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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
Saturday Night Videos
Labels: video
Green Day: Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Oasis: Wonderwall
Kenny Rogers: Just Dropped In
Lambrettas: Beat Boys in the Jet Age (live BBC)
Uriah Heep: Easy Livin'
X: Los Angeles
and last but not least....
Doors: When the Music's Over
- posted by Jim in LA
Ice Weasel: "Swiftboating History....Again"
Labels: racism, wingnuttery
bob perry, the scum behind the swift boat liars works to eradicate
history
thanks to Ice Weasel for finding this sad article - THANKS ICEE!
A few excerpts from this article...Texas district built by freed slaves fades away
By Jeff Franks
HOUSTON - One of the last surviving communities built by freed slaves
after the U.S. Civil War is on the verge of disappearing, despite
long efforts to save it.
The old buildings of Freedmen's Town in Houston are being bulldozed
to make way for new homes in a transformation that preservationists
say is wiping out an important piece of history.
The U.S. South was once scattered with such communities, but most
have faded away or been swallowed up by suburban growth.
The loss of Freedmen's Town is particularly significant because
historians believe it was the largest of the freed slave settlements
that was still intact architecturally and to some degree culturally.
Its long rows of narrow wooden houses, interspersed every block or
two by churches, stood as a monument to the will of its founders to
thrive despite bitter racism that forced them into isolation.
Freedmen's Town was listed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1985, with more than 530 buildings in a 40-block area in
the shadow of downtown Houston.
Today, only about 30 of those buildings remain and their fate is
uncertain.
A few groups are scrambling to save what is left because they say it
is important that society not forget the dark era in U.S. history
that produced the freed slave settlements.
NEVER AGAIN
"People need to know that even though slavery ended, there was still
a long time of disenfranchisement. Just like the Holocaust museums,
this can remind us of what should never happen again," said Catherine
Roberts, founder of the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum, one of the
remaining homes preserved in the neighborhood.
...
HARSH BLOW
The Depression dealt a harsh blow to Freedmen's Town, and from then
on it declined economically, becoming steadily poorer and less stable.
Politicians, with support from developers who coveted the prime
location, began promoting the idea of urban renewal for the
neighborhood in the 1970s.
Black leaders resisted for years, insisting that Freedmen's Town be
preserved, but by the 1990s political and economic pressure to
redevelop had won out.
What began as a trickle of change in the old quarter has become a
flood the past few years.
Developers such as Bob Perry, better known nationally as the chief
funder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks against
John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, have torn wide swaths
through the old housing stock and replaced it with condos and
townhouses.
...
Even though Freedmen's Town was on the National Register of Historic
Places, weak local preservation statutes allowed the wholesale
demolition of the old homes.
But in the end, said Lenwood Johnson, who grew up in Freedmen's Town
and led a long fight to protect it, one thing did in his old
neighborhood -- money.
The desire to make a buck by putting up new homes trumped the
interest in preserving history.
"The people with money wanted it and got it. This system is so
controlled by corporate dollars," Johnson said.
"Now a people's history and culture is being destroyed. If you
destroy their culture, you eventually destroy the people."
- posted by Ice Weasel
Kim: "A Female Blogger Who Got Death Threats"
Labels: blogosphere, wingnuttery
Blogger Kathy Sierra
Thanks to Kim for finding this important story and commenting - THANKS KIM!
The original story is totally incredible to read:Blog death threats spark debate
Prominent blogger Kathy Sierra has called on the blogosphere to combat the culture of abuse online.
It follows a series of death threats which have forced her to cancel a public appearance and suspend her blog.
Ms Sierra described on her blog how she had been subject to a campaign of threats, including a post that featured a picture of her next to a noose.
The police are investigating while the blogosphere has launched its own enquiry.
One of the issues raised is the question of how women bloggers are treated online.
Ms Sierra, author of popular blog Creating Passionate Users, began receiving death threats four weeks ago.
Since going public on the issue, she has been overwhelmed by the support she has received.
"I agonised about making this post but I hoped it would start a dialogue," she told the BBC News website.
"I never thought it would become so big or be this positive," she said.
While blogging feuds are common, she believes the campaign against her is more likely to be because she is a woman in the male-dominated technology world.
I read the blog in question entry in question and the harassments and
death threats are really beyond typical troll prank posts.
I'm shocked that one of the co-authors of "The Cluetrain Manifesto"
(which originally started as a website--and was later turned into a
book--that stated the obvious: that successful markets really begin
with conversations between the seller and the potential customer and
the seller tries to meet the needs of the customer based on those
conversations) has been named as being a member of a recently pulled
blog called meankids.org whose members are largely responsible for the
harassments and death threats.
I have never heard of this blog or of Kathy Sierra before seeing the
BBC News story and she doesn't strike me as being a hateful
right-winger like Anne Coulter. Apparently she writes about
technology-related issues and it's been hinted that she may be paying
the price for being a woman writing about traditionally male-dominated
fields. Even if it is sexism at work, it seems beyond the pale to
threaten someone's life simply because you object to something she
wrote in her own blog.
- posted by Kim
Jesse Doc Wendel: "Throw Down"
Labels: games
Yeah, it's that important
Thanks to Doc Wendel for this lighthearted find - THANKS DOC!
Bonus read: We meet at dawn, er, 4 pm, for Rock, Paper, Scissors (the Court case) - PDF ALERT
How to beat anyone at Rock Paper Scissors
by Graham Walker -- co-author of the Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide and five-time organizer of the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships.
Contrary to what you might think RPS is not simply a game of luck or chance. While it is true that from a mathematical perspective the 'optimum' strategy is to play randomly, it still is not a winning strategy for two reasons. First, 'optimum' in this case means you should win, lose and draw an equal number of times (hardly a winning strategy over the long term). Second, Humans, try as they might, are terrible at trying to be random, in fact often humans in trying to approximate randomness become quite predictable. So knowing that there is always something motivating your opponent's actions, there are a couple of tricks and techniques that you can use to tip the balance in your favour.
The secret to winning at RPS
Basically, there are two ways to win at RPS. First is to take one throw away from your opponent options. ie - If you can get your opponent to not play rock, then you can safely go with scissors as it will win against paper and stalemate against itself. Seems impossible right? Not if you know the subtle ways you can manipulate someone. The art is to not let them know you are eliminating one of their options. The second way is to force you opponent into making a predictable move. Obviously, the key is that it has to be done without them realizing that you are manipulating them.
Most of the following techniques use variations on these basic principles. How well it works for you depends upon how well you can subtly manipulate your opponent without them figuring out what you are doing. So, now that the background is out of the way, let's get into these techniques:
1 - Rock is for Rookies
In RPS circles a common mantra is "Rock is for Rookies" because males have a tendency to lead with Rock on their opening throw. It has a lot to do with idea that Rock is perceived as "strong" and forceful", so guys tend to fall back on it. Use this knowledge to take an easy first win by playing Paper. This tactic is best done in pedestrian matches against someone who doesn't play that much and generally won't work in tournament play.
2 - Scissors on First
The second step in the 'Rock is for Rookies' line of thinking is to play scissors as your opening move against a more experienced player. Since you know they won't come out with rock (since it is too obvious), scissors is your obvious safe move to win against paper or stalemate to itself.
3 - The Double Run
When playing with someone who is not experienced at the RPS, look out for double runs or in other words, the same throw twice. When this happens you can safely eliminate that throw and guarantee yourself at worst a stalemate in the next game. So, when you see a two-Scissor run, you know their next move will be Rock or Paper, so Paper is your best move. Why does this work? People hate being predictable and the perceived hallmark of predictability is to come out with the same throw three times in row.
4 - Telegraph Your Throw
Tell your opponent what you are going to throw and then actually throw what you said. Why? As long as you are not playing someone who actually thinks you are bold enough to telegraph your throw and then actually deliver it, you can eliminate the throw that beats the throw you are telegraphing. So, if you announce rock, your opponent won't play paper which means coming out with that scissors will give you at worst a stalemate and at best the win.
5 - Step Ahead Thinking
Don't know what to do for your next throw? Try playing the throw that would have lost to your opponents last throw? Sounds weird but it works more often than not, why? Inexperienced (or flustered) players will often subconsciously deliver the throw that beat their last one. Therefore, if your opponent played paper, they will very often play Scissors, so you go Rock. This is a good tactic in a stalemate situation or when your opponent lost their last game. It is not as successful after a player has won the last game as they are generally in a more confident state of mind which causes them to be more active in choosing their next throw.
6 - Suggest A Throw
When playing against someone who asks you to remind them about the rules, take the opportunity to subtly "suggest a throw" as you explain to them by physically showing them the throw you want them to play. ie "Paper beats Rock, Rock beats scissors (show scissors), Scissors (show scissors again) beats paper." Believe it or not, when people are not paying attention their subconscious mind will often accept your "suggestion". A very similar technique is used by magicians to get someone to take a specific card from the deck.
7 - When All Else Fails Go With Paper
Haven't a clue what to throw next? Then go with Paper. Why? Statistically, in competition play, it has been observed that scissors is thrown the least often. Specifically, it gets delivered 29.6% of the time, so it slightly under-indexes against the expected average of 33.33% by 3.73%. Obviously, knowing this only gives you a slight advantage, but in a situation where you just don't know what to do, even a slight edge is better than none at all.
8 - The Rounder's Ploy
This technique falls into more of a 'cheating' category, but if you have no honour and can live with yourself the next day, you can use it to get an edge. The way it works is when you suggest a game with someone, make no mention of the number of rounds you are going to play. Play the first match and if you win, take it is as a win. If you lose, without missing a beat start playing the 'next' round on the assumption that it was a best 2 out of 3. No doubt you will hear protests from your opponent but stay firm and remind them that 'no one plays best of one for a kind of decision that you two are making'. No this devious technique won't guarantee you the win, but it will give you a chance to battle back to even and start again.
- posted by Jesse "Doc" Wendel
Sky Bluesky: "Bad Interviewing 101"
Sexy or just manipulative?
Thanks to Sky Bluesky for this great and insightful cross-post - THANKS SKY!
The interviewer: Katie Couric.
Subjects: John and Elizabeth Edwards.
First question: establish the terms of the discussion.Elizabeth, first and foremost, how are you feeling?
Translation: we're not going to talk about anything except for your cancer.
Next, keep the interview focused on the single area that you've selected.Have you found that people are relating to you a bit differently with this news?
Have you received any additional information the last couple of days about where the cancer might have spread other than this area of your ribs?
Tell me about that roller coaster.
Tell me what went through your mind when you looked at that bone scan?
Were you terrified you might lose your wife?
Note: use loaded, subjective words whenever possible. If you can, tell the subject what to think.That must have been hard once again to have to face your kids and to talk to Emma Claire and Jack who are 8 and 6. That is tough.
Make sure to remind your subject about their children and their ages. They may have forgotten.Can you describe the decision making process for me in terms of what should we do now? Do we stay in? Do we suspend it temporarily? Do I call the whole thing off? Do we call the whole thing off? How did that unfold?
If you ask about another topic, make sure it's in the frame that you have already cho. In the case, ask about the presidential race in terms of the cancer. Don't ask any questions about why the subject might actually want to run for president.At your press conference, you were both extremely confident, very upbeat.
Elizabeth said, "Right now we feel incredibly optimistic. I don't expect my life to be significantly different."
And I think some people wondered if you were in denial, if you were being realistic about what you were going to be facing here.
"Some people" is a good way to avoid saying "cynical right-wing commentators."Your decision to stay in this race has been analyzed, and quite frankly judged by a lot of people. And some say, what you're doing is courageous, others say it's callous. Some say, "Isn't it wonderful they care for something greater than themselves?" And others say, "It's a case of insatiable ambition." You say?
Again, use the pronoun "some" to cover up that you're pulling questions from right-wing blogs and commentators.Here you're staring at possible death...
And you're thinking, "I don't want to deprive the country of having my husband lead us."
Politics, as you know, can be a cynical business. You didn't know that? Glad I... (laughter) I'm glad I could teach you something today.
It's a clever strategy to make jokes about cynicism while you're asking cynical questions of the subject. It throws them off.Some have suggested that you're capitalizing on this.
See how helpful the "some would say" construction is? This is a great way to call someone a goddamn liar without actually putting yourself on the spot.Some people watching this would say, "I would put my family first always, and my job second." And you're doing the exact opposite. You're putting your work first, and your family second.
I guess some people would say that there's some middle ground. You don't have to necessarily stay at home and feel sorry for yourself, and do nothing. But, if given a finite – a possibly finite period of time on the planet – being on the campaign trail, away from my children, a lot of time, and sort of pursuing this goal, is not, necessarily, what I'd do.
They're 6 and 8. They're still baby birds.
Again, they may have forgotten how young their children are. If you can, bring photos so they remember what their children look like.Even those who may be very empathetic to what you all are facing might question your ability to run the country at the same time you're dealing with a major health crisis in your family.
Can you understand their concern, though, Senator Edwards, that gosh, at a time when we're living in a world that is so complicated and so dangerous that the president cannot be distracted by, rightly so, caring about his wife's situation?
If you talk politics at all, make it as vague and meaningless as possible. Extra points if you can subtle refer to terrorist threats without using the word "terrorism."You said, this weekend, "I am definitely in the race for the duration." If you want to give the honest answer, how can you say that, Senator Edwards, with such certainty? If, God forbid, Elizabeth doesn't respond to whatever treatment is recommended, if her health deteriorates, would you really say that?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some people would say that Katie Couric should lose her job. Others have suggested that Couric should be kept on light-hearted stories: interviewing musicians, actors, and Muppets. You say?
- posted by Sky Bluesky
First Draft's Athenae: "Our Lady of the Driveway"
Labels: Katrina
How it was
Thanks to Athenae from First Draft for this great and important cross-post - THANKS A!
A First Draft group of 14 bloggers and readers has
come down to New Orleans to gut houses this weekend,
and continue Scout's excellent reporting on the
aftermath of Katrina. This is a cross-post from First
Draft, look for other posts over the weekend.
She was standing at the entrance of somebody's
driveway, as we drove past looking for the spot where
the levees broke and the water came rushing past.
Scout would know the precise name of it, the name of
the street: we drove around today for two hours
looking at places she'd been and I'd never imagined.
Mary, full of grace, with her head cracked off and put
back on, and all the broken places showing.
What you don't want, what you aggressively don't want,
when you're going through something, is some
comfortably situated loudmouth telling you they know
exactly what you're going through. Misery hates
company. Misery hates shallowness more. Misery hates,
above all, being lectured at. We came to put our hands
to use places where they could be used. I came, having
been here as a child only once and only briefly (there
was a doll shop, and a doll with a purple hat with
ostrich feathers, and the raised graves concerned me,
is all I remember). The light is different and the
streets are narrow and everything smells sweet, like
something baking, and this is what we saw, around the
city, today.
People communicated through markings on houses, a
code: who was here, when, what they found and what
they left. A dog is trapped, in black spraypaint. No
pets, in green. One body, marked in red. People
painted their own street signs, because nobody else
did it and it had to be done. In the Lower 9th Ward,
there are electrical cables lying across the road
ways. There is a house sitting on a car.
There were tourists on the plane, necks wrapped with
beads, drunk and silly and out for a good time. The
plane was full, the Quarter crowded. A five minute
drive away and it's a ghost town. Two men sitting on a
blue porch on a street called Forstall (which makes me
think fore·stall [fohr-stawl, fawr-] verb, to
prevent, hinder, or thwart by action in advance; to
act beforehand with or get ahead of; anticipate)
wave at us as we drive past. They once lived on a
block of houses. They're all alone now, other houses
in the 9th having been torn down. Weeds creep up past
the level of the stoops that still stand there, ivy
reclaiming the debris.
The school's fence is crushed like a giant stepped on
it. The house behind Mary, the windows were blown out,
broken glass everywhere. The Lord is with thee. She's
standing watch, blessed among women, her and the kid
with the visor and stop sign warning us that there's
road work ahead and to turn back.
More tomorrow, or later tonight.
- posted by Athenae of First Draft
Sara Robinson: "Kauffman's Rules Part 4"
Thanks to Sara "Mrs." Robinson for this fantastic series that we've enjoyed tremendously - THANK YOU SARA!
And at last -- we come down to Draper Kauffman's last seven rules on reality hacking:
21. Remember the Golden Mean. When people face a serious problem, they tend to overvalue anything that helps solve it. They mobilize their energies and fight hard to solve the problem, and often keep right on going after the problem is solved and the solution is becoming a new problem. When most children died before their tenth birthdays, a high birth rate was essential for survival and societies developed powerful ways to encourage people to have large families. When the death rate is reduced, a high birth rate becomes a liability, but all those strong cultural forces keep right on encouraging large families, and it can take generations for people's attitudes to change. Like the man who eats himself to death as an adult because he was always hungry as a child, people tend to forget that too much of something can be as bad as too little. They assume that if more of something is good a lot more must be better--but it often isn't. The trick is to recognize these situations and try to swing the pendulum back to the middle whenever it swings toward either extreme. What Kauffman is describing here is a feedback delay. Systems often fall apart because the feedback mechanisms that keep them within an optimal range don't return current information; or because there's a disconnect between the feedback mechanism and the rest of the system that keeps that information from being acted on in a timely way. Creating a feedback delay is one of the better ways there is to wreck a functioning system. Unfortunately, one of the greatest weaknesses of democracy is that has a stronger structural tendency toward feedback delays than most other forms of government. In monarchies or oligarchies, you only have to convince a few people to take action; and once they're convinced, things happen. But in a republic, you have to convince everybody -- and they have to convince their representatives -- and that takes time. A lot of us knew a decade ago that global warming was going to be a defining issue of our time. In this case, the feedback delays are killing us.
22. Beware the empty compromise. There are also times when the middle ground is worse than either extreme. There's an old, old fable about an ass who starved to death halfway between two bales of hay because it couldn't make up its mind which one to eat first. Sometimes you just have to choose, because a compromise won't work. The only way to tell is to examine the entire system carefully and try to anticipate what the results of different decisions will be. Twenty-two rules in, it's still amazing to me how many of these rules W violated on his way to Iraq. (Which, I guess, proves that he doesn't listen to his cousins -- Draper Kauffman's mother was Prescott Bush's sister -- any more than he does the rest of us.) The road to Iraq was a succession of empty compromises; and the longer we're there, the more of them seem to crop up.
23. Don't be boiled frog. Some systems are designed so that they can react to any change that is larger than a certain amount, but they can't respond to changes that are below that threshold. For example, if a frog is put in a pan of hot water, he will jump right out. But if he is put in a pan, of cool water and the water is then gradually heated up, the frog will happily sit there and let itself be cooked. As long as the change is slow enough, it doesn't trigger a response. Sometimes a country can use this tactic to defeat an enemy in a patient series of small steps. Each step weakens the opponent a little bit, but is "not worth going to war over" until finally the victim is too weak to resist an attack. (These are sometimes called "salami-slicing tactics". "Divide and conquer" is another version of the same thing.) While a healthy system shouldn't overreact to small changes, it has to be able to identify and respond to a series of small changes that will bring disaster if allowed to continue. Rule 19 said that loose systems are often a good thing, because they can adapt. But, sometimes, you can adapt yourself right out of existence…or at least a perfectly decent Constitution.
24. Watch out for thresholds. Most systems change pretty gradually. But some systems are designed to switch abruptly from one kind of behavior to a completely different kind. Sometimes this is a defense against the "boiled frog" problem. ("He's meek as a lamb until you push him too far. Then you'd better watch out!") In other cases, it's a way of avoiding "empty compromises" (#22). But most often it's because the system, or a subsystem of it, has exhausted its reserves for coping with some pressure on it. This can be disastrous if you are relying on a system that has seemed able to absorb a lot of abuse and it suddenly collapses as a result of something apparently trivial. Democracies, market economies, and natural ecosystems are all prone to behave in this way. They seem so sturdy that we can kick them around, interfere with subsystem after subsystem, increase the load more and more, and they will always bounce back. But we can never be sure which straw is going to break the camel's back. Actually, if we're watching the right spots closely and interpreting feedback correctly, we can get a pretty good idea of just how close we are to loading that last straw. The trick, of course, is figuring out which spots are the right ones, and reading the feedback rightly.
25. Competition is often cooperation in disguise. A chess player may push himself to the limit in his desire to defeat his opponent, and yet be very upset if he finds out that his opponent deliberately let him win. What appears to be a fierce competition on one level is actually part of a larger system in which both players cooperate in a ritual that gives both of them pleasure. Not "doing your best" is a violation of that cooperative agreement. Similarly, the competitions between two lawyers in a courtroom is an essential part of a larger process in which lawyers, judge, and jury cooperate in a search for just answers. Businesses cooperate to keep the economy running efficiently by competing with each other in the marketplace. Political parties cooperate in running a democracy by competing with each other at the polls. And so on. How do you tell cooperative competition from destructive competition? In cooperative competition, the opponents are willing to fight by the rules and accept the outcome of a fair contest, even if it goes against them.' One reason extremist or totalitarian movements are dangerous in a democracy is that they turn politics into destructive competition. Kauffman wrote this upwards of 30 years ago -- but was prescient about the way in which the right wing has decimated our ability to engage with the right on the same field, under the same rules, for cooperative control of our government. They took their ball, went home, and came back with guns. And, at that moment, any possibility of democracy as usual vanished.
26. Bad boundaries make bad governments. Unlike most cities, St. Louis is not part of a larger county. St. Louis County surrounds the city and keeps it from expanding its city limits. As a result, the communities in the county have become parasites on the city, using the city's commercial and cultural resources but contributing nothing toward the cost of maintaining them. As long as there is a boundary that splits the metropolitan area in half, and no government with authority over the whole area, the county will keep getting richer and the city will keep getting poorer until urban decay completely destroys it. Similar boundary problems afflict states, nations, ecosystems, and economic regions. As a general rule, the system with responsibility for a problem should include the entire problem area; authority must be congruent with responsibility, or commons problem (#27) results. The CFC/ozone hole problem was a major landmark in human history, because, for the first time, the boundary of both the problem and its solution transcended the boundaries of individual countries. Solving it required that we create global institutions capable of mounting a planet-wide response -- and, to our credit, we did. The fact that we successfully rose to this first-ever global challenge bodes well for our ability to deal with the other challenges that are now rising ahead of us. However, it also means that we're headed into a century in which we'll continue to extend the strength and reach of our international political, scientific, legal, and other institutions -- because they're the only ones with boundaries large enough to deal with the issues raised by economic globalization, global warming, rogue states, environmental refugeeism, and so on.
27. Beware the Tragedy of the Commons. A "commons" problem occurs when subsystems in a competitive relationship with each other are forced to act in ways that are destructive of the whole system. Usually, the source of the problem is the right of a subsystem to receive the whole benefit from using a resource while paying only a small part of the cost for it. The solution is either to divide the common resource up (not always possible) or limit access to it. The only real solution to a commons problem is to form a government that's empowered to regulate access to the shared resource. Much of the violence that the GOP has done to the American body politic over the past 30 years has resulted from the fact that the right wing a) does not recognize the concept of the commons in any way, shape or form (that's what all their talk about privatization is about -- eliminating any commons, anywhere); and b) does not recognize the legitimate right of government to regulate the commons that do exist. These people want to privatize our air and water, and sell it back to us for a price. For them, the only valid function of government is to protect the property rights that allow them to own things, and charge for access to them. Of course, the Earth is reminding us that this is wrong-headed: nobody can possibly own the atmosphere and the oceans, unless we all do -- and manage them accordingly. It's coming clear now that our very survival depends on creating institutions that are big enough and credible enough to handle this job.
28. Foresight always wins in the long run. Solutions to problems affecting complex systems usually take time. If we wait until the problem develops and then react to it, there may not be time for a good solutions before a crisis point is reached. If we look ahead and anticipate a problem, however, we usually have more choices and a better chance of heading the problem off before it disrupts things. Reacting to problems means letting the system control us. Only by using foresight do we have a real chance to control the system; or: those who do not try to create the future they want must endure the future they get. Unfortunately, in a democracy, it's very hard to summon the will for change until most of the voters are convinced change is needed. And, in most cases, that's not until they've already felt the brunt of a crisis -- by which point, any action will be strictly reactive, instead of preventative.
Sources: Although some of these guidelines are associated with particular people, it is impossible to trace most of the concepts back to specific originators with any confidence. Rules 1, 3, and 5 were either coined or popularized by Barry Commoner. Rules 2, 14, 16, and 27 are associated with Garrett Hardin. Number 4 is associated with Commoner and science fiction author Robert Heinlein, among others. Number 6 is an old idea, but the words apparently come from humorist Will Rogers. Number 7 is associated with Jay Forrester. Number 9 is also an old idea; it has been emphasized by Isaac Asimov, Paul Ehrlich, Hardin, Forrester, and Donella Meadows, among others. Number 15 is a quote from John Platt's book, The Step to Man. The Boulding quote in number 17 is from The Meaning of the 20th Century. Most of the rest are "in general use"--i.e., not especially associated with an originator or a popularizer. They have generally been paraphrased or re-stated for this list.
- posted by Sara Robinson
Tom Watson: "The Richest Man in Town"
Labels: site news
By far
Thanks to Tom Watson for this great cross-post - THANKS TOM!
Steve Gilliard has been dealt a lousy hand, but he's still in the game and for that his friends - real and virtual - are thankful. For those who may not know Steve: he's a voluble and iconoclastic blogger, a New Yorker with a deft writing style and a strong sense of justice. I've met him only once or twice, but Steve's voice has been part of my day for years now. He and his blogging partner Jen run the prolific News Blog, a tough, front-of-the-cab view of politics, war, culture, media, business and technology.
To call Steve outspoken is to call Kansas flat; his voice is millions of square miles worth of attitude and opinion. I'd venture that none of his readers agrees with everything Steve writes - just when you think you've got him pegged, he'll smack you. On race relations and New York politics, there are few keener observers than Gilliard. He knows food, roots for the Mets, despises the political status quo, hates blowhards and phonies, and is a hell of a military historian besides.
So news of Steve's medical crisis hit his readership hard, indeed. Jen's updates have had us all on edge now for a couple of weeks. There has been some slight improvement of late, but the big man's not out of the woods. Today, Jen worried that Steve will be angry when he wakes up and reads all the medical updates and comments on his health - that most personal of subjects.
But I don't think so. I think Steve will realize with a certainty that few of us are ever so privileged to feel that he is a highly-valued member of his community, that his virtual family is huge, and that his work is worth all the long hours and sleepless nights. Read the comments over at his blog, where volunteers are writing posts and handling tech duties to keep it running. The dude has atheists lighting candles.
The other night, we had a little gathering under the newcritics banner - where Steve gave me a couple of guest posts right before he fell ill - half a dozen bloggers, a few libations, and plenty of talk at a midtown bar. After a while, the conversation turned to Gilliard. We ordered a new round and raised our glasses to Steve. So here's the toast: to our blogging brother, the richest man in town.
- posted by Tom Watson
Jazz Cooking's Kate Petersen: "Potluck Dinners"
Labels: food
Everybody bring something
Thanks to Kate Petersen of Jazz Cooking for this great food contribution - THANKS KATE!!!
Since we are all sitting here in a virtual campout outside Steve's hospital room, how about an old-fashioned potluck dinner?
When I was a kid, potlucks always meant church suppers or family reunions. They always involved homemade fried chicken, potato salad, my grandmother's seven-layer salad (which was ostensibly a garden salad but somehow seemed to have more mayonnaise, green peas, and shredded cheese than anything), and someone always brought a salad/dessert hybrid thing made with green Jello and fruit cocktail and Dream Whip (powdered precursor to Cool Whip and just as vile).
The fried chicken was always good, though. Sometimes there was chocolate cake. And lemonade.
I remember, too, a time when we'd just moved to a new neighborhood and joined a new church and were invited to the Wednesday night potluck supper. I was married and working and had two small babies, but I arranged to take off early from work that first Wednesday afternoon to go home and make a recipe from my grandmother's mayonnaise repertoire:Potluck Chicken Broccoli Casserole
1. Preheat oven to 350°. Place thawed chopped broccoli in an even layer over the bottom of a large flat casserole dish. Place chicken. chopped in bitesize pieces, over broccoli.
2. Mix soup, mayonnaise, and 3/4 cup cheese together. Spoon evenly over broccoli and chicken.
3. Top with remaining 1/4 cup of cheese. Smash crackers to crumbs and sprinkle crumbs over cheese.
4. Bake at 350° for about an hour. Serve hot or room temperature; keeps well for a couple of hours. Serves a crowd, at least 8 full-size portions.
(Rereading this recipe now, I feel faintly queasy. However!)
I took my casserole in its approved little calico carrier (
) to
the parish hall, arriving in time to set my dish on the big table with the others. Imagine my astonishment -- and outraged sense of betrayal! -- to see a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the table! And next to it, potato salad from the grocery store deli!! In its original little container!!!! I was incensed that people would cheat like that!
The next Wednesday, I stopped after work and picked up brownies from the bakery as my contribution. I learn fast.
Years later, I joined an art critique group that met once a month for -- yes -- potluck lunches. By this time, though, I knew enough about food that neither bakery offerings nor Grandmother's Mayonnaise Delights would do. I dinked around for a while before coming up with this giant vegetarian summer sandwich as my contribution, which was (ahem) considerably more well-received than the mayonnaise casserole. Leave out the anchovies if you don't eat fish or don't like the taste.Summer Messy Picnic Sandwich
Serves about 8. Pack plenty of large napkins.
Time for dinner! Who brought dessert?
Kate Petersen blogs about food, cooking, and politics from the wilds of central Alabama. You can read more at Jazz Cooking -- a fusion of playful improvisation and good basic food.
- posted by Kate Petersen
Ice Weasel: "Exploding Althouse"
Labels: wingnuttery
Oh the pain
Thanks to ice weasel for this great post - THANKS ICEE!
words and image by ice weasel with a big nod to Ezra Klein for the link
There are certain bloggers who, at least in my mind, I associate with particular issues. Which isn't to say that these bloggers are single issue or one hit wonders. In every case of the people I'm think of that's not true. But it is true that in every case these writers really hit their stride on one issue. For me, when it comes castigating the mushy middle better than anyone, it's Driftglass. Drifty can weave a tapestry of disgust and righteous indignation that is bulletproof in its factual assertions and hilarious in its descriptions. I wish I could write like that. Oh how I wish...
Which brings me to one of the poster girls of the politically androgynous (which is an unintentional insult to all androgynes out there), ann althouse. Aside from the fact that every proud badger out there must cringe a little, taste just a bit of that vomit of disgust in the back of their throat when they hear her described a law professor at UW Madison (an otherwise fine institution). Hell, I just lived in Wisconsin during some of my formative years and it makes me a little nauseous. Saying one is mostly liberal but really only liking conservatives is the kind of mental judo that althouse specializes in. That and the classic Larry King non-sequitur. Look at the pretty snow...
Anyway, I urge to visit Bloggingheads TV and watch this link. If you're impatient you can scroll forward to 5:07 and see althouse really blow a gasket but it's only ten minutes long in total, so watch the whole thing. You wouldn't want the altmouse to say you were taking her out of context would you? Hey, is that chocolate...
Seriously, you deserve this. Well, other than the almost unavoidable shame you will feel when you look at Garance Franke-Ruta's face and know how uncomfortable it is to be the victim of althouse's patented brand of shrill. You know the feeling. When you see someone do something so stupid that you feel shame for being the same species
that they are. Yes. Watching poor Garance's face patiently endure althouse's pathetically petulant rant is difficult. But there is the althouse meltdown. So it's kind of a wash.
Ooooo, shiny things...
- posted by ice weasel
Jesse Doc Wendel: "Bite me"
Oh my
Thanks (i think) to Jesse for this find
RapeX -- The Anti-Rape Female Condom
Patented, developed in Africa, the RapeX condom has 25 fish-like teeth which can only be removed by a doctor once they clamp down and attach to the head and shaft of the penis of the rapist. "I want this guy to be identified. I want a way that will prove that penetration took place," said Ehlers (the woman who invented RapeX.)
Ehlers believes the moments of initial pain will give women an opportunity to escape. In the latest crime statistics, South Africa recorded 54,926 rape cases, giving it one of the worst sexual assault records in the world. And as is well known, only a fraction of rapes are reported.
In what I think is one of the stupidest controversies I've ever heard, people are arguing over whether RapeX is a medieval device built on a hatred of men or whether it is an easy-to-use invention that could free millions of South African women from fear of rape.
What part of forcible rape means your johnson may get glomped onto by sharp knives don't you understand? I fully believe in non-violence in almost all circumstances. For those rare circumstances, it's important to keep Hubris Sonic and the Teams available (and their counterparts in the other services.) It's also critical I believe that people can protect themselves, and hand to the Gods, protection just doesn't get more personal than the RapeX condom. (Yes, even more personal than a Glock.)
As the father of three daughters, and as someone whom has taken care of sexual assault victims many many times, this is a wonderful invention. Will someone, somewhere, get pranged with it in an act of revenge? You bet. And we have laws which deal with domestic violence, just as if she took a bat to his head, or zapped him with one of those cute little pink tasers.
Africa is a nation where women are not generally respected, where rape is sometimes used as a weapon of state against nations, in violation of not simply basic UN rights for all human beings, but specifically in ways which earn those ordering and participating invitations to the Hague. Rape as an act of the state is a war crime, designed not just to destroy the will of a people, but to foster children by a different gene pool upon the losing side.
Anything to help stop the raping of girls, of young women, of women, is good. And if a few penises are lacerated along the way, well, fuck them.
- posted by Jesse "Doc" Wendel
Watson: "Old Business: the O.J. Simpson Verdict"
Labels: racism
They love me in Florida
Thanks to Watson for this great analysis - THANKS WATSON!
While we wait for our 'justice system' to process the police killing of Sean Bell, permit me to revisit another racially charged case. I followed the O.J. Simpson trial pretty closely, closely enough to believe that the outcome was a miscarriage of justice, and that OJ got away with a double murder.
My complaint is with the mainstream reaction to the verdict. I thought that Simpson's acquittal was a routine example of the wealth effect on criminal justice. There were some evidentiary problems with the prosecution case, Simpson had the resources to magnify those defects, the defense team was more credible than the phony Marcia Clark, and so the jury acquitted Simpson.
Our punditocracy doesn't usually object to the fact that defendants wealthy enough to spend millions of dollars on investigators, experts, and lawyers regularly turn prosecution weaknesses into 'reasonable doubt' acquittals.
But in the Simpson case the pundits were infuriated. What was different in his case?
Granted, double murder is more serious than the varieties of grand theft for which our well-to-do brethren are ordinarily indicted. But an honest punditocracy would object to the wealth effect phenomenon in all cases.
To me the different reaction was because our pundits are biased and racist.
Wealthy defendants are typically white males, our pundits are mostly wealthy white males. Simpson, though wealthy, was black, as was the lead attorney, and most of the jury.
The pundits asserted that the miscarriage of justice was caused by Johnny Cochrane's unprincipled 'playing the race card', but it was they who were unprincipled in howling 'reverse racism' to obfuscate the fact that the result was just another instance of the wealth effect.
Cochrane didn't bring race into the case. Time Magazine admitted that its 'cover portrait of O.J. Simpson after his arrest was doctored to make his skin look darker. The manipulation made an accused man seem more sinister before he had gone to trial, and it did so by playing off the language of racial stereotype.' Race was introduced into our culture hundreds of years ago by slavers, and we adamantly refuse to take the steps necessary to become a non-racial society.
Cochrane didn't bring race into the courtroom. The LAPD injected race into the trial when it dispatched racist Mark Fuhrman to the crime scene and to Simpson's residence.
The famous gloves were put into evidence by the prosecution on the theory that they were the murderer's gloves. Officer Fuhrman said that he found one of them in Simpson's yard. When they appeared not to fit Simpson, it was perfectly appropriate for Cochrane to argue that Fuhrman was a liar whose racism gave him a motive to frame Simpson.
Dishonest criticism of the Simpson verdict has served to reinforce our dominant culture's dogma that blacks, unlike whites, are irrational and dishonest about race and racism.
As if.
That's why I believe that it's important to defend the Simpson verdict as rational given the circumstances. The outcome was because rich people can buy justice, not because Cochrane or the jury were racist or unprincipled.
- posted by Watson
Atrios: Braley vs. Doan
classic governmental grilling: Labels: oversight
she probably needed some of her eponymously-named pills after this backbreaker.
- posted by Jim in LA
Daily Show - Zbigniew Brzezinski
Saw this on Yglesias: Labels: diplomacy
- posted by Jim in LA
Seitan Worshipper: "Harpers.com - McGovern & Polk - The Way Out of War"
Labels: Bush Iraq
This-a-way
Thanks to Seitan Worshipper for this great find at Harpers - THANKS SW!
Although our govt. has missed the deadline set by the authors, it's still a compelling read - and if our Congresscritters aren't totally hopeless, might be persuaded to implement at least some of the "blueprint," if the McGovern plan can be shoved in their faces a few (hundred) thousand times:The Way Out of War
A blueprint for leaving Iraq now
Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006. Originally from October 2006. By George S. McGovern and William R. Polk.
Staying in Iraq is not an option. Many Americans who were among the most eager to invade Iraq now urge that we find a way out. These Americans include not only civilian “strategists” and other “hawks” but also senior military commanders and, perhaps most fervently, combat soldiers. Even some of those Iraqis regarded by our senior officials as the most pro-American are determined now to see American military personnel leave their country. Polls show that as few as 2 percent of Iraqis consider Americans to be liberators. This is the reality of the situation in Iraq. We must acknowledge the Iraqis’ right to ask us to leave, and we should set a firm date by which to do so.
We suggest that phased withdrawal should begin on or before December 31, 2006, with the promise to make every effort to complete it by June 30, 2007.
Withdrawal is not only a political imperative but a strategic requirement. As many retired American military officers now admit, Iraq has become, since the invasion, the primary recruiting and training ground for terrorists. The longer American troops remain in Iraq, the more recruits will flood the ranks of those who oppose America not only in Iraq but elsewhere.
Withdrawal will not be without financial costs, which are unavoidable and will have to be paid sooner or later. But the decision to withdraw at least does not call for additional expenditures. On the contrary, it will effect massive savings. Current U.S. expenditures run at approximately $246 million each day, or more than $10 million an hour, with costs rising steadily each year. Although its figures do not include all expenditures, the Congressional Research Service listed direct costs at $77.3 billion in 2004, $87.3 billion in 2005, and $100.4 billion in fiscal year 2006. Even if troop withdrawals begin this year, total costs (including those in Afghanistan) are thought likely to rise by $371 billion during the withdrawal period. Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary of commerce, have estimated that staying in Iraq another four years will cost us at least $1 trillion.
Let us be clear: there will be some damage. This is inevitable no matter what we do. At the end of every insurgency we have studied, there was a certain amount of chaos as the participants sought to establish a new civic order. This predictable turmoil has given rise to the argument, still being put forward by die-hard hawks, that Americans must, in President Bush’s phrase, “stay the course.” The argument is false. When a driver is on the wrong road and headed for an abyss, it is a bad idea to “stay the course.” A nation afflicted with a failing and costly policy is not well served by those calling for more of the same, and it is a poor idea to think that we can accomplish in the future what we are failing to accomplish in the present. We are as powerless to prevent the turmoil that will ensue when we withdraw as we have been to stop the insurgency. But we will have removed a major cause of the insurgency once we have withdrawn. Moreover, there are ways in which we can be helpful to the Iraqis—and protect our own interests—by ameliorating the underlying conditions and smoothing the edges of conflict.The first of these would be a “bridging” effort between the occupation and complete independence.
* * *
- posted by Seitan Worshipper
Sara Robinson: "Kauffman's Rules -- Part III"
Rules for living
Thanks to Sara Robinson of Orcinus for her ongoing series on Kauffman's Rules - THANKS SARA!!!
The next installment of Kauffman's Rules: more stuff to think about,
and more to talk about.
15. High morality depends on accurate prophecy. You cannot
judge the morality of an action unless you have some idea of what the
consequences of the action will be. According to this point of view,
an action cannot be good if it has evil results, and everyone has a
moral obligation to try to foresee, as well as possible, what the
results of various decisions will be.
Another of my favorites. We don't usually think of good foresight as
being essential to morality -- but consider that foresight is nothing
more than forward-looking judgment; and we know that real- world
morality (as opposed to the synthetic fundamentalist product) has
everything to do with sound judgment.
This explains why double-highs (people who are high in social
dominance, and also in right-wing authoritarian traits) are unfit to
hold positions of political or cultural leadership. Double highs
don't look much farther ahead than their next chance to stick it to
somebody, or grab for their own glory; and common-good definitions of
morality have no place in their worldview at all. You might as well
put your future in the hands of a Class V hurricane rather than hand
it over to people who are constitutionally incapable of assessing or
accepting the results of their own decisions. (Oh….right. Never mind.)
16. If you can't make people self-sufficient, your aid does more
harm than good. This usually comes up in discussing problems
of poverty or hunger, where temporary relief often postpones the
disaster at the cost of making it much worse when it comes. It is not
really an argument against helping, but an argument against half-way
measures. Ghandi said the same thing in a more positive way: "If you
give me a fish, I eat for a day; if you teach me to fish, I eat for a
lifetime."
Or, as another beloved freedom-fighting guru of a later generation
put it: Do or do not. There is no try.
Partial fixes that are focused one part of the system alone almost
always make the situation worse. They're usually just big enough to
throw the system out of balance, forcing it to adjust elsewhere to
compensate. And that adjustment, more often than not, creates a
bigger problem than the one your tweak was trying to solve. In other
words, the road to unintended consequences is paved with quick patches.
[Of course, as one commenter noted when this first ran at Orcinus:
"Teach a society to fish, and within a few years they'll have totally
depleted the local fish stocks."]
17. There are no final answers. As Ken Boulding put it,
"If all environments were stable, the well-adapted would simply take
over the earth and the evolutionary process would stop. In a period
of environmental change, however, it is the adaptable, not the well-
adapted who survive." This applies to social systems as well as
natural ones. In a time of rapid change, like the present, the best
"solution" to a problem is often one that just keeps the problem
under control while keeping as many options for the future as
possible.
I'm constantly amazed at the number of people who think that the way
things are now is the way they're always going to be. (Again, it's
probably a more common conservative habit of mind -- was it only a
year ago that the GOP was gloating they'd be running the show for the
next generation?) But the fact is that change is the only constant --
and there are a lot of serious people who think it's going to keep
coming at us faster and faster in the decades ahead.
The future belongs to those who know how to surf the waves of
constant adaptation. But people who allow themselved to be seduced
into thinking that it's all settled, and they can relax now, are
setting themselves up for disappointment. It's never been true, and
never will be. Life is flux. Get over it.
18. Every solution creates new problems. The auto solved
the horse-manure pollution problem and created an air pollution
problem. Modern medicine brought us longer, healthier lives--and a
population explosion that threatens to produce a global famine.
Television brings us instant access to vital information and world
events--and a mind-numbing barrage of banality and violence. And so
on. The important thing is to try to anticipate the new problems and
decide whether we prefer them to the problem we are currently trying
to solve. Sometimes the "best" solution to one problem just creates a
worse problem. There may even be no solution to the new problem. On
the other hand, an apparently "inferior" solution to the original
problem may be much better for the whole system in the long run.
Kauffman is foreshadowing my friend John Smart's Second Law of
Technology here: All new technologies are inherently dehumanizing in
their first iteration. (Think about it. It's true.) Whenever we step
beyond the limits of our current experience and understanding, we're
forced to guess. We're doing something that's never been done before;
we have no idea what the consequences will be; and so there's no real
way to prepare ourselves. All we can do is take the best precautions
we can, test small before going big, and remain open to the option of
turning back if it proves too dangerous to continue.
19. Sloppy systems are often better. Diverse,
decentralized systems often seem disorganized and wasteful, but they
are almost always more stable, flexible, and efficient than "neater"
systems. In Boulding's terms (#17), highly adaptable systems look
sloppy compared to systems that are well-adapted to a specific
situation, but the sloppy-looking systems are the ones that will
survive. In addition, systems which are loose enough to tolerate
moderate fluctuations in things like population levels, food supply,
or prices, are more efficient than systems which waste energy and
resources on tighter controls.
This is why central planning usually fails; and why small distributed
networks are a much better environment for almost everything from
moving data to moving food to ensuring economic risks are shared
rather than concentrated.
This rule is also the fundamental indictment of monopolies.
20. Don't be fooled by system cycles. All negative
feedback loops create oscillations--some large, some small. For some
reason, many people are unable to deal with or believe in cyclical
patterns, especially if the cycles are more than two or three years
in length. If the economy has been growing steadily for the last four
years, nearly everyone will be optimistic. They simply project their
recent experience ahead into the future, forgetting that a recession
becomes more likely the longer the boom continues. Similarly,
everyone is gloomiest at the bottom of a recession, just when rapid
growth is most likely.
Another example of that common fallacy: It's no different now than
it's ever been. Yes, it is. The question is: is the current situation
within the normal parameters of past cycles -- or are we headed into
uncharted territory here? You may recognize this frame as a favorite
of global warming skeptics, who still don't think there's anything at
all out of the ordinary about the fact that it's the first of March
and I'm writing this in a snowstorm in a city that never sees snow
after January 15.
21. Remember the Golden Mean. When people face a serious
problem, they tend to overvalue anything that helps solve it. They
mobilize their energies and fight hard to solve the problem, and
often keep right on going after the problem is solved and the
solution is becoming a new problem. When most children died before
their tenth birthdays, a high birth rate was essential for survival
and societies developed powerful ways to encourage people to have
large families. When the death rate is reduced, a high birth rate
becomes a liability, but all those strong cultural forces keep right
on encouraging large families, and it can take generations for
people's attitudes to change. Like the man who eats himself' to death
as an adult because he was always hungry as a child, people tend to
forget that too much of something can be as bad as too little. They
assume that if more of something is good a lot more must be better--
but it often isn't. The trick is to recognize these situations and
try to swing the pendulum back to the middle whenever it swings
toward either extreme.
I consider this a restatement of #20, but from a different angle. The
main caution here is: just because a tool always worked before, don't
expect it will continue to deliver the same results in the future.
Every situation's different, and deserves its own unique response.
All right: that's the third set. Stand by for the fourth and last
set. And thanks to those of you who've grabbed on to this and are
playing with it. These rules are delightfully simple stuff; but once
I started working with them, I found they made a sweet little shift
in how I approached people and problems that used to just drive me to
despair or annoyance. I found I could forego being annoyed at foolish
people (who usually can't be changed), and instead focus my energy on
foolish systems (which often can be).
And in these rough days, anything that gets us out of our stuck
places is worth looking in to.
- posted by Sara Robinson
zuzu: "Because You Can’t Get Enough of AutoAdmit"
Labels: harrassment, sexism
thanks to zuzu who keeps us up to date on the runaway train that is AutoAdmit - THANKS ZUZU!
Because You Can’t Get Enough of AutoAdmit
Posted by zuzu @ 10:26 pm
Spirit of Margaret Brent sent along this article from the UVa Law Weekly which demonstrates that, yes, the harassment and libel of female law students by shitstains on AutoAdmit has had demonstrable effects on the subjects’ careers: Recently, several female UVA Law students have been targets of harassment by members of an online message board. This harassment, perpetrated anonymously by posters to AutoAdmit.com, carries potentially damaging repercussions for the women: at least one has already been contacted about it by her prospective employer, and others fear that it will injure their professional reputations. . . .
What’s more, nearly all of these threads are accessible through any Google search that includes the students’ names. In a recent exposé on the issues raised by similar content on AutoAdmit, the Washington Post cited a report that found about half of all U.S. hiring officials conduct internet searches of job applicants. According to the same study, approximately one-third of such searches generated results used to deny a job.
Indeed, one of the female UVA Law students on the “Top 14” site has already been contacted by her prospective law firm, where her pictures and the AutoAdmit comments about her had circulated. Although it has not changed her job situation, she feels that the site has already impaired her professional reputation. “People at firms read this stuff, and the word spreads. When I come into my law firm, this is not how I want to be seen.”
Emphasis added. Kinda puts the lie to all those people (*cough*AlthouseandReynoldandDr.Helen*cough*) who maintained that this was just harmless fun and no rational employer would EVER pay the slightest bit of attention to this!
This is exactly why damage to reputation is actionable; the kind of slander and harassment these women endured is going to follow them professionally for quite some time. Their undeserved reputations will precede them in the work world, and even where they don’t lose a job because of it, they’re going to have to work that much harder to prove themselves worthy of trust. They’re going to have to work that much harder to overcome the kind of speculation about whether there’s any truth to the AutoAdmit garbage that’s the inevitable result of something like this. They’re always going to be known as “that girl.”
The article is notable for a few other things, as well. First, the UVa students place a great deal of blame on the members of the UVa Law community who sent their photos into the “T14″ hot-girls contest site and posted identifying information — full names and contact info — to AutoAdmit. The worst part, as these women tell the Law Weekly, is that they wouldn’t have had to endure this ordeal if a few of their UVA Law classmates had duly respected their privacy. . . .
In mid-February, several of the site’s members organized a contest that was aimed at naming the “hottest” female student at a “Top 14” law school. To that end, the contest’s organizers solicited nominations from these schools; several UVA Law students responded by submitting dozens of photos of their classmates. In all, pictures of eight UVA Law women appeared on the “Top 14” site. None of them consented to having their pictures posted. . . .
Despite the fact that the “Top 14” site purported to protect the identities of the women pictured in its contest, AutoAdmit members soon began to reference many of them by name. In all, four UVA Law women had their full names posted on the message board. In addition to criticizing their appearances on the discussion threads, AutoAdmit members continually referred to some of these UVA Law students as “whores” and “sluts,” among other terms too obscene to print.
In other representative threads, an anonymous AutoAdmit poster wrote about performing sex acts on them, while another told them to “[g]et raped.” . . .
The Law Weekly spoke to several of the eight women from UVA Law whose pictures appeared on the site, and we agreed to protect their anonymity in order to prevent further harassment and threats against them. Although each expressed similar condemnation for the administrators of AutoAdmit and for the “Top 14” contest’s organizers, they saved particular condemnation for members of the UVA Law community who participated by either submitting pictures or by posting to the AutoAdmit board.
More than one stated that such actions shattered for them the sense of trust that UVA’s Honor system is meant to foster. One commented:
“When I first got here, everyone told me how this place was so safe that you can leave your laptop around without worrying about it being stolen. You would like to think that also means that people respect each other enough to not invade a fellow student’s privacy.”
Another told the Law Weekly that she was surprised that UVA students participated. “I would have thought that people had more respect for other members of the UVA community.” In addition, she resented having to walk through school “knowing that there were people here who had submitted pictures and who were posting about [her]” on the internet. She added that the UVA Law students who participated should be “embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty about what they’ve put [the women] through.” When they submitted pictures, they “should have known that the tone” of AutoAdmit’s message board would engender the kind of harassment it did.
While it may be tempting to dismiss this kind of reaction as naive, not every law school is cutthroat. I do remember hearing stories about Harvard and Columbia and how competitive they were, to the extent that students would cut pages out of books in the library. While that may well be apocryphal, I can honestly say that, outside the top 5 students or so, Michigan was pretty free of backbiting. Mostly, I think, because while we did get regular grades rather than the Yale system of pass/fail, we weren’t ranked until a year after graduation, and you have to ask for it (I never did until last year, when I had to. And I graduated 11 years ago). So there was no way to know exactly how you stood in relation to your classmates, and that cut way down on competition. People were very free with their course outlines, for example.
While I don’t know much about the atmosphere at UVa, it’s quite clear from the article that the reaction of the law school community could have been better: Another laid the blame in part on UVA’s administration. “There is a reason there were so many UVA posts, and it’s not because we have attractive girls,” she stated. “The Stanford community gathered together and made sure no one submitted people. The deans at our school should have taken a more active role.”
Strictly speaking, there’s not a whole lot of direct action a school can take in a situation like this, but the success that Stanford had at preventing exactly what happened at UVa and at NYU and at Yale shows the value of an active, engaged administration. And when the administration isn’t interested, or concerns itself with the letter of the law, then students are going to be abused by other students. The fish rots from the head, after all.
Fortunately, though, at least some members of the UVa Law community didn’t feel constrained by notions of what was actionable or what the school could get involved in. However, more than one of the women whose pictures were posted to the “Top 14” site have taken matters into their own hands. Some of the women have been able to determine who was responsible for submitting pictures of them without their consent, and have confronted these students.
This was possible because a UVA Law student (who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of harassment by AutoAdmit members) deceived the “Top 14” contest’s organizers and obtained access to the email account through which they were running the site. This student subsequently downloaded all of the account’s messages, and in some cases those emails found their way to the women whose pictures were contained therein. The Law Weekly has viewed the emails in question, several of which do indeed contain identifying information, including names.
How sweet it is.
- posted by zuzu
Matthew Saroff: "Assuming the Best of Dick Cheney"
Labels: Cheney
Why, you!
Thanks to Matthew Saroff for this fine analysis - THANKS MATTHEW!
For the sake of argument, let's look at the US Attorney purge under the
assumption that Dick Cheney is a decent and honorable human being. (While
we're at it let's assume that Santa Claus exists, pro-wrestling is real,
and that the Bush crime family are dedicated public servants).
Let us further assume that when Mitchell Wade, President of MZM and briber
of Randall "Duke" Cunningham, got a $140,000.00 contract for furniture and
computers in the Vice President's
office(http://thinkprogress.org/2005
this was not a direct byproduct of corruption. (Other services brought up
the total to over $600,000.00)
Even though MZM was clearly bribing the Dukester, let us assume that an
informal conversation between Cunningham and then House Appropriations
chair Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) that resulted in a DEFENSE AND
INTELLIGENCE firm being recommended to the White House was simply legal,
but unethical pay-back to a political supporter.
Let us further assume that neither Mr. Lewis nor Mr. Cheney had any idea
that MZM was a corrupt organization.
We are well past Easter Bunny territory now. In fact, I believe that we
are well past where Rod Serling would have crumpled the "Twilight Zone"
script and thrown it into the garbage because it exceeded the audience's
capacity for suspension of disbelief.
In fact, we may have exceeded limits of a Max Bialystock production
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
But lets give these folks the benefit of the doubt.
So, when it's discovered that Duke Cunningham is dirty, they are shock,
shocked I tell you, that MZM might not be above board.
So when US Carol Lam expands her investigation, looking at ties to corrupt
CIA Agent Dusty Foggo, and opening up Lewis to scrutiny, they are
disturbed that completely above board contracts for furniture and other
services will doubtlessly be reviewed, and the ties between the office of
the Vice President with the largest corruption case in the history of the
US Congress would cripple both Cheney, and the whole Bush administration.
It would prevent their pursuing their policies, and tie up excessive
resources for the remainder of the term.
So Dick Cheney picks up the phone, or more likely sends an underling, to
Gonzalez, and explains how this investigation is bad news for both the
Administration and the country.
He has not-so-subtly demanded that the investigation be shut down.
That is obstruction of justice, even if the firings are legal, despite the
fact that the US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, and it
is an impeachable offense, and this is when one casts Dick Cheney in the
best possible light.
- posted by Matthew Saroff
Seitan Worshipper: "Esquire - The Bag"
The messenger bag contains previously unknown information about the dust cloud that enveloped lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. The information will affect the lives of thousands of people, starting with the life of the man who was wearing it. By Eric Gillin Thomas Cahill squirms in his swivel chair. He's wearing a green-and-red wool sweater covered with pills, eyeing the white garbage bag on the battered metal desk. FedEx delivered the bag last week. Cahill is impatient as the photographer documents everything: the bag, the dust-collection machine, Cahill himself. Staring at the bag with a glint, the broad, six-foot former high school tackle looks like a kid who can't wait for his parents to stop snapping pictures of him near the tree on Christmas morning. For Cahill--for a lot of people, actually, although they don't know it yet--this bag holds a lot of answers. It has been sealed shut for more than five years, and you should have heard the excitement in Cahill's voice when he found out it existed. Man, five years. That long? "Are we ready yet?" He is sixty-nine years old. In the four decades he has taught physics and conducted air-quality research here at the University of California at Davis, Cahill has seen a lot. Five years ago, he stood near the burning, pissing rubble at ground zero for weeks, taking samples, testing, telling people the air wasn't as safe as the government said it was. To the Environmental Protection Agency, and even to the president, he became a pest, a role of which he is proud. Today, though, today is different. "This is so exciting," he says to me, actually rubbing his hands together. "We have no other samples from September 11 except your backpack. It will give us a snapshot of what people were actually breathing, which will help the doctors enormously in knowing what to treat." He told me this over the phone, before I arrived from New York to witness the opening. Now, even with me standing there, one of the people who breathed in whatever he's about to discover, he repeats it. Exuberantly. "I'm sorry for you," he says, and he means it. "But I'm also delighted!" My black messenger bag, which is inside the white plastic blob on the metal table, is Cahill's holy grail. When Esquire called, told him I had kept it in my closet for the last five years, and asked him to test it for toxins, Cahill was stunned. Thousands of tons of debris blew through downtown Manhattan as each of the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11, but no one--not the city, not a lab at nearby NYU, not the EPA--seems to have any primary evidence from inside the plume itself. A heavy rainstorm on September 14 rinsed much of the floating debris from the air, and the city was already hastily sweeping the streets and scrubbing the buildings in a mad scramble for normalcy. Scientists hadn't even arrived on the scene. (Before the bag, the closest Cahill had ever come to finding a primary source was an air filter on an office desk, but the debris had fused to the filter and was too difficult to measure.) What the rains didn't clear was quickly contaminated by the stinky diesel trucks rolling in and out of ground zero and the chemical fire raging a few stories below the street. By the time the EPA began telling people the downtown air was safe, three days after September 11, any chance of isolating exactly what happened in the initial moments of the disaster--what was in the clouds that engulfed more than five thousand people, including me, in a matter of seconds--was presumed lost. Why did I preserve my bag that day? I can't say. I had just seen a building that took six years and eight months to build aerate in twelve seconds. I wasn't really thinking, just doing. I had walked the twenty blocks to my apartment among the cavalcade of refugees heading uptown, all of us looking like pale, disentombed corpses spreading out among the living. Once home, I stripped, then showered, but my skin still itched, as if someone had switched my cotton towels with pink fiberglass insulation. I threw my khakis and sneakers away--no way the lady at the wash-and-fold was going to touch those. But not my Manhattan Portage messenger bag. Even though it was trashed, I stuffed it into a clean Hefty bag and stuck it on the top shelf of my closet. For a long time after, I joked about putting it in a Lucite box to make a coffee table. Why did I really keep it? I don't know. Maybe because I had just bought it. Cost me eighty dollars. 
Artifact
Thanks to Seitan Worshipper for this great link - THANKS SW!For those of us in the NYC-Metro area, this story is a powerful reminder of The Day Everything Changed (tm).
The Bag
- posted by Seitan Worshipper
res ipsa loquitur: "Tin Pot Dictators We Have Known"
Labels: Bush
That kind
Thanks to res ipsa loquitur of Rising Hegemon for this great cross-post - THANKS RES!
Tin Pot Dictators We Have Known
Over at U.S. Attorney Scandal Central, Josh Marshall writes:The contours and scope of executive privilege is one issue, and certainly an important one. But in this case it is being used as no more than a shield to keep the full extent of the president's perversion of the rule of law from becoming known.
Yes, he's our own little Generalissimo El Busho. Political cartoonist Ted Rall saw Bush for what he was -- a power-mad tinpot-dictator-wannabe -- long before any of us had heard of Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, or the theory of the unitary executive (0r before the whole world saw Bush prancing on the deck of that aircraft carrier in his little flight suit costume).
It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown. At most points in our history the idea that an Attorney General could stay in office after having overseen such an effort would be unthinkable. The most telling part of this episode is that they're not even really denying the wrongdoing. They're ignoring the point or at least pleading 'no contest' and saying it's okay.
The only reason Bush feigns outrage now about "show trials" and "klieg lights" is because they're just about the only things the petulant little creep didn't manage to co-opt from a garden-variety despot.
But you have to give him credit for trying. As Josh Marshall points out,[The U.S. Attorney scandal is] all reminiscent of the bogus voter fraud allegations Republicans got caught peddling in the South Dakota senate race in 2002. Only in this case getting these charges into the press wasn't enough; they wanted to use U.S. Attorneys to actual harrass people or put them in jail.)
Ah, Republicans. How proud you all must be.
- posted by res ipsa loquitur
Rising Hegemon: "Bill Maher on Bush and Cheney"
wow, check this out. bill maher's definitely rockin' these days. i think the HBO gig suits him much better than the ABC one ever did, though it probably doesn't pay as well.
plus, he probably sees less of henry rollins and arianna huffington this way.
via Rising Hegemon.
- posted by Jim in LA
me: " What a mess, baby"
Thomas Andrews and his wife, Nancy, got a surprise when daughter Jessica (l.) was born: Looks like Thomas wasn't the dad. A Long Island woman and her husband are suing a Park Ave. fertility clinic for allegedly inseminating her with the wrong man's sperm. After struggling to conceive their second child, Nancy Andrews and her husband, Thomas, turned to New York Medical Services for Reproductive Medicine for in-vitro fertilization treatments, according to a lawsuit. Andrews soon became pregnant and the couple was overjoyed. They only discovered the clinic's "colossal blunder" after Andrews gave birth to her daughter Jessica, court papers charge. "While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her," the Commack couple said in documents filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. "It is simply impossible to ignore." Thomas Andrews is white and his wife is Dominican. But Jessica, who was born Oct. 19, 2004, has darker skin than either of them as well as "characteristics more typical of African or African-American descent," the lawsuit states.
Oops
thanks to "me" for this great find - THANKS ME! What a mess, baby
Parents say fertility clinic botched in-vitro & girl's got the wrong dad
How do you go about a lawsuit like this and NOT come off like a racist? why does it have to be, the kid is darker than us? Why do they have to point that out. Why can't it be, the kid does not resemble either one of us?
- posted by me
DrBopperTHP: "Radical Traditionalist Catholics"
Labels: religion, wingnuttery
Not part of the plan
Thanks to DrBopperTHP for these great finds - THANKS DR!
I've been doing a little research on the "Radical Traditionalist Catholic" movement - maybe being a lapsed Catholic ain't such a bad thing after all. The 'Synagogue of Satan'
- posted by DrBopperTHP
by Mark Potok
From a makeshift pulpit inside an Indiana Quality Inn, a baby-faced priest angrily denounces the Jews, saying they mean to "destroy all Christian nations."
In offices in State Line, Pa., an intense, bespectacled man tirelessly recounts how the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia "predicts the anti-Christ will come from Jewry" and warns of the Jews' role in the coming "New World Order."
At a gathering near the Philadelphia airport, men in priests' collars and brown monk's robes rage against the "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy to destroy the Catholic Church, the "Marxist-Jewish" scheme to wreck American schools, and even an elaborate 9/11 plot, "predicted by the Blessed Virgin Mary 84 years ago."
For most Americans, the world of "radical traditionalist Catholicism" is so remote and little-known -- it entered the nation's consciousness, just barely, with revelations about the strident anti-Semitism of actor Mel Gibson and his father, Hutton -- that it may seem wholly irrelevant to the modern world. Is it really important what a group of people, many excommunicated and most gathered behind the walls of their monasteries and other institutions, think about the Jews? That many believe there was no Holocaust? That some say every pope since 1958 has been illegitimate, and a few even insist the real pope has been kidnapped?
The fact is, it does matter. As explained in a remarkable and sweeping story by the Intelligence Report's Heidi Beirich, the best estimates suggest there are 100,000 radical traditionalists in America, a number that appears to be growing. And while the size of this movement is dwarfed by the 70 million mainstream Catholics in this country, these energetic men and women are having an influence.
For one thing, the open anti-Semitism that characterizes the movement is leaking into other subcultures, some of them especially dangerous.
Navy officer under investigation for extremist activities
Navy Times
Published on March 19, 2007
Lt. Cmdr. John Sharpe Jr. looks like a naval officer sent straight from central casting in Hollywood: A fit-looking, gregarious 1993 Naval Academy graduate with short blond hair and eyeglasses, he looks just his part as public affairs officer aboard the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.
But in his off-duty hours, Sharpe operates Web sites that have landed him in a brewing controversy in this singularly Navy town. Accused of being an anti-Semite, he was temporarily relieved of his duties March 7 and is now under investigation for allegedly violating Navy regulations against supremacist activities. An editorial in The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot on March 15 slammed Sharpe, calling his ideas "crazy" and "dangerous."
Sharpe and his Web sites are on a "dirty dozen" list of anti-Semitic organizations compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a national organization based in Montgomery, Ala. [...]
Heidi Beirich, a law center investigator who has focused on Sharpe, said he is a "radical traditionalist Catholic" who believes that Jews, Masons and others have conspired to undermine the Roman Catholic Church for the past 300 years.
She called a 2005 speech she saw Sharpe give "quite the anti-Zionist screed," and said she witnessed him selling books at a gathering of a group, known as "American Renaissance," that welcomes activists to "help the cause of whites," according to its Web site.
Sharpe admits to attending the gathering but claims little knowledge of the group, describing it as perhaps "the white man's version of the NAACP." [...]
Beirich scoffed at Sharpe's apparent ignorance of American Renaissance.
"Literally next to him, in the next booth, was a guy selling ‘White Power' T-shirts," Beirich said. "You had to be an idiot not to know where you were."
Progress or just a new flavor of BS?
Call out the marching band; apparently having run out of other swarthy colored folk's cultures to plunder (Alladin, Mulan, Pocahontis), Disney is now having to stiffen its upper lip even more and roll out its very first Black princess. As a Caucasian female who was never a) a victim of the whole "Princess" culture (I never wanted to dress up as a princess or balerina--I played at being a cop, a fireman, or a chef even when I was 3), b) racially marginalized by my plaything options (unless you count the fact that Barbie is rail-thin and I was always a little porker), and c) don't have kids and never will, I don't feel I have a lot of valid stuff to say on the subject. So, I'd like to turn this over to folks with more (dark) skin in the game, especially those with girl-kiddies in the house. You can read some of CNN's readers' comments here, and I have to say I was a little surprised at them. The question that keeps getting danced around: Is more carefully tailored market exploitation better than being cut out of it altogether? I can understand (sort of, I guess) a little girl wanting to say "I can dress up just like PricessFairyGirlPerson!!" or whatever, but the fact that this seems to be the ONLY play option widely put out there for girls is disturbing (and its own thread whatsoever). FWIW, Gilly has a niece that just turned 10. Thank G-d she got past the whole "princess" phase and is now actually sewing and knitting her own fashions--no kidding. At least she'll have her own sense of style and a GREAT skill for the future (when she goes to college, she will get zillions in pocket money from her dorm-mates hemming and fixing their stuff--I saw this firsthand when I was in college). She won't need a prince to "rescue" her. Of course, this thread wouldn't be complete without mentioning a lot of Disney's past flirtations with serious racism and sexism. Zippety-do-dah anyone? I mean, could you picture Disney doing a mixed-live-animation film on stories from the Mishnah with a hooknosed, untended-beard Rabbi, his fat, hysterical, always-cooking-something wife, and his scrawny, neurotic, bespectacled kiddies dealing out platitudes to a group of scrubbed, healthy, gingham-clad golden-haired Aryan Ideal children? Oh, wait, bleh, I COULD see that. Rant on.
Not appearing in any Disney movie anytime soon
Jen here--doing a little Saturday catching up. Will try to get a hold of Gilly's Mom but I suspect she's already at the hospital. Anyway, having said that:
Dejah Thoris: "The Battle of the Bulge, Progressive Style"
Labels: recipes, weight loss
Fat kitty
Thanks to Dejah Thoris for this great piece on weight loss - THANKS DT!
Along with the battle against idiocy in our government, stupidity in our White House, and lunacy in the Republican Party lately, a great many of us have been facing the battle of the bulge. Boomers are surrounded by the message that it's not too late for us to avoid death by hypertension, heart problems, high fat, low exercise, and all the sedentary lifestyle issues that, it is said, will doom us to an early grave. Our kids and grandkids are facing an obesity epidemic of their own, and it's almost as if the nation that was scared shitless on 9/11 is now fortifying itself to death, both literally and figuratively.
Here at Chez Thoris, we're facing the battle of the bulge by turning it into
a "stick it to the man" experience. For each pound we lose, each gram of fat
we avoid, we celebrate "stickin' it to the wingnuts" that would rather see
Americans fat, dumb, happy and consuming all kinds of low-nutritional value
food and misinformation instead of healthy food and good-for-you truth.
So, in that vein (so to speak), I offer the "Stickin' It to the Man" diet.
First, it helps to think of the rabid right (which can encompass pretty much
any of the Republican "luminaries" you want to include) as a big, heapin'
helpin' of high fat. Maybe they taste good in the short term, but long-term,
they're death on a plate. They're clogging up the workings of this country,
just as a high-fat diet is clogging up the arteries of so many folks. An apt
metaphor upon which to focus as one literally wrings the fat from one's own
body.
How does this diet work? First, you dismiss the Reich Wing for the "fat"
that it is.
Then you take the freedom that engenders and use it dismiss the real fat
from your life. It's a sort of"Bind the figurative fat to the literal fat"
scapegoating process. Something to cheer you up each time you pass up the
corporate fat for the good, healthy stuff.
Sure, it's just a device to get one's self on the road to good health, but
by golly, what's good for individual Americans and their future health has
GOT to be good for the U.S. and the future health of our country and the
world.
In my case, I started out by avoiding all the fat globules inherent in the
modern American diet: Big Macs, oversized restaurant portions of anything,
and my own home-grown abilities to make and eat more food than is healthy
for me. I read labels on food religiously. If it's high-fat, I only have a
little bit. Or none at all.
Remember that some fat is also literally good for us. So, some fat belongs
in the diet, just as some Republicans aren't too bad. Keep those. Discard
the animal fats (or as many of them as possible) and the saturated-fat
values of Wingnuttia.
Keep a few good things in your life to make you happy. For me, it's
chocolate. And the occasional French fry. (No dammit, they're NOT Freedom
Fries! That's another piece of Rethug fat to get rid of in the figurative
diet while allowing one's self to have a few REAL fries from time to time.)
The key is moderation. A word the wingnuts hate as much as they hate
"choice" and "freedom" and "respect for others' opinions and lifestyle."
But, I don't allow myself more than 30 grams of fat a day. PER DAY. Period.
And I don't suffer more than the minimum amount of lard that seems to
proliferate in wingnut ideas sprouting fully grown from the White House and
the right-wing side of the aisle in Congress and the Senate.
That's because I want to LOSE the excess fat and if I have a limited amount
then my body has to burn what it already has to keep me going. And, I want
to avoid the excess fat in stupid ideas emanating from the Reich Wing. Doing
that puts me and my mind on the road to health, baby.
The top limits for women are 40 and the top limits for men are 60 if you
want to lose weight and get those arteries into shape. If you eat that much,
you're probably still eating only half of what you did before. But, within
those limits, have what you want.
Let Them Eat Low Fat Cake (or Muffins)
Foodwise, low fat's a bitch, because a good slice of chocolate cake made
with cooking oil and whole eggs will bring you 15 or so grams of fat
depending on the size of the slice.
A piece of fried chicken from KFC? Depends on the piece, but you're not
going to get away for less than 25 or 30 grams of fat. How about a bagel?
All by itself, it may have no more than 3-5 grams of fat. But, load it up
with cream cheese or an egg and bacon? You're talkin' more fat than Dick
Cheney on a duck hunt.
Don't avoid the cream cheese or the bacon. Just adjust the portion size. If
it says 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, use a half of ONE tablespoon and
you're talking just a couple of grams of fat (again, depending on the peanut
butter) rather than 9 or 10 that would be a significant portion of your
daily allowance. You can stand a few Republicans (the few moderate ones and
no, I'm not talking about Joe Loserman). Okay, you can stand a little fat.
One slice of bacon satisfies MY lust for shredded pork strips. But not two.
The Obligatory Recipe
Okay, so, what's on the table at my place tonight?
Mixed lettuce salad with cherry tomatoes and a teaspoon of low-fat cranberry
dressing. (Don't knock it until you've tried it!) About 3 grams per serving
4-ounce slice of tilapia (fish) baked with cajun seasonings, a bit of PAM
spray, and some lemon juice.
Baked for 20 minutes, broiled for two to brown the top. 3 grams per serving
Side of Zatarain's black beans and rice cooked ONLY in water (no oil added).
0.5 gram per serving
Steamed veggies (zero fat) with a little salt on them.
1 chocolate muffin (see below). 4.0 grams per muffin
total fat: 10.5 grams including the muffin!
About that muffin: we took a Ghirardelli's Muffin Mix (box) and mixed up
only half of it. We
substituted applesauce for the cooking oil and Egg Beaters for the eggs.
Total fat per muffin depends
on how big you make your muffins, but ours came out to about 4 grams per
medium-sized muffin.
So, anybody else have any tasty low-fat recipes?
For those who want more specifics, check out the T-Factor diet. That's what
I'm really following...
- posted by Dejah Thoris
Lindsey Beyerstein: "PTSD Cheesecake"
The New York Times ran quite a good article about female vets with PTSD. I don't know what to make of the accompanying photographs by Katy Grannan, an famous fine art photographer who specializes micromanaging her portraits to produce outwardly natural looking portraits that evoke the aesthetics of fashion photography, pinup art and other commercial source material. The photograph above is the largest and most prominent of the images accompanying the PTSD story. The picture shows 21-year-old Army specialist Suzanne Swift reclining on a black, rocky beach with her hand on her inner thigh. The article explains Swift went AWOL to rather than return for a second tour of duty in Iraq. If there's a message here, I don't get it. Why would you dress a veteran in jeans and a tight baby t-shirt to pose like a swimsuit model on a beach in order to illustrate a story about how she got PTSD in Iraq and went AWOL? I'm not saying it's a bad photograph. Actually, I think it's very good technically and aesthetically. It just doesn't make any sense. Here's ">another portrait from the same series. The subject is a naval construction worker whose war-related PTSD in Iraq was exacerbated by the fact that she was also raped by fellow Americans. There's something weirdly sexualized about this image. Look at the angle of the shot. She's wearing a knee-length skirt, but she's positioned so that her bare legs and daintily flexed ankle command as much attention as her face. Like Suzanne Swift, the construction worker is reclining on one arm, this time on a white couch rather than a beach. Her other hand is on her thigh, like Swift's. Here's another subtle variant on the ">lounging pose , in which the barefoot Keri Christensen leans back into a corner with one leg slightly bent at the knee and flexed ballerina-like at the ankle. If you watch the full ">multimedia presentation you'll find a ">relatively traditional portrait of the same Navy vet sitting I can't find a way to link to the individual stills within the Grannan is well-known for fine art photos influenced by /">pinups and other vintage erotica--her website is probably not safe for work, but definitely worth a visit. She is internationally famous for applying fashion and commercial photography methods and aesthetics to intricately composed informal-looking posed portraits of non-models. Maybe in her assignment for the NYT PTSD story Grannan is parodying pinup photos to make a point how these women soldiers were regarded by their male colleagues. After all, it doesn't seem like Grannan intended to make her subjects appear to happy or comfortable in the positions she chose for them. Would the New York Times run a picture of conscientious objector ">Ehren Watada awaiting his court martial like a ">faun in repose? [HT: ">zuzu] Lindsay Beyerstein is a New York journalist blogging at ">Majikthise. Labels: Bush Iraq
A big thanks to Lindsey Beyerstein for this great post - THANKS LINDSAY!
up and looking at the camera. The difference in effect is striking.
Flash presentation. So, I'll just explain where to find the relevant shots: The traditional portrait is image #3 in the series. Image #4 is a beautiful picture of Army Sgt. Jane Bulson in the door of her camper, but again with the thigh-clutching.
I'm guessing they wouldn't, even if Lt. Watada was willing to indulge
the photographer.
- posted by Lindsey Beyerstein
Ice Weasel: "Pressure on the Judiciary Committee"
Put it on
Thanks to ice weasel for this great idea - THANKS ICEE!
Below is the list of Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee with links to their contact pages.
Everyone should put as much pressure as possible to subpoena the white house people involved and force them to testify, under oath, and on the record, about what took place. Anything less and this will issue will just fade into the background noise.
Patrick J. Leahy
http://leahy.senate.gov/contact.html
Edward M. Kennedy
http://kennedy.senate.gov/senator/contact.cfm
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
http://biden.senate.gov/contact/emailjoe.cfm
Herb Kohl
http://kohl.senate.gov/gen_contact.html
Dianne Feinstein
http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html
Russell D. Feingold
http://feingold.senate.gov/contact_opinion.html
Charles E. Schumer
http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm
Richard J. Durbin
http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm#contact
Benjamin L. Cardin
http://cardin.senate.gov/contact.cfm
Sheldon Whitehouse
http://whitehouse.senate.gov/contact.cfm
- posted by Ice Weasel
Skippy: "3 reasons to give 3 cheers for blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase!"
Labels: blogosphere
Celebrate, darn it!
Thanks to Skippy for this reminder that we have a LOT to be thankful for - and happy about - THANKS SKIPPY!
we have noticed, as of late, a disheartening trend in various comments and blog posts around blogtopia*. several writers have seemingly fallen into the dumps because things are not progressing as progressively as progressives would like. they cite the dems' refusal to discuss impeachment, the iraq defunding which looks to be dead in the water, and the general tendency of those in charge to ignore the common citizens they are supposedly hired by to run things.
however, we here at skippy international are feeling pretty good about things, and we wish that the rest of you in blogtopia* would join us. after all, there are several major accomplishments that have come to fruition recently, all of which were done, if not completely, then certainly with major efforts, by the netroots.
to start with, blogs and bloggers really came into their own as true-to-life journalists with the libby trial. thanks to the kids at firedoglake, and to marcy wheeler (also known as "emptywheel "...and maybe some day she'll explain what the hell that screen name means), as well as swopa of medianeedle, jerlayn merritt of talkleft and margie burns for bradblog (plus others we have surely missed, and our apologies if we have), the idea of blogs as actual journalism came into existence.
where before blogs were seen mainly as an outlet for cranky powerless people to whine, suddenly it was proven that they could be used as an outlet for cranky powerless people to disseminate information on a national level at a level far deeper and wider in scope than any electronic media, and most dead trees media.
dan froomkin, and admitted fan of blogs, said on a washpost.com q&a: i think what firedoglake.com did with this trial was not just impressive, it was transformative. by offering the public live-blogging of this very important trial, you not only put the msm to shame, but actually became a must-read for journalists who couldn't attend the trial, but wanted to get a better and faster sense of what was going on than they could from their own colleagues.
i'm not saying that the msm should emulate everything bloggers do -- far from it -- but the blogosphere's enthusiasm for this story was something to behold, and admire.
now, we here at skippy international had little to do with the libby coverage, short of a recurring photoshop, but just the very fact that several blogs made history by making journalism with this story should be an inspiration to everyone in blogtopia*.
and another recent event that bloggers can be proud of is the recent and effective backlash against annthrax coulter.
we will grant you that it wasn't just the blogs that were responsible for the dissemination of annthrax's f*ggot moment. for once, the mmm did its job and spread the word about her ill-conceived attempt at humor at the cpac convention.
but we would posit that the mmm, which took a few days before actually pouncing on the story, were spurred on by the relentless coverage annthrax got on the blogs, both the left and right.
it was, however, the lefty blogs that put together the action alerts, and the blog readers (you) were the ones that implemented them. media matters led the charge w/email addresses and other contact info of the papers that ran annthrax's column. other blogs, like the daily background, put together email cc's for quick use.
thanks to the work of those and other blogs, and of you, the people that wrote into these organs, at least 9 papers have dropped annthrax's column, and others could follow.
lastly, but not leastly (in fact perhaps mostly), the reason we can cheer is the role which blogtopia* played in the nevada state democratic party's decision to not allow fox news to broadcast the reno debate among presidential candidates.
moveon.org was forefront in the effort to convince the nevada state dem party, and other blogs contributed as well, but we must give mad props to matt stoller of mydd. we have not always agreed w/matt on several things, but for this we admire and salute matt's work in rallying blogtopia* to write and email and call (and fax) sen. reid and the nevada dems.
the impact of bloggers making the case of fox's severe partisanship is of paramount importance in the landscape of national media. this is perhaps the first time that it has been spoken out loud on a national stage the fact that fox news is a definitive partisanship organ, and it certainly is the first time that consequences derived there from have occurred.
of course, several other factors influenced this decision. john edwards announced he wouldn't attend the debate, and members of the nevada state dem executive board including michael zahara worked diligently from within the party to change the original decision.
but the netroots are not only a major factor in the change, but are getting all the blame now as well. this in and of itself is an interesting development. irrespective of whether or not it's true, the conventional wisdom now holds that blogtopia* is a force to be reckoned with.
and we would agree. the cumulative effect of these three instances of success shows that, as a political force, we have now had major impact on the national political and journalistic scene. this is something we can be proud of; this is something to cheer about.
granted, there's still plenty of work to to be done. the dems are turning out to only have very starchy shirts and no spines whatsoever when it comes to iraq. there is still talk of the congressional black caucus holding its debates on fox news. and, face it...there is still mountains of stupidity out there to contend with.
but there are definitely signs of progress. and we should all be incredibly proud of our work and give ourselves a collective pat on our backs. we have shown that democracy can work on a citizen level, and there is power in blogtopia*.
and *yes. we coined that phrase.
- posted by Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Watson: "War Nerd on Hezbollah"
He's tough
Thanks to Watson for this grab from War Nerd - thanks Watson!
War Nerd is the nomme-de-blog of foggy Fresno's Gary Brecher. His
work appears in the eXile, Moscow's alternative newspaper.
Like Steve, he's a military history buff, and he regularly offers an
alternative critique to the strategery of our neocon Napoleons.
I'm a bit hesitant to recommend him because his cold-blooded,
shock-the-bourgeois writing style is insensitive, to mankind in general and
to ethnicity in particular. His advice to those offended would probably be
'Don't study war'.
The excerpt below contains an IDF/Wehrmacht comparison. I think it's
benign, but I refer readers to Wes Cheek's 3/18/07 News Blog guest-post 'The
Problem with the Problem with Nazi Analogies', and the comments thereto.
Here's War Nerd in July 2006 on the IDF-Hezbollah dustup in Lebanon:'The IDF doesn't deserve its rep. It did once, back in 1948
and during Suez, when it was manned by double-tough survivors of the
European Jews who were determined to show up the book-nerd stereotype by
kicking ass from Haifa to Damascus. Those dudes were truly tough. But we're
talking demographics again, dude. Passage of time, plus difference in
birthrate, means that by now the IDF has a thin, real thin, crust of
Ashkenazi brains'n'brawn on top and a bunch of flabby mama's boys under
them.
...
'The IDF was safe in its F-16s and Merkavas, facing
Pal[estian]s with nothing but rifles and old RPGs. It's easy to look tough
rolling through refugee camps in the world's most heavily armored tank. But
as you may recall, those tanks got a real different reception when they
chased Hezbollah's raiding party back into Lebanon after the Hezzies killed
three IDF soldiers and kidnapped another two.
...
'It was a good plot twist: one minute the IDF is stomping
around Gaza blasting amateurs, when something taps it on the shoulder, and
there's Hezbollah, looking like Godzilla in a headscarf. Pretty funny
moment, something almost Abbot & Costello about it. No army enjoys getting
invited to a second front just when it was starting to enjoy itself on the
first one. Even the Wehrmacht rank and file was bummed when they heard they
were getting shipped from the beaches of the Mediterranean to Russia.
...
'Nasrullah may look like a fat social studies teacher who
needs a shave, but you don't claw your way to the top of a bloody world like
that one without brains. The men who run Hezbollah attacked because they
finally figured out that they literally cannot lose. The IDF can never expel
Hezbollah from South Lebanon, because it's a genuine mass movement, ashttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
committed and crazy at the roots as at the top. ... If Israel retaliates by
blasting every target of value in Lebanon, every TV tower and shopping mall
and freeway...well, that's the beauty of the plan: the Shia are the poorest
of the poor. They don't own any of that shit anyway. They sit back and laugh
watching their neighbors' stuff that they've envied all their lives get
blown away -- and it's the Israelis who get the blame. So call'em crazy if
it makes you feel better, but don't call'em stupid. Better yet, get used to
calling'em "Sir."
Link
- posted by Watson
me: "Jim Cramer"
Labels: stock market
Just watch this one, suggested by "me." Incredible. You wonder if it's real or a put-on.
Fundraising at Orcinus
Labels: fundraising
Time to feed the orca
It's fundraising time at Orcinus - home to David Neiwert AND Sara Robinson, who has been pitching in here at The News Blog in Steve's absence.
PLEASE VISIT THEM AND HELP THEM OUT!
They have helped us in our time of need. It's only right that News Blog readers help them.
Thank you all.
- posted by Jim in LA and Jen
Mrs. Robinson: "Kauffman's Rules, Part II"
Into the works
Thanks to Mrs. Robinson for this very very very cool series - part 2 now!
Well, y'all seem to be having a lot of fun with the first group of Kauffman's Rules -- so let's move on to the next seven.
8. Look for high leverage points. Nearly every feedback system has weak spots. These are almost always the control points which measure the system's behavior and determine its response to change. The best way to change a system's behavior is either to change the "setting" of the control unit or to change the information which the control unit receives. If you want to make a cold house warmer, turn the thermostat up or stick an ice pack on it, but don't build a fire in an inefficient fireplace--it will do little if any good.
One of the assumptions behind the Why Protests Don't Work post was that your garden variety street protest is a big, blunt, soft instrument that's ineffective against most political and cultural leverage points. If you want to change the physics, you need to find the exact lever hinge, stick just the right sharp, strong tool in there, and then yank for all you're worth. Modern protests aren't designed to have that kind of surgical focus, and that's why they fail.
Another lesson implicit in this is the old rule attributed to Lord Kelvin: You can't control what you can't measure. The corollary to this is that you only tend to value what you do measure. Corporations measure profit, and work to optimize it. Most still don't measure their environmental and social effects, so these factors get ignored in decision-making. So changing how the system's metrics are reckoned is often key to changing its entire structure and outcome.
9. Nothing grows forever. The exponential growth curves produced by positive feedback keep on growing only in mathematics. In the real world, growth always stops sooner or later and the faster the growth, the sooner it will stop. If the Earth's human population could continue to grow at its current rate for another 7 centuries, we would be the only living things on the planet. After just ten more centuries, the mass of human bodies would outweigh the entire rest of the planet--an obvious impossibility. If energy use continued to grow at its current rate for another 400 years, the surface of the earth would be hotter than the sun. And at current rates of growth in food consumption, we would have to eat every living thing on the planet in a single year only 5 centuries from now. Obviously, these projections are ridiculous and the growth of population, energy use, and food consumption will stop long before such extremes are reached. The question is, how soon and in what way?
The fact that this was still news to most people 30 years ago when Kauffman wrote these rules gives you some idea of the uphill battle we're facing when it comes to sustainability. It's more general knowledge now; but getting people to understand a principle is one thing, and getting them to act on it is another. Even Americans who intellectually know better still believe, at heart and against all reason, that our lives are going to continue pretty much as they have for the past 50 years. (And, worse, they're staking their futures on this belief.) They won't believe the limits exist until they see them with their own eyes -- and won't act for change until they feel them closing in around their own lifestyles.
10. Don't fight positive feedback, support negative feedback instead. Don't poison pests, support their predators. Don't order people to have fewer children, make it more profitable for them to have small families instead. Don't ration energy, raise the price instead (and give the money back by cutting taxes somewhere else, like the social security tax). And so on. England used a version of this rule for centuries in European politics. Whenever one nation or group got too strong, England would throw its support to the weaker side. Don't try to weaken your enemy, strengthen your enemy's enemies instead.
Rule 1 talked about how exhausting direct conflict can be. This is one alternative way of changing a system without having to throw all your resources into a head-to-head pitched battle.
11. Don't try to control the players, just change the rules. When the National Football League wanted to make football games a bit more exciting, it didn't order quarterbacks to throw more passes. Instead, it changed the rules slightly so that pass plays would have a better chance of working. If the, league had gone the first route, teams would have looked for ways to evade the order, perhaps by throwing a few more short, safe passes, and the game would still have been dull. In the actual case, however, teams were aggressive about taking advantage of the new opportunities to pass. The same principle applies in economics, politics, science, education, and many other areas. If the system tries to make choices for people, the people will try to outwit the system. It is much more effective to change the "rules of the" game" so that it is to most people's advantage to make the choices that are good for the whole system.
This is one of my personal favorites. One of the usual ways we separate the moderates from the true radicals is that moderates "want to work from within the system" and radicals are quite clear that it's the system itself that's the problem. System theory sides with the radicals on this one.
I stand on middle ground, which says that it's often possible to change systems from the inside -- hard (there's always that immune reaction mentioned in Rule 7), but not impossible. Being inside gives you your best shot at the leverage points, and also allows you to take things at an evolutionary rather than revolutionary pace that will allow related systems to adapt slowly, creating less breakage. If the system's near failure anyway, though, go ahead and break the sucker. No point in prolonging the agony.
Rule 11 also explains why workers who keenly understood the day-to-day problems when they were in the trenches seem to get lobotomies a year or two after being promoted to management. They're in a new place in the system now; and that position demands that they prioritize things in a different way. It's also why throwing the old city hall bastards out usually results in nothing more than fresh city hall bastards; and why corporate housecleanings that bring in new executive staff usually result in more of the same. Changing the players changes absolutely nothing. You have to change the system in ways that change the players' behavior within it.
12. Don't make rules that can't be enforced. If many people want to disobey a law and nearly all of them are able to get away with it, then the law will not be obeyed. But this gets people used to disobeying laws, and it reduces respect for laws in general. It also creates ideal opportunities for corruption, blackmail, and the acceptance of organized crime. A society that really gets serious about enforcing unenforceable laws can tear itself apart. (See, for example, the tremendous damage done by witchhunts, inquisitions, and civil wars that result from enforcing laws against thinking certain kinds of religious or political thoughts.) The same problem arises in business, government, and many other kinds of systems, where a higher system is weakened by trying to overcontrol lower subsystems.
People who try to enforce unforceable rules are typically either authoritarians, utopians, or both. Invariably, when respect for the law and its makers has broken down, they resort to force to maintain order. On a larger level, if it's chaos you're after, there's nothing like demanding that a system behave in ways contrary to its own internal intelligence and performance capacity.
A corollary to this is that all legitimate authority springs from mutual respect between the leader and the led.
13.There are no simple solutions. Real-life systems are big, messy, complicated things, with problems to match. Genuine solutions require careful thought for their effect on the whole system. Anyone who tries to sell you a simple answer--"All we have to do is. . . .and everything will be perfect! "--is either honestly dumb, dishonest, or running for office.
We'll just show up, and they'll throw flowers. It'll be that easy -- a cakewalk, really. Three weeks, and we're on our way home, mission accomplished…
14. Good intentions are not enough. Few things are more painful than trying to do good and finding out that you've done a great deal of harm instead. Simple compassion and simple morality are inadequate in a complex world. The bumbling missionary causes tragedy because he follows his heart without using his head to try to understand the whole situation.
If you don't have a thoughtful plan that's based on a thorough understanding of the system -- and which has been subjected to critique by the affected parties, and shaken out in a couple of proof-of-concept test runs -- then do us all a favor and just keep your damn fingers out of the system entirely. Sometimes (more often than not, in fact), it's best just to leave even not-quite-well-enough alone.
There'll be seven more coming along in another couple days. See you then.
- posted by Mrs. Robinson
LA Times: "Governor calls Limbaugh 'irrelevant' "
Labels: arnold, california, limbaugh
Blow hole ahoy
Saw this at LATimes.com today and had to pull a Nelson - HA HA! love it when they fight!Governor calls Limbaugh 'irrelevant'
SACRAMENTO — After repeatedly being asked about his conservative critics, including talk show host Rush Limbaugh, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped his diplomatic veneer Tuesday and declared their views irrelevant to his work in California.
"All irrelevant. Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant. I am not his servant," the governor said on NBC's "Today" show.
Limbaugh then declared on his radio program that Schwarzenegger, lacking the communications skills to persuade Californians of his Republican values, had sold them out.
"If he had the leadership skills to articulate conservative principles and win over the public as [former President] Reagan did, then he would have stayed conservative," said Limbaugh, who is often seen as the embodiment of all conservative viewpoints.
The tiff marked Schwarzenegger's most high-profile repudiation of a conservative critic. Many fellow Republicans view his support of stem-cell research, mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions and universal healthcare as a betrayal of his party's ideals.
In the NBC interview, Schwarzenegger said he was "the people's servant of California. What they call me — Democrat or Republican or in the center, this and that — that is not my bottom line. This is for them to talk about."
- posted by Jim in LA
DrBopperTHP: "EE Times - MIT to put its entire curriculum online free of charge"
Labels: education
The price is right
Thanks to DrBopperTHP for this amazing score of an article - THANKS DR!MIT to put its entire curriculum online free of charge
In 2002, when MIT decided to experiment with placing course contents on the Web for open access, the university's officials knew they were breaking new ground and had no idea how the effort would be received.
On Tuesday, school officials revealed plans to make available the university's entire 1,800-course curriculum by year's end. Currently, some 1.5 million online independent learners log on the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site every month and more than 120 universities around the world have inaugurated their own sites for independent learners. MIT has more than 1,500 course curriculums available online to date.
Who are MIT's independent learners? One MIT calculation found that 17% were educators elsewhere, 32% students everywhere, and 49% were self learners.
"About 40% of the MIT alumni population uses the site," said Steve Carson, the OCW's external relations director, in an interview Tuesday. "Usually they take courses they didn't have time for while they were students here." The courses are free of charge and no course credit is granted.
Other learners come from nations all over the world, from Antarctica to Darfur. He notes that the highest traffic in the United States comes from leading high-tech states Massachusetts and California. South Korea has a sizable base, accounting for a higher number of learners than, for instance, in China, its neighbor.
I've been using the MITOCW site for continuing medical education purposes for some time. I think it is an invaluable resource, and I recommend it to all who might have a need to access one of the greatest online. distance education/information repositories available. My high school physics teacher was a proto-nerd/hippie MIT grad who almost persuaded me to go there rather than drop anchor in Providence, and wonderfully generous, and magnanimous educational efforts such as this, on the part of this renowned and universally recognized institution of "highest" learning, make me wish I had.
- posted by DrBopperTHP
Res Ipsa Loquitur: "It's Over"
Labels: GOP
Someone break the news to 'em, for god's sake
Thanks to Res Ipsa Loquitur for this insightful cross-post from Rising Hegemon - THANKS RES!
There's a great scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch and Sundance break into Sheriff Ray Bledsoe's house to to ask him to help them evade the "super posse" by enlisting in the army. Furious that he may be seen in the company of "known outlaws," Bledsoe takes the opportunity to explain the reality of their situation to them.Bledsoe: You are crazy. Both of you: crazy! They'd throw you in jail for a thousand years each! They forget all about the years of thieving and robbing and they take you into the Army - which is what you want in the first place. There's something out there that scares you; but it's too late. No, you should have let yourself get killed a long time ago when you had the chance. You may be the biggest thing that ever hit this area, but you're still two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid. But you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over! Don't you get that? Your times is over and you're gonna die bloody! And all you can do is choose where.
Watching the clips of Victoria Toensing lying testifying in front of congress today, reading the transcript of Tony Snow spinning at today's gaggle, and thinking about why the administration chose Wednesday to announce that the guy who confessed to planning 9/11 five years ago had confessed all over again, I couldn't help but think of Butch and Sundance. They thought all they needed to do was to escape the posse. But Bledsoe understood the deeper truth: that the world had changed and that E.H. Harriman and the rest of the people in it weren't going to put up with Butch and Sundance robbing them anymore.
The Republicans have a Butch and Sundance problem. They've either failed -- or are petulantly refusing -- to realize that 11/7 changed everything. Americans are onto their bullshit and no amount of Kate O'Bierne yipping, "She wasn't covert!" or Matt Drudge screaming "Clinton fired U.S. Attorneys (and got a blow job)!" or Anne Coulter screeching, "He's a faggot!" or Madingaling howling, "The mosque wasn't 'destroyed'!" is going to change that. Americans have had enough. It's over.
Remember how it ended for Butch and Sundance? I wonder how it will end for the Republican party?
- posted by Res Ipsa Loquitur
Seitan Worshipper: "Losing Faith: How Scholarship Affects Scholars"
Labels: religion
Thanks to Seitan Worshipper for this can of lighter fluid so desperately needed in our theological discourse! THANKS SW!"Losing Faith: How Scholarship Affects Scholars"
Several media stories recently reported that Bart Ehrman, a leading expert on the apocryphal gospels and one of BAS’s most popular lecturers, had lost his faith as a result of his scholarly research. This raised a question for us that is not often talked about, but seemed well worth a discussion: What effect does scholarship have on faith? We asked Bart to join three other scholars to talk about this:
James F. Strange, a leading archaeologist and Baptist minister; Lawrence H. Schiffman, a prominent Dead Sea Scroll scholar and Orthodox Jew; and William G. Dever, one of America’s best-known and most widely quoted archaeologists, who had been an evangelical preacher, then lost his faith, then became a Reform Jew and now says he’s a non-believer. The discussion took place in the offices of the Biblical Archaeology Society on November 19, 2006, and was moderated by BAR [Biblical Archaeology Review] editor Hershel Shanks.
Hershel Shanks: Bart, how did your scholarship affect your faith?
Bart Ehrman: First, I lost my fundamentalist faith because of my scholarship. Like Bill Dever, I have a fundamentalist background. I had a very high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, no mistakes of any kind—geographical or historical. No contradictions. Inviolate.
My scholarship early on as a graduate student showed me that in fact these views about the Bible were wrong. I started finding contradictions and finding other discrepancies and started finding problems with the Bible. What that ended up doing for me was showing me that the basis of my faith, which at that time was the Bible, was problematic. So I shifted from being an evangelical Christian to becoming a fairly mainline liberal Protestant Christian.
What ended up making me lose my faith was kind of related to scholarship: When I was at Rutgers University, I taught a course on the problem of suffering in Biblical traditions, where I dealt with issues of theodicy throughout different Biblical books, both Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—
Shanks: What is theodicy?
Ehrman: Theodicy is the question of how God can be righteous, given the amount of suffering in the world. The issue as it’s usually put today is that if God is all-powerful and is able to prevent suffering, and is all-loving so that he wants to prevent suffering, why is there suffering? This problem isn’t ever expressed that way in the Bible, but Biblical authors do deal with the problem by asking: Why does the people of God suffer? In teaching this course, the thing that struck me is just how different the answers are. Depending on what part of Job you read, you get one set of answers. If you read the Prophets, you get a different set of answers. If you read apocalyptic literature, you get still a different set of answers.
...
Shanks: Well, Larry, I take it that you, as an Orthodox Jew, don’t believe those historical claims about Jesus.
Schiffman: No. One of the principles of the Jewish faith is not believing in Jesus. [Laughter] But, like Bart, I of course believe that he lived, preached and was crucified by the Romans.
From a Jewish point of view, these kinds of problems aren’t problems. First of all, the Bible was never taken literally in Judaism. It doesn’t mean that it’s not historical, but it is not taken literally in the Protestant sense. It’s not an issue in Judaism. Admittedly there is a literalist strain in a minority of medieval Jewish thinkers and a minority—maybe a growing minority—in modern Judaism, but it’s not classical Judaism. The Talmud doesn’t take the Bible literally in the Protestant sense.
Jim’s approach of taking a kind of experiential approach to the whole thing is one that is much more primary in Judaism.
...
Seitan Worshiper here: This actually resonated for me, as a believer, because I struggle with doubt on a regular basis, as well as the whole notion of "Where is G-d when innocents suffer?"
OTOH, I *do* believe in a Higher Power/Lifeforce/Creative Energy -- NOT a "Bearded Guy in the Sky". I look around me and see the wonders of creation and can believe that Someone/Something made it all.
Having more questions than answers doesn't diminish the belief for me, nor do I find a conflict between Science/Reason and [my] belief. Also, I agree with Mr. Schiffman regarding the notion of Judaism as a set of rules that -- when applied conscientiously --enables one to live a decent life, and make the world around us a little better.
- posted by Seitan Worshipper
Pachacutec: "To The Bunker!"
This is about where Steve usually brings in an historical reference to Hitler’s bunker fantasies of a phantom division to crush the invading Allied horde.
Thanks to Firedoglake's Pachacutec for this timely and on-the-mark post - THANKS PACH!
Nuh guh huppen:White House Voices Support for Gonzales
By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, March 20 — The White House reaffirmed President Bush’s support for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today as the Senate prepared to vote on whether to revoke the authority it granted the administration last year to name federal prosecutors.
“The president spoke to the attorney general around 7:15 a.m. from the Oval Office,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. “They had a good conversation about the status of the United States attorney issue. The president also reaffirmed his strong backing and support for the attorney general.”
Mr. Bush’s call to Mr. Gonzales, an old friend from Texas, could dampen speculation that the attorney general’s job is at stake, at least in the immediate future.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, were moving to overturn a formerly obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation. A vote is expected early this afternoon.
President Bush has said he has confidence in Mr. Gonzales, but as recently as Monday the White House seemed to offer only tepid support for him.
“Nobody is prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold,” the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, said when asked if Mr. Gonzales would remain until the end of Mr. Bush’s term. Mr. Bush has said Mr. Gonzales needs to repair his relations with Capitol Hill; asked if the attorney general had done so, Mr. Snow said, “I don’t know.”
At the Justice Department, neither Mr. Gonzales nor his staff have engaged in a major effort to reverse the erosion of his support among Republicans in Congress, associates said. Mr. Gonzales read budget briefing books over the weekend and on Monday he phoned one or two lawmakers, said one aide, who declined to identify them.
Mr. Gonzales, who publicly apologized last week for his department’s handling of the dismissals of eight United States attorneys, also acknowledged mistakes in a conference call with United States attorneys over the weekend.
Despite the attorney general’s apologies, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, joined a chorus of lawmakers who are calling for Mr. Gonzales to leave the administration.
“I believe we need a new attorney general,” Ms. Pelosi told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune.
The new chief counsel to President Bush, Fred F. Fielding, spent Monday preparing a response for Democrats who are demanding testimony from Karl Rove and other top aides to Mr. Bush, including the former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.
Of course, it’s near impossible to imagine Gonzo lasting until this time next week, in a rational world, but the Bush world has not been a rational world in a long, long time, if ever.
Bush dumped Rumsfeld on his own terms with maximum figleaf coverage after the election, and he thinks he can wait this one out a bit longer, too. But this is different. The GOP is not willing to follow Bush down to the sewers of political irrelevancy, at least, not all of them.
Steve has often predicted Bush would not last his full term, and I’ve never really agreed with him, but this is where I think he’d bring that point up again.
Whaddya think?
- posted by Firedoglake's Pachacutec
me: "NYT - Mortgage Trouble Clouds Homeownership Dream"
Bad times coming
Thanks to me for suggesting this article from the NYT - THANKS!Mortgage Trouble Clouds Homeownership Dream
By EDUARDO PORTER and VIKAS BAJAJ
Perhaps the American dream of homeownership is not for everyone.
That may sound at odds with a bedrock notion of society promoted by presidents for decades. But many experts say it is a message that can be drawn from the rising troubles with mortgages provided to home buyers with weak credit.
Several large mortgage companies have stopped making new loans, and others have tightened lending standards.
Hundreds of thousands of families who bought houses in the last two years — using loans with low teaser interest rates and no down payments — are now losing them.
Their short tenure as homeowners calls into question whether the nation's long drive to increase homeownership — pushed by both public policy and financial innovations — has overstepped some boundary of demographic and economic sense.
"Clearly we went too far," said Joseph E. Gyourko, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "It's not the case that high homeownership is always good."
Consider Nathaniel Shields, who expects to lose his four-bedroom Cape Cod house in southwest Chicago to a foreclosure in May.
He cannot afford his mortgage payment, which jumped to $1,300 a month from about $1,000 after his loan reset to a higher interest rate last summer. A divorce and the loss of his county government clerical job, which paid $14.80 an hour, have also hurt.
In 2004, Mr. Shields took out a popular hybrid mortgage that carried a fixed interest rate for two years before becoming an adjustable-rate loan for the remaining 28 years. In August, his loan's interest rate rose from 6.6 percent to 8.1 percent, and to 9.6 percent now. "I love the house," said Mr. Shields, 47, who now works in a custodial job with the Chicago school district that pays $10.40 an hour. "I put a lot of money in the house — a deck and a new garage — and they are just going to take the house."
Kathleen Van Tiem, a counselor at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, has been trying to help him, but says that his weak credit and low income make him ineligible to refinance or modify his loan. Mr. Shields has put his house up for sale, but in a market with many homes available, he has found no takers.
A couple of observations here.
We recently bought a place. We live very modestly and between the mortgage and the common charges and the school loan payments and the whole one income thing with the kid...let's just say that we have a cushion of a couple of hundred a month. With just the mortgage payments we make the recommended earnings to mortgage ratio comfortably...but with the common charge...well it's very very tight. So you'd think that the bank would have given us the type of mortgage product that Mr. Shields had gotten. After all, although our income is not his, proportionally speaking we're not rich, not by a long shot. And my credit is good but not spotless due to forgetting to pay the occaisional credit card bill. Yet we easily got a 30 year fixed at 6%.
I don't know why Mr. Shields was offered his loan or why he decided to go with it or how much he put down. But I do know one thing --- Mr. Shields is black and we're not. There's driving while black right? Well there's buying a house while black too.
- posted by me
Center for American Progress: "Iraq by the numbers"
Labels: Bush Iraq
Our kids
Thanks to the Center for American Progress for this great post on the 4th anniversary of the Iraq Invasion - GO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE
March 19, 2007
Today, on the four-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, our military is stretched to the breaking point, Iraq is descending deeper into civil war, and the president is moving more—and more poorly prepared—troops into battle. The Center for American Progress has repeatedly advocated for a new strategy that would redeploy troops from Iraq to focus more attention on completing the mission left unaccomplished in Afghanistan and strengthen our ground troops by making sure that they are well-equipped and prepared—mentally and physically—when they are sent overseas. Clearly, we need a change in U.S. policy in Iraq:
The Cost in American Lives is Rising
3,217: Number of American troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war
54: Percentage of troops killed who were 24 years old or younger
Coalition Support is Waning
49: Number of countries in the Coalition of the Willing when the invasion began in 2003
21: Number of countries in the Coalition by mid-2007 after Britain, Denmark, and South Korea reduce their forces
135,000: Number of American troops in Iraq
11,095: Number of non-American troops that will remain in Iraq after the upcoming Coalition withdrawals
Staying the Wrong Course
29,100: Number of additional troops President Bush and his generals have officially requested to send to Iraq as part of an escalation strategy
Up to 50,000: Likely number of additional combat and support troops that will actually have to be deployed for the escalation, according to a Congressional Budget Office report
59: Percentage of Americans who think the Iraq war was a mistake
13: Percentage of Americans who prefer the option of sending more troops to options involving some form of withdrawal
continued at CAP's site
Mrs. Robinson: "Rules of Complex Systems - Part 1"
Kauffman's Rules of Reality Hacking -- Part 1 of 4
Jesse "Doc" Wendel asked if I'd be willing to let him re-run this four-part series that just completed over at Orcinus. It's a little bit offbeat from the usual run of things seen on either blog; but it might provide fodder for some thought and discussion. Since I'd like to see some of these ideas move into wider currency among progressives, I'm happy to share it here.
One of the first things futures studies faculty try to pound into the little puddin' heads of budding futurists is that the world isn't built of separate pieces and parts; and history can't ever be reduced to a list of Great Men and Great Events. Rather, they tell us, the world is a vast interlocking matrix of complex systems -- and one of the biggest keys to cultivating good foresight lies not in examining the specific properties of each part, but rather in examining the relationships between the parts, and the way they function together as a whole to create a given situation. Look at it this way, and it becomes much easier to see what's working, what's breaking, what's likely to happen next, and what needs to change for a better outcome to occur.
This is the basic idea behind systems theory, which been around since the early 70s, when Jay Forrester founded the Systems Lab at MIT (and where three of his proteges soon produced the landmark World 3 computer model, and with it a best-selling book called Limits to Growth that was one of the earliest warnings of a global ecological crisis). Since then, a wide variety of disciplines have realized that systems thinking offers some singular tools for getting ahold of the complexities of our ever-more-chaotic universe, helping us find the proper focus on things, and distilling unwieldy problems down to their essence so that the right solutions can emerge.
One of the cool things about studying the behavior of systems that all of them -- economic, ecological, biological, political, cultural, or mechanical -- consistently behave in ways that cause them to succeed or fail in much the same way. This observation greatly simplifies our ability to understand of the world, once we learn to look for the common recurring patterns. As a quick way of teaching this awareness, an early systems teacher named Draper Kauffman (who happens to be our only Boy King's first cousin, once removed -- yet more proof that not even his own family can talk sense to him) set down 28 rules that seem to apply to the behavior of all kinds of systems. It's kind of like those little "101 Life Lessons" books you get at Borders, only this one encapsulates the life philosophy of a bunch of systems geeks at MIT.
They're not scientific laws, exactly, but a list of rules-of-thumb that should be kept in mind by anybody who's trying to suss out how any kind of system works, and how you're gonna make it change so it's more to your liking. And since that's pretty much everybody who reads this blog and wonders how we can restore a political and social system that's obviously in tremendous flux, I thought I'd offer y'all a set for your own cognitive toolkit.
Twenty-eight rules is a lot, so I'll start with the first seven, and add the rest in future posts. The rule is in bold; Kauffman's original commentary follows in italics; and the plain text after each one is mine. Here we go:
1. Everything is connected to everything else. Real life is lived in a complex world system where all the subsystems overlap and affect each other. The common mistake is to deal with one subsystem in isolation, as if it didn't connect with anything else. This almost always backfires as other subsystems respond in unanticipated ways.
This is something that most educated Americans understood intuitively as we approached Iraq: there were interrelationships here that the White House hadn't accounted for, and pulling one string (removing Saddam) was going to create a cascade of effects that nobody could foresee -- though many of us knew it wouldn't be good. This was a triumph of foresight on the part of the American left, and a catastrophic failure of it on the right.
2. You can never do just one thing. This follows from rule #1: in addition to the immediate effects of an action, there will always be other consequences of it which ripple through the system.
Never follow a leader who can't explain at least four possible scenarios about what the second- and third-order effects of a proposed change will be. Not just one best-case scenario: you want to see a worst-case, a most-likely-case, and an off-the-wall case, too. If they haven't done these "what-if" thought exercises, they are the wrong person to be leading the charge.
3. There is no "away." Another corollary of #1. In natural ecosystems, in particular, you can move something from one place to another, you can transform it into something else, but you can't get rid of it. As long as it is on the Earth, it is part of the global ecosystem. The industrial poisons, pollutants, insecticides, and radioactive materials that we've tried to "throw away" in the past have all too often come back to haunt us because people didn't understand this rule.
A lot of the people and problems Dave [Neiwert, my co-blogger] writes about came about because people haven't yet given up on the naive fantasy that there is, in fact, an "away." We can send the brown and black folks "away," and that'll fix it. We can put criminals "away" in jail, and the things they learn there will never touch us. We can send our pollution "away" down the stream, where only the orcas will choke on it. We get in a lot of trouble when we overestimate the size of this tiny blue ball, and start to thinking that there's anywhere on it that's far enough "away" to hide our crimes against nature and each other.
4. TANSTAAFL: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Years ago, bars used to offer a "free lunch" as a way to draw customers. Of course, the drinks in those bars cost twice as much, so the lunches weren't really "free" at all. Similarly, in complex systems, what looks like the cheapest solution to a problem often turns out to be the most expensive one in the long run. TANSTAAFL is a way of saying, "Don't expect something for nothing -- there's always a hidden cost somewhere."
Fossil fuels have been a big free lunch, until we found out that there was no "away" with those, either. And now we're going to get to spend the next 50 years trying to pay for that long lunch. There are a couple lunches that look considerably cheaper right now -- biofuels and nukes among them -- but anybody who thinks those are going to be free is kidding themselves, too.
5. Nature knows best. Natural ecosystems have evolved over millions of years, and everything in them has a role to play. Be very suspicious of any proposal to alter or eliminate an apparently "useless" part of the system. If it looks useless, that just means that you don't understand its function, and the risk of doing harm is that much greater. When in doubt, be careful, and always try to find a "natural" solution to a problem if at all possible.
This rule is expressed in terms of biological systems, but it appliesto mechanical, economic, and political systems, too. Consider the fate of the American financial system in the 80s when New Deal-era regulations were repealed; or the state of our media since the original FCC laws were gutted.
People forgot those laws were there for a damned good reason, and let themselves get talked out of them. And now we may never get them back. In this case, it wasn't nature that knew best -- but older governments that had a much clearer grasp of the public good than our present ones do. (And isn't it a conservative value to start from the assumption that the traditional order is the way it is for very good reasons, and shouldn't be tampered with unless you're very sure about what you're doing?)
6. It ain't what you don't know that hurts you; it's what you DO know that ain't so. Beware of false assumptions about system behavior. When we are sure of something, we usually don't bother to look for proof that it is true and we may be blind to evidence that it is false. We are much more likely to make really big blunders when we act on false assumptions than when we are uncertain and aware of our own uncertainty.
Journalists wince when we hear this one; most of us are caught up by the wrong stuff we know on an all-too-regular basis. But the Bush adventure in Iraq is the ultimate morality play here, too.
7. "Obvious solutions" do more harm than good. All complex systems use negative feedback to negate external changes in the system. If you try to change something in the direct, "obvious" way, the system is going to treat your efforts like any other outside influences and do its best to neutralize them. The more energy you waste fighting the system head on, the more energy it will waste fighting back, and any gains you make will be only temporary at best. Finally, if you try hard enough and long enough, you will exhaust the system's ability to fight back--at which point the system will break down completely.
This lesson applies to almost every battle we're fighting these days. Implicit in this is that viral assaults (like the netroots) will be met by strong immune reactions; but the battle will go to the side that adapts fastest and can divert less energy toward the struggle. It also suggests that change (like, say, with global warming) isn't going to really start happening until the rationalizations, solutions, and chances for limited change within the current system have been completely exhausted.
OK: Kauffman's Rules, one thru seven. If you're intrigued by systems thinking and want to know more, one good place to start is The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, who applies these principles to organizations in one of the more remarkable management books I've ever read.
More to come.
- posted by Mrs. Robinson
desmoinesdem: "Two one-dish suppers without meat"
It ain't wabbit season, Doc
Thanks to demoinesdem for these cool recipies - we could all stand to eat less meat now and then - THANKS DEM!
I don't want to start an argument between the vegetarians and the carnivores. For years I never cooked with meat at home. Now I eat meat at home occasionally, but I still cook supper without it most of the time.
Even if you love your animal flesh, you might find these recipes useful when you need a dish to take to a potluck with friends who are vegetarians.
When I make these for supper, I don't bother with side dishes, as they are both satisfying and reasonably nutritious without sides.
Desmoinesdem's Tomato and Olive Wild Rice Casserole
(adapted from Wild Rice Cooking by Susan Carol Hauser)
I don't think I've ever taken this to a potluck without someone asking me for the recipe. It doesn't have eggs or wheat or nuts, so it's good if you may be serving people with those food allergies. It is not hard to make and is easily adaptable to your taste.
Wild rice can be very expensive. The best deal may be in the bulk section of your favorite grocery store. If you can get a bag of the real harvested wild rice (this will be mottled medium-brown in color), I prefer that to the California-grown wild rice, which is uniform in color and almost black. The California kind, which is what you'd probably find in the bulk food section, works fine in this dish, though.
To save money, you could probably make this dish with half wild rice and half regular brown rice, but I've never done that. Why not splurge on wild rice once in a while?
For a big gathering, double this recipe. For a small potluck, or for your own supper, make as indicated below. When I serve this at home, I don't bother making any side dishes, as this is quite filling. If you are single, you can re-heat the leftovers the next day without losing the flavor or texture.
1 cup uncooked wild rice
one chopped onion (small or medium, depending on how much you like onions)
a little butter or oil for sauteing
1 28-oz can chopped tomatoes or crushed tomatoes, undrained
up to 1 cup chopped ripe black olives (you can use less if you have very flavorful olives like kalamata)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
dried crushed chillies to taste (the kind you can sprinkle on pizza if you like it spicy)
grated cheese of your choice (up to 1 cup for cheddar or swiss or gruyere, but you can get away with less if you use a very flavorful cheese like asiago or halumi)
Rinse wild rice, drain and cook in 3 to 4 cups water until tender, about 40-45 minutes. To cook, bring the rice and water to a boil, stir, turn heat to low and cook covered, stirring occasionally. Drain the wild rice when it has finished cooking.
Meanwhile, saute onions in butter or oil. I saute them in a big saucepan that I can use as a casserole dish in the oven, so I have one less pan to clean later.
Grate the cheese and slice the olives in between stirring the onions. I buy pitted kalamata olives, which are easier to slice.
When the onions are soft, combine them with tomatoes, olives, oregano, crushed chillies, cooked wild rice and shredded cheese in a casserole dish. I like to sprinkle some wheat germ on top (see variation below). At this point you can cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight until you are ready to bake.
Bake the wild rice casserole covered at 350 F for about 45 minutes. If it’s coming out of the fridge, you’ll need to bake a little longer. I like to take the cover off for the last 10 minutes in the oven to get it a little brown on top.
Variations:
-use 1 15-oz can tomatoes plus one cup water instead of the 28-oz can of tomatoes
-use different herbs in place of oregano
-leave out crushed chillies if you don't like spicy food
-saute 1 cup sliced mushrooms along with the onions
-sprinkle a few tablespoons of wheat germ on top before baking (don't add this if you are serving to someone who cannot tolerate wheat)
Desmoinesdem's Chinese-style noodles with nutty sauce
(adapted from Moosewood Collective's Moosewood Cooks at Home)
This is a true emergency dinner. I used to make it when my husband got home from work and I got home from grad school around 8:30 pm and we were starving.
It is also good if you've only got 30 minutes to make something to bring to a potluck. There's no egg or dairy here, so you don't have to worry about it sitting out for a while before people eat.
You don't have to cook the sauce; just stir together sauce ingredients while boiling the water for the pasta.
I don't want to start an argument with tofu-haters (and if memory serves, Steve is in this category). If you don't like tofu, leave it out and the dish will be fine. If you've got time to saute strips of chicken or some other meat while you are cooking the pasta for this dish, it would probably taste fine with that too, though I've never tried it.
1 pound pasta, any kind or shape (I like whole-wheat fusilli)
one-third cup peanut butter
one-third cup rice vinegar
one-fourth cup soy sauce or tamari (less if you are cutting back on sodium)
one-half cup hot water (I take from the pot as water is heating for pasta)
one-fourth cup toasted sesame oil (has to be the toasted kind to get the best flavor)
one-half teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder (available in the spice section of most groceries, even in Des Moines)
1 tablespoon fresh basil, sliced, or 1 teaspoon dried basil
1 minced or pressed garlic clove
a few dashes of hot sauce
1 cake extra-firm tofu
two or three scallions, sliced thin
Heat a large pot of water to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package instructions.
Meanwhile, whisk together all other ingredients except the tofu and scallions in large bowl.
Dice the tofu and slice the scallions.
When pasta is cooked, drain and stir into the sauce along with tofu and scallions.
Serve hot or at room temperature. It keeps well for lunch or dinner the next day.
Variations:
-use almond butter or cashew butter instead of peanut butter (this is good for potlucks if you think someone has a peanut allergy)
-use one small leek, sliced thin, instead of scallions
-leave out the scallions or leek if uncooked onion bothers you
-leave out garlic if uncooked garlic bothers you
-leave out hot sauce if you don't like spicy food
-peel and shred some raw carrots and stir these in at the end
-use five-spice or marinated tofu
-cook any fresh or frozen green vegetable, such as broccoli, peas or green beans, while pasta is cooking and stir in along with everything else at the end.
- posted by desmoinesdem
Ditty: "Portrait of George W. Bush: The Global Makeover"
Thanks to Ditty for this hilarious cross-post - THANKS D!
"Portrait of George W. Bush: The Global Makeover"
Jerry van Eyk
President Bush insisted that the painting of his official portrait, which would join all the others in Washington's National Portrait Gallery, fully reflect his role as a world leader. He felt that the turban was a necessity in this day and age, and he thought that the yellow facial tinting would make him more approachable to the Eastern hemisphere.
The painter van Eyk was the first Depressionist artist to be given the honor of painting the Presidential portrait, and he made it appropriately dark and somber. The "turban" is actually an old Soviet Union flag, a gift from the President's new best buddy, Vladimir Putin.
This portrait led to other Capitol Hill work for van Eyk, most notably "Rugless: the True Trent Lott," and "Senator Strom Thurmond as an Advocate Centerfold."
- posted by Ditty
Video: Pam Atlas Shrugged Parody "Atlas Juggs"
Labels: wingnuttery
A must watch (via Atrios) - particularly after you've sat through something like this:
the resemblance is amazing, isn't it?
- posted by Jim in LA
Watson: "Matt Taibbi on Iraq, Viet Nam, Warmongering, and Thomas Friedman"
Moustache Rides - 5¢
Thanks to Watson for finding this great Friedman takedown by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone - THANKS WATSON!
Matt Taibbi has landed at Rolling Stone after getting bounced from the New York Press because not enough people saw the humor in his 2005 piece 'The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope' (not for the squeamish). Taibbi's explanation of that story is here.
His latest article 'Right War, Wrong Tactics' is inspired by Thomas Friedman's 3/7/07 NYT column 'Don't Ask, Don't Know, Don't Help'. It contains some interesting observations, and a well-deserved takedown of Mr. Friedman.
Taibbi:'What we have to remember about America's half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. ... we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. That's why to this day we're still hearing about how Vietnam was lost because a) the media abandoned the war effort b) the peace movement undermined the national will and c) the public, and the Pentagon, misread the results of the Tet offensive, seeing defeat where there actually was a victory.
'After a few decades of that, we were ready to go to war again [in Iraq] -- all we had to do, we figured, was keep the cameras away from the bloody bits, ignore the peace movement, and blow off any and all bad news from the battlefield. And we did all of these things for quite a long time in Iraq, but, maddeningly, Iraq still turned out to be a failure.
'That left the war apologists in a bind. If after fixing all of the long-held Vietnam excuses Iraq could still blow up in our faces, that must mean that we not only misjudged Iraq, but we were wrong about why Vietnam failed, too. Now, if we're ever going to pull one of these stunts again, we're going to need to come up with a grander, even more outlandish excuse for why both wars were horrible, bloody failures.
...
'[According to Friedman] both Vietnam and Iraq failed not because they were stupid, vicious occupations of culturally alien populations that despised our very presence and were willing to sacrifice scads of their own lives to send us home. No, the problem was that we didn't make an effort to "re-evaluate tax and spending policies" and "shift resources" into an "all-out" war effort.
'We're talking about one of the richest men in media, a guy who in recent years got still richer beating the drum for this war from his $9.3 million, 11,400 square-foot mansion in suburban Maryland. He is married to a shopping mall heiress worth nearly $3 billion; the Washingtonian says he is part of one of the 100 richest families in America. And yet he has the balls to turn around and tell us that the pointless, asinine war he cheerleaded for failed because we didn't sacrifice enough for it.
...
'[T]rust me, the myth is going to be that you didn't cough up enough for the war. It's your fault we failed, not Tom Friedman's.'
link
- posted by Watson
Congrats to Josh Marshall and TPM
POST MASTERS: Josh Marshall, left, owns and runs TPM Media. Talking Points Memo also led in chronicling the scandals involving GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “Hundreds of people out there send clips and other tips,” Marshall said. “There is some real information out there, some real expertise.” With him is reporter Paul Kiel.
(Carolyn Cole / LAT)
Make sure you check out the great profile on Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo from Saturday's LA Times. It's a great read, very flattering and even says the unspeakable: that electronic journalism is doing things that traditional print isn't covering - or following as they should.
Congrats to Josh and his team at TPM - one of my favorite sites, for sure.
- posted by Jim in LA
Labels: blogosphere, media
DrBopperTHP: "Wired.com - Yahoo Betrayed My Husband"
Thanks to DrBopperTHP for this sad but important story- THANKS DR!
'Yahoo Betrayed My Husband'
By Luke O'Brien
FAIRFAX, Virginia -- Early one Sunday morning in 2002, a phone rings in Yu Ling's Beijing duplex. She's cleaning upstairs; her son is asleep, while downstairs, her husband, Wang Xiaoning, is on the computer. Wang writes about politics, anonymously e-mailing his online e-journals to a group of Yahoo users. He's been having problems with his Yahoo service recently. He thinks it's a technical issue. This is the day he learns he's wrong.
Wang picks up the phone: "Yes?"
"Are you home?" asks the unfamiliar voice on the other end.
"Yes."
The line goes dead.
Moments later, government agents swarm through the front door -- 10 of them, some in uniform, some not. They take Wang away. They take his computers and disks. They shove an official notice into Yu's hands, tell her to keep quiet, and leave. This is how it's done in China. This is how the internet police grab you.
Five years later, Yu, 55, sits in the dining room of a small house in Fairfax and weeps softly. She is a slight woman -- 100 pounds and barely 5 feet tall in slippers. Her eyes betray her exhaustion; but she is determined, too. She carries a thick stack of notes with her, and she has scrawled more on her left hand.
"Yahoo betrayed my husband and deprived him of freedom," Yu says through a translator, her voice trembling. "Yahoo must learn its lesson."
Yu's husband is now in Beijing Prison No. 2, serving a 10-year sentence for inciting subversion with his pro-democracy internet writings. According to the written court verdict, the Chinese government convicted Wang, in part, on evidence provided by Yahoo.
- posted by DrBopperTHP
Wes Cheek: "The Problem with the Problem with Nazi Analogies"
An unfortunate pose
thanks to Wes Cheek for this great cross-post - THANKS WES!
Godwin’s law tells us that internet conversations inevitably migrate towards Nazi analogies and therefore loose their usefulness. This may very well be true, but it presents me with a slight problem.
As I stated in an earlier post, I am currently rereading Antony Beevor’s brilliant history of the Battle of Stalingrad. On page 67, Field Marshal Paulus receives a letter from Major Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who usually served on the general staff but had recently been serving on the Russian Front. He writes:How refreshing it is to get away from this atmosphere to surroundings where men give of their best without a thought, and give their lives too, without a murmur of complaint, while the leaders and those who should set an example quarrel and quibble about their own prestige, or haven’t the courage to speak their minds on a question which affects the lives of thousands of their fellow men.
You can see our problem. This is obviously two Nazis having a conversation. It is also, obviously, very poignant. Beyond that, it is also, again obviously, relevant. One Nazi making an accurate observation to another Nazi that provides us with an insight that can be relevant to us today, is that something that we should pretend not to notice?
Hitler’s big problem is that he was a genocidal maniac who exterminated people by the millions. He had lots of other problems. One of them pertained to his abilities as a military commander. As implied by von Stauffenberg’s letter above, Hitler had intimidated people away from commenting on his mistakes. Further, as can be evidenced in Beevor’s superb book, he was content only with yes men who would provide him with information that related to the reality he desired to believe. People who brought him the truth were quickly upbraided and filtered out. This factor played a great role in the disaster at Stalingrad.
We, however, are not supposed to discuss this. You see, using names like Paulus and von Stauffenberg are too subtle. We can only say ‘Nazi’ and then think how wrong it is to think along those lines. What other military figures are we not allowed to discuss? Stalin? The name has a pretty big shadow over it, but people use it. Shaka Zulu? Kamehameha the Great? Sitting Bull? Vo Nguyen Giap?
When someone presents their self as the military leader of a country, they deserve to be judged by those standards. One of the most influential and well documented figures in that coterie was Hitler. We can look at his record and analyze what was wrong. Now, it is obvious that the comparison being made in this piece is to Iraq. Does that mean to imply that President Bush would like to gas Jews? No, of course not. Does it insinuate that he might grow a mustache? Never. Is it possible he might do meth until he goes impotent? Possible, but irrelevant. Is it feasible that he would be so blinded by his own vision that he would discount the facts and surround himself with people who would do the same making the soldiers who served under him suffer needlessly? You make the call.
I have a unifying theory about life here in Japan; when you treat people like children, they will act like children. That is just as true in the realm of American debate. We have internalized equivocation. We have traded accuracy for mediocrity because sometimes precision is scary. Is it immature to say ‘Bush is a Nazi’? Yes, of course it is. It is also stupid. But, it is more juvenile to write off history as context because we are afraid that someone will take our argument and simplify it. I read von Stauffenberg’s letter as an indictment of a hierarchy in thrall to their own self-importance. It was written by a Nazi, to a Nazi about Nazis and it is relevant to our discourse today. That is my problem with the problem with Nazi analogies.
- posted by Wes Cheek
Seitan Worshipper: "Furor Over Baptist's Gay-Baby Article"
Not if the Baptists have anything to do about it
Thanks to Seitan Worshipper for this great find - THANKS SW!!Furor Over Baptist's Gay-Baby Article
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer
NEW YORK Mar 14, 2007 (AP)— The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has incurred sharp attacks from both the left and right by suggesting that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., one of the country's pre-eminent evangelical leaders, acknowledged that he irked many fellow conservatives with an article earlier this month saying scientific research "points to some level of biological causation" for homosexuality.
Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality which they view as sinful is a matter of choice that can be overcome through prayer and counseling.
However, Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was assailed even more harshly by gay-rights supporters. They were upset by his assertion that homosexuality would remain a sin even if it were biologically based, and by his support for possible medical treatment that could switch an unborn gay baby's sexual orientation to heterosexual.
"He's willing to play God," said Harry Knox, a spokesman on religious issues for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group. "He's more than willing to let homophobia take over and be the determinant of how he responds to this issue, in spite of everything else he believes about not tinkering with the unborn."
So, I guess these guys are "pro-life" - except if the kid'll turn out queer...
- posted by Seitan Worshipper
Walter Reed Blog
Labels: Walter Reed. hospital
He can design, too
A reader sent this link along to an interesting blog on Blogspot by an anonymous soldier being treated at Walter Reed.
It's always important to hear the voices of our men and women in uniform directly, as opposed to filtered through the media or with overseers standing behind them.It is easier for me to write than to speak.
And with the high profile types we have walking the campus now it is almost necessary to have a reply to some basic questions set upon the shelf.
Them: How is Walter Reed treating you?
Me: I have recieved excellent medical treatment here.
Them: Why are you here?
Me: Didn't move fast enough.
Them: What can we do to make Walter Reed better?
Me: I cannot speak for Army or DoD policy and I believe this a question better answered by my Commander or the Public Affairs Office, sir.
What I want to say:
Me: Have you visited Walter Reed in the past two years, sir?
Them:No
Me: Then you are part of the problem by ignoring us, sir.
or
Me: Have you visited Walter Reed in the past two years, sir?
Them: Yes
Me: Then you are part of the problem, because you haven't fixed anything yet, sir.
Not that I would ever say that, but I sleep better at night thinking that it might change things.
Posted by @WR
Check it out - challenging and well written.
- posted by Jim in LA
DrBopperTHP: "Future Soldier"
I'm Captain America (black uni' version) Bitch!!! Spidey ain't got nuthin' on me.
Thanks to DrBopperTHP for finding this cool article - THANKS DR!
"By using high technology and cutting edge biomedicine, the military hopes to create an entire army of Captain Americas – a fighting force made up of super-soldiers whose human-ness has been all but banished."
Even if you never read the comic book or watched the hopelessly low-production-value 1960s cartoon, chances are you've at least seen the image of Captain America – the slightly ridiculous looking superhero in a form-fitting, star-spangled bodysuit. If you're still hazy on "Cap," he was Steve Rogers, a 4-F weakling during World War II who, through the miracle of "modern science" (a "super soldier serum") became an Axis-smashing powerhouse – the pinnacle of human physical perfection and the ultimate American fighting-man.
In the 1940s comic, Rogers had taken part in a super-soldier experiment, thanks to the interventions of an Army general and a scientist in a secret government laboratory. He was to be the first of many American super-soldiers, but due to poor note-keeping methods and the efforts of a Nazi assassin, he became the sole recipient of the serum. Today, however, the dream of Captain America turns out to be alive and well – and lodged in the Pentagon. The U.S. military aims to succeed where those in the four-color comic book world failed. By using high technology and cutting edge biomedicine, the military hopes to create an entire army of Captain Americas – a fighting force devoid of "Steve Rogers" or any other "Joe Average," and made up instead of super-soldiers whose human-ness has been all but banished.
24-Hour Soldiers
The military has long been interested in creating an always-on, 24-hour fighting man. During the Vietnam War, the Army undertook extensive studies on the effects of sleep deprivation. At the time, however, all the military could offer was copious amounts of amphetamines to keep men wired for combat.
As in the Vietnam era, the military is again stretched thin and, with National Guard recruiting having fallen 12 percent below goal in the first three quarters of 2004, in need of troops. What better way to forestall future manpower crises than by creating two-for-the-price-of-one soldiers who never need to sleep?
To this end, the Department of Defense's blue-skies research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), currently has a "Preventing Sleep Deprivation Program." Its aim is to work on ways to enable a pilot "to fly continuously for 30 hours," Green Berets to carry out 48-72 hours of sustained activity, or "advancing ground troops [to] engage in weeks of combat operations with only 3 hours of sleep per night" – all without suffering from cognitive or psychomotor impairments.
Scientists in the military-industrial-academic complex are hard at work for DARPA on this line of research. At Wake Forest University, for instance, researchers are studying a class of medicines known as "Ampakines" which are thought to be protective against the cognitive deficits ordinarily associated with sleep deprivation. At Columbia University, new imaging technologies are being employed as part of a program to study the "neuro-protective and neuro-regenerative effects" of an anti-oxidant found in cocoa. (In low-tech World War II, they just gave the grunts chocolate bars.) Who's conducting this line of research for DARPA? Why, researchers at the Salk Institute and also at that all-chocolate-all-the-time company Mars Inc. – yes, the folks who bring you M&M's and Snickers!
At the same time, the Air Force Research Laboratory's Warfighter Fatigue Countermeasure program is looking into a drug known as Modafinil which can reportedly keep people awake for up to 88 hours without sleep; while researchers at the Naval Health Research Center (NHRC), the Space and Naval Warfare Systemshttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Center (SPAWAR), the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, among others, are working on sleep- (or-lack-thereof)-related projects.
Major Morality, You're Demoted
Sleepless soldiers are all well and good while the fighting goes on; but how does one prevent sleepless, anxiety-filled nights after those missions end? Once upon a time, it seems, most soldiers had a great revulsion against close-quarters killing. During World War II, it has been estimated that as few as 15-20% of American infantry troops actually fired their weapons at the enemy. By the Vietnam years, the military had managed to bring that number up into the 90-95% range! Obviously, the armed forces had found ways to turn American men into more efficient killers. But how to deal with the pesky problems of regret, remorse, and post-traumatic stress disorder?
Well, last year, writing in the Village Voice, Erik Baard raised the specter of the creation of a "guilt-free soldier," noting that researchers from various universities across the U.S. (including Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and UC-Irvine) were working on various methods of fear-inhibition and also memory-numbing by using "propranolol pills... as a means to nip the effects of trauma in the bud." He further reported that at Columbia, the lab of Nobel laureate in medicine Eric Kandel had "discovered the gene behind a fear-inhibiting protein, uncovering a vision of 'fight or flight' at the molecular level." When asked by Baard if he was funded by DARPA, Kandel answered, "No, but you're welcome to call them and tell them about me."
Will DARPA take Kandel up on his tacit offer? It seems only natural that a soldier unburdened by morals, ethics, or remorse would be the military's dream. But for now, DARPA seems fixated on another long-term project – creating cyborg soldiers – which might make an anti-morality morning-after (combat) pill superfluous.
Remote-Controlled Soldiers?
As noted recently in the pages of the New Yorker, searching for perks to retain troops, the military is offering free cosmetic surgery (funded by taxpayer dollars) to "[a]nyone wearing a uniform." So right now "bigger breasts" are the type of implants the U.S. military is specializing in. (Military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements between 2000 and 2003.) However, if DARPA scientists have their way, the implants du jour of the future may be the product of the "Brain Machine Interface Program" which seeks "new high-density interconnects for brain machine interfaces that will allow [researchers] to monitor the brain patterns associated with a wide variety of behaviors and activities relevant to DoD [the Department of Defense]."
Monkeys, with electrodes implanted in their brains, have already been taught to use thought-power to do such things as move a robotic arm. But why stop there? A few years back, DARPA scientists succeeded in creating a "ratbot" – a living, breathing rat with electrodes implanted in its brain that could be controlled using a laptop computer. Today, DARPA researchers, not exactly heading up the evolutionary scale but evidently proceeding toward larger sized natural fighting machines, are working on a remote-controlled shark. And how long will it be until some researcher gets the bright idea of a remote-controlled soldier; short-circuiting free will altogether? The technology isn't there yet, but what happens when it is?
DARPA already has all sorts of programs designed to use high-tech means to prevent humans from "becoming the weakest link in the U.S. military." Take the "Neovision Program" whose goal is "using synthetic materials for a retinal prosthesis to enable signal transduction at the nerve/retina interface"; that is, creating devices to technologically-enhance or even re-conceptualize human vision as we know it. Or how about the Biologically Inspired Multifunctional Dynamic Robotics (BIODYNOTICS) Program, which aims to develop "robotic capabilities," inspired by biology -such as the movements of arms and legs – "for national security applications."
Foodless Fighters? Water-free Warriors?
But what good is an always-on, morals-free cyborg soldier if s/he's caught in the classic quagmire of having recurring desires to eat and drink which simply must be met? How pathetically human! Not to worry. Today's soldiers might complain about choking down MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) but, if all goes well, tomorrow's might not have such worries.
Typical adults require about 1500-2000 calories per day, but Special Forces' troops may require as many as 6,000-8,000 calories per day while in the field. Taking time to eat, however, cuts into time that could be spent identifying targets or killing people, so DARPA's "Peak Soldier Performance Program" is investigating ways of "optimizing metabolic performance" to achieve "metabolic dominance" and so to allow future soldiers to operate at "continuous peak physical performance and cognitive function for 3 to 5 days, 24 hours per day, without the need for calories."
At the same time, the DARPA crew has instituted a "Water Harvesting Program" which seeks to "eliminate at least 50 percent of the minimum daily water supply requirement (7qts/day) of the Special Forces, Marine Expeditionary Units, and Army Medium-Weight Brigades" through initiatives such as deriving "water from air."
And when it comes to their meals, perhaps someday soldiers will be able forgo water altogether for long periods of time thanks to the efforts of the Combat Feeding Directorate of the US Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts. Yes, the lab that created the "indestructible sandwich" (which boasts a three year shelf life) has now come up with a dried-food ration that troops can hydrate by urinating on it. And you thought military food was piss-poor to begin with!
Super-Suits: Can I Get This in Star-Spangled Spandex?
What can you say about Captain America's outfit? While certainly distinctive, his red, white, and blue threads were always a bit light on function. So what can we expect for the real Captain Americas of the future? They won't be clad in jingoistic jumpsuits. The Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center is currently supervising a seven-year, $250 million "Future Force Warrior" program, set to be rolled out in 2010, which will outfit soldiers with new, lighter body armor, an on-board computer, "e-textile" clothing (with wiring for computer systems woven into it), and a helmet with built-in night-vision, a computer screen monocle, and bone-conduction microphones. Add a decade onto the Future Force Warrior and the military aims to be rolling out "The Vision 2020 Future Warrior system," an all-black, sci-fi, storm-trooper outfit that looks like it came from a B-movie prop trailer. But both may seem so last year before they ever have a chance to encase a military body!
Earlier this year, Dr. Steven G. Wax, the director of DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO), addressed members of the academic, corporate, and military communities and told them that the mech-suit worn by Sigourney Weaver in the movie Alien was fast becoming a reality. While various clunky exoskeletons have been produced since the 1960s, Wax indicated that "breakthroughs in structures, actuators and power generation – with a bit of help from advanced microelectronics" left DARPA capable of creating a workable "external structure that can move unobtrusively with a soldier and still carry more than 100 pounds with no effort by the wearer." And through its "Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation" program, DARPA claims to be en route to creating even more advanced "self-powered, controlled, and wearable exoskeleton devices and/or machines" specifically designed, of course, to "increase the lethality" of U.S. soldiers.
Food for Thought
In a world where many still lack access to adequate clothing, despite it being decreed a basic human right in 1948, DARPA is pouring massive sums into building costly robotic suits. In a world where 800 million people suffer from malnutrition and 1 billion lack access to potable water, food and water are only made "sexy" when DARPA researchers figure out how a few (well armed) people in the global North can do without them on military missions (generally in the global South). There's no DARPA-esque organization involved in actually solving the most pressing problems in the world. And yes, while some in the developing world could benefit from possible DARPA spin-off, trickle-down innovations like futuristic prosthetic limbs, many, many more could benefit from low-cost, low-tech public health initiatives. Of course, many would have no need for high-tech prosthetics if, for so many years, the U.S. military hadn't pumped so much money into weapons, especially landmine research and production. (In Vietnam, for instance, as many as 3 million landmines and "800,000 tons of war-era ordnance" may still lie in the ground.)
DARPA's chunk of the vast Pentagon budget is a cool $3 billion, a sizeable hunk of which is now being devoted to creating real-life Captain Americas or, more accurately Captain DARPAmericas. Like so many DARPA projects, the agency's efforts to craft the super-soldiers of tomorrow typify the ultimate in sci-fi thinking. What was once the stuff of comic books and futuristic movie serials is now assumed to be America's military future.
In reality, however, most DARPA projects fail to meet their ultimate goals. During the Vietnam War, massive amounts of money, firepower, and high-tech weaponry proved unable to stamp out an enemy that regularly used punji sticks (sharpened bamboo) as a weapon. Today in Iraq, billions upon billions of dollars in military and intelligence spending for satellites, state-of-the-art surveillance devices, stealth bombers, fighter jets, tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Humvees, heavy weapons, night-vision devices, high tech drones, experimental weaponry and all the trappings of Technowar, though capable of killing large numbers of people, are again unable to stop resistance fighters who lack heavy armor, airpower, spy satellites, body armor, or high-tech gear and fight with AK-47s – a rifle designed in the 1940s – pickup trucks, and bombs detonated by garage-door openers. Captain DARPAmerica – an always on, never hungry or thirsty, morality-free, remote-controlled soldier – is a frightening prospect; but odds are, even if such DARPA projects pan out, the high-tech super-soldier of our future will fail too, due to underlying conceptual flaws and the ceaseless hubris of U.S. military planners that typified the American experience in Vietnam and continues to do so in today's war in Iraq.
Further, DARPA imagines the future through the lens of the present. Its projects are largely typified, at their core, by the very opposite of blue-sky thinking, being mired in the mindset and premises of today (or even yesterday). Where Pentagon seers envision an Army of unstoppable comic-book heroes, they may well find over-wrought, strung-out soldiers, suffering from the still unknown side-effects that are sure to come from interfering with basic human functions like sleeping and eating. They will be clad in temperamental gear that will prove vulnerable to yet undeveloped, but sure to be cheap, crude, and effective jamming devices and counter-measures. Odds are, the Pentagon would be better off investing in Captain America outfits. Not only would it be infinitely cheaper, but who's gonna mess with a platoon clad in star-spangled spandex?
Nicholas Turse is doctoral candidate at the Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He writes regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate complex as well as for the Village Voice. Posted October 16, 2004.
The Doctor sez:
Despite it's supposed pullback from it's vaunted Land Warrior/Mounted Warrior programs last year (part of it's, to date, $300 Billion plus and growing "Future Combat System" program) the Pentagon and DARPA still have some real goodies cooking slowly on their back burners. Check out your gub'mints continuing research/plans for the development of the "Super Soldier" of scifi mythos. Quite a recipe of soft science (neuro/bio) and hard science (materials/tech) ingredients being stirred up in the old cauldron of war.
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/programs.htm
Particularly scary areas of research:
(**** = R-E-A-L-L-Y scary!! Mary Shelley-type shit!!!))
Peak Soldier Performance
Preventing Sleep Deprivation
Training Superiority (DARWARS)
Revolutionizing Prosthetics
Engineered Bio-Molecular Nano-Devices/Systems **** ****
Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation ****
Z-Man ****
Human-Assisted Neural Devices ****
Soldier Self Care
Restorative Injury Repair **** ****
Surviving Blood Loss ****
Improving Warfighter Information Intake Under Stress (AugCog)
Intestinal Fortitude
Neurotechnology for Intelligence Analysts
Neovision
Info Links:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore_pr.html
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/02/tony_tether_has_1.html
- posted by DrBopperTHP (Capt. America R.I.P. 2007)
eos0000: "Looking Southward"
Labels: soccer
That fateful view
thanks to eos0000 for this great post on soccer - THANKS EOS!
This week, two Mexican clubs -- Chivas and Pachuca -- will travel to the United States to face MLS sides DC United and Houston Dynamo in the first legs of the semifinals of the CONCACAF Champions' Cup. The winner will receive a berth in this year's World Club Cup in Japan; the runner-up (and possibly one or both of the other teams -- this is CONCACAF, where at least one of the C's stands for "confusion") will be invited to the Copa Sudamericana.
But that might not be the most important tournament pitting MLS teams against Mexican foes this year.
This summer, four Mexican clubs (Chivas and Pachuca, again, plus América and Morelia) will travel to the US for the inaugural SuperLiga -- a made-for-television competition featuring David Beckham (eventually) plus a million-dollar prize for the winner.
Between this new tourney, the Interliga (which determines which Mexican clubs qualify for the Copa Libertadores), and a seemingly unending series of national team and club friendly matches, it sometimes seems like more Mexican soccer is played in the United States than in Mexico itself.
It's all because somebody -- actually, two sets of somebodies -- has finally figured out how to make money from soccer in America.
As suggested above, the first set would be the FMF (the Mexican football federation) and Mexican clubs, who have been making money hand over fist, thanks to the higher ticket prices possible in the US, television rights fees, merchandise sales, etc.
And the second set of somebodies would be MLS, whose ownership groups have hit upon a workable formula: the combination of low expenses (especially when it comes to the majority of players' salaries) and mid-size soccer-specific stadia controlled by the teams (which nonetheless can be rented out for concerts, rodeos, sports like lacrosse and rugby, etc., ad infinitum) can actually be profitable.
The idiosyncrasy of both these approaches means that American sports businessmen with hundreds of millions of dollars burning holes in their pockets (like the Glazers, like Hicks & Gillett) who'd like to make money off of the beautiful game end up looking for those profits elsewhere. And, thanks to a welcoming business climate, a lack of institutional impediments, and, possibly, a common language, they're going to England.
But the English (and European) football machine doesn't just require large sacks of cash to keep it running at its most profitable; it requires a neverending supply of players -- domestically trained if possible, imported when necessary. Long story short: hundreds (if not thousands) of Brazilians and other South American soccer players end up plying their trade in Europe.
(Even though there may be a comparatively small number of Brazilians in the Premiership, the continuing influx of other foreign players (French, Spaniards, other Europeans, etc.) creates openings in other leagues for Brazilian players.)
Despite the continuing drain of talent to Europe, South American clubs are still well-supported and their competitive standards have remained high. The main problems -- especially in Brazil -- would seem to be organizational; for example, the Brazilian first division has historically been less important than the bigger state championships, and even its recent history (with numerous rules changes) has been checkered at best.
Even so, the Brazilian game would seem to represent an immense opportunity for the sporting entrepreneur able to bring some order to the chaos; if anyone were able to gain some control continuing stream of players to Europe -- and the transfer fees coming the other way, that individual or organization could make astronomical amounts of money.
One Brazilian club -- Corinthians -- recently tried to do just that, signing a deal with the international fund MSI, bringing in the Argentine stars Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano among others. But then both Tévez and Mascherano were transferred to West Ham under extemely murky circumstances, and the relationship between the club and its investors has apparently deteriorated, to put it mildly.
So who might be capable of succeeding where Corinthians and MSI failed?
Over the past decade, Mexican soccer has become more and more entwined with that of South America; at the same time, US soccer has become more and more tied to that of Mexico -- the new Superliga just represents the latest and greatest example of cooperation between them.
And between them, there are quite a few really, really, really, really rich people and organizations (the Mexican network Televisa, Philip Anschutz among others) who could conceivably take profitable advantage of the footballing situation in South America.
But will they?
- posted by eos0000
Pants: "Schadenfreude Is the Force that Gives Me Meaning"
Labels: Bush
Bush 2000
Bush 2007
thanks to Pants for this photoplay on then-and-now Bush - THANKS PANTS!
While we all decry the state of our country under the stewardship of the Worst President in the History of the Republic, it is fun watching the Presidential Crack-Up. George W. Bush has gone from a healthy- but stupid-looking smirking chimp to a gray-haired castrated silverback. (This man has aged badly.) Because I do not believe in hell, I am hoping that his slide continues unabated. I won’t be happy to he’s shrieking bat-shit insane. (There has to be some sort of universal justice, right?)
Now let’s hope that fat fuck Cheney is haunted by the ghosts of the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Yeah, fat chance.
The sad thing is that none of these guys are likely to be held to account for their crimes and treason (hey, I'm all for impeachment, but the Dems are too chickenshit to make that work). But little snippets like the following indicate that BushCo.'s failures are penetrating even the thickest skulls in this administration.
From the Wayne Madsen Report:
Pretzel face
- posted by Pants
Jo Public: "JOE KLEIN on Obama and Sharpton"
Takes no guff
thanks to Jo Public for this good grab from Joe Klein's TIME blog - THANKS JO!
You know, being a white girl from Bensonhurst, I tend not to actively participate in discussions on race -- only because I know I'm not the most knowledgeable person on the subject. So in the past, when discussions would crop up here about, say, Barack Obama or Al Sharpton, I preferred to simply read what Steve, Lower Manhattanite and others have to say. I figured they're much better informed than I am, and if I shut up, I'll learn a thing or two. And I HAVE learned, and I appreciate it.
But those days are over. Everyone here can get outta the way. Because JOE KLEIN's on it.
link
Sharpton, obviously aggrieved by Obama's good press, says "Why shouldn't the black community ask questions? Are we now being told, 'You all just shut up?'"
No, just you, Al.
Well, I guess Sharpton has no choice but to shut up now. Because Joe Klein said he should. And what Joe Klein says, you know, matters and all.
- posted by Jo Public
Matthew Saroff: "Cox Sackers"
Labels: gonzales
Great analogy
Thanks to Matthew Saroff for this fantastic insight into the Gonzales US Attorney firings - THANKS MATTHEW!
The current attorney purge sounds a lot like the "Saturday Night Massacre' done by Nixon, when he fires special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both resigned rather than do the firing, so Robert "What, Me Ethics" Bork, swung the ax.
Does this mean that we can call GW Bush and Alberto Gonzales a bunch of Cox Sackers?
Doubtless, some on the right will claim that this is a crude and unfunny play on words. Our response should be that we are sick to death of the self-important, humorless, politically correct right wingers.
For many years now, the backlash against "political correctness" has been one of the defining features of the right's critique of the reality based community, and turnabout is fair play.
- posted by Matthew Saroff
blksista: "Newshounds.com - Mark Fuhrman Too Racially Sensitive For Hannity"
Labels: racism
thanks to blksista for this great find - THANKS!
From Newshounds.com:Yes, you read that right. Mark Fuhrman was the guest on tonight’s Hannity & Colmes (3/14/07) to discuss the pending Grand Jury decision on the case of the unarmed bridegroom, Sean Bell, shot and killed by policemen in New York City last fall. One of Hannity’s favorite black boogeymen, Councilman Charles Barron, was the other guest. Rather than discuss the facts of the Bell case, Hannity and FOX News made the story about Barron and his alleged incitement to violence.
....
When it was his turn, Hannity quickly went to Mark Fuhrman for a comment on the case.
Barron said what I suspect a lot of non-bigots must have been thinking: “Mark Fuhrman? You have a lot of nerve bringing him on!”
Hannity, in his bullyboy voice, read a quote from Barron and asked Fuhrman, “Is he inciting a riot?”
But to Hannity’s evident chagrin, Fuhrman didn’t think so. Fuhrman replied, “He’s crafting the words very carefully… I’m not sure it would be a threat or a passionate response.”
Hannity interrupted Fuhrman in an obvious effort to egg him on against Barron.
Other Democrats should take a lesson from Barron on how to handle Hannity. Barron didn’t sit there like a lump and wait for the invective against him to stop. He knew his opponent and seized the moment. He interrupted Hannity by saying, “Let (Fuhrman) talk.” Then the canny Barron said, “Mark, you didn’t say what he wanted to hear.”
- posted by blksista
Watson: "Quotes on Iraq"
Labels: Iraq
Oops
Thanks to Watson for gathering these recent quotes on Iraq - THANKS WATSON!
Here are a couple of recent takes on Iraq that Steve might agree with:"Maliki will be the fall guy and a new Washington/Green Zone-engineered "coalition", led by perennial favorite [Iwad] Allawi, will usurp his power in Parliament. This coup-in-the-making has been rumored in Baghdad for months. At least this is how the ideal Bush administration scenario develops.
"From a Bush administration point of view Allawi's legitimacy is a minor issue - as most Iraqi members of Parliament would rather legislate by remote control from London anyway. In real life the masses, Sunni or Shi'ite, despise them and totally ignore them. The really popular leaders in Iraq are, religiously, Grand Ayatollah Sistani and, politically, Muqtada al-Sadr - whose reach also includes a great deal of moderate Sunnis.
Sadrism, apart from the excesses of a minority, is in essence a nationalist liberation movement. Thus, for axis-of-evil cheerleaders, inevitably it is as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah."
- Pepe Escobar, The Asia Times, 3/12/07
How will they engineer the switch? According to Juan Cole on 3/11/07, it may take the form of a 'judicial coup' initiated by (a perhaps unwitting) Maliki:"Parliamentarians from the Sadr Bloc vowed that they would resist
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's plans to dismiss 5 out of 6 cabinet ministers from their party. The Sadrists have 32 seats in the Iraqi legislature, and their support was key to the election of al-Maliki last spring.
"KarbalaNews.net reports in Arabic that al-Maliki gave an interview in which he said that high judicial authorities are preparing indictments against members of parliament for involvement in militia and death squad activity. Maybe al-Maliki thinks he does not need the Sadrist MPs because so many of them will soon be in prison.
"Indeed, the scale of the indictments against sitting Iraqi representatives and officials hinted at by al-Maliki suggests a judicial coup.'
- Juan Cole, Informed Comment
- posted by Watson
Disgusted in St. Louis: "Colorado Slave Labor: Tom Tancredo's Dream Come True?"
Thanks to DinSL for this great cross-post - THANKS!
Inmates Will Replace Migrants in Colorado Fields (New York Times):As migrant laborers flee Colorado because of tough new immigration restrictions, worried farmers are looking to prisoners to fill their places in the fields.
In a pilot program run by the state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.
Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said.
The director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, Ari Zavaras, is a real comedian:“They won’t be paid big bucks, but we’re hoping this will help our inmates pick up significant and valuable job skills”
The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition's director, Christie Donner, had this to say in response:“This feels like the re-invention of the plantation.”
“You have a captive labor force essentially working for their room and board in order to benefit the employer. This isn’t a job training program. It’s an exploitative program.”
Unfortunately, this concept seems to be gaining acceptance elsewhere:Although chain gangs and prison farms have long been staples of American correctional culture, the concept of inmates working on private farms is unusual. But there are signs that other states are following suit. The Iowa Department of Corrections is considering a similar program because of a migrant labor shortage in that state.
Several Iowa farmers called recently to request inmates in lieu of migrant workers, said Roger Baysden, the director of the state’s prison industries program. One farmer asked for as many as 200 inmates, Mr. Baysden said.
All ties together doesn't it:
- posted by Disgusted in St. Louis
Tom Watson: "Party of Bigots"
National shame
A big thank you to Tom Watson for this terrific cross-post - THANKS TOM!
A few years ago, a business trip took me through some of the great battlegrounds on this continent. Birmingham. Montgomery. Tuskegee. Selma. To my tour guide at the time, a liberal white judge from Alabama, they were as sacred to the American text as Gettysburg and Yorktown. He spoke with deep reverence about the struggle of black pilots to fly in the Second World War, the bus boycott, the Freedom Riders, and the bombings in Birmingham. He didn't shy away from the personal history, either, and strongly recommended Diane McWhorter's Carry Me Home, the memoir of the daughter of a white supremacist family in Birmingham. Her story, he said, was the story of thousands of white sons and daughters of Alabama.
When we walked through the brilliant Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, he had a quiet suggestion: things change, Alabama has changed, we've all changed.
And he was right. We have changed. But lately, I've come to feel we're not as far down the road as many of us think we are. Even as Alabama does a bonanza business in civil rights tourism, the history feels nearer; the bigots in our grand American tapestry are not so neatly sown into the margins. They're right there in the middle. They have a place in the national party of bigotry.
One national political party does business with bigots - openly and in thinly-coded language.
One national party came to power on the strength of a regional strategy aimed at scratching the scars of the civil rights era till they bled, and delivered a stream of bloody-red electoral votes.
One national party tolerates bigoted speech at its national gatherings, on its mainstream blogs, and on the lips of its grand commentators and media wizards.
That party is the Republican Party - the only national party where bigotry is accepted and in some quarters, openly encouraged.
In what other political movement could a prominent commentator call another human being a "faggot" at a national conference and still possess a career or a pulpit; or worse, have apologists line up to wave it off as "humor." The Republican candidates all issued the usual statements about Ann Coulter's anti-gay attack on John Edwards, but they sounded like a platoon of little captains dressed like Claude Rains in Casablanca. Shocked, one and all.
"With a single word, Coulter sullied the hard work of hundreds of CPAC participants and exhibitors and tarred the collective reputation of thousands of CPAC attendees," mourned Michelle Malkin.
But Malkin's got it wrong - Coulter didn't sully the hard work of CPAC's tribe; she represented it. She didn't tar their collective reputation; she embodies it.
Keep in mind, these people cheered and applauded wildly after Coulter's remark. These are people who believe it was fair game, that they're fighting a righteous battle against the "homosexual agenda." Coulter didn't offend any of them.
Don't believe me? Go read the comments on Malkin's blog, or over at FreeRepublic, or any of the "mainstream" clubhouses where conservative Republicans hang their virtual hats. Or take a look at some of the hats and t-shirts they were selling in the hallways. Or watch MSNBC: I just watched Pat Buchanan call Coulter "courageous" and Tucker Carlson agreed with him. Intolerance sells to this crowd. Any candidate who speaks to CPAC must know that. Indeed, this was a return appearance for Coulter. They like her. Here's what she said last year, to raucous applause:
"I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"
Coulter's word offended like a back-hand to the face of our political conscience, but Newt Gingrich showed what the real Republican Party apparatus thinks in his remarks about New Orleans at the self-same Conservative Political Action Conference. Hurricane Katrina, declared almost-candidate Gingrich, merely uncovered:
"...the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."
Mmmmm. Those folks in the Ninth Ward aren't good citizens. We get it, Newt. We get it. Ever since Reagan's successful and utterly calculated southern strategy, one party has leaned hard on its end of the pool table - and done its best to collect the bigot vote. As blogger John Cole - no liberal - puts it:
Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the same visible, high profile, symptom of the problem with what is modern ‘conservatism.’ Throw in Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Dinesh D’Souza, and the rest, if you still don’t understand....the reason her comments are a problem is that the majority of the ‘conservative’ movement is dominated by people who think there is something wrong with homosexuality and that there are few things worse than being a “faggot.”
Prejudice doesn't leave us easily, and our collective march toward real civil rights is not as far along as many of us think. In this year's race for President, we have a woman, a black man, and a Mormon and each has taken the arrows of bigotry. After all, this is a country where Rush Limbaugh is a millionaire and Maureen Dowd collects a paycheck from the New York Times on the basis of her ability to stereotype; in her world, Barak Obama is a little boy in need of wise (white) counsel while Hillary Clinton is a "feral" woman, conniving and calculating.
I started this post recalling a trip to Alabama for a reason. Two Democrats were in Selma this weekend to commemorate the historic march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge, and while the press played the civil rights gathering as a battle between the Clintons and Obama for the black vote (some truth to that), I was struck by how the entire legacy of civil rights is anathema to Republicans and conservatives. It was easy to recall how the conservative intellectuals of the 50s and 60s, led by a young William F. Buckley, opposed civil rights.
Their legacy is a party in which hate and intolerance are winked at, shrugged off as humor, used in barely-coded language, and celebrated in electoral victories as "true conservatism."
UPDATE: Digby, as usual, gets it right: "For forty years the Republicans have been winning elections by calling liberals "faggots" (and "dykes") in one way or another. It's what they do. To look too closely at what she said is to allow light on their very successful reliance on gender stereotypes to get elected."
- posted by Tom Watson
DeeLuzon: "A Dream Team for the Ages"
Labels: 2008 race
Cute, cuddly, and electable
Thanks to DeeLuzon for this FIRST EVER POST - nice work, Dee!
if you're reading this, it's been accepted. as this is the first time i've ever posted anything more than a brief comment, please be kind!
anyway, here goes. i have a fantasy of how a bloodless revolution could be pulled off right here in the land-that-once-dreamed-of-a-more-perfect-union.
i was a post-war kid (born 1951) and learned most of what i know from new york's wor's "million dollar movies." this means that my sense of the twenty years before my birth was formed by a bunch of leftie hollywood writers (yeah, the more things change...). so, thanks to the brothers warner and sam goldwyn, i have always believed that the new deal was a really good thing which led inexorably to the civil rights movement, the great society and, among many other services originally devised for the benefit of the people and not the corporations, the food & drug administration. all good things. when i was a kid, we learned (in school, mind you. hell, in ELEMENTARY school!) about the tva bringing electricity to the rural south and desperate, depression oppressed masses finding work and dignity building great projects for the improvement of their country. by the time i was in college, bobby kennedy (who was the last politician who knew how to take our romantic awareness of the recent past, fuse it with the idealized hope of accomplishing similarly great things and then energize people to actually DO something) was dead and Nixon was in, bringing with him the young men who grew up to be the the lipless, white guys who've finally realized THEIR dreams of wiping out everything i thought was good about america in order to leap backwards in time to exactly the day before things began to get better. [on a side note - maybe, after the revolution, the reeducation program should consist of being confined to one's home with a cable selection that ranges from Turner Classic Movies to AMC to programming provided by the late, great Z channel in L.A.] What's amazing is that, despite interludes of carter (remember, the one who was destroyed for suggesting we turn down the thermostats and cut back on gas consumption?) and clinton (who hardly inspired civic idealism, but did eliminate the deficit and didn't want to feed school children catsup for lunch), the aging, lipless, white guys have managed to kill enough time working their self-interested magic that there's really no "recent past" about which to wax nostalgic, anymore.
in other (and lots fewer) words - if they're not teaching kids about evolution, i'm guessing there's not much talk of the tva, anymore. and i KNOW they're not teaching about how the titans of industry pooled their resources to create the materiel of WWII, let alone about guys like boeing and douglas working together to develop and streamline the production of planes and ... with the help of tens of thousands of people on the home front and at war, actually doing it. in a matter of months.
which moves me along to the notion of doing things, not talking about things. it ought not be just a nike slogan. they've turned us into a "service society" and all anyone does is talk about doing things or watch other people doing things on tv . it's not like there's nothing to do, either. there are all those roads to rebuild, all those schools to rebuild, all those hospitals to rebuild, all that liberty to rebuild. not to mention all those solar powered roof panels to build and install, all those efficient batteries to develop and mass produce, all those local farms and businesses to reestablish (so that safe, healthy food is available without having to ship it). and there are children to be taught. there are always children to be taught. and not just how to pass tests, but about what we are and how we've come to be what we are and how we might become even better. oh, there's plenty to do and there will be plenty of glory to go around for those who figure out a way to get it done.
so here's my fantasy... the press are beckoned for a major event at the democratic party's headquarters and the curtain goes up and standing on the stage are gore and clinton and obama and edwards and richardson and pelosi and dean and wes & richard clark(e) and bill gates and steve jobs and maybe even colin powell and whoever else is a true patriot with a really high profile. and bill clinton introduces president carter who takes the microphone to introduce them all as... the Democratic Party's candidate for... the government of the united states. seriously... split up the jobs - hillary, mightn't it be enough for your ego to be, finally, the person who creates a just and affordable single payer health insurance program? al could clearly live with being tasked with grappling with the climate crisis. edwards, once one of the top civil litigators in the country, could certainly bring a passion for what the law can do to the office of attorney-general. gates and jobs, haven't you made enough money that you can afford to collaborate on overseeing the technical revolution that will surely stand with the industrial revolution? OSX and Windows will be long forgotten in the future, should we have a future, but your names and some true measure of glory could live far longer if you were to do such a thing. everyone to sign on would instantly guarantee her/his place in history as someone comparable to the founding fathers, just for making it clear that you were going to stop wasting your and our time bickering amongst yourselves and, instead, assign yourselves jobs in a government-for-consideration by the american voters and then... DO IT.
why should i have to choose one of you to front the most enormous bureaucracy in history when there isn't a one of you who could possibly handle it all by yourself? i and the rest of the country (the world, in fact) need ALL of you working together to stand a chance of getting all the critically important jobs begun, let alone done, so please don't pretend that you don't need one another.
if it was a good idea for bill clinton to pick al gore so early (and it definitely was), why can't it be a better idea to sell an already staffed, top o' the line government of the best, the brightest, the most capable team of dedicated american public servants as a comprehensive democratic ticket? what's the worst thing that could happen? things might not work out? well, things are definitely NOT working out now and fretting about who's going to raise the most money in hollywood is not, in any way whatsoever, going to accomplish a single thing that matters to anyone but you folks and the campaign/media industry that's grown up around and utterly corrupted the entire process.
believe me, everyone but you and those who make their livings from it are utterly bored with the news being about the competition. the democrats could rewrite history - and benefit from the element of surprise associated with the revelation that the whole bunch of you are, after all, creative, dedicated patriots - simply by agreeing to join forces. imagine - a dozen "candidates" from the package, any of whom is qualified to be a decent president, criss-crossing the country selling the notion of a bloodless revolution led by those at the very top of their games who were willing to give up their own personal ambitions of winning "the big one" for the sake of our all winning back our republic. and, as to the question of which one of them fronts the team and gets to be "president," frankly, let 'em draw straws, because, if they are ALL on board, it won't matter. and then, finally, things would get done. it could be a whole new deal for a potentially great society; the greatest "do over" in history.
- posted by DeeLuzon
LowerManhattanite: "From Comedy Of Errors To Horror Show In One Reel"
And when you're done bringing that head, we've got some other people's body parts we want brought to us...
Another fantastic post (and photoshop!) by the incomparable LowerManhattanite - THANKS LM!
Ever watch a "classic" Three Stooges short? And by "classic" I mean the ones featuring the peach-fuzzed Curly Howard from between 1933 to 1945 or so. The one by-law of every one of those "pre-multiple-choice-half-*ssed-Curlies" (and one too-old Shemp) period films was this:
Every scene in which The Stooges appear where they can f*ck up whatever they touch and look like idiots somehow, The Stooges will f*ck up whatever they touch and look like an idiots.
Folks...every day's news about this White House is like those old after-school days of yore--when you hurried home, day after day, and turned on the TV, to find those Goddamned Stooge movies, full of colossal f*ck-ups, pipes to the head, and brutal falls down flights of steps.
Dig into your post-school/pre-dinner bowl of Cocoa Krispies, kiddies--in today's Stooge-fest, the boys f*ck up royally:
"Clang!"
"Owwwwww!
"Moe! Larry! The lawyers!"
Credit must be given where credit is due--even though I sometimes (f*ck it...often) disagree with him for an annoying tendency to hug up on mealy-mouthed centrists, Josh Marshall's been the firstest with the mostest on this story from the jump, digging at it tirelessly. And it's a story with roots going way beyond the top soil just getting turned over in recent days. Questions and concerns about the Justice Department's..shall we say, selective personnel handling go back a couple of years--to the beginning of things starting to smell in the CIA Leak Case.
Yeah. There was a sh*tload of talk and worry about Alberto Gonzales' personnel priorities even then. Folks were worried about him firing Patrick Fitzgerald over his taking a spade to the bottom of PlameGate. People laughed those concerns off. How stupid would the AG have to be to obviously ditch prosecutors over the tack of their investigations?
Oh...I dunno. Maybe John Mitchell stupid?
A trail. A slimy, lie-speckled trail of viscous, partisan skullduggery leading from Senator Domenici and Rep. Wilson, to Karl Rove, to Harriet ("I dot my i's-with hearts") Miers, to the president and his Tom Hagen-esque Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. A truly Stoog-ian f*ck-up. Traceable as all hell. And now, as the lifeboat goes all leaky, somebody's gotta go over the side.
"Hey Alberto. Look in the water there--closer...closer. Here pal, lemme help you get a closer look. 'Splash!' "
From The Three Stooges to Bring Me The Head Of Alberto Gonzales. Comedy to blood-soaked horror show in less than one reel.
What's this scandal all about? (have to emphasize "this"--what with the multitude of bed-sh*ts the last two years)
Pretty simple really. In the heat of an impending electoral Tsunami last year, GOP elected officials twisted arms of prosecutors to push hard on investigations against Democratic office-holders in an attempt to swing focus from GOP wrong-doing (which was quite rampant--from Bob Ney, to Duke Cunningham to Tom DeLay et.al) to putting Dems under prosecutorial fire. For what reason? To swing an election here or there in an election season where every seat lost was another circle of power-deprived hell descended to. When those investigations either fizzled or were found to be baseless, the GOP retaliated, through the White House, Rove, and Bush's Consigliere Gonzales, by spitefully firing the eight prosecutors who did not play ball in the desired, partisan manner. The issue at hand? The justice department's being used as a partisan tool of punishment of the administration.
Remember basic civics, kids? The Executive Branch, The Judicial Branch, and the Legislative Branch? Allegedly separate entities? Checks and balances and all that. stuff? When you get a situation like the one described above, you have what's called A Constitutional Crisis, where those hard lines set by the Constitution's very words are smeared by the sweaty, criminal hands of those who would seek to exploit that un-clarity.
Now, you'll hear justification of this craven bullsh*t from the right--"Hey! The Clintons did it! Janet Reno dismissed ALL of the attorneys when they came in! It's the same thing! MOONBAT! MOONBAT! MOONBAT!" Well...they're almost right. Reno did indeed dismiss ALL the prosecutors, because as they will also tell you, "they serve at the president's pleasure". But the difference is a stark one. The Clinton dismissals were borne of cleaning house entirely upon taking office. An understandable and generally accepted perk of an incoming administration.
This situation with Rove, Gonzales, Miers, Bush and apparently all manner of pissy GOP'er is quite different. There is a clear trail of political pressure on these prosecutors to go after political opponents of the president and his party. And when they did not do that bidding, then they got the axe. Why would one figure that? Couldn't they just have been fired on G.P.? One would think, yes.
But if that were the case, why, oh why would the Justice Department lie about the reasons for it.
"Gonzales characterized the changes as routine personnel decisions based on evaluations of each prosecutor's performance, calling it 'an overblown personnel matter' ."
Er. Damn near all of the prosecutors had just come off good performance reviews.
Why would we get obfuscation over who prompted Rove and Gonzales about these prosecutors?
"I have no idea what he's talking about"--Sen. Pete Domenici R-NM on prosecutor David Iglesias claims of Domenici's direct intervention in his firing.
Um...which he later recanted upon closer investigation, stating "I regret making that call (complaining about him to Rove) and I apologize".
"White House officials including the President did not direct DOJ to take any specific action with regards to any specific U.S. attorney."--White House Spokeswoman Perino...
"Gonzales characterized the changes as routine personnel decisions based on evaluations of each prosecutor's performance."--NYT
Ah...as it turns out, e-mails and various other documents indicate White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.
Simple question--right here and now. Why would an administration, its Attorney General, and involved partisan elected officials repeatedly lie about their involvement in something that they claim to be LEGAL AND ABOVE BOARD?
People lie for one of two reasons.
1.) To cover up a misdeed--an illegal or unethical act.
or,
2.) Because they are compulsive untruth-tellers who prevaricate about pretty much everything for little or no reason.
Neither of these reasons serves this administration well. The latter one indicates that they can be trusted on nothing, and the former one--the supremely prevalent one in general practice indicates serious, and damning illegality. They lied. Before Congress. Under oath. About circumventing the Constitution of the United States. Slaving the judicial branch--law enforcement, to the whims of the political needs of the executive branch. Somewhere in hell--probbly the boiler room, Pinochet, Marcos and Nixon are all smiling sweaty, proud "attaboy" smiles at this justice-poisoning news.
You see, f*cking around with federal prosecutors is a political third rail. It's happened before, and burned administrations used-match crispy. I've mentioned the infamous "Watergate Summer" here many a time, and how this administration seems to be dead set on providing us with another one.
Anyone remember "The Saturday Night Massacre?"
It was one of the most damning, and craven events of the criminally-sodden Nixon administration, and highlighted the "Roy Hobbs hit ball-like" unraveling of the Nixon White House. It was...a Constitutional pig-f*ck, par excellence. And it's turning out that the recent events are almost equal in levels of Constitutional pork-porking. You f*ck with the lawyers at your own peril.
So now, we have the specter (not Arlen, the pretender--but a real-live one) of Gonzales before the press today, skittish as a turkey in the third week of November, eyes blinking, head twitching, and words tumbling out of his mouth with the smoothness of clotted, sour milk as he tried to explain away the murders of prosecutors' careers--while he, Rove, Bush and others stand over the bodies with bloody clubs, hatchets, knives and red, red hands. Bush dares not (mis)speak on this. Rove, still treading on eggshells over the fallout of PlameGate would rather eat salted glass, than pass a public utterance past his jiggling wattle. And the fellow thrown under the bus--after Harriet Miers was fed directly into the fan blades of the engine today, is Alberto Gonzales. And...he's someone we'll gladly take, as he's helmed a disgusting, ignoble tenure at Justice. But beyond getting "him", the reprehensible person and dirt-dealing public official he is--he's another piece, perhaps even a key piece in that game of Jenga we spoke about recently.
So yes...by all means, BRING US THE HEAD OF ALBERTO GONZALES! 'Cause bringing us his head, may well drag along, and down the body parts of an administration whose collapse...would in the end, would only be a good thing.
Clear your throats. And say it with me now, "Jenga! JENGA! JENGA!" :)
- posted by LowerManhattanite
Loveandlight: "Viacom sues Google and YouTube for $1G"
On Google's Back
Thanks to Love & Light for this timely coverage of the Viacom-Google circlejerk - THANKS L&L!Link
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Viacom sued Google and its online video
subsidiary YouTube for $1 billion Tuesday, the first big lawsuit
against the online video site and its parent for copyright
infringement.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York, Viacom (Charts), owner of MTV and
Comedy Central, said that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of
Viacom's programming have been available on YouTube and that these
clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times." In addition to
damages, Viacom said it wants an injunction prohibiting Google and
YouTube from further copyright infringement.
Viacom first demanded that YouTube take down videos from shows on
Viacom-owned networks that were posted on the site without Viacom's
consent. Google (Charts) bought YouTube for nearly $1.7 billion last
year.
Viacom is the first major media firm to sue Google and YouTube for
copyright infringement. Other media companies, including GE
(Charts)-owned NBC Universal, CBS (Charts), and Universal Music Group,
have decided to partner with YouTube, the world's most popular online
video site.
Well, we knew this was going to happen sooner or later. I don't know very much about the ins and outs of these things, but as much as I enjoy viewing nostalgic music videos from the 80's on YouTube, I couldn't help but think that they're not going to be able to get away with skirting copyright laws that way forever. I hope some kind of compromise can eventually be worked out somehow some way because it would be a shame if the only thing you could watch on YouTube were amateur home movies and snippets from people's lives. I probably would never have been able to see the UK-made nuclear-war movie *Threads* in its entirety had it not been for YouTube.
- posted by Love and Light
Ice Weasel: "Loyalty to the Family"
Hard to believe he's president, isn't it
THANKS to ice weasel for this great post - THANKS ICEE!
Unquestioning loyalty is the one thing that the republicans prize above all else. Bowing down, in all matter, to top authority is the only rule, all else flows from this. As some of us are discovering, there is not bottom to the greasy barrel in which the bush family lives. There is nothing they won't do to preserve their power to do whatever they please. So please, all of you, quit pretending otherwise. Because to hang onto that, in other times, reasonable feeling that "they can't be that bad, that dumb, that openly criminal".
Yes they can.
You don't have to make any large intuitive leaps to see the white house all over this. rove, miers, they're all names we've heard time and again and they're only being the good soliders that they are, protecting the Dear Leader and the Party; preserving power for the future, covering their tracks for yesterday.
And don't forget, while you're honing your anger this morning, at the one enabler who made this entire USA scandal possible, the mealy-mouthed, craven senator from my own state, arlen spector. Not only was spector's performance at the hearings on this matter last week so sadly partisan that is shamed even tom delay, but spector was the
snake who, at the last minute, slipped in the little bit that allowed this plan to remove USA's who couldn't maintain fealty, into the patriot act re--authorization. spector made this entire scam possible. Don't forget that now and certainly, if you live in the commonwealth, don't forget that next year.
I guess for me, the thing that makes this that much more a confirmation of everything I've ever thought about the republican party is that these United States Attorneys are all republicans. All of them. These aren't Clinton appointees who managed to hide well. These are the loyal shock troops duly appointed by the most crooked system of patronage since Boos Tweed (oh, and winged monkeys, I know Tweed was a dem, so what, a crook is a crook and I could have easily used nixon as an example if you're more comfortable with your criminals all having the same party affiliation). These were loyal republicans who, apparently foolishly, thought they could just come in and do a good job. But we all know that's not enough.
- posted by ice weasel
Jesse "Doc" Wendel: "How To Succeed In Film Festivals Without Really Trying"
Labels: you tube
Thanks to Doc Wendel for this cool YouTube find - cool if you're not an independent filmmaker, that is - THANKS DOC!
I've mentioned before I'm working on a documentary, What's Your Pattern?, about why people date the same type of person over and over again. To start filming about a year from now. And that my mother-in-law Judith Holstra is an Emmy Winner. I mean, obviously the video above is a spoof, but my documentary is also going to have celebrities, and we do know people in the major film festivals (well, Judith does.) And we're not a musical. And absolutely not a zombie musical. And we're willing to do anyone, er, anything, um, my young assistant is willing to do anything to see that we get a spot in a good festival. (If he's cute, she says. And knows Jared Leto.) So seems to me even though all this is a spoof and totally meaningless and no one in their right mind would ever pay attention except a desperate filmmaker and the Gods know we're not that -- shhhh, we're not, okay, the new camera will get here real soon now -- but to hell with all that because we've got our basis covered on this totally spoof documentary. Especially the no zombie musical part. So that means, we're absolutely assured of succeeding in film festivals without really trying, you know, something that's like four to five years from now. Well damn... that's a load off my mind. Breathe. Must remember to breathe. *breathes* *breathes* *breathes again*
Anyway, enjoy the flick. It's funny. And pretty much right on. Zombie musical and other great moments in film history belong in the comments.
- posted by Jesse "Doc" Wendel
Queequeg: "Broken Gaydar"
Labels: coulter, wingnuttery
Um...I'd call a tech about that
Thanks to Queequeg for this cool inside look at the Coulter - well, not THAT inside...THANKS Q!
Ann Coulter needs to go into rehab.
She says so herself. Friday, in a speech at the right wing's big
annual bash, the conference for the American Conservative Union's PAC,
she called John Edwards a faggot.
"I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic
presidential candidate, John Edwards, " Coulter
said, "but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use
the word 'faggot,' so …" she paused as the audience's collective gasp
turned into laughter and applause, then she continued: "so I'm kind of
at an impasse."
Ann has anger issues as well as sexual identity issues.
I won't psychoanalyze her weird fixation on sexuality. Her fellow
conservatives, many of whom are obsessed with the sexuality of others,
might be a better choice for explaining Coulter's homophobia and her
malfunctioning gaydar. (John Edwards? I mean, I can see someone
calling out Lindsey Graham. But Edwards?)
As far as Ann's anger, we liberal bloggers bear some responsibility
for it. Who among us has not called her Mann Coulter? Which of us has
not noted that she has a horse face? Raise your hand if you have
not commented, online or in person, upon Coulter's own dubious
sexuality? Called her Coultergeist? Remarked upon her prominent Adam's
apple?
We've been mean to her, folks, and so she struck at the best-looking
presidential candidate she could find. Maybe she has a man-crush on
Edwards. Hard to tell what's going on in Ann's mind. She makes her
patented outrageous statements with so little conviction that it makes
you wonder who the joke is on -- her supposed targets, or her
conservative audience.
By the way, she endorsed Mitt Romney.
I find it odd that this hasn't gotten much coverage by the mainstream
press. Atrios notes that "there's nothing a conservative can say which would cause the
'liberal media' to decide that she wasn't an appropriate person to
promote." Over at Tapped, Ben Adler notes: "Charming. When the right lets out its hate-mongering id, it's a really pretty sight."
I met Ann Coulter last summer in a greenroom, when I was waiting to do
a brief interview on Fox News out of a dingy studio in West Palm
Beach. She walked in, doffed her chiffon cape and threw it on a couch,
and made a beeline for the makeup chair. She told the makeup artist,
Christine, that she had awakened with a red eye. Christine had Visine.
I was relieved that Ann apparently didn't notice me, because I felt
like the manly, Queequegish thing to do would be to say something
nasty to her. But since I didn't exist in her world, I didn't have to
discharge my responsibility.
I thought, what the heck, I'm not going to be an asshole unless she's
an asshole to me.
After my interview, I walked out of the studio and into the greenroom.
Ann was sitting on the couch, waiting for her time before the camera.
She was wearing blue jeans (it was 90 degrees outside and humid) with
a big hole ripped in the right knee. I smiled wimpily and mumbled
hello as I lifted her chiffon cape to see if I had left anything on
the couch.
Her car was parked next to mine. Empty. Engine running, air
conditioning turned on full blast.
I asked myself if I had done the moral thing by not saying something
belittling to her. My friends, I admit that I was afraid of
confrontation. I sense that she's muy smart and she could have
eviscerated me with a nasty comeback.
But perhaps the best she could have done would have been to call me a faggot.
- posted by Queequeg
Hubris Sonic: Juan Cole - "Iran EFP Story A New 'Yellowcake' Scandal?"
Labels: Iran
Here we go again
Thanks to Hubris Sonic who saw this over at Juan Cole's Informed Comment - THANKS HS!An informed reader writes:
Your reference to the Drew Brown McClatchy wire service report carried by the Mercury News about possible Sunni involvement in the IEDs and EFPs that have allegedly killed upwards of 170 Americans could be the tendrils of the new "Yellowcake" scandal of the Administration's ramp up to attacking Iran.
As we all know, several weeks ago, a military intelligence briefing occurred in Iraq where several officials, including Brigadier General Caldwell, the mouthpiece for the American Occupation Forces, and several intelligence analysts, claimed that not only was Iran responsible for the use and manufacture of EFPs, which they said had killed upwards of 170 Americans -- but that the orders for their use, manufacture, and supply to "insurgents" came from "the highest levels of the Iranian Government." The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, quickly said that while there were aspects to the briefing he agreed with, he could not state, unequivocally, that the orders for the use and manufacture of these EFPs had come down from on high. This was when the American people, indeed, the people of the world, were told that the nefarious "Quds Brigade" were the operatives who had carried out these tasks for high Iranian officials.
Checking through various books I've read about the Shia, I learned that the Quds Brigade, besides being a counter intelligence and intelligence unit for the Supreme Leader, ali Khamenai, has considerable expertise and probably HAD supplied training to insurgents in Iraq on how to build these massive and powerful weapons. Once I saw some of the photos of Abrams M1 tanks completely destroyed, or flipped, it became clear that yes, the insurgents had a new, more powerful weapon.
Several things hadn't jelled with me, though, about this briefing. First, no one ever, even to this day, said that the briefing was blessed by General Odierno, General Petraeus's second in command. Nor have they ever indicated whether Petraeus had blessed the briefing. Having worked for the U.S. Air Force for 20 years, I would say that that constitutes poor reporting. To NOT have been given the blessing to conduct the briefing, by one or both of those officers, would constitute such gross negligence, that they ought to be recalled immediately. The civilian intelligence analyst who speculated that the highest type officials of the Iranian government had blessed the use of these devices probably is shoveling poop in Alaska now, if he even has a job. But General Caldwell, you can believe, reports to Odinero or Petraeus. If either of them had signed off on the briefing, then why no action for them? The charges, after all, led to a serious reversal by even the White House.
The Mercury News article goes over the details in a way that more media reporters should have taken. They sorted out how many EFPs and IED attacks have occurred in 2005 and 2006. There isn't much difference ... about 40 killed from the former year to the latter. But the EFPs have clearly become an almost certain death sentence for our troops. But the details bear out what I thought from having read the casualty reports that come out daily from Globalsecurity.org. The greatest % of fatalities connected with those devices is in Sunni or Mixed areas.
So, nix the so called solid intelligence the Administration has once again claimed to warrant severe scrutiny of the Iranians and Iranian leadership. Essentially, they can't prove it, or, if they can, they're not going to compromise their intelligence sources (most likely signals intelligence of some kind derived from NSA monitoring). Additionally, what about the eight choppers shot down or brought down due to the use of SA-7s, 14s, and 17s? All Soviet weapons. And, again, according to Globalsecurity.org's glossary of weapons information, at least two Sunni dominated nations -- Egypt and Pakistan -- had all of these weapons, plus the heavy machine guns that have also been used in downing these 8 choppers. Is it possible that rouge intelligence or military agents from those two nations, among other Sunni nations which might have some reason to see the Americans humiliated, have migrated to Iraq? And taught insurgents -- Sunni insurgents -- how to use those weapons in coordination with RPGs, heavy automatic weapons fire, as well as other diversions, to cause chopper problems for the Americans?
That would be serious. It would embarrass perhaps Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Pakistan. And speaking of Pakistan: today we were told by Brian Ross, on ABC Evening News, that the very day Cheney read the riot act to Musharraf, the Pakistanis found the #3 of the Taliban and arrested him. Or is it more likely that Cheney delivered, personally, intelligence that showed Musharraf exactly WHERE this man was. And that Cheney told him: either you get him or we will. Today. And then Cheney leaves, and goes to Baghram Airport. Where, oddly enough, he is forced to stay overnight, due to weather.
And oddly enough, the Taliban blow up a suicider at the main gate. Surely, not to get Cheney, American officials proudly proclaim. There's no way to get Cheney! No, but the Taliban said they wanted Cheney to know we knew you were staying there. And perhaps that info came from a Pakistani ISI source? Was all of this a ruse to smoke out, for Musharraf, a very high placed spy for the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Or was the bombing at Bagram, more a signal to Cheney: WE got YOUR message! YOU told Musharraf where our #3 guy was, and YOU were sending US a message. Now, here is OUR message to YOU, Mr. Cheney! WE knew you were there. We KNEW your movements. Think about THAT! Maybe next time you come around our part of the world, we'll get YOU!
I suspect Musharraf is walking a razor blade. I suspect that since the squandered opportunities in the War in Afghanistan, and especially since the U.S.- India nuclear deal, elements of the Pakistani Army and ISI have once again begun to assist the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Cheney and Bush are blowing all kinds of intelligence to let the Pakistanis know that we know what they're up to. But will it really do Musharraf much good? Will he suddenly be able to swoop down on rogues in his Army and ISI, and quell yet another possible coup? How long can he last, when he sucks up more and more to the Americans?
And, of course, the Brits are very unhappy with Musharraf and Pakistan. The British Pakistanis are the ones causing Great Britain real concern, as they show up in plot after plot to kill British citizens.
Finally, why in the world would Ahmadinejad make a trip to Saudi Arabia? What deals could he convey to the Saudis? Is a deal in the works to soft pedal any criticism the Iranians have made against the Saudis, in exchange for the same from the Saudis against the Iranians? Are the Iranians going pull a rabbit out of their hat at the upcoming diplomats conference in Iraq? Or, do the Iranians have intelligence which will seriously implicate Saudi rogues in the transition of EFP training to the insurgents? Are the Iranians about to expose that? And embarrass the Saudis AND, the Americans?
Could it be that the rampant Bushista rant against Iran is the new "yellowcake" incident of this potential war? Because why in the world would the Americans NOT cite ANY Sunni nations as transferring not only IED and EFP technology and training to Sunni insurgents, but also, why would they not even mention the implications of Sunni experts from some Sunni nation, assisting insurgents in shooting down choppers? And possibly, the chlorine gas IEDs, as well. For there being 170 Americans killed and nearly 700 wounded by EFPs, it's remarkable that nothing's been said to Sunni nations when it is Sunni insurgents doing the killing. Rather, without naming Sunnis as the killers using these devices, the Bush Administration makes it appear that the deaths are caused by IRANIAN weapons and trainers.
There are roughly 15 of the 30 outposts now located in Baghdad. There are only two ways to resupply them: over the road and by chopper. If the Americans suddenly see a chopper shot down every day, that will make chopper supply more tenuous for those isolated outposts. Supplying them by ground will be even more dangerous. Are we about to see a massive chain reaction ambush, using IEDs, snipers, EFPs, counter chopper equipment and techniques (Manpad shoulder fired missiles), heavy machine gun and automatic weapons fire, as well as chlorine gas releases near American outposts?
And who will be behind such coordinated attacks? Quds Brigade or Sunnni dominated nations' rogue elements, assisting their brethren, in the fight on the ground. Vali Nasr makes it very clear that the Iraqi Shia will NOT allow themselves to be dominated ever again by Sunnis. Nor will Iran allow Iraqi Shias to be wiped out. Saudi Arabia recently said that they would never allow their Sunni brethren be slaughtered in Iraq. Have the Saudis, through so-called "rogues," already begun to fight the Shias on the ground, in Iraq?
Is the Administration willing to ignore that, so that they can once again, build up a phony case for attacking not a Sunni nation, but colluding with the Sunnis, who are killing Americans right and left ... to squash the Shiites?
Imagine the implications of THAT kind of secret game. In essence, claiming Shias are responsible for Americans being killed by EFPs, when, in fact, we KNOW it's Sunni inspired insurgents doing the killing. That would shake the very foundations of this country. It would be dejå vu all over again.
I hope Brown and McClatchy can push this further, and I hope Informed Comment can scour the news, to see what the Pakistani press says about the arrest of the #3 Taliban leader. And what they say about the bombing in Baghram. And what they say about Ahmadinejad's trip to Saudi Arabia. The Bush Administration is definitely the darkest regime we have EVER seen in America. Frankly, I wouldn't doubt that if they could push American opinion to accept the Iranians are behind all the evil in Iraq, they'd be willing to sacrifice some Americans to perpetuate that myth. It is heinous to think that, but this regime is heinous.
There is a golden award of some kind for the first reporter to bring this level of scrutiny to the national media's attention. They are lazy, asleep, and still gullible when it comes to trusting military or intelligence community briefings. Thank God there are a few real reporters left in the American media.
- posted by Hubris Sonic
blksista: "60,000 American marriages broken by Iraq War"
Labels: Bush Iraq
It's real
Thanks to blksista for this great crosspost on a growing national tragedy - THANKS!
Crossposted from the Orange Zone and Booman Tribune.
Including Stacy Bannerman's, the author of this article which was written for the February issue of The Progressive:It is the soldiers, their families, and the people of Iraq that pay the human costs. The tab so far: more than 3,000 dead U.S. troops, tens of thousands of wounded, over half a million Iraqi casualties, roughly 250,000 American servicemen and women struggling with PTSD, and almost 60,000 military marriages that have been broken by this war.
And she doesn't just blame Bush. She blames Congress, who has in her words, "has abandoned the troops for nearly four years."
It wasn't Stacy's advocacy of Military Families Speak Out that broke her marriage to Lorin, a mortar platoon sergeant with the Army National Guard 81st Brigade. It wasn't her interview on Hardball beamed to the troops during lunchtime in Iraq that broke it. Or that Lorin had been reprimanded by his superiors for having an unruly spouse who was detrimental to his career prospects. It was the ravages of PTSD after he returned home.
Lorin had accidentally killed two Iraqi children; had troops under his command murdered by Iraqi soldiers during training; had loaded coffins onto cargo planes; and had survived a shell exploding next to his trailer while he slept.He'd been back for almost two months, but he was still checking to see where his weapon was every time he got in a vehicle. He drove aggressively, talked aggressively, and sometimes I could swear that he was breathing aggressively. This was not the man I married, this hard-eyed, hyper-vigilant stranger who spent his nights watching the dozens of DVDs that he got from soldiers he served with in Iraq. He couldn't sleep, and missed the adrenaline surge of constant, imminent danger. The amateur videos of combat eased the ache of withdrawal from war, but did nothing to heal my soldier's heart.
And what did the Pentagon do to assist Guard families with mental health issues post-deployment? During a conference, it was suggested that they learn how to laugh and to walk like a penguin.Emotional isolation is one of the hallmarks of post-combat mental health problems. The National Guard didn't conduct follow-up mental health screening or evaluations of the men in my husband's company until they had been home for almost eight months. Nearly a year later, in August of 2006, my husband was informed of his results: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It was obvious that he was suffering, but when I brought it up, he parroted what the military told him: "Give it time."
She and Lorin are now living apart. Where, the article does not say.
Some people might say, Why is this is any different from what has occurred in other wars Americans have participated in? It's only because of the media that we know about all this.
In previous wars, having PTSD might have been called being shellshocked. These men were sent away to VA hospitals or to state mental health facilities. Some were able to return home and become vital citizens. Or there was a family member whose special job was to watch Junior or Brother or to keep him occupied during the day, and families carried on the best that they could. I know at least one friend, a black woman, who cares for an aging parent as well as a brother--a Vietnam-era vet who is mentally ill, and who has recently suffered a stroke.
And yes, modern war takes a toll on military families in the form of deaths and in permanent injuries. Many vets need constant physical and mental health care that families are unable to pay for. This is something that the war wimp neo-cons fail to understand. This is not 1919, or 1946. The Iraq War is not anything like World War II, which was the last of the "good" wars in which we knew who the enemy was. What is different is that National Guard units are being called up for almost continuous combat service. And they are being blackmailed, in essence: any additional service in the sandbox is not going to be used towards retirement, but if they don't serve, they might lose retirement benefits, particularly if there are shortages of a particular kind of Guardsman. Like mortar platoon sergeant.
You can contact Stacy Bannerman at http://www.stacybannerman.com.
Military Families Speak Out's website is at http://www.mfso.org/.
- posted by blksista
Seitan Worshipper: "Army surgeon general forced to retire"
Labels: US Army, Walter Reed. hospital
Not looking happy these days
Thanks to Seitan Worshipper for this timely coverage of an important topic - THANKS SW!
In Steve's honor, and continued hopes/wishes/prayers for a speedy,
complete recovery.
Another bit o' brass out at Walter Reed [cue Queen's "Another One
Bites the Dust"]
This scandal is undoubtedly going to get much worse - and much uglier
- before things get better. Let's just hope it results in improved
care for the people who have (needlessly) sacrificed the most.Army surgeon general forced to retire
WASHINGTON - The Army forced its surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin C.
Kiley, to retire, officials said Monday, the third high-level
official to lose his job over poor outpatient treatment of wounded
soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Kiley, who headed Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004, has been a lightning
rod for criticism over conditions at the Army's premier medical
facility, including during congressional hearings last week. Soldiers
and their families have complained about substandard living
conditions and bureaucratic delays at the hospital overwhelmed with
wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kiley submitted his retirement request on Sunday, the Army said in a
statement.
"We must move quickly to fill this position — this leader will have a
key role in moving the way forward in meeting the needs of our
wounded warriors," Acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren said in an
Army statement.
...
Kiley's removal underscored how the fallout over Walter Reed's shoddy
conditions has yet to subside. Instead, the controversy has
mushroomed into questions about how wounded soldiers and veterans are
treated throughout the medical systems run by the military and the
Department of Veterans Affairs and has become a major preoccupation
of a Bush administration already struggling to defend the unpopular
war in Iraq.
"I submitted my retirement because I think it is in the best interest
of the Army," Kiley said in Monday's Army statement. He said he
wanted to allow officials to "focus completely on the way ahead."
...
Yeah, guess it's either get out or be subpoenaed.
- posted by Seitan Worshiper
Yanqui Mike: "Meltdown"
Labels: Bush
Please caption this photo, won't you?
Thanks to Yanqui Mike for this great cross-post - THANKS MIKE!
The back burner is both a wonderful and treacherous place as any cook will tell you.
The US President returns Thursday to South America to lift the lid on his south-of-the-border concoction that has given him fits in recent years.
Long gone are the waiter-in-chief's euphoric descriptions from his first Summit of the Americas in Quebec back in April of 2001,
"Amigo y amigos, it's an honor to be here. We have a great vision before us,
a fully democratic hemisphere bound together by goodwill and free trade. That's a tall order. It is a chance of a lifetime. It is a responsibility we all share."
In September of that year, another "chance of a lifetime" apparently pushed that item off the menu.
Exactly 12 months after the Summit, his administration was wiping egg of it's face for cheering the short-lived ouster of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
He kicked off 2003 with a State of the Union speech that failed to even mention Latin America. His best buddy, Fox, took a beating in the Mexican mid-terms. Soy, corn, beef, sugar and other commodities figured prominently as China became Argentina's biggest export market in June and July and, during the first eight months of 2003, Brazil's exports to China jumped 136 per cent to reach nearly $3 billion. The Neo-liberal souffle began to collapse as one-by-one the left began to take the presidencies of South America.
Bush closed 2004 by going to Chile to try to change prevailing tastes toward US arrogance and neglect of the region. He ended up trying to whip some Chilean security guards in the presidential palace.
Bolivia's Democracy Center released a statement in 2005, "With the arrival of soldiers so close to Bolivia's border, people here are understandably worried that the US is cooking up something even more drastic" as the US deployed troops to Paraguay. Almost simultaneously Bush garnished the Summit of the Americas in Argentina as human piñata.
Less than 90 days later, the Bush franchise lost a couple of stars when elections brought to the table Chilean Socialist President Bachelet and the self-described "US's worst nightmare", President Morales of Bolivia.
Maybe Bush can save this big pot of Latin America Bush by simply stirring things up!
The centerpiece of this week's tour of South America will be another attempt to peel-away yet another Mercosur common market nation.
This time, tiny Uruguay which has been feeling the heat from Argentina over the European construction of a pulp mill too dirty to be allowed in Europe. The mill's location on a shared river across from Buenos Aires has been causing indigestion for more than a year.
Bush's fat will be held to the fire, however, by Argentina's guest chef, Hugo Chavez, who has been invited to hold a public demonstration on the Uruguayan border.
That big pot of Latin America has been heating up the kitchen for a long time now. The world watches to see if this is too much heat for Bush.
- posted by Yanqui Mike
Gracchus: "What's Good for Halliburton is....?"
Labels: halliburton
The proof's in the pudding
Thanks to Gracchus for his timely takedown of everyone's favorite irresponsible multinational - THANKS G!
Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994) is one of those rare films that stands up to repeated viewing and stays fresh and relevant. No wonder, as one of its major themes is exploring the multifarious levels of corruption that riddled the supposedly golden and innocent age of 1950s America. The film is in large part about how corruption's enablers and even its opponents at almost every level are able to deny it or rationalise it -- most of all to themselves.
The film came to mind today, watching the reaction to Halliburton's corporate move to Dubai:
* From the extreme free-marketeers: of course they're going -- cost-cutting, min-max, low-tax don'tcha know?
* From the People's Heroes(tm) of the left: they're fleeing America like it's La Nuit de Varennes! We're winning!
* From mainstream Beltway Dems: hummph ... this demonstrates that we should no longer consider Halliburton an American company. Think of all the Americans this'll put out of work, the lost tax revenues...
* From the Know-Nothings: Halliburton? Last I heard from Rush, theyz're USA patriots. But I hear tell that Pat Buchanan don't like 'em so much. I's confused, and when I gets confused, I like to watch me some funny telebision.
* From the MSM business desks: They're an oil services company, so they're just going where the oil is. Nothing to see here ... move along.
* And from the neoCons: judicio us silence -- the PNAC faction because they're starting to see that they'll be left holding the bag in 2008, and the Oil-Bitch
faction because ...
Well, because they're happy no-one is talking about the real meaning and implications of this move. In that, they're following Halliburton's lead -- no surprise, given that they're either owners of or owned by the company -- one of several in the Oil Bitch arms-n-energy portfolio.
Now inside Halliburton, to middle management, the executives are probably justifying the move on two counts.
The first is to escape "a potentially hostile domestic regulatory environment" -- which is corporate-speak for "the jig is almost up on our lucrative racket, so
let's close shop and move on before they investigate." The forward-thinking tone is deliberate: despite the hopes of the hard left, these aren't incompetents like Louis XVI or Nicholas III. They're businessmen who understand "pro-active reduction of exposure" (MBA/HR Culture-speak for "CYA") -- at least for the next four
to six fiscal quarters.
And Dubai is all about reduction of risk for shady types with money. It has been since it aspired to be something more than a sleepy fishing village and minor trading port. It's the kind of place where ... well, say you're an individual (as opposed to a person) whose main source of income is large-scale international insurance fraud -- the sort of fraud which often results in people dying. No mere tax shelter like the Caymans or Jersey will do for incorporating a venture like that. And countries like Costa Rica or Thailand -- swinging and louche enough to permit Internet gambling operations or sex tours on their sovereign soil -- well, even they have their limits. Where to set up shop?
Ah, Dubai... If you define "gated community" as a grouping of man-made private islands ... if you define "private jet" as a 737 ... if you define "yacht" as displacing the gross tonnage of a cruise ship ... if you define "head office" as a brand-new skyscraper ... and (most importantly) if you define "tax" as a multi-million-dollar baksheesh payment to some sheik's numbered account ... well, then you can engage in all sorts of interesting enterprises (and personal peccadilloes) with the blessing of your new host nation.
Which brings us to the second motive. Inside Halliburton, they probably call it "opportunities in previously untapped markets." Which is to say, markets that U.S. law frowns upon; markets with lots of oil, but with an unfortunate tendency to promote violence against citizens of your home country, and which stand in opposition to the liberal free market capitalism your company claims to support and prosper from.
Y'know, markets which are points on the ol' Axis of Evil.
But move your HQ to a country that's more ... sympathetic to those markets and their (literal) owners, and suddenly those new opportunities just open up. Quite the bargain, in the grand scheme of things.
Especially if you're trying to firm up your secret contracts with Iran and Syria, especially if your executives are trying to avoid testifying at Congressional hearings. Especially if you're trying to avoid nasty things like lawsuits, collections and jails.
Oh, and none of those unionised janitors or uppity clerks. The MBAs probably come cheaper, too, and it's a good way to dump those expensive middle-aged American managers (unless they wanna move to Dubai!).
Not that Halliburton's giving up the perquisites of being a flag-wavin' 'Murkin company, mind you (at least not until they sell off KBR to Know-Nothing suckers and don't need to push that tiresome patriotic angle). Like any degenerate confidence artist, Halliburton wants to have its cake and eat it too for as long as possible, even as it reduces risk and exposure. And they still have enough friends in
government that they won't be arrested like the far more sinful gambling execs. But in the end, Halliburton's executives understand the nature of corporate personhood in America: the one thing the U.S. doesn't really expect of it -- despite caterwaulings like we're hearing from the Dems -- is actual good citizenship.
Which brings us back to Quiz Show. As the film progresses, the ambitious government investigator Dick Goodwin (played by Rob Morrow) believes he's closing in on the real villain -- the television industry. And here he is, trying (despite his superiors' instructions) to strong=arm the show's sponsor (played by Martin Scorcese) to turn on NBC:
Dick Goodwin: The questions are to take no longer than five minutes. You're to receive the questions in advance, and I'm to thank you for the courtesy of attending this hearing.
Martin Rittenhome [sarcastic]: Mercy. What a grueling line of inquiry.
Dick Goodwin: Must have a familiar ring, the questions in advance.
Martin Rittenhome [to his attorney]: Would you excuse us for a moment, please? And take this, please. Thank you. Young man...
Dick Goodwin: The ratings went up if the same contestant came back week after week. There was only one way for that to happen. You had to know that.
Martin Rittenhome: Young man, I sell over $14 million a year worth of Geritol. That's the kind of
businessman I am. That show, Twenty-One cost me $3-1/2 million year in, year out. Sales went up 50% when Van Doren was on. Fifty percent. So the very idea that I was unaware of every detail or aspect of that show's operation...well, frankly, it's, it's very insulting.
Dick Goodwin: So you knew.
Martin Rittenhome [grinning]: That's even more insulting.
Dick Goodwin: You had to know. That's what you just said.
Martin Rittenhome: It's not about what I know. It's about what you know.
Dick Goodwin: You don't know what I know.
Martin Rittenhome: You know that Dan Enright ran a crooked quiz show.
Dick Goodwin: Oh, he never informed you?
Martin Rittenhome [grinning]: Did he?
Dick Goodwin: Let's see what he says.
Martin Rittenhome: Dan? Look, Dan Enright wants a future in television. Okay? What you have to understand is that the public has a very short memory. But corporations, they never forget.
Dick Goodwin: He's not that stupid. He knows he's through.
Martin Rittenhome: Oh, no. He'll be back. NBC's gonna go on. Geritol's gonna go on. It makes me wonder what you hope to accomplish with all this.
Dick Goodwin: Don't worry. I'm just gettin' started.
Martin Rittenhome: But even the quiz shows'll be back. Why fix them? Think about it, will ya? You could do exactly the same thing by just making the questions easier. See, the audience didn't tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money.
Dick Goodwin: Imagine if they could watch you.
Martin Rittenhome: You're a bright young kid with a bright future. Watch yourself out there.
And here's the thing: Rittenhome is correct in his prescience. He's smug throughout that dialogue, and in a certain sense he has a right to be. He is that kind of businessman -- selling a glorified patent medicine that "cures tired blood." He knows the score, just like the slimy executives of Halliburton do. And like the head of NBC in the movie, Rittenhome has "reduced exposure" and "expanded opportunities" by cultivating the right politicians.
But Dick Goodwin is correct in his last line above, too -- even if he's still too narrowly focused on "21" and the cheater Van Doren rather than the larger picture. Imagine if the American public could watch how these large corporations work -- in the same cynical way the executives themselves view it (something Steve used to do with his "How To Read a 10-Q" posts). Assuming they wanted to.
But all we can do is imagine, because all we get in reaction to news like today's is the kind of half-baked and romanticised posturing mentioned at the top of this post. And while it may give one a nice warm feeling inside, until this nonsense stops all
we'll be left with the feeling Dick Goodwin has in Quiz Show when he confronts Robert Kintner, the head of NBC:
Dick Goodwin: 21 is rigged and I can prove it ... I have Enright cold and that means I have you.
Kintner: Really?
Dick Goodwin: Really.
Kintner: Then how come you're the one who's sweating?
Are you sweating at this news? And do you know why you should be?
- posted by Tiberus Gracchus
Republic of Palau: "Meanwhile, in other news, UK Quietly Reauthorises Slavery"
Shameful
Thanks to Republic of Palau for this important insight from across the atlantic - thanks RoP!
For all the pious hooha that's been spouted this past few weeks by the likes of that vain, permatanned former ANC member Peter Hain MP and the risible Deputy PM John Prescott about the sanctity of William
Wilberforce and the Abolition
Movement they somehow failed to mention, as lenin points out, that quietly, New Labour has been repealing employment legislation, thus allowing the effective reinstitution of slavery - not in some far-off, easily hidden colony this time, but on its own soil.Slavery in the UK. posted by lenin
It seems Tom DeLay was not the only one to learn from the perfect petri dish of pure capitalism. New Labour is to abolish laws that provide the most basic protection for migrant workers.
Workers who receive visas to enter domestic service are "legally entitled to leave their employer if they are abused or exploited and to receive basic protection - including the minimum wage - under UK employment law."
Now, if they are abused or mistreated by an employer, either they must suck it up or flee back to their country of origin. Even Barbara Roche, the former Home Office minister who used to put on a hideous freak show by appearing at the docks and interrogating lorry-drivers about any human cargo they might inadvertently be carrying, is alarmed: "These new proposals are a very retrograde step. Workers who suffer abuse from employers will feel absolutely alone. I can't believe a Labour government which has taken such a firm stance against trafficking will want this to
happen." Oh, you'd be surprised, Barbara.
This comes as a recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found an enormous amount of slavery operating in the UK. There are said to be 10,000 gangmasters operating in the UK, who supply labour that operates under the threat of extreme physical violence to various sectors of British capital.
These include everything from domestic service, where the new laws will apply, to agriculture, manufacturing, restaurant workers, food processors, care work, hotels and so on. Among these are tens of thousands of sex slaves, who include thousands of children - and not all of those children come from overseas. If you try to protest about your treatment, you "may be beaten, abused, raped, deported or even killed."
Read the whole post.
Those of us on the anticapitalist left have long been derided as out-there hysterics when we've warned that the increased slavery and exploitation so apparent elsewhere is spreading to the developed world and that this is the natural outcome of the neoliberal economic polices that Blair and Brown have been pursuing.
Blindly tribal Labour supporters who still harbour the hope that Gordon Brown's ascendance to the premiership would herald some sort of shift towards humanity and away from rapaciousness, when Brown himself willingly enables that rapaciousness is out of their tiny mind.
Just look at the money the party has just taken from private equity groups - largely unaccountable conglomerations of private money which buy take private and proceed to asset-strip other companies, They're run by fund managers, unlike publicly regulated corporations they have no shareholders and they have little social accountability compared to public companies. Plus the Gordon Brown gives them a tax break!
Anyone who's still with Labour despite everything, (and that includes a number of people I was once was close to and thought highly of) deserves to go down with the rest of them.
Did you ever think, staunch union activist and Labour loyalist, when you were sitting under that tree at Tolpuddle with the union banner at your feet and a cold pint in your hand and thinking of Labour's glorious past fighting for freedom, that your party would one day be the party of slavery?
- posted by Republic of Palau
LowerManhattanite: "On the Libby Verdict"
Labels: Libby
Love that transparency in Photoshop - if only in real life
Thanks to LowerManhattanite for yet another fantastic look at our upside-down world - THANKS LM!
I decided to stay home on Tuesday to work on a project I’d been neglecting, and usually, I run MSNBC in the background as white noise. I’m a life-long news junkie, and the drone of anchors delivering the day’s events is an aural comfort for me.
But that day, because of the nature of my project—a film one—I wanted a little bit of inspiration nudging me along, so I flipped around and stumbled across a documentary on IFC entitled “A Decade Under The Influence”, a movie about the second golden age of American Cinema—namely the 70’s. Listening to the likes of Scorcese, Coppola and Billy Friedkin go on about their landmark films, I was enervated and blasting along with my work, when in the movie at around noontime, they ran a clip from 1976’s “All The President’s Men.
BRADLEE. He nods again, starts walking the two reporters from the lawn back toward WOODWARD's car.
BRADLEE: He's wrong on that last, we're not in the least danger, because nobody gives a shit--what was that Gallup Poll result? Half the country's never even heard the word Watergate.
CUT TO:
THE RED KARMANN GHIA as the three approach.
BRADLEE: Look, you're both probably a little tired, right? (They nod) You should be, you've been under a lot of pressure. So go home, have a nice hot bath, rest up fifteen minutes if you want before you get your asses back in gear-- (louder now)--because we're under a lot of pressure, too, and you put us there--not that I want it to worry you-nothing's riding on you except the First Amendment of the Constitution plus the freedom of the press plus the reputation of a hundred-year-old paper plus the jobs of the two thousand people who work there.
And then my brain—a weirdly wired, herky-jerky erector set of a thing, faintly screamed “Turn the TV to the news.” Punched in channel 23. MSNBC.
Holy sh*t. Bulletin and Breaking News and as we say ‘round the way, Bust This! Libby convicted on four of five counts.
My mind went back to the movie I had just been watching—them running that “All The President’s Men” clip, and me turning to catch the announcement of that political earthquake shaking the dandruff outta the pubes of D.C.’s “Big Willies”, and damned if I didn’t laugh my natural, Black *ss off.
Irony…you can be a bitch, this I know--but I can’t front—you can be a funny *ss bitch at the same damn time.
So at that point, I was like “f*ck the project, let’s dig into this sundae of schadenfreude, shall we?
And kiddies, it was indeed a smorgasbord. The stand-up reports from outside the courthouse, from Fitzgerald, Wells, Juror Collins and the various made-up talking heads who’d been staking the joint out was something to see. The reports in-studio from more made-up talking heads were equally intriguing…but what started to take hold on the air as the pundits began to weigh in—an early day for them I might add—was the deeper implications of what went down. Buchanan, Howard Dean, Matthews, Bill Schneider—one and all, began to start digging through the wreckage of the verdict for “the black box” if you will.—the key to what brought us all to the awful crash. And what the “black box” is beginning to reveal is all the twists and turns, the accelerations and climbs, and yes, the f*cked up flight plan that was put in place initially. The focus is going back to the people who put the whole thing in motion. Grave words about the future of the Vice President and Rove. Lovely people the jury apparently deciphered were at the nexus of the bullsh*t, deception, and skullduggery.
That ain’t the discussion the White House wanted to see coming out of this. Compartmentalization was the desired game here. “Plan A.: Focus on Scooter.” “Plan B. : Wilson’s a liar.” “Plan C.: Plame wasn’t covert.” “Plan D. : Fitzgerald’s was on a witch hunt.” That obfuscation ain’t quite taking hold—save for on Fox where the collective lower lips were snagging dust bunnies in the studio basement--no, the tale now is of how badly this judicial cock-punch will double over the administration, and whether the administration even keeps its nuts post-cock-punch. Aaaamd, how they can survive a pardon, which the shrillest of the wingnuts cried for immediately. Again, not the discussion this bunch was craving.
It’s a game—a deadly serious f*cking game of Jenga that seems to be ensuing. When you yank Libby away, do you upset a delicately balanced Cheney? Do the underpinnings supporting Rove tremble? And do the Hummels in Bush’s breakfront up top, rattle around and possibly even…chip or break? That’s the discussion that’s unfolding over all of this. But, this game of Jenga is as wide as it is high, because it encompasses the media narrative about this administration. This one story—the CIA Leak Case, is but one of a tall, wide and perilously assembled jumble of stories. When this administration was riding high, post-’04 elections, the media was loathe to consider tugging at the various Jenga blocks that stuck out of this White House’s construct of criminality. But with the unraveling of the war in Iraq, the president’s raging unpopularity, the turning out of the GOP this November past—and now, now, the conviction of Libby in this CIA Leak Case, the media narrative has changed. Bush’s lame duck-ishness contributes to this newfound willingness to challenge his and the GOP’s bullsh*t, too. So, note if you will, the ramped up interest in things like the fired prosecutor case, the hearings on Walter Reed hospital, and the now-open speculation about Cheney’s involvement in the leak case (that post-trial juror statement about Cheney & Rove’s obvious involvement put brass knucks on the aforementioned cock-punch).
That’s a whole lotta Jenga blocks getting’ picked at right about now. And sh*t’s a trembin’ all over. What could bring the whole balsa-wood contraption down is something we as people are directly responsible for—namely, electing a Democratic congress this past year. Josh Marshall summed it up nicely in saying, ”Lesson of the day: running the administration as a criminal enterprise is much harder when the opposition controls Congress..
Hearings, kiddies. The power of the gavel. The can of worms this case opened up allows for congress to come in with a dustpan and pick up those nasty worms and chuck ‘em into the trash. Remember when congress investigated Bill Clinton over the Vince Foster suicide, replete with Rep. Dan Burton busting open melons in lame C.S.I.-lite attempts to hang the President for involvement? Well, that could only have happened with the GOP in charge of congress. Now, the Dems run things…and with pit-fighters like Henry Waxman and Charlie Rangel heading up committees with subpoena powers, the specter of investigations of the run-up to war and the obfuscations that it entailed are very much on the horizon. Which enables the Jenga game to be played that much quicker, and out of doors—with the wind blowing and close to the curb, where vibrations from passing trucks can further shake that f*cker--possibly, all the way down.
It’s kind of remiscent of that summer some 20-odd years ago. The summer of C.R.E.E.P., The Pentagon Papers, Agnew, and the “Saturday Night Massacre”. A great big bunch of Jenga blocks—some at the bottom, some at the middle, some at the edges—but yanking at ‘em all eventually brought the whole thing down. Fun and games, Washington D.C. style. So let’s break out the ice cream and cake, shall we? And settle in for a few rounds of Twister, Trouble, Mr. Mouth and yeah…Jenga.
- posted by LowerManhattanite
FDL's Pachacutec: "Have DC Democrats Learned to Read?"
Labels: Bush Iraq
Keep fighting
Thanks to Pachacutec of Firedoglake for this great cross-post - THANKS PACH!
That is, have they learned to read the polls?Democrats Rally Behind a Pullout From Iraq in ’08
By JEFF ZELENY and ROBIN TONER
WASHINGTON, March 8 — Democratic leaders in the House and Senate began a new legislative push on Thursday for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2008, coalescing behind a fixed timetable to end the war.
The plan to establish a specific date for removing troops intensifies the confrontation with the administration at a time when Congress is scrutinizing President Bush’s request for nearly $100 billion in additional spending toward military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Republicans vowed to block the new Democratic effort, which they said amounted to micromanaging the war, and the White House immediately signaled its opposition.
“It would unnecessarily handcuff our generals on the ground, and it’s safe to say it’s a nonstarter for the president,” said Dan Bartlett, a senior White House adviser, speaking to reporters as he traveled with Mr. Bush to Latin America.
Given the Republican opposition and the Democrats’ slender margin in the Senate, the significance of the new plans was as much political as it was legislative. Democratic leaders in the House were optimistic about passing their legislation, but their counterparts in the Senate faced immediate resistance from Republicans and acknowledged that their chances of attracting enough votes seemed slim.
The new American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, warned on Thursday that American troops there faced a long road ahead and left open the possibility of calling in even more soldiers to calm the country. He stressed the long-term nature of the effort and asserted a need for open-endedness in the American commitment.
The notion of Democratic leaders embracing a timetable to leave Iraq had ramifications beyond Congress, particularly in the presidential race. The Senate plan sets a goal for troops to be removed by March 31, 2008, similar to a proposal by Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois.
A chief rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, has advocated a phased withdrawal of troops, but has not proposed setting a specific date. She said she intended to support the Democratic resolution. “It’s a goal; it’s not a hard deadline, it’s a goal,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview Thursday evening as she left the Capitol. “We’re just trying to create some pressure on the president. That’s the whole point here.”
The proposals in the House and Senate reflected the growing sentiment among Democrats that the American public was ready for an end to the war and would not punish their party for escalating the pressure on Mr. Bush to do so. Still, Democratic leaders worked behind the scenes, from dawn to dusk, to sell the plans to the party’s nervous conservatives and still unsatisfied liberals.
“This is extremely painful,” said Representative Carol Shea-Porter, a New Hampshire Democrat elected last fall, in part, because of her opposition to the war. She is eager to end the conflict but intent on supporting the troops. “There are times that you have to search for a compromise for the good of the country.”
In the House, Democratic leaders presented legislation to their members on Thursday that would place new conditions on military operations in Iraq as well as call for a troop withdrawal no later than August 2008. The proposals are attached to an emergency spending bill that will be considered next week in the Appropriations Committee and debated on the House floor before the end of the month.
The Democratic proposal in the House would require Mr. Bush to certify that the Iraqi government is meeting a series of military, political and economic benchmarks. If Mr. Bush cannot verify any progress in Iraq, the legislation calls for the majority of all combat troops to be removed beginning July of this year and completed by Dec. 31.
The legislation also would prohibit military action in Iran unless authorized by Congress.
We’re beginning to see some signs here of late stage testiculogenesis, though the devil, of course, will be in the details.
I highlighted the Hillary Clinton portion because at some point, she’s going to wonder why her campaign fell apart, even though current polls show her ahead. Her close advisors are at once confident she will wrap up the nomination early and hypersensitive to the point of paranoia over any criticism of her war and foreign policy positions.
Senator Clinton, this is not about “putting pressure on the President.” He does not give a shit about pressure. Listen to me very closely: this is about getting the fuck out of Iraq and ending a failed sinkhole of an occupation that is breaking our armed services and weakening the country, according to the will of the voters.
How many highly paid consultants does it take to be that fucking stupid? Jayzuz!
Nice to throw that Iran bit in there, but let’s see if the caucus can hold together. The situation is extremely fluid.
- posted by Firedoglake's Pachacutec
Uncommon Sense: "The Hypocritical Mr. Hannity"
Labels: coulter, hannity, wingnuttery
What - you'd rather look at a picture of Hannity?
Thanks to Uncommon Sense for this great take-down on failed shockjock (and that's saying something) Sean Hannity - THANKS UC!
Sean Hannity, a card-carrying member of the Right Wing Outrage Machine, can't seem to manufacture much of it over Ann Coulter's calling John Edwards a "faggot." Hannity is unwilling to express a value judgment about Coulter's statement, and has declared that it is unfair to ask anyone other than Coulter to do so.
Via Hullaballoo, the following exchange took place between Hannity and Michelle Malkin:MM: Ann Coulter was here yesterday. She gave a very, mostly funny, speech, and at the end of it, dropped a stinker where she used the term "faggot." And I'm glad, I have to honestly say, I'm glad I didn't bring my children here because that's not the kind of language I would use. What was your reaction to that? Because, predictably, the left is in high dudgeon about it. Howard Dean wants every presidential candidate in the Republican Party to renounce it. Do you think that was a really bad move on her part and should be condemned?
It is laughable for Sean Hannity to refuse to offer an opinion on Coulter's statement on the basis that he wasn't the one who said it. This would be the same Sean Hannity whose argumentative style consists almost entirely of straw men, false choices, and the peculiar device of holding individuals, particularly Democrats and liberal activists, accountable for the words and deeds of others.
Sean Hannity: I didn't hear it. I'd rather see it before I comment on it and whatever. You know, no other person is responsible for what a person says except that person. And so, if they have a problem with what Ann Coulter says, blame Ann Coulter. You can't blame somebody else for what she said. So I didn't see it.
MM: Except that we're all role models here. And there are so many young people they inspire--
Sean Hannity: --I don't use that term, so that's my answer to you if she used it.
In June of 2005, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) compared U.S. treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the way German, Russian and Cambodian authoritarian regimes treated their prisoners. An outraged Hannity unleashed his fury... on Gen. Wesley Clark.HANNITY: Senator Durbin is refusing to apologize and instead says that the Bush administration should apologize for abandoning the Geneva Convention.
On January 8, 2006, actor, singer and activist Harry Belafonte referred to President Bush as "the greatest terrorist in the world." The next day, Hannity demanded to know if Princeton University professor and author Cornel West condemned Belafonte's remarks.
And joining us now with reaction is former presidential candidate, by the way, the newest member of the FOX family. Welcome aboard General Wesley Clark. How are you? We're glad to have you.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: I'm doing great, Sean. Thank you.
HANNITY: Obviously, he doesn't know what the Geneva conventions are. Obviously, he's never read them. Obviously, he doesn't know they don't apply to enemy combatants. But we'll put that aside for just a minute.
General Clark, these comments are insidious; they're repugnant. There's propaganda. This misinformation is outrageous. These comparisons are over the top, and they put our troops in harm's way. And we need prominent Democrats like yourselves to condemn it. Will you condemn him for saying this?HANNITY: But there's something wrong with an American citizen, on foreign soil, calling our president a terrorist, saying that he's the greatest terrorist and a tyrant. And you went with him on that trip. Why don't you say, "I don't want anything to do with that"?
On March 29, 2006, Hannity was incensed over the presence of Mexican flags and protest signs at an immigrants' rights rally in California. He wanted to know if a former advisor to then-Mexican President Vincente Fox supported or condemned those actions.
WEST: Anything to do with what?
HANNITY: With what he said. He's your friend. Weren't you sitting on a plane with him? Wait, wait. You went on that plane with him.
WEST: I disagree with a lot of different people.
HANNITY: Do you condemn what he said?HANNITY: No, no, I think [former President Ronald] Reagan made a mistake, one of the mistakes, because he's my favorite president. But, look, I'm saying, at this point, if we allow people to stay that came here illegally and jumped in front of the line, then we're telling other people to do the same.
There are many other examples like these. Hannity does not merely ask Democrats to opine on controversial statements by their political fellows, as Malkin asked him to do regarding Ann Coulter. He demands that they issue condemnations, implying that a failure to do so amounts to an endorsement of the word or deed in question.
Here's what I don't like. I didn't like a lot of these signs. "This is you -- this is stolen land, America." "This is our continent, not yours." If you disagree with the idea of amnesty, you're a racist or anti-immigrant. People holding the Mexican flag up. It seemed to be, in many, many ways, outrages, some of the things that were said and done. Do you agree with that?
HERNANDEZ: In any parade and in any group of people, you can highlight, of course, someone who is maybe presenting something that is not proper.
HANNITY: Do you condemn some of it? Do you condemn?
Suddenly, however, it is out of bounds to ask Hannity for his opinion on Coulter having called John Edwards a "faggot." When asked, all he can mutter is, You know, no other person is responsible for what a person says except that person.
Well said, Sean. Perhaps the next time some left-leaning public figure says something that offends your delicate sensibilities, you might take it up with that person, rather than challenge every other Democrat on the planet to prove their patriotism, decency, or basic humanity by condemning the remark. But then, doing so would require you to embrace intellectual honesty, and reject the hypocrisies which have made you such an adored and prosperous figure in the conservative movement. That's probably expecting too much.
- posted by Uncommon Sense
Fox: Just Don't Call it News
Labels: fox, wingnuttery
"Lily! Grandpa! I wanna! I wanna! I wanna" - the immortal Fred Gwynne
Via Atrios and Larry C. Johnson comes this brilliant screen-capture montage of Fox's propaganda spew over the last few years, created by Welcome to Pottersville.
A true must-view. Check it out now.
You always know it's bad, but you still shudder when you see it graphically like this.
And to think millions of rubes out there eat this shit up with a fork and spoon.
- posted by Jim in LA
Tearing my hair out
So, I got a call last night from one of my best friends from college. Long story short--years ago, she married some schmuck she met in grad school. They moved out here a little over a year ago in order to better their (academic) career options into a house owned by her family. They have a 1-year old. And he refuses to get a job. Or work at all on child rearing. And he has hit her a few times. He's spent the night in jail over this. And my shithead friend called to complain that "I didn't get anything for Valentine's Day." Um, girlfriend, saying it one more time. You never told me he hit you over Xmas. While you were holding the baby. IF HE HIT YOU THIS IS BEYOND FUCKING VALENTINES DAY. She's busy fussing over painting a house that's on fire. Yes, she tried to tell her family and believe it or not all they did was give her a watered down "you need to grow up and stop hitting each other." NO, they are not absorbing that HE hit HER and she used NO force against him. She has two brothers, both of whom own guns and neither of which have volunteered to a) beat the shit out of him or b) send him back to his Eastern European shithole of a country in a box. Yes, she has "escape money" and a plan. No, she doesn't yet realize just how helpless her situation is. "But I have so much invested in this already," she says. I don't think that she understands that it will NEVER GET BETTER. Hell, he's already threatened to take the baby back to Shitovia with him. What kills me is that my friend is one of the smartest and prettiest women I know. I envied her in college. Now she hasn't worked in years (she supported him while he tried to get his grounding in a non-tenure-track job elsewhere), even though her PhD is the same as his. They are living in a house owned by HER family and off of HER savings. She's loathe to just run back to her parents' with the baby because they JUST DON'T GRASP the situation. I offered to spot her a grand for emergency lodgings if need be. I don't know what else to do. She called me on the sly after one of their fights where he stormed out of the house and took the only car. I told her she HAS to start telling people who WILL believe her RE her situation--the other women in her La Leche group, for instance. ANYONE, even if her immediate family is clueless and doesn't want to hear what she's saying. I just don't know what to do anaymore. Did I mention that another one of my close friends is caretaker to her elderly parents and another one just lost her job (and can't collect severance)? I love my friends. However, there are days when I just want to burn all of my worldly posessions and go hide in a cave somewhere for a few years. Watching some of the dearest people to me self-destruct is crazy-making in ways I can't describe. In the meantime, if any of the ladies out there have any Domestic Violence Survival Tips that I can pull out of my butt the next time my friend manages to sneak in a phone call, please tag them up here. I'm so afraid she'll wind up dead. Her dead, Dad in jail or dead or deported, and then what for her daughter? And no, she can't come live with me. I love her but it would be self-destructive for everyone involved. Oh, no word RE Gilly yet. Will touch base with his Mom tomorrow to see if they closed him up yet and to see what kind of mod he had done. PS--also all fucked up in the head RE setting the clock ahead an hour. That always messes me up. Goodnight.
Never a solution for marital problems
Jen here. I guess that some Power that Be decided that worrying about Gilly and my Mom and my little old self just wasn't enough this weekend, and that the broken tooth, impending radiator repair tomorrow AM, career issues, and bronchitis just wasn't cutting it.
Tom Watson: "Meet the New Mets"
Thanks to Tom Watson for this baseball post - THANKS TOM!
Nothing to cheer a late winter day and a hospital stay in New York but fastballs and over-hyped young soupbones. So while the Yankees spit on tradition and laugh greedily at the best player of their late dynasty while counting the handful of greenbacks they’ll save by keeping Bernie Williams at home on his guitar, we’re turning our attention to the team of true New Yorkers – the Mets, those Metties, Los Mets.
Now, the Mets lineup remains as fierce as ever, although we’re all working to get the image of Carlos Beltran standing there at Shea out of our minds. Reyes has packed on 10 pounds of muscle and will be an MVP candidate again this year. Wright had better quit the teeny-bopper music contests and poster-posing and just hit the ball, especially in the second half. Delgado had off-season surgery but is reported well-healed, and is good for 35-100 falling out of bed. Beltran is one of the top hitters in baseball, despite that called strike.
That’s the top four – after that, we get the questions. Will LoDuca repeat his incredible knack for reaching base and rally-stoking last year, as he looks for a new contract? Does Shawn Green have anything left? Will the newly-acquired Moises Alou be an improvement on the beloved-but-gimpy Cliff Floyd in left? Which Jose Valentin will we get at second? Do we trade the talented Lastings Milledge or try to get him at-bats? Endy Chavez is no question mark – he’s the perfect fourth outfielder: fast, makes contact, super defense.
Of course, the lineup is just the prelude – and it’s pretty well scripted, really. What matters with this team is the pitching, and there are big question marks all over the rotation. Pedro’s out till at least July, and then he’s tender as a newborn coming back. Glavine is well over 40 now, but seems good for 200 innings. El Duque? Let’s just point out that he’s already had a medical trip back to New York this spring – for arthritis.
Now, the soupbones and for once, we’ve got a bunch of ‘em. John Maine looked the most ready last year and pitched in some big spots. Oliver Perez is a lefty, late-developing with good stuff, and was occasionally brilliant, occasionally horrid last season. A pair of number one pick studs are vying for a spot: Mike Pelfrey and Philip Humber – big guys, big futures, probably both ticketed for the new Mets Triple-A affiliate No’leans. Throw in a couple of promising, “could develop” types like Jorge Sosa, Jason Vargas and Alay Soler – and there’s plenty of young starting stuff in Port St. Lucie. Old junk, too. As is his way, Omar Minaya has brought in a couple of retreads in Aaron Sele and Chan-Ho Park to compete.
The bullpen is even more interesting – after Billy Wagner and Aaron Heilman, you’ve got the rehabbing Duaner Sanchez, lefty Dave Williams, veteran free agent Scott Schoeneweis, along with Pedro Feliciano. Plenty of depth, and it doesn’t include Guillermo Mota, who was suspended for steroid use and will return after 50 games.
But the talk of Mets camp may be a couple of Dominican outfielders with no chance to make the team: Carlos Gomez, 21, and Fernando Martinez, only 18. Both have power, speed, and very quick bats and could be stalwarts in the upcoming Citi Field Era.
Too early for predictions, but with exhibition season kicking off today, this year’s team looks deeper than last year’s – and the starting rotation may well tell the tale in the end.
What’s that you say about the Yankees, Steve?
- posted by Tom Watson
eos0000: "1216 And All That"
Labels: soccer
'Cause you soccer fans need it
A big thanks to eos0000 for keeping the soccer tradition alive here at The News Blog - THANKS EOS!
In 1216, the French invaded England.
Forces led by Prince Louis (son of King Philip II Augustus) landed in
Kent in May; finding little resistance, they entered London within days.
But instead of fighting these foreign invaders (or even just slipping
quietly out of town), the noblemen and burghers of London decided to
throw one hell of a party for their new Capetian overlord, capping it
off by proclaiming him King of England at St. Paul's Cathedral.
(Of course, one reason for the French prince's happy reception was the
fact that he'd been invited -- the barons were once more at war with
King John, and Louis had already sent a detachment of French knights
(nowadays they'd be called "advisers") to protect London the previous
November.)
In related news, the American sports businessmen Tom Hicks and George N.
Gillett Jr. are now finalizing their takeover of Liverpool Football
Club.
Indeed, the Hicks/Gillett takeover would seem to represent a textbook
example of How To Do This Sort Of Thing. They've managed this whole
process with the cooperation of the current management and with a
minimum of acrimony (unlike the Glazers, for example); they're actually
wiping out the club's millions of pounds of debts (again, unlike the
Glazers) while putting up hundreds of millions more for a new stadium.
Even Gillett's misstep in using the F-word ("franchise") didn't seem to
dampen the optimism surrounding their arrival.
And, at least in the short term, LFC's financial prospects look
dazzling: the club already generates about $230 million/year in revenue,
and the new owners can look forward to an additional financial boost
from that planned new stadium.
But what happens after that?
Premiership clubs -- especially at this highest level -- would seem to
have already maximized most of their revenue opportunities; how much
more money could the elite clubs make from television revenues, shirt
sponsorships, merchandise sales, higher ticket prices, etc.? Even
though the current financial climate for the gigarich would seem to
argue otherwise, there must be limits to the money splashed about.
(Well, for everyone except Roman Abramovich.)
Furthermore, these revenue opportunities are performance-dependent to a
degree unknown to owners used to the comfortable franchise system of
American sports; for example, Manchester United's early elimination from
the Champions League in 2005/06 made a noticeable dent (millions of
pounds worth) in their revenue for the year. And then there's the case
of Leeds United, which has gone from the semifinals of the Champions
League in 2001 to financial ruin (initially due to the club's having
taken out loans against future revenues that failed to materialize due
to a single failure to qualify for the Champions League) to battling to
avoid relegation to the *third* level of English football.
Now, it's extremely unlikely that Hicks & Gillett could screw things up
that badly -- indeed, their best-case scenario (a new stadium plus
continued high performance on the field resulting in further revenue
growth) does seem to be a definite possibility. Their chances do seem
better than those of the Glazers at Manchester United, who have burdened
the club with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of debts; and better
than those of Randy Lerner at Aston Villa -- a club that has thus far
not been able to break into the topmost tier.
And regardless of whether Hicks & Gillett (and the Glazers, etc.)
succeed or fail, or just muddle through, or become disenchanted with
sports ownership entirely and retire to log cabins on Baffin Bay, there
are plenty of other billionaires looking to get a piece of the English
action. (Another US consortium is now eying Coventry City.) So it
seems reasonable to assume that this latest invasion of England will
continue apace.
At this point, it's hard to make any definitive predictions as to what
will happen -- indeed, the situation looks somewhat 1216-ish: there is
plenty of optimism, and plenty of reasonable reasons for that optimism
all around (both on the part of the invaders (Prince Louis/Hicks &
Gillett et al) and the gladly invaded (the barons/the Premier League).
But it may be a good idea to recall what happened to Prince Louis after
being acclaimed as king by the people of London in the spring of 1216.
With the barons flocking to his side and King John on the run, Louis
could be forgiven for thinking that he'd won the rich prize of England,
and that all that remained was the mopping up.
However, Louis failed to press the siege of Dover to a successful
conclusion, calling a truce in October and returning to London. Then
King John died; William Marshal (regent for John's son Henry III)
rallied the Plantagenet forces; the barons began to peel away from the
prince's side; finally, the nascent Royal Navy (commanded by Hubert de
Burgh from Dover) prevented the landing of any French reinforcements.
By September 1217, Louis was back in France.
(A final indignity: by the terms of the Treaty of Lambeth -- despite
having controlled much of England for a year and a half and receiving
the homage of the King of Scotland -- Louis was compelled to declare
that he had never been King of England.)
*****
[Best wishes to Mr. Gilliard -- hoping that he recovers soon.]
- posted by eos0000
LowerManhattanite: "Spewin' "
Labels: comedy, coulter, wingnuttery
A big THANKS to the amazing LowerManhattanite who keeps 'em comin - THANKS LM!
(To the tune of “Doin What Comes Naturally”)
Folks are dumb where I come from,
They think gays are fer' burnin'.
Still they're bigoted as can be,
Spewin' what comes naturally! (Spewin' what comes naturally!).
Wingnuts like us, we always fuss--
And keep intolerance's pot a' churnin.
Still we're proudly G-O-P,
Spewin' what comes naturally! (Spewin' what comes naturally!)
You don't have to know how to read or write,
When you bash a minority in the pale moonlight.
You don't have to read my books to find--
What I think of 'em and what to do with their kind.
That comes naturally! (That comes naturally!).
Immigrants don't pay no taxes,
They're all take and no give.
Rush says that's what the facts is,
And you know he ne-ver fibs!
Virginia George got angry when
an injun taped him speakin',
Macaca'ed him, 'cause he was free—
Just spewin' what comes naturally! (Spewin' what comes naturally!)
Cousin Sean has never read an al-ma-nac on thinking.
Still talks sh*t on FOX-TV,
Spewin' what comes naturally! (Spewin' what comes naturally!).
Pal Michelle, our b*tch from hell, gives her own a lesson,
Hates brown folks a' com-plete-ly--
While spewin' what comes naturally! (Spewin' what comes naturally!)
You don't have to go a' Bob Jones school,
To know who to blame in the scapegoat pool.
No need to wear a hood and run around,
To make it clear you wanna keep other folks down.
That comes naturally! (That comes naturally!).
My president out in Texas can't even write his name.
He signs off bills with "x's"—
But he's a genius at the racist game.
We're more than hicks, from out in the sticks,
A' bangin. our relations.
We can spell B-I-G-and-O-and-T,
While a’ spewin' what comes naturally! (Spewin' what comes naturally!).
Spewin’....intolerance--nat-u-ralll-eeeeeeeeeeeeee!
(with apologies to Irving Berlin)
- posted by LowerManhattanite
DrBopperTHP: "Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years"
Labels: books, science fiction
image from this super-bitchen site of old SF mag covers
I saw this listing recently and was a little surprised to find that I have forty-four of these great books in my personal library. I lean towards (anything edited or written by) Harlan Ellison and Bester when I get the urge to re-read something. Not as avid with my scifi reading as I once was - vocation trumping avocation(s) I suppose. These are the ones I haven't read, but are still on my "Things To Do Before I..." list:
11,21,23,26 (NOL),40,43
(NOL = not on list)
How about you folks out there in "ether" -
The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002
- posted by DrBopperTHP
Seitan Worshipper: "International Women's Day"
"In Russia, truck drives you" - hack comedian Yakov Smirnov
Thanks to SW who sent in this insightful (and brief) thought - THANKS SW!
We're more than 1/2 the world and all we get is one day. [sigh] Anyway, here's what the UN hopes to accomplish:U.N. chief urges single world agency for women
By Michelle Nichols
Thu Mar 8, 3:12 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world body on Thursday to create a single agency to empower women and girls and fight for their rights.
In an address to mark International Women's Day, Ban said the 192-member United Nations should take the lead in the global battle with a fully funded new agency that combines the work currently done by three different U.N. bodies.
"Such a new body should be able to call on all of the U.N. system's resources in the work to empower women and realize gender equality worldwide," Ban said. "It should mobilize forces of change at the global level and inspire enhanced results at the country level."
A U.N. panel recommended in November that the U.N. Development Fund for Women, the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women, and the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues be combined into one ambitiously funded agency.
The combined budgets of the three units is currently less than $80 million annually.
Ban said much more needed to be done in the fight for women's rights, particularly in combating violence against women and girls around the world, which is the theme for this year's International Women's Day.
"Most societies proscribe such violence -- yet the reality is that too often, it is tolerated under the fallacious cover of cultural practices and norms, within the walls of the home," Ban told a U.N. International Women's Day event in New York.
- posted by Seitan Worshipper
Friday Night Videos
OK, it's saturday AM for you east coasters, but WTF: Labels: video
and
and
- posted by Jim in LA
Schwinn: "Gingrich's Fake Mea Culpa"
I..can't quite...remember...was she really 23 years my junior? Man, I ROCK!
Thanks to Schwinn for this great cross-post on Newtie - THANKS SCHWINN! LOVE YOUR BIKES! (the pre-china ones)Gingrich admits to extramarital affair
By BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 9, 3:48 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.
"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."
We already knew the details of this affair due to Gingrich's circus divorce trial in 1999, which was held in open court because he refused to settle with his second wife. As admitted in testimony, he was banging a paid aide 23 years his junior, sometimes on his Congressional desk, during the Clinton impeachment period. So why is he admitting to this now in front of Dobson? It means he wants to run for President and has to get this past the Christian Right gatekeepers. But look what he's forced to say in the process of defending the indefensible:
"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. "I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."
The fact that he would reiterate how intolerable "perjury in your highest officials" is within hours of the Libby verdict just shows how bad he wants into the GOP primary race. As his 2nd wife said in 1995, "I don't want him to be president and I don't think he should be."
- posted by Schwinn
Jesse "Doc" Wendel: "Look What We Can Do!"
All Planet Sizes relative to each other. Outward from the Sun, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Jupiter's diameter is about 11 times that of the Earth's and the Sun's diameter is about 10 times Jupiter's. Pluto's diameter is slightly less than one-fifth of Earth's. The planets are not shown at the appropriate distance from the Sun. Image Credit: Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
We can always count on "DOC" WENDEL to presence our essential humanity. THANK YOU DOC for touching our hearts.
Truckin': Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been
Ten years ago a spaceship named Cassini left Earth and headed towards Saturn by falling inwards towards the Sun and letting gravity speed her up. Cassini only had enough fuel to fire her engines occasionally, so the scientists running her mission used gravity assists & flybys : they played crack-the-whip around the planets while simultaneously lining Cassini up for the solar system's biggest game of pool.
Cassini's target was Saturn and to get there, she headed for the Sun. This is called "How to pick up speed. Fast." Here's a short movie of the whole sequence: Cassini ducked tightly around Venus, flew out past Mars' orbit, then headed back in for another close pass around Venus picking up even more velocity. She got another push going back out past Earth, and yet another kick passing Jupiter taking pictures all the while. Finally in 2004, a full seven years after she started, Cassini arrived at Saturn.
Listen... I'm trying to tell you something. Listen with your whole heart please. Three years ago a spaceship crossed a distance so far I can't explain it to you or to myself with any example which will actually communicate the distance in terms of distance. The best I can do is say it took seven years one-way in conditions so harsh it isn't yet possible to send a living person there or even a dog (like Laika, the Russian space dog who died within hours of launch from stress and overheating.) And even if we could send a human (and we can't), we couldn't bring her (or him) back home alive.
Just three years ago we crossed this distance with a large spaceship. It's only the third time in human history we've crossed to Saturn and the first two times were tiny Voyagers simply passing by.
Just last week as I write this, NASA posted new photographs from Saturn. Last week. In the whole of human history, after ten years and crack-the-whip and a four-planet pool shot with the Sun's gravity as the cue-stick, after three years orbiting and dodging so many moons I'm not even certain how many there are, not to mention all those gorgeous rings, with Steve in the hospital and open-heart surgery, with people living, dying, getting married and breaking up, with kittens still being cute and... and nothing. There's no opposite to kittens being cute; they're cute.
With everything that is and everything that isn't, I can say this: On March 1st, 2007, human beings posted photographs on the world-wide internet, taken from around the planet Saturn... taken from Saturn.
As a species, we rock. When we commit to learn, we move from Bulls in China Shops to Beginners, from Beginners to Advanced Beginners and then to Competency. Then to Proficient and Virtuosity, and a few people even become Masters, inventing new distinctions in the domain which alter the domain of learning for everyone who comes afterwards. 104 years ago we didn't even have controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight. And now, Saturn. Cassini orbits Saturn.
Look what we can do...
Viewing hint 1: The high-resolution links below each photo kick serious ass.
Viewing hint 2: I've saved the best for last -- a link to the Cassini Photo Essay. If you're easily bored, simply must read the end of the post first, or just want the best stuff as fast as possible, then click the above link now (turn your speakers on.) It's as if you are flying near Saturn yourself. If you can, please first come along with me below and be in awe at these three photos. The above link is for the "can't wait" crowd. *grins*
Pastel Planet
03.01.07
With pastel blues, pinks, greens and golds, Saturn displays a dazzling diversity of colors and hues. The small moon Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) can be spotted off the planet's western limb (edge) near the image bottom. Image scale is 60 kilometers (38 miles) per pixel.
High Resolution: PIA08359: Pastel Planet <-- Best viewed in High Resolution Symmetry in Shadow
03.01.07
Magnificent blue and gold Saturn floats obliquely as one of its gravity-bound companions, Dione, hangs in the distance. The darkened rings seem to nearly touch their shadowy reverse images on the planet below. Dione is 1,126 kilometers (700 miles) across. Image scale is 75 kilometers (47 miles) per pixel.
High Resolution: PIA08358: Symmetry in Shadow <-- Best viewed in High Resolution
Blinding Saturn
03.01.07
Surely one of the most gorgeous sights the solar system has to offer, Saturn sits enveloped by the full splendor of its stately rings.
Taking in the rings in their entirety was the focus of this particular imaging sequence. Therefore, the camera exposure times were just right to capture the dark-side of its rings, but longer than that required to properly expose the globe of sunlit Saturn. Consequently, the sunlit half of the planet is overexposed.
Between the blinding light of day and the dark of night, there is a strip of twilight on the globe where colorful details in the atmosphere can be seen. Bright clouds dot the bluish-grey northern polar region here. In the south, the planet's night side glows golden in reflected light from the rings' sunlit face.
Saturn's shadow stretches completely across the rings in this view, taken on Jan. 19, 2007, in contrast to what Cassini saw when it arrived in 2004 (see PIA05429).
The view is a mosaic of 36 images -- that is, 12 separate sets of red, green and blue images -- taken over the course of about 2.5 hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system. This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 40 degrees above the ring plane.
The images in this natural-color view were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.23 million kilometers (764,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 70 kilometers (44 miles) per pixel.
High Resolution: PIA08362: Blinding Saturn <-- Best viewed in High Resolution
AND FINALLY -- Make certain you hit this. Speakers on. Sit back. And enjoy the Cassini Photo Essay as you ride with Cassini in orbit through near-Saturn space.
This is genuine human accomplishment. This is beauty writ across the face of the Solar System.
- posted by Jesse "Doc" Wendel
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org . Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Gavin M: "Booty Drop"
Labels: max boot, wingnuttery
A big thanks to Gavin M. for this great post AND the cool GILLYART! - THANKS G!
A few weeks ago, Matt Yglesias picked up on an attempt to scrub the Wikipedia entry of the self-serious young wingnut-welfare grantee, Max Boot:
Above: Max Boot[A]s you can read here on Altercation, what this is about is the fact that Boot is involved in some scandalously corrupt backstory. Before he was a prestigious military policy writer, Boot was simply a generic rightwing hack at The Wall Street Journal's hack-laden editorial page. While there he, among other things, wrote an editorial attacking public health officials that was edited by tobacco lobbyist Steven Milloy.
The only reason we know anything about this is that it happens to have come up in tobacco-related litigation. It's possible, in principle, that when Boot was writing rightwing regulatory policy journalism for the Journal he just so happened to let one of his pieces be edited by a lobbyist and that that piece just so happened to have come up in a lawsuit. Much more likely, however, is that he did this on various occasions and there just so happens to have been a lawsuit that uncovered this.
Welp, things have really been heating up over there. A user called Lynnchu re-scrubbed
the so-called 'malicious, false, and misleading information' that appeared in those official court documents. Then, in stepped John Quiggin of Crooked Timber, reverting
Lynnchu's 'attempted censorship and excessive hyperlinking.'
One waits for Lynnchu to strike again. But one might wonder: Who is this 'Lynnchu,' a Wikipedia editor who only edits articles pertaining to Max Boot?
Funnily enough, she's Vice-President of the conservative literary agency, Writer's Representatives -- a firm which counts among its clients one Max Boot.
As Yglesias concluded:I wonder why he's bothering. In case Boot hasn't noticed, he's a conservative. The rules of the media game are clear -- no jobs for the left, no accountability for the right. Corrupt or not, Boot seems like a smart, perceptive guy . . . surely he's picked up on this.
No kidding. But fate has its ways, and anyone who's been watching Boot with bemused fascination over the past few years knows that there's another, unspoken issue that promises to catch up to him far faster than the forces of accountability.
Above: Some guys just don't have a good head shape for it
- posted by Gavin M
FDL's Scarecrow: " A Surge Or An Open-Ended Occupation?"
Thanks to Scarecrow from Firedoglake for this great cross-post - THANKS!
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." — Inigo Montoya, from The Princess Bride
Almost everything President Bush and his supporters told us in January about his new way forward in Iraq is already inoperative. First, he told us that his plan called for the introduction of only 21,500 additional troops. But within a week or so it became clear that was just "combat" troops; there would also be another 7,000 to 20,000 or so more US soldiers required to support the "combat" troops. Now, just two months later, the Generals are hinting that even that may not be enough.
From yesterday's New York Times article, US Commander In Iraq Sees Long Commitment, updated here:The new American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, warned today that American troops here face a long road ahead, and left open the possibility that even more soldiers would be called to serve here, as he described the difficult task of bringing peace to the country.
The President also told the American people that 17,500 of the added troops would be sent to pacify Baghdad, with the remaining sent to reinforce the Marines in Anbar Province. This carefully thought out plan, the President and his "experts" from AEI assured us, would focus on Baghdad because securing the captial city was critical and, more important, the military warned us there were not enough troops to simultaneously pacify Baghdad and areas outside of Baghdad. But that constraint, though still valid, is now forgotten:Among the most vexing problems he described were how to deal with rising violence outside the capital. . . . He also underscored how important it is to prevent the insurgents and death-squad members who are believed to have temporarily fled Baghdad from exporting their violence to nearby areas like Hilla, where attacks on Shiite religious pilgrims on Tuesday killed more than 100 people.
“Anyone who knows about securing Baghdad knows that you must also secure the Baghdad belts — in other words, the areas that surround Baghdad,” General Petraeus said.
The President's plan was described as a "surge," a sudden and substantial increase in troops. But when Generals and skeptics warned that the Army and Marines were too depleted, overstretched and underequipped to support this notion, their warnings were swept aside. Two months later, they have been proven correct. There is no "surge." At most, there is an unsteady trickle of added troops as rotations in are accelerated and rotations out are delayed — a strategy that is simply unsustainable.With barely one-third of the promised additional American and Iraqi “surge” troops now available on the ground, the new security plan for Baghdad is only beginning to take effect.
The Administration also encouraged the impression that the increase in US forces would be temporary. Joe Lieberman explained that this plan would work where others had failed because . . . well, this plan was different, and then our troops could come home. He and his fellow neocons from the National Review essentially told skeptics to shut up, demanding that they give the plan a chance to work. Well, that has happened. Administration supporters repeatedly talked in January about the importance of achieving substantial progress within six to nine months. Republican Senator Warner told us, back in November and December, that the next six months were critical. It is now March, and all expectations about these milestones are already disappearing.General Petraeus repeatedly stressed the long-term nature of the “surge,” as the current buildup of troops and operations has come to be called, and he was careful not to put a ceiling on the number of troops that may eventually be needed or how long they may need to stay in Iraq.
He said there were no “looming” requests for additional troops, and that he had not yet endorsed an assessment by the second-ranking commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, that the greatly enlarged American force should remain undiminished for at least one full year.
But General Petraeus added, “If you’re going to achieve the kinds of effects that we probably need, that it would need to be sustained certainly for some time well beyond the summer.”
The president promised the Iraqi people that his plan would help protect them. Last year at this time, sectarian militias helped provide security for the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims during the February-March Shia holidays; this year, the militias went into hiding to avoid confrontations with the US/Iraqi security forces, while hundreds of people were killed by bombs. Despite repeated calls for reconciliation, we still won't allow the Iraqis to use the people they most trust to provide their own security.But he emphasized that successes had come with devastating setbacks. “Schools, health clinics and marketplaces have all been attacked,” he said. “Car bombs have targeted hundreds of innocent Iraqis,” including worshipers in Habbaniya and college students in Baghdad. . . .
Similarly, General Petraeus appeared to take a softer line on the Mahdi militia led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, saying that many coalition countries had a “variety of auxiliary police” but that Iraqi leaders must ultimately decide the Mahdi militia’s fate.
The challenge, he said, “has been to determine how do you incorporate those who want to serve in a positive way, as neighborhood watches, let’s say, but unarmed in our own communities, but without turning into something much more than that.”
The President also told the American people that our commitment to Iraq was not "open ended," but Petraeus talked as though it was open ended.General Petraeus’s open-ended strategy appeared to be an effort to avoid a repeat of the pattern that has doomed past American efforts to halt the insurgency. In hot spots including Tal Afar and Diyala, United States soldiers have cracked down on insurgents and then reduced the American presence only to see insurgents retake old ground.
The President emphasized the need for political progress from the Iraqis in movings toward reconcilation. He assured us that he told the Iraqi leaders that the American people were losing patience and would not continue their support without substantial progress by the Iraqis. But polls suggest the American people are already there. And yesterday, when the Democrats in the House and Senate proposed to set timetables and condition continued US troop commitments to progress by the Iraqis in meeting certain political milestones, the President threatened to veto any legislation that made such a connection.
Here is what is becoming clear:
– There is no "surge." A "surge" is not possible, because the US military is no longer capable of any meaningful "surge" — not in Iraq, not anywhere.
– The US military acknowledges that it is not capable of achieving a military victory in Iraq. It is not clear that any number of US or foreign troops could achieve that, but it is likely that whatever that large number is, the US does not have even a significant fraction of that number to send.
– There is no longer any meaningful "coalition of the willing" to continue the occupation of Iraq. Whatever happens in Iraq, we are mostly on our own.
– It is probably not possible for the US military to achieve even the military objectives the President's plan promised, yet those objectives are already expanding to larger areas. The Generals are also telling us that broader US objectives cannot be achieved by military means alone but instead require substantial political reconciliation among the Iraqis. It is doubtful that the continued presence of US troops contributes to that reconciliation.
– We do not know whether violence in Iraq would be subtantially worse or less if we began to withdraw. However, polls there indicate that a substantial majority of Iraqis, including the Sunnis who presumably have the most to fear from majority Shia retribution if we left, want us to leave. The greatest threat to these people is that we apparently have no plans for protecting the most vulnerable, or for handling the surge of refugees under any scenario, even though "about 3.8 million Iraqis have [already] fled their homes and at least 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing each month."
– There is no reason to believe that the US and Iraqi governments share the same objectives, even though US objectives rely heavily on cooperation from the Iraqis.
– The President has no viable plan to achieve "success," whatever that means, but he will oppose any plan that calls for withdrawal of US troops. Taken together, this is equivalent to an open-ended commitment to continuing the occupation and participation in Iraq's civil/sectarian wars.
– The President's plan is not a plan for "victory." Rather, it is a plan for continued occupation of Iraq. We appear to have enough troops there to keep from being driven out, and to continue attacks in selected parts of Iraq, but not all of it, and not enough to achieve much more that is positive.
– Because it is unwilling to withhold funding in any meaningful way, the Congress does not have a viable strategy for getting the nation out of this stalemate. We are stuck in Iraq and the war will continue through the end of the Bush/Cheney regime.
– Only the Bush/Cheney regime's removal from office can change this fundamental stalemate.
– If the above is correct, then responsibility for the stalemate in Iraq will be the dominant issue in the 2008 elections, and the American people will be furious. Many incumbents will not be safe, and the Republican party could be savaged. With their political survival at stake, and with national security and responsibility for losing a war — and at least 30,000 US casualties — at issue, the 2008 elections could be very mean indeed.
I hope I'm wrong. UPDATE: Juan Cole assesses the “surge” at Salon.
- posted by FDL's Scarecrow
LowerManhattanite: "Thoughts of Hospitals"
Labels: Bush, US Army, Walter Reed. hospital
Soap Operas...every one of 'em
Thank you, LowerManhattanite, for this great post - YOUR FANS
Folks, it’s been a hospital-rific last week, what with Steve laid up with the Mother Of The Mother Of All Bugs, (And get better quickfast, ya big galoot!) and with this not so little piece of news…WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey resigned Friday in the wake of recent reports of substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a key facility treating troops wounded in Iraq.
………………………….
Troops recuperating from wounds they suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan were discovered to be living in substandard conditions in Building 18, an adjunct structure at Walter Reed that was once a hotel. There also were complaints of too much bureaucratic red tape.
………………………….
Earlier Friday, Bush said he is "deeply troubled" by the reports from Walter Reed and will form a bipartisan panel to assess medical care for wounded U.S. service members.
"This review will examine their treatment from the time they leave the battlefield through their return to civilian life as veterans, so we can ensure that we are meeting their physical and mental health needs," Bush will say in his weekly radio address, which is to air Saturday. A transcript was released by the White House on Friday.
Now, there’s a wild bit of symmetry at play with all of this news from the world of medicine. For one thing, probably foremost in our minds again, is the health of the main barkeep who slings the libations ‘round here. And while I consider myself fairly perceptive, I’m not a mind reader—but I’m pretty sure I have a bead on something on the big fella’s mind beyond his own health. And that something is the above noted story. Why you ask? Because in my daily, Monk-like, OCD-fueled tripping about the blogosphere, Steve is one of the few who has focused on the issue of what happens to our soldiers in VA hospitals, should they be injured on the battlefield—physically and mentally. And he is pretty much the only one who has taken this issue up as a personal crusade—well before the revelations of the ill-treatment and “Willowbrook-ing” at Walter Reed that came to light in the last two weeks.
In the reading of this blog, Steve has been uncannily prescient on so many elements of the war in Iraq, that the wrong-as-puppy-kicking Victor Davis Hansons and Fred Kagans of the world probably voodoo-dolled the brother into his hospital bed out of analytical jealousy. And his mounting of the VA hospital hobby horse here comes from life experience. As he’s noted here many a time, the treatment of our soldiers post-war was a kitchen table discussion for him. His dad worked in a VA hospital, and the tales of those places and the men who found themselves in them were part of the everyday conversation. I’m fairly certain that there were times when he would pit-bull chomp on that subject around here and some eyes would glaze over with an “Again with this sh*t?” silent sigh from certain readers. But damned if that concern, something so very few have chosen to discuss with any clarity—wasn’t again prescient, as the story of the now infamous “Building 18” at Walter Reed Hospital broke. I thought of his many mentions of the hell that is everyday life for patients in our V.A. hospitals, and how impassioned they were. And the symmetry became clear—worrying about him in the hospital, as he worried about our soldiers in their hospitals.
That symmetry hit this weekend as I drove my kids to their Grandpa’s house for a visit. Grandpa lives not far from my folks in Southeastern Queens, and getting to his house takes you past an odd neighborhood called Addisleigh Park—a weird, little enclave in Jamaica where Black entertainers like Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and James Brown all owned homes. And just across Linden Boulevard from Addisleigh, was the big V.A. hospital—a mean, imposing place where sullen men drifted in and out for treatment that always seemed to be—well, according to them, less than good. Driving past there, I remembered the old OTB parlor and the bars dotting Linden along that brief stretch near the hospital—funny how those places wound up so close by, and how those places always seemed to be overfull of, to the point of spilling out onto the streets, of angry, apparently ill-treated men. There was a comic-book store us kids frequented on that block, and on those sojourns you would always hear the men carping and ranting a litany of V.A. hospital horror stories—sometimes in front of the aforementioned sad haunts, but also in the luncheonette/comic book store we hung out at where they’d come in for ciggies and cheap cigars.
“I got better care in the middle of the f*cking jungle than ten minutes from my house” I remember one gaunt, afro-ed outpatient growling to a friend at the counter one day. I Briefly dated a girl who lived in Addisleigh, and I noted one day sitting on her porch that we only seemed to see the patients coming in and out of the place--never employees, and how I never saw the doctors out on the Boulevard.
“They ain’t crazy.”, the girlfriend pointed out. “They come in and go out the back way, otherwise some of those dudes’d jump ‘em. It’s a rough place, and they hold the doctors responsible. One got f*cked up at the bus stop a few years ago, and ever since then, they go out the back door—and get the bus a few stops back ithe other way.”
I hadn’t thought about that conversation until this (Sunday) morning. What kind of treatment would lead patients to wanna whip a doctor’s *ss? And move not one doctor , but drive ‘em all to use a crappy back door near a loading bay for entry and egresss? I shudder to think of what had so many of those olive-drab clad vagabonds who wandered up and down Linden so incensed about that hospital. Well, at least I used to shudder.
And then, about a month ago, in my usual late-night movie crawling on cable, I stumbled across Oliver Stone’s “Born On The Fourth Of July”—a movie I’ve seen every scene of but never in one continuous sitting (much the way I’ve seen “Dirty Dancing” at least nine times, but never in one uninterrupted shot) I figured I’d sacrifice a drowsy workday morning to see the damned thing that late night, from start to end, and put bluntly, the film was a revelation. Stone worked a bravura turn at the helm—with the usual visual genius he fairly oozes, and with the performances he got out of his actors. Cruise was I think at his best ever in it, as he made the trek from callow youth, to wounded, cynical adulthood (as opposed to Cruise’s usual “Callow-Youth-to-Smarmy-Thinks-He’s-Cool-F*ck” turn) as Ron Kovic. But the sh*t that struck me about the movie was the sequences in the V.A. hospital. Those harrowing, Hieronymous Bosch-like scenes of the hell that a V.A. hospital could be kind of haunted me. They were jarring as all f*ck, but…as much as I appreciate Stone’s talent, I figured he was ramping up the ugly for dramatic license, as he is prone to do—his Achilles Heel--sometimes to creepy excess.
And then you see the news from the past week from Walter Reed, and realize that some 35 years hence, what Stone was depicting—those seeming nightmarish bins where our military wounded would sometimes end up…was a f*cked-up, and evidently chronic reality.
The shadows of the Washington Monument, Capitol, and White House fell across that pit of despair, Walter Reed every day. Yet the bleat, the simpering bleat of the truth-starved cowards on the right, a mewled “Support The Troops”, somehow passed their lips repeatedly, as they actually abandoned them twice over. First to an ego, hate, and hubris-driven war they were lied into—and then abandoned again when they came home with injuries from that awful folly in the desert.
Left to rust and seize to the point of discarding, like a careless mechanic leaving his hand tools in the damp—because in his mind, they’re cheap and can be replaced.
It’s not a scandal. It’s a national Goddamned outrage. Thank God it’s come to light—because folks…there’s a multitude of our people passing through these places, and when I recall the damaged men I saw those days on Linden Boulevard, and what they had to contend with, I shudder thinking about our meaner, cruder and more selfish world of today—and how this world now could do so much more damage to today’s grievously wounded soldiers. Say a prayer for them, people. And then say a prayer for those who’ve championed their care—like Steve has for ages, and I’m sure when he is able, will continue to do. While you’re at it, if you have insurance and decent health care, take a moment to think about the 40-million-plus Americans who don’t. 40-plus-million of us. Nearly one sixth of the population in the country, simply *ss-out health care-wise.
And Goddamnit, let’s press these people running for president to really do something about it—make it a “vote for you/not vote for you” issue and let the chips fall where they may.
- posted by LowerManhattanite
Bob Geiger: "Patty Murray: 'We Are Fighting A War With No Cause' "
How the other side sees her, apparently
Thanks to Bob Geiger for this great Senate-watcher cross-post - THANKS BOB!
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) went to the floor of the Senate on Tuesday and said something I really admire. I respect her words because she made a statement that falls, for some incredibly dumb reason, right into that category of words we dare not speak.
"In truth, we are fighting a war with no cause," said the Washington Senator.
Those are not easy words to say in a political environment where most Republicans will use them to say you're sleeping with Osama bin Laden and that you obviously love the terrorists, but Murray is right -- as was Barack Obama (D-IL) when he "slipped" and made the true statement that the needless troop deaths in Iraq are a waste.
I'm hopeful that by the time Murray runs for reelection in 2010, those words will make her look thoughtful and prescient and not be a truth that her Republican opponent can use to smear her good name.
Murray made the speech on the Senate floor earlier this week when she addressed the subject of funding for mental-health care for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and the extent to which the White House and Republican party all sport "support the troops" ribbons on their SUVs but have done nothing but lie them into war and hang them out to dry if they make it home.
Indeed, as Murray points out, the Bush administration has seen many reports over the years highlighting bad conditions in Veterans' medical care facilities and have shown that their pro-troop rhetoric doesn't extend to actually doing anything to help them.
"With minimal amounts of sleep, our service men and women work longer days than you and I can imagine. They see things none of us should ever witness: bodies blown to pieces, mutilation, the blood of their fellow soldiers on the streets of a country we have no place being," said Murray on Tuesday. "All of this is for a war we were misled into supporting. There were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was never connected to al Qaeda, and nobody can say we are spreading democracy to Iraq today."
"In truth, we are fighting a war with no cause."
And Murray was clear in laying the blame right at the doorstep of George W. Bush, who not only took our country into a needless war, but has resisted every attempt by Democrats to rescue our troops from this quagmire, while his Republican attack dogs have impugned the courage and patriotism of those who have tried.
"As Americans across this country -- but especially Senators -- it is our solemn duty, as those who have not seen the horrors of battle, to care for those who have," said Murray. "Even more so, as the one who sent Americans to Iraq, it is the duty of the President. Providing mental health care for our children falls under this duty -- a duty that, sadly, this President has failed to fulfill."
The three-term Washington Senator also took the time to rebuke the other side of the aisle, taking Republicans to task for doing nothing to truly support the troops while providing massive cover for Bush on the Iraq war during the previous, do-nothing Congress.
Here's Murray:"I came to the floor this morning to remind my colleagues -- my Republican colleagues and this President -- actions speak louder than words. Talk does not improve the quality of the living conditions, and it doesn't make adequate mental health care available. Talk is cheap. Eventually, after a lot of talk and no action, words catch up with you. That is what we are seeing today. The Bush administration says they have provided for our active-duty warriors and our Veterans, but story after story, report after report proves otherwise.
"Unfortunately, it is pretty clear to all of us now that from enlistment to retirement, this administration has failed our troops. It is time for us to take action. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues on this floor to have action and not just words. I don't want to see report after report, all this year long and a year from now, stories that continue. We have a responsibility, when we send men and women overseas to fight for us, that we are on this floor fighting for them."
Murray ended her speech by making sure that Democrats understand they too have a responsibility -- especially now holding the majority in both houses of Congress -- to speak up loudly about the situation in Iraq and to take action as the 9/11 Commission recommendations are debated this week.
"I call on all of my colleagues to step up at every step of the way as we approve bill after bill, supplemental budgets, authorization bills, to stand up and speak out for our troops and no longer ignore the reality of this war."
Kudos to Senator Murray for having the guts to speak hard words that, for whatever pathetic reason, seem to challenge the courage of people on both sides of the political aisle. Lives are being wasted and this is indeed a war with no cause whatsoever.
And although Patty Murray will undoubtedly be attacked for those words, it's refreshing to hear someone in Washington speak that reality
- posted by Bob Geiger
Ditty: "Pork Brains in Milk Gravy"
Labels: comedy
Thanks to Ditty for this great cross-post and killer art - THANKS DITTY!
Pork Brains in Milk Gravy
By Mandy Warhole
Warhole, a member of both the Pop and Mom schools of modern art, dedicated herself to the iconization of the everyday. Best known for her Campbell's Soup can series, she also produced an amazing collection of other works on the same theme, inspired perhaps by her day job as a stacker in a local supermarket and by her hobby as an anorexic depressive. To her way of thinking, by painting food she could avoid eating it.
After her death her apartment was found to be crammed with unopened cans of purloined foodstuffs, while above the mantel was her masterwork, "The Virgin Can Opener," which now hangs in the Ekko Museum in Finland.
"Pork Brains in Milk Gravy" represents her final completed work. Her preliminary sketches are covered with notations like "3,500 calories --JESUS!!!!!!" and "A THOUSAND TIMES the RDA for cholesterol, mama mia!!!!!!" and "Fried in LARD and scrambled with EGGS, even, EEE-HAH!!!!!" and "This little piggy went to market, WITH HIS HEAD UP HIS CAN!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!"
Warhole died after apparently consuming four tubes of Liquitex Cadmium Red acrylic during a painting-completion binge.
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Acquired in part by a generous donation from the Howard Hughes/Karen Carpenter Foundation. "You can never be too rich or too thin."™
- posted by Ditty
Jesse "Doc" Wendel: "The Day The Music Died"
Buddy Holly good. RIAA awful.
Thanks to Doc Wendel for this great and IMPORTANT reminder why the RIAA blows - THANKS DOC!
THE RIAA KILLS INTERNET MUSIC WEBCASTS
THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED or
The Sony Betamax Case -- Part 2 (The Bad Guys Win)
By Daniel McSwain
The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).
RAIN has learned the rates that the Board has decided on, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006. They are as follows:
2006
$.0008 per performance
2007
$.0011 per performance
2008
$.0014 per performance
2009
$.0018 per performance
2010
$.0019 per performance
A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays.
The minimum fee is $500 per channel per year. There is no clear definition of what a 'channel' is for services that make up individualized playlists for listeners.
For noncommercial webcasters, the fee will be $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month. They would pay the commercial rate for all transmissions above that number.
Participants are granted a 15 day period wherein they have the opportunity to ask the CRB for a re-hearing.
Within 60 days of the final determination, the decision is supposed to be published in the Federal Register, along with any technical corrections that the Board may wish to make.
Within 30 days of publication in the Federal Register, it can be appealed (but only by the participants) to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.
...
...
Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that's a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.
In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour.
Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.
That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues . —KH
...
HOW TO TAKE ACTION
1. Sign this online petition and open letter to the US Congress.
2. Send an email to your members of Congress. You can use our suggested text, or write your own.
3. Print out the email (you'll get a copy) and mail it to your Congresspeople. Follow up with a phone call. You can look up their addresses and phone numbers here .
4. Write a letter to the editor of your favorite magazines and newspapers. If you know someone in the media, let them know what's going on. Have them read my post below, if you like.
5. Don't panic. Together we can save the medium that we all love. We have the passion to make it happen!
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
The View From Paradise
I'm Bill Goldsmith, and my wife Rebecca and I have spent the last seven years of our lives pouring our hearts, minds, and financial resources into . We are now faced with the very real possibility that all of our efforts will have been in vain, and that the thousands of people who are devoted listeners to our station will have it snatched out of their lives.
I have been in love with radio all of my life, and spent 30-odd years dealing with the conflict between my vision of radio as an art form and my FM-station employers' vision of radio as a conduit for advertising. I have watched the medium that I love turn from an essential part of the process of connecting those who love making music with those whose lives are touched by it into a mindless background hum of advertising and disposable musical sludge.
With the advent of the Internet, we were finally able to bring to life the radio station I had always wanted to work for (and listen to): commercial-free, passionate, and embracing a wide universe of musical treasures, from the classic rock artists I grew up with to the latest indie discoveries, with a liberal sprinkling of world music, electronica, jazz, even classical. We have slowly built up a loyal audience and have been able to support ourselves while living our dream.
An Exciting - But Fragile - New Era for Radio
The Internet has changed radio in a profound way. Instead of a business that required investments so huge (millions of dollars for even a small-market FM station) that a programming focus on the lowest common denominator and an extreme aversion to risk or experimentation was an unavoidable consequence, a radio station with a global reach was now within the grasp of anyone with the talent and determination to make it happen.
Every day we hear from listeners who are profoundly touched by our efforts - by the music we play, by the way we assemble the songs into meaningful sequences that are more than the sum of their parts, by our passion for what we are doing, and our commitment to never contaminating the music with advertising. And our station is but one of many who have attracted that kind of passionate following, and provided that kind of outlet for radio artists like myself.
The Internet's paradigm-shifting gift to radio programmers and music lovers - at least those in the US - is now in danger of being taken away by the misguided actions of the US Copyright Board. The performance royalty rates released by the Copyright Board on March 1, 2007 are not just extreme, not just burdensome. They are a death sentence for all US-based independent webcasters like Radio Paradise, SOMA-FM, Digitally Imported, and many others.
The facts and figures of the new rates are detailed in Kurt Hanson's newsletter for 3/2/07. Kurt's analysis of the financial impact of the new rates is entirely accurate, and chilling.
The Artificial Analog vs. Digital Divide
There has been much discussion about how unfair these rates are, but our listeners find one fact particularly appalling: while Internet stations like ours are being told they must pay royalty fees that exceed their income, sometimes by several times over, FM stations - including those owned by media conglomerates like Clear Channel - pay nothing at all!
Yes, both FM stations and Internet stations pay royalties to songwriters and/or music publishers. But the royalties in question are owed to the owners of performance copyrights, which means, in most cases, record companies - and to them, FM stations pay nothing at all.
How is it possible for such a massive disparity to exist? For the answer to that we need to go back to the 1990s, when music industry lobbyists persuaded Congress to include wording in two pieces of legislation (the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) that drew a sharp division between analog and digital broadcasts. Their reasoning was that a digital radio transmission was not a radio broadcast at all, but a sequence of perfect digital copies of music performances provided to the user, who could then copy them rather than paying to own a CD.
This is a profoundly flawed piece of reasoning, but members of Congress (who at that time had no idea how this whole digital thing worked) accepted it at face value, and agreed that it was only fair that digital broadcasts be subject to additional copyright fees, to be determined by an impartial (in theory…) ruling by the Copyright Office.
Let's Get Real About This
Let's reassess that reasoning in the light of 21st-century reality. Is there, in truth, a fundamental difference in the experience of an online listener to Radio Paradise and someone who was listening to identical programming on an FM station? Every one of our listeners - indeed, anyone who has ever clicked on a webcast as background music while working - knows the answer to that question. No! There is no difference whatsoever. Radio is radio, whether it comes in digital or analog form.
A Grave Disservice to The Public
Crippling an exciting, groundbreaking industry like Internet radio is certainly not in the best interests of the public, nor that of musical artists, and not even - if history is any judge - of the music industry itself. Just as they were unable to see how the advent of home music taping actually spurred the sale of LPs and CDs, they are unable to tell exactly what impact Internet radio and other forms of digital media will have on the future of their industry - and to behave as if they do know, and f