reported pretty thoroughly on other blogs, but today is the day that Matthew Miller and Judith Cooper will find out if they will be sentenced.

In case you haven’t been following this (which would be surprising to me), Miller and Cooper are the two New York Times reporters implicated in the scandal that outed Valerie Plame, a spy who is the wife of Joe Wilson, a diplomat who took Bushco to task over the fake “Niger Letter” that was proof, supposedly, that Saddam Hussein was purchasing yellowcake, an unfinished form of uranium commonly used to develop nuclear weapons (part of the justification for the war, of course). Outing Plame was Bushco’s payback against Wilson.

It is widely believed that conservative shill Robert Novak, who wrote the story that outed Plame, had to have received Plame’s identity from someone inside the White House, and if someone did that, that person is guilty of a felony. An irony to me is that Novak isn’t going to be touched along with any of his sources. Cooper was working on a story that had not been printed yet, and Miller was only gathering background information. Another irony in this is that Miller came down against John Kerry in her reporting of the 2004 presidential election.

The conventional wisdom that I’m reading says that, if any of them go up for this (and I’m temporarily downplaying the horrible “chilling effect” that this would have on news organizations for now), it will be Cooper, since she would never reveal a source. I read a spirited defense of her by conservative “godfather” William Safire, who also said that Novak should come clean and that this case should spur immediate Congressional action on “shield law” legislation across the country – I heartily agree, but good luck seeing that happen with the bunch we have now. I would link to Safire’s remarks, but to get the full background, you have to go to the New York Times site and register, and they have the worst online registration process that I’ve ever seen. I’ve also read that a deal may be in the works for Miller to turn over his notes, which would basically accomplish the purpose of revealing his source and let him off the hook.

(Update: the four reporters in the Wen Ho Lee case lost their appeal today also, though the reporting on that case, as much as I can determine, was a total hatchet job on Lee.)

(Another update on 7/1...Cooper is spared.)

As I was checking about this stuff online, I went to the Editor and Publisher site (http://www.journalism.org/) to find out more information, and came across information on this criminal case in Montreal.

As you can read from this link, convicted killer Karla Homolka is seeking an injunction against the press from reporting on her in any way after her anticipated release from prison, which could come soon. I haven’t seen any reporting on this story, though I’m sure it’s a big deal up north. I definitely do not support her action – she committed brutal, heinous crimes, and I believe she must deal with any consequences from that even though she has served her jail time.

This story concerns me because I can easily see the lawyers for this piece of human refuse named Dennis Rader – the self-confessed “BTK” killer who terrorized the area of Wichita, Kansas since the early 1970s – finding a way to try and fit Homolka’s legal action for their own purposes. I don’t think they will succeed either (I sincerely hope not, anyway).

Do I see a pattern between the Cooper/Miller and Homolka stories? Yes, even if that is a bit of a stretch because Homolka is in Canada. An injunction such as Homolka’s would have been unthinkable years ago, but her lawyers obviously believe that it could succeed because (I believe) the courts, acting on signals from politicians and the public, think they can get away with squelching information and suppressing the public’s right to know (even though that right often allows stretches into prurient territory). I admit that these two cases are vastly different in subject matter, but as I said, I think there is a bit of a slender thread between them.

Also (speaking of suppressing information), let’s look at the case of the records of Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force which met shortly after Dubya’s installation as president (the most prominent task force member being Ken Lay of Enron). David Sirota (who else?) uncovered this information regarding the judge who decided the records should remain secret.

It turns out US District Judge A. Raymond Randolph, who ruled in favor of Vice President Dick Cheney's efforts to keep his energy task force records secret, has ties to the oil industry. David Sirota notes that Randolph serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of George Mason's Law & Economics Center (he has apparently served there for at least a few years, and may still currently). This is the same Law & Economics Center famous for taking judges on training junkets, and for being financed with huge amounts of cash from oil industry giants like Exxon. Raymond is also an adjunct law professor at George Mason University, a place that has taken millions from Koch Industries -- another major oil company (for more on Koch's multi-million dollar ties to George Mason, see Media Transparency's special site).

This is another problem with court decisions regarding public information. Often, the judges who rule in these matters were either appointed or elected by people with a predisposition in support of business interests that don’t have an advocacy point of view, any desire whatsoever to state publicly what it is that they’re doing, or any motivation to comply with “sunshine laws” or other legislation passed with the goal of ensuring that the electorate is informed enough to act in a responsible way.

Sigh...

I could fill this site with all kinds of information from reputable sources and demonstrate conclusively that George W. Bush is perhaps the biggest empty suit to hold the position of President that this country has ever seen, but a lot of other people have done a good job of that already, and I'm trying to do something different here.

Suffice to say that, apparently, last night's latest attempt to pass himself off as someone worthy of his position by harping on the same warmed-over propaganda over and over was another cringing media moment that inspired dread more than anything else. With that in mind, I thought Arianna Huffington's take on it was interesting (with the appropriate tongue-in-cheek humor).

Today's CNN Quick Vote question: Which word best describes Bush's speech?

Reassuring - 17 percent
Uplifting - 7 percent
Worrying - 76 percent

Also, the best analysis I've seen of the speech so far (and I've seen a lot of good stuff) is at the Lying Media Bastards site (accessible from the right column link).

One more thing: isn't it nice to see how Bushco "supports our troops"?

(Update on 6/30 - Zogby dares to mention the "I" word: hmmm...)

The Straight Dope On The Speech

Go to The Daily Kos and Americablog for lots of great coverage on Dubya's foray into prime time tonight (including his approval ratings, showing 50 percent or better in only 11 states, a fake moment of applause - unbelievable - and an excellent rebuttal from Sen. Harry Reid). They covered it better there than I could here.

Future Crock

(Or maybe not..this will be a long one).

Today on CNN’s site, there is a section that contains a bunch of commentaries by various people from different disciplines about the future and what they think it holds in store (my comments are blocked out in brown).

One of these individuals, a man named Ian Pearson, foresees the rise of a “care economy,” in which skills such as teaching and nursing will be very much in demand. His thought is that robots will do much of the rough manual labor that we do now and sophisticated AI applications (“artificial intelligence” for the uninitiated) will perform sophisticated business functions. The futurists have been talking about AI for years, by the way, but we may actually be getting closer to realizing that vision.

Also, in Pearson’s words, “We will be spending more time on human interaction and doing personal services for other people -- jobs like fitness gurus, lifestyles gurus, feng shui consultants, color therapists, job's that reduce people's stress, these sorts of things will expand dramatically and a lot of people will be working in these jobs.”

“Color therapists?” You mean like than man and wife in that goofball singing family in the folk music parody “A Mighty Wind”? “Oooh, honey….I’m stroking aqua velour fabric while chartreuse is permeating my being. Ommmm….”

To be serious about that for a minute, though, I should point out that I once worked with a very nice lady who left our employer to start her own personal services company (picking up cleaning, taking care of the house, overseeing the landscaping, etc.) to do the work that well-to-do or uber-rich people can’t do because they either don’t want to or they’re so busy with their jobs that they can’t be bothered. The last time I spoke with her, she was so busy that she barely had a minute to herself. I don’t know how profitable the venture was, though.

Also, Dr. Jakob Nielsen, the web usability guru, basically says that we will be able to do so much without leaving our homes that the price of real estate will fall through the floor, since, theoretically, it will make less of a difference where you live because you can do anything anywhere. Also, he says that “small hospitals will have the world’s greatest medical specialists on standby to diagnose patients through remote sensing.”

“Oh, honey, can you please dial the interactive medical channel for me on our 50-inch, high definition, plasma TV? I think I need some hormones for male dysfunction again, and my urologist is having an online diagnosis session beginning in a few minutes. I tried the orgasmatron, but I didn’t have any luck with it.”

Regarding travel, Ronald G. Larson, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, says that because we are increasingly mobile, viruses such as SARS and avian flu “pose a continual threat of a worldwide pandemic” (oh, great), but “novel, ‘lab on chip’ technologies are emerging that offer the potential for rapid, inexpensive, portable genotyping of viruses, allowing for the possibility of ‘on the spot’ diagnosis”.

From the New York Times, date 6/11/05:

Two reported new outbreaks of avian flu among birds in western China have raised fears that the virus is being spread widely by migrating birds and mutating rapidly.

The regional director for the World Health Organization, Dr. Shigeru Omi, told reporters in Beijing yesterday that the two recent outbreaks in remote areas in which hundreds of birds died were worrisome because they involved migratory waterfowl and domestic geese, birds that until now had been fairly resistant to the disease.

More than 13,000 geese were destroyed in Tacheng, in the Xinjiang autonomous region, after about 500 died of H5N1 avian flu, China's Agriculture Ministry reported.

Upon hearing of the news, the Bush Administration immediately questioned the scientific validity of the data, lambasted the Times as “a clearing house for liberal propaganda,” and stated that “the progress of free market reforms will enable China to implement health care measures to ensure public safety to a greater degree than ever before while we continue to run up irresponsible trade deficits with an oppressive regime that continually violates the basic human rights of its citizens.”

(OK, that last paragraph wasn’t really in the story – you got me. Nothing funny about this stuff, actually.)

Finally, Dean Kamen, inventor of The Segway (remember how our MSM cousins, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, went ga-ga over this novel but, for now, irrelevant piece of machinery?) had this interesting thought:

“The largest single cause of human disease, the cause of 80 percent of illness, is water-borne pathogens. This year 5.2 million people will die because of bad water. Yet in rich countries we use drinkable water to wash our cars and flush our toilets. I think in the next century you will see that all but disappear. Water will become more costly than oil.

The goal in my mind is to give people a way to take any source of water and make it pure -- to put a box in the middle of a village that would supply drinking water, no matter what the contamination, for 100 people. We're testing a device now and we're very excited about it.”

I can see it now – “Coming to a multiplex near you, that big-summer blockbuster everyone has been talking about: ‘Oilworld,’ starring Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper, with Reese Witherspoon as the gratuitous bit of T&A. Special appearances by George W. and George H.W. Bush, Jim Baker, King Fahd, the president of Venezuela, and the Unocal Corporation.”

Actually, this makes it all the more urgent to deal with global warming and climate change (to be serious again for a minute), since that is probably hurting Africa more than any other continent, drying up more and more of the country and leading to subsequently more of the tribal chaos and civil wars that we’ve seen to date (that behavior happens for more than just environmental reasons, I know).

By the way, I’m not for a minute saying that we should own Africa’s problems. All I’m saying is that we should keep our eye on “the big picture” since, when it comes to other continents, we have an interest in each other because we all share the same ecosystem.

Of course, we can’t even realistically consider a more active role in the problem of African drought until after January 2009 at the earliest, when Bushco departs (ugh).

(back to me…)

As I read all of this, though, the one thought I have over and over is this. Who on earth is going to be able to afford all of these great innovations that will enable people to do everything from the safety of their homes and hardly ever interact with the outside world? All of this will surely come at a cost, though that is never discussed in these types of stories. Under the Bushco world of the “haves,” “have mores,” and “have nothings,” I hate to admit that I think I know the answer.

Also, I don’t think anything that makes us retreat unto ourselves is such a great development. When we do that, we hurt our ability to interact and communicate effectively with each other (an ironic observation I admit, as I type onto my keyboard and get ready to publish this to a location where it will hopefully be read by an unknown audience:-). I don’t think that, as a nation, we’re doing that great of a job of communicating with each other anyway. We have the Internet, Email, voice mail, iPods ™, Blackberries™…all kinds of means to reach out to each other. The irony to me is that so many of us are too busy to do that.

I applaud the visionary observations of the people that CNN profiled in their feature today. I would just like somehow to see this information presented in more of a present-day context, so that, one day ten years down the road, we aren’t watching our TVs talk to us, our appliances start to perform functions without our command, and our computers tell us what medicines to take without saying, “How the $#@! did this happen?”

Items Of Note

The Al Franken Show blog today contains a post by a man named Erick Campbell, who has worked in our government's Bureau of Land Management for 30 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. I thought that what he has to say about Bushco, though not really that surprising, was shocking anyway. Please take a look.

Also, the cover photo on The Huffington Post showing "Christians" protesting at military funerals was gut wrenching and borderline nauseating. These people should all be shipped over to that hell hole in the Middle East that we created and be forced to ride in non-up armored Humvees, taking their chances on buying it from an IED at any moment.

Finally, I'm going on record as saying that I'm not going to watch the Liar in Chief tonight. Assuming I believe a word he says (and I don't), I've found it to be embarrassing watching him tap dance, obfuscate and mangle the English language in a manner more befitting an elementary school student than a reasonable adult, let alone the President of the United States.

Yep, just go ahead and take a shot at me as a typical liberal for not bothering to watch. But life is short, he's never listened to anything anyone has had to say, and we're all living with the result, so he deserves what he gets.

Oh, and by the way, as Bush tries to justify the abomination to which he has subjected our troops, please keep in mind these words from Molly Ivins.

An Icon Passes From Our Midst

R.I.P...

He would probably laugh at that characterization, but if you saw any of "The Civil War" by Ken Burns on PBS, you'd know he was that and much more.

Toby Keith At Live 8?

That's like The Dixie Chicks performing at a rally for The Young Republicans.

Hey, you support Bushco, so guess what? You are not entitled to free media time for yourself on behalf of causes that might not need to be publicized if Dubya had paid any attention to them whatsoever.

For a refresher on why I'm feeling this surge of indignation, check this out.

Win George Bush's Money

The latest polls are in on Dubya (hee, hee)...

The only thing that is keeping him afloat is the fact that there has been no repeat of 9/11 (and I want to emphasize as strongly as I can that NO SANE PERSON WANTS THAT, INCLUDING ME!). His marks absolutely stink on everything else, and rightly so.

It disgusts me unutterably that the Repugs are the successful propagandists that they are (though, to execute a con properly, you need an easy mark), but that is an undeniable fact, and as far as I'm concerned, that explains the fact that Bushco received a second term.

(Oh, and by the way Ben Stein, go soak your over-inflated, self-aggrandizing, egotistical Republican face! And they’re STILL hawking the Social Security scam!)

The Teutonic Twist

OK, so I want to understand this. Dubya hosts Gerhard Schroeder, who (in his good sense) did not support the Iraq War but does support the reconstruction (though that, to me, is a little like picking the pockets of people killed in a roadside traffic accident), and Dubya tries to build up Schroeder in the process in a tough election against an incumbent who actually DID support the war. Hmmm....

Apparently, Bushco has come to some sort of realization that it needs "old Europe" and our longtime allies to help bail us out of the mess that they created, and with that in mind, it's a good idea to support leaders they know from past experience (a rare moment of sanity for Bushco, assuming I'm right).

You would think the Bushco diehards would be screaming about a flip flop like this. Of course, they would be if this were Clinton (they'd be frothing at the mouth to the point where they might need an EMT, actually). But again, we're "living in the age of Bushco," unfortunately, where we're not supposed to ask too many questions and let the investor class do what they want while they await "the rapture".

This brings to mind a quote about politics (from an ironic source).

Conservatives Say The Darndest Things

I added a whole bunch of links recently for a number of reasons, and one of them is to do anything within reason to bring traffic to this site. With that in mind, I actually added some conservative links at the bottom right column (I also did that so we can recognize the enemy when we see him).

I poked around some of their sites, and as I expected, I encountered waves and waves of misinformation that I don’t have the time (or the desire, actually) to properly refute here. One of the places I went to was the site for USA Next, one of the Republican Party’s most prominent propaganda vehicles which was responsible for the Swift Boat Liars in last year’s election (see here).

And who should be gracing the home page for these cretins but none other than Art Linkletter. I realize this isn’t much of a surprise to the truly informed, since he’s a right winger from the Barry Goldwater days (someone who had more character in one of his boots than most of the clowns in the current ruling cabal have in their entire bodies, by the way), but perhaps, in my naïveté, I expected better of Linkletter than to lie down with Bushco.

With that in mind, here is some information about a little-known chapter in Linkletter’s long association with the Repugs that may prove to be illuminating.

(By the way, I am truly sorry for his family tragedy, and I am not trying to make light of that in any way.)

Gosh, Piglet Too?

I liked him best in The Odd Couple...

I've got Mr. Carlin on the "Bob Newhart Show" death pool, so we'll see.

Keep It Up, Sen. Scumwad

You're doing great, Ricky. You're making it easier and easier by the minute for Casey, Jr. This stuff all helps that along, as well as that nonsensical bill you tried to sponsor to get dangerous weather warnings banned from broadcasts by the National Weather Service.

David Sirota has the goods on you, and this link provides information which is even more outrageous. I don't think any fawning article in the NY Times magazine will save you on this (or comparing the Democrats to Hitler as you did earlier this year).

Ah, but I can see a way out for you, sadly enough. I'm sure Bushco will continue to infiltrate PA with their minions to raise money from the lemmings and sponsor more TV and radio attack ads, to wit:

"Who’s the REAL Bob Casey, anyway? Is he the one who bilked money from the widows and orphans trust fund as state treasurer? Is he the one who voted against the interests of legitimate sportsmen by siding with Handgun Control, Ira Einhorn and those other liberals from Philadelphia who are trying to take our guns away? (that will REALLY play big). Is he best friends with that jew-boy governor Ed Rendell, a product of those ‘eastern elites’” (well, OK, maybe they won’t go THAT far…hope not, anyway). These ads will be followed by the inevitable disclaimer – “I’m Rick Santorum, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with this message,” as Santorum’s nose gets bigger.

The fact that you are a member of the same organized religion as I am makes me want to throw up. I would strenuously argue, however, that you practice a very different type of spirituality.

Update 7/5: heh, heh, keep it up Ricky (more...) . And on top of that, according to David Sirota, he's even made a video advocating that the mandatory retirement age for Social Security be raised to over 70. You're doing great, you idiot!

Thing One and Thing Two

Thing One: Paul Krugman weighs in on our economic sellout to China (cautionary words from a knowledgeable source).

Thing Two: E.J. Dionne profiles David Obey, showing courage in the best Democratic tradition.

A Letter to Karl

I read a blog somewhere where Rove was described as "a Mayberry Machaivelli". That's brilliant (color me jealous for not coming up with it myself).

Oh, and by the way, here's a word from someone who is actually "in the sh*t" as they say.

One more thing (on a wholly other note)...R.I.P. Paul Winchell (sniff).

Justice Is Blind (And Stacked Also)

Looks like another legacy from the era of "loser to the dead guy" at the DOJ has bitten the dust.

Yep, the Repugs sure have a thing about bare boobs. Look how they all went nuts after Janet Jackson showed hers.

Oh, and by way, here's a prior column from Molly Ivins to remind us just how illustrious Ashcroft's tenure really was.

36 Million

And now, this important message from John Edwards:

Dear Friend,

Elizabeth and I believe strongly in the power and dignity of hard work. I remember mornings before school when my dad would sit at the kitchen table worrying over paper work and jotting down notes. It wasn't the family bills; he was trying to improve his math skills by watching public TV programs about probability and statistics. He believed, as we do, that hard work should be the means to a better life in America.

But 36 million Americans are impoverished today - that's 13 million more than there were thirty years ago - and many are hard working men and women who simply cannot work their way out of poverty. No one has all the answers, but one solution is clear: we need to raise the minimum wage in America.

You can tell a lot about a nation's character by how its leadership treats those who are struggling. It's a national disgrace that our minimum wage is so low, and yet President Bush and Republicans in Congress refuse to raise it. I've met single mothers who work full time, some even hold down two jobs - but each month they struggle to pay the bills, and they certainly can't build assets or save up for a family crisis.

One stroke of bad luck could send them and their families over the cliff.

That's why I've been working with grassroots organizations, labor unions, elected officials, and other progressive allies to fight for a higher minimum wage, and that's why I'm asking for your support as we take this issue to the states. Next week we will rally in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Lansing, Cleveland, and Columbus to call for increases in the minimum wage. Please ask your friends to join us at these upcoming events as we push for a ballot measure on this all-important issue.

The Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage. By taking the issue directly to state ballots, we can go around the Republican stonewall and give greater financial opportunity to millions of working Americans. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have already enacted higher minimum wage rates over the last few years, and Nevadans will vote on a statewide measure in 2006. With your help, we can bring more states along.

Legislators take notice when grassroots organizations and thousands of voters unite behind an issue. Let's make our voices heard: encourage your friends to join us as we restore dignity and hope to hard working Americans.

Please also visit our Web site to learn more about the fight for a fair minimum wage, and check back next week to see footage from the events mentioned above.

Your friend,
John

Signed, An Unpatriotic Liberal

(Oh, and by the way, I want to see our troops get killed...sure I do, Karl.)

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood for something a little more "up tempo" in the conspiratorial vein encouraged by Bushco, so here it is (to the tune of "Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys - property of Capitol/EMI).

OK, everybody now...

Let's go for a road trip
Into the desert sand
On behalf of the Army
To give our troops a hand
Selective service is awesome
Dubya wants us to go
Hop a transport and join the
Fallujah horror show

We'll all be taking that route
Through Kirkuk we're gonna drive
Sunnis roaming in Baghdad
I hope I come back alive
Waging Shia incursions
Blow each other to bits
Fly in Rummy, coerce the
Troops to all re-enlist
All over in Tikrit
Battles rage for Allah
Where the Bible once called it
Mesopotamia

So off we go for the oil
And pledge ourselves with aplomb
To up-armor our Humvees
Against a roadside bomb
Just fly my body to Dover
If then my life I forego
It's just the price if I join the
Fallujah horror show

Bring It On, Dubya!

Hmmm...good, honest scorn from the White House. How refreshing for a Friday.

Maybe we Democrats are "puzzled," at the very least, because we don't appreciate it when someone says we support the murder of our own troops.

Oh, and one more thing: I skimmed over the CNN article and saw that Bushco took a swipe at Moveon.org, an organization that I support. I'm tired of wasting my valuable time and energy explaining the misinformation and lies that continue to seep out from this administration and its sycophants, so I'm not going to bother to refute their utter nonsense.

Bushco Knows Best

Gee gosh uncle Karl, I don't know if you'll be able to pin this one on the liberals or not (but I'm sure you'll try).

I wouldn't call this a diplomacy challenge, Mr. Ereli. I'd call it a reality challenge.

See Dick Run (From The Truth)

LIE: According to Vice President Dick Cheney, the Iraqi insurgency "is in its last throes".

TRUTH: Gen. John Abizaid painted a very different picture today.

Here are more Dick Cheney lies from last year. Enjoy.

A Good Way to Seize Property?

OK, everyone is weighing in on the story about the Supreme Court ruling that allows local officials to seize personal property for private economic development that you can read about here.

Please allow me to offer a glimmer of hope in all of this.

First, I think it stinks that the New London, CT residents are going to lose their homes and/or businesses. However, I don't believe that the Supremes were ruling on the merits of their case and the legality of "eminent domain". I think they were ruling on who should exercise the authority, local government or the Feds. If they were ruling on "eminent domain" and found it illegal (which they should do), then that would ensue a whole raft of litigation, and they weren't going to let that happen.

The one paragraph in the story that stands out for me is this one:

Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.

That's the good news in all of this as far as I'm concerned (and I'll admit you have to really dig for good news in this story). If someone is going to make a decision about taking over your property, wouldn't you want it to be someone on the local level instead of the feds?

The key to me is who voted the way they did. I think that's what Stevens, Kennedy and the Clinton bunch were going for. I admire what Sandra Day O'Connor said, but though I believe she has stood tall in recent years, I wonder if she was being a bit disingenuous on this one. I think it further proves my theory that the "Stop-The-Gore-Bush-Recount" bunch voted against this, because they wanted more federal control and were in favor of using a ruling in a case like this as justification (again, ironic that judges who typically side with the "party of states rights" would come down this way).

Here's another key paragraph in this story:

The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.

Again, I think "eminent domain" stinks, but it wasn't going to go away as a result of this case. As far as I'm concerned, you have a better chance of fighting this out if you're doing so on the local level and not going up against "Uncle Sam" and the full weight and force of the U.S. government.

Update: Please check out this site's 6/26 entry, which adds more information to what I said above.

My Dad Was a Liberal, Karl

This is almost too easy.

From "Blogoland"...

Karl Rove was in Manhattan the other day, and here are some of the delightful things he had to say (from the New York Times):

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

Not red meat enough for you? Wait, there's more!

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

So there you go. Liberals: their only intent is getting our troops killed.

I don't know whether or not Durbin has actually served, but I do know that his remarks were based on what an FBI agent had seen at Gitmo. I do also know that Rove has not.

Oh, and by the way, here's an update (Bushco are, collectively, a bunch of self-serving, greedhead toads, but Scott McLellan is becoming more and more of a joke every day).

Out of the Past

My dad would have been 86 today.

He served in the 29th infantry in World War II, and he surely would have been in the first wave of the assault on D-Day had he not injured his knee in a jeep accident and required a medical stay. As it was, he went over after Normandy was secured and policed the area, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

I once asked him if he ever shot anybody, and he just kind of rolled his eyes and looked away and changed the subject. I believe his rank was sergeant, but I’m not sure. He later completed a master’s degree at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. before he became one of the co-founders of the Northeast Philadelphia Internal Revenue Service operations center. It remains then as now a sprawling facility, though I’m quite sure it has grown decrepit with age and will eventually be closed, with all of the personnel planned to move to a facility near 30th and Market Street in the city.

I’m not going to tell you some fairy tale. He had problems, but he was a good man. He smoked Tareyton cigarettes, drank Italian Swiss Colony (ugh) and used to staple together foam tiles for reuse in the drop ceiling of the basement of our home, along with threading wires into fuses for our electrical appliances (though he did many other handywork-related things). He was a provider in the typical fashion for men of his generation.

Part of the reason why I’m thinking of him now is that I am truly glad that he is no longer around to see what is happening to the working middle class that built this country after World War II and subsequent generations. Change was inevitable – we could barely afford The Great Society when it was taking place, and we certainly can’t now, and more fool those of the left who ridiculed it while the unholy alliance between the radical right wing Southerners and Westerners and the pro-business conservatives began to take shape – but the lessons of sacrifice during an earlier era were forgotten by many of the baby boom generation seeking to renounce their youthful indulgence.

The splintering of the Democratic Party into a gaggle of interest groups often competing with themselves to the point where they could not find a consistent, unified voice to summon the country to recall its past has been a tragic development also.

The occasional moments of unification (see Carter, Jimmy and Clinton, Bill) proved to be illusory, as the radical conservatives – ridiculing the Democrats for talking of “class warfare” while they themselves practiced it – found a means to pillage our savings and loan institutions in the 80s, relax corporate regulations at approximately that timeframe also, consolidate power among media outlets in the 90s for the purpose of controlling dissemination of information in the present day, and accelerate the elimination of white-collar professional jobs from 2000 through offshoring and outsourcing.

Also, as we know full well, the individuals running our plutocratic state are not satisfied with the ravages they have wrought to date. In a matter not unlike holding the sails and rigging in place while a ship is violently tossed in a storm at sea, we are fighting to hang onto Social Security, which is truly one of the last safety nets still in existence. Medicaid is in trouble, and thanks to “tort reform”, it is harder to bring class action lawsuits. It is also now harder to file for personal bankruptcy in the event of loss of income due to a catastrophic health care-related development for which insurance does not provide, among other reasons.

All of the safety nets that were provided for us were hard earned by the generation of my parents, and their squandering and neglect from individuals who buy into the jingoistic, aggrandizing half truths and lies of politicians of either party (though primarily the Republicans) without, apparently, the slightest clue about the history of this country over the last 50 or so years fuels my ire which enables me to populate this site with my words which, at times, are admittedly feeble for my purpose.

Despite it all, there is still more right with this country than not, though for my money, the scales are tipping the wrong way more and more every day. I can take some comfort, though, from the fact that this was not the legacy provided for me by the people who built the way of life from which I have benefited over all of these years.

They did their part. It’s time for more, many more of us, to start doing ours.

Today's Bush Bash

God bless Chris Floyd (and God help the rest of us).

Find outrage from somewhere, people. Never give up!

Eat Me

The following are excerpts from the keynote speech of the Honorable James C. Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), which he gave to open the BIO Conference recently held in Philadelphia on Monday, June 20th.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending this year’s biotechnology conference held in my hometown. For those of you who don’t know this, Philadelphia has been ranked third in a national study measuring the strength and impact of the life sciences industries, behind Boston and the San Francisco Bay area, according to a published report in the Inquirer.

That study originated from the Milken Institute, a non-profit organization headed by a former financier who improperly induced insurance companies to purchase his junk bonds in vast quantities. For those of you who don’t know, junk bonds are speculative finacial instruments that yield a higher rate of return because of a higher default rate. Anyway, when the artificially-inflated junk bond market collapsed in the 1980s, this left policyholders (including employees of many companies who had replaced their pension systems with annuities purchased from the corrupted insurance companies) holding worthless paper.

I realize that what I just said has nothing whatsoever to do with life sciences, but I firmly believe that you can never have too much information.

I think it is commendable that you were able to negotiate your way into this building past the reckless, hedonistic horde of skateboarding, color-coded protestors who blocked your entry. Suffice it to say that we are blazing new trails of entrepreneurial riches while they wish to continue latching onto the government teat and sucking away like your Mom’s broken-down Hoover that’s missing half of its hand-held attachments while it’s trying to ingest the shedded coat of her Springer Spaniel. Un-freaking-believable!

Speaking of animals, I think that ties in nicely to the primary subject I wish to address, and that is the development and maintenance of healthy food sources. We here face, what is in part, a public relations battle to sell the benefits of genetically modified foods. All over the US, UK, and many parts of Europe, people are choosing to avoid the products we are developing for the new century. Boy, talk about head-in-the-sand time!

One of the leading companies developing new food products is Monsanto, which has produced genetically modified potatoes for Russia. However, the yields produced by Russian farmers with these new potatoes have only reached about a third of what the yield would be if the farmers had used real potatoes instead. Hey, go cry in your vodka, comrade! We’re talking a new age of science here!

Oh, and please don’t remind me that Monsanto was also the company that produced the chemical defoliant Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War, which has been linked to chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a disease marked by fatigue, shortness of breath, weight loss, or frequent infections. None of us are virgins here. You read me?

In this country, the McDonald’s Corporation has continued their experiments with synthetic chemicals to produce a chicken that has three breasts instead of two. As a result of this, we can all ingest more genetically modified poultry that contains chicken bums, pee pees and possible excrement and take our chances. And don’t you talk to me about carcinogens. Try proving it, bucko! Hey, we’re talking about birds with boobs big enough to fit into a C cup. Ol’ Mc Donald never had it so good!

In closing, let me say this. I am not a scientist. I am not an investor. I am not a businessman. What I am is a politician who played the game for as many years as I could and put up with all manner of petty day-in-day-out niggling, all in the name of providing constituent service to the eighth congressional district, including all of the whining babies complaining about funding shortfalls for their favorite entitlements, road construction on their streets when it was time to run little Johnny or Jill to soccer practice, or my inability to grant any favor they wanted at a moment’s notice.

However, rest assured that I will use my hard-earned clout in a way that is beneficial to ourselves and our industry. Namely, I will spare no effort on behalf of tort reform that absolves us of any and all liability for our actions.

I now and always pledge my undying gratitude to and toil on behalf of the Biotechnology Industry Organization for their forward-thinking vision, boundless promises of a better tomorrow for one and all, and my $650,000-a-year salary.

Thank you, and I hope you have a great conference.”

(smile)

Glub, Glub...

According to the latest poll results at The Daily Kos, Katherine Harris, in the U.S. Senate election in Florida, appears to be trailing incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson badly in the polls. It sounds like she's "flailing away in the water," so to speak, so as a public service, allow me to toss an anvil or two in her direction (from other blogs).

Apparently, disenfranchising 50,000 voters in order to swing an entire presidential election is considered a "qualification" to the Republican Party. (However), that sounds a lot more like an extraordinary abuse of power.

Remember, this is the same Katherine Harris who was Florida's Secretary of State during the 2000 election debacle and was simultaneously co-chair of George Bush's Florida campaign. It's the same Katherine Harris who ordered the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters - mostly African Americans and Latinos - simply because their names or birthdays were conveniently similar to that of a convicted felon.

And...

What in the world would Katherine Harris have as a campaign platform? Preventing black people, Jews and liberals from voting? That’s the bulk of her experience in public service.

Again and again, Katherine Harris has proved herself to be a faithful servant to Florida’s power elites. Instead of fulfilling the duty inherent to her job as Secretary of State to protect the voting rights of Florida’s citizens, Katherine worked night and day to prevent Floridians’ votes from being counted. Her main priority all along was not to ensure that justice was served, but to serve the ambitions of her boss, Jeb Bush, and his brother George W. Time and time again, Katherine Harris has chosen loyalty to powerful families and financial elites over the needs of Florida’s average citizens.

Personally, Nelson isn't my favorite guy, but consider the alternative.

What Say You Now, Jesse?

Justice of a fashion was administered today, albeit 38 years too late.

I would like to think that this will change the minds of people in that area inclined to do the awful act that Killen did, but somehow I know better.

The Seven Percent Solution

Today’s CNN Quick Vote question is as follows:

"If U.S. intelligence officials have an ‘excellent idea’ where Osama bin Laden is, should they go get him?"

The last I checked the results, 93 percent said yes, but 7 percent actually said no. It is mind boggling to me that the numbers aren’t 100 percent yes and 0 percent no instead.

In an attempt to enlighten the seven percent who are actually “on the fence” regarding this matter, allow me to provide my remembrance of a gentleman named Don Havlish, who we frequently ran into in the McCaffrey’s Supermarket. He was a tall, gregarious man who always offered a smile and some friendly words whenever we saw him.

I don’t recall the name of his employer at the World Trade Center, but I believe he worked in the North Tower. Suffice it to say that a femur was his only remains as a result of the attack. All told, Bucks County, PA lost Don Havlish and 18 other people on September 11th.

This is the reason why I don’t want to hear any hand-wringing, equivocating Bushco bullshit from Porter Goss about “a sense of international obligation” and worries about “sanctuaries in sovereign states” when it comes to tracking down bin Laden and slaughtering him like the sick animal that he is. Gee guys, you certainly didn’t worry about these matters when you stormed into Iraq for your illegal war fought for the wrong reasons, did you now?

Of all the epochal failures of the Bush Administration, the inability thus far to apprehend bin Laden is easily the greatest of them all. If we are truly the country we profess to be, then we should enable that to happen with all speed by making a legitimate case to the world community for intervention anywhere that it is necessary and subsequent apprehension. Of course, we squandered so much international good will as a result of Iraq War II that that task will be more difficult than it should be.

The statements of Porter Goss, as far as I’m concerned, is the equivalent of Tom Ridge’s idiotic color-coded security warnings which the White House told him to send out for public consumption just to keep “the faithful” nervous enough to trust everything Bushco did without actually holding up their actions to scrutiny.

If you know where he is, get him. Screw everything else. I don’t want to see bin Laden’s face again unless it’s mounted on a stick with the rest of his severed head (with Al-Zarqawi right behind him in the same disposition) and paraded around the Baghdad town square.

Any Shame in Sight?

I'm continuing to catch up from last week, and in the process, I was alerted to this column from John Grogan, metro columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, that is too good not to include here (property of Knight-Ridder and PNI).

Michael Schiavo, A Man Wronged

The world owes Michael Schiavo an apology. President Bush owes him one. Congress owes him one. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the President's brother, owes him one.

So does House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who shamelessly grandstanded on the Schiavo case to deflect attention from his own ethics scandal, famously declaring that Terri Schiavo "talks and she laughs."

And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a cardiologist who blithely proclaimed the former Montgomery County woman to be mentally responsive based on his viewing of a family video of her. (Now I know why he's practicing politics instead of medicine.)

And Pennsylvania's Sen. Rick Santorum, who turned a fund-raising trip to Florida into an opportunity to pander to his conservative base outside Terri Schiavo's hospice.

In their rush to prolong Terri Schiavo's profoundly compromised life, they not only ran roughshod over states' rights and judicial rights, but over a husband's right to act in what he believed was the best interest of his irreversibly brain-damaged wife.

The antiabortion agitators and end-of-life meddlers and self-righteous pontificators who hijacked an incapacitated woman for their own agendas, turning what always should have been a private family matter into a national circus, owe Michael Schiavo an apology, too.

A reputation trampled

Has any husband ever been so vilified and excoriated, so impugned by innuendo and rumor, simply for trying to honor what he said was his wife's wish?

I owe him an apology, as well.

I allowed myself to be swayed by the relentless whispers and slanders spread by those who made Terri Schiavo's unconscious life their obsession.

The rumors flew through cyberspace, sticking as they went: Just maybe Michael had choked and beaten his wife in a failed murder attempt... Just maybe his violence, not an eating disorder, had caused the brain damage, and now he was trying to cover his tracks by insisting she be allowed to die... Just maybe he wanted the insurance settlement, or to have her out of the way so he could remarry.

I did not advance the rumors as truth, but I did let them color my thinking and lead me to question his motives. Now we know, based on an exhaustive autopsy released Tuesday, that Michael Schiavo was pretty much on target all along.

The autopsy confirmed what Schiavo has long maintained - that his wife was profoundly and irreversibly brain-damaged and no amount of therapy was ever going to change that.

Her brain had atrophied and shrunken to half its normal size. She was blind, dispelling her parents' emotional assertion that their daughter could recognize them and follow a balloon with her eyes.

No signs of foul play

The autopsy also put to rest the ugly rumors. It found no evidence of physical abuse or mistreatment. No strangulation, no broken bones, no poisons, no suspicious marks. So much for all those titillating theories.

We may never know why Terri Schiavo's heart stopped beating in 1990 at the age of 26, but there is no indication the cause was anything but natural. Michael Schiavo was not always his own best advocate. He could come off as abrasive and defensive. But, given the concerted daily attacks on his character, can anyone blame him?

Many Americans were quick to crucify him, and for what? For wanting to let his wife's life end with a shred of dignity after all hope of recovery was gone. For wanting to move on with his own life. For having children with another woman and wanting to remarry.

Spouses die; their survivors move on. But in this long, sad case, the limbo between life and death stretched for 15 interminable years. Michael Schiavo finally deserves peace.

Those who set out to destroy him in a warped effort to preserve a life already gone deserve shame, but I won't hold my breath.

As an unrepentant Randall Terry, the antiabortion protester who interjected himself into the middle of this debacle, told Newsday this week: "Our contention all along is you err on the side of life."

And, oh, how we erred.

Also, E.J. Dionne had some (I believe) appropriate thoughts in a similar vein.